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Augustine of Hippo, On Marriage And Concupiscence
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on augustin’s forwarding to him what he calls his first book “on marriage and concupiscence.”
On Marriage and Concupiscence,
Chapter 1.—Concerning the Argument of This Treatise.
Chapter 2. [II.]—Why This Treatise Was Addressed to Valerius.
Chapter 3 [III.]—Conjugal Chastity the Gift of God.
Chapter 8 [VII.]—The Evil of Lust Does Not Take Away the Good of Marriage.
Chapter 15.—The Teaching of the Apostle on This Subject.
Chapter 18 [XVI.]—Continence Better Than Marriage But Marriage Better Than Fornication.
Chapter 19 [XVII.]—Blessing of Matrimony.
Chapter 20 [XVIII]—Why Children of Wrath are Born of Holy Matrimony.
Chapter 24.—Lust and Shame Come from Sin The Law of Sin The Shamelessness of the Cynics.
Chapter 30 [XXVII.]—The Evil Desires of Concupiscence We Ought to Wish that They May Not Be.
Chapter 31 [XXVIII.]—Who is the Man that Can Say, “It is No More I that Do It”?
Chapter 32.—When Good Will Be Perfectly Done.
Chapter 33 [XXX.]—True Freedom Comes with Willing Delight in God’s Law.
Chapter 34.—How Concupiscence Made a Captive of the Apostle What the Law of Sin Was to the Apostle.
Chapter 35 [XXXI.]—The Flesh, Carnal Affection.
Chapter 36.—Even Now While We Still Have Concupiscence We May Be Safe in Christ.
Chapter 1 [I.]—Introductory Statement.
Chapter 3.—The Same Continued.
Chapter 4.—The Same Continued.
Chapter 5.—The Same Continued.
Chapter 6.—The Same Continued.
Chapter 8.—Augustin Refutes the Passage Adduced Above.
Chapter 10 [IV.]—In What Manner the Adversary’s Cavils Must Be Refuted.
Chapter 11.—The Devil the Author, Not of Nature, But Only of Sin.
Chapter 12.—Eve’s Name Means Life, and is a Great Sacrament of the Church.
Chapter 13.—The Pelagian Argument to Show that the Devil Has No Rights in the Fruits of Marriage.
Chapter 14 [V.]—Concupiscence Alone, in Marriage, is Not of God.
Chapter 16 [VI.]—It is Not of Us, But Our Sins, that the Devil is the Author.
Chapter 18.—The Same Continued.
Chapter 19 [VIII.]—The Pelagians Misunderstand “Seed” In Scripture.
Chapter 20.—Original Sin is Derived from the Faulty Condition of Human Seed.
Chapter 21 [IX.]—It is the Good God That Gives Fruitfulness, and the Devil That Corrupts the Fruit.
Chapter 22.—Shall We Be Ashamed of What We Do, or of What God Does?
Chapter 24 [XI.]—What Covenant of God the New-Born Babe Breaks. What Was the Value of Circumcision.
Chapter 25 [XII.]—Augustin Not the Deviser of Original Sin.
Chapter 26 [XIII.]—The Child in No Sense Formed by Concupiscence.
Chapter 28 [XIV.]—Augustin’s Answer to This Argument. Its Dealing with Scripture.
Chapter 29.—The Same Continued. Augustin Also Asserts that God Forms Man at Birth.
Chapter 30 [XV.]—The Case of Abimelech and His House Examined.
Chapter 31 [XVI.]—Why God Proceeds to Create Human Beings, Who He Knows Will Be Born in Sin.
Chapter 32 [XVII.]—God Not the Author of the Evil in Those Whom He Creates.
Chapter 33 [XVIII.]—Though God Makes Us, We Perish Unless He Re-makes Us in Christ.
Chapter 36 [XXI.]—God Made Nature Good: the Saviour Restores It When Corrupted.
Chapter 39 [XXIV.]—Man Born of Whatever Parentage is Sinful and Capable of Redemption.
Chapter 40 [XXV.]—Augustin Declines the Dilemma Offered Him.
Chapter 43.—The Good Tree in the Gospel that Cannot Bring Forth Evil Fruit, Does Not Mean Marriage.
Chapter 45.—Answer to This Argument: The Apostle Says We All Sinned in One.
Chapter 47.—The Scriptures Repeatedly Teach Us that All Sin in One.
Chapter 48.—Original Sin Arose from Adam’s Depraved Will. Whence the Corrupt Will Sprang.
Chapter 49 [XXIX.]—In Infants Nature is of God, and the Corruption of Nature of the Devil.
Chapter 52 [XXX.]—Sin Was the Origin of All Shameful Concupiscence.
Chapter 53 [XXXI.]—Concupiscence Need Not Have Been Necessary for Fruitfulness.
Chapter 54 [XXXII.]—How Marriage is Now Different Since the Existence of Sin.
Chapter 55 [XXXIII.]—Lust is a Disease The Word “Passion” In the Ecclesiastical Sense.
Chapter 57 [XXXIV.]—The Great Sin of the First Man.
Chapter 60.—Let Not the Pelagians Indulge Themselves in a Cruel Defence of Infants.
Chapter 22 [XX.]—Even Infants, When Unbaptized, are in the Power of the Devil; Exorcism in the Case of Infants, and Renunciation of the Devil.
Now the Christian faith unfalteringly declares, what our new heretics have begun to deny, both that they who are cleansed in the laver of regeneration are redeemed from the power of the devil, and that those who have not yet been redeemed by such regeneration are still captive in the power of the devil, even if they be infant children of the redeemed, unless they be themselves redeemed by the self-same grace of Christ. For we cannot doubt that that blessing of God applies to every stage of human life, which the apostle describes when he says concerning Him: “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son.”86 Col. i. 13. From this power of darkness, therefore, of which the devil is the prince,—in other words, from the power of the devil and his angels,—infants are delivered when they are baptized; and whosoever denies this, is convicted by the truth of the Church’s very sacraments, which no heretical novelty in the Church of Christ is permitted to destroy or change, so long as the Divine Head rules and helps the entire body which He owns—small as well as great. It is true, then, and in no way false, that the devil’s power is exorcised in infants, and that they renounce him by the hearts and mouths of those who bring them to baptism, being unable to do so by their own; in order that they may be delivered from the power of darkness, and be translated into the kingdom of their Lord. What is that, therefore, within them which keeps them in the power of the devil until they are delivered from it by Christ’s sacrament of baptism? What is it, I ask, but sin? Nothing else, indeed, has the devil found which enables him to put under his own control that nature of man which the good Creator made good. But infants have committed no sin of their own since they have been alive. Only original sin, therefore, remains, whereby they are made captive under the devil’s power, until they are redeemed therefrom by the laver of regeneration and the blood of Christ, and pass into their Redeemer’s kingdom,—the power of their enthraller being frustrated, and power being given them to become “sons of God” instead of children of this world.87 John i. 12.
CAPUT XX.
22. Etiam infantes non baptizatos esse in diaboli potestate. Exorcismus in parvulis, et renuntiatio diabolo. Non enim fides dubitat christiana, quam novi haeretici oppugnare coeperunt, et eos qui lavacro regenerationis abluuntur, redimi de diaboli potestate; et eos qui nondum tali regeneratione redempti sunt, etiam parvulos filios redemptorum sub ejusdem diaboli esse potestate captivos, nisi et ipsi eadem Christi gratia redimantur. Ad omnes namque pertinere non dubitamus aetates, illud de quo Apostolus loquitur beneficium Dei: Qui eruit nos de potestate 0427tenebrarum, et transtulit in regnum Filii charitatis suae (Coloss. 1, 13). Ab hac igitur potestate tenebrarum, quarum est diabolus princeps, id est a potestate diaboli et angelorum ejus, quisquis erui cum baptizantur negaverit parvulos, ipsorum Ecclesiae Sacramentorum veritate convincitur, quae nulla haeretica novitas in Ecclesia Christi auferre vel mutare permittitur, regente atque adjuvante capite totum corpus suum, pusillos cum magnis. In veritate itaque, non in falsitate, potestas diabolica exorcizatur in parvulis: eique renuntiant, quia per sua non possunt, per corda et ora gestantium; ut eruti a potestate tenebrarum in regnum sui Domini transferantur. Quid ergo in eis est, per quod in potestate diaboli teneantur, donec eruantur inde per sacramentum Baptismatis Christi? Quid est, nisi peccatum? Non enim aliud invenit diabolus, unde posset humanam suo juri mancipare naturam, quam bonam bonus auctor instituit. Nullum autem peccatum parvuli in sua vita proprium commiserunt. Remanet igitur originale peccatum, per quod sub diaboli potestate captivi sunt, nisi inde lavacro regenerationis et Christi sanguine redimantur, et transeant in regnum redemptoris sui, frustrata potestate captivatoris sui, et data potestate qua fiant ex filiis hujus saeculi filii Dei (Joan. 1, 12).