Therefore, the Church of Rome borrowed the dogma of original sin from the Pagans. To this many Roman Catholic writers say: true the Pagans held this doctrine, but we did not borrow it from them; we found it in the first chapters of Genesis. We rejoin that even the fathers of the fourth century did not understand those chapters literally, and thereby as teaching the dogma of original sin. St. Augustine, in his work, City of God, avers that it was a general opinion among Christians, that the first three chapters of Genesis are allegorical, and that he himself is inclined to think so. He confesses that it is impossible to take them literally without hurting piety, and ascribing to God unworthy actions. Origen says: "Where is the man of good sense, who can ever believe that there have been a first, a second, and a third days, and that those days had each an evening and morning, though there were not yet neither sun, nor moon, nor stars? Where is the man credulous enough to believe, that God was working like a gardener, and that he planted a garden in Orient; that the tree of life was a real tree, whose fruit would preserve life?" Origen compared the temptation of Adam to that of the birth of Love, whose father was Porus, or Abundance, and whose mother was Poverty. He adds that there are in the Old Testament facts, which, if understood literally, are absurd, and which, if understood allegorically, contain valuable truths. We refer the reader for the above to the following works: See St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, liber xi, cap. 6, et liber 2, cap. xi, No. 24.--De Genesi ad Litteram, liber 4, No. 44.--De Catechis Rudibus, cap. 13. The opinion of St. Athanase can be found in his Oratio Contra Arium, No. 60.--That of Origen, in his work De Principiis, liber iv, No. 16, contra Celsum, liber 6, No. 50, 51. That of St. Ambrosius, in his Hexam, liber one, cap. 7, et Sequentia. That of Theodoret, in his Quest. in Genes. interpr. cap. v. et Sequentia, and that of St. Gregory in his Moral, in Job, liber 32, cap. 9.