|
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." 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. 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?
|
|