Atos 20

Atos 20:24

"I fear none of these things," he says, "nor do I make my soul more precious than myself" (Acts 20:24). An excellent appraiser of things, who judges that nothing of his own should be preferred to himself. How many have preferred a small and worthless sum of money to their own salvation! Paul did not even prefer his soul. "I do not," he says, "make it more precious than myself." Therefore you make a distinction between yourself and your soul? Prudently indeed you are of more worth to yourself than anything that is yours. But how is your soul not you? I judge that because Paul already at that time walked in the spirit, and in his mind consented to the law of God because it is good (Rom 7:16); for this reason he deemed this very mind of his, as a certain principal and supreme part of himself, worthy to be designated rather by the name of himself than of any possession of his; but the remainder, which is established to be of an inferior nature and therefore to cling to the inferior and cheaper essence, which is the body; not only by the office of vivifying and giving sensation, but also by the desire of nourishing and cherishing: this, I say, being sensual and carnal, the spiritual man, judging it unworthy of the appellation of himself, reckoned it should rather be counted among his possessions than that he should be personally expressed through it. — Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 30