153.
(xi) Chastity cannot be attributed to those who refrain from acts of adultery only for various outward reasons.
Many people think that refraining in body from acts of adultery is chastity, though
it is not so unless one also refrains in spirit. It is a person's spirit, here meaning his mind as regards affections and thoughts, which makes him chaste or unchaste, and it is this which determines
how he behaves in body. For the body is exactly what the mind or spirit is. It follows from this that those who refrain from acts of adultery in body, but not in spirit, and those who refrain from them
in spirit for bodily reasons, are neither of them chaste. There are many reasons which make a person refrain from them in body, and also in spirit for bodily reasons; but someone who fails to avoid
them in body for spiritual reasons is still unchaste. For the Lord says:
If he has looked upon someone else's wife so as to desire her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matt.
5:28. [2] It is impossible to list all the reasons for refraining from acts of adultery merely in the body, because they differ depending on the state of a person's marriage and his bodily condition.
There are those who refrain for fear of the law of the land and its penalties; for fear of loss of reputation and thus of position; for fear of picking up diseases; for fear of quarrelling with
one's wife at home, and being unable to live in peace; for fear of a husband or relative seeking revenge; for fear of being beaten by servants. There are also those who refrain because of poverty, greed,
or weakness arising from disease, self-abuse, age or impotence. Some among these, since they are unable or do not dare to commit adultery in body, therefore condemn such acts in spirit, so that
they speak out against adultery as immoral and praise marriage. But if these do not disavow adultery in spirit, and their spirit is not motivated by religion, they are still adulterers who commit the
act in spirit even if not in body. After death, therefore, when they become spirits, they speak openly in favour of adultery. From these considerations it is plain that even an irreligious person can
shun acts of adultery as damaging, but no one but a Christian can shun them as sins, This is now enough to establish the truth of the proposition that chastity cannot be attributed to those who refrain
from adultery only for various outward reasons.
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