Chapter 29—What then? Did not Adam have the grace of God? Yes, truly, he had it   largely, but of a different kind. He was placed in the midst of   benefits which he had received from the goodness of his Creator; for  he had not procured those benefits by his own deservings; in which  benefits he suffered absolutely no evil. But saints in this life, to  whom pertains this grace of deliverance, are in the midst of evils out  of which they cry to God, “Deliver us from evil.” He in those benefits needed not the death of Christ: these, the blood of that Lamb   absolves from guilt, as well inherited as their own. He had no need of   that assistance which they implore when they say, “I see another law   in my members warring against the law of my mind, and making me   captive in the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that   I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of   God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Because in them the flesh   lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and as   they labor and are imperiled in such a contest, they ask that by the   grace of Christ the strength to fight and to conquer may be given   them. He, however, tempted and disturbed in no such conflict   concerning himself against himself, in that position of blessedness   enjoyed his peace with himself.”

Augustine | A Treatise On Rebuke and Grace [Against the Pelagians] (c. 426—27). Spelling modernized.

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