A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter 3
3 Theirs is Comparatively a Harmless Error, Who Say that a Man Lives Here Without Sin PL 44, 202
They therefore are not a very dangerous set of persons and they ought to be urged to show, if they are able, that they are themselves such, who hold that man lives or has lived here without any sin whatever. There are indeed passages of Scripture, in which I apprehend it is definitely stated that no man who lives on earth, although enjoying freedom of will, can be found without sin; as, for instance, the place where it is written, “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified.” If, however, anybody shall have succeeded in showing that this text and the other similar ones ought to be taken in a different sense from their obvious one, and shall have proved that some man or men have spent a sinless life on earth,—whoever does not, not merely refrain from much opposing him, but also does not rejoice with him to the full, is afflicted by extraordinary goads of envy. Moreover, if there neither is, has been, nor will be any man endowed with such perfection of purity (which I am more inclined to believe), and yet it is firmly set forth and thought there is or has been, or is to be,—so far as I can judge, no great error is made, and certainly not a dangerous one, when a man is thus carried away by a certain benevolent feeling; provided that he who thinks so much of another, does not think himself to be such a being, unless he has ascertained that he really and clearly is such.
Proinde non multum molesti sunt, et instandum est eis, ut si possunt, ostendant ita esse, qui dicunt vivere hic hominem, sive vixisse sine ullo omnino peccato. Nam si testimonia Scripturarum, quibus existimo definitum, nullum hominem hic viventem, quamvis utatur libero arbitrio, inveniri sine peccato, sicuti est, Ne intres in judicium cum servo tuo, quoniam non justificabitur in conspectu tuo omnis vivens , et caetera talia quisquam docere potuerit aliter accipienda quam sonant, et demonstraverit aliquem vel aliquos sine ullo hic vixisse peccato; qui non ei, non solum minime adversatus, verum etiam plurimum gratulatus fuerit, non mediocribus invidentiae stimulis agitatur. Quin etiam si nemo est, aut fuit, aut erit, quod magis credo, tali puritate perfectus, et tamen esse, aut fuisse, aut fore defenditur et putatur, quantum ego judicare possum, non multum erratur, nec perniciose, cum quadam quisque benevolentia fallitur: si tamen qui hoc putat, se ipsum talem esse non putet, nisi revera ac liquido talem se esse perspexerit.