What? know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have of God, and you are not your own?
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 6:19 Go To 1 Corinthians 6
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? They, therefore, who pollute their bodies by impurity are guilty of sacrilege, for they sin against the Holy Ghost. They do Him wrong by robbing Him of the body dedicated to Him, and120 transferring it to the demon of lust. Further, the bodies of the faithful are the temple of the Spirit of Christ, because they themselves are members of Christ, and because the faithful are one spirit with God. (See notes to vers16 , 17 , and 2 Corinthians 6:16. ) Tertullian cleverly and beautifully says (de Cultu Femin. c. i.) that the guardian and high-priestess of this temple is chastity. He says: "Since we are all the temple of God, because endowed and consecrated with the Holy Spirit, the guardian and high-priestess of His temple is chastity, who suffers nothing unclean, nothing unholy to be carried in, lest God, who inhabits it, be offended, and leave His polluted shrine." The faithful and just is therefore a temple in which by grace dwells and is worshipped the Holy Spirit, whom God hath given us, to work in us all holy thoughts, affections, words, and works. Wherefore it is altogether unseemly that His soul and body should by fornication become the temple of Venus and Priapus: this is a grievous wrong done to God and the Holy Spirit. Hence it was that S. Seraphia, virgin and martyr, when asked by the Judges , "Where is the temple of the Christ whom you adore, where you sacrifice?" replied, "I, by cultivating chastity, am the temple of Christ, and to Him I offer myself a sacrifice." The judge retorted, "If your chastity, then, were taken from you, you would, I suppose, cease to be a temple of Christ?" The virgin rejoined: "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy." The judge then sent two young men to violate her, but at her prayer an earthquake took place, and the young men fell down dead: they were, however, at her prayers restored to life. This is to be found in her life by Surius, under the3of September.
