1 Corinthians 7:9

9. Cannot The cannot is not in the apostle’s Greek. The true rendering is, If they do not be continent if experience shows the certainty of failure.

Burn An ordinary figure, expressing both the intensity and consuming power of lust. Relief from the burning impulse allows the soul, by cultivating the other virtues, to attain as high a piety as celibacy would afford. The very exaggeration of the virtue of celibacy in the post apostolic age of the Church had, no doubt, the good effect of almost recreating the lost virtue of chastity in the Roman empire. It was the restoration of the balance of the virtues, as presented here by Paul, since the Reformation, that has, as it were, brought the family virtues to a lustre of development unknown to former ages.