CHAPTER XIV
2k fact does not know what is unfitting with respect to God. Therefore, even if God had made Jesus to he only a man (as I said above), it would still have been necessary for God to have endowed Him with no less justice and happiness than Adam possessed when he was first created.
CHAPTER XIV
That What Is Written--1 That Man Is Conceived from Unclean Seed And in Iniquity*--Does Not Oppose the Proposed Argument
Perhaps someone may not understand the things which I have said regard ing the seed of man, namely that there is no sin in it before it becomes a rational soul, and that this seed is called unclean in sin and iniquity on account of a later uncleanness which will be in man. And perhaps someone may think that the seed is unclean in the moment of its conception because he reads the two verses which I have already opposed to my own argument, namely 'Who can make a man clean from an unclean seed?* and *1 was begotten in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.' (Job l4:4, Ps. 51:5)
If there is any such person, there is no need for me to strive here to make him understand what he cannot understand; but I ask him now to listen closely to a few things which I am going to say.
Those who have had recourse to these scripture verses either want them to be understood as referring to the seed of every man or else as referring only to that seed which is inseminated with the sense of pleasure which would have been proper only to brute animals, had man not sinned. But if they understand this text to refer to all men, then they would have to assert that the seed of Jesus Himself--even though it was taken from the Virgin--was un clean. But it is blasphemous to believe this. Therefore, these scripture verses do not refer to all men; and if they refer to any seed of man, then it