12. Let marriages possess
their own good, not that they beget sons, but that honestly, that
lawfully, that modestly, that in a spirit of fellowship they beget
them, and educate them, after they have been begotten, with
cooperation, with wholesome teaching, and earnest purpose: in that
they keep the faith of the couch one with another; in that they
violate not the sacrament of wedlock. All these, however, are
offices of human duty: but virginal chastity and freedom through
pious continence from all sexual intercourse is the portion of
Angels, and a practice, in corruptible flesh, of perpetual
incorruption. To this let all fruitfulness of the flesh yield, all
chastity of married life; the one is not in (man’s) power, the
other is not in eternity; free choice hath not fruitfulness of the
flesh, heaven hath not chastity of married life. Assuredly they
will have something great beyond others in that common immortality, who have something already not of the flesh in the flesh.