{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050635.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050635.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050635.htm","text":"Chapter 28 [XIV.]\u2014Augustin\u2019s Answer to This Argument. Its Dealing with Scripture.\nNow to this lengthy statement of his we have to say in answer, that, in the passages which he has quoted from the sacred writings, there is nothing said about that shameful lust, which we say did not exist in the body of our first parents in their blessedness, when they were naked and were not ashamed. 2258 The first passage from the apostle was spoken of the seeds of corn, which first die in order to be quickened. For some reason or other, he was unwilling to complete the verse for his quotation. All he adduces from it is: \u201cThou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened;\u201d but the apostle adds, \u201cexcept it die.\u201d 2259 This writer, however, so far as I can judge, wished this passage, which treats only of corn seeds, to be understood of human seed, by such as read it without either understanding the Holy Scriptures or recollecting them. Indeed, he not merely curtailed this particular sentence, by omitting the clause, \u201cexcept it die,\u201d but he omitted the following words, in which the apostle explained of what seeds he was speaking; for the apostle adds: \u201cAnd that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but the bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain.\u201d 2260 This he omitted, and closed up his context with what the apostle then writes: \u201cBut God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its own body;\u201d just as if the apostle spoke of man in cohabitation when he said, \u201cThou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened,\u201d with a view to our understanding of human seed, that it is quickened by God, not by man in cohabitation begetting children. For he had previously said: \u201cSexual pleasure does not complete the entire process of man\u2019s making, but rather presents to God, out of the treasures of nature, material with which He vouchsafes to make the human being.\u201d 2261 He then added the quotation, as if the apostle affirmed as follows: Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened,\u2014quickened, that is, by thyself; but God forms the human being out of thy seed. As if the apostle had not said the intermediate words, which this writer chose to pass over; and as if the apostle\u2019s aim was to speak of human seed thus: \u201cThou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened; but God giveth to the seed a body such as pleaseth Him, and to every seed its own body.\u201d Indeed, after the apostle\u2019s words, he introduces remarks of his own to this effect: \u201cIf, therefore, God has assigned to human seed, as to everything else, its own proper body, which no wise or pious man will deny;\u201d quite as if the apostle in the passage in question spoke of human seed.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: On Marriage and C...","type":"page"}