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The City of God

Chapter 13.--What Was the First Punishment of the Transgression of Our First Parents.

For, as soon as our first parents had transgressed the commandment, divine grace forsook them, and they were confounded at their own wickedness; and therefore they took fig-leaves (which were possibly the first that came to hand in their troubled state of mind), and covered their shame; for though their members remained the same, they had shame now where they had none before. They experienced a new motion of their flesh, which had become disobedient to them, in strict retribution of their own disobedience to God. For the soul, revelling in its own liberty, and scorning to serve God, was itself deprived of the command it had formerly maintained over the body. And because it had willfully deserted its superior Lord, it no longer held its own inferior servant; neither could it hold the flesh subject, as it would always have been able to do had it remained itself subject to God. Then began the flesh to lust against the Spirit, ¹ in which strife we are born, deriving from the first transgression a seed of death, and bearing in our members, and in our vitiated nature, the contest or even victory of the flesh.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XIII: Praeuaricatio primorum hominum quam primam senserit poenam.

Nam posteaquam praecepti facta transgressio est, confestim gratia deserente diuina de corporum suorum nuditate confusi sunt. unde etiam foliis ficulneis, quae forte a perturbatis prima conperta sunt, pudenda texerunt; quae prius eadem membra erant, sed pudenda non erant. senserunt ergo nouum motum inoboedientis carnis suae, tamquam reciprocam poenam inoboedientiae suae. iam quippe anima libertate in peruersum propria delectata et deo dedignata seruire pristino corporis seruitio destituebatur, et quia superiorem dominum suo arbitrio deseruerat, inferiorem famulum ad suum arbitrium non tenebat, nec omni modo habebat subditam carnem, sicut semper habere potuisset, si deo subdita ipsa mansisset. tunc ergo coepit caro concupiscere aduersus spiritum, cum qua controuersia nati sumus, trahentes originem mortis et in membris nostris uitiataque natura contentionem eius siue uictoriam de prima praeuaricatione gestantes.