Moreover in this age and at this day, you may find many who wish that they had no children at all born to them. And this far more than barbarous inhumanity and enormity is found more particularly among princes and nobles, who frequently abstain from marriage for the sole reason that they may have no posterity. Still more base is the practice found in those princes, who suffer themselves to be counselled and persuaded not to marry, lest their families should become too large for civil purposes. Such men are indeed worthy of having their names blotted out from the land of the living, as the punishment of their contempt of the laws and intents of God. Who is there that would not execrate such swine-like monsters as these? These inhuman beings however still further manifest in many base particulars the nature and depth of original sin. Were it not for the consequences of this mighty sin, we should all admire the fulfilment of the law of God in generation, as one of the highest acts of the obedience and worship of God. And we should extol it as one of the greatest gifts of God with its due praise and admiration. From the above inhuman abuse and contempt of marriage have arisen those numerous reproaches of the female sex, which celibacy has greatly augmented. Whereas it is one of the greatest of his blessings that God has preserved for us women, even against the wishes and the wills of such inhuman beings, both as a divine means of generation and as a remedy also against the sin of fornication. In paradise woman would have been indeed a helper in our duty and obedience to God, and in our fulfilment of his command "to be fruitful and to multiply and replenish the earth," Gen. 1:28. But now woman is in a very great measure a medicine and remedy for sin. So that in truth we can now scarcely mention the name of woman without shame; most certainly we cannot unite ourselves to her without some sense and blush of that shame. The mighty cause of all this is original sin. For in paradise the union of man and woman would have been wholly free from the thought of shame or impurity. The whole union would have been looked upon and felt, as a duty of obedience to God, ordained by himself and sanctified by the blessings he pronounced upon it. The same calamitous state on account of sin rests upon us also, even in the midst of all our spiritual gifts. For although we may have faith and live in faith, yet we cannot be free from doubt, fear and the sensible awe of death. These just punishments of original sin, our holy fathers in the faith deeply saw and felt. That which now follows is as it were a repetition of what has preceded, concerning the creation of Adam, by which repetition Moses would more conveniently arrive at his intended description of the manner in which woman was created. In reading what follows, therefore, we must consider Adam to have been already created.