As often as a mystical song gives forth its melody in diverse kinds yet in harmonious voice, it feeds and delights the hearing with sweet gentleness; so when the divine and heavenly doctrine is brought forth in varied manner yet by one Spirit and the selfsame meaning, it unfolds and opens the mystery of evangelical knowledge more gladly and with the greatest sweetness. And therefore, after the prophetic melody and the astounding miracles of Christ's powers, let us return to the order of the apostolic lessons. Such, then, was the content of today's lesson: What then shall we say? Is the law sin? God forbid. But I did not know sin except through the law; for I did not know concupiscence, unless the law said: Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all concupiscence (Romans 7).
You have heard, brethren, with what disease the human condition laboured without Christ, how captive human frailty was without grace—frailty which by the law, by the commandments, was not forbidden but armed unto crimes; which for this cause heard, for this cause came to know, not that it might conquer sins, but that it might commit them. I did not know sin except through the law. Not to know vices is of happiness; to know them, of peril; to have conquered them, of virtue. A noble and mighty king meets his enemies far off, and so forestalls the treacheries of those who threaten, that the loyalty of his soldiers cannot be cast down, nor the constancy of his citizens disturbed:
so now the noble spirit, through the grace of Christ, passes beyond the pitiable straits of its own body, and so wholly forestalls transgressions, tramples down vices, and utterly lays low crimes by their destruction, that they cannot deceive the mind with false appearances, deprave the wits with wiles, dissolve the wretched, feeble heart with tumults, kindle the smoking occasions with heat and with bloody passions, or vex with the varied kinds of passions the members naturally frail.
What fire is to the dry standing corn, that vices are to the human body; which are conquered more safely by separation alone, are slain by ignorance, and, unknown, happily vanish away. For if they reach the mind and the senses, if they touch the soul, if once they penetrate the members, an inextinguishable conflagration is begotten and raised on high; and unless the heavenly wave has watered the heart, flooded the mind, and moistened the members, all that is of human strength is subdued and reduced to ashes. The law, he says, is sin? God forbid. But I did not know sin except through the law. As if he said: Gold is not avarice, but I did not know avarice except through gold. Wine is not drunkenness, but I did not know drunkenness except through wine.
The beauty of the body is not concupiscence, but the comeliness of form dragged the wretched man into concupiscence and led him to his fall. So then, these things are not in themselves evil, which were created by God for benefit, for salvation, for grace, but through them occasion of sinning is given. Therefore the covetous man accuses the gold, the drunkard the wine, the wanton or the frivolous man wishes that to be form which came to his ruin. So also the law, which had been given by God for salvation, which in itself was heavenly and holy, was made by man unto the ruin of wretched man, as the Apostle proves from what follows, saying: So the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
That which was good, then, did not bring in death, but sin did, which had chiefly brought in death, which had made human nature frail, feeble, and prone to falls and vices. What lay hidden and ranged like an enemy through the human body, the law rebuked, the law betrayed, while it admonished man concerning innocence, holiness, justice, virtue, and faith; while it convicted him of vices, offences, and crimes. But man began indeed to hear of virtues, began to will them, yet did not attain them; he began to detest vices, yet to follow them; to hate offences, yet to do them; to shudder at crimes, yet to fulfil them: whence he felt himself a slave, a captive, given over late to the madness of evil, and began to cry out:
Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? To whom the answer is given: The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Hearing this, he began to seek liberty through the Author, salvation through pardon, life through grace alone as his only hope. For long had he been ignorant whence innocence was difficult, whence justice was toilsome, holiness anxious, virtue arduous, faith full of all perils, whence offences had such great forces, whence crimes increase when they are cut down, virtues fail when they are cultivated. The law opened, the law taught, the law showed in full light that crimes reign through sin, virtues through God, in the human senses and in the human mind;
and that offences cannot be overcome before the author of offences has been destroyed, which is sin, which Christ took away, as John testifies, saying: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world (John 1). For without the law, he says, sin was dead. But I lived once without the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived. And I died, and the commandment, which was unto life, was found to be unto death for me. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, seduced me, and through it slew me. Sin was dead, not because it was not, but because it was unknown; and it is properly said, Sin revived, because it was buried in our ignorance:
not the commandment through sin, but sin through the commandment revived, while it makes him a transgressor who before was a sinner; while it makes the guilty man even defiant, rouses up the deserter and the rebel. Whence rightly does the man cry out that he was even then dead, when he recognized whence, and why, and through whom he was dying. Now we see, brethren, how cruel a tyrant sin is. Through the commandment it seduced me, and through it slew me. For it turned the proof of salvation into a snare, made a cure to be a sickness, changed the instrument of health into a deadly wound, and turned life itself into a lethal sword: Through the commandment it seduced me, and through it slew me. But how could he now provide for himself, being already slain, seeing he was dead?
For who could come to the aid of the slain, save Christ, who being slain restored life? Who repaid the vengeance of the dead man through death, destroyed death, and betrayed it as defiant—death which, bidden to brood over the punishments of the guilty, dared to assail the very judge, and presumed to invade the very Author of innocence: whence rightly death is dead, and in me it is not I that live, but Christ that lives, acts, reigns, and rules.