Saint Augustine (354-430)

Of Marriage and Concupiscence

Translated by Peter Holmes

Book II

Chapter 22

“Show me,” he says, “any bodily marriage without sexual connection.” I do not show him any bodily marriage without sexual connection; but then, neither does he show me any case of sexual connection which is without shame. In paradise, however, if sin had not preceded, there would not have been, indeed, generation without union of the sexes, but this union would certainly have been without shame; for in the sexual union there would have been a quiet acquiescence of the members, not a lust of the flesh productive of shame. Matrimony, therefore, is a good, in which the human being is born after orderly conception; the fruit, too, of matrimony is good, as being the very human being which is thus born; sin, however, is an evil with which every man is born. Now it was God who made and still makes man; but “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for in him all sinned.”

Book II Chapter 21

Book II Chapter 23