Chapter 21.—That There Was
Created at First But One Individual, and that the Human Race Was
Created in Him.
Now that we have solved, as well as
we could, this very difficult question about the eternal God
creating new things, without any novelty of will, it is easy to see
how much better it is that God was pleased to produce the human
race from the one individual whom He created, than if He had
originated it in several men. For as to the other animals, He
created some solitary, and naturally seeking lonely places,—as
the eagles, kites, lions, wolves, and such like; others gregarious,
which herd together, and prefer to live in company,—as pigeons,
starlings, stags, and little fallow deer, and the like: but
neither class did He cause to be propagated from individuals, but
called into being several at once. Man, on the other hand, whose
nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial, He created
in such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as
his rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should
pass into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the
intervention of death,
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a blessed and endless immortality;
but if he offended the Lord his God by a proud and disobedient use
of his free will, he should become subject to death, and live as
the beasts do,—the slave of appetite, and doomed to eternal
punishment after death. And therefore God created only one single
man, not, certainly, that he might be a solitary, bereft of all
society, but that by this means the unity of society and the bond
of concord might be more effectually commended to him, men being
bound together not only by similarity of nature, but by family
affection. And indeed He did not even create the woman that was
to be given him as his wife, as he created the man, but created her
out of the man, that the whole human race might derive from one
man.
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Coquaeus remarks that this is
levelled against the Pelagians.