given to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake; having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me. If there is therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any communion of spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my joy, that ye may be of the same mind, having the same love, unanimous, thinking one thing. And if he is offered on the sacrifice and service of faith, joying and rejoicing"[1] with the Philippians, to whom the apostle speaks, calling them "fellow-partakers of joy,"[2] how does he say that they are of one soul, and having a soul? Likewise also, writing respecting Timothy and himself, he says, "For I have no one like-souled, who will nobly care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's."[3]
Let not the above-mentioned people, then, call us, by way of reproach, "natural men" (ψυχικοὶ), nor the Phrygians either; for these now call those who do not apply themselves to the new prophecy "natural men" (ψυχικοὶ), with whom we shall discuss in our remarks on "Prophecy." The perfect man ought therefore to practise love, and thence to haste to the divine friendship, fulfilling the commandments from love. And loving one's enemies does not mean loving wickedness, or impiety, or adultery, or theft; but the thief, the impious, the adulterer, not as far as he sins, and in respect of the actions by which he stains the name of man, but as he is a man, and the work of God. Assuredly sin is an activity, not an existence: and therefore it is not a work of God. Now sinners are called enemies of God—enemies, that is, of the commands which they do not obey, as those who obey become friends, the one named so from their fellowship, the others from their estrangement, which is the result of free choice; for there is neither enmity nor sin without the enemy and the sinner. And the command "to covet nothing," not as if the things to be desired did not belong to us, does not teach us not to entertain desire, as those suppose who teach that the Creator is different from the first God, not as if creation was loathsome and
