Annotation CCXLIII

”The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” — Romans 7:25

Chrysostom, [in] homily thirteen on the epistle to the Romans, in the narration of this clause, says that so great was the indulgence of God, that in the Mosaic law he gave lesser and lighter precepts than in the law of nature. Which opinion he demonstrates by a double argument in these words: “GOD, in the written law, did not draw men on to the highest polity [manner of conduct]; but permitted them to enjoy monies, not forbidding [them] to use several wives, and to gratify anger, so far as [it was] just, and to have the use of moderate pleasures. In fine, so great was [his] indulgence, that the written law exacted even lesser [things] than the natural law would dictate. For the law of nature commanded that one living man be content with the custom [companionship] of one woman. Which also Christ, indicating, says: ‘He who from the beginning made [them], made them male and female.’ But the law of Moses forbade neither that this [wife] be repudiated, nor that another be admitted in place of the repudiated one; nor did it prohibit two [wives] from being had at the same time. But besides this thou mayest see that those who lived before the law of Moses, instructed under the natural law, performed more [things] than were contained in the law of Moses.”

Whether the law of Moses commands lesser [things] than the law of nature.

In a Greek codex of Chrysostom, which Sanctes Pagninus — a most learned man — placed in the Library of the Preachers [Dominicans] at Lyons, we read in the margin of this passage a Greek scholion, thus inscribed by Pagninus’s own hand: “Σκληρὸν τοῦτ’ ἐστι, καὶ παρὰ τὰ τῶν Σχολαστικῶν δόγματα” — that is, “This is hard, and beside [contrary to] the tenets of the scholastics.”