Soon after Augustine’s conversion, he was walking down the street in Milan, Italy. There he accosted a prostitute whom he had known most intimately. She called but he would not answer. He kept right on walking. \u201cAugustine,\u201d she called again. \u201cIt is I!\u201d Without slowing down, but with assurance of Christ in his heart, he testified, \u201cYes, but it is no longer I.\u201d [*]<\/p>\n
Although young in the faith, he knew something of a solicitation to do evil and the way of victory over temptation. His reply, \u201cIt is no longer I,\u201d expresses a realization that he had a new power available to combat the forces of sin and evil which would seek to dominate his life. He was a changed man. This is the essence of verses 13-20. In the words of the Master, \u201cKeep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.\u201d (Matthew 26:41)<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
[*] Holwick: this story has been popular with preachers since at least the time of Spurgeon but it is apparently apocryphal. See Spencer Gear’s analysis at https:\/\/spencer.gear.dyndns.org\/2014\/11\/17\/did-st-augustine-say-this-to-a-prostitute\/ . The Church Father Ambrose calls it a fable and makes the protagonist an anonymous man instead of Augustine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Soon after Augustine’s conversion, he was walking down the street in Milan, Italy. There he accosted a prostitute whom he had known most intimately. She called but he would not answer. He kept right on walking. \u201cAugustine,\u201d she called again. \u201cIt is I!\u201d Without slowing down, but with assurance of Christ in his heart, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[849,391,1887,1886],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}