'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;