After we had touched the Davidic harp of spiritual understanding with the plectrum and cadence of interpretation, and had soothed your souls and hearts, and had also set forth the awesome opening notes of the resounding Gospel to awaken your senses, we soon judged that we must return to the teaching of the Apostle, so that the threefold order of discourse might hold and offer the saving discipline of ecclesiastical doctrine. For song relaxes the spirit from unbroken toil, the authority of the Gospel restores the mind and rouses it again to labour, and the apostolic vigour will not suffer men to be drawn from the straight path nor our thoughts to wander. This lesson from the blessed Apostle we find set in order for us today.
Are you ignorant, brethren, he says, for I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? And he adds a comparison. For the woman who is under a husband is bound by the law while her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Therefore, while her husband lives, she shall be called an adulteress if she be with another man; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of her husband.
You see, brethren, this great proof of heavenly teaching from the blessed Apostle: how he affirms that the times of the law have passed away by testimonies drawn from the law itself, and how he emptied out all its prerogative by the wondrous example of marriage. And rightly is the law compared to a carnal marriage, for it did not obtain a spiritual partnership with the synagogue. For when it had received her for the keeping of discipline, for the fruitfulness of a holy offspring, for the increase of modesty, for the guarding of chastity, for the sacred and reverend secret of the heavenly bridal chamber, for the mystical union of the celestial couch, it found in her the filth of every harlotry. For she came to meet so great a husband, that is, the law, not adorned in her ways, not decked with the jewels of virtues, not grave in her bearing, not covered with that true veil of maidenly modesty—the bridal veil—but wanton in her eyes, loose in her gait, forestalled by allurements, and wholly painted over with wiles and pretences.
And when so great a husband, seeing her, looked upon her with just indignation, and thrust her far from his fellowship, and cursed her with all the sternness of his judgment; she, though scorned, did not blush, though despised, did not correct herself, nor came to her senses, but being repulsed, she rushed headlong to the brothels of the idols, and chose rather to undergo the infamy of fornication and to incur the crime of adultery, than not to shudder at the vileness of a disposition ill-pleasing. Whence the blessed prophet rightly bewails her, saying: How is the faithful city Sion become a harlot (Isaiah 1)? Whose adulteries also holy Ezekiel describes throughout almost his whole book.
Hence it is, brethren, that when in the Gospel this adulteress was accused before the Lord by the scribes and doctors of the law, the Lord turned away his face and bent down to the ground, that he might not behold the crime he would have to punish; and he chose rather, brethren, to write pardon in the dust than to pass sentence upon the flesh (John 8). This adulteress the Apostle strives to recall to fellowship with Christ, and does not suffer her to be held back by fear of her former fall—she who, while her husband lived, was rightly an adulteress because she was with another man, but now does not desert the law, since she has recourse to the Author of the law;
but she dies to the law, being condemned by the sentences of the law, that she may live to grace and rise again through pardon—she who by the law had been kept intemperate and put to death. Finally, when he declares her set free from the marital bond by the death of the husband, he testifies that she herself, and not the husband, has died to what follows: because the law does not die to the man, but the man dies to the law; nor does the commandment pass away, but he who falls away from the commandment fails through the commandment. Hear what follows: Therefore, my brethren, you also are made dead to the law. He does not say, The law is dead to you; but, You also are made dead to the law. And he well added, By the body of Christ. For the law binds the guilty, constrains the offender, punishes and slays the criminal.
He therefore who through the body of Christ has been exempted and rescued from every crime, dies happily to the law, that he may live to innocence and grace. That you may be, he says, another's, who rose again from the dead. Another's. He himself was made another, when he changed our corruption into incorruption, and carried over our mortality to the glory of immortality. That we may bring forth fruit, he says, to God. Sharers of the heavenly nature through Christ, he affirms that fruit is borne not to the earth but to God, not to death but to life, and to God, not to the flesh. For when we were, he says, in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law, worked in our members, so that we brought forth fruit unto death. When he says:
When we were—this indicates past time, while, set (nay rather, exposed) in the flesh alone, we were compelled to savour, to do, and to will only the things of the flesh, according to that other saying of the Apostle: They who are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8). For when we were, he says, in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law. Let me speak as it was spoken by the Lord: If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness itself (Matthew 6)? If through the law the passions of sins have dominion over human members, what will the passions do of themselves—passions which straightway wait upon the man at his birth, unhappily and punishingly? For as one is thus born, so he is begotten: anguishes press him down, perils urge him, punishments afflict him.
These are the passions, brethren, by which infancy is weakened, childhood is dragged along, adolescence is driven mad, youth and old age are heaped with many griefs; these are they which accompany the whole life of man, at the disturbing of the enemy, unto his fall; which the law, while it forbade them, called to notice; while it examined them, enlarged them; while it accused them, made them dearer; and the things that lay hidden through ignorance, it made more widely known through knowledge. And just as thorns grow the more when cut down by the sickle, so, when pruned by the law, the passions sprout up, because, fixed as it were in the root of the flesh within, they are made solid. Within, the law has a culture of faith sufficiently just, yet it does not profit: whence by its own stirring it brings the very sod of human flesh to the harvest of death.
The passions, he says, of sins, which were by the law, worked in our members, so that we brought forth fruit unto death. The instrument which was unto life, the passions claim for themselves in us unto the harvest of death. Wounded therefore in this way, through the grace of Christ we are set free from the law of death, and we receive within us the Holy Spirit, the vanquisher and conqueror of vices; so that the passions, shut out on the outside, may knock, tempt, and provoke, but fall to the glory of our triumphs. For us, for us he desires to conquer, who, when he had dominion over us, deigned to do battle for us, as he said. Let us therefore serve in newness of the Spirit, now freed from the slavery of the flesh, because true lordship is servitude to the Lord's holiness;