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15. In no wise therefore are souls cleansed and reconciled to God
by sacrilegious imitations, or curious arts that are impious, or
magical incantations; since the false mediator does not translate them
to higher things, but rather blocks and cuts off the way thither
through the affections, malignant in proportion as they are proud,
which he inspires into those of his own company; which are not able to
nourish the wings of virtues so as to fly upwards, but rather to heap
up the weight of vices so as to press downwards; since the soul will
fall down the more heavily, the more it seems to itself to have been
carried upwards. Accordingly, as the Magi did when warned of God,
whom the star led to adore the low estate of the Lord; so we also
ought to return to our country, not by the way by which we came, but
by another way which the lowly King has taught, and which the proud
king, the adversary of that lowly King, cannot block up. For to
us, too, that we may adore the lowly Christ, the "heavens have
declared the glory of God, when their sound went into all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world." A way was made for us to
death through sin in Adam. For, "By one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, in whom
all have sinned." Of this way the devil was the mediator, the
persuader to sin, and the caster down into death. For he, too,
applied his one death to work out our double death. Since he indeed
died in the spirit through ungodliness, but certainly did not die in
the flesh: yet both persuaded us to ungodliness, and thereby brought
it to pass that we deserved to come into the death of the flesh. We
desired therefore the one through wicked persuasion, the other followed
us by a just condemnation; and therefore it is written, "God made
not death," since He was not Himself the cause of death; but yet
death was inflicted on the sinner, through His most just retribution.
Just as the judge inflicts punishment on the guilty; yet it is not the
justice of the judge, but the desert of the crime, which is the cause
of the punishment. Whither, then, the mediator of death caused us to
pass, yet did not come himself, that is, to the death of the flesh,
there our Lord God introduced for us the medicine of correction,
which He deserved not, by a hidden and exceeding mysterious decree of
divine and profound justice. In order, therefore, that as by one man
came death, so by one man might come also the resurrection of the
dead; because men strove more to shun that which they could not shun,
viz. the death of the flesh, than the death of the spirit, i.e.
punishment more than the desert of punishment (for not to sin is a
thing about which either men are not solicitous or are too little
solicitous; but not to die, although it be not within reach of
attainment, is yet eagerly sought after); the Mediator of life,
making it plain that death is not to be feared, which by the condition
of humanity cannot now be escaped, but rather ungodliness, which can
be guarded against through faith, meets us at the end to which we have
come, but not by the way by which we came. For we, indeed, came to
death through sin; He through righteousness: and, therefore, as our
death is the punishment of sin, so His death was made a sacrifice for
sin.
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