for the greater the difficulty in resisting the
allurements of pleasure once enjoyed the greater the reward; but by the
hundred-fold the crown of virginity is expressed. Was there no one to
suggest to him that in the natural expectation of increase his order is
reversed? As a sample of the turgid rodomontade with which those Fathers
of the Church induced the women of their time to sacrifice, for the
glory of God, the duties of wifehood and motherhood which the Creator
ordained that they should perform, we will quote from Cyprian at length:
"We come now to contemplate the lily blossom; and see, O thou, the
virgin of Christ! see how much fairer is this thy flower, than any
other! look at the special grace which, beyond any other flower of the
earth, it hath obtained! Nay, listen to the commendation bestowed upon
it by the Spouse himself, when he saith--Consider the lilies of the
field (the virgins) how they grow, and yet I say unto you that Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these! Read therefore, O
virgin, and read again, and often read again, this word of thy Spouse,
and understand how, in the commendation of this flower, he commends thy
glory. In the glory of Solomon you are to understand that, whatever is
rich and great on earth, and the choicest of all, is prefigured; and in
the bloom of thy lily, which is thy likeness, and that of all the
virgins of Christ, the glory of virginity is intended.... Virginity hath
indeed a twofold prerogative, a virtue which, in others, is single only;
for while all the Church is virgin in soul, having neither spot, nor
wrinkle; being incorrupt in faith, hope, and charity, on which account
it is called a virgin, and merits the praise of the Spouse, what praise,
think you, are our lilies worthy of, who possess this purity in body, as
well as in soul, which the Church at large has in soul only! In truth,
the virgins of Christ are, as we may say, the fat and marrow of the
Church, and by right of an excellence altogether peculiar to themselves,
they enjoy His most familiar embraces."

The effect of this senseless exaltation of virginity, and of persuading
great numbers of maidens to forswear the pleasures and the duties of
matrimony, in the conviction that they thereby rendered themselves far
more pleasing to God than were their mothers and married sisters, was
unquestionably injurious to the morals of the time. The result was as
bad for the "lilies" themselves as it was f