Chapter 29.—The Same Continued. Augustin Also Asserts that God Forms Man at Birth.

Though I have given special attention to the point, I have failed to discover what assistance he could obtain from this deceitful use of Scripture, except that he wanted to produce the apostle as a witness, and by him to prove, what we also assert, that God forms man of human seed. And inasmuch as no passage directly occurred to him, he deceitfully manipulated this particular one; fearing no doubt that, if the apostle should chance to seem to have spoken of corn seeds, and not of human, in this passage, we should have suggested to us at once by such procedure of his, how to refute him: not indeed as the pure-minded advocate of a chastened will, but as the impudent proclaimer of a profligate voluptuousness. But from the very seeds, forsooth, which the farmers sow in their fields he can be refuted. For why can we not suppose that God could have granted to man in his happy state in paradise, the same course with regard to his own seed which we see granted to the seeds of corn, in such wise that the former might be sown without any shameful lust, the members of generation simply obeying the inclination of the will; just as the latter is sown without any shameful lust, the hands of the husbandman merely moving in obedience to his will? There being, indeed, this difference, that the desire of begetting children in the parent is a nobler one than that which characterizes the farmer, of filling his barns. Then, again, why might not the almighty Creator, with His incontaminable ubiquity, and his power of creating from human seed just what it pleased Him, have operated in women, with respect to what He even now makes, in the self-same manner as He operates in the ground with corn seeds according to His will, making blessed mothers conceive without lustful passion, and bring forth children without parturient pains, inasmuch as there was not (in that state of happiness, and in the body which was not as yet the body of this death, but rather of that life) in woman when receiving seed anything to produce shame, as there was nothing when giving birth to offspring to cause pain? Whoever refuses to believe this, or is unwilling to have it supposed that, while men previous to any sin lived in that happy state of paradise, such a condition as that which we have sketched could not have been permitted in God’s will and kindness, must be regarded as the lover of shameful pleasure, rather than the encomiast of desirable fecundity.

29. De qua fraude quid adjuvaretur ejus intentio, cum aliquanto attentius cogitarem, nihil potui reperire, nisi quia testem voluit adhibere Apostolum, quo probaret Deum, quod et nos dicimus, de humanis seminibus hominem operari. Et cum ei testimonium nullum occurreret, isto abusus est fraudulenter, timens utique, ne forte si appareret Apostolum non de humanis seminibus, sed de frumentis illa dixisse, hinc admoneremur, unde refutaretur, non religiosae voluntatis, sed libidinosae voluptatis pudens nominator, et impudens praedicator. De ipsis quippe seminibus, quae in agris agricolae seminant, potest ipse redargui. Cur enim non credamus, Deum potuisse in paradiso concedere homini beato de suo semine, quod concessum videmus agricolis de tritici semine; ut eo modo illud sereretur sine ulla pudenda libidine, ad voluntatis nutum membris obsequentibus genitalibus; sicut hoc seritur sine ulla pudenda libidine, ad voluntatis nutum agricolarum obsequentibus manibus; honestiore in parentibus gignendorum desiderio filiorum, quam est implendorum in arantibus horreorum: ac deinde Creator omnipotens incontaminabili ubique praesentia et creatrice potentia de seminibus hominum prout vellet, quod et nunc facit, operaretur in femina, sicut de seminibus frumentorum prout vult operatur in terra, beatis matribus sine libidinosa voluptate concipientibus, sine aerumnoso gemitu parientibus; quandoquidem in illa felicitate et in corpore nondum mortis hujus, sed vitae illius, non esset feminis in excipiendis seminibus quod puderet, sicut non esset in edendis fetibus quod doleret? Quisquis non credit , 0454 vel credi non vult, hominibus ante omne peccatum in illa paradisi felicitate versantibus hoc potuisse Dei voluntate et benignitate concedi, non optandae fecunditatis laudator, sed pudendae voluptatis amator est.