Augustine in His Own Words
Against the Pelagians 425 war the holy man warns us to flee from the world, and shows the great difficulty—rather, the very impossibility—of this flight, unless we are aided by the grace of God. He says that our faults are dead through the forgiveness of all our sins in baptism, but that we must take care, as it were, of their burial. In this same work he recounts that we have such a conflict with our dead faults that we do not do what we wish, but do what we hate; that sin works many things in us while we struggle with it; that pleasures often revive and rise again; that we must struggle against the flesh, against which Paul was struggling when he said: "I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind" (Rom 7:23). He teaches us not to trust our flesh, not to rely on it, since the Apostle exclaims: "I know that the good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. To will is close to me, but to do the good is not" (Rom 7:18). See what a fight we have with our dead sins, as that active soldier of Christ and faithful teacher of the Church shows. For how is sin dead when it works many things in us while we struggle against it? What are these many things except foolish and harmful desires which plunge those who consent to them into death and destruction (1 Tm 6:9)? And to bear them patiently and not to consent to them is a struggle, a conflict, a battle. And between what parties in this battle if not between good and evil, not of nature against nature, but of nature against fault, which is already dead but still to be buried, that is, entirely healed? How, then, do we say this sin is dead in baptism, as this man also says, and how do we confess it dwells in our members and causes many desires against which we struggle and which we resist by not consenting to them, as this man also confesses, except that it is dead in that guilt by which it held us, and until it is healed by the perfection of its burial it rebels even though dead? It is, however, called sin, not in such a way that it makes us guilty, but because it is the result of the guilt of the first man and because by rebelling it strives to draw us to guilt, unless we are aided by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, lest even the dead sin so rebel that, by conquering, it revives and reigns.96
96. Contra Julianum 2.9.31–9.32 (PL 44:694–96); trans. Schumacher, FOTC 35:92–93 (modified).