But it is a fair question, whether our first parent or first parents (for there was a marriage of two), before they sinned, experienced in their animal body such emotions as we shall not experience in the spiritual body when sin has been purged and finally abolished.For if they did, then how were they blessed in that boasted place of bliss, Paradise? For who that is affected by fear or grief can be called absolutely blessed? And what could those persons fear or suffer in such affluence of blessings, where neither death nor ill-health was feared, and where nothing was wanting which a good will could desire, and nothing present which could interrupt man's mental or bodily enjoyment? Their love to God was unclouded, and their mutual affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage; and from this love flowed a wonderful delight, because they always enjoyed what was loved.Their avoidance of sin was tranquil; and, so long as it was maintained, no other ill at all could invade them and bring sorrow.Or did they perhaps desire to touch and eat the forbidden fruit, yet feared to die; and thus both fear and desire already, even in that blissful place, preyed upon those first of mankind?
Away with the thought that such could be the case where there was no sin! And, indeed, this is already sin, to desire those things which the law of God forbids, and to abstain from them through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness.
Away, I say, with the thought, that before there was any sin, there should already have been committed regarding that fruit the very sin which our Lord warns us against regarding a woman: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed *****ery with her already in his heart."(1) As happy, then, as were these our first parents, who were agitated by no mental perturbations, and annoyed by no bodily discomforts, so happy should the whole human race have been, had they not introduced that evil which they have transmitted to their" posterity, and had none of their descendants committed iniquity worthy of damnation;but this original blessedness continuing until, in virtue of that benediction which said, "Increase and multiply,"(2)the number of the predestined saints should have been completed, there would then have been bestowed that higher felicity which is enjoyed by the most blessed angels,--a blessedness in which there should have been a secure assurance that no one would sin, and no one die; and so should the saints have lived, after no taste of labor, pain, or death, as now they shall live in the resurrection, after they have endured all these things.
CHAP.11.--OF THE FALL OF THE FIRST MAN, IN WHOM NATURE WAS CREATEDGOOD, AND CAN
BE RESTORED ONLY BY ITS AUTHOR.
But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city m connection with what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not embrace God's ordination.For man, by his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor compel God to change what He had decreed; for God's foreknowledge had anticipated both,--that is to say, both how evil the man whom He had created good should become, and what good He Himself should even thus derive from him.For though God is said to change His determinations (so that in a tropical sense the Holy Scripture says even that God repented(3)), this is said with reference to man's expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to that which the Almighty had foreknown that He would do.Accordingly God, as it is written, made man upright,(4) and consequently with a good will.
For if he had not had a good will, he could not have been upright.The good will, then, is the work of God; for God created him with it.But the first evil will, which preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the work of God to its own works than any positive work.And therefore the acts resulting were evil, not having God, but the will itself for their end; so that the will or the man himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree bringing forth evil fruit.Moreover, the bad will, though it be not in harmony with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a vice or blemish, yet it is true of it as of all vice, that it cannot exist except in a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing, and not in that which the Creator has begotten of Himself, as He begot the Word, by whom all things were made.For though God formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly material, is absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul, too, God created out of nothing, and joined to the body, when He made man.But evils are so thoroughly overcome by good, that though they are permitted to exist, for the sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can make a good use even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as in the true and supreme God Himself, and as in every invisible and visible celestial creature that exists above this murky atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because the natures in which evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are good.And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved.The will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins.Such was it given us by God; and this being lost by its own fault, can only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it.And therefore the truth says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed;"(1)which is equivalent to saying, If the Son shall save you, ye shall be saved indeed.For He is our Liberator, inasmuch as He is our Saviour.