BOOK XIV. 
ARGUMENT. 
AUGUSTIN AGAIN TREATS OF THE SIN OF THE FIRST MAN, AND TEACHES THAT IT IS THE 
CAUSE OF THE CARNAL LIFE AND VICIOUS AFFECTIONS OF MAN. ESPECIALLY HE PROVES 
THAT THE SHAME WHICH ACCOMPANIES LUST IS THE JUST PUNISHMENT OF THAT 
DISOBEDIENCE, AND INQUIRES HOW MAN, IF HE HAD NOT SINNED, WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE 
WITHOUT LUST TO PROPAGATE HIS KIND. 
CHAP. I.- THAT THE DISOBEDIENCE OF THE FIRST MAN WOULD HAVE PLUNGED ALL MEN INTO 
THE ENDLESS MISERY OF THE SECOND DEATH, HAD NOT THE GRACE OF GOD RESCUED MANY. 
WE have already stated in the preceding books that God, desiring not only that 
the human race might be able by their similarity of nature to associate with one 
another, but also that they might be bound together in harmony and peace by the 
ties of relationship, was pleased to derive all men from one individual, and 
created man with such a nature that the members of the race should not have 
died, had not the two first (of whom the one was created out of nothing, and the 
other out of him) merited this by their disobedience; for by them so great a sin 
was committed, that by it the human nature was altered for the worse, and was 
transmitted also to their posterity, liable to sin and subject to death. And the 
kingdom of death so reigned over men, that the deserved penalty of sin would 
have hurled all headlong even into the second death, of which there is no end, 
had not the undeserved grace of God saved some therefrom. And thus it has come 
to pass, that though there are very many and great nations all over the earth, 
whose rites and customs, speech, arms, and dress, are distinguished by marked 
differences, yet there are no more than two kinds of human society, which we may 
justly call two cities, according to the language of our Scriptures. The one 
consists of those who wish to live after the flesh, the other of those who wish 
to live after the spirit; and when they severally achieve what they wish, they 
live in peace, each after their kind. 
CHAP. 2. --OF CARNAL LIFE, WHICH IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD NOT ONLY OF LIVING IN 
BODILY INDULGENCE, BUT ALSO OF LIVING IN THE VICES OF THE INNER MAN. 
First, we must see what it is to live after the flesh, and what to live after 
the spirit. For any one who either does not recollect, or does not sufficiently 
weigh, the language of sacred Scripture, may, on first hearing what we have 
said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers live after the flesh, because they 
place man's highest good in bodily pleasure; and that those others do so who 
have been of opinion that in some form or other bodily good is man's supreme 
good; and that the mass of men do so who, without dogmatizing or philosophizing 
on the subject, are so prone to lust that they cannot delight in any pleasure 
save such as they receive from bodily sensations: and he may suppose that the 
Stoics, who place the supreme good of men in the soul, live after the spirit; 
for what is man's soul, if not spirit? But in the sense of the divine Scripture 
both are proved to live after the flesh. For by flesh it means not only the body 
of a terrestrial and mortal animal, as when it says, "All flesh is not the same 
flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another 
of fishes, another of birds,"(1) but it uses this word in many other 
significations; and among these various usages, a frequent one is to use flesh 
for man himself, the nature of man taking the part for the whole, as in the 
words, "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;"(2) for what 
does he mean here by "no flesh" but "no man?" And this, indeed, he shortly after 
says more plainly: "No man shall be justified by the law;"(3) and in the Epistle 
to the Galatians, "Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law." 
And so we understand the words, "And the Word was made flesh,"(4)--that is, man, 
which some not accepting in its right sense, have supposed that Christ had not a 
human soul.(5) For as the whole is used for the part in the words of Mary 
Magdalene in the Gospel, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where 
they have laid Him,"(6) by which she meant only the flesh of Christ, which she 
supposed had been taken from the tomb where it had been buried, so the part is 
used for the whole, flesh being named, while man is referred to, as in the 
quotations above cited. 
Since, then, Scripture uses the word flesh in many ways, which there is not time 
to collect and investigate, if we are to ascertain what it is to live after the 
flesh (which is certainly evil, though the nature of flesh is not itself evil), 
we must carefully examine that passage of the epistle which the Apostle Paul 
wrote to the Galatians, in which he says," Now the works of the flesh are 
manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 
idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, 
heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the 
which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which 
do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."(7) This whole passage of 
the apostolic epistle being considered, so far as it bears on the matter in 
hand, will be sufficient to answer the question, what it is to live after the 
flesh. For among the works of the flesh which he said were manifest, and which 
he cited for condemnation, we find not only those which concern the pleasure of 
the flesh, as fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness, 
revellings, but also those which, though they be remote from fleshly pleasure, 
reveal the vices of the soul. For who does not see that idolatries, witchcrafts, 
hatreds, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings, are vices 
rather of the soul than of the flesh? For it is quite possible for a man to 
abstain from fleshly pleasures for the sake of idolatry or some heretical error; 
and yet, even when he does so, he is proved by this apostolic authority to be 
living after the flesh; and in abstaining from fleshly pleasure, he is proved to 
be practising damnable works of the flesh. Who that has enmity has it not in his 
soul? or who would say to his enemy, or to the man he thinks his enemy, You have 
a bad flesh towards me, and not rather, You have a bad spirit towards me? In 
fine, if any one heard of what I may call "carnalities," he would not fail to 
attribute them to the carnal part of man; so no one doubts that "animosities" 
belong to the soul of man. Why then does the doctor of the Gentiles in faith and 
verity call all these and similar things works of the flesh, unless because, by 
that mode of speech whereby the part is used for the whole, he means us to 
understand by the word flesh the man himself? 
CHAP. 3.-- THAT THE SIN IS CAUSED NOT BY THE FLESH, BUT BY THE SOUL, AND THAT 
THE CORRUPTION CONTRACTED FROM SIN IS NOT SIN BUT SIN'S PUNISHMENT. 
But if any one says that the flesh is the cause of all vices and ill conduct, 
inasmuch as the soul lives wickedly only because it is moved by the flesh, it is 
certain he has not carefully considered the whole nature of man. For "the 
corruptible body, indeed, weigheth down the soul."(8) Whence, too, the apostle, 
speaking of this corruptible body, of which he had shortly before said, "though 
our outward man perish,"(9) says, "We know that if our earthly house of this 
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be 
clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we 
shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 
burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality 
might be swallowed up in life."(10) We are then burdened with this corruptible 
body; but knowing that the cause of this burdensomeness is not the nature and 
substance of the body, but its corruption, we do not desire to be deprived of 
the body, but to be clothed with its immortality. For then, also, there will be 
a body, but it shall no longer be a burden, being no longer corruptible. At 
present, then, "the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly 
tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things," nevertheless 
they are in error who suppose that all the evils of the soul proceed from the 
body. 
Virgil, indeed, seems to express the sentiments of Plato in the beautiful lines, 
where he says,-- 
"A fiery strength inspires their lives, 
An essence that from heaven derives, Though clogged in part by limbs of clay And 
the dull 'vesture of decay;'"(1) 
but though he goes on to mention the four most common mental emotions,--desire, 
fear, joy, sorrow,--with the intention of showing that the body is the origin of 
all sins and vices, saying,-- 
" Hence wild desires and grovelling fears, And human laughter, human tears, 
Immured in dungeon-seeming nights They look abroad, yet see no light,"(2) 
yet we believe quite otherwise. For the corruption of the body, which weighs 
down the soul, is not the cause but the punishment of the first sin; and it was 
not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful, but the sinful soul that 
made the flesh corruptible. And though from this corruption of the flesh there 
arise certain incitements to vice, and indeed vicious desires, yet we must not 
attribute to the flesh all the vices of a wicked life, in case we thereby clear 
the devil of all these, for he has no flesh. For though we cannot call the devil 
a fornicator or drunkard, or ascribe to him any sensual indulgence (though he is 
the secret instigator and prompter of those who sin in these ways), yet he is 
exceedingly proud and envious. And this viciousness has so possessed him, that 
on account of it he is reserved in chains of darkness to everlasting 
punishment.(3) Now these vices, which have dominion over the devil, the apostle 
attributes to the flesh, which certainly the devil has not. For he says "hatred, 
variance emulations, strife, envying" are the works of the flesh; and of all 
these evils pride is the origin and head, and it rules in the devil though he 
has no flesh. For who shows more hatred to the saints? who is more at variance 
with them? who more envious, bitter, and jealous? And since he exhibits all 
these works, though he has no flesh, how are they works of the flesh, unless 
because they are the works of man, who is, as I said, spoken of under the name 
of flesh? For it is not by having flesh, which the devil has not, but by living 
according to himself,--that is, according to man,--that man became like the 
devil. For the devil too, wished to live according to himself when he did not 
abide in the truth; so that when he lied, this was not of God, but of himself, 
who is not only a liar, but the father of lies, he being the first who lied, and 
the originator of lying as of sin. 
CHAP. 4.--WHAT IT IS TO LIVE ACCORDING TO MAN, AND WHAT TO LIVE ACCORDING TO 
GOD. 
When, therefore, man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like 
the devil. Because not even an angel might live according to an angel, but only 
according to God, if he was to abide in the truth, and speak God's truth and not 
his own lie. And of man, too, the same apostle says in another place, "If the 
truth of God hath more abounded through my lie;"(4) my lie," he said, and "God's 
truth." When, then, a man lives according to the truth, he lives not according 
to himself, but according to God; for He was God who said, "I am the truth."(5) 
When, therefore, man lives according to himself,--that is, according to man, not 
according to God,--assuredly he lives according to a lie; not that man himself 
is a lie, for God is his author and creator, who is certainly not the author and 
creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not live 
according to himself, but according to Him that made him,--in other words, that 
he might do His will and not his own; and not to live as he was made to live, 
that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not living so that 
he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire be not? Wherefore it is not 
without meaning said that all sin is a lie. For no sin is committed save by that 
desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it 
being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be 
well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, 
but because the source of man's happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons 
when he sins, and not in himself, by living according to whom he sins? 
In enunciating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live according 
to the flesh and others according to the spirit, there have arisen two diverse 
and conflicting cities, we might equally well have said, "because some live 
according to man, others according to God." For Paul says very plainly to the 
Corinthians, "For whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not 
carnal, and walk according to man?"(6) So that to walk according to man and to 
be carnal are the same; for by flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is meant. 
For before he said that those same persons were animal whom afterwards he calls 
carnal, saying, "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of 
man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of 
God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is 
of God; that we might, know the things which are freely given to us of God. 
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But 
the animal man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are 
foolishness unto him." It is to men of this kind, then, that is, to animal men, 
he shortly after says, "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto 
spiritual, but as unto carnal."(2) And this is to be interpreted by the same 
usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the 
component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man; and so the animal 
man and the carnal man are not two different things, but one and the same thing, 
viz., man living according to man. In the same way it is nothing else than men 
that are meant either in the words, "By the deeds of the law there shall no 
flesh be justified;"(3) or in the words, "Seventy-five souls went down into 
Egypt with Jacob."(4) In the one passage, "no flesh" signifies "no man;" and in 
the other, by "seventy-five souls" seventy-five men are meant. And the 
expression, "not in words which man's wisdom teacheth" might equally be "not in 
words which fleshly wisdom teacheth;" and the expression, "ye walk according to 
man," might be "according to the flesh." And this is still more apparent in the 
words which followed: "For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of 
Apollos, are ye not men?" The same thing which he had before expressed by "ye 
are animal," "ye are carnal, he now expresses by "ye are men;" that is, ye live 
according to man, not according to God, for if you lived according to Him, you 
should be gods. 
CHAP. 5.--THAT THE OPINION OF THE PLATONISTS REGARDING THE NATURE OF BODY AND 
SOUL IS NOT SO CENSURABLE AS THAT OF THE MANICHEANS,, BUT THAT EVEN IT IS 
Objectionable, BECAUSE IT ASCRIBES THE ORIGIN OF VICES TO THE NATURE OF 
THEFLESH. 
There is no need, therefore, that in our sins and vices we accuse the nature of 
the flesh to the injury of the Creator, for in its own kind and degree the flesh 
is good; but to desert the Creator good, and live according to the created good, 
is not good, whether a man choose to live according to the flesh, or according 
to the soul, or according to the whole human nature, which is composed of flesh 
and soul, and which is therefore spoken of either by the name flesh alone, or by 
the name soul alone. For he who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, 
and condemns the nature of the flesh as if it were evil, assuredly is fleshly 
both in his love of the soul and hatred of the flesh; for these his feelings 
arise from human fancy, not from divine truth. The Platonists, indeed, are not 
so foolish as, with the Manichaeans, to detest our present bodies as an evil 
nature;(5) for they attribute all the elements of which this visible and 
tangible world is compacted, with all their qualities, to God their Creator. 
Nevertheless, from the death-infected members and earthly construction of the 
body they believe the soul is so affected, that there are thus originated in it 
the diseases of desires, and fears, and joy, and sorrow, under which four 
perturbations, as CiCero(6) calls them, or passions, as most prefer to name them 
with the Greeks, is included the whole viciousness of human life. But if this be 
so, how is it that AEneas in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in Hades 
that the souls should return to bodies, expresses surprise at this declaration, 
and exclaims: 
"O father! and can thought conceive 
That happy souls this realm would leave, 
And seek the upper sky, With sluggish clay to reunite? This direful longing for 
the light, 
Whence comes it, say, and why? "(7) 
This direful longing, then, does it still exist even in that boasted purity of 
the disembodied spirits, and does it still proceed from the death-infected 
members and earthly limbs? Does he not assert that, when they begin to long to 
return to the body, they have already been delivered from all these so-called 
pestilences of the body? From which we gather that, were this endlessly 
alternating purification and defilement of departing and returning souls as true 
as it is most certainly false, yet it could not be averred that all culpable and 
vicious motions of the soul originate in the earthly body; for, on their own 
showing, "this direful longing," to use the words of their noble exponent, is so 
extraneous to the body, that it moves the soul that is purged of all bodily 
taint, and is existing apart from any body whatever, and moves it, moreover, to 
be embodied again. So that even they themselves acknowledge that the soul is not 
only moved to desire, fear, joy, sorrow, by the, flesh, but that it can also be 
agitated with these emotions at its own instance. 
CHAP. 6.--OF THE CHARACTER OF THE HUMAN WILL WHICH MAKES THE AFFECTIONS OF THE 
SOUL RIGHT OR WRONG. 
But the character of the human will is of moment; because, if it is wrong, these 
motions of the soul will be wrong, but if it is right, they will be not merely 
blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in them all; yea, none of them 
is anything else than will. For what are desire and joy but a volition of 
consent to the things we wish? And what are fear and sadness but a volition of 
aversion from the things which we do not wish? But when consent takes the form 
of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire; and when 
consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy. In 
like manner, when we turn with aversion from that which we do not wish to 
happen, this volition is termed fear; and when we turn away from that which has 
happened against our will, this act of will is called sorrow. And generally in 
respect of all that we seek or shun, as a man's will is attracted or repelled, 
so it is changed and turned into these different affections. Wherefore the man 
who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of 
good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but 
whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish 
towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because 
of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love 
the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that 
ought to be hated, will remain. 
CHAP. 7.--THAT THE WORDS LOVE AND REGARD (AMOR AND DILECTIO) ARE IN SCRIPTURE 
USED INDIFFERENTLY OF GOOD AND EVIL AFFECTION. 
He who resolves to love God, and to love his neighbor as himself, not according 
to man but according to God, is on account of this love said to be of a good 
will; and this is in Scripture more commonly called charity, but it is also, 
even in the same books, called love. For the apostle says that the man to be 
elected as a ruler of the people must be a lover of good.(1) And when the Lord 
Himself had asked Peter, "Hast thou a regard for me (diligis) more than these?" 
Peter replied, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee." And again a second 
time the Lord asked not whether Peter loved (amaret) Him, but whether he had a 
regard (diligeret)for Him, and, he again answered, "Lord, Thou knowest that I 
love (amo) Thee." But on the third interrogation the Lord Himself no longer 
says, "Hast thou a regard (diligis) for me," but "Lovest thou (amas) me?" And 
then the evangelist adds, "Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third 
time, Lovest thou (amas) me?" though the Lord had not said three times but only 
once, "Lovest thou (amas) me?" and twice "Diligis me?" from which we gather 
that, even when the Lord said "diligis," He used an equivalent for "amas." 
Peter, too, throughout used one word for the one thing, and the third time also 
replied, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love (amo) 
Thee."(2) 
I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of opinion that charity 
or regard (dilectio) is one thing, love (amor) another. They say that dilectio 
is used of a good affection, amor of an evil love. But it is very certain that 
even secular literature knows no such distinction. However, it is for the 
philosophers to determine whether and how they differ, though their own writings 
sufficiently testify that they make great account of love (amor) placed on good 
objects, and even on God Himself. But we wished to show that the Scriptures of 
our religion, whose authority we prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no 
distinction between am. or, dilectio, and caritas; arid we have already shown 
that amor is used in a good connection. And if any one fancy that amor is no 
doubt used both of good and bad loves, but that dilectio is reserved for the 
good only, let him remember what the psalm says, "He that loveth (diligit) 
iniquity hateth his own soul;"(3) and the words of the Apostle John, "If any man 
love (diligere) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him."(4) 
Here you have in one passage dilectio used both in a good and a bad sense. And 
if any one demands an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for we have 
already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words, "For men shall 
be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money."(5 The 
right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed 
love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and 
enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what 
is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are 
evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good. What we assert let us prove 
from Scripture. The apostle "desires to depart, and to be with Christ."(1) And, 
"My soul desired to long for Thy judgments;"(2) or if it is more appropriate to 
say, "My soul longed to desire Thy judgments." And, "The desire of wisdom 
bringeth to a kingdom."(3) Yet there has always obtained the usage of 
understanding desire and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object be not 
defined. But joy is used in a good sense: "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye 
righteous."(4) And, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart."(5) And, "Thou wilt 
fill me with joy with Thy countenance."(6) Fear is used in a good sense by the 
apostle when he says, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling."(7) And, 
"Be not high-minded, but fear."(8) And, "I fear, lest by any means, as the 
serpent be-Culled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted 
from the simplicity that is in Christ."(9) But with respect to sadness, which 
Cicero prefer to calls sickness (oegritudo), and Virgil pain (dolor) (as he 
says, "Dolent gaudentque"(10)), but which I prefer to call sorrow, because 
sickness and pain are more commonly used to express bodily suffering,--with 
respect to this emotion, I say, the question whether it can be used in a good 
sense is more difficult. 
CHAP. 8.--OF THE THREE PERTURBATIONS, WHICH THE STOICS ADMITTED IN THE SOUL OF 
THE WISE MAN TO THE EXCLUSION OF GRIEF OR SADNESS, WHICH THE MANLY MIND OUGHT 
NOT TO EXPERIENCE. 
Those emotions which the Greeks call <greek>eupaqeiai</greek>, and which Cicero 
calls constantioe, the Stoics would restrict to three; and, instead of three 
"perturbations" in the soul of the wise man, they substituted severally, in 
place of desire, will; in place of joy, contentment; and for fear, caution; and 
as to sickness or pain, which we, to avoid ambiguity, preferred to call sorrow, 
they denied that it could exist in the mind of a wise man. Will, they say, seeks 
the good, for this the wise man does. Contentment has its object in good that is 
possessed, and this the wise man continually possesses. Caution avoids evil, and 
this the wise man ought to avoid. But sorrow arises from evil that has already 
happened; and as they suppose that no evil can happen to the wise man, there can 
be no representative of sorrow in his mind. According to them, therefore, none 
but the wise man wills, is contented, uses caution; and that the fool can do no 
more than desire, rejoice, fear, be sad. The former three affections Cicero 
calls constantioe, the last four perturbationes. Many, however, calls these last 
passions; and, as I have said, the Greeks call the former 
<greek>eupaq</greek><ds210><greek>iai</greek>, and the latter 
<greek>paqh</greek>. And when I made a careful examination of Scripture to find 
whether this terminology was sanctioned by it, I came upon this saying of the 
prophet: "There is no contentment to the wicked, saith the Lord;"(11) as if the 
wicked might more properly rejoice than be contented regarding evils, for 
contentment is the property of the good and godly. I found also that verse in 
the Gospel: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto 
them:(12) which seems to imply that evil or shameful things may be the object of 
desire, but not of will. Indeed, some interpreters have added "good things," to 
make the expression more in conformity with customary usage, and have given this 
meaning, "Whatsoever good deeds that ye would that men should do unto you." For 
they thought that this would prevent any one from wishing other men to provide 
him with unseemly, not to say shameful gratifications,--luxurious banquets, for 
example,--on the supposition that if he returned the like to them he would be 
fulfilling this precept. In the Greek Gospel, however, from which the Latin is 
translated, "good" does not occur, but only, "All things whatsoever ye would 
that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them," and, as I believe, 
because "good" is already included in the word "would;" for He does not say 
"desire." 
Yet though we may sometimes avail ourselves of these precise proprieties of 
language, we are not to be always bridled by them; and when we read those 
writers against whose authority it is unlawful to reclaim, we must accept the 
meanings above mentioned in passages where a right sense can be educed by no 
other interpretation, as in those instances we adduced partly from the prophet, 
partly from the Gospel. For who does not know that the wicked exult with joy? 
Yet "there is no contentment for the wicked, saith the Lord And how so, unless 
because contentment, when the word is used in its proper and distinctive 
significance, means something different from joy? In like manner, who would deny 
that it were wrong to enjoin upon men that whatever they desire others to do to 
them they should themselves do to others, lest they should mutually please one 
another by shameful and illicit pleasure? And yet the precept, "Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," is very wholesome and 
just. And how is this, unless because the will is in this place used strictly, 
and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its object? But ordinary 
phraseology would not have allowed the saying, "Be unwilling to make any manner 
of lie,"(1) had there not been also an evil will, whose wickedness separates if 
from that which the angels celebrated, "Peace on earth, of good will to men."(2) 
For "good" is superfluous if there is no other kind of will but good will. And 
why should the apostle have mentioned it among the praises of charity as a great 
thing, that "it rejoices not in iniquity," unless because wickedness does so 
rejoice? For even with secular writers these words are used indifferently. For 
Cicero, that most fertile of orators, says, "I desire, conscript fathers, to be 
merciful."(3) And who would be so pedantic as to say that he should have said" I 
will" rather than "I desire," because the word is used in a good connection? 
Again, in Terence, the profligate youth, burning with wild lust, says, "I will 
nothing else than Philumena."(4) That this "will" was lust is sufficiently 
indicated by the answer of his old servant which is there introduced: "How much 
better were it to try and banish that love from your heart, than to speak so as 
uselessly to inflame your passion still more!" And that contentment was used by 
secular writers in a bad sense that verse of Virgil testifies, in which he most 
succinctly comprehends these four perturbations,-- 
"Hence they fear and desire, grieve and are content"(5) 
The same author had also used the expression, "the evil contentments of the 
mind."(6) So that good and bad men alike will, are cautious, and contented; or, 
to say the same thing in other words, good and bad men alike desire, fear, 
rejoice, but the former in a good, the latter in a bad fashion, according as the 
will is right or wrong. Sorrow itself, too, which the Stoics would not allow to 
tie represented in the mind of the wise man, is used in a good sense, and 
especially in our writings.For the apostle praises the Corinthians because they 
had a godly sorrow. But possibly some one may say that the apostle congratulated 
them because they were penitently sorry, and that such sorrow can exist only in 
those who have sinned. For these are his words: "For I perceive that the same 
epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not 
that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance; for ye were made 
sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For 
godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the 
sorrow of the world worketh death. For, behold, this selfsame thing that ye 
sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you!"(7) 
Consequently the Stoics may defend themselves by replying,(8) that sorrow is 
indeed useful for repentance of sin, but that this can have no place in the mind 
of the wise man, inasmuch as no sin attaches to him of which he could 
sorrowfully repent, nor any other evil the endurance or experience of which 
could make him sorrowful. For they say that Alcibiades (if my memory does not 
deceive me), who believed himself happy, shed tears when Socrates argued with 
him, and demonstrated that he was miserable because he was foolish. In his case, 
therefore, folly was the cause of this useful and desirable sorrow, wherewith a 
man mourns that he is what he ought not to be. But the Stoics maintain not that 
the fool, but that the wise man, cannot be sorrowful. 
CHAP. 9.--OF THE PERTURBATIONS OF THE SOUL WHICH APPEAR AS RIGHT AFFECTIONS IN 
THE LIFE OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 
But so far as regards this question of mental perturbations, we have answered 
these philosophers in the ninth book(9) of this work, showing that it is rather 
a verbal than a real dispute, and that they seek contention rather than truth. 
Among ourselves, according to the sacred Scriptures and sound doctrine, the 
citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to God in the pilgrimage Of 
this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice. And because their love 
is rightly placed, all these affections of theirs are right. They fear eternal 
punishment, they desire eternal life; they grieve because they themselves groan 
within themselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of their body;(10) 
they rejoice in hope, because there "shall be brought to pass the saying that is 
written, Death is swallowed up in victory."(1) In like manner they fear to sin, 
they desire to persevere; they grieve in sin, they rejoice in good works. They 
fear to sin, because they hear that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of 
many shall wax cold."(2) They desire to persevere, because they hear that it is 
written, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved."(3) They grieve for sin, 
hearing that "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth 
is not in us."(4) They rejoice in good works, because they hear that "the Lord 
loveth a cheerful giver."(5) In like manner, according as they are strong or 
weak, they fear or desire to be tempted, grieve or rejoice in temptation. They 
fear to be tempted, because they hear the injunction, "If a man be overtaken in 
a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; 
considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."(6) They desire to be tempted, 
because they hear one of the heroes of the city of God saying, "Examine me, O 
Lord, and tempt me: try my reins and my heart."(7) They grieve in temptations, 
because they see Peter weeping;(8) they rejoice in temptations, because they 
hear James saying, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers 
temptations."(9) 
And not only on their own account do they experience these emotions, but also on 
account of those whose deliverance they desire and whose perdition they fear, 
and whose loss or salvation affects them with grief or with joy. For if we who 
have come into the Church from among the Gentiles may suitably instance that 
noble and mighty hero who glories in his infirmities, the teacher (doctor) of 
the nations in faith and truth, who also labored more than all his 
fellow-apostles, and instructed the tribes of God's people by his epistles, 
which edified not only those of his own time, but all those who were to be 
gathered in,--that hero, I say, and athlete of Christ, instructed by Him, 
anointed of His Spirit, crucified with Him, glorious in Him, lawfully 
maintaining a great conflict on the theatre of this world, and being made a 
spectacle to angels and men,(10) and pressing onwards for the prize of his high 
calling,(11)--very joyfully do we with the eyes of faith behold him rejoicing 
with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep;(12) though hampered by 
fightings without and fears within;(13) desiring to depart and to be with 
Christ;(14) longing to see the Romans, that he might have some fruit among them 
as among other Gentiles;(15) being jealous over the Corinthians, and fearing in 
that jealousy lest their minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in 
Christ;(16) having great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for the 
Israelites,(17) because they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going 
about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto 
the righteousness of God;(18) and expressing not only his sorrow, but bitter 
lamentation over some who had formally sinned and had not repented of their 
uncleanness and fornications.(19) 
If these emotions and affections, arising as they do from the love of what is 
good and from a holy charity, are to be called vices, then let us allow these 
emotions which are truly vices to pass under the name of virtues. But since 
these affections, when they are exercised in a becoming way, follow the guidance 
of right reason, who will dare to say that they are diseases or vicious 
passions? Wherefore even the Lord Himself, when He condescended to lead a human 
life in the form of a slave, had no sin whatever, and yet exercised these 
emotions where He judged they should be exercised. For as there was in Him a 
true human body and a true human. soul, so was there also a true human emotion. 
When, therefore, we read in the Gospel that the hard-heartedness of the Jews 
moved Him to sorrowful indignation,(20) that He said, "I am glad for your sakes, 
to the intent ye may believe,"(21) that when about to raise Lazarus He even shed 
tears,(22) that He earnestly desired to eat the passover with His disciples,(23) 
that as His passion drew near His soul was sorrowful,(24) these emotions are 
certainly not falsely ascribed to Him. But as He became man when it pleased Him, 
so, in the grace of His definite purpose, when it pleased Him He experienced 
those emotions in His human soul. 
But we must further make the admission, that even when these affections are well 
regulated, and according to God's will, they are peculiar to this life, not to 
that future life we look for, and that often we yield to them against our will. 
And thus sometimes we weep in spite of ourselves, being carried beyond 
ourselves, not indeed by culpable desire; but by praiseworthy charity. In us, 
therefore, these affections arise from human infirmity; but it was not so with 
the Lord Jesus, for even His infirmity was the consequence of His power. But so 
long as we wear the infirmity of this life, we are rather worse men than better 
if we have none of these emotions at all. For the apostle vituperated and 
abominated some who, as he said, were "without natural affection."(1) The sacred 
Psalmist also found fault with those of whom he said, "I looked for some to 
lament with me, and there was none."(2) For to be quite free from pain while we 
are in this place of misery is only purchased, as one of this world's literati 
perceived and remarked,(3) at the price of blunted sensibilities both of mind 
and body. And therefore that which the Greeks call <greek>apaqeia</greek>, and 
what the Latins would call, if their language would allow them, 
"impassibilitas," if it be taken to mean an impassibility of spirit and not of 
body, or, in other words, a freedom from those emotions which are contrary to 
reason and disturb the mind, then it is obviously a good and most desirable 
quality, but it is not one which is attainable in this life. For the words of 
the apostle are the confession, not of the common herd, but of the eminently 
pious, just, and holy men: "If we say we have: no sin, we deceive ourselves, and 
the truth is not in us."(4) When there shall be no sin in a man, then there 
shall be this <greek>apaqeia</greek>. At present it is enough if we live without 
crime; and he who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon. 
And if that is to be called apathy, where the mind is the subject of no emotion, 
then who would not consider this insensibility to be worse than all vices? It 
may, indeed, reasonably be maintained that the perfect blessedness we hope for 
shall be free from all sting of fear or sadness; but who thai is not quite lost 
to truth would say that neither love nor joy shall be experienced there? But if 
by apathy a condition be meant in which no fear terrifies nor any pain annoys, 
we must in this life renounce such a state if we would live according to God's 
will, but may hope to enjoy it in that blessedness which is promised as our 
eternal condition. 
For that fear of which the Apostle John says, "There is no fear in love; but 
perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not 
made perfect in love,"(5)--that fear is not of the same kind as the Apostle Paul 
felt lest the Corinthians should be seduced by the subtlety of the serpent; for 
love is susceptible of this fear, yea, love alone is capable of it. But the fear 
which is not in love is of that kind of which Paul himself says, "For ye have 
not received the spirit of bondage again to fear."(6) But as for that "clean 
fear which endureth for ever,"(7) if it is to exist in the world to come (and 
how else can it be said to endure for ever?), it is not a fear deterring us from 
evil which may happen, but preserving us in the good which cannot be lost. For 
where the love of acquired good is unchangeable, there certainly the fear that 
avoids evil is, if I may say so, free from anxiety. For under the name of "clean 
fear" David signifies that will by which we shall necessarily shrink from sin, 
and guard against it, not with the anxiety of weakness, which fears that we may 
strongly sin, but with the tranquillity of perfect love. Or if no kind of fear 
at all shall exist in that most imperturbable security of perpetual and blissful 
delights, then the expression, "The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for 
ever," must be taken in the same sense as that other, "The patience of the poor 
shall not perish for ever"(8) For patience, which is necessary only where ills 
are to be borne, shall not be eternal, but that which patience leads us to will 
be eternal. So perhaps this "clean fear" is said to endure for ever, because 
that to which fear leads shall endure. 
And since this is so,--since we must live a good life in order to attain to a 
blessed life, a good life has all these affections right, a bad life has them 
wrong. But in the blessed life eternal there will be love and joy, not only 
right, but also assured; but fear and grief there will be none. Whence it 
already appears in some sort what manner of persons the citizens of the city of 
God must be in this their pilgrimage, who live after the spirit, not after the 
flesh,--that is to say, according to God, not according to man,--and what manner 
of persons they shall be also in that immortality whither they are journeying. 
And the city or society of the wicked, who live not according to God, but 
according to man, and who accept the doctrines of men or devils in the worship 
of a false and contempt of the true divinity, is shaken with those wicked 
emotions as by diseases and disturbances. And if there be some of its citizens 
who seem to restrain and, as it were, temper those passions, they are so elated 
with ungodly pride, that their disease is as much greater as their pain is less. 
And if some, with a vanity monstrous in proportion to its rarity, have become 
enamored of themselves because they can be stimulated and excited by no emotion, 
moved or bent by no affection, such persons rather lose all humanity than obtain 
true tranquility. For a thing is not necessarily right because it is inflexible, 
nor healthy because it is insensible. 
CHAP. 10.--WHETHER IT IS TO BE BELIEVED THAT OUR FIRST PARENTS IN PARADISE, 
BEFORE THEY SINNED, WERE FREE FROM ALL PERTURBATION. 
But it is a fair question, whether our first parent or first parents (for there 
was a marriage of two), before they sinned, experienced in their animal body 
such emotions as we shall not experience in the spiritual body when sin has been 
purged and finally abolished. For if they did, then how were they blessed in 
that boasted place of bliss, Paradise? For who that is affected by fear or grief 
can be called absolutely blessed? And what could those persons fear or suffer in 
such affluence of blessings, where neither death nor ill-health was feared, and 
where nothing was wanting which a good will could desire, and nothing present 
which could interrupt man's mental or bodily enjoyment? Their love to God was 
unclouded, and their mutual affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage; 
and from this love flowed a wonderful delight, because they always enjoyed what 
was loved. Their avoidance of sin was tranquil; and, so long as it was 
maintained, no other ill at all could invade them and bring sorrow. Or did they 
perhaps desire to touch and eat the forbidden fruit, yet feared to die; and thus 
both fear and desire already, even in that blissful place, preyed upon those 
first of mankind? Away with the thought that such could be the case where there 
was no sin! And, indeed, this is already sin, to desire those things which the 
law of God forbids, and to abstain from them through fear of punishment, not 
through love of righteousness. Away, I say, with the thought, that before there 
was any sin, there should already have been committed regarding that fruit the 
very sin which our Lord warns us against regarding a woman: "Whosoever looketh 
on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his 
heart."(1) As happy, then, as were these our first parents, who were agitated by 
no mental perturbations, and annoyed by no bodily discomforts, so happy should 
the whole human race have been, had they not introduced that evil which they 
have transmitted to their" posterity, and had none of their descendants 
committed iniquity worthy of damnation; but this original blessedness continuing 
until, in virtue of that benediction which said, "Increase and multiply,"(2) the 
number of the predestined saints should have been completed, there would then 
have been bestowed that higher felicity which is enjoyed by the most blessed 
angels,--a blessedness in which there should have been a secure assurance that 
no one would sin, and no one die; and so should the saints have lived, after no 
taste of labor, pain, or death, as now they shall live in the resurrection, 
after they have endured all these things. 
CHAP. 11.--OF THE FALL OF THE FIRST MAN, IN WHOM NATURE WAS CREATED GOOD, AND 
CAN BE RESTORED ONLY BY ITS AUTHOR. 
But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that man also 
would fall, we ought to consider this holy city m connection with what God 
foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not embrace 
God's ordination. For man, by his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor 
compel God to change what He had decreed; for God's foreknowledge had 
anticipated both,--that is to say, both how evil the man whom He had created 
good should become, and what good He Himself should even thus derive from him. 
For though God is said to change His determinations (so that in a tropical sense 
the Holy Scripture says even that God repented(3)), this is said with reference 
to man's expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to 
that which the Almighty had foreknown that He would do. Accordingly God, as it 
is written, made man upright,(4) and consequently with a good will. For if he 
had not had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good will, then, is 
the work of God; for God created him with it. But the first evil will, which 
preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the work of 
God to its own works than any positive work. And therefore the acts resulting 
were evil, not having God, but the will itself for their end; so that the will 
or the man himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree 
bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be not in harmony 
with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a vice or blemish, yet it is true 
of it as of all vice, that it cannot exist except in a nature, and only in a 
nature created out of nothing, and not in that which the Creator has begotten of 
Himself, as He begot the Word, by whom all things were made. For though God 
formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly 
material, is absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul, too, God created 
out of nothing, and joined to the body, when He made man. But evils are so 
thoroughly overcome by good, that though they are permitted to exist, for the 
sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can make a good 
use even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as in the true and supreme 
God Himself, and as in every invisible and visible celestial creature that 
exists above this murky atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because 
the natures in which evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are good. And 
evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had been 
introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that which had been 
vitiated and depraved. The will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is not 
the slave of vices and sins. Such was it given us by God; and this being lost by 
its own fault, can only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it. And 
therefore the truth says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free 
indeed;"(1) which is equivalent to saying, If the Son shall save you, ye shall 
be saved indeed. For He is our Liberator, inasmuch as He is our Saviour. 
Man then lived with God for his rule in a paradise at once physical and 
spiritual. For neither was it a paradise only physical for the advantage of the 
body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of the mind; nor was it only 
spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his internal sensations, and not also 
physical to afford him enjoyment through his external senses. But obviously it 
was both for both ends. But after that proud and therefore envious angel (of 
whose fall I have said as much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books 
of this work, as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God's angels, 
became his angels), preferring to rule with a kind of pomp of empire rather than 
to be another's subject, fell from the spiritual Paradise, and essaying to 
insinuate his persuasive guile into the mind of man, whose unfallen condition 
provoked him to envy now that himself was fallen, he chose the serpent as his 
mouthpiece in that bodily Paradise in which it and all the other earthly animals 
were living with those two human beings, the man and his wife, subject to them, 
and harmless; and he chose the serpent because, being slippery, and moving in 
tortuous windings, it was suitable for his purpose. And this animal being 
subdued to his wicked ends by the presence and superior force of his angelic 
nature, he abused as his instrument, and first tried his deceit upon the woman, 
making his assault upon the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might 
gradually gain the whole, and not supposing ,that the man would readily give ear 
to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman. For 
as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they blindly wished him 
to make an idol, and yet yielded to constraint; and as it is not credible that 
Solomon was so blind as to suppose that idols should be worshipped, but was 
drawn over to such sacrilege by the blandishments of women; so we cannot believe 
that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil's word to be truth, and therefore 
transgressed God's law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the 
woman, the husband to the wife, the one human being to the only other human 
being. For not without significance did the apostle say, "And Adam was not 
deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression;"(2) but he 
speaks thus, because the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but 
the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this 
involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable, but 
sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not say, "He did not sin," 
but "He was not deceived." For he shows that he sinned when he says, "By one man 
sin entered into the world,"(3) and immediately after more distinctly, "In the 
likeness of Adam's transgression." But he meant that those are deceived who do 
not judge that which they do to be sin; but he knew. Otherwise how were it true 
"Adam was not deceived?" But having as yet no experience of the divine severity, 
he was possibly deceived in so far as he thought his sin venial. And 
consequently he was not deceived as the woman was deceived, but he was deceived 
as to the judgment which would be passed on his apology: "The woman whom thou 
gavest to be with me, she gave me, and I did eat."(4) What need of saying more? 
Although they were not both deceived by credulity, yet both were entangled in 
the snares of the devil, and taken by sin. 
CHAP. 12.--OF THE NATURE OF MAN'S FIRST 
SIN. 
If any one finds a difficulty in understanding why other sins do not alter human 
nature as it was altered by the transgression of those first human beings, so 
that on account of it this nature is subject to the great corruption we feel and 
see, and to death, and is distracted and tossed with so many furious and 
contending emotions, and is certainly far different from what it was before sin, 
even though it were then lodged in an animal body,--if, I say, any one is moved 
by this, he ought not to think that that sin was a small and light one because 
it was committed about food, and that not bad nor noxious, except because it was 
forbidden; for in that spot of singular felicity God could not have created and 
planted any evil thing. But by the precept He gave, God commended obedience, 
which is, in a sort, the mother and guardian of all the virtues in the 
reasonable creature, which was so created that submission is advantageous to it, 
while the fulfillment of its own will in preference to the Creator's is 
destruction. And as this commandment enjoining abstinence from one kind of food 
in the midst of great abundance of other kinds was so easy to keep,--so light a 
burden to the memory,--and, above all, found no resistance to its observance in 
lust, which only afterwards sprung up as the penal consequence of sin, the 
iniquity of violating it was all the greater in proportion to the ease with 
which it might have been kept. 
CHAP. 13.--THAT IN ADAM'S SIN AN EVIL WILL 
PRECEDED THE EVIL ACT. 
Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly 
corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded 
it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For "pride is the 
beginning of sin."(1) And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? 
And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to 
cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it 
becomes its own satisfaction. And it does so when it falls away from that 
unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than itself. This falling away 
is spontaneous; for if the will had remained steadfast in the love of that 
higher and changeless good by which it was illumined to intelligence and kindled 
into love, it would not have turned away to find satisfaction in itself, and so 
become frigid and benighted; the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke 
the truth, nor would the man have preferred the request of his wife to the 
command of God, nor have supposed that it was a venial trangression to cleave to 
the partner of his life even in a partnership of sin. The wicked deed, 
then,--that is to say, the trangression of eating the forbidden fruit,--was 
committed by persons who were already wicked. That "evil fruit"(2) could be 
brought forth only by "a corrupt tree." But that the tree was evil was not the 
result of nature; for certainly it could become so only by the vice of the will, 
and vice is contrary to nature. Now, nature could not have been depraved by vice 
had it not been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is a nature, this is 
because it is made by God; but that it falls away from Him, this is because it 
is made out of nothing. But man did not so fall away(3) as to become absolutely 
nothing; but being turned towards himself, his being became more contracted than 
it was when he clave to Him who supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself, 
that is, to be his own satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to become 
a nonentity, but to approximate to that. And therefore the holy Scriptures 
designate the proud by another name, "self-pleasers." For it is good to have the 
heart lifted up, yet not to one's self, for this is proud, but to the Lord, for 
this is obedient, and can be the act only of the humble. There is, therefore, 
something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something 
in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that 
loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to 
submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and 
therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a 
defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolting from Him 
who is supreme, falls to a low condition; and then comes to pass what is 
written: "Thou castedst them down when they lifted up themselves."(4) For he 
does not say, "when they had been lifted up," as if first they were exalted, and 
then afterwards cast down; but "when they lifted up themselves" even then they 
were cast down,--that is to say, the very lifting up was already a fall. And 
therefore it is that humility is specially recommended to the city of God as it 
sojourns in this world, and is specially exhibited in the city of God, and in 
the person of Christ its King; while the contrary vice of pride, according to 
the testimony of the sacred writings, specially rules his adversary the devil. 
And certainly this is the great difference which distinguishes the two cities of 
which we speak, the one being the society of the godly men, the other of the 
ungodly, each associated with the angels that adhere to their party, and the one 
guided and fashioned by love of self, the other by love of God The devil, then, 
would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what God had 
forbidden, had man not already begun to live for himself. It was this that made 
him listen with pleasure to the words, "Ye shall be as gods,"(1) which they 
would much more readily have accomplished by obediently adhering to their 
supreme and true end than by proudly living to themselves. For created gods are 
gods not by virtue of what is in themselves, but by a participation of the true 
God. By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring to be 
self-sufficing, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him. Accordingly, this 
wicked desire which prompts man to please himself as if he were himself light, 
and which thus turns him away from that light by which, had he followed it, he 
would himself have become light,--this wicked desire, I say, already secretly 
existed in him, and the open sin was but its consequence. For that is true which 
is written, "Pride goeth before destruction, and before honor is humility;"(2) 
that is to say, secret ruin precedes open ruin, while the former is not counted 
ruin. For who counts exaltation ruin, though no sooner is the Highest forsaken 
than a fall is begun? But who does not recognize it as ruin, when there occurs 
an evident and indubitable transgression of the commandment? And consequently, 
God's prohibition had reference to such an act as, when committed, could not be 
defended on any pretense of doing what was righteous.(3) And I make hold to say 
that it is useful for the proud to fall into an open and indisputable 
transgression, and so displease themselves, as already, by pleasing themselves, 
they had fallen. For Peter was in a healthier condition when he wept and was 
dissatisfied with himself, than when he boldly presumed and satisfied himself. 
And this is averred by the sacred Psalmist when he says, "Fill their faces with 
shame, that they may seek Thy name, O Lord;"(4) that is, that they who have 
pleased themselves in seeking their own glory may be pleased and satisfied with 
Thee in seeking Thy glory. 
CHAP. 14.--OF THE PRIDE IN THE SIN, WHICH WAS WORSE THAN THE SIN ITSELF. 
But it is a worse and more damnable pride which casts about for the shelter of 
an excuse even in manifest sins, as these our first parents did, of whom the 
woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;" and the man said, "The 
woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did 
eat."(5) Here there is no word of begging pardon, no word of entreaty for 
healing. For though they do not, like Cain, deny that they have perpetrated the 
deed, yet their pride seeks to refer its wickedness to another,--the woman's 
pride to the serpent, the man's to the woman. But where there is a plain 
trangression of a divine commandment, this is rather to accuse than to excuse 
oneself. For the fact that the woman sinned on the serpent's persuasion, and the 
man at the woman's offer, did not make the transgression less, as if there were 
any one whom we ought rather to believe or yield to than God. 
CHAP. 15.--OF THE JUSTICE OF THE PUNISHMENT WITH WHICH OUR FIRST PARENTS WERE 
VISITED FOR THEIR DISOBEDIENCE. 
Therefore, because the sin was a despising of the authority of God,--who had 
created man; who had made him in His own image; who had set him above the other 
animals; who had placed him in Paradise; who had enriched him with abundance of 
every kind and of safety; who had laid upon him neither many, nor great, nor 
difficult commandments, but, in order to make a wholesome obedience easy to him, 
had given him a single very brief and very light precept by which He reminded 
that creature whose service was to be free that He was Lord,--it was just that 
condemnation followed, and condemnation such that man, who by keeping the 
commandments should have been spiritual even in his flesh, became fleshly even 
in his spirit; and as in his pride he had sought to he his own satisfaction, God 
in His justice abandoned him to himself, not to live in the absolute 
independence he affected, but instead of the liberty he desired, to live 
dissatisfied with himself in a hard and miserable bondage to him to whom by 
sinning he had yielded himself, doomed in spite of himself to die in body as he 
had willingly become dead in spirit, condemned even to eternal death (had not 
the grace of God delivered him) because he had forsaken eternal life. Whoever 
thinks such punishment either excessive or unjust shows his inability to measure 
the great iniquity of sinning where sin might so easily have been avoided. For 
as Abraham's obedience is with justice pronounced to be great, because the thing 
commanded, to kill his son, was very difficult, so in Paradise the disobedience 
was the greater, because the difficulty of that which was commanded was 
imperceptible. And as the obedience of the second Man was the more laudable 
because He became obedient even "unto death,"(1) so the disobedience of the 
first man was the more detestable because he became disobedient even unto death. 
For where the penalty annexed to disobedience is great, and the thing commanded 
by the Creator is easy, who can sufficiently estimate how great a wickedness it 
is, in a matter so easy, not to obey the authority of so great a power, even 
when that power deters with so terrible a penalty? 
In short, to say all in a word, what but disobedience was the punishment of 
disobedience in that sin? For what else is man's misery but his own disobedience 
to himself, so that in consequence of his not being willing to do what he could 
do, he now wills to do what he cannot? For though he could not do all things in 
Paradise before he sinned, yet he wished to do only what he could do, and 
therefore he could do all things he wished. But now, as we recognize in his 
offspring, and as divine Scripture testifies, "Man is like to vanity."(2) For 
who can count how many things he wishes which be cannot do, so long as he is 
disobedient to himself, that is, so long as his mind and his flesh do not obey 
his will? For in spite of himself his mind is both frequently disturbed, and his 
flesh suffers, and grows old, and dies; and in spite of ourselves we suffer 
whatever else we suffer, and which we would not suffer if our nature absolutely 
and in all its parts obeyed our will. But is it not the infirmities of the flesh 
which hamper it in its service? Yet what does it matter how its service is 
hampered, so long as the fact remains, that by the just retribution of the 
sovereign God whom we refused to be subject to and serve, our flesh, which was 
subjected to us, now torments us by insubordination, although our disobedience 
brought trouble on ourselves, not upon God? For He is not in need of our service 
as we of our body's; and therefore what we did was no punishment to Him, but 
what we receive is so to us. And the pains which are called bodily are pains of 
the soul in and from the body. For what pain or desire can the flesh feel by 
itself and without the soul? But when the flesh is said to desire or to suffer, 
it is meant, as we have explained, that the man does so, or some part of the 
soul which is affected by the sensation of the flesh, whether a harsh sensation 
causing pain, or gentle, causing pleasure. But pain in the flesh is only a 
discomfort of the soul arising from the flesh, and a kind of shrinking from its 
suffering, as the pain of the soul which is called sadness is a shrinking from 
those things which have happened to us in spite of ourselves. But sadness is 
frequently preceded by fear, which is itself in the soul, not in the flesh; 
while bodily pain is not preceded by any kind of fear of the flesh, which can be 
felt in the flesh before the pain. But pleasure is preceded by a certain 
appetite which is felt in the flesh like a craving, as hunger and thirst and 
that generative appetite which is most commonly identified with the name" lust," 
though this is the generic word for all desires. For anger itself was defined by 
the ancients as nothing else than the lust of revenge;(3) although sometimes a 
man is angry even at inanimate objects which cannot feel his vengeance, as when 
one breaks a pen, or crushes a quill that writes badly. Yet even this, though 
less reasonable, is in its way a lust of revenge, and is, so to speak, a 
mysterious kind of shadow of [the great law of] retribution, that they who do 
evil should suffer evil. There is therefore a lust for revenge, which is called 
anger; there is a lust of money, which goes by the name of avarice; there is a 
lust of conquering, no matter by what means, which is called opinionativeness; 
there is a lust of applause, which is named boasting. There are many and various 
lusts, of which some have names of their own, while others have not. For who 
could readily give a name to the lust of ruling, which yet has a powerful 
influence in the soul of tyrants, as civil wars bear witness? 
CHAP. 16.--OF THE EVIL OF LUST,--A WORD WHICH, THOUGH APPLICABLE TO MANY VICES, 
IS SPECIALLY APPROPRIATED TO SEXUAL UNCLEANNESS 
Although, therefore, lust may have many objects, yet when no object is 
specified, the word lust usually suggests to the mind the lustful excitement of 
the organs of generation. And this lust not only takes possession of the whole 
body and outward members, but also makes itself felt within, and moves the whole 
man with a passion in which mental emotion is mingled with bodily appetite, so 
that the pleasure which results is the greatest of all bodily pleasures. So 
possessing indeed is this pleasure, that at the moment of time in which it is 
consummated, all mental activity is suspended. What friend of wisdom and holy 
joys, who, being married, but knowing, as the apostle says, "how to possess his 
vessel in santification and honor, not in the disease of desire, as the Gentiles 
who know not God,"(4) would not prefer, if this were possible, to beget children 
without this lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the members 
created for this purpose should not be stimulated by the heat of lust, but 
should be actuated by his volition, in the same way as his other members serve 
him for their respective ends? But even those who delight in this pleasure are 
not moved to it at their own will, whether they confine themselves to lawful or 
transgress to unlawful pleasures; but sometimes this lust importunes them in 
spite of themselves, and sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it, so 
that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not in the body. Thus, strangely 
enough, this emotion not only fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget 
offspring, but also refuses to serve lascivious lust; and though it often 
opposes its whole combined energy to the soul that resists it, sometimes also it 
is divided against itself, and while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved. 

CHAP. 11.--OF THE FALL OF THE FIRST MAN, IN WHOM NATURE WAS CREATED GOOD, AND 
CAN BE RESTORED ONLY BY ITS AUTHOR. 
But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that man also 
would fall, we ought to consider this holy city m connection with what God 
foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not embrace 
God's ordination. For man, by his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor 
compel God to change what He had decreed; for God's foreknowledge had 
anticipated both,--that is to say, both how evil the man whom He had created 
good should become, and what good He Himself should even thus derive from him. 
For though God is said to change His determinations (so that in a tropical sense 
the Holy Scripture says even that God repented(3)), this is said with reference 
to man's expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to 
that which the Almighty had foreknown that He would do. Accordingly God, as it 
is written, made man upright,(4) and consequently with a good will. For if he 
had not had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good will, then, is 
the work of God; for God created him with it. But the first evil will, which 
preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the work of 
God to its own works than any positive work. And therefore the acts resulting 
were evil, not having God, but the will itself for their end; so that the will 
or the man himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree 
bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be not in harmony 
with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a vice or blemish, yet it is true 
of it as of all vice, that it cannot exist except in a nature, and only in a 
nature created out of nothing, and not in that which the Creator has begotten of 
Himself, as He begot the Word, by whom all things were made. For though God 
formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly 
material, is absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul, too, God created 
out of nothing, and joined to the body, when He made man. But evils are so 
thoroughly overcome by good, that though they are permitted to exist, for the 
sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can make a good 
use even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as in the true and supreme 
God Himself, and as in every invisible and visible celestial creature that 
exists above this murky atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because 
the natures in which evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are good. And 
evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had been 
introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that which had been 
vitiated and depraved. The will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is not 
the slave of vices and sins. Such was it given us by God; and this being lost by 
its own fault, can only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it. And 
therefore the truth says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free 
indeed;"(1) which is equivalent to saying, If the Son shall save you, ye shall 
be saved indeed. For He is our Liberator, inasmuch as He is our Saviour. 
Man then lived with God for his rule in a paradise at once physical and 
spiritual. For neither was it a paradise only physical for the advantage of the 
body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of the mind; nor was it only 
spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his internal sensations, and not also 
physical to afford him enjoyment through his external senses. But obviously it 
was both for both ends. But after that proud and therefore envious angel (of 
whose fall I have said as much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books 
of this work, as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God's angels, 
became his angels), preferring to rule with a kind of pomp of empire rather than 
to be another's subject, fell from the spiritual Paradise, and essaying to 
insinuate his persuasive guile into the mind of man, whose unfallen condition 
provoked him to envy now that himself was fallen, he chose the serpent as his 
mouthpiece in that bodily Paradise in which it and all the other earthly animals 
were living with those two human beings, the man and his wife, subject to them, 
and harmless; and he chose the serpent because, being slippery, and moving in 
tortuous windings, it was suitable for his purpose. And this animal being 
subdued to his wicked ends by the presence and superior force of his angelic 
nature, he abused as his instrument, and first tried his deceit upon the woman, 
making his assault upon the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might 
gradually gain the whole, and not supposing ,that the man would readily give ear 
to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman. For 
as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they blindly wished him 
to make an idol, and yet yielded to constraint; and as it is not credible that 
Solomon was so blind as to suppose that idols should be worshipped, but was 
drawn over to such sacrilege by the blandishments of women; so we cannot believe 
that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil's word to be truth, and therefore 
transgressed God's law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the 
woman, the husband to the wife, the one human being to the only other human 
being. For not without significance did the apostle say, "And Adam was not 
deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression;"(2) but he 
speaks thus, because the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but 
the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this 
involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable, but 
sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not say, "He did not sin," 
but "He was not deceived." For he shows that he sinned when he says, "By one man 
sin entered into the world,"(3) and immediately after more distinctly, "In the 
likeness of Adam's transgression." But he meant that those are deceived who do 
not judge that which they do to be sin; but he knew. Otherwise how were it true 
"Adam was not deceived?" But having as yet no experience of the divine severity, 
he was possibly deceived in so far as he thought his sin venial. And 
consequently he was not deceived as the woman was deceived, but he was deceived 
as to the judgment which would be passed on his apology: "The woman whom thou 
gavest to be with me, she gave me, and I did eat."(4) What need of saying more? 
Although they were not both deceived by credulity, yet both were entangled in 
the snares of the devil, and taken by sin. 
CHAP. 12.--OF THE NATURE OF MAN'S FIRST 
SIN. 
If any one finds a difficulty in understanding why other sins do not alter human 
nature as it was altered by the transgression of those first human beings, so 
that on account of it this nature is subject to the great corruption we feel and 
see, and to death, and is distracted and tossed with so many furious and 
contending emotions, and is certainly far different from what it was before sin, 
even though it were then lodged in an animal body,--if, I say, any one is moved 
by this, he ought not to think that that sin was a small and light one because 
it was committed about food, and that not bad nor noxious, except because it was 
forbidden; for in that spot of singular felicity God could not have created and 
planted any evil thing. But by the precept He gave, God commended obedience, 
which is, in a sort, the mother and guardian of all the virtues in the 
reasonable creature, which was so created that submission is advantageous to it, 
while the fulfillment of its own will in preference to the Creator's is 
destruction. And as this commandment enjoining abstinence from one kind of food 
in the midst of great abundance of other kinds was so easy to keep,--so light a 
burden to the memory,--and, above all, found no resistance to its observance in 
lust, which only afterwards sprung up as the penal consequence of sin, the 
iniquity of violating it was all the greater in proportion to the ease with 
which it might have been kept. 
CHAP. 13.--THAT IN ADAM'S SIN AN EVIL WILL 
PRECEDED THE EVIL ACT. 
Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly 
corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded 
it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For "pride is the 
beginning of sin."(1) And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? 
And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to 
cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it 
becomes its own satisfaction. And it does so when it falls away from that 
unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than itself. This falling away 
is spontaneous; for if the will had remained steadfast in the love of that 
higher and changeless good by which it was illumined to intelligence and kindled 
into love, it would not have turned away to find satisfaction in itself, and so 
become frigid and benighted; the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke 
the truth, nor would the man have preferred the request of his wife to the 
command of God, nor have supposed that it was a venial trangression to cleave to 
the partner of his life even in a partnership of sin. The wicked deed, 
then,--that is to say, the trangression of eating the forbidden fruit,--was 
committed by persons who were already wicked. That "evil fruit"(2) could be 
brought forth only by "a corrupt tree." But that the tree was evil was not the 
result of nature; for certainly it could become so only by the vice of the will, 
and vice is contrary to nature. Now, nature could not have been depraved by vice 
had it not been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is a nature, this is 
because it is made by God; but that it falls away from Him, this is because it 
is made out of nothing. But man did not so fall away(3) as to become absolutely 
nothing; but being turned towards himself, his being became more contracted than 
it was when he clave to Him who supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself, 
that is, to be his own satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to become 
a nonentity, but to approximate to that. And therefore the holy Scriptures 
designate the proud by another name, "self-pleasers." For it is good to have the 
heart lifted up, yet not to one's self, for this is proud, but to the Lord, for 
this is obedient, and can be the act only of the humble. There is, therefore, 
something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something 
in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that 
loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to 
submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and 
therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a 
defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolting from Him 
who is supreme, falls to a low condition; and then comes to pass what is 
written: "Thou castedst them down when they lifted up themselves."(4) For he 
does not say, "when they had been lifted up," as if first they were exalted, and 
then afterwards cast down; but "when they lifted up themselves" even then they 
were cast down,--that is to say, the very lifting up was already a fall. And 
therefore it is that humility is specially recommended to the city of God as it 
sojourns in this world, and is specially exhibited in the city of God, and in 
the person of Christ its King; while the contrary vice of pride, according to 
the testimony of the sacred writings, specially rules his adversary the devil. 
And certainly this is the great difference which distinguishes the two cities of 
which we speak, the one being the society of the godly men, the other of the 
ungodly, each associated with the angels that adhere to their party, and the one 
guided and fashioned by love of self, the other by love of God The devil, then, 
would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what God had 
forbidden, had man not already begun to live for himself. It was this that made 
him listen with pleasure to the words, "Ye shall be as gods,"(1) which they 
would much more readily have accomplished by obediently adhering to their 
supreme and true end than by proudly living to themselves. For created gods are 
gods not by virtue of what is in themselves, but by a participation of the true 
God. By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring to be 
self-sufficing, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him. Accordingly, this 
wicked desire which prompts man to please himself as if he were himself light, 
and which thus turns him away from that light by which, had he followed it, he 
would himself have become light,--this wicked desire, I say, already secretly 
existed in him, and the open sin was but its consequence. For that is true which 
is written, "Pride goeth before destruction, and before honor is humility;"(2) 
that is to say, secret ruin precedes open ruin, while the former is not counted 
ruin. For who counts exaltation ruin, though no sooner is the Highest forsaken 
than a fall is begun? But who does not recognize it as ruin, when there occurs 
an evident and indubitable transgression of the commandment? And consequently, 
God's prohibition had reference to such an act as, when committed, could not be 
defended on any pretense of doing what was righteous.(3) And I make hold to say 
that it is useful for the proud to fall into an open and indisputable 
transgression, and so displease themselves, as already, by pleasing themselves, 
they had fallen. For Peter was in a healthier condition when he wept and was 
dissatisfied with himself, than when he boldly presumed and satisfied himself. 
And this is averred by the sacred Psalmist when he says, "Fill their faces with 
shame, that they may seek Thy name, O Lord;"(4) that is, that they who have 
pleased themselves in seeking their own glory may be pleased and satisfied with 
Thee in seeking Thy glory. 
CHAP. 14.--OF THE PRIDE IN THE SIN, WHICH WAS WORSE THAN THE SIN ITSELF. 
But it is a worse and more damnable pride which casts about for the shelter of 
an excuse even in manifest sins, as these our first parents did, of whom the 
woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;" and the man said, "The 
woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did 
eat."(5) Here there is no word of begging pardon, no word of entreaty for 
healing. For though they do not, like Cain, deny that they have perpetrated the 
deed, yet their pride seeks to refer its wickedness to another,--the woman's 
pride to the serpent, the man's to the woman. But where there is a plain 
trangression of a divine commandment, this is rather to accuse than to excuse 
oneself. For the fact that the woman sinned on the serpent's persuasion, and the 
man at the woman's offer, did not make the transgression less, as if there were 
any one whom we ought rather to believe or yield to than God. 
CHAP. 15.--OF THE JUSTICE OF THE PUNISHMENT WITH WHICH OUR FIRST PARENTS WERE 
VISITED FOR THEIR DISOBEDIENCE. 
Therefore, because the sin was a despising of the authority of God,--who had 
created man; who had made him in His own image; who had set him above the other 
animals; who had placed him in Paradise; who had enriched him with abundance of 
every kind and of safety; who had laid upon him neither many, nor great, nor 
difficult commandments, but, in order to make a wholesome obedience easy to him, 
had given him a single very brief and very light precept by which He reminded 
that creature whose service was to be free that He was Lord,--it was just that 
condemnation followed, and condemnation such that man, who by keeping the 
commandments should have been spiritual even in his flesh, became fleshly even 
in his spirit; and as in his pride he had sought to he his own satisfaction, God 
in His justice abandoned him to himself, not to live in the absolute 
independence he affected, but instead of the liberty he desired, to live 
dissatisfied with himself in a hard and miserable bondage to him to whom by 
sinning he had yielded himself, doomed in spite of himself to die in body as he 
had willingly become dead in spirit, condemned even to eternal death (had not 
the grace of God delivered him) because he had forsaken eternal life. Whoever 
thinks such punishment either excessive or unjust shows his inability to measure 
the great iniquity of sinning where sin might so easily have been avoided. For 
as Abraham's obedience is with justice pronounced to be great, because the thing 
commanded, to kill his son, was very difficult, so in Paradise the disobedience 
was the greater, because the difficulty of that which was commanded was 
imperceptible. And as the obedience of the second Man was the more laudable 
because He became obedient even "unto death,"(1) so the disobedience of the 
first man was the more detestable because he became disobedient even unto death. 
For where the penalty annexed to disobedience is great, and the thing commanded 
by the Creator is easy, who can sufficiently estimate how great a wickedness it 
is, in a matter so easy, not to obey the authority of so great a power, even 
when that power deters with so terrible a penalty? 
In short, to say all in a word, what but disobedience was the punishment of 
disobedience in that sin? For what else is man's misery but his own disobedience 
to himself, so that in consequence of his not being willing to do what he could 
do, he now wills to do what he cannot? For though he could not do all things in 
Paradise before he sinned, yet he wished to do only what he could do, and 
therefore he could do all things he wished. But now, as we recognize in his 
offspring, and as divine Scripture testifies, "Man is like to vanity."(2) For 
who can count how many things he wishes which be cannot do, so long as he is 
disobedient to himself, that is, so long as his mind and his flesh do not obey 
his will? For in spite of himself his mind is both frequently disturbed, and his 
flesh suffers, and grows old, and dies; and in spite of ourselves we suffer 
whatever else we suffer, and which we would not suffer if our nature absolutely 
and in all its parts obeyed our will. But is it not the infirmities of the flesh 
which hamper it in its service? Yet what does it matter how its service is 
hampered, so long as the fact remains, that by the just retribution of the 
sovereign God whom we refused to be subject to and serve, our flesh, which was 
subjected to us, now torments us by insubordination, although our disobedience 
brought trouble on ourselves, not upon God? For He is not in need of our service 
as we of our body's; and therefore what we did was no punishment to Him, but 
what we receive is so to us. And the pains which are called bodily are pains of 
the soul in and from the body. For what pain or desire can the flesh feel by 
itself and without the soul? But when the flesh is said to desire or to suffer, 
it is meant, as we have explained, that the man does so, or some part of the 
soul which is affected by the sensation of the flesh, whether a harsh sensation 
causing pain, or gentle, causing pleasure. But pain in the flesh is only a 
discomfort of the soul arising from the flesh, and a kind of shrinking from its 
suffering, as the pain of the soul which is called sadness is a shrinking from 
those things which have happened to us in spite of ourselves. But sadness is 
frequently preceded by fear, which is itself in the soul, not in the flesh; 
while bodily pain is not preceded by any kind of fear of the flesh, which can be 
felt in the flesh before the pain. But pleasure is preceded by a certain 
appetite which is felt in the flesh like a craving, as hunger and thirst and 
that generative appetite which is most commonly identified with the name" lust," 
though this is the generic word for all desires. For anger itself was defined by 
the ancients as nothing else than the lust of revenge;(3) although sometimes a 
man is angry even at inanimate objects which cannot feel his vengeance, as when 
one breaks a pen, or crushes a quill that writes badly. Yet even this, though 
less reasonable, is in its way a lust of revenge, and is, so to speak, a 
mysterious kind of shadow of [the great law of] retribution, that they who do 
evil should suffer evil. There is therefore a lust for revenge, which is called 
anger; there is a lust of money, which goes by the name of avarice; there is a 
lust of conquering, no matter by what means, which is called opinionativeness; 
there is a lust of applause, which is named boasting. There are many and various 
lusts, of which some have names of their own, while others have not. For who 
could readily give a name to the lust of ruling, which yet has a powerful 
influence in the soul of tyrants, as civil wars bear witness? 
CHAP. 16.--OF THE EVIL OF LUST,--A WORD WHICH, THOUGH APPLICABLE TO MANY VICES, 
IS SPECIALLY APPROPRIATED TO SEXUAL UNCLEANNESS 
Although, therefore, lust may have many objects, yet when no object is 
specified, the word lust usually suggests to the mind the lustful excitement of 
the organs of generation. And this lust not only takes possession of the whole 
body and outward members, but also makes itself felt within, and moves the whole 
man with a passion in which mental emotion is mingled with bodily appetite, so 
that the pleasure which results is the greatest of all bodily pleasures. So 
possessing indeed is this pleasure, that at the moment of time in which it is 
consummated, all mental activity is suspended. What friend of wisdom and holy 
joys, who, being married, but knowing, as the apostle says, "how to possess his 
vessel in santification and honor, not in the disease of desire, as the Gentiles 
who know not God,"(4) would not prefer, if this were possible, to beget children 
without this lust, so that in this function of begetting offspring the members 
created for this purpose should not be stimulated by the heat of lust, but 
should be actuated by his volition, in the same way as his other members serve 
him for their respective ends? But even those who delight in this pleasure are 
not moved to it at their own will, whether they confine themselves to lawful or 
transgress to unlawful pleasures; but sometimes this lust importunes them in 
spite of themselves, and sometimes fails them when they desire to feel it, so 
that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not in the body. Thus, strangely 
enough, this emotion not only fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget 
offspring, but also refuses to serve lascivious lust; and though it often 
opposes its whole combined energy to the soul that resists it, sometimes also it 
is divided against itself, and while it moves the soul, leaves the body unmoved. 

CHAP. 23.--WHETHER GENERATION SHOULD HAVE TAKEN PLACE EVEN IN PARADISE HAD MAN 
NOT SINNED, OR WHETHER THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ANY CONTENTION THERE BETWEEN 
CHASTITY AND LUST. 
But he who says that there should have been neither copulation nor generation 
but for sin, virtually says that man's sin was necessary to complete the number 
of the saints. For if these two by not sinning should have continued to live 
alone, because, as is supposed, they could not have begotten children had they 
not sinned, then certainly sin was necessary in order that there might be not 
only two but many righteous men. And if this cannot be maintained without 
absurdity, we must rattler believe that the number of the saints fit to complete 
this most blessed city would have been as great though no one had sinned, as it 
is now that the grace of God gathers its citizens out of the multitude of 
sinners, so long as the children of this world generate and are generated.(3) 
And therefore that marriage, worthy of the happiness of Paradise, should have 
had desirable fruit without the shame of lust, had there been no sin. But how 
that could be, there is now no example to teach us. Nevertheless, it ought not 
to seem incredible that one member might serve the will without lust then, since 
so many serve it now. Do we now 
move our feet and hands when we will to do the things we would by means of these 
members? do we meet with no resistance in them, but perceive that they are ready 
servants of the will, both in our own case and in that of others, and especially 
of artisans employed in mechanical operations, by which the weakness and 
clumsiness of nature become, through industrious exercise, wonderfully 
dexterous? and shall we not believe that, like as all those members obediently 
serve the will, so also should the members have discharged the function of 
generation, though lust, the award of disobedience, had been awanting.? Did not 
Cicero, in discussing the difference of governments in his De Republica, adopt a 
simile from human nature, and say that we command Our bodily members as 
Children, they are so obedient; but that the vicious parts of the soul must be 
treated as slaves, and be coerced with a more stringent authority? And no doubt, 
in the order of nature, the soul is more excellent than the body; and yet the 
soul commands the body more easily than itself. Nevertheless this lust, of which 
we at present speak, is the more shameful on this account, because the soul is 
therein neither master of itself, so as not to lust at all, nor of the body, so 
as to keep the members under the control of the will; for if they were thus 
ruled, there should be no shame. But now the soul is ashamed that the body, 
which by nature is inferior and subject to it, should resist its authority. For 
in the resistance experienced by the soul in the other emotions there is less 
shame, because the resistance is from itself, and thus, when it is conquered by 
itself, itself is the conqueror, although the conquest is inordinate and 
vicious, because accomplished by those parts of the soul which ought to be 
subject to reason, yet, being accomplished by its own parts and energies, the 
conquest is, as I say, its own. For when the soul conquers itself to a due 
subordination, so that its unreasonable motions are controlled by reason, while 
it again is subject to God, this is a conquest virtuous and praiseworthy. Yet 
there is less shame when the soul is resisted by its own vicious parts than when 
its will and order are resisted by the body, which is distinct from and inferior 
to it, and dependent on it for life itself. 
But so long as the will retains under its authority the other members, without 
which the members excited by lust to resist the will cannot accomplish what they 
seek, chastity is preserved, and the delight of sin foregone. And certainly, had 
not culpable disobedience been visited with penal disobedience, the marriage of 
Paradise should have been ignorant of this struggle and rebellion, this quarrel 
between will and lust, that the will may be satisfied and lust restrained, but 
those members like all the rest, should have obeyed the will. The field of 
generation(1) should have been sown by the organ created for this purpose, as 
the earth is sown by the hand. And whereas now, as we essay to investigate this 
subject more exactly, modesty hinders us, and compels Us to ask pardon of chaste 
ears, there would have been no cause to do so, but we could have discoursed 
freely, and without fear of seeming obscene, upon all those points which occur 
to one who meditates on the subject. There would not have been even words which 
could be called obscene, but all that might be said of these members would have 
been as pure as what is said of the other parts of the body. Whoever, then, 
comes to the perusal of these pages with unchaste mind, let him blame his 
disposition, not his nature; let him brand the actings of his own impurity, not 
the words which necessity forces us to use, and for which every pure and pious 
reader or hearer will very readily pardon me, while I expose the folly of that 
scepticism which argues solely on the ground of its own experience, and has no 
faith in anything beyond. He who is not scandalized at the apostle's censure of 
the horrible wickedness of the women who "changed the natural use into that 
which is against nature,"(2) will lead all this without being shocked, 
especially as we are not, like Paul, citing and censuring a damnable 
uncleanness, but are explaining, so far as we can, human generation, while with 
Paul we avoid all obscenity of language. 
CHAP. 24.--THAT IF MEN HAD REMAINED INNOCENT AND OBEDIENT IN PARADISE, THE 
GENERATIVE ORGANS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN SUBJECTION TO THE WILL AS THE OTHER 
MEMBERS ARE. 
The man, then, would have sown the seed, and the woman received it, as need 
required, the generative organs being moved by the will, not excited by lust. 
For we move at will not only those members which are furnished With joints of 
solid bone, as the hands, feet, and fingers, but we move also at will those 
Which are composed of slack and soft nerves: we can put them in motion, or 
stretch them out, or bend and twist them, or contract and stiffen them, as we do 
with the muscles of the mouth and face. The lungs, which are the very tenderest 
of the viscera except the brain, and are therefore carefully sheltered in the 
cavity of the chest, yet for all purposes of inhaling and exhaling the breath, 
and of uttering and modulating the voice, are obedient to the will when we 
breathe, exhale, speak, shout, or sing, just as the bellows obey the smith or 
the organist. I will not press the fact that some animals have a natural power 
to move a single spot of the skin with which their whole body is covered, if 
they have felt on it anything they wish to drive off,--a power so great, that by 
this shivering tremor of the skin they can not only shake off flies that have 
settled on them, but even spears that have fixed in their flesh. Man, it is 
true, has not this power; but is this any reason for supposing that God could 
not give it to such creatures as He wished to possess it? And therefore man 
himself also might very well have enjoyed absolute power over his members had he 
not forfeited it by his disobedience; for it was not difficult for God to form 
him so that what is now moved in his body only by lust should have been moved 
only at will. 
We know, too, that some men are differently constituted from others, and have 
some rare and remarkable faculty of doing with their body what other men can by 
no effort do, and, indeed, scarcely believe when they hear of others doing. 
There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a time, or both 
together. There are some who, without moving the head, can bring the hair down 
upon the forehead, and move the whole scalp backwards and forwards at pleasure. 
Some, by lightly pressing their stomach, bring up an incredible quantity and 
variety of things they have swallowed, and produce whatever they please, quite 
whole, as if out of a bag. Some so accurately mimic the voices of birds and 
beasts and other men, that, unless they are seen, the difference cannot be told. 
Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at 
pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing. I myself have known a man who 
was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known that some weep when 
they please, and shed a flood of tears. But far more incredible is that which 
some of our brethren saw quite recently. There was a presbyter called 
Restitutus, in the parish of the Calamensian(3) Church, who, as often as he 
pleased (and he was asked to do this by those who desired to witness so 
remarkable a phenomenon), on some one imitating the wailings of mourners, became 
so insensible, and lay in a state so like death, that not only had he no feeling 
when they pinched and pricked him, but even when fire was applied to him, and he 
was burned by it, he had no sense of pain except afterwards from the wound. And 
that his body remained motionless, not by reason of his self-command, but 
because he was insensible, was proved by the fact that he breathed no more than 
a dead man; and yet he said that, when any one spoke with more than ordinary 
distinctness, he heard the voice, but as if it were a long way off. Seeing, 
then, that even in this mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by 
many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what 
reason is there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this 
weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the 
propagation of offspring without lust? Man has been given over to himself 
because he abandoned God, while he sought to be self-satisfying; and disobeying 
God, he could not obey even himself. Hence it is that he is involved in the 
obvious misery of being unable to live as he wishes. For if he lived as he 
wished, he would think himself blessed; but he could not be so if he lived 
wickedly. 
CHAP. 25.--OF TRUE BLESSEDNESS, WHICH THIS 
PRESENT LIFE CANNOT ENJOY. 
However, if we look at this a little more closely, we see that no one lives as 
he wishes but the blessed, and that no one is blessed but the righteous. But 
even the righteous himself does not live as he wishes, until he has arrived 
where he cannot die, be deceived, or injured, and until he is assured that this 
shall be his eternal condition. For this nature demands; and nature is not fully 
and perfectly blessed till it attains what it seeks. But what man is at present 
able to live as he Wishes, when it is not in his power so much as to live? He 
wishes to live, he is compelled to die. How, then, does he live as he wishes who 
does not live as long as he wishes? or if he wishes to die, how can he live as 
he wishes, since he does not wish even to live? Or if he wishes to die, not 
because he dislikes life, but that after death he may live better, still he is 
not yet living as he wishes, but only has the prospect of so living when, 
through death, he reaches that which he wishes. But admit that he lives as he 
wishes, because he has done violence to himself, and forced himself not to wish 
what he cannot obtain, and to wish only what he can (as Terence has it, "Since 
you cannot do what you will, will what you can"(1), is he therefore blessed 
because he is patiently wretched? For a blessed life is possessed only by the 
man Who loves it. If it is loved and possessed, it must necessarily be more 
ardently loved than all besides; for whatever else is loved must be loved for 
the sake of the blessed life. And if it is loved as it deserves to be,--and the 
man is not blessed who does not love the blessed life as it deserves,--then he 
who so loves it cannot but wish it to be eternal. Therefore it shall then only 
be blessed when it is eternal. 
CHAP. 26.--THAT WE ARE TO BELIEVE THAT IN PARADISE OUR FIRST PARENTS BEGAT 
OFFSPRING WITHOUT BLUSHING. 
In Paradise, then, man lived as he desired so long as he desired what God had 
commanded. He lived in the enjoyment of God, and was good by God's goodness; he 
lived without any want, and had it in his power so to live eternally. He had 
food that he might not hunger, drink that he might not thirst, the tree of life 
that old age might not waste him. There was in his body no corruption, nor seed 
of corruption, which could produce in him any unpleasant sensation. He feared no 
inward disease, no outward accident. Soundest health blessed his body, absolute 
tranquillity his soul. As in Paradise there was no excessive heat or cold, so 
its inhabitants were exempt from the vicissitudes of fear and desire. No sadness 
of any kind was there, nor any foolish joy; true gladness ceaselessly flowed 
from the presence of God, who was loved "out of a pure heart, and a good 
conscience, and faith unfeigned."(2) The honest love of husband and wife made a 
sure harmony between them. Body and spirit worked harmoniously together, and the 
commandment was kept without labor. No languor made their leisure wearisome; no 
sleepiness interrupted their desire to labor.(3) In tanta facilitate rerum et 
felicitate hominum, absit ut suspicemur, non potuisse prolem seri sine libidinis 
morbo: sed eo voluntatis nutu moverentur illa membra qua caetera, et sine 
ardoris illecebroso stimulo cum tranquillitate animi et corporis nulla 
corruptione integritatis infunderetur gremio maritus uxoris. Neque enim quia 
experientia probari non potest, ideo credendum non est; quando illas corporis 
partes non ageret turbidus calor, sed spontanea potestas, sicut opus, 
adhibebret; ita tunc potuisse utero conjugis salva integritate feminei genitalis 
virile semen immitti, sicut nunc potest cadem integritate salva ex utero 
virginis fluxus menstrui cruoris emitti. Eadem quippe via posset illud injici, 
qua hoc potest ejici. Ut enim ad pariendum non doloris gemitus, sed maturitatis 
impulsus feminea viscera relaxaret: sic ad foetandum et concipiendum non 
libidinis appetitus, sed voluntarius usus naturam utramque conjungeret. We speak 
of things which are now shameful, and although we try, as well as we are able, 
to conceive them as they were before they became shameful, yet necessity compels 
us rather to limit our discussion to the bounds set by modesty than to extend it 
as our moderate faculty of discourse might suggest. For since that which I have 
been speaking of was not experienced even by those who might have experienced 
it,--I mean our first parents (for sin and its merited banishment from Paradise 
anticipated this passionless generation on their part),--when sexual intercourse 
is spoken of now, it suggests to men's thoughts not such a placid obedience to 
the will as is conceivable in our first parents, but such violent acting of lust 
as they themselves have experienced. And therefore modesty shuts my mouth, 
although my mind conceives the matter clearly. But Almighty God, the supreme and 
supremely good Creator of all natures, who aids and rewards good wills, while He 
abandons and condemns the had, and rules both, was not destitute of a plan by 
which He might people His city with the fixed number of citizens which His 
wisdom had foreordained even out of the condemned human race, discriminating 
them not now by merits, since the whole mass was condemned as if in a vitiated 
root, but by grace, and showing, not only in the case of the redeemed, but also 
in those who were not delivered, how much grace He has bestowed upon them. For 
every one acknowledges that he has been rescued from evil, not by deserved, but 
by gratuitous goodness, when he is singled out from the company of those with 
whom he might justly have borne a common punishment, and is allowed to go 
scathless. Why, then, should God not have created those whom He foresaw would 
sin, since He was able to show in and by them both what their guilt merited, and 
what His grace bestowed, and since, under His creating and disposing hand, even 
the perverse disorder of the wicked could not pervert the right order of things? 

CHAP. 27.--OF THE ANGELS AND MEN WHO SINNED, AND THAT THEIR WICKEDNESS DID NOT 
DISTURB THE ORDER OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE. 
The sins of men and angels do nothing to impede the "great works of the Lord 
which accomplish His will."(1) For He who by His providence and omnipotence 
distributes to every one his own portion, is able to make good use not only of 
the good, but also of the wicked. And thus making a good use of the wicked 
angel, who, in punishment of his first wicked volition, was doomed to an 
obduracy that prevents him now from willing any good, why should not God have 
permitted him to tempt the first man, who had been created upright, that is to 
say, with a good will? For he had been so constituted, that if he looked to God 
for help, man's goodness should defeat the angel's wickedness; but if by proud 
self-pleasing he abandoned God, his Creator and Sustainer, he should be 
conquered. If his will remained upright, through leaning on God's help, he 
should be rewarded; if it became wicked, by forsaking God, he should be 
punished. But even this trusting in God's help could not itself be accomplished 
without God's help, although man had it in his own power to relinquish the 
benefits of divine grace by pleasing himself. For as it is not in our power to 
live in this world without sustaining ourselves by food, while it is in our 
power to refuse this nourishment and cease to live, as those do who kill 
themselves, so it was not in man's power, even in Paradise, to live as he ought 
without God's help; but it was in his power to live wickedly, though thus he 
should cut short his happiness, and incur very just punishment. Since, then, God 
was not ignorant that man would fall, why should He not have suffered him to be 
tempted by an angel who hated and envied him? It was not, indeed, that He was 
unaware that he should be conquered. but because He foresaw that by the man's 
seed, aided by divine grace, this same devil himself should be conquered, to the 
greater glory of the saints. All was brought about in such a manner, that 
neither did any future event escape God's foreknowledge, nor did His 
foreknowledge compel any one to sin, and so as to demonstrate in the experience 
of the intelligent creation, human and angelic, how great a difference there is 
between the private presumption of the creature and the Creator's protection. 
For who will dare to believe or say that it was not in God's power to prevent 
both angels and men from sinning? But God preferred to leave this in their 
power, and thus to show both what evil could be wrought by their pride, and what 
good by His grace. 
CHAP. 28.--OF THE NATURE OF THE TWO CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY. 
Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love 
of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to 
the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in 
the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other 
is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; 
the other says to its God, "Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine 
head."(1) In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the 
love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in 
love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one 
delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the 
other says to its God, "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength."(2) And therefore 
the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to 
their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God "glorified Him 
not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and 
their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,"--that is, 
glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride,--"they became fools, 
and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to 
corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." For 
they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, "and 
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for 
ever."(3) But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, 
which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the 
society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, "that God may be all 
in all."(4)