Note 49 — Chapter XI · A TALK WITH THE READER.

No domestic concealment surely could be more difficult than that of a wife’s religion from her husband. Yet Tertullian supposes this to have been not uncommon. For, speaking of a married woman communicating herself at home, according to practice in those ages of persecution, he says, “Let not your husband know what you taste secretly, before every other food; and if he shall know of the bread, may he not know it to be what it is called.” Ad Uxor. lib. ii. c. 5. Whereas, in another place, he writes of a Catholic husband and wife giving communion to one another. De Monogamia, c. 11.