The Institution of Christian Religion

The children of God therefore are so delivered by regeneration from the bondage of sin, not that having now obtained the full possession of liberty, they should feel no more trouble by their flesh but that they should have remaining a continual matter of strife, wherewith they may be exercised, and not only be exercised, but also may better learn their own weakness. And in this point all writers of sound judgement agree together, that there remaineth in man regenerate a feeding of evil, from whence continually spring desires that allure and stir him to sin. They confess also that the holy ones are still so holden entangled with that disease of lusting, that they can not withstand but that sometime they are tickled and stirred either to lust or to covetousness, or to ambition or to other vices. Neither is it needful to labour much in searching what the old writers have thought herein, forasmuch as only Augustine may be sufficient for it,¹ which hath faithfully & with great diligence gathered all their judgements. Therefore let y• readers gather out of him, such certainty as they shall desire to learn of the opinion of antiquity. But there may seem to be this difference between him & us, that he when he granteth that the faithful so long as they dwell in a mortal body are so holden bound with lusts, that they can not but lust, yet dareth not call that disease sin: but being content to express it by the name of weakness, he teacheth that then only it becometh sin, when either work or consent is added to conceit or receiving, that is, when will yieldeth to the first desire: but we account the very same for sin, that man is tickled with any desire at all against the law of God: Yea we affirm that the very corruption that engendereth such desires in us, is sin. We teach therefore that there is alway ⟨p. 130⟩sin in the holy ones, until they be unclothed of the mortal body, because there remaineth in their flesh that perverseness of lusting that fighteth against uprightness. And yet he doth not alway forbear to use the name of Sin,² as when he saith: This Paul calleth by the name of sin, from whence spring all sins unto a fleshly concupiscence. This, as much as pertaineth to the holy ones, loseth the kingdom in earth, and perisheth in heaven.