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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 35 [XX.]—He Answers the Arguments of Julianus. What is the Natural Use of the Woman? What is the Unnatural Use?
My answer to this challenge is, that not only the children of wedlock, but also those of adultery, are a good work in so far as they are the work of God, by whom they are created: but as concerns original sin, they are all born under condemnation of the first Adam; not only those who are born in adultery, but likewise such as are born in wedlock, unless they be regenerated in the second Adam, which is Christ. As to what the apostle says of the wicked, that “leaving the natural use of the woman, the men burned in their lust one toward another: men with men working that which is unseemly;”219 Rom. i. 27. he did not speak of the conjugal use, but the “natural use,” wishing us to understand how it comes to pass that by means of the members created for the purpose the two sexes can combine for generation. Thus it follows, that even when a man unites with a harlot to use these members, the use is a natural one. It is not, however, commendable, but rather culpable. But as regards any part of the body which is not meant for generative purposes, should a man use even his own wife in it, it is against nature and flagitious. Indeed, the same apostle had previously220 Rom. ix. 26. said concerning women: “Even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature;” and then concerning men he added, that they worked that which is unseemly by leaving the natural use of the woman. Therefore, by the phrase in question, “the natural use,” it is not meant to praise conjugal connection; but thereby are denoted those flagitious deeds which are more unclean and criminal than even men’s use of women, which, even if unlawful, is nevertheless natural.
CAPUT XX.
35. Ad haec respondeo, non solum filios ex conjugio, verum etiam ex adulterio bonum aliquod esse, secundum opus Dei quo creati sunt: secundum autem originale peccatum, in damnatione nasci ex Adam primo, non solum si de adulterio, verum etiam si de conjugio generentur, nisi in Adam secundo, qui est Christus, regenerentur. Quod autem ait Apostolus de improbis, Relicto naturali usu feminae, exarserunt in desideria sua in invicem, masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes: non dixit usum 0457 conjugalem, sed naturalem, eum volens intelligi, qui fit membris ad hoc creatis, ut per ea possit ad generandum sexus uterque misceri. Ac per hoc, cum eisdem membris etiam meretrici quisque miscetur, naturalis est usus, nec tamen laudabilis, sed culpabilis. Ab ea vero parte corporis, quae non ad generandum est instituta, si et conjuge quisque utatur, contra naturam est et flagitiosum. Denique prius idem apostolus de feminis dixit, Nam feminae eorum immutaverunt naturalem usum in eum usum qui est contra naturam (Rom. I, 27, 26): deinde, de masculis in masculos turpitudinem operantibus, relicto usu femineo naturali. Non ergo isto nomine, id est, usu naturali, conjugalis est laudata commixtio, sed immundiora et sceleratiora flagitia denotata sunt, quam si illicite et feminis, sed tamen naturaliter uterentur.