Colossians 3:4

ut qui malum a se accersitum, nunc et in posterum eligant. Si ergo “omnia licerent,” nec timendum esset ne a spe excideremus propter malas actiones, esset fortasse eis aliquis præ textus, cur male viverent et miserabiliter. Quoniam autem vita beata nobis ostensa est per præcepta, quam oportet omnes sequentes, nec aliquid eorum, quæ dicta sunt, perperam intelligentes, nec eorum, quæ convenit, aliquid, etsi sit vel minimum, contemnentes, sequi quo Iogos ducit; quiâ, si ab eo aberraverimus, in malum immortale incidamus necesse est; si divinam autem Scripturam secuti fuerimus, per quam ingrediuntur, qui crediderunt, ut Domino, quoad fieri potest, assimilentur, non est vivendum indifferenter, sed pro viribus mundos esse oportet a voluptatibus et cupiditatibus, curaque est gerenda animæ, qua apud solum Deum perseverandum est. …

14. Vices and carnal sins must be trampled down, beloved brethren, and the corrupting plague of the earthly body must be trodden under foot with spiritual vigour, lest, while we are turned back again to the conversation of the old man, we be entangled in deadly snares, even as the apostle, with foresight and wholesomeness, forewarned us of this very thing, and said: “Therefore, brethren, let us not live after the flesh; for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall begin to die; but if ye, through the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live. …

In Isaiah: “Seek ye the Lord; and when ye have found Him, call upon Him. But when He hath come near unto you, let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him be turned unto the Lord, and he shall obtain mercy, because He will plentifully pardon your sins.” Of this same thing in Solomon: “I have seen all the works which are done under the sun; and, lo, all are vanity.” Of this same thing in Exodus: “But thus shall ye eat it; your loins girt, and your shoes on your feet, and your staves in your hands: and ye shall eat it in haste, for it is the Lord’s passover.” Of this same thing in the Gospel according to Matthew: “Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewith shall we be clothed? for these things the nations seek after. But your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. …

It may be asked why we should have gone through all this when the verse before us is, “He came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light.” But it was necessary to give John’s testimonies to the light, and to show the order in which they took place, and also, in order to show how effective John’s testimony proved, to set forth the help it afforded afterwards to those to whom he bore it. But before all these testimonies there was an earlier one when the Baptist leaped in the womb of Elisabeth at the greeting of Mary. That was a testimony to Christ and attested His divine conception and birth. And what more need I say? John is everywhere a witness and forerunner of Christ. …

We have lingered rather long over these discussions, but there is a reason for it. There are many who, under the pretence of glorifying the advent of Christ, declare the Apostles to be wiser than the fathers or the prophets; and of these teachers some have invented a greater God for the later period, while some, not venturing so far, but moved, according to their own account of the matter, by the difficulty connected with doctrine, cancel the whole of the gift conferred by God on the fathers and the prophets, through Christ, through whom all things were made. If all things were made through Him, clearly so must the splendid revelations have been which were made to the fathers and prophets, and became to them the symbols of the sacred mysteries of religion. …

But we must seek to understand what is meant by “tasting of death.” And He is life who says, “I am the life,” and this life assuredly has been hidden with Christ in God; and. “when Christ our life shall be manifested, then along with Him” shall be manifested those who are worthy of being manifested with Him in glory. But the enemy of this life, who is also the last enemy of all His enemies that shall be destroyed, is death, of which the soul that sinneth dies, having the opposite disposition to that which takes place in the soul that lives uprightly, and in consequence of living uprightly lives. And when it is said in the law, “I have placed life before thy face,” the Scripture says this about Him who said, “I am the Life,” and about His enemy, death; the one or other of which each of us by his deeds is always choosing. …

3. This passing from death to life is meanwhile wrought in us by faith, which we have for the pardon of our sins and the hope of eternal life, when we love God and our neighbour; “for faith worketh by love,” and “the just shall live by his faith;” “and hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” According to this faith and hope and love, by which we have begun to be “under grace,” we are already dead together with Christ, and buried together with Him by baptism into death; as the apostle hath said, “Our old man is crucified with Him;” and we have risen with Him, for “He hath raised us up together, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places.” Whence also he gives this exhortation: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the rig …

10. For this reason the Apostle John writes in the Apocalypse to seven churches. The Church, moreover, while it remains under the conditions of our mortal life in the flesh, is, on account of her liability to change, spoken of Scripture by the name of the moon; e.g. , “They have made ready their arrows in the quiver, that they may, while the moon is obscured, wound those who are upright in heart.” For before that comes to pass of which the apostle says, “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory,” the Church seems in the time of her pilgrimage obscured, groaning under many iniquities; and at such a time, the snares of those who deceive and lead astray are to be feared, and these are intended by the word “arrows” in this passage. Again, we have another instance in Psalm lxxxix. …

5. In the darkness, then, of this world, in which we are pilgrims absent from the Lord as long as “we walk by faith and not by sight,” the Christian soul ought to feel itself desolate, and continue in prayer, and learn to fix the eye of faith on the word of the divine sacred Scriptures, as “on a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts.” For the ineffable source from which this lamp borrows its light is the Light which shineth in darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not, the Light, in order to seeing which our hearts must be purified by faith; for “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God;” and “we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Then after death shall come the true life, and after desolation the true consolation, that life shall deliver our “souls from death” that con …

16. Neither may we think that Christ shall so give up the kingdom to God, even the Father, as that He shall take it away from Himself. For some vain talkers have thought even this. For when it is said, “He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father,” He Himself is not excluded; because He is one God together with the Father. But that word “until” deceives those who are careless readers of the divine Scriptures, but eager for controversies. For the text continues, “For He must reign, until He hath put all enemies under His feet;” as though, when He had so put them, He would no more reign. Neither do they perceive that this is said in the same way as that other text, “His heart is established: He shall not be afraid, until He see His desire upon His enemies.” For He will not then be afraid when He has seen it. …

But what we believe as to Christ’s action in the future, when He shall come from heaven to judge the quick and the dead, has no bearing upon the life which we now lead here; for it forms no part of what He did upon earth, but is part of what He shall do at the end of the world. And it is to this that the apostle refers in what immediately follows the passage quoted above: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.”

29. Thus the spirit of man, cleaving unto the Spirit of God, lusts against the flesh, that is, against itself: but for itself, in order that those motions, whether in the flesh or in the soul, after man, not after God, which as yet exist through the sickness man hath gotten, may be restrained by continence, that so health may be gotten; and man, not living after man, may now be able to say, “But I live, now not I, but there liveth in me Christ.” For where not I, there more happily I: and, when any evil motion after man arises, unto which he, who with the mind serves the Law of God, consents not, let him say that also, “Now it is not I that do this.” To such forsooth are said those words, which we, as partners and sharers with them, ought to listen to. …