Pars 3, Cap. 4
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/5/d/3/q/bon-brev-p3-c4
----------------------------------------
### Chapter IV. *On the punishment of the first parents.*

Concerning the *punishment* inflicted on the first parents, this is to be held: that the man and the woman, immediately after the *guilt*, felt the *punishment* of rebellion and of shame in the flesh; and therefore, to cover their shameful parts, *they made themselves girdles*. — But afterwards, by the divine judgment, the man incurred the punishment of *labor* and of straitness, the punishment of *hunger* and of want, the punishment of *death* and of dissolution into ash; as Scripture says: *Cursed is the earth in thy work*, etc. — But for the *woman* the punishment was *doubled*, because there was inflicted on her the penalty of manifold *hardships* in conception, the punishment of *pains* in childbirth, and also the punishment of *subjection* to the man in their life together; and thereby, according as it appears, that sin — namely the eating of the forbidden tree — was punished gravely enough, although it was easily perpetrated.

Now the reason for the understanding of the foresaid is this: since the first principle is most provident in governing and most upright in presiding, it lets nothing at all in the universe go undisposed; and since guilt is rightly ordered into punishment, therefore straightway in the first parents the *disgrace of sin* was followed by the *comeliness of judgment*, so that what was disordered by falling from the order of nature should fall straightway into the order of justice. For this twofold order so embraces all things that whatever falls away from the one falls back into the other.

Since, therefore, each parent, by growing proud in mind and by tasting in the flesh, was disobedient to his superior, it was brought about by the just judgment of God that his own inferior should become *disobedient* to him, and most of all as regards those parts according to which there is the joining of either sex, which are the members serving the generative power. And because this was in them not from nature but from their own guilt, therefore they blushed and covered themselves.

Again, because the man, having spurned the highest delightful thing, sought to be delighted in the flesh; therefore by the just judgment of God there was inflicted on him *labor* and the *failing of hunger and thirst*.

Last, because for the good of the flesh he chose to be separated from the good of the mind, therefore by the just judgment of God the soul is unwillingly separated from the flesh through *death* and *reduction to ashes*; and thereby, just as God had given to man, according to the order of nature, a body *subject* to the soul, *propagable* without lust, *capable of growth* without failing, *unchangeable* without the intervention of death; so, man having sinned, it was brought about according to the order of justice that He should withdraw all the foresaid things and inflict their opposites; so that thus guilt should not remain unpunished and disordered, which the divine providence ought in no way to suffer.

And since from the woman the sin took its beginning; therefore her punishment is *doubled*. For because she was proud in mind, she incurred *subjection*; because she saw and desired the tree as sweet for eating, she incurred *pain*; last, because she broke the yoke of obedience, she incurred the bond and the weight of *manifold hardship*.

And thus it is clear with how great an order of divine providence the manifold punishments were inflicted on the *man* and doubled in the *woman*, so that thus « the disgrace of sin should not be without the comeliness of justice ».

---