'When they had been lifted up' — as though first they were exalted and afterward cast down; but 'while they were being lifted up,' then they were cast down. For the very being lifted up is already a being cast down. Wherefore, that now in the City of God, and for the City of God on pilgrimage in this present age, humility is especially commended, and is especially proclaimed in her King, who is Christ, while the vice of exaltation contrary to this virtue is taught by the sacred writings especially to hold dominion in His adversary, who is the devil — this surely is that great difference by which the two cities of which we speak are distinguished: the one, namely, the society of pious men, the other of the impious, each with the angels belonging to it, in which the one has love of God preceding, the other love of self.
Therefore, in the manifest and open sin, where that was done which God had forbidden to be done, the devil would not have caught man had man not already begun to please himself. For hence too it gave delight, that which was said: 'You shall be as gods.' Which they could better have been by cleaving through obedience to the supreme and true beginning, than by their own pride existing as their own beginning. For created gods are gods not by their own truth but by participation in the true God. But by seeking more, he becomes less, who, while he chooses to be sufficient for himself, falls away from Him who truly suffices for him.
That evil, then, by which, when a man is pleased with himself as though he too were light, he turns away from that Light which, had he been pleased with It, would have made him also to be light — that evil, I say, preceded in secret, so that this evil, which was committed in the open, might follow. For true is that which is written: 'Before ruin the heart is exalted, and before glory it is humbled.' That ruin which occurs in the hidden place precedes the ruin that occurs in the manifest, while the former is not accounted a ruin at all. For who thinks self-exaltation to be ruin, when there is already present that defect by which the Most High is forsaken? And who does not see it to be ruin, when there occurs an evident and unquestionable transgression of the commandment?
For this reason God forbade that thing which, once it had been committed, could by no imagination of righteousness be defended. And I dare to say that it is profitable for the proud to fall into some open and manifest sin, whereby they may become displeasing to themselves, who had already fallen by being pleased with themselves. For more wholesomely was Peter displeased with himself when he wept, than when he was pleased with himself when he presumed. This too the sacred psalm declares: 'Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek Thy name, O Lord' — that is, that Thou mayest please them who seek Thy name, who had pleased themselves by seeking their own. [XIV] But there is a worse and more damnable pride, whereby even in manifest sins a refuge of excuse is sought; as with those first men, of whom Scripture said this:
'The serpent deceived me, and I did eat'; and he said: 'The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' Nowhere here is there any sound of a plea for pardon, nowhere any imploring of remedy. For although these two do not, like Cain, deny what they have committed, yet pride still seeks to refer elsewhere the wrong it has done: the woman's pride upon the serpent, the man's pride upon the woman. But it is rather accusation than any true excuse, where there is an open transgression of the divine commandment. For they did not on that account fail to do it — because the woman committed it at the serpent's persuading, the man at the woman's imparting — as though anything ought to have been preferred to God, in whom they should either have believed or to whom they should have yielded.
[XV] Because, then, God was despised who was commanding — He who had created man, who had made him after His own image, who had set him above the other animals, who had placed him in paradise, who had furnished him with abundance of all things and of health, who had burdened him with commandments neither many nor great nor difficult, but had supported him with one most brief and most light unto the wholesomeness of obedience, whereby He was reminding that creature, for whom a free servitude was expedient, that He Himself was Lord — a just condemnation followed, and such a condemnation that man, who by keeping the commandment would have been destined to be spiritual even in the flesh, became carnal even in the mind; and he who by his own pride had been pleased with himself, was by God's justice given over to himself;
yet not so as to be in every way in his own power, but, dissenting even from himself, he should under him to whom he consented by sinning, instead of the liberty he had coveted, lead a hard and wretched 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. Whosoever thinks a condemnation of this kind either excessive or unjust, assuredly knows not how to measure how great was the iniquity in sinning, where there was so great a facility of not sinning. For just as Abraham's obedience is not without reason proclaimed great, because a most difficult thing was commanded — that he should slay his son —
so in paradise the disobedience was the greater, the more that which was commanded was of no difficulty at all. And just as the obedience of the second Man is the more to be praised, in that He was made obedient even unto death, so the disobedience of the first man is the more to be detested, in that he was made disobedient even unto death. For where the great penalty of disobedience is set forth and an easy thing is commanded by the Creator, who can sufficiently unfold how great an evil it is not to obey in an easy matter, at the command of so great a power, and under so great a threatened punishment? In short, to put it briefly, in the penalty of that sin, what was requited to disobedience but disobedience?
For what other misery is there for man than his own disobedience against himself, so that, because he would not do what he could, he now wills what he cannot? For in paradise, even though 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 divine Scripture testifies, 'man has become like unto vanity.' For who can count how many things he wills which he cannot, while his own self — that is, his very mind, and his flesh which is inferior to it — does not obey his own will?
For even against his will his mind is oftentimes disturbed, and his flesh suffers pain and grows old and dies, and whatever else we suffer which we would not suffer against our will, if our nature in every way and in all its parts obeyed our will. But it is objected: the flesh suffers something whereby it is not permitted to serve. What does it matter whence, so long as, by the justice of God who rules us — whom being made subject we would not serve — our flesh, which had been made subject to us, becomes troublesome to us by not serving; although we, by not serving God, could be troublesome to ourselves, but not to Him? For He does not need our service, as we need the service of the body; and therefore what we receive is our own penalty, not His, for what we did.
Further, the pains which are called pains of the flesh are 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 when the flesh is said to desire or to feel pain, it is either the man himself, as we have discussed, or some part of the soul which the passion of the flesh affects — whether harsh, so as to cause pain, or gentle, so as to cause pleasure. But pain of the flesh is only an offence to the soul from the flesh, and a certain dissent from its passion, as pain of the mind, which is called sadness, is a dissent from those things which have befallen us against our will. But sadness is for the most part preceded by fear, which itself also is in the soul, not in the flesh.
But pain of the flesh is not preceded by any sort of fear of the flesh which is felt in the flesh before the pain. Pleasure, however, is preceded by a certain appetite which is felt in the flesh as its craving, such as hunger and thirst, and that which in the genital parts is more usually called lust — though this be the general term for all craving. 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 retribution, grows angry even at inanimate things, and, being angry, dashes down the pen that writes badly, or breaks the reed.
Yet this too, although more irrational, is nevertheless a certain lust of avenging, and a sort of shadow, so to speak, of retribution — that those who do ill should suffer ill. There is therefore a lust of avenging, which is called anger; there is a lust of possessing money, which is avarice; there is a lust of conquering in any way whatever, which is obstinacy; there is a lust of boasting, which is called vainglory. There are many and various lusts, of which some have even their own proper names, but some have not. For who could readily say what is the name of the lust of domineering, which nevertheless prevails exceedingly in the minds of tyrants, as even civil wars bear witness?
[XVI] Since, therefore, there are lusts of many things, yet when 'lust' is spoken of, and it is not added of what thing the lust is, scarcely anything is wont to occur to the mind except that by which the obscene parts of the body are excited. This lust, moreover, claims for itself not only the whole body, nor only externally, but also internally, and moves the whole man, the affection of the soul being joined and mingled together with the appetite of the flesh, so that there follows a pleasure than which there is none greater among the pleasures of the body; so that at the very moment of time in which it comes to its climax, well-nigh all the keenness and, as it were, the watchfulness of thought is overwhelmed.
But what friend of wisdom and of holy joys, leading a conjugal life but, as the Apostle admonished, 'knowing how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the disease of desire, as also the Gentiles who know not God' — would not prefer, if he could, to beget children without this lust; so that even in this office of propagating offspring, the members created for this work might, just like the other members each assigned to their own works, serve his mind, moved by the beck of his will, not incited by the heat of lust? But not even the very lovers of this pleasure are moved, whether to conjugal intercourse or to the uncleannesses of shameful deeds, when they will;
but sometimes that motion is importunate when no one demands it, and sometimes it forsakes the one who gapes for it, and while in the mind desire is on fire, in the body it is cold; and thus in a marvellous way lust does not serve, not only the will to generate, but also the lust of wantonness; and while for the most part it wholly opposes the mind that would restrain it, sometimes it is even divided against itself, and, having stirred the mind, does not follow itself in stirring the body. [XVII] Deservedly is one most of all ashamed of this lust; deservedly too are those very members, which it moves or does not move by a certain right, so to speak, of its own, not altogether according to our will, called 'pudenda' (the parts of shame), which they were not before man's sin. For as it is written:
'They were naked, and were not ashamed' — not because their nakedness was unknown to them, but because their nakedness was not yet shameful, since not yet did lust move those members apart from the will, nor yet did the flesh, by a certain disobedience of its own, bear witness to reprove man's disobedience. For they were not created blind, as the ignorant crowd supposes; since indeed the man saw the animals to which he gave names, and of the woman 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 therefore were open, but not open unto this — that is, not attentive — so as to recognize what was furnished them by the garment of grace, when they knew not their members to resist the will.
When this grace was withdrawn, so that by a reciprocal penalty the disobedience might be punished, there arose in the motion of the body a certain shameless novelty, whence the nakedness became indecent, and it made them attentive and rendered them confounded. Hence it is that, after they had violated God's commandment by open transgression, it is written of them: 'And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.' 'The eyes of them both were opened,' it says — not unto seeing, for they saw even before, but unto discerning between the good which they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen.
Whence also the tree itself, because it caused this discernment if it should be touched for eating against the prohibition, from that circumstance received its name, so as to be called 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' For once the trouble of disease has been experienced, the pleasantness of health becomes more evident too. They knew, therefore, that they were naked — stripped, that is, of that grace whereby it came to pass that the nakedness of the body did not confound them by any law of sin resisting their mind. This, then, they came to know, which they would more happily have not known, had they, believing and obeying God, not committed that which forced them to experience by their own hurt what infidelity and disobedience harm.
Accordingly, confounded by the disobedience of their own flesh, as by a witness to the penalty of their own disobedience, they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons — that is, girdles for the genitals. For certain interpreters have put 'girdles.' Now 'campestria' is indeed a Latin word, but it is derived from the fact that young men who were exercised naked in the field (campus) used to cover their private parts; whence those who are thus girded the common people call 'campestrati.' What, therefore, lust was moving disobediently against the will already condemned for the fault of disobedience, modesty was decently covering.
From this, all nations, since they are begotten from that stock, hold so ingrained a custom of veiling the pudenda, that certain barbarians do not keep those parts of the body bare even in the baths, but bathe with coverings for them. Through the shady solitudes of India also, when certain men philosophize naked — whence they are called gymnosophists — they nevertheless apply coverings to the genitals, though they go without them over the rest of their members.
[XVIII] But the very act which is performed by such lust seeks concealment not only in all cases of debauchery, where hiding-places are sought to escape human judgments, but even in the use of harlots, which practice the earthly city has made a licensed baseness; although that is done which no law of that city punishes, yet even permitted and unpunished lust shuns the public gaze, and by natural modesty the very brothels have made provision for secrecy; and unchastity could more easily be without the bonds of prohibition than shamelessness could remove the hiding-places of that foulness. But even the shameful themselves call this thing shameful, and though they be lovers of it, they dare not be flaunters of it. What of
conjugal intercourse, which according to the prescriptions of the marriage tablets is done for the sake of begetting children — does not it too, although it be licit and honourable, seek out a chamber removed from witnesses? Does not the husband, before he even begins to caress his wife, send outside all servants, and even the groomsmen themselves, and whomever any necessity had permitted to enter? And since, as even a certain 'greatest author of Roman eloquence' says, all rightly done deeds wish to be placed in the light — that is, they desire to be known — this rightly done deed so desires to be known, that yet it blushes to be seen. For who does not know what married persons do together, that children may be begotten? — since indeed it is with such great festivity that wives are led home for this to be done;
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. For this rightly done deed thus desires the light of minds unto knowledge of itself, that yet it shuns the light of eyes. Whence is this, save that what is by nature seemly is so carried on, that there should attend it, from the penalty, even something that shames? [XIX] Hence it is that even those philosophers who came nearer to the truth confessed anger and lust to be vicious parts of the soul, in that they are moved turbulently and inordinately even to those things which wisdom forbids to be committed, and on this account have need of a governing mind and reason.
This third part of the soul they hold to be placed, as it were, in a certain citadel, to govern those two, so that, with it commanding and those serving, righteousness might be preserved in man from every part of the soul. These parts, then, which they confess to be vicious even in a wise and temperate man — so that the mind, by checking and restraining, might rein them in and recall them from those things toward which they are unjustly moved, and permit them toward those which are conceded by the law of wisdom (as anger toward exercising just correction, as lust toward the office of propagating offspring) — these parts, I say, in paradise before sin were not vicious.
For they were not moved toward anything against a right will, so that it would be necessary to restrain them by reason as by reins governing. But that they are now so moved, and by those who live temperately and justly and piously are, sometimes more easily, sometimes with more difficulty, yet by checking and resisting kept in measure, this is assuredly not health from nature, but a languor from fault. But why the works of anger and of the other affections in certain words and deeds are not so concealed by modesty as the works of lust, which are done by the genital members — what is the cause of this, save that in the other cases it is not the affections themselves, but the will, when it has consented to them, that moves the members of the body, and which in their use altogether dominates?
For whoever utters a word in anger, or even strikes anyone, could not do this unless tongue and hand were moved by the will in some way commanding; which members, even when there is no anger, are moved by the same will. But the genital parts of the body, lust has so appropriated to its own right, as it were, that they cannot be moved if it be absent, and unless it, either spontaneously or when excited, has arisen. This is what causes shame; this is what shrinks blushing from the eyes of onlookers; and a man more readily bears a multitude of spectators when he is unjustly angry with a man, than the gaze even of one when he is justly uniting with his wife.
[XX] This those dog-like philosophers — that is, the Cynics — did not see, when they put forth against human modesty what else but a dog-like — that is, an unclean and shameless — opinion? namely, that, since what is done with a wife is just, one need not be ashamed to do it openly, nor to avoid conjugal intercourse in any street or square whatever. Yet natural shame overcame the opinion of this error. For although they relate that Diogenes once did this boastfully, thinking his sect would thereby become more renowned if his shamelessness were more notably fixed in the memory of men, yet afterwards this ceased to be done by the Cynics, and shame prevailed — that men should blush before men — more than error, that men should affect to be like dogs.
Whence also that man, or those men, who are reported to have done this, I rather judge to have presented to the eyes of men who knew not what was going on under the cloak the motions of persons cohabiting, than that that pleasure could be accomplished under the pressure of human gaze. For there the philosophers were not ashamed to be seen willing to cohabit, where lust itself would have been ashamed to arise. And now we see that there are still Cynic philosophers; for these are they who not only clothe themselves with a cloak, but even carry a club; yet none of them dares to do this, and if any had dared, they would have been overwhelmed — not to say with the blows of stone-throwers, at least certainly with the spittle of those spitting upon them. Human nature therefore, without any doubt, 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 requited to man for that first disobedience of his; which it was most fitting should appear in that part whereby is generated the very nature which was changed for the worse by that first and great sin — from whose bond no one is delivered, unless that which, when all were in the one, was perpetrated unto common ruin and avenged by God's justice, be expiated in each by God's grace. [XXI] Far be it, therefore, that we should believe those spouses established in paradise would have fulfilled, through this lust for which they covered those same members in shame, what God said in His blessing to them:
'Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.' For it was after sin that this lust arose; after sin that nature — not shameless, having lost the power to which the body served in every part — perceived, took heed, blushed, and covered itself. But that blessing of marriage, that the wedded should increase and multiply and fill the earth, although it remained even among the transgressors, yet was given before they transgressed, so that it might be known that the procreation of children pertains to the glory of wedlock, not to the penalty of sin.
But now men, wholly ignorant of that felicity which was in paradise, suppose that children could not have been begotten except through this which they have experienced — that is, through lust, at which we see that even the very honourableness of marriage blushes: some not at all accepting the divine Scriptures, where it is read that after sin there was shame at nakedness and the pudenda were covered, but faithlessly deriding them; others, however, although they accept and honour them, yet will not have that which was said, 'Increase and multiply,' understood according to carnal fecundity, because something of the sort is read to have been said even according to the soul: 'Thou shalt multiply me in my soul with strength' — so that what follows in Genesis:
'And fill the earth, and have dominion over it' — they understand the earth to be the flesh, which the soul fills by its presence and over which it especially has dominion when it is multiplied in strength; but carnal offspring, without the lust which arose after sin — beheld, confounded, and veiled — could not, they say, have been born then, just as neither now can they, nor would they have been in paradise, but outside, as indeed it came to pass. For after they were dismissed thence, they came together to beget children, and begat them. [XXII] But we in no way doubt that, according to the blessing of God, to increase and multiply and fill the earth is a gift of marriage, which God instituted from the beginning before man's sin, by creating male and female — which sex is assuredly evident in the flesh.
For to this work of God the very blessing itself was subjoined. For when Scripture had said, 'Male and female made He them,' it immediately added, 'And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and have dominion over it,' and the rest. All which things, although they can not unfittingly be referred also to the spiritual understanding, yet male and female cannot be understood as of something similar even in one man — namely, in that in him there is one thing that rules, another that is ruled; but, as appears most evidently in bodies of different sex, male and female were so created, that by generating offspring they might increase and multiply and fill the earth: and to resist this is of great absurdity.
For it was not concerning the spirit which commands and the flesh which obeys, nor concerning the rational soul which rules and the irrational desire which is ruled, nor concerning the contemplative virtue which excels and the active which is subordinate, nor concerning the understanding of the mind and the sense of the body, but plainly concerning the conjugal bond, whereby each sex is bound to the other, that the Lord, being asked whether it were lawful to put away a wife for any cause whatever — since on account of the hardness of the Israelites' heart Moses permitted a bill of divorcement to be given — answered and said: 'Have ye not read, that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh?'
'So then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' It is certain, therefore, that male and female were so first instituted as we now see and know two human beings of different sex; but they are called one, either on account of their conjunction, or on account of the origin of the woman, who was created from the man's side. For the Apostle also, by this first example which preceded by God's institution, admonishes each individual, that husbands should love their own wives. [XXIII] But whoever says that they would not have come together nor generated, unless they had sinned — what does he say, save that man's sin was necessary for the multitude of the saints?
For if by not sinning they would have remained alone — because, as they suppose, unless they had sinned they could not have generated — then assuredly, in order that not two just men only might exist but many, sin was necessary. But if it is absurd to believe this, then rather is that to be believed, that as great a number of the saints as suffices to complete that most blessed city would have existed, even if no one had sinned, as great a number as is now gathered by God's grace out of the multitude of sinners, so long as the children of this world generate and are generated. And therefore those marriages, worthy of the felicity of paradise, if sin had not been, would both have begotten offspring to be loved, and would not have had lust to be ashamed of. But how this could come to pass, there is now no example whereby it may be demonstrated.
Nor, however, ought it on that account to seem incredible that even that one member could have served the will without this lust, to which so many members now serve. Or do we not move hands and feet, when we will, to those things which are to be done by these members, without any resistance, with such great ease as we see both in ourselves and in others — especially in the craftsmen of any bodily works whatever, where to exercise a nature that is weaker and slower a more agile industry has come — and do we not believe that, for the work of generating children, if there had been no lust (which was requited to the sin of disobedience), those members likewise, just as the rest, could have served men obediently at the beck of the will?
Did not Cicero, in his books on the Republic, when he was disputing about the difference of governments and took a likeness of this matter from human nature, say that the members of the body are commanded like sons, on account of the ease of obeying; but that the vicious parts of the soul, like slaves, are restrained by a harsher command? And assuredly, by the order of nature, the soul is set before the body; and yet the soul itself commands the body more easily than it commands itself. Yet this lust, of which we now discourse, has come to be the more to be blushed at, because the soul in it neither commands itself effectually, so as not to lust at all, nor the body in every way, so that it may be the will rather than lust that moves the shameful members; for if it were so, they would not be shameful.