The Utility of the Law

The utility of the law may be shown by this, that it obliges all whom it proves guilty of transgression to betake themselves to grace for deliverance… For it rather commands than assists; it discovers disease, but does not heal it; nay, the malady that is not healed is rather aggravated by it, so that the cure of grace is more earnestly and anxiously sought for.

–Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ,” in Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, vol. 1, part 2 (eBook: Kessinger Publishing, 2006), 589.