Tertullian, On Monogamy 16

I laugh when the weakness of the flesh is set up as an objection, weakness that ought to be called the greatest strength (1 Cor 7). To marry again is a show of strength; to resume the works of the flesh after the rest of continence is a matter of loin-power. Such weakness suffices for a third, a fourth, and perhaps up to a seventh marriage; so that the more often it is weaker, the stronger it becomes — and will end up claiming not the Apostle as its author, but some Hermogenes, a man used to leading more women than painting them; for in him the raw material abounds, from which he even presumes to have a soul, and therefore all the more he does not have the Spirit from God; he is not even psychical, because he is not psychical from the breath of God (1 Cor 2:14-15). What if someone pleads poverty, so that he openly admits he is prostituting his flesh, marrying for display, forgetting that food and clothing are not to be anxious concerns? He has God as the feeder of ravens and the dresser of flowers (Matt 6:26-30). What if he puts forward the loneliness of his house? As if one woman could supply a crowd for a man to flee to his neighbor; he has a widow, after all, whom he is permitted to take. Not just one wife of this sort is allowed, but several. What if someone thinks about posterity with the same mindset as Lot’s wife, so that he repeats marriage because he had no children from the first; surely a Christian seeks heirs, though disinherited from the whole world? He has brothers; he has the Church as mother. It is another matter if they also believe that the Julian laws operate under Christ, and think that the celibate and the childless cannot receive a solid inheritance from God’s testament. So they marry to that very end, until in this confusion of flesh they are caught at the world’s final exit, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the days of the flood were (Luke 17:26-30). Let them add the third saying: ‘Let us eat and drink and marry, for tomorrow we die’ (1 Cor 15:32; Isa 22:13) — not recalling that woe to the pregnant and the nursing will be far more severe and bitter in the shaking of the whole world than it was in the devastation of one part of Judea (Matt 24:19; Isa 13:6, 8). They gather the ripe fruits of repeated marriages for the last times: breasts overflowing, wombs heaving, infants wailing. They prepare recruits for the Antichrist, that he may rage more wantonly. He will bring them executioners and midwives.