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Hence it is that even the philosophers who have approximated to the
truth have avowed that anger and lust are vicious mental emotions,
because, even when exercised towards objects which wisdom does not
prohibit, they are moved in an ungoverned and inordinate manner, and
consequently need the regulation of mind and reason. And they assert
that this third part of the mind is posted as it were in a kind of
citadel, to give rule to these other parts, so that, while it rules
and they serve, man's righteousness is preserved without a breach.
These parts, then, which they acknowledge to be vicious even in a
wise and temperate man, so that the mind, by its composing and
restraining influence, must bridle and recall them from those objects
towards which they are unlawfully moved, and give them access to those
which the law of wisdom sanctions, that anger, e.g., may be allowed
for the enforcement of a just authority, and lust for the duty of
propagating offspring,-these parts, I say, were not vicious in
Paradise before sin, for they were never moved in opposition to a holy
will towards any object from which it was necessary that they should be
withheld by the restraining bridle of reason. For though now they are
moved in this way, and are regulated by a bridling and restraining
power, which those who live temperately, justly, and godly exercise,
sometimes with ease, and sometimes with greater difficulty, this is
not the sound health of nature, but the weakness which results from
sin. And how is it that shame does not hide the acts and words
dictated by anger or other emotions, as it covers the motions of lust,
unless because the members of the body which we employ for accomplishing
them are moved, not by the emotions themselves, but by the authority
of the consenting will? For he who in his anger rails at or even
strikes some one, could not do so were not his tongue and hand moved by
the authority of the will, as also they are moved when there is no
anger. But the organs of generation are so subjected to the rule of
lust, that they have no motion but what it communicates. It is this
we are ashamed of; it is this which blushingly hides from the eyes of
onlookers. And rather will a man endure a crowd of witnesses when he
is unjustly venting his anger on some one, than the eye of one man when
he innocently copulates with his wife.
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