On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.47–2.60

Let him still ask through what sin is found in a little child. Let the holy pages answer him: “Through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed through to all men, in whom all sinned.” “Through the offense of one many died.” “The judgment was from one to condemnation.” “Through the offense of one death reigned through the one.” “Through the offense of one it came to all men to condemnation.” “Through the disobedience of one many were made sinners.” See through what sin is found in a little child! Let him now believe in original sin; let him allow little children to come to Christ to be saved. What is this that he says: “The one who is born does not sin, the one who begot does not sin, the one who created does not sin: through what cracks, amid so many defenses of innocence, do you imagine sin entered?” Why does he look for a hidden crack, when he has a wide-open door? “Through one man,” says the apostle; “through the offense of one,” says the apostle; “through the disobedience of one man,” says the apostle. What more does he want? What does he want more plain? What does he want more insistently repeated?

“If sin,” he says, “comes from the will, the will that commits sin is evil; if from nature, the nature is evil.” I answer at once: sin comes from the will. Perhaps he asks whether original sin does too. I answer: certainly original sin too, because this too was sown from the will of the first man, so that it both was in him and passed to all. But as to what he added next, “if from nature, the nature is evil,” I ask him to answer, if he can: just as it is evident that all evil works come from an evil will as the fruits of an evil tree, from where does he say that the evil will itself, that is, the evil tree of evil fruits, arose? If from an angel, what was the angel himself but a good work of God? If from a man, what was the man himself but a good work of God? Indeed, since the evil will of the angel arose from the angel, and that of man from man, what were these two, before these evils arose in them, but a good work of God and a good and praiseworthy nature? See, then: evil arises from good, and there was nothing at all from which it could arise except good—I mean the evil will itself, which no evil preceded; not evil works, which exist only from an evil will as from an evil tree. Yet an evil will could arise from good not because the good was made by the good God, but because it was made from nothing, not from God. What, then, does he mean by saying, “If nature is the work of God, the work of the devil is not allowed to pass through the work of God”? Did not the work of the devil, when it first arose in the angel who became the devil, arise in a work of God? So if evil, which existed nowhere at all, could arise in a work of God, why could evil, which already existed somewhere, not pass through a work of God—especially since the apostle uses that very word, saying, “and so it passed through to all men”? Are human beings not the work of God? Sin passed through human beings, then, that is, the work of the devil through the work of God; or, to say the same thing another way, since the work of the devil, that is, sin, which arose through the devil himself, who is a creature or work of God, passed through another work of God, that is, man, the work of a work of God passed through a work of God. And therefore God alone is unchangeable and of most powerful goodness, because even before there was any evil he made all works good, and from the evils that have arisen in the good things he made, he works well through all things.

“In one person,” he says, “the intention is rightly blamed and the origin praised, because there are two things, to which contrary judgments are applied; but in a little child there is one thing, nature only, since there is no will. That one thing, then,” he says, “will be ascribed either to God or to the demon. If nature,” he says, “is through God, there cannot be original evil in it; if from the devil, there will be nothing by which man may be claimed for the divine work. So he is a complete Manichee who defends original evil.” Let him rather hear what is true against this. In one person the intention is rightly blamed and the nature praised, because there are two things to which contrary judgments are applied; but in a little child too there is not one thing only, that is, the nature in which man was created by the good God; for he has also the fault that passed through one man to all men, as the apostle wisely holds, not as Pelagius or Caelestius or any of their disciples foolishly holds. Of these two things, then, which we have said are in a little child, one is ascribed to God, the other to the devil. And that both are subjected to the power of the devil because of one of them, that is, because of the fault, is not unfitting, because this happens not by the power of the devil himself but by the power of God; and fault is subjected to fault, nature to nature, since both are also in the devil; so that when the beloved and elect are rescued from the power of darkness, to which they are rightly subject, it may appear what is given to the justified by God, who is good and works good from evils.

As for what he thought he was saying piously, “If nature is through God, there cannot be original evil in it,” does not someone else think he speaks more piously in saying, “If nature is through God, no evil can arise in it”? And yet that is false; for the Manichees wanted to assert this, and tried to fill with all evils not a creature of God made from nothing but the very nature of God. For evil has arisen only in the good—not, however, in the supreme and unchangeable good, which is the nature of God, but in a good made from nothing through the wisdom of God. There is, then, something by which man is claimed for the divine work, because he would not be a man unless he were created by the divine work. But there would be no evil in little children unless sin had been committed by the will of the first man and original sin contracted from the corrupted origin. It is not, then, as he says, “He is a complete Manichee who defends original evil”; rather, he is a complete Pelagian who does not believe in original evil. For it was not from the time the pestilent doctrine of Manichaeus began that little children to be baptized began to be exorcised and breathed upon in the church of God, so that it might be shown by these very mysteries that they are not transferred into the kingdom of Christ unless rescued from the power of darkness. Nor is it in the books of Manichaeus that we read that the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost; or that through one man sin entered into this world, and the rest belonging to the same statement, which we mentioned above; or that God repays the sins of the fathers on the children; or what is written in the psalm, “I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb”; or, “Man has become like vanity; his days pass like a shadow”; or, “See, you have made my days old, and my substance is as nothing before you; indeed, every living man is all vanity”; or what the apostle says, “Every creature has been subjected to vanity”; or in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. What abundance has a man from all his labor at which he labors under the sun?”; or in the book of Ecclesiasticus, “A heavy yoke is on the sons of Adam from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb until the day of their burial into the mother of all”; or what the apostle says, “In Adam all die”; or what holy Job says, where he speaks of his sins: “For man born of woman is short of life and full of wrath; like the flower of the grass he falls; he flees like a shadow and will not stand. Have you not taken care even of him, and made him enter into judgment in your sight? For who will be clean from filth? Not even one, even if his life on earth has been one day.” What he meant by filth—since he meant sins—the reading itself shows, where it is quite clear what he is speaking of. Hence also that passage in the prophet Zechariah, where the filthy garment is taken from the priest and it is said to him, “See, I have taken away your sins.” I think that all these, and others of this kind, which show that every human being is born under sin and the curse, are read not in the darkness of the Manichees but in the light of the catholics.

What shall I say about the interpreters of the divine Scriptures who flourished in the catholic church—how they did not try to turn these texts into other senses, since they were steadfast in the most ancient and most robust faith and were not moved by newfangled error? If I wished to collect them and use their testimonies, it would take too long, and I might seem to have relied less than I ought on the canonical authorities, from which we must not turn away. Yet—to pass over most blessed Ambrose, to whom Pelagius, as I have already mentioned, bore so great a testimony of soundness in the faith, and who nevertheless defended nothing else in little children, as the reason they need Christ the physician, but original sin—will anyone say that Cyprian, of most glorious crown, not only was a Manichee but even could have been one, since he suffered before that plague appeared in the Roman world? And yet in his book on the baptism of little children he so defends original sin as to say for that reason that a little child ought to be baptized even before the eighth day, if necessary, lest his soul perish; and he wants it understood that the child comes to the pardon of baptism the more easily, the more the sins forgiven him are not his own but another's. Let this man dare to call these men Manichees, and bespatter with this wicked charge the most ancient tradition of the church, by which, as I have said, little children are exorcised and breathed upon, so that, rescued from the power of darkness, that is, of the devil and his angels, they may be transferred into the kingdom of Christ. As for us, we are more ready, with these men and with the church of Christ, established in the antiquity of this faith, to endure any curses and insults whatever than to be praised by the Pelagians with any eloquence whatever.

“You say again,” he says, “‘There would be no concupiscence had man not sinned first, but marriage would exist even if no one had sinned.’” I did not say, “There would be no concupiscence,” since there is also a spiritual concupiscence to be gloried in, by which wisdom is desired; but I said, “There would be no shameful concupiscence.” Let my words be read again, which he himself also set down, so that it may appear with what deceit they are cited by him. But let him call it by whatever name he likes: I said that that would not exist, had man not sinned first, at which those in paradise blushed who covered their shameful parts—which no one denies followed because the sin of disobedience had gone before. Whoever wants to understand what they felt ought to consider what they covered. For they made themselves girdles of fig leaves, not garments; and these girdles are called in Greek perizōmata. What perizōmata cover is known to all; some Latin translators have rendered them campestria. And who does not know what parts of the body are covered by those who wear the campestre? For the young Roman men covered these when they exercised naked on the Campus, from which this kind of covering got its name.

“That marriage, then,” he says, “which, as you say, could have existed without concupiscence, without motion of bodies, without necessity of the sexes, you pronounce praiseworthy; but these marriages which take place now you define as devised by the devil. What you dream could have been instituted,” he says, “you judge to be good; but these, of which the divine Scripture says, ‘A man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh,’ you declare to be diabolical evils, which should in the end be called a disease, not marriage.” It is no wonder if the Pelagians try to twist our statements into the senses they want, since they are accustomed to do this even with the holy Scriptures—not where something is said obscurely, but where the testimonies are clear and open—in the manner, indeed, of other heretics too. For who would say that marriage could have existed without motion of bodies, without necessity of the sexes? For God made the sexes, since he made them male and female, as it is written. And how could it happen that those who were to be joined, and to beget by that very joining, should not move their bodies, since no bodily approach of one human being to another takes place without motion of the body? The question here, then, is not about the motion of bodies, without which they could not unite at all, but about the shameful motion of the genitals, which surely would not exist—and yet the seed-sowing union would not be lacking—if the genitals served not lust but the will, like the other members. Is it not so even now, in the body of this death, that we command the foot, the arm, the finger, the lip, the tongue, and at our nod they are at once stretched out? Even the fluid held inside the bladder—what is more wonderful—is commanded to flow out, even when we are not pressed by its quantity, and it obeys. Indeed, the hidden organs and sinews by which that fluid is held are commanded to propel it, press it out, and expel it, and, if there is health, they serve the will without difficulty. How much more easily and tranquilly, then, would the member itself be extended and man be sown, with the genital parts of the body obeying, had not the disobedience of these members been paid back as a just punishment to those disobedient human beings? This punishment the chaste feel, who would doubtless prefer, if they could, to sow children at the command of the will rather than by the itch of pleasure. But the unclean, who because of this disease love not only harlots but even their wives, exult in this punishment of the flesh with a heavier punishment of the mind.

Far be it from us, then, to say what he pretends we say, that the marriages that take place now were devised by the devil. They are absolutely the same marriage that God instituted from the beginning. For he did not take this good of his, instituted for the generation of human beings, away even from condemned human beings, from whom he did not take away the senses and members of the flesh either, which are surely his gifts, though now destined to die by the condemnation that was due. This, I say, is the marriage of which it was said—apart from that great sacrament of Christ and the church which is figured here—“For this reason a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh.” For this was said before sin, and if no one had sinned it could have taken place without shameful lust. And now, although in the body of this death it does not take place without it, it is still the very thing that does not cease to take place: that a man cleaves to his wife and the two are in one flesh. So if it is said that marriage now is one thing, and would have been another if no one had sinned, this is said not according to its nature but according to a certain quality changed for the worse. Just as a man who has changed his life, whether for the better or for the worse, is called another man, although he is the same man—for a righteous man is one thing and a sinner another, though he is the same man—so marriage without shameful lust is one thing, and marriage with shameful lust another. Yet according to its constitution, by which a woman is lawfully joined to a man, the faithfulness of the carnal debt is kept free from the sin of adulteries, and children are sown in this lawful way, it is the same marriage that God instituted—although the devil wounded not marriage itself but the human beings from whom marriages are formed, by the ancient persuasion of sin, persuading them to the sin of disobedience, to which the disobedience of the members was paid back in return by divine judgment. In this state the married, though they blushed at their nakedness, could not altogether lose the goodness of marriage instituted by God.

From here he passes from those who are joined to those who are begotten—for whose sake we labor in this question with so many disputes against the new heretics—and, driven by a hidden prompting of God, says something by which he unties this whole knot by his own confession. For, wishing to stir up greater odium against us because we say that little children are born under sin even from lawful marriage, he says: “Those, then, who were never born you say could have been good; but these who have filled the world, for whom Christ died, you define as the work of the devil, born of a disease, and guilty from the beginning. I have proved, then,” he says, “that you aim at nothing else than to deny that God is the creator of these human beings who exist.” I, for my part, say that the creator of all human beings is none but God, although all are born under sin and perish unless they are reborn; for it is a fault, sown by the persuasion of the devil, through which they are born under sin, not the created nature by which they are human beings. But let shameful lust not move the members except when we will, and then it is not a disease; let even the lawful and honorable intercourse of married people not blush at it, avoiding sight and seeking privacy, and then it is not a disease; let the apostle not forbid wives to be possessed in this disease, and then it is not a disease. For what the Greek has, en pathei epithymias, some have translated into Latin as “in the disease of desire” or “of concupiscence,” others as “in the passion of concupiscence,” or in whatever other way it is found in various manuscripts. But passio in the Latin language, especially in the usage of the church, is not usually understood as a term of blame.

But whatever he thinks about the shameful concupiscence of the flesh, note what he has said about the little children, for whom we labor so that they may be believed to need a Savior, lest they die without salvation. I repeat his words: “Those, then, who were never born you say could have been good; but these who have filled the world, for whom Christ died, you define as the work of the devil, born of a disease, and guilty from the beginning.” Oh, if only he would untie the knot of contentiousness as he has untied the knot of this question! Will he now say that he said these things about adults? The question is about little children, about those being born; it is about them that he stirs up odium against us, because we define them as guilty from the beginning—because we say that those for whom Christ died are guilty. Why, then, did Christ die for them, if they are not guilty? From there, from there indeed, we shall win our case, from the very place where he thought odium should be stirred up. He says: how are little children guilty, for whom Christ died? We answer: no, how are little children not guilty, for whom Christ died? This dispute needs a judge. Let Christ judge, then, and let him say what his death availed for. “This is my blood,” he says, “which will be shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Let the apostle judge with him, since Christ himself speaks in the apostle too. He cries out and says of God the Father that he did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all. I think he says that Christ was handed over for us all in such a way that in this case little children are not separated from us. But what need is there to labor over this, about which even he no longer disputes, since he not only confesses that Christ died even for little children, but even blames us for calling guilty the little children for whom Christ died? Now, then, let the apostle, who said that Christ was handed over for us all, also say why Christ was handed over for us. “He was handed over,” he says, “for our offenses and rose for our justification.” If, then, as this man both confesses and professes, both says and objects, little children too are among those for whom Christ was handed over, and Christ was handed over for our offenses, then little children certainly have original offenses, for which Christ was handed over. He has something to heal in them, who, as he himself says, is not needed as a physician by the healthy but by the sick; he has a reason to save them, who came into the world, as the apostle Paul says, to save sinners; he has something to forgive in them, who testifies that he shed his blood for the forgiveness of sins; he has a reason to seek them, who came, as he says, to seek and to save what was lost; the Son of God has something to destroy in them, who came, as the apostle John says, for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. He, then, is an enemy of the salvation of little children who so asserts their innocence as to deny the necessary medicine to the wounded and injured.

Now note what follows and what he adds: “If before sin,” he says, “that from which human beings would be born was created through God, but that by which parents are aroused was created through the devil, holiness will doubtless be ascribed to those who are born and guilt to those who beget. Since this most plainly condemns marriage, remove this idea, I beg, from the midst of the churches, and truly believe that all things were made through Jesus Christ and without him nothing was made.” He says this as though we said that something of substance in human beings was created through the devil. The devil persuaded evil as sin; he did not create it as a nature. But plainly he persuaded a nature, since man is a nature, and so by persuading he corrupted it. For one who wounds does not create members but harms them. But wounds inflicted on bodies make the members limp or move with difficulty, not the virtue by which a man is righteous; while the wound called sin wounds the very life by which one was living rightly. And this wound the devil then inflicted far greater and deeper than the sins known to human beings. Hence by that great sin of the first man our nature, there changed for the worse, not only became a sinner but also begot sinners. And yet the very languor by which the power of living well perished is certainly not a nature but a fault, just as bad health in the body is surely no substance or nature but a fault; and, though not always, still very often the bad health of parents is in a certain way implanted in, and appears in, the bodies of their children.

But this sin, which changed man himself for the worse in paradise, because it is far greater than we can judge, is contracted by everyone who is born and is forgiven only in one who is reborn; so that even from parents already reborn, in whom it has been forgiven and covered, it is contracted into the guilt of the children who are born, unless the second, spiritual birth absolves those too whom the first, carnal birth has bound. Of this wonderful thing the Creator has produced a wonderful example in the olive and the wild olive, where not only from the seed of the wild olive but even from the seed of the olive nothing but a wild olive springs up. Therefore, although this carnal concupiscence, warring against the law of the mind, is present also in human beings who are generated by nature and regenerated by grace, yet, because it has been forgiven in the forgiveness of sins, it is no longer reckoned to them as sin, nor does it do any harm, unless consent is given to its motions toward unlawful things. But their offspring, because it is sown not through spiritual but through carnal concupiscence, like a wild olive of our kind from that olive, so contracts guilt from it by being born that it cannot be set free from that plague except by being reborn. How, then, does he claim that we ascribe holiness to those who are born and guilt to those who beget, when the truth rather shows that, even if there has been holiness in those who beget, original guilt is present in those who are born, which is abolished only in those who are reborn?

Since this is so, let him think whatever he likes about this concupiscence of the flesh and this lust—imperious over the unchaste, to be tamed by the chaste, yet shameful to chaste and unchaste alike—since, as I see, it pleases him greatly. Let him not hesitate to praise what he is ashamed to name; let him call it, as he has called it, the vigor of the members, and not respect the horror of chaste ears; let him call it the power of the members, and not beware of shamelessness; let him say, if he does not blush, that in paradise, had no one sinned, this vigor could have flourished there like a flower, and that there was no need to cover what would move in such a way that no one would be confounded by it, but that, a wife always being ready, it would always be exercised and never repressed, lest its will should ever be denied to so great a happiness. For far be it that that blessedness should either lack in that place what it wanted or feel in its body or mind what it did not want; and so, if the motion of lust anticipated the will of human beings, the will would at once follow, and the wife, who for this reason ought never to be absent, whether she was to conceive or was already pregnant, would at once be brought near, and either offspring would be sown or the natural and praiseworthy pleasure would be satisfied and the man's seed would perish, lest the appetite of so good a concupiscence be cheated—only the spouses would not turn to that use which is against nature, but as often as it delighted them they would use the members created for this, the genitals. And yet what if that use against nature also perhaps delighted them—what if that praiseworthy lust neighed after this pleasure too? Would they follow it, because it was sweet, or resist it, because it was base? If they followed it, where is any thought of honor? If they resisted it, where is the peace of such great happiness? If perhaps he blushes at this and says that the peace of that happiness and the order in these things could have been so great that the concupiscence of the flesh would never anticipate the will of those human beings, but would rise up when they themselves willed, and that they would will it when it was needed for sowing children, so that no emission of seed would be in vain and no intercourse would take place that was not followed by conception and birth, the flesh serving at their nod, lust serving at their nod—if he says this, let him at least consider that what he describes does not exist in human beings now. And if he will not grant that lust is a fault, let him at least say that through the disobedience of those human beings the concupiscence of the flesh itself was corrupted, so that what would have moved obediently and in order now moves disobediently and without order, so that it does not obey the nod even of chaste married people, but moves also when it is not needed, and, when it is needed, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, follows their nod, yet puts forth motions of its own. This disobedience of it, then, those disobedient human beings received and poured into us by descent. For it was not moving at their nod, but certainly without order, when they covered the members that had before been matters for glory and were then shameful.

But, as I said, let him think whatever he likes about this lust, proclaim it however he likes, praise it as much as he likes—for, as he shows in many places, he likes it much—so that the Pelagians, whichever of them, by a vow of continence, do not enjoy the flesh of wives, may delight in it, if not by its use, at least by its praises. Only let him spare the little children, so as not to praise them uselessly and defend them cruelly; let him not say that they are saved already, but let him allow them to come not to Pelagius the praiser but to Christ the Savior. For, to close this book now—since his discourse, written in the paper you sent, ended by saying, “Truly believe that all things were made through Jesus, and without him nothing was made”—let him grant that Jesus is Jesus for little children too, and, as he confesses that all things were made through him in that he is the Word, God, so let him confess that little children too are saved by him in that he is Jesus, if he wants to be a catholic Christian. For so it is written in the gospel: “And they will call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins.” He is called Jesus, then, because Jesus in Latin is Savior; “for he will save his people”—and among that people there are certainly little children too—and “he will save them from their sins.” There are, then, original sins in little children too, because of which Jesus, that is, the Savior, can be theirs also.