Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Hebrews 13:4
There are 24 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 432, footnote 3 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (HTML)
The Stromata, or Miscellanies (HTML)
Book IV. (HTML)
Chapter XX.—A Good Wife. (HTML)
... rather, he says, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: looking diligently, lest there be any fornicator or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel surrendered his birth-right; and lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.” And then, as putting the finishing stroke to the question about marriage, he adds: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”[Hebrews 13:4] And one aim and one end, as far as regards perfection, being demonstrated to belong to the man and the woman, Peter in his Epistle says, “Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations; that the trial of your ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 7, page 463, footnote 10 (Image)
Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, 2 Clement, Early Liturgies
Constitutions of the Holy Apostles (HTML)
Book VI (HTML)
Sec. V.—The Teaching of the Apostles in Opposition to Jewish and Gentile Superstitions, Especially in Regard to Marriage and Funerals (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3325 (In-Text, Margin)
... an harlot are not clean.” These things the laws have forbidden, but they have honoured marriage, and have called it blessed, since God has blessed it who joined male and female together. And wise Solomon somewhere says: “A wife is suited to her husband by the Lord.” And David says: “Thy wife is like a flourishing vine in the sides of thine house; thy children like olive-branches round about thy table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord.” Wherefore “marriage is honourable”[Hebrews 13:4] and comely, and the begetting of children pure, for there is no evil in that which is good. Therefore neither is the natural purgation abominable before God, who has ordered it to happen to women within the space of thirty days for their advantage ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8, page 56, footnote 14 (Image)
Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocryphal Gospels and Acts, Syriac Documents
Two Epistles Concerning Virginity. (HTML)
The First Epistle of the Blessed Clement, the Disciple of Peter the Apostle. (HTML)
Continuation of the Remarks on Self-Denial; Object and Reward of True Virgins. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 323 (In-Text, Margin)
... excuse himself from this command, “Be fruitful, and multiply,” but he longs for the “hope promised” and prepared “and laid up in heaven” by God, who has declared with His mouth, and He does not lie, that it is “better than sons and daughters,” and that He will give to virgins a notable place in the house of God, which is something “better than sons and daughters,” and better than the place of those who have passed a wedded life in sanctity, and whose “bed has not been defiled.”[Hebrews 13:4] For God will give to virgins the kingdom of heaven, as to the holy angels, by reason of this great and noble profession.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 402, footnote 6 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Moral Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Good of Marriage. (HTML)
Section 8 (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1954 (In-Text, Margin)
8. “Honorable,” therefore, “is marriage in all, and the bed undefiled.”[Hebrews 13:4] And this we do not so call a good, as that it is a good in comparison of fornication: otherwise there will be two evils, of which the second is worse: or fornication will also be a good, because adultery is worse: for it is worse to violate the marriage of another, than to cleave unto an harlot: and adultery will be a good, because incest is worse; for it is worse to lie with a mother than with the wife of another: and, until we arrive at those things, which, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 250, footnote 8 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin. (HTML)
On Original Sin. (HTML)
Three Things Good and Laudable in Matrimony. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2023 (In-Text, Margin)
... own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife;” and considered as the bond of union: “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Touching these points, we do not forget that we have treated at sufficient length, with whatever ability the Lord has given us, in other works of ours, which are not unknown to you. In relation to them all the Scripture has this general praise: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.”[Hebrews 13:4] For, inasmuch as the wedded state is good, insomuch does it produce a very large amount of good in respect of the evil of concupiscence; for it is not lust, but reason, which makes a good use of concupiscence. Now lust lies in that law of the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 274, footnote 5 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
On Marriage and Concupiscence. (HTML)
On Marriage and Concupiscence (HTML)
Through Lust Original Sin is Transmitted; Venial Sins in Married Persons; Concupiscence of the Flesh, the Daughter and Mother of Sin. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2151 (In-Text, Margin)
Wherefore the devil holds infants guilty who are born, not of the good by which marriage is good, but of the evil of concupiscence, which, indeed, marriage uses aright, but at which even marriage has occasion to feel shame. Marriage is itself “honourable in all”[Hebrews 13:4] the goods which properly appertain to it; but even when it has its “bed undefiled” (not only by fornication and adultery, which are damnable disgraces, but also by any of those excesses of cohabitation such as do not arise from any prevailing desire of children, but from an overbearing lust of pleasure, which are venial sins in man and wife), yet, whenever it comes ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 361, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament. (HTML)
On the words of the Gospel, Matt. xviii. 15, ‘If thy brother sin against thee, go, shew him his fault between thee and him alone;’ and of the words of Solomon, he that winketh with the eyes deceitfully, heapeth sorrow upon men; but he that reproveth openly, maketh peace. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2753 (In-Text, Margin)
... happened, there let the evil die. Yet do we not neglect that wound; above all things showing the man who is in such a sinful state, and bears such a wounded conscience, that that is a deadly wound which they who suffer from, sometimes by an unaccountable perverseness despise; and seek out testimonies in their favour, I know not whence, null certainly and void, saying, “God careth not for sins of the flesh.” Where is that then which we have heard to-day, “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge”?[Hebrews 13:4] Lo! whosoever thou art that labourest under such a disease attend. Hear what God saith; not what thine own mind, in indulgence to thine own sins, may say, or what thy friend, thine enemy rather and his own too, bound in the same bond of iniquity ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 193, footnote 3 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm LI (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1831 (In-Text, Margin)
... male, of a virgin conceiving by the Holy Ghost. He cannot be said to have been conceived in iniquity, it cannot be said, In sins His mother nourished Him in the womb, to whom was said, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Virtue of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” It is not therefore because it is sin to have to do with wives that men are conceived in iniquity, and in sins nourished in the womb by their mother; but because that which is made is surely made of flesh deserving punishment.[Hebrews 13:4] For the punishment of the flesh is death, and surely there is in it liability to death itself. Whence the Apostle spoke not of the body as if to die, but as if dead: “The body indeed is dead,” he saith, “because of sin, but the Spirit is life ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 9, page 113, footnote 9 (Image)
Chrysostom: On the Priesthood, Ascetic Treatises, Select Homilies and Letters, Homilies on the Statutes
An Exhortation to Theodore After His Fall. (HTML)
Letter II (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 317 (In-Text, Margin)
“Marriage is right,” you say; I also assent to this. For “marriage,” we read, “is honourable and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge;”[Hebrews 13:4] but it is no longer possible for thee to observe the right conditions of marriage. For if he who has been attached to a heavenly bridegroom deserts him, and joins himself to a wife the act is adultery, even if you call it marriage ten thousand times over; or rather it is worse than adultery in proportion as God is greater than man. Let no one deceive thee saying: “God hath not forbidden to marry;” I know this as ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 2, page 18, footnote 3 (Image)
Socrates: Church History from A.D. 305-438; Sozomenus: Church History from A.D. 323-425
The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
Of the Bishop Paphnutius. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 197 (In-Text, Margin)
... to the bishops to introduce a new law into the Church, that those who were in holy orders, I speak of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, should have no conjugal intercourse with the wives whom they had married while still laymen. Now when discussion on this matter was impending, Paphnutius having arisen in the midst of the assembly of bishops, earnestly entreated them not to impose so heavy a yoke on the ministers of religion: asserting that ‘marriage itself is honorable, and the bed undefiled’;[Hebrews 13:4] urging before God that they ought not to injure the Church by too stringent restrictions. ‘For all men,’ said he, ‘cannot bear the practice of rigid continence; neither perhaps would the chastity of the wife of each be preserved’: and he termed the ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 4, page 557, footnote 5 (Image)
Athanasius: Select Writings and Letters
Letters of Athanasius with Two Ancient Chronicles of His Life. (HTML)
The Festal Letters, and their Index. (HTML)
Personal Letters. (HTML)
Letter to Amun. Written before 354 A.D. (HTML)
... the body willed and made these parts to have such passages? But since we must grapple with the objections of evil persons, as they may say, ‘If the organs have been severally fashioned by the Creator, then there is no sin in their genuine use,’ let us stop them by asking this question: What do you mean by use? That lawful use which God permitted when He said, ‘Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth,’ and which the Apostle approves in the words, ‘Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled[Hebrews 13:4],’ or that use which is public, yet carried on stealthily and in adulterous fashion? For in other matters also which go to make up life, we shall find differences according to circumstances. For example, it is not right to kill, yet in war it is ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 4, page 557, footnote 6 (Image)
Athanasius: Select Writings and Letters
Letters of Athanasius with Two Ancient Chronicles of His Life. (HTML)
The Festal Letters, and their Index. (HTML)
Personal Letters. (HTML)
Letter to Amun. Written before 354 A.D. (HTML)
... only are they who have distinguished themselves in the field held worthy of great honours, but monuments are put up proclaiming their achievements. So that the same act is at one time and under some circumstances unlawful, while under others, and at the right time, it is lawful and permissible. The same reasoning applies to the relation of the sexes. He is blessed who, being freely yoked in his youth, naturally begets children. But if he uses nature licentiously, the punishment of which the Apostle[Hebrews 13:4] writes shall await whoremongers and adulterers.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 23, footnote 5 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Eustochium. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 345 (In-Text, Margin)
... bride “lady”), to show you by my opening words that my object is not to praise the virginity which you follow, and of which you have proved the value, or yet to recount the drawbacks of marriage, such as pregnancy, the crying of infants, the torture caused by a rival, the cares of household management, and all those fancied blessings which death at last cuts short. Not that married women are as such outside the pale; they have their own place, the marriage that is honorable and the bed undefiled.[Hebrews 13:4] My purpose is to show you that you are fleeing from Sodom and should take warning by Lot’s wife. There is no flattery, I can tell you, in these pages. A flatterer’s words are fair, but for all that he is an enemy. You need expect no rhetorical ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 67, footnote 10 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Pammachius. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1047 (In-Text, Margin)
... supposing all cohabitation unclean. For he condemns and reprobates not marriage only, but foods also which God has created for us to enjoy. We know that in a large house there are vessels not only of silver and of gold, but of wood also and of earth. We know, too, that on the foundation of Christ which Paul the master builder has laid, some build up gold, silver, and precious stones; others, on the contrary, hay, wood, and stubble. We are not ignorant that ‘marriage is honorable…and the bed undefiled.’[Hebrews 13:4] We have read the first decree of God: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.’ But while we allow marriage, we prefer the virginity which springs from it. Gold is more precious than silver, but is silver on that account the less silver? ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 135, footnote 9 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Pammachius. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1925 (In-Text, Margin)
... them by her own contempt of riches the true object on which to fix their affections? Who has set a better example of courage than Eustochium, who by resolving to be a virgin has breached the gates of the nobility and broken down the pride of a consular house? The first of Roman ladies, she has brought under the yoke the first of Roman families. Has there ever been temperance greater than that of Paulina, who, reading the words of the apostle: “marriage is honourable in all and the bed undefiled,”[Hebrews 13:4] and not presuming to aspire to the happiness of her virgin sister or the continence of her widowed mother, has preferred to keep to the safe track of a lower path rather than treading on air to lose herself in the clouds? When once she had entered ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 144, footnote 2 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Oceanus. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2035 (In-Text, Margin)
... withdrew into the privacy of his own chamber when he sought to obey nature and to win God’s blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” You on the contrary outraged public decency in the hot eagerness of your lust. He covered a lawful indulgence beneath a veil of modesty; you pursued an unlawful one shamelessly before the eyes of all. For him it is written “Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled,” while to you the words are read, “but whoremongers and adulterers God wilt judge,”[Hebrews 13:4] and “if any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” All iniquities, we are told, are forgiven us at our baptism, and when once we have received God’s mercy we need not afterwards dread from Him the severity of a judge. The apostle ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 168, footnote 2 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Salvina. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2468 (In-Text, Margin)
... uninjured, and another to cling naked to a plank and, as the waves toss you this way and that, to be dashed again and again on the sharp rocks. A widow should be ignorant that second marriage is permitted; she should know nothing of the apostle’s words:—“It is better to marry than to burn.” Remove what is said to be worse, the risk of burning, and marriage will cease to be regarded as good. Of course I repudiate the slanders of the heretics; I know that “marriage is honourable…and the bed undefiled.”[Hebrews 13:4] Yet Adam even after he was expelled from paradise had but one wife. The accursed and blood-stained Lamech, descended from the stock of Cain, was the first to make out of one rib two wives; and the seedling of digamy then planted was altogether ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 267, footnote 19 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Demetrius. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3728 (In-Text, Margin)
... the only sure friendship is one based on an identity of likes and dislikes. You have been taught by their example as well as instructed by the holy life of your home to aspire to virginity, to recognize the commandments of Christ, to know what is expedient for you and what course you ought to choose. But do not regard what is your own as absolutely your own. Remember that part of it belongs to those who have communicated their chastity to you and from whose honourable marriages and beds undefiled[Hebrews 13:4] you have sprung up like a choice flower. For you are destined to produce perfect fruit if only you will humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, always remembering that it is written: “God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.” ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 349, footnote 11 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
Treatises. (HTML)
Against Jovinianus. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4286 (In-Text, Margin)
... instructed by Huldah, wife of Shallum. Daniel also and the three youths are classed by him with the married. Suddenly he betakes himself to the Gospel, and adduces Zachariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his father-in-law, and the rest of the Apostles. His inference is thus expressed: “If they idly urge in defence of themselves the plea that the world in its early stage needed to be replenished, let them listen to the words of Paul, ‘I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children.’ And[Hebrews 13:4] ‘Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled.’ And ‘A wife is bound for so long time as her husband liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.’ And ‘Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 25, footnote 2 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril. (HTML)
On the Ten Points of Doctrine. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 724 (In-Text, Margin)
25. Nor again, on the other hand, in maintaining thy chastity be thou puffed up against those who walk in the humbler path of matrimony. For as the Apostle saith, Let marriage be had in honour among all, and let the bed be undefiled[Hebrews 13:4]. Thou too who retainest thy chastity, wast thou not begotten of those who had married? Because thou hast a possession of gold, do not on that account reprobate the silver. But let those also be of good cheer, who being married use marriage lawfully; who make a marriage according to God’s ordinance, and not of wantonness for the sake of unbounded license; who recognise seasons ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 340, footnote 10 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)
On the Words of the Gospel, 'When Jesus Had Finished These Sayings,' Etc.--S. Matt. xix. 1. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3827 (In-Text, Margin)
... with his wife, it is not good to marry. Is it only now, O Pharisee, that thou understandest this, It is not good to marry? Didst thou not know it before when thou sawest widowhoods, and orphanhoods, and untimely deaths, and mourning succeeding to shouting, and funerals coming upon weddings, and childlessness, and all the comedy or tragedy that is connected with this? Either is most appropriate language. It is good to marry; I too admit it, for marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.[Hebrews 13:4] It is good for the temperate, not for those who are insatiable, and who desire to give more than due honour to the flesh. When marriage is only marriage and conjunction and the desire for a succession of children, marriage is honourable, for it ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 9, page 97b, footnote 15 (Image)
Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus
John of Damascus: Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. (HTML)
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. (HTML)
Book IV (HTML)
Concerning Virginity. (HTML)
Virginity is the rule of life among the angels, the property of all incorporeal nature. This we say without speaking ill of marriage: God forbid! (for we know that the Lord blessed marriage by His presence, and we know him who said, Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled[Hebrews 13:4]), but knowing that virginity is better than marriage, however good. For among the virtues, equally as among the vices, there are higher and lower grades. We know that all mortals after the first parents of the race are the offspring of marriage. For the first parents were the work of virginity and not of marriage. But celibacy is, as we said, an imitation ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 9, page 97b, footnote 19 (Image)
Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus
John of Damascus: Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. (HTML)
An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. (HTML)
Book IV (HTML)
Concerning Virginity. (HTML)
... the procreation of children enjoined by the law, and good is marriage on account of fornications, for it does away with these, and by lawful intercourse does not permit the madness of desire to be enflamed into unlawful acts. Good is marriage for those who have no continence: but that virginity is better which increases the fruitfulness of the soul and offers to God the seasonable fruit of prayer. Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge[Hebrews 13:4].
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 11, page 507, footnote 3 (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 X. An explanation that we may not appear to recommend separation from wives. (HTML)
But let no one imagine that we have invented this for the sake of encouraging divorce, as we not only in no way condemn marriage, but also, following the words of the Apostle, say: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled,”[Hebrews 13:4] but it was in order faithfully to show the reader the origin of the conversion by which this great man was dedicated to God. And I ask the reader kindly, to allow that, whether he likes this or no, in either case I am free from blame, and to give the praise or blame for this act to its real author. But as for me, as I have not put forward an opinion of my own on this ...