Augustine: Earlier Writings
ON FREE WILL 205 their former existence and the labours of their present existence, with consequent ignorance and toil which in the first man were a punishment involving mortality and completing the misery' of the soul. But for these souls ignorance and toil are opportunities for ministering to the restoration of the integrity of the body. The flesh coming from a sinful stock causes this ignorance and toil to infect the souls sent to it. Only in this sense arc they to be called sins, and the blame for them is to be ascribed neither to the souls nor to their Creator. For he has given them power to do good in difficult duties, and has provided for them the way of faith where oblivion had brought blindness. Also and above all, he has given them the insight which every soul possesses; that it must seek to know what to its disadvantage it does not know, and that it must persevere in burdensome duties and strive to overcome the difficulty of well-doing, and implore the Creator's aid in its efforts. By the law without and by direct address to the heart within, he has commanded that effort be made, and he has prepared the glory of the Blessed City for those who triumph over the devil, who with wicked persuasion overcame the first man and reduced him to his state of misery. That misery these souls undergo in lively faith in order to overcome the devil. No little glory is to be gained from the campaign to overcome the devil, waged by undergoing the punishment which he glories in having brought upon his victim, man. Whoever yields to love of the present life and takes no part in that campaign can by no means justly attribute the shame of his desertion to the command of his king. Rather the Lord of all will appoint his place with the devil, because he loved the base hire wherewith he bought his desertion.
58. But if souls existing in some place are not sent by the Lord God, but come of their own accord to inhabit bodies, it is easy to see that any ignorance or toil which is the consequence of their own choice cannot in any way be ascribed as blame to the Creator. He would be entirely without blame. If we accept the view that he himself sent souls, he did not take from them even in the state of ignorance and toil their freedom to ask and seek and endeavour, and was ever ready to give to those who ask, to demonstrate to those who seek and to open to those who knock. Similarly, on this other view, he would allow conquest over ignorance and difficulty on the part of earnest and rightminded souls to count as a crown of glory. He would not lay the ignorance or the difl[iculty to the charge of the negligent or of those who wished to defend their sins on the ground of their