The Stromata, or Miscellanies

What is voluntary is either what is by desire, or what is by choice, or what is of intention. Closely allied to each other are these things— sin, mistake, crime. It is sin, for example, to live luxuriously and licentiously; a misfortune, to wound one's friend in ignorance, taking him for an enemy; and crime, to violate graves or commit sacrilege. Sinning arises from being unable to determine what ought to be done, or being unable to do it; as doubtless one falls into a ditch either through not knowing, or through inability to leap across through feebleness of body. But application to the training of ourselves, and subjection to the commandments, is in our own power; with which if we will have nothing to do, by abandoning ourselves wholly to lust, we shall sin, nay rather, wrong our own soul. For the noted Laius says in the tragedy:—

“None of these things of which you admonish me have escaped me;
But notwithstanding that I am in my senses, Nature compels me;”

i.e., his abandoning himself to passion. Medea, too, herself cries on the stage:—

“And I am aware what evils I am to perpetrate,
But passion is stronger than my resolutions.”

Further, not even Ajax is silent; but, when about to kill himself, cries:—

“No pain gnaws the soul of a free man like dishonour.
Thus do I suffer; and the deep stain of calamity
Ever stirs me from the depths, agitated
By the bitter stings of rage.”

Anger made these the subjects of tragedy, and lust made ten thousand others— Phædra, Anthia, Eriphyle,—

“Who took the precious gold for her dear husband.”

For another play represents Thrasonides of the comic drama as saying:—

“A worthless wench made me her slave.”

Mistake is a sin contrary to calculation; and voluntary sin is crime (ἀδικία); and crime is voluntary wickedness. Sin, then, is on my part voluntary. Wherefore says the apostle, “Sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the law, but under grace.” Addressing those who have believed, he says, “For by His stripes we were healed.” Mistake is the involuntary action of another towards me, while a crime (ἀδικία) alone is voluntary, whether my act or another's. These differences of sins are alluded to by the Psalmist, when he calls those blessed whose iniquities (ἀνομίας) God has blotted out, and whose sins (ἁμαρτίας) He has covered. Others He does not impute, and the rest He forgives. For it is written, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin, and in whose mouth there is no fraud.” This blessedness came on those who had been chosen by God through Jesus Christ our Lord. For “love hides the multitude of sins.” And they are blotted out by Him “who desires the repentance rather than the death of a sinner.” And those are not reckoned that are not the effect of choice; “for he who has lusted has already committed adultery,” it is said. And the illuminating Word forgives sins: “And in that time, says the Lord, they shall seek for the iniquity of Israel, and it shall not exist; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found.” For who is like Me? And who shall stand before My face? You see the one God declared good, rendering according to desert, and forgiving sins. John, too, manifestly teaches the differences of sins, in his larger Epistle, in these words: “If any man see his brother sin a sin that is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life: for these that sin not unto death,” he says. For “there is a sin unto death: I do not say that one is to pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin; and there is a sin not unto death.”

David, too, and Moses before David, show the knowledge of the three precepts in the following words: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly;” as the fishes go down to the depths in darkness; for those which have not scales, which Moses prohibits touching, feed at the bottom of the sea. “Nor stands in the way of sinners,” as those who, while appearing to fear the Lord, commit sin, like the sow, for when hungry it cries, and when full knows not its owner. “Nor sits in the chair of pestilences,” as birds ready for prey. And Moses enjoined not to eat the sow, nor the eagle, nor the hawk, nor the raven, nor any fish without scales. So far Barnabas. And I heard one skilled in such matters say that “the counsel of the ungodly” was the heathen, and “the way of sinners” the Jewish persuasion, and explain “the chair of pestilence” of heresies. And another said, with more propriety, that the first blessing was assigned to those who had not followed wicked sentiments which revolt from God; the second to those who do not remain in the wide and broad road, whether they be those who have been brought up in the law, or Gentiles who have repented. And “the chair of pestilences” will be the theatres and tribunals, or rather the compliance with wicked and deadly powers, and complicity with their deeds. “But his delight is in the law of the Lord.” Peter in his Preaching called the Lord, Law and Logos. The legislator seems to teach differently the interpretation of the three forms of sin— understanding by the mute fishes sins of word, for there are times in which silence is better than speech, for silence has a safe recompense; sins of deed, by the rapacious and carnivorous birds. The sow delights in dirt and dung; and we ought not to have “a conscience” that is “defiled.”

Justly, therefore, the prophet says, “The ungodly are not so: but as the chaff which the wind drives away from the face of the earth. Wherefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment” (being already condemned, for “he that believes not is condemned already”), “nor sinners in the counsel of the righteous,” inasmuch as they are already condemned, so as not to be united to those that have lived without stumbling. “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous; and the way of the ungodly shall perish.”

Again, the Lord clearly shows sins and transgressions to be in our own power, by prescribing modes of cure corresponding to the maladies; showing His wish that we should be corrected by the shepherds, in Ezekiel; blaming, I am of opinion, some of them for not keeping the commandments. “That which was enfeebled you have not strengthened,” and so forth, down to, “and there was none to search out or turn away.”