Chapter 20 [XVIII]—Why Children of Wrath are Born of Holy Matrimony.

This is the reason, indeed, why of even the just and lawful marriages of the children of God are born, not children of God, but children of the world; because also those who generate, if they are already regenerate, beget children not as children of God, but as still children of the world. “The children of this world,” says our Lord, “beget and are begotten.”78    Luke xx. 34. Augustin quotes an interpolation current in the Latin Bibles of his day, and found also in certain Greek (D. Origen) and Syriac (Curetonian version) witnesses. From the fact, therefore, that we are still children of this world, our outer man is in a state of corruption; and on this account our offspring are born as children of the present world; nor do they become sons of God, except they be regenerated.79    See De Peccatorum Meritis et Remissione, ii. 11 [ix.]. Yet inasmuch as we are children of God, our inner man is renewed from day to day.80    2 Cor. iv. 16. And yet even our outer man has been sanctified through the laver of regeneration, and has received the hope of future incorruption, on which account it is justly designated as “the temple of God.” “Your bodies,” says the apostle, “are the temples of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, and which ye have of God; and ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a great price: therefore glorify and carry God in your body.”81    1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. Note the odd interpolation “and carry,” which was a common Latin reading. The whole of this statement is made in reference to our present sanctification, but especially in consequence of that hope of which he says in another passage, “We ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”82    Rom. viii. 23. If, then, the redemption of our body is expected, as the apostle declares, it follows, that being an expectation, it is as yet a matter of hope, and not of actual possession. Accordingly the apostle adds: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”83    Rom. viii. 24, 25. Not, therefore, by that which we are waiting for, but by that which we are now enduring, are the children of our flesh born. God forbid that a man who possesses faith should, when he hears the apostle bid men “love their wives,”84    Col. iii. 19. love that carnal concupiscence in his wife which he ought not to love even in himself; as he may know, if he listens to the words of another apostle: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever, even as also God abideth for ever.”85    1 John ii. 15–17. The last clause, though not in Jerome’s Vulgate, was yet read by some of the Latin Fathers—by Cyprian and Lucifer, for instance, and something like it also by one of the Egyptian versions.

CAPUT XVIII.

20. Cur e sancto conjugio nascantur filii irae. Propter hanc ergo fit ut etiam de justis et legitimis nuptiis filiorum Dei, non filii Dei, sed filii saeculi generentur: quia et ii qui generant, si jam regenerati sunt, non ex hoc generant ex quo filii Dei sunt, sed ex quo adhuc filii saeculi. Dominica quippe sententia est, Filii hujus saeculi generant, et generantur (Luc. XX, 34). Ex quo itaque sumus adhuc filii hujus saeculi, exterior homo noster corrumpitur, ex hoc et hujus saeculi filii generantur, nec filii Dei nisi regenerentur fiunt: sed ex quo sumus filii Dei, interior de die in diem renovatur (II Cor. IV, 16). Quamvis et ipse exterior per lavacrum regenerationis sanctificatus sit, et spem futurae incorruptionis acceperit, propter quod et templum Dei merito dicitur: Corpora vestra, inquit Apostolus, templum in vobis Spiritus sancti est, quem habetis a Deo: et non estis vestri; empti enim estis pretio magno. Glorificate ergo et portate Deum in corpore vestro (I Cor. VI, 19, 20). Hoc totum non solum propter praesentem sanctificationem, sed maxime propter illam spem dictum est, de qua idem alio loco dicit: Sed et nos ipsi primitias spiritus habentes, et ipsi in nobismetipsis ingemiscimus, adoptionem exspectantes, redemptionem corporis nostri. Si ergo redemptio corporis nostri, secundum Apostolum, exspectatur; profecto quod exspectatur, adhuc speratur, nondum tenetur. Unde adjungit et dicit: Spe enim salvi facti sumus. Spes autem quae videtur, non est spes: quod enim videt quis, quid sperat? Si autem quod non videmus, speramus, per patientiam exspectamus (Rom. VIII, 23-25). Non itaque per hoc quod exspectamus, sed per hoc quod toleramus, carnales filii propagantur. Absit ergo ut fidelis homo (Coloss. III, 19), cum audit ab Apostolo, Diligite uxores vestras, concupiscentiam carnis diligat in uxore, quam nec in se ipso debet diligere, audiens alterum apostolum, Nolite diligere mundum, nec ea quae in mundo sunt: quisquis dilexerit mundum, non est charitas Patris in illo; quia omnia quae in mundo sunt, concupiscentia carnis est, et concupiscentia oculorum, et ambitio saeculi, quae non est a Patre, sed ex mundo est. Et mundus transibit et concupiscentia ejus: qui autem fecerit voluntatem Dei, manet in aeternum, sicut et Deus manet in aeternum (I Joan. II, 15-17).