Origen, ON THE PRINCIPLES (PERI ARCHON - DE PRINCIPIIS), Second Part, Complete

Translated by Frederick Crombie.

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This Part: 128 Pages

Page 96

And it is with respect to this that they think the apostle uttered the words: "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." [2622] And if one were to object to them that these words were spoken of the nature of the body, which indeed, agreeably to the peculiarity of its nature, is dead, but is said to have sensibility, or wisdom [2623] which is hostile to God, or which struggles against the spirit; or if one were to say that, in a certain degree, the flesh itself was possessed of a voice, which should cry out against the endurance of hunger, or thirst, or cold, or of any discomfort arising either from abundance or poverty,--they would endeavour to weaken and impair the force of such (arguments), by showing that there were many other mental perturbations [2624] which derive their origin in no respect from the flesh, and yet against which the spirit struggles, such as ambition, avarice, emulation, envy, pride, and others like these; and seeing that with these the human mind or spirit wages a kind of contest, they lay down as the cause of all these evils, nothing else than this corporal soul, as it were, of which we have spoken above, and which is generated from the seed by a process of traducianism. They are accustomed also to adduce, in support of their assertion, the declaration of the apostle, "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, poisonings, [2625] hatred, contentions, emulations, wrath, quarrelling, dissensions, heresies, sects, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and the like;" [2626] asserting that all these do not derive their origin from the habits or pleasures of the flesh, so that all such movements are to be regarded as inherent in that substance which has not a soul, i.e., the flesh.

[2622] Rom. vii. 23.

[2623] Sensum vel sapientiam.

[2624] Passiones animae.

[2625] Veneficia. Pharmakeia. "Witchcraft" (Auth. Version).

[2626] Gal. v. 19-21.

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