[5] But as wealth which one cannot use does not profit the owner, so the motherhood of virtue profits not if the offspring be not profitable for ourselves. Some she judges quite worthy to share her life, but others she thinks have not yet reached the age to submit to her admirable and chaste and sober domesticity. Such she allows to celebrate the preliminaries of marriage, and holds out hopes of consummating the full rite in the future.
[6] So Sarah, the virtue which rules my soul, was a mother, but not a mother for me. For young as I was I could not yet receive her offspring, wisdom, justice, piety, because of the multitude of bastard children whom vain imaginations had borne to me. The nurture of these, the constant supervision, the ceaseless anxiety, compelled me to take little thought of the genuine, the truly free-born.
[7] It is well then to pray that virtue may not only bear (she does that in abundance without our prayers), but also may bear for ourselves, that we, by sharing in what she sows and genders, may enjoy happiness. For in ordinary course she bears for God only, thankfully rendering the first-fruits of the blessings bestowed upon her to Him who, as Moses says, opens the womb which yet loses not its virginity (Gen. 29:31).
[8] In confirmation of this we read that the candlestick, that is the original pattern of the later copy, gives light from one part only, that is the part where it looks towards God. For being seventh in position, and placed between the six branches, divided as they are into triplets which guard it on either side, it sends its rays upwards towards the Existent, as though feeling that its light were too bright for human sight to look upon it (Ex. 25:37, 31).