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| Generation Something Akin to the First Formation of Eve from the Side and Nature of Adam; God the Creator of Men in Ordinary Generation.
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Chapter
II.—Generation Something Akin to the First Formation of Eve from
the Side and Nature of Adam; God the Creator of Men in Ordinary
Generation.
And this perhaps is what was shadowed forth by the sleep
and trance of the first man, which prefigured the embraces of connubial
love. When thirsting for children a man falls into a kind of
trance,2532
| 2532
Remark the connection, ἔκστασις and εξίσταται. | softened and
subdued by the pleasures of generation as by sleep, so that again
something drawn from his flesh and from his bones is, as I said,
fashioned into another man. For the harmony of the bodies being
disturbed in the embraces of love, as those tell us who have experience
of the marriage state, all the marrow-like and generative part of the
blood, like a kind of liquid bone, coming together from all the
members, worked into foam and curdled, is projected through the organs
of generation into the living body of the female. And probably it
is for this reason that a man is said to leave his father and his
mother, since he is then suddenly unmindful of all things when united
to his wife in the embraces of love, he is overcome by the desire of
generation, offering his side to the divine Creator to take away from
it, so that the father may again appear in the son.
Wherefore, if God still forms man, shall we not be
guilty of audacity if we think of the generation of children as
something offensive, which the Almighty Himself is not ashamed to make
use of in working with His undefiled hands; for He says to Jeremiah,
“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee;”2533
and to Job,
“Didst thou take clay and form a living creature, and make it
speak upon the earth?”2534
and Job draws near to Him in
supplication, saying, “Thine hands have made me and fashioned
me.”2535
Would it
not, then, be absurd to forbid marriage unions, seeing that we expect
that after us there will be martyrs, and those who shall oppose the
evil one, for whose sake also the Word promised that He would shorten
those days?2536
For if
the generation of children henceforth had seemed evil to God, as you
said, for what reason will those who have come into existence in
opposition to the divine decree and will be able to appear
well-pleasing to God? And must not that which is begotten be
something spurious, and not a creature of God, if, like a counterfeit
coin, it is moulded apart from the intention and ordinance of the
lawful authority? And so we concede to men the power of forming
men.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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