27. You have heard that it was said by them of old time, You shall not commit adultery;
28. But I say to you, That whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.
CHRYS.The Lord having explained how much is contained in the first commandment, namely, You shall not kill, proceeds in regular order to the second.
AUG. You shall not commit adultery, that is, You shall go nowhere but to your lawful wife. For if you exact this of your wife, you ought to do the same, for the husband ought to go before the wife in virtue. It is a shame for the husband to say that this is impossible. Why not the husband as well as the wife? And let not him that is unmarried suppose that he does not break this commandment by fornication; you know the price wherewith you have been bought; you know what you eat and what you drink; therefore keep yourself from fornicationd. Forasmuch as all such acts of lust pollute and destroy God's image (which you are), the Lord who knows what is good for you, gives you this precept that you may not pull down His temple which you have begun to be.
ID. He then goes on to correct the error of the Pharisees, declaring, Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already with her in his heart. For the commandment of the Law, You shall not lust after your neighbor's wife, the Jews understood of taking her away, not of committing adultery with her.
JEROME; Between actual passion and the first spontaneous movement of the mind, there is this difference: passion is at once a sin; the spontaneous movement of the mind, though it partakes of the evil of sin, is yet not held for an offense committed. When then one looks upon a woman, and his mind is therewith smitten, there is pro-passion; if he yields to this he passes from pro-passion to passion, and then it is no longer the will but the opportunity to sin that is wanting. Whoever, then, looks on a woman to lust after her, that is, so looks on her as to lust, and cast about to obtain, he is rightly said to commit adultery with her in his heart.
AUG. For there are three things which make up a sin: suggestion either through the memory, or the present sense; if the thought of the pleasure of indulgence follows, that is an unlawful thought, and to be restrained; if you consent then, the sin is complete. For prior to the first consent, the pleasure is either none or very slight, the consenting to which makes the sin. But if consent proceeds on into overt act, then desire seems to be satiated and quenched. And when suggestion is again repeated, the contemplated pleasure is greater, which previous to habit formed was but small, but now more difficult to overcome.
GREG.But whoever casts his eyes about without caution will often be taken with the pleasure of sin, and ensnared by desires begins to wish for what he would not. Great is the strength of the flesh to draw us downwards, and the charm of beauty once admitted to the heart through the eye is hardly banished by endeavor. We must therefore take heed at the first, we ought not to look upon what it is unlawful to desire. For that the heart may be kept pure in thought, the eyes, as being on the watch to hurry us to sin, should be averted from wanton looks.
CHRYS. If you permit yourself to gaze often on fair countenances you will assuredly be taken, even though you may be able to command your mind twice or thrice. For you are not exalted above nature and the strength of humanity. She too who dresses and adorns herself for the purpose of attracting men's eyes to her, though her endeavor should fail, yet shall she be punished hereafter, seeing she mixed the poison and offered the cup, though none was found who would drink thereof. For what the Lord seems to speak only to the man, is of equal application to the woman, inasmuch as when He speaks to the head, the warning is meant for the whole body.
29. And if your right eye offends you, pluck it out, and cast it from yourself; for it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.
30. And if your right hand offends you, cut it off, and cast it from yourself; for it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell.
GLOSS. Because we ought not only to avoid actual sin, but even put away every occasion of sin, therefore having taught that adultery is to be avoided not in deed only but in heart, He next teaches us to cut off the occasions of sin.
PSEUDO-CHRYS. But if according to that of the Prophet, there is no whole part in our body (Ps 38:3), it is needful that we cut off every limb that we have that the punishment may be equal to the depravity of the flesh. Is it then possible to understand this of the bodily eye or hand? As the whole man when he is turned to God is dead to sin, so likewise the eye when it has ceased to look evil is cut off from sin. But this explanation will not suit the whole; for when He says, your right eye offends you, what does the left eye do? Does it contradict the right eye, and it is preserved innocent?
JEROME; Therefore by the right eye and the right hand we must understand the love of brethren, husbands and wives, parents and kinsfolk; which if we find to hinder our view of the true light, we ought to sever from us.
AUG. As the eye denotes contemplation, so the hand aptly denotes action. By the eye we must understand our most cherished friend, as they are wont to say who would express ardent affection, 'I love him as my own eye.' And a friend too who gives counsel, as the eye shows us our way. The right eye, perhaps, only means to express a higher degree of affection, for it is the one which men most fear to lose. Or, by the right eye may be understood one who counsels us in heavenly matters, and by the left one who counsels in earthly matters. And this will the sense: Whatever that is which you love as you would your own right eye if it offends you, that is, if it be a hindrance to your true happiness, cut it off and cast it from you. For if the right eye was not to be spared, it was superfluous to speak of the left. The right hand also is to be taken of a beloved assistant in divine actions, the left hand in earthly actions.
PSEUDO-CHRYS.Otherwise; Christ would have us careful not only of our own sin, but likewise that even they who pertain to us should keep themselves from evil. Have you any friend who looks to your matters as your own eye, or manages them as your own hand, if you know of any scandalous or base action that he has done, cast him from you; he is an offense; for we shall give account not only of our own sins, but also of such of those of our neighbors as it is in our power to hinder.
HILARY; Thus a more lofty step of innocence is appointed us, in that we are admonished to keep free, not only from sin ourselves, but from such as might touch us from without.
JEROME. Otherwise, as above he had placed lust in the looking on a woman, so now the thought and sense straying here and there He calls 'the eye.' By the right hand and the other parts of the body, He means the initial movements of desire and affection.
PSEUDO-CHRYS.The eye of flesh is the mirror of the inward eye. The body also has its own sense, that is, the left eye, and its own appetite, that is, the left hand. But the parts of the soul are called right, for the soul was created both with free will and under the law of righteousness, that it might both see and do rightly. But the members of the body being not with free will, but under the law of sin, are called the left. Yet He does not bid us cut off the sense or appetite of the flesh; we may retain the desires of the flesh, and yet not do thereafter, but we cannot cut off the having the desires. But when we willfully purpose and think of evil, then our right desires and right will offend us, and therefore He bids us cut them off. And these we can cut off, because our will is free. Or otherwise, everything, however good in itself that offends ourselves or others, we ought to cut off from us. For example, to visit a woman with religious purposes, this good intent towards her may he called a right eye, but if often visiting her I have fallen into the net of desire, or if any looking on are offended, then the right eye, that is, something in itself good, offends me. For the right eye is good intention, the right hand is good desire.
GLOSS. Or, the right eye is the contemplative life which offends by being the cause of indolence or self-conceit, or in our weakness that we are not able to support it unmixed. The right hand is good works, or the active life, which offends us when we are ensnared by society and the business of life. If then anyone is unable to sustain the contemplative life, let him not slothfully rest from all action; or on the other hand while he is taken up with action, dry up the fountain of sweet contemplation.
REMIG. The reason why the right eye and the right hand are to be cast away is subjoined in that, For it is better, &c.
PSEUDO-CHRYS. For as we are everyone members one of another, it is better that we should be saved without some one of these members, than that we perish together with them. Or, it is better that we should be saved without one good purpose, or one good work, than that while we seek to perform all good works we perish together with all.
31. It has been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement;
32. But I say to you, That whoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.
GLOSS. The Lord had taught us above that our neighbor's wife was not to be coveted; He now proceeds to teach that our own wife is not to be put away.
JEROME; For touching Moses's allowance of divorce, the Lord and Savior more fully explains in conclusion, that it was because of the hardness of the hearts of the husbands, not so much sanctioning discord, as checking bloodshed.
PSEUDO-CHRYS. For when Moses brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, they were indeed Hebrews in race, but Egyptians in manners. And it was caused by the Gentile manners that the husband hated the wife; and if he was not permitted to put her away, he was ready either to kill her or mistreat her. Moses therefore suffered the bill of divorcement, not because it was a good practice in itself, but was the prevention of a worse evil.
HILARY; But the Lord who brought peace and good-will on earth, would have it reign especially in the matrimonial bond.
AUG. The Lord's command here that a wife is not to be put away, is not contrary to the command in the or Law, as Manichaeus affirmed. Had the Law allowed any who would to put away his wife, to allow none to put away were indeed the very opposite of that. But the difficulty which Moses is careful to put in the way, shows that he was no good friend to the practice at all. For He required a bill of divorcement, the delay and difficulty of drawing out which would often cool headlong rage and disagreement, especially as by the Hebrew custom, it was the scribes alone who were permitted to use the Hebrew letters, in which they professed a singular skill. To these then the law would send him whom it bid to give a writing of divorcement, when he would put away his wife, who mediating between him and his wife, might set them at one again, unless in minds too wayward to be moved by counsels of peace. Thus then He neither completed, by adding words to it, the law of them of old time, nor did He destroy the Law given by Moses by enacting things contrary to it, as Manichaeus affirmed, but rather repeated and approved all that the Hebrew Law contained, so that whatever He spoke in his own person more than it had, had in view either explanation, which in diverse obscure places of the Law was greatly needed, or the more punctual observance of its enactments. ID. By interposing this delay in the mode of putting away, the lawgiver showed as clearly as it could be shown to hard hearts, that He hated strife and disagreement. The Lord then so confirms this backwardness in the Law, as except only one case, the cause of fornication; every other inconvenience which may have place, He bids us bear with patience in consideration of the plighted troth of wedlock.
PSEUDO-CHRYS.If we ought to bear the burdens of strangers in obedience to that of the Apostle, Bear you one another's burdens (Gal 6:2), how much more that of our wives and husbands? The Christian husband ought not only to keep himself from any defilement, but to be careful not to give others occasion of defilement; for so is their sin imputed to him who gave the occasion. Whoever then by putting away his wife gives another human occasion of committing adultery, is condemned for that crime himself.
AUG. Yea more, He declares the man who marries her who is put away an adulterer.
CHRYS. Say not here, it is enough her husband has put her away; for even after she is put away she continues the wife of him that put her away.
AUG. The Apostle has fixed the limit here, requiring her to abstain from a fresh marriage as long as her husband lives. After his death he allows her to marry. But if the woman may not marry while her former husband is alive, much less may she yield herself to unlawful indulgences. But this command of the Lord, forbidding to put away a wife, is not broken by him who lives with her not carnally but spiritually, in that more blessed wedlock of those that keep themselves chaste. A question also here arises as to what is that fornication which the Lord allows as a cause of divorce; whether carnal sin or, according to the Scripture use of the word, any unlawful passion, as idolatry, avarice, in short all transgressions of the Law by forbidden desires. For if the Apostle permits the divorce of a wife if she be unbelieving (though indeed it is better not to put her away), and the Lord forbids any divorce but for the cause of fornication, unbelief even must be fornication. And if unbelief be fornication, and idolatry unbelief, and covetousness idolatry, it is not to be doubted that covetousness is fornication. And if covetousness be fornication who may say of any kind of unlawful desire that it is not a kind of fornication?
ID. Yet I would not have the reader think this disputation of ours sufficient in a matter so arduous; for every sin is spiritual fornication, nor does God destroy every sinner, for He hears His saints daily crying to Him Forgive us our debts; but every man who goes a whoring and forsakes Him, him He destroys. Whether this be the fornication for which divorce is allowed is a most knotty question - for it is no question at all that it is allowed for the fornication by carnal sin.
ID. If any affirm that the only fornication for which the Lord allows divorce is that of carnal sin, he may say that the Lord has spoken of believing husbands and wives, forbidding either to leave the other except for fornication. Not only does He permit to put away a wife who commits fornication, but whoso puts away a wife by whom he whom he is driven to commit fornication, puts her away for the cause of fornication, both for his own sake and hers.
ID. He also rightly puts away his wife to whom she shall say, 'I will not be your wife unless you get me money by robbery' or should require any other crime to be done by him. If the husband here be truly penitent, he will cut off the limb that offends him.
ID. Nothing can be more unjust than to put away a wife for fornication, and yourself to be guilty of that sin, for then is that happened, Wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself (Rom 2:1). When He says, And he who marries her who is put away, commits adultery, a question arises: does the woman also in this case commit adultery? For the Apostle directs either that she remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. There is this difference in the separation, namely, which of them was the cause of it. If the wife put away the husband and marry another, she appears to have left her first husband with the desire of change, which is an adulterous thought. But if she has been put away by her husband, yet he who marries her commits adultery, how can she be quit of the same guilt? And further, if he who marries her commits adultery, she is the cause of his committing adultery, which is what the Lord is here forbidding.
Catena Aurea Matthew 5