On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 14
BASIC WRITINGS
to that human being through a seed that was produced and brought into being not by any created nature, or by any creature's will, or by any power bestowed on a nature, but solely by God's own will, which set apart from the Virgin this seed so that by a new power a human being would be begotten who would be free from sin. This would be true even if that seed came to be a mere human being and were not assumed into a divine person.After all, the rational mind clearly recognizes that God ought not to have made this man, whom he propagated solely by his own will and power, subject to any evil, for the same reason that he ought to have made Adam just, and not burdened by any debt or disadvantage: namely, that it would be altogether unfitting for God's wise and all-powerful goodness to make a rational nature subject to any evil by his own will alone, out of matter in which there was no sin. Anyone who does not understand this does not recognize what is unfitting for God. Therefore, even if God had made a mere human being in this way I have described, it would have been necessary for him to be endowed with no less justice and happiness than Adam was when he was first made.
Chapter 14 That the passages saying human beings are conceived from unclean seed and in iniquities do not contradict the argument I have offered, even if they do apply properly to certain cases Now suppose someone's mind does not grasp what I have said concerning the seed of a human being, namely, that there is no sin in it before there is a rational soul, but that it is said to be unclean with sin and iniquity on account of its future uncleanness, once it is a human being. Suppose such a person thinks that the human seed is unclean from its very conception on the grounds that (to quote the passages I myself raised as objections) Scripture says,"Who can make clean what was conceived from unclean seed?" and "In iniquities was I conceived, and in sins did my mother conceive me." I will not devote much effort here to make him understand what he is incapable of understanding, for I have no need to do so. But I do ask that he pay attention to the brief reply I am about to make.
Those who wrote these words meant them to be understood either as applying to every human seed or as applying only to that which is produced in conjunction with the experience of the sensuality that would have belonged exclusively to brute animals had human beings not sinned. If they meant them to apply to every human seed, it follows that such great men asserted that the seed received from the Virgin alone was unclean—and it is impious to believe such a thing. So they did not write these things about that seed. Rather, if they were speaking of any human seed according to the second sense, they meant their words to apply only to seed that is conceived in sensuality. But this in no