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AND this law the Apostle also calls spiritual saying: "But we know that
the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin." For this law is
spiritual which bids us eat in the sweat of our brow that "true bread which
cometh down from heaven" but that sale under sin makes us carnal. What,
I ask, or whose is that sin? Doubtless Adam's, by whose fall and, if I may
so say, ruinous transaction and fraudulent bargain we were sold. For when
he was led astray by the persuasion of the serpent he brought all his
descendants under the yoke of perpetual bondage, as they were alienated by
taking the forbidden food. For this custom is generally observed between
the buyer and seller, that one who wants to make himself over to the power
of another, receives from his buyer a price for the loss of his liberty,
and his consignment to perpetual slavery. And we can very plainly see that
this took place between Adam and the serpent. For by eating of the
forbidden tree he received from the serpent the price of his liberty, and
gave up his natural freedom and chose to give himself up to perpetual
slavery to him from whom he had obtained the deadly price of the forbidden
fruit; and thenceforth he was bound by this condition and not without
reason subjected all the offspring of his posterity to perpetual service to
him whose slave he had become. For what can any marriage in slavery produce
but slaves? What then? Did that cunning and crafty buyer take away the
rights of ownership from the true and lawful lord? Not so. For neither did
he overcome all God's property by the craft of a single act of deception so
that the true lord lost his rights of ownership, who though the buyer
himself was a rebel and a renegade, yet oppressed him with the yoke of
slavery; but because the Creator had endowed all reasonable creatures with
free will, he would not restore to their natural liberty against their will
those who contrary to right had sold themselves by the sin of greedy lust.
Since anything that is contrary to goodness and fairness is abhorrent to
Him who is the Author of justice and piety. For it would have been wrong
for Him to have recalled the blessing of freedom granted, unfair for Him to
have by His power oppressed man who was free, and by taking him captive,
not to have allowed him to exercise the prerogative of the freedom he had
received, as He was reserving his salvation for future ages, that in due
season the fulness of the appointed time might be fulfilled. For it was
right that his offspring should remain under the ancient conditions for so
long a time, until by the price of His own blood the grace of the Lord
redeemed them from their original chains and set them free in the primeval
state of liberty, though He was able even then to save them, but would not,
because equity forbade Him to break the terms of His own decree. Would you
know the reason for your being sold? Hear thy Redeemer Himself proclaiming
openly by Isaiah the prophet: "What is this bill of the divorce of your
mother with which I have put her away? Or who is My creditor to whom I sold
you? Behold you are sold for your iniquities and for your wicked deeds have
I put your mother away." Would you also plainly see why when you were
consigned to the yoke of slavery He would not redeem you by the might of
His own power? Hear what He added to the former passage, and how He charges
the same servants of sin with the reason for their voluntary sale. "Is My
hand shortened and become little that I cannot redeem, or is there no
strength in Me to deliver?" But what it is which is always standing in
the way of His most powerful pity the same prophet shows when he says:
"Behold the hand of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save, neither
is His ear heavy that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have divided
between you and your God and your sins have hid His face from you that He
should not hear."
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