書信與論戰集（CSEL） 第 31 章

IV. ON CONTINENCE. Concerning the virtue of the soul which is called continence, it is difficult to discourse in a manner sufficiently fitting and worthy; but our smallness, under the burden of so great a weight, he will aid, whose great gift this virtue is. For he who grants it to his faithful continent ones, himself gives speech to his ministers who speak concerning it. Therefore, being about to speak on so great a matter what he himself shall have given, we first say and prove that continence is a gift of God. In the book of Wisdom we have it written that unless God gives it, no one can be continent; the Lord, concerning that greater and more glorious continence which is contained in the marriage bond, says: 'Not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given.'

And since conjugal chastity itself, unless it be restrained from unlawful intercourse, cannot be preserved, the Apostle proclaimed both to be gifts of God, when he spoke concerning each mode of life, that is, both the conjugal and that which is without marriage, saying: 'I would that all men were even as I myself; but each has his own gift from God, one thus, another thus.' And lest continence should seem to be hoped for from the Lord as necessary only in the lust of the lower parts of the flesh, it is also sung in the psalm: 'Set, O Lord, a guard to my mouth, and a door of continence about my lips.'

But in this testimony of the divine word, if we understand 'mouth' as we ought to understand it, we recognize how great a gift of God is the continence there placed. For it is a small thing to restrain the mouth of the body, lest something that is not expedient should burst forth through the sound of the voice; there is the mouth of the heart within, where he who spoke those words, and wrote them to be spoken by us, desired that a guard and a door of continence be set for him by the Lord. For many things we do not say with the mouth of the body, and yet we cry out with the heart; but no word of any matter proceeds from the mouth of the body of which there is silence in the heart. Therefore that which does not flow out from there does not sound abroad; but that which does flow out from there, if it is evil, though it move not the tongue, defiles the soul.

There, then, is continence to be placed, where the conscience even of those who are silent speaks. For it comes about through the door of continence that there does not go forth from there that which, even with the lips of the flesh closed, defiles the life of the one thinking. Finally, in order to show more openly that inner mouth which he signified through those words — when he had said, 'Set, O Lord, a guard to my mouth, and a door of continence about my lips' — he immediately added: 'Incline not my heart unto malicious words.' What is the inclining of the heart but consent? For he has not yet spoken, whoever, at the suggestions and imaginings of whatever things occurring in the heart, has consented by no inclining of the heart. But if he has consented, he has already spoken in the heart, even if he has not sounded with the mouth;

even if he has not done it with the hand or with any part of the body, that which nevertheless he has already resolved must be done by him in thought — he is guilty by the divine laws, though hidden from human senses, by the word spoken in the heart, with no deed committed through the body. He would by no means have moved a member outwardly in the deed, the beginning of which deed had not first preceded inwardly in the word. For not falsely is it written: 'The beginning of every work is a word.' For men do many things with the mouth closed, the tongue quiet, the voice restrained; but yet they do nothing by the work of the body which they have not first spoken in the heart.

And by this, since there are many sins in inner words which are not in outer deeds, but there are no sins in outer deeds which do not precede in inner words, there will be purity of innocence from both, if the door of continence be set about the inner lips. Wherefore the Lord himself also says with his own mouth: 'Cleanse the things that are within, and the things that are without shall be clean.' And likewise in another place, when he was refuting the foolish talk of the Jews, because they slandered his disciples for eating with unwashed hands: 'Not what enters into the mouth,' he says, 'defiles a man; but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles a man.' Which sentence, if it be taken wholly of the mouth of the body, is absurd.

For food does not defile a man, but vomit does not defile whom food does not. Food indeed enters into the mouth, vomit proceeds out of the mouth. But without doubt the former words pertain to the mouth of the flesh, where he says: 'Not what enters into the mouth defiles a man'; but the latter to the mouth of the heart, where he says: 'But what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles a man.' Finally, when the apostle Peter asked of him, as it were, the exposition of this parable, he replied: 'Are you also still without understanding? Do you not understand that everything that enters into the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the privy?' Here certainly we recognize the mouth of the flesh into which food enters.

But in those things which he adds, that we might recognize the mouth of the heart, the slowness of our heart would not follow, unless Truth deigned to walk even with the slow. For he says: 'But the things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart' — as if he said: 'When you hear "of the mouth," understand "of the heart."' I speak of both; but I explain the one by the other. The inner man has an inner mouth, and this the inner ear discerns; the things which proceed from this mouth come forth from the heart, and these defile a man. Then, having now left aside the name 'mouth,' which can also be understood of the body, he shows more openly what he means. For 'out of the heart,' he says, 'come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man.'

There is certainly none of these evils, which can be perpetrated even by the members of the body, that an evil thought does not precede and defile a man, even if something hinders the shameful and criminal works of the members from following. For if the power is not given, the hand is idle from the killing of a man — is the heart of the murderer therefore clean from crime? Or if he cannot seize another's property as he wishes, is he therefore not a thief in the very will? Or if she whom the unchaste man wishes to corrupt is chaste, has he therefore not committed adultery with her in his heart? Or if a harlot is not found in the brothel, does he therefore who seeks her not fornicate in his mind?

Or if to him who desires to harm his neighbor through a lie, the time or the place is lacking, has he therefore not already spoken false testimony with the inner mouth? Or if anyone, fearing men, does not with the tongue of the flesh dare to sound forth blasphemy, is he therefore not guilty of this crime, who says in his heart: 'There is no God'? Thus the other evil deeds of men, which no motion of the body performs, which no sense of the body knows, have their hidden guilty ones, whom consent alone defiles in the thought — that is, the malicious word of the inner man.

Fearing that his heart should be inclined toward this, that man asks of the Lord that a door of continence be set about the lips of this mouth, which may restrain the heart lest it be inclined into malicious words — and restrain it by not allowing the thought to proceed into consent; for thus, according to the apostolic precept, sin does not reign in our mortal body, nor do we present our members as weapons of iniquity unto sin. From fulfilling which precept those are certainly strangers who, for this reason do not move their members to sin, because no power is permitted them: which, if it were present, they would forthwith show, by the motions of their members as of weapons, who reigns within them.

Accordingly, as far as in them lies, they present their members as weapons of iniquity unto sin, because they will that which they for this reason do not present, because they cannot. And through this, that continence which, when the genital members are curbed in chastity, is wont most especially and properly to be named continence, is violated by no transgression, if the higher continence, of which we have now long been speaking, be kept in the heart. Therefore the Lord, when he had said, 'For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts,' then, showing what pertains to evil thoughts, added: 'murders, adulteries,' and the rest. Nor did he say all; but having named certain ones for the sake of example, he admonished that others too are to be understood.

Of which there is nothing that can be done, if evil thought has not preceded, by which is inwardly established that which is outwardly performed; and proceeding from the mouth of the heart, it already defiles a man, even if, no opportunity being permitted, it is not performed outwardly through the members of the body. Therefore, the door of continence being set in the mouth of the heart, whence come forth all the things that defile a man, if nothing of the kind be permitted to go forth thence, purity follows, in which the conscience can now rejoice — although that perfection is not yet present, where continence shall not struggle with vice. But now, as long as the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, it is enough for us not to consent to the evils which we feel within ourselves.

But when this consent takes place, then there goes forth from the mouth of the heart that which defiles a man. But when, through continence, consent is not held, the evil of carnal concupiscence, against which spiritual concupiscence fights, is not permitted to do harm. But it is one thing to fight well, which is now, when the strife of death is resisted; another to have no adversary, which shall then be, when death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed. For continence itself, when it curbs and holds back the lusts, at the same time both craves the good, to whose immortality we tend, and rejects the evil, with which in this mortality we contend. For it is the lover and beholder of the one, but of the other both the enemy and the witness — both craving the honorable and fleeing the disgraceful.

Continence would surely not labor in curbing the lusts, if nothing pleased us against what is fitting, if nothing from evil concupiscence resisted our good will. The Apostle cries out: 'I know,' he says, 'that there dwells not in me, that is, in my flesh, good. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I find not.' For now it can come about that the good be done, that consent be not given to evil concupiscence; but the good shall be accomplished when that evil concupiscence itself shall be ended. And likewise the same Teacher of the Gentiles cries out: 'I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind.'

This battle none experience in themselves except the warriors of the virtues and the vanquishers of the vices; nothing overcomes the evil of concupiscence except the good of continence. But there are those who, being wholly ignorant of the law of God, do not even reckon evil concupiscences among enemies, and, serving them with pitiable blindness, moreover even think themselves blessed by sating rather than by taming them. But those who through the law have come to know them — for through the law is the knowledge of sin, and 'I did not know concupiscence,' he says, 'unless the law had said: You shall not covet' — and yet are overcome by their assault, because they live under the law, by which what is good is commanded but not also given, do not live under grace, which gives through the Holy Spirit what is commanded through the law:

For this reason the law entered in secretly, that in them the offense might abound. The prohibition increased concupiscence and made it invincible, so that transgression might be added, which was not without the law, even though sin was; for where there is no law, neither is there transgression. Thus the law, grace not aiding, while forbidding sin, is moreover a strength of sin committed. Whence the Apostle says: 'The strength of sin is the law.' Nor is it to be wondered at that human weakness added strength to evil even from a good law, while it trusts in its own strength for the doing of that very law; for, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, which he gives to the weak, and wishing to establish its own, which the weak man lacks, the reprobate and proud man is not subject to the righteousness of God.

But if the law, like a tutor, leads the one made a transgressor — as one thereby more grievously wounded, that he might long for the physician — to grace: against the harmful sweetness by which concupiscence prevailed, the Lord gives a beneficial sweetness, by which continence may delight the more, and our land yields its fruit, by which the soldier is fed who wars down sin with God's help. Such soldiers the apostolic trumpet kindles into battle with this blast. 'Let not sin therefore reign,' he says, 'in your mortal body, unto obeying its desires, neither present your members as weapons of iniquity unto sin, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as weapons of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you;

for you are not under the law but under grace.' And in another place: 'Therefore, brethren,' he says, 'we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die; but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.' This, then, is now being done, as long as this our mortal life is under grace: that sin — that is, the concupiscence of sin, for by the name of sin he calls this in this place — may not reign in our mortal body. And it is shown to reign, if its desires are obeyed. There is therefore in us the concupiscence of sin, which is not to be allowed to reign; there are its desires, which are not to be obeyed, lest, if they are obeyed, it reign.

Wherefore let not concupiscence usurp our members for itself, but let continence claim them for itself, that they may be weapons of righteousness unto God, not weapons of iniquity unto sin; for thus sin shall not have dominion over us. For we are not under the law, which indeed commands the good but does not give it, but we are under grace, which, doing that which the law commands, can make us love it, so as to command the free. And likewise, when he exhorts that we live not according to the flesh, lest we die, but that by the Spirit we mortify the deeds of the flesh, that we may live, he certainly sounds the trumpet, shows the war in which we are engaged, and, that we may fight fiercely and mortify our enemies, lest we be mortified by them, kindles us. But who these enemies are, he expressed clearly enough.

For those whom he wished to be mortified by us are these very things, namely the works of the flesh. For thus he says: 'But if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live.' And that we may know what these are, let us likewise hear the same one writing to the Galatians and saying: 'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornications, uncleannesses, wantonnesses, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkennesses, revellings, and things like these; concerning which I foretell you, as I have foretold, that those who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.'

For there too, in saying these things, he was pointing out that very war, and by the same heavenly and spiritual trumpet of Christ was rousing the soldiers to mortify these enemies. For above he had said: 'But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not fulfill the desires of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to one another, so that you do not the things that you would. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.' Therefore he wishes those established under grace to have this conflict against the works of the flesh. And to demonstrate these works of the flesh, he added those which I recalled above:

'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornications' and the rest, whether those which he recalled or those which he admonished are to be understood, especially adding: 'and things like these.' Finally, in this battle against the carnal army, as it were, bringing forth another line of battle, a spiritual one, 'But the fruit of the Spirit,' he says, 'is charity, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, continence; against such there is no law.' He did not say 'against these,' lest they be thought to be the only ones — although even if he had said this, we ought to have understood all the goods of the same kind that we could conceive — but he says 'against such,' meaning both these and whatever things are like them.

Yet in that among the good things which he enumerated he placed continence in the last position — the continence about which we have now undertaken to discourse and on account of which we have already said much — it was chiefly this that he willed to cling fast to our minds. For it is continence that prevails most in this war, in which the spirit lusts against the flesh, since it in a certain manner crucifies the very concupiscences of the flesh. Wherefore, when the Apostle had said these things, he immediately added: 'They that are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its passions and concupiscences.' This is the work of continence; thus are the works of the flesh mortified. And it mortifies those whom, as they fall away from continence toward consent to perpetrate such works, concupiscence drags along.

But that we may not fall away from continence, we ought above all to keep watch against those snares of diabolical suggestions, lest we presume upon our own strength; for 'cursed is everyone who places his hope in man.' And who is this man but a man himself? He cannot therefore truly say that he does not place his hope in man, who places it in himself. For this too, to live according to man, what is it but to live according to the flesh? Let him therefore hear, who is tempted by such a suggestion — and, if any Christian sense is in him, let him tremble — let him hear, I say: 'If you shall live according to the flesh, you shall die.' But someone will be ready to say to me that it is one thing to live according to man, and another to live according to the flesh:

namely because man is a rational creature, and in him there is a rational soul, whereby he differs from the beast; but the flesh is the weak and earthly part of man, and therefore to live according to it is vicious. On which account he who lives according to man does not live according to the flesh, but rather according to that part of man whereby he is man, that is, according to the spirit of the mind, whereby he stands above the beasts. But this disputation is perhaps of some worth in the schools of the philosophers; we, however, in order that we may understand the Apostle of Christ, ought to attend to how the Christian books are wont to speak.

It is certainly the faith of us all that Christ came, having assumed a man from the Word of God — not indeed without a rational soul, as certain heretics would have it — and yet we read: 'The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' What here is 'flesh' to be understood but 'man'? And 'all flesh shall see the salvation of God' — what can be understood but 'every man'? 'To thee shall all flesh come' — what is it but 'every man'? 'Thou hast given him power over all flesh' — what is it but over 'every man'? 'By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified' — what is it but 'no man shall be justified'? And the same Apostle, expressing this more plainly elsewhere, says: 'A man shall not be justified by the works of the law.' He also rebukes the Corinthians, saying:

'Are you not carnal, and walk you not according to man?' When he had called them carnal, he did not say 'you walk according to the flesh,' but 'according to man'; because by this too, what did he wish to be understood but 'according to the flesh'? For surely, if to walk — that is, to live — according to the flesh were blameworthy, but according to man were praiseworthy, he would not have said reproachfully, 'you walk according to man.' Let man acknowledge the reproach, let him change his purpose, let him avoid destruction. Hear, O man; do not walk according to man, but according to Him who made man; do not fall away from Him who made you, nor toward yourself. For it was a man who said — a man who nevertheless did not live according to man:

'Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.' See whether he who truly said this was living according to man. Therefore the Apostle, in admonishing man not to live according to man, restores man to God. But he who lives not according to man but according to God, surely does not even live according to himself, for he too is a man. Yet he is also said to live according to the flesh when he lives thus, because even by the flesh alone being named, 'man' is understood, as we have already shown — just as by the soul alone being named, 'man' is understood; whence it is said: 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers,' that is, every man; and:

'Seventy-five souls went down into Egypt with Jacob,' that is, seventy-five men. Do not therefore live according to yourself, O man; thence you had perished, but you have been sought out. Do not, I say, live according to yourself; if you had perished, you have been found. Do not accuse the nature of the flesh, when you hear: 'If you shall live according to the flesh, you shall die.' For it could also have been said, and most truly said: 'If you shall live according to yourselves, you shall die.' For the devil has no flesh, and yet, because he willed to live according to himself, he stood not in the truth. What wonder then, if living according to himself, when he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own? — which the Truth spoke truly of him. Therefore, when you hear:

'Sin shall not have dominion over you,' do not trust in yourself that sin may not have dominion, but in Him to whom a certain holy man says in prayer: 'Direct my ways according to thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.' For lest perhaps, when we had heard 'Sin shall not have dominion over us,' we should exalt ourselves and attribute this to our own strength, the Apostle at once saw this and added: 'For you are not under the law, but under grace.' Grace therefore brings it about that sin shall not have dominion over you. Do not then trust in yourself, lest it have dominion over you thence all the more. And when we hear: 'If by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live,' let us not attribute this so great good to our own spirit as though it could do these things of itself.

For lest we should relish this carnal notion with a spirit dead rather than a spirit that mortifies, he straightway added: 'For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.' Therefore, in order that by our spirit we may mortify the works of the flesh, we are led by the Spirit of God, who gives the continence by which we may bridle, tame, and conquer concupiscence. In this so great a battle, in which man lives under grace and, when aided he fights well, rejoices in the Lord with trembling, there are nevertheless not lacking even to strenuous warriors and to those who, though unconquered, mortify the works of the flesh, some wounds of sins, for the healing of which they may daily and truly say:

'Forgive us our debts' — contending against these same vices and against the devil, the prince and king of the vices, all the more watchfully and keenly by prayer itself, lest his death-bringing suggestions avail anything, by which he incites the sinner besides to excuse rather than to accuse his sins, and so those wounds are not only not healed, but even, though they were not deadly, are grievously and mortally inflicted. And here therefore there is need of a more cautious continence, by which the proud appetite of man may be restrained, whereby he is pleased with himself and is unwilling to be found blameworthy, and disdains, when he sins, to be convicted that he himself has sinned — not with wholesome humility accepting the accusation of himself, but rather with ruinous conceit seeking his own excuse.

To curb this pride, that man asked continence from the Lord, whose words I have set down above and, as I could, commended. For when he had said, 'Set, O Lord, a watch before my mouth and a door of continence about my lips; incline not my heart to evil words,' explaining more evidently why he said this, he added: 'to make excuses in sins.' For what is more malignant than these words, by which the wicked man denies himself to be wicked, even when convicted of a wicked deed which he cannot deny? And since he cannot cover the deed, nor can call it well done, and sees that it stands manifest as done by himself, he seeks to lay upon another what he did, as though thence he could take away what he had deserved.

Unwilling to be guilty, he rather adds to his guilt, and by excusing rather than accusing his sins, he is ignorant that he does not remove the punishment from himself, but the pardon. For before human judges, since they can be deceived, to purge by whatever falsehood what was wrongly done seems to be of some avail for a time; but before God, who cannot be deceived, no deceitful defense is to be employed, but a truthful confession of sins. And some indeed, who are accustomed to excuse their sins, complain that they are driven to sin by fate, as though the stars had decreed such things, and heaven had first sinned by decreeing such things, so that man might afterward sin by committing them; others prefer to impute to fortune the fact that they sin —

they who think that all things are agitated by fortuitous chances, and yet contend that they hold and assert this opinion not by fortuitous rashness but by clear-sighted reason. What madness then is it, to ascribe their disputations to reason and to subject their actions to chance? Others refer the whole of what they do wickedly to the devil, and are unwilling to have even a share with him, since they may suspect that he persuaded them to evil by hidden suggestions, but cannot doubt that they themselves consented to those suggestions, from wherever they came. There are even those who extend their excuse into an accusation of God — wretched by the divine judgment, but blasphemous by their own frenzy.

For against Him they bring in, from a contrary principle, a rebelling substance of evil, which He could not have resisted unless He had mingled a part of His own substance and nature with that same rebel, to be defiled and corrupted; then, they say, sin occurs when the nature of evil prevails over the nature of God. This is the most filthy insanity of the Manichaeans, whose diabolical contrivances the undoubted Truth most easily overturns — the Truth which confesses the nature of God to be incontaminable and incorruptible. And what shameful defilement and corruption is not deservedly believed of these men, by whom God, who is supremely and incomparably good, is believed to be contaminable and corruptible?

There are also these, who in the excuse of their sins accuse God in such a way as to say that sins please Him. For if they displeased Him, they say, He would by no means, with His utterly omnipotent power, permit them to be done — as though indeed He had permitted sins to go unpunished, even in those whom, by the remission of sins, He frees from everlasting torment. For no one receives pardon of the graver punishment due, unless he pay some punishment, though far less than he owed; and so the bounty of mercy is imparted in such a way that the justice of discipline is not abandoned. For even a sin that seems unavenged has its own punishment following at its heels, so that no one, in respect of what he has committed, either grieves not through bitterness or grieves not through blindness. As therefore you say:

'Why does He permit these things, if they displease Him?' — so I say: 'Why does He punish these things, if they please Him?' And thus, as I confess that these things would by no means come to pass unless they were permitted by the Omnipotent, so do you confess that things which are punished by the Just One ought not to be done — that, by not doing what He punishes, we may deserve to learn from Him why He permits things to exist which He punishes. For solid food, as it is written, is for the perfect, in which those who have advanced well now understand that it pertained rather to the omnipotence of God to permit the evils that come from the free choice of the will to exist.

For so omnipotent is His goodness that even out of evils He can make good things — whether by pardoning, or by healing, or by fitting and turning them to the advantages of the godly, or even by most justly avenging. For all these are good things, and most worthy of a good and omnipotent God, and yet they come to be only out of evils. What then is better, what more omnipotent than He who, while He does nothing of evil, makes good even out of evils? They who have done evil cry to Him: 'Forgive us our debts'; He hears, He pardons. Their own evils have harmed the sinners; He comes to their aid and heals their sicknesses. The enemies of His own rage; out of their rage He makes martyrs. Finally, He even condemns those whom He judges worthy of condemnation:

although they suffer their own evils, He nevertheless does what is good. For what is just cannot fail to be good; and surely, as sin is unjust, so the punishment of sin is just. Now it was not that power was lacking to God to make such a man as could not sin; but He preferred to make him such that it lay open to him to sin if he willed, and not to sin if he willed not — forbidding this, commanding that — so that first he might have the good merit of not sinning, and afterward the just reward of not being able to sin. For He is going to make even His saints such at the end, who shall be wholly unable to sin. Such indeed He has even now His angels, whom in Him we so love that we fear concerning none of them lest by sinning he become a devil —

which of no righteous man do we presume in the mortality of this life. But we trust that all shall be such in the immortality of that life; for the omnipotent God, who works good things even out of our evils, what manner of good things will He give, when He shall have freed us from all evils? Many things about the good use of evil could be disputed more copiously and more subtly; but we have not undertaken this in the present discourse, and its excessive length is to be avoided. Now therefore let us return to that for the sake of which we have said these things. Continence is needful for us, and we know it to be a divine gift, that our heart may not be inclined to evil words, to make excuses in sins.

But for the restraining of what sin do we not have need of continence, lest it be committed, when this very continence also restrains it, lest, if it has been committed, it be defended by wicked pride? Universally therefore continence is needful for us, that we may turn away from evil. But that we may do good pertains, it seems, to another virtue, that is, to justice. Of this the sacred psalm admonishes us, where we read: 'Turn away from evil and do good.' And to what end we do these things, it presently added, saying: 'Seek peace and pursue it.' For perfect peace will then be ours, when our nature, cleaving inseparably to its Creator, shall have nothing in us to resist us out of ourselves. This also the Savior Himself willed, as far as it seems to me, to be understood, where He says:

'Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning.' What is it to gird the loins? To restrain the lusts, which belongs to continence; but to have the lamps burning is to shine and glow with good works, which belongs to justice. Nor here was He silent as to the end for which we do these things, adding and saying: 'And be yourselves like men who wait for their lord, when he shall come from the wedding.' For when He shall have come, He will reward us, who have restrained ourselves from the things that lust desired, and have done the things that charity commanded — that in His perfect and everlasting peace, without any strife of evil and with the highest delight of good, we may reign.

All of us therefore who believe in the living and true God, whose supremely good and immutable nature neither does anything of evil nor suffers anything of evil, from whom is every good that even can be diminished, and who by His own good, which He Himself is, can in no way be diminished — when we hear the Apostle saying: 'Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the concupiscences of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not the things that you would' — far be it that we should believe what the insanity of the Manichaeans believes, that here two natures are shown, warring from mutually contrary principles, the one of evil, the other of good. Both these two are altogether good: both the spirit is good and the flesh is good.

And man, who consists of both — the one commanding, the other serving — is surely a good, but a mutable good; which, however, could not come to be except from the immutable Good, from whom is every created good, whether small or great; but however small, yet made by the Great; and however great, yet in no way to be compared to the greatness of the Maker. But in this good nature of man, well founded and established by the Good, there is now a war, because there is not yet health. Let the sickness be healed, and there is peace. But this sickness fault deserved; nature did not have it. This fault indeed, through the laver of regeneration, the grace of God has now remitted to the faithful; but under the hands of the same Physician nature still struggles with its own sickness.

But in such a battle full health shall be the entire victory — not a temporary health, but an eternal one, where not only shall this sickness be ended, but henceforth no other shall arise. On which account the righteous man addresses his own soul and says: 'Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His retributions; who is merciful to all thy iniquities, who heals all thy sicknesses.' He is merciful to iniquities when He forgives sins; He heals sicknesses when He curbs depraved desires; He is merciful to iniquities by granting indulgence, He heals sicknesses by granting continence. The former is done in baptism to those confessing; the latter is done in the contest to those striving, in which our disease is to be conquered by us through His help.

Even now that is done whereby we are heard when we say: 'Forgive us our debts'; but this is done when we are heard saying: 'Lead us not into temptation.' For everyone, as the Apostle James says, is tempted, being drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence. Against which vice the medicinal help is besought from Him who can heal all sicknesses of this kind — not by the separation of an alien nature from us, but by the reparation of our own nature within us. Whence the aforesaid Apostle did not say: 'Everyone is tempted by concupiscence,' but added: 'his own,' that he who hears this may understand how he ought to cry out: 'I said, Lord, be merciful to me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee.'

For it would not have needed healing, unless it had corrupted itself by sinning, so that its own flesh should lust against it — that is, so that it should resist itself out of that part whereby it was made weak in the flesh. For the flesh lusts nothing except through the soul; but the flesh is said to lust against the spirit when the soul with carnal concupiscence struggles against the spirit. All this we ourselves are. And the flesh itself, which dies when the soul departs, is our weak part; it is not abandoned to be fled from, but laid aside to be received again, nor once received will it be forsaken any further. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.

Then indeed the flesh will lust nothing against the spirit, when it too shall be called spiritual, since it shall be made subject to the spirit not only without any resistance, but even without any need of corporeal nourishment, to be made alive forever. These two therefore, which now are mutually opposed in us — since we ourselves are in both — let us pray and act that they may be in concord. For we ought not to think either of them our enemy, but the vice by which the flesh lusts against the spirit; which vice being healed, it too shall not be, and each substance shall be whole, and in each there shall be no war. Let us hear the Apostle. 'I know,' he says, 'that there dwells not in me' — that is, in my flesh — 'good.' This surely he says, because the vice of the flesh, in a thing that is good, is not good:

which vice, when it shall have ceased to be, there will be flesh, but no longer vitiated or vicious. Yet that this flesh pertains to our nature the same teacher shows, by first saying: 'I know that there dwells not in me'; and to explain this, he added: 'that is, in my flesh, good.' Thus he says his flesh to be himself. Therefore it is not itself our enemy; and when its vices are resisted, it itself is loved, because it itself is cared for. For no one ever hated his own flesh, as the Apostle himself says. And in another place he says: 'Therefore I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.' Let those who have ears hear: 'Therefore I myself' — I with the mind, I with the flesh; but with the mind I serve the law of God, with the flesh the law of sin. In what way with the flesh the law of sin?

Was it by consenting to carnal concupiscence? Far be it; but by there having the motions of desires, which he did not wish to have, and yet did have. But by not consenting to them, with the mind he served the law of God, and held his members fast, that they might not become weapons of sin. There are therefore in us evil desires, by not consenting to which we do not live wickedly; there are in us concupiscences of sins, by not obeying which we do not accomplish evil, but by having them we do not yet accomplish good. Both the Apostle shows — that good is not here accomplished, where evil is thus lusted after, nor is evil here accomplished, when such concupiscence is not obeyed. The former indeed he shows where he says: 'To will is present with me, but to accomplish the good, no'; the latter, where he says:

'Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the concupiscences of the flesh.' For there he does not say that to do good is not present with him, but to accomplish it; nor here does he say: 'Do not have the concupiscences of the flesh,' but 'do not fulfill them.' Thus evil concupiscences come to be in us, when that which is not lawful pleases; but they are not fulfilled, when, the mind serving the law of God, the lusts are restrained. And good comes to be, when that which wickedly pleases, the good delight prevailing, is not done; but the perfection of good is not fulfilled, so long as, the flesh serving the law of sin, lust allures and, although it is restrained, nevertheless is moved. For there would be no need for it to be restrained, if it were not moved. There will one day be even the perfection of good, when there is the consumption of evil: the former shall be supreme, the latter shall be nought.

But if we think this is to be hoped for in this mortality, we are deceived. For it will then be, when death shall not be; and it will be there, where life eternal shall be. For in that age and in that kingdom there will be the supreme good, no evil, when there shall be and where there shall be the supreme love of wisdom, no labor of continence. The flesh therefore is not evil, if it lack the evil — that is, the vice by which man was vitiated, not made evil, but himself making evil. For out of each part — that is, soul and body — made good by the good God, he himself made the evil by which he was made evil. From the guilt of which evil now indeed already absolved through indulgence, lest he think light what he did, he still fights with his own vice through continence.

But far be it that there should be any vices in that peace which is to be, for those who reign, seeing that in this present war there are daily diminished, in those who make progress, not only sins but also the very concupiscences, with which by not consenting we strive, and by consenting we sin. That therefore the flesh lusts against the spirit, that there dwells not in our flesh good, that the law in our members resists the law of the mind — this is not a commingling of two natures made out of contrary principles, but a division of one against itself made on account of the desert of sin. We were not such in Adam, before nature, having heard and followed its own deceiver, had despised and offended its own Author;

this is not the prior life of created man, but the later penalty of the condemned. From which condemnation, freed by grace through Jesus Christ, the free struggle with their own penalty, their salvation not yet full, but the pledge of salvation already received; but those not freed are both guilty of sins and entangled in punishments. But after this life, for the guilty there will remain penalty for eternity in exchange for fault; for the free there will not remain for eternity either fault or penalty; but there shall abide for eternity the good substances, spirit and flesh, which the good and immutable God founded good, though mutable. And they shall abide, changed for the better, never henceforth to be changed for the worse, all evil being utterly consumed — both what man did unjustly and what he suffered justly.

When these two kinds of evil have altogether perished — of which the one is of preceding iniquity, the other of consequent unhappiness — there will be man's will upright, without any depravity. There it will be clear and manifest to all — what now is believed by many of the faithful, understood by few — that evil is not a substance, but that, as a wound in the body, so a substance which has vitiated itself began to exist when the plague was set in motion, and there ceases to exist when health is perfected. When therefore all evil has arisen from us and been destroyed in us, and our good too has been increased and perfected up to the summit of most blessed incorruption and immortality, of what sort will each of our substances be?

Seeing that now, in this corruption and mortality, when as yet the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and — as the Apostle says — 'the body is dead because of sin,' the same Apostle nevertheless bears such a testimony to our flesh, that is, to our weak and earthly part, as to say what I mentioned a little before: 'For no one ever hated his own flesh,' and immediately subjoins: 'but nourishes and cherishes it, as also Christ the Church.'

By what, then — I do not say error, but downright frenzy — do the Manichaeans ascribe our flesh to I know not what fabulous race of darkness, which they would have always possessed its own evil nature without any beginning, whereas the truthful teacher exhorts men to love their wives by the example of their own flesh, whom he exhorts to this very thing also by the example of Christ and of the Church? In short, the whole passage itself of the apostolic epistle, being very much to the point, is to be recalled. 'Husbands,' he says, 'love your wives, as also Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify her, cleansing her by the laver of water in the word, that He might present the Church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and immaculate.'

'So also,' he says, 'ought husbands to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.' Then he subjoined what we have already mentioned: 'For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ the Church.' What to this does the insanity of most filthy impiety say? What to this do you say, O Manichaeans? — you who try to introduce to us, even from the apostolic writings, two natures without beginning, the one of good, the other of evil, and are unwilling to hear the apostolic writings which would correct you from this sacrilegious perversity. As you read: 'The flesh lusts against the spirit,' and: 'There dwells not in my flesh good,' so read:

'No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as also Christ the Church.' As you read: 'I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,' so read: 'As Christ loved the Church, so ought husbands also to love their wives as their own bodies.' Do not be insidious in those testimonies of holy Scripture, and deaf in these, and you will be corrected in both. For if you accept these as is fitting, you will try also to understand those as is true. The Apostle has intimated to us certain three couplings: Christ and the Church, husband and wife, spirit and flesh.

Of these, the former take counsel for the latter, the latter serve the former; all are good, in that they preserve in themselves, by the beauty of order, certain things excellently set above, certain things becomingly subjected. Husband and wife, what they ought to be toward each other, receive both a precept and an example. The precept is: 'Let wives be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife'; and: 'Husbands, love your wives.' But an example is given to wives from the Church, to husbands from Christ. 'As the Church,' he says, 'is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be subject to their husbands in all things.' Likewise also, a precept having been given to husbands, that they love their wives, he added an example: 'As Christ loved the Church.'

But he exhorted husbands also from a lower thing, that is, from their own body — not only from a higher, that is, from their own Lord. For he did not only say: 'Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church,' which is from the higher; but he also said: 'Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies,' which is from the lower — because both the higher things and the lower things are all good. Yet the wife did not receive an example from the body or the flesh, so as to be subject to the husband as the flesh is to the spirit; but either the Apostle wished it to be understood by consequence, which he omitted to say, or perhaps because the flesh lusts against the spirit in the mortality and sickness of this life, therefore he was unwilling to apply from it to the wife an example of subjection.

But He willed it so for men, because, even though the spirit lusts against the flesh, in this very act it takes thought for the flesh, not as the flesh lusts against the spirit, which takes no thought either for the spirit by such resistance or for itself. Yet the good spirit would not take thought for the flesh — whether by nourishing and cherishing its nature through providence, or by resisting its vices through continence — unless each substance pointed to God, the Maker of both, even by the very beauty of this ordering.

What then does it mean that you, in true madness, boast of being Christians, yet with such perversity contend against the Christian Scriptures with eyes shut, or rather put out — asserting that Christ appeared to mortals in a false flesh, that the Church belongs in its soul to Christ but in its body to the devil, that the male and female sex are works of the devil and not of God, and that the flesh, as an evil substance, clings to the good substance which is the spirit? If what we have recalled from the apostolic writings seems to you too little of an answer, hear yet other things, if you have ears. What does the utterly insane Manichaeus say concerning the flesh of Christ? That it was not true, but false. What does the blessed Apostle say to this?

'Remember that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.' And Jesus Christ Himself says: 'Handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see Me to have.' How is there truth in their doctrine, which proclaims that in the flesh of Christ there was falsehood? How was there no evil at all in Christ, in whom there was so great a lie? Namely because, to men who are excessively pure, true flesh is evil, but false flesh in place of true is not evil; true flesh born of David's seed is evil, but a false tongue is not evil which says: 'Handle and see, for a spirit hath not bones and flesh, as you see Me to have'! What does the deceiver of men in his death-dealing error say concerning the Church?

That in respect of souls it belongs to Christ, but in respect of bodies to the devil. What does the teacher of the Gentiles, in faith and truth, say to this? 'Know you not,' he says, 'that your bodies are the members of Christ?' What does the son of perdition say concerning the sex of male and female? That neither sex is from God, but from the devil. What does the vessel of election say to this? 'As the woman,' he says, 'is of the man, so also the man is by the woman; but all things are from God.' What does the unclean spirit, through Manichaeus, say concerning the flesh? That it is an evil substance, and not the creature of God but of the enemy. What does the Holy Spirit, through Paul, say to this?

'For as the body is one,' he says, 'and hath many members, but all the members of the body, though they be many, are one body, so also is Christ.' And a little after: 'God hath set the members,' he says, 'every one of them in the body as He would.' Again a little after: 'God,' he says, 'hath tempered the body together, giving greater honour to that which lacked it, that there might be no schisms in the body, but the members might be mutually careful one for another. And if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it.' How is the flesh evil, when the very souls are admonished to imitate the peace of its members?

How is it the creature of the enemy, when the very souls that rule bodies, in order that they may have no rifts of enmity among themselves, take an example from the members of the body, so that what God has bestowed on the body by nature they too may love and possess by grace? Rightly, when he wrote to the Romans, he said: 'I beseech you, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God.' Not without cause do we contend that darkness is not light, and light not darkness, if from the bodies of the race of darkness we present a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. But, they say, how is the flesh compared to the Church by a certain likeness? Does the Church lust against Christ, since the same Apostle has said:

'The Church is subject to Christ'? Plainly the Church is subject to Christ, for this very reason the spirit lusts against the flesh, that the Church may in every part be made subject to Christ; but the flesh lusts against the spirit, because the Church has not yet received the peace which was promised as perfect. And by this the Church is subject to Christ from the pledge of salvation, and the flesh lusts against the spirit from the weakness of its infirmity. For those to whom he said these things were indeed members of the Church: 'Walk in the spirit, and fulfil not the desires of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary one to another, so that you do not the things that you would.'

These things certainly were being said to the Church, which, if it were not subject to Christ, the spirit would not lust in it against the flesh through continence. On account of which they were able not to fulfil the concupiscences of the flesh, yet, with the flesh lusting against the spirit, they were not able to do the things they willed — that is, not even to have the concupiscences of the flesh themselves. Then why should we not confess that in spiritual men the Church is subject to Christ, but in carnal men it still lusts against Christ? Or did they not lust against Christ, to whom it was said: 'Is Christ divided?' and: 'I could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto little ones in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not meat;'

'for hitherto you were not able. But neither indeed are you now able; for you are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you emulation and contention, are you not carnal?' Against whom do emulation and contention lust, except against Christ? For these concupiscences of the flesh Christ heals in His own, but in none does He love them. Wherefore the holy Church, so long as it has even such members, is not yet without spot or wrinkle. To these are added also those sins for which the daily voice of the whole Church is: 'Forgive us our debts.'

And lest we should think spiritual men to be strangers to these sins — not any of the carnal, nor even any of the spiritual, but he who reclined upon the Lord's breast and whom He loved above the rest — 'If we say,' he says, 'that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' But in every sin — more in a greater, less in a lesser — nevertheless there is lusting against righteousness. And of Christ it is written: 'Who is made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.' Therefore in every sin, without doubt, there is lusting against Christ;

but He who heals all our infirmities, when He shall have brought the Church to the promised health after its infirmity, then in no one of its members, however slight, shall there be any spot or wrinkle; then in no way shall the flesh lust against the spirit, and therefore there shall be no cause why the spirit should also lust against the flesh; then shall all this warfare receive its end, then shall there be the highest concord of both substances, then to such a degree shall there be no one carnal there, that the very flesh itself shall be spiritual.

What therefore each one now does with his own flesh, living according to Christ — since he both lusts against its evil concupiscence, because he holds it in check as needing to be healed, holding what is not yet healed, and yet nourishes and cherishes its good nature, since no one ever hated his own flesh — this Christ also does with the Church, so far as it is permitted to compare lesser things with greater. For He both restrains it by corrections, lest, puffed up by impunity, it burst apart, and raises it up by consolations, lest, weighed down by infirmity, it sink under. Hence is that saying of the Apostle: 'For if we judged ourselves, we should not be judged; but while we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we be not condemned with this world'; and that in the Psalm:

'According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, Thy consolations have delighted my soul.' Then therefore is the perfect health of our flesh, without any resistance, to be hoped for, when the Church of Christ shall have sure security without any fear. Let this suffice as a disputation against the Manichees, who deceitfully practise continence, on behalf of true continence, lest the fruitful and glorious labour of continence be believed not to chastise our weaker part for its health — that is, the body — when it curbs and restrains it from immoderate or illicit pleasures, but to persecute it as an enemy. For the body is indeed by nature diverse from the soul, but it is not foreign to the nature of man. For the mind does not consist of the body;

but nevertheless man consists of mind and body: and assuredly God, whom He sets free, sets free the whole man. Whence the Saviour Himself also took upon Himself the whole man, deigning to set free in us the whole that He made. Those who hold opinions against this truth — what does it profit them to restrain their lusts? If indeed they restrain any. What in them can be made pure through continence, whose continence itself is so impure? Which ought not even to be called continence. For to hold the opinion which they hold is the poison of the devil; but continence is the gift of God.

But just as not everyone who suffers something, or who endures any pains whatsoever most patiently, has that virtue which is likewise the gift of God and is called patience — for many endure many torments so as not to betray, in their crimes, either those who share their guilt or themselves; many for the sake of glutting their most burning lusts and of obtaining or not relinquishing those things by which they are bound with the chain of a depraved love; many for the sake of the diverse and pernicious errors by which they are vehemently held:

all of whom far be it that we should say to have true patience — so also not everyone who restrains anything, or who even restrains the very lusts of the flesh or of the mind marvellously, is to be said to have that continence of whose usefulness and beauty we are treating. For some — which may seem astonishing to say — are continent through incontinence, as if a woman restrain herself from her husband because she has sworn this to an adulterer; some through injustice, as if a spouse does not render to the spouse the debt of intercourse of the sexes, because he or she is now able to conquer such an appetite of the body; likewise some are continent, deceived by a false faith, hoping vain things, pursuing vain things: among whom are all heretics and whosoever are deceived by some error under the name of religion.

Whose continence would be true, if their faith also were true; but since that faith is on that account not even to be called faith, because it is false, without doubt this too is unworthy of the name of continence. For are we going to say that continence — which we most truly call the gift of God — is a sin? Far be from our hearts so detestable a madness. But the blessed Apostle says: 'Everything that is not of faith is sin.' Therefore that which does not have faith is not to be called continence either. There are also those who, by openly serving malignant demons, abstain from the pleasures of the body, in order that through them they may glut nefarious pleasures, whose onslaught and ardour they do not restrain.

Hence, to say something and to pass over the rest for the sake of the length of the discourse: some do not even touch their own wives, while as if pure through magical arts they strive to attain to other men's wives. O marvellous continence — nay rather, singular wickedness and uncleanness! For if it were true continence, the concupiscence of the flesh ought to have restrained itself from the marriage-bed rather away from adultery than for the sake of perpetrating adultery.

For conjugal continence is wont to relax this concupiscence of the flesh and, up to a point, to impose measure by its bridles, so that not even in marriage itself may it flow forth in immoderate license, but a measure be kept — either that due to the infirmity of the spouse, to whom the Apostle prescribes this not by command but grants it by indulgence, or that accommodated to the procreation of children, which was the one reason for the mutual mingling of flesh both for the holy fathers of old and for the mothers.