{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/002/0020370.htm","path":"chr/ecf/002/0020370.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020370.htm","text":"The woman who, with propriety, loves her husband, Euripides describes, while admonishing,\u2014\n \u201cThat when her husband says aught,\nShe ought to regard him as speaking well if she say nothing;\nAnd if she will say anything, to do her endeavour to gratify her husband.\u201d\nAnd again he subjoins the like:\u2014\n \u201cAnd that the wife should sweetly look sad with her husband,\nShould aught evil befall him,\nAnd have in common a share of sorrow and joy.\u201d\nThen, describing her as gentle and kind even in misfortunes, he adds:\u2014\n \u201cAnd I, when you are ill, will, sharing your sickness bear it;\nAnd I will bear my share in your misfortunes.\u201d\n \u201cNothing is bitter to me,\nFor with friends one ought to be happy,\nFor what else is friendship but this?\u201d\nThe marriage, then, that is consummated according to the word, is sanctified, if the union be under subjection to God, and be conducted \u201cwith a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and the body washed with pure water, and holding the confession of hope; for He is faithful that promised.\u201d And the happiness of marriage ought never to be estimated either by wealth or beauty, but by virtue.\n \u201cHelps no wife with her husband;\nBut virtue has helped many; for every good wife\nWho is attached to her husband knows how to practice sobriety.\u201d\nThen, as giving admonitions, he says:\u2014\n \u201cFirst, then, this is incumbent on her who is endowed with mind,\nThat even if her husband be ugly, he must appear good-looking;\nFor it is for the mind, not the eye, to judge.\u201d\nFor with perfect propriety Scripture has said that woman is given by God as \u201can help\u201d to man. It is evident, then, in my opinion, that she will charge herself with remedying, by good sense and persuasion, each of the annoyances that originate with her husband in domestic economy. And if he do not yield, then she will endeavour, as far as possible for human nature, to lead a sinless life; whether it be necessary to die, in accordance with reason, or to live; considering that God is her helper and associate in such a course of conduct, her true defender and Saviour both for the present and for the future; making Him the leader and guide of all her actions, reckoning sobriety and righteousness her work, and making the favour of God her end. Gracefully, therefore, the apostle says in the Epistle to Titus, \u201cthat the elder women should be of godly behaviour, should not be slanderers, not enslaved to much wine; that they should counsel the young women to be lovers of their husbands, lovers of their children, discreet, chaste, housekeepers, good, subject to their own husbands; that the word of God be not blasphemed.\u201d 2868 But rather, he says, \u201cFollow 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.\u201d 2869 And then, as putting the finishing stroke to the question about marriage, he adds: \u201cMarriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.\u201d 2870 p. 433 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, \u201cThough now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations; that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than that of gold which perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise, and honour, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ; whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls.\u201d 2871 Wherefore also Paul rejoices for Christ\u2019s sake that he was \u201cin labours, more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths oft.\u201d 2872","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol II: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Chapter XX.\u2014A Good Wife.","type":"page"}