City of God 14.20–15.1

Chapter 20. Of the utterly vain shamelessness of the Cynics.

This the canine philosophers, that is, the Cynics, did not see, putting forward against human modesty what else but a canine, that is, an unclean and shameless, opinion: namely, that since what is done with one's wife is just, one should not be ashamed to do it openly, nor avoid conjugal intercourse in any street or square. Yet natural shame has overcome the opinion of this error. For although they report that Diogenes once did this, glorying in it, thinking that his sect would be the more famous if his shamelessness were fixed more notably in men's memory, yet afterward the Cynics ceased to do it; and shame, so that men blushed before men, prevailed more than error, so that men affected to be like dogs. Hence I think that he, or those who are reported to have done this, rather presented the motions of people lying together to the eyes of men who did not know what was being done under the cloak, than that that pleasure could have been accomplished under the pressure of human gaze. For there the philosophers did not blush to be seen wishing to lie together, where lust itself would have blushed to rise. And we see that there are still Cynic philosophers now; for these are the ones who not only wrap themselves in the cloak but also carry a club; yet none of them dares to do this; and if any dared, they would be overwhelmed, I will not say by the blows of those stoning them, but certainly by the spittle of those spitting on them. Human nature, then, is without any doubt ashamed of this lust, and rightly ashamed. For in its disobedience, which has subjected the genital members of the body to its motions alone and snatched them from the power of the will, it is sufficiently shown what was repaid to man for that first disobedience; and it was fitting that this should appear above all in that part by which nature itself is begotten, which was changed for the worse by that first and great sin; from whose bond no one is rescued unless what was committed, when all were in one, to the common ruin and punished by the justice of God, is expiated in each by the grace of God.

Chapter 21. Of the blessing of multiplying human fruitfulness given before sin, which transgression did not take away, and to which the disease of lust was added.

Far be it from us, then, to believe that that married couple placed in paradise would have fulfilled through this lust, at which they blushed and covered those members, what God said in his blessing: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” For this lust arose after sin; after sin nature, not shameless, having lost the power which the body obeyed in every part, felt it, noticed it, blushed, and covered it. But that blessing of marriage, that the married should increase and multiply and fill the earth, although it remained even in those who sinned, was nevertheless given before they sinned, so that it might be known that the procreation of children belongs to the glory of marriage, not to the punishment of sin. But now men, certainly ignorant of that happiness which was in paradise, think that children could not have been begotten except through what they have experienced, that is, through lust, at which we see even the honorableness of marriage blush. Some of them do not accept the divine Scriptures at all, where we read that after sin they were ashamed of their nakedness and covered their shameful parts, but mock them in unbelief; while others, though they accept and honor them, yet want the saying “Increase and multiply” to be understood not of fleshly fruitfulness, because something similar is read said of the soul, “You will multiply me in my soul in strength”; so that in what follows in Genesis, “And fill the earth and have dominion over it,” they understand the earth as the flesh, which the soul fills with its presence and over which it has most dominion when it is multiplied in strength; but they hold that fleshly offspring could not have been born without lust, which arose after sin, was noticed, was a source of confusion, and was veiled, either then or now, and would not have been in paradise but outside it, as in fact happened. For after they had been sent out from there, they came together to beget children and begot them.

Chapter 22. Of the conjugal union, instituted and blessed by God from the beginning.

We, however, in no way doubt that to increase and multiply and fill the earth according to God's blessing is the gift of marriage, which God established from the beginning, before man's sin, by creating male and female, a difference of sex which is certainly evident in the flesh. For to this work of God the blessing itself was also joined. For when Scripture had said, “Male and female he made them,” it at once added, “And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it,” and so on. Although all these things can also, not unfittingly, be referred to a spiritual understanding, yet male and female cannot be understood as something similar within one man, namely, that in him one thing rules and another is ruled; but it is a great absurdity to resist the plainest evidence, in the bodies of different sex, that male and female were so created that by begetting offspring they might increase and multiply and fill the earth. For it was not about the spirit that commands and the flesh that obeys, or about the rational mind that rules and the irrational desire that is ruled, or about the contemplative virtue that excels and the active that is subordinate, or about the understanding of the mind and the sense of the body, but plainly about the conjugal bond, by which each sex is bound to the other, that the Lord, when asked whether it was lawful to put away one's wife for any cause, since Moses, because of the hardness of heart of the Israelites, permitted a bill of divorce to be given, answered and said: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined, let man not separate.” It is certain, then, that male and female were established at the first just as we now see and know two human beings of different sex, and that they are called one either because of their union or because of the origin of the woman, who was created from the male's side. For the apostle too, by this first example, which went before by God's institution, admonishes each and every one that husbands should love their wives.

Chapter 23. Whether there would have been begetting even in paradise if no one had sinned, and whether the principle of chastity would have had to fight there against the heat of lust.

But whoever says that they would not have come together or begotten unless they had sinned, what does he say but that man's sin was necessary for the number of the saints? For if by not sinning they would have remained alone, because, as they think, they could not have begotten unless they had sinned, then surely sin was necessary in order that there might be not only two righteous human beings but many. But if it is absurd to believe this, we must rather believe that the number of saints needed to complete that most blessed city would have come to be, even if no one had sinned, as great as is now gathered by the grace of God from the multitude of sinners, as long as “the children of this age beget and are begotten.” And therefore that marriage, worthy of the happiness of paradise, if there had been no sin, would both have begotten offspring to be loved and would not have had shameful lust. But how this could be done there is now no example to show. Yet it ought not on that account to seem incredible that that one member too could have served the will without this lust, when so many members serve it now. Do we move our hands and feet, when we will, to the things that are to be done by these members, without any resistance, with such ease as we see both in ourselves and in others, especially in craftsmen of all kinds of bodily work, where a nimbler skill has been added to train a weaker and slower nature; and do we not believe that, for the work of begetting children, had there been no lust, which was repaid for the sin of disobedience, those members could have served men obediently at the bidding of the will like the rest? Did not Cicero, in his books On the Republic, when discussing the difference of governments and drawing a likeness of this from the nature of man, say that the members of the body are commanded like children because of their readiness to obey, but that the vicious parts of the soul are restrained like slaves by a harsher rule? And certainly by the order of nature the soul is set above the body, and yet the soul commands the body more easily than itself. But this lust of which we are now speaking has become the more shameful because in it the soul neither commands itself effectively, so as not to desire at all, nor commands the body in every way, so that the will rather than lust would move the shameful members; if this were so, they would not be shameful. But as it is, the soul is ashamed that the body, which by its lower nature is subject to it, resists it. For in the other affections, when it resists itself, there is less shame, because, when it is overcome by itself, it overcomes itself; even if in a disordered and vicious way, since it is overcome by those parts which ought to be subject to reason, yet it is overcome by its own parts and so, as has been said, by itself. For when the soul overcomes itself in an ordered way, so that its irrational motions are subject to mind and reason, provided that too is subject to God, it is a matter of praise and virtue. Yet there is less shame when the soul does not obey itself in its vicious parts than when the body, which is other than it and below it and whose nature does not live without it, does not yield to it when it wills and commands. But when the other members are held back by the command of the will, without which those that are stirred by lust against the will cannot fulfill what they seek, chastity is preserved, not because the delight of sin has been lost but because it is not permitted.

This resistance, this opposition, this quarrel of will and lust, or at least this need of lust for the sufficiency of the will, marriage in paradise would beyond doubt not have had, unless culpable disobedience had been punished by penal disobedience; but all the members, like the rest, would have served the will. So the vessel created for this work would have sown the field of generation, as the hand now sows the earth; and whereas now, when we wish to discuss this matter more carefully, modesty resists us and compels us, prefacing our words with an apology, to ask pardon of chaste ears, there would be no reason why this should happen, but speech would move freely, without any fear of obscenity, to everything that might touch the mind of one thinking about such members; nor would there be words themselves which would be called obscene, but whatever was said of them would be as honorable as when we speak of other parts of the body. Whoever, then, comes to these writings unchaste, let him blame guilt, not nature; let him censure the deeds of his own shamefulness, not the words of our necessity; in which the chaste and devout reader or hearer very easily pardons me, while I refute unbelief, which argues not from faith in things unexperienced but from the sense of things experienced. For he reads this without offense who does not shudder at the apostle rebuking the horrible shameful deeds of women who “exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature”; especially since we are not now, as he was, recalling and rebuking a damnable obscenity, but, in explaining as far as we can the workings of human generation, we nevertheless avoid obscene words, as he did.

Chapter 24. That human beings without guilt, remaining in paradise by the merit of obedience, would have used the genital members for begetting offspring as they use the others, at the choice of the will.

The man, then, would have sown offspring and the woman received it by the genital members, when and as much as was needed, moved by the will, not stirred by lust. For we move at our bidding not only those members which are jointed with firm bones, like hands, feet, and fingers, but also those which are loosely composed of soft sinews, we move when we will, by shaking them, extend them by stretching, bend them by twisting, and harden them by contracting, as are those which the will moves, as far as it can, in the mouth and face. The lungs, finally, the softest of all the organs except the marrow, and therefore protected in the cavity of the chest, serve the will of one who breathes, inhales, speaks, shouts, or sings, for drawing in and letting out breath and for uttering or modulating the voice, like the bellows of smiths or of organs. I pass over the fact that it is naturally given to certain animals to move the covering which clothes their whole body only at the place where they feel something to be driven off, and to shake off by a trembling of the skin not only flies that settle on them but even spears sticking in them. Because man cannot do this, could the Creator therefore not give it to whatever living beings he willed? So, then, man himself too could have had the obedience even of his lower members, which he lost by his own disobedience. For it was not difficult for God so to make him that in his flesh even that which now is moved only by lust would be moved only by his will.

For we know the natures of certain men as well, very unlike the rest and wonderful for their very rarity, who do some things with the body as they will which others can in no way do and scarcely believe when they hear of them. For there are some who move their ears, either one at a time or both together. There are some who, without moving the head, bring the whole scalp, as far as the hair covers it, down to the forehead and draw it back when they will. There are some who, when they have swallowed an incredible number of various things, by a slight pressure of the diaphragm bring out whatever they please, quite whole, as from a bag. Some imitate and reproduce the voices of birds and beasts and of any other men so that, unless they are seen, they cannot be distinguished at all. Some produce from below, without any stench, such rhythmical sounds at will that they seem to be singing even from that part. I myself have known a man who used to sweat when he wished. It is well known that some weep when they will and shed tears abundantly. Now that is much more incredible which very many of the brothers experienced quite recently. There was a presbyter named Restitutus in the parish of the church of Calama. When he pleased (and he was asked to do this by those who wished to witness the marvel in person), at the imitated voices, as it were, of some person lamenting, he would so withdraw himself from his senses and lie so like a dead man that not only did he not feel people pinching and pricking him, but sometimes he was even burned by fire brought near without any sense of pain, except afterward from the wound; and that he did not move his body not by resisting but by not feeling was proved by this, that, as in a dead man, no breathing was found; yet he reported afterward that he heard men's voices, if they spoke rather loudly, as though from far away. Since, then, even now the body serves some people wonderfully, beyond the usual measure of nature, in many motions and affections, though they are leading this wretched life in corruptible flesh, what reason is there that we should not believe that, before the sin of disobedience and the punishment of corruption, human members could have served the human will without any lust for propagating offspring? Man, then, was given over to himself because he forsook God by pleasing himself; and not obeying God he could not obey even himself. Hence the more evident misery by which man does not live as he wills. For if he lived as he willed, he would think himself happy; but even so he would not be, if he lived shamefully.

Chapter 25. Of the true happiness which temporal life does not attain.

Though, if we consider more carefully, no one lives as he wills unless he is happy, and no one is happy unless he is righteous. But even the righteous man himself will not live as he wills unless he arrives where he can in no way die, be deceived, or be harmed, and is certain that it will always be so. For this is what nature seeks, and it will not be fully and perfectly happy unless it has obtained what it seeks. But now what man can live as he wills, when living itself is not in his power? For he wills to live and is forced to die. How then does he live as he wills who does not live as long as he wills? But if he wills to die, how can he who does not will to live live as he wills? And if he wills to die not because he does not will to live but in order to live better after death, then he does not yet live as he wills, but will when by dying he has arrived at what he wills. But suppose he does live as he wills, because he has forced and commanded himself not to will what he cannot, and to will what he can, as Terence says:

Since what you wish cannot be done, wish for what you can:

is he therefore happy because he is patiently wretched? For the happy life, if it is not loved, is not possessed. Further, if it is loved and possessed, it must be loved more excellently than all other things, since whatever else is loved must be loved for its sake. Further, if it is loved as much as it deserves to be loved (for he is not happy by whom the happy life itself is not loved as it deserves), it cannot be that one who so loves it does not will it to be eternal. It will, then, be happy when it is eternal.

Chapter 26. That the happiness of those living in paradise must be believed to have been able to fulfill the duty of begetting without shameful craving.

Man, then, lived in paradise as he willed, as long as he willed what God had commanded; he lived enjoying God, from whose goodness he was good; he lived without any want, having it in his power to live so forever. Food was at hand so that he should not hunger, drink so that he should not thirst, the tree of life so that old age should not dissolve him. There was nothing of corruption in the body, or from the body, to inflict any troubles on any of his senses. No disease within, no blow from without was feared. There was perfect health in the flesh and entire tranquillity in the soul. As in paradise there was no heat or cold, so in its inhabitant there was no offense to the good will from desire or fear. There was nothing sad at all, nothing vainly glad. True joy continued unbroken from God, toward whom charity burned “from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned”; and between the spouses there was a faithful partnership from honorable love, a harmonious watchfulness of mind and body, and a keeping of the command without toil. Weariness did not tire the one at leisure, sleep did not overpower him against his will.

In so great an ease of things and happiness of human beings, far be it from us to suspect that offspring could not be sown without the disease of lust; but those members would be moved by the same bidding of the will as the rest, and without the seductive goad of burning desire, with tranquillity of mind and body, the husband would pour himself into his wife's lap without any corruption of her integrity. For it is not to be disbelieved because it cannot be proved by experience; since, when no turbid heat drove those parts of the body, but a spontaneous power applied them as there was need, the male seed could then have been introduced into the wife's womb with the integrity of the female genital preserved, just as now, with that same integrity preserved, the flow of menstrual blood can be emitted from the womb of a virgin. For the seed could be introduced by the same way by which that can be discharged. For as in giving birth it would not be the groans of pain but the impulse of maturity that would relax the woman's organs, so in conceiving and bearing it would not be the craving of lust but a voluntary use that would join the two natures. We are speaking now of things that are shameful, and therefore, although we conjecture as best we can what they could have been like before they were shameful, it is necessary that our discussion be bridled by the modesty that calls us back rather than helped by an eloquence which we lack. For since those who could have experienced what I describe did not experience it themselves (because sin came first and they deserved exile from paradise before they came together in the work of propagation by a tranquil decision), how, when these things are mentioned now, does anything come to human minds but the experience of turbid lust, not the conjecture of a placid will? Hence it is that shame hinders the speaker, even though reason does not fail the thinker.

Yet the almighty God, the supreme and supremely good creator of all natures, but the helper and rewarder of good wills, and the abandoner and condemner of evil ones, and the orderer of both, certainly did not lack a plan by which to fill up the fixed number of citizens predestined in his wisdom for his city, even from the condemned human race; distinguishing them no longer by merits, since the whole mass has been condemned as in a vitiated root, but by grace, and showing to those who are freed not only in their own case but also in the case of those not freed what he bestows on them. For each one then recognizes that he has been rescued from evils not by owed but by gratuitous goodness, when he is exempted from the fellowship of those men with whom a just punishment would have been common to him. Why, then, should God not create those whom he foreknew would sin, since both in them and from them he could show both what their guilt deserved and what his grace bestowed, and since under that creator and disposer the perverse disorder of sinners could not pervert the right order of things?

Chapter 27. Of sinners, both angels and men, whose perversity does not disturb providence.

Sinners, therefore, both angels and men, do nothing by which “the great works of the Lord, sought out according to all his wills,” are hindered; since he who providently and omnipotently distributes to each his own knows how to make good use not only of the good but also of the evil. And so, when the evil angel had been so condemned and hardened for the desert of his first evil will that he would never again have a good will, why should God, making good use of him, not permit the first man, who had been created upright, that is, with a good will, to be tempted by him? For he had been so established that, if the good man trusted in the help of God, he would overcome the evil angel; but if he forsook God, his creator and helper, by proudly pleasing himself, he would be overcome; having good merit in a right will helped by God, but bad merit in a perverse will forsaking God. For even trusting in God's help he could not do without God's help; and yet it was in his power to withdraw from these benefits of divine grace by pleasing himself. For just as it is not in our power to live in this flesh without the support of food, but it is in our power not to live in it, as those do who kill themselves, so it was not in man's power even in paradise to live well without the help of God; but it was in his power to live badly, yet with a happiness that would not last and a most just punishment to follow. Since, then, God was not ignorant of this future fall of man, why should he not allow him to be tempted by the malice of the envious angel? He was in no way uncertain that he would be overcome, but no less did he foreknow that the devil himself was to be overcome by his seed, helped by his grace, to the greater glory of the saints. So it came about that nothing of the future was hidden from God, and yet by foreknowing he compelled no one to sin, and he showed by subsequent experience to the rational creature, angelic and human, what difference there was between each one's own presumption and his protection. For who would dare to believe or say that it was not in God's power that neither angel nor man should fall? But he preferred not to take this out of their power, and so to show both how much evil their pride could do and how much good his grace.

Chapter 28. Of the character of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly.

Two loves, then, have made two cities: the earthly, love of self even to contempt of God; the heavenly, love of God even to contempt of self. In short, the one glories in itself, the other in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but to the other God, the witness of conscience, is the greatest glory. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “My glory and the one who lifts up my head.” In the one the lust for ruling rules over its princes or the nations it subdues; in the other they serve one another in charity, the leaders by taking counsel and the subjects by obeying. The one loves its own strength in its powerful men; the other says to its God, “I will love you, O Lord, my strength.” And therefore in the one its wise men, living according to man, have pursued the goods either of the body or of their own mind or of both; or those who could know God “did not honor him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened; claiming to be wise” (that is, exalting themselves in their own wisdom, with pride ruling them), “they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents” (for in adoring images of this kind they were either leaders of the peoples or followers), “and they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.” But in the other there is no human wisdom but godliness, by which the true God is rightly worshipped, awaiting this reward in the fellowship of the saints, not only of men but also of angels, “that God may be all in all.”

Chapter 1. On the two lines of the human race, running from the beginning toward different ends.

Concerning the happiness of paradise, or paradise itself, and the life of the first human beings there, and their sin and punishment, many people have thought many things, said many things, and committed many things to writing. We too, following the holy Scriptures, have spoken of these matters in the preceding books, setting down either what we read in them or what we could understand from them in agreement with their authority. But if these things are investigated more minutely, they give rise to many and various disputes, which would need to be woven into more volumes than this work and our time require; and we do not have so much time that we ought to linger over everything that idle and scrupulous people can ask, who are readier to question than able to understand. I think, however, that we have now done enough on the great and very difficult questions about the beginning of the world, of the soul, and of the human race itself. That race we have divided into two kinds: one of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. These we also call, figuratively, two cities, that is, two societies of human beings, of which one is predestined to reign for ever with God, the other to undergo eternal punishment with the devil. But that is their end, of which we must speak later. Now, since enough has been said about their origin, whether among the angels, whose number is unknown to us, or in the first two human beings, it seems to me that I must take up their course, from the time when those two began to beget until human beings cease to beget. For this whole time or age, in which the dying depart and the newborn succeed them, is the course of these two cities of which we are treating.

First, then, of those two parents of the human race was born Cain, who belongs to the city of men; afterwards Abel, who belongs to the city of God. For just as we find in a single man what the apostle said, that “it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and afterwards the spiritual” (and so each one, since he springs from a condemned stock, must first be evil and carnal from Adam, and if he advances by being reborn in Christ, will afterwards be good and spiritual), so in the whole human race: when these two cities first began to run their course by birth and death, the citizen of this world was born first, and after him the pilgrim in this world who belongs to the city of God, predestined by grace, chosen by grace, by grace a pilgrim below, by grace a citizen above. For as far as he himself is concerned, he arises from the same lump that is wholly condemned in its origin; but God, like a potter (the apostle introduces this comparison not impudently but prudently), “made from the same lump one vessel for honor, another for dishonor.” The vessel for dishonor was made first, and afterwards the other for honor; because in each single man too, as I have said, what is reprobate comes first, from which we must begin but in which we need not remain, and what is approved comes afterwards, toward which we advance and in which, once we arrive, we remain. Not every evil man, then, will be good; yet no one will be good who was not evil. But the sooner anyone is changed for the better, the sooner he brings upon himself the name of what he has laid hold of, and covers the earlier name with the later one. So it is written of Cain that he founded a city; but Abel, as a pilgrim, did not found one. For the city of the saints is above, although it gives birth to citizens here, in whom it is on pilgrimage until the time of its kingdom comes, when it will gather them all, rising again in their bodies, and the promised kingdom will be given them, where with their prince, the King of the ages, they will reign without any end of time.