St Augustine City of God:
Chapter 26.— That We are to Believe that in Paradise Our First Parents Begat Offspring Without Blushing.
In Paradise, then, man lived as he desired so long as he desired what God had commanded.
He lived in the enjoyment of God, and was good by God’s goodness; he lived without any want, and had it in his power so to live eternally. He had food that he might not hunger, drink that he might not thirst, the tree of life that old age might not waste him. There was in his body no corruption, nor seed of corruption, which could produce in him any unpleasant sensation. Hefeared no inward disease, no outward accident. Soundest health blessed his body, absolute tranquillity his soul. As in Paradise there was no excessive heat or cold, so its inhabitants were exempt from the vicissitudes of
fear and desire. No sadness of any kind was there, nor any foolish
joy;
true gladness ceaselessly flowed from the presence of
God, who was loved out of a pure heart, and a good
conscience, and
faith unfeigned.
1 Timothy 1:5 The honest
love of husband and wife made a sure harmony between them. Body and spirit worked harmoniously together, and the commandment was kept without labor. No languor made their leisure wearisome; no sleepiness interrupted their desire to labor.
In tanta facilitate rerum et felicitate hominum, absit ut suspicemur, non potuisse prolem seri sine libidinis morbo: sed eo voluntatis nutu moverentur illa membra qua cætera, et sine ardoris illecebroso stimulo cum tranquillitate animi et corporis nulla corruptione integritatis infunderetur gremio maritus uxoris. Neque enim quia experientia probari non potest, ideo credendum non est; quando illas corporis partes non ageret turbidus calor, sed spontanea potestas, sicut opus esset, adhiberet; ita tunc potuisse utero conjugis salva integritate feminei genitalis virile semen immitti, sicut nunc potest eadem integritate salva ex utero virginis fluxus menstrui cruoris emitti. Eadem quippe via posset illud injici, qua hoc potest ejici. Ut enim ad pariendum non doloris gemitus, sed maturitatis impulsus feminea viscera relaxaret: sic ad fœtandum et concipiendum non libidinis appetitus, sed voluntarius usus naturam utramque conjungeret. We speak of things which are now shameful, and although we try, as well as we are able, to conceive them as they were before they became shameful, yetnecessity compels us rather to limit our discussion to the bounds set by modesty than to extend it as our moderate faculty of discourse mightsuggest. For since that which I have been speaking of was not experienced even by those who might have experienced it—I mean our first
parents (for
sin and its merited banishment from Paradise anticipated this passionless generation on their part)—when sexual intercourse is spoken of now, it suggests to men’s thoughts not such a placid
obedience to the will as is conceivable in our first
parents, but such violent acting of
lust as they themselves have experienced. And therefore modesty shuts my mouth, although my mind conceives the matter clearly. But Almighty
God, the supreme and supremely good Creator of all natures, who aids and rewards good wills, while He abandons and condemns the bad, and rules both, was not destitute of a plan by which He might people His city with the fixed number of citizens which His wisdom had foreordained even out of the condemned
human race, discriminating them not now by merits, since the whole mass was condemned as if in a vitiated root, but by
grace, and showing, not only in the case of the redeemed, but also in those who were not delivered, how much
grace He has bestowed upon them. For every one acknowledges that he has been rescued from
evil, not by deserved, but by gratuitous goodness, when he is singled out from the company of those with whom he might
justly have borne a common punishment, and is allowed to go scathless. Why, then, should God not have created those whom He foresaw would
sin, since He was able to show in and by them both what their guilt merited, and what His
grace bestowed, and since, under His creating and disposing hand, even the perverse disorder of the
wicked could not pervert the right order of things?
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The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ. **