Chapter 2 (163): What Is The Letter That Kills.—Augustine, On The Baptism Of
Distinction XL | 169 things is the same as the one that says: You shall not steal; and the commandment about not desiring another's wife is the same as the one that says: You shall not commit adultery — AUGUSTINE, ON EXODUS: "For the commandment about not stealing could be understood so generally as to include the one about not coveting a neighbour's thing; and in the statement, You shall not commit adultery, the other: You shall not desire your neighbour's wife could be understood. But in the first two commandments about adultery and stealing, the deeds themselves are singled out and prohibited; in the latter two, it is the desire itself."" And so the latter are very different from the former. That is why to the commandment about adultery an addition is made in the Gospel, where all adulterous desire is forbidden.'
2. WHY THE LAW IS SAID TO RESTRAIN THE HAND, BUT NOT THE SOUL.
But since here the desire of another's wife and another's thing is forbidden, why is the Law said to restrain the hand, but not the soul, while the Gospel restrains both?*—SOLUTION. That is said of the Law in regard to the ceremonial mandates, not in regard to the moral ones. Or because in the Law there is not the same general prohibition of all death-dealing desire, as there is in the Gospel.
Chapter 2 (163)
WHAT IS THE LETTER THAT KILLS.—AUGUSTINE, ON THE BAPTISM OF
CHILDREN. But if it is asked which is the letter which the Apostle describes as killing,' "it certainly is the Decalogue. It is not called the letter that kills because the Law is evil, but because by forbidding sin it increases concupiscence and aggravates transgression, unless grace frees us,"" which grace is not as abundant in the Law as it is in the Gospel.
"And so the Law is good, and yet without grace it kills, since it is the power of sin,' which commands that which cannot be fulfilled without grace." But grace was lacking, and so the letter killed.
?Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, bk 2 q71.
ACE Mt..5,27-28.
'Ordinary gloss, on Ps. 18, 8.
IC £2. Cor. 3. 6:
Augustine, De spiritu et littera, c14 nn24 and 25.
Gis bCorst 5, 50; 'Augustine, Epistola 145 (ad Anastasium), nn 2-3.