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| Of Carnal Life, Which is to Be Understood Not Only of Living in Bodily Indulgence, But Also of Living in the Vices of the Inner Man.
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Chapter 2.—Of Carnal Life, Which
is to Be Understood Not Only of Living in Bodily Indulgence, But
Also of Living in the Vices of the Inner Man.
First, we must see what it is to
live after the flesh, and what to live after the spirit. For any
one who either does not recollect, or does not sufficiently weigh,
the language of sacred Scripture, may, on first hearing what we
have said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers live after the
flesh, because they place man’s highest good in bodily pleasure;
and that those others do so who have been of opinion that in some
form or other bodily good is man’s supreme good; and that the
mass of men do so who, without dogmatizing or philosophizing on the
subject, are so prone to lust that they cannot delight in any
pleasure save such as they receive from bodily sensations: and he
may suppose that the Stoics, who place the supreme good of men in
the soul, live after the spirit; for what is man’s soul, if not
spirit? But in the sense of the divine Scripture both are proved
to live after the flesh. For by flesh it means not only the body
of a terrestrial and mortal animal, as when it says, “All flesh
is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men,
another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another of
birds,”639
but it uses
this word in many other significations; and among these various
usages, a frequent one is to use flesh for man himself, the nature
of man taking the part for the whole, as in the words, “By the
deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;”640
for what
does he mean here by “no flesh” but “no man?” And this,
indeed, he shortly after says more plainly: “No man shall be
justified by the law;”641
and in the Epistle to the
Galatians, “Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the
law.” And so we understand the words, “And the Word was made
flesh,”642
—that is,
man, which some not accepting in its right sense, have supposed
that Christ had not a human soul.643
For as the whole is used for the
part in the words of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel, “They have
taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him,”644
by which she
meant only the flesh of Christ, which she supposed had been taken
from the tomb where it had been buried, so the part is used for the
whole, flesh being named, while man is referred to, as in the
quotations above cited.
Since, then, Scripture uses the
word flesh in many ways, which there is not time to collect and
investigate, if we are to ascertain what it is to live after the
flesh (which is certainly evil, though the nature of flesh is not
itself evil), we must carefully examine that passage of the epistle
which the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, in which he says,
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these:
adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry,
witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions,
heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such
like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in
time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the
kingdom of God.”645
This whole passage of the
apostolic epistle being considered, so far as it bears on the
matter in hand, will be sufficient to answer the question, what it
is to live after the flesh. For among the works of the flesh
which he said were manifest, and which he cited for condemnation,
we find not only those which concern the pleasure of the flesh, as
fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness, revellings,
but also those which, though they be remote from fleshly pleasure,
reveal the vices of the soul. For who does not see that
idolatries, witchcrafts, hatreds, variance, emulations, wrath,
strife, heresies, envyings, are vices rather of the soul than of
the flesh? For it is quite possible for a man to abstain from
fleshly pleasures for the sake of idolatry or some heretical error;
and yet, even when he does so, he is proved by this apostolic
authority to be living after the flesh; and in abstaining from
fleshly pleasure, he is proved to be practising damnable works of
the flesh. Who that has enmity has it not in his soul? or who
would say to his enemy, or to the man he thinks his enemy, You have
a bad flesh towards me, and not rather, You have a bad spirit
towards me? In fine, if any one heard of what I may call
“carnalities,” he would not fail to attribute them to the
carnal part of man; so no one doubts that “animosities” belong
to the soul of man. Why then does the doctor of the Gentiles in
faith and verity call all these and similar things works of the
flesh, unless because, by that mode of speech whereby the part is
used for the whole, he means us to understand by the word flesh the
man himself?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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