The patristic consensus held that consecrated virginity is a higher calling than marriage — not because marriage is evil, but because virginity anticipates the resurrection state where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Jerome's Dialogue Against the Luciferians and Letters make the sharpest case: virginity is "more excellent than all these conditions," exceeding marriage as gold exceeds silver. Augustine's On the Good of Marriage carefully nuances the position: those who marry "ascend unto marriage by a step of honesty," while those who would have remained continent "descended unto marriage by a step of piety" — the hierarchy holds, but marriage is a genuine good, not a concession to sin. The Reformation sharply contested this: Luther and Calvin argued celibacy is a special gift given to few and that the elevation of celibacy had produced generations of false vows. Both sides are robustly represented in the corpus.
"men, who contain not, as it were ascend unto marriage by a step of honesty: but they, who without doubt would contain...in a certain measure descended unto marriage by a step of piety" — Augustine's nuanced hierarchy: virginity is the higher gift, but marriage is a genuine good; those who marry do not sin but take the lesser step.
"virginity is more excellent than all these conditions" — Jerome's polemical defense of consecrated virginity as the summit of Christian calling, against those who flattened the New Testament's own graduated ethic of hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold.
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