Chapter VII.
To mark the sea with the Gospel and the Church, and what a fish should accomplish in the sea. Spouses are urged towards mutual tolerance of character, charity, and faith, by the example of the viper. Why is the same example used on both sides?
17. And do not be moved by the fact that I have placed the Gospel in the sea. The Gospel is the sea in which Christ walked: The Gospel is the sea in which Peter wavered, when he denied; yet through the stronghold of Christ's faith, he found the grace of his station: The Gospel is the sea from which the martyr ascended: The Gospel is the sea in which the apostles fish, in which the net is cast, which is like the kingdom of heaven: The Gospel is the sea in which the mysteries of Christ are portrayed: The Gospel is the sea from which the Hebrew escaped, while the Egyptian was destroyed: The Gospel is the sea, for the Church, the bride of Christ, is the sea, and the fullness of divine grace, which is founded above the seas, as the Prophet said: He founded it above the seas (Psalm 24:2). Exile over the waves, O man, because you are a fish: let not the waves of this age overpower you: if there is a storm, seek the deep and the abyss: if there is old age, play in the waves: if there is a tempest, beware of the rocky shore; lest the raging surf strike you against the cliff. For it is written: Be shrewd as serpents (Matt. X, 16).
18. And since there is a proposed example of cunning serpents, let us be cunning in seeking and maintaining marriages, let us cherish the partnerships entrusted to us. And if those who were born in distant regions and separated in time come together, and if a man contends for a foreign land, no distance, no absence diminishes the pleasing love. The same law connects the present and the absent: the same bond of nature binds the distant and the united in the rights of conjugal love. They are joined under the same yoke of blessing, even if one must endure the long separations of distant regions; for they have received the yoke of grace not on the physical neck, but on the neck of the mind. The viper, the most wicked kind of beast, and cleverer than all other serpentine species, when it has taken on the desire to mate, seeks the well-known company of the sea moray, or prepares a new one: having advanced to the shore, having given testimony to its presence with a hiss, it summons her to the conjugal embrace. But the invited moray is not lacking, and she imparts the desired uses of her poisonous serpent's conjunction. What does such a conversation mean, if not that the behavior of spouses must be endured; and if he is absent, that his presence must be awaited, even if he is harsh, deceitful, inconsistent, slippery, drunken? What is worse than poison, which does not spare even the moray eel in a spouse? It is not lacking in invites, and with careful charity it embraces the slippery serpent. He bears your misfortunes and the fickleness of a woman: can you not, O woman, tolerate your husband? Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam (33, q. 5, c. Adam per Evam). Whom the woman called to blame, it is right that she should take on as her leader; lest she stumble again due to female weakness. But he is rough and uncultivated. Once he pleased. Should a man be chosen frequently? He compares his own and seeks an ox, and he loves a horse; and if another is changed, nevertheless he does not know how to drag the yoke like the counterpart of another, and he does not think himself whole: you reject your husband, and you think of changing often; and if one day he is absent, you introduce a rival, and immediately you carry out an unknown cause as if known of shame. A snake seeks the absent one, calls the absent one, and proclaims with a soothing hiss; and when she senses the approaching counterpart, she vomits venom, showing respect to her husband, ashamed of her conjugal grace: you, woman, repel your husband coming from afar with insults. The viper surveys the sea, explores the path of her husband: you obstruct the way to the man with insults: you stir up the poison of quarrels, you do not reject it: you boil with a dreadful venom at the time of conjugal embraces; you are not ashamed of marriage, nor do you respect your husband.
19. But also you, sir, can accept it in this way: set aside the swelling of the heart, the harshness of character, when your diligent wife comes to you: push away indignation, when your charming wife encourages you towards love. You are not a master, but a husband: you did not obtain a servant, but a wife. God wanted you to be the leader of the inferior sex, not the all-powerful one. Return kindness for zeal, return gratitude for love. A viper emits its own venom: can you not set aside the hardness of mind? But you have a natural rigidity: you must temper it with contemplation of marriage, and set aside the harshness of the mind with reverence for the union. It may be done in this way. Do not seek, men, another's bed, do not plot against another's relationship. Adultery is serious, and an injury to nature. God first made two, Adam and Eve, that is, a man and a wife, and a wife from the man, that is, from Adam's rib; and he commanded both to be in one body, and to live with one spirit. Why do you separate one body, and divide one spirit? This is adultery against nature. This is taught by the eel and the snake, who desire the embrace not from a lawful union, but from the passion of lust. Learn, O men, who seek to touch another man's wife, with whom you desire to join in the bed of a serpent, to whom you even compare yourself. Hurry towards the snake, who pours herself into the lap of a man not by the direct path of truth, but by the slippery path of deviant love. She rushes towards her who takes back her poison, as a viper who, having completed the duty of mating, drinks again the poison she had vomited; for she is an adulterous viper. (Prov. XXIII, 32). And Solomon also said that whoever is drunk, when their desire is accustomed to boil through wine, is stretched out as if by a snake's bite, and as if by a lurking one spreads that poison to them. And so that you know he spoke of an adulteress, he added: 'Your eyes, when they see another woman, your mouth speaks perverse things.' (Ibid., 33).
20. And let no one think that we have set forth contradictory things, such as using the example of this snake both for good and for evil; for in both cases it would profit us to be ashamed either not to show faith to a beloved to whom the snake shows faith, or to abandon holy unions and prefer harmful things which he does who is mixed with a snake.