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The City of God

Chapter 14.--Of the Pride in the Sin, Which Was Worse Than the Sin Itself.

But it is a worse and more damnable pride which casts about for the shelter of an excuse even in manifest sins, as these our first parents did, of whom the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;" and the man said, "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." ¹ Here there is no word of begging pardon, no word of entreaty for healing. For though they do not, like Cain, deny that they have perpetrated the deed, yet their pride seeks to refer its wickedness to another,--the woman's pride to the serpent, the man's to the woman. But where there is a plain trangression of a divine commandment, this is rather to accuse than to excuse oneself. For the fact that the woman sinned on the serpent's persuasion, and the man at the woman's offer, did not make the transgression less, as if there were any one whom we ought rather to believe or yield to than God.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XIV: De superbia transgressoris, quae ipsa fuit transgressione deterior.

Sed est peior damnabiliorque superbia, qua etiam in peccatis manifestis suffugium excusationis inquiritur; sicut illi primi homines, quorum et illa dixit: serpens seduxit me, et manducaui, et ille dixit: mulier, quam dedisti me cum, haec mihi dedit a ligno, et edi. nusquam hic sonat petitio ueniae, nusquam inploratio medicinae. nam licet isti non sicut Cain quod commiserunt negent, adhuc tamen superbia in aliud quaerit referre quod perperam fecit: superbia mulieris in serpentem, superbia uiri in mulierem. sed accusatio potius quam excusatio uera est, ubi mandati diuini est aperta transgressio. neque enim hoc propterea non fecerunt, quia id mulier serpente suadente, uir muliere inpertiente commisit, quasi quidquam deo, cui uel crederetur uel cederetur, anteponendum fuit.