Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Ecclesiastes 3:5
There are 10 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8, page 28, footnote 1 (Image)
Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocryphal Gospels and Acts, Syriac Documents
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. (HTML)
The Testament of Naphtali Concerning Natural Goodness. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 158 (In-Text, Margin)
... thereof; so also for a good work there is a good remembrance with God. But him who doeth not that which is good, men and angels shall curse and God will be dishonoured among the heathen through him, and the devil maketh him his own as his peculiar instrument, and every wild beast shall master him, and the Lord will hate him. For the commandments of the law are twofold, and through prudence must they be fulfilled. For there is a season for a man to embrace his wife, and a season to abstain therefrom[Ecclesiastes 3:5] for his prayer. So then there are two commandments; and unless they be done in due order, they bring about sin. So also is it with the other commandments. Be ye therefore wise in God, and prudent, understanding the order of the commandments, and the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 2, page 564, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: The City of God, Christian Doctrine
On Christian Doctrine (HTML)
Book III (HTML)
We Must Take into Consideration the Time at Which Anything Was Enjoyed or Allowed. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1873 (In-Text, Margin)
... enjoyments. And those men to whom the apostle permitted as a matter of indulgence to have one wife because of their incontinence, were less near to God than those who, though they had each of them numerous wives, yet just as a wise man uses food and drink only for the sake of bodily health, used marriage only for the sake of offspring. And, accordingly, if these last had been still alive at the advent of our Lord, when the time not of casting stones away but of gathering them together had come,[Ecclesiastes 3:5] they would have immediately made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. For there is no difficulty in abstaining unless when there is lust in enjoying. And assuredly those men of whom I speak knew that wantonness even in regard to ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 405, footnote 8 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Moral Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Good of Marriage. (HTML)
Section 15 (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1977 (In-Text, Margin)
15. For what Christian men of our time being free from the marriage bond, having power to contain from all sexual intercourse, seeing it to be now “a time,” as it is written, “not of embracing, but of abstaining from embrace,”[Ecclesiastes 3:5] would not choose rather to keep virginal or widowed continence, than (now that there is no obligation from duty to human society) to endure tribulation of the flesh, without which marriages cannot be (to pass over in silence other things from which the Apostle spares.) But when through desire reigning they shall have been joined together, if they shall after overcome it, because it ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 445, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Moral Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Good of Widowhood. (HTML)
Section 11 (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2244 (In-Text, Margin)
11. But thou who both hast sons, and livest in that end of the world, wherein now is the time not of casting stones, but of gathering; not of embracing, but of abstaining from embracing;[Ecclesiastes 3:5] when the Apostle cries out, “But this I say, brethren, the time is short; it remains, that both they who have wives be as not having;” assuredly if thou hadst sought a second marriage, it would have been no obedience of prophecy or law, no carnal desire even of family, but a mark of incontinence alone. For you would have done what the Apostle says, after he had said, “It is good for them, if they shall ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 269, footnote 14 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
On Marriage and Concupiscence. (HTML)
On Marriage and Concupiscence (HTML)
Before Christ It Was a Time for Marrying; Since Christ It Has Been a Time for Continence. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2110 (In-Text, Margin)
... was a most bounden duty for the purpose of begetting and preserving a people for God, amongst whom the prophecy of Christ’s coming must needs have had precedence over everything, now has no longer the same necessity. For from among all nations the way is open for an abundant offspring to receive spiritual regeneration, from whatever quarter they derive their natural birth. So that we may acknowledge that the scripture which says there is “a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing,”[Ecclesiastes 3:5] is to be distributed in its clauses to the periods before Christ and since. The former was the time to embrace, the latter to refrain from embracing.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 5, page 69, footnote 1 (Image)
Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises; Select Writings and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises. (HTML)
Against Eunomius. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
It will not do to apply this conception, as drawn out above, of the Father and Son to the Creation, as they insist on doing: but we must contemplate the Son apart with the Father, and believe that the Creation had its origin from a definite point. (HTML)
It is clear, even with a moderate insight into the nature of things, that there is nothing by which we can measure the divine and blessed Life. It is not in time, but time flows from it; whereas the creation, starting from a manifest beginning, journeys onward to its proper end through spaces of time; so that it is possible, as Solomon somewhere[Ecclesiastes 3:1-11] says, to detect in it a beginning, an end, and a middle; and mark the sequence of its history by divisions of time. But the supreme and blessed life has no time-extension accompanying its course, and therefore no span nor measure. Created things are confined within the fitting measures, as within a boundary, with due regard ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 29, footnote 10 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Eustochium. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 463 (In-Text, Margin)
Some people may be eunuchs from necessity; I am one of free will. “There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. There is a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together.”[Ecclesiastes 3:5] Now that out of the hard stones of the Gentiles God has raised up children unto Abraham, they begin to be “holy stones rolling upon the earth.” They pass through the whirlwinds of the world, and roll on in God’s chariot on rapid wheels. Let those stitch coats to themselves who have lost the coat woven from the top throughout; who delight in the cries of infants which, as soon as they see the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 195, footnote 6 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Laeta. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2726 (In-Text, Margin)
... sister, and to realize the mighty souls which animate their small bodies; such is your innate thirst for chastity that I cannot doubt but that you would go to them even before your daughter, and would emancipate yourself from God’s first decree of the Law to put yourself under His second dispensation of the Gospel. You would count as nothing your desire for other offspring and would offer up yourself to the service of God. But because “there is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing,”[Ecclesiastes 3:5] and because “the wife hath not power of her own body,” and because the apostle says “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called” in the Lord, and because he that is under the yoke ought so to run as not to leave his companion in ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 234, footnote 24 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Ageruchia. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3289 (In-Text, Margin)
... only end our marrying with the close of our lives. And if both before and after the deluge the maxim held good: “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth:” what has that to do with us upon whom the ends of the ages are come, unto whom it is said, “the time is short,” and “now the axe is laid unto the root of the trees;” that is to say, the forests of marriage and of the law must be cut down by the chastity of the gospel. There is “a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.”[Ecclesiastes 3:5] Owing to the near approach of the captivity Jeremiah is forbidden to take a wife. In Babylon Ezekiel says: “my wife is dead and my mouth is opened.” Neither he who wished to marry nor he who had married could in wedlock prophesy freely. In days gone ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 11, page 508, footnote 1 (Image)
Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian
The Works of John Cassian. (HTML)
The Conferences of John Cassian. Part III. Containing Conferences XVIII.-XXIV. (HTML)
Conference XXI. The First Conference of Abbot Theonas. On the Relaxation During the Fifty Days. (HTML)
Chapter XII. The answer on the nature of things good, bad, and indifferent. (HTML)
... build; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to send away; a time to scatter and a time to collect; a time to be silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace;” and below: “For there is a time,” it says, “for everything and for every deed.”[Ecclesiastes 3:1-8] None therefore of these things does it lay down as always good, but only when any of them are fittingly done and at the right time, so that these very things which at one time, when done at the right moment, turn out well, if they are ventured on at ...