Matthew 19:12

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

Ver. 12. Which were so born] Of a frigid constitution of body, and unapt for generation. This is not continence, but impotence, effeminacy, a defect in nature.

Which were made eunuchs of men] Evirati, bereft of manhood, as in the court of Persia of old, and of Turkey at this day, where Christians' children are not gelded only, but deprived of all their genitals, supplying the uses of nature with a silver quill; which inhuman custom was brought in among them by Selymus II out of jealousy lest his eunuchs were not so chaste as they should have been in keeping their ladies' beds. For though made eunuchs by men, yet are they not without their fleshly concupiscences, yea, they are magni amatores mulierum, as she in Terence saith.

Which have made themselves eunuchs] Not gelded themselves, as Origen and some others in the primitive times, by mistake of this text. (So Tertullian tells of Democritus, that he pulled out his own eyes, because he could not look upon women and not lust after them; wherein he did but publish his extreme folly to the whole city, saith he.) Nor yet tied themselves by vow to perpetual continence, out of a superstitious opinion of meriting heaven thereby, as the Essenes of old (Joseph. B. J. ii. 6), and the Popish clergy now; but live single, that they may serve God with more freedom, fighting against fleshly lusts (that fight against the soul) with those spiritual weapons, meditation, prayer, abstinence, &c., which are mighty through God to the pulling down of Satan's strongholds set up in the heart. Hence the Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldee, and Arabic render this text, Qui castrarunt animam suam, which have gelded their souls. And the truth is, there they must begin, that will do anything in this kind to purpose. Incesta est, et sine stupro, quae stuprum cupit, saith Seneca. And St Paul's virgin must "be holy both in body and in spirit," 1 Corinthians 7:34 .