Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
that is, hidden, all the time that men were born mortal and lived without the commandment of the law, following the desires of the flesh in ignorance because there was no prohibition. Therefore he says: "I lived without the law once." Thereby he shows that he is not speaking in his own person but generally in the person of "the old man." But "when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; the commandment which was unto life I found to be unto death." But if the commandment is obeyed it surely gives life. But it was found to be unto death because it was disobeyed. Now, what is done contrary to the commandment is sin, just as it was sinful even before the commandment was given, but now it is more abundantly and perniciously sinful, because it is done knowingly and in transgression of the commandment.
5. "For sin," he says, "finding occasion through the commandment deceived me and thereby slew me." Sin became sweeter, wrongly using the law to increase desire which it was intended to forbid. Thereby it deceived him. Sweetness is deceptive because it is followed by much bitterness in the shape of punishment. Men who have not yet received spiritual grace find greater pleasure in doing what is forbidden, and so sin deceives them with its false sweetness. When there is added the sense of the guilt of transgression, sin slays.
6. Accordingly "the law is holy and the commandment holy, just and good." It commands what ought to be commanded, and prohibits what ought to be prohibited. "Was that which is good, then, made death to me? God forbid." The fault lies in making a bad use of the commandment, which in itself is good. "The law is good if one use it lawfully" (I Tim. 1:8). But he makes a bad use of the law who does not subject himself to God in humble piety, so that, with the aid of grace, he may become able to fulfil the law. He who does not use the law lawfully receives it to no other end than that his sin, which was latent before the prohibition, should be made apparent by his transgression. And this above measure, for it is not only sin but it is also contrary to direct commandment. So he goes on: "Sin, that it might be shown to be sin, worked death in me through that which is good, that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful." Here he makes clear in what sense he wrote the words, "Without the law sin was dead," not that it did not exist but that it was not made apparent, and also what he meant by saying that "sin revived"—not simply that that should exist which already existed before the law, but that it