'We, the representatives in our meeting, have agreed that the source of conjugial love is the same as that of marriage. This has been established by law in order to restrain human beings' inbred lust for adultery, which destroys their souls, poisons their rational minds, debases their behaviour, and blights their bodies with sickness. For adultery is the conduct of wild beasts, not human beings, of brutes, not rational beings, and so of barbarians, not Christians. Marriage grew up because such conduct was dangerous, and conjugial love developed together with it.

'It is much the same with the strength or potency of this love. This depends on chastity, which is abstaining from indiscriminate fornication. This is because the strength or potency in the case of a man who loves only his wife is restricted to one woman, and is therefore gathered together and, so to speak, concentrated. This ennobles it and makes it quintessential by removing the impurities, but it would otherwise be dispersed and scattered in all directions. One of us five who is a priest also brought in predestination as a cause of this strength or potency. "Are not marriages," he said, "predestined? And if they are, so is the begetting of children and the means which effect this." He insisted on this reason, because he had taken an oath on it.' This paper was signed with the letter B [for Holland].

On hearing this someone said in a mocking tone 'Predestination! That's a pretty excuse for inability or impotence.'