The Literal Meaning of Genesis
1ec2 THE LITERAL MEANING OF GENESIS war, not with the hope that sin will no longer be in their body as long as it is mortal—when it is rightly called dead—but with the hope that it will not reign.*? And sin does not reign when its desires are not obeyed, that is, the cravings by which it lusts after allurements according to the flesh against the spirit. Hence, St. Paul did not say, "Let not sin be in your mortal body" (for he knew that the attraction of sin, which he calls sin, is there since our nature has been corrupted by the original transgression); but he said, Let not sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its lusts; do not yield your members as instruments of iniquity unto sin.>°
CHAPTER 13
The Manichean doctrine of two natures and two wills in man rejected. The sins of children.
22. In this interpretation I avoid saying that the flesh has desires without the soul (an absurd position), and I also avoid agreeing with the Manichees, who saw that the flesh could not have desires without the soul and hence assumed that it has another soul within it, having its origin in a nature opposed to God, whence it lusts against the spirit.>! Moreover, | am not forced to say that there is some soul for which the grace of Christ is not necessary when someone says to me: "What blame has the soul of an infant deserved that it should be dangerous for it to depart from the body without receiving the sacrament of baptism, if on the one hand it has not committed any sin of its own and on the other has not descended from the first soul which sinned in Adam?"
23. | am not talking about children in their late childhood. There are some people, it is true, who are unwilling to impute personal sin to children before the beginning of puberty in their fourteenth year. I could see good reason to believe this if there were no sins except those that have to do with the genital organs. But who would dare assert that thefts, lies, and false oaths are not sins except one who wishes to commit such sins with im-