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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 32 [XVII.]—God Not the Author of the Evil in Those Whom He Creates.
Then, does God feed the children of perdition, the goats on His left hand,207 Matt. xxv. 33. for the devil and nourish and clothe them for the devil “because He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust”?208 Matt. v. 45. He creates, then, the evil just in the same way as He feeds and nourishes the evil; because what He bestows on them by creating them appertains to the goodness of nature; and the growth which He gives them by food and nourishment, He bestows on them, of course, as a kindly help, not to their evil character, but to that same good nature which He in His goodness created. For in as far as they are human beings—this is a good of that nature whose author and maker is God; but in as far as they are born with sin and so destined to perdition unless they are born again, they belong to the seed which was cursed from the beginning,209 Wisd. xii. 11. by the fault of the primitive disobedience. This fault, however, is turned to good account by the Maker of even the vessels of wrath, that He may make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy:210 Rom. ix. 33. and that no one may attribute to any merits of his own, pertaining as he does to the self-same mass, his deliverance through grace; but “he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”211 2 Cor. x. 17.
CAPUT XVII.
32. An vero filios perditionis haedos sinistrae partis (Matth. XXV, 33) diabolo pascit, et diabolo nutrit, et vestit, quia facit solem suum oriri super bonos et malos, et pluit super justos et injustos (Id. V, 45)? Sic itaque creat malos, quomodo pascit et nutrit malos: quia quod eis creando tribuit, ad naturae pertinet bonitatem; et quod eis pascendo et nutriendo dat incrementum, non utique malitiae eorum, sed eidem bonae naturae quam creavit bonus, bonum tribuit adjumentum. In quantum enim homines sunt, bonum est naturae, cujus auctor est Deus: in quantum autem cum peccato nascuntur, perituri si non renascuntur , ad semen pertinent maledictum ab initio (Sap. XII, 11), illius antiquae inobedientiae vitio. Quo tamen bene utitur factor etiam vasorum irae, ut notas faciat divitias gloriae suae in vasa misericordiae; ne meritis suis tribuat, si ad eamdem massam quisque pertinens gratia liberetur, sed qui gloriatur, in Domino glorietur (II Cor. X, 17).