"We should not be ashamed to name," he declared, "what God has not been ashamed to create."[52] It was a memorable declaration because, while it accepted the old classic feeling of no shame in the presence of nature, it put that feeling on a new and religious basis harmonious to Christianity.

Throughout, though not always quite consistently, Clement defends the body and the functions of sex against those who treated them with contempt.

And as the cause of sex is the cause of women he always strongly asserts the dignity of women, and also proclaims the holiness of marriage, a state which he sometimes places above that of virginity.[53] Unfortunately, it must be said, St.Augustine--another North African, but of Roman Carthage and not of Greek Alexandria--thought that he had a convincing answer to the kind of argument which Clement presented, and so great was the force of his passionate and potent genius that he was able in the end to make his answer prevail.

For Augustine sin was hereditary, and sin had its special seat and symbol in the sexual organs; the fact of sin has modified the original divine act of creation, and we cannot treat sex and its organs as though there had been no inherited sin.

Our sexual organs, he declares, have become shameful because, through sin, they are now moved by lust.