Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 45/87

as it was changed by that transgression of the first two human beings, so that it became subject to such great corruption as we see and feel, and through this to death, and was thrown into turmoil and tossed about by so many and such great emotions, so contrary to one another, as in paradise before sin it certainly was not, even though it was in an animal body—if anyone, I say, is moved by this, he ought not on that account to think that what was committed was light and trivial because it was done in the matter of food, which indeed was neither evil nor harmful except that it was forbidden; for God would create and plant nothing evil in that place of so great felicity.

But obedience was commended in the precept—a virtue which in a rational creature is in a certain manner the mother and guardian of all virtues; since it was so made that to be subject to God is profitable to it, but to do its own will, and not the will of Him by whom it was created, is ruinous. And so this commandment about not eating one kind of food, where so great an abundance of other foods lay at hand—a precept so light to observe, so brief to retain in memory, especially where desire did not yet resist the will (which afterwards followed from the punishment of the transgression)—was violated with all the greater injustice in proportion as it could be kept with greater ease. CHAPTER XIII. That in Adam's transgression an evil will preceded the evil work.

But they began to be evil in secret, so that they might slip into open disobedience. For the evil work would not have been reached, unless an evil will had preceded. Moreover, what could be the beginning of an evil will except pride? For 'pride is the beginning of all sin.' And what is pride except an appetite for a perverse exaltation? For it is a perverse exaltation, when, forsaking that to which the soul ought to cling, it becomes, as it were, and is, in a certain manner its own beginning. This happens when it is too well pleased with itself. And it is thus pleased with itself, when it falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to have pleased it more than itself.

Now this defection is voluntary; for if the will had remained steadfast in the love of the higher, unchangeable good, by which it was illumined that it might see and kindled that it might love, it would not have turned away from there to please itself, and thereby grown dark and cold, so as either to believe that the serpent had spoken the truth, or to prefer to God's command his wife's will, and to suppose that he was venially a transgressor of the precept if he did not forsake his life's companion even in the fellowship of sin. The evil work, then—that is, that transgression of eating the forbidden food—was not done except by those who were already evil. Nor would that fruit have been evil except from an evil tree.

But that the tree should become evil was done contrary to nature, because it would not happen at all except through a defect of the will, which is contrary to nature. But a nature could not be depraved by a defect unless it had been made out of nothing. And so it has that it is a nature from the fact that it was made by God; but that it falls away from that which it is, from the fact that it was made out of nothing. Yet man did not so fall away as to become altogether nothing, but, being turned toward himself, to be less than he was when he clung to Him who supremely is. Thus, having forsaken God, to be in oneself—that is, to please oneself—is not now to be nothing, but to draw near to nothing. Whence in the Holy Scriptures the proud are called by another name, the self-pleasers. For it is good to have the heart on high;

yet not toward oneself, which is of pride, but toward the Lord, which is of obedience, which can belong to none but the humble. There is therefore something of humility which in a wonderful way makes the heart high, and there is something of exaltation which makes the heart low. This indeed seems as it were contrary, that exaltation should be downward and humility upward. But pious humility makes one subject to a superior; and nothing is superior to God; and therefore humility exalts, which makes one subject to God. But exaltation, which is in vice, by that very fact spurns subjection and falls from Him than whom nothing is superior, and from this it will be lower, and there comes to pass what is written: 'You cast them down while they were being lifted up.' For he does not say:

'When they had been lifted up,' as if they were first lifted up and afterward cast down; but 'while they were being lifted up'—then they were cast down. For the very being lifted up is already to be cast down. Wherefore, since now in the city of God, and to the city of God on its pilgrimage in this present age, humility is especially commended, and is especially proclaimed in its King, who is Christ; and the contrary vice of exaltation is taught by the sacred writings especially to hold sway in His adversary, who is the devil: surely this is the great difference by which the two cities, of which we speak, are distinguished—the one, namely, a society of pious human beings, the other of the impious, each with the angels that belong to it, in which in the one has gone before the love of God, in the other the love of self.

By manifest and open sin, then—where was done what God had forbidden to be done—the devil would not have taken the man, had he not already begun to please himself. For from this came also the delight in what was said: 'You shall be as gods.' Which they could be better by cleaving to the supreme and true Beginning through obedience, than by becoming a beginning to themselves through pride. For created gods are gods not by their own truth, but by participation in the true God. But by seeking more, one becomes less, who, while choosing to be sufficient for himself, falls away from Him who truly suffices for him.

That evil, then—by which, when a man pleases himself as though he too were light, he turns away from that Light which, if it pleased him, would make him too become light—that evil, I say, preceded in secret, so that this evil might follow which was perpetrated in the open. For it is true what is written: 'Before ruin the heart is exalted, and before glory it is humbled.' That ruin, indeed, which is done in secret, precedes the ruin which is done in the open, while the former is not thought to be ruin. For who reckons exaltation to be ruin, when already there is in it the defection by which the Most High is forsaken? But who does not see it to be ruin, when there occurs the evident and undoubted transgression of the commandment?

For this reason God forbade that which, when it had been committed, could be defended by no pretense of righteousness. And I dare to say that it is profitable to the proud to fall into some open and manifest sin, whereby they may become displeasing to themselves, who had already fallen by pleasing themselves. For more wholesomely was Peter displeasing to himself when he wept, than when he pleased himself when he presumed. And this the sacred psalm says: 'Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek your name, O Lord'—that is, that you may please them who seek your name, who had pleased themselves by seeking their own. CHAPTER XIV.

On the pride of the transgressor, which was worse than the transgression itself. But there is a worse and more damnable pride, by which even in manifest sins a refuge of excuse is sought; as did those first human beings, of whom both she said: 'The serpent seduced me, and I ate,' and he said: 'The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.' Nowhere here does there sound a petition for pardon, nowhere an imploring of remedy. For although these did not, like Cain, deny what they had committed, yet pride still seeks to refer to another what it has wrongly done: the woman's pride to the serpent, the man's pride to the woman. But it is accusation rather than excuse, where the divine commandment has been openly transgressed.

For they did not commit this thing any the less because the woman did it at the serpent's persuasion, and the man at the woman's offering—as though anything ought to have been preferred to God, in whom one should either have believed or to whom one should have yielded. CHAPTER XV. On the justice of the retribution which the first human beings received for their disobedience. Since, therefore, God was despised—who had commanded, who had created, who had made man to His own image, who had set him above the other animals, who had placed him in paradise, who had furnished him with an abundance of all things and of salvation, who had not burdened him with precepts many, or great, or difficult, but had supported him with one most brief and most light precept unto the wholesomeness of obedience, by which He reminded that creature, for whom a free servitude was expedient, that He was its Lord:

a just condemnation followed, and such a condemnation that man, who by keeping the commandment would have been even in the flesh spiritual, became even in mind carnal; and he who by his pride had pleased himself was by God's justice given over to himself; not so as to be in his own power in every respect, but, dissenting even from himself, under him to whom by sinning he consented, he might lead, in place of the liberty he coveted, a hard and miserable servitude—dead in spirit willingly, and about to die in body unwillingly; a deserter of eternal life, condemned also to eternal death, unless grace should deliver him. Whoever thinks such a condemnation either excessive or unjust certainly does not know how to measure how great the iniquity was in sinning, where there was such great facility for not sinning.

For just as Abraham's great obedience is not without reason proclaimed, because a most difficult thing was commanded—that he should slay his son—so in paradise the disobedience was so much the greater inasmuch as what was commanded was of no difficulty. And just as the obedience of the second man is the more praiseworthy in that He became 'obedient unto death,' so the disobedience of the first man is the more detestable in that he became disobedient unto death. For where the penalty of disobedience set forth is great, and the thing commanded by the Creator is easy, who can sufficiently explain how great an evil it is not to obey in an easy matter, and at the command of so great a power, and under the threat of so great a punishment?

Finally, to say it briefly, in the penalty of that sin what was repaid for disobedience except disobedience? For what other misery of man is there than his own disobedience against his very self, so that, since he would not what he could, he now wills what he cannot? For in paradise, although before sin he could not do all things, yet whatever he could not do, he did not will; and therefore he could do all that he willed; but now, as we recognize in his offspring, and as the divine Scripture testifies: 'Man has become like to vanity.' For who can count how many things he wills which he cannot do, while to himself—that is, to his own will—his own mind, and his flesh, which is inferior to it, does not submit?

For even against his will the mind is often disturbed, and the flesh suffers pain and grows old and dies, and whatever else we suffer which we would not suffer unwillingly, if our nature in every way and in all its parts obeyed our will. But indeed the flesh suffers something whereby it is not permitted to serve. What does it matter from what cause, so long as by the justice of the dominating God, whom being subject we refused to serve, our flesh, which had been subject to us, by not serving becomes troublesome to us—though we, by not serving God, were able to be troublesome to ourselves, not to Him? For He does not stand in need of our service as we of the service of the body, and therefore what we receive is our own penalty, not His, for what we have done.

Furthermore, the pains which are called pains of the flesh are pains of the soul in the flesh and from the flesh. For what does the flesh by itself, without the soul, either feel as pain or desire? But what is said to be desired or grieved over by the flesh is either the man himself, as we have argued, or something of the soul which the suffering of the flesh affects—whether harsh, so as to cause pain, or gentle, so as to cause pleasure. But the pain of the flesh is only an offense of the soul from the flesh and a certain dissent from its suffering, just as the pain of the mind, which is called sadness, is a dissent from those things which have happened to us against our will. But sadness is for the most part preceded by fear, which is itself also in the soul, not in the flesh.

But the pain of the flesh is not preceded by any fear, as it were, of the flesh, which might be felt in the flesh before the pain. Pleasure, however, is preceded by a certain appetite which is felt in the flesh as its desire, such as hunger and thirst, and that which in the genitals is more usually named lust, though this is a general term for every desire. For the ancients defined even anger itself to be nothing else than the lust of avenging; although sometimes a man, where there is no sense of vengeance, is even angry at inanimate things, and being angry dashes down the pen that writes badly, or breaks the reed-pen.

But even this, though more irrational, is yet a certain lust of avenging—as it were, so to speak, a kind of shadow of retribution, that those who do evil should suffer evil. There is, then, a lust of avenging, which is called anger; there is a lust of having money, which is avarice; there is a lust of conquering in whatever way, which is obstinacy; there is a lust of boasting, which is called vainglory. There are many and varied lusts, of which some have even their own proper names, while others do not. For who could easily say what is to be called the lust of dominating, which yet, that it prevails greatly in the souls of tyrants, even the civil wars bear witness? CHAPTER XVI.

On the evil of lust, whose name, though it agrees with many vices, is yet properly attributed to the motions of obscene heat. Since, therefore, there are lusts of many things, yet when lust is spoken of without any addition of what thing the lust is for, scarcely anything is wont to come to mind except that by which the obscene parts of the body are aroused. And this lust claims for itself not only the whole body, nor only outwardly, but even inwardly, and moves the whole man, with the soul's affection joined and mingled at once with the appetite of the flesh, so that there follows a pleasure than which there is none greater among the pleasures of the body; to such a degree that, at the very moment of time when its climax is reached, almost the entire keenness and as it were vigilance of thought is overwhelmed.

But what friend of wisdom and of holy joys, leading the conjugal life—yet, as the apostle admonished, 'knowing how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the disease of desire, like the Gentiles also who know not God'—would not prefer, if he could, to beget children without this lust, so that even in this office of producing offspring the members created for this work might serve his mind, just as the other members severally distributed to their own tasks, being moved by the bidding of the will, not incited by the heat of lust? But not even the very lovers of this pleasure, whether toward conjugal embraces or toward the uncleannesses of shameful deeds, are moved when they will;

but sometimes that motion is importunate when no one demands it, and sometimes it deserts the one who craves, and while in the mind desire is burning, in the body it grows cold; and thus in a wondrous manner lust does not serve, not only the will to generate, but even the lust for wantonness; and although for the most part it opposes the mind that would restrain it, sometimes it is divided even against itself, and, having aroused the mind, in arousing the body it does not follow its own self. CHAPTER XVII. On the nakedness of the first human beings, which after sin they saw to be shameful and a cause for shame.

Rightly is one most ashamed of this lust, and rightly are those very members, which it moves or does not move by a certain right of their own, so to speak, not at all according to our choice, called 'shameful parts,' which they were not before the sin of man. For, as it is written: 'They were naked, and were not confounded'—not that their nakedness was unknown to them, but because shameful nakedness did not yet exist, since lust did not yet move those members against their choice, nor did the flesh as it were by its own disobedience bear witness to rebuke man's disobedience. For they were not created blind, as the unlearned crowd supposes; since indeed he saw the animals to which he gave names, and of her it is read:

'The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes to behold.' Their eyes, then, were open, but not opened to this—that is, not attentive—that they might recognize what was bestowed on them by the garment of grace, when their members did not know how to resist the will. When this grace was removed, so that disobedience might be punished by a reciprocal penalty, there arose in the motion of the body a certain shameless novelty, whence nakedness became indecent, and it made them attentive and rendered them confounded. Hence it is that, after they had violated by open transgression the commandment of God, it is written of them: 'And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves girdles.'

'The eyes of both were opened,' it says—not to seeing, for they saw even before, but to discerning between the good which they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen. Whence also that very tree, because it would bring about this discernment if it were touched for eating against the prohibition, received its name from that very thing, so that it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when the trouble of sickness has been experienced, the pleasantness of health becomes also more evident. They knew, then, that they were naked—stripped, that is, of that grace by which it came about that the nakedness of the body confounded them by no law of sin resisting their mind.

This, then, they came to know, which they would more happily have not known, if, believing and obeying God, they had not committed that which would compel them to experience what infidelity and disobedience would harm. Accordingly, confounded by the disobedience of their own flesh, as by a witness of the penalty of their own disobedience, they sewed fig leaves and made themselves girdles—that is, coverings for the genitals. For some translators have put 'coverings' (succinctoria). Moreover, 'campestria' is indeed a Latin word, but derived from this, that the young men who exercised naked in the field (campus) covered their shameful parts; whence those who are thus girded the common people call 'campestrati.'

What, then, lust was shamelessly moving against the will that had been condemned by the guilt of disobedience, modesty was modestly covering. From this, all nations, since they are descended from that stock, hold so deeply the implanted instinct to veil the shameful parts that certain barbarians do not have those parts of the body bared even in the baths, but wash with their coverings on. Through the shady solitudes of India also, when certain men philosophize naked—whence they are named gymnosophists—they nevertheless apply coverings to the genitals, though they go without them over the rest of their members. CHAPTER XVIII. On the shame of intercourse, not only common but even conjugal.

The very act, moreover, which is accomplished by such lust, not only in every kind of fornication, where hiding-places are sought in order to escape human judgment, but even in the use of harlots, a shameful thing which the earthly city has made lawful — even though what is done is something that no law of that city punishes — yet even this lust, although permitted and unpunished, shuns the public gaze; and the brothels themselves, by a natural sense of shame, have provided for secrecy. Unchastity could more easily dispense with the bonds of prohibition than shamelessness could remove the lurking-places of that foulness. But this baseness even the base themselves call baseness; and though they are its lovers, they do not dare to be its parading exhibitors. What of this?

Marital intercourse, which according to the prescriptions of the marriage tablets is performed for the begetting of children — does not even this, although it is lawful and honourable, seek out a chamber removed from witnesses? Does not the bridegroom, before he even begins to caress his bride, send out of doors all the servants, and even the groomsmen, and whomsoever any kind of relationship had permitted to enter? And since, as 'the greatest author of Roman eloquence' himself says, all rightly-done deeds wish to be set in the light — that is, they desire to be known — this rightly-done deed so desires to be known that nevertheless it blushes to be seen. For who does not know what husbands and wives do between themselves in order that children may be begotten? Since indeed, that this may be done, wives are taken with such great festivity;

and yet when that is being done from which children are born, not even the children themselves, if any have already been born from it, are permitted to be witnesses. So this rightly-done deed seeks the light of minds for its being known, yet shrinks from the light of eyes. Whence comes this, except that what is by nature seemly is so done that what is shameful accompanies it by way of penalty? CHAPTER XIX. That the elements of anger and lust, which in man are moved so viciously that they need to be restrained by the bridle of wisdom, did not exist in that soundness of nature before sin.

Hence it is that even those philosophers who came nearer to the truth confessed that anger and lust are vicious parts of the soul, because they are moved turbidly and inordinately even toward things which wisdom forbids to be perpetrated, and therefore have need of a governing mind and reason. This part of the soul they declare to be the third, set as it were in a certain citadel to rule those others, so that, while it commands and they serve, justice may be preserved in man from every part of the soul.

These parts, therefore — which even in the wise and temperate man they admit to be vicious, so that the mind by checking and restraining must bridle them and call them back from those things toward which they are unjustly moved, and permit them only toward those things which are granted by the law of wisdom (as anger toward the exercise of just correction, as lust toward the office of propagating offspring) — these parts, I say, were not vicious in paradise before sin. For they were not moved toward anything contrary to a right will, so that it would be necessary to restrain them with reason as with governing reins.

For the fact that now they are so moved, and by those who live temperately and justly and piously are modified by being restrained and resisted — sometimes more easily, sometimes with more difficulty — this is certainly not health from nature, but languor from fault. But as to why a sense of shame does not so conceal the works of anger and of other affections in whatever is said and done, as it conceals the works of lust which are done by the genital members — what is the reason, except that in the other members of the body it is not the affections themselves that move them, but, when it has consented to them, the will, which utterly dominates in their use? For whoever utters a word in anger, or even strikes someone, could not do this unless the tongue and the hand were moved by the will commanding, as it were;

which members, even when there is no anger, are moved by the same will. But truly the genital parts of the body lust has in a manner so subjected to its own right that they cannot be moved if it is lacking, and unless it has arisen either of its own accord or when excited. This is what causes shame; this is what, by blushing, shuns the eyes of onlookers; and a man more readily endures a multitude of spectators when he is unjustly angry with another man, than the gaze of even one man when he is justly united with his wife. CHAPTER XX. On the utterly empty shamelessness of the Cynics. This those dog-like philosophers — that is, the Cynics — did not perceive, bringing forward against human modesty nothing other than a canine, that is, an unclean and shameless opinion?

namely, that since what is done with one's wife is just, one should not be ashamed to do it openly, nor avoid conjugal intercourse in any lane or public square. Yet natural modesty conquered the opinion of this error. For although they relate that Diogenes once did this in a boastful manner, thinking thus that his sect would become more renowned if his shamelessness were the more conspicuously fixed in the memory of men, nevertheless afterward the practice ceased among the Cynics; and modesty prevailed more, so that men blushed before men, than the error, by which men aspired to be like dogs.

Whence I rather suppose that he, or those who are reported to have done this, presented to the eyes of men, who did not know what was being done under the cloak, only the motions of those copulating, rather than that they could have carried that pleasure through to completion under the pressure of human gaze. For there the philosophers did not blush to be seen wishing to copulate, where the lust itself would blush to rise. And now we see that there are still Cynic philosophers; for these are they who not only wrap themselves in a cloak but also carry a club; yet none of them dares to do this, which if any had dared, they would have been overwhelmed — not to say with the blows of those stoning them, then certainly with the spittle of those spitting at them. Without any doubt, therefore, human nature is ashamed of this lust, and rightly ashamed.

For in that disobedience, which subjected the genital members of the body to their own motions alone and snatched them from the power of the will, it is sufficiently shown what was rendered in return to man for that first disobedience; which it was fitting should appear chiefly in that part by which is generated the very nature that was changed for the worse by that first and great sin. From the bond of which no one is delivered, except that what was perpetrated to the common ruin when all were in one, and avenged by the justice of God, be expiated in each one by the grace of God. CHAPTER XXI. On the blessing of multiplying human fecundity given before sin, which the transgression did not take away, though to it the disease of lust was added.

Far be it, therefore, that we should believe that those spouses placed in paradise were going to fulfil, through this lust — by which, in shame, they covered those same members — what God said in His blessing: Increase and multiply and fill the earth. For this lust arose after sin; after sin nature — not without shame, having lost the power to which the body was in every part subject — felt it, attended to it, blushed at it. But that blessing of marriage, that the married should increase and multiply and fill the earth, although it remained even in the transgressors, was nevertheless given before they transgressed, that it might be known that the procreation of children belongs to the glory of wedlock, not to the penalty of sin.

But now men, being utterly ignorant of that happiness which was in paradise, suppose that children could not have been begotten except through this, which they have experienced — that is, through lust, of which we see that even the honourableness of marriage itself blushes. Some, not accepting the divine Scriptures at all, where it is read that after sin there was shame at nakedness and that the shameful parts were covered, but unbelievingly mocking them; others, however, although they accept and honour them, yet do not wish that which was said — Increase and multiply — to be understood according to carnal fecundity, because something of the kind is also read concerning the soul: Thou shalt multiply me in my soul with strength; so that what follows in Genesis: