Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members." A "law in his members" is the name he gives to the burden of mortality under which we groan, being heavyladen. A body which is corrupted burdens the soul. So it often happens that what is not right gives pleasure and cannot be resisted. This sorely pressing burden he calls a law, because it has been imposed as a punishment by the divine judgment, by God who gave man previous warning, saying, "In the day ye eat thereof ye shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). This law "warreth against the law of the mind" which says, "Thou shalt not covet." In this law man rejoices after the inner man. But before he is under grace the other law so wars against his mind that it brings him into captivity under the law of sin, that is, under itself. In repeating "which is in my members" he shows that this is the same law as that referred to earlier as "another law in my members."
14. All this is said to show that a man who is thus taken captive ought not to presume on his own strength. Paul rebuked the Jews for proudly glorying in the works of the law, though concupiscence attracted them to what was unlawful; since the law in which they gloried said, "Thou shalt not covet." The man who is conquered, damned and taken captive, who is not victorious even though he has received the law but is rather made a transgressor, such a man must humbly cry, "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." In this mortal life one thing remains for free will, not that a man may fulfil righteousness when he wishes, but that he may turn with suppliant piety to him who can give the power to fulfil it.
15. In this whole closely argued passage of the apostle which we have expounded, possibly some may think that the apostle feels that the law is an evil thing. There are also these other passages: "The law came in that sin might abound" (Rom. 5:20); "The ministration of death engraved in letters of stone" (II Cor. 3:7); "The power of sin is the law" (I Cor. 15:56); "Ye are dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye may become the property of another, even of him who rose from the dead.
. . . Sinful passions which were through the law wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we have been discharged from the law of death wherein we were holden so that we may serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter" (Rom. 7:4-6). And we can find other passages in the apostle of similar import. But notice, he does not mean to con-