Living and True God, Whose Nature, being For every one is tempted,"' saith the Apostle
THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
My '"Seek peace, and ensue it. For we shall then have perfect peace, when, our nature cleaving inseparably to its Creator, we shall have nothing of ourselves opposed to ourselves. This our Saviour also Himself would have us to understand, so far as seems to me, when He said, '' Let your loins be girt, and your lamps burning.''? What is it, to gird the loins? To restrain lusts, which is the work of continence. But to have lamps burning is to shine and glow with good works, which is the work of righteousness. Nor was He here silent with what end we do these things, adding and saying, *'And you like unto men waiting for their Lord, when He cometh from the marriage.''3 But, when He shall have come, He will reward us, who have kept ourselves from those things which lust, and have done those things which charity hath bidden us: that we may reign in His perfect and eternal peace, without any strife of evil, and with the highest delight of good.
the hands of the same Physician nature as yet striveth with its sickness. But in sucha conflict victory will be entire soundness; and that, soundness not for a time, but for ever: wherein not only this sickness is to come to an end, but also none to arise after it. Wherefore the just man addresseth his soul and saith, *' Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His returns: Who becometh propitious to all thy iniquities, Who healeth all thy sicknesses.''5 He becometh propitious to our iniquities, when He pardons sins: He heals sicknesses when He restrains evil desires. He becometh propitious unto iniquities by the ygrant of forgiveness: He heals sicknesses, by the grant of continence. The one was done in Baptism to persons confessing; the other is done in the strife to persons contending; wherein through His help we are to overcome our disease. Even now the one is done, when we are heard, saying, °° Forgive us our debts;''® but the other, when we are heard, saying, '* Lead us not into temptation. For every one is tempted,"' saith the Apostle James, "' being drawn away and enticed by his own lust.'"'" And against this fault there is sought the help of medicine from Him, Who can heal all such sicknesses, not by the removal of a nature that is alien from us, but in the renewal of our own nature. Whence also the above-mentioned Apostle saith not, **Every one is tempted '' by lust, but added, 'by his own:"' that he who hears this may understand, how he ought to cry, "* I said, Lord, have mercy upon me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee.''® For it would not have needed healing, had it not corrupted? itself by sinning, so that its own flesh should lust against it, that is, itself should be opposed to itself, on that side, wherein in the flesh it was made sick.
18. All we therefore, who believe in the Living and True God, Whose Nature, being in the highest sense good and incapable of change, neither doth any evil, nor suffers any evil, from Whom is every good, even that which admits of decrease, and Who admits not at all of decrease in His own Good, Which is Himself, when we hear the Apostle saying, 'Walk in the Spirit, and perform ye not the lusts of the flesh, For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: For these are opposed one to another, that ye do not what ye would.''* Far be it from us to believe, what the madness of the /. Manichees believes, that there are here shown two natures or principles contrary one to another at strife, the one nature of good, the other of evil. Altogether these two are both good; both the Spirit is a good, and the flesh a good: and man, who is composed of both, one ruling, the other obeying, is assuredly a good, but a good capable of change, which yet could not be made save by a Good incapable of change, by Whom was created every good, whether small or great; but how small soever, yet made by What is Great; and how great soever, yet no way to be compared with the greatness of the Maker. But in this nature of man, that is good, and well formed and ordered by One That is Good, there is now war, since there is not yet health. Let the sickness be healed, there is peace. But that sickness fault hath deserved, not nature
19. For the flesh lusts after nothing save through the soul, but the flesh is said to lust against the spirit, when the soul with fleshly lust wrestles against the spirit. This whole are we: and the flesh itself, which on the departure of the soul dies, the lowest part of us is not put away as what we are to ilee from, but is laid aside as what we are to receive again, and, after having received it, never again to leave. But '' there is sown an animal body, there shall rise again a spiritual body." Then from that time the flesh will not lust after any thing against the spirit, when as itself also shall be called spiritual, forasmuch as not only without any opposition, but also without any need of bodily aliment, hath had. And this fault indeed through the laver of regeneration the grace of God hath already remitted unto the faithful; but under
6 Matt. vi. 12, 13. SPs) xii. 4. to y Cor. xv. 44.
5 Ps. ciii. 2, 3. 7 James i. 14. 9 Vitiasset.
1 Ps, xxxiv. 14. 2 Luke xii. 35. 3 Luke xii, 36. 4 Gal. v. 16, 17.