28. Go on therefore in your
course, and run with perseverance, in order that ye may obtain; and
by pattern of life, and discourse of exhortation, carry away with
you into this same your course, whomsoever ye shall have had power.
Let there not bend you from this earnest purpose, whereby ye excite
many to follow, the complaint of vain persons, who say, How shall
the human race subsist, if all shall have been continent? As though
it were for any other reason that this world is delayed, save that
the predestined number of the Saints be fulfilled, and were this
the sooner fulfilled, assuredly the end of the world would not be
put off. Nor let it stay you from your earnest purpose of
persuading others to the same good ye have, if it be said to you,
Whereas marriage also is good, how shall there be all goods in the
Body of Christ, both the greater, forsooth, and the lesser, if all
through praise and love of continence imitate? In the first place,
because with the endeavor that all be continent, there will still
be but few, for “not all receive this word.” But forasmuch as
it is written, “Whoso can receive, let him receive;”23012301 then do
they receive who can, when silence is not kept even toward those
who cannot. Next, neither ought we 454to fear lest haply all receive
it, and some one of lesser goods, that is, married life, be wanting
in the body of Christ. For if all shall have heard, and all shall
have received, we ought to understand that this very thing was
predestinated, that married goods already suffice in the number of
those members which so many have passed out of this life. For
neither now, if all shall have been continent, will they give the
honor of the continent to those who have already borne into the
garners of the Lord the fruit thirty-fold, if that be understood of
married good. Therefore all these goods will have there their
place, although from this time no woman wish to be married, no man
wish to marry a wife. Therefore without anxiety urge on whom ye
can, to become what ye are; and pray with watchfulness and fervor,
that by the help of the Right Hand of the Most High, and by the
abundance of the most merciful grace of the Lord, ye may both
persevere in that which ye are, and may make advances unto that
which ye shall be.
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