{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/105/1050641.htm","path":"chr/ecf/105/1050641.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/105/1050641.htm","text":"Chapter 34 [XIX.]\u2014The Pelagians Argue that Cohabitation Rightly Used is a Good, and What is Born from It is Good.\nI request your attention now to the following words. He says, \u201cThat children, however, who are conceived in wedlock are by nature good, we may learn from the apostle\u2019s words, when he speaks of men who, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust, men with men working together that which is disgraceful. 2272 Here,\u201d says he, \u201cthe apostle shows the use of the woman to be both natural and, in its way, laudable; the abuse consisting in the exercise of one\u2019s own will in opposition to the decent use of the institution. Deservedly then,\u201d says he, \u201cin those who make a right use thereof, concupiscence is commended in its kind and mode; whilst the excess of it, in which abandoned persons indulge, is punished. Indeed, at the very time when God punished the abuse in Sodom with His judgment of fire, He invigorated the generative powers of Abraham and Sarah, which had become impotent through old age. 2273 If, therefore,\u201d he goes on to say, \u201cyou think that fault must be found with the strength of the generative organs, because the Sodomites were steeped in sin thereby, you will have also to censure such created things as bread and p. 297 wine, since Holy Scripture informs us that they sinned also in the abuse of these gifts. For the Lord, by the mouth of His prophet Ezekiel, says: \u2018These, moreover, were the sins of thy sister Sodom; in their pride, she and her children overflowed in fulness of bread and abundance of wine; and they helped not the hand of the poor and needy.\u2019 2274 Choose, therefore,\u201d says he, \u201cwhich alternative you would rather have: either impute to the work of God the sexual connection of human bodies, or account such created things as bread and wine to be equally evil. But if you should prefer this latter conclusion, you prove yourself to be a Manichean. The truth, however, is this: he who observes moderation in natural concupiscence uses a good thing well; but he who does not observe moderation, abuses a good thing. What means your statement, then,\u201d 2275 he asks, \u201cwhen you say that \u2018the good of marriage is no more impeachable on account of the original sin which is derived herefrom, than the evil of adultery and fornication can be excused because of the natural good which is born of them\u2019? In these words,\u201d says he, \u201cyou conceded what you had denied, and what you had conceded you nullified; and you aim at nothing so much as to be unintelligible. Show me any bodily marriage without sexual connection. Else impose some one name on this operation, and designate the conjugal union as either a good or an evil. You answer, no doubt, that you have already defined marriages to be good. Well then, if marriage is good,\u2014if the human being is the good fruit of marriage; if this fruit, being God\u2019s work, cannot be evil, born as it is by good agency out of good,\u2014where is the original evil which has been set aside by so many prior admissions?\u201d\nGen. 21:1, 2, Gen. 19:24.\n297:2274 297:2275\nSee first chapter of the first book of this treatise.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. V: On Marriage and C...","type":"page"}