[32] Whenever the menstrual issue occurs, a man must not touch a woman, but must during that period refrain from intercourse and respect the law of nature. He must also remember the lesson that the generative seeds should not be wasted fruitlessly for the sake of a gross and untimely pleasure. For it is just as if a husbandman should in intoxication or lunacy sow wheat and barley in ponds or mountain-streams instead of in the plains, since the fields should become dry before the seed is laid in them.
[33] Now nature also each month purges the womb as if it were a cornfield—a field with mysterious properties, over which, like a good husbandman, he must watch for the right time to arrive. So while the field is still inundated he will keep back the seed, which otherwise will be silently swept away by the stream, as the humidity not only relaxes, but utterly paralyses the seminal nerve-forces, which in nature’s laboratory, the womb, mould the living creature and with consummate craftsmanship perfect each part both of body and soul. But if the menstruation ceases, he may boldly sow the generative seeds, no longer fearing that what he lays will perish.
[34] They too must be branded with reproach, who plough the hard and stony land. And who should they be but those who mate with barren women? For in the quest of mere licentious pleasure like the most lecherous of men they destroy the procreative germs with deliberate purpose. For what other motive can they have in plighting themselves to such women? It cannot be the hope of offspring, a hope which they know must necessarily fail to be realized; it can only be an inordinate frenzy, and incontinence past all cure.
[35] Those who marry maidens in ignorance at the time of their capacity or incapacity for successful motherhood, and later refuse to dismiss them, when prolonged childlessness shews them to be barren, deserve our pardon. Familiarity, that most constraining influence, is too strong for them, and they are unable to rid themselves of the charm of old affection imprinted on their souls by long companionship.
[36] But those who sue for marriage with women whose sterility has already been proved with other husbands, do but copulate like pigs or goats, and their names should be inscribed in the lists of the impious as adversaries of God. For while God in His love both for mankind and all that lives spares no care to effect the preservation and permanence of every race, those persons who make an art of quenching the life of the seed as it drops, stand confessed as the enemies of nature.