THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CUTHBURGA. 177 



For whosoever desires to hasten to the perfection of Ufe, it is doubtless 

 needful that he should put behind him all that is of the world, and, 

 following the Lord, strive to go along the narrow way that leads to 

 life. For so it is written that our Saviour said to a certain man : — 

 " If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast and give to the 

 poor, and come follow Me." But as we believe that marriage has 

 been granted by the Lord to mortal men for the propagation of 

 children, so we prove on the authority of the Gospel that it has been 

 sanctified by the presence of the Saviour Himself. For he, the Lord 

 Jesus, the Saviour of the world, was, as the Gospel bears witness, a 

 guest at a wedding ; and that it might be seen that He approved of 

 marriage, at that very same wedding, by a new and unheard of miracle. 

 He changed water into the best of wine. Paul the Apostle, also, that 

 excellent doctor by whom God spake, said ' It is better to marry than 

 to burn.' And again, ' Let everyone have a wife because of fornica- 

 tion.' To no one therefore should it seem contrary to divine commands 

 or to human salvation if a man marry a wife or if a woman be given in 

 marriage to a man." 



The sixth Chapter. 



To this, so it is reported, the blessed Cuthberga answered with a 

 smile : — " True it is, O excellent king, that our Lord and Saviour was 

 present at a wedding and there by His powerful virtue changed water 

 into wine. But nevertheless He showed j^lainly how greatly He 

 preferred virginity to marriage when He chose the blessed and 

 unstained Virgin Mary for His mother, who first of all women devoted 

 herself as a virgin to God. And although He suffered her by a divine 

 dispensation to be espoused to Joseph, yet she endured no detriment 

 of her virginity ; but, before the birth and in the birth and after the 

 birth, she remained a virgin intact by the sheltering grace of the Holy 

 Spirit. Also He withdrew by an inward inspiration the very bride- 

 groom at the wedding where the Saviour was present, as the histories 

 hand down, and caused him to continue a virgin free of all carnal 



grander wedding than this, and that thou mayest know what it is, it 

 is My passion.' " 



" There are, however, earlier references to the story that our Lord 

 prevented John from marrying. Many of these are given under the 

 title " Johannes Herkunft " in Lipsius' Die Apokryphen Apostel- 

 geschichten und Apostellegenden. 



" The identification of the bridegroom at Cana with " Simon the 

 Canaanite " is the more widely accepted tradition. Lipsius deals 

 with it in his Vol. III."— J.M.J.F. 



