Of the Remainders of Concupiscence. 28
and also from the grace of God, in respect of willing that which is good. "He that made you without yourself," says Augustine, De verb.
Apost., serm. 15, "does not justify you without yourself. And He that made you not witting, justifies you being willing, and without your will there shall no righteousness be in you." Therefore, the papists' doctrine of free will, that it is but half dead, that is, bound from use or exercise, but not dead in respect of the active power of willing well, is not catholic.
Of the Remainders of Concupiscence 1. Whereas sometimes in the fathers we find it written that concupiscence is no sin after regeneration, it must be thus understood, because God of His mercy does not impute it. So that the fathers do only deny that concupiscence is sin unto the person in whom it is, but that it is sin in itself and of itself, and so remains after baptism, they never deny, but do aver it so to be. Augustine himself,
Contr. Jul. Pelag., lib. 5, cap. 3, very plainly calls that concupiscence sin, against which the good spirit strives, because, says he, "There is in it a disobedience against the rule of the mind." And again, De nupt. & concup., lib. 1, cap. 26: "This is to be free from sin," says he,
"not to be guilty of sin." Besides, Tractat. in Joan., 41: "Let not sin rule. He says not, let it not be in you, for as long as you live you are sure to have sin in your members, but yet let it not rule in them." So Ambrose, apud Aug. contra Jul. 2, c. 5, calls the remains of concupiscence in the regenerate, iniquity, and Hilary calls it malitiam, illness, apud eundem, lib. 2, cap. 8. Caietane, in Romans chapter 7, verse 8, sticks not to say that concupiscence (whereof
Saint Paul speaks) is even formally sin, in respect that it is part of original sin.
2. The first motions of concupiscence, before consent, the fathers hold to be sin. So holds Bede: "Carnal concupiscences," says he in Psalm 9, "are the first death, and death's entry." And in Psalm 114:
"Whosoever falls but in thought offends God." And again, in Psalm 1:
"The soul is killed three ways: with delectation alone, with delight joined with consent, and with action." "Sin," says Radulphus, in Levitic., lib. 8, cap. 4, "breeds in a man's soul before consent, and now begins to be brought forth, but is not consummate or perfected."
And Cassiodorus, in Psal. 119, calls those desires unlawful, to which we do not consent. And Augustine also before him, in Psal. 118, conc.
3, does the like.
3. When the fathers say that the first motions in concupiscence are not sins unless we consent, we must not so understand them as though they were not sins in the truth of appellation, but because the guilt of these first motions, together with the guilt of concupiscence itself, is taken away in our regeneration. So says Augustine, De peccat. origin., lib. 2, cap. 40: "The vicious desires also (unto which if we do not consent, there is not guilt contracted) are all purged away in the same fountain of regeneration." And again, Contra Jul., lib. 2, cap. 10: "As for us, we should be always without sin, if this evil were once cured, and if we should never consent with it unto evil." But he had said before, cap. 9, in fine: "How then do we say that this sin is dead in baptism, and yet confess that it dwells still in our members, and causes many desires in us against our wills, unto which we resist by not consenting, unless because it is dead touching that guilt wherewith it held us, and yet until it be cured in the consummation of burial, will rebel though it be dead? Although now it is not called sin after the same manner, whereby it makes a man guilty, but in that it was caused by the guilt of the first man Adam, and by rebelliousness endeavors to bring us into guilt, unless we be helped by God's grace through Jesus Christ." Look at his third sermon in