After reading your Reverence’s letter and asking1 its bearer the questions that remained to be asked, I have been very greatly grieved that you chose so to act towards your husband that the edifice of chastity which had already begun to be built up in him has, through his failure to persevere, toppled to the pitiful downfall of adultery. If after making to God a vow of chastity and already undertaking its observance in deed and in disposition, he had returned to his wife’s body, his case would have been deplorable enough; but how much more deplorable is it now that he has plunged to deeper destruction, with such precipitate collapse into adultery, furious towards you, injurious to himself, as if his rage at you would be the more violent if he accomplished his own ruin! This great mischief has come about because you failed to treat him with the moderation you ought, for although by agreement you were no longer coming together in carnal intercourse, yet in all other things you ought to have shown the subjection of a wife to your husband in compliance with the marriagebond, especially as you were both members of the body of Christ.^b Indeed, if you, a believer, had had a husband who was an unbeliever, it would have been your duty to conduct yourself with submissiveness, as the Apostles enjoined, so as to win him to the Lord.

I leave out of account the fact that I know you2