Otherwise; There is fruit an hundred-fold of the martyrs because of their satiety of life or contempt of death; a sixty-fold fruit of virgins, because they rest not warring against the use of the flesh; for retirement is allowed to those of sixty years’ age after service in war or in public business; and there is a thirty-fold fruit of the wedded, because theirs is the age of warfare, and their struggle is the more arduous, that they should not be vanquished by their lusts.
Or otherwise; We must struggle with our love of temporal goods that reason may be master; it should either be so overcome and subject to us, that when it begins to rise it may be easily repressed, or so extinguished that it never arises in us at all. Whence it comes to pass, that death itself is despised for truth’s sake, by some with brave endurance, by others with content, and by others with gladness — which three degrees are the three degrees of fruits of the earth — thirty-fold, sixty-fold, and an hundred-fold.
And in one of these degrees must one be found at the time of his death, if any desires to depart well out of this life.
Reproduced in full. Translation: Oxford 1841 (Newman), public domain (Public domain).
Also cites: Quaest Ev., i, 9