Annotation CCXLI

”We know that the law is spiritual.” — Romans 7:14

The exposition of this passage retracted.

Augustine, in the book of Propositions from the epistle to the Romans, expounding these words — “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I work, I understand not. For it is not the good that I will, that I do; but the evil that I hate, that I do” — down to that passage, “Unhappy man that I am,” etc. — judged that that [man in the text], who was spiritual, is to be taken not from the person of the Apostle, but from the person of a man placed under the law, and not yet constituted under grace, who, willing to do well, [being] conquered by concupiscence, does ill. Augustine reviewed this passage [in] the first [book] of the Retractations, chapter 23, wishing these words of the Apostle to be expounded better and more rightly, if they be understood of the person of a man constituted under grace — on account of the body of flesh, which is not yet spiritual, and on account of the concupiscence of the flesh, of whose motions the saints in this life are not free, although they resist them, and consent not to them unto evil.