Tertullian

“ I grant it makes a wide difference whether a married man or an unmarried desire another woman. Every woman, (however) , even to an unmarried man, is “another,” so long as she belongs to some one else; nor yet is the mean through which she becomes a married woman any other than that through which withal (she becomes) an adulteress. It is laws which seem to make the difference between marriage and fornication; through diversity of illicitness, not through the nature of the thing itself. ”

“ Besides, what is the thing which takes place in all men and women to produce marriage and fornication? Commixture of the flesh, of course; the concupiscence whereof the Lord put on the same footing with fornication. “Then,” says (some one) , “are you by this time destroying first—that is, single—marriage too?” And (if so) not without reason; inasmuch as it, too, consists of that which is the essence of fornication. [3] Accordingly, the best thing for a man is not to touch a woman; and accordingly the virgin’s is the principal sanctity, [4] because it is free from affinity with fornication. ”

“ It does not suffice you to have fallen back, by marrying, from that highest grade of immaculate virginity; but you roll yourself down into yet a third, and into a fourth, and perhaps into more, after you have failed to be continent in the second stage; inasmuch as he who has treated about contracting second marriages has not willed to prohibit even more. ”