Augustine: Earlier Writings
OF TRUE RELIGION JJig ciplcs were first called Christians in Antioch, as it is written. When I said, "This is the Christian religion in our times," I did not mean that it had not existed in former times, but that it received that name later.
4. In another place I say, "Listen to what follows as diligently and as piously as you can; for God aids such." This is not to be understood as if he aids the diligent and pious only. He aids those who are not such to be such, and to seek diligently and piously. Those who do so he aids so that they may find. Again, I say (chap, xii), "After the death of the body which we owe to the first sin, in its own time and order this body will be restored to its pristine stability." That is to be accepted as partially true. The pristine stability of the body, which by sinning we lost, had so great felicity that it would not fall into the decline of old age. To this state the body will be restored at the resurrection of the dead. But it will have more; for it will not need to be sustained by material food. It will be sufficiently animated by spirit alone when it is resurrected as a vivifying spirit. For this reason also it will be spiritual. Man's original nature, though it would not have died if man had not sinned, yet was made a living soul.
5. In another place (chap xiv) I say, "Sin is so much voluntary evil, that there would be no such thing as sin unless it were voluntary." That may appear a false definition; but if it is diligently discussed it will be found to be quite true. We are to consider as sin simply sin and not what is really the penalty of sin, as I showed above when I was dealing with passages from the third book of the De Libera Arbitrio, Sins which are not unjustifiably said to be non-voluntary because they are committed in ignorance or under compulsion cannot be said to be committed entirely involuntarily. He who sins in ignorance uses his will to some extent, for he thinks he should do what in fact ought not to be done. He who does not the things that he would because the flesh lusteth against the spirit, may be unwilling but he lusts all the same, and thereby does not the things he would. If he is overcome he voluntarily consents to lust, and thereby does what he wishes, being free from righteousness and the servant of sin. What we call original sin in infants, who have not yet the use of free choice, may not absurdly also be called voluntary, because it originated in man's first evil will and has become in a manner hereditary. So my statement was not false.
By the grace of God not only is the guilt of past sins done away in all who are baptized in Christ, by the spirit of regeneration;