{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/102/1020409.htm","path":"chr/ecf/102/1020409.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/102/1020409.htm","text":"Chapter 17.\u2014Of the Nakedness of Our First Parents, Which They Saw After Their Base and Shameful Sin.\nJustly 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 \u201cshameful.\u201d Their condition was different before sin. For as it is written, \u201cThey were naked and were not ashamed,\u201d 742 \u2014not 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\u2019s 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; 743 for Adam saw the animals to whom he gave names, and of Eve we read, \u201cThe woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes.\u201d 744 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, 745 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\u2019s command by open transgression, it is written: \u201cAnd the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.\u201d 746 \u201cThe eyes of them both were opened,\u201d 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. \u201cThey knew,\u201d therefore, \u201cthat they were naked,\u201d\u2014naked 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, \u201cthey sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons,\u201d 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.\nAn error which arose from the words, The eyes of them both were opened, Gen. iii. 7.\u2014See De Genesi ad lit. ii. 40.\n276:744 276:745\nThis doctrine and phraseology of Augustin being important in connection with his whole theory of the fall, we give some parallel passages to show that the words are not used at random: De Genesi ad lit. xi. 41; De Corrept. et Gratia, xi. 31; and especially Cont. Julian. iv. 82.\n276:746","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: City of God: Cha...","type":"page"}