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Justly is shame very specially connected with this lust; justly,
too, these members themselves, being moved and restrained not at our
will, but by a certain independent autocracy, so to speak, are called
"shameful." Their condition was different before sin. For as it is
written, "They were naked and were not ashamed,", not that their
nakedness was unknown to them, but because nakedness was not yet
shameful, because not yet did lust move those members without the
will's consent; not yet did the flesh by its disobedience testify
against the disobedience. of man. For they were not created blind,
as the unenlightened vulgar fancy; for Adam saw the animals to whom he
gave names, and of Eve we read, "The woman saw that the tree was
good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes." Their eyes,
therefore were open, but were not open to this, that is to say, were
not observant so as to recognize what was conferred upon them by the
garment of grace, for they had no consciousness of their members
warring against their will. But when they were stripped of this
grace, that their disobedience might be punished by fit retribution,
there began in the movement of their bodily members a shameless novelty
which made nakedness indecent: it at once made them observant and made
them ashamed. And therefore, after they violated God's command by
open transgression, it is written: "And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves
together, and made themselves aprons." "The eyes of them both were
opened," not to see. for already they saw, but to discern between
the good they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen. And
therefore also the tree itself which they were forbidden to touch was
called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from this
circumstance, that if they ate of it it would impart to them this
knowledge. For the discomfort of sickness reveals the pleasure of
health. "They knew," therefore, "that they were naked,", naked
of that grace which prevented them from being ashamed of bodily
nakedness while the law of sin offered no resistance to their mind.
And thus they obtained a knowledge which they would have lived in
blissful ignorance of, had they, in trustful obedience to God,
declined to commit that offence which involved them in the experience of
the hurtful effects of unfaithfulness and disobedience. And
therefore, being ashamed of the disobedience of their own flesh, which
witnessed to their disobedience while it punished it, "they sewed fig
leaves together, and made themselves aprons," that is, cinctures for
their privy parts; for some interpreters have rendered the word by
succinctoria. Campestria is, indeed, a Latin word, but it is used
of the drawers or aprons used for a similar purpose by the young men who
stripped for exercise in the campus; hence those who were so girt were
commonly called campestrati. Shame modestly covered that which lust
disobediently moved in opposition to the will, which was thus punished
for its own disobedience. Consequently all nations, being propagated
from that one stock, have so strong an instinct to cover the shameful
parts, that some barbarians do not uncover them even in the bath, but
wash with their drawers on. In the dark solitudes of India also,
though some philosophers go naked, and are therefore called
gymnosophists, yet they make an exception in the case of these members
and cover them.
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