d to be holy. We must all live. We must all, as we
suppose, in one shape or other give account for our actions; and
accounts of the conflict are most individually interesting when it is
an open wrestle with the enemy; as we find in the penances and
austerities of the Catholic saints, or when the difficulties of belief
are confessed and detailed, as in David's Psalms, or in the Epistles
of St. Paul. St. Paul, like the rest of mankind, found a law in his
members warring against the law which was in his heart. The problem
presented to him was how one was to be brought into subjection to the
other, and the solution was by 'the putting on of Christ.' St. Paul's
mind was charged with the ideas of Oriental and Greek philosophy then
prevalent in the Roman Empire. His hearers understood him, because he
spoke in the language of the prevailing speculations. We who have not
the clue cannot, perhaps, perfectly understand him; but his words have
been variously interpreted as human intelligence has expanded, and
have formed the basis of the two great theologies which have been
developed out of Christianity. The Christian religion taught that evil
could not be overcome by natural human strength. The Son of God had
come miraculously upon earth, had lived a life of stainless purity,
and had been offered as a sacrifice to redeem men conditionally from
the power of sin. The conditions, as English Protestant theology
understands them, are nowhere more completely represented than in the
'Pilgrim's Progress.' The Catholic theology, rising as it did in the
two centuries immediately following St. Paul, approached probably
nearer to what he really intended to say.

Catholic theology, as a system, is a development of Platonism. The
Platonists had discovered that the seat of moral evil was material
substance. In matter, and therefore in the human body, there was
either some inherent imperfection, or some ingrained perversity and
antagonism to good. The soul so long as it was attached to the body
was necessarily infected by it; and as human life on earth consisted
in the connection of soul and body, every single man was necessarily
subject to infirmity. Catholic theology accepted the position and
formulated an escape from it. The evil in matter was a fact. It was
explained by Adam's sin. But there it was. The taint was inherited by
all Adam's posterity. The flesh of man was incurably vitiated, and if
he was to be saved a new body must be prepared f