Blessed Augustine of Hippo

On Marriage and Concupiscence

5th c.

Classic translation

Moral & Pastoral · English translation, 1890

Contents

• Title Page
• Retractations
• Advertisement to the Reader on the Following Treatise
• A Letter Addressed to the Count Valerius
• On Marriage and Concupiscence
• Introduction
• Concerning the Argument of This Treatise
• Why This Treatise Was Addressed to Valerius
• Conjugal Chastity the Gift of God
• A Difficulty as Regards the Chastity of Unbelievers. None But a Believer is…
• The Natural Good of Marriage. All Society Naturally Repudiates a Fraudulent…
• The Censuring of Lust is Not a Condemnation of Marriage; Whence Comes Shame in…
• Man’s Disobedience Justly Requited in the Rebellion of His Own Flesh; The Blush…
• The Evil of Lust Does Not Take Away the Good of Marriage
• This Disease of Concupiscence in Marriage is Not to Be a Matter of Will, But of…
• Why It Was Sometimes Permitted That a Man Should Have Several Wives, Yet No…
• The Sacrament of Marriage; Marriage Indissoluble; The World’s Law About Divorce…
• Marriage Does Not Cancel a Mutual Vow of Continence; There Was True Wedlock…
• In the Marriage of Mary and Joseph There Were All the Blessings of the Wedded…
• Before Christ It Was a Time for Marrying; Since Christ It Has Been a Time for…
• The Teaching of the Apostle on This Subject
• A Certain Degree of Intemperance is to Be Tolerated in the Case of Married…
• What is Sinless in the Use of Matrimony? What is Attended With Venial Sin, and…
• Continence Better Than Marriage; But Marriage Better Than Fornication
• Blessing of Matrimony
• Why Children of Wrath Are Born of Holy Matrimony
• Thus Sinners Are Born of Righteous Parents, Even as Wild Olives Spring From the…
• Even Infants, When Unbaptized, Are in the Power of the Devil; Exorcism in the…
• Sin Has Not Arisen Out of the Goodness of Marriage; The Sacrament of Matrimony…
• Lust and Shame Come From Sin; The Law of Sin; The Shamelessness of the Cynics
• Concupiscence in the Regenerate Without Consent is Not Sin; In What Sense…
• Whatever is Born Through Concupiscence is Not Undeservedly in Subjection to the…
• Through Lust Original Sin is Transmitted; Venial Sins in Married Persons…
• Concupiscence Remains After Baptism, Just as Languor Does After Recovery From…
• How Concupiscence Remains in the Baptized in Act, When It Has Passed Away as to…
• The Evil Desires of Concupiscence; We Ought to Wish That They May Not Be
• Who is the Man That Can Say, ‘It is No More I That Do It’?
• When Good Will Be Perfectly Done
• True Freedom Comes With Willing Delight in God’s Law
• How Concupiscence Made a Captive of the Apostle; What the Law of Sin Was to the…
• The Flesh, Carnal Affection
• Even Now While We Still Have Concupiscence We May Be Safe in Christ
• The Law of Sin With Its Guilt in Unbaptized Infants. By Adam’s Sin the Human…
• To Baptism Must Be Referred All Remission of Sins, and the Complete Healing of…
• By the Holiness of Baptism, Not Sins Only, But All Evils Whatsoever, Have to Be…
• Refutation of the Pelagians by the Authority of St. Ambrose, Whom They Quote to…
• Book II
• Preliminary Notes on the Second Book
• Introductory Statement
• In This and the Four Next Chapters He Adduces the Garbled Extracts He Has to…
• The Same Continued
• The Same Continued (v)
• The Same Continued (vi)
• The Same Continued (vii)
• Augustin Adduces a Passage Selected From the Preface of Julianus. (See ‘The…
• Augustin Refutes the Passage Adduced Above
• The Catholics Maintain the Doctrine of Original Sin, and Thus Are Far From…
• In What Manner the Adversary’s Cavils Must Be Refuted
• The Devil the Author, Not of Nature, But Only of Sin
• Eve’s Name Means Life, and is a Great Sacrament of the Church
• The Pelagian Argument to Show That the Devil Has No Rights in the Fruits of…
• Concupiscence Alone, in Marriage, is Not of God
• Man, by Birth, is Placed Under the Dominion of the Devil Through Sin; We Were…
• It is Not of Us, But Our Sins, That the Devil is the Author
• The Pelagians Are Not Ashamed to Eulogize Concupiscence, Although They Are…
• The Same Continued (xix)
• The Pelagians Misunderstand ‘Seed’ In Scripture
• Original Sin is Derived From the Faulty Condition of Human Seed
• It is the Good God That Gives Fruitfulness, and the Devil That Corrupts the…
• Shall We Be Ashamed of What We Do, or of What God Does?
• The Pelagians Affirm That God in the Case of Abraham and Sarah Aroused…
• What Covenant of God the New-Born Babe Breaks. What Was the Value of…
• Augustin Not the Deviser of Original Sin
• The Child in No Sense Formed by Concupiscence
• The Pelagians Argue That God Sometimes Closes the Womb in Anger, and Opens It…
• Augustin’s Answer to This Argument. Its Dealing With Scripture
• The Same Continued. Augustin Also Asserts That God Forms Man at Birth
• The Case of Abimelech and His House Examined
• Why God Proceeds to Create Human Beings, Who He Knows Will Be Born in Sin
• God Not the Author of the Evil in Those Whom He Creates
• Though God Makes Us, We Perish Unless He Re-makes Us in Christ
• The Pelagians Argue That Cohabitation Rightly Used is a Good, and What is Born…
• He Answers the Arguments of Julianus. What is the Natural Use of the Woman?…
• God Made Nature Good: the Saviour Restores It When Corrupted
• If There is No Marriage Without Cohabitation, So There is No Cohabitation…
• Jovinian Used Formerly to Call Catholics Manicheans; The Arians Also Used to…
• Man Born of Whatever Parentage is Sinful and Capable of Redemption
• Augustin Declines the Dilemma Offered Him
• The Pelagians Argue That Original Sin Cannot Come Through Marriage If Marriage…
• The Pelagians Try to Get Rid of Original Sin by Their Praise of God’s Works…
• The Good Tree in the Gospel That Cannot Bring Forth Evil Fruit, Does Not Mean…
• The Pelagians Argue That If Sin Comes by Birth, All Married People Deserve…
• Answer to This Argument: The Apostle Says We All Sinned in One
• The Reign of Death, What It Is; The Figure of the Future Adam; How All Men Are…
• The Scriptures Repeatedly Teach Us That All Sin in One
• Original Sin Arose From Adam’s Depraved Will. Whence the Corrupt Will Sprang
• In Infants Nature is of God, and the Corruption of Nature of the Devil
• The Rise and Origin of Evil. The Exorcism and Exsufflation of Infants, a…
• To Call Those That Teach Original Sin Manicheans is to Accuse Ambrose, Cyprian…
• Sin Was the Origin of All Shameful Concupiscence
• Concupiscence Need Not Have Been Necessary for Fruitfulness
• How Marriage is Now Different Since the Existence of Sin
• Lust is a Disease; The Word ‘Passion’ In the Ecclesiastical Sense
• The Pelagians Allow That Christ Died Even for Infants; Julianus Slays Himself…
• The Great Sin of the First Man
• Adam’s Sin is Derived From Him to Every One Who is Born Even of Regenerate…
• The Pelagians Can Hardly Venture to Place Concupiscence in Paradise Before the…
• Let Not the Pelagians Indulge Themselves in a Cruel Defence of Infants