Job 14:5

“Exsecranda” autem “dies in qua natus sum, et ut non sit optanda,” inquit Jeremias: non absolute exsecrandam dicens generationem, sed populi peccata ægre ferens et inobedientiam. Subjungit itaque: “Cur enim natus sum ut viderem labores et dolores, et in perpetuo probro fuerunt dies mei?” Quin etiam omnes, qui prædicabant veritatem, propier eorum, qui audiebant, inobedientiam, quæ rebantur ad pœnam, et veniebant in periculum. “Cur enim non fuit uterus matris meæ sepulcrum, ne viderem affiictionem Jacob et laborera generis Isræl?” ait Esdras propheta. “Nullus est a sorde mundus,” ait Job, “nee si sit quidera una dies vita ejus.” Dicant ergo nobis, ubi fornicatus est infans natus? vel quomodo sub Adæcecidit exsecrationem, qui nihil est operatus? Restat ergo eis, ut videtur, consequenter, ut dicant malam esse generationem, non solum corporis, sed etiam animæ, per quam exsistit corpus. …

In Job: “For who is pure from filth? Not one; even if his life be of one day on the earth.” Also in the fiftieth Psalm: “Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins hath my mother conceived me.” Also in the Epistle of John: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

Let us be imitators also of those who in goat-skins and sheep-skins went about proclaiming the coming of Christ; I mean Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel among the prophets, with those others to whom a like testimony is borne [in Scripture]. Abraham was specially honoured, and was called the friend of God; yet he, earnestly regarding the glory of God, humbly declared, “I am but dust and ashes.” Moreover, it is thus written of Job, “Job was a righteous man, and blameless, truthful, God-fearing, and one that kept himself from all evil.” But bringing an accusation against himself, he said, “No man is free from defilement, even if his life be but of one day.” Moses was called faithful in all God’s house; and through his instrumentality, God punished Egypt with plagues and tortures. …

A few years ago there lived at Rome one Jovinian, who is said to have persuaded nuns of even advanced age to marry, not, indeed, by seduction, as if he wanted to make any of them his wife, but by contending that virgins who dedicated themselves to the ascetic life had no more merit before God than believing wives. It never entered his mind, however, along with this conceit, to venture to affirm that children of men are born without original sin. If, indeed, he had added such an opinion, the women might have more readily consented to marry, to give birth to such pure offspring. …

After this he adduced the passages which are usually quoted against them. He does not attempt to explain these passages, but, by quoting what seem to be contrary ones, he has entangled the questions more tightly. “For,” says he, “there are passages of Scripture which are in opposition to those who ignorantly suppose that they are able to destroy the liberty of the will, or the possibility of not sinning, by the authority of Scripture. For,” he adds, “they are in the habit of quoting against us what holy Job said: ‘Who is pure from uncleanness? Not one; even if he be an infant of only one day upon the earth.’” Then he proceeds to give a sort of answer to this passage by help of other quotations; as when Job himself said: “For although I am a righteous and blameless man, I have become a subject for mockery,”, not understanding that a man may be called righteous, who has gone so far towards …

Furthermore, concerning these words of Job, “My heart shall not reproach me in all my life,” we remark, that it is in this present life of ours, in which we live by faith, that our heart does not reproach us, if the same faith whereby we believe unto righteousness does not neglect to rebuke our sin. On this principle the apostle says: “The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Now it is a good thing to avoid concupiscence, and this good the just man would, who lives by faith; and still he does what he hates, because he has concupiscence, although “he goes not after his lusts;” if he has done this, he has himself at that time really done it, so as to yield to, and acquiesce in, and obey the desire of sin. His heart then reproaches him, because it reproaches himself, and not his sin which dwelleth in him. …

There was a change of the sacramental ordinances made after the coming of Him whose advent they prefigured; but there was no change in the Mediator’s help, who, even previous to His coming in the flesh, all along delivered the ancient members of His body by their faith in His incarnation; and in respect of ourselves too, though we were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, we are quickened together in Christ, in whom we are circumcised with the circumcision not made with the hand, but such as was prefigured by the old manual circumcision, that the body of sin might be done away which was born with us from Adam. The propagation of a condemned origin condemns us, unless we are cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh, in which He was sent without sin, who nevertheless concerning sin condemned sin, having been made sin for us. …

As to the passage, which he seemed to himself to indite in a pious vein, as it were, “If nature is of God, there cannot be original sin in it,” would not another person seem even to him to give a still more pious turn to it, thus: “If nature is of God, there cannot arise any sin in it?” And yet this is not true. The Manicheans, indeed, meant to assert this, and they endeavoured to steep in all sorts of evil the very nature of God itself, and not His creature, made out of nothing. For evil arose in nothing else than what was good, not, however, the supreme and unchangeable good which is God’s nature, but that which was made out of nothing by the wisdom of God. This, then, is the reason why man is claimed for a divine work; for he would not be man unless he were made by the operation of God. …

These things being so, what advantage is it to new heretics, enemies of the cross of Christ and opposers of divine grace, that they seem sound from the error of the Manicheans, if they are dying by another pestilence of their own? What advantage is it to them, that in the praise of the creature they say “that the good God is the maker of those that are born, by whom all things were made, and that the children of men are His work,” whom the Manicheans say are the work of the prince of darkness; when between them both, or among them both, God’s creation, which is in infants, is perishing? For both of them refuse to have it delivered by Christ’s flesh and blood, the one, because they destroy that very flesh and blood, as if He did not take upon Him these at all in man or of man; and the other, because they assert that there is no evil in infants from which they should be delivered by the sa …

Let us, then, see that third point, which in these men is not less shocking to every member of Christ and to His whole body, that they contend that there are in this life, or that there have been, righteous men having absolutely no sin. In which presumption they most manifestly contradict the Lord’s Prayer, wherein, with truthful heart and with daily words, all the members of Christ cry aloud, “Forgive us our debts.” Let us see, then, what Cyprian, most glorious in the Lord, thought of this, what he not only said for the instruction of the Churches, not, of course, of the Manicheans, but of the catholics, but also committed to letters and to memory. …

10. “For, behold, in iniquities I was conceived” ( ver. 5 ). As though he were saying, They are conquered that have done what thou, David, hast done: for this is not a little evil and little sin, to wit, adultery and man-slaying. What of them that from the day that they were born of their mother’s womb, have done no such thing? even to them dost thou ascribe some sins, in order that He may conquer all men when He beginneth to be judged. David hath taken upon him the person of mankind, and hath heeded the bonds of all men, hath considered the offspring of death, hath adverted to the origin of iniquity, and he saith, “For, behold, in iniquities I was conceived.” Was David born of adultery; being born of Jesse, a righteous man, and his own wife? What is it that he saith himself to have been in iniquity conceived, except that iniquity is drawn from Adam? Even the very bond of death, with ini …

“There is no man clean from sin; even though he has lived but for one day.” And the years of man’s life are many in number. “The stars are not pure in his sight, and his angels he charged with folly.” If there is sin in heaven, how much more must there be sin on earth? If they are stained with guilt who have no bodily temptations, how much more must we be, enveloped as we are in frail flesh and forced to cry each one of us with the apostle: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? For in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing.” For we do not what we would but what we would not; the soul desires to do one thing, the flesh is compelled to do another. …