“Is righteousness, then, something 'fickle and changeable'? No; but the periods of time over which it presides, do not all proceed alike; they are time. Men, however, whose life on earth is short, are unable to conceive with their own minds the reasoning processes of earlier generations and of other races whom they have not known for themselves, whereas in the generations they do know, they can easily see what is appropriate within one and the same body or day or house, to each lib or hour or part and person. They are scandalized by the past, and enslaved to the present” HumanityMorality Book:Confessions Source: Confessions
“It is according to this Law that the customs of different times and places are shaped to fit their time and place; but the Law itself is everywhere and always, not one thing in one place and another in another. It is according to this Law that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and all those who were praised by the mouth of God, were righteous. It is the naive who judge them unrighteous, judging them in accordance with their brief place in human time, and measuring the moral character of the human race from the direction of their own moral character.” TimeHumanityMoralityJudgment Book:Confessions Source: Confessions
“God bids you not to commit lechery, that is, not to have sex with any woman except your wife. You ask of her that she should not have sex with anyone except you -- yet you are not willing to observe the same restraint in return. Where you ought to be ahead of your wife in virtue, you collapse under the onset of lechery. ... Complaints are always being made about men's lechery, yet wives do not dare to find fault with their husbands for it. Male lechery is so brazen and so habitual that it is now sanctioned [= permitted], to the extent that men tell their wives that lechery and adultery are legitimate for men but not for women.” MenWomenMarriageMoralityGenderSexualityHypocrisyMisogynyAdulteryFidelityStereotypesSocial NormsDouble StandardsWivesClichés Book:Sermons 1-19 (Vol. III/1) Source: Sermons 1-19 (Vol. III/1)