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BECAUSE then the original curse of God has made us carnal and condemned
us to thorns and thistles, and our father has sold us by that unhappy
bargain so that we cannot do the good that we would, while we are torn away
from the recollection of God Most High and forced to think on what belongs
to human weakness, while burning with the love of purity, we are often even
against our will troubled by natural desires, which we would rather know
nothing about; we know that in our flesh there dwelleth no good thing
viz., the perpetual and lasting peace of this meditation of which we have
spoken; but there is brought about in our case that miserable and wretched
divorce, that when with the mind we want to serve the law of God, since we
never want to remove our gaze from the Divine brightness, yet surrounded as
we are by carnal darkness we are forced by a kind of law of sin to tear
ourselves away from the good which we know, as we fall away from that lofty
height of mind to earthly cares and thoughts, to which the law of sin,
i.e., the sentence of God, which the first delinquent received, has not
without reason condemned us. And hence it is that the blessed Apostle,
though he openly admits that he and all saints are bound by the constraint
of this sin, yet boldly asserts that none of them will be condemned for
this, saying: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in
Christ Jesus: for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath set me
free from the law of sin and death," i.e., the grace of Christ day by
day frees all his saints from this law of sin and death, under which they
are constantly reluctantly obliged to come, whenever they pray to the Lord
for the forgiveness of their trespasses. You see then that it was in the
person not of sinners but of those who are really saints and perfect, that
the blessed Apostle gave utterance to this saying: "For I do not the good
that I would, but the evil which I hate, that I do;" and: "I see another
law in my members resisting the law of my mind and bringing me captive to
the law of sin which is in my members."
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