"St. Paul's is a very particular case," said Carlton.
"But he himself lays down the general maxim, that it is 'good' for a man to continue as he was."
"There we come to a question of criticism, what 'good' means: I may think it means 'expedient,' and what he says about the 'present distress' confirms it."
"Well, I won't go to criticism," said Charles; "take the text, 'in sin hath my mother conceived me.' Do not these words show that, over and above the doctrine of original sin, there is (to say the least) great risk of marriage leading to sin in married people?"
"My dear Reding," said Carlton, astonished, "you are running into Gnosticism."
"Not knowingly or willingly," answered Charles; "but understand what I mean. It's not a subject I can talk about; but it seems to me, without of course saying that married persons must sin (which would be Gnosticism), that there is a danger of sin. But don't let me say more on this point."
"Well," said Carlton, after thinking awhile, "_I_ have been accustomed to consider Christianity as the perfection of man as a whole, body, soul, and spirit. Don't misunderstand me. Pantheists say body and intellect, leaving out the moral principle; but I say spirit as well as mind. Spirit, or the principle of religious faith and obedience, should be the master principle, the _hegemonicon_. To this both intellect and body are subservient; but as this supremacy does not imply the ill-usage, the bondage of the intellect, neither does it of the body; both should be well treated."
"Well, I think, on the contrary, it does imply in one sense the bondage of intellect and body too. What is faith but the submission of the intellect? and as 'every high thought is brought into captivity,' so are we expressly told to bring the body into subjection too. They are both well treated, when they are treated so as to be made fit instruments of the sovereign principle."
"That is what I call unnatural," said Carlton.
"And it is what I mean by supernatural," answered Reding, getting a little too earnest.
"How is it supernatural, or adding to nature, to destroy a part of it?" asked Carlton.
Charles was puzzled. It was a way, he said, _towards_ perfection; but he thought that perfection came after death, not here. Our nature could not be perfect with a corruptible body; the body was treated now as a body of death.