Saint Augustine (354-430)

Against Two Letters of the Pelagians

Translated by Robert Wallis

Book I

Chapter 11

For when he says also, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” who can deny that when the apostle said this he was still in the body of this death? And certainly the wicked are not delivered from this, to whom the same bodies are returned for eternal torment. Therefore, to be delivered from the body of this death is to be healed of all the weakness of fleshly lust, and to receive the body, not for penalty, but for glory. With this passage also those words are sufficiently in harmony: “Ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption, of our body.” For surely we groan with that groaning wherein we say, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” That also where he says, “For what I do, I know not”; what else is it than: “I will not, I do not approve, I do not consent, I do not do”? Otherwise it is contrary to what be said above, “By the law is the knowledge of sin,” and, “I had not known sin but by the law,” and, “Sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me by that which is good.” For how did he know sin, of which he was ignorant, by the law? How does sin which is not known appear? Therefore it is said, “I know not,” for “I do not,” because I myself commit it with no consent of mine; in the same way in which the Lord will say to the wicked, “I know you not,” although, beyond a doubt, nothing can be hid from Him; and as it is said, “Him who had not known sin,” which means who had not done sin, for He had not known what He condemned.

On the careful consideration of these things, and things of the same kind in the context of that apostolical Scripture, the apostle is rightly understood to have signified not, indeed, himself alone in his own person, but others also established under grace, and with him not yet established in that perfect peace in which death shall be swallowed up in victory. And concerning this he afterwards says, “But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. If, then, the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Therefore, after our mortal bodies have been quickened, not only will there be no consent to sinning, but even the lust of the flesh itself, to which there is no consent, will not remain. And not to have this resistance to the spirit in the mortal flesh, was possible only to that man who came not by the flesh to men. And that the apostles, because they were men, and carried about in the mortality of this life a body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, were, therefore, “always polluted with excessive lust,” as that man injuriously affirms, be it far from me to say. But I do say that although they were free from consent to depraved lusts, they nevertheless groaned concerning the concupiscence of the flesh, which they bridled by restraint with such humility and piety, that they desired rather not to have it than to subdue it.

Book I Chapter 10

Book I Chapter 12