Saint Augustine, The City of God, Vol. II

condemned, we find not only those things which pertain to the pleasure of the flesh, such as fornications, impurities, luxury, drunkenness, revellings; but also those things by which the vices of the mind are demonstrated, which are foreign to the pleasure of the flesh. For who
5 would not understand that servitude which is exhibited to idols, sorcery, enmities, contentions, emulations, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies are vices of the mind rather than of the flesh? Since it can indeed happen that, on account of idolatry or the error of some heresy, one might refrain from the pleasures
10 of the body; and yet even then a man, although he may seem to restrain and hold back the lusts of the flesh, is convicted by this apostolic authority of living according to the flesh, and in that he abstains from the pleasures of the flesh, he is shown to perform the damnable works of the flesh. Who would not have enmities in
15 the mind? Or who would speak in such a way to his enemy, or to one whom he considers an enemy, saying: "You have bad flesh," and not rather: "You have a bad mind toward me"? Finally, just as if someone had heard "carnalities," so to speak, they would not hesitate to attribute it to the flesh, so no one doubts that animosities pertain to the
20 mind. Why, therefore, does the teacher of the nations i.e., Paul the Apostle in faith and truth call all these things and similar ones the works of the flesh, unless it is because by that mode of speech, where the whole is signified by a part, he wishes the man himself to be understood by the name of flesh?

CAPUT III.

25 ### That the cause of sin proceeded from the soul, not from the flesh, and

that corruption contracted from sin is not a sin, but a punishment.

But if anyone says that the flesh is the cause of any vices whatsoever in bad morals, on the ground that the soul lives in such a way having been affected by the flesh,
30 he surely does not carefully observe the entire nature of man. For "the corruptible body

10 body VAF; flesh v || 18 had doubted v