ACC ~ Titus 1 v6b

MONOGAMY THE RULE. TERTULLIAN: Should we not rather recognize, from among the store of primitive scriptural precedents, those that correspond with the gospel order of things respecting discipline? By this means we convey to the new community the typical requirements of antiquity. In the old law I find the pruning knife applied to the license of repeated marriage. … Among us the prescript is more fully and more carefully laid down, that they who are chosen into the sacerdotal order must be men of one marriage. This rule is so rigidly observed that I remember some removed from their office for bigamy. ON EXHORTATION TO CHASTITY 7.

MARRIED NO MORE THAN ONCE. ANONYMOUS: We have already said that a bishop, a presbyter and a deacon, when they are constituted, must be married but once, whether their wives are alive or whether they are dead. It is not lawful for them, if they are unmarried when they are ordained, to be married afterwards; or if they are married at that time, to marry a second time, but to be content with that wife which they had when they came to ordination. CONSTITUTIONS OF THE HOLY APOSTLES 6.17.

BISHOP NOT EXCLUDED FROM MARRIAGE. AMBROSE: I have put down the faults which I have been taught to avoid. But it is the apostle who is the teacher of virtues. He teaches a bishop … to be “the husband of one wife.” The bishop is thereby not excluded from marriage altogether … but rather encouraged by chastity in marriage to preserve the grace of his baptism. … There are many who argue that “husband of one wife” is said of marriage after baptism, on the ground that the fault which would constitute an impediment has been washed away in baptism. … But where there has been a second marriage, it is not dissolved. Sin is washed away in baptism, law is not. LETTERS 63.62-63.

MARRIAGE HONORABLE. CHRYSOSTOM: Paul says this to stop the mouths of those heretics who condemned marriage. He shows that it is not an unholy thing in itself, but so far honorable that a married man might ascend the holy throne. And at the same time he wishes to reprove the wanton, not permitting their admission into this high office those who contracted a second marriage. HOMILIES ON TITUS 2.

TEACHING MONOGAMY BY EXAMPLE. JEROME: It is not that every monogamous man is better than every man who has been married twice. Rather, it is that the bishop must teach monogamy and, best of all, continence, by example. Indeed, some monogamous men are less continent than some who have been married twice and widowed. COMMENTARY ON TITUS.

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