Chapter 42.—The Pelagians Try to Get Rid of Original Sin by Their Praise of God’s Works; Marriage, in Its Nature and by Its Institution, is Not the Cause of Sin.

I have an answer ready for all this; but before I give it, I wish the reader carefully to notice, that the result of the opinions of these persons is, that no Saviour is necessary for infants, whom they deem to be entirely without any sins to be saved from. This vast perversion of the truth, so hostile to God’s great grace, which is given through our Lord Jesus Christ, who “came to seek and to save what was lost,”226    Luke xix. 10. tries to insinuate its way into the hearts of the unintelligent by eulogizing the works of God; that is, by its eulogy of human nature, of human seed, of marriage, of sexual intercourse, of the fruits of matrimony—which are all of them good things. I will not say that he adds the praise of lust; because he too is ashamed even to name it, so that it is something else, and not it, which he seems to praise. By this method of his, not distinguishing between the evils which have accrued to nature and the goodness of nature’s very self, he does not, indeed, show it to be sound (because that is untrue), but he does not permit its diseased condition to be healed. And, therefore, that first proposition of ours, to the effect that the good thing, even the human being, which is born of adultery, does not excuse the sin of adulterous connection, he allows to be true; and this point, which occasions no question to arise between us, he even defends and strengthens (as he well may) by his similitude of the thief who sows the seed which he stole, and out of which there arises a really good harvest. Our other proposition, however, that “the good of marriage cannot be blamed for the original sin which is derived from it,” he will not admit to be true; if, indeed, he assented to it, he would not be a Pelagian heretic, but a catholic Christian. “Certainly,” says he, “if evil arises from marriage, it may be blamed, nay, cannot be excused; and you place its work and fruit under the devil’s power, because everything which is the cause of evil is itself without good.” And in addition to this, he contrived other arguments to show that good could not possibly be the cause of evil; and from this he drew the inference, that marriage, which is a good, is not the cause of evil; and that consequently from it no man could be born in a sinful state, and having need of a Saviour: just as if we said that marriage is the cause of sin, though it is true that the human being which is born in wedlock is not born without sin. Marriage was instituted not for the purpose of sinning, but of producing children. Accordingly the Lord’s blessing on the married state ran thus: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”227    Gen. i. 28. The sin, however, which is derived to children from marriage does not belong to marriage, but to the evil which accrues to the human agents, from whose union marriage comes into being. The truth is, both the evil of shameful lust can exist without marriage, and marriage might have been without it. It appertains, however, to the condition of the body (not of that life, but) of this death, that marriage cannot exist without it though it may exist without marriage. Of course that lust of the flesh which causes shame has existence out of the married state, whenever it urges men to the commission of adultery, chambering and uncleanness, so utterly hostile to the purity of marriage; or again, when it does not commit any of these things, because the human agent gives no permission or assent to their commission, but still rises and is set in motion and creates disturbance, and (especially in dreams) effects the likeness of its own veritable work, and reaches the end of its own emotion. Well, now, this is an evil which is not even in the married state actually an evil of marriage; but it has this apparatus all ready in the body of this death, even against its own will, which is indispensable no doubt for the accomplishment of that which it does will. The evil in question, therefore, does not accrue to marriage from its own institution, which was blessed; but entirely from the circumstance that sin entered into the world by one man, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for in him all sinned.228    Rom. v. 12.

42. Ad haec responsurus, prius volo esse intentum lectorem, nihil agere istos, nisi ut salvator non sit parvulis necessarius, quos peccata prorsus a quibus 0460 salventur negant habere. Haec tanta perversitas et tantae inimica gratiae Dei, quae data est per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum, qui venit quaerere et salvare quod perierat (Luc. XIX, 10), insinuare se nititur cordibus parum intelligentium, laude operum divinorum, hoc est, laude naturae humanae, laude seminis, laude nuptiarum, laude utriusque sexus commixtionis, laude fecunditatis: quae omnia bona sunt. Nolo enim dicere, laude libidinis: quia eam et ipse nominare confunditur, ut aliud aliquid, non ipsam, laudare videatur. Ac per hoc mala quae acciderunt naturae, non discernendo ab ipsius bonitate naturae, non eam (quia falsum est) ostendit sanam, sed sanari non permittit aegrotam. Et ideo illud quod diximus, quod «adulteriorum culpam, bonum quod inde nascitur,» id est, «homo non potest excusare,» verum esse concedit: et hoc, unde nulla inter nos quaestio est, etiam similitudine furis furtivum triticum seminantis, de quo bona utique messis nascitur, astruit et confirmat ut potest. Illud autem alterum quod diximus, «Nuptiarum bonum malo originali, quod inde trahitur, non potest accusari,» non vult consentire quod verum sit: quia si consenserit, non Pelagianus haereticus, sed Christianus catholicus erit. «Prorsus,» inquit, «si malum de nuptiis trahitur, accusari possunt, excusari non possunt; et in diaboli jure opus earum fructumque constituis: quia omnis causa mali, expers boni est.» Et ad hoc caetera attexit, ut probet causam mali bonum esse non posse ; et ideo nuptias, quia bonum sunt, causam mali non esse; ac per hoc de illis peccatorem, qui necessarium habeat salvatorem, nasci omnino non posse: quasi nos nuptias causam dicamus esse peccati; quamvis homo qui ex illis nascitur, non nascatur sine peccato. Nuptiae institutae sunt causa generandi, non peccandi: propter quod illa est a Domino benedictio nuptiarum, Crescite, et multiplicamini, et replete terram (Gen. I, 28). Peccatum autem quod inde a nascentibus trahitur, non ad nuptias pertinet, sed ad malum quod accidit hominibus, quorum conjunctione sunt nuptiae. Nam malum pudendae libidinis et potest esse sine nuptiis, et potuerunt esse nuptiae sine illo: ad conditionem autem pertinet corporis, non vitae illius, sed mortis hujus, ut nunc non possint esse nuptiae sine illo, quamvis ipsum possit esse sine illis. Nam utique sine nuptiis est pudenda carnis concupiscentia, quando adulteria et quaeque stupra atque immunda committit, longe contraria pudicitiae nuptiarum; aut quando nulla ista committit, quia homo nulla consensione permittit, et tamen surgit et movetur et movet, et plerumque in somnis ad ipsius operis similitudinem et suae motionis pervenit finem. Hoc ergo malum nec in ipsis nuptiis malum est nuptiarum: sed habent illud in corpore mortis hujus paratum, etiamsi nolunt, sine quo non possunt implere quod volunt. Non igitur ab earum institutione, quae benedicta est, ad eas venit: sed ab 0461 eo quod ex uno homine peccatum intravit in mundum, et per peccatum mors, et ita in omnes homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt.