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| Chapter XIII. Of this also: “But I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”
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Chapter XIII.
Of this also: “But I know that in me, that is in
my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”
Because then the original curse
of God has made us carnal and condemned us to thorns and thistles, and
our father has sold us by that unhappy bargain so that we cannot do the
good that we would, while we are torn away from the recollection of God
Most High and forced to think on what belongs to human weakness, while
burning with the love of purity, we are often even against our will
troubled by natural desires,
which we would rather know nothing about; we know that in our flesh
there dwelleth no good thing2273
viz., the
perpetual and lasting peace of this meditation of which we have spoken;
but there is brought about in our case that miserable and wretched
divorce, that when with the mind we want to serve the law of God, since
we never want to remove our gaze from the Divine brightness, yet
surrounded as we are by carnal darkness we are forced by a kind of law
of sin to tear ourselves away from the good which we know, as we fall
away from that lofty height of mind to earthly cares and thoughts, to
which the law of sin, i.e., the sentence of God, which the first
delinquent received, has not without reason condemned us. And hence it
is that the blessed Apostle, though he openly admits that he and all
saints are bound by the constraint of this sin, yet boldly asserts that
none of them will be condemned for this, saying: “There is
therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus: for the
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath set me free from the law
of sin and death,”2274
i.e., the
grace of Christ day by day frees all his saints from this law of sin
and death, under which they are constantly reluctantly obliged to come,
whenever they pray to the Lord for the forgiveness of their trespasses.
You see then that it was in the person not of sinners but of those who
are really saints and perfect, that the blessed Apostle gave utterance
to this saying: “For I do not the good that I would, but the evil
which I hate, that I do;” and: “I see another law in my
members resisting the law of my mind and bringing me captive to the law
of sin which is in my members.”2275
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