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St Basil the Great LETTERS, Second Part

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Page 103

XXXVII. The man who marries after abducting another man's wife will incur the charge of adultery for the first case; but for the second will go free.

XXXVIII. Girls who follow against their fathers' will commit fornication; but if their fathers are reconciled to them, the act seems to admit of a remedy. They are not however immediately restored to communion, but are to be punished for three years.

XXXIX. The woman who lives with an adulterer is an adulteress the whole time. [2714]

XL. The woman who yields to a man against her master's will commits fornication; but if afterwards she accepts free marriage, she marries. The former case is fornication; the latter marriage. The covenants of persons who are not independent have no validity.

XLI. The woman in widowhood, who is independent, may dwell with a husband without blame, if there is no one to prevent their cohabitation; for the Apostle says; "but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord." [2715]

XLII. Marriages contracted without the permission of those in authority, are fornication. If neither father nor master be living the contracting parties are free from blame; just as if the authorities assent to the cohabitation, it assumes the fixity of marriage.

XLIII. He who smites his neighbour to death is a murderer, whether he struck first or in self defence.

XLIV. The deaconess who commits fornication with a heathen may be received into repentance and will be admitted to the oblation in the seventh year; of course if she be living in chastity. The heathen who, after he has believed, takes to idolatry, returns to his vomit. We do not, however, give up the body of the deaconess to the use of the flesh, as being consecrated.

[2714] Or, according to another reading, in every way.

[2715] 1 Cor. vii. 39.
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Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters-2.asp?pg=103