Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Again, when he says it is good for a man not to touch a woman, but on account of fornications let each man have his own wife, he seems, as it were, to explain himself further by adding: that Satan may not tempt you. For he does not say this of those who use marriage self-controlledly for the sake of child-bearing alone, on account of incontinence, but of those who desire to go further than child-bearing, lest, the Adversary breathing hard upon them, their desire be swept out to strange pleasures. And perhaps also, since the Adversary, out of jealousy and rivalry, sets himself against those who live righteously, wishing to draw them under his own dominion, he wants to furnish them occasions through toilsome self-restraint.
Reasonably, then, he says: better to marry than to burn, that the husband may render to the wife her due and the wife to the husband, and that they may not defraud one another of the help given, through the divine dispensation, for the sake of begetting children. But whoever, they say, does not hate father or mother or wife or children cannot be my disciple. He does not bid us hate our kin — for, he says, honor your father and mother, that it may be well with you — but he says, do not be led away by irrational impulses, nor indeed be bound to civic customs; for a household is constituted from kindred, and cities from households, just as Paul also said that those occupied with marriage seek to please the world.
Again the Lord says: let the man who has married not put away his wife, and let the man who has not married not marry; let the one who has professed, according to a purpose of eunuchhood, not to marry, remain unmarried.
To both, then, the same Lord gives fitting promises through the prophet Isaiah, speaking somewhat as follows: let not the eunuch say, I am a dry tree; thus says the Lord to the eunuchs: if you keep my sabbaths and do all that I command, I will give you a place better than sons and daughters. For it is not eunuchhood alone that justifies, nor indeed the sabbath of the eunuch, if he does not do the commandments. To those who have married he adds and says: my chosen shall not labor in vain nor beget children unto a curse, for it is a seed blessed by the Lord. For to the one who has begotten children according to reason and reared them and educated them in the Lord, just as to the one who has begotten through true instruction, there lies a reward, just as also for the chosen seed. But others take child-bearing itself to be the curse, and do not understand that the Scripture speaks against those very ones. For those who are truly the Lord's chosen do not hold doctrines, nor do they beget children, unto a curse, as the heresies do.
A eunuch, then, is spoken of not as one forcibly deprived of his members, nor indeed as the unmarried man, but as one barren of truth. This man was formerly a dry tree; but having obeyed the word and kept the sabbaths by abstaining from sins and having done the commandments, he will be more honored than those who are instructed by word alone without right conduct. Little children, he says, yet a little while I am with you, the Teacher. Wherefore Paul too, writing to the Galatians, says: my little children, for whom I am again in birth-pangs until Christ be formed in you. And again, writing to the Corinthians, he says: for though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers; for in Christ, through the gospel, I begot you. For this reason a eunuch shall not enter into the church of God — the one barren and fruitless both in conduct and in reason — but those who have made eunuchs of themselves from all sin for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, these are blessed, these are they who fast from the world.
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