On Marriage and Concupiscence

Contents (104 chapters)

1. 1. Retractations.
2. 2. Advertisement to the Reader on the Following Treatise.
3. 3. A Letter Addressed to the Count Valerius.
4. 4. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Concerning the Argument of This Treatise.
5. 5. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Why This Treatise Was Addressed to Valerius.
6. 6. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Conjugal Chastity the Gift of God.
7. 7. On Marriage and Concupiscence — A Difficulty as Regards the Chastity of Unbelievers. None But a Believer is Truly a Chaste Man.
8. 8. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Natural Good of Marriage. All Society Naturally Repudiates a Fraudulent Companion. What is True Conjugal Purity? No True Virginity and Chastity Except in Devotion to True Faith.
9. 9. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Censuring of Lust is Not a Condemnation of Marriage; Whence Comes Shame in the Human Body. Adam and Eve Were Not Created Blind; Meaning of Their 'Eyes Being Opened.'
10. 10. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Man’s Disobedience Justly Requited in the Rebellion of His Own Flesh; The Blush of Shame for the Disobedient Members of the Body.
11. 11. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Evil of Lust Does Not Take Away the Good of Marriage.
12. 12. On Marriage and Concupiscence — This Disease of Concupiscence in Marriage is Not to Be a Matter of Will, But of Necessity; What Ought to Be the Will of Believers in the Use of Matrimony; Who is to Be Regarded as Using, and Not Succumbing To, the Evil of Concupiscence; How the Holy Fathers of the Old Testament Formerly Used Wives.
13. 13. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Why It Was Sometimes Permitted that a Man Should Have Several Wives, Yet No Woman Was Ever Allowed to Have More Than One Husband. Nature Prefers Singleness in Her Dominations.
14. 14. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Sacrament of Marriage; Marriage Indissoluble; The World’s Law About Divorce Different from the Gospel’s.
15. 15. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Marriage Does Not Cancel a Mutual Vow of Continence; There Was True Wedlock Between Mary and Joseph; In What Way Joseph Was the Father of Christ.
16. 16. On Marriage and Concupiscence — In the Marriage of Mary and Joseph There Were All the Blessings of the Wedded State; All that is Born of Concubinage is Sinful Flesh.
17. 17. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Before Christ It Was a Time for Marrying; Since Christ It Has Been a Time for Continence.
18. 18. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Teaching of the Apostle on This Subject.
19. 19. On Marriage and Concupiscence — A Certain Degree of Intemperance is to Be Tolerated in the Case of Married Persons; The Use of Matrimony for the Mere Pleasure of Lust is Not Without Sin, But Because of the Nuptial Relation the Sin is Venial.
20. 20. On Marriage and Concupiscence — What is Sinless in the Use of Matrimony? What is Attended With Venial Sin, and What with Mortal?
21. 21. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Continence Better Than Marriage; But Marriage Better Than Fornication.
22. 22. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Blessing of Matrimony.
23. 23. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Why Children of Wrath are Born of Holy Matrimony.
24. 24. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Thus Sinners are Born of Righteous Parents, Even as Wild Olives Spring from the Olive.
25. 25. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Even Infants, When Unbaptized, are in the Power of the Devil; Exorcism in the Case of Infants, and Renunciation of the Devil.
26. 26. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Sin Has Not Arisen Out of the Goodness of Marriage; The Sacrament of Matrimony a Great One in the Case of Christ and the Church—A Very Small One in the Case of a Man and His Wife.
27. 27. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Lust and Shame Come from Sin; The Law of Sin; The Shamelessness of the Cynics.
28. 28. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Concupiscence in the Regenerate Without Consent is Not Sin; In What Sense Concupiscence is Called Sin.
29. 29. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Whatever is Born Through Concupiscence is Not Undeservedly in Subjection to the Devil by Reason of Sin; The Devil Deserves Heavier Punishment Than Men.
30. 30. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Through Lust Original Sin is Transmitted; Venial Sins in Married Persons; Concupiscence of the Flesh, the Daughter and Mother of Sin.
31. 31. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Concupiscence Remains After Baptism, Just as Languor Does After Recovery from Disease; Concupiscence is Diminished in Persons of Advancing Years, and Increased in the Incontinent.
32. 32. On Marriage and Concupiscence — How Concupiscence Remains in the Baptized in Act, When It Has Passed Away as to Its Guilt.
33. 33. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Evil Desires of Concupiscence; We Ought to Wish that They May Not Be.
34. 34. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Who is the Man that Can Say, ‘It is No More I that Do It’?
35. 35. On Marriage and Concupiscence — When Good Will Be Perfectly Done.
36. 36. On Marriage and Concupiscence — True Freedom Comes with Willing Delight in God’s Law.
37. 37. On Marriage and Concupiscence — How Concupiscence Made a Captive of the Apostle; What the Law of Sin Was to the Apostle.
38. 38. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Flesh, Carnal Affection.
39. 39. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Even Now While We Still Have Concupiscence We May Be Safe in Christ.
40. 40. On Marriage and Concupiscence — The Law of Sin with Its Guilt in Unbaptized Infants. By Adam’s Sin the Human Race Has Become a 'Wild Olive Tree.'
41. 41. On Marriage and Concupiscence — To Baptism Must Be Referred All Remission of Sins, and the Complete Healing of the Resurrection. Daily Cleansing.
42. 42. On Marriage and Concupiscence — By the Holiness of Baptism, Not Sins Only, But All Evils Whatsoever, Have to Be Removed. The Church is Not Yet Free from All Stain.
43. 43. On Marriage and Concupiscence — Refutation of the Pelagians by the Authority of St. Ambrose, Whom They Quote to Show that the Desire of the Flesh is a Natural Good.
44. 44. Book II — Preliminary Notes on the Second Book.
45. 45. Book II — Introductory Statement.
46. 46. Book II — In This and the Four Next Chapters He Adduces the Garbled Extracts He Has to Consider.
47. 47. Book II — The Same Continued.
48. 48. Book II — The Same Continued.
49. 49. Book II — The Same Continued.
50. 50. Book II — The Same Continued.
51. 51. Book II — Augustin Adduces a Passage Selected from the Preface of Julianus. (See ‘The Unfinished Work,’ i. 73.)
52. 52. Book II — Augustin Refutes the Passage Adduced Above.
53. 53. Book II — The Catholics Maintain the Doctrine of Original Sin, and Thus are Far from Being Manicheans.
54. 54. Book II — In What Manner the Adversary’s Cavils Must Be Refuted.
55. 55. Book II — The Devil the Author, Not of Nature, But Only of Sin.
56. 56. Book II — Eve’s Name Means Life, and is a Great Sacrament of the Church.
57. 57. Book II — The Pelagian Argument to Show that the Devil Has No Rights in the Fruits of Marriage.
58. 58. Book II — Concupiscence Alone, in Marriage, is Not of God.
59. 59. Book II — Man, by Birth, is Placed Under the Dominion of the Devil Through Sin; We Were All One in Adam When He Sinned.
60. 60. Book II — It is Not of Us, But Our Sins, that the Devil is the Author.
61. 61. Book II — The Pelagians are Not Ashamed to Eulogize Concupiscence, Although They are Ashamed to Mention Its Name.
62. 62. Book II — The Same Continued.
63. 63. Book II — The Pelagians Misunderstand ‘Seed’ In Scripture.
64. 64. Book II — Original Sin is Derived from the Faulty Condition of Human Seed.
65. 65. Book II — It is the Good God That Gives Fruitfulness, and the Devil That Corrupts the Fruit.
66. 66. Book II — Shall We Be Ashamed of What We Do, or of What God Does?
67. 67. Book II — The Pelagians Affirm that God in the Case of Abraham and Sarah Aroused Concupiscence as a Gift from Heaven.
68. 68. Book II — What Covenant of God the New-Born Babe Breaks. What Was the Value of Circumcision.
69. 69. Book II — Augustin Not the Deviser of Original Sin.
70. 70. Book II — The Child in No Sense Formed by Concupiscence.
71. 71. Book II — The Pelagians Argue that God Sometimes Closes the Womb in Anger, and Opens It When Appeased.
72. 72. Book II — Augustin’s Answer to This Argument. Its Dealing with Scripture.
73. 73. Book II — The Same Continued. Augustin Also Asserts that God Forms Man at Birth.
74. 74. Book II — The Case of Abimelech and His House Examined.
75. 75. Book II — Why God Proceeds to Create Human Beings, Who He Knows Will Be Born in Sin.
76. 76. Book II — God Not the Author of the Evil in Those Whom He Creates.
77. 77. Book II — Though God Makes Us, We Perish Unless He Re-makes Us in Christ.
78. 78. Book II — The Pelagians Argue that Cohabitation Rightly Used is a Good, and What is Born from It is Good.
79. 79. Book II — He Answers the Arguments of Julianus. What is the Natural Use of the Woman? What is the Unnatural Use?
80. 80. Book II — God Made Nature Good: the Saviour Restores It When Corrupted.
81. 81. Book II — If There is No Marriage Without Cohabitation, So There is No Cohabitation Without Shame.
82. 82. Book II — Jovinian Used Formerly to Call Catholics Manicheans; The Arians Also Used to Call Catholics Sabellians.
83. 83. Book II — Man Born of Whatever Parentage is Sinful and Capable of Redemption.
84. 84. Book II — Augustin Declines the Dilemma Offered Him.
85. 85. Book II — The Pelagians Argue that Original Sin Cannot Come Through Marriage If Marriage is Good.
86. 86. Book II — The Pelagians Try to Get Rid of Original Sin by Their Praise of God’s Works; Marriage, in Its Nature and by Its Institution, is Not the Cause of Sin.
87. 87. Book II — The Good Tree in the Gospel that Cannot Bring Forth Evil Fruit, Does Not Mean Marriage.
88. 88. Book II — The Pelagians Argue that If Sin Comes by Birth, All Married People Deserve Condemnation.
89. 89. Book II — Answer to This Argument: The Apostle Says We All Sinned in One.
90. 90. Book II — The Reign of Death, What It Is; The Figure of the Future Adam; How All Men are Justified Through Christ.
91. 91. Book II — The Scriptures Repeatedly Teach Us that All Sin in One.
92. 92. Book II — Original Sin Arose from Adam’s Depraved Will. Whence the Corrupt Will Sprang.
93. 93. Book II — In Infants Nature is of God, and the Corruption of Nature of the Devil.
94. 94. Book II — The Rise and Origin of Evil. The Exorcism and Exsufflation of Infants, a Primitive Christian Rite.
95. 95. Book II — To Call Those that Teach Original Sin Manicheans is to Accuse Ambrose, Cyprian, and the Whole Church.
96. 96. Book II — Sin Was the Origin of All Shameful Concupiscence.
97. 97. Book II — Concupiscence Need Not Have Been Necessary for Fruitfulness.
98. 98. Book II — How Marriage is Now Different Since the Existence of Sin.
99. 99. Book II — Lust is a Disease; The Word ‘Passion’ In the Ecclesiastical Sense.
100. 100. Book II — The Pelagians Allow that Christ Died Even for Infants; Julianus Slays Himself with His Own Sword.
101. 101. Book II — The Great Sin of the First Man.
102. 102. Book II — Adam’s Sin is Derived from Him to Every One Who is Born Even of Regenerate Parents; The Example of the Olive Tree and the Wild Olive.
103. 103. Book II — The Pelagians Can Hardly Venture to Place Concupiscence in Paradise Before the Commission of Sin.
104. 104. Book II — Let Not the Pelagians Indulge Themselves in a Cruel Defence of Infants.