Most sincere brethren, Albina, Pinianus, and Melania, we have dictated these things for you

1. 1. How greatly we rejoice over your welfare, both bodily and above all spiritual, most sincere brethren, beloved of God, Albina, Pinianus, and Melania, we leave for you to consider and to believe, since we cannot put it into words, so that we may rather now speak of those matters about which you consulted us. For since the bearer was in haste, and we were in the midst of our occupations, which at Carthage are far more pressing than anywhere else, we have dictated these things as best we could, so far as God has deemed it worthy to grant.

2. 2. You wrote to me that you had dealt with Pelagius, urging that he condemn in writing whatever was said against him, and that he said, in your hearing: "Let him be anathema who either thinks or says that the grace of God, by which Christ came into this world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15), is not necessary, not only at every hour and at every moment, but also for our every single act; and let those who try to take this away suffer eternal punishment."

Whoever hears these words, and does not know his meaning, which he has expressed plainly enough in his books, supposes that he holds entirely what the truth holds—not in those writings which he says were foisted upon him uncorrected, or which he wholly disowns, but in those which he mentions in his letter sent to Rome. But whoever notices what he says more openly in them ought to hold these words also suspect. For even if he places the grace of God, by which Christ came into the world to save sinners, in the mere remission of sins, he can fit these words to that meaning by saying that it is therefore necessary at every hour, at every moment, and for our every single act, so that, always retaining in memory and recalling that our sins have been forgiven us, we may sin no further—aided not by any supply of strength, but by the powers of our own will, as we recall through each act what has been bestowed upon us by the remission of sins. Likewise, since they are accustomed to say that Christ furnished us help toward not sinning in that, by living justly and teaching justly, he left us an example, they can also fit these words to this, so as to say that grace of this kind is necessary to us at every moment and for our every single act—that is, that in our whole manner of life we may behold the example of the Lord's manner of life. But your faith perceives how this confession is to be distinguished from the confession of grace, which is the matter in question; and yet it can be concealed by the ambiguity of his words.

3. 3. But what is surprising in this? For although Pelagius himself, in the episcopal proceedings (See De gestis Pel. 14, 30), without any objection condemned those who say that the grace of God and his help are not given for our individual acts, but lie in free choice, or in the law and teaching—whereby we supposed that all his evasions on this matter had been exhausted—and although he also condemned those who teach that the grace of God is given according to our merits: nevertheless, in the books which he published In Defense of Free Choice, which he mentions in the letter he sent to Rome, he is shown to think nothing other than what he seemed to have condemned. For he places the grace of God and the help by which we are aided toward not sinning either in nature and free choice, or in the law and teaching: namely, so that God is believed to help a person to turn away from evil and do good (1 Pet 3:11; see Ps 34:14 (33:15); 37:27 (36:27)) by revealing and showing what ought to be done, but not also by cooperating and breathing in love, so that he may do what he has come to know ought to be done (See Contra Cresconium 2, 17, 21-30. 38).

3. 4. For when he establishes and distinguishes three things by which he says the divine commandments are fulfilled—possibility, will, and action: possibility, namely, by which a person can be just; will, by which he wills to be just; action, by which he is just—of these three he confesses that the first, that is, possibility, is given by the Creator of nature and is not in our power, but that we have it even if we are unwilling; whereas the other two, that is, will and action, he asserts to be ours, and so attributes them to us that he contends they are from us alone. Finally, he holds that the grace of God assists not these two, which he wants to be entirely ours—that is, will and action—but that which is not in our power and which is from God in us, namely, possibility: as though those things which are ours, that is, will and action, were so strong for turning away from evil and doing good that they need no divine help, while that which is from God in us—namely, possibility—were so weak that it must always be aided by the help of grace.

4. 5. But lest anyone perhaps say that we either do not rightly understand what he says, or with ill will twist into another sense what was not so meant, now hear his very words. "We," he says, "distinguish these three things in this way, and set them out as in a fixed order, dividing them. In the first place we put being able, in the second willing, in the third being. Being able we locate in nature, willing in choice, being in effect. That first, namely, being able, pertains properly to God, who conferred it on his creature; but the other two, that is, willing and being, are to be referred to the human person, since they descend from the fountainhead of choice. Therefore in the will and in good work the praise belongs to the human person—nay, both to the human person and to God, who gave the possibility of that very will and work, and who always aids that possibility by the help of his grace. But that a person can will the good and accomplish it belongs to God alone. So that one can exist even if these two have not existed; but these cannot exist without that. And so I am free to have neither a good will nor action, but in no way can I fail to have the possibility of good: it is in me even if I am unwilling, nor does nature ever admit any respite from it in this regard.

Some examples will make this meaning clearer to us. That we can see with our eyes is not ours, but that we see well or badly, this is ours; that we can speak is God's, but that we speak well or badly is ours. And to embrace all things in general: that we can do, say, or think every good thing belongs to him who gave this capacity, who aids this capacity; but that we speak well or badly is ours, because we can also turn all these things to evil. Hence—and this must be repeated often because of your slander—when we say that a person can be without sin, and by confessing the possibility he has received we praise God, who has bestowed this capacity on us, there is here no occasion for praising the human person, where the cause of God alone is being treated: for the discussion is not of willing, nor of being, but only of that which can be" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3).

5. 6. Here, then, is the whole teaching of Pelagius in his third book In Defense of Free Choice, set out carefully in these very words, in which he took such care to distinguish with such subtlety those three things—the one being being able, the second being willing, the third being being, that is, possibility, will, and action—that whenever we read or hear him confessing the help of divine grace by which we turn away from evil and do good (See 1 Pet 3:11; Ps 34:14 (33:15); 37:27 (36:27)), whether he places it in the law and teaching or wherever else, we may know what he is saying, and may not err by understanding him otherwise than he thinks. For we ought to know that he believes neither our will nor our action to be aided by divine help, but only the possibility of will and work, which alone, among these three, he affirms that we have from God—as though this were the weak thing, which God himself placed in nature, while the other two, which he wished to be ours, were so firm and strong and self-sufficient that they need no help from him; and therefore he does not help us to will, does not help us to act, but only helps us to be able to will and to act. The Apostle, on the contrary, says: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12).

And that they might know that they are divinely aided not only in that they can work (for this they had already received in nature and in teaching), but also in that they do work, he did not say: For it is God who works in you the being able, as though they themselves already had both the willing and the working through themselves, and did not need his help in these two; but he said: For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish (Phil 2:13); or, as it reads in other codices, and especially the Greek ones, both to will and to work. See whether the Apostle did not, by the Holy Spirit, foresee so long beforehand the future adversaries of the grace of God, and say that God works in us these two things—that is, both to will and to work—which this man so wanted to be ours, as if they were not aided by the help of divine grace.

6. 7. Nor let Pelagius here deceive the unwary and the simple, or even himself, in that, having said, "Therefore in the will and in good work the praise belongs to the human person," he as it were corrected himself and added, "nay, both to the human person and to God." For he did not say this because he wanted it understood, according to sound doctrine, that God works in us both to will and to work; but why he said it he shows plainly enough by at once adding, "who gave the possibility of that very will and work." That he places this possibility in nature is clear from his words above. But lest he seem to have said nothing about grace, he added, "and who always aids that very possibility by the help of his grace"; he did not say: That very will, or, That very working—which, if he said it, would not seem to be at variance with apostolic doctrine—but he said, "that very possibility," namely that one of the three which he located in nature, "he always aids by the help of his grace"; so that in will and action the praise belongs to both God and the human person not because a person wills in such a way that God nevertheless breathes into his will the ardor of love, and works in such a way that God nevertheless cooperates, without whose help what is the human person?—but he added God to this praise only because, unless there were the nature in which he founded us, by which we could will and act, we would neither will nor act.

6. 8. But that he confesses this natural possibility to be aided by the grace of God—it is not here plain either what grace he means, or to what extent he holds that nature is aided by it; but, as can be understood from other passages where he speaks more clearly, he does not want anything else to be understood than the law and teaching, by which the natural possibility is aided.

7. 8. For in a certain passage he says: "Here the most ignorant of men suppose that we do injury to divine grace, because we say that it in no way perfects holiness in us without our will—as if God had commanded something of his grace, and did not also supply the help of his grace to those whom he commanded, so that what people are bidden to do by free choice they might more easily be able to fulfill through grace" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1). And as though about to explain what grace he means, he went on to add, saying: "Which we confess to be, not, as you suppose, in the law only, but also in the help of God." Who would not here desire that he show what he wants understood by grace? For on this account especially we ought to expect of him that he say this, which he does say, that he confesses grace to be not in the law only. But while we are held in suspense by this expectation, see what he added: "For God aids us," he says, "by his teaching and revelation, while he opens the eyes of our heart; while he shows us things to come, lest we be taken up with things present; while he lays bare the snares of the devil; while he illumines us by the manifold and ineffable gift of heavenly grace." Then, concluding his thought as if by a kind of release: "Does the one who says these things," he says, "seem to you to deny grace? Or does he confess both the free choice of the human person and the grace of God?" In all these things he did not depart from commending the law and teaching, diligently inculcating that this is the grace that aids, and carrying out what he had proposed when he said, "but we confess it to be in the help of God." Finally, he thought God's help was to be conveyed in manifold ways, by mentioning teaching and revelation, and the opening of the eyes of the heart, and the showing of things to come, and the uncovering of the devil's snares, and the illumination by the manifold and ineffable gift of heavenly grace: to this end, surely, that we might learn the divine precepts and promises. This, then, is to place the grace of God in the law and teaching.

8. 9. From this, then, it appears that he confesses that grace by which God shows and reveals what we ought to do, not that by which he grants and aids us to do it—since the knowledge of the law, if the assistance of grace is lacking, avails rather to bring about the transgression of the commandment. For where there is no law, says the Apostle, there is no transgression (Rom 4:15); and: I should not have known desire, if the law had not said, You shall not covet (Rom 7:7; see Exod 20:17).

And on this account, law is one thing and grace another to such a degree that the law not only is of no profit, but even does the greatest harm, unless grace aids; and this is shown to be the usefulness of the law, that, by making them guilty of transgression, it compels those whom it makes guilty to flee for refuge to grace, to be set free and to be aided so that they may overcome evil desires. For it commands rather than helps; it teaches that there is a disease, but does not heal it; nay, by it rather is increased what is not healed, so that the medicine of grace may be sought more attentively and anxiously. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law (Gal 3:21). Yet insofar as the law does help, he adds and says: But Scripture consigned all things under sin, that the promise might be given by faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe. So the law, he says, was our schoolmaster in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:22, 24).

This very thing, then, is useful to the proud—to be more strictly and more manifestly confined under sin, lest they presume to do righteousness by free choice, as if by their own powers; but that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may become guilty before God, since by the law no flesh will be justified before him. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin: but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, attested by the Law and the Prophets (Rom 3:19–21).

How, then, is it manifested apart from law, if it is attested through the law? It is therefore not manifested apart from law, but it is a righteousness apart from law, because it is the righteousness of God—that is, the one that comes to us not from the law, but from God: not the one that is feared by being known when he commands, but the one that is held fast by being loved when he gives, so that he who boasts may boast in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31).

9. 10. What, then, is the point of this man reckoning the law and teaching to be the grace by which we are helped to work righteousness—grace which, however much it helps, helps to this end, that grace be sought? For no one can fulfill the law through the law. For the fullness of the law is love (Rom 13:10). But the love of God has been poured out in our hearts, not through the law, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). Accordingly, grace is shown through the law, so that the law may be fulfilled through grace. For what does it profit Pelagius that, in different words, he says the same thing, so that it may not be understood that he places in the law and teaching the grace by which he asserts the possibility of nature to be aided? But, as I judge, he is afraid of being understood for this reason: because he condemned those who say that the grace of God and his help are not given for individual acts, but lie in free choice, or in the law and teaching; and yet he thinks he is hidden, while in various phrasings he keeps turning over the meaning of the law and teaching.

10. 11. And indeed in another passage too, after he had long asserted that a good will is brought about in us not by the help of God, but from our own selves, he set against himself a question from the Apostle's epistle, and said: "And how," he says, "will that saying of the Apostle stand: For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish (Phil 2:13)?" Then, in order as it were to resolve this objection, which he saw to be vehemently contrary to his teaching, he went on to add: "He works in us to will what is good, to will what is holy, while he kindles us—given over to earthly desires and, after the manner of dumb animals, loving only things present—by the greatness of future glory and the promise of rewards; while by the revelation of wisdom he rouses to the desire of God a will that is stupefied; while he persuades us (which elsewhere you do not fear to deny) of everything that is good" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). What could be plainer—that by the grace by which God works in us to will what is good he means nothing other than the law and teaching? For in the law and teaching of the holy Scriptures the greatness of future glory and of rewards is promised. To teaching belongs also that wisdom is revealed; to teaching belongs the persuading of everything that is good. And if there seems to be some difference between teaching and persuading, or rather exhorting, this too is nevertheless included under the generality of teaching, which is contained in any words or writings; for the holy Scriptures both teach and exhort, and in teaching and exhorting there can also be the working of a human being.

But we want him at some point to confess that grace by which the greatness of future glory is not only promised, but also believed and hoped for; and wisdom not only revealed, but also loved; and everything that is good not only urged, but also brought home as persuasion. For not all have faith (2 Thess 3:2) who hear through the Scriptures the Lord promising the kingdom of heaven; nor are all persuaded to whom it is urged, that they should come to him who says: Come to me, all you who labor (Matt 11:28). But whose faith it is, and who are persuaded to come to him, he himself sufficiently showed when he said: No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (John 6:44); and a little later, when he was speaking of those who did not believe: I told you, he says, that no one can come to me unless it has been granted him by my Father (John 6:65). This is the grace Pelagius ought to confess, if he wants not only to be called, but also to be, a Christian.

11. 12. But what shall I say of the revelation of wisdom? For no one would easily hope to be able in this life to attain to the greatness of the revelations of the apostle Paul; and surely, in them, what else is to be believed to have been revealed to him, except what pertained to wisdom? And yet he says: So that I might not be exalted by the greatness of my revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me. Concerning this I three times asked the Lord that it might depart from me; and he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:7–9). Without doubt, if there had already been in the Apostle the highest love, to which nothing could be added—the love that could in no way be puffed up—would an angel of Satan be necessary, by whose buffeting the elation that could arise in the greatness of revelations might be checked? And what else is elation but a being puffed up? And surely it was most truly said of love: Love is not jealous, is not puffed up (1 Cor 13:4). This love, then, was assuredly being increased from day to day even in so great an Apostle, so long as his inner self was being renewed from day to day (See 2 Cor 4:16), to be perfected without doubt where it could no longer be puffed up. But then his mind was still where it might be puffed up by the greatness of revelation, until it should be filled with the solid building of love: for he had not yet, by arriving, laid hold of that toward which he was running by making progress.

12. 13. And so, to him who was unwilling to endure the trouble by which his elation was being held in check, before there was in him the final and highest perfection of love, it is most rightly said: My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness: in weakness (2 Cor 12:9), namely—not, as he supposes, "of the flesh only," but both of the flesh and of the mind: because the mind too was weak in comparison with that highest perfection, and to it, lest it be exalted, the thorn in the flesh, the angel of Satan (See 2 Cor 12:7), was accordingly understood to have been given—although, in comparison with carnal or animal persons, who do not yet perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:14), it was most firm.

Wherefore, if power is made perfect in weakness (See 2 Cor 12:9), whoever does not confess himself weak is not perfected. But this grace by which power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9) leads to the highest perfection and glorification those who are predestined and called according to his purpose (See Rom 8:28). By this grace it is brought about not only that we may know the things to be done, but also that we may do the things known; and not only that we may believe the things to be loved, but also that we may love the things believed.

13. 14. If this grace is to be called teaching, let it surely be called so in such a way that God is believed to infuse it more deeply and inwardly, with ineffable sweetness, not only through those who plant and water from without, but also through himself who, hidden, supplies his own increase (See 1 Cor 3:7), so that he not only shows the truth, but also imparts love. For thus God teaches those who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28), at once granting both to know what they should do and to do what they know.

Hence the Apostle speaks thus to the Thessalonians: But concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you; for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another. And to prove that they had been taught by God, he added: For indeed you do this toward all the brethren in all Macedonia (1 Thess 4:9–10). As though this were the most certain sign that you have been taught by God, if you have done what you have been taught. In this way all who are called according to his purpose are, as it is written in the Prophets, taught by God (See Isa 54:13; John 6:45).

But whoever indeed knows what ought to be done, and does not do it, has not yet learned from God according to grace, but according to the law; not according to the spirit, but according to the letter. Although many seem to do what the law commands, out of fear of punishment, not out of love of righteousness—which the Apostle calls his own righteousness which is from the law, as though it were commanded, not given.

But if it is given, it is called not our righteousness, but God's: because it becomes ours in such a way that it is in us from God. For he says: That I may be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Jesus, the righteousness from God (Phil 3:9).

So great, then, is the distance between law and grace that, although it is not doubted that the law is from God, yet the righteousness which is from the law is not from God; but the righteousness which is brought to fulfillment through grace is from God. Because the righteousness which comes about on account of the law's curse is called righteousness from the law; the righteousness which is given through the gift of grace is called righteousness from God: so that the commandment may be not terrifying but sweet, as is prayed in the Psalm: You are gracious, O Lord, and in your graciousness teach me your righteousness (Ps 119:68 (118:68)):

that is, that I may not be servilely compelled by dread of punishment to be under the law, but may with free love delight to be with the law. For the one who acts willingly makes the precept free. And in this way whoever learns does, entirely, whatever he has learned ought to be done.

14. 15. Of this manner of teaching the Lord too says: Everyone who has heard from my Father and has learned comes to me (John 6:45). Of the one, then, who has not come, it is not rightly said: He has indeed heard and learned that he should come, but he is unwilling to do what he has learned. It is plainly not rightly said of this manner of teaching by which God teaches through grace. For if, as the Truth says, everyone who has learned comes, then whoever does not come has assuredly not learned either. But who does not see that a person both comes and does not come by the choice of the will? Yet this choice can be alone, if he does not come; but it cannot but be aided, if he comes—and aided in such a way that he not only knows what is to be done, but also does what he has come to know. And on this account, when God teaches, not through the letter of the law but through the grace of the Spirit, he teaches in such a way that what each one has learned he not only sees by knowing, but also desires by willing, and brings to fulfillment by doing. And in this divine manner of teaching the will itself and the working itself are aided, not the natural possibility of willing and working alone.

For if only our being able were aided by this grace, the Lord would say: Everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned can come to me. But he did not say it thus; rather: Everyone who has heard, he says, from the Father and has learned comes to me. Pelagius places being able to come in nature, or even, as he has just begun to say, in grace, however he conceives of it, "by which the possibility itself," as he says, "is aided" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3); but coming is now in will and work. It does not, however, follow that one who can come also does come, unless he wills it and does it. But everyone who has learned from the Father not only can come, but does come: where now there is both the advancement of the possibility, and the disposition of the will, and the effect of the action.

15. 16. What, then, do his examples mean, except that they have indeed made his meaning clearer to us, as he promised—not that we should think as they say, but that we may more plainly and openly recognize what he himself thought? "That we can see with our eyes," he says, "is not ours: but that we see well or badly, this is ours" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). Let the Psalm answer him, where it is said to God: Turn away my eyes, that they may not see vanity (Ps 119:37 (118:37)). And even if this is said of the eyes of the mind, from there surely it proceeds to these eyes of the flesh, to see either well or badly: not in the way that those who gaze with sound eyes are said to see well, and the bleary-eyed badly; but to see well so as to give aid, to see badly so as to lust. For although through these outer eyes there is seen both the poor person to whom aid is given and the woman who is desired, nevertheless from the inner self there proceeds, toward seeing well or badly, either mercy or lust. Why, then, is it said to God: Turn away my eyes, that they may not see vanity? Why is that sought which pertains to our power, if God does not aid the will?

16. 17. "That we can speak," he says, "is God's: but that we speak well or badly is ours" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). This is not the teaching of him who speaks well. For it is not you who speak, he says, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt 10:20). "And to embrace all things in general," he says, "that we can do, say, or think every good thing belongs to him who gave this capacity, who aids this capacity" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). See, here too he repeats the earlier meaning, that of those three—that is, possibility, will, action—only the possibility is aided. Then, adding so as to complete what he intends: "But that we do, or speak, or think well," he says, "is ours" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). He has forgotten what he had, as it were, corrected above, where, having said, "Therefore in the will and in good work the praise belongs to the human person," he added and said, "nay, both to the human person and to God, who gave the possibility of that very will and work" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). Why, even in these examples, did he not recall this, so as at least at the end of them to say: That we can do, say, or think every good thing belongs to him who gave this capacity, who aids this capacity; but that we do, or speak, or think well is both ours and his? He did not say this; but, unless I am mistaken, I seem to myself to see what he feared.

17. 18. For when he wanted to show why it is ours: "Because," he says, "all these things we can also turn to evil" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). This, then, is what he feared, so that he would not say, it is both ours and God's, lest it be answered to him: If what we do, speak, think well is therefore both ours and God's, because he gave us this capacity, then also what we do, speak, think evil is both ours and God's, because he gave that capacity for both—and thus, God forbid, just as we are praised together with God in good works, so we are blamed together with him in evil ones. For that possibility which he gave makes us able to do good things as much as evil ones.

18. 19. Of this possibility Pelagius speaks thus in the first book In Defense of Free Choice: "We have," he says, "the possibility of either side implanted in us by God, like, so to speak, a certain fruitful and fertile root, which, according to the human will, may bring forth and bear diverse things, and which can, at the choice of its own cultivator, either be bright with the flower of virtues or bristle with the thorns of vices" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1). Here, not seeing what he says, he establishes one and the same root of goods and evils, against evangelical truth and apostolic doctrine. For the Lord says that neither can a good tree bear bad fruits, nor a bad one good fruits (See Matt 7:18); and when the apostle Paul says that desire is the root of all evils (See 1 Tim 6:10), he surely admonishes us to understand that love is the root of all goods. Hence, if two trees, the good and the bad, are two persons, the good and the bad, what is the good person but one of good will, that is, a tree of a good root? And what is the bad person but one of bad will, that is, a tree of a bad root? For the fruits of these roots and trees are the deeds, words, and thoughts which proceed, the good from a good will and the evil from an evil one.

19. 20. But a person makes a good tree when he receives the grace of God. For he does not make himself good out of evil by himself; but from him and through him and in him who is always good—and it is necessary that he be aided by the same grace, without which he can do nothing good, not only that the tree may be good, but also that it may bear good fruits. For he himself cooperates in the fruit in good trees, who both waters and cultivates from without through any minister, and through himself gives the increase from within (See 1 Cor 3:7).

But a person makes a bad tree when he makes himself bad, when he falls away from the unchangeable good: for from that falling-away is the origin of the bad will. And this falling-away does not initiate any other, bad nature, but corrupts the nature which was created good. But once the corruption is healed, no evil remains; because the corruption was indeed present in the nature, but the corruption was not the nature.

20. 21. That possibility, then, is not, as this man supposes, one and the same root of goods and evils. For love the root of goods is one thing, desire the root of evils another (See 1 Tim 6:10); and they differ from each other as much as virtue and vice. But that possibility is plainly capable of either root; because a person can have not only love, by which he is a good tree, but can also have desire, by which he is a bad tree. But the desire of a person, which is a vice, has as its author a human being, or a deceiver of the human being, not the Creator of the human being. For it is itself the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father, but is from the world (1 John 2:16). And who does not know that Scripture is accustomed to call by the name "world" those by whom this world is inhabited?

21. 22. But love, which is a virtue, is in us from God, not from ourselves, as Scripture testifies, which says: Love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, because God is love (1 John 4:7–8). According to this love it is better understood what is said: He who is born of God does not sin (1 John 3:9); and that he cannot sin (1 John 3:9). Because the love according to which he is born of God does not deal wrongly, nor think evil (1 Cor 13:4–5). When, therefore, a person sins, he sins not according to love, but according to desire, according to which he is not born of God: since that possibility, as has been said, is capable of either root. When, then, Scripture says: Love is from God (1 John 4:7); or, what is more: God is love (1 John 4:8); when the apostle John cries out most openly: See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called, and should be, children of God (1 John 3:1): why does this man, hearing God is love, still contend that of those three we have only the possibility from God, but have a good will and good action from ourselves? As though a good will were something other than love, which Scripture cries out is in us from God, and given by the Father that we might be his children.

22. 23. But perhaps preceding merits of ours brought it about that it was given to us—as this man thinks of the grace of God in that book which he wrote to the holy virgin, which he also mentioned in the letter he sent to Rome (See PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). For there, having inserted the testimony of the apostle James, where he says: Be subject to God; but resist the devil, and he will flee from you (Jas 4:7), he adds and says: "He shows how we ought to resist the devil—namely, if we are subject to God, and by doing his will earn the divine grace, and more easily resist the wicked spirit by the help of the Holy Spirit" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 25).

See with how truthful a heart he condemned, in the Palestinian ecclesiastical judgment, those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits! Or do we still doubt that he thinks this and preaches it most openly? How, then, was that confession in the episcopal examination truthful? Or had he perhaps already written this book, where he says most openly that grace is given according to our merits—which in the Eastern synod he condemned without any objection? Let him confess, then, that he once held it thus, but no longer holds it, so that we might rejoice most openly at his correction. But as it is, when among other things this too had been charged against him, he answered: "Whether these are Caelestius's, let those see to it who say they are Caelestius's: I, for my part, never held it thus, but I anathematize those who hold it thus." How did he never hold it thus, if he had previously composed this book? Or how does he anathematize those who hold it thus, if he composed this book afterward?

22. 24. But lest he perhaps answer that he meant here, "by doing the will of God we earn the divine grace," in the sense in which grace is added to the faithful who live devoutly, by which they may resist the tempter bravely, while they had nevertheless also first received grace, that they might do the will of God—lest, then, he perhaps answer thus, hear his other words on this matter. "He who runs to the Lord," he says, "and desires to be ruled by him—that is, suspends his own will upon his will; who, by clinging to him continually, becomes, according to the Apostle, one spirit with him (See 1 Cor 6:17)—accomplishes this by nothing other than the freedom of choice" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1). See how great a thing he said is accomplished by nothing other than the freedom of choice; and on this account he reckons that we cling to God without the help of God; for this is what "by nothing other than the freedom of choice" means: so that when we have clung to him without his help, then, now that we have clung, we may even earn to be aided.

23. 24. For he goes on and says, "He who uses it well"—that is, who uses the freedom of choice well—"so hands himself over wholly to God," he says, "and mortifies all his own will, that he can say with the Apostle: I live, yet now not I, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20): and he places his heart in the hand of God, that he may turn it wherever he wills" (See PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1, with an allusion to Prov 21:1). Truly a great help of divine grace, that God himself may turn our heart wherever he wills. But this so great a help, as this man foolishly supposes, we earn then, when, without any help, by nothing other than the freedom of choice, we run to the Lord, desire to be ruled by him, suspend our will upon his will, and by clinging to him continually are made one spirit with him (See 1 Cor 6:17).

These so vast goods, namely, we accomplish, according to this man, by nothing other than the freedom of choice, so that by these preceding merits we so obtain his grace that he turns our heart wherever he wills. How, then, is it grace, if it is not given freely? How is it grace, if it is repaid as a debt? How does the Apostle speak truly: Not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone be exalted (Eph 2:8–9): and again: But if by grace, he says, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace (Rom 11:6)? How, I say, is this true, if such great works precede that make for us the merit of obtaining grace, so that it is not given to us gratuitously, but repaid as a debt? Is it, then, that in order to arrive at the help of God, one runs to God without the help of God; and that, in order to be aided by God by clinging to God, we cling to God without being aided by God? What greater, or what comparable, will grace itself be able to bestow on a person, if without it he could already be made one spirit with the Lord (See 1 Cor 6:17), by nothing other than the freedom of choice?

24. 25. But I would wish that this man would say whether that king of the Assyrians, whose bed the holy woman Esther abhorred (See Esth 14:15), when he was seated on the throne of his kingdom, and was clothed in all the robe of his splendor, all variegated with gold and precious stones, and was very terrible; and, lifting up his face inflamed with glory, he looked upon her like a bull in the onrush of his indignation; and the queen was afraid, and her color changed through faintness, and she sank down upon the head of the maid who went before her (Esth 15:9–10):

I would wish, then, that this man would tell us whether that king had already run to the Lord, and had desired to be ruled by him, and had suspended his will upon his will, and, by clinging to him continually, had been made one spirit with him (See 1 Cor 6:17), by nothing other than the freedom of choice; whether he had handed himself over wholly to God, and had mortified all his own will, and had placed his heart in the hand of God. I think it is not folly, but madness, in anyone who thinks these things of that king, such as he then was: and yet God turned and changed his indignation into gentleness (See Esth 15:11). And who does not see that it is far greater to turn and change indignation from its opposite into gentleness, than to make a heart not yet seized by either disposition, but standing midway between the two, incline toward something? Let them read, then, and understand, let them perceive and confess, that not by law and teaching sounding from without, but by an inner and hidden, marvelous and ineffable power, God works in the hearts of human beings not only true revelations, but good wills as well.

25. 26. Let Pelagius, then, now cease both to deceive himself and others by disputing against the grace of God. Not for one of those three things—that is, for the possibility of a good will and work—but also for the good will and working itself, is the grace of God toward us to be proclaimed. For he defines that possibility as availing for both: and yet our sins are not on that account to be attributed to God, just as, on account of the same possibility, he wants our good works to be attributed to him. Let not the help of divine grace be commended only because it aids the natural possibility. Let him cease to say, "That we can do, say, or think every good thing belongs to him who gave this capacity, who aids this capacity: but that we do, or speak, or think well is ours" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). Let him cease, I say, to say these things. For God not only gave and aids our being able, but also works in us to will and to work (Phil 2:13). Not because we do not will, or we do not act: but because without his help we neither will anything good nor do it.

For how is it said, "That we can act well is God's; but that we act is ours" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3), when the Apostle says that he prays to God for those to whom he was writing, that they may do nothing evil, and that they may do what is good? For he does not say: "We pray that you may be able to do nothing evil"; but: that you may do nothing evil, nor: "That you may be able to do good"; but: that you may do good (2 Cor 13:7). Since of those of whom it is written: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God (Rom 8:14), surely, that they may do what is good, they are led by him who is good. How does Pelagius say, "That we can speak well is God's: that we speak well is ours," when the Lord says: It is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt 10:20)?

For he does not say: "It is not you who have given yourselves to be able to speak well," but he says: It is not you who speak. Nor does he say: "It is the Spirit of your Father who gives you, or has given you, to be able to speak well"; but he says: who speaks in you, not signifying the advancement of the possibility, but expressing the effect of the cooperation. How does the puffed-up asserter of free choice say, "That we can think well is God's; but that we think well is ours"? To whom the humble preacher of grace answers: Not that we are competent to think anything of ourselves, as if from our own selves; but our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor 3:5). For he does not say: "To be able to think"; but, to think.

26. 27. Let Pelagius also openly confess this grace of God, manifest in the divine words, and let him not cover over with most shameless shame that he has so long thought against it, but disclose it with most salutary sorrow; so that the holy Church may not be troubled by his stubborn obstinacy, but may rejoice at his truthful correction. Let him distinguish knowledge and love, as they are to be distinguished. Because knowledge puffs up, love builds up (1 Cor 8:1). And then knowledge does not puff up, when love builds up. And although each is a gift of God, but the one lesser and the other greater, let him not so exalt our righteousness above the praise of our justifier that he attributes the lesser of these two to divine help, but usurps the greater for human choice. And if he agrees that we receive love by the grace of God, let him not think it to be as though any good merits of ours preceded. For what good merits could we then have, when we did not love God?

For in order that we might receive the love by which we should love, we were loved when we did not yet have it. This the apostle John says most openly: Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us (1 John 4:10). And elsewhere: Let us love, he says, because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). Most excellently and most truly. For we would have nothing whereby to love him, unless we received this from him, when he first loved us. But what good would we do, unless we loved? Or how do we not do good, if we love?

For although the commandment of God sometimes seems to be done not by those who love, but by those who fear, nevertheless, where there is no love, no good work is reckoned, nor is it rightly called a good work: because everything that is not from faith is sin (Rom 14:23); and faith works through love (Gal 5:6). And on this account, let whoever wants to confess truly so confess the grace of God, by which the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5), that he does not doubt that absolutely nothing good—nothing that pertains to godliness and true righteousness—can be done without it. Not as this man does, who, when he says, "grace is given for this reason, that what is commanded by God may more easily be fulfilled" (See PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1), shows sufficiently what he thinks of it—namely, that even without it, although less easily, what is divinely commanded can nevertheless be done.

27. 28. Indeed, in the book to the holy virgin, which I also mentioned above (See bk. 1, 22-23), when he says, "we earn the divine grace, and more easily resist the wicked spirit by the help of the Holy Spirit" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 25), he surely signifies what he holds. For why did he insert this word, that is, "more easily"? Was the sense not complete: "that we may resist the wicked spirit by the help of the Holy Spirit"? But who does not understand how great a damage he did by this addition? Wanting, surely, to have it believed that the powers of nature are so great—which by exalting he casts down—that even without the help of the Holy Spirit, although less easily, the wicked spirit is nevertheless in some way resisted.

28. 29. Likewise in the first book In Defense of Free Choice: "But although we have in us," he says, "a free choice for not sinning so strong, so firm, which the Creator implanted generally in human nature, again, out of his inestimable kindness, we are fortified by his daily help" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1). What need is there of this help, if free choice is so strong, so firm, for not sinning? But here too he wants it understood that the help is for this, that what he thinks can nevertheless be done apart from grace, although less easily, may be done more easily through grace.

29. 30. Likewise in the same book, in another passage: "So that what people are bidden to do by free choice," he says, "they may be able to fulfill more easily through grace." Take away "more easily," and the sense is not only complete, but even sound, if it is put thus: "So that what people are bidden to do by free choice they may be able to fulfill through grace." But when "more easily" is added, it is suggested, by a tacit implication, that the fulfillment of a good work can come about even without the grace of God. This meaning is refuted by him who says: Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5).

30. 31. Let him amend all these things, lest, if human weakness has erred in the depth of great matters, there be added to this error also a diabolical falsehood or animosity, whether by denying what he thought or by defending what he wrongly thought, once he has come to know, through the plain truth set before him, that he ought not to have thought it. For that grace by which we are justified—that is, by which the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5)—in the writings of Pelagius and Caelestius, whatever I have been able to read, I have nowhere found them confessing in the way it ought to be confessed (See AUG., Ep. 188, 3, 13). Indeed, I have never noticed them acknowledging, as they ought to be acknowledged, the children of the promise, of whom the Apostle says: It is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as the offspring (Rom 9:8). For what God promises, we do not do through choice or nature, but he himself does through grace.

30. 32. For, to say nothing for the moment of Caelestius's little works, or of his pamphlets which he submitted in the ecclesiastical proceedings—all of which, together with other letters we have judged necessary, we have taken care to send to you, so that, having carefully inspected them all, you may observe that he does not place the grace of God, by which we are aided either to turn away from evil or to do good (See 1 Pet 3:11), apart from the natural choice of the will, anywhere except in the law and teaching; so that he asserts that even prayers themselves are necessary for this, that it may be shown to a person what he should desire and love—to leave these things aside for the moment, then: Pelagius himself recently sent both a letter and a statement of his faith to Rome, writing to Pope Innocent of blessed memory, whom he did not know to be dead. In this letter, then, he says there are two things of which people are trying to defame him: one, that he denies infants the sacrament of Baptism, and promises to some the kingdom of heaven apart from the redemption of Christ; the other, that he so says a person can avoid sin as to exclude the help of God, and so trusts in free choice as to repudiate the assistance of grace (See PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). But concerning the Baptism of infants—though he concedes it ought to be given to them—how perversely he thinks against the Christian and Catholic truth, this is not the place to discuss more carefully: for now what we have undertaken concerning the assistance of grace must be carried through. So let us see what he answers here too to what he has set forth. For, to leave aside his spiteful complaints about his enemies, when it came to the point he spoke thus:

31. 33. "See," he says, "let this letter clear me before Your Blessedness, in which we say, purely and simply, that we have a free choice, whole and entire, for sinning and for not sinning—which in all good works is always aided by divine help" (See PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). You surely discern, by the understanding the Lord has given you, that these words of his do not suffice to resolve the question. For we still ask by what help he says free choice is aided, lest perhaps, as he is wont, he wants the law and teaching to be understood. For if you ask why he said always, he will be able to answer, Because it is written: And on his law he will meditate day and night (Ps 1:2). Then, when he had inserted certain things about the condition of the human person and his natural possibility for sinning and for not sinning, he added, saying: "This power of free choice we say is in all generally—in Christians, Jews, and Gentiles. In all there is free choice equally through nature, but in Christians alone is it aided by grace" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). Again we ask, by what grace? And again he will be able to answer, By the Christian law and teaching.

31. 34. Then, whatever grace he means, he says it is given to Christians themselves according to their merits—although he already condemned, in Palestine, as I mentioned above, by that splendid clearing of himself, those who say this. For these are his words: "In those," he says, "the good of their condition is naked and unarmed"; he means in those who are not Christians. Then, weaving in the rest: "But in those," he says, "who belong to Christ, it is fortified by the help of Christ." You see that it is still uncertain by what help, according to what we have said above. But he goes on still about those who are not Christians, and says: "They are therefore to be judged and condemned, because, although they have free choice through which they could come to faith and earn the grace of God, they make bad use of the freedom granted them. But these are to be rewarded, who, by using free choice well, merit the grace of the Lord, and keep his commandments" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium).

Surely it is manifest that he says grace is given according to merits—whatever grace, and of whatever kind, he means, though he does not openly express it. For when he says that those are to be rewarded who use free choice well, and on that account merit the grace of the Lord, he confesses that a debt is repaid to them. Where, then, is that saying of the Apostle: Justified freely by his grace (Rom 3:24)? Where also is that: By grace you have been saved (Eph 2:8)? And lest they should suppose it was through works, he added, through faith. And again, lest they should think that faith itself was to be attributed to themselves without the grace of God: And this, he says, not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God (Eph 2:8). Surely, then, that from which begins everything that we are said to receive by merit, we receive without merit—that is, faith itself. Or if it is denied that it is given, what is that which is said: As God has apportioned to each a measure of faith (Rom 12:3)?

But if it is said to be given in such a way that it is repaid to merits, not bestowed, what is that which he says again: To you it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him (Phil 1:29)? For he testified that both are granted—both that one believes in Christ and that one suffers for Christ.

But these men so attach faith to free choice that grace seems to be repaid to faith—not gratuitous, but owed: and on this account it is now not even grace, because unless it is gratuitous, it is not grace.

32. 35. But from this letter Pelagius wants the reader to pass to the book of his faith, of which he made mention to you: in which he discussed many things about which he was not being questioned. But let us look at the very things on account of which we are dealing with them. For when he had brought his disputation—as long as he wished—from the unity of the Trinity all the way to the resurrection of the flesh, which no one was asking of him, he says: "And we hold one Baptism, which we say is to be celebrated with the same words of the sacrament in infants as also in adults" (PELAG., Libellus fidei 7).

This, certainly, you said you also heard from him in person: but what does it profit that he says the sacrament of Baptism is celebrated in infants with the same words as in adults, when it is the reality, not the words alone, that we ask of him? More to the point is what he answered, as you write, when you questioned him with his own mouth: that "infants receive Baptism for the remission of sins." For here too he did not say, in the words of the remission of sins; but he confessed that they are baptized for that very remission: and yet if you asked him what sin is believed to be remitted to them, he would contend that they have no sin at all.

33. 36. Who would believe that under this seemingly manifest confession a contrary meaning lay hidden, had not Caelestius disclosed it? He, in his pamphlet which he submitted at Rome in the ecclesiastical proceedings, confessed that "infants too are baptized for the remission of sins," and denied that "any of them has original sin" (CAEL., Libellus fidei). But now let us attend not to the Baptism of infants, but rather to the assistance of grace—even in the statement of his faith which Pelagius sent to Rome, what he thought. "We so confess free choice," he says, "that we say we always need the help of God" (PELAG., Libellus fidei 13). See, again we ask by what help he confesses we need: and again we find it ambiguous, since he can answer that he means the Christian law or teaching, by which that natural possibility is aided. But we look in their confession for that grace of which the Apostle says: For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control (2 Tim 1:7). But it does not follow that one who has the gift of knowledge, by which he knows what he should do, has also that of love, so that he may do it.

34. 37. Those books or writings of his too, which he mentions in the same letter that he sent to Pope Innocent of holy memory, I have read—except for one letter, which he says he sent, a brief one, to the holy bishop Constantius: nor have I been able to find anywhere that he confesses this grace, by which not only the natural possibility of will and action—which he says we have even if we neither will nor do good—but the will and action itself is aided by the supply of the Holy Spirit.

35. 38. "Let them read," he says, "that letter which we wrote to the holy man, bishop Paulinus, nearly twelve years ago, which, in perhaps three hundred lines, confesses nothing other than the grace and help of God, and that we can do absolutely nothing good without God" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). This letter, then, I have read, and I found that through almost the whole of it he dwells on nothing but the faculty and possibility of nature, and almost there alone places the grace of God: but Christian grace he touches on with such brevity, with the mere mention of the name, that he seems to have done nothing but fear to be silent about it. Whether, however, he wants it understood as in the remission of sins, or also in the teaching of Christ, where there is too the example of his manner of life—which he does in some passages of his little works—or whether he believes some help for acting well to be joined to nature and teaching through the inspiration of a most ardent and most luminous love, does not appear at all.

36. 39. "Let them read also," he says, "the one to the holy bishop Constantius, where briefly indeed, but plainly, I joined the grace and help of God to the free choice of the human person" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). This letter, as I said above, I have not read: but if it is not unlike the others which he mentions as known to me, it too does not have what we seek.

37. 40. "Let them read also," he says, "the one we composed in the East to the holy virgin of Christ, Demetrias, and they will find that we so praise the nature of the human person that we always add the help of God's grace." This one, indeed, I have read, and it had nearly persuaded me that he confesses that grace which is in question—although in many passages of his little work he seemed to contradict himself: but when other things came into my hands, which he composed later and more fully, I saw how he was able even there to name grace, hiding under an ambiguous generality what he thought, and yet by the word "grace" breaking the ill will and avoiding offense. For in its very beginning, where he says, "Let us sweat over the work set before us, nor distrust the mediocrity of our talent, which we believe to be aided both by the faith of the mother and the merit of the virgin" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 1), he had seemed to me to confess the grace by which we are aided to do something, and I had not noticed that he could have placed this in the mere revelation of teaching.

37. 41. Likewise in the same work, in another passage: "But if even without God," he says, "people show what kind they were made by God, see what Christians can do, whose nature has been restored for the better through Christ, and who are aided also by the help of divine grace" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 3). By "nature restored for the better" he wants the remission of sins to be understood: which he showed sufficiently in another passage in this very book, where he says, "Even those who by long practice of sinning have in a way grown hardened can be restored through penance" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 17). But the help of divine grace he can place here too in the revelation of teaching.

38. 42. Likewise elsewhere in the same letter: "For if even before the law," he says, "as we have said, and long before the coming of our Lord and Savior, certain people are reported to have lived justly and holily, how much more must it be believed that we can do this after the illumination of his coming—we who have been restored through the grace of Christ and reborn into a better person, we who, expiated and cleansed by his blood, and stirred by his example to the perfection of righteousness, ought to be better than those who lived before the law" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 8)? See how here too, in different words indeed, but nevertheless in the remission of sins and in the example of Christ, he has placed the assistance of grace.

Then he adds and says: "Better even than they were under the law, as the Apostle says: Sin will not have dominion over you; for you are not under law, but under grace (Rom 6:14). And since," he says, "we have spoken sufficiently, as I think, on this point, let us now form the perfect virgin, who, always kindled by both, may bear witness by the holiness of her conduct to the good of nature and of grace alike" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 8-9). And in these words you ought to notice that he so wanted to conclude what he was saying that we should understand the good of nature to be that which we received when we were created, but the good of grace to be when we behold the example of Christ: as though, for this reason, sin was not pardoned to those who were or are under the law, because they either did not have the example of Christ, or do not believe it.

39. 43. But that he holds this view, his other words also show—not in this book, but in the third book In Defense of Free Choice, where, speaking to the one against whom he disputes, since that one had set down the words of the Apostle saying: It is not what I will that I do; and: I see another law in my members at war with the law of my mind (Rom 7:15, 23), and the rest that is said there, he answered and said: "For what you desire to understand of the Apostle, all ecclesiastical men assert that he said in the person of a sinner still placed under the law, who was held, as it were, by a certain necessity of sinning through excessive habit of vices, and who, although he sought the good by will, was nevertheless by habit hurled into evil. But in the person of one man," he says, "he designates the people still sinning under the old law; whom he says is to be freed from this evil of habit through Christ, who first remits to those who believe in him all their sins through Baptism, then by imitation of himself stirs them to perfect holiness, and overcomes the habit of vices by the example of virtues" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3).

See how he wants those who sin under the law to be aided, so that, justified through the grace of Christ, they may be freed—as though the law alone did not suffice for them, on account of the excessive habit of sinning, unless there be added that of Christ—not the inspiration of love through the Holy Spirit, but the example of his virtue, to be beheld and imitated in the evangelical teaching. And certainly here there was the greatest occasion to express what grace he meant, where the Apostle so concluded the very passage to which he responds that he said: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24–25). Since this man places this not in the help of his virtue, but in the example of his imitation, what more ought we to hope of him, wherever he mentions the name of grace under an ambiguous generality?

40. 44. Likewise in the same book to the holy virgin, on which we have already discoursed above, where he says: "Let us be subject to God, and by doing his will earn the divine grace, and more easily resist the wicked spirit by the help of the Holy Spirit" (PELAG., Ep. ad Demetr. 25). In these words of his it is certainly manifest that he so wants us to be aided by the grace of the Holy Spirit, not because without it, even by the mere possibility of nature, we cannot resist the tempter, but that we may resist more easily. And yet this assistance, of whatever sort and however small, he, it is credible, places in this: that knowledge is added to us by the Spirit revealing through teaching, which we either cannot, or can only with difficulty, have through nature. These are the things which I have been able to notice in the book he wrote to the virgin of Christ, where he seems to confess grace: and what they are like, you surely discern.

41. 45. "Let them read also," he says, "my recent little work, which we were recently compelled to publish In Defense of Free Choice; and they will recognize how unjustly they have been eager to defame us with the denial of grace, we who through almost the whole text of the work itself confess perfectly and entirely both free choice and grace" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). There are four books of this work, and these I have read, and from them I have taken what I proposed to treat and examine, and as best I could I have dealt with it, before we came to these letters of his which were sent to Rome. But in these four books also, whatever he seems to say for the grace by which we are aided to turn away from evil and do good, he says in such a way that in no way does he depart from the ambiguity of words, which he can so expound to his disciples that they believe there is no assistance of grace by which the possibility of nature is aided, except in the law and teaching: so that he supposes even prayers themselves, as he most openly affirms in his writings, are to be employed for nothing else than that teaching may be opened to us even by divine revelation—not that the mind of a person may be aided, so that what he has learned ought to be done, he may also bring to fulfillment by love and action.

For he does not at all withdraw from that most manifest teaching of his, where he establishes those three things—possibility, will, action: and he says only the possibility is always aided by divine help; but the will and action he reckons need no help of God. And the help itself, by which he holds the natural possibility to be aided, he places in the law and teaching, which he confesses is revealed to us even by the Holy Spirit, on account of which he also concedes that we should pray. But this assistance of law and teaching, he holds, existed even in prophetic times; whereas the assistance of grace, which is properly called grace, he reckons to be in the example of Christ—which, nonetheless, you perceive to pertain to teaching, which is preached to us in the gospel: so that, namely, the way having been shown along which we ought to walk, we may now, by the powers of free choice, needing no help of another, suffice for ourselves, lest we fail on the way (See Matt 15:32); though he contends that even the way itself can be found by nature alone, but more easily if grace aids.

42. 46. This, then, as far as my understanding could reach, I have been able to grasp in the writings of Pelagius when he names grace. And you see that those who think these things, ignorant of the righteousness of God, want to establish their own (Rom 10:3), and are far from that which is in us from God (Phil 3:9), not from ourselves—which they ought to have noticed and acknowledged most of all in the holy canonical Scriptures.

But because they read them according to their own opinion, they assuredly do not behold even the plain things in them. Would, then, that at least in the writings of Catholic men, by whom they do not doubt that the Scriptures have been rightly understood, they would not negligently attend to what is to be thought about the assistance of divine grace, nor pass it by out of excessive love of their own opinion. For this very Pelagius, in that very recent little work of his, by the mention of which he defends himself—that is, in the third book In Defense of Free Choice—hear how he praises the holy Ambrose:

43. 47. "The blessed bishop Ambrose," he says, "in whose books especially the Roman faith shines forth, who stood out as a certain splendid flower among Latin writers, whose faith and most pure understanding in the Scriptures not even an enemy has dared to censure" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3). See with what and how great praises he proclaims a man—however holy and learned, yet in no way to be compared to the authority of canonical Scripture. And this man he so commends for this reason: because he thinks he can use him in a certain passage of his books as a witness by whom to prove that a person can be without sin: which is not now the matter at issue, but the matter at issue is the assistance of grace, by which we are aided to not sinning and to living justly.

44. 48. Let him, then, hear that venerable prelate saying and teaching, in the second book of his Exposition of the Gospel according to Luke, that the Lord cooperates even with our wills. "You surely see," he says, "that everywhere the power of the Lord cooperates with human endeavors; so that no one can build without the Lord, no one keep watch without the Lord, no one begin anything without the Lord. And therefore, according to the Apostle: Whether you eat or drink, do all things to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). You see how the holy Ambrose took away, by these words, even that which people are wont to say—We begin, and God brings to completion—saying, "that no one even begins anything without God." Likewise in the sixth book of the same work, when he was dealing with those two debtors of one moneylender: "According to human reckoning," he says, "the one who owed more perhaps offended more: but through the mercy of the Lord the case is changed, so that he loves the more who owed the more—if, however, he obtains grace" (AMBR., Expos. Ev. Lc 6, 25). See how openly the Catholic teacher proclaims that even the very love by which one loves the more pertains to the gift of grace.

45. 49. Finally, that penance itself, which without doubt the will performs, comes to be performed by the mercy and help of the Lord, the blessed Ambrose says in the ninth book of the same work, speaking thus: "Good are the tears that wash away guilt. Indeed, those whom Jesus looks upon weep. Peter denied the first time, and did not weep, because the Lord had not looked upon him: he denied the second time, did not weep, because the Lord had still not looked upon him: he denied the third time too, Jesus looked upon him, and he wept most bitterly" (AMBR., Expos. Ev. Lc 10, 89). Let these men read the Gospel, and see that the Lord Jesus was then within, when he was being heard by the chief priests: but that the apostle Peter was without and below in the courtyard with the servants by the fire, now sitting, now standing, as is shown by the most truthful and most concordant narrative of the Evangelists. Hence it cannot be said that the Lord looked upon him visibly, with bodily eyes, by admonishing him.

And therefore what is written there: The Lord looked upon him (Luke 22:61), was done within, was done in the mind, was done in the will. The Lord secretly came to his aid by mercy, touched his heart, called back his memory, by his grace visited the inner Peter, and moved and drew forth the disposition of the inner self even to outward tears. See how God is present, by aiding, to our wills and actions: see how he works in us both to will and to work (Phil 2:13).

45. 50. Likewise in the same book the same holy Ambrose: "For if Peter fell," he says, "who said: Even if others are made to stumble, I will not be made to stumble (Matt 26:33), who else may rightly presume upon himself? Indeed David, because he had said: I said in my abundance: I shall not be moved forever, confesses that his boasting harmed him, saying: You turned away your face, and I was confounded (Ps 30:7–8 (29:7–8))" (AMBR., Expos. Ev. Lc 10, 91). Let this man hear so great a man teaching, let him imitate the one believing, whose doctrine and faith he praised. Let him hear humbly, let him imitate faithfully: let him not presume stubbornly upon himself, lest he perish. Why does Pelagius wish to be drowned in that sea from which Peter was freed by the rock?

46. 51. Let him hear the same prelate of God saying, likewise in the sixth book of the same work: "But why they did not receive him, the Evangelist himself related, saying: Because his face was that of one going to Jerusalem (Luke 9:53). But the disciples were eager that he be received within Samaria. But God calls those whom he deems worthy, and makes religious whom he wills" (AMBR., Expos. Ev. Lc 7, 27). O the understanding of the man of God, drawn from the very fountain of the grace of God! "God," he says, "calls those whom he deems worthy, and makes religious whom he wills."

See whether this is not that prophetic saying: I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I have been merciful (Exod 33:19; see Rom 9:15), and that apostolic one: So it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16). As also a man of his own in our own times says, "Whom he deems worthy he calls, and whom he wills he makes religious." Surely no one will dare to say that he is not yet religious "who runs to the Lord, and desires to be ruled by him, and suspends his will upon his will, and who, by clinging to him continually, becomes, according to the Apostle, one spirit with him (See 1 Cor 6:17)"?

But this whole so great work of a religious person, Pelagius says is "accomplished by nothing other than the freedom of choice." But, on the contrary, the blessed Ambrose, praised so excellently by his own mouth, says: "The Lord God calls whom he deems worthy, and makes religious whom he wills." Therefore, that one may run to the Lord, and desire to be ruled by him, and suspend his will upon his will, and, by clinging to him continually, become, according to the Apostle, one spirit with him, God makes religious whom he wills: and this whole thing no one but a religious person does. Wherefore, unless it be done by God that he do this, who does this?

47. 52. But because this question, where the choice of the will and the grace of God are disputed, is so difficult to sort out that, when free choice is defended, the grace of God seems to be denied, and when the grace of God is asserted, free choice is thought to be taken away: Pelagius can so wrap himself in the hiding places of this obscurity that he says he even agrees with the things which we have set down as written by the holy Ambrose, and proclaims that he too thinks these things, and has always thought them; and so tries to expound them one by one that they may be believed to suit even his opinion. Wherefore, as far as concerns this question about divine grace and assistance, attend to those three things which he distinguished most openly: being able, willing, being—that is, possibility, will, action. If, then, he agrees with us that not the possibility alone is aided in a person, even if he neither wills nor acts well, but the will and action itself—that is, that we may will well and act well, which are not in a person except when he wills well and acts well—if, as I said, he agrees that the will and action itself is divinely aided, and so aided that without that help we will and do nothing good, and that this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (See Rom 7:25), in which he makes us just by his own righteousness, not ours, so that this is our true righteousness which is in us from him (See Phil 3:9); then nothing, as I judge, will be left of controversy between us about the assistance of the grace of God.

48. 53. But as for that on account of which he so praised the holy Ambrose—namely, because he found in his writings, from the praises of Zechariah and Elizabeth, that a person can be in this life without sin—although it is not to be denied, if God wills this, with whom all things are possible (See Matt 19:26), let him nevertheless consider more carefully in what way it was said. For it was said, as it seems to me, according to a certain manner of life among human beings, probable and praiseworthy, which no one could justly call into a complaint of accusation and incrimination. Zechariah and his wife are reported to have had this in the sight of God (See Luke 1:6) for this reason: because in it they deceived no one by any dissembling, but as they appeared to people, so they were known to the eyes of God. But this was not said according to that perfection of righteousness in which we shall live truly and in every way unspotted and perfect. For the apostle Paul too said that, according to the righteousness which is from the law, he had been blameless (Phil 3:6); in which law Zechariah too lived blamelessly: but this righteousness the Apostle counted as dung and loss (See Phil 3:8), in comparison with the righteousness which we hope for, and for which we ought now to hunger and thirst (See Matt 5:6), so that we may at some time be satisfied in vision with that which is now in faith, so long as the just lives by faith (Rom 1:17).

49. 54. Let him hear, finally, that same venerable prelate, when he was expounding the prophet Isaiah, saying that no one in this world can be without sin. Where no one can say that he said "in this world" as if in the love of this world. For he was speaking of the Apostle, who said: Our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). The said bishop, then, explaining this meaning: "The Apostle," he says, "says that many perfect ones are with him, still placed in this world, who, if you look to true perfection, could not be perfect. For he himself said: We see now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I have been known (1 Cor 13:12). Thus they are both unspotted in this world and will be unspotted in the kingdom of God: although surely, if you examine more minutely, no one can be unspotted, because no one is without sin" (AMBR., Expos. Is proph). That testimony of the holy Ambrose, then, which Pelagius uses for his own opinion (See PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 3), was either said according to a certain manner—probable indeed, but not minutely examined—or else, if that holy and humble man supposed that Zechariah and Elizabeth had the highest and in every way perfect righteousness, to which nothing could now be added, he assuredly corrected his opinion by examining it more minutely.

50. 55. Let this man surely attend, in that very passage from which he took this Ambrosian testimony that pleased him, that he also said this: that to be unspotted from the beginning is impossible for human nature (See AMBR., Expos. Ev. Lc 1, 17); where the venerable Ambrose testifies that that natural possibility—which Pelagius is unwilling faithfully to regard as corrupted by sin, and therefore boastfully exalts—is entirely feeble and weak: without doubt against this man's will, but not against apostolic truth, where it is read: We too were once by nature children of wrath, like the rest (Eph 2:3).

For it is itself, through the sin of the first man, which came from his free choice, a corrupted and condemned nature; to which divine grace alone comes to aid, through the Mediator of God and human beings (See 1 Tim 2:5) and the omnipotent physician. Concerning his assistance for our justification—by which God works all things for good for those who love him (Rom 8:28), whom he first loved (1 John 4:19), granting them that he be loved by them—since we have long been discoursing of it, let us henceforth begin, as far as the Lord may help, to treat also of the sin which, through one man, together with death, entered the world, and so passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12), against those who have broken out more openly into the error contrary to this truth—those things which will seem sufficient to set forth.

1. 1. Now then, carefully notice how cautiously you ought to listen, concerning the Baptism of infants, to men of this kind, who neither openly dare to deny to that age the bath of regeneration and remission of sins—lest Christian ears could not bear this—and yet persist in upholding and defending their opinion, by which they think that carnal generation is not held liable to the sin of the first man, although they seem to grant them Baptism for the remission of sins. Surely you yourselves wrote that, in your presence, you heard from Pelagius, when he read to you from his pamphlet, which he also asserted he had sent to Rome, that they say "infants ought to be baptized with the same words of the sacrament as adults too" (PELAG., Libellus fidei 7). Who, after these words, would suppose that any question should be raised with them on this matter? Or, if one did, to whom would he not seem most slanderous, were not their manifest words read, where they deny that infants contract original sin, and contend that all are born without any defect?

2. 2. And Caelestius indeed showed himself more outspoken in this error, to such a degree that not even in the episcopal judgment at Carthage was he willing to condemn those who say "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not the human race; and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression" (PAULIN. Mediol., Libellus minor). And in the city of Rome, in his pamphlet which he gave to the most blessed Pope Zosimus, he asserted this more expressly: "that original sin binds none of the little ones." For from the ecclesiastical proceedings at Carthage we have copied out these words of his.

3. 3. "Bishop Aurelius said: Let what follows be read. And it was read: That the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not the human race. And when it had been read, Caelestius said: I said that I was in doubt about the transmission of sin, yet in such a way that I would agree with whomever God has given the grace of skill; because I have heard differing things from those who are surely established as presbyters in the Catholic Church. The deacon Paulinus said: Tell us their names. Caelestius said: The holy presbyter Rufinus, who stayed at Rome with the holy Pammachius: I heard him saying that there is no transmission of sin. The deacon Paulinus said: Is there any other? Caelestius said: I have heard several say it too. The deacon Paulinus said: Tell their names. Caelestius said: Is one priest not enough for you?" And after some things, in another place: "Bishop Aurelius said: Let the rest of the pamphlet be read. And it was read: That infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression: down to the end of the lesser pamphlet inserted above."

4. 3. "Bishop Aurelius said: Did you at some time teach, Caelestius, as the deacon Paulinus says, that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression? Caelestius said: Let him explain what he said: Before the transgression. The deacon Paulinus said: You deny that you taught this. It is one of two things: either let him deny that he taught it, or let him now condemn it. Caelestius said: I have already said, let him explain in what sense he said: Before the transgression. The deacon Paulinus said: Deny that you taught those things. Bishop Aurelius said: I ask what I have gathered from this objection: I say, Adam, established in paradise, is said to have been made beforehand incorruptible, but afterward, through the transgression of the precept, was made corruptible.

Do you say this, brother Paulinus? The deacon Paulinus said: This, lord. Bishop Aurelius said: Whether the state of the infants to be baptized today is certainly such as it was before the transgression of Adam, or whether it certainly draws the guilt of the transgression from that same origin of sin from which one is born; this is what the deacon Paulinus wants to hear. The deacon Paulinus said: Whether he taught this, let him not deny it? Caelestius said: I have already spoken about the transmission of sin, that I have heard several of those established within the Catholic Church demolish it, and others also build it up: although this is a matter of question, not of heresy. I have always said that infants need Baptism, and ought to be baptized: what else does he seek?"

4. 4. Surely you see that Caelestius so granted Baptism to the little ones that he was unwilling to confess that the sin of the first man, which is washed away by the bath of regeneration, passes into them—although he did not dare to deny it either: and on account of this hesitation of his, he did not condemn those who say "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not the human race; and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression" (PAULIN. Mediol., Libellus minor).

5. 5. But in the pamphlet which he published at Rome, which was submitted there in the ecclesiastical proceedings, he speaks of this matter in such a way as to show that he believes that about which he had here said he was in doubt. For these are his words: "But infants," he says, "ought to be baptized for the remission of sins, according to the rule of the universal Church, and according to the meaning of the Gospel, we confess: because the Lord established that the kingdom of heaven can be conferred on none but the baptized (See John 3:5); and since the powers of nature do not have this, it must be conferred through the freedom of grace" (CAEL., Libellus fidei Romae). If he said nothing further about this matter, who would not believe that he confessed that original sins are remitted in Baptism to infants too, by saying that they ought to be baptized for the remission of sins? Hence, then, comes also that which you wrote, that Pelagius answered you thus, "that infants are baptized with the same words of the sacrament as adults too" (PELAG., Libellus fidei 7); and that you rejoiced, having heard what you desired, and yet still preferred to consult us about his words.

6. 6. Notice, then, what Caelestius said most openly, and there you will see what Pelagius hid from you. For Caelestius adds and says: "But that infants are to be baptized for the remission of sins, we have not said on this account, that we might seem to affirm sin from transmission: which is far alien from the Catholic understanding. For sin is not born with a person, since it is afterward practiced by the person: because it is shown to be a fault not of nature, but of will. And therefore it is fitting to confess this, lest we seem to make different kinds of Baptism, and it is necessary to guard against this, lest, through the occasion of the mystery, to the injury of the Creator, an evil be said to be transmitted to a person through nature before it is done by the person" (CAEL., Libellus fidei Romae). This meaning of his Pelagius either feared or blushed to disclose to you, which his disciple neither feared nor blushed to profess openly, without any windings of obscurity, before the Apostolic See.

6. 7. But the very merciful prelate of the said See, when he saw him being carried headlong with such great presumption, as though raving, until—if it could come to pass—he should come to his senses, preferred gradually to bind him by his own questions and the other's answers, rather than, by striking with a severe sentence, to push him into that precipice toward which he already seemed to be leaning. But I did not say: He had openly fallen, but, he seemed to be leaning; because above, in that same pamphlet of his, about to speak of questions of this kind, he had said beforehand: "If perhaps, as happens to human beings, some error of ignorance has crept in, let it be corrected by your judgment" (CAEL., Libellus fidei Romae).

7. 8. Holding to this preliminary statement of his, the venerable Pope Zosimus dealt with the man, whom the wind of false doctrine had puffed up, that he should condemn those things which had been objected against him by the deacon Paulinus, and that he should give his assent to the letters of the Apostolic See which had flowed from his predecessor of holy memory (See AUG., Contra duas epp. Pelag. 2, 3, 5-4, 6).

But he was indeed unwilling to condemn the objections of the deacon: yet he did not dare to resist the letters of the blessed Pope Innocent (See AUG., Epp. 181-183); nay, "he promised that he would condemn all that that See condemned" (CAEL., Libellus fidei Romae; see PAULIN. Mediol., Libellus Zosimo episc); and so, like a frenzied man, that he might rest, as though gently soothed, he was nevertheless not yet believed to be loosed from the bonds of excommunication. But, with an interval of two months interposed, until a reply should be written back from Africa (See Zosim., Ep. "Magnum pondus."), room for coming to his senses was granted him under a certain medicinal mildness of the sentence.

Since, in truth, if, having laid aside the vanity of obstinacy, he were willing to attend to what he had promised, and to read carefully those same letters to which he had answered that he would consent, he would be healed. But after the rescripts had been directed from the African council of bishops, what followed—so that a sentence was most justly pronounced against him—read it all, for we have sent it all.

8. 9. Hence Pelagius too, if he considers himself and his writings without deceit, is not right to say that he ought not to be held by the same sentence. For he deceived the Palestinian judgment; therefore he there seems to have been cleared: but the Roman Church, where you know him to be most well known, he could by no means deceive everywhere; although he attempted this too in some fashion: but, as I said, he by no means prevailed.

For the most blessed Pope Zosimus recalled what his predecessor, worthy of imitation, had thought of those very proceedings. He also attended to what the faith of the Romans, to be proclaimed in the Lord (See Rom 1:8), thought of him—whose harmonious zeal, against his error, on behalf of Catholic truth, he saw burning in concord: among whom that man had long lived, and from whom his teachings could not be hidden; who knew Caelestius to be his disciple in such a way that they could bear most faithful and most firm testimony on this matter. What, then, the holy Pope Innocent judged about the proceedings of the Palestinian synod, by which Pelagius boasts that he was absolved—although you can both read it in his letters which he wrote back to us, and the African synod, in answer to the venerable Pope Zosimus, mentioned it (which we have sent to Your Charity with the other materials)—nevertheless it does not seem that it should be passed over even in this work.

9. 10. For when we, in the letter which five bishops wrote to him (See AUG., Ep. 177, 2), had made mention of those same Palestinian proceedings—the report of which had already reached us—saying that in the East, where he lives, ecclesiastical proceedings had taken place by which he is thought to have been cleared, and when he wrote back to this, among other things: "Although there are," he says, "some things placed in those very proceedings which, when objected, he in part suppressed by evading, in part confounded with utter obscurity by twisting many words upon himself; some he cleared by reasoning more false than true, as for the time could appear, by denying some things, by turning others with a false interpretation. But would that—which is rather to be wished—he would now turn himself from that error of his to the true way of the Catholic faith, and desire and will to be cleared, considering the daily grace of God and recognizing his assistance, so that he may be seen truly, and approved by all, to be corrected by manifest reason; not by the judgment of the proceedings, but by a heart turned to the Catholic faith.

Hence we can neither approve nor blame their judgment, since we do not know whether the proceedings are true; or, if they are true, it is rather established that he evaded than that he cleared himself with the whole truth" (See AUG., Ep. 183, 3-4). You surely see in these words how the most blessed Pope Innocent seems to speak not as of something unknown. You see what sentence he passed on his clearing. You see what his successor, the holy Pope Zosimus, ought to have recalled, as he did recall, so that in this he might confirm, with all hesitation removed, the judgment of his predecessor.

10. 11. Now then, attend carefully to that from which it is shown that Pelagius deceived the Palestinian judges—to pass over other things—in this very question about the Baptism of infants: lest perhaps, in what we said—that Pelagius hid from you that meaning in which Caelestius was more outspoken, although he himself thinks no otherwise—we should seem rather to slander or suspect than to have grasped anything certain. For surely it has already become clear enough above that Caelestius was unwilling to condemn what is said, "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, not the human race; and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression"; because he saw that, if he condemned these things, he would confirm that the passage of sin from Adam into infants takes place. But when these things had been objected to Pelagius—that he too thought them together with Caelestius—he condemned them without any retraction. And although I know that you have read this, nevertheless, because this is written not for you alone, lest the reader be reluctant to go back to the proceedings themselves, or, if he does not have them, even with labor to seek them out, we transcribe from there the very words, which are written below.

11. 12. "The Synod said: Now, since Pelagius has anathematized the uncertain foolish talk (See De gest. Pel. 6, 16), rightly answering that a person, with the help and grace of God, can be
that is, without sin, let him answer to the other chapters also. Another chapter in the teaching of Caelestius, the disciple of Pelagius, from those things which at Carthage were heard and noted by the holy Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, with other bishops: That Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or did not sin, would die. That the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not the human race. That the law leads to the kingdom just as the Gospel also does. That before the coming of Christ there were people without sin. That infants newly born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression. That neither does the whole race of human beings die through the death or transgression of Adam, nor does the whole race of human beings rise again through the resurrection of Christ.

That the holy bishop Augustine answered, against his disciples in Sicily, to Hilary on the chapters appended (See AUG., Epp. 156-157), writing a book in which these things are contained: That a person can be without sin, if he wills: That infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life: That baptized rich persons, unless they renounce all things, if they appear to do anything good, it is not reckoned to them, nor can they have the kingdom of God (See AUG., Ep. 157). Pelagius said: As to a person's being able to be without sin, it was said above. But as to its having been the case that there were people without sin before the coming of the Lord, we too say that before the coming of Christ certain ones lived holily and justly, according to the tradition of the holy Scriptures: but the rest were not said by me, even according to their testimony, for which I ought not to make satisfaction; yet, for the satisfaction of the holy Synod, I anathematize those who so hold, or have at some time held" (See De gest. Pel. 11, 24).

12. 13. See—to leave out other things—you see that Pelagius anathematized those who hold "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not the human race; and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression" (PAULIN. Mediol., Libellus minor). What else, then, could the bishop-judges here understand, except that he confessed that sin passes from Adam into the little ones? In order not to confess this, Caelestius was unwilling to condemn these things, which this man condemned. Accordingly, if I show that he too thinks nothing else of the little ones than that they are born without any contagion of any defect, what will be the difference between this man and Caelestius in this question, except that the latter was more open, the former more secretive; the latter more obstinate, the former more mendacious; or at least the latter more outspoken, this one more cunning?

For the latter was unwilling, even in the Church of Carthage, to condemn what he afterward confessed at Rome that he held, and professed that he was prepared to be corrected, if an error had crept upon him as upon a human being (CAEL., Libellus fidei Romae). But this man both condemned that teaching as contrary to the truth, lest he himself be condemned by the Catholic judges; and reserved it for himself to be defended afterward, either condemning it mendaciously, or interpreting it cunningly.

13. 14. But I see that it is now most justly demanded of me that I not delay to demonstrate what I promised: whether he too thinks what Caelestius thinks. In the first book of his more recent work, which he wrote In Defense of Free Choice, of which work he made mention in the letter he sent to Rome: "Every good and evil," he says, "by which we are either praiseworthy or blameworthy, does not arise with us, but is done by us: for we are born capable of either thing, not full of it, and just as without virtue, so also we are begotten without vice: and before the action of our own will, there is in a person only that which God created" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1).

Surely you discern in these words of Pelagius that the teaching of both is contained—about the little ones being born without any contagion of any defect from Adam. It is no wonder, then, that Caelestius was unwilling to condemn those who say, "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not the human race; and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression": but it is a great wonder with what effrontery Pelagius condemned these things.

For if, as he says, "evil does not arise with us, and we are begotten without vice, and before the action of our own will there is in a person only that which God created," then assuredly the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, because it made no passage into the offspring. For either sin is not an evil, or sin is not a vice, or God created sin. But this man says, "Evil does not arise with us, and we are begotten without vice, and there is in those being born only that which God created." And on this account, since, according to this opinion of his, he thinks it most true that "the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, not the human race," why did Pelagius condemn this, except that the Catholic judges might be deceived?

Similarly this too can be said: "If evil does not arise with us, and we are begotten without vice, and there is in a person being born only that which God created"; then without doubt "infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression," in whom there was no evil or vice, and there was in him only that which God had created. And yet Pelagius anathematized "those who hold or have at some time held that little ones newly come from birth are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression" (See De gest. Pel. 11, 24; 35, 65)—that is, without any evil, without any vice, having only that which God created. Why, then, did Pelagius condemn this too, except that the Catholic synod might be deceived, lest the new heretic be condemned?

14. 15. But as you know—and as I also set down in that book which I wrote about the Palestinian proceedings to our venerable old man Aurelius—I rejoiced that, by that answer of Pelagius, this whole question was exhausted, and he seemed to me to have confessed most openly that there is original sin in the little ones, by saying anathema to those who would believe that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not also the human race, and would suppose that the little ones are in that state in which that first man was before the transgression. But afterward, when I had read his four books—from the first of which I copied out the words mentioned a little before—and had found the man still thinking against the Catholic faith concerning the little ones, I first began to marvel at so shameless a lie in an ecclesiastical judgment and on so great a question.

For if he had already written those same books beforehand, how did he say that he anathematizes those who at some time so held? But if he promised that work afterward, how did he anathematize those who so hold? Unless perhaps he is going to say, ridiculously, that he condemned those who at some time so held, and those who so hold; but that about future time—that is, those who were going to hold it thus—he could prejudge neither himself nor others; and that therefore he did not lie, because he was afterward caught holding it thus.

But he does not say this—not only because it is ridiculous, but because it cannot be true. For in those same books he both speaks against the passage of sin from Adam into the little ones, and boasts of the proceedings of the Palestinian synod, where he was thought to have truly condemned those who so hold, and by deceit stole his own absolution.

15. 16. For what does it pertain to the matter we are now dealing with, that he answers his disciples "that he condemned those objections for this reason: because he too says that that first sin harmed not only the first man, but also the human race, not by propagation, but by example (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1)"—that is, not that those who were propagated from him drew any vice from him, but that all who afterward sinned imitated him as the first sinner? Or that he says, "infants are therefore not in that state in which Adam was before the transgression, because they cannot yet receive a precept, but he could; and they do not yet use the choice of the rational will, which, unless he had used it, no precept would have been given him" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1)?

What does this pertain to the matter—that, by so expounding the words objected to him, he thinks he rightly condemned what is said, "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, and not the human race; and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before sin" (PAULIN. Mediol., Libellus minor); and yet, these things condemned, does not mendaciously hold what is found in his little works composed afterward, "that the little ones are born without any evil, without any vice, and that there is in them only that which God created" (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1), not the wound which the enemy inflicted?

16. 17. Does he, by saying these things—by expounding otherwise words objected for another purpose—bring it about that he shows he did not deceive the judges? He by no means achieves this: for he deceived the judges all the more secretly, the more cunningly he expounds these things.

For the Catholic bishops, when they heard a man anathematizing those who say, "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone, not the human race," supposed that he held nothing other than what the Catholic Church is accustomed to proclaim: whence it truly baptizes the little ones for the remission of sins—not of those which they committed by imitating, on account of the example of the first sinner, but of those which they drew by being born, on account of the vice of their origin.

And when they heard him anathematizing those who say, "that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression," they believed that he said nothing other than that those who think the little ones have drawn no sin from Adam, and accordingly are in that state in which he was before sin. For this would be objected to him, and nothing else, since this was the matter in question. Accordingly, when this man so expounds this as to say that infants are therefore not in that state in which Adam was before sin, because they are not yet in the same firmness of mind or body, not because any guilt of propagation has passed into them, let it be answered to him: When those things to be condemned were objected to you, the Catholic bishops did not understand them thus; therefore, when you condemned them, they believed you to be Catholic.

On this account, then, what they supposed you held was to be absolved: but what you held was to be condemned. Therefore you are not absolved, you who held things to be condemned: but that was absolved which you ought to have held. But in order that you might be thought absolved, you were believed to hold things to be praised, since the judges did not understand that you were concealing things to be condemned. Rightly were you judged the associate of Caelestius, of whom you show yourself a manifest partaker. And although in the judgment you covered up your books, nevertheless after the judgment you published them.

17. 18. Since these things are so, you surely perceive that, against the authors of so wicked an error, the episcopal councils, and the Apostolic See, and the whole Roman Church, and the Roman Empire (See the laws of Honorius)—which, by God's favor, is Christian—were most rightly moved, until they should come to their senses from the snares of the devil. For who knows whether God may perhaps give them repentance, to recognize and confess and proclaim even the truth, and truly to condemn the condemnable falsehood? But however these men may wish to be, we cannot doubt that, by the mercy of the Lord, provision was made for many who followed them for this reason: because they saw them associated with Catholic communion.

17. 19. But how Pelagius tried to creep in so as to deceive even the episcopal judgment of the Apostolic See, in this very question about the Baptism of infants, attend carefully. For in the letter which he sent to Rome to Pope Innocent of blessed memory—since they did not find him in the body, and it was given to the holy Pope Zosimus, and from there directed to us—he says "that he is defamed by people, as denying infants the sacrament of Baptism, and promising to some the kingdom of heaven apart from the redemption of Christ" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium). But these things are not objected to them as he put it. For they neither deny infants the sacrament of Baptism, nor promise to any the kingdom of heaven apart from the redemption of Christ. And so that of which he complains he is defamed, he so set forth that he could easily answer the charge objected, with his teaching kept safe.

18. 19. But it is objected to them that they are unwilling to confess that unbaptized infants are liable to the condemnation of the first man, and that original sin, to be purged by regeneration, has passed into them; since they contend that infants are to be baptized only for receiving the kingdom of heaven: as though, apart from the kingdom of heaven, they could have anything but eternal death, who without participation in the body and blood of the Lord cannot have eternal life. See what is objected to them about the Baptism of infants: not what he himself so set forth that he could, according to his teachings, answer his own proposition, as if it were the objection of an adversary.

18. 20. Then notice how he answers, and see that the hiding places of ambiguity prepare refuges for falsehood, by pouring darkness over the truth; so that even we, when we first read these things, almost rejoiced at them as correct or corrected. But his fuller disputations in his books, where, however much he covers himself, he is for the most part compelled to disclose himself, made these things too suspect to us, so that, looking more attentively, we found them ambiguous. For when he had said "that he had never heard even any impious heretic say of the little ones" what he set forth, he then added and said: "For who is so ignorant of evangelical reading that he would not only try to affirm this, but could even lightly say it, or even think it? Then who is so impious as to want the little ones to be excluded from the kingdom of heaven, while he forbids them to be baptized and to be reborn in Christ" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium)?

19. 21. In vain he says these things: he does not thereby clear himself. That the little ones cannot enter the kingdom of heaven without Baptism, not even they themselves have ever denied. But that is not the question: the question is about the purging of original sin in the little ones. Let him clear himself of this, who is unwilling to confess that the bath of regeneration has, in the little ones, something to purge. And therefore let us attend to the rest of what he is going to say.

For after interposing the testimony from the Gospel, that unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, no one can enter the kingdom of heaven (John 3:5)—about which, as we said, no question arises for them—he went on to add, saying: "Who is so impious as to forbid to a little one of any age the common redemption of the human race" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium)? And this too is ambiguous, what redemption he means: whether from evil to good, or from good to better. For Caelestius too, at Carthage, in his pamphlet confessed the redemption of the little ones, and yet was unwilling to confess that sin had passed from Adam into them.

20. 22. But notice what this man then adds: "And forbid," he says, "the one who is born to an uncertain life to be reborn to a perpetual and certain one" (PELAG., Ep. ad Innocentium)? That is, Who is so impious as to forbid to be reborn to a perpetual and certain life the one who is born to an uncertain one? When we first read these words, we believed that by "uncertain life" he meant this temporal life: although it seemed to us that he ought rather to have called it mortal than uncertain, since it ends in certain death. Nevertheless, as long as it is lived, since it is not doubted to be uncertain at every moment, we thought he meant nothing other than that he preferred to call this mortal life uncertain. And on this account, although he openly was unwilling to confess the eternal death of the little ones who depart from this life without the sacrament of Baptism, nevertheless a seemingly certain reasoning consoled our anxiety about that. For we said: If perpetual life, as he seems to confess, cannot belong to any but those who have been baptized, then assuredly perpetual death will follow those who die unbaptized. Which can happen, by no justice of God, to those by whom no sins have been committed in this life, except on account of original sin.

21. 23. But afterward there were not lacking brethren who admonished us that Pelagius could have said this for this reason: because on this question he is reported to have been accustomed to answer those who asked, saying, "Little ones dying without Baptism—where they do not go, I know; where they go, I do not know"; that is, I know that they do not go into the kingdom of heaven; but where they go, he said, or says, that he does not know, because he did not dare to say that those go into perpetual death whom he both held to have committed nothing evil here, and did not agree to have drawn original sin. And so these words of his too, sent to Rome as a great clearing of himself, are so ambiguous that they can offer hiding places to their teaching, from which the heretical meaning may leap out to lie in wait, when, no one being present who could answer, someone is found weak, as if in a wilderness.

21. 24. But now, in the statement of his Faith, which he sent to Rome with that same letter to the same Pope Innocent, to whom he had also written a letter, by covering himself he laid himself bare much more evidently, saying: "We hold one Baptism, which we say is to be celebrated with the same words of the sacrament in infants as also in adults" (PELAG., Libellus fidei 7). He did not even say: With the same sacrament; which indeed, if he had said it, would still be ambiguous: but, "with the same," he says, "words of the sacrament"; as though to infants the remission of sins were spoken by the sound of words, not effected by the reality of things. He nevertheless seemed for a time to say something that suited the Catholic faith: but he did not prevail to deceive that See to the end.

For after the rescripts of the African council—into which province indeed that pestiferous doctrine had arrived by creeping, but had not so widely occupied it or so deeply pervaded it—other things of his also, in the city of Rome, where he had spent a very long time, and where he had earlier been engaged in these discourses and disputes, were brought forth and laid open by the care of the faithful brethren; which Pope Zosimus appended, as things to be execrated, to his letters which he composed to be carried throughout the Catholic world, as you can read. There Pelagius, as if expounding the Letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans, argues and says: "If the sin of Adam harmed even those who did not sin, then the righteousness of Christ profits even those who do not believe" (PELAG., Exp. in Ep. ad Rom 5, 15). And other things of this kind, all of which, with the Lord's help, have been refuted and dissolved in the books which we wrote on the Baptism of infants (De peccat. mer. et rem. 3, 3, 5-6).

And these things, indeed, in his so-called expositions, he did not dare to object in his own person; but he said this there, where he was most well known to many, and could not hide what he thought and said: which, in those books of which I mentioned something above from the first (PELAG., Pro lib. arb. 1), he carries on not dissemblingly, but most openly, with all the force of disputing that he can, that human nature in the little ones may be believed in no way corrupted from propagation; and in arrogating salvation to it, he begrudges it the Savior.

22. 25. Since these things are so, and since it is now established that a pestiferous teaching and a heretical error has arisen—which, with the Lord's help, the Church now more openly shuns—these two, namely Pelagius and Caelestius, being either brought back to a place of repentance, or, if they refuse this, wholly condemned—who are either reported, or even proved, to be the authors of this perversity; or at least, if they are not the authors, but learned this from others, are nevertheless touted as its asserters and teachers, through whom it might creep more widely and grow, both by their words and writings, and by fitting evidence, and by the report arising and increasing from all these:

what remains, except that every Catholic, by the powers which he takes from the Lord, refute this plague, and vigilantly resist it; so that, while one contends for the truth by the necessity of answering, without zeal for contention, the unlearned may be instructed, and so that what the enemy contrived for ruin may be turned to the usefulness of the Church, according to that saying of the Apostle: There must be heresies too, that those who are approved may be made manifest among you (1 Cor 11:19)?

23. 26. Wherefore, after the many things which, by writing, we have been able to discuss against this error hostile to the grace of God, which through Jesus Christ our Lord he bestows on small and great, now it is fitting to examine this: that, wishing cunningly to avoid the odium of heresy, they assert "that this question is apart from peril to the faith"; so that, namely, if they are convicted of having gone astray in it, they may seem to have erred not criminally, but as it were civilly. For thus Caelestius spoke at Carthage in the ecclesiastical proceedings: "I have already," he says, "spoken about the transmission of sin, that I have heard several of those established within the Catholic Church demolish it, and others also build it up; although this is a matter of question, not of heresy. I have always said that infants need Baptism, and ought to be baptized: what else does he seek?" He said this as if he wished to signify that it would then have been to be judged a heresy, if he denied that infants ought to be baptized: but now, since he confesses that they are to be baptized, even if he gives as the reason for their Baptism not that which the truth holds, but one that does not pertain to the faith, he reckons that he does not err, and therefore is not to be judged a heretic.

Likewise in the pamphlet which he gave at Rome, when he had set forth his faith, as much as it pleased him to say, from the Trinity of one deity all the way to the resurrection of the dead, of what kind it will be—about which no one had questioned him, and concerning which no question was being raised with him—where his discourse came to what was at issue: "But if any questions," he says, "apart from the faith have arisen, about which there is contention among many; I have not, as the author of some teaching, established this by definitive authority, but those things which I have received from the fountain of the Prophets and Apostles I offer to be approved by the judgment of your Apostolate; so that if perhaps, as happens to human beings, some error of ignorance has crept in, it may be corrected by your judgment" (CAEL., Libellus fidei Romae). Surely you perceive that he did this with this preliminary statement set forth: so that, if any error appeared in him, he might seem to have erred not in the faith, but in questions which are apart from the faith, where, even if the error is to be corrected, it is nevertheless not corrected as a heresy, and one who has not been corrected is said to err in such a way that he is nevertheless not judged a heretic.

23. 27. But this opinion greatly deceives him. These questions, which he reckons to be apart from the faith, are in a far different case from those in which, with the faith kept safe by which we are Christians, one is either ignorant of what is true, and a definitive judgment is suspended, or, by a human and weak conjecture, surmises otherwise than it is. As when it is asked of what kind, or where, is the paradise where God placed the man whom he formed from dust (See Gen 2:7); though the Christian faith does not doubt that that paradise exists: or when it is asked where Elijah or Enoch now is, whether there, or somewhere else; whom, however, we do not doubt to be alive in the bodies in which they were born: or when it is asked whether the Apostle was caught up to the third heaven in the body or out of the body (See 2 Cor 12:2); although this is a shameless inquiry of those who want to know what he himself, to whom this was granted, testifies—with the faith surely kept safe—that he does not know:

or how many heavens there are, to the third of which he records that he was caught up: or whether the elements of this visible world are four or more: what makes the sun or moon fail, by those eclipses which astrologers are accustomed to predict by a fixed reckoning of times: why the ancient people lived so long as holy Scripture testifies; and whether, in proportion to a longer lifespan, they began to beget children at a late puberty: how Methuselah was able to live (See Gen 5:25–27), who was not in the ark, and who, as the years are reckoned in very many codices both Greek and Latin, is found to have survived the flood; or whether one ought rather to believe the fewer, which are very rarely found, in which the number of years is so written that he is shown to have died before the flood. For who would not perceive that, in these and similar varied and innumerable questions—pertaining either to the most obscure works of God or to the most hidden recesses of the Scriptures, which it is difficult to embrace and define by any fixed kind—many things are unknown with the Christian faith kept safe, and one errs somewhere without any crime of heretical teaching?

24. 28. But in the cause of the two men, by one of whom we were sold under sin, by the other are redeemed from sins; by one we were cast headlong into death, by the other are freed unto life; since the one ruined us in himself by doing his own will, not the will of him by whom he was made; the other saved us in himself by doing not his own will, but the will of him by whom he was sent (See John 4:34; 5:30): in the cause, then, of these two men the Christian faith properly stands. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). Since there is no other name under heaven given to human beings, in which we must be saved (Acts 4:12): and in him God has appointed faith for all, raising him from the dead (Acts 17:31).

And so without this faith—that is, without faith in the one mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus; without faith, I say, in his resurrection, which God has appointed for all, and which surely cannot be truly believed without his incarnation and death—without faith, then, in the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ, the Christian truth does not doubt that not even the ancient just could, in order to be just, be cleansed from sins and justified by the grace of God: whether among those just ones whom holy Scripture mentions, or among those whom it does not indeed mention, but who are nevertheless to be believed to have existed, whether before the flood, or from then until the giving of the law, or in the time of the law itself, not only among the children of Israel, such as the Prophets were, but also outside that same people, such as Job was. For their hearts too were cleansed by the same faith in the mediator, and love was poured out in them through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5), who breathes where he wills (John 3:8), not following merits, but even making the merits themselves. For the grace of God will in no way be grace, unless it be gratuitous in every way.

24. 29. Although, then, death reigned from Adam until Moses (Rom 5:14), because not even the law given through Moses could conquer it—for it was not given as something that could give life (See Gal 3:21), but as something that should show the dead, for whose giving of life grace was necessary, to be not only laid low by the propagation and domination of sin, but also convicted by the added transgression of the law itself; not that anyone should perish who even then understood this in the mercy of God, but that, destined to punishment through the reign of death, and made manifest even to himself through the transgression of the law, he should seek the help of God, so that where sin abounded, grace might superabound (Rom 5:20), which alone frees from the body of this death (Rom 7:24–25).

25. 29. Although, then, not even the law given through Moses could take away from any person the reign of death; nevertheless, even in the time of the law, there were people of God—not under the law that terrifies, convicts, punishes, but under the grace that delights, heals, frees. There were those who would say: I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb (Ps 51:5 (50:7)); and: There is no peace in my bones because of the face of my sins (Ps 38:3 (37:4)); and: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me (Ps 51:10 (50:12)); and: Strengthen me with a princely spirit (Ps 51:12 (50:14)); and: Take not your Holy Spirit from me (Ps 51:11 (50:13)). There were those who would say: I believed, therefore I have spoken (Ps 116:10 (115:1)).

For they too were cleansed by the same faith by which we are. Hence the Apostle also says: But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed, therefore I have spoken; we too believe, therefore we also speak (2 Cor 4:13). From that same faith it was said: Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb, and will bear a son; and they will call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us (Isa 7:14; see Matt 1:23). From that same faith it was said of him: And he himself, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber: he rejoiced as a giant to run the way; from the height of heaven is his going forth, and his circuit even to the height of heaven; and there is no one who can hide himself from his heat (Ps 19:5–6 (18:6–7)). From that same faith it was said to him: Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, a rod of uprightness, the rod of your kingdom: you have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows (Ps 45:6–7 (44:7–8)).

By the same spirit of faith these future things were seen by them, by which they are believed by us to have been done. For those who could prophesy these things to us with faithful love were not themselves without a share in them. And whence is it that the apostle Peter says: Why do you tempt God, by laying upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear; but through the grace of the Lord Jesus we believe that we are saved, even as they were (Acts 15:10–11):

except because they too were saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, not through the law of Moses, through which there came not healing, but knowledge of sin, as the Apostle teaches, saying: For through the law comes the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20)? But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, attested by the Law and the Prophets (Rom 3:21).

If, then, it has now been manifested, it existed even then, but hidden. Its hiddenness was signified by the veil of the temple, which, to signify its revelation, was torn at the death of Christ (See Matt 27:51). And even then, therefore, this grace of the one mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus, was in the people of God: but it lay hidden within, as the rain in the fleece, which God sets apart for his inheritance not as owed, but as freely given (See Ps 68:9 (67:10)); but now, as if that fleece had been dried—that is, the Jewish people having been rejected—it is seen lying open in all the nations, as on the threshing floor (See Judg 6:36–40).

26. 30. Let us not, then, like Pelagius and his disciples, divide the ages (See AUG., Contra duas epp. Pelag. 1, 21, 39), saying that just people first lived by nature, then under the law, thirdly under grace. By nature, namely, from Adam through so long an age, in which the law had not yet been given. "For then," they say, "the Creator was known with reason as guide, and how one ought to live was carried written in their hearts, not by the law of the letter, but of nature. But when morals had been corrupted," they say, "when nature, now discolored, began not to suffice, the law was added to it, by which, as by a file, the rust having been rubbed away, it might be restored to its former brightness. But after the excessive habit of sinning prevailed, as they argue, which the law had little power to heal: Christ came, and, as to a most desperate disease, the physician himself came to the aid, not through his disciples, but through himself."

26. 31. Arguing these things, they try to exclude the ancient just from the grace of the mediator, as though the man Christ Jesus had not been the Mediator of God and of those human beings (1 Tim 2:5); because, not having yet taken flesh from the womb of the Virgin, he was not yet a human being when those just ones lived. But if this were so, the Apostle would by no means say: Through a human being came death, and through a human being the resurrection of the dead: for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:21–22). Since those ancient just, according to the empty talk of these men, nature sufficing for them, did not need the man Christ as mediator, through whom they might be reconciled to God: nor will they be made alive in him, to whose body and members—according to that by which he was made a human being for the sake of human beings—they are shown not to pertain. But if, as the Truth says through his Apostles, as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive; since through that human being came death, and through this human being the resurrection of the dead,

who, being a Christian, would dare to doubt that even those just ones, who in the more recent ages of the human race pleased God, are therefore going to come into the resurrection of eternal life, not of eternal death, because they will be made alive in Christ; and that they are made alive in Christ because they pertain to the body of Christ; and that they pertain to the body of Christ because for them too Christ is the head (1 Cor 11:3); that Christ is the head for them too because there is one Mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5)? Which he would not have been for them, unless they had believed in his resurrection through his grace. And how would this have come about, if they had not known that he was going to come in the flesh, nor had lived justly and devoutly from this faith? For if the incarnation of Christ did not profit them because it had not yet taken place, then neither does the judgment of Christ over the living and the dead profit us, because it has not yet taken place. But if we, through faith in this judgment not yet made, but to come, shall stand at the right hand of Christ; then assuredly they, through faith in his incarnation then not yet made, but to come, are members of Christ.

27. 32. For it is not to be thought that to the ancient just only the divinity of Christ, which always existed, was revealed and profited, and not also his humanity, which did not yet exist. For that which the Lord Jesus said: Abraham longed to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad (John 8:56); if by his day he wanted his time to be understood, he assuredly bore witness to Abraham that he had been imbued with faith in his incarnation. For according to this he has a time: but his divinity exceeds all time, because through it all times were made. And even if anyone supposed it should be taken of the everlasting day, which is bounded by no tomorrow, preceded by no yesterday—that is, of eternity itself, in which he is coeternal with the Father—how would Abraham truly long for it, unless he knew the future mortality of him whose eternity he sought? Or if anyone constricts the meaning of these words to this, so as to say that nothing is to be understood in what the Lord said, He sought my day, except, He sought me, who am the abiding day—that is, the unfailing light: as when we speak of the life of the Son, of which the Gospel speaks, saying: So he gave to the Son also to have life in himself (John 5:26): we understand not the Son to be one thing and his life another, but the same Son himself to be the life, who said: I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6): and of whom it is said: He is the true God and life eternal (1 John 5:20): so that Abraham desired to see this divinity of his equal to the Father, his incarnation by no means foreknown, as some philosophers too sought him, who learned nothing of his flesh: will anyone rightly understand otherwise that too which Abraham bids, that his servant place his hand under his thigh, and swear by the God of heaven (See Gen 24:2–3), except that Abraham knew in what flesh, propagated from that thigh, the God of heaven would come?

28. 33. Of this flesh and blood, when he blessed Abraham himself, Melchizedek too brought forth a testimony most well known to faithful Christians (See Gen 14:18, 20), so that so long afterward it was said to Christ in the Psalms—what had not yet been done, but was still to come, and yet the same one faith of the fathers, which is ours, sang: You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek (Ps 110:4 (109:4)). For to those who find death in Adam, Christ profits by this: that he is the mediator unto life. But he is not mediator by that whereby he is equal to the Father: for by this he is as far distant from us as the Father is; and how will there be a middle, where the very distance is the same? Therefore the Apostle does not say: One mediator between God and human beings, Christ Jesus; but, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). He is Mediator, then, by that whereby he is a human being: lower than the Father by that whereby he is nearer to us; higher than us by that whereby he is nearer to the Father. Which is said more openly thus: lower than the Father, because in the form of a servant (See Phil 2:7); higher than us, because without the stain of sin.

29. 34. Wherefore whoever contends that human nature, at whatever age, does not need a physician, the second Adam, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted as an enemy of the grace of God—not in some question in which one can doubt or err with the faith kept safe, but in the very rule of faith by which we are Christians. But what kind of thing is it, that by these men the nature of human beings which existed before the law is praised, as though still corrupted by less evil morals; and they do not consider that human beings were then submerged in such great, as it were intolerable, sins, that—except for one man of God and his wife, and three sons and as many daughters-in-law—by the just judgment of God, just as afterward the small land of Sodom was destroyed by fire, so the whole world was destroyed by the flood (See Gen 7; 19)? From the time, therefore, when through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12), assuredly the whole mass of perdition became the possession of the destroyer. And so no one, absolutely no one, has been freed from there, or is freed, or will be freed, except by the grace of the Redeemer.

30. 35. And before Abraham, indeed, whether the just, or their little ones, were marked by any bodily and visible sacrament, Scripture does not express. Abraham himself, however, received the sign of circumcision, the seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom 4:11). And he so received it that thenceforth he was bidden to circumcise all the little ones of his house too, freshest from their mothers' wombs, on the eighth day of their birth; so that even these, who could not yet believe with the heart unto righteousness (See AUG., De nupt. et concup. 2, 11, 24), might nevertheless take the seal of the righteousness of faith. This was commanded under such great terror that God said that that soul would perish from his people whose foreskin had not been circumcised on the eighth day (See Gen 17:11–14). If the justice of so horrible a penalty be sought, will not all the argumentation of these men about free choice and the praiseworthy soundness and purity of nature, however clever it be, struck back and broken, fly to pieces? For what evil, I ask, did a little one commit by his own will, that, with another being negligent and not circumcising him, he himself should be condemned, with so severe a condemnation that that soul should perish from his people? For the terror of temporal death was not struck in; since of the just, when they died, it was then rather said: And he was gathered to his people (Gen 25:17); or, he was gathered to his fathers (1 Macc 2:69): since thenceforth no temptation is feared for a person which would separate him from his people, if his people is itself the people of God.

31. 36. What, then, does so great a condemnation mean, for nothing admitted of one's own will? For it is not, as some suppose, following the Platonists, that this is repaid to the soul of each infant, which by its own will it committed before this life, when, before this body, it had a free choice of living either well or badly: since the apostle Paul says most openly that those not yet born have done nothing good or evil (See Rom 9:11). Whence, then, is an infant rightly punished with that perdition, except because he belongs to the mass of perdition, and is justly understood, as born from Adam, to be condemned by the obligation of the ancient debt, unless he has been freed from there, not according to debt, but according to grace? And what grace, except the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25)? Whom, assuredly, among the other sacraments of the ancients, the very circumcision of the foreskin also prophesied. For the eighth day, in the recurrences of the weeks, is the Lord's day, on which the Lord rose: and the rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4); whence the knife of circumcision is of stone (See Josh 5:2–3); and the flesh of the foreskin, the body of sin.

32. 37. Accordingly, the sacraments having been changed, after he came who was signified to be going to come—yet the help of the Mediator not changed, who even before he had come in the flesh freed his ancient members by faith in his incarnation (See Rom 6:6)—we too, when we were dead in trespasses and in the foreskin of our flesh, were made alive together with Christ, in whom we were circumcised with a circumcision not made by hand (Col 2:13, 11), which the circumcision made by hand prefigured, that the body of sin might be done away with (Rom 6:6), with which we are born from Adam. The propagation of the condemned origin condemns us, unless we are cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh, in which was sent, without sin, the one who nevertheless from sin would condemn sin (See Rom 8:3)—for he was made sin for us. Whence the Apostle says: We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God: him who knew no sin he made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor 5:20–21).

God, then, to whom we are reconciled through him, made him sin for us—that is, a sacrifice through which our sins might be remitted: since sacrifices for sins are called sins. And surely he himself was offered up for our sins, having no vice, alone among human beings—such as was sought even then in the beasts, by which it was signified that the one without vice would come to heal vices. On whatever day of his birth, therefore, an infant is baptized in Christ, he is circumcised as on the eighth day: since he is circumcised in him who rose on the third day indeed from when he was crucified, but on the eighth day in the weeks. And he is circumcised in the stripping off of the body of the flesh (Col 2:11)—that is, so that the debt which the contagion of carnal generation drew, the grace of spiritual regeneration may absolve. For no one is clean from filth (with what filth, I ask, except of sin?), not even the infant whose life is of one day upon the earth (Job 14:4 (according to the LXX)).

33. 38. But they argue thus, saying: "Then marriage is an evil, and the human being whom marriage begets is not the work of God?" As though the good of marriage were the disease of concupiscence, in which those who do not know God love their wives—which the Apostle forbids (See 1 Thess 4:5)—and not rather conjugal chastity, by which carnal lust is brought back into the good uses of begetting children in an ordered way: or as though a human being could be anything but the work of God—not only one who is begotten of marriage, but even one who is begotten of fornication or of adultery.

But in this question, where it is asked not for what thing a creator, but for what thing a savior is necessary, one must look not at what good there is in the procreation of nature, but at what evil there is in the sin by which it is certain that nature was corrupted. But both are propagated together, both nature and the vice of nature; of which the one is good, the other evil. The former is taken from the bounty of the Creator, the latter is drawn from the origin of condemnation: of the former the cause is the good will of God most high, of the latter the bad will of the first man: the former indicates God as the founder of the creature, the latter indicates God as the punisher of disobedience: finally, the same Christ himself, for creating the former, is the maker of the human being; for healing the latter, was made a human being (See AUG., Ep. 177, 11ff).

34. 39. Marriage, then, is a good in all things which are proper to marriage. And these are three: the ordering of begetting, the fidelity of chastity, the sacrament of wedlock. On account of the ordering of begetting it is written: I want the younger to marry, to bear children, to be mothers of households (1 Tim 5:14). On account of the fidelity of chastity: The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband: likewise also the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife (1 Cor 7:4). On account of the sacrament of wedlock: What God has joined together, let no one separate (Matt 19:6).

Of these, in our other little works, which are not unknown to you, we remember having discussed sufficiently, as far as we could with the Lord's help. On account of all these, marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled (Heb 13:4). For insofar as marriage is good, it makes very much good even out of the evil of lust: since lust is used well not by lust, but by reason. But lust is in that which the Apostle notes—the law of the disobedient members fighting against the law of the mind: but reason, using lust well, is itself in the law of marriage. For if no good could come from evil, God would not even form a human being from an adulterous union.

As, therefore, the condemnable evil of adultery, when even from it a human being is born, is not imputed to God, who surely in the evil work of human beings himself does a good work: so whatever there is shameful in that disobedience of the members, at which those blushed who after sin covered those same members with fig leaves (Gen 3:7), is not imputed to marriage, on account of which conjugal intercourse is not only licit, but even useful and honorable; but is imputed to the sin of disobedience, whose penalty this followed, that the human being, disobedient to God, should feel his members also disobedient to himself:

blushing at which, because they were moved not at the choice of his will, but at the incitement of lust, as if by their own choice, he judged them shameful, and took care to cover them. For a human being ought not to have been confounded over the work of God, nor were those things in any way to be blushed at as created, which seemed good to the Creator to establish. And so that simple nakedness displeased neither God nor the human being, when there was nothing shameful, because nothing punishable had preceded.

35. 40. But there would without doubt be marriage even had sin not preceded, because for no other cause was a helper for the man made not another man, but a woman. And those words of God: Increase and multiply (Gen 1:28), are not a prediction of sins to be condemned, but a blessing of marriages made fruitful. For God, by these ineffable words of his—that is, by the divine reasons living in the truth of his wisdom, through which all things were made—implanted the force of seed in the first human beings. But if nature had not been dishonored by sin, far be it that we should suppose that marriages in paradise would have been such that in them the genital members would be moved for sowing offspring not by the assent of the will, as the foot for walking, the hand for working, the tongue for speaking, but by the heat of lust. Nor, as now happens, would the integrity of virginity be corrupted, for conceiving offspring, by the force of turbid ardor, but it would obey the command of a most tranquil love: and in that way there would be neither pain nor blood of the virgin in intercourse, just as there would be no groaning of the mother in giving birth. These things are not believed, because in this condition of mortality they are untried. For nature, changed for the worse by vice, does not find an example of that first purity. But we speak to the faithful, who have known how to believe the divine words, even with no examples of tried truth applied. For how shall I now show a human being made from dust without any parents, and for him a wife from his own side (See Gen 2:7, 22)? And yet what the eye no longer finds, faith believes.

36. 41. So, then, both the tranquility of the first marriage without the passion of lust, and the movement of the genitals like that of the other members—not at the incitement of unbridled heat, but at the choice of the will (such marriage as would have continued, if the reproach of sin had not intervened)—now cannot be shown: but, from those things which have been written by divine authority, it can not undeservedly be believed. For thus I do not now find anyone having intercourse without itching lust, just as I do not find anyone giving birth without pain and groaning, anyone being born without future death: and yet, according to the truth of the holy Scriptures, the groaning of one giving birth and the death of a human being would not have been, if sin had not preceded. So too that at which they blushed, who covered those members: because this too is written, in those same holy Letters, to have followed when sin preceded.

For unless an unseemly movement had announced to their eyes—not indeed closed, but in this respect not open, that is, not attentive—that those members were to be noticed, they would have felt nothing in their body shameful and to be veiled—a body which God had surely made wholly praiseworthy: because, unless the misdeed had gone before, which disobedience dared to commit, the disgrace would not follow, which shame would wish to hide.

37. 42. It is clear, therefore, that this is not to be imputed to marriage, which, even if it did not exist, marriage would nevertheless exist: whose good is not taken away by this evil, but by it even this evil is turned to a good use. But because now, in this condition of mortals, intercourse and lust are carried on together, it comes about that, when lust is censured, even the licit and honorable conjugal intercourse is thought to be censured by those who are unwilling, or do not know how, to distinguish these. Nor do they attend to the fact that that is the good of marriage by which marriages glory—that is, offspring, chastity, the sacrament; but that this is not the good of marriage, but the evil of carnal concupiscence, at which marriages too blush. But because without that evil the good of marriage—that is, the propagation of children—cannot come about, when it comes to a work of this kind, secret places are sought, witnesses are removed, even the presence of the children themselves, if any have already been born from there, is avoided, when through their age they have already begun to perceive these things: and so marriages are allowed to exercise what is licit, in such a way that they do not neglect to conceal what is unseemly. Hence it is that even infants, who cannot sin, are nevertheless not born without the contagion of sin; not from that which is licit, but from that which is unseemly. For from that which is licit, nature is born; from that which is unseemly, the vice. Of the nature being born the author is God, who created the human being, and who joined man and woman by the law of marriage: but of the vice the author is the cunning of the deceiving devil, and the will of the consenting human being.

38. 43. In which God did nothing, except that he condemned by just judgment, together with his stock, the human being who sinned by his will: and therefore there, whatever was not yet even born was deservedly condemned in the transgressing root: in which condemned stock carnal generation holds the human being, from which spiritual regeneration alone frees. Therefore, for regenerated parents, if at least they have persevered in the same grace, without doubt this lust, on account of the remission of sins which has taken place in them, will not harm—unless they use it badly, not only in all illicit corruptions, but even in their own spouses, when, not with the will to propagate, they spend effort on creating children, but with the pleasure of wantonness serve to glut their craving.

That, on account of avoiding fornications, husbands and wives should not defraud one another, except by consent for a time, that they may be free for prayers, the Apostle concedes by way of indulgence, not by way of command (1 Cor 7:5–6). For evidently, while he grants indulgence, he marks a fault. But conjugal intercourse, which the marriage contracts also indicate, taking place for the sake of begetting children, is good through itself outright, not in comparison with fornication: which, although—on account of the body of death, which is not yet renewed by resurrection—it cannot take place without a certain bestial movement, at which human nature blushes; nevertheless the intercourse itself is not sin, where reason uses lust for the good, and is not overcome by it for the evil.

39. 44. This concupiscence of the flesh would do harm, even merely by being present, unless the remission of sins so profited that the concupiscence which is in them can, in one born, both be present and do harm, but in one reborn can indeed be present, yet not do harm. But it so harms those born that, unless they are reborn, it can profit nothing if they are born of the reborn. For the vice of origin remains in the offspring, so as to make it guilty; even if in the parent the guilt of the same vice has been washed away by the remission of sins, until every vice—by consenting to which one sins—is consumed by the final regeneration:

that is, by the very renewal of the flesh, which is promised to be in his resurrection, where we shall not only do no sins, but shall not even have any vicious desires, by consenting to which we might sin; to which blessed perfection one arrives by the grace of the holy bath now given. For by that regeneration of the spirit, by which it now comes about that all past sins are remitted, by its merit there will come about also the regeneration of the flesh unto eternal life, by which, in the very flesh rising again incorruptibly, the incitements of all sins will be healed. But that salvation has as yet been made in hope, is not held in reality; nor is it possessed through presence, but awaited through patience.

40. 44. And on this account, not only all sins, of which now the remission is made in Baptism—which make one guilty, while one consents to vicious desires and sins; but even the vicious desires themselves, by which, if one does not consent, no guilt of sin is contracted, which will not exist in that other life, but in this—all are purged by the same bath of Baptism.

40. 45. And so the guilt of that vice of which we are speaking will remain in the carnal offspring of the regenerated, until there too it be washed away by the bath of regeneration. For one regenerated does not regenerate the children of the flesh, but generates; and on this account he passes into them not what he is as regenerated, but what he is as generated.

So, then, whether a guilty unbeliever or an absolved believer, neither begets absolved children, but guilty ones: just as not only the seeds of the wild olive, but even the seeds of the olive, do not generate olives, but wild olives. So, then, the first birth holds a human being in condemnation, from which only the second frees.

The devil, then, holds; Christ frees: the deceiver of Eve holds, the Son of Mary frees: the one who came to the man through his wife holds, the one who was born of a wife who endured no man frees: the one who brought the occasion of lust to the woman holds, the one who was conceived without lust in a woman frees. He could indeed hold all through the one, nor does any free from his dominion but the one whom he could not hold.

Finally, the very sacraments of the Church, which she celebrates with such authority of ancient tradition that, although these men reckon them to be done in the little ones rather in pretense than truly, they nevertheless do not dare to spurn them with open disapproval: these very sacraments, I say, of the holy Church indicate sufficiently that little ones, even those freshest from birth, are freed through the grace of Christ from the servitude of the devil. For besides that they are baptized for the remission of sins, by a mystery not deceptive but faithful, the contrary power is also first exorcized in them and breathed out; to which, by the words of those by whom they are carried, they answer that they renounce it. By all these consecrated and evident signs of hidden realities, they are shown to pass from the worst captor to the best redeemer; who, for our sake having taken on weakness, bound the strong one, that he might snatch away his vessels (See Matt 12:29): because the weak thing of God is stronger not only than human beings (See 1 Cor 1:25), but even than angels. And so God, freeing the small with the great, shows in both what the Truth spoke through the Apostle. For not only those greater in age, but even the small ones, he rescues from the power of darkness, to transfer them into the kingdom of the Son of his love (Col 1:13).

40. 46. Nor let anyone marvel and say: "Why, then, does the goodness of God create what the malice of the devil possesses?" For he bestows this on the seeds of his creature out of that goodness by which he also makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45). For by this goodness he also blessed the seeds themselves, or by blessing established them: which blessing of a praiseworthy nature a condemnable fault did not take away.

Which fault, although, through the justice of the punishing God, it had power to make human beings be born with the vice of original sin, did not nevertheless have power that human beings should not be born. Just as in those greater in age, any vices of sins do not take away the human being from the human being; but the good work of God remains, in however great evil works of the impious. For even if a human being, set in honor, and not understanding, is compared to the beasts, and is made like them (See Ps 49:13 (48:13)), he is nevertheless not made so like that he is a beast.

For he is compared through vice, not through nature; not by the vice of a beast, but of his nature. For a human being is of such great excellence in comparison with a beast that the vice of a human being is the nature of a beast: nor yet on that account is the nature of a human being turned into the nature of a beast. And on this account God condemns the human being on account of the vice by which the nature is dishonored, not on account of the nature, which is not taken away by the vice. But far be it that we should suppose the beasts liable to the penalty of condemnation, which it is just should be free from misery, since they cannot be partakers of blessedness either.

What wonder, then, is it, or what injustice, that a human being should be made subject to an unclean spirit, not on account of his nature, but on account of his uncleanness, which, coming not from the divine work but from human will, he contracted in the stain of his origin: since even the unclean spirit itself is good, in that it is a spirit; evil, in that it is unclean? For the former is from the work of God, the latter from its own will. And so a stronger nature—that is, the angelic—holds an inferior nature—that is, the human—made subject by the fellowship of vice. Therefore the Mediator, stronger than the angels, was made weak for the sake of human beings: so the pride of the captor is destroyed by the humility of the Redeemer; so that he who glories over the children of man by angelic strength may be conquered by the Son of God through human weakness taken on.

41. 47. But now, about to conclude this book too, we think it fitting that, as we did concerning grace, so concerning original sin too—in the deleting of which grace itself is more evidently commended—we make Ambrose, the prelate of God, whose most pure faith Pelagius proclaims especially among the ecclesiastical writers of the Latin tongue, answer the slanderous talkativeness of these men. In the work which he wrote On the Resurrection, the holy Ambrose says: "I fell in Adam, I was cast out of paradise in Adam, I died in Adam: whom he does not call back unless he find me in Adam, so that, as in him liable to guilt, owing death, so in Christ justified." Likewise, writing against the Novatians, he says: "All human beings are born under sin, whose very origin is in vice, as you have read, David saying: Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me (Ps 51:5 (50:7)).

Therefore the flesh of Paul was a body of death, as he himself says: Who will free me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:24) But the flesh of Christ condemned sin, which by being born it did not feel, which by dying it crucified; that in our flesh there might be justification through grace, where before there was defilement through fault" (AMBR., De paenit. 1, 2-3). Likewise the same man, when he was expounding the prophet Isaiah, speaking of Christ: "Therefore," he says, "as a human being he was tempted in all things, and in the likeness of human beings endured all things: but as one born of the Spirit he abstained from sin (See Heb 4:15). For every human being is a liar (Ps 116:11 (115:2); see Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19); and no one is without sin, except the one God. It was provided, therefore, that no one born of man and woman—that is, through that commingling of bodies—should be seen to be free of sin. But the one who is free of sin is free also of a conception of this kind."

Likewise, when he was expounding the Gospel according to Luke: "For it was not the union with a man," he says, "that unsealed the secret places of the virginal womb, but the Holy Spirit poured an immaculate seed into the inviolable womb. For alone among those born of woman is the Lord Jesus holy in all things, who, by the newness of his immaculate birth, did not feel the contagions of earthly corruption, and by his heavenly majesty drove them away" (AMBR., In Lc. 2, 2, 56).

41. 48. Yet these words of the man of God, whom Pelagius himself praised with so great a proclamation, he contradicts, and says, "that just as without virtue, so we are begotten without vice." What, then, remains, except either that Pelagius condemn this error of his, or that he repent of having so praised Ambrose? But because the blessed Ambrose spoke these things according to the Catholic faith, as a Catholic bishop, it follows that Pelagius, gone astray from this way of faith, has deservedly been condemned, with his disciple Caelestius, by the authority of the Catholic Church, unless he repent of not having praised Ambrose, but having thought against Ambrose. I know that you read insatiably the things which are written for the edification or confirmation of the faith: nevertheless this book, however useful it may be for this, must now at last at some point be ended.