A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

504 A Source Book for Ancient Church History[460]as it believes itself to have the less ability, and when it is ignorantof what is within it, think that it does not possess it.Ch. 3. One must be careful to see to it that … one does notthink that a man is not made good because he can do evil and isnot compelled to an immutable necessity of doing good throughthe might of nature. For if you diligently consider it and turnyour mind to the subtler understanding of the matter, the betterand superior position of man will appear in that from which hisinferior condition was inferred. But just in this freedom in eitherdirection, in this liberty toward either side, is placed the gloryof our rational nature. Therein, I say, consists the entire honorof our nature, therein its dignity; from this the very good meritpraise, from this their reward. For there would be for those whoalways remain good no virtue if they had not been able to havechosen the evil. For since God wished to present to the rationalcreature the gift of voluntary goodness and the power of the freewill, by planting in man the possibility of turning himself towardeither side, He made His special gift the ability to be what hewould be in order that he, being capable of good and evil, coulddo either and could turn his will to either of them.Ch. 8. We defend the advantage of nature not in the sensethat we say it cannot do evil, since we declare that it is capableof good and evil; we only protect it from reproach. It shouldnot appear as if we were driven to evil by a disease of nature,we who do neither good nor bad without our will, and to whomthere is always freedom to do one of two things, since always weare able to do both.… Nothing else makes it difficult for us to dogood than long custom of sinning which has infected us since wewere children, and has gradually corrupted us for many years, sothat afterward it holds us bound to it and delivered over to it, sothat it almost seems as if it had the same force as nature.If before the Law, as we are told, and long before the appearanceof the Redeemer, various persons can be named who livedjust and holy lives, how much more after His appearance must