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Therefore, because the sin was a despising of the authority of God,
who had created man; who had made him in His own image; who had set
him above the other animals; who had placed him in Paradise; who had
enriched him with abundance of every kind and of safety; who had laid
upon him neither many, nor great, nor difficult commandments, but,
in order to make a wholesome obedience easy to him, had given him a
single very brief and very light precept by which He reminded that
creature whose service was to be free that He was Lord, it was just
that condemnation followed, and condemnation such that man, who by
keeping the commandments should have been spiritual even in his flesh,
became fleshly even in his spirit; and as in his pride he had sought to
he his own satisfaction, God in His justice abandoned him to
himself, not to live in the absolute independence he affected, but
instead of the liberty he desired, to live dissatisfied with himself in
a hard and miserable bondage to him to whom by sinning he had yielded
himself, doomed in spite of himself to die in body as he had willingly
become dead in spirit, condemned even to eternal death (had not the
grace of God delivered him) because he had forsaken eternal life.
Whoever thinks such punishment either excessive or unjust shows his
inability to measure the great iniquity of sinning where sin might so
easily have been avoided. For as Abraham's obedience is with justice
pronounced to be great, because the thing commanded, to kill his son,
was very difficult, so in Paradise the disobedience was the greater,
because the difficulty of that which was commanded was imperceptible.
And as the obedience of the second Man was the more laudable because
He became obedient even "unto death," so the disobedience of the
first man was the more detestable because he became disobedient even
unto death. For where the penalty annexed to disobedience is great,
and the thing commanded by the Creator is easy, who can sufficiently
estimate how great a wickedness it is, in a matter so easy, not to
obey the authority of so great a power, even when that power deters
with so terrible a penalty?
In short, to say all in a word, what but disobedience was the
punishment of disobedience in that sin? For what else is man's misery
but his own disobedience to himself, so that in consequence of his not
being willing to do what he could do, he now wills to do what he
cannot? For though he could not do all things in Paradise before he
sinned, yet he wished to do only what he could do, and therefore he
could do all things he wished. But now, as we recognize in his
offspring, and as divine Scripture testifies, "Man is like to
vanity." For who can count how many things he wishes which be cannot
do, so long as he is disobedient to himself, that is, so long as his
mind and his flesh do not obey his will? For in spite of himself his
mind is both frequently disturbed, and his flesh suffers, and grows
old, and dies; and in spite of ourselves we suffer whatever else we
suffer, and which we would not suffer if our nature absolutely and in
all its parts obeyed our will. But is it not the infirmities of the
flesh which hamper it in its service? Yet what does it matter how its
service is hampered, so long as the fact remains, that by the just
retribution of the sovereign God whom we refused to be subject to and
serve, our flesh, which was subjected to us, now torments us by
insubordination, although our disobedience brought trouble on
ourselves, not upon God? For He is not in need of our service as we
of our body's; and therefore what we did was no punishment to Him,
but what we receive is so to us. And the pains which are called bodily
are pains of the soul in and from the body. For what pain or desire
can the flesh feel by itself and without the soul? But when the flesh
is said to desire or to suffer, it is meant, as we have explained,
that the man does so, or some part of the soul which is affected by the
sensation of the flesh, whether a harsh sensation causing pain, or
gentle, causing pleasure. But pain in the flesh is only a discomfort
of the soul arising from the flesh, and a kind of shrinking from its
suffering, as the pain of the soul which is called sadness is a
shrinking from those things which have happened to us in spite of
ourselves. But sadness is frequently preceded by fear, which is
itself in the soul, not in the flesh; while bodily pain is not
preceded by any kind of fear of the flesh, which can be felt in the
flesh before the pain. But pleasure is preceded by a certain appetite
which is felt in the flesh like a craving, as hunger and thirst and
that generative appetite which is most commonly identified with the
name" lust," though this is the generic word for all desires. For
anger itself was defined by the ancients as nothing else than the lust
of revenge; although sometimes a man is angry even at inanimate objects
which cannot feel his vengeance, as when one breaks a pen, or crushes
a quill that writes badly. Yet even this, though less reasonable, is
in its way a lust of revenge, and is, so to speak, a mysterious kind
of shadow of [the great law of] retribution, that they who do evil
should suffer evil. There is therefore a lust for revenge, which is
called anger; there is a lust of money, which goes by the name of
avarice; there is a lust of conquering, no matter by what means,
which is called opinionativeness; there is a lust of applause, which
is named boasting. There are many and various lusts, of which some
have names of their own, while others have not. For who could readily
give a name to the lust of ruling, which yet has a powerful influence
in the soul of tyrants, as civil wars bear witness?
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