Chapter 37 [XXII.]—If There is No Marriage Without Cohabitation, So There is No Cohabitation Without Shame.

“Show me,” he says, “any bodily marriage without sexual connection.” I do not show him any bodily marriage without sexual connection; but then, neither does he show me any case of sexual connection which is without shame. In paradise, however, if sin had not preceded, there would not have been, indeed, generation without union of the sexes, but this union would certainly have been without shame; for in the sexual union there would have been a quiet acquiescence of the members, not a lust of the flesh productive of shame. Matrimony, therefore, is a good, in which the human being is born after orderly conception; the fruit, too, of matrimony is good, as being the very human being which is thus born; sin, however, is an evil with which every man is born. Now it was God who made and still makes man; but “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for in him all sinned.”223    Rom. v. 12.

CAPUT XXII.

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37. «Ostende,» inquit, «sine commixtione nuptias corporales.» Non ostendo ego nuptias corporales sine commixtione; sed nec ipse ostendit eamdem commixtionem sine confusione. In paradiso autem si peccatum non praecessisset, non esset quidem sine utriusque sexus commixtione generatio, sed esset sine confusione commixtio. Esset quippe in coeundo tranquilla membrorum obedientia, non pudenda carnis concupiscentia. Proinde conjugium bonum est, unde ordinate seminatus nascitur homo; et fructus conjugii bonus, quod est ipse qui ita nascitur homo: sed peccatum malum est, cum quo nascitur omnis homo. Deus quippe fecit et facit hominem: sed per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum, et per peccatum mors; et ita in omnes homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt (Rom. V, 12).