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| Chapter XV. The answer to the objection raised.
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Chapter XV.
The answer to the objection raised.
Theonas: Your notion does
not come to much; as you yourselves have actually now begun to maintain
that this cannot possibly stand in the person of those who are out and
out sinners, but that it properly applies to those who are trying to
keep themselves clear from carnal sins. And since you have already
separated these from the number of sinners, it follows that you must
shortly admit them into the ranks of the faithful and holy. For what
kinds of sin do you say that those can commit, from which, if they are
involved in them after the grace of baptism, they can be freed by the
daily grace of Christ? or of what body of death are we to think that
the Apostle said: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord”?2276
Is it not clear, as truth compels you
yourselves also to admit, that it is spoken not of those members of
capital crimes, by which the wages of eternal death are gained; viz.,
murder, fornication, adultery, drunkenness, thefts and robberies, but
of that body before mentioned, which the daily grace of Christ assists?
For whoever after baptism and the knowledge of God falls into that
death, must know that he will either have to be cleansed, not by the
daily grace of Christ, i.e., an easy forgiveness, which our Lord when
at any moment He is prayed to, is wont to grant to our errors, but by a
lifelong affliction of penitence and penal sorrow, or else will be
hereafter consigned to the punishment of eternal fire for them, as the
same Apostle thus declares: “Be not deceived: neither
fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor
defilers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous persons,
nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom
of God.”2277
Or what is
that law warring in our members
which resists the law of our mind, and
when it has led us resisting but captives to the law of sin and death,
and has made us serve it with the flesh, nevertheless suffers us to
serve the law of God with the mind? For I do not suppose that this law
of sin denotes crimes or can be taken of the offences mentioned above,
of which if a man is guilty he does not serve the law of God with the
mind, from which law he must first have departed in heart before he is
guilty of any of them with the flesh. For what is it to serve the law
of sin, but to do what is commanded by sin? What sort of sin then is it
to which so great holiness and perfection feels that it is captive, and
yet doubts not that it will be freed from it by the grace of Christ,
saying: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our
Lord”? What law, I ask, will you maintain to be implanted in our
members, which, withdrawing us from the law of God and bringing us into
captivity to the law of sin, could make us wretched rather than guilty
so that we should not be consigned to eternal punishment, but still as
it were sigh for the unbroken joys of bliss, and, seeking for a helper
who shall restore us to it, exclaim with the Apostle: “O wretched
man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
For what is it to be led captive to the law of sin but to continue to
perform and commit sin? Or what other chief good can be given which the
saints cannot fulfil, except that in comparison with which, as we said
above, everything else is not good? Indeed we know that many things in
this world are good, and chiefly, modesty, continence, sobriety,
humility, justice, mercy, temperance, piety: but all of these things
fail to come up to that chief good, and can be done I say not by
apostles, but even by ordinary folk; and, those by whom they are not
done, are either chastised with eternal punishment, or are set free by
great exertions, as was said above, of penitence, and not by the daily
grace of Christ. It remains then for us to admit that this saying of
the Apostle is rightly applied only to the persons of saints, who day
after day falling under this law, which we described, of sin not of
crimes, are secure of their salvation and not precipitated into wicked
deeds, but, as has often been said, are drawn away from the
contemplation of God to the misery of bodily thoughts, and are often
deprived of the blessing of that true bliss. For if they felt that by
this law of their members they were bound daily to crimes, they would
complain of the loss not of happiness but of innocence, and the Apostle
Paul would not say: “O wretched man that I am,” but
“Impure,” or “Wicked man that I am,” and he
would wish to be rid not of the body of this death, i.e., this mortal
state, but of the crimes and misdeeds of this flesh. But because by
reason of his state of human frailty he felt that he was captive, i.e.,
led away to carnal cares and anxieties which the law of sin and death
causes, he groans over this law of sin under which against his will he
had fallen, and at once has recourse to Christ and is saved by the
present redemption of His grace. Whatever of anxiety therefore that law
of sin, which naturally produces the thorns and thistles of mortal
thoughts and cares, has caused to spring up in the ground of the
Apostle’s breast, that the law of grace at once plucks up.
“For the law,” says he, “of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath set me free from the law of sin and
death.”2278
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