For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
10. "For my soul is filled with illusions, and there is no soundness in my flesh" (ver. 7). Where there is the whole man, there there is soul and flesh both. The "soul is filled with illusions;" the flesh hath "no soundness." What does there remain that can give joy? Is it not meet that one should "go mourning"? "All the day long have I gone mourning." Let mourning be our portion, until our soul be divested of its illusions; and our body be clothed with soundness. For true soundness is no other than immortality. How great however are the soul's illusions, were I even to attempt to express, when would the time suffice me? For whose soul is not subject to them? There is a brief particular that I will remind you of, to show how our soul is filled with illusions. The presence of those illusions sometimes scarcely permits us to pray. We know not how to think of material objects without images, and such as we do not wish, rush in upon the mind; and we wish to go from this one to that, and to...
Loins. Psoai, as the Alexandrian and Complutensian Septuagint read, though the Vatican has psuche, soul, (Haydock) with the Arabic
Illusions. Hebrew nikle, "burning. "(Pagnin) "shameful ulcer. "(Houbigant) "Ignominy. "(St. Jerome) (Haydock)
David acknowledges that the irregular motions of concupiscence were an effect of his transgression. The Jews and Greeks place these sensations in the loins, 3 Kings viii. 10. Plato triplicem finxit animam, cujus principatum in capite, iram in pectore, cupiditatem subter præcordia locavit. (Cicero, Tusc. 1.) (Calmet)
Flesh. Concupiscence striving in me.
