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Nevertheless, in the "heavy yoke that is laid upon the sons of
Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb to the day
that they return to the mother of all things," there is found an
admirable though painful monitor teaching us to be sober-minded, and
convincing us that this life has become penal in consequence of that
outrageous wickedness which was perpetrated in Paradise, and that all
to which the New Testament invites belongs to that future inheritance
which awaits us in the world to come, and is offered for our
acceptance, as the earnest that we may, in its own due time, obtain
that of which it is the pledge. Now, therefore, let us walk in
hope, and let us by the spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh, and so
make progress from day to day. For "the Lord know eth them that are
His;" and "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons
of God," but by grace, not by nature. For there is but one Son of
God by nature, who in His compassion became Son of man for our
sakes, that we, by nature sons of men, might by grace become through
Him sons of God. For He, abiding unchangeable, took upon Him our
nature, that thereby He might take us to Himself; and, holding fast
His own divinity, He became partaker of our infirmity, that we,
being changed into some better thing, might, by participating in His
righteousness and immortality, lose our own properties of sin and
mortality, and preserve whatever good quality He had implanted in our
nature perfected now by sharing in the goodness of His nature. For as
by the sin of one man we have fallen into a misery so deplorable, so by
the righteousness of one Man, who also is God, shall we come to a
blessedness inconceivably exalted. Nor ought any one to trust that he
has passed from the one man to the other until he shall have reached
that place where there is no temptation, and have entered into the
peace which he seeks in the many and various conflicts of this war, in
which "the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against
the flesh." Now, such a war as this would have had no existence if
human nature had, in the exercise of free will, continued steadfast in
the uprightness in which it was created. But now in its misery it
makes war upon itself, because in its blessedness it would not continue
at peace with God; and this, though it be a miserable calamity, is
better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognize
that a war is to be maintained. For better is it to contend with vices
than without conflict to be subdued by them. Better, I say, is war
with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of
deliverance. We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and,
kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that
well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is for ever
subordinated to what is above it. But if (which God forbid) there
had been no hope of so blessed a consummation, we should still have
preferred to endure the hardness of this conflict, rather than, by our
non-resistance, to yield ourselves to the dominion of vice.
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