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The Deity is good and more than good, and so is His will. For that
which God wishes is good. Moreover the precept, which teaches this,
is law, that we, holding by it, may walk in light: and the
transgression of this precept is sin, and this continues to exist on
account of the assault of the devil and our unconstrained and voluntary
reception of it. And this, too, is called law.
And so the law of God, settling in our mind, draws it towards itself
and pricks our conscience. And our conscience, too, is called a law
of our mind. Further, the assault of the wicked one, that is the law
of sin, settling in the members of our flesh, makes its assault upon
us through it. For by once voluntarily transgressing the law of God
and receiving the assault of the wicked one, we gave entrance to it,
being sold by ourselves to sin. Wherefore our body is readily impelled
to it. And so the savour and perception of sin that is stored up in
our body, that is to say, lust and pleasure of the body, is law in
the members of our flesh.
Therefore the law of my mind, that is, the conscience, sympathises
with the law of God, that is, the precept, and makes that its will.
But the law of sin, that is to say, the assault made through the law
that is in our members, or through the lust and inclination and
movement of the body and of the irrational part of the soul, is in
opposition to the law of my mind, that is to conscience, and takes me
captive (even though I make the law of God my will and set my love on
it, and make not sin my will), by reason of commixture: and through
the softness of pleasure and the lust of the body and of the irrational
part of the soul, as I said, it leads me astray and induces me to
become the servant of sin. But what the law could not do, in that it
was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh (for He assumed flesh but not sin) condemned
sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled
in us who walk not after the flesh but in the Spirit. For the Spirit
helpeth our infirmities and affordeth power to the law of our mind,
against the law that is in our members. For the verse, we know not
what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh
intercession with groanings that cannot be uttered, itself teacheth us
what to pray for. Hence it is impossible to carry out the precepts of
the Lord except by patience and prayer.
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