Chapter 10--The Third Calumny,--The Assertion that Conjugal Intercourse is Condemned.
"They say also," says he, "that sexual impulse and the intercourse of married people were devised by the devil, and that therefore those who are born innocent are guilty, and that it is the work of the devil, not of God, that they are born of this diabolical intercourse. And this, without any ambiguity, is Manicheism." Nay, as I say that marriage was appointed by God for the sake of the ordinance of the begetting of children, so I say that the propagation of children to be begotten could not have taken place without sexual impulse, and without intercourse of husband and wife, even in Paradise, if children were begotten there. But whether such impulse and intercourse would have existed, as is now the case with shameful lust, if no one had sinned, here is the question concerning which I shall argue hereafter, if God will.
Chapter 11 [VI.]--The Purpose of the Pelagians in Praising the Innocence of Conjugal Intercourse.
Yet what it is they wish, what they purpose, to what result they are striving to bring the matter, the words that are added by that writer declare, when he asserts that I say, "that therefore they who are born innocent are guilty, and that it is the work of the devil, not of God, that they are born of this diabolical intercourse." Since, therefore, I neither say that this intercourse of husband and wife is diabolical, especially in the case of believers, which is effected for the sake of generating children who are afterwards to be regenerated; nor that any men are made by the devil, but, in so far as they are men, by God; and nevertheless that even of believing husband and wife are born guilty persons (as if a wild olive were produced from an olive), [2549] on account of original sin, and on this account they are under the devil unless they are born again in Christ, because the devil is the author of the fault, not of the nature: what, on the other hand, are they labouring to bring about who say that infants inherit no original sin, and therefore are not under the devil, except that that grace of God in infants may be made of no effect, by which He has plucked us out, as the apostle says, from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love? [2550] [VII.] When, indeed, they deny that infants are in the power of darkness even before the help of the Lord the deliverer, they are in such wise praising in them the Creator's work as to destroy the mercy of the Redeemer. And because I confess this both in grown-up people and in infants, he says that this is without any ambiguity Manicheism, although it is the most ancient catholic dogma by which the new heretical dogma of these men is overturned.
[2549] On Marriage and Concupiscence, i. 37.
[2550] 1 Cor. i. 13.
Chapter 12.--The Fourth Calumny,--That the Saints of the Old Testament are Said to Be Not Free from Sins.
"They say," says he, "that the saints in the Old Testament were not without sins,--that is that they were not free from crimes even by amendment, but they were seized by death in their guilt." Nay, I say that either before the law, or in the time of the Old Testament, they were freed from sins,--not by their own power, because "cursed is every one that hath put his hope in man," [2551] and without any doubt those are under this curse whom also the sacred Psalm notifies, "who trust in their own strength;" [2552] nor by the old covenant which gendereth to bondage, [2553] although it was divinely given by the grace of a sure dispensation; nor by that law itself, holy and just and good as it was, where it is written, "Thou shalt not covet," [2554] since it was not given as being able to give life, but it was added for the sake of transgression until the seed should come to whom the promise was made; but I say that they were freed by the blood of the Redeemer Himself, who is the one Mediator of God and man, the man Christ Jesus. [2555] But those enemies of the grace of God, which is given to small and great through Jesus Christ our Lord, say that the men of God of old were of a perfect righteousness, lest they should be supposed to have needed the incarnation, the passion, and resurrection of Christ, by belief in whom they were saved.
[2551] Jer. xvii. 5.
[2552] Ps. xlix. 6.
[2553] Gal. iv. 24.
[2554] Ex. xx. 7.
[2555] 1 Tim. ii. 5.