Augustine: Earlier Writings
TO SIMPLICIAN— ON VARIOUS qUESTIONS 377
2. But again, if the law is not sin but introduces sin, even so it is found fault with in these words. Therefore we must understand that the law was given not to introduce sin nor to extirpate it, but simply to make it known; by the demonstration of sin to give the human soul a sense of its guilt in place of a secure sense of its innocence. Sin cannot be overcome without the grace of God, so the law was given to convert the soul by anxiety about its guilt, so that it might be ready to receive grace. Accordingly he does not say: "Without the law I had not committed sin," but: "I had not known sin except through the law." And again, he does not say: "I had no concupiscence except the law had said Thou shalt not covet," but: "I had not known concupiscence except the law had said. Thou shalt not covet." Hence it appears that concupiscence was not implanted in him by the law, but was made known to him.
3. The consequence was that concupiscence was even increased, since it could not be resisted when grace was not yet received. For concupiscence acquires greater strength when in addition there is violation of a law. It is aggravated when it is done against the law, and becomes a worse sin than if there had been no law prohibiting it. Accordingly he adds: "Sin, finding occasion through the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence." Sin, then, existed before the law, but did not reach its full sinfulness because there was so far no violation of a law. So in another passage he says: "Where there is no law there is no breaking of the law."
4. He goes on: "Without the law sin is dead." That is as if he said, "sin is latent," in other words, "is thought to be dead." He is going to say that more clearly a little later. "I lived without the law once," he says, i.e., no fear of death because of sin terrified me, because sin was not made manifest when there was no law. "But when the commandment came, sin revived," i.e., became manifest, "and I died," i.e., I knew that I was dead because the guilt of breaking the law was threatened by the certain punishment of death. Indeed when he says that sin revived when the commandment came, he makes it perfectly clear that sin had lived before and had been known, I suppose, in the sin of the first man, since he had received and violated a commandment. In another place he says: "The woman being beguiled fell into transgression" (I Tim. 2:14). And again: "After the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him who was to come" (Rom. 5:14). In any case, nothing can be said to revive which did not live at some previous time. But sin was dead,