(4) What shall we say then? [Is] the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known (o) lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
(4) An objection: What then? Are the law and sin the same thing, and do they agree together? No, he says: sin is reproved and condemned by the law. But because sin cannot abide to be reproved, and was not in a manner felt until it was provoked and stirred up by the law, it takes occasion by this to be more outrageous, and yet by no fault of the law.
(o) By the word "lust" in this place he does not mean evil lusts themselves, but the fountain from which they come, for the heathen philosophers themselves condemned wicked lusts, though somewhat poorly. But as for the fountain of lust, they could not so much as determine it, and yet it is the very seat of the natural and unclean spot and filth.