Miscellanies 3.16.101

And that everyone who turns from sin to faith turns to life from the sinful habit as from a mother, one of the twelve prophets will bear me witness, saying: “Shall I give my firstborn for ungodliness, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul?” He does not accuse the one who said, “Increase and multiply,” but calls the first impulses from birth, by which we do not know God, ungodliness. And if someone calls birth evil on this account, let him call it good on the other, in that in it we come to know the truth. “Awake to righteousness and do not sin; for some have no knowledge of God,” clearly those who sin. Since “our wrestling is not against blood and flesh but against spiritual things,” and “the world rulers of darkness” are able to tempt, therefore pardons are given. That is why Paul too says, “I pummel my body and lead it into slavery,” because “everyone who competes exercises self-control in all things” (meaning he exercises self-control with regard to all things, not abstaining from all, but using self-controlledly those he has judged fit); “they to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable,” victorious in the wrestling, not crowned without a struggle. Some already prefer the widow to the virgin in regard to self-control, since she has scorned a pleasure she has experienced.