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If, moreover, any one is solicitous about this point, how, if death
be the very punishment of sin, they whose guilt is cancelled by grace
do yet suffer death, this difficulty has already been handled and
solved in our other work which we have written on the baptism of
infants. There it was said that the parting of soul and body was
left, though its connection with sin was removed, for this reason,
that if the immortality of the body followed immediately upon the
sacrament of regeneration, faith itself would be thereby enervated.
For faith is then only faith when it waits in hope for what is not yet
seen in substance. And by the vigor and conflict of faith, at least
in times past, was the fear of death overcome. Specially was this
conspicuous in the holy martyrs, who could have had no victory, no
glory, to whom there could not even have been any conflict, if, after
the layer of regeneration, saints could not suffer bodily death.
Who would not, then, in company with the infants presented for
baptism, run to the grace of Christ, that so he might not be
dismissed from the body? And thus faith would not be tested with an
unseen reward; and so would not even be faith, seeking and receiving
an immediate recompense of its works. But now, by the greater and
more admirable grace of the Saviour, the punishment of sin is turned
to the service of righteousness. For then it was proclaimed to man,
"If thou sinnest, thou shall die;" now it is said to the martyr,
"Die, that thou sin not." Then it was said, "If ye trangress
the commandments, ye shall die; now it is said, "If ye decline
death, ye transgress the commandment." That which was formerly set
as an object of terror, that men might not sin, is now to be undergone
if we would not sin. Thus, by the unutterable mercy of God, even
the very punishment of wickedness has become the armor of virtue, and
the penalty of the sinner becomes the reward of the righteous. For
then death was incurred by sinning, now righteousness is fulfilled by
dying. In the case of the holy martyrs it is so; for to them the
persecutor proposes the alternative, apostasy or death. For the
righteous prefer by believing to suffer what the first transgressors
suffered by not believing. For unless they had sinned, they would not
have died; but the martyrs sin if they do not die. The one died
because they sinned, the others do not sin because they die. By the
guilt of the first, punishment was incurred; by the punishment of the
second, guilt is prevented. Not that death, which was before an
evil, has become something good, but only that God has granted to
faith this grace, that death, which is the admitted opposite to life,
should become the instrument by which life is reached.
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