Institutes & Conferences 1 part 41/44

Since therefore the saints daily feel themselves, weighed down by the burden of earthly thought, falling from that sublimity of mind, and against their will—nay rather even without knowing it—being carried over into the law of sin and death, and (to pass over the rest) being called away from the sight of God at least by those works I mentioned above, which are indeed good and just and yet earthly, they assuredly have cause to groan continually to the Lord; they have cause, being truly humbled and pierced in heart, to declare themselves sinners not in word only but in affection, and, continually begging pardon from the Lord's grace for all the faults into which they daily fall, overcome by the frailty of the flesh, to pour forth unceasingly the true tears of penitence—inasmuch as they see that, wrapped in the very same fervors over which they are tormented with continual grief even to the very end of life, they cannot offer even their own supplications without the anxiety of thoughts.

Having proved therefore that by human strength they cannot attain the longed-for end, since the burden of the flesh stands in the way, nor can they be joined to that supreme and highest Good according to the desire of their heart, but are led away captive from the contemplation of Him to worldly things, they flee for refuge to the grace of God, who justifies the ungodly, protesting with the Apostle: 'Unhappy man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.' For they feel that the good which they will they cannot accomplish, but keep falling into that which they will not and which they hate as evil—that is, into the stirrings of thoughts or the cares of carnal things.

And indeed according to the inner man they delight in the law of God—the inner man who, transcending all visible things, strives ever to be united to God alone—but they see another law in their members, that is, one implanted in the nature of the human condition, which, warring against the law of their mind, drags their captive sense away by the violent law of sin, compelling it, namely, to abandon that principal Good and to be brought low by earthly thought.

And although this may seem necessary and useful, when it is expended in the dispensing of some religious need, yet compared with that Good which delights the gaze of all the saints, it is judged by them to be evil and to be fled from, because through it they are in some way drawn back, even for a little while, from the joy of that perfect blessedness. For truly it is the law of sin which the transgression of its author brought upon the human race, through the offense of him against whom that sentence of the most just Judge was pronounced: 'Cursed is the earth in thy works: thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.'

This, I say, is the law implanted in the members of all mortals, which wars against the law of our mind and shuts it out from the divine sight, and which, as the earth cursed in our works after the knowledge of good and evil, began to bring forth the thorns and thistles of thoughts, by whose prickles the natural seeds of the virtues are choked, so that we cannot eat that our bread which came down from heaven and which strengthens the heart of man, without the sweat of our face. The whole human race therefore is subject in general, without any exception, to this law. For there is no one, however holy, who does not receive the aforesaid bread with the sweat of his face and the anxious effort of his heart.

But of this common bread many, as we see, feed as rich men without any sweat of their face. This law too the blessed Apostle asserts to be spiritual, saying: 'We know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.' For spiritual is this law which commands us that in the sweat of our face we eat that true bread which came down from heaven; but that selling under sin makes us carnal. And whose, I ask, is that sin? Without doubt Adam's, by whose transgression and (so to speak) ruinous bargaining and fraudulent commerce we have been sold. For, seduced by the serpent's persuasion, he consigned his whole offspring, distracted by the tasting of forbidden food, to the yoke of perpetual servitude.

For this is the custom usually kept between seller and buyer, that he who desires to bind himself over to another's dominion should receive from his purchaser a price for the loss of his own liberty and for his consignment to perpetual servitude. And this too we see most plainly fulfilled between Adam and the serpent. For he, taking from the serpent as the price of his liberty the eating of the forbidden tree, departed from his natural freedom and chose rather to give himself over to perpetual servitude to him from whom he had received the deadly price of the forbidden fruit: whereby, being thenceforth bound by this condition, not without cause he subjected the whole progeny of his posterity in perpetual bondage to the same one whose slave he had become. For what else can a servile marriage produce than servants?

What then? Did this crafty and cunning buyer wrest the right of dominion from the true and lawful Lord? It is not so. For he did not by the deceit of a single fraud so overrun the whole property of the one God that the true Lord lost the power of His dominion—He who presses down even that very buyer, refugee and rebel though he be, under the yoke of servitude: but because the Creator had granted to all rational creatures the freedom of the will, He ought not to recall against their will to their inborn liberty those who, contrary to right, had sold themselves by the transgression of greedy lust. For whatever is contrary to goodness and equity is abhorrent to that Author of justice and mercy.

For it would have been evil if He had revoked the benefit of the liberty He had granted; unjust if, oppressing and taking captive by His power a free man, He had not allowed him to exercise the prerogative of the liberty he had received—whose salvation He then reserved for the ages to come, that in due order the fullness of the appointed time might be completed. For it was fitting that his offspring should continue so long under the ancestral condition, until, being freed from the original chains, He should reform it back into the ancient state of liberty by the grace of its former Lord at the price of His own blood—whom He could have saved even then, but would not, because equity did not permit Him to break the sanction of His own decree. Wilt thou know the cause of thy selling?

Hear thy Redeemer Himself most plainly proclaiming through the prophet Isaiah: 'Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, wherewith I put her away? or who is my creditor, to whom I sold you? Behold, for your iniquities are you sold, and for your crimes have I put away your mother.' Wilt thou also clearly recognize why He would not, by the might of His power, redeem thee bound over to the yoke of servitude? Hear what He added to the words above, in which He reproaches those same slaves of sins with the cause of their voluntary selling: 'Is my hand shortened and become little, that I cannot redeem? or is there no strength in me to deliver?'

But what it is that has always stood in the way of this most mighty mercy of His, the same prophet shows, saying: 'Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is His ear made heavy that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have divided between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you that He should not hear.'

Therefore that first curse of God made us carnal and condemned us to thorns and thistles, and our father sold us by so iniquitous a bargain that we cannot do the good which we will, while, torn away from the remembrance of the most high God, we are compelled to think upon the things that belong to human frailty; while, burning with love of purity, we are often, even against our will, pricked by natural incitements which we would utterly wish to be ignorant of: 'we know that in our flesh there dwelleth not'—

the good, that is, the perpetual and continual tranquillity of that contemplation and purity of which we spoke; but there has come about in us that most wretched and mournful divorce, that although with the mind we wish to serve the law of God, never willingly removing our gaze from the divine brightness, yet, surrounded by carnal darkness, we are forced by a certain law of sin to be torn away from that which we know to be good—falling, namely, to earthly cares and thoughts from that height of mind, to which the law of sin, that is, that sentence of God, not undeservedly condemned us, which the first transgressor received.

And hence it is that the blessed Apostle, although he most plainly confesses that he, or rather all the saints, are constrained by the unavoidable necessity of this sin, yet boldly declares that none of them are on this account to be condemned, 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 delivered me from the law of sin and of death;' that is, the daily grace of Christ absolves all His saints from this law of sin and death, into which they are continually forced, unwillingly, to fall, whenever they beseech the Lord for the remission of their debts. You see therefore that the blessed Apostle uttered this sentence not in the person of sinners, but of those who are truly holy and perfect:

'For the good that I will, I do not; but the evil which I hate, that I do: I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin which is in my members.' GERMANUS: We say that this cannot properly apply to the persons of those who are entangled in capital crimes, nor of the Apostle or of those who have advanced to his measure; but we judge that it ought properly to be understood of those who, after the grace of God and the knowledge of the truth, desiring to abstain from carnal vices, are yet, by their old habit dominating most violently in their members as if by a natural law, dragged away to the ingrained lust of the passions.

For the practice and frequency of sinning becomes as it were a natural law, which, implanted in the members of human weakness, seizes captive the affections of a soul not yet trained in the full pursuits of the virtues, but still, so to speak, rude and tender in chastity, and drags them to vices, and, subjecting them to death by the ancient law, consigns them to the yoke of dominating sin, not allowing them to attain the good of purity which they love, but rather compelling them to practice the evil which they abhor. THEONAS: Your opinion has not made a little progress: for you yourselves too have now begun to establish that in the person of those who are altogether sinners this cannot at all hold good, but that it properly belongs to those who strive to abstain from carnal vices.

And since you have now separated these from the number of sinners, it follows that you should gradually enroll them among the assemblies of the faithful and the saints. For what kinds of sins do you say that these can commit, from which, if they be involved in them after the grace of baptism, they may again be delivered through the daily grace of Christ? Or of what body of death is the Apostle to be believed to have said, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord'?

Is it not manifest—as the truth also has compelled you yourselves to confess—that he speaks not of those members of capital crimes by which the wages of eternal death are acquired, that is, of murder, fornication, adulteries, drunkenness, thefts and robberies, but of that aforesaid body which the daily grace of Christ succors?

For whoever, after baptism and the knowledge of God, rushes into that body of death, let him know that he is to be purged not by the daily grace of Christ, that is, by the easy remission which our Lord, entreated at every moment, is wont to grant to our errors, but either by long affliction of penance and painful sorrow, or else to be consigned in the world to come to the punishments of eternal fire for these things—as the same Apostle proclaims: 'Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God.'

Or what is this law warring in our members, which fights against the law of our mind, and, when it has led us away resisting and captive in the law of sin and death and made us serve it with the flesh, nevertheless permits us to serve the law of God with the mind? For I do not think that here the law of sin denotes flagrant crimes, or can be understood of the aforesaid offenses, which if any one commits, he does not serve the law of God with the mind, from which he must needs revolt in soul before he commits any of them in the flesh. For what is it to serve the law of sin, save to fulfill those things which are commanded by sin? What kind of sin then is it by which so great sanctity and perfection feels itself taken captive, yet doubts not that it is to be delivered by the grace of Christ, saying:

'Unhappy man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord?' What law, I say, will you affirm to be present in our members, which, drawing us away from the law of God and taking us captive in the law of sin, makes us rather unhappy than guilty, so that we are not consigned to eternal punishments, but sigh as it were over the interrupted joy of blessedness, and, seeking a helper to draw us back to it, cry out with the Apostle: 'Unhappy man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' For to be led captive in the law of sin—what else is it than to remain in the effect and work of sin?

Or what other principal good shall be assigned, which the saints cannot fulfill, save that in comparison with which, as we said above, all things are not even good? Indeed we know that there are many good things in this world, and especially chastity, continence, sobriety, humility, justice, mercy, temperance, piety: but all these both cannot be equal to that supreme Good, and can be accomplished not, I will not say by apostles, but even by ordinary men, and by those by whom they have not been fulfilled are punished either by eternal punishment or by the great labor of penance, as was said above—they are not delivered by the daily grace of Christ.

It remains therefore that we rightly acknowledge this sentence of the Apostle to be fitting to the persons of the saints alone, who, daily running into this law of sin (not of crimes) which we have described, being sure of the state of their salvation, are not hurled headlong into wickedness, but, as has often been said, being rolled down from divine contemplation to the misery of bodily thoughts, are for the most part defrauded of the good of that true blessedness.

For if they felt themselves bound by daily crimes through this law of their members, they would complain not indeed of the loss of felicity, but of innocence, nor would the Apostle Paul say 'Unhappy man that I am,' but 'Impure' or 'Wicked man that I am,' nor would he wish to be freed 'from the body of this death,' that is, from the mortal condition, but from the flagrant deeds and crimes of this flesh. But because he felt himself taken captive on account of the condition of human frailty, that is, led away to the solicitudes and cares of the flesh which the law of sin and death works, groaning over this law of sin into which he had unwillingly fallen, he at once has recourse to Christ and is saved by the most present redemption of His grace.

Whatever therefore that law of sin, which naturally begets the thorns and thistles of mortal thoughts and cares, has brought forth even in the soil of solicitude of the apostolic breast, this law of grace presently plucks away. 'For the law,' he says, 'of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath delivered thee from the law of sin and death.' This therefore is the unavoidable body of death, in which all the perfect—who have tasted how sweet the Lord is—daily rolled back, feel with the prophet how evil and bitter it is for them to depart from the Lord their God.

This is the body of death, which, drawing them back from the heavenly gaze, leads them down to earthly things, which makes them, while chanting psalms and prostrate in prayer, turn over again in their minds superfluous human images or words or affairs or acts. This is the body of death, by which those who emulate angelic sanctity and wish to cleave continually to the Lord cannot nevertheless find the perfection of this good, because the body of death stands in the way, but do the evil which they will not—that is, they are carried away in mind even to those things which do not pertain to the advancement of the virtues and to perfection.

Finally, that the blessed Apostle might clearly express that he had said this of the saints and the perfect and of those like himself, pointing out as it were only himself with his finger, he at once adds: 'So then I myself'—that is, I who declare these things—lay open the hidden places of my own conscience, not of another's. This manner of speech the Apostle is wont to use familiarly, whenever he wishes to designate himself especially, as there: 'I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ;' and again: 'except that I myself was not burdensome to you;' and again: 'But be it so, I myself did not burden you;' and elsewhere: 'I Paul myself say to you: that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing;' and to the Romans:

'For I myself could wish to be anathema from Christ for my brethren.' It can also be taken, not absurdly, in such a way that it is uttered more expressly with emphasis: 'So then I myself'—that is, I whom you know to be an apostle of Christ, whom you venerate with all reverence, whom you believe to be supreme and perfect and in whom Christ speaks—'with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh I confess that I serve the law of sin,' that is, by the distension of the human condition I am at times rolled down from heavenly things to earthly, and the loftiness of my mind slips down to the cares of lowly things:

through which law of sin I feel myself so taken captive at each moment that, although I persevere in an unshaken desire toward the law of God, yet I feel that I can in no way escape the force of this captivity, unless I always flee for refuge to the grace of the Savior. And therefore all the saints, pierced with daily sighs on account of this frailty of their substance, while they search out the varieties of their thoughts and the hidden places and inmost recesses of their conscience, cry suppliantly: 'Enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified;' and that: 'Who will boast that he has a chaste heart? or who will have confidence that he is clean from sin?' and again:

'There is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not;' and also that: 'Sins—who understandeth them?' And thus they have deemed the righteousness of men to be infirm and imperfect and always in need of God's mercy, so that one of these, whose iniquities and sins God purged by the live coal of His word sent from the altar, after that wondrous contemplation of God, after the sight of the sublime Seraphim and the revelation of the heavenly mysteries, says: 'Woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips.' He, as I think, would not perhaps even then have perceived the uncleanness of his lips,

unless he had by the contemplation of God deserved to recognize the true and entire purity of perfection, by the sight of which he suddenly recognized his own pollution, before unknown to him. For that he said, 'Woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips,' confessing this of his own lips, not of the people's pollution, that which follows makes manifest: 'and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips.' But also when in prayer he confesses the uncleanness of sinners as it were universal, he embraces in a general supplication not only the people of the unrighteous, but also of the just, saying: 'Behold, thou art angry, and we have sinned: in them we have been always, and we shall be saved.'

'We are all become as one unclean, and all our righteousnesses as the cloth of a menstruous woman.' I ask, what can be plainer than this sentence, by which the prophet, embracing not one only but all our righteousnesses, and looking round on all things which are judged either unclean or horrid—since he could find nothing in the conversation of men more filthy or more impure—chose rather to compare them to the cloth of a menstruous woman. In vain therefore is the point of a thorny objection set against most manifest truth, as you said a little before: 'if no one is without sin, no one is holy; if no one is holy, no one therefore shall be saved.' For by this testimony of the prophet the knot of this question can be loosed: 'Behold,' he says, 'thou art angry, and we have sinned:'

that is, when, turning away from the pride of our heart or our negligences, thou didst strip us of thy help, at once the abyss of sins swallowed us up—as if one should say to the most splendid element of the sun, 'Blind one, thou hast set,' and immediately dark obscurity covered us. And yet, although here he says that the saints have sinned, and not only sinned but even always remained in those very sins, he does not utterly despair of salvation, but subjoins: 'in them we have been always, and we shall be saved.' This sentence, 'Behold, thou art angry, and we have sinned,' I will compare to that apostolic one: 'Unhappy man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Again, that which the prophet subjoins, 'in them we have been always, and we shall be saved,' agrees with the words that follow in the Apostle:

'The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' Likewise too that saying of the same prophet, 'Woe is me, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips,' seems to savor of the aforesaid words: 'Unhappy man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' And likewise that which follows in the prophet, 'And behold, one of the Seraphim flew to me, and in his hand a live coal (or stone), which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: Behold, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be cleansed'—this is such as seems uttered by the mouth of Paul, who says: 'The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' You see

therefore, how all the saints—not so much in the person of the people as in their own—truly confess themselves also to be sinners, and yet by no means despair of their salvation, but presume upon the fullness of justification (which they distrust that they can attain on account of the condition of human frailty) from the grace and mercy of the Lord. But that no one in this life, however holy, is exempt from the debts of sins, the very teaching of the Savior also instructs us, who, delivering to His disciples the formula of perfect prayer, among the rest of those sublime and most sacred commands—which, since they were delivered to none but the holy and perfect, cannot suit the wicked and unfaithful—ordered this to be inserted:

'And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' If therefore this prayer is offered even by the saints—as we ought undoubtingly to believe—who can be found so obstinate and presumptuous, so puffed up with the pride of diabolical fury, that, declaring himself to be without sin, he not only believes himself greater than the apostles, but even accuses the Savior Himself as it were of ignorance or vanity—as though either He did not know that some could be exempt from debts, or vainly taught those whom He knew not to need the remedy of this prayer? But since all the saints without exception, keeping the precepts of their King, daily say 'Forgive us our debts,' if they speak truly, then truly no one is exempt from fault.

But if they pretend, it is equally true that they are not free from the sin of lying. Whence also that most wise Ecclesiastes, running over in his mind all the acts and pursuits of men, pronounces without any exception: 'For there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not:' that is, no one on this earth so holy, so diligent, so intent, either ever could be or ever shall be found, who is able so continually to cleave to that true and singular Good, that he does not feel himself daily to have sinned, being distracted from it. Yet, although he is pronounced unable to be exempt from fault, he is nonetheless not denied to be righteous.

Whosoever therefore ascribes anamartēton, that is, sinlessness, to human nature, let him contend with us not by empty words, but by the testimony and proof of his own conscience, and let him then at last declare himself to be without sin, when he shall have felt himself not torn away from this supreme Good: nay rather, whosoever, considering his own conscience, shall have found that he has celebrated—not to say more—even one single synaxis without any interruption of word or deed or thought, let him declare himself to be without sin. Accordingly, since we confess that the winged flight of the human mind cannot be free of all these idle and superfluous things, by this consequently we truly confess ourselves not to be without sin.

For however great the circumspection with which each one strives to guard his own heart, he will never keep it according to the desire of his spirit while the condition of the flesh resists. For the more the human mind has advanced and attained to a purer clarity of contemplation, the more unclean it will see itself to be, as though through the mirror of its own purity; because it must needs happen that, while the soul stretches itself toward a loftier gaze and, beholding things greater than it accomplishes, longs for them, it despises as ever lower and baser those very things in which it stands. For a purer vision marks out more faults, and a blameless life begets for itself a greater grief of self-reproach, and the amendment of morals and an attentive zeal for the virtues multiplies groans and sighs.

For no one can be content with the degree to which he has advanced; and the purer anyone is in mind, the more he sees himself defiled, and finds cause rather for humility than for elation; and the more swiftly he climbs to loftier heights, the more he foresees that there yet remains further for him to strive toward. In short, that most eminent of the apostles, whom Jesus loved, reclining upon His breast, uttered as though from the Lord's own heart this sentence: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' And so, if by saying that we have no sin we do not have the truth, that is, Christ, in us, what else do we gain, save that by this very profession we prove ourselves, from being sinners, to be criminals and impious men?