Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 15 part 4/4

But now the soul is ashamed that it is resisted by the body, which by nature is subjected to it as inferior. For in other affections, when it resists itself, it is therefore less ashamed, because, when it is conquered by itself, it conquers itself; even if inordinately and viciously, because it is conquered by those parts which ought to be subject to reason, yet by its own parts, and thus, as has been said, by itself. For when the soul in orderly fashion conquers itself, so that its irrational motions are subjected to the mind and reason — provided that itself also be subject to God — it is a matter of praise and virtue.

Yet it is less shameful when the soul does not obey itself from its own vicious parts, than when the body — which is another thing from it, and beneath it, and whose nature does not live without it — does not yield to it when willing and commanding. But when the other members are held by the command of the will, without which those members that are stirred against the will by lust cannot fulfil what they seek, chastity is preserved — the delight of sin being not lost, but not permitted.

This resistance, this repugnance, this strife of will and lust, or at any rate this insufficiency of lust for the will's sufficiency — without doubt, unless a culpable disobedience had been punished by a penal disobedience, the marriages in paradise would not have had; but all the members, like the rest, would in every way have served the will.

So the generative organ would sow its seed into this work as a hand now tills the ground; and although modesty stands in the way of our wishing to dispute more carefully on this matter, and compels us to beg pardon of chaste ears with a preface of honour, yet there would then have been no cause why this should be so. Rather, concerning all things that touched the senses in reflecting upon members of this kind, speech would have flowed freely without any fear of obscenity; nor would there have been words that were called obscene, but whatever was said thereof would have been as decent as when we speak of the other parts of the body. Whoever, then, comes to this writing in an unchaste spirit, let him flee the fault, not nature; let him mark the deeds of his own foulness, not the words of our necessity;

in these a chaste and religious reader or hearer most readily pardons me, while I refute unbelief, arguing not from faith in things untried, but from the perception of things experienced. For he reads these things without offence who does not shudder at the Apostle when he rebukes the horrible outrages of women, who exchanged the natural use for that use which is against nature; especially because we do not now, as he did, recall and rebuke a damnable obscenity, but in explaining, as far as we can, the workings of human generation, we nevertheless, as he did, avoid obscene words.

[XXIV] The man, then, would have sown his offspring, and the woman would have received it in her generative members, when such work was needed and as much as was needed, the members being moved by the will, not roused by lust. For we move at our bidding not only those members that are articulated with joined bones, such as the hands and feet and fingers, but also those that are relaxed with soft sinews: when we wish, we move them by shaking, and by stretching we extend them, and by twisting we bend them, and by tightening we harden them, as are those which the will moves, as far as it can, in the mouth and face.

Finally the lungs themselves, softest of all the viscera except the marrow, and for this reason enclosed within the cavity of the breast, serve the will of one who blows, breathes, speaks, cries out, or sings, for drawing in and letting out the breath and for uttering or modulating the voice, like the bellows of smiths or of organs. I pass over the fact that it is naturally implanted in certain animals that the covering with which the whole body is clothed, if they sense anything in any part of it that must be driven off, they move only there where they feel it, and by a trembling of the skin they shake off not only settled flies but even clinging spears. Because man cannot do this, could the Creator therefore not have granted it to the living creatures he willed?

So, then, man himself could have had the obedience even of his lower members, which by his own disobedience he lost. For it was not difficult for God so to fashion him that in his flesh even that which now is moved only by lust would then have been moved only by his will. For we know that the natures of certain men are far different from the rest, and by their very rarity are marvellous, since they do with their bodies at will some things that others can in no way do and, when heard, scarcely believe. For there are those who move their ears, either singly or both together. There are those who, with the head unmoved, bring down all their hair, as far as it covers the head, to the forehead, and draw it back when they wish.

There are those who, by lightly manipulating their inwards, bring up from what they have swallowed an incredibly great and varied amount, quite whole, whatever they please, as if from a bag. Some so imitate and reproduce the voices of birds and beasts and of any other men that, unless they be seen, they cannot be distinguished at all. Some produce from their lower parts, without any stench, so many rhythmic sounds at will that they seem to sing even from that quarter. I myself have known a man who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known that certain persons weep when they will, and pour forth tears abundantly. But that is far more incredible which very many of the brethren have experienced within most recent memory.

There was a certain presbyter named Restitutus in the parish of the church of Calama. Whenever it pleased him (and he was asked to do this by those who desired to know so marvellous a thing at first hand), at the imitation as it were of the wailing voices of any lamenting man, he would so withdraw himself from his senses and lie most like a dead man, that not only did he not in the least feel those who pinched and pricked him, but sometimes he was even burned by fire applied to him without any sensation of pain, save afterwards from the wound; and that it was not by resistance but by not feeling that his body did not move, was proved by this, that no breathing could be found in him, as in a dead man; yet he afterwards reported that he heard the voices of men, if they spoke more clearly, as though from far off.

Since, therefore, even now the body marvellously serves certain persons—though they lead this laborious life in corruptible flesh—in very many motions and affections beyond the accustomed measure of nature: what reason is there that we should not believe that, before the sin of disobedience and the punishment of corruption, the human members could have served the human will, for the propagation of offspring, without any lust? Man, then, was given over to himself, because he forsook God by pleasing himself; and being disobedient to God, he could not obey even himself. Hence the more evident misery, whereby man does not live as he wills. For if he lived as he willed, he would think himself blessed; yet not even so would he be, if he lived basely.

[XXV] And yet, if we attend more carefully, none but the blessed lives as he wills, and none is blessed but the just. But even the just man himself will not live as he wills, unless he shall have come to that place where he can in no way die, be deceived, or be offended, and where he shall be assured that it will ever be so. For this nature seeks, and it will not be fully and perfectly blessed until it has attained what it seeks. But now, which of men can live as he wills, when the very living is not in his power? For he wills to live, yet is compelled to die. How, then, does he live as he wills, who does not live as long as he wills? But if he should will to die, how can he live as he wills, who does not will to live? And if he wills to die, not because he is unwilling to live, but that after death he may live better:

then he does not yet live as he wills, but only when by dying he shall have arrived at that which he wills. But suppose he does live as he wills, because he has wrung from himself and commanded himself not to will what he cannot, and to will what he can (as Terence says: 'Since that cannot be done which you wish, wish for that which you can'): is he therefore blessed, because he is patiently wretched? For the blessed life, if it is not loved, is not possessed. Furthermore, if it is loved and possessed, it must needs be loved more excellently than all other things, since for its sake is to be loved whatever else is loved. Furthermore, if it is loved as much as it is worthy to be loved (for he is not blessed by whom the blessed life itself is not loved as it is worthy), it cannot be that he who so loves it should not will it to be eternal.

Then, therefore, it will be blessed, when it shall be eternal. [XXVI] Man, then, lived in paradise as he willed, so long as he willed what God had commanded; he lived enjoying God, from which good he was good; he lived without any want, having it in his power ever so to live. Food was at hand, that he might not hunger; drink, that he might not thirst; the tree of life, that old age might not dissolve him. Nothing of corruption in the body, or arising from the body, brought any troubles to any of his senses. No disease was feared from within, no blow from without. In the flesh the highest health, in the mind entire tranquillity. As in paradise there was no heat or cold, so in its inhabitant no offence to a good will arose from desire or fear.

There was nothing at all sad, nothing vainly glad. True joy was perpetuated from God, toward whom charity blazed from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned; and between the spouses there was a faithful fellowship of honourable love, a concord of vigilance in mind and body, and a keeping of the commandment without toil. Weariness did not fatigue the leisured, nor did sleep oppress the unwilling. In so great an ease of things and felicity of men, far be it that we should suspect that offspring could not be sown without the disease of lust; but those members would be moved by that nod of the will by which the rest are moved, and without the enticing goad of ardour, with tranquillity of soul and body and no corruption of integrity, the husband would flow into the bosom of the wife.

For it is not to be disbelieved merely because it cannot be proved by experience, that at that time, when those parts of the body were moved not by turbulent heat but by spontaneous power applying itself as need required, the male seed could have been introduced into the womb of the wife with the integrity of the female generative organ preserved, just as now, with that same integrity preserved, the flux of menstrual blood can be discharged from the womb of a virgin. For by the same way that this can be expelled, that could be injected. For as, to give birth, it would be not the groan of pain but the impulse of maturity that relaxed the female inwards, so, to impregnate and conceive, it would be not the appetite of lust but a voluntary exercise that joined the two natures together.

We now speak of things that shame us, and therefore, although—before there was shame of them—we conjecture as best we can what they could have been like, yet it is necessary that our discussion be curbed rather by the modesty that calls us back than aided by the eloquence which is scarcely at our command. For since not even those who could have experienced it have experienced what I speak of—because, sin forestalling them, they deserved exile from paradise before they came together by tranquil choice in the work of sowing offspring—how now, when these things are recalled, does anything present itself to human senses except the experience of turbulent lust, not the conjecture of a placid will? Hence it is that shame hinders the speaker, though reason does not fail the thinker.

Nevertheless, the almighty God, the supreme and supremely good Creator of all natures, the helper and rewarder of good wills, but the forsaker and condemner of evil ones, the orderer of both, did not lack a counsel by which he might fill up the fixed number of citizens predestined in his wisdom for his City, even from the condemned human race—no longer discerning them by their merits, since the whole mass has been condemned as it were in its vitiated root, but by grace; and showing, both in those set free and in those not set free, what he bestows upon the freed.

For it is not by a debt owed, but by a gratuitous goodness, that each one then acknowledges himself rescued from evils, when he is made exempt from the fellowship of those men with whom he would justly have a common punishment. Why, then, should God not create those whom he foreknew would sin, seeing that in them and from them he could show both what their fault deserved and what his grace bestowed, and that under such a Creator and Disposer the perverse disorder of the offenders would not pervert the right order of things? [XXVII] Accordingly, sinners, both angels and men, do nothing whereby the great works of the Lord may be hindered—works sought out unto all his wills—since he who providently and omnipotently distributes to each his own knows how to use well not only the good but even the evil.

And by this means, since the evil angel had, for the merit of his first evil will, been so condemned and hardened that he no longer had a good will, why should God, using him well, not permit the first man—who had been created upright, that is, of good will—to be tempted by him? Seeing that he was so constituted that, if the good man trusted in God's help, he would conquer the evil angel; but if, pleasing himself in pride, he forsook God his Creator and helper, he would be conquered—having good merit in a will made right by divine aid, but evil merit in a perverse will forsaking God.

For even to trust in God's help he could not indeed do without God's help; yet he did not for that reason lack the power to withdraw, by pleasing himself, from these benefits of divine grace. For as, to live in this flesh, it is not in our power to do so without the aid of nourishment, but it is in our power not to live in it, as those do who kill themselves: so, to live well, it was not, even in paradise, in his power to do so without God's help; but it was in his power to live ill—though with a blessedness that would not endure and a most just penalty to follow. Since, therefore, God was not ignorant of this coming fall of man, why should he not allow him to be tempted by the malignity of the envious angel?

in no way indeed uncertain that he would be conquered, yet none the less foreknowing that this same devil was to be conquered, to the greater glory of the saints, by that man's seed aided by his grace. Thus it came to pass that nothing of things to come lay hidden from God, nor did he by foreknowing compel anyone to sin; and by the ensuing experience he demonstrated to the rational creature, angelic and human, what difference there is between each one's own presumption and his own protection. For who would dare to believe or to say that it was not in God's power that neither angel nor man should fall? But he chose rather not to take this away from their power, and thus to show both how much their pride availed for evil and how much his grace for good.

[XXVIII] Two loves, then, have made two cities: namely, self-love unto the contempt of God the earthly, but the love of God unto the contempt of self the heavenly. The one, in short, glories in itself; the other in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but for the other God, the witness of conscience, is the greatest glory. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God: 'My glory, and the lifter up of my head.' In the one the lust of domination dominates over its princes or over the nations it subjugates; in the other men serve one another in charity, both the rulers by counselling and the subjects by obeying. The one loves its own strength in its mighty ones; the other says to its God: 'I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.'

And therefore in the former its wise men, living according to man, pursued either the goods of the body or of their own soul or of both; or those who could know God did not honour him as God nor give thanks, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise (that is, exalting themselves in their own wisdom, with pride lording it over them) they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed beasts and of serpents (for to the worship of such idols they were either the leaders of the peoples or their followers), and they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.

But in the latter city there is no wisdom of man save piety, whereby the true God is rightly worshipped, looking for this as its reward in the fellowship of the saints—not only of men but also of angels—that God may be all in all.