“For as soon as our first parents had transgressed the commandment, divine grace forsook them and they were confounded at their own wickedness; and therefore they took fig leaves and covered their shame, for though their members remained the same, they had shame now where they had none before. They experienced a new motion of their flesh, which had become disobedient to them, in strict retribution of their own disobedience to God. For the soul, revelling in its own liberty, and scorning to serve God, was itself deprived of the command it had formerly maintained over the body. And because it had willfully deserted its superior Lord, it no longer held its own inferior servant; neither could it hold the flesh subject as it would always have been able to do had it remained itself subject to God. Then began the flesh to lust against the Spirit (Galatians 5:17), on which strife was born, deriving from the first transgression a seed of death, and bearing in our members, and in our vitiated nature, the contest or even victory of the flesh.”
“For God, the author of natures, not vices, created man upright; but man, being of his own will corrupted and justly condemned, begat corrupted and condemned children. An thus, from the bad use of free will, there originated the whole train of evil, which, with its concatenation of miseries, convoys the human race from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death, which has no end, those only being excepted who are freed by the grace of God.”
“And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” ~ Romans 8:10-11“Now we bear the image of the earthly man by the propagation of sin and death, which pass on us by ordinary generation; but we bear the image of the heavenly by the grace of pardon and life eternal, which regeneration confers upon us through the Mediator of God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.
“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:”“Those men who have been embraced by God’s grace, and are become the fellow citizens of the holy angels who have continued in bliss, shall never more either sin or die, being endued with spiritual bodies.”
“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” ~ 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 20-22, 54-57
*The City of God by Saint Augustine Translated by Marcus Dods, D.D. with an introduction by Thomas Merton, pages Book one pages 422,423,430,448
1993 Modern Library Edition
Introduction copyright 1950,1978 by Random House, Inc.
ISBN 0-679-60087-6
