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Far be it, then, from us to suppose that our first parents in
Paradise felt that lust which caused them afterwards to blush and hide
their nakedness, or that by its means they should have fulfilled the
benediction of God, "Increase and multiply and replenish the
earth;" for it was after sin that lust began. It was after sin that
our nature, having lost the power it had over the whole body, but not
having lost all shame, perceived, noticed blushed at, and covered
it. But that blessing upon marriage, which encouraged them to
increase and multiply and replenish the earth, though it continued even
after they had sinned, was yet given before they sinned, in order that
the procreation of children might be recognized as part of the glory of
marriage, and not of the punishment of sin. But now, men being
ignorant of the blessedness of Paradise, suppose that children could
not have been begotten there in any other way than they know them to be
begotten now, i.e., by lust, at which even honorable marriage
blushes; some not simply rejecting, but sceptically deriding the
divine Scriptures, in which we read that our first parents, after
they sinned, were ashamed of their nakedness, and covered it; while
others, though they accept and honor Scripture, yet conceive that
this expression, "Increase and multiply," refers not to carnal
fecundity, because a similar expression is used of the soul in the
words, "Thou wilt multiply me with strength in my soul;" and so,
too, in the words which follow in Genesis, "And replenish the
earth., and subdue it," they understand by the earth the body which
the soul fills with its presence, and which it rules over when it is
multiplied in strength. And they hold that children could no more then
than now be begotten without lust, which, after sin, was kindled,
observed, blushed for, and covered; and even that children would not
have been born in Paradise, but only outside of it, as in fact it
turned out. For it was after they were expelled from it that they came
together to beget children, and begot them.
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