On Marriage and Concupiscence

Contents (101 chapters)

Book I

On Marriage and Concupiscence

1. 1. Concerning the Argument of This Treatise.
2. 2. Why This Treatise Was Addressed to Valerius.
3. 3. Conjugal Chastity the Gift of God.
4. 4. A Difficulty as Regards the Chastity of Unbelievers. None But a Believer is Truly a Chaste Man.
5. 5. 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.
6. 6. 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.'
7. 7. Man’s Disobedience Justly Requited in the Rebellion of His Own Flesh; The Blush of Shame for the Disobedient Members of the Body.
8. 8. The Evil of Lust Does Not Take Away the Good of Marriage.
9. 9. 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.
10. 10. 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.
11. 11. The Sacrament of Marriage; Marriage Indissoluble; The World’s Law About Divorce Different from the Gospel’s.
12. 12. 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.
13. 13. 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.
14. 14. Before Christ It Was a Time for Marrying; Since Christ It Has Been a Time for Continence.
15. 15. The Teaching of the Apostle on This Subject.
16. 16. 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.
17. 17. What is Sinless in the Use of Matrimony? What is Attended With Venial Sin, and What with Mortal?
18. 18. Continence Better Than Marriage; But Marriage Better Than Fornication.
19. 19. Blessing of Matrimony.
20. 20. Why Children of Wrath are Born of Holy Matrimony.
21. 21. Thus Sinners are Born of Righteous Parents, Even as Wild Olives Spring from the Olive.
22. 22. Even Infants, When Unbaptized, are in the Power of the Devil; Exorcism in the Case of Infants, and Renunciation of the Devil.
23. 23. 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.
24. 24. Lust and Shame Come from Sin; The Law of Sin; The Shamelessness of the Cynics.
25. 25. Concupiscence in the Regenerate Without Consent is Not Sin; In What Sense Concupiscence is Called Sin.
26. 26. Whatever is Born Through Concupiscence is Not Undeservedly in Subjection to the Devil by Reason of Sin; The Devil Deserves Heavier Punishment Than Men.
27. 27. Through Lust Original Sin is Transmitted; Venial Sins in Married Persons; Concupiscence of the Flesh, the Daughter and Mother of Sin.
28. 28. 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.
29. 29. How Concupiscence Remains in the Baptized in Act, When It Has Passed Away as to Its Guilt.
30. 30. The Evil Desires of Concupiscence; We Ought to Wish that They May Not Be.
31. 31. Who is the Man that Can Say, ‘It is No More I that Do It’?
32. 32. When Good Will Be Perfectly Done.
33. 33. True Freedom Comes with Willing Delight in God’s Law.
34. 34. How Concupiscence Made a Captive of the Apostle; What the Law of Sin Was to the Apostle.
35. 35. The Flesh, Carnal Affection.
36. 36. Even Now While We Still Have Concupiscence We May Be Safe in Christ.
37. 37. The Law of Sin with Its Guilt in Unbaptized Infants. By Adam’s Sin the Human Race Has Become a 'Wild Olive Tree.'
38. 38. To Baptism Must Be Referred All Remission of Sins, and the Complete Healing of the Resurrection. Daily Cleansing.
39. 39. 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.
40. 40. 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.

Book II

1. 41. Preliminary Notes on the Second Book.
2. 42. Introductory Statement.
3. 43. In This and the Four Next Chapters He Adduces the Garbled Extracts He Has to Consider.
4. 44. The Same Continued.
5. 45. The Same Continued.
6. 46. The Same Continued.
7. 47. The Same Continued.
8. 48. Augustin Adduces a Passage Selected from the Preface of Julianus. (See ‘The Unfinished Work,’ i. 73.)
9. 49. Augustin Refutes the Passage Adduced Above.
10. 50. The Catholics Maintain the Doctrine of Original Sin, and Thus are Far from Being Manicheans.
11. 51. In What Manner the Adversary’s Cavils Must Be Refuted.
12. 52. The Devil the Author, Not of Nature, But Only of Sin.
13. 53. Eve’s Name Means Life, and is a Great Sacrament of the Church.
14. 54. The Pelagian Argument to Show that the Devil Has No Rights in the Fruits of Marriage.
15. 55. Concupiscence Alone, in Marriage, is Not of God.
16. 56. Man, by Birth, is Placed Under the Dominion of the Devil Through Sin; We Were All One in Adam When He Sinned.
17. 57. It is Not of Us, But Our Sins, that the Devil is the Author.
18. 58. The Pelagians are Not Ashamed to Eulogize Concupiscence, Although They are Ashamed to Mention Its Name.
19. 59. The Same Continued.
20. 60. The Pelagians Misunderstand ‘Seed’ In Scripture.
21. 61. Original Sin is Derived from the Faulty Condition of Human Seed.
22. 62. It is the Good God That Gives Fruitfulness, and the Devil That Corrupts the Fruit.
23. 63. Shall We Be Ashamed of What We Do, or of What God Does?
24. 64. The Pelagians Affirm that God in the Case of Abraham and Sarah Aroused Concupiscence as a Gift from Heaven.
25. 65. What Covenant of God the New-Born Babe Breaks. What Was the Value of Circumcision.
26. 66. Augustin Not the Deviser of Original Sin.
27. 67. The Child in No Sense Formed by Concupiscence.
28. 68. The Pelagians Argue that God Sometimes Closes the Womb in Anger, and Opens It When Appeased.
29. 69. Augustin’s Answer to This Argument. Its Dealing with Scripture.
30. 70. The Same Continued. Augustin Also Asserts that God Forms Man at Birth.
31. 71. The Case of Abimelech and His House Examined.
32. 72. Why God Proceeds to Create Human Beings, Who He Knows Will Be Born in Sin.
33. 73. God Not the Author of the Evil in Those Whom He Creates.
34. 74. Though God Makes Us, We Perish Unless He Re-makes Us in Christ.
35. 75. The Pelagians Argue that Cohabitation Rightly Used is a Good, and What is Born from It is Good.
36. 76. He Answers the Arguments of Julianus. What is the Natural Use of the Woman? What is the Unnatural Use?
37. 77. God Made Nature Good: the Saviour Restores It When Corrupted.
38. 78. If There is No Marriage Without Cohabitation, So There is No Cohabitation Without Shame.
39. 79. Jovinian Used Formerly to Call Catholics Manicheans; The Arians Also Used to Call Catholics Sabellians.
40. 80. Man Born of Whatever Parentage is Sinful and Capable of Redemption.
41. 81. Augustin Declines the Dilemma Offered Him.
42. 82. The Pelagians Argue that Original Sin Cannot Come Through Marriage If Marriage is Good.
43. 83. 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.
44. 84. The Good Tree in the Gospel that Cannot Bring Forth Evil Fruit, Does Not Mean Marriage.
45. 85. The Pelagians Argue that If Sin Comes by Birth, All Married People Deserve Condemnation.
46. 86. Answer to This Argument: The Apostle Says We All Sinned in One.
47. 87. The Reign of Death, What It Is; The Figure of the Future Adam; How All Men are Justified Through Christ.
48. 88. The Scriptures Repeatedly Teach Us that All Sin in One.
49. 89. Original Sin Arose from Adam’s Depraved Will. Whence the Corrupt Will Sprang.
50. 90. In Infants Nature is of God, and the Corruption of Nature of the Devil.
51. 91. The Rise and Origin of Evil. The Exorcism and Exsufflation of Infants, a Primitive Christian Rite.
52. 92. To Call Those that Teach Original Sin Manicheans is to Accuse Ambrose, Cyprian, and the Whole Church.
53. 93. Sin Was the Origin of All Shameful Concupiscence.
54. 94. Concupiscence Need Not Have Been Necessary for Fruitfulness.
55. 95. How Marriage is Now Different Since the Existence of Sin.
56. 96. Lust is a Disease; The Word ‘Passion’ In the Ecclesiastical Sense.
57. 97. The Pelagians Allow that Christ Died Even for Infants; Julianus Slays Himself with His Own Sword.
58. 98. The Great Sin of the First Man.
59. 99. 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.
60. 100. The Pelagians Can Hardly Venture to Place Concupiscence in Paradise Before the Commission of Sin.
61. 101. Let Not the Pelagians Indulge Themselves in a Cruel Defence of Infants.