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| The Same Argument is Continued.
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Chapter 9.—The Same Argument is Continued.
14. For the soul loving its own
power, slips onwards from the whole which is common, to a part,
which belongs especially to itself. And that apostatizing pride,
which is called “the beginning of sin,”766
whereas it might have been most
excellently governed by the laws of God, if it had followed Him as
its ruler in the universal creature, by seeking something more than
the whole, and struggling to govern this by a law of its own, is
thrust on, since nothing is more than the whole, into caring for a
part; and thus by lusting after something more, is made less;
whence also covetousness is called “the root of all evil.”767
And it
administers that whole, wherein it strives to do something of its
own against the laws by which the whole is governed, by its own
body, which it possesses only in part; and so being delighted by
corporeal forms and motions, because it has not the things
themselves within itself, and because it is wrapped up in their
images, which it has fixed in the memory, and is foully polluted by
fornication of the phantasy, while it refers all its functions to
those ends, for which it curiously seeks corporeal and temporal
things through the senses of the body, either it affects with
swelling arrogance to be more excellent than other souls that are
given up to the corporeal senses, or it is plunged into a foul
whirlpool of carnal pleasure.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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