On Continence 1–16

It is difficult to discuss fittingly and worthily the virtue of the soul that is called continence; but he whose great gift this virtue is will help our smallness under the load of so heavy a burden. For he who gives it to his faithful who are continent himself gives speech about it to his ministers who speak of it. Accordingly, as we are about to speak on so great a matter what he himself may give, we first state and prove that continence is a gift of God. In the book of Wisdom we have it written that no one can be continent unless God gives it; and the Lord, speaking of that greater and more glorious continence by which one holds back from the bond of marriage, says: "Not all receive this word, but those to whom it has been given." And since married chastity too cannot be kept unless it holds back from unlawful intercourse, the apostle proclaimed both to be a gift of God, when he was speaking of both kinds of life, that is, the married life and the life without marriage, and said: "I would that all men were as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that."

And lest continence should seem to be needed, and to be hoped for from the Lord, only against the lust of the lower parts of the flesh, it is also sung in the psalm: "Set, O Lord, a guard on my mouth, and a door of continence around my lips." Now in this testimony of the divine word, if we understand "mouth" as we ought to understand it, we recognize how great a gift of God is the continence placed there. For it is a small thing to restrain the mouth of the body, so that nothing unfitting bursts out of it in the sound of the voice; within is the mouth of the heart, where he who spoke those words and wrote them down for us to say desired that a guard and a door of continence be set for him by the Lord. For there are many things we do not say with the mouth of the body and yet cry out in the heart; but no word of anything goes out from the mouth of the body when there is silence about it in the heart. What does not flow out from there, then, does not sound outside; but what does flow out from there, if it is evil, defiles the soul even if it does not move the tongue. Continence, therefore, must be placed where the conscience speaks even of those who keep silent. For it is through the door of continence that there does not go out from there what would pollute the life of the one who thinks it, even with the lips of the flesh closed.

Then, to show more plainly the inner mouth that he meant by those words, after he had said, "Set, O Lord, a guard on my mouth, and a door of continence around my lips," he at once added: "Do not incline my heart to evil words." What is the inclining of the heart but consent? For he has not yet "spoken" who, when the suggestions of any sort of images come to mind in the heart, has consented to them by no inclining of the heart. But if he has consented, he has already spoken in the heart, even if he has made no sound with the mouth; even if he has not done with his hand or any other part of the body what he has nevertheless already resolved in thought to do, he is guilty under the divine laws, though hidden from human senses, by a word spoken in the heart, even with no deed committed through the body. Indeed, no one would have moved a limb outwardly in a deed unless the beginning of that deed had gone before inwardly in a word. For it is not written falsely: "The word is the beginning of every work." People do many things with closed mouth, tongue still, voice restrained; yet they do nothing by an action of the body that they have not first said in the heart. And therefore, since there are many sins in inward words that are not in outward deeds, but none in outward deeds that are not preceded by inward words, there will be purity of innocence from both if the door of continence is set around the inner lips.

This is why the Lord himself also said with his own mouth: "Cleanse what is within, and what is without will be clean." And again in another place, when he was refuting the foolish talk of the Jews, who were finding fault with his disciples for eating with unwashed hands, he said: "Not what enters the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." If this whole saying is taken of the mouth of the body, it is absurd. For vomit does not defile one whom food does not defile; food enters the mouth, vomit comes out of the mouth. But beyond doubt the first words refer to the mouth of the flesh, where he says, "Not what enters the mouth defiles a man"; the latter to the mouth of the heart, where he says, "but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." Then, when the apostle Peter asked him for an explanation of this as of a parable, he answered: "Are you also still without understanding? Do you not understand that everything that enters the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the drain?" Here we certainly recognize the mouth of the flesh, into which food enters. But in what he adds, so that we might recognize the mouth of the heart, the slowness of our heart would not follow unless the Truth deigned to walk even with the slow. For he says: "But what comes out of the mouth comes out of the heart," as though he were saying: when you hear "of the mouth," understand "of the heart." I speak of both, but I explain the one by the other. The inner man has an inner mouth, and the inner ear discerns it; what comes out of this mouth comes out of the heart, and these things defile a man. Next, leaving aside the word "mouth," which can also be understood of the body, he shows more plainly what he means. "For out of the heart," he says, "come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are what defile a man." Certainly there is none of these evils, which can also be committed with the members of the body, that is not preceded by an evil thought which defiles a man, even if something prevents the shameful and criminal works of the members from following. For if the opportunity is not given and the hand is free of killing a man, is the murderer's heart therefore clean of the crime? Or if someone cannot steal another's property as he wishes, is he therefore not a thief in the will itself? Or if she is chaste whom an unchaste man wishes to commit adultery with, has he therefore not committed adultery with her in his heart? Or if a prostitute is not found in the brothel, does the man who looks for her therefore not commit sexual immorality in his mind? Or if time or place is lacking to one who desires to harm his neighbor by a lie, has he therefore not already spoken false testimony with the inner mouth? Or if someone, from fear of men, does not dare to sound blasphemy with the tongue of the flesh, is he therefore not guilty of this crime, who says in his heart, "There is no God"? So too the other evil deeds of men, which no movement of the body performs and no bodily sense perceives, have their hidden guilty ones, whom consent in thought alone defiles, that is, the evil word of the inner man. Fearing that his heart would be inclined to this, the psalmist asks the Lord to set a door of continence around the lips of this mouth, to restrain the heart so that it is not inclined to evil words; and to restrain it by not allowing thought to proceed to consent. For thus, according to the apostle's precept, sin does not reign in our mortal body, and we do not present our members to sin as weapons of iniquity. Those are certainly strangers to fulfilling this precept who do not move their members to sin only because no opportunity is allowed them; if it were present, they would at once show by the movements of their members, as of weapons, who reigns in them within. So, as far as it lies in them, they present their members to sin as weapons of iniquity, because they will what they do not present only because they cannot.

And for this reason that continence which is usually called continence most of all and most properly, restraining the genital members by modesty, is violated by no transgression if the higher continence, of which we have long been speaking, is kept in the heart. That is why the Lord, after saying, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts," went on to add what belongs to evil thoughts: "murders, adulteries," and the rest. He did not name them all, but by naming some as examples he reminded us to understand the others as well. None of these can be done unless an evil thought has gone before, by which what is done outwardly is set up within; and, coming out of the mouth of the heart, it already defiles a man even if, no opportunity being allowed, it is not done outwardly through the members of the body. When, therefore, the door of continence has been set on the mouth of the heart, from which all the things that defile a man come out, if nothing of that kind is allowed to go out from it, there follows a cleanness in which the conscience can now rejoice, although it is not yet that perfection where continence will not struggle with vice. But now, as long as the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, it is enough for us not to consent to the evils that we feel in ourselves. When that consent happens, then there goes out from the mouth of the heart what defiles a man. But when consent is held back by continence, the evil of carnal concupiscence, against which spiritual desire fights, is not allowed to do harm.

But it is one thing to fight well, which is the case now, when one resists the strife of death; another to have no adversary, which will be the case then, when death, the last enemy, will be destroyed. For continence itself, when it curbs and restrains lusts, at once both seeks the good to whose immortality we are tending and rejects the evil with which we contend in this mortality. Of the former it is the lover and the watcher; of the latter both the enemy and the witness; seeking what is honorable and fleeing what is shameful. Continence would certainly not labor in curbing desires if nothing pleased us contrary to what is fitting, if nothing out of evil concupiscence resisted our good will. The apostle cries out: "I know," he says, "that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find." For now good can be done, in that one does not consent to evil concupiscence; but the good will be accomplished when evil concupiscence itself comes to an end. And again the same teacher of the Gentiles cries out: "I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind."

None experience this fight in themselves except those who wage war for the virtues and war down the vices; nothing overcomes the evil of concupiscence except the good of continence. But there are some who, wholly ignorant of the law of God, do not even count evil desires among their enemies, and serving them in wretched blindness even think themselves happy by satisfying rather than taming them. Others have come to know them through the law (for "through the law comes the knowledge of sin," and "I would not have known concupiscence," he says, "unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet'"), and yet they are conquered by their assault, because they live under the law, by which what is good is commanded but not also given; they do not live under grace, which gives through the Holy Spirit what is commanded through the law. In these the law came in so that the offense might abound. The prohibition increased concupiscence and made it unconquerable, so that transgression was added, which did not exist without the law, even though sin did; "for where there is no law, there is no transgression." So the law, forbidding sin without the help of grace, is in addition the strength of sin once committed. Hence the apostle says: "The strength of sin is the law." Nor is it surprising that human weakness has added strength to evil even from the good law, while it trusts in its own strength to fulfill the law; for, ignorant of the righteousness of God, which he gives to the weak, and wishing to establish its own, which the weak lacks, it is not subject to the righteousness of God, reprobate and proud. But if the law, as a tutor, leads to grace the man it has made a transgressor, wounded more gravely precisely so that he may desire the physician, then against the harmful sweetness by which concupiscence was conquering, the Lord gives a beneficial sweetness by which continence may take greater delight; and our earth yields its fruit, by which the soldier is fed who, with God's help, wars down sin.

Such soldiers the apostle's trumpet rouses to battle with this sound: "Let not sin therefore reign," he says, "in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires; and do not present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity, but present yourselves to God as living from the dead, and your members to God as weapons of righteousness. For sin will not have dominion over you; for you are not under the law but under grace." And in another place: "So then, brothers," he says, "we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." This, then, is what is being done now, as long as this mortal life of ours is under grace: that sin, that is, the concupiscence of sin (for in this place he calls it by the name of sin), should not reign in our mortal body. And it is shown to reign if its desires are obeyed. There is therefore in us a concupiscence of sin which must not be allowed to reign; there are its desires, which must not be obeyed, lest it reign over those who obey. For this reason let concupiscence not usurp our members for itself, but let continence claim them for itself, so that they may be weapons of righteousness for God and not weapons of iniquity for sin; for so sin will not have dominion over us. For we are not under the law, which commands the good but does not give it, but we are under grace, which, by making us love what the law commands, can command the free.

Likewise, when he urges us not to live according to the flesh, lest we die, but by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the flesh, that we may live, he is certainly sounding the trumpet: he shows the war in which we are engaged, and rouses us to fight fiercely and put our enemies to death, lest we be put to death by them. And who these enemies are he has stated plainly enough. Those whom he wished us to put to death are the very ones, namely the works of the flesh. For so he says: "But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live." And to know what these are, let us hear the same apostle writing to the Galatians and saying: "Now the works of the flesh are plain, which are acts of sexual immorality, impurities, debaucheries, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strifes, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, carousings, and the like, of which I forewarn you, as I have forewarned you, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God." There too, in saying this, he was showing the same war and rousing the soldiers of Christ with the same heavenly and spiritual trumpet to put these enemies to death. For he had said above: "But I say, walk by the Spirit and do not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." So he wants those who are set under grace to wage this conflict against the works of the flesh. And to show these works of the flesh he added what I have mentioned above: "Now the works of the flesh are plain, which are acts of sexual immorality," and the rest, whether those he mentioned or those he reminded us to understand, adding above all, "and the like." Then, in this battle, as though bringing out a spiritual battle line against the carnal army, he says: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, continence; against such there is no law." He did not say "against these," lest they be thought to be the only ones (although even if he had said that, we ought to have understood all the goods of the same kind we could think of), but he said "against such," meaning both these and whatever are like them. Yet in placing continence last among the goods he mentioned, the continence we have now undertaken to discuss and on account of which we have already said much, he especially wished it to cling to our minds. For it is of the greatest strength in this war in which the spirit lusts against the flesh, since in a way it crucifies the very lusts of the flesh. Hence, when the apostle had said this, he at once added: "But those who are Jesus Christ's have crucified their flesh with its passions and lusts." This is the action of continence; so are the works of the flesh put to death. But they put to death those whom concupiscence, when they fall away from continence, draws to consent to committing such works.

But in order not to fall away from continence, we must be especially watchful against those snares of diabolical suggestions, lest we presume on our own strength; for "cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man." And who is this but a man? So he cannot truthfully say that he does not put his hope in man who puts it in himself. For this too, living according to man, what is it but living according to the flesh? Let him who is tempted by such a suggestion hear, then, and if there is any Christian sense in him, let him tremble; let him hear, I say: "If you live according to the flesh, you will die."

But someone will say to me that it is one thing to live according to man and another to live according to the flesh: because, of course, man is a rational creature and in him there is a rational mind, by which he differs from the beast; but the flesh is the weak and earthly part of man, and therefore living according to it is faulty. For this reason, he will say, the one who lives according to man does not live according to the flesh, but rather according to that part of man by which he is man, that is, according to the spirit of the mind, by which he excels the beasts. This argument may perhaps carry some weight in the schools of the philosophers; but we, in order to understand the apostle of Christ, ought to observe how Christian books are accustomed to speak. It is certainly the faith of all of us that, for Christ to come, a man was assumed by the Word of God, and certainly not without a rational soul, as some heretics would have it; and yet we read: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." What is to be understood by "flesh" here but man? "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God": what can be understood but every man? "To you all flesh shall come": what is it but every man? "You gave him power over all flesh": what is it but over every man? "By the works of the law no flesh shall be justified": what is it but no man shall be justified? The same apostle expresses this more plainly elsewhere: "A man is not justified," he says, "by the works of the law." He also rebukes the Corinthians, saying: "Are you not carnal, and walking according to man?" When he had called them carnal, he did not say "you walk according to the flesh" but "according to man," because what did he want understood by this too but "according to the flesh"? For surely, if walking, that is, living, according to the flesh were blameworthy but according to man praiseworthy, he would not say reproachfully, "You walk according to man." Let man recognize the reproach, change his purpose, avoid destruction. Hear, O man: do not walk according to man, but according to him who made man; do not fall away from him who made you, not even to yourself. For a man was saying, one who nevertheless did not live according to man: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God." See whether he lived according to man who said these things truthfully. So when the apostle warns man not to live according to man, he gives man back to God. And he who lives not according to man but according to God surely does not live according to himself either, since he too is a man. But he is also said to live according to the flesh when he lives so, because man is understood even when only the flesh is named, as we have already shown; just as man is understood when only the soul is named, whence it is said, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers," that is, every man, and, "Seventy-five souls went down into Egypt with Jacob," that is, seventy-five men. Do not, then, live according to yourself, O man; from that you had perished, but you were sought. Do not, I say, live according to yourself; if you had perished, you have been found. Do not accuse the nature of the flesh when you hear, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die." For it could have been said, and said most truly: "If you live according to yourselves, you will die." For the devil has no flesh, and yet, because he wished to live according to himself, he did not stand in the truth. What wonder, then, if, living according to himself, when he speaks a lie he speaks from his own? This the Truth said truly of him.

When, therefore, you hear, "Sin will not have dominion over you," do not trust in yourself for sin not to have dominion, but in him to whom a certain holy man says in prayer: "Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me." For lest perhaps, when we heard, "Sin will not have dominion over us," we should exalt ourselves and ascribe this to our own strength, the apostle saw this at once and added: "For you are not under the law but under grace." So it is grace that brings it about that sin does not have dominion over you. Do not trust in yourself, then, lest from that it gain far more dominion over you. And when we hear, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live," let us not ascribe this great good to our own spirit, as though it could do these things by itself. For lest we should hold this carnal view, with the spirit dead rather than putting to death, he at once added: "For all who are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." So in order that we may put to death the works of the flesh by our spirit, we are led by the Spirit of God, who gives continence, by which we may curb, tame, and conquer concupiscence.

In this so great battle, in which man lives under grace and, when with help he fights well, rejoices in the Lord with trembling, yet even vigorous warriors, however unconquered they may be in putting to death the works of the flesh, are not without some wounds of sins; for the healing of these they truthfully say every day, "Forgive us our debts," and by that very prayer they fight far more watchfully and keenly against the same vices and against the devil, the prince and king of vices, so that his deadly suggestions may have no power. By these he further urges the sinner to excuse his sins rather than accuse them, and so those wounds are not only not healed but, even if they were not deadly, are inflicted gravely and fatally. Here, then, there is need of a more wary continence, by which man's proud appetite is held in check, by which he pleases himself and does not wish to be found blameworthy, and when he sins disdains to be convicted of having sinned himself, not accepting self-accusation in wholesome humility but rather seeking excuses in ruinous pride. To restrain this pride he asked the Lord for continence whose words I have already set down above and commended as well as I could. For when he had said, "Set, O Lord, a guard on my mouth, and a door of continence around my lips; do not incline my heart to evil words," he explained more clearly why he said this: "to make excuses in sins." For what is more evil than those words by which an evil man denies that he is evil, even when convicted of an evil deed that he cannot deny? And since he cannot hide the deed, nor call it a good deed, and sees that it is plain that he did it, he seeks to lay on another what he did, as though he could thereby remove what he deserved. Unwilling to be guilty, he rather adds to his guilt, and by excusing, not accusing, his sins he does not realize that he removes from himself not the punishment but the pardon. For with human judges, since they can be deceived, it seems to help for a time to clear by any deceit whatever what was wrongly done; but with God, who cannot be deceived, one must use not a deceitful defense but a truthful confession of sins.

And some who are accustomed to excuse their sins complain that they are driven to sin by fate, as though the stars had decreed it, and heaven had first sinned by decreeing such things so that man might afterwards sin by committing them. Others prefer to blame fortune for their sinning; they think everything is tossed about by chance happenings, and yet they insist that they know and assert this not by chance rashness but by clear reason. What madness it is, then, to attribute one's arguments to reason and to subject one's actions to chance! Others lay all the evil they do on the devil, and will not have even a share with him, though they may suspect that he urged evil on them by hidden suggestions, but cannot doubt that they themselves consented to those suggestions, wherever they came from. There are also those who extend their excuse into an accusation of God, wretched by the divine judgment, blasphemers by their own frenzy. For they bring in against him, from an opposing principle, a rebellious substance of evil, which he could not have resisted unless he had mixed a part of his own substance and nature with that rebel to be defiled and corrupted; and they say that they sin when the nature of evil prevails over the nature of God. This is the most unclean madness of the Manichaeans, whose diabolical contrivances are overturned most easily by the undoubted truth that confesses the nature of God to be incapable of defilement and corruption. And what shameful defilement and corruption is not rightly believed of those by whom God, who is supremely and incomparably good, is believed capable of defilement and corruption?

There are also those who, in excusing their sins, accuse God in such a way as to say that sins please him. "For if they displeased him," they say, "he would by no means permit them to be done by his surely almighty power." As though he had allowed sins to go unpunished even in those whom he frees from eternal punishment by the forgiveness of sins! For no one receives pardon for the heavier punishment he owed unless he has paid some punishment, even if far less than he owed; and so the bounty of mercy is bestowed in such a way that the justice of discipline is not abandoned. For even sin that seems unavenged has its own punishment following at its heels, so that no one, for what he has committed, either does not grieve with bitterness or does not grieve because of blindness. As you say, then, "Why does he permit these things, if they displease him?" so I say, "Why does he punish them, if they please him?" And so, just as I confess that these things would not happen at all unless they were permitted by the Almighty, so you must confess that the things punished by the Just One are not to be done, so that by not doing what he punishes we may deserve to learn from him why he permits what he punishes to exist. For solid food, as it is written, is for the perfect; and in it those who have made good progress already understand that it rather belonged to God's omnipotence to permit evils coming from the free choice of the will to exist. For his goodness is so almighty that it can make good even out of evils, whether by pardoning, or by healing, or by fitting and turning them to the benefit of the godly, or also by avenging them most justly. For all these things are good and most worthy of the good and almighty God, and yet they come about only out of evils. What, then, is better, what more almighty, than he who, while making nothing evil, makes good even out of evils? Those who have done evil cry to him, "Forgive us our debts": he hears, he pardons. Their evils have harmed the sinners: he comes to their aid and heals their sicknesses. The enemies of his own people rage: out of their rage he makes martyrs. Finally, he also condemns those whom he judges worthy of condemnation: though they suffer their own evils, yet he does what is good. For what is just cannot fail to be good; and certainly, as sin is unjust, so the punishment of sin is just.

It was not that God lacked the power to make man such that he could not sin; but he preferred to make him such that it lay with him to sin if he willed, and not to sin if he did not will, forbidding the one and commanding the other: so that first not sinning would be a good merit for him, and afterwards being unable to sin would be a just reward. For in the end he will make his saints such that they cannot sin at all. Indeed, he even now has such angels, whom we so love in him that we do not fear that any of them may become a devil by sinning; which we do not presume of any righteous man in the mortality of this life. But we trust that all will be such in the immortality of that life; for almighty God, who works good even out of our evils, what goods will he give when he has freed us from all evils? Much could be discussed more fully and more subtly about the good use of evil; but we have not undertaken this in the present discourse, and excessive length must be avoided.