For the flesh lusteth against the spirit: and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary one to another: so that you do not the things that you would.
John Cassian
An inward war is being waged every day within us. The desires of the flesh and of the spirit are within one and the same person. The lust of the flesh rushes headlong into vice, delights in the worldly enjoyments that seem to satisfy. By contrast the opposed desire of the spirit is so eager to cleave entirely to spiritual pursuits that it in an exaggerated way chooses even to exclude the necessary uses of the flesh. By wishing to be so inseparably attached to spiritual things it refuses to take care of its own bodily fragility.
Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.