Peter Abelard

Listen, I beg you, with the ear of your heart to what you have so often heard with your bodily ear. In the book of Proverbs it is written that ‘A capable wife is her husband’s crown,’ and again, ‘Find a wife and you find a good thing; so you will earn the favour of the Lord’; yet again, ‘Home and wealth may come down from ancestors; but an intelligent wife is a gift from the Lord.’16 In Ecclesiasticus too it says that ‘A good wife makes a happy husband,’ and a little later, ‘A good wife means a good life.’17 And we have it on the Apostle’s authority that ‘the unbelieving husband now belongs to God through his wife’.