Nevertheless, in the “heavy yoke that is laid on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb to the day that they return to the mother of all things,”⁠a there is found an admirable though painful instructor teaching us to be sober-minded, and convincing us that this life has become penal in consequence of that outrageous wickedness which was committed in Paradise, and that all to which the New Testament invites belongs to that future inheritance which awaits us in the world to come, and is offered for our acceptance, as a down payment, so that we may, in its own due time, obtain that of which it is the pledge. Now, therefore, let us walk in hope, and let us by the spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh, and so make progress from day to day. For “the Lord knows those who are His;” 2 Timothy 2:19 and “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God,” Romans 8:14 but by grace, not by nature. For there is only one Son of God by nature, who in His compassion became Son of man for our sakes, so that we, by nature sons of men, might by grace become through Him sons of God. For He, remaining unchangeable, took on Himself our nature, so that by it He might take us to Himself; and, holding fast His own divinity, He became partaker of our weakness, so that we, being changed into some better thing, might, by participating in His righteousness and immortality, lose our own properties of sin and mortality, and preserve whatever good quality He had implanted in our nature perfected now by sharing in the goodness of His nature. For just as by the sin of one man we have fallen into a misery so deplorable, so by the righteousness of one Man, who also is God, we shall come to a blessedness inconceivably exalted. Nor ought anyone to trust that he has passed from the one man to the other until he has reached that place where there is no temptation, and have entered into the peace which he seeks in the many and various conflicts of this war, in which “the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” Galatians 5:17 Now, such a war as this would have had no existence if human nature had, in the exercise of free will, continued steadfast in the uprightness in which it was created. But now in its misery it makes war on itself, because in its blessedness it would not continue at peace with God; and this, though it is a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognize that a war is to be waged. For it is better to contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them. Better, I say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of deliverance. We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is forever subordinated to what is above it. But if (which God forbid) there had been no hope of so blessed a consummation, we would still have preferred to endure the hardship of this conflict, rather than, by our failure to resist, to yield ourselves to the dominion of vice.