by Charles note: this is being edited to include further material from Augustine, but the goal is to explore transmission and problems of concupiscence and differences emerging between the woman who was ‘beguiled’ vs. Adam who deliberately wrought sin/death. It should be noted patriarchy was not a postlapsarian origin but existed in paradise and declared as ‘good’. However, the sin of the woman was special and carries forward as the ‘weaker vessel’, likely to the detriment of marriage.
The Prayer to be said for a Women with Child is found in Elizabeth’s 1578 Book of Private Prayers. Within the prayer is a distinct theology of the woman, containing two interwoven themes: 1. an account of the fall; 2. the labor which the seed of the Woman continues in, though marred with suffering, remains the cause by which we beg God’s help. Kinists might have a special curiosity for the 1578 prayer not only because it gives wonderful insight into Augustinian theology, but especially because it explains the post-lapsarian lot by which male headship is re-instituted. We might say Kinism stands upon the earliest ordering of man and woman, namely, the first division of mutual society by which external hierarchies occur.
Related to the 1578 prayer are those prayer book rites that further bless the domestic—such as marriage, churching of women, and infant baptism. Here, the predicament of first corruption is retold within the liturgy where the women often has peculiar blame for trespass, persuading the very cause of her humility and her re-asserted need for male headship. Anglican liturgy and articles also seem to convey a more physical, rather than merely legal, notion of original evil where transgression is additionally infused in a fleshly manner, passed on by maternal issue. Several themes are at work which have implications to kinism, namely, why society is not composed of equal parts, and how the work of sin is not just legal but by the flesh. Starting with the 1578 prayer, it reads:
“Thy wisdom and power shine forth in all thy works, O Lord; but yet much more great, more manifest, and more wonderful are they, in the shaping of man. Of how small beginning dost thou make so marvellous a living thing, shedding a soul into it, whose original is from heaven, to the intent he should long to return thither, as into his country.
And now, that thou hast vouchsafed to make me, as it were, thy workhouse, wherein to fashion so singular a work, I most humbly and heartily thank thee, beseeching thee, that, as thou hast given me ability to conceive, so thou wilt give me strength to the perfecting of the thing that is in breeding, that I may safely both bear it and bring it forth. Truly thou, O merciful Father, hadst of thine own goodness made this work of child-bearing easy; but our sin hath made it sorrowful, and full of danger.
O most gracious workman, let thy pitifulness amend the thing, which our sinfulness hath marred, and either abate my pain, that I may not have need of so great strength, tendance, and cunning; or else, increase my strength, power, and courage that I may be able to overcome all the pain of my travail. Amen”
The prayer begins describing the beginning of man which is not of the woman but from heaven, namely, his soul. And, like the gift of a soul, so is the ability to conceive since God, though infinitely greater, is also the maker of life. Conception itself was likely part of paradise, but the fall from innocence marred it. Life still passes through the creature, however, but the child-bearing of the woman now has a dual character: 1. she suffers due to Edenic transgression, “our sin hath made it sorrowful”; yet 2. she is the object of the promise of children by God’s grace, “perfecting that thing that is in breeding”. These two events work together to establish a greater hope—that life is not of woman yet it may be counted in what is superior to her, namely, God. And, the Fall makes the searching His mercy urgent, “let thy pitifulness amend the thing which our sinfulness hath marred, and either abate my pain…or else, increase my strength…that I may overcome all the pain of my travail”. Anyway, the woman’s dilemma is acute. She is especially marked by the nature of child-birth from which she is 1.) made His workhouse, “thou hast vouchsafed to make me, as it were, thy workhouse…thou hast given me ability to conceive, so thou wilt give me strength to the perfecting of the thing that is in breeding”. But she’s also the natural reason for concupiscence or sin-nature in man. What is this “thing that is in breeding?” It must be the seed or soul which cannot be born of woman (who gives the body and fleshly concupiscence) but needs God’s first cause to quicken and increase until it is fully ‘brought forth” in glory.
While the prayer book notes the woman as the vessel of birthing children, it also assigns her a special cause for sin, and from first degradation flows the notion and begging grace, pastoral care, and hence the start of an ordered society which is theocracy. The woman’s role is to be a workhouse for both God but also man. I’d like to further explore this concept from the bowels of the bcp, starting with the Churching of Women in the 1549 version, connecting the Anglican or Augustinian notion to original sin to the reaffirmaiton of patriarchy.
I’m adding more material below as wade through standards and will be integrating more proofs to scaffold the thesis. From the Second Book of Homilies 1563, On Whoredom and Uncleanness touches on this sort of sin known as concupiscence from which adultery arises:
“And surely if we would weigh the greatness of this sin, and consider it in the right kind, we should find the sin of woredom to be that most filthy lake, foul puddle, and stinking sink, whereunto all kinds of sins and evils flow, where also they have their resting place and abiding. For hath not the adulterer a pride in his whoredom? As the Wise Man saith, They are glad when they have done eivl, adn rejoice in things that are stark naught. Is not the adulterer also idle, and delighteth in no godly exercise, but only in that his most filthy and beastly pleasure? Is not his mind plucked and utterly drawn away from all virtuous studies, and fruitful labours, and only given to carnal and fleshly imagination? Doth not the whoremonger give his mind to gluttony, that he may be the more apt to serve his lust and pleasures? Doth not the adulterer give his mind to covetousness, and to polling and pilling of others, that he may be the more able to maintain his harlots and whores, and to continue in his flithy and unlwaful love? Swelleth he not also with envy against others, fearing that his prey should be allured or taken away from him?...What sin or kind of sin is it, that is not joined with fornication and whoredom? It is a monster of many heads: it receiveth all kinds of vices, and refuseth all kinds o fvirtues. If one several sin bringeth damnation, what is to be thought of sin, which is accompanied with all evils, and hath waiting on it whatsoever is hateful to God, danmable to man, and pleasant to Satan?” (Homilies, p. 86)
In his notes with the Wittenberg reformers, aka. 13 articles, Cranmer says in 1538 regarding the nature of cupiscence:
“For children are born with original sin, and need to have this sin forgiven, so that their guilt may be removed. Even though the corruption of nature called cupiscence remains in this life, it can begin to be healed because the Holy Spirit is effective even in children and cleanses them”.
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