We have already stated in the preceding books that God, desiring not only that the human race might be able by their similarity of nature to associate with one another, but also that they might be bound together in harmony and peace by the ties of relationship, was pleased to derive all men from one individual, and created man with such a nature that the members of the race would not have died if the first two (of whom the one was created out of nothing, and the other out of him) had not deserved this by their disobedience; for they committed so great a sin that by it human nature was altered for the worse, and was also transmitted to their posterity, liable to sin and subject to death. And the kingdom of death so reigned over men, that the deserved penalty of sin would have hurled all headlong even into the second death, of which there is no end, if the undeserved grace of God had not saved some from it. And so it has come about that though there are very many and great nations all over the earth, whose rites and customs, speech, arms, and dress, are distinguished by marked differences, there are still no more than two kinds of human society, which we may justly call two cities, according to the language of our Scriptures. The one consists of those who wish to live according to the flesh, the other of those who wish to live according to the spirit; and when each achieves what it wishes, they live in peace, each after their kind.
First, we must see what it is to live according to the flesh, and what it is to live according to the spirit. For anyone who either does not recall, or does not sufficiently weigh, the language of sacred Scripture, may, on first hearing what we have said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers live according to the flesh, because they place man's highest good in bodily pleasure; and that those others do so who have held the opinion that in some form or other bodily good is man's supreme good; and that the mass of men do so who, without dogmatizing or philosophizing on the subject, are so prone to lust that they cannot delight in any pleasure except what they receive from bodily sensations: and he may suppose that the Stoics, who place the supreme good of men in the soul, live according to the spirit; for what is man's soul, if not spirit? But in the sense of the divine Scripture both are proved to live according to the flesh. For by flesh it means not only the body of a terrestrial and mortal animal, as when it says, “Not all flesh is the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds,” 1 Corinthians 15:39 but it uses this word in many other senses; and among these various usages, a frequent one is to use flesh for man himself, the nature of man taking the part for the whole, as in the words, “By the works of the law no flesh shall be justified;” Romans 3:20 for what does he mean here by “no flesh” but “no man?” And this, indeed, he shortly after says more plainly: “No man shall be justified by the law;” Galatians 3:11 and in the Epistle to the Galatians, “Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law.” And so we understand the words, “And the Word was made flesh,” John 1:14 — that is, man, which some, not accepting it in its right sense, have taken to mean that Christ did not have a human soul. For as the whole is used for the part in the words of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him,” John 20:13 by which she meant only the flesh of Christ, which she supposed had been taken from the tomb where it had been buried, so the part is used for the whole, when flesh is named while man is meant, as in the quotations cited above. Since, then, Scripture uses the word flesh in many ways, which there is not time to collect and investigate, if we are to ascertain what it is to live according to the flesh (which is certainly evil, though the nature of flesh is not itself evil), we must carefully examine that passage of the epistle which the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, in which he says, “Now the works of the flesh are plain, and they are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, anger, strife, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, carousing, and the like: of which I warn you, as I have also told you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:19-21 This whole passage of the apostolic epistle, considered as far as it bears on the matter at hand, will be sufficient to answer the question, what it is to live according to the flesh. For among the works of the flesh which he said were plain, and which he cited for condemnation, we find not only those which concern the pleasure of the flesh, such as fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, drunkenness, carousing, but also those which, though they are remote from fleshly pleasure, reveal the vices of the soul. For who does not see that idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, anger, strife, heresies, envy, are vices rather of the soul than of the flesh? For it is quite possible for a man to abstain from fleshly pleasures for the sake of idolatry or some heretical error; and yet, even when he does so, he is proved by this apostolic authority to be living according to the flesh; and in abstaining from fleshly pleasure, he is proved to be practicing damnable works of the flesh. Who has enmity and does not have it in his soul? Or who would say to his enemy, or to the man he thinks his enemy, You have a bad flesh toward me, and not rather, You have a bad spirit toward me? In short, just as anyone who heard of what I may call “carnalities,” would not fail to attribute them to the carnal part of man; so no one doubts that “animosities” belong to the soul of man. Why then does the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth call all these and similar things works of the flesh, if not because, by that figure of speech by which the part is used for the whole, he means us to understand by the word flesh the man himself?
But if anyone says that the flesh is the cause of all vices and bad conduct, since the soul lives wickedly only because it is moved by the flesh, it is certain he has not carefully considered the whole nature of man. For “the corruptible body, indeed, weighs down the soul.” For this reason, too, the apostle, speaking of this corruptible body, of which he had shortly before said, “though our outward man is perishing,” 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, “We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to put on over it our house which is from heaven: if indeed, being clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened: not because we wish to be unclothed, but further clothed, so that mortality might be swallowed up in life.” 2 Corinthians 5:1-4 We are then burdened with this corruptible body; but knowing that the cause of this burdensomeness is not the nature and substance of the body, but its corruption, we do not desire to be deprived of the body, but to be clothed with its immortality. For then, also, there will be a body, but it will no longer be a burden, being no longer corruptible. For now, then, “the corruptible body presses down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weighs down the mind that muses on many things,” nevertheless those are in error who suppose that all the evils of the soul come from the body. Virgil, indeed, seems to express the views of Plato in the beautiful lines, where he says — A fiery strength inspires their lives, / An essence that from heaven derives, / Though clogged in part by limbs of clay / And the dull 'vesture of decay;' / but though he goes on to mention the four most common mental emotions — desire, fear, joy, sorrow — with the intention of showing that the body is the origin of all sins and vices, saying — / Hence wild desires and grovelling fears, / And human laughter, human tears, / Immured in dungeon-seeming nights / They look abroad, yet see no light, yet we believe quite otherwise. For the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause but the punishment of the first sin; and it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful, but the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible. And though from this corruption of the flesh there arise certain incitements to vice, and indeed vicious desires, yet we must not attribute to the flesh all the vices of a wicked life, or we would clear the devil of all these, for he has no flesh. For though we cannot call the devil a fornicator or drunkard, or ascribe to him any sensual indulgence (though he is the secret instigator and prompter of those who sin in these ways), yet he is exceedingly proud and envious. And this viciousness has so possessed him, that on account of it he is reserved in chains of darkness to everlasting punishment. Now these vices, which have dominion over the devil, the apostle attributes to the flesh, which the devil certainly does not have. For he says “hatred, discord, jealousy, strife, envy” are the works of the flesh; and of all these evils pride is the origin and head, and it rules in the devil though he has no flesh. For who shows more hatred to the saints? Who is more at variance with them? Who more envious, bitter, and jealous? And since he exhibits all these works, though he has no flesh, how are they works of the flesh, if not because they are the works of man, who is, as I said, spoken of under the name of flesh? For it is not by having flesh, which the devil does not have, but by living according to himself — that is, according to man — that man became like the devil. For the devil too, wished to live according to himself when he did not remain in the truth; so that when he lied, this came not from God, but from himself, who is not only a liar, but the father of lies, since he was the first who lied, and the originator of lying as of sin.
When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil. For not even an angel was to live according to an angel, but only according to God, if he was to remain in the truth, and speak God's truth and not his own lie. And of man, too, the same apostle says in another place, “If the truth of God has abounded all the more through my lie;” Romans 3:7 — “my lie,” he said, and “God's truth.” When, then, a man lives according to the truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to God; for He was God who said, “I am the truth.” John 14:6 When, therefore, man lives according to himself — that is, according to man, not according to God — he certainly lives according to a lie; not that man himself is a lie, for God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, so that he might live not according to himself, but according to Him who made him — in other words, so that he might do His will and not his own; and not to live as he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire is not? So it is not without meaning that all sin is said to be a lie. For no sin is committed except by that desire or will by which we want things to go well with us, and shrink from their going badly. What we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were, is therefore a lie. And why is this, if not because the source of man's happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by living according to whom he sins? In stating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live according to the flesh and others according to the spirit, there have arisen two different and conflicting cities, we might equally well have said, “because some live according to man, others according to God.” For Paul says very plainly to the Corinthians, “For while there is envy and strife among you, are you not carnal, and walking according to man?” 1 Corinthians 3:3 So to walk according to man and to be carnal are the same; for by flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is meant. For before he said that those same persons were animal whom he afterward calls carnal, saying, “For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him? In the same way no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, so that we might know the things freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the animal man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him.” 1 Corinthians 2:11-14 It is to men of this kind, then, that is, to animal men, that he says shortly after, “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal.” 1 Corinthians 3:1 And this is to be interpreted by the same usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man; and so the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but one and the same thing, namely, man living according to man. In the same way it is nothing else than men that are meant either in the words, “By the works of the law no flesh shall be justified;” Romans 3:20 or in the words, “Seventy-five souls went down into Egypt with Jacob.” Genesis 46:27 In the one passage, “no flesh” signifies “no man;” and in the other, by “seventy-five souls” seventy-five men are meant. And the expression, “not in words which man's wisdom teaches” might equally be “not in words which fleshly wisdom teaches;” and the expression, “you walk according to man,” might be “according to the flesh.” And this is still more apparent in the words which followed: “For while one says, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not men?” The same thing which he had before expressed by “you are animal,” you are carnal, he now expresses by “you are men;” that is, you live according to man, not according to God, for if you lived according to Him, you would be gods.
There is no need, therefore, for us to blame the nature of the flesh for our sins and vices to the injury of the Creator, for in its own kind and degree the flesh is good; but to desert the good Creator, and live according to the created good, is not good, whether a man chooses to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole human nature, which is composed of flesh and soul, and which is therefore spoken of either by the name flesh alone, or by the name soul alone. For anyone who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as if it were evil, is certainly fleshly both in his love of the soul and hatred of the flesh; for these feelings of his arise from human fancy, not from divine truth. The Platonists, indeed, are not so foolish as, with the Manichæans, to detest our present bodies as an evil nature; for they attribute all the elements of which this visible and tangible world is composed, with all their qualities, to God their Creator. Nevertheless, from the death-infected members and earthly construction of the body they believe the soul is so affected, that in this way there arise in it the diseases of desires, and fears, and joy, and sorrow, and in these four disturbances, as Cicero calls them, or passions, as most prefer to call them following the Greeks, is included the whole viciousness of human life. But if this is so, how is it that Æneas in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in Hades that the souls would return to bodies, expresses surprise at this declaration, and exclaims: O father! And can thought conceive / That happy souls this realm would leave, / And seek the upper sky, / With sluggish clay to reunite? / This dreadful longing for the light, / Where does it come from, say, and why? Does this dreadful longing, then, still exist even in that boasted purity of the disembodied spirits, and does it still come from the death-infected members and earthly limbs? Does he not assert that, when they begin to long to return to the body, they have already been delivered from all these so-called pestilences of the body? From this we gather that, even if this endlessly alternating purification and defilement of departing and returning souls were as true as it is most certainly false, it still could not be claimed that all culpable and vicious motions of the soul originate in the earthly body; for, by their own account, “this dreadful longing,” to use the words of their noble spokesman, is so unconnected with the body, that it moves the soul that is purged of all bodily taint, and is existing apart from any body at all, and moves it, moreover, to be embodied again. So even they themselves acknowledge that the soul is not only moved to desire, fear, joy, sorrow, by the flesh, but that it can also be agitated with these emotions of its own accord.
But the character of the human will is what matters; because, if it is wrong, these motions of the soul will be wrong, but if it is right, they will be not merely blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in them all; indeed, none of them is anything else than will. For what are desire and joy but an act of will consenting to the things we wish? And what are fear and sadness but an act of will turning away from the things which we do not wish? But when consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire; and when consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy. In the same way, when we turn away from what we do not wish to happen, this act of will is called fear; and when we turn away from what has happened against our will, this act of will is called sorrow. And generally, with respect to all that we seek or shun, as a man's will is attracted or repelled, so it is changed and turned into these different emotions. Therefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, whoever lives according to God ought to have a perfect hatred toward evil men, so that he will neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For once the vice is cured, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain.
Whoever resolves to love God, and to love his neighbor as himself, not according to man but according to God, is on account of this love said to be of a good will; and this is in Scripture more commonly called charity, but it is also, even in the same books, called love. For the apostle says that the man to be elected as a ruler of the people must be a lover of good. And when the Lord Himself had asked Peter, “Have you a regard for me (diligis) more than these?” Peter replied, “Lord, You know that I love (amo) You.” And again a second time the Lord asked not whether Peter loved (amaret) Him, but whether he had a regard (diligeret) for Him, and he again answered, “Lord, You know that I love (amo) You.” But at the third questioning the Lord Himself no longer says, “Have you a regard (diligis) for me,” but “Do you love (amas) me?” And then the evangelist adds, Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love (amas) me?” though the Lord had not said three times but only once, “Do you love (amas) me?” and twice “Diligis me?” from which we gather that, even when the Lord said “diligis,” He used an equivalent for “amas.” Peter, too, throughout used one word for the one thing, and the third time also replied, “Lord, You know all things, You know that I love (amo) You.” I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of the opinion that charity or regard (dilectio) is one thing, love (amor) another. They say that dilectio is used of a good affection, amor of an evil love. But it is very certain that even secular literature knows no such distinction. However, it is for the philosophers to determine whether and how they differ, though their own writings sufficiently testify that they set great store by love (amor) placed on good objects, and even on God Himself. But we wished to show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all other writings, make no distinction between amor, dilectio, and caritas; and we have already shown that amor is used in a good sense. And if anyone imagines that amor is no doubt used both of good and bad loves, but that dilectio is reserved for the good only, let him remember what the psalm says, “Whoever loves (diligit) iniquity hates his own soul;” and the words of the Apostle John, “If anyone loves (diligere) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him.” 1 John 2:15 Here you have in one passage dilectio used both in a good and a bad sense. And if anyone asks for an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words, “For men will be lovers (amantes) of themselves, lovers (amatores) of money.” 2 Timothy 3:2 The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has happened to it, is sadness. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good. Let us prove what we assert from Scripture. The apostle “desires to depart, and to be with Christ.” Philippians 1:23 And, “My soul desired to long for Your judgments;” or if it is more appropriate to say, “My soul longed to desire Your judgments.” And, “The desire of wisdom brings to a kingdom.” Yet it has always been the usage to understand desire and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object is not specified. But joy is used in a good sense: “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, you righteous.” And, “You have put gladness in my heart.” And, “You will fill me with joy with Your countenance.” Fear is used in a good sense by the apostle when he says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Philippians 2:12 And, “Do not be high-minded, but fear.” Romans 11:20 And, “I fear that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” 2 Corinthians 11:3 But with respect to sadness, which Cicero prefers to call sickness (œgritudo), and Virgil pain (dolor) (as he says, “Dolent gaudentque”), but which I prefer to call sorrow, because sickness and pain are more commonly used to express bodily suffering — with respect to this emotion, I say, the question whether it can be used in a good sense is more difficult.
Those emotions which the Greeks call εὐπαθείαι, and which Cicero calls constantiœ, the Stoics limited to three; and, in place of three “disturbances” in the soul of the wise man, they substituted, one for each: for desire, will; for joy, contentment; and for fear, caution; and as to sickness or pain, which we, to avoid ambiguity, preferred to call sorrow, they denied that it could exist in the mind of a wise man. Will, they say, seeks the good, for the wise man does this. Contentment has its object in good that is possessed, and the wise man continually possesses this. Caution avoids evil, and the wise man ought to avoid this. But sorrow arises from evil that has already happened; and as they suppose that no evil can happen to the wise man, nothing in his mind can correspond to sorrow. According to them, therefore, no one but the wise man wills, is contented, uses caution; and that the fool can do no more than desire, rejoice, fear, be sad. The first three emotions Cicero calls constantiœ, the last four perturbationes. Many, however, call these last passions; and, as I have said, the Greeks call the former εὐπαθείαι, and the latter πάθη . And when I made a careful examination of Scripture to find whether it supported this terminology, I came upon this saying of the prophet: “There is no contentment for the wicked, says the Lord;” Isaiah 57:21 as if the wicked might more properly rejoice than be contented regarding evils, for contentment belongs to the good and godly. I found also that verse in the Gospel: “Whatever you will that men should do to you, do the same to them,” Matthew 7:12 which seems to imply that evil or shameful things may be the object of desire, but not of will. Indeed, some interpreters have added “good things,” to bring the expression more into line with customary usage, and have given this meaning, “Whatever good deeds you will that men should do to you.” For they thought that this would prevent anyone from wishing other men to provide him with improper, not to say shameful, gratifications — luxurious banquets, for example — on the supposition that if he did the same for them in return he would be fulfilling this precept. In the Greek Gospel, however, from which the Latin is translated, “good” does not occur, but only, “All things whatever that you will that men should do to you, do the same to them,” and, as I believe, because “good” is already included in the word “will;” for He does not say “desire.” Yet though we may sometimes make use of these precise distinctions of language, we are not always to be bound by them; and when we read those writers whose authority it is unlawful to dispute, we must accept the meanings above mentioned in passages where a right sense can be drawn out by no other interpretation, as in the instances we cited partly from the prophet, partly from the Gospel. For who does not know that the wicked exult with joy? Yet “there is no contentment for the wicked, says the Lord.” And how can that be, if not because contentment, when the word is used in its proper and distinctive significance, means something different from joy? In the same way, who would deny that it would be wrong to command men to do to others whatever they desire others to do to them, since they might then please one another by shameful and illicit pleasure? And yet the precept, “Whatever you will that men should do to you, do the same to them,” is very wholesome and just. And how is this, if not because the will is in this place used strictly, and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its object? But ordinary speech would not have allowed the saying, “Be unwilling to tell any kind of lie,” if there were not also an evil will, whose wickedness separates it from the will which the angels celebrated, “Peace on earth, of good will to men.” Luke 2:14 For “good” is superfluous if there is no other kind of will but good will. And why should the apostle have mentioned it among the praises of charity as a great thing, that “it does not rejoice in iniquity,” if not because wickedness does so rejoice? For even with secular writers these words are used interchangeably. For Cicero, that most fertile of orators, says, “I desire, conscript fathers, to be merciful.” And who would be so pedantic as to say that he should have said “I will” rather than “I desire,” because the word is used in a good sense? Again, in Terence, the profligate youth, burning with wild lust, says, “I will nothing else than Philumena.” That this “will” was lust is sufficiently indicated by the answer of his old servant which is there introduced: “How much better it would be to try to banish that love from your heart, than to speak so as uselessly to inflame your passion still more!” And that contentment was used by secular writers in a bad sense that verse of Virgil testifies, in which he most concisely sums up these four disturbances — “Hence they fear and desire, grieve and are content.” The same author had also used the expression, “the evil contentments of the mind.” So good and bad men alike will, are cautious, and contented; or, to say the same thing in other words, good and bad men alike desire, fear, rejoice, but the former in a good, the latter in a bad fashion, depending on whether the will is right or wrong. Sorrow itself, too, which the Stoics would not allow any place in the mind of the wise man, is used in a good sense, and especially in our writings. For the apostle praises the Corinthians because they had a godly sorrow. But perhaps someone may say that the apostle congratulated them because they were penitently sorry, and that such sorrow can exist only in those who have sinned. For these are his words: “For I perceive that the same epistle has made you sorry, though only for a time. Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that you were sorry to the point of repentance; for you were made sorry in a godly way, so that you might suffer no loss through us. For godly sorrow produces a repentance leading to salvation that is not to be regretted, but the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold what earnestness this very thing, that you were sorry in a godly way, produced in you!” 2 Corinthians 7:8-11 Consequently the Stoics may defend themselves by replying that sorrow is indeed useful for repentance of sin, but that this can have no place in the mind of the wise man, since no sin attaches to him of which he could sorrowfully repent, nor any other evil the endurance or experience of which could make him sorrowful. For they say that Alcibiades (if my memory does not deceive me), who believed himself happy, shed tears when Socrates argued with him, and demonstrated that he was miserable because he was foolish. In his case, therefore, folly was the cause of this useful and desirable sorrow, with which a man mourns that he is what he ought not to be. But the Stoics maintain not that the fool, but that the wise man, cannot be sorrowful.
But as regards this question of mental disturbances, we have answered these philosophers in the ninth book of this work, showing that it is a dispute about words rather than things, and that they seek controversy rather than truth. Among ourselves, according to the sacred Scriptures and sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice. And because their love is rightly placed, all these emotions of theirs are right. They fear eternal punishment, they desire eternal life; they grieve because they themselves groan within themselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of their body; Romans 8:23 they rejoice in hope, because “the saying shall come to pass that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” 1 Corinthians 15:54 In the same way they fear to sin, they desire to persevere; they grieve in sin, they rejoice in good works. They fear to sin, because they hear that “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold.” Matthew 24:12 They desire to persevere, because they hear that it is written, “Whoever endures to the end shall be saved.” Matthew 10:22 They grieve for sin, hearing that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8 They rejoice in good works, because they hear that “the Lord loves a cheerful giver.” 2 Corinthians 9:7 In the same way, depending on whether they are strong or weak, they fear or desire to be tempted, grieve or rejoice in temptation. They fear to be tempted, because they hear the instruction, “If a man is overtaken in a fault, you who are spiritual should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself, so that you too are not tempted.” Galatians 6:l They desire to be tempted, because they hear one of the heroes of the city of God saying, “Examine me, Lord, and test me: try my inmost self and my heart.” They grieve in temptations, because they see Peter weeping; Matthew 26:75 they rejoice in temptations, because they hear James saying, “My brothers, count it all joy when you fall into various temptations.” James 1:2 And they experience these emotions not only on their own account, but also on account of those whose deliverance they desire and whose perdition they fear, and whose loss or salvation affects them with grief or with joy. For if we who have come into the Church from among the Gentiles may suitably cite that noble and mighty hero who glories in his weaknesses, the teacher (doctor) of the nations in faith and truth, who also labored more than all his fellow apostles, and instructed the tribes of God's people by his epistles, which edified not only those of his own time, but all those who were to be gathered in — that hero, I say, and athlete of Christ, instructed by Him, anointed by His Spirit, crucified with Him, glorious in Him, lawfully maintaining a great conflict in the theater of this world, and being made a spectacle to angels and men, 1 Corinthians 4:9 and pressing onward for the prize of his high calling, Philippians 3:14 — we very joyfully see him with the eyes of faith, rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep; Romans 12:15 though hampered by conflicts outside and fears within; 2 Corinthians 7:5 desiring to depart and to be with Christ; Philippians 1:23 longing to see the Romans, so that he might have some fruit among them as among other Gentiles; Romans 1:11-13 being jealous over the Corinthians, and fearing in that jealousy that their minds might be corrupted and turned from the chastity that is in Christ; 2 Corinthians 11:1-3 having great sorrow and continual grief of heart for the Israelites, Romans 9:2 because they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God; Romans 10:3 and expressing not only his sorrow, but bitter lamentation over some who had formerly sinned and had not repented of their uncleanness and fornications. 2 Corinthians 12:21 If these emotions and feelings, arising as they do from the love of what is good and from a holy love, are to be called vices, then let us allow these emotions which are truly vices to pass under the name of virtues. But since these emotions, when they are exercised in a fitting way, follow the guidance of right reason, who will dare to say that they are diseases or vicious passions? Therefore even the Lord Himself, when He stooped to lead a human life in the form of a slave, had no sin at all, and yet exercised these emotions where He judged they should be exercised. For as there was in Him a true human body and a true human soul, so there was also true human emotion. When, therefore, we read in the Gospel that the hard-heartedness of the Jews moved Him to sorrowful indignation, Mark 3:5 that He said, “I am glad for your sakes, so that you may believe,” John 11:15 that when about to raise Lazarus He even shed tears, John 11:35 that He earnestly desired to eat the passover with His disciples, Luke 22:15 that as His passion drew near His soul was sorrowful, Matthew 26:38 these emotions are certainly not falsely ascribed to Him. But as He became man when it pleased Him, so, in the grace of His definite purpose, when it pleased Him He experienced those emotions in His human soul. But we must further admit that even when these emotions are well ordered, and according to God's will, they belong to this life, not to that future life we look for, and that often we yield to them against our will. And thus sometimes we weep in spite of ourselves, being carried beyond ourselves, not indeed by culpable desire, but by praiseworthy love. In us, therefore, these emotions arise from human weakness; but it was not so with the Lord Jesus, for even His weakness came from His power. But as long as we wear the weakness of this life, we are rather worse men than better if we have none of these emotions at all. For the apostle rebuked and detested some who, as he said, were “without natural affection.” Romans 1:31 The sacred Psalmist also found fault with those of whom he said, “I looked for some to lament with me, and there was none.” For to be quite free from pain while we are in this place of misery is only purchased, as one of this world's men of letters perceived and remarked, at the price of blunted feeling both of mind and body. And therefore what the Greeks call ἀπαθεια, and what the Latins would call, if their language would allow them, “impassibilitas,” if it is taken to mean an impassibility of spirit and not of body, or, in other words, a freedom from those emotions which are contrary to reason and disturb the mind, then it is obviously a good and most desirable quality, but it is not one which is attainable in this life. For the words of the apostle are the confession, not of the common herd, but of the eminently pious, just, and holy men: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8 When there is no sin in a man, then there will be this απάθεια . For now it is enough if we live without crime; and whoever thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon. And if that is to be called apathy, where the mind is subject to no emotion, then who would not consider this insensibility to be worse than all vices? It may, indeed, reasonably be maintained that the perfect blessedness we hope for will be free from every sting of fear or sadness; but who, unless he is completely lost to truth, would say that neither love nor joy will be experienced there? But if by apathy a condition is meant in which no fear terrifies nor any pain annoys, we must in this life renounce such a state if we wish to live according to God's will, but may hope to enjoy it in that blessedness which is promised as our eternal condition. For that fear of which the Apostle John says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment. Whoever fears is not made perfect in love,” 1 John 4:18 — that fear is not of the same kind as the Apostle Paul felt that the Corinthians might be seduced by the cunning of the serpent; for love is capable of this fear, indeed, love alone is capable of it. But the fear which is not in love is of that kind of which Paul himself says, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” Romans 8:15 But as for that “clean fear which endures forever,” if it is to exist in the world to come (and how else can it be said to endure forever?), it is not a fear deterring us from evil which may happen, but preserving us in the good which cannot be lost. For where the love of acquired good is unchangeable, there certainly the fear that avoids evil is, if I may say so, free from anxiety. For under the name of “clean fear” David signifies that will by which we will necessarily shrink from sin, and guard against it, not with the anxiety of weakness, which fears that we may strongly sin, but with the tranquility of perfect love. Or if no kind of fear at all will exist in that most imperturbable security of perpetual and blissful delights, then the expression, “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever,” must be taken in the same sense as that other, “The patience of the poor shall not perish forever.” For patience, which is necessary only where ills are to be borne, will not be eternal, but that which patience leads us to will be eternal. So perhaps this “clean fear” is said to endure forever because what fear leads to will endure. And since this is so — since we must live a good life in order to attain to a blessed life, a good life has all these emotions right, a bad life has them wrong. But in the blessed eternal life there will be love and joy, not only right, but also assured; but fear and grief there will be none. From this it is already clear to some extent what kind of persons the citizens of the city of God must be in this pilgrimage of theirs, who live according to the spirit, not according to the flesh — that is to say, according to God, not according to man — and what kind of persons they will also be in that immortality toward which they are journeying. And the city or society of the wicked, who live not according to God, but according to man, and who accept the doctrines of men or devils in the worship of a false and contempt of the true divinity, is shaken with those wicked emotions as by diseases and disturbances. And if there are some of its citizens who seem to restrain and, as it were, temper those passions, they are so elated with ungodly pride, that their disease is as much greater as their pain is less. And if some, with a vanity monstrous in proportion to its rarity, have fallen in love with themselves because they can be stimulated and excited by no emotion, moved or bent by no affection, such persons rather lose all humanity than obtain true tranquility. For a thing is not necessarily right because it is inflexible, nor healthy because it is insensible.
But it is a fair question whether our first parent or first parents (for there was a marriage of two), before they sinned, experienced in their animal body such emotions as we shall not experience in the spiritual body when sin has been purged and finally abolished. For if they did, then how were they blessed in that boasted place of bliss, Paradise? For who, if he is affected by fear or grief, can be called absolutely blessed? And what could those persons fear or suffer in such affluence of blessings, where neither death nor ill-health was feared, and where nothing was lacking which a good will could desire, and nothing present which could interrupt man's mental or bodily enjoyment? Their love for God was unclouded, and their mutual affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage; and from this love flowed a wonderful delight, because they always enjoyed what was loved. Their avoidance of sin was tranquil; and, as long as it was maintained, no other ill at all could invade them and bring sorrow. Or did they perhaps desire to touch and eat the forbidden fruit, yet feared to die; and thus both fear and desire already, even in that blissful place, preyed on those first of mankind? We must reject the thought that this could be so where there was no sin! And, indeed, this is already sin, to desire those things which the law of God forbids, and to abstain from them through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness. We must reject the thought, I say, that before there was any sin, there should already have been committed regarding that fruit the very sin which our Lord warns us against regarding a woman: “Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Matthew 5:28 As happy, then, as were these our first parents, who were agitated by no mental disturbances, and troubled by no bodily discomforts, so happy would the whole human race have been, if they had not introduced that evil which they have transmitted to their posterity, and if none of their descendants had committed iniquity worthy of damnation; and with this original blessedness continuing until, by virtue of that blessing which said, “Increase and multiply,” Genesis 1:28 the number of the predestined saints had been completed, there would then have been bestowed that higher happiness which is enjoyed by the most blessed angels — a blessedness in which there would have been a secure assurance that no one would sin, and no one die; and so the saints would have lived, after no taste of labor, pain, or death, as they will now live in the resurrection, after they have endured all these things.
But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city in connection with what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not take in what God has ordained. For man, by his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor compel God to change what He had decreed; for God's foreknowledge had anticipated both — that is to say, both how evil the man whom He had created good would become, and what good He Himself would even so bring out of him. For though God is said to change His determinations (so that in a figurative sense Holy Scripture even says that God repented), this is said with reference to man's expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to what the Almighty had foreknown that He would do. Accordingly God, as it is written, made man upright, Ecclesiastes 7:29 and consequently with a good will. For if he had not had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good will, then, is the work of God; for God created him with it. But the first evil will, which preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the work of God to its own works than any positive work. And therefore the acts resulting were evil, having not God, but the will itself, as their end; so that the will or the man himself, insofar as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it is not in harmony with nature but opposed to it, since it is a vice or blemish, is still like every vice in that it cannot exist except in a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing, and not in what the Creator has begotten from Himself, as He begot the Word, by whom all things were made. For though God formed man from the dust of the earth, the earth itself, and every earthly material, is absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul, too, God created out of nothing, and joined to the body, when He made man. But evils are so thoroughly overcome by good, that, though they are permitted to exist, for the sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can make good use even of them, good can still exist without evil, as in the true and supreme God Himself, and as in every invisible and visible celestial creature that exists above this murky atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because the natures in which evil exists, insofar as they are natures, are good. And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting what had been corrupted and depraved. The will, therefore, is truly free when it is not the slave of vices and sins. It was given to us in this state by God; and once lost by its own fault, it, can only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it. And therefore the truth says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed;” 1 John 8:36 which is equivalent to saying, If the Son saves you, you will be saved indeed. For He is our Liberator because He is our Savior. Man then lived with God as his rule in a paradise at once physical and spiritual. For it was not a paradise only physical for the advantage of the body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of the mind; nor was it only spiritual to give enjoyment to man by his internal sensations, and not also physical to give him enjoyment through his external senses. But obviously it was both for both ends. But after that proud and therefore envious angel (of whose fall I have said as much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books of this work, as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God's angels, became his angels), preferring to rule with a kind of pomp of empire rather than to be another's subject, fell from the spiritual Paradise, and, trying to work his persuasive cunning into the mind of man, whose unfallen condition provoked him to envy now that he himself had fallen, he chose the serpent as his mouthpiece in that bodily Paradise in which it and all the other earthly animals were living with those two human beings, the man and his wife, subject to them, and harmless; and he chose the serpent because, being slippery, and moving in tortuous windings, it was suitable for his purpose. And having subdued this animal to his wicked ends by the presence and superior force of his angelic nature, he misused it as his instrument, and first tried his deceit on the woman, making his assault on the weaker part of that human alliance, so that he might gradually gain the whole, and not supposing that the man would readily listen to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman. For as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they blindly wished him to make an idol, and yet yielded under pressure; and as it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as to suppose that idols should be worshipped, but was drawn over to such sacrilege by the coaxing of women; so we cannot believe that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil's word to be truth, and therefore transgressed God's law, but that he yielded to the woman because of the bond between them, the husband to the wife, the one human being to the only other human being. For it was not without significance that the apostle said, “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, fell into transgression;” 1 Timothy 2:14 but he speaks in this way because the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be separated from his only companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable, but sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not say, “He did not sin,” but “He was not deceived.” For he shows that he sinned when he says, “By one man sin entered into the world,” Romans 5:12 and immediately after more distinctly, “In the likeness of Adam's transgression.” But he meant that those are deceived who do not judge what they do to be sin; but he knew. Otherwise how would it be true “Adam was not deceived?” But having as yet no experience of the divine severity, he was possibly deceived insofar as he thought his sin venial. And consequently he was not deceived as the woman was deceived, but he was deceived as to the judgment which would be passed on his apology: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me, and I ate.” Genesis 3:12 What need is there to say more? Although they were not both deceived by credulity, both were still entangled in the snares of the devil, and taken by sin.
If anyone finds a difficulty in understanding why other sins do not alter human nature as it was altered by the transgression of those first human beings, so that on account of it this nature is subject to the great corruption we feel and see, and to death, and is distracted and tossed with so many furious and contending emotions, and is certainly far different from what it was before sin, even though it was then lodged in an animal body — if, I say, anyone is troubled by this, he ought not to think that that sin was a small and light one because it was committed about food, and food that was neither bad nor harmful, except that it was forbidden; for in that place of unique happiness God could not have created and planted any evil thing. But by the precept He gave, God commended obedience, which is, in a way, the mother and guardian of all the virtues in the rational creature, which was so created that submission is advantageous to it, while the fulfillment of its own will in preference to the Creator's is destruction. And since this commandment requiring abstinence from one kind of food in the midst of great abundance of other kinds was so easy to keep — so light a burden to the memory, — and, above all, found no resistance to its observance in lust, which only afterward sprang up as the punishment of sin, the iniquity of violating it was all the greater in proportion to the ease with which it might have been kept.
Our first parents fell into open disobedience because they were already secretly corrupted; for the evil act would never have been done if an evil will had not preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For “pride is the beginning of sin.” And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cling as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction. And it does so when it falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than itself. This falling away is spontaneous; for if the will had remained steadfast in the love of that higher and changeless good by which it was illumined to intelligence and kindled into love, it would not have turned away to find satisfaction in itself, and so become cold and darkened; the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke the truth, nor would the man have preferred the request of his wife to the command of God, nor have supposed that it was a venial transgression to cling to the partner of his life even in a partnership of sin. The wicked deed, then — that is to say, the transgression of eating the forbidden fruit — was committed by persons who were already wicked. That “evil fruit” Matthew 7:18 could be brought forth only by “a corrupt tree.” But that the tree was evil was not the result of nature; for certainly it could become so only by the vice of the will, and vice is contrary to nature. Now, nature could not have been depraved by vice if it had not been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is a nature is because it is made by God; but that it falls away from Him is because it is made out of nothing. But man did not so fall away as to become absolutely nothing; but when he turned toward himself, his being became less than it was when he clung to Him who supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself, that is, to be his own satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to become nothing, but to come close to it. And therefore the holy Scriptures call the proud by another name, “self-pleasers.” For it is good to have the heart lifted up, yet not to oneself, for this is proud, but to the Lord, for this is obedient, and can be the act only of the humble. There is, therefore, something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolting from Him who is supreme, falls to a low condition; and then what is written comes to pass: “You cast them down when they lifted up themselves.” For he does not say, “when they had been lifted up,” as if first they were exalted, and then afterward cast down; but “when they lifted up themselves” even then they were cast down — that is to say, the very lifting up was already a fall. And therefore it is that humility is specially recommended to the city of God as it sojourns in this world, and is specially exhibited in the city of God, and in the person of Christ its King; while the contrary vice of pride, according to the testimony of the sacred writings, specially rules his adversary the devil. And certainly this is the great difference which distinguishes the two cities of which we speak, the one being the society of godly men, the other of the ungodly, each associated with the angels that adhere to their party, and the one guided and fashioned by love of self, the other by love of God. The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what God had forbidden, if man had not already begun to live for himself. It was this that made him listen with pleasure to the words, “You shall be like gods,” Genesis 3:5 which they would much more readily have accomplished by obediently clinging to their supreme and true end than by proudly living for themselves. For created gods are gods not by virtue of what is in themselves, but by participation in the true God. By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring to be self-sufficient, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him. Accordingly, this wicked desire which prompts man to please himself as if he were himself light, and which thus turns him away from that light by which, if he had followed it, he would himself have become light — this wicked desire, I say, already secretly existed in him, and the open sin was only its consequence. For what is written is true, “Pride goes before destruction, and before honor is humility;” Proverbs 18:12 that is to say, secret ruin precedes open ruin, while the former is not counted ruin. For who counts exaltation ruin, though no sooner is the Highest forsaken than a fall is begun? But who does not recognize it as ruin, when there occurs an evident and unmistakable transgression of the commandment? And consequently, God's prohibition concerned an act which, when committed, could not be defended on any pretense of doing what was righteous. And I venture to say that it is useful for the proud to fall into an open and indisputable transgression, and so displease themselves, just as, by pleasing themselves, they had already fallen. For Peter was in a healthier condition when he wept and was dissatisfied with himself, than when he boldly presumed and satisfied himself. And the sacred Psalmist affirms this when he says, “Fill their faces with shame, so that they may seek Your name, Lord;” that is, so that those who have pleased themselves in seeking their own glory may be pleased and satisfied with You in seeking Your glory.
But it is a worse and more damnable pride which looks about for the shelter of an excuse even in plain sins, as these first parents of ours did, of whom the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate;” and the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Genesis 3:12-13 Here there is no word of begging pardon, no word of pleading for healing. For though they do not, like Cain, deny that they have done the deed, their pride still seeks to shift its wickedness to another — the woman's pride to the serpent, the man's to the woman. But where there is a plain transgression of a divine commandment, this is rather to accuse than to excuse oneself. For the fact that the woman sinned on the serpent's persuasion, and the man at the woman's offer, did not make the transgression less, as if there were anyone whom we ought rather to believe or yield to than God.
Therefore, because the sin was a despising of the authority of God — who had created man; who had made him in His own image; who had set him above the other animals; who had placed him in Paradise; who had enriched him with abundance of every kind and of safety; who had laid on him neither many, nor great, nor difficult commandments, but, in order to make a wholesome obedience easy to him, had given him a single very brief and very light precept by which He reminded that creature whose service was to be free that He was Lord, — it was just that condemnation followed, and condemnation such that man, who by keeping the commandments would have been spiritual even in his flesh, became fleshly even in his spirit; and as in his pride he had sought to be his own satisfaction, God in His justice abandoned him to himself, not to live in the absolute independence he aspired to, but instead of the liberty he desired, to live dissatisfied with himself in a hard and miserable bondage to him to whom by sinning he had yielded himself, doomed in spite of himself to die in body as he had willingly become dead in spirit, condemned even to eternal death (if the grace of God had not delivered him) because he had forsaken eternal life. Whoever thinks such punishment either excessive or unjust shows his inability to measure the great iniquity of sinning where sin might so easily have been avoided. For as Abraham's obedience is justly pronounced great, because the thing commanded, to kill his son, was very difficult, so in Paradise the disobedience was the greater, because the difficulty of what was commanded was imperceptible. And as the obedience of the second Man was the more praiseworthy because He became obedient even “to death,” Philippians 2:8 so the disobedience of the first man was the more detestable because he became disobedient even to death. For where the penalty attached to disobedience is great, and the thing commanded by the Creator is easy, who can sufficiently estimate how great a wickedness it is, in a matter so easy, not to obey the authority of so great a power, even when that power deters with so terrible a penalty? In short, to put it all in a word, what but disobedience was the punishment of disobedience in that sin? For what else is man's misery but his own disobedience to himself, so that in consequence of his not being willing to do what he could do, he now wills to do what he cannot? For though he could not do all things in Paradise before he sinned, he wished to do only what he could do, and therefore he could do all things he wished. But now, as we recognize in his offspring, and as divine Scripture testifies, “Man is like vanity.” For who can count how many things he wishes which he cannot do, as long as he is disobedient to himself, that is, as long as his mind and his flesh do not obey his will? For in spite of himself his mind is both frequently disturbed, and his flesh suffers, and grows old, and dies; and in spite of ourselves we suffer whatever else we suffer, which we would not suffer if our nature absolutely and in all its parts obeyed our will. But is it not the weaknesses of the flesh which hamper it in its service? Yet what does it matter how its service is hampered, as long as the fact remains that by the just retribution of the sovereign God whom we refused to be subject to and serve, our flesh, which was subjected to us, now torments us by insubordination, although our disobedience brought trouble on ourselves, not on God? For He is not in need of our service as we are of our body's; and therefore what we did was no punishment to Him, but what we receive is so to us. And the pains which are called bodily are pains of the soul in and from the body. For what pain or desire can the flesh feel by itself and without the soul? But when the flesh is said to desire or to suffer, it is meant, as we have explained, that the man does so, or some part of the soul which is affected by the sensation of the flesh, whether a harsh sensation causing pain, or gentle, causing pleasure. But pain in the flesh is only a discomfort of the soul arising from the flesh, and a kind of shrinking from its suffering, as the pain of the soul which is called sadness is a shrinking from those things which have happened to us in spite of ourselves. But sadness is frequently preceded by fear, which is itself in the soul, not in the flesh; while bodily pain is not preceded by any kind of fear of the flesh, which can be felt in the flesh before the pain. But pleasure is preceded by a certain appetite which is felt in the flesh like a craving, such as hunger and thirst and that generative appetite which is most commonly identified with the name lust, though this is the generic word for all desires. For anger itself was defined by the ancients as nothing else than the lust for revenge; although sometimes a man is angry even at inanimate objects which cannot feel his vengeance, as when one breaks a pen, or crushes a quill that writes badly. Yet even this, though less reasonable, is in its way a lust for revenge, and is, so to speak, a mysterious kind of shadow of [the great law of] retribution, that those who do evil should suffer evil. There is therefore a lust for revenge, which is called anger; there is a lust for money, which goes by the name of avarice; there is a lust for winning, no matter by what means, which is called obstinacy; there is a lust for applause, which is named boasting. There are many and various lusts, of which some have names of their own, while others have not. For who could readily give a name to the lust for ruling, which nevertheless has a powerful influence in the soul of tyrants, as civil wars bear witness?
Although, therefore, lust may have many objects, yet when no object is specified, the word lust usually suggests to the mind the lustful excitement of the organs of generation. And this lust not only takes possession of the whole body and outward members, but also makes itself felt within, and moves the whole man with a passion in which mental emotion is mingled with bodily appetite, so that the pleasure which results is the greatest of all bodily pleasures. This pleasure is so overwhelming, indeed, that at the moment of time in which it is consummated, all mental activity is suspended. What friend of wisdom and holy joys, who, being married, but knowing, as the apostle says, “how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the disease of desire, like the Gentiles who do not know God,” 1 Thessalonians 4:4 would not prefer, if this were possible, to father children without this lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the members created for this purpose would not be stirred by the heat of lust, but would be moved by his will, in the same way as his other members serve him for their respective ends? But even those who delight in this pleasure are not moved to it at their own will, whether they confine themselves to lawful or transgress to unlawful pleasures; but sometimes this lust presses on them in spite of themselves, and sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it, so that though lust rages in the mind, it does not stir in the body. Thus, strangely enough, this emotion not only fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget offspring, but also refuses to serve wanton lust; and though it often opposes its whole combined energy to the soul that resists it, sometimes also it is divided against itself, and while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved.
Shame is justly connected in a special way with this lust; and these members themselves, being moved and restrained not at our will, but by a certain independent autocracy, so to speak, are justly called “shameful.” Their condition was different before sin. For as it is written, “They were naked and were not ashamed,” Genesis 2:25 — not that their nakedness was unknown to them, but because nakedness was not yet shameful, because lust did not yet move those members without the will's consent; the flesh did not yet testify by its disobedience against the disobedience of man. For they were not created blind, as the ignorant crowd imagines; for Adam saw the animals to whom he gave names, and of Eve we read, “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes.” Genesis 3:6 Their eyes, therefore, were open, but were not open to this, that is to say, were not observant so as to recognize what was conferred on them by the garment of grace, for they had no consciousness of their members warring against their will. But when they were stripped of this grace, so that their disobedience might be punished by a fitting retribution, there began in the movement of their bodily members a shameless novelty which made nakedness indecent: it at once made them observant and made them ashamed. And therefore, after they violated God's command by open transgression, it is written: “And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” Genesis 3:7 “The eyes of both of them were opened,” not to see, for they already saw, but to discern between the good they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen. And therefore also the tree itself which they were forbidden to touch was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the fact that if they ate from it, it would impart to them this knowledge. For the discomfort of sickness reveals the pleasure of health. “They knew,” therefore, “that they were naked,”— naked of that grace which prevented them from being ashamed of bodily nakedness while the law of sin offered no resistance to their mind. And thus they obtained a knowledge of which they would have lived in blissful ignorance if they had, in trusting obedience to God, refused to commit that offense which plunged them into the experience of the harmful effects of unfaithfulness and disobedience. And therefore, being ashamed of the disobedience of their own flesh, which witnessed to their disobedience while it punished it, “they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons,” that is, coverings for their private parts; for some interpreters have translated the word by succinctoria. Campestria is, indeed, a Latin word, but it is used of the drawers or aprons used for a similar purpose by the young men who stripped for exercise in the campus; so those who were dressed in this way were commonly called campestrati. Shame modestly covered what lust disobediently moved in opposition to the will, which was thus punished for its own disobedience. Consequently all nations, being propagated from that one stock, have so strong an instinct to cover the shameful parts, that some barbarians do not uncover them even in the bath, but wash with their drawers on. In the dark solitudes of India also, though some philosophers go naked, and are therefore called gymnosophists, they still make an exception in the case of these members and cover them.
Lust requires for its consummation darkness and secrecy; and not only when unlawful intercourse is desired, but even such fornication as the earthly city has legalized. Where there is no fear of punishment, these permitted pleasures still shrink from the public eye. Even where provision is made for this lust, secrecy also is provided; and while lust found it easy to remove the prohibitions of law, shamelessness found it impossible to lay aside the veil of privacy. For even shameless men call this shameful; and though they love the pleasure, dare not display it. Why, does not even conjugal intercourse, sanctioned as it is by law for the begetting of children, legitimate and honorable though it is, seek privacy from every eye? Before the bridegroom fondles his bride, does he not exclude the attendants, and even the groomsmen, and such friends as the closest ties have admitted to the bridal chamber? The greatest master of Roman eloquence says that all right actions wish to be set in the light, that is, desire to be known. This right action, however, desires to be known, and yet blushes to be seen. Who does not know what passes between husband and wife so that children may be born? Is it not for this purpose that wives are married with such ceremony? And yet, when this well-understood act is performed for the procreation of children, not even the children themselves, who may already have been born to them, are allowed to be witnesses. This right action seeks the light, insofar as it seeks to be known, but still dreads being seen. And why so, if not because what is by nature fitting and decent is done in such a way that it is accompanied by the shame that is the penalty of sin?
This is why even the philosophers who have come close to the truth have admitted that anger and lust are vicious mental emotions, because, even when exercised toward objects which wisdom does not prohibit, they are moved in an ungoverned and inordinate manner, and consequently need to be governed by mind and reason. And they assert that this third part of the mind is posted as it were in a kind of citadel, to rule these other parts, so that, while it rules and they serve, man's righteousness is preserved without a breach. These parts, then, which they acknowledge to be vicious even in a wise and temperate man, so that the mind, by its calming and restraining influence, must bridle and recall them from those objects toward which they are unlawfully moved, and give them access to those which the law of wisdom sanctions — so that anger, for example, may be allowed for the enforcement of a just authority, and lust for the duty of propagating offspring — these parts, I say, were not vicious in Paradise before sin, for they were never moved in opposition to a holy will toward any object from which it was necessary that they should be withheld by the restraining bridle of reason. For though now they are moved in this way, and are regulated by a bridling and restraining power, which those who live temperately, justly, and godly exercise, sometimes with ease, and sometimes with greater difficulty, this is not the sound health of nature, but the weakness which results from sin. And how is it that shame does not hide the acts and words dictated by anger or other emotions, as it covers the motions of lust, if not because the members of the body which we employ for accomplishing them are moved, not by the emotions themselves, but by the authority of the consenting will? For a man who in his anger shouts at or even strikes someone could not do so if his tongue and hand were not moved by the authority of the will, as they are also moved when there is no anger. But the organs of generation are so subjected to the rule of lust, that they have no motion except what it gives them. It is this we are ashamed of; it is this which blushingly hides from the eyes of onlookers. And a man will sooner endure a crowd of witnesses when he is unjustly venting his anger on someone than the eye of one man when he innocently copulates with his wife.
It is this which those canine or cynic philosophers have overlooked, when they have, in violation of the modest instincts of men, boastfully proclaimed their unclean and shameless opinion, worthy indeed of dogs, namely, that as the matrimonial act is legitimate, no one should be ashamed to perform it openly, in the street or in any public place. Instinctive shame has overcome this wild notion. For though it is related that Diogenes once dared to put his opinion in practice, under the impression that his sect would be all the more famous if his outrageous shamelessness were deeply engraved in the memory of mankind, this example was not followed afterward. Shame had more influence with them, to make them blush before men, than error had to make them imitate dogs. And perhaps, even in the case of Diogenes, and those who did imitate him, there was only an appearance and pretense of copulation, and not the reality. Even today there are still Cynic philosophers to be seen; for these are Cynics who are not content with being clad in the pallium, but also carry a club; yet no one of them dares to do what we are speaking of. If they did, they would be spat upon, not to say stoned, by the mob. Human nature, then, is without doubt ashamed of this lust; and justly so, for the insubordination of these members, and their defiance of the will, are the clear testimony of the punishment of man's first sin. And it was fitting that this should appear specially in those parts by which is generated that nature which has been altered for the worse by that first and great sin — that sin from whose evil connection no one can escape, unless God's grace expiates in him individually what was committed to the destruction of all in common, when all were in one man, and which was avenged by God's justice.
We must never suppose, then, that our first parents in Paradise felt that lust which afterward caused them to blush and hide their nakedness, or that by its means they would have fulfilled the blessing of God, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth;” Genesis 1:28 for it was after sin that lust began. It was after sin that our nature, having lost the power it had over the whole body, but not having lost all shame, perceived, noticed, blushed at, and covered it. But that blessing on marriage, which encouraged them to increase and multiply and fill the earth, though it continued even after they had sinned, was nevertheless given before they sinned, so that the procreation of children might be recognized as part of the glory of marriage, and not of the punishment of sin. But now men, being ignorant of the blessedness of Paradise, suppose that children could not have been begotten there in any other way than the way they know them to be begotten now, that is, by lust, at which even honorable marriage blushes; some not simply rejecting, but skeptically deriding the divine Scriptures, in which we read that our first parents, after they sinned, were ashamed of their nakedness, and covered it; while others, though they accept and honor Scripture, still suppose that this expression, “Increase and multiply,” refers not to carnal fertility, because a similar expression is used of the soul in the words, “You will multiply me with strength in my soul;” and so, too, in the words which follow in Genesis, “And fill the earth, and subdue it,” they understand by the earth the body which the soul fills with its presence, and which it rules over when it is multiplied in strength. And they hold that children could no more be begotten then than now without lust, which, after sin, was kindled, observed, blushed for, and covered; and even that children would not have been born in Paradise, but only outside of it, as in fact it turned out. For it was after they were expelled from it that they came together to beget children, and begot them.
But we, for our part, have no doubt at all that to increase and multiply and fill the earth by virtue of the blessing of God is a gift of marriage as God instituted it from the beginning before man sinned, when He created them male and female — in other words, two plainly distinct sexes. And it was this work of God on which His blessing was pronounced. For no sooner had Scripture said, “Male and female He created them,” Genesis 1:27-28 than it immediately continues, “And God blessed them, and God said to them, Increase, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it,” and so on. And though all these things may quite suitably be interpreted in a spiritual sense, “male and female” cannot be understood of two things in one man, as if there were in him one thing which rules, another which is ruled; but it is quite clear that they were created male and female, with bodies of different sexes, for the very purpose of begetting offspring, and so increasing, multiplying, and filling the earth; and it is great folly to oppose so plain a fact. It was not of the spirit which commands and the body which obeys, nor of the rational soul which rules and the irrational desire which is ruled, nor of the contemplative virtue which is supreme and the active which is subject, nor of the understanding of the mind and the sense of the body, but plainly of the matrimonial union by which the sexes are mutually bound together, that our Lord, when asked whether it was lawful to divorce one's wife for any reason (for on account of the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites Moses permitted a certificate of divorce to be given), answered and said, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God has joined together, let no man separate.” Matthew 19:4-5 It is certain, then, that from the first men were created, as we see and know them to be now, of two sexes, male and female, and that they are called one, either on account of the matrimonial union, or on account of the origin of the woman, who was created from the side of the man. And it is by this original example, which God Himself instituted, that the apostle urges all husbands to love their own wives in particular. Ephesians 5:25
But whoever says that there would have been neither intercourse nor generation if it were not for sin is in effect saying that man's sin was necessary to complete the number of the saints. For if these two by not sinning would have continued to live alone, because, as is supposed, they could not have had children if they had not sinned, then certainly sin was necessary in order that there might be not only two but many righteous men. And if this cannot be maintained without absurdity, we must rather believe that the number of the saints fit to complete this most blessed city would have been as great even if no one had sinned, as it is now that the grace of God gathers its citizens out of the multitude of sinners, as long as the children of this world beget and are begotten. Luke 20:34 And therefore that marriage, worthy of the happiness of Paradise, would have had desirable fruit without the shame of lust, if there had been no sin. But how that could be, there is now no example to teach us. Nevertheless, it ought not to seem incredible that one member might serve the will without lust then, since so many serve it now. Do we not now move our feet and hands when we will, to do what we wish by means of these members? Do we not meet with no resistance in them, but perceive that they are ready servants of the will, both in our own case and in that of others, and especially of craftsmen engaged in manual work, by which the weakness and clumsiness of nature become, through diligent practice, wonderfully skillful? And shall we not believe that, just as all those members obediently serve the will, so also those members would have performed the function of generation, even if lust, the reward of disobedience, had been absent? Did not Cicero, in discussing the different kinds of government in his De Republica, adopt a simile from human nature, and say that we command our bodily members as we do children, they are so obedient; but that the vicious parts of the soul must be treated as slaves, and be coerced with a stricter authority? And no doubt, in the order of nature, the soul is more excellent than the body; and yet the soul commands the body more easily than itself. Nevertheless this lust, of which we are now speaking, is the more shameful on this account, because the soul is in it neither master of itself, so as not to lust at all, nor of the body, so as to keep the members under the control of the will; for if they were thus ruled, there would be no shame. But now the soul is ashamed that the body, which by nature is inferior and subject to it, should resist its authority. For in the resistance experienced by the soul in the other emotions there is less shame, because the resistance is from itself, and thus, when it is conquered by itself, it is itself the conqueror. Although the conquest is disordered and vicious, because accomplished by those parts of the soul which ought to be subject to reason, yet, being accomplished by its own parts and energies, the conquest is, as I say, its own. For when the soul conquers itself into a proper order, so that its unreasonable motions are controlled by reason, while it again is subject to God, this is a virtuous and praiseworthy conquest. Yet there is less shame when the soul is resisted by its own vicious parts than when its will and order are resisted by the body, which is distinct from and inferior to it, and dependent on it for life itself. But as long as the will retains under its authority the other members, without which the members excited by lust to resist the will cannot accomplish what they seek, chastity is preserved, and the delight of sin forgone. And certainly, if culpable disobedience had not been punished with disobedience, the marriage of Paradise would have known nothing of this struggle and rebellion, this quarrel between will and lust, in which the will must be satisfied and lust restrained; those members, like all the rest, would have obeyed the will. The field of generation would have been sown by the organ created for this purpose, as the earth is sown by the hand. And while now, as we try to investigate this subject more exactly, modesty hinders us, and compels us to ask pardon of chaste ears, there would have been no cause to do so, but we could have spoken freely, and without fear of seeming obscene, on all those points which occur to one who meditates on the subject. There would not have been even words which could be called obscene, but all that might be said of these members would have been as pure as what is said of the other parts of the body. Whoever, then, comes to read these pages with an unchaste mind, let him blame his disposition, not his nature; let him condemn the workings of his own impurity, not the words which necessity forces us to use, and for which every pure and pious reader or hearer will very readily pardon me, while I expose the folly of that skepticism which argues solely on the ground of its own experience, and has no faith in anything beyond. Whoever is not scandalized at the apostle's censure of the horrible wickedness of the women who “changed the natural use into that which is against nature,” Romans 1:26 will read all this without being shocked, especially as we are not, like Paul, citing and censuring a damnable uncleanness, but are explaining, as far as we can, human generation, while with Paul we avoid all obscenity of language.
The man, then, would have sown the seed, and the woman received it, as need required, with the generative organs moved by the will, not excited by lust. For we move at will not only those members which are furnished with joints of solid bone, such as the hands, feet, and fingers, but we also move at will those which are composed of slack and soft nerves: we can put them in motion, or stretch them out, or bend and twist them, or contract and stiffen them, as we do with the muscles of the mouth and face. The lungs, which are the very tenderest of the viscera except the brain, and are therefore carefully sheltered in the cavity of the chest, are nevertheless, for all purposes of inhaling and exhaling the breath, and of uttering and modulating the voice, obedient to the will when we breathe, exhale, speak, shout, or sing, just as the bellows obey the smith or the organist. I will not press the fact that some animals have a natural power to move a single spot of the skin with which their whole body is covered, if they have felt on it anything they wish to drive off — a power so great, that by this shivering tremor of the skin they can not only shake off flies that have settled on them, but even spears that have stuck in their flesh. Man, it is true, does not have this power; but is this any reason for supposing that God could not give it to such creatures as He wished to possess it? And therefore man himself also might very well have enjoyed absolute power over his members if he had not forfeited it by his disobedience; for it was not difficult for God to form him so that what is now moved in his body only by lust would have been moved only at will. We know, too, that some men are differently constituted from others, and have some rare and remarkable faculty of doing with their body what other men can by no effort do, and, indeed, scarcely believe when they hear of others doing. There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a time, or both together. There are some who, without moving the head, can bring the hair down over the forehead, and move the whole scalp backward and forward as they please. Some, by lightly pressing their stomach, bring up an incredible quantity and variety of things they have swallowed, and produce whatever they please, quite whole, as if out of a bag. Some so accurately mimic the voices of birds and beasts and other men, that, unless they are seen, the difference cannot be told. Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at will, so as to produce the effect of singing. I myself have known a man who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known that some weep when they please, and shed a flood of tears. But far more incredible is what some of our brothers saw quite recently. There was a presbyter called Restitutus, in the parish of the Calamensian Church, who, as often as he pleased (and he was asked to do this by those who desired to witness so remarkable a phenomenon), when someone imitated the wailings of mourners, became so insensible, and lay in a state so like death, that not only had he no feeling when they pinched and pricked him, but even when fire was applied to him, and he was burned by it, he had no sense of pain except afterward from the wound. And that his body remained motionless, not because of his self-control, but because he was insensible, was proved by the fact that he breathed no more than a dead man; and yet he said that, when anyone spoke with more than ordinary distinctness, he heard the voice, but as if it were a long way off. Since, then, even in this mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there for doubting that, before man was plunged by his sin into this weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the propagation of offspring without lust? Man has been given over to himself because he abandoned God, while he sought to be his own satisfaction; and disobeying God, he could not obey even himself. This is why he is caught in the obvious misery of being unable to live as he wishes. For if he lived as he wished, he would think himself blessed; but he could not be so if he lived wickedly.
However, if we look at this a little more closely, we see that no one lives as he wishes but the blessed, and that no one is blessed but the righteous. But even the righteous himself does not live as he wishes, until he has arrived where he cannot die, be deceived, or injured, and until he is assured that this will be his eternal condition. For nature demands this; and nature is not fully and perfectly blessed until it attains what it seeks. But what man is now able to live as he wishes, when it is not in his power so much as to live? He wishes to live, he is compelled to die. How, then, does he live as he wishes who does not live as long as he wishes? Or if he wishes to die, how can he live as he wishes, since he does not wish even to live? Or if he wishes to die, not because he dislikes life, but so that after death he may live better, still he is not yet living as he wishes, but only has the prospect of so living when, through death, he reaches what he wishes. But admit that he lives as he wishes, because he has done violence to himself, and forced himself not to wish what he cannot obtain, and to wish only what he can (as Terence has it, “Since you cannot do what you will, will what you can”), is he therefore blessed because he is patiently wretched? For a blessed life is possessed only by the man who loves it. If it is loved and possessed, it must necessarily be more ardently loved than everything else; for whatever else is loved must be loved for the sake of the blessed life. And if it is loved as it deserves to be — and the man is not blessed who does not love the blessed life as it deserves — then whoever loves it in this way cannot help wishing it to be eternal. Therefore it will be blessed only when it is eternal.
In Paradise, then, man lived as he desired as long as he desired what God had commanded. He lived in the enjoyment of God, and was good by God's goodness; he lived without any lack, and had it in his power to live so eternally. He had food so that he might not hunger, drink so that he might not thirst, the tree of life so that old age might not waste him. There was in his body no corruption, nor seed of corruption, which could produce in him any unpleasant sensation. He feared no inward disease, no outward accident. The soundest health blessed his body, absolute tranquility his soul. As in Paradise there was no excessive heat or cold, so its inhabitants were exempt from the turmoil of fear and desire. No sadness of any kind was there, nor any foolish joy; true gladness ceaselessly flowed from the presence of God, who was loved “out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.” 1 Timothy 1:5 The faithful love of husband and wife made a sure harmony between them. Body and spirit worked harmoniously together, and the commandment was kept without labor. No languor made their leisure wearisome; no sleepiness interrupted their desire to labor. In tanta facilitate rerum et felicitate hominum, absit ut suspicemur, non potuisse prolem seri sine libidinis morbo: sed eo voluntatis nutu moverentur illa membra qua cætera, et sine ardoris illecebroso stimulo cum tranquillitate animi et corporis nulla corruptione integritatis infunderetur gremio maritus uxoris. Neque enim quia experientia probari non potest, ideo credendum non est; quando illas corporis partes non ageret turbidus calor, sed spontanea potestas, sicut opus esset, adhiberet; ita tunc potuisse utero conjugis salva integritate feminei genitalis virile semen immitti, sicut nunc potest eadem integritate salva ex utero virginis fluxus menstrui cruoris emitti. Eadem quippe via posset illud injici, qua hoc potest ejici. Ut enim ad pariendum non doloris gemitus, sed maturitatis impulsus feminea viscera relaxaret: sic ad fœtandum et concipiendum non libidinis appetitus, sed voluntarius usus naturam utramque conjungeret. We speak of things which are now shameful, and although we try, as well as we are able, to conceive them as they were before they became shameful, necessity still compels us rather to limit our discussion to the bounds set by modesty than to extend it as our modest powers of expression might suggest. For since what I have been speaking of was not experienced even by those who might have experienced it — I mean our first parents (for sin and its deserved banishment from Paradise came before this passionless generation on their part) — when sexual intercourse is spoken of now, it suggests to men's thoughts not such a placid obedience to the will as is conceivable in our first parents, but the kind of violent action of lust as they themselves have experienced. And therefore modesty shuts my mouth, although my mind conceives the matter clearly. But Almighty God, the supreme and supremely good Creator of all natures, who aids and rewards good wills, while He abandons and condemns the bad, and rules both, was not without a plan by which He might people His city with the fixed number of citizens which His wisdom had foreordained even out of the condemned human race, distinguishing them now not by merits, since the whole mass was condemned as if in a corrupted root, but by grace, and showing, not only in the case of the redeemed, but also in those who were not delivered, how much grace He has bestowed on them. For everyone acknowledges that he has been rescued from evil, not by deserved, but by freely given goodness, when he is singled out from the company of those with whom he might justly have borne a common punishment, and is allowed to go unharmed. Why, then, should God not have created those whom He foresaw would sin, since He was able to show in and by them both what their guilt deserved, and what His grace bestowed, and since, under His creating and disposing hand, even the perverse disorder of the wicked could not pervert the right order of things?
The sins of men and angels do nothing to impede the “great works of the Lord which accomplish His will.” For He who by His providence and omnipotence distributes to everyone his own portion, is able to make good use not only of the good, but also of the wicked. And so, since He makes good use of the wicked angel, who, in punishment for his first wicked act of will, was doomed to a hardness that prevents him now from willing any good, why should God not have permitted him to tempt the first man, who had been created upright, that is to say, with a good will? For man had been so made that if he looked to God for help, his goodness would defeat the angel's wickedness; but if by proud self-pleasing he abandoned God, his Creator and Sustainer, he would be conquered. If his will remained upright, through leaning on God's help, he would be rewarded; if it became wicked, by forsaking God, he would be punished. But even this trusting in God's help could not itself be accomplished without God's help, although man had it in his own power to give up the benefits of divine grace by pleasing himself. For as it is not in our power to live in this world without sustaining ourselves by food, while it is in our power to refuse this nourishment and cease to live, as those do who kill themselves, so it was not in man's power, even in Paradise, to live as he ought without God's help; but it was in his power to live wickedly, though in this way he would cut short his happiness, and incur very just punishment. Since, then, God was not ignorant that man would fall, why should He not have allowed him to be tempted by an angel who hated and envied him? It was not, indeed, that He was unaware that he would be conquered, but because He foresaw that by the man's seed, aided by divine grace, this same devil himself would be conquered, to the greater glory of the saints. All was brought about in such a manner, that no future event escaped God's foreknowledge, nor did His foreknowledge compel anyone to sin, and so as to demonstrate in the experience of the intelligent creation, human and angelic, how great a difference there is between the private presumption of the creature and the Creator's protection. For who will dare to believe or say that it was not in God's power to prevent both angels and men from sinning? But God preferred to leave this in their power, and so to show both what evil their pride could do, and what good by His grace.
Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “You are my glory, and the lifter up of my head.” In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, “I will love You, Lord, my strength.” And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought the good of their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God “did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful, but became vain in their reasonings, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,”— that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride —“they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, “and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.” Romans 1:21-25 But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, “so that God may be all in all.” 1 Corinthians 15:28
Connections in City of God, Book 14
4 connections
Chapter 3 1 connections
Chapter 7 1 connections
Chapter 8 1 connections
Chapter 13 1 connections
No connections match.