1. 1. The book that you sent, my dearest sons Timasius and James, I read through, setting aside for a little while the matters that were in hand, hastily indeed but with no slight attention; and I saw a man kindled with the most ardent zeal against those who, when they ought to accuse the human will for their sins, instead accuse the nature of human beings and try to excuse themselves through it. He blazed exceedingly against this plague, which even the authors of secular literature gravely censured, exclaiming: Falsely does the human race complain of its own nature (Sallust, The War with Jugurtha 1, 1). This very opinion he too heaped up with all the force of intellect he could. Yet I fear that he rather lends support to those who have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened; for, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to the righteousness of God (Rom 10:2-3). What this righteousness of God is, of which he here speaks, he then discloses by adding: For Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified (Rom 10:4).

Whoever understands, then, that this righteousness of God is established not in the precept of the law, by which fear is struck into us, but in the help of the grace of Christ, to which alone the fear of the law as a tutor profitably leads (See Gal 3:24), he understands why he is a Christian. For if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose (Gal 2:21). But if he did not die to no purpose, then it is in him alone that the ungodly is justified, for whom, believing in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness (Rom 4:5). For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his blood (Rom 3:23-24). But whoever are thought not to belong to all those who have sinned and fall short of the glory of God surely have no need to become Christians, since those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; whence he came to call not the righteous, but sinners (See Matt 9:12-13).

2. 2. And on this account, if the nature of the human race, begotten from the flesh of that one transgressor, can suffice of itself to fulfill the law and to perfect righteousness, then it ought to be secure of the reward, that is, of eternal life, even if in some nation or in some earlier time faith in the blood of Christ lay hidden from it.

For God is not unjust, that he should defraud the righteous of the wages of righteousness, if to them the sacrament of the divinity and humanity of Christ, which was manifested in the flesh, has not been announced (See 1 Tim 3:16). For how are they to believe what they have not heard? Or how are they to hear without a preacher (See Rom 10:14)? For faith, as it is written, comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the word of Christ. But I say, he says: Have they not heard? Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world (Rom 10:17-18; see Ps 19 (18):4).

But before this began to happen, before, that is, this very preaching reached to the ends of the whole world—since there are still wanting some remotest nations, very few, it is reported, to whom this has not yet been preached—what is human nature to do, or what has it done, when either it had not earlier heard that this was to come, or has not yet learned that it has been done, except believe in God, who made heaven and earth (See Acts 4:24), by whom it perceives that it was naturally made, and by living rightly fulfill his will, imbued with no faith in the passion and resurrection of Christ? But if this could be done or can be done, then I too say what the Apostle said of the law: Then Christ died to no purpose (Gal 2:21).

For if he said this of the law, which one nation, the Jews, received, how much more justly is it said of the law of nature, which the whole human race received: "If righteousness comes through nature, then Christ died to no purpose." But if Christ did not die to no purpose, then the whole of human nature can in no way be justified and redeemed from the most just wrath of God, that is, from his vengeance, except through faith and the sacrament of the blood of Christ.

3. 3. The nature of the human being was indeed at first created blameless and without any fault; but this present nature of the human being, by which each one is born from Adam, now needs a physician (See Orosius, Excerpta 3-13), because it is not sound. All the good things, indeed, that it has in its formation, life, senses, and mind, it has from the supreme God, its creator and maker. But the fault that darkens and weakens these natural goods, so that it has need of enlightenment and healing, was not contracted from the blameless maker, but from original sin, which was committed by free choice. And on this account this penal nature pertains to a most just vengeance. For if we are now in Christ a new creation (See 2 Cor 5:17), yet we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest; but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved (Eph 2:3-5).

4. 4. This grace of Christ, therefore, without which neither infants nor those grown in years can be saved, is not rendered for merits but given freely, on account of which it is called grace. Being justified, he says, freely by his blood (Rom 3:24). Hence those who are not set free through it—whether because they have not yet been able to hear (See Rom 10:14), or because they were unwilling to obey, or even because, when through their age they could not hear, they did not receive the bath of regeneration (See Titus 3:5), which they could have received and through which they would have been saved—are surely justly condemned, because they are not without sin, whether that which they drew from their origin or that which they added by evil conduct. For all have sinned—whether in Adam or in themselves—and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).

5. 5. The whole mass, therefore, owes a penalty, and if the due punishment of condemnation were rendered to all, beyond doubt it would not be rendered unjustly. Those, then, who are set free from it by grace are called not vessels of their own merits, but vessels of mercy (See Rom 9:23). Of whose mercy, if not of him who sent Christ Jesus into this world to save sinners (See 1 Tim 1:15), whom he foreknew and predestined and called and justified and glorified (See Rom 8:29-30)? Who, then, would rave so utterly out of his mind as not to give ineffable thanks to the mercy that sets free those whom it willed, since he could in no way rightly find fault with the justice that condemns absolutely all?

6. 6. If we are wise according to the Scriptures in this matter, we are not driven to dispute against Christian grace and to say the things by which we would try to show that human nature neither needs a physician in little ones, because it is sound, nor in the grown is unable, if it wills, to suffice of itself for righteousness. These things, indeed, seem to be cleverly said, but with the wisdom of words, by which the cross of Christ is emptied (See 1 Cor 1:17): This is not the wisdom that comes down from above (Jas 3:15). I do not wish to say what follows, lest we be thought to do an injury to our friends, whose most vigorous and quick minds we wish to run not in the wrong direction, but straight ahead.

7. 7. With however great a zeal, then, the author of this book that you sent was kindled against those who seek patronage for their sins in the weakness of human nature, with that much and far more ardent a zeal ought we to be kindled, lest the cross of Christ be emptied (See 1 Cor 1:17). But it is emptied if it is said that one can in any way come to righteousness and eternal life apart from his sacrament. That this is what is done in this book I do not wish to say is done knowingly, lest I should judge that the man who wrote it is not even to be held a Christian; but rather, as I more readily believe, by one who did not know, and indeed with great force—but I would have that force sound, not such as the frenzied are wont to have.

7. 8. For first he distinguishes that "it is one thing to ask whether something can be, which pertains to possibility alone, and another, whether it actually is." No one doubts that this distinction is true; for it follows that what is could have been able to be, but it does not follow that what can be also is. Because the Lord raised up Lazarus (See John 11:43-44), without doubt he was able; but because he did not raise up Judas, is it to be said: "He was not able"? He was able, then, but he was unwilling. For if he had willed, he would have done this too by the same power, since the Son also gives life to whom he wills (See John 5:21). But note where, by this true and manifest distinction, he is tending and what he is trying to effect. "We," he says, "are dealing with possibility alone; and unless something certain be established about it, we hold it most serious and out of order to pass on to anything else." This he turns over in many ways and in a lengthy discourse, lest anyone should suppose that he is asking about anything other than the possibility of not sinning.

Among the many ways in which he pursues this, he also says this: "Again I repeat the same thing: I say a human being can be without sin. What do you say? That a human being cannot be without sin? Neither do I say," he says, "that a human being is without sin, nor do you say that a human being is not without sin; we are contending about being able and not being able, not about being and not being."

Then he recounts that certain things that are wont to be brought forward against them from the Scriptures do not pertain to this question, in which it is asked whether or not a human being can be without sin, thus: "For no one," he says, "is clean from filth (See Job 14:4); and: There is no one who does not sin (1 Kgs 8:46); and: There is no one righteous on the earth (Eccl 7:20 (7:21)); and: There is no one who does good (Ps 14 (13):1. 3); and the rest like these," he says, "avail toward not being, not toward not being able. For by examples of this kind it is shown what sort of human beings certain ones were at some time, not that they could not be otherwise; whence they are also rightly found to be culpable. For if they were such because they could not be otherwise, they are free of fault."

8. 9. See what he has said. But I say that a little one, born in a place where he could not be helped by the baptism of Christ, and overtaken by death, was such—that is, departed without the bath of regeneration (See Titus 3:5)—because he could not be otherwise. Let him then absolve such a child and open to him, against the sentence of the Lord (See John 3:5), the kingdom of heaven; but the Apostle does not absolve him, who says: 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). Rightly, then, by that condemnation which runs through the whole mass, he is not admitted into the kingdom of heaven, although he not only was not a Christian, but could not even be one.

9. 10. But "he is not condemned," they say, "because that all sinned in Adam (See Rom 5:12) was said not on account of sin drawn down by the origin of birth, but on account of imitation." If, then, Adam is for this reason called the author of all the sins that followed, because he was the first sinner among human beings, why is not Abel rather than Christ set down as the head of all the righteous, because he was the first righteous one among human beings? But I am not speaking of the infant; a young man or an old man has died in a region where he could not hear the name of Christ. Could he have become righteous through nature and free choice, or could he not?

If they say he could, behold what it is to empty the cross of Christ (See 1 Cor 1:17)—"to contend that someone can be justified without it, through the natural law and the choice of the will." Let us say here too: Then Christ died to no purpose (Gal 2:21); for all could do this even if he had not died; and if they were unrighteous, they would be so because they willed it, not because they could not be righteous.

But if without the grace of Christ he could not be justified at all, let him too, if he dares, absolve this man according to his own words, because "if he was such because he could not be otherwise, he was free of fault."

10. 11. But he raised an objection against himself as though said by another, and he says: "It can indeed be, but through the grace of God, you will say." Then, as if in reply, he adds: "I give thanks to your kindness, that you are not content not merely to fail to attack or to fail to confess my assertion, which you were lately attacking, but you do not even shrink from approving it. For to say: It can indeed be, but through this or that—what else is it than not only to consent that it can be, but even to show in what way or by what means it can be? And so no one proves the possibility of anything more than he who confesses also its character, since character cannot exist apart from a thing."

Having said this, he again objects to himself: "But you," you will say, "in this place seem to refuse the grace of God, since indeed you make no mention of it." Then he replies: "Do I refuse it, who, by confessing the thing, must of necessity confess also that through which the thing can be effected—or rather you, who, by denying the thing, beyond doubt deny also whatever it is through which the thing is effected?" He has already forgotten that he is replying to one who does not deny the thing, whose objection he had a little before set forth, saying: "It can indeed be, but through the grace of God." How, then, does he deny the possibility for which he labors so much, when he already says to him: "It can be, but through the grace of God"? Yet, since, having dismissed the one who already confesses the thing, he is still arguing against those who deny that it is possible for a human being to be without sin, what is that to us? Let him argue against whomever he wills, provided he confesses this, which is denied with most wicked impiety—that without the grace of God a human being cannot be without sin. He says, then: "Whether through grace, or through help, or through mercy, and whatever it is through which a human being can be without sin, whoever acknowledges the thing itself confesses it."

11. 12. I confess to your love that when I read these things I was suddenly suffused with joy, that he did not deny the grace of God, by which alone a human being can be justified; for this above all I detest and shudder at in the disputations of such men. But as I went on to read the rest, I first began to hold him suspect from the comparisons he gave. For he says: "Now if I say: A human being can dispute, a bird can fly, a hare can run, and I do not also mention the things by which these can be effected, that is, the tongue, the wings, the feet, have I denied the characters of these functions, when I have confessed the functions themselves?"

It is clear that he has here mentioned things that have their power from nature; for these members were created for natures of this kind: the tongue, the wings, the feet. He has not set down anything such as we wish to be understood concerning grace, without which a human being is not justified, where the matter at issue is the healing of natures, not their establishing. From this point, then, anxious, I began to read the rest, and I found that I had not suspected falsely.

12. 13. Before I come to that, see what he has said. When he was treating the question of the difference among sins, and objected to himself that certain people say that some light sins, by their very multitude, because they often rush upon us, cannot all be avoided, he denied "that even light sins ought to be censured by rebuke, if they cannot at all be avoided," not noticing the Scriptures of the New Testament, where we have learned (See Orosius, Excerpta 13-21) that this is the intent of the law in convicting: that, on account of those things which are done wrongly, recourse may be had to the grace of the Lord who shows mercy, the tutor as it were shutting us up in the same faith (See Gal 3:23-24) which was later revealed, where both the things done evilly are forgiven and, by the same grace helping, are no longer done.

For there is a road of those who advance, although those who advance well are called perfect travelers. But that highest perfection, to which nothing can be added, is when that toward which one is striving begins to be possessed.

13. 14. Now indeed that which is said to him: "Are you yourself without sin?" truly does not pertain to the matter about which the question turns. But when he says that "it is to be imputed rather to his own negligence that he is not without sin," he says well indeed; but let him deign for that reason also to pray to God, that this unjust negligence may not lord it over him—he whom a certain man was entreating when he said: Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me (Ps 119 (118):133)—lest, while he trusts in his own diligence as in his own powers, he attain neither here to true righteousness nor there, where without doubt the perfect is to be desired and hoped for.

14. 15. And that which is said to him by certain people, "that nowhere is it written in these exact words that a human being can be without sin," he easily refutes, "because the question there is not in what words any opinion is expressed." Yet perhaps not without cause, though sometimes in the Scriptures human beings are said to be without reproach, no one is found who is said to be without sin except one alone (See Job 1:8; Luke 1:6; Phil 3:6), of whom it is openly said: Him who knew no sin (2 Cor 5:21), and, in that place where it was a question of holy priests: For he was tried in all things in our likeness, without sin (Heb 4:15)—namely, in that flesh which had the likeness of the flesh of sin (See Rom 8:3), although it was not the flesh of sin; yet it would not have this likeness unless all other flesh were the flesh of sin.

Again, how this is to be taken: Everyone who is born of God does not sin and cannot sin, because his seed abides in him (1 John 3:9), when the apostle John himself, as though he were not born of God or were speaking to those who were not yet born of God, openly set down: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8)—this I have taken care to explain, as I was able, in the books that I wrote on this matter to Marcellinus (See Aug., De pecc. mer. et rem. 2, 7, 9 - 8, 10). And that which is said: He cannot sin (See 1 John 3:9), was said as if it were said "he ought not to sin"—this assertion of his does not seem to me to be disapproved. For who that is sane would say that one ought to sin, since sin is sin precisely because it ought not to be done?

15. 16. Indeed, what the apostle James says: But the tongue no human being can tame (Jas 3:8), does not seem to me to be understood as he wished to expound it, "as though said by way of reproach, as if it were said: Then can no human being tame the tongue? as if rebuking and saying: You can tame wild beasts, can you not tame the tongue? as though it were easier to tame the tongue than wild beasts." I do not think that this is the sense in this place. For if he wished it to be understood of the ease of taming the tongue, the rest would follow in a comparison with beasts. But as it is, there follows: A restless evil, full of deadly poison (Jas 3:8), surely more harmful than that of beasts and serpents; for the one kills the body, but the other the soul; for the mouth that lies kills the soul (Wis 1:11). Holy James, then, did not pronounce that sentence as though it were easier than the taming of beasts, nor did he wish it to be pronounced in that tone, but rather showing how great is the evil of the tongue in a human being, that it can be tamed by no human being, since even beasts are tamed by human beings. Nor did he say this so that we should suffer the dominion of this evil over us to remain through negligence, but so that for the taming of the tongue we should beg the help of divine grace. For he did not say: The tongue "no one" can tame, but "no human being," so that, when it is tamed, we may confess it to be done by the mercy of God, the help of God, the grace of God. Let the soul, then, try to tame the tongue, and, while it tries, let it beg help; and let the tongue pray that the tongue may be tamed, by the gift of him who said to his own: For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matt 10:20). And so by the precept we are admonished to do what, in trying and not prevailing by our own strength, we should beg divine help to accomplish.

16. 17. Accordingly he too, when he had magnified the evil of the tongue (See Jas 3:6), saying among other things: This ought not to be so, my brothers (Jas 3:10), at once, when he had finished what he was saying on this point, admonished by what help these things should not be done, which he said ought not to be done: Who is wise and instructed among you? Let him show his work out of his good conduct in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter zeal and contentions in your hearts, do not boast and be false against the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is zeal and contention, there is inconstancy and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, modest, open to persuasion, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without dissimulation (Jas 3:13-17).

This is the wisdom that tames the tongue, coming down from above, not springing up from the human heart. Or does anyone dare to take this too away from the grace of God and, with most arrogant vanity, place it in the power of a human being? Why then is it prayed for, that it may be received, if it is from the human being that it is had? Or is this prayer too contradicted, lest an injury be done to free choice, which suffices for itself by the possibility of nature for fulfilling all the precepts of righteousness? Then let that same apostle James also be contradicted when he admonishes and says: But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and does not reproach, and it will be given him; but let him ask in faith, with no doubting (Jas 1:5-6). This is the faith to which the precepts compel us, that the law may command and faith may obtain. For through the tongue, which no human being can tame, but the wisdom coming down from above (See Jas 3:8. 15), we all offend in many things (Jas 3:2). For this too the Apostle pronounced in no other way than that which he said: The tongue no human being can tame (Jas 3:8).

17. 18. Nor should anyone object to these men, in the same way, on behalf of the impossibility of not sinning, what was said: The wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:7-8). For he said the wisdom of the flesh, not the wisdom coming down from above (See Jas 3:15); and it is manifest that those signified as being in the flesh are not those who have not yet departed from the body, but those who live according to the flesh (See Rom 8:12). But the question that is at issue is not there. This is what I wait to hear from him, if I can: whether those who live according to the spirit, and on this account, though still living here in the flesh, are now in a certain way not in the flesh, live according to the spirit by the grace of God or suffice for themselves by the possibility of nature already given when they are created and by their own proper will—since the fullness of the law is nothing but love (See Rom 13:10), and the love of God has been poured out in our hearts not by ourselves, but by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (See Rom 5:5).

17. 19. He also treats of sins of ignorance and says that "a human being ought to keep watch beforehand, lest he be ignorant, and therefore ignorance is to be blamed, because a human being does not know through his own negligence what, had he applied diligence, he ought to have known"—while yet he disputes about everything rather than pray and say: Give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments (Ps 119 (118):73).

For it is one thing not to have cared to know—the sins of which negligence were seen to be expiated even by certain sacrifices of the law (See Lev 4:2-3)—and another to wish to understand and not be able, and to act against the law by not understanding what it wills to be done. Hence we are admonished to ask wisdom of God, who gives to all generously (Jas 1:5), surely to all those who so ask, and ask only in such manner and measure as so great a thing is to be asked.

18. 20. He confesses that "nevertheless sins committed are to be expiated divinely, and the Lord is to be entreated for them"—namely, for obtaining pardon, "because that what has been done should be made undone" even by his own admission "that much-praised power of nature and will of the human being cannot do." Therefore by this necessity it remains that he prays to be forgiven. But that he may be helped not to sin, he nowhere said—I did not read it here; the silence on this matter is altogether astonishing, since the Lord's Prayer admonishes that both are to be asked: both that our debts may be forgiven us, and that we may not be led into temptation (See Matt 6:12-13)—the one, that past sins may be expiated; the other, that future ones may be avoided.

Although this does not happen unless the will is present, yet for it to happen the will alone does not suffice; therefore for this matter the prayer offered to the Lord is neither superfluous nor shameless. For what is more foolish than to pray that you may do what you have in your own power?

19. 21. Now then see what pertains most of all to the matter: how he tries to show that human nature is altogether without any fault, and how he struggles against the most manifest Scriptures of God with the wisdom of words, by which the cross of Christ is emptied (See 1 Cor 1:17). But plainly that cross will not be emptied; rather, this wisdom will be overthrown. For when we have shown this, the mercy of God will perhaps be present, so that he too may repent of having said these things. "First," he says, "we must dispute about that on account of which nature is said to be weakened and altered by sin (See Eugippius, Excerpta 297). Hence before all things I think it must be asked," he says, "what sin is: some substance, or a name altogether lacking substance, by which not a thing, not an existence, not any body, but the act of a wrongly done deed is expressed." Then he adds: "I believe it is so. And if it is so," he says, "how could that which lacks substance weaken or change human nature?"

See, I beg, how, in his ignorance, he strives to overthrow the most healthful words of the medicinal Scriptures: I said: Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you (Ps 41 (40):4). What is healed if nothing has been wounded, nothing injured, nothing weakened and corrupted? Further, if there is something that is healed, from what has it been corrupted? You hear one confessing; what do you require of one disputing? Heal, he says, my soul (Ps 41 (40):4). Ask of him from what it has been corrupted, which he asks to be healed, and hear what follows: For I have sinned against you (Ps 41 (40):4). Let him question this man, let him ask of him what he thinks should be asked, and say: "O you who cry out: Heal my soul, for I have sinned against you (Ps 41 (40):4), what is sin? Some substance, or a name altogether lacking substance, by which not a thing, not an existence, not any body, but only the act of a wrongly done deed is expressed?"

That man answers: "It is as you say; sin is not some substance, but only by this name is the act of a wrongly done deed expressed." And against this the other: "Why then do you cry out: Heal my soul, for I have sinned against you (Ps 41 (40):4)? How could that which lacks substance corrupt your soul?" Would not that man, worn out with grief at his wound, lest he be turned away from prayer by disputation, briefly answer and say: "Depart from me, I beg you. Dispute rather, if you can, with him who said: Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Matt 9:12-13), where by the righteous he surely meant the well, and the sinners he called the sick"?

20. 22. Do you see where this disputation is tending and where it stretches out its hand (See Eugippius, Excerpta 297)? That it may be thought said altogether in vain: You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21). For how will he save, where there is no sickness? For sins, from which the Gospel says the people of Christ are to be saved, are not substances, and according to this man cannot corrupt.

O brother, it is good that you remember you are a Christian. To believe these things will perhaps suffice; but yet, because you wish to dispute, and it does no harm, indeed even profits, provided a most firm faith goes before and we do not suppose that human nature cannot be corrupted by sin, but, believing the divine Scriptures that it has been corrupted by sin, inquire how this could have come about: since we have already learned that sin is not a substance, is it not observed—to omit other things—that not eating, too, is not a substance? For one withdraws from a substance, since food is a substance. But to abstain from food is not a substance, and yet the substance of the body, if one abstains from food altogether, so languishes, is so corrupted by the unevenness of its condition, is so drained of strength, is so weakened and broken by weariness, that if in some way it endures in life, it can scarcely be recalled to that food by abstaining from which it was corrupted. So sin is not a substance, but God is a substance, indeed the supreme substance and the only true food of the rational creature. By withdrawing from him through disobedience and being unable through weakness to take in that in which it ought to have rejoiced, you hear in what manner one says: My heart was struck like grass and withered, for I forgot to eat my bread (Ps 102 (101):4)?

21. 23. But notice how he still presses on with verisimilar reasonings against the truth of holy Scripture. The Lord Jesus says—he who is called Jesus for this very reason, that he saves his people from their sins (Matt 1:21)—the Lord Jesus, then, says: Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Matt 9:12-13). Hence the Apostle also says: This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15). And this man, against the faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, says "that this sickness ought not to have been contracted by sins, lest the punishment of sin should be this, that more sins should be committed."

So great a physician and helper is sought even for little ones, and this man says: "Why do you seek? They are well, those for whom you seek a physician. Nor was the first man himself condemned to death for this reason; for afterward he did not sin." As though he had heard anything afterward about the perfection of his righteousness, except that the Church commends him too as set free by the mercy of the Lord Christ. "His descendants, too," this man says, "are not only not weaker than he, but have even fulfilled more precepts, whereas he neglected to fulfill the one."

These descendants, whom he sees being born in such a way as that man certainly was not made—not only incapable of a precept, which they do not perceive at all, but scarcely capable of the breast when they hunger—these very ones, when he wishes to save them by his grace in the bosom of mother Church, he who saves his people from their sins (See Matt 1:21), human beings contradict, and, as though they knew how to look upon the creature, which was made through him, better than he does, with an unsound voice pronounce the unsound to be sound.

22. 24. "The occasion of sin," he says, "is vengeance, if the sinner has been weakened to this end, that he should sin more"—and he does not consider how worthily the light of truth deserts the transgressor of the law; deserted by which, he surely becomes blind, and of necessity offends more, and by falling is afflicted, and being afflicted does not rise up, so that for this reason only he hears the voice of the law, that he may be admonished to implore the grace of the Savior. Or is there no punishment of those of whom the Apostle says: Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their senseless heart was darkened (Rom 1:21)?

Surely this darkening was already a vengeance and a punishment; and yet through this punishment, that is, through the blindness of heart that comes when the light of wisdom deserts it, they slid into more and graver sins; for claiming to be wise, they became fools (Rom 1:22). This is a grave punishment, if one understands it, and from this punishment see where they went: And they changed, he says, the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed beasts and of serpents (Rom 1:23). These things they did from the punishment of sin, by which their senseless heart was darkened (Rom 1:21). And yet for these things—because, although penal, they are themselves also sins—he adds and says: Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness (Rom 1:24).

Behold how God condemned them more gravely, giving them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness. See also from this punishment what they do: That they should dishonor, he says, their own bodies among themselves (Rom 1:24). And because this is a punishment of iniquity, while it is also iniquity, he more evidently commends it, saying: Who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, he says, God gave them up to passions of ignominy (Rom 1:25-26). Behold how often God takes vengeance, and from that same vengeance more and graver sins arise: For their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature. And likewise the men, giving up the natural use of the woman, were inflamed in their appetite for one another, men with men committing shamelessness (Rom 1:27). And to show that these sins are such that they are also punishments of sins, he added to these too: And receiving in themselves the due recompense of their error (Rom 1:27). See how often he takes vengeance, and that the same vengeance gives birth to and multiplies sins. Attend still further: And as they did not see fit, he says, to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting, filled with all iniquity, with deceit, malice, avarice, full of envy, murder, contention, guile, malignity; gossips, slanderers, hateful to God, insolent, proud, haughty, inventors of evils, disobedient to parents, foolish, disorderly, without affection, without mercy (Rom 1:28-31). Here now let this man say: "Sin ought not to have been so avenged that the sinner through vengeance should commit more sins."

23. 25. Perhaps he will answer that God does not compel to these things, but only deserts those who are worthy to be deserted. If he says this, he says most truly; for those deserted, as I said, by the light of righteousness, and thereby darkened, what do they bring forth but all those works of darkness I have mentioned, until it be said to them, if they will obey the word: Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light (Eph 5:14)?

The Truth calls them dead—whence comes also that saying: Let the dead bury their dead (Matt 8:22; Luke 9:60)—the Truth, then, calls them dead, whom this man says could not have been harmed and corrupted by sin, because, forsooth, he has learned that sin is not a substance.

No one says to him: "The human being was so made that he could indeed go from righteousness into sin, but could not return from sin to righteousness"; but to go into sin, free choice sufficed him, by which he corrupted himself; but to return to righteousness, he has need of a physician, since he is not well, he has need of being given life, since he is dead.

Of this grace this man says nothing at all, as though by his own will alone he could heal himself, because by it alone he could corrupt himself. We do not say to him "that the death of the body avails toward sin," where there is vengeance alone—for no one sins by dying in the body—but toward sin avails the death of the soul, which its life, that is, its God, has deserted; and it must of necessity do dead works until it comes to life again by the grace of Christ. "Hunger and thirst and the other bodily troubles—far be it that we should say" that they "have a necessity of sinning"; by which troubles the life of the righteous, exercised, has shone the more brightly, and by overcoming them through patience has gained a greater glory—but helped by the grace of God, helped by the Spirit of God, helped by the mercy of God, not lifting itself up by a proud will, but earning fortitude by humble confession. For it knew how to say to God: For you are my patience (Ps 71 (70):5).

Of this grace and help and mercy, without which we cannot live well, I do not know why this man says nothing at all; indeed, defending nature as sufficient for itself unto righteousness, if only the will be present, he most openly contradicts the grace of Christ, by which we are justified. But why, when the guilt of sin has been loosed by grace, the death of the body should remain for the exercise of faith, although it came from sin, I have already discussed this too, as I was able, in those books to Marcellinus of holy memory (Aug., De pecc. mer. et rem. 2, 30, 49 - 34, 56; see Jerome, Contra Pelagianos 3, 19).

24. 26. But as for what he says, "that the Lord could die without sin," to be born too was for him a power of mercy, not a condition of nature; so likewise he died by power, and this is our price, by which he redeemed us from death. And this the disputation of these men strives to empty, when by them human nature is so defended that free choice can have no need of this price, by which they might be transferred from the power of darkness and of the one set over death into the kingdom of Christ the Lord. And yet when the Lord went on to his passion: Behold, he says, the prince of this world will come, and in me he will find nothing (John 14:30)—surely nothing of sin, on which ground the one set over death might by his own right act to destroy him—but that all may know, he says, that I do the will of my Father, rise, let us go hence (John 14:31), that is, that I die not by the necessity of sin, but by the will of obedience.

24. 27. He says, "No evil is the cause of any good," as though punishment were a good, by which nevertheless many have been corrected; there are, then, evils that profit by the wonderful mercy of God. Did that man suffer anything good who said: You turned away your face from me, and I was troubled (Ps 30 (29):7)? Surely not; and yet this trouble was for him, in a certain way, medicinal against pride. For he had said in his abundance: I shall never be moved (Ps 30 (29):6), and was attributing to himself what he had from the Lord.

For what had he that he had not received (See 1 Cor 4:7)? Therefore it had to be shown him from whom he had it, that, humbled, he might receive back what, proud, he had lost. Therefore: Lord, he says, by your will you gave strength to my beauty (Ps 30 (29):7). In which abundance of mine I was saying: I shall not be moved (Ps 30 (29):6), when this was mine from you, not from myself. Then: You turned away your face from me, and I was troubled (Ps 30 (29):7).

25. 28. A proud mind has no taste for this at all; but the Lord is great, who in his own way persuades of it. For we are more prone to seek what we may answer against the things that are objected to our error than to attend to how healthful they are, that we may be free of error. Hence with these men one must deal not so much by disputations as by prayers for them, as for ourselves. For we do not say to them what this man set against himself, "that, in order that there be an occasion for the mercy of God, sin was necessary"—would that there had been no misery, so that this mercy were not necessary!—but that the iniquity of sin is the graver, the more easily the human being might not have sinned, whom as yet no weakness held back. A most just punishment followed, that he should receive in himself the due recompense of his sin, losing the obedience, set as it were under him, of his own body, which preeminent obedience, set under his Lord, he himself had despised. And as for the fact that we are now born with that same law of sin, which fights in our members against the law of the mind (Rom 7:23), we ought neither to murmur against God nor to dispute against a most manifest matter, but to seek his mercy for our punishment and to pray.

26. 29. Attend carefully and watchfully to how he has said: "God indeed brings his mercy to this part too, whenever it is necessary, because it is necessary so to help the human being after sin, not because God desired the cause of this necessity." Do you see how he says that the mercy of God is necessary not that we may not sin, but because we have sinned? Then he adds: "But the physician too ought to be ready to cure one already wounded; yet he ought not to desire that one who is well should be wounded." If this comparison fits the matters of which we are treating, surely human nature cannot be wounded by sin, since sin is no substance. As, then, one limping from a wound, for example, is cured for this end, that, the past evil being healed, his future walking may be set straight, so the heavenly physician heals our evils not only that they should no longer be, but that for the rest we may be able to walk rightly; which indeed even when well we shall be able to do only by his help.

For a human physician, when he has healed a human being, leaves him thereafter to God to be sustained by the bodily elements and nourishments, that the same health may grow strong and persist by fitting support—God, who furnishes these things to those living in the flesh, whose also were the very things that the physician applied while curing. For a physician heals no one from those things which he himself created, but from the resources of him who creates all things necessary for the well and the diseased. But God himself, when through the mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus (See 1 Tim 2:5), he spiritually heals the sick or gives life to the dead, that is, justifies the ungodly (See Rom 4:5), and when he has brought him to perfect health, that is, to perfect life and righteousness, he does not desert him, if he is not deserted, that one may always live piously and righteously.

For as the eye of the body, even when most fully sound, cannot see unless helped by the brightness of light, so a human being, even most perfectly justified, cannot live rightly unless he is divinely helped by the eternal light of righteousness. God, then, heals not only to wipe out what we have sinned, but also to grant that we may not sin.

27. 30. He treats and turns the matter cleverly indeed, and, as it seems to him, refutes and convicts what is said to them, "that it was even necessary for the human being, in order to take away the occasion of pride or vainglory, that he should not be able to be without sin. For he thinks it most absurd and most foolish that there should be a sin lest there be a sin, since pride too is surely a sin"—as though both a sore is in pain, and the cutting works pain, that pain may be taken away by pain. If we had not experienced this, and in some lands where these things had never happened we were to hear of it, without doubt, deriding, we would perhaps use even this man's words and say: "It is most absurd that pain should be necessary lest there be the pain of a sore."

27. 31. "But God," they say, "can heal all things." This indeed he does, that he may heal all things; but he does it by his own judgment, nor does he receive the order of healing from the sick one. For without doubt he wished to make the Apostle most firm, to whom nevertheless he says: Power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9), and he does not take from him, though he prayed so often, some sting of the flesh, which he says was given him lest he be exalted in the greatness of the revelations (See 2 Cor 12:7-8). For the other vices avail only in evil deeds, but pride alone is to be guarded against even in deeds rightly done.

Hence they are admonished, lest by attributing the gifts of God to their own power and exalting themselves they perish more grievously than if they had done no good, to whom it is said: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to work according to good will (Phil 2:12-13). Why, then, with fear and trembling, and not rather with security, if God works, except that, on account of our will, without which we cannot work well, it can quickly steal upon the human mind to think that what one works well is one's own alone, and to say in one's abundance: I shall never be moved (Ps 30 (29):6)? Therefore he who by his will had given strength to his beauty turns away his face for a little while, so that he who had said this should be troubled (See Ps 30 (29):7), since it is that very swelling that must be healed by pains.

28. 32. It is not, then, said to a human being: "It is necessary to sin, lest you sin"; but it is said to a human being: "God deserts for a little while that wherein you are proud, that you may know it to be not yours, but his, and may learn not to be proud." For that saying of the Apostle, too, what is it like! Is it not so wonderful that, were it not that he himself says it, to whom, speaking the truth, it is wicked to contradict, it would not be credible?

For who among the faithful does not know that the first persuasion to sin came from Satan (See Gen 3:1-6), and that he is the first author of all sins? And yet certain ones are handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme (See 1 Tim 1:20).

How, then, is the work of Satan excluded by the work of Satan? Let him consider these and like things, lest those things seem to him too clever which sound subtle and, when examined, are found blunt. What of the fact that he even brings forward comparisons, by which he the more admonishes us what should be answered him? "What more shall I say," he says, "except that it can be believed that fires are extinguished by fires, if it can be believed that sins are cured by sins?" What if one cannot extinguish fires by fires, but yet pains can, as I have taught, be cured by pains? Poisons too, if he seeks and learns, can be driven out by poisons. For if he notices that sometimes the heats of fevers are broken by certain medicinal heats, perhaps he will grant that fires too can be extinguished by fires.

29. 33. "In what way," he says, "shall we separate pride itself from sin?" But why does this press him, when it is manifest that it too is a sin? "To sin," he says, "is as much to be proud as to be proud is to sin. For seek what any sin whatever may be, and see whether you will find any sin without the name of pride." And he pursues this opinion thus, and thus tries to prove it: "Every sin," he says, "unless I am mistaken, is a contempt of God, and every contempt of God is pride. For what is so proud as to despise God? Therefore every sin is also pride, as Scripture too says: The beginning of all sin is pride (Sir 10:13 (10:15))." Let him seek diligently, and he will find in the law that the sin of pride is much distinguished from other sins. For many sins are committed through pride, but not all things that are done wrongly are done proudly—certainly not by the ignorant, certainly not by the weak, certainly often by those weeping and groaning—and indeed pride, though it is itself a great sin, is so by itself without others that even, as I have said (See above, 27, 31), very often it comes upon and creeps in, with a swifter foot, not amid sins but amid the very things rightly done. But for this reason it was most truly said, which this man understood otherwise: The beginning of all sin is pride (Sir 10:13), since pride cast down the devil, from whom the origin of sin arose, and, envy following, it subverted the human being, standing, from the place from which the devil himself had fallen. For surely that serpent sought the door of boasting by which to enter, when he said: You will be like gods (Gen 3:5). Therefore it was said: The beginning of all sin is pride; and: The beginning of human pride is to apostatize from God (Sir 10:12-13 (10:14-15)).

30. 34. But what does he mean by saying: "Then how will he be able to be subject to God for the guilt of that sin which he has come to know is not his own? For it is not his own," he says, "if it is necessary. Or if it is his own, it is voluntary; and if it is voluntary, it can be avoided." We answer: "It is altogether his own; but the fault by which it is committed has not yet been wholly healed in every part; which fault indeed, that it might grow ingrained, came down from health not rightly used. From this fault, already ailing through either weakness or blindness, he commits more, for which entreaty must be made, that he may be healed and thereafter live in perpetual health—not be proud, as though the human being is healed by the same power by which he was corrupted."

31. 35. And this indeed I have said in such a way that I confess I am ignorant of the deeper counsel of God, why he does not quickly heal even pride itself, which lies in wait for the human mind even in deeds rightly done; for the healing of which those pious souls supplicate him with tears and great groanings, that to those striving to overcome it and in a manner to trample it down and crush it he may stretch out his right hand. For when a human being has rejoiced that in some good work he has overcome pride too, from that very joy it lifts its head and says: "Behold, I live; why do you triumph? And I live for this reason, because you triumph."

For perhaps it delights him to triumph over it as though conquered before the time, when its last shadow will, at that noonday—as I judge—be absorbed, which noonday Scripture promises, saying: And he will bring forth your righteousness like the light, and your judgment like the noonday (Ps 37 (36):6); if that be done which is written above: Reveal your way to the Lord, and hope in him, and he himself will do it (Ps 37 (36):5)—not, as certain people think, that they themselves do it. For he seems to have attended to none, when he said: And he himself will do it, except those who say: We do it, that is, we ourselves justify ourselves.

Where indeed we too work, but, with him working, we cooperate, because his mercy goes before us (See Ps 59 (58):11). It goes before, that we may be healed, because it will also follow, that even when healed we may be strengthened; it goes before, that we may be called, it will follow, that we may be glorified; it goes before, that we may live piously, it will follow, that we may live with him forever, since without him we can do nothing (See John 15:5). For both are written: My God, his mercy will go before me (Ps 59 (58):11); and: Your mercy will follow me all the days of my life (Ps 23 (22):6). Let us, then, reveal our way to him (See Ps 37 (36):5) by confession, let us praise it not by defense. For if it is not his way, but our own, beyond doubt it is not straight. Let us reveal it by confessing, since it is not hidden from him, even if we try to cover it. But it is good to confess to the Lord (Ps 92 (91):1).

32. 36. For thus he will give us what pleases him, if what displeases him in us displeases us too. He will turn aside, as it is written, our paths from his way, and will make to be ours what is his (See Ps 44 (43):19), since it is furnished by him to those who believe in him and hope in him that he himself may do it (See Ps 37 (36):5). For this is the righteous way, which they, being ignorant of, who have a zeal for God, but not enlightened, and wishing to establish their own, did not submit to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified (Rom 10:2-4), who said: I am the way (John 14:6). Yet those already walking in it the divine voice has terrified, lest they exalt themselves as though by their own strength in it. For to those to whom, on this account, the Apostle says: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to work according to good will (Phil 2:12-13), to them, on account of this very thing, the psalm too says: Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling. Lay hold of instruction, lest at any time the Lord be angry and you perish from the righteous way, when his wrath blazes up in a short while upon you (Ps 2:11-13).

He did not say "Lest at any time the Lord be angry" and not "show you the righteous way" or "not bring you into the righteous way," but he was able so to terrify those already walking there that he said: Lest you perish from the righteous way (Ps 2:12). Whence, except that pride—which, as I have so often said and must often say, is to be guarded against even in the very deeds rightly done, that is, in the very righteous way—lest a human being, while he reckons what is God's to be his own, lose what is God's and return to his own?

Therefore let us do that with which the psalm itself concludes: Blessed are all who trust in him (Ps 2:13), surely that he himself may do it, he himself may show his way, he to whom it is said: Show us, Lord, your mercy (Ps 85 (84):7); he himself may give salvation, that we may be able to walk, he to whom it is said: And your salvation, Lord, give to us (Ps 85 (84):7); he himself may lead us in the same way, he to whom it is said: Lead me, Lord, in your way, and I will walk in your truth (Ps 86 (85):11); he himself may bring us through to those promised things to which the way leads, he to whom it is said: For even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will bring me through (Ps 139 (138):10);

he himself may there feed those reclining with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom it is said: He will make them recline, and he will pass by and minister to them (Luke 12:37). For in mentioning these things we do not take away the choice of the will, but we proclaim the grace of God. For to whom do these things profit except to one willing, but humbly willing, not exalting himself by the strength of his will, as though it alone sufficed for the perfection of righteousness?

33. 37. But far be it that we should say to him what he says is said against him by certain people, "that a human being is compared to God, if he is asserted to be without sin" (See Jerome, Ep. 133, 8)—as though indeed an angel, because he is without sin, were compared to God. For my part I hold this: that even when there shall be in us so great a righteousness that nothing at all can be added to it, the creature will not be made equal to the Creator. But if some think that our advancement will be so great that we are turned into the substance of God and become outright what he is, let them see how they would prop up their opinion; for myself, I confess I am not persuaded of this.

34. 38. Now indeed I much favor the author of this book in that, against those who say: "What you assert seems reasonable indeed, but it is proud to say that a human being can be without sin," he answers in such a way that, altogether, if it is true, it is in no way to be called proud. For he says most cleverly and most truly: "On which side should humility rather be placed? Without doubt on the side of falsehood, if on the side that is proved to be of truth there is pride." And on this account it pleases him, and rightly pleases him, that humility should rather be placed on the side of truth, not on the side of falsehood. From which it follows that he who said: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8), should least of all be doubted to have spoken truly, lest for the sake of humility he should seem to have said this falsely. For he added: And the truth is not in us, when perhaps it would have sufficed to say: We deceive ourselves, had he not attended to the fact that some could think it was said "we deceive ourselves" because one who praises himself even for a true good is exalted. By adding, then: And the truth is not in us, he manifestly showed—as this man too most rightly judges—that this is altogether untrue: If we say that we have no sin, lest humility, placed on the side of falsehood, lose the reward of truth.

34. 39. But further, in that he seems to himself to plead the cause of God by defending nature, he does not attend to the fact that, by saying that this same nature is sound, he removes the mercy of the physician. But the same one is its Creator who is its Savior. We ought not, then, so to praise the Creator that we are compelled—indeed truly convicted—to call the Savior superfluous. Let us therefore honor the nature of the human being with worthy praises, and refer those praises to the glory of the Creator; but, just as we are grateful because he created us, so let us not be ungrateful because he heals us. Our faults indeed, which he heals, let us attribute not to the divine work, but to the human will and to his just vengeance; but, as we confess that it was in our power that they should not have happened, so let us confess that for them to be healed lies in his mercy rather than in our power. This mercy and medicinal help of the Savior this man places only in this, "that he forgives past misdeeds, not that he helps toward avoiding future ones." Here he is most perniciously deceived; here, though unknowingly, he forbids us to watch and pray that we enter not into temptation (See Mark 14:38), when he contends that for this not to befall us is in our power alone.

35. 40. Indeed, the "examples of certain ones whom we read to have sinned" were not, he says—whoever is soundly wise—"written for this, that they should avail toward a despair of not sinning and seem in a manner to offer us a security of sinning," but that we might learn either the humility of repentance or, even in such falls, that salvation is not to be despaired of. For some, fallen into sins, perish the more through despair, and not only neglect the medicine of repentance, but, to fulfill base and wicked desires, become slaves of lusts and criminal cupidities; as though they would lose something if they did not do what lust instigates, when a certain condemnation already remains for them. Against this too dangerous and deadly disease the recollection of the sins into which even the righteous and holy have fallen avails.

35. 41. But he seems to ask cleverly, "How are we to believe that these saints departed from this life—with sin or without sin?" so that, if it be answered "with sin," they may be thought to have been followed by condemnation, which it is wicked to believe; but if it be said that they departed from this life without sin, he may prove that a human being was at least, with death drawing near, without sin in this life. Here he too little attends, sharp as he is, that not in vain do even the righteous say in prayer: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12). And that the Lord Christ, when he had unfolded this same prayer in teaching it, most truthfully added: For if you forgive the sins of human beings, your Father will also forgive your sins (Matt 6:14). For through this daily, spiritual, as it were, incense, which is offered before God upon the altar of the heart, which we are admonished to have on high, even if one does not live here without sin, yet one may die without sin, while again and again that is wiped away by pardon which again and again is committed through ignorance or weakness.

36. 42. Then he mentions those "who are reported not only not to have sinned, but even to have lived righteously: Abel, Enoch, Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua son of Nun, Phinehas, Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, Ezekiel, Mordecai, Simeon, Joseph to whom the virgin Mary was betrothed, John." He adds also women: "Deborah, Hannah the mother of Samuel, Judith, Esther, the other Anna daughter of Phanuel, Elizabeth, and also the very mother of our Lord and Savior, whom," he says, "piety requires us to confess to be without sin."

With the exception, then, of the holy virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish no question whatever to be raised when sins are being discussed—for whence do we know what greater grace was conferred on her for overcoming sin in every part, who deserved to conceive and bear him whom it is agreed had no sin?—with this Virgin excepted, then, if we could gather together all those holy men and women, while they lived here, and ask them whether they were without sin, what do we think they would have answered? Whether that which this man says, or that which the apostle John says, I ask you. However great the excellence of holiness they had in this body, had they been able to be asked this, with one voice they would have cried out: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). Or would they perhaps have answered this more humbly than truly? But it now pleases this man, and rightly pleases him, "not to place the praise of humility on the side of falsehood." Thus, if they said this truly, they had sin; and because they confessed it humbly, the truth was in them; but if they lied in this, they had sin none the less, because the truth was not in them.

37. 43. "They will say perhaps," he says, "could Scripture have recorded the sins of all?" And whoever says it will say what is true to him. Nor do I see that he has answered anything valid against this, although I see that he was unwilling to be silent. For attend, I beg, to what he has said. "This," he says, "can rightly be said of those of whose good or evil deeds Scripture is not mindful; but of those whose righteousness it mentions, without doubt it would also have mentioned their sins, if it had perceived that they had sinned in any way." Let him then say that the faith of those did not pertain to so great a righteousness, who, in a great multitude, going before and following with the praises of the Lord, were even crying out around the ass, amid raging enemies who wondered why they did this: Hosanna, son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord (Matt 21:9)! Let this man dare, then, to say, if he can, that in that great multitude there was no one who had any sin at all. But if it is most absurd to say this, why did Scripture mention none of their sins, when it took care to mention so great a good as their faith?

37. 44. But perhaps he himself saw this too, and therefore added and said: "But be it so; suppose that in other times, by reason of the numerousness of the crowds, it passed over in silence the sins of all; what," he says, "do we say of the very beginning of the world, where there were but four human beings? Why did it not wish to record the misdeeds of all? Was it on account of a vast multitude, which did not yet exist, or because it mentioned only those who had committed sins, but could not mention the one who had committed none?" He further adds words by which this opinion may be more amply and plainly propped up: "Surely," he says, "in the first time there are reported to have been only four human beings: Adam and Eve, from whom were born Cain and Abel. Eve sinned—Scripture made this known (See Gen 3:6)—Adam too transgressed—the same Scripture did not keep silent (See Gen 3:6)—but Cain too the same Scripture equally testified to have sinned (See Gen 4:8), of whom it indicates not only the sins but even the character of the sins. But if Abel too had sinned, Scripture without doubt would have said so; but it did not say so: therefore neither did he sin, indeed it shows him to be righteous. Let us therefore believe what we read, and let us hold it wicked to prop up what we do not read."

38. 45. In saying these things he little attends to what he himself had said a little before, that "once the multitude of the human race had arisen, Scripture could, on account of the numerousness of the crowds, pass over the weaving together of the sins of all." For if he had attended sufficiently to this, he would see that even in one human being a crowd and multitude of light sins either could not, or, even if it could, ought not to have been written down. For those things were written for which a measure had to be observed, and by which, with few examples, the reader had to be instructed in the many things that are necessary.

For since Scripture was unwilling to record even those human beings then, though still few—how many, or who they were, that is, Adam and Eve, how many sons and daughters they begot, and what names they imposed on them (whence some, considering too little how many things Scripture silently passes over, supposed that Cain himself lay with his mother, that he might beget the offspring that is mentioned (See Gen 4:17), thinking that those sons of Adam had no sisters, because Scripture was then silent about them, afterward, in recapitulating, bringing in what it had omitted, that Adam begot sons and daughters (Gen 5:4), showing neither the time when they were born, nor the number, nor the names):

so neither was it to be recorded, if Abel, though deservedly called righteous (See Matt 23:35; Heb 11:4), ever laughed somewhat immoderately, or jested in a relaxing of the mind, or saw something to be coveted, or plucked fruit somewhat too immoderately, or was somewhat dyspeptic from a little too much food, or when he prayed thought of something by which his attention was called away to other things—and how often these and many like things crept upon him!

Or are those perhaps not sins against which, that they may be generally guarded and held in check, we are admonished by the apostolic precept, where he says: Let not sin, then, reign in your mortal body, to obey its desires (See Rom 6:12)? For lest we obey these in things that are not lawful or are less fitting, we must contend in a daily and perpetual struggle. For surely from this fault the eye is sent or directed where it ought not; and if this fault gains strength and prevails, adultery too is perpetrated in the body, which in the heart is committed the more quickly the swifter the thought is and the more there is no hindrance of delay.

Those who have for the most part bridled this sin, that is, this appetite of vicious affection, so as not to obey its desires nor present their members to it as weapons of iniquity (See Rom 6:12-13), have deserved even to be called righteous, and this by the help of the grace of God. But because sin often creeps in, in the very slightest things and sometimes upon the unwary, they both were righteous and were not without sin. Finally, if in the righteous Abel the love of God, by which alone whoever is righteous is truly righteous, was still such that it could and ought to be increased, whatever was less in it was from a fault (See Aug., De spir. et litt. 36, 65; De perf. iust. hom. 6, 15). And in whom is it not less, until one comes to that fortitude of love in which the whole weakness of the human being is absorbed?

39. 46. He concluded this passage with a great sentence indeed, when he said: "Let us therefore believe what we read, and let us hold it wicked to prop up what we do not read; let this suffice to have been said about all matters." On the contrary, I say that we ought not to believe everything we read, on account of what the Apostle says: Read all things; hold fast what is good (1 Thess 5:21), and that to prop up something even that we do not read is not wicked. For we can, as witnesses in good faith, prop up something that we have experienced, even if perhaps we have not read it. Here perhaps he answers: "When I said this, I was dealing with the holy Scriptures." O would that he wished to prop up nothing against what he reads—I do not say anything other than what he reads in those writings! He would faithfully and obediently hear what is written: 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), and he would not weaken the grace of so great a physician, while he is unwilling to confess that human nature has been corrupted. O would that, as a Christian, he might read that besides Jesus Christ there is no name under heaven in which we must be saved (See Acts 4:12), and would not so defend the possibility of human nature that a human being should be believed able to be saved through free choice even without this name!

40. 47. But he thinks perhaps that the name of Christ is necessary for this reason, that through his Gospel we may learn how we ought to live, not also that we may be helped by his grace to live well. Or at least from this let him confess that there are miserable shadows in the human mind, which knows how it ought to tame a lion and does not know how to live. Or does free choice and the natural law suffice it even to know this? This is the wisdom of words, by which the cross of Christ is emptied (See 1 Cor 1:17). But he who said: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise (1 Cor 1:19), because that cross cannot be emptied, surely overthrows that wisdom through the foolishness of preaching, by which believers are healed (See 1 Cor 1:21). For if natural possibility through free choice suffices of itself both for knowing how one ought to live and for living well, then Christ died to no purpose (Gal 2:21); then the scandal of the cross has been emptied (Gal 5:11). Why should not I too here cry out? Indeed I will cry out and rebuke them with Christian grief: You have been emptied of Christ, you who are justified in nature; you have fallen from grace (See Gal 5:4)! For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish your own, you have not submitted to the righteousness of God (See Rom 10:3). For as Christ is the end of the law, so too he is the Savior of corrupted human nature unto righteousness for everyone who has faith (See Rom 10:4).

41. 48. But as for what he set against himself as said by those against whom he speaks: For all have sinned (Rom 3:23), "it is manifest that the Apostle was speaking of those who then existed, that is, of Jews and gentiles." But plainly that which I mentioned: 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), this sentence embraces both the ancients and the more recent, and us, and our posterity. He also sets down a testimony by which to prove that, when "all" are spoken of, it is not always to be understood as absolutely all, none excepted. "As through one man's transgression upon all human beings unto condemnation, so also through one man's righteousness upon all human beings unto the justification of life (Rom 5:18)," he says, "when by Christ's righteousness," he says, "not all, but only those who were willing to obey him and were purified by the washing of his baptism, were without doubt sanctified." Plainly he does not prove by this testimony what he wishes. For just as it was said: As through one man's transgression upon all human beings unto condemnation (Rom 5:18), so that none was passed over, so too in that which was said: through one man's righteousness upon all human beings unto the justification of life (Rom 5:18), none was passed over—not because all believe in him and are washed by his baptism, but because no one is justified unless he believes in him and is washed by his baptism. And so "all" was said, lest in any way someone be believed able to be saved otherwise than through him. Just as, when one teacher of letters has been established in a city, we say most rightly: "This man teaches all here their letters," not because all the citizens learn letters, but because no one learns unless he teaches him, so no one is justified unless Christ justifies him.

42. 49. "But be it so," he says, "I will grant that he testifies all to have been sinners. For he says what they were, not that they could not be otherwise. Wherefore, even if all human beings," he says, "could be proved sinners, it would in no way be an obstacle to our definition, who defend not so much what human beings are as what they can be." Here he rightly does well sometimes to grant, since no living person will be justified in the sight of God (See Ps 143 (142):2); yet he contends that the question is not there, but in the very possibility of not sinning, in which there is no need for us to contend against him.

For neither am I too anxious whether there have been here, or are, or can be any who have had, or have, or will have a perfect love of God to which nothing should be added (for this is the truest, fullest, and most perfect righteousness), since that which I confess and defend can come to be by the will of the human being helped through the grace of God, I ought not to contend overmuch when, or where, or in whom it comes to be. Nor do I contend about the possibility itself, since, when the will of the human being has been healed and helped, that very possibility comes forth together with its effect in the saints, while the love of God—as fully as our nature, healed and purified, can take it in—is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (See Rom 5:5). The cause of God, therefore, is better pleaded (which this man says he is pleading by defending nature) when both the Creator and the Savior are acknowledged, than when the creature, defended as though sound and of unimpaired powers, is left without the aid of the Savior.

43. 50. But true is that which he says: "that God, as good as he is just, made the human being such that he was able to be free of the evil of sin, if only he had willed." For who does not know that he was made sound and blameless, and established with free choice and a free power to live righteously?

But now we are dealing with that man whom robbers left half-alive on the road (See Luke 10:30-34), who, gravely wounded and pierced with wounds, cannot ascend to the summit of righteousness in the way he was able to descend from it, and who, even if he is now in the inn, is still being cured. God, then, does not command the impossible, but by commanding he admonishes you both to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot. Now let us see whence one can, and whence one cannot. This man says: "It is not by the will, what nature can do." I say: "By the will, indeed, a human being is not righteous, if nature can do it; but medicine will be able to do what by the fault it cannot."

44. 51. What need, then, to dwell longer on more points? Let us come within, to the cause that we have with these men in this question alone, or almost alone. For just as he himself says "that it does not pertain to what he is now treating to ask whether there have been or are any human beings in this life without sin, but whether they could be or can be," so therefore, even if I should grant that there have been or are such, yet I affirm that they in no way could be or can be, except as justified by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and him crucified (See Rom 7:25; 1 Cor 2:2). For that faith healed the ancient righteous, which heals us too, that is, the faith of the mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus (See 1 Tim 2:5), faith in his blood, faith in his cross, faith in his death and resurrection; having therefore the same spirit of faith, we too believe, and therefore we also speak (2 Cor 4:13).

44. 52. But this man, when an objection has been raised against him in which he truly seems intolerable to Christian hearts, let us attend to what he answers. For he says: "But this is what moves many, you will say, that you defend that a human being can be without sin without the grace of God." Precisely this is what moves us, this is what we object. He says the very thing; this we bear most grievously, that such things should be disputed by Christians; we do not endure it, out of the love we have toward others and toward these men themselves.

Let us hear, then, how he extricates himself from the objection of this question. "O blindness of ignorance," he says, "O sloth of an untrained mind, which supposes that to be defended without the grace of God which it hears must be ascribed to God alone!" If we did not know what follows, hearing only these things, we would think we had believed false things about him from rumor's boasting and from certain suitable brothers asserting them as witnesses. For what could be said more briefly and more truly than that the possibility of not sinning, however great it is or will be in a human being, must be ascribed to none but God? This we too say; let us join right hands.

45. 53. Or are the rest to be heard? Plainly they are to be heard, and surely to be corrected or guarded against. "For when it is said," he says, "that this very being-able belongs not at all to human choice, but to nature, but to the author of nature, namely God, how can it possibly be that it should be understood to be without the grace of God which is judged to pertain properly to God?" Now it has begun to appear what he says; but lest perhaps we are mistaken, he explains it more broadly and more clearly. "But that this may be made more manifest," he says, "we must dispute a little more broadly. For we say that the possibility of anything whatever consists not so much in the power of human choice as in the necessity of nature."

He illustrates what he says by examples or comparisons. "For instance," he says, "I can speak. That I can speak is not mine; that I speak is mine, that is, of my own will; and because what I speak is mine, I can do either, that is, both speak and not speak. But because that I can speak is not mine, that is, of my own choice and will, it is necessary that I can always speak; and if I should will not to be able to speak, I still cannot not be able to speak, unless perhaps I take away that member by which the office of speaking can be fulfilled." Many things indeed could be said by which, if he wished, a human being might take from himself the possibility of speaking without taking away that member by which we speak. For instance, if something be done whereby the voice itself is removed, no one will be able to speak though the members remain; for the voice of a human being is not a member; if indeed some inner member be injured, this can come about, even without removal. But lest I seem to press a word, and lest it be said to me contentiously: "To injure too is to take away," we can indeed effect this by closing and barring the mouth with certain bonds, so that we are not at all able to open it, nor is it in our power that it be opened, though it was in our power that it be closed, while the integrity and soundness of the members remains.

46. 54. But what is that to us? Let us see what he weaves together next. "For whatever is constrained by natural necessity," he says, "is deprived of the choice and deliberation of the will." And here there is some question. For it would be too absurd that we should say it does not pertain to our will that we wish to be happy, because we cannot at all not wish it, by some—and that a good—constraint of nature; nor do we dare to say that God has not the will but the necessity of righteousness, because he cannot will to sin.

47. 55. Attend also to what follows. "This," he says, "can be perceived also of hearing, smelling, or seeing: that to hear, to smell, to see is in our power, but that we can hear or smell or see is not in our power, but consists in natural necessity." Either I do not understand what he says, or he himself does not. For how is the possibility of seeing not in our power, if the necessity of not seeing is in our power, since blindness is in our power, by which we take from ourselves the very ability to see, if we will? And how is it in our power to see if we will, when even with the integrity of the nature of our body and of our eyes preserved, we cannot see even when willing, whether through night, the lights that are supplied from without being removed, or if someone shut us up in some dark place? Likewise, if what we can or cannot hear is not in our power, but in the constraint of nature, while what we hear or do not hear is of our own will, why does he not attend to how many things we hear unwillingly, which penetrate to our sense even with the ears stopped, as is the screech of a saw nearby or the grunting of a pig? Although the stopping of the ears shows that it is not in our power, with open ears, not to hear; perhaps such a stopping is even possible as would take away the very sense, so that it would be in our power even to be unable to hear. But as to what he says of smell, does he not attend too little, "that it is not in our power to be able to smell or not, but it is in our power"—that is, in free will—"to smell or not to smell," when, if we have been set among heavy and offensive odors, and someone places us there with hands bound, with the integrity and health of the members wholly preserved, we may will not to smell and yet not be able at all, because, when we are compelled to draw breath, we at the same time draw in the odor we do not will?

48. 56. As, then, these comparisons are false, so too is that for whose sake he wished to bring them in; for he goes on and says: "In a like manner, then, it is to be understood of the possibility of not sinning, that not to sin is ours, but that we can not-sin is not ours." If he were speaking of the whole and sound nature of the human being (which we do not now have; for in hope we have been saved; but hope that is seen is not hope. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Rom 8:24-25)), not even so would he say rightly that not to sin alone is ours, although to sin would be ours; for even then there would be the help of God, and, like light to sound eyes, it would offer itself to those willing, that, helped, they might see.

But because he is disputing about this life, where the body that is corruptible weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that ponders many things (Wis 9:15), I wonder with what heart he thinks that, even without the help of the medicine of our Savior, not to sin is ours, and contends that to be able not to sin belongs to nature—a nature that appears so corrupted that not to see this is the mark of a greater fault.

49. 57. "Because not to sin," he says, "is ours, we are able both to sin and not to sin." What if another should say: "Because to be unwilling to be wretched is ours, we are able both to will it and not to will it"? And yet we cannot at all will it. For who could in any way will to be wretched, even if he wills something else by which wretchedness pursues him even unwilling? Then, since not to sin belongs much more to God, shall we dare to say of him that he can both sin and not sin? Far be it from us that we should say God can sin! For not, as the foolish suppose, will he therefore not be omnipotent, because he can neither die nor deny himself (2 Tim 2:13).

What is it, then, that he says, and by what rules of speech does he try to persuade of what he is unwilling to consider? He further adds and says: "But because the being-able-not-to-sin is not ours, even if we should will not to be able not to sin, we cannot not be able not to sin." This he said in a twisted way, and therefore rather obscurely. But it could be said more plainly thus: Because the being-able-not-to-sin is not ours, whether we will or will not, we are able not to sin. For he does not say: whether we will or will not, we do not sin; for without doubt we sin if we will; but yet he asserts that, will we or will we not, we have the possibility of not sinning, which he says is implanted in nature.

But of a human being with sound feet it can tolerably be said: will he or will he not, he has the possibility of walking; but of one with broken feet, even if he wills, he has it not. The nature of which he speaks has been corrupted: Why is earth and ashes proud? (Sir 10:9). It has been corrupted, it implores a physician: Save me, Lord (Ps 12 (11):1), it cries out; Heal my soul (Ps 41 (40):4), it cries out. What blocks these cries, that, by defending an as-it-were-present possibility, it should hinder a future health?

50. 58. And see what he adds, whereby he thinks to confirm this: "Because no will," he says, "can take away what is proved to be inseparably implanted in nature." Whence, then, that voice: So that you do not do the things that you will (Gal 5:17)? Whence too this: For I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I hate, this I do (Rom 7:15. 19)? Where is the possibility that is proved to be inseparably implanted in nature? Behold, human beings do not do the things they will. And he was surely treating of not sinning, not of flying, since human beings were not birds. Behold, the human being does not do the good he wills, but the evil he does not will, this he does; to will lies near at hand for him, but to accomplish the good does not lie at hand (See Rom 7:18).

Where is the possibility that is proved to be inseparably implanted in nature? For into whomever he may transfigure himself (See 2 Cor 11:13-15), even if the Apostle does not say these things of himself, he certainly transfigures into himself a human being. But by this man the very human nature is defended as having an inseparable possibility of sinning in nothing. But by these words this is brought about even by him who speaks unknowingly, yet not unknowingly by him who suggests these things to be spoken to the unwary, even to those who fear God, that the grace of Christ may be emptied, nature being as it were sufficient of itself for its own righteousness.

51. 59. But that the ill will may be turned aside by which Christians cry out for their salvation and say: "Why do you say that a human being can not-sin without the help of the grace of God?"—"This very possibility of not sinning," he says, "is not so much in the power of choice as in the necessity of nature. Whatever is placed in the necessity of nature, it is not doubted, pertains to the author of nature, namely God. How, then," he says, "is it thought to be said without the grace of God, which is shown to pertain properly to God?" The opinion that lay hidden has been expressed; there is no way it can be concealed. He attributes the possibility of not sinning to the grace of God for this reason, that God is the author of that nature in which he says the possibility of not sinning is inseparably implanted. When, then, he wills, he does it; because he does not will, he does not do it. For where there is an inseparable possibility, there cannot befall it a weakness of the will or rather a lack present in the will and in its perfecting. If, then, it is so, whence comes: To will lies at hand, but to accomplish the good does not lie at hand (Rom 7:18)? For if this man who wrote this book were speaking of that nature of the human being which was at first created blameless and sound, this saying might somehow be accepted; although that nature ought not to have been said to have an inseparable possibility, that is, so to speak, an unlosable one, which could be corrupted and seek a physician to heal the eyes of the blind and restore the possibility of seeing, which had been lost through blindness—since the blind man, I think, wills to see, but cannot; but if he wills and cannot, the will is present, but the possibility has been lost.

52. 60. See still what masses he tries to break through, by which to drive his opinion, if he could. For he objects a question to himself, saying: "But the flesh, according to the Apostle, is contrary to us (See Gal 5:17), you will say." Then he answers: "How can it be that the flesh should be contrary to anyone baptized, when according to the same Apostle he is understood not to be in the flesh? For thus he says: But you are not in the flesh (Rom 8:9)." Well that he says the flesh cannot be contrary to the baptized—whether this is true we shall see afterward. But now, because he could not utterly forget that he is a Christian, but recollected it, however faintly, he withdrew from the defense of nature.

Where, then, is the inseparability of the possibility? Or are the not-yet-baptized perhaps not among the nature of human beings? Here precisely, here he could be watchful, and, if he would attend, he can be. "How can it be," he says, "that the flesh should be contrary to anyone baptized?" Therefore to the unbaptized the flesh can be contrary. Let him explain in what way, since in them too is that nature, by him so much defended. Certainly even in them he grants it to be corrupted, if in the baptized that wounded man has come out of the inn sound, or is sound in the inn to which the merciful Samaritan brought him to be cured (See Luke 10:30-35).

Further, if he grants that even to these the flesh is contrary, let him say what has happened, since both, that is, both flesh and spirit, are the creation of one and the same Creator, and without doubt good, because made by the Good—except that this is the fault that has been inflicted by one's own will; and that it may be healed in nature, there is need of that very Savior by whom nature was established as its Creator. If we confess that there is need of this Savior, and of that medicine of his by which the Word was made flesh, that he might dwell among us (See John 1:14), for the small and the great, that is, from the wailings of infants to the gray hairs of the old, then the whole controversy of this question that is between us is dissolved.

53. 61. Now let us see whether the flesh is read to be contrary even to the baptized. Here I ask, to whom was the Apostle saying: The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to one another, so that you do not do the things that you will (Gal 5:17)? He wrote this, I think, to the Galatians, to whom he says: He, then, who supplies the Spirit to you and works powers in you, does he do so from the works of the law or from the hearing of faith (Gal 3:5)? Whence it appears that he is speaking to Christians, and to those to whom God had supplied the Spirit, therefore to the baptized.

Behold, even to the baptized the flesh is found to be contrary, and that possibility is not present which he says is inseparably implanted in nature. Where is that which he says: "How can it be that the flesh should be contrary to anyone baptized?" In whatever way he understands the flesh—because in truth it is not its nature, which is good, but the carnal faults of the flesh that are here called by the name—behold, nevertheless, the flesh is contrary even to the baptized. And how contrary? So that they do not do what they will. Behold, the will is present in the human being; where is that possibility of nature? Let us confess that grace is necessary, let us cry out: Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? And let it be answered us: The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24-25).

53. 62. For when it is most rightly said to these men: "Why do you say that a human being can be without sin without the help of the grace of God?" the question is not then about that grace by which the human being was created, but about that by which he is made safe through Jesus Christ our Lord. For the faithful say in prayer: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13). If the possibility is present, why do they pray? Or from what evil do they pray to be delivered, if not chiefly from the body of this death (Rom 7:24), from which nothing delivers except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25)?

Surely not from the substance of the body, which is good, but from the carnal faults, from which a human being is not delivered without the grace of the Savior, not even when through the death of the body he departs from the body. And that the Apostle might say this, what had he said above? I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and leading me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members (Rom 7:23).

Behold the fault that the disobedience of the will inflicted upon human nature. Let him be allowed to pray, that he may be healed. Why is so much presumed concerning the possibility of nature? It is wounded, injured, harassed, ruined: it has need of a true confession, not a false defense. Let the grace of God, then, be sought—not that by which nature is established, but that by which it is restored—which by this man is alone proclaimed not to be necessary, when it is passed over in silence. If he had said nothing at all about the grace of God, nor proposed to himself this question to be solved, in order to remove from himself the ill will about this matter, he might have been thought to hold indeed what truth holds, but not to have said it, because not everything is to be said everywhere. He proposed the question about grace; he answered what he had in his heart; the question is settled—not the one we wished, but the one in which we were in doubt as to what he held.

54. 63. Then with many words of the Apostle he tries to show—whereof there is no controversy—"that flesh is so often named by him that he wishes it to be understood not as the substance, but as the works of the flesh." What is this to the matter? The faults of the flesh are contrary to the will of the human being; nature is not accused, but a physician is sought for its faults. What is it that he asks: "Who made the spirit for the human being?" and answers himself: "Without doubt God." And again he asks: "Who created the flesh?" And again he answers: "The same, I believe, God." He asks a third time: "Is God good, who created both?" He answers: "There is no doubt to anyone." He still asks: "And is each thing that the good author created good?" and to this he answers: "It must be confessed." Then he concludes: "If, then, both the spirit is good and the flesh good, as established by a good author, how can it be that two goods should be contrary to one another?"

I forbear to say that his whole reasoning would be thrown into confusion if someone should ask him: "Who made heat and cold?" For he would answer: "Without doubt God." I do not ask many questions; let him himself conclude whether either these can be called not good, or do not appear to be contrary to one another. Here perhaps he says: "These are qualities of substances, not substances." So it is, it is true; but natural qualities, and without doubt pertaining to the creation of God; for substances are said to be contrary to one another not through themselves, but through their qualities, as water and fire. What if the flesh and the spirit are so? Which indeed we do not affirm, but we have said this in order to show that his reasoning was concluded by no necessary inference. For contraries can even not be opposed to one another, but be tempered from one and the other and yield good health, as in the body dryness and moisture, cold and heat, by the tempering of all of which good bodily health consists. But that the flesh is contrary to the spirit, so that we do not do what we will, is a fault, not nature. Let medicinal grace be sought, and let the controversy be ended.

54. 64. For these two goods, established by the good God, how, against this man's reasoning, can they be contrary to one another in unbaptized human beings? Or will he repent of having said this too, which he spoke from some affection of the Christian faith? For when he said: "How can it be that the flesh should be contrary to anyone already baptized?" he signified that to the unbaptized the flesh could be contrary. For why did he add "already baptized," when he could have said this too without that addition: "How can it be that the flesh should be contrary to anyone?" and, to prove this, subjoin that reasoning of his, that each is good, established by the Good, and therefore cannot be contrary to one another? If, then, the unbaptized, to whom he certainly confesses the flesh to be contrary, should press him with his own questions and say: "Who made the spirit for the human being?" this man will answer: "God." And again they: "Who created the flesh?" This man answers: "The same, I believe, God." They a third time: "Is God good, who created both?" And this man: "There is no doubt to anyone." And let them inquire the one thing that remains: "And is each thing that the good author created good?"; this man will confess it.

Then they will cut his throat with his own sword, bringing in his own conclusion and saying: "If, then, the spirit is good and the flesh good, as established by a good author, how can it be that two goods should be contrary to one another?" Here perhaps he will answer: "Pardon me, for I ought not to have said that the flesh cannot be contrary to anyone baptized, so as in this way to confess it contrary to you unbaptized, but I ought to have said without any exception that the flesh is contrary to no one."

Behold into what he wedges himself, behold what he says, who is unwilling to cry out with the Apostle: Who will set me free from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24-25). "But why," he says, "should I cry out, now baptized in Christ? Let those cry it out who have not yet received such a benefit, whose voices the Apostle was figuring in himself—if indeed they say even this."

But this defense of nature does not even permit those to cry out with this voice. For nature is not in the baptized and absent in the unbaptized. Or if even in those it is granted to be corrupted, so that not without cause they cry out: Wretched man! Who will set me free from the body of this death (Rom 7:24)? and they are helped in what follows: The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25), let it now at length at some time be granted that human nature needs Christ as its physician.

55. 65. But I ask, where did nature lose that liberty which it longs to be given it, when it says: Who will set me free (Rom 7:24)? For neither does that man accuse the substance of the flesh when he says he desires to be set free from the body of this death (Rom 7:24), since the nature of the body too, like that of the soul, is to be attributed to God, the good author, but surely he speaks of the faults of the body. For death separates the body from the body; but the faults contracted from it cling, for which a just penalty is owed, which that rich man found even in hell (See Luke 16:22-26). From this surely he could not set himself free, who says: Who will set me free from the body of this death (See Rom 7:24)?

But wherever it lost this liberty, surely that possibility of nature is inseparable; it has the being-able through natural support, it has the willing through free choice; why does it seek the sacrament of baptism? Is it on account of past misdeeds, that those alone may be forgiven which cannot be made undone? Let the human being be left be, let him cry out what he was crying out. For he does not desire only that, by indulgence, he be unpunished for past sins, but also that he be strong and able for not sinning thereafter. For he delights in the law of God according to the inner man, but he sees another law in his members fighting against the law of his mind (See Rom 7:22-23); he sees it to be, he does not merely recall it to have been; he is pressed by present things, he does not remember past ones.

Nor does he see it merely fighting, but even leading him captive in the law of sin (See Rom 7:23), which is in his members, not which was. Hence it is that he cries out: Wretched man, who will set me free from the body of this death (Rom 7:24)? Let him be allowed to pray, let him be allowed to beg the help of the most powerful physician. Why is he contradicted? Why is he clamored against? Why is the wretched man forbidden to seek the mercy of Christ, and this by Christians? For those too walked with Christ who by their clamor forbade the blind man to seek light (See Mark 10:46-52); but even amid the tumult of those contradicting, he hears the one crying out. Whence to this man it was answered: The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25).

55. 66. Further, if we obtain even this from these men, that the not-yet-baptized should implore the help of the grace of the Savior, this indeed is no small thing against that false defense of nature as though sufficient for itself and of the power of free choice; for he does not suffice for himself who says: Wretched man! Who will set me free (Rom 7:24)? nor is he to be said to have full liberty who still asks to be set free.

56. 66. Yet let us also see this, whether those who have been baptized do the good things they will with no carnal concupiscence resisting. But what we should say on this point he himself mentions, where, concluding this passage, he says: "As we have said, that statement: The flesh desires against the spirit (Gal 5:17), must of necessity be understood not of the substance of the flesh, but of the works." This we too say, that it was said not of the substance of the flesh, but of the works, which come from carnal concupiscence, that is, from sin, of which he commands that it should not reign in our mortal body, so that we obey its desires (See Rom 6:12).

57. 67. But let him too attend that it was said to those already baptized: The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that you do not do the things that you will (Gal 5:17). And lest he should make them slothful in that very struggle, and seem by this sentence to have given a license for sinning, he adds: But if you are led by the spirit, you are no longer under the law (Gal 5:18).

For he is under the law who feels that he abstains from the work of sin through fear of the punishment that the law threatens, not through love of righteousness, not yet free nor estranged from the will of sinning. For in that very will he is guilty, by which he would prefer, if it could be, that there were nothing he fears, so that he might freely do what he secretly desires.

Therefore if you are led by the spirit, he says, you are no longer under the law (Gal 5:18)—surely the law that strikes fear, that does not bestow love, that love of God which has been poured out in our hearts not through the letter of the law, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). This is the law of liberty, not of slavery, because it is the law of love, surely, not of fear, of which the apostle James too says: But he who has looked into the perfect law of liberty (Jas 1:25). Whence that man too was no longer terrified by the law of God as a slave, but delighted in it according to the inner man (See Rom 7:22); yet he still sees another law in his members fighting against the law of his mind (Rom 7:23). So here too: If you are led by the spirit, he says, you are no longer under the law (Gal 5:18). Insofar as anyone is led by the spirit, he is not under the law, because insofar as he delights in the law of God, he is not under the fear of the law, because fear has torment (1 John 4:18), not delight.

58. 68. Accordingly, if we are rightly minded, just as we ought to give thanks for our members that have been healed, so we ought to pray for those that are to be healed, that we may enjoy a most complete health, to which nothing can be added, a perfect sweetness of God, a full liberty. For we do not deny that human nature can be without sin, nor ought we in any way to deny that it can be perfected, which we do not deny can advance—but by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (See Rom 7:25); we say it comes to be just and blessed by the help of him by whom it was created to be.

And so it is easily refuted, what he says is objected to him by certain people: "The devil is opposed to us." We answer this objection precisely with the same words that he himself answered: "Let us resist him, and he will flee. Resist, says the blessed Apostle, the devil, and he will flee from you (Jas 4:7). Whence it is to be noted what harm he can do to those whom he flees, or what power he is to be understood to have, who can prevail only against those who do not resist." These are my words too; for nothing truer can be said.

But this is the difference between us and these men: that we, even when the devil is resisted, not only do not deny that the help of God is to be sought, but even proclaim it; whereas they attribute such great power to the will that they take prayer away from piety. For surely it is that we may resist the devil and that he may flee from us that, praying, we say: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13); for this too we have been admonished, as soldiers by a commander exhorting and saying: Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation (Mark 14:38).

59. 69. But as for his disputing against those who say: "And who would not wish to be without sin, if this lay within the power of a human being?" he disputes rightly indeed, "that by this very thing they confess it is not impossible, since either many or all wish it"; but let him confess whence this is possible, and there is peace. For it is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25), by which this man nowhere wished to say that we, praying, are helped that we may not sin. But if perhaps he secretly holds this, let him pardon those who suspect otherwise. For he himself does this, who, though he suffers such great ill will about this matter, wishes to hold it and is unwilling to confess or profess it.

What was the great thing in saying this, especially since he undertook to treat and to open this objection put to him as it were from the person of his adversaries? Why did he there wish to defend nature alone, and assert that the human being was so created that he could not sin if he had been unwilling to sin, and on this account, because he was so created, define that this possibility pertains to the grace of God—the possibility by which, if he is unwilling to sin, he does not sin—and yet was unwilling to say anything about that whereby this very nature is either healed by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (See Rom 7:25), because it has been corrupted, or, because it does not suffice for itself, is helped?

60. 70. For whether in this age there has been, or is, or can be anyone living so righteously that he has no sin at all, there may be some question among true and pious Christians; yet whoever doubts that it can certainly be after this life is a fool. But I do not wish to contend even about this life. For although it does not seem to me that what is written should be understood otherwise: No living person will be justified in your sight (Ps 143 (142):2), and whatever is like it, yet would that it could be shown either that these testimonies can be better understood otherwise, or that perfect and full righteousness, to which nothing at all should be added, both was yesterday in someone while he lived in this body, and is today, and will be tomorrow—provided that there are far more who do not doubt that, up to the last day of this life, it is necessary for them to say truthfully: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12), yet trust that their hope in Christ and in his promises is true, certain, and firm! Yet whoever denies that, only by the help of the grace of the Savior Christ crucified and the gift of his Spirit, either any persons whatever come to the fullest perfection, or anyone at all comes to any advance whatever of true and pious righteousness, I know not whether he can rightly be reckoned among the number of any sort of Christians.

61. 71. And on this account those testimonies too, which he set down not indeed from the canonical Scriptures but from certain little works of Catholic writers, wishing to meet those who would say that he alone defends these things, are so neutral that they are neither against our opinion nor against his own. Among them he wished to insert something even from my books, reckoning me too to be someone who might seem worthy to be mentioned with them. Whence I ought not to be ungrateful, and with a friendlier affection I would not wish him to err who has paid me this honor.

For the first thing he set down—because the name of him who said it I did not read there, whether because he did not write it or because the manuscript you sent did not, perhaps through some defect, have it—what need to discuss? Especially since, being free in writings of this kind by whatever human beings (because to the canonical alone do I owe consent without any refusal), I am in no way moved by what he set down from the writings of him whose name I did not find there: "It was fitting that the master and teacher of virtue should be made most like to the human being, so that by conquering sin he might teach that the human being can conquer sin (Lactantius, Div. instit. 4, 24)." For in what way this was said, let the author of this opinion see how he can explain it, provided we least of all doubt that Christ had no sin in himself to conquer (See 2 Cor 5:21), who was born in the likeness of the flesh of sin (See Rom 8:3), not in the flesh of sin.

Another saying of the same one he set down thus: "And again: That, with the desires of the flesh subdued, he might teach that to sin is not of necessity, but of purpose and will (Lactantius, Div. instit. 4, 25)." I take "the desire of the flesh," if illicit concupiscences are not here meant, as such things as hunger, thirst, the refreshment of weariness, and whatever is of this kind. For through these certain people, although they are blameless, fall into faults; which was far from that Savior, even if we see by the testimony of the Gospel that these were in him, on account of the likeness of the flesh of sin.

62. 72. But the blessed Hilary, whose words he set down: "For only when made perfect in spirit and changed into immortality, which is appointed for the pure in heart alone, shall we see that which is immortal in God" (Hilary, Comment. in Mt. 4, 7)—what he said against what we say, or how it helps this man, I do not know, except that he testified that a human being can be pure in heart. Who denies it? But it is by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25), not by liberty of choice alone. Likewise the saying he records as said by Hilary: "What letters had Job read that he should abstain from every evil thing? Because with mind alone, unmixed with vices, he venerated God; but to worship God is the proper office of righteousness (Hilary, Tract. in Iob, fr. 2)."

He says what Job did (See Job 1:1), not what he had perfected in this age, or what without the grace of the Savior—whom he too prophesied—he had either done or perfected. For even one who has sin, which he does not allow to reign in himself (See Rom 6:12), abstains from every evil thing, upon whom a thought to be reproved creeps in, which he does not permit to come to the end of a deed. But it is one thing not to have sin, another not to obey its desires; it is one thing to fulfill what is commanded: You shall not covet (Exod 20:17), and another by a certain effort of abstinence at least to do that which is likewise written: Do not go after your lusts (Sir 18:30)—and yet to know that one can rightly do none of these without the grace of the Savior.

To do righteousness, then, in the true worship of God, is to fight with an inner struggle against the inner evil of concupiscence; but to perfect it is to have no adversary at all. For he who fights and is still in peril, and is sometimes struck, even if not laid low; but he who has no adversary rejoices in full peace. And he is most truly said to be without sin in whom no sin dwells, not he who by abstinence from an evil deed says: Now it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:20).

62. 73. For Job himself too is not silent about his sins, and surely it rightly pleases this friend of ours that humility is in no way to be placed on the side of falsehood; whence that which Job confesses (See Job 1:1), since he is a truthful worshiper of God, without doubt he confesses truthfully. And Hilary himself, when he was expounding a place of the psalm where it is written: You have despised all who depart from your justifications (Ps 119 (118):118), says: "For if God despised sinners, he would surely despise all, since no one is without sin. But he despises those who depart from him, whom he calls apostates (Hilary, In ps. 118, 15, 10)." You see how he did not say that no one has been without sin, as though speaking of past things, but that no one is without sin. About which indeed, as I have said, I do not contend; for whoever does not yield to the apostle John, who himself does not say: If we say that we (1 John 1:8) "had no sin," but "have"—how will he yield to bishop Hilary? I cry out for the grace of Christ, without which no one is justified, against free choice as though sufficient for nature. Indeed he himself cries out for it; let him be yielded to who says: Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5).

63. 74. But saint Ambrose, truly, in that place which this man mentions (Ambrose, Expos. in Ev. Lc 1, 17), resists those who say that a human being cannot be without sin in this life. For, that he might say these things, he took occasion from Zechariah and Elizabeth, because in the Gospel they are mentioned as having walked in all the justifications of the law without reproach (See Luke 1:6). Yet does he deny that this comes to be by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25)? By which faith it is not doubted that the righteous lived even before his passion, he who furnishes the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, through whom love is poured out in our hearts (See Rom 5:5), by which alone they are righteous, whoever are righteous. Which Spirit the said bishop admonishes is to be obtained even by prayers (so the will, not divinely helped, does not suffice for him), where in his hymn he says:

And he grants to diligent prayers
to merit the Holy Spirit.

63. 75. I too will mention something from this same work of saint Ambrose, from which this man mentioned what he thought should be mentioned: "It seemed good, he says, to me (See Luke 1:3). It can have seemed good not to him alone, what he declares seemed good to him. For it seemed good not by human will only, but as it pleased him, who, he says, speaks in me, Christ (2 Cor 13:3), who works that what is good may seem good to us also; for whom he has mercy on, he also calls. And therefore he who follows Christ can, when asked why he wished to be a Christian, answer: It seemed good to me. When he says this, he does not deny that it seemed good to God; for by God the will of human beings is prepared (Prov 8:35). For that God may be honored by a holy person is the grace of God (Ambrose, Expos. in Ev. Lc 1, 10; see Aug., De dono persev. 19, 49)."

Behold what this man would hold, if he delights in the words of Ambrose: that by God the will of human beings is prepared, and that there is no question, or no great question, who is perfected or when, provided it be least of all doubted that this very thing can come to be without the grace of Christ. Then, how much it would have been for this man to attend to one verse from the words of Ambrose that he set down! For when Ambrose had said: "For since the Church is gathered from the gentiles, that is, from sinners, how can she be immaculate from the spotted, unless first, by the grace of Christ, because she has been washed from misdeed, and then because, by the quality of not sinning, she abstains from misdeeds?"

Ambrose added that which it is clear why this man was unwilling to add. For he says: "Nor immaculate from the beginning (for this is impossible to human nature), but by the grace of God and by her own quality, because she now does not sin, it comes about that she appears immaculate (Ambrose, Expos. in Ev. Lc 1, 17)."

Why this man did not add these words, who does not understand? For this is what is being done now, in this age: that holy Church may come to that most immaculate purity which all the saints desire, that in the age to come, with no evil human beings mingled with her, and no law of sin in her resisting the law of the mind (See Rom 7:23), she may lead a most pure life in the divine eternity. Yet let this man attend to what, according to the Scriptures, bishop Ambrose said: "Nor immaculate from the beginning; for this is impossible to human nature (Ambrose, Expos. in Ev. Lc 1, 17)." For surely he says "from the beginning," by which we are born from Adam. For Adam himself too was without doubt made immaculate; but in those who are by nature children of wrath (See Eph 2:3), deriving from him what was corrupted in him, he has defined that to be immaculate from the beginning is impossible to human nature.

64. 76. Likewise John, bishop of Constantinople, whose opinion he set down, "says that sin is not a substance, but a malignant act." Who denies this? "And because it is not natural, therefore a law was given against it, and it descends from the liberty of choice (See Jerome, Ep. 133, 3)." This too, who denies it? But it is not human nature, such as it is in this life, that is at issue; rather it is the grace of God that is at issue, by which it is healed through Christ the physician, of whom it would have no need if it were sound—the nature that by this man is defended as though sound, or as though sufficient for itself by the choice of the will, as able not to sin.

64. 77. Again, what Christian is ignorant of that which he records the most blessed Xystus, bishop of the Roman Church and martyr of the Lord, to have said: "That God permitted to human beings the liberty of their own choice, so that, living purely and without sin, they might become like to God"? But it pertains to that very choice to hear the one who calls and to believe, and to ask of him in whom one believes the help of not sinning. For surely when he says "they may become like to God," they are to become like to God through the love of God, which has been poured out in our hearts not by the possibility of nature nor by the free choice that is in us, but by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (See Rom 5:5).

And as for what the same martyr says: "A pure mind is a holy temple to God, and a clean heart, without sin, is the best altar to him," who does not know that a clean heart is to be led through to this perfection, while the inner man is renewed from day to day (See 2 Cor 4:16), yet not without the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (See Rom 7:25)?

Likewise, what he himself says: "A chaste man, without sin, has received from God the power to be a son of God," surely he admonished that, when anyone has been made so chaste and without sin (where and when this is perfected in him there is some question, but it is well asked among the pious, among whom, nevertheless, it is agreed that it can come to be, and cannot come to be without the mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus (See 1 Tim 2:5)),

yet, as I had begun to say, Xystus prudently admonished, lest, when anyone has been made such and on this account rightly reckoned among the sons of God, it be thought to have been of his own power, which he received through grace from God, since he did not have it in a nature already corrupted and depraved,

as is read in the Gospel: But to as many as received him, he gave the power to become sons of God (See John 1:12); which surely they were not by nature, nor would they be at all, unless, by receiving, they had received this kind of power through his grace. This is the power that the fortitude of love claims for itself, which is not in us except through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (See Rom 5:5).

65. 78. But as for what the venerable presbyter Jerome said, among the things that this man records him to have said, when he was expounding what is written: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8): "Whom no conscience of any sin accuses," and added: "The pure is seen by the pure heart; the temple of God cannot be polluted (Jerome, Comment. in Ev. Mt 1, 5, 8)." This surely is being done in us by striving, laboring, praying, obtaining, that by his grace we may be led through to that perfection in which we can behold God with a pure heart, through Jesus Christ our Lord (See Rom 7:25). Likewise, what he records the said presbyter to have said: "God created us of free choice, and we are drawn neither to virtue nor to vices by necessity; otherwise, where there is necessity, there is no crown" (Jerome, Contra Iovinianum 2, 3)—who does not acknowledge it, who does not receive it with his whole heart, who denies that human nature was otherwise created? But in doing rightly there is therefore no bond of necessity, because there is the liberty of love.

66. 79. Return, then, to the apostolic sentence: The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). By whom, if not by him who ascended on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts to human beings (Eph 4:8)? But that there is a certain necessity of sinning from the faults of nature, not from the condition of nature, let the human being hear; and, that the same necessity may be no more, let him learn to say to God: Bring me out of my necessities (Ps 25 (24):17), because even in prayer of this kind there is a struggle against the tempter who fights against us out of that very necessity, and on this account, with grace helping through our Lord Jesus Christ (See Rom 7:25), both the evil necessity will be removed and full liberty bestowed.

67. 80. Let us come to ourselves. "Likewise," he says, "Augustine the bishop in the books On Free Will: Whatever this cause of the will is, if it cannot be resisted, it is yielded to without sin; but if it can, let it not be yielded to, and there will be no sin. Or does it perhaps deceive the unwary? Then let him beware lest he be deceived. Or is the deception so great that it cannot at all be guarded against? If it is so, then there are no sins. For who sins in that which can in no way be guarded against? But sin is committed; therefore it can be guarded against (Aug., De lib. arb. 3, 18, 50)." I acknowledge them: they are my words; but let him too deign to acknowledge all the things that were said above.

For the matter at issue is the grace of God, which helps us as a medicine through the mediator, not the impossibility of righteousness. That cause, then, whatever it is, can be resisted—it plainly can. For it is on this account that we ask help, saying: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13); which help we would not seek if we believed it could in no way be resisted. Sin can be guarded against, but with the help of him who cannot be deceived. For this very thing too pertains to guarding against sin, if we say truthfully: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12). For in two ways too the evil of disease is guarded against in the body: both that it may not happen, and that, if it has happened, it may be quickly healed. That it may not happen, let us guard against by saying: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13); that it may be quickly healed, let us guard against by saying: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12). Whether, then, it threatens or is present, it can therefore be guarded against.

67. 81. But, so that my opinion on this matter may sufficiently appear, not only to that man but also to those who have not read those same books of mine that he read, On Free Will, and who, not having read them, perhaps read this, I must mention from those very books what, if this man held it and set it down in his writings, no controversy on this matter would remain between us (See Aug., Retract. 1, 9, 5). For immediately after my words, which this man mentioned, I myself subjoined what could be objected, and, as much as I could, I dealt with it, saying: "And yet certain things done even through ignorance are disapproved and judged to be in need of correction, as we read in the divine authorities (Aug., De lib. arb. 3, 18, 51)." And from this point, with examples adduced, I spoke also of weakness (Aug., De lib. arb. 3, 18, 51), saying: "There are also things done by necessity that are to be disapproved, where a human being wishes to do rightly and cannot. For whence are those voices: For I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I hate, this I do (Rom 7:15. 19)?"

And with other testimonies of the divine words mentioned in this sentence (Aug., De lib. arb. 3, 18, 51): "But all these," I said, "are the voices of human beings coming from that condemnation of death. For if this is not the punishment of the human being, but his nature, then these are no sins."

Then a little later (Aug., De lib. arb. 3, 18, 51): "It remains, then," I said, "that this just punishment comes from the condemnation of the human being. Nor is it to be wondered at that either, through ignorance, he does not have the free choice of the will to choose what he may do rightly, or, with carnal habit resisting—which by the violence of mortal succession has in a manner grown ingrained naturally—he sees what should rightly be done and wills it, and cannot accomplish it. For that is the most just punishment of sin, that each one lose what he was unwilling to use well, when he could without any difficulty have done so if he had willed.

That is to say, that he who, knowing, does not do rightly, lose the knowledge of what is right, and that he who, being able to do rightly, was unwilling, lose the power when he wills it. For there are indeed these two penal things for every sinning soul: ignorance and difficulty. From ignorance, error disgraces; from difficulty, torment afflicts.

But to approve false things for true, so that one errs unwillingly, and, with the pain of the carnal bond resisting and torturing, not to be able to refrain from lustful works, is not the nature of the human being as established, but the punishment of the condemned. But when we speak of the free will to do rightly, we are speaking, namely, of that in which the human being was made."

From here, then, to human beings laying down as it were a just complaint about the faults of ignorance and difficulty transmitted and poured into the offspring of the first man, it was thus answered (Aug., De lib. arb. 3, 19, 53): "To whom," I said, "it is briefly answered, that they may be quiet and cease to murmur against God. For perhaps they would rightly complain, if no human being existed as victor over error and lust; but since he is everywhere present who in many ways, through the creature serving him as Lord, calls back the one turned away, teaches the believer, consoles the one who hopes, exhorts the one who loves, helps the one who strives, and hears the one who entreats, it is not reckoned to you as a fault that you are unwillingly ignorant, but that you neglect to seek what you do not know; nor that you do not bind up your wounded members, but that you despise him who is willing to heal you."

Thus I both exhorted, as much as I could, to living rightly, and did not empty the grace of God, without which human nature, now darkened and corrupted, cannot be enlightened and healed. And about this matter the whole question with these men turns, lest by a perverse defense of nature we make void the grace of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

About which nature, likewise, a little later I said (Aug., De lib. arb. 3, 19, 54): "We speak of nature in one way when we speak properly of the nature of the human being in which he was first made blameless in his kind, and in another of this nature in which, from the punishment of that condemned one, we are born both ignorant and subject to the flesh. According to which mode the Apostle says: For we too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest (Eph 2:3)."

68. 82. If, then, we wish "to rouse and kindle by Christian exhortations minds cold and slothful toward living rightly," let us first exhort to faith, by which they may become Christians and be made subject to his name, without which they cannot be saved. But if they are already Christians and neglect to live rightly, let them be lashed with terrors and lifted up by the praises of rewards; yet so that we remember to exhort them not only to good actions but also to pious prayers, and to instruct them with this soundness of doctrine, that both from that quarter they may give thanks, when they have begun to live well, because they have done something without difficulty, and where they feel any difficulty, they may persist, by most faithful and most persevering prayers and by works of mercy promptly performed, in obtaining facility from the Lord.

But where and when those thus advancing are perfected in fullest righteousness, I am not overly anxious; but wherever and whenever they have been made perfect, I affirm that they cannot be perfected except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (See Rom 7:25). Indeed, when they have clearly come to know that they have no sin, let them not say that they have sin, lest the truth be not in them (1 John 1:8), just as the truth is not in those who, when they have it, say that they do not.

69. 83. "The precepts" are exceedingly "good, if we use them lawfully (See 1 Tim 1:8)." For by the very fact that it is most firmly believed "that God, being just and good, could not have commanded the impossible," from this we are admonished both what to do in things easy and what to ask in things difficult. For all things become easy to love, to which alone the burden of Christ is light (Matt 11:30), or that burden alone is the one that is light.

According to this it was said: And his commandments are not heavy (1 John 5:3), so that he to whom they are heavy may consider that it could not have been said divinely: They are not heavy, except because there can be an affection of the heart to which they are not heavy, and let him ask for that in which he is wanting, that he may fulfill what is commanded.

And what is said to Israel in Deuteronomy, if it be understood piously, holily, spiritually, signifies this same thing; for surely, when the Apostle had mentioned this testimony: The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (Deut 30:14; Rom 10:8) (which here has "in your hands"; for in the heart are the spiritual hands), this is, he says, the word of faith that we preach (Rom 10:8).

Each one, then, turned, as is there commanded, to the Lord his God with his whole heart and with his whole soul (See Deut 30:2), will not have the commandment of God heavy. For how is it heavy, when it is the commandment of love? For either one does not love, and so it is heavy, or one loves, and it cannot be heavy. But he loves, if, as Israel is there admonished, he has been turned to the Lord his God with his whole heart and with his whole soul. A new commandment, he says, I give you, that you love one another (John 13:34); and: He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law (Rom 13:8. 10); and: Love is the fullness of the law (Rom 13:10). According to this that too was said: If they had walked in the good paths, they would surely have found the paths of righteousness easy (Prov 2:20). How, then, is it said: For the words of your lips I have kept hard ways (Ps 17 (16):4), except because both are true? They are hard to fear, easy to love.

70. 84. Love, then, begun is righteousness begun; love advanced is righteousness advanced; love great is righteousness great; love perfect is righteousness perfect—but love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned (1 Tim 1:5), which is then greatest in this life when life itself is despised for the sake of it (See John 15:13). But I wonder whether it has not somewhere to grow, when it has departed from mortal life. Yet wherever and whenever it is so full that nothing can be added to it, it is nevertheless not poured out in our hearts by the resources either of nature or of will that are in us, but by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (See Rom 5:5), who both helps our weakness and cooperates with our health. For it is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (See Rom 7:25), to whom belongs, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, eternity and goodness, forever and ever. Amen.