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indeed not to be denied that the apostle, when he discusses the questions of the Corinthians on marriage and divorce, starts from the assumption that celibacy is to be ranked higher than married life; but he separates his teaching decisively from that of his ascetic contemporaries by giving reasons of a purely practical character for this exaltation of the single life, and by insisting on the lawfulness and the purity of marriage. He seems to regard celibacy and marriage as two specific states of the Christian life, equally requiring a vocation, equally pure, but under all the circumstances of the time, with persecution always threatening, the Lord's work always demanding a complete concentration of thought and energy from those who were charged with it, and the Lord's return in judgment and victory always at hand, not equally expedient and befitting. He quotes a passage from the Apocryphal Second Book of Esdras, and applies it to the existing situation:

"But this I say, brethren, the time is shortened, that