47. As has been likewise remarked above, the words, it shut not up, are ‘it opened,’ and it took not away, ‘it brought upon me.’ So that this night, i.e. sin, opened the door of the womb, in that to man, conceived unto sin, it unsealed the lust of concupiscence [m], whereof the Prophet says, Enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors. [Isa. 26, 20] For we ‘enter our chambers,’ when we go into the recesses of our own hearts. And we ‘shut the doors,’ when we restrain forbidden lusts; and so whereas our consent set open these doors of carnal concupiscence, it forced us to the countless evils of our corrupt state. And so now we henceforth groan under the weight of mortality, though we came [n] thereunto by our own free will, in that the justice of the sentence against us requires thus much, that what we have done willingly, we should bear with against our will.
22. What the womb of his mother is to each individual man, that the primary abode in Paradise became to the whole human race. For from it came forth the family of man as it were from the womb, and tending to the increase of the race, as if to the growth of the body, it issued forth without. There our conception was cemented, where the Man, the origin of mankind, had his abode, but the serpent opened the mouth of this womb, in that by his cunning persuading he broke asunder the decree of heaven in man's heart. The serpent opened the mouth of this womb, in that he burst the barriers of the mind which were fortified with admonitions from above. Let the holy man then in the punishment which he suffers, cast the eyes of his mind far back to the sin. Let him mourn for this, which the neglect of darkness, that is, the dark suggestions of our old enemy lodged in man's mind; for this, that man's mind consented to his cunning suggestions to his own betrayal, and let him say, Because it shu...
