He here lays down explicitly the doctrine that polygamy and concubinage are not forbidden to Christians, though, in his advice to Philip, he adds the _caveat_ that he should keep the matter dark to the end that offence might not be given.

"For," says he, "it matters not, provided one's conscience is right, what others say." In one of his sermons on the Pentateuch[5] we find the words: "It is not forbidden that a man have more than one wife.

I would not forbid it to-day, albeit I would not advise it....

Yet neither would I condemn it." Other opinions on the nature of the sexual relation were equally broad; for in one of his writings on monastic celibacy his words plainly indicate his belief that chastity, no more than other fleshly mortifications, was to be considered a divine ordinance for all men or women.

In an address to the clergy he says: "A woman not possessed of high and rare grace can no more abstain from a man than from eating, drinking, sleeping, or other natural function.