Many of those, too, who belong to his school, abstain from animal food, and draw away multitudes by a feigned temperance of this kind. They hold, moreover, that some of the prophecies were uttered by those angels who made the world, and some by Satan; whom Saturninus represents as being himself an angel, the enemy of the creators of the world, but especially of the God of the Jews.
Anf-03 v.iii.i Pg 9 Bible:1Tim.4.1-1Tim.4.3 Bible:2Pet.2.1">Matt. vii. 15; xxiv. 4, 11, 24; 1 Tim. iv. 1–3; 2 Pet. ii. 1.
nor the fact that they subvert the faith of some, for their final cause is, by affording a trial to faith, to give it also the opportunity of being “approved.”1853
is cruelly tortured in confession. But although sins are attributed to the body, yet they are preceded by the guilty concupiscence of the soul; nay, the first motion of sin must be ascribed to the soul, to which the flesh acts in the capacity of a servant. By and by, when freed from the soul, the fleshsins no more.2631
2631 Hactenus. [Kaye, p. 260.]
So that in this matter goodness is unjust, and likewise imperfect, in that it leaves to destruction the more harmless substance, which sins rather by compliance than in will. Now, although Christ put not on the verity of the flesh, as your heresy is pleased to assume, He still vouchsafed to take upon Him the semblance thereof. Surely, therefore, some regard was due to it from Him, because of this His feigned assumption of it. Besides, what else is man than flesh, since no doubt it was the corporeal rather than the spiritual2632
2632 Animalis (from anima, the vital principle, “the breath of life”) is here opposed to corporalis.
element from which the Author of man’s nature gave him his designation?2633
