Abominations self-condemned; divorce bill; false virginity charge begins

Cyril: …you will not sleep a womanly lying; for it is an abomination.’ From itself, he says, such things suffer the having-been-condemned, and much the foul smell melted into them is found without toil, and those led unto this of abomination will not need a long word unto proof, as having from home so shameful and unbeautiful a glory, and the writing from nature itself. Therefore having set such things aside, he examines the things done lawfully, and not outside reason, saying in Deuteronomy: ‘And if someone should take a woman and should cohabit with her; and it will be, if he should not find favor before him; because he found in her an unseemly matter, he will write for her a book of standing-away, and will give it into her hands, and will send her out from his house; and if having gone away she should become to another man, and the last man should hate her, and should write for her a book of standing-away, and should give into her hands, and should send her out from his house, or also her last man should die, who took her for himself as wife, the former man who sent her out will not be able, having turned back, to take her for himself as wife, after she has been defiled, because it is an abomination before the Lord your God, and you will not defile the land which the Lord your God gives you in a lot.’ For to make a genuine cohabiter of the woman parted from a husband upon reasonable charges and having endured insolence under another is not safe, rather altogether also unlearned. ‘For the one holding,’ he says, ‘an adulteress, is foolish and impious.’ And just as he forbids needing to be pleased with the things manifestly shameful and unambiguously condemned, so again he does not allow to slander the solemn things as unsolemn. For in an equal word of fault will lie both thinking worthy of affection what is better to flee, and stripping of disposition what fear declines. ‘For woe,’ he says, ‘those who say the sweet bitter, and the bitter sweet; the beautiful evil, and the evil beautiful; those who set the light darkness, and the darkness light.’ So then he does not allow to adopt again the woman who has become sent-away, nor yet does he permit harms from word-loving to be brought upon those not yet condemned. And he said thus again: ‘And if someone should take a woman, and should cohabit with her, and should hate her, and should set upon her pretexting words, and should bring down upon her an evil name, and should say, I have taken this woman, and having come toward her I have not found her virginities; and the father of the child and the mother, having taken, will bring out the virginities of the child toward the elders upon the gate, and the father of the child will say to the elders: I have given this my daughter to this human as wife, and this one now having hated her sets upon her pretexting words, saying, I have not found virginities for your daughter; and these are the virginities of my daughter. And they will unfold the garment before the elders of the city, and the elders of that city will take that human, and will discipline him, and will fine