Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
HOW THE FLESH IS CALLED SINFUL. [1] Thus every soul is reckoned as being in Adam until it is reckoned anew in Christ; unclean for as long as it is not so reckoned anew, and sinful precisely because unclean, taking on disgrace too from its partnership with the flesh. [2] For although the flesh is called sinful — the flesh whose course we are forbidden to walk, whose works, lusting against the spirit, stand condemned, on account of which men are branded 'carnal' — the flesh is not, on that account, disreputable in its own name. For it neither thinks nor perceives anything on its own account, so as to persuade or to command sin. And why should it? It is a service — and a service not of the kind a slave is, or a lesser friend, terms that belong to living beings, but of the kind a cup is, or any similar thing: a body, not a soul. For a cup, too, is in the service of one who thirsts; yet unless the thirsty man has applied the cup to himself, the cup will serve nothing at all. [3] To such a degree does the man of earth possess no property of his own, nor is the flesh 'man' in the sense of being one power of the soul and one person alongside another; rather it is a thing of a wholly different substance and a wholly different condition, assigned to the soul nonetheless as furniture, as an instrument for the offices of life. The flesh, therefore, is reproved in Scripture because the soul does nothing without the flesh in the working of lust, gluttony, drunkenness, cruelty, idolatry, and the rest of the carnal things — carnal not in their sensations, but in their effects. [4] Finally, the very sense of transgressions, even without their effects, is regularly imputed to the soul. 'Whoever has looked with desire has already committed adultery in his heart.' But on the other hand, what is the flesh, without the soul, in the working of honesty, justice, endurance, chastity? Further, what sort of thing is it, to charge someone with crimes to whose credit you will not enter even its own good evidence? But that through which the offense is committed is arraigned, so that the one by whom the offense is committed may be burdened as well — even to the point of an accusation against the very service rendered. The graver resentment falls on the one in command, when the offices under him are struck at; the one who gives the order is beaten more, since the one who merely obeys is not excused either.