" Do you," he asks, " repeat your affirmation, ' There would be no concupiscence if man had not first sinned; marriage, however, would have existed, even if no one had sinned '? " I never said, " There would be no concupiscence," because there is a concupiscence of the spirit, I which craves wisdom. 7 My words were, " There. would be no shameful concupiscence." ^ Let x my words be re-perused, even those which he has cited, that it may be clearly seen how dishonestly they are handled by him. However, let him call it by any name he likes. What T said would not have existed unless man had, previously sinned, was that which made them! ashamed in paradise when they covered their { loins, and which every one will allow would not i have been felt, had not the sin of disobedience 1 first occurred. Now he who wishes to under- _ stand what they felt, ought to consider what it was they covered. For of the fig-leaves they made themselves " aprons," not clothes; and these aprons or kilts are called Trept^oj/xara in Greek. Now all know well enough what it is which these peri-zomata cover, which some Latin writers explain by the word campestria. Who is ignorant of what persons wore this kilt, and what parts of the body such a dress concealed; even the same which the Roman youths used to cover when they practised naked in the campus, from which circumstance the name campester was given to the apron.^ CHAP. 53 [xXXl] — CONCUPISCENCE NEED NOT HAVE BEEN NECESSARY FOR FRUITFULNESS.
He sa5's: " Therefore that marriage which might have been without concupiscence, without bodily motion, without necessity for sexual organs — to use your own statement — is pronounced by you to be laudable; whereas such marriages as are now enacted are, according to 7 Wisd. vi. 21. 8 See above, Book i. ch. i.
9 See On the City of God, Book xi. ch. 17.
Chap. 54.]
your decision, the invention of the devil. Those, therefore, whose institution was possible in )'our dreams, you deliberately assert to be good, while those which Holy Scripture intends, when it says, ' Therefore shall a man lea\-e his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh,' ' you pronounce to be diabolical evils, worthy, in short, to be called a pest, not matrimony." It is not to be wondered at, that these Pelagian opponents of mine try to twist my words to any meaning they wish them to bear, when it has been their custom to do the same thing with the Holy Scriptures, and not simply in obscure passages, but where their testimony is clear and plain: a custom, indeed, which is followed by all other heretics. Now who could make such an assertion, as that it was possible for marriages to be "without bodily motion, without necessity for sexual organs"? \ For God made the sexes; because, as it is writj.en, "He created them male and female." -j But how could it possibly happen, that they ' who were to be united together, and by the very union were to beget children, were not to move, their bodies, when, of course, there can be no ■bodily contact of one person with another if I bodily motion be not resorted to? The question before us, then, is not about the motion of|: bodies, without which there could not be sexual ' 1 intercourse; but about the shameful motion of^ the organs of generation, which certainly could ' ; be absent, and yet the fructifying connection be ' ' still not wanting, if the organs of generation | ' were not obedient to lust, but simply to the will, | like the other members of the body. Is it not even now the case, in " the body of this death," that a command is given to the foot, the arm, j the finger, the lip, or the tongue, and they are instantly set in motion at this intimation of our will? And (to take a still more wonderful case) even the liquid contained in the urinary vessels! obeys the command to flow from us, at our | pleasure, and when we are not pressed with its overflow; while the vessels, also, which contain the hquid, discharge without difficulty, if they are in a healthy state, the office assigned them by our will of propelling, pressing out, and eject- ' ing their contents. With how much greater ease i and quietness, then, if tlie generative organs of our body were compliant, would natural motion ensue, and human conception be effected; except in the instance of those persons who violate natural order, and by a righteous retribution are punished with the intractability of these members and organs! This punishment is felt ' by the chaste and pure, who, without doul)t, would rather beget children by mere natural desire than by voluptuous pruriency; while un ' Gen. ii. 24.
^ Gen. i. 27 chaste persons, who are impelled by this diseased passion, and bestow their love upon harlots as well as wives, are excited by a still heavier mental remorse in consequence of this carnal chastisement.
CHAP. 54 [XXXII.] HOW MARRIAGE IS NOW DIFFERENT SINCE THE EXISTENCE OF SIN.
God forbid that we should say, what this man pretends we say, " Such marriages as are now enacted are the invention of the devil." Why, they are absolutely the same marriages as God made at the very first. For this blessing of His,' \ which He appointed for the procreation of man- 1 kind. He has not taken away even from men ' under condemnation, any more than He has ' \ deprived them of their senses and bodily limbs, which are no doubt His gifts, although they are, condemned to die by an already incurred retri- 1 '\ bution. This, I say, is the marriage whereof it | was said (only excepting the great sacrament of Christ and the Church, which the institution prefigured): "For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh." ' For this, no doubt, was said before sin; and if no one had sinned, it might have been done without shameful lust. And now, although it is not done without that, in the body of this death, there is that nevertheless which does not cease to be done so that a man may cleave to his wife," and they twain be one flesh. When, therefore, it is alleged that marriage is now one thing, but might have been another had no one sinned, this is not predicated of its nature, but of ai certain quality which has undergone a change for the worse. Just as a man is said to be different, though he is actually the same individual, when he has changed his manner of life either for the better or the worse; for as a righteous man he is one thing, and as a sinful man another, though the man himself be ready the same individual. In like manner, marriage without^ shameful lust is one thing, and marriage with shameful lust is another. When, however, a woman is lawfully united to her husband in accordance with the true constitution of wedlock, and fidelity to what is due to the flesh is kept free from the sin of adulter}', and so children are lawfiilly begotten, it is actually the very same marriage which God instituted at first, although by his primeval inducement to sin, the devil inflicted a heavy wound, not, indeed, on marriage itself, but on man and woman b\- whom marriage is made, by his prevailing on them to disobey God, — a sin which is requited in the course of the divine judgment by the reciprocal disobedience of man's own members. United in this matrimonial state, although they were ashanied of their nakedness, still they were not 3o6 [Book II.
by any means able altogether to lose the blessedness of marriage which God appointed.
CHAP. 55 [xxxiii.]
WORD LUST IS A DISEASE; THE He then passes on from those who are united in marriage to those who are born of it. It is in relation to these that we have to encounter the most laborious discussions with the new heretics in connection with our subject. Impelled by some hidden instinct from God, he makes avowals which go far to untie the whole knot. For in his desire to raise greater odium against us, because we had said that infants are born in sin even of lawful wedlock, he makes the following observation: " You assert that they, indeed, who have not been ever born might possibly have been good; those, however, who have peopled the world, and for whom Christ died, you decide to be the work of the devil, born in a disordered state, and guilty from the beginning. Therefore," he continues, " I have shown that you are doing nothing else than denying that God is the Creator of the men who actually exist." I beg to say, that I declare none but God to be the Creator of all men, however true it be that all are born in sin, and must perish unless born again. It was, indeed, the sinful corruption which had been sown in them by the devil's persuasion that became the means of their being born in sin; not the created nature of which men are composed. Shameful lust, however, could not excite our members, except at our own will, if it were not a disease. Nor would even the lawful and honourable cohabiting of husband and wife raise a blush, with avoidance of any eye and desire of secrecy, if there were not a diseased condition about it. Moreover, the apostle would not prohibit the possession of wives in this disease, did not disease exist in it. The phrase in the Greek text, eV TrdOeL £7ri^u/xta?, is by some rendered in Latin, in morbo desiderii vel concupiscenticB, in the disease of desire or of concupiscence; by others, however, in passione concupiscentice, in the passion of concupiscence; or however it is found otherwise in different copies: at any rate, the Latin equivalent passio (passion), especially in the ecclesiastical use, is usually understood as a term of censure.
CYLKV. 56. — THE PELAGIANS ALLOW THAT CHRIST DIED EVEN FOR INFANTS; JULIANUS SLAYS HIM- SELF WITH HIS OWN SWORD.
But whatever opinion he may entertain about the shame-causing concupiscence of the flesh, I must request your attention to what he has said respecting infants (and it is in their behalf that we labour), as to their being supposed to need a Saviour, if they are not to die without salvation. I repeat his words once more: " You assert," says he to me, " that they, indeed, who have not been ever born might possibly have been good; those, however, who have peopled the world, and for whom Christ died, you decide to be the work of the devil, born in a disordered state, and guilty from the very beginning." Would that he only solved the entire controversy as he unties the knot of this question! For will he pretend to say that he merely spoke of adults in this passage? Why, the subject in hand is about infants, about human beings at their birth; and it is about these that he raises odium against us, because they are defined by us as guilty from the very first, because we declare them to be guilty, since Christ died for them. And why did Christ die for them if they are not guilty? It is entirely from them, yes, from them, we shall find the reason, wherefore he thought odium should be raised against me. He asks: " How are infants guilty, for whom Christ died?" We answer: Nay, how are infants not guilty, since Christ died for them? This dispute wants a judge to determine it. Let Christ be the Judge, and let Him tell us what is the object which has profited by His death? " This is my blood," He says, " which shall be shed ' for many for the remission of sins."^ Let the apostle, too, be His assessor in the judgment; since even in the apostle it is Christ Himself that speaks. Speaking of God the Father, he exclaims: " He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all! " 3 I suppose that he describes Christ as so delivered up for us all, that infants in this matter are not separated from ourselves. But what need is there to dwell on this point, out of which even he no longer raises a contest? For the truth is, he not only confesses that Christ died even for infants, but he also reproves us out of this admission, because we say that these same infants are guilty for whom Christ died. Now, then, let the apostle, who says that Christ was delivered up for us all, also tell us why Christ was delivered up for us. " He was delivered," says he, " for our offences, and rose again for our justification."'' If, therefore, as even this man both confesses and professes, both admits and objects, infants, too, are included amongst those for whom Christ was delivered up; and if it was for our sins that Christ was delivered up, even infants, of course, must have original sins, for whom Christ was delivered up; He must have something in them to heal, who (as Himself affirms) is not needed as a Physician by the whole, but by the sick; s He must have a reason for saving them, seeing that He came into the world, as the Apostle Paul says, ' Effundetur. * Rorn. iv. 25.
2 Matt. xxvi. 28 i Matt. ix. 12.
^ Rom. viii. 32.
Chap. 59.]
)07 "to save sinners;"' He must have something in them to remit, who testifies that He shed His blood "for the remission of sins;"^ He must have good reason for seeking them out, who "came," as He says, "to seek and to save that which was lost; " 3 the Son of man must find in them something to destroy, who came for the express jnirpose, as the Apostle John says, " that He might destroy the works of the devil." * Now to this salvation of infants He must be an enemy, who asserts their innocence, in such a way as to deny them the medicine which is required by the hurt and wounded.
CHAP. 5 7 [XXXIV.] — THE GRE.\T SIN OF THE FIRST MAN.
Now observe what follows, as he goes on to say: " If, before sin, God created a source from which men should be born, but the devil a source from which parents were disturbed, then beyond a doubt holiness must be ascribed to those that are born, and guilt to those that produce. Since, however, this would be a most manifest condemnation of marriage; remove, I pray you, this view from the midst of the churches, and really believe that all things were made by Jesus Christ, and that without Him nothing was made." 5 He so speaks here, as if he would make us say, that there is a something in man's substance which was created by the devil. The devil persuaded evil as a sin; he did not create it as a nature. No doubt he persuaded nature, for man is nature; and therefore by his persuasion he corrupted it. He who wounds a limb does not, of course, create it, but he injures it.^ Those wounds, indeed, which are inflicted on the body produce lameness in a limb, or difficulty of motion; but they do not affect the virtue whereby a man becomes righteous: that wound, however, which has the name of sin, wounds the very life, which was being righteously lived. This wound was at that fatal moment of the fall inflicted by the devil to a vastly wider and deeper extent than are the sins which are known amongst men. Whence it came to pass, that our nature having then and there been deteriorated by that great sin of the first man, not only was made a sinner, but also generates sinners; and yet the very weakness, under which the virtue of a holy life has drooped and died, is not really nature, but corruption; precisely as a bad state of health is not a bodily substance or nature, but disorder; very often, indeed, if not always, the ailing character of parents is in a certain way implanted, and reappears in the bodies of their children.
*' Ve.xat. Another reading has vitiat, " corrupts."
CHAP. 58. — ADAM'S SIN IS DERIVED FROM HIM TO EVERY ONE WHO IS BORN EVEN OF REGEN- ER.'VTE PARENTS; THE EXAMPLE OF THE OLIVE TREE AND THE WILD OLIVE.
But this sin, which changed man for the worse in paradise, because it is far greater than we can form any judgment of, is contracted by every one at his birth, and is remitted only in the regenerate; and this derangement is such as to be;' derived even from parents who have been regen- ' erated, and in whom the sin is remitted and covered, to the condemnation of the children born of them, unless these, who were bound by their first and carnal birth, are absolved by their second and spiritual birth. Of this wonderful fact the Creator has produced a wonderful example in the cases of the olive and the wild olive trees, in which, from the seed not only of the wild olive, but even of the good olive, nothing but a wild olive springs. Wherefore, although even in persons whose natural birth is followed by regeneration through grace, there exists this carnal concupiscence which contends against the law of the mind, yet, seeing that it is remitted in the remission of sins, it is no longer accounted to them as sin, nor is it in any degree hurtful, unless consent is yielded to its motions for unlawful deeds. Their offspring, however, being begotten not of spiritual concupiscence, but of carnal, like a wild olive of our race from the good olive, derives guilt from them by natural birth to such a degree that it cannot be liberated from that pest except by being born again. How is it, then, that this man affirms that we ascribe holiness to those who are born, and guilt to their parents? when the truth rather shows that even if there has been holiness in the parents, original sin is inherent in their children, which is abolished in them only if they are born again.
CHAP. 59 [XXXV.] — THE PELAGIANS CAN HARDLY VENTURE TO PLACE CONCUPISCENCE IN PARADISE BEFORE THE COMMISSION OF SIN.
This being the case, let him think what he pleases about this concupiscence of the flesh and about the lust which lords it over the unchaste, has to be mastered by the chaste, and yet is to be blushed at both by the chaste and the unchaste; for I see plainly he is much pleased with it. Let him not hesitate to praise what he is ashamed to name; let him call it (as he has in fact called it) the vigour of the members, and let him not be afraid of the horror of chaste ears; let him designate it the power of the members, and let him not care about the impudence. Let him say, if his blushes permit him, that if no one had sinned, this vigour must have flourished like a flower in paradise: nor would there have been any need to cover that which would 3o8 [Book II.
have been so moved that no one should have felt ashamed; rather, with a wife provided, it would have been ever exercised and never repressed, lest so great a pleasure should ever be denied to so vast a happiness. Far be it from being thought that such blessedness could in such a spot fail to ha\e what it wished, or ever experience, in mind or body what it disliked. And so, should the motion of lust precede men's will, then the will would immediately follow it. The wife, who ought certainly never to be absent in this happy state of things, would be urged on by it, whether about to conceive or already pregnant; and, either a child would be begotten, or a natural and laudable pleasure would be gratified, — for perish all seed rather than disappoint the appetite of so good a concupiscence. Only be sure that the united pair do not apply themselves to that use of each other which is contrary to nature, then (with so modest a reservation) let them use, as often as they would have delight, their organs of generation, created for the purpose. But what if this very use, which is contrary to nature, should peradventure give them delight; what if the aforesaid laudable lust should hanker even after such delight; I wonder whether they should pursue it because it was sweet, or loathe it because it was base? If they should pursue it to gratification, what becomes of all thought about honour? If they should loathe it, where is the peaceful composure of so good a happiness? But at this point perchance his blushes will awake, and he will say that so great is the tranquillity of this happy state, and so entire the orderliness which may have existed in this state of things, that carnal concupiscence never preceded these persons' will: only whenever they themselves wished, would it then arise; and only then would they entertain the wish, when there was need for begetting children; and the result would be, that no seed would ever be emitted to no purpose, nor would any embrace ever ensue which would not be followed by conception and birth; the flesh would obey the will, and concupiscence would vie with it in subserviency. Well, if he says all this of the imagined ha])py state, he must at least be pretty sure that what he describes does not now exist among men. And even if he will not concede that lust is a corrupt condition, let him at least allow that through the disobedience of the man and woman in the happy state the very concupiscence of their flesh was corrupted, so that what would once be excited obediently and orderly is now moved disobediently and inordinately, and that to such a degree that it is not obedient to the will of even chaste-minded husbands and wives, so that it is excited when it is not wanted; and whenever it is necessary, it never, indeed, follows their will, but sometnnes loo hurriedly, at other times too tardily, exerts its own movements. Such, then, is the rebellion of this concupiscence which the primitive pair received for their own disobedience, and transfused by natural descent to us. It certainly was not at their bidding, but in utter disorder, that it was excited, \\-hen they covered their members, which at first were worthy to be gloried in, but had then become a ground of shame.
CHAP. 60. — LET NOT THE PELAGIANS INDULGE THEMSELVES IN A CRUEL DEFENCE OF INF.\NTS.
As I said, however, let him entertain what views he likes of this lust; let him proclaim it j as he pleases, praise it as much as he chooses, (and he pleases viiich, as several of his extracts] show), that the Pelagians may gratify themselves, if not with its uses, at all events with its praises, as many of them as fail to enjoy the limitation! of continence enjoined in wedlock. Only let him spare the infants, so as not to praise their condition uselessly, and defend them cruelly. Let him not declare them to be safe; let himl suffer them to come, not, indeed, to Pelagius for] eulogy, but to Christ for salvation. For, that] this book may be now brought to a termination,] since the dissertation of this nlbn is ended, which was written on the short paper you sent me, I will close with his last words: " Really believe that all things were made by Jesus Christ, and that without Him nothing was made.'" Let him grant that Jesus is Jesus even to infants; and as he confesses that all things were made by Him, in that He is God the Word, so let him acknowledge that infants, too, are saved by Him in that He is Jesus; let him, I say, do this if he would be a catholic Christian. For thus it is written in the Gospel: " And they shall call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins"^ — Jesus, because Jesus is in Latin Salvator, " Saviour." He shall, indeed, save His people; and amongst His people surely there are infants. " From their sins " shall He save them; in infants, too, therefore, are there original sins, on account of which He can be Jesus, that is, Saviour, even unto them.
John i. 3.
2 Matt. i. 21.
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL AND ITS ORIGIN.
Book II. Chap. 56, "DE ANIMA ET EJUS ORIGINE."
"At that time one Vincentius discovered in the possession of a certain presbyter called Peter, in Mauritania Csesariensis, a little work of mine, in a particular passage of which, touching the origin of souls in individual men, I had confessed that I knew not whether they are propagated from the primeval soul of the first man, and from that by parental descent, or whether they are severally assigned to each person without propagation, as the first was to Adam; but that I was, at the same time, quite sure that the soul was not body, but spirit. In opposition to these opinions of mine, he addressed to this Peter two books, which were sent to me from Csesarea by the monk Renatus. Having read these books, I replied in four others, — one addressed to the ' monk Renatus, another to the presbyter Peter, I and two more to Victor himself. That to Peter, j however, though it has all the lengthiness of a I book, is yet only a letter, which I did not like I to be kept separate from the other three works. In all of them, while discussing many points which were unavoidable, I defended my hesitancy on the point of the origin of the souls which are given to individual men; and I pointed out this man's many errors and presumptuous pravity. At the same time, I treated the young man as gently as I could, — not as one who ought to be denounced all out of hand, but as one who ought to be still instructed; and I accepted the account of his conduct which he wrote back to me. In this work of mine, the book addressed to Renatus begins with these words: "Your sincerity towards us;" while that which was written to Peter begins thus: " To his Lordship, my dearly beloved brother and copresbyter Peter." Of the last two books, which are addressed to Vincentius Victor, the former one thus opens: " As to that which I have thought it my duty to write to you."
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER OF THIS TREATISE.
The occasion of these four books was furnished by a young man named Vincentius Victor, a native of Mauritania Cjesariensis, a convert to the catholic Church from the Rogatian faction (which split off from the Donatist schism, and inhabited that part of Mauritania which lay around Cartenna). This Victor, they say, had previously so high an opinion of the Vincentius who succeeded Rogatus as the head of the before-mentioned faction, that he adopted his name as his own.' Happening to meet with a certain work of Augustin's, in which the writer acknowledged himself to be incapable of saying whether all souls were propagated from Adam's soul simply, or whether every man severally had his soul given to him by God, even as Adam himself had, without propagation, although he declared, for all that, his conviction that the soul was in its nature spirit, not body, Victor was equally offended with both statements: he wondered that so great a man as Augustin did not unhesitatingly teach what one ought to hold concerning the origin of the soul, especially as he thought its propagation probable; and also that he did state with so great assurance the nature of the soul to be incorporeal. He accordingly published two books written to one Peter, a presbyter of Spain, against Augustin on this subject, containing some conceits of the Pelagian heretics, and other things even worse than these.* A monk called Renatus happened then to be at Caesarea. It appears that this man had shown to Augustin, who was staying at the same place in the autumn of the year 418, a letter of the Bishop Optatus consulting him about the origin of the soul.^ This monk, of the order of laymen, but perfectly orthodox in the faith, induced by the circumstance, carefully copied the books of Victor, and forwarded them from Cassarea to Hippo the next summer; Augustin, however, only received them at the end of autumn of the year 419, as is supposed.