you say, ‘They had marital relations, but no child,’ I will reply: It was the creator, not sexual union, who gave the child the creator promised. But the child who is born is the work of God. After all, he who made the first human being from dust fashions all human beings from seed. Just as clay which was then used as matter was not the author of the human being, so this force of pleasure which forms and mingles the seeds does not now take the place of God’s action, but offers to God from the resources