A LETTER TO COUNT VALERIUS. To his lord, illustrious and deservedly most excellent, and in the love of Christ most dear son, Valerius: Augustine, greeting in the Lord. Whereas I had long been troubled that I had written several times and had merited no reply from your Sublimity, suddenly I received three letters from your Benignity:
one, not sent to me alone, by my fellow-bishop Vindemialis, and not long after, two by my fellow-presbyter Firmus. This holy man, joined to us — as you could learn from him — by a most intimate charity, by conversing much with us about your excellence and truthfully making known to us of what sort he had come to know you in the bowels of Christ, surpassed not only those letters which the aforesaid bishop or which he himself brought, but even those which we complained of not having received. And therefore his account of you was the sweeter to us, because he said those things which you yourself could not have written back even had I inquired, lest, contrary to what Holy Scripture forbids, you should become a proclaimer of your own praises.
And yet I too am afraid to write these things to you, lest I incur the suspicion of a flatterer, my lord, illustrious and deservedly most excellent and in the love of Christ most dear son. See, therefore, what delight and gladness it was to me to hear your praises in Christ — or rather, in you, the praises of Christ — from him who could neither deceive me because of his faith, nor be ignorant of these things because of his friendship with you.
But other things also, and from others — though not so many nor so certain — we nevertheless have heard: how sound and catholic your faith is, how pious your expectation of things to come, how great your love of God and of the brethren, how you are not proudly wise amid your lofty honours, nor set your hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, and are rich in good works; how your house is a rest and solace to the saints and a terror to the impious; how great is your care that no one lie in wait for the members of Christ, cloaked under the veil of the name of Christ, whether among His old or His more recent enemies; and how provident you are for the salvation of those same enemies, yet hostile to their error. These things and the like, as I said, we are wont to hear even from others;
but now, through the aforementioned brother, we have come to know these things more fully and more attested. Furthermore, concerning your conjugal chastity — that we might love and praise this too in you — what should we have heard, save from some intimate familiar of yours, who knew your life not on the surface but inwardly? Concerning this good of yours, then, this gift of God, it delights me also to speak with you more familiarly and somewhat at greater length. I know that I am no burden to you if I send something lengthy, whereby, in reading, you may be longer with us. For I have learned this too: that amid your many and great cares you read easily and gladly, and are quite delighted by our little works — even those which we have written to others — if any have been able to come into your hands.
How much more, then, that which is written to you, where I speak as though to one present, both do you deign to attend more attentively and to receive more gratefully! From this letter, therefore, proceed to the book which I have sent together with it, which will itself, at its very beginning, more conveniently make known to your Reverence both why it was written and why it was sent to you in particular. Book IV. TWO BOOKS ON MARRIAGE AND CONCUPISCENCE, TO COUNT VALERIUS. BOOK ONE. The new heretics, most beloved son Valerius, who contend that the medicine of Christ, by which sins are healed, is not necessary for little ones born of the flesh,
they most odiously cry out that we are condemners of marriage and of the divine work by which God creates men from males and females, because we say that those who are born of such union draw upon themselves original sin — of which the Apostle says: 'By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned' — and because we do not deny that these, of whatever sort of parents they are born, are still under the devil, unless they be born again in Christ and, by His grace, rescued from the power of darkness, be transferred into the kingdom of Him who willed not to be born of that same union of the two sexes.
Because, then, we say this — which is contained in the most ancient and firmest rule of the catholic faith — these asserters of a novel and perverse dogma, who say there is no sin in little ones that is washed away by the laver of regeneration, faithlessly or ignorantly calumniate us as though we condemned marriage, and as though we said that the work of God — that is, the man who is born of it — is the work of the devil; and they do not perceive that the good of marriage can no more be accused on account of the original evil which is drawn from it, than the evil of adulteries and fornications can be excused on account of the natural good which is born of it. For just as sin, whether drawn by little ones from this source or from that, is the work of the devil, so man, whether born from this source or from that, is the work of God.
The intention, therefore, of this book is this: that, as far as the Lord deigns to help us, we may distinguish the evil of carnal concupiscence — on account of which man, who is born through it, draws original sin — from the goodness of marriage. For this shameful concupiscence, which is shamelessly praised by the shameless, would not exist had man not first sinned; but marriage would exist even had no one sinned. For indeed the sowing of children would take place, without this disease, in a body of that life, without which it now cannot take place in this body of death. And why I have wished to write to you in particular on this matter, there are three chief causes, which I shall briefly make known. One is that, by Christ's gift, there is in you a great observance of conjugal chastity;
the second, that against these profane novelties, which we here resist by disputation, you have effectively resisted by your authority, in curbing and pressing them; the third, that I have learned that a certain piece of writing, composed by them, has come into your hands — which, although with most robust faith you laughed to scorn, it is nevertheless good that we should also know how to help by defending what we believe. For the Apostle Peter enjoins that we be ready for confession to everyone who asks of us a reason concerning our faith and hope; and the Apostle Paul: 'Let your speech,' he says, 'be seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man.' These are chiefly the things that have compelled me, that in this volume I might have with you such discourse as the Lord should deign to grant.
For it never pleased me to thrust something of my little works, to be read, upon any illustrious man conspicuous for so great a sublimity as you yourself are — especially one not now enjoying a leisured dignity, but still occupied with public and indeed military affairs — when he had not asked it of me, not so much diligently as impudently. If, therefore, I have now done any such thing, on account of the causes I have mentioned graciously pardon it, and bend a well-disposed mind to what follows. That conjugal chastity too is a gift of God, the most blessed Paul shows, where, speaking of this matter, he says: 'I would that all men were even as myself; but every one hath his proper gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that.'
Behold, he said that this too is a gift from God — though inferior to that continence in which he wished all to be as himself — yet a gift from God. Whence we understand that, when these things are enjoined that they be done, nothing else is shown than that there must be in us, for the receiving and having of them, also our own will; but when they are demonstrated to be gifts of God, we learn from whom they are to be sought, if they are not had, and to whom thanks are to be given, if they are had, and that our own wills avail too little for seeking, taking, and retaining these things, unless they be divinely assisted. What, then, do we say, when conjugal chastity is found even in certain impious persons?
Are they to be said to sin in this, that they misuse a gift of God, not referring it to the worship of Him from whom they received it? Or are these perhaps not even to be reckoned gifts of God, when unbelievers do them, according to the Apostle's sentence which says: 'Whatsoever is not of faith is sin'? But who would dare to say that a gift of God is sin? For the soul and the body and whatever goods are naturally implanted in soul and body — even in sinners — are gifts of God, since it is God, and not they themselves, who made these things; but concerning the things which they do it is said: 'Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.'
When, therefore, men without faith do these things which seem to pertain to conjugal chastity — whether seeking to please men, either themselves or others, or in these matters which they viciously covet avoiding human troubles, or serving demons — sins are not restrained, but sins are conquered by other sins. Far be it, then, that he be truly called chaste who does not keep faith with his wife in wedlock for the sake of the true God. The coupling, therefore, of male and female for the sake of begetting is the natural good of marriage.
But he misuses this good who uses it bestially, so that his intention is in the pleasure of lust, not in the will of propagation — although in not a few animals devoid of reason, as in most birds, a certain confederacy as it were of unions is kept, and the social skill of nest-building, and in turn the divided times of brooding the eggs and the alternating labour of nourishing the young, make them seem, when they couple, to be engaged rather in the business of continuing their kind than of satisfying lust. Of which two things, the former is, in the beast, like the man; the latter, in the man, like the beast.
But that which I said pertains to the nature of marriage — that male and female be joined in the fellowship of begetting, and thus not defraud one another, just as every fellowship naturally does not want a fraudulent partner — this manifest good, nevertheless, when unbelievers have it, because they use it unbelievingly, they turn into evil and sin. In that same manner, then, the faithful marriages of believers turn even that concupiscence of the flesh — by which the flesh lusts against the spirit — into a use of righteousness. For they have the intention of begetting those to be regenerated, so that those who are born of them as children of the world may be born again as children of God.
Wherefore those who beget children not with this intention, this will, this end — that they may transfer them from the members of the first man into the members of Christ — but, as unbelieving parents, glory in unbelieving offspring, even if they be of such great observance that, according to the marriage tablets, they lie together only for the sake of procreating children, there is not in them true conjugal chastity. For since chastity is a virtue, to which the vice contrary is unchastity, and since all virtues — even those which operate through the body — dwell in the soul, how by true reasoning is the body asserted to be chaste, when the soul itself commits fornication away from the true God? Which fornication that holy Psalm accuses, where it says: 'For behold, they that put themselves far from Thee shall perish;'
Thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring from Thee.' True chastity, therefore — whether conjugal, or widowed, or virginal — is not to be so called, save that which is devoted to true faith. For since by right judgment consecrated virginity is preferred to marriage, what Christian of sober mind would not set even Christian catholic wives who have had but one husband before not only the Vestals, but even before heretical virgins? So greatly avails faith, of which the Apostle says: 'Whatsoever is not of faith is sin,' and of which it is likewise written to the Hebrews: 'Without faith it is impossible to please God.' Since these things are so, assuredly they err who, when carnal lust is blamed, suppose that marriage is condemned, as though this disease were from wedlock and not from sin.
Were not those first spouses, whose marriage God blessed, saying: 'Increase and multiply,' naked and not ashamed? Why, then, after sin, was there confusion arising from those members, unless because there arose there an unseemly motion, which, had men not sinned, marriage would without doubt not have had? Or was it perhaps, as certain persons suppose — because they attend too little diligently to what they read — that the first men were created blind, like dogs, and (what is more absurd) that not, like dogs, by growing, but by sinning, they acquired sight? Far be it to believe this. But that which moves those who think this is that which is read: 'Taking of its fruit, she ate; and she gave to her husband with her, and they ate. And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.'
Hence it is that those who understand too little suppose that beforehand their eyes were closed, because Divine Scripture testifies that these were then opened. But surely did Hagar too, the handmaid of Sarah, when — her son thirsting and weeping — she opened her eyes and saw a well, have her eyes closed before? Or those two disciples, after the Lord's resurrection, were they walking on the way with Him with closed eyes — of whom the Gospel speaks, that in the breaking of bread their eyes were opened, and they knew Him? That, then, which is written of the first men:
'The eyes of both were opened,' we ought to understand as their having been made attentive to gazing at and recognizing what new thing had happened in their body — a body which assuredly lay subject, exposed and known, daily to their open eyes. Otherwise, how could Adam, with closed eyes, have imposed names upon all the terrestrial and flying animals brought to him — which he would not do save by distinguishing, and could not distinguish save by seeing? How, finally, was the woman herself shown to him, when he said: 'This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh'?
Finally, if anyone shall be so contentious as to say that he could have done these things not by seeing but by touching, what will he say of that which is there read — that the woman saw how fair to the eyes to behold was the tree of which she was about to take the forbidden food? They were, then, naked and not ashamed — not because they did not see, but because they had felt nothing in those members, which they saw, whereby they should be ashamed. For it is not said, 'They were both naked and did not know it,' but, 'They were not ashamed.' For since nothing had preceded that was not lawful, nothing had followed of which they should be ashamed.
There, man — having first transgressed God's law — began to have in his members another law warring against his mind, and felt the evil of his own disobedience, when he found the disobedience of his own flesh most deservedly requited to him. For such an opening of the eyes had the serpent by seduction promised, namely, to the knowing of something which it were better not to know. Then indeed man felt within himself what he had done; then he distinguished evil from good, not by lacking it, but by suffering it through and through. For it was unjust that he should be obeyed by his servant — that is, by his body — who had not obeyed his own Lord.
For what is it that the eyes, the lips, the tongue, the hands, the feet, the bendings of the back, the neck, and the sides — that they may be moved to their fitting works — are placed in our power, when we have a body free and sound from impediments; but, when it comes to sowing children, the members created for this work do not serve at the nod of the will, but one waits for lust, as though it were of its own right, to stir them, and sometimes it does not act though the mind wills, while sometimes it acts even when the mind is unwilling? Would not the liberty of the human will hereby blush, that by despising God who commands it lost its own command even over its own members?
But where could it more fittingly be shown that human nature was depraved by the deserving of disobedience than in these disobedient parts, from which, through succession, that very nature subsists? For it is on this account that these parts of the body are properly called by the name of 'nature.' This motion, therefore — unseemly precisely because disobedient — when those first men had felt it in their flesh and had blushed at their nakedness, they covered those same members with fig-leaves, so that at least by the choice of those ashamed there might be veiled what was not moved by the choice of the willing; and, since what unseemly aroused them was a shame, by covering there might come to be what was seemly.
Because, then, not even by the adjoining of this evil could the good of marriage perish, the imprudent suppose that this is not an evil, but pertains to that good. But it is distinguished — not only by subtle reasoning, but even by the most common natural judgment — which appeared even in those first men and is held today by married persons. For what they afterward did by propagation, this is the good of wedlock; but what they earlier covered in confusion, this is the evil of concupiscence, which everywhere shuns the gaze and, in its shame, seeks secrecy. Accordingly, marriage — because out of that evil it too makes something good — glories; because it cannot come to pass without that evil, it blushes.
Just as if someone with a lamed foot should reach some good even by limping, and neither on account of the evil of the limping is that arrival evil, nor on account of the good of that arrival is the limping good — so neither ought we, on account of the evil of lust, to condemn marriage, nor, on account of the good of marriage, to praise lust. For this is indeed that disease of which the Apostle, speaking even to married believers, says: 'For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the disease of desire, even as the Gentiles who know not God.'
Therefore not only must the faithful married man not make use of another's vessel — which those do who covet other men's wives — but he must also know that he is not to possess even his own vessel in the disease of carnal concupiscence. This is not to be so understood as though the Apostle had forbidden conjugal — that is, lawful and honourable — intercourse; but rather that this intercourse, which would have had nothing of morbid lust attached to it if free choice had not perished in it through the sin that went before (whereas now it does have that attached to it), belongs not to the will but to necessity, without which, nevertheless, the fruit of that very will cannot be attained in the procreation of children.
This will, in the marriages of the faithful, is not bounded by the aim that children may be born into this world as those who will pass away, but that they may be reborn in Christ as those who will abide. If this comes about, there will be from the marriage the reward of full felicity; but if it does not come about, there will be for the spouses the peace of a good will. With this intention of heart, whoever possesses his own vessel — that is, his wife — assuredly possesses it not in the disease of desire, like the Gentiles who know not God, but in sanctification and honour, like the faithful who hope in God.
For a man uses that evil of concupiscence, and is not overcome by it, when he bridles and restrains it as it seethes with disordered and unseemly motions, and relaxes and applies it only with a view to offspring — that he may carnally beget those who are to be spiritually regenerated, not that he may subject the spirit to the flesh in sordid servitude. That the holy fathers, from Abraham and before Abraham — to whom God bears witness that they were pleasing to Him — thus made use of their wives, no Christian ought to doubt, since to certain individuals it was even granted to have several wives, where the reason was the multiplying of offspring, not the seeking of varied pleasure.
For if that multiplicity of wives had not been displeasing to the God of our fathers — who is also our God — on the ground that lust might thereby more abundantly disport itself, then holy women likewise would each have served several husbands. But if any woman did so, what would have driven her, save the foulness of concupiscence, to have several husbands, since by such licence she would not have had more children? Yet that it pertains rather to the good of marriage to be not one man and many women, but one man and one woman, the very first union of spouses, made by divine act, sufficiently indicates — so that from that source marriages might take their beginning, where the example might be regarded as more honourable. But as the human race went forward, good women were joined to certain good men, several to each.
Whence it appears that the one course sought rather the modesty of dignity, while the other permitted the nature of fecundity. For rule too, by nature, can more readily belong to one over many than to many over one. Nor can it be doubted that by the natural order men should have rule over women rather than women over men. Observing this, the Apostle says: 'The head of the woman is the man,' and: 'Wives, be subject to your husbands'; and the Apostle Peter says: 'even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.' And although this is so — that the nature of things having principle loves singularity, whereas we more readily see plurality among things subordinate — nevertheless several women would never lawfully be joined to one man, unless from this more children were born.
Whence, if one woman should lie with several men, since for her this brings no multiplying of offspring but only the frequenting of lust, she cannot be a wife but a harlot. And since indeed not only fecundity, whose fruit is in offspring, nor only chastity, whose bond is faith, but also a certain sacrament of marriage is commended to the faithful who are married — whence the Apostle says: 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church' — the reality of this sacrament is, without doubt, that the man and woman joined in wedlock should remain inseparably as long as they live, and that it should not be lawful, except for the cause of fornication, for one spouse to be put away from the other.
For this is preserved in Christ and the Church, that the living, joined with the living, may in eternity be separated by no divorce. So great is the observance of this sacrament in the city of our God, on His holy mountain — that is, in the Church of Christ, among all the faithful who are married, who are without doubt members of Christ — that, although women marry and wives are taken for the sake of procreating children, it is not lawful to forsake even a barren spouse in order that another, being fruitful, may be taken.
But if anyone should do so, he is not, by the law of this world — where, when a bill of divorce intervenes, it is permitted without crime to contract new marriages with others (which the Lord testifies that even holy Moses allowed the Israelites because of their hardness of heart) — but by the law of the Gospel he is guilty of adultery; as is she too, if she should marry another. So far do the rights of marriage, once entered into between the living, endure, that those who have been separated from one another are rather spouses to each other than they are to those to whom they have attached themselves afterward. For with these others they would not be adulterers, unless they remained spouses to each other. Finally, once the husband is dead with whom there was a true marriage, a true marriage can be made with him with whom before there was adultery.
Thus there remains between the living something conjugal, which neither separation nor union with another can take away. But it remains to the harm of guilt, not to the bond of covenant — just as the soul of an apostate, as it were withdrawing from marriage with Christ, even when faith is lost does not lose the sacrament of faith which it received in the laver of regeneration. For it would without doubt be restored to him should he return, if he had lost it in departing. He who has departed, however, has this to the heaping up of punishment, not to the meriting of reward. But as for those to whom it has been pleasing, by consent, to abstain forever from the use of carnal concupiscence, far be it that the conjugal bond between them should be broken;
nay, it will be all the firmer, the more they have entered upon those compacts with each other which must be kept the more dearly and the more harmoniously, not by the pleasurable bindings of bodies but by the voluntary affections of souls. For it was not deceitfully that it was said by the angel to Joseph: 'Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife.' She is called wife from the first faith of betrothal, whom he had neither known nor was to know by intercourse; nor had the appellation 'wife' perished, nor had it remained false, where there had been and was to be no commingling of flesh whatever. For that virgin was on this account more holily and more wondrously pleasing to her husband, in that, being fruitful without a husband, she was unlike him in offspring yet equal to him in faith.
On account of which faithful marriage, both were counted worthy to be called the parents of Christ — and not only she as mother, but also he as father, being as it were the husband of His mother — both in mind, not in flesh; yet whether he was father in mind alone or she mother both in mind and in flesh, both were nevertheless parents of His lowliness, not of His loftiness; of His weakness, not of His divinity. For the Gospel does not lie, where it is read: 'And His father and mother were marvelling at those things which were spoken concerning Him'; and in another place: 'And His parents went every year to Jerusalem'; likewise a little later: 'And His mother said unto Him: Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.'
But He, to show that He had a Father besides them, who begot Him without a mother, answered them: 'How is it that ye sought me? Knew ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' And again, lest by this saying He should be thought to have denied them as parents, the Evangelist, continuing, added: 'And they understood not the word which He spake unto them. And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.' To whom subject, if not to His parents? And who was subject, if not Jesus Christ, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God? Why then subject to those who were far below the form of God, unless because He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, of which form they were the parents?
But since she brought forth without his sowing, assuredly neither would both be parents even of that form of a servant, unless they were spouses to each other, even without the commingling of flesh. Whence too the series of generations, when the parents of Christ are commemorated by the linking of succession, ought rather to have been carried down, as indeed was done, to Joseph — lest in that marriage injury should be done to the male sex, which is certainly the stronger, since nothing was lost to the truth, because both Joseph and Mary were of the seed of David, from whom Christ was foretold to come. Thus every good of marriage was fulfilled in those parents of Christ: offspring, fidelity, sacrament. The offspring we recognize as the Lord Jesus Himself; fidelity, because there was no adultery; sacrament, because there was no divorce.