The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
bodies of the first human beings in such a way that, if they had not sinned and had not immediately thereupon contracted a disease which would bring death, they would move the members by which offspring are generated in the same way that one commands his feet when he walks, so that conception would take place without passion and birth without pain? But as it is, by disobeying God's command they deserved to experience in their members, where death now reigned, the movement of a law at war with the law of the mind,*® a movement that marriage regulates and continence controls and restrains, so that where punishment has followed sin, there merit will come from punishment.
CHAPTER 11
The woman was created for procreation, which would have taken place in Paradise without any uncontrolled destre.
19. The woman, then, with the appearance and distinctive physical characteristics of her sex, was made for the man from the man. She brought forth Cain and Abel and all their brothers, from whom all men were to be born; and among them she brought forth Seth, through whom the line descended to Abraham and the people of Israel, the nation long well known among all men; and it was through the sons of Noah that all nations sprang.
Whoever calls these facts into question undermines all that we believe, and his opinions should be resolutely cast out of the minds of the faithful. Consequently, when someone asks what help the woman was intended to give the man, as I carefully consider to the best of my ability all that we are told, I can think of no other purpose than the procreation of children in order to fill the earth with their descendants. But the begetting of children by the first man and woman was not to have been as it is today, when there is the law of sin in the members at war with the law of the mind,*? even though virtue overcomes it by the grace of God. For we must believe that this condition could not