BOOK ONE

1. 1. 1. I had indeed come to know you through the widespread proclamation of your renown, and from very frequent and most truthful reports I had learned how full you were of the grace of God, most blessed and venerable Pope Boniface. But after my brother Alypius also saw you in your bodily presence, and, received by you with the greatest kindness and sincerity, exchanged mutual conversations as love prompted, and living with you, though for a short time, was joined to you by a great affection, he poured both himself and me into your mind and brought you back to me in his own; and so my acquaintance with your Holiness grew the greater the surer our friendship became. For you do not disdain, you who are not haughty in mind although you preside from a loftier height, to be the friend of the lowly and to repay the love bestowed on you. For what else is friendship, which takes its name from nothing other than love, and which is faithful nowhere except in Christ, in whom alone it can even be everlasting and happy? Having therefore received it through that brother through whom I came to know you more intimately, I have ventured with greater confidence to write something to your Beatitude about those matters which at this time stir up the episcopal care—if there is any in us—to a fresh vigilance on behalf of the Lord's flock.

1. 1. 2. I know indeed that the new heretics, the enemies of the grace of God that is given to small and great through our Lord Jesus Christ, although they are now more clearly shown to be men to guard against by a more open censure, do not for all that cease to try the hearts of the less cautious or the less learned by their writings. To these, surely, an answer had to be given, lest they confirm themselves or their followers in that wicked error, even if we did not fear that they might deceive some Catholic by their plausible discourse. But since they do not cease to rage at the folds of the Lord's flock, and to search out an entry from every side in order to plunder the sheep redeemed at so great a price, and since the pastoral watchtower is common to all of us who hold the office of bishop (although you yourself rise above it on a higher summit), I do what I can for my own small share of the ministry, as far as the Lord deigns to grant me, with the help of your prayers, so that I may set out against their pestilent and treacherous writings other writings that heal and fortify; that by them the madness with which they rave may either itself be cured or be turned away from injuring others.

1. 1. 3. Now these matters, which I am answering in reply to two of their letters—one, namely, that Julian is said to have sent to Rome (in order, I suppose, to find or to make there such followers as he could), and the other, which eighteen so-called bishops who share his error dared to write to Thessalonica, not to anyone whatever but, by their cunning, to the bishop of that very place, that they might tempt him and, if it could be done, draw him over to their party—these matters, then, which I am answering in this discussion in reply to those two letters of theirs, as I said, I have decided to direct above all to your Holiness, not so much to be learned as to be examined and, where perhaps something has displeased you, to be corrected. For my brother indicated to me that you yourself deigned to give him those letters, which could not have come into your hands except by the most watchful diligence of our brothers, your sons. And I give thanks for your most sincere goodwill toward us, in that you did not wish those letters of the enemies of the grace of God to be hidden from me, in which you found my name maliciously and openly singled out. But I hope from the Lord our God that it is not without a reward, which is in heaven, that they tear me with slanderous tooth, against whom I set myself for the sake of the little ones, lest they be left to perish under the deceitful flatterer Pelagius, instead of being offered to be set free by the truthful Savior Christ.

1. 2. 4. Now therefore let us answer Julian's letter. Those Manichees, he says, with whom we do not now hold communion—that is, all those with whom we disagree—say that by the sin of the first man, that is, of Adam, free choice perished, and that no one now has the power of living well, but all are forced by the necessity of their flesh into sin. He calls Catholics Manichees after the manner of that Jovinian, who a few years ago, as a new heretic, was undoing the virginity of holy Mary and was making the marriages of the faithful equal to sacred virginity. And he brought this charge against Catholics for no other reason than that he wished them to seem to be accusers or condemners of marriage.

1. 2. 5. But in defending free choice they go headlong, so that one trusts in it rather than in the Lord's help for doing justice, and so that each glories in himself, not in the Lord. But which of us says that by the sin of the first man free choice perished from the human race? Freedom indeed perished through sin—but that freedom which was in paradise, of having full righteousness together with immortality. On account of this, human nature stands in need of divine grace, as the Lord says: If the Son makes you free, then you will be free indeed (Jn 8:36)—free, that is, for living well and justly. For free choice has so far not perished in the sinner that it is precisely through it that all sin most of all who sin with delight and with love of sin, and to whom that is pleasing which gives them pleasure. Hence the Apostle too says: When you were the slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness (Rom 6:20). See, they are shown to have been unable to serve even sin except by another freedom. They are therefore not free from righteousness except by the choice of the will; but they are not made free from sin except by the grace of the Savior. On account of this, that admirable Teacher distinguished the very words: For when you were the slaves of sin, he says, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and become slaves to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life (Rom 6:20-22). He said the slaves of sin were "free" in regard to righteousness, not "set free"; but in regard to sin he did not say "free," lest they should attribute this to themselves, but most watchfully he chose to say "set free," referring this to that saying of the Lord: If the Son makes you free, then you will be free indeed. Since, therefore, the sons of men do not live well unless they are made the sons of God, what is it that this man wishes to attribute to free choice the power of living well, when this power is not given except by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Gospel saying: But to as many as received him he gave the power to become sons of God (Jn 1:12)?

1. 3. 6. But lest perhaps they say that men were helped to this, that they might have the power to become sons of God—but that, in order to merit to receive this, they first received him by free choice, helped by no grace (for this is the aim by which they strive to undo grace, namely, to maintain that it is given according to our merits)—lest, then, they should perhaps so divide this evangelical sentence as to place merit in what was said, But to as many as received him, and then make the grace not freely given but rendered to this merit in what follows, he gave the power to become sons of God: surely, if it should be asked of them what received him means, they will say nothing other than "they believed in him." That they may know, then, that this too pertains to grace, let them read what the Apostle says: In nothing be terrified by the adversaries; this is for them a cause of perdition, but for you of salvation, and this from God; for to you it has been granted on Christ's behalf not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him (Phil 1:28-29)—for he said that both were granted—and likewise what he says: Peace to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 6:23). Let them read also that which the Lord himself says: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (Jn 6:44). And here let no one suppose that to come to me means anything other than "to believe in me." A little later, when he was speaking of his body and blood and very many had been scandalized at his discourse, he said: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life; but there are some of you who do not believe (Jn 6:63-64). Then the Evangelist added: For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed and who it was that would betray him; and he said: Therefore I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given to him by my Father (Jn 6:64-65). He repeated, namely, the sentence in which he had said: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And he made plain that he had said this on account of those who believe and those who do not believe, by explaining what he had said, unless the Father who sent me draws him, when he repeated the very same thing in other words in saying, unless it has been given to him by my Father. For he is drawn to Christ to whom it is given to believe in Christ. The power, therefore, to become sons of God is given to those who believe in him, when this very thing is given, namely, that they believe in him. And unless this power is given by God, it can be none from free choice; for that will not be free in good which the liberator has not set free, but it has free choice in evil, into which a deceiver, whether hidden or manifest, has implanted the delight of malice, or which it has persuaded itself.

1. 3. 7. It is therefore not, as some say that we say and as this man besides dares to write, that all are forced into sin, as if unwilling, by the necessity of their flesh; but rather, if they are already of an age to use the choice of their own mind, they are both held in sin by their own will and hurled headlong from sin into sin by their own will. For not even he who persuades and deceives acts in them otherwise than that they commit sin by their will—whether through ignorance of the truth, or through delight in iniquity, or through both evils, of blindness and of weakness. But this will, which is free in evils because it delights in evils, is for that reason not free in goods, because it has not been set free. Nor can a man will anything good unless he is helped by him who cannot will evil, that is, by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. For whatever is not of faith is sin (Rom 14:23). And on account of this a good will, which draws itself away from sin, is faithful, because the just man lives by faith (Rom 1:17). And it pertains to faith to believe in Christ, and no one can believe in him, that is, come to him, unless it has been given to him. No one, therefore, can have a just will unless, with no preceding merits, he has received the true grace, that is, the gratuitous grace, from above.

1. 4. 8. This these men, lifted up and proud, are unwilling to admit—men who are not the defenders of free choice by purifying it but its overthrowers by exalting it, and who are indignant at us for saying these things for no other reason than that they disdain to glory in the Lord. Yet Pelagius feared the episcopal judgment in Palestine and, when it was charged against him that he said "the grace of God is given according to our merits," he denied that he said it and, by anathematizing them, condemned those who would say this. And yet in the books that he afterward wrote he is found defending nothing else, thinking that he had practiced a fraud upon the men who judged by lying, or by covering over his own meaning, in I know not what way, with ambiguous words.

1. 5. 9. But now let us see what follows. They also say, he says, that those marriages which are now carried on were not instituted by God; which is read in the book of Augustine, against whom I have just now replied in four little books. And the sayings of this Augustine our enemies have taken up in hatred of the truth. To these most slanderous words of his I see that a brief reply must be made, since he repeats them later, where he himself wishes to suggest, as it were against our writings, what they say. There I must contend with him, with the Lord's help, as far as the matter shall seem to demand. Now therefore I answer that marriages were instituted by God, both then, when it was said: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh (Gen 2:24); and now, in regard to what is written: By the Lord is a woman joined to a man (Prov 19:14). For nothing else happens even now than this, that a man cleaves to his wife and the two are in one flesh. For about these very marriages which take place now, the Lord was consulted by the Jews whether it was lawful to dismiss a wife for any cause whatever, and after recalling this testimony of the Law he added: What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder (Matt 19:6). This testimony of the Law the apostle Paul also employed when he was admonishing husbands that wives should be loved by them. Far be it, then, that in my book this man read anything against these divine testimonies; rather, whether by not understanding or, more likely, by slandering, he strives to wrest into another sense what he reads. As for my book, against which he records that he has replied in four little books, I composed it after the condemnation of Pelagius and Celestius. This I thought ought to be said, since this man says "my sayings were taken up by his enemies in hatred of the truth," lest anyone suppose that the new heretics, the enemies of the grace of Christ, were condemned on account of this book of mine. Now in that book there is a defense rather than a reproof of marriage.

1. 5. 10. They also say, he says, that the motion of the genitals and the intercourse of spouses were devised by the devil, and that for this reason those who are born, though innocent, are guilty and are made by the devil, not by God, because they are born of this diabolical intercourse. But this, without any ambiguity, is Manichean. On the contrary, just as we say that marriages were instituted by God for the sake of the orderly begetting of children, so we say that the sowing of children to be begotten could not have existed, even in paradise, if children were to be begotten, without the motion of the genitals and without the intercourse of spouses. But whether such a motion and intercourse of theirs would have existed, had no one sinned, as now exists with shameful lust—this is the question about which we shall later, if God wills, discuss more carefully.

1. 6. 11. Yet what these men want, what they aim at, to what end they are striving to bring the matter—the words of this man, added on, make plain, where he says that we say: that for this reason those who are born innocent are guilty and are made by the devil, not by God, because they are born of this diabolical intercourse. Since, therefore, we neither call the intercourse of spouses diabolical—especially of the faithful, which takes place for the sake of begetting children who are afterward to be reborn—nor say that any men are made by the devil, but by God, insofar as they are men, and yet that even of faithful spouses guilty children are born, as a wild olive from an olive, on account of original sin, and on this account are under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ, since the devil is the author of fault, not of nature: against this, those men, saying that little ones contract no original sin and therefore are not under the devil, what do they labor to bring about except that that grace of God may be made void in the little ones, by which, as the Apostle says, he has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love (Col 1:13)—since indeed they deny that little ones are in the power of darkness, even before the help of the Lord their liberator, thus praising in them the work of the Creator in such a way as to undo the mercy of the Redeemer? And because we confess this mercy both in the older and in the little ones, "this," he says, "without any ambiguity is Manichean"—though it is most ancient and Catholic, the very thing by which the new heretical dogma of these men is overthrown.

1. 7. 12. They say, he says, that the saints in the Old Testament were not free from sins, that is, that they were not freed from crimes by amendment, but were caught in guilt by death. On the contrary, we say that, whether before the Law or in the time of the Old Testament, they were freed from sins—not by their own power, since cursed is everyone who places his hope in man (Jer 17:5) (and under this curse, without doubt, are those whom the divine Psalm also marks: those who trust in their own strength (Ps 49:6 (48))), nor by the Old Testament, which begets unto slavery, although by the grace of a sure dispensation it was divinely given, nor by the Law itself, holy and just and good, where it is written: You shall not covet (Exod 20:17), since it was not given as one that could give life, but was set down for the sake of transgression until the seed should come to whom the promise was made; but rather they were freed by the blood of the Redeemer himself, who is the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. But these enemies of the grace of God, which is given to small and great through our Lord Jesus Christ, say that the ancient men of God were of perfect righteousness for this reason: that they may not be believed to have had need of the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ, by faith in which they were saved.

1. 8. 13. They say too, he says, that the apostle Paul, or even all the apostles, were always polluted by immoderate lust. Who, even of the profane, would dare to say this? But doubtless this man slanders in this way because they contend that what the Apostle said—I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, what is good; for to will is present to me, but to accomplish the good I do not find (Rom 7:18), and other such things—was not said by him of himself, but that he put on the character of some other person, I know not whom, who suffered those things. On account of which the very passage in his letter must be carefully considered and searched out, lest in some obscurity of it the error of these men lie hidden. Although, therefore, the Apostle discusses this more broadly, defending grace in a great and long struggle against those who gloried in the Law, yet we touch upon the few things pertaining to the matter. Hence he says: Because by the Law no flesh shall be justified before him; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested without the Law, attested by the Law and the Prophets; the righteousness of God, that is, through faith in Jesus Christ, unto all who believe. For there is no distinction; for all have sinned and need the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus (Rom 3:20-24). And again: Where then is your boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law (Rom 3:27-28). And again: For the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that he should be heir of the world, was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise made void. For the Law works wrath; for where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:13-15). And in another place: But the Law entered in that sin might abound; but where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more (Rom 5:20). Likewise in another place: For sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the Law but under grace (Rom 6:14). And again in another place: Or do you not know, brethren—for I am speaking to those who know the Law—that the Law has dominion over a man for as long a time as he lives? For a woman is bound by the Law to her husband while her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is loosed from the law of her husband (Rom 7:1-2). And a little later: And so, my brethren, you also have become dead to the Law through the body of Christ, that you may belong to another, who rose from the dead, that we may bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which are through the Law, were at work in our members, that they might bear fruit unto death; but now we have been freed from the law of death, in which we were held fast, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter (Rom 7:4-6). By these and similar attestations that Teacher of the Gentiles shows plainly enough that the Law was not able to take away sin but rather had increased it, and that grace takes it away, since the Law knows how to command, to which weakness succumbs, and grace to help, by which love is poured in. For lest anyone, on account of these testimonies, find fault with the Law and contend that it is evil, the Apostle saw what might occur to those who understand badly, and he set the same question for himself: What then shall we say? he says. Is the Law sin? God forbid. But I did not know sin except through the Law (Rom 7:7). This he had already said above: Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin; not, therefore, the removal but the knowledge.

1. 8. 14. But from here he now begins, on account of which we have undertaken to consider these things, to introduce his own person and to speak, as it were, of himself. Here the Pelagians are unwilling that the Apostle himself be understood, but hold that he transfigured another into himself, that is, a man still set under the Law, not yet set free through grace. Here indeed they must already concede that in the Law no one is justified (Gal 3:11), as the same Apostle says elsewhere, but that the Law avails unto the knowledge of sin and unto the transgression of the Law itself, so that, sin being known and increased, grace may be sought through faith. Now they are not afraid that these things be understood of the Apostle, which he could also say of his own past life; but they fear the things that follow. For here he says: I did not know covetousness unless the Law had said: You shall not covet. But sin, taking the occasion, worked in me through the commandment all manner of covetousness. For without the Law sin was dead. But I was alive once without the Law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was unto life, was found to be unto death for me. For sin, taking the occasion through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. And so the Law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did then that which is good become death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through what is good, that the sinner, or sin, might become through the commandment exceedingly sinful (Rom 7:7-13). All these things, as I said, the Apostle can be seen to have recalled about his own past life, so that what he says—But I was alive once without the Law—he meant to be understood of his first age, from infancy, before the years of reason; and what he added—but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died—he might show himself to be now capable of the precept, but not effective in it, and therefore a transgressor of the Law.

1. 9. 15. Nor let it disturb us that he wrote to the Philippians: According to the righteousness which is in the Law, having been blameless (Phil 3:6). For he could have been inwardly, in his depraved affections, a transgressor of the Law, and yet have fulfilled the conspicuous works of the Law, either through fear of men or even of God himself—but through dread of punishment, not through love and delight in righteousness. For it is one thing to do good by a will to do good, and another to be so inclined by the will to do evil that one would even do it if this could be permitted with impunity. For thus he surely sins inwardly in the very will who does not sin by will but by fear. Knowing himself to have been such in these inward things, before the grace of God which is given through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle confesses this most openly elsewhere. For writing to the Ephesians, he says: And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of unbelief, among whom we also all once conducted ourselves in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the affections, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest; but God, who is rich in mercy, on account of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved (Eph 2:1-5). Again, to Titus: For we ourselves also were once foolish and unbelieving, going astray, serving various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another (Titus 3:3). Such was Saul, when he says that he had been blameless according to the righteousness which is in the Law. For that it was not after this abominable life, in order to be blameless, that he had advanced in the Law and changed his ways, he shows plainly in what follows, since indeed he says that he was changed from these evils only through the grace of the Savior; for adding this very thing here too, as to the Ephesians, he says: But when the goodness and kindness of God our Savior appeared, not by works of righteousness which we did, but according to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out richly upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, that, being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7).

1. 9. 16. Now what he says in this place of the letter to the Romans—sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through what is good—agrees with the things above where he said: but I did not know sin except through the Law; for I did not know covetousness unless the Law had said: You shall not covet; and above: Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. For this is what he said here too: that it might appear sin; so that what he had said—for without the Law sin was dead—we should understand only as, "as though it did not exist, it lies hidden, does not appear, is utterly unknown," as though it were buried in I know not what darkness of ignorance. And what he says—But I was alive once without the Law—what does he say but "I seemed to myself to be alive"? And what he added—but when the commandment came, sin revived—what else is it than "it stood out and appeared"? Yet he does not say "it lived," but revived. For it had lived once in paradise, when against the precept that had been given the transgression was sufficiently apparent; but when it is contracted from those being born, it lies hidden as though it were dead, until the evil that resists righteousness is felt by its prohibition, when one thing is commanded and approved, another delights and dominates. Then sin in a certain way revives in the awareness of the man who is born, sin which had once already lived in the awareness of the man who was made.

1. 10. 17. But what follows is not so readily understood, as to how it can be understood of Paul. For we know, he says, that the Law is spiritual; but I am carnal (Rom 7:14). He does not say "I was," but I am. Was the Apostle, then, carnal when he wrote these things? Or does he say this according to the body? For he was still in the body of this death, not yet made into that of which he says elsewhere: The body is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44). For then a man will be wholly spiritual—that is, in both parts of which he consists—when the body too will be spiritual. For it is not absurd that in that life there should be even spiritual flesh, if in this life, in those who still relish carnal things, the spirit itself could be carnal. Thus, therefore, he said but I am carnal for this reason, that the Apostle did not yet have a spiritual body, just as he could say "but I am mortal," which surely would be understood as said only according to the body, which had not yet been clothed with immortality. Likewise, when he added sold under sin, lest anyone suppose him not yet redeemed by the blood of Christ, this too can be understood according to what he says: And we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). For if he says that he was sold under sin according to this, that his body is not yet redeemed from corruption, or that it was sold once in the first transgression of the precept, so that he has a corruptible body which weighs down the soul, what prevents us from understanding that here the Apostle says of himself what he says in such a way that even in himself it can be understood—even if in his own person he wishes not himself alone but all to be understood who have come to know themselves struggling, with spiritual love against the affection of the flesh without consenting?

1. 10. 18. Or do we perhaps fear what follows: For what I work, I do not know; for it is not what I will that I do, but what I hate, that I do (Rom 7:15), lest perhaps from these words someone suspect that the holy Apostle consented to the concupiscence of the flesh unto evil works? But what he adds must be considered: But if I do what I do not will, I agree with the Law that it is good (Rom 7:16). For he says rather that he agrees with the Law than with the concupiscence of the flesh—for this he calls by the name of sin; he said, therefore, that he did and worked, not by the disposition of consenting and fulfilling, but by the very motion of coveting. "Hence, therefore," he says, I agree with the Law that it is good; I agree, because I do not will what it does not will. Then he says: But now it is no longer I that work it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:17). What is But now except "Now already under grace, which has set free the delight of the will from consent to desire"? For I do not work it is not better understood except as that he does not consent to present his members as weapons of iniquity to sin. For if he both covets and consents and acts, how does he not himself work it, even if he grieves that he works it and groans heavily at being overcome?

1. 10. 19. Now does not what follows show most plainly from what source he speaks? For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, what is good (Rom 7:18). For if he had not explained by adding that is, in my flesh, what he said—in me—might perhaps be taken otherwise. And on this account he turns this very thing over, repeating and impressing it: For to will is present to me, but to accomplish the good, no. For this is to accomplish the good: that a man not even covet; but the good is imperfect when he covets, even if he does not consent to the concupiscence unto evil. For it is not the good that I will that I do, he says, but the evil that I do not will, that I do. But if I do that which I do not will, it is now no longer I that work it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:19-20). This he repeated, impressing it and, as it were, rousing the most sluggish from sleep: I find, then, a law for me when I will to do good, since evil is present to me (Rom 7:21). That, then, is good for one who wills to do it, but evil is present from concupiscence, to which he does not consent who says: It is now no longer I that work it.

1. 10. 20. But what follows declares both more openly: For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members (Rom 7:22-23). But what he said—taking me captive—can disturb us, if there is no consent. Hence, on account of those three things—two, namely, about which we have already discussed, namely that he said but I am carnal, and sold under sin, and this third, taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members—the Apostle can be seen to be describing the man who still lives under the Law, not yet under grace. But as we have explained those two as said on account of the flesh still corruptible, so this too can be understood, so that he said taking me captive meaning "in flesh," not in mind, "in motion," not in consent, and therefore taking me captive, because even in the flesh itself there is not a nature foreign to us, but our own. As, therefore, he himself explained what he said—For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, what is good—so too from his explanation we ought to take this place, as though he had said: taking me captive, that is, "my flesh," in the law of sin which is in my members.

1. 10. 21. Then he adds that for the sake of which all these things were said: Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 7:24-25); and from this he concludes: Therefore I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25)—with the flesh, namely, the law of sin by coveting; but with the mind the law of God by not consenting to the same concupiscence. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). For no one is condemned except him who consents to the concupiscence of the flesh unto evil. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2)—that is, lest the concupiscence of the flesh claim your consent for itself. And the things that follow show this same sense more and more; but a measure must be observed.

1. 10. 22. Now it had at one time seemed even to me that "the man under the Law" was described by this discourse of the Apostle. But these words afterward exerted force upon me, namely that he says: But now it is no longer I that work it. For to this pertains also what he says afterward: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus; and because I do not see how a man under the Law could say I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, since that very delight in the good, by which he also does not consent to evil—not from fear of punishment but from love of righteousness (for this is to delight together)—is to be ascribed to nothing but grace.

1. 11. 23. For as to that where he says: Who will free me from the body of this death?—who would deny that the Apostle, when he said these things, was still in the body of this death? From which, surely, the ungodly are not freed, since the same bodies are restored to them for eternal torments. To be freed, then, from the body of this death is, with every languor of the concupiscence of the flesh healed, to receive the body not unto punishment but unto glory. To this place that too is sufficiently in harmony: And we ourselves also, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). For surely it is with this groaning that we groan in which we say: Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death? That too where he says: For what I work, I do not know—what is it other than "I do not will," "I do not approve," "I do not consent," "I do not do"? Otherwise it is contrary to what he said above: Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin, and: I did not know sin except through the Law, and: Sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through what is good. For how did he come to know through the Law the sin that he does not know? How does the sin appear that is not known? Thus, therefore, I do not know means "I do not do," because by no consent do I myself commit it—just as the Lord will say to the ungodly: I do not know you (Matt 7:23), from whom without doubt nothing can lie hidden; and just as it was said: him who had not known sin (2 Cor 5:21), which is "had not done it," for surely he was not unaware of that which he reproved.

1. 11. 24. These and similar things in this context of the apostolic Scripture having been carefully considered, the Apostle is rightly understood to have signified not indeed himself alone in his own person, but others also established under grace, yet not established with him in that perfect peace in which death will be swallowed up in victory. Of which he says afterward: But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead on account of sin, but the spirit is life on account of righteousness. If, then, the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you (Rom 8:10-11). When, therefore, our mortal bodies are made alive, not only will there be no consent unto sinning, but not even will there remain the concupiscence of the flesh itself to which one would not consent. That this should not resist the spirit in mortal flesh, that man alone could achieve who did not come to men through it. And therefore, since the apostles were men and were carrying in the mortality of this life a body that is corrupted and weighs down the soul, far be it that we should say, as this man slanderously charges, that they were always polluted by immoderate lust; rather we say that they were free from consent to depraved lusts, yet that, with regard to the concupiscence of the flesh, which they restrained by moderating it, they groaned with such great humility and piety that they wished rather not to have it than to subdue it.

1. 12. 25. Furthermore, as for what this man added, that we say "Christ too was not free from sins, but lied out of the necessity of the flesh and was stained with other faults"—let him see from whom he has heard this or in whose writings he has read it; which perhaps he did not understand and, with deceiving malice, twisted into slanderous senses.

1. 13. 26. They also say, he says, that baptism does not give every pardon of sins nor take away crimes, but shaves them, so that the roots of all sins are retained in the evil flesh. Who would affirm this against the Pelagians except an unbeliever? We say, then, that baptism gives the pardon of all sins and takes away crimes, does not shave them, nor does it act so that the roots of all sins are retained in the evil flesh, like the hairs shaved on the head, from which the sins to be cut off grow again. For I have learned that they apply this comparison too to their slander, as though we held and said this.

1. 13. 27. But about this concupiscence of the flesh I believe that they are deceived or that they deceive, with which it is necessary that even the baptized—and this even if he advances most diligently and is led by the Spirit of God—should struggle with a pious mind. But this concupiscence, even if it is called sin, is so called not because it is sin but because it was made by sin, just as a writing is called someone's hand because the hand made it. But sins are those things which are unlawfully done, spoken, or thought according to the concupiscence of the flesh or to ignorance; and these, once committed, hold one guilty also, if they are not forgiven. And this very concupiscence of the flesh is so remitted in baptism that, although it is contracted by those being born, it does no harm to those being reborn. Yet from those reborn, if they beget children carnally, it is again contracted and will again do harm to those being born, unless it is remitted by the same form to those being reborn and remains in them, destined to do no harm to the future life, since its guilt, contracted by generation, has been remitted by regeneration; and therefore it is now no longer sin, but is so called, either because it was made by sin or because it is moved by the delight of sinning, even if it is not consented to, the delight of righteousness prevailing. And it is not on account of it, whose guilt has now been consumed by the washing of regeneration, that the baptized say in prayer, Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12), but on account of the sins that are committed, whether in consents to it, when something that is pleasing is overcome by it, or when through ignorance evil is pleasing as though it were good. And these are committed either by acting or by speaking or—what is easiest and quickest—by thinking. From all of which, what one even of the faithful will glory that he has a chaste heart, or who will glory that he is clean from sin? Indeed, that which follows in the prayer is said on account of it: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13). For each one, as it is written, is tempted by being drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence; then concupiscence, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin (Jas 1:14-15).

1. 14. 28. All these offspring of concupiscence, and the ancient guilt of concupiscence itself, have been remitted by the washing of baptism; and whatever this concupiscence now gives birth to, if those offspring are not such as are called not only sins but even crimes, is cleansed by that compact of daily prayer where we say, Forgive as we forgive, and by the sincerity of almsgiving. For no one is so foolish as to say that the Lord's precept does not pertain to the baptized: Forgive, and it will be forgiven you; give, and it will be given to you (Luke 6:37-38). But no one could rightly be ordained a minister in the Church if the Apostle had said "if anyone is without sin" where he said if anyone is without crime (Titus 1:6), or if he had said "having no sin" where he said having no crime (1 Tim 3:10). For many baptized faithful are without crime; but without sin in this life I would say no one is, however much the Pelagians, because we say these things against them, may be puffed up and burst with madness—not because anything of sin remains that is not remitted in baptism, but because, while we remain in the weakness of this life, those things do not cease to be done daily which are daily remitted to those who pray faithfully and act mercifully. This is the soundness of the Catholic faith, which the Holy Spirit everywhere sows, not the vanity of heretical depravity and the presumption of a spirit.

1. 15. 29. Now therefore let us see how, after he thought to charge us slanderously with things we believe and to invent things we do not believe, he himself professes his own faith, or that of the Pelagians. Against these things, he says, we dispute daily, and therefore we are unwilling to give consent to transgressors, because we say that free choice exists naturally in all and could not have perished by the sin of Adam, which is confirmed by the authority of all the Scriptures. If you said these things as you ought, not against the grace of God, you would not be giving consent to transgressors but correcting your own meaning. But on this point we have discussed above as much as we could and as much as seemed sufficient.

1. 15. 30. We say, he says, that these marriages which are now carried on in the world were instituted by God, and that spouses are not guilty, but fornicators and adulterers are to be condemned. This is true and Catholic; but what you wish to bring about from this—namely, that those being born contract nothing of sin from the intercourse of male and female, sin which would be expiated by the washing of regeneration—this is false and heretical.

1. 15. 31. The motion of the genitals, he says, that is, manhood itself, without which there cannot be intercourse, we say was instituted by God. To this we answer that God instituted the motion of the genitals and—to use his word—manhood, without which there cannot be intercourse, in such a way that it had nothing shameful. For it was not right that his creature should blush at the work of its Creator; but the disobedience of the members was rendered as a just punishment to the first men, who were disobedient, at which they blushed when they covered with fig leaves the parts that became shameful, which before were not shameful.

1. 16. 32. For they did not sew tunics for themselves to cover the whole body after sin, but aprons, which some of our less careful translators rendered "coverings." Which indeed is true; but "covering" is a general name by which every garment and wrapping can be understood. And therefore the ambiguity ought to have been avoided, so that just as the Greek put down a word for things by which nothing is covered but the shameful parts of the body, so the Latin should either put down the Greek word itself (since usage already employs it as Latin) or, as some did, "aprons," or, as others better named them, "loincloths." For this name comes from that custom by which young men of old, in the Roman manner, covered their private parts when they exercised naked on the field; whence even today those who cover those same members by girding them are called "girded for the field." And yet, if those things by which sin was committed had to be covered after sin, they ought not even to have been clothed with tunics, but to have covered the hand and the mouth, because they sinned by taking and eating. What, then, does it mean that, the forbidden food having been taken, when the transgression of the precept had been committed, attention was turned to those members? What newness, unknown there, is felt and compels itself to be noticed?—which is signified by the opening of their eyes. For their eyes were not closed, either when he gave names to the cattle and the birds, or when she saw that the tree was beautiful and good; rather, they were opened, that is, made intent upon looking. So it is written of Hagar, Sarah's maidservant, that she opened her eyes and saw a well, which surely she did not have closed. So that they should suddenly be so ashamed of their nakedness, which they surely beheld daily and were not confounded, that they could no longer bear those members naked but at once took care to cover them—did they not, he in an open motion and she in a hidden one, feel those members disobedient against the choice of their will, members over which they surely ought to have had dominion at their voluntary nod as over the rest? Which they rightly suffered, because they themselves had not been obedient to their Lord. They blushed, then, that they had not rendered service to their Creator in such a way that in those members from which children were to be procreated they deserved to lose dominion.

1. 16. 33. This kind of shame, this necessity of blushing, is certainly born with every man and is, in a way, commanded by the very laws of nature, so that in this matter even chaste marriages feel shame, and no one advances so badly and shamefully that, because he has come to know that God is the founder of nature and the author of marriage, therefore, when he is about to be joined to his wife, he should not, if anyone should see him, blush at these motions and seek out a secret place where he can avoid the sight not only of strangers but even of all his own. And so let human nature be permitted to recognize as an evil befalling it by its own fault, lest it be forced either—what is most shameless—not to blush at these motions of its own, or—what is most ungrateful—to blush at the works of its Creator. Yet this evil chaste marriages use well for the sake of the good of begetting children; but to consent to lust for the sake of carnal pleasure alone is sin, although it is conceded to the married by way of pardon.

1. 17. 34. But settle this, Pelagians, granting the honor and fruitfulness of marriage: if no one had sinned, what kind of life would you wish to imagine for those men in paradise, and choose one of these four things. For without doubt either, as often as they wished, so often they would have had intercourse; or they would have curbed lust when intercourse was not necessary; or then lust would have arisen at the nod of the will, when chaste prudence had foreseen that intercourse was necessary; or, with no lust at all existing there, just as the other several members serve their works, so the genitals too would have served their proper work at the bidding of those willing, without any difficulty. Of these four, choose which you will. But I suppose that you will reject the first two, in which lust is either served or resisted. For so excellent an honor does not want that first, and so great a happiness does not want this second. For far be it that the glory of that great blessedness should either, by always following lust, carry on a most shameful slavery, or, by resisting it, not have the fullest peace; far be it, I say, that the concupiscence of the flesh, rising not opportunely for begetting but by a disordered commotion, should either please that mind to satisfy it by consenting, or should be necessary for that repose to restrain it by dissenting.

1. 17. 35. But whichever of the two remaining ones you choose, there is no need to labor against you with any contention. For even if you are unwilling to choose the fourth, where there is the highest tranquillity of all the obedient members without any lust—since now the onset of your disputations has made you its enemies—at least that will please you which we put in the third place, namely, that that carnal concupiscence, whose motion arrives at the lowest pleasure, the one that delights you greatly, would never in paradise have arisen at the nod of the will except when it was necessary for begetting. If it pleases you to place this in paradise, and through such a concupiscence of the flesh, which would neither anticipate nor delay nor exceed the command of the will, it seems to you that in that happiness children could have been begotten, we do not resist. For to the purpose of what we are doing it is enough for us that such a concupiscence as you grant could have existed in that place of happiness does not now exist in men. For what kind it now is, surely the perception of all mortals confesses, even if with shame, since it harasses even the chaste against their will, and those who chastise it by temperance, with a disordered and importunate restlessness, and often withdraws itself from those who will it and forces itself upon those who do not, so that by its disobedience it testifies that it is nothing else than the punishment of that ancient disobedience. Whence rightly about it both the first men, when they covered their shameful parts, and now whoever considers himself in any way to be a man—everyone, shameful and shameless—is confounded, far be it on account of the work of God, but on account of the punishment of the first and ancient sin. But you, not for a religious reason but for a spirited contention, and not for human shame but for your own fury, lest the concupiscence of the flesh itself be believed to be corrupted and original sin to be contracted from it, attempt by disputing to recall into paradise such a concupiscence as now exists, and to contend that there could have existed there that lust which either an unbecoming consent would always follow or a pitiable dissent would sometimes restrain. But we do not much care what it pleases you to think about it. Nevertheless, whatever of men is born through it, unless it is reborn, is without doubt condemned, and must necessarily be under the devil, if it is not set free from there by Christ.

1. 18. 36. We maintain, he says, that men are the work of God, and that no one is forced by his power either to evil or to good against his will, but that by his own will he either does good or evil; and that in a good work he is always helped by the grace of God, but to evil he is incited by the suggestions of the devil. To these things we answer that men are the work of God insofar as they are men, but that they are under the devil insofar as they are sinners, unless they are rescued from there through him who became the mediator between God and men for no other reason than that, sprung from men, he could not be a sinner; and that no one is forced by the power of God either to evil or to good against his will, but that with God deserting him for his merits he goes into evil, and with God helping him without merits he is turned to good. For a man is not good if he does not will it; but he is helped by the grace of God even to this, that he may will, since it is not written in vain: For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will (Phil 2:13), and: the will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 LXX).

1. 19. 37. But you think that a man is helped by the grace of God in a good work in such a way that in rousing his will to the good work itself you believe grace works nothing. Which your own words sufficiently declare. For why did you not say that a man is roused by the grace of God to a good work, as you said incited to evil by the suggestions of the devil, but said in a good work he is always helped by the grace of God?—as though by his own will, having undertaken a good work with no grace of God, he were then in the work itself helped divinely, for the merits, namely, of the good will, so that a grace owed is rendered, not an unowed grace given, and thus grace is now no longer grace, but is that which Pelagius condemned with a feigned heart in the judgment in Palestine, that the grace of God is given according to our merits. Tell me, I beg, what good did Paul, while still Saul, will, and not rather great evils, when, breathing slaughter, he was going to lay waste the Christians with horrible blindness and fury of mind? By what merits of a good will did God, by a marvelous and sudden calling, turn him from these evils to good? What shall I say, then, by what merits, when he himself cries out: Not by works of righteousness which we did, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5)? What of that which I have already recalled the Lord to have said: No one can come to me—which is understood as "believe in me"—unless it has been given to him by my Father (Jn 6:65)? Is this given to one already willing to believe, for the merits of a good will, or rather is the will itself, that he may believe, roused from above, as in Saul's case, even if he is so turned away from faith that he even persecutes believers? For why has the Lord commanded us to pray for those who persecute us? Do we pray for this, that the grace of God be repaid to them for their good will, and not rather that the will itself be changed from evil into good? Just as we believe that it was not in vain that the saints, whom he was persecuting, then prayed for Saul, that his will be turned to the faith which he was laying waste. And his conversion, indeed, wrought from above, appeared even by a manifest miracle; but how many enemies of Christ are daily drawn suddenly to Christ by the hidden grace of God! Which word, if I had not taken from the Gospel, how much this man would have said about me on account of it, since even now he struggles not against me but against him who cries: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him (Jn 6:44)! For he does not say "leads him," so that we might understand the will in some way to precede there. Who is drawn, if he already willed? And yet no one comes unless he wills. He is drawn, therefore, in wondrous ways, that he may will, by him who knows how to work within, in the very hearts of men—not that men should believe unwilling, which cannot happen, but that they should become willing from unwilling.

1. 20. 38. That this is true we do not suspect by human conjecture, but recognize by the most evident authority of the divine Scriptures. It is read in the books of Chronicles: And indeed in Judah the hand of God was at work, to give them one heart, that they might do the commandment of the king and of the princes in the word of the Lord (2 Chr 30:12). Likewise, through the prophet Ezekiel the Lord says: I will give them another heart, and I will give them a new spirit, and I will tear their stony heart out of their flesh, and I will give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my precepts and keep my judgments and do them (Ezek 11:19-20). But what is it that Queen Esther prays and says: Give a fitting word into my mouth, and make my words clear in the sight of the lion, and turn his heart to hatred of him who fights against us (Esth 14:13)? Why does she say these things to God in prayer, if God does not work the will in the hearts of men? But perhaps this woman prayed foolishly. Let us see, then, whether the affection of the one praying was sent forth in vain and the effect of the one hearing did not follow. Behold, she goes in to the king—not to say much—and because she did not go in by her own order, compelled by great necessity, he looked upon her, as it is written, like a bull in the onset of his indignation; and the queen was afraid, and her color was changed by faintness, and she leaned upon the head of her maid who went before her. And God turned and transferred his indignation into gentleness. Now what need is there to recall what follows, where the divine Scripture testifies that God fulfilled what she had asked, working in the heart of the king nothing other than the will by which he commanded, and what the queen had asked of him was done? Which God, that it might be done, had already heard, he who turned and transferred the heart of the king, before he had heard the speech of the woman asking, by a most hidden and most effective power, from indignation to gentleness, that is, from a will to harm to a will to favor, according to that saying of the Apostle: God works in you both to will (Phil 2:13). Did the men of God who wrote these things—nay, the very Spirit of God, by whose authorship through them these things were written down—assail the free choice of man? God forbid; rather, he commended both the most just judgment and the most merciful help of the Almighty in all things. For it suffices a man to know that there is no iniquity with God. Now how he dispenses these things, making some vessels of wrath according to merit, others vessels of mercy according to grace, who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? (Rom 11:34) If, therefore, we belong to the honor of grace, let us not be ungrateful by attributing to ourselves what we have received. For what do we have that we have not received?

1. 21. 39. We say, he says, that the saints of the Old Testament passed over to eternal life with their righteousness here made perfect—that is, that by zeal for virtue they withdrew from all sins, because even those whom we read to have sinned in some way we have learned afterward to have amended themselves. However great the virtue he may proclaim the ancient just men to have had, nothing saved them except faith in the Mediator, who shed his blood for the remission of sins. For it is their own voice: I believed, therefore I have spoken (Ps 116:10 (115)). Hence the apostle Paul also says: But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written: I believed, therefore I have spoken, we also believe, therefore we also speak (2 Cor 4:13). What is the same spirit, except the one which those just men also had, who said these things? The apostle Peter also says: Why do you wish to lay a yoke upon the Gentiles which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? But by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we believe that we are saved, just as they too (Acts 15:10-11). This you are unwilling to admit, enemies of this grace—that the ancients are believed to have been saved by the same grace of Jesus Christ; but you distribute the times according to Pelagius, in whose books this is read, and you say that before the Law men were saved by nature, then through the Law, and finally through Christ, as though for the men of the two earlier times—before the Law, namely, and under the Law—the blood of Christ had not been necessary, making void what was said: For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5).

1. 22. 40. We confess, they say, that the grace of Christ is necessary for all, both for the older and for the little ones, and we anathematize those who say that a child born of two baptized parents ought not to be baptized. We know how you say these things not according to the apostle Paul but according to the heretic Pelagius—namely, that baptism is necessary for the little ones not on account of the remission of sins but only on account of the kingdom of heaven. For you give them a place of salvation and eternal life outside the kingdom of God, even if they have not been baptized, and you do not attend to what is written: He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned (Mark 16:16). On account of which, in the Church of the Savior, little ones believe through others, just as from others they have contracted the sins which are remitted to them in baptism. Nor do you consider that they cannot have life who have been without a share of the body and blood of Christ, since he himself says: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you (Jn 6:53). Or if by the evangelical words you are compelled to confess that the little ones cannot have life and salvation, departing from the body, unless they have been baptized, ask why the unbaptized are compelled to undergo the punishment of the second death, judged by him who condemns no one undeserving, and you will find—what you do not wish—original sin.

1. 23. 41. Those too who say, he says, that baptism does not blot out all sins, we condemn, because we know that full purgation is conferred through the mysteries themselves. This we too say; but that the little ones too are loosed through these same mysteries from the bonds of their first nativity and of a guilty succession—this you do not say. On account of which, from the Church of Christ, which holds this from of old, it is fitting that you too, like other heretics, be set apart.

1. 24. 42. Now indeed, as for the way he so concludes his letter as to say: Let no one therefore seduce you; nor let the ungodly deny that they hold these views, but, if they speak the truth, let either a hearing be granted, or at least let those very bishops who now dissent condemn the views I have stated above, which they hold together with the Manichees, just as we condemn those views which they cast at us, and let full concord be made. But if they are unwilling, know that they are Manichees, and keep yourselves from fellowship with them—this is to be despised rather than refuted. For which of us hesitates to say anathema to the Manichees, who say that neither men nor marriages were instituted by the good God, nor was the Law given which was administered through Moses to the Hebrew people? But to the Pelagians too we say anathema, not undeservedly, who are such enemies of the grace of God, which comes through our Lord Jesus Christ, that they say it is given not freely but according to our merits, and thus grace is now no longer grace; and who place so much in free choice—into the depths of which man has been plunged—that they say that by using it well a man merits grace, although no one can use it well except through grace, which is rendered not according to debt but is given by God, freely showing mercy; and who, moreover, so contend that the little ones are already saved as to dare to deny that they are to be saved by the Savior. And, holding and sowing these execrable dogmas, they still besides demand a hearing, when, being condemned, they ought to do penance.

BOOK TWO

2. 1. 1. Now let us consider another letter, not of Julian alone but common to him with several Pelagian bishops, which they sent to Thessalonica, and let us answer it, with the Lord's help, as best we can. But that this work of ours may not become longer than the necessity of the case itself demands, what need is there to refute also those things which do not contain the treacherous poisons of their dogma, but only seem to ask, in aid of themselves or in defense of the Catholic faith against the profanity (as they call it) of the Manichees, for the agreement of the Eastern bishops—striving for nothing else than that, with a horrible heresy thrown forward, of which they pretend to be the adversaries, they, the enemies of grace, may lie hidden in the praise of nature? For who ever stirred up a question against them on this point? Or to which of the Catholics are they displeasing because they condemn those whom the Apostle foretold would depart from the faith, having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, abstaining from foods which they think unclean, and not thinking that all things were created by God? Who ever compelled them to deny that every creature of God is good and that there is no substance which the most high God did not make—except God himself, who was made by no one? These things are not reproved or condemned in them, things which are agreed to be Catholic. For the impiety of the Manichees, exceedingly foolish and harmful, not only the Catholic faith detests, but also all heretics who are not Manichees. Hence these Pelagians too do this well, to say anathema to the Manichees and to gainsay their errors. But they do two evils for which they themselves too are to be anathematized: one, that they charge Catholics with the name of the Manichees; the other, that they themselves too introduce the heresy of a new error. For not because they do not labor with the disease of the Manichees are they therefore of a sound faith. There is not one kind of pestilence, as in bodies, so also in minds. As, therefore, a physician of the body would not at once have pronounced free from the danger of death one whom he had denied to be dropsical, if he perceived him to be sick with another deadly disease, so the truth does not congratulate these men because they are not Manichees, if they are mad with another kind of perversity. Wherefore it is one thing that we anathematize together with them, another that we anathematize in them. For we detest together with them what rightly displeases even themselves, yet in such a way that we detest in them that for which they themselves rightly displease us.

2. 2. 2. The Manichees say that the good God is not the creator of all natures; the Pelagians say that God is not the cleanser, savior, and liberator of all ages in men. The Catholic faith refutes both: against the Manichees defending God's creature, lest any nature be denied to have been instituted by him, and against the Pelagians, that in all ages lost human nature may seek to be restored. The Manichees disparage the concupiscence of the flesh not as an accidental vice but as a nature evil from eternity; the Pelagians, moreover, praise it as no vice but a natural good. The Catholic faith refutes both, saying to the Manichees: "It is not a nature but a vice," and saying to the Pelagians: "It is not from the Father but from the world"—so that both may allow it, as a bad state of health, to be healed, the former ceasing to believe it incurable, the latter ceasing to proclaim it praiseworthy. The Manichees deny that for the good man the beginning of evil was from free choice; the Pelagians say that even the evil man has sufficient free choice for doing the good commandment. The Catholic faith refutes both, saying to the former: God made man upright (Eccl 7:29); and to the latter: If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed (Jn 8:36). The Manichees say that the soul, a particle of God, has sin from the intermingling of an evil nature; the Pelagians say that the just soul—not indeed a particle but a creature of God—does not have sin even in this corruptible life. The Catholic faith refutes both, saying to the Manichees: Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree evil and its fruit evil (Matt 12:33)—which would not be said to a man who cannot make a nature, except because sin is not a nature but a vice; and saying to the Pelagians: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 Jn 1:8). With these diseases, contrary to one another, the Manichees and the Pelagians struggle, of unlike will but like vanity; separated by a diverse opinion, but near by a perverse mind.

2. 2. 3. Now indeed they together assail the grace of Christ, together make void his baptism, together dishonor his flesh—but even these things by diverse modes and causes. For the Manichees declare that divine aid is given to the merits of a good nature, the Pelagians to the merits of a good will. The former say: "God owes this to the labors of his members"; the latter say: "God owes this to the virtues of his servants." To both, therefore, the reward is reckoned not according to grace but according to debt. The Manichees say that the washing of regeneration, that is, the water itself, is superfluous, and contend with profane heart that it profits nothing; the Pelagians, moreover, assert that what is said in holy baptism for the expiation of sins is of no help to infants who have no sin. And by this, in the baptizing of little ones, so far as pertains to the remission of sins, the Manichees destroy the visible element; the Pelagians, moreover, even the invisible sacrament. The Manichees dishonor the flesh of Christ by blaspheming the Virgin's childbearing; the Pelagians, moreover, by making the flesh of those to be redeemed equal to the flesh of the Redeemer. For Christ was born for this reason, not indeed in the flesh of sin, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin, because the flesh of other men is born flesh of sin. The Manichees, therefore, utterly detesting all flesh, take away from the flesh of Christ its clear truth; but the Pelagians, asserting that no flesh of sin is born, take away from the flesh of Christ its proper dignity.

2. 2. 4. Let the Pelagians, then, cease to charge Catholics with what they are not, but let them rather hasten to amend what they themselves are; and let them not wish themselves to be lovable because they oppose the odious error of the Manichees, but let them rightly acknowledge themselves to be hateful because they do not oppose their own error. For two errors can be contrary to each other, yet both are to be detested, because both are contrary to the truth. For if the Pelagians are to be loved because they hate the Manichees, then the Manichees too are to be loved because they hate the Pelagians. But far be it that the Catholic mother, on account of hatred of the one party, should choose to love the other, since, with the Lord admonishing and helping, she ought to avoid both and desires to heal both.

2. 3. 5. Moreover, they even accuse the Roman clergy, writing that "they, struck by the terror of the imperial order, were not ashamed to commit the crime of prevarication, so that, against their former opinion, by which in the proceedings they had supported the Catholic dogma, they afterward pronounced that the nature of men is evil." On the contrary, the Pelagians had hoped, by a false hope, that the new and execrable dogma of Pelagius or of Celestius could be persuaded upon the Catholic minds of certain Romans, when those talents, though perverted by a wicked error, yet not contemptible, since they seemed to need to be diligently corrected rather than easily condemned, were treated somewhat more gently than the stricter discipline of the Church required. For with so many and such great ecclesiastical writings running back and forth between the Apostolic See and the African bishops, and with proceedings drawn up about this case before that See, with Celestius present and answering, what letter at last of Pope Zosimus of venerable memory, what interlocutory statement, is found, where he ordered it to be believed that a man is born without any taint of original sin? Nowhere at all did he say this, nowhere at all did he write it. But when Celestius had set this down in his little book—among those things, at any rate, about which he confessed that he still doubted and wished to be instructed—in a man of most keen talent, who surely, if he had been corrected, would have profited very many, it was the will to amend, not the falsity of the dogma, that was approved. For this reason his little book was called Catholic, because this too belongs to a Catholic mind: if perhaps it relishes anything otherwise than the truth requires, not to define it most certainly but, once it is uncovered and demonstrated, to reject it. For it was not to heretics but to Catholics that the Apostle was speaking where he says: Let us, then, as many as are perfect, be of this mind; and if you are of a different mind in anything, this too God will reveal to you (Phil 3:15). This was thought to have been done in him, when he answered that he agreed with the letters of Pope Innocent of blessed memory, by which all doubt about this matter was removed. And that this might be done more fully and more manifestly in him, the letters to come from Africa were awaited, in which province his cunning had become somewhat more evidently known. After these letters came to Rome, containing this—that it was not enough for the more sluggish and more anxious men that he confessed in general that he agreed with the letters of Bishop Innocent, but that he ought openly to anathematize the depraved things he had set down in his little book, lest, if he did not do this, many of little understanding should believe those poisons of faith in his little book to have been approved by the Apostolic See, on account of what had been said by it, that the book was Catholic, rather than amended, on account of his having answered that he agreed with the letters of Pope Innocent—then, therefore, when his presence was demanded, so that by certain and clear answers either the man's craftiness or his correction might come to light and remain doubtful to no one, he withdrew himself and refused the examination. Nor was that to be deferred any longer, as was done, which would profit others, even if it could not profit the obstinacy and madness of the excessively perverse. But if—far be it!—it had then been so judged about Celestius or Pelagius in the Roman Church that those dogmas of theirs, which in them and with them Pope Innocent had condemned, were pronounced to be approved and to be held, then rather the mark of prevarication would have to be branded upon the Roman clergy. But now, since first the letters of the most blessed Pope Innocent, answering the letters of the African bishops, condemned alike this error which these men try to persuade, and his successor too, holy Pope Zosimus, never said, never wrote, that what these men think about the little ones is to be held, and moreover bound Celestius—who was endeavoring to clear himself—by frequent interlocutory statements to consent to the aforesaid letters of the Apostolic See: surely whatever in the meantime was done more gently with Celestius—provided that the firmness of the most ancient and most robust faith was preserved—was the most clement persuasion of correction, not the most destructive approval of depravity. And that afterward Celestius and Pelagius were condemned by the same priest with renewed authority was a reason for a severity now necessarily brought forth after being briefly intermitted, not a prevarication of truth previously known or a new acknowledgment of it.

2. 4. 6. But what need is there for us to delay longer in speaking about this matter, when there exist, on the one side and the other, the proceedings and the writings sent, where all those things can be either known or recognized, in what manner they were done? For from the interrogations of your holy predecessor and the responses of Celestius, by which he professed that he agreed with the letters of blessed Pope Innocent, who does not see how Celestius was bound and constrained by a most wholesome bond, that he might no longer dare to defend that original sin is not remitted in the baptism of little ones? For these are the words of the venerable Bishop Innocent about this matter to the Council of Carthage: For free choice, which that man of old endured—while he used his goods too rashly—falling and plunged into the depths of transgression, found no way how he might thereafter rise, and, deceived forever by his own freedom, would have lain hidden under the weight of this ruin, had not the coming of Christ afterward, by his grace, lifted him up, he who, through the purification of a new regeneration, cleansed every past fault by the washing of his baptism. What is clearer or more manifest than this judgment of the Apostolic See? With this Celestius professed that he agreed, when, after it had been said to him by your holy predecessor, Do you condemn all those things which have been bandied about in your name?, he himself answered: I condemn them according to the judgment of your predecessor Innocent, of blessed memory. Now among the other things which had been bandied about in his name, the deacon Paulinus had charged Celestius with saying "that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone and not the human race; and that infants newly born are in that state in which Adam was before sin." Accordingly, if he condemned the charges of Paulinus with a truthful heart and mouth, according to the judgment of blessed Pope Innocent, what would thereafter remain to him from which to contend that there is in little ones no fault from the past transgression of the first man, a fault which is cleansed by holy baptism through the purification of a new regeneration? But that he had answered this falsely he showed by his very last exit, when he withdrew himself from the examination, lest he be compelled, according to the African rescripts, to recall and anathematize the very words about this question which he had set down in his little book.

2. 4. 7. What of the fact that the same Pope wrote back about this very cause also to the bishops of Numidia—because he had received writings from both councils, namely from that of Carthage and from that of Mileve—does he not speak most openly about little ones? For these are his words: But that which your Fraternity asserts they preach, that little ones can be granted the rewards of eternal life even without the grace of baptism, is utterly foolish. For unless they eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, they will not have life in themselves. But those who defend that they have this without regeneration seem to me to wish to make void baptism itself, when they preach that these little ones have what we believe is to be conferred on them only by baptism. What does the ungrateful man say to these things—he whom the Apostolic See had already spared, as though he had been corrected by his own profession, with the most kindly gentleness? What does he say to these things? Whether, after the end of this life, little ones, even if while they live they are not baptized in Christ, will be in eternal life or not? If he says "they will be," how then did he answer that he condemned, according to the judgment of Innocent of blessed memory, the things bandied about in his name? Behold, Pope Innocent of blessed memory says that without the baptism of Christ and without participation in the body and blood of Christ little ones do not have life. If he says "they will not be," how then, not receiving eternal life, are they not consequently condemned to eternal death, if they contract no original sin?

2. 4. 8. What do those men say to these things, who dare even to write their slanderous impieties, dare even to send them to the Eastern bishops? Celestius is held bound to have given his consent to the letters of the venerable Innocent; the very letters of the aforesaid bishop are read, writing that unbaptized little ones cannot have life. But who will deny that it is consequent that they have death who do not have life? Whence, then, in infants this pitiable punishment, if there is no original fault? How, therefore, are the Roman clergy charged with prevarication, under Bishop Zosimus, by these deserters of the faith and assailants of grace, as though they held something different in the later condemnation of Celestius and Pelagius than what they held under Innocent in the earlier one? For surely, since by the letters of the venerable Innocent the antiquity of the Catholic faith shone clear—that little ones, unless they are baptized in Christ, will remain in eternal death—surely whoever had deviated from that judgment would rather be a prevaricator against the Roman Church. And since, God being favorable, this was not done, but the very thing was preserved by the constantly repeated condemnation of Celestius and Pelagius, let these men understand that they themselves are what they charge others with, and let them at some time be healed from prevarication against the faith. For the Catholic faith does not say that the nature of men is evil, insofar as man was first instituted by the Creator; nor is what God now creates in that nature, when he makes men from men, his evil, but what it contracts from that fault of the first man.

2. 5. 9. Now let us look at those things which, charging us in their letter, they briefly set down, to which this is our answer: We do not say that by the sin of Adam free choice perished from the nature of men, but that it avails for sinning in men subject to the devil; but that it does not avail for living well and piously, unless the will of man itself has been set free by the grace of God and helped to every good of action, of speech, of thought. We say that no one but the Lord God is the founder of those being born, and that marriages were instituted not by the devil but by him, yet that all are born under sin on account of the fault of their descent, and therefore are under the devil until they are reborn in Christ. Nor do we assert fate under the name of grace, because we say that the grace of God is preceded by no merits of men. But if it pleases some to call the will of the almighty God by the name of fate, we indeed avoid profane novelties of words, but we do not love to contend about words.

2. 5. 10. But whence it seemed good to them to charge us with this, that we assert fate under the name of grace, I inspected, when I considered it somewhat more attentively, their words that follow. For they thought this ought to be charged against us thus: Under the name of grace, they say, they so assert fate as to say that, unless God breathes into a man, unwilling and resisting, the desire even of an imperfect good, he can neither turn away from evil nor lay hold of good. Then somewhat later, where they themselves recall what they defend, I attended to what was said by them about this matter: We confess, they say, that baptism is necessary for all ages, and that grace also helps the good purpose of each, yet does not instill zeal for virtue into one who resists, because there is no respect of persons with God. From these words of theirs I understood that they either think, or wish it to be thought, that we assert fate under the name of grace, because we say that the grace of God is given not according to our merits but according to his most merciful will, who said: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will be merciful (Exod 33:19). Where it was consequently added: So then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16). Here too someone similarly foolish could think or say that the Apostle is an assertor of fate. But here these men reveal themselves sufficiently. For when they slander us, saying that we assert fate under the name of grace, because we say that the grace of God is given not according to our merits, they confess without doubt that they themselves say it is given according to our merits; thus their blindness could not hide or dissemble that they relish and think this very thing which, charged against him, Pelagius in the episcopal judgment in Palestine condemned out of crafty fear. For it was charged against him, indeed from the words of his disciple Celestius, that he too said "the grace of God is given according to our merits." This he, detesting it, or as though detesting it—with his mouth at least—did not delay to anathematize; but, as his later books indicate and the assertion of these his followers lays bare, he kept it with a feigned heart, until afterward he brought forth even into writing, by boldness, what he had then covered out of fear by the cunning of one denying. And still the Pelagian bishops do not dread—are not even at all ashamed—to send their letters to the Catholic Eastern bishops, in which they charge us with being assertors of fate, because we do not say that the grace of God is given according to our merits—which Pelagius, fearing the Eastern bishops, both did not dare to say and was compelled to condemn.

2. 6. 11. Is it so, then, you sons of pride, enemies of the grace of God, O new Pelagian heretics, that whoever says that all the good merits of a man are preceded by the grace of God, and that grace is not given for merits—lest it be no grace, if it is not given freely but is rendered as owed to those who deserve it—seems to you to be asserting fate? Do not you yourselves too, with whatever intention, say that baptism is necessary for all ages? Did you not, in this very letter of yours, set down that opinion about baptism side by side with the one about grace? Why did not baptism, which is given to infants, by its very nearness admonish you what you ought to think about grace? For these are your words: We confess that baptism is necessary for all ages, and that grace also helps the good purpose of each, yet does not instill zeal for virtue into one who resists, because there is no respect of persons with God. In all these words of yours, what you said about grace I pass over for now. About baptism render an account: why do you say it is necessary for all ages; tell why it is necessary for little ones—surely because it confers some good upon them, and that some good is neither small nor middling, but great. For even though you deny that they contract original sin, which is remitted in baptism, yet you do not deny—nay, you even preach—that by that washing of regeneration they are adopted out of the sons of men into the sons of God. Tell us, then: by what preceding merits did those little ones, baptized in Christ, who have departed from the body, receive this so sublime a gift? If you say that they merited this by the piety of their parents, it will be answered you: Why is this good sometimes denied to the children of the pious and granted to the children of the impious? For sometimes offspring sprung from religious parents, at a tender age and most recently from the womb, is anticipated by death before it is washed by the washing of regeneration, and an infant born of the enemies of Christ is baptized in Christ by the mercy of Christians; a baptized mother bewails her own unbaptized child, and a chaste woman gathers up a stranger's offspring, exposed by an unchaste woman, to be baptized. Here surely the merits of the parents are of no account; they are of no account, by your own confession, even of the little ones themselves. For we know that you do not believe this about the human soul, that, giving it an earthly body, it lived somewhere and did something either of good or of evil, whence it would merit this difference in the flesh. What cause, then, procured baptism for this little one and denied it to that one? Or do these have fate, because they have no merit? Or is there in these a respect of persons with the Lord? For you said both, fate first, respect of persons afterward, so that, since both are to be refuted, there may remain what you wish to introduce against grace—merit. Answer, then, about the merits of little ones: why do some, baptized, and others, unbaptized, depart from their bodies, and neither prevail by the merits of their parents nor lack so excellent a good as to be made the sons of God out of the sons of men, by no merits of their parents, by none of their own. Surely you fall silent, and you rather find yourselves in the very thing you charge against us. For if, where there is no merit, you say there is consequently fate, and on this account you wish a merit of man to be understood in the grace of God, lest you be compelled to confess fate: behold, you rather assert fate in the baptism of little ones, of whom you confess there is no merit. But if in baptizing little ones you grant that no merit at all precedes, and yet that there is no fate, why, when we say that the grace of God is given freely for this reason, lest it be no grace, and is not rendered as owed to preceding merits, do you boast that we are assertors of fate—not understanding that in justifying the ungodly, just as for that reason there are no merits, because it is the grace of God, so for that reason there is no fate, because it is the grace of God; so for that reason there is no respect of persons, because it is the grace of God?

2. 6. 12. For those who affirm fate contend that not only acts and events but even our very wills depend on the position of the stars at the time when each is conceived or born—what they call the constellations; but the grace of God transcends not only all the stars and all the heavens but even all the angels. Then the assertors of fate attribute both the goods and the evils of men to fate; but God, in the evils of men, pursues their merits with the owed retribution, while the goods he bestows by an unowed grace with a merciful will, doing both not through a temporal partnership of the stars but through the eternal and deep counsel of his severity and his goodness. Neither, therefore, do we see to pertain to fate. Here, if you answer that this very benevolence of God, by which he does not follow merits but bestows unowed goods by a gratuitous goodness, ought rather to be called fate—although the Apostle calls this grace, saying: By grace you have been saved through faith; and this not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God, not of works, lest perhaps anyone be lifted up (Eph 2:8-9)—do you not attend, do you not perceive, that fate is not asserted by us under the name of divine grace, but that divine grace is rather called by you under the name of fate?

2. 7. 13. Likewise, respect of persons is rightly said to exist there where he who judges, leaving aside the merit of the cause about which he judges, casts his vote for one against another, because he finds something in the person which is worthy of honor or of pity. But if anyone has two debtors and wishes to forgive the debt of one, to exact it from the other, he gives to whom he wills but defrauds no one; nor is it to be called respect of persons, since there is no iniquity. Otherwise, to those who understand little, respect of persons could seem to exist where the owner of the vineyard gave to the workers who had worked there one hour as much as to those who had borne the burden of the day and the heat, making them equal in pay whose toil had differed by so great a distance. But what did he answer to those murmuring against the householder over this seeming respect of persons? Friend, he says, I do you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go. But I wish to give to this last man as also to you. Or is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Or is your eye evil because I am good? (Matt 20:13-15) Surely here is all justice: "This I will." "To you," he says, "I have rendered, to this man I have given; nor, in order to give to this man, have I taken anything from you or either diminished or denied what I owed. Is it not lawful for me to be silent about what I will? Or is your eye evil because I am good?" As, therefore, here there is no respect of persons, because one is freely honored in such a way that another is not defrauded of what is owed, so too when, according to the purpose of God, one is called, another is not called, the call is given as a gratuitous good, of which good the call itself is the beginning; to the one not called no evil is rendered, because all are guilty from the fact that through one man sin entered into the world. And in that comparison of the workers, indeed, where they received one denarius who had labored one hour and those who had labored twelve times as much—who surely, according to human but vain reckonings, ought to have received twelve denarii for the amount of their labor—both were made equal in good, not some freed and others condemned; for even those who labored more, both that they were so called as to come, and that they were so fed as not to fail, they had from the householder himself. But where it is said: Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills (Rom 9:18), he who makes one vessel unto honor, another unto dishonor (Rom 9:21): the good indeed is given undeserved and freely, because it is from the same mass to which it is given, but the evil is rendered deservedly and as owed, because in the mass of perdition evil is rendered to evil not evilly, and it is evil to him to whom it is rendered, because it is his punishment, but to him by whom it is rendered it is good, because it is his right doing. Nor is there any respect of persons in two debtors equally guilty, if to one is forgiven, from the other is exacted, what is equally owed by both.

2. 7. 14. But that what we say may become clear by the demonstration of some example, let us suppose some twins brought forth by some harlot and, that they might be gathered up by others, exposed; of these one expired without baptism, the other was baptized. What shall we say was here fate or fortune, which are altogether nothing? What respect of persons—since there was none with God—even if there could have been any in these, who surely had nothing whereby the one should be preferred to the other, and no proper merits of their own, either good, by which the one should merit to be baptized, or evil, by which the other should merit to die without baptism? Or were there any of the parents, where the father was a fornicator, the mother a harlot? But of whatever kind those were, they were surely not, for these dying in so diverse a condition, any diverse merits, but common to both. If, therefore, neither fate, because no stars decree these things, nor fortune, because chance happenings do not bring these things about, nor a diversity of persons or of merits brought this about, what remains, as far as pertains to the baptized one, except the grace of God, which is given freely to the vessels made unto honor, and, as far as pertains to the unbaptized one, the wrath of God, which is rendered to the vessels made unto dishonor for the merits of the mass itself? But in the one who was baptized we compel you to confess the grace of God, and we prove that no merit of his preceded; but about the one who died without baptism—why the sacrament was lacking to him, which you too confess to be necessary for all ages, and what in this way was punished in him—you yourselves see to it, who do not wish there to be original sin.

2. 7. 15. For us, in these two twins who without doubt have one cause, the Apostle resolves the difficulty of the question—why the one died in one way, the other in another—as though by not resolving it. For when he too had set forth something of the kind about two twins, on account of which it was said, not from works, since they had not yet done anything good or evil, but from the one who calls: The elder shall serve the younger (Gen 25:23); and: Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated (Mal 1:2-3); and had carried the dread of this depth to the point of saying: Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills (Rom 9:18), he felt at once what might disturb, and set against himself the words of one contradicting, which he would restrain by apostolic authority. For he says: You will say to me then: Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will? (Rom 9:19) And he answered the one saying these things: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing molded say to him who molded it: Why have you made me thus? Or does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel indeed unto honor, another unto dishonor? (Rom 9:20-21) Then, having pursued so great and hidden a secret, as far as he judged it ought to be opened to men, he opened it, saying: But if God, willing to show his wrath and to make known his power, bore in much patience the vessels of wrath, which are fitted for perdition, and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he prepared unto glory (Rom 9:22-23). This is not only the help of the grace of God, but also its proof—the help, namely, in the vessels of mercy; but in the vessels of wrath, the proof; for in them he shows his wrath and demonstrates his power, because his goodness is so powerful that it uses well even evils, and in them he makes known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, since what the justice of him who punishes exacts from the vessels of wrath, this the grace of him who frees remits to the vessels of mercy. Nor would the benefit, which is freely bestowed on some, appear, unless God, condemning others, equally guilty, from the same mass, with a just punishment, showed what was owed to both. For who distinguishes you? (1 Cor 4:7) the same Apostle says to a man glorying, as it were, about himself and his own proper good. For who distinguishes you?—surely from the vessels of wrath, from the mass of perdition, which through one man sent all into condemnation. For who distinguishes you? And, as though he had answered, "My faith distinguishes me, my purpose, my merit": For what do you have, he says, that you have not received? But if you have also received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?—that is, as if it were of your own whence you are distinguished. Therefore he distinguishes who imparts whence you are distinguished, removing the owed punishment, bestowing unowed grace. He distinguishes who, when there was darkness over the deep, said: Let there be light, and there was light; and he divided—that is, distinguished—between the light and the darkness (Gen 1:3-4). For when there was only darkness, he did not find what to distinguish, but by making light he distinguished, so that to the justified ungodly it might be said: For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord (Eph 5:8); and thus he who glories glories not in himself but in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31). He distinguishes who, about those not yet born nor who had done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not from works but from himself who calls, said: The elder shall serve the younger; and commending this same thing afterward through the prophet: Jacob, he says, I have loved, but Esau I have hated. For he said "election," where God did not find what he might choose, made by another, but himself makes what he finds, as is written of the remnant of Israel: A remnant has been made by the election of grace. But if by grace, then no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace (Rom 11:5-6). On account of which you surely are foolish, since, the Truth saying, not of works, but of the one who calls it was said, you say: "From future works, which God foreknew he would do, Jacob was loved," and thus you contradict the Apostle saying not of works, as though he could not say "not of present but of future works." But he says not of works, that he might commend grace; but if by grace, then no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. For grace that is not owed but gratuitous precedes, that through it good works may be done; lest, if good works precede, grace be rendered as though to works, and thus grace be no longer grace.

2. 7. 16. But that every lurking-place of your fog might be taken away from you, I therefore set forth such twins, who would neither be helped by the merits of their parents and would both, in the very beginning of infancy, die, one baptized, the other without baptism, lest you should say, as you say of Jacob and Esau against the Apostle, that God foreknew their future works. For how did he foreknow as future those things which, since they were about to die in infancy—and his foreknowledge cannot be deceived—he rather foreknew would not be? Or what does it profit those who are snatched from this life, lest malice change their understanding or deceit beguile their soul, if even sin which was not done, spoken, thought, is so punished as though it had been committed? But if it is most absurd, most insipid, most insane that any men should be condemned for those sins whose guilt they could neither, as you say, contract from their parents, nor not only commit but not even so much as think—then that twin brother of the baptized one, the unbaptized one, returns to you, and silently asks of you whence he was distinguished from his brother's happiness, why punished with that unhappiness, so that, while the one was adopted into the sons of God, he himself did not receive the sacrament necessary for all ages, as you confess; if, just as there is no fortune or fate, or respect of persons with God, so there is no gift of grace without merits, no original sin. To this infant, surely, you submit your tongue and your voice; to this one who does not speak you have nothing to say.

2. 8. 17. Now let us see, as best we can, this very thing which they wish to precede in a man, so that he may be held worthy of the help of grace and so that grace may be repaid to him for its merit, not as unowed but as owed, and thus grace may now no longer be grace—let us see, however, what that is. Under the name of grace, they say, they so assert fate as to say that, unless he breathes into a man, unwilling and resisting, the desire even of an imperfect good, he can neither turn away from evil nor lay hold of good. We have already shown how empty are the things they say about fate and grace. Now this is what we ought to notice: whether God breathes into a man, unwilling and resisting, the desire of good, so that he is now no longer resisting, no longer unwilling, but consenting to the good and willing the good. For these men wish the desire of good to begin in a man from himself, so that the grace also of accomplishing may follow the merit of this beginning—if indeed they wish even this; for Pelagius says that what is good is fulfilled "more easily" if grace helps. By which addition, that is, by adding "more easily," he surely signifies that he relishes this: that, even if the help of grace be lacking, the good can be fulfilled, though more difficultly, through free choice. But what these men think in this matter, let us not prejudge from that author of this heresy—let us permit them to be free with their free choice even from Pelagius himself—and let us rather attend to these words of theirs which they set down in this letter to which we are replying.

2. 8. 18. For they thought this ought to be charged against us, that we say God breathes into a man, unwilling and resisting, not the desire of any great good whatever, but even of an imperfect good. Perhaps, then, they themselves in that way at least preserve a place for grace, so that they think a man can, without it, have the desire of good, but of an imperfect good, while of a perfect good he cannot "more easily" through it, but cannot at all except through it. But even so they say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, which, in the East, Pelagius, fearing to be condemned in the ecclesiastical proceedings, condemned. For if without the grace of God the desire of good begins through us, that beginning itself will be a merit to which, as though out of debt, the help of grace comes, and thus the grace of God will not be given freely but will be given according to our merit. But the Lord, to answer the future Pelagius, did not say "Without me you can do something with difficulty," but said: Without me you can do nothing (Jn 15:5). And to answer these future men too, in that very evangelical sentence, he did not say Without me you can "accomplish" nothing, but do. For if he had said "accomplish," these men could say that the help of God is necessary not for beginning the good, which is from us, but for accomplishing it. But let them hear the Apostle too. For when the Lord says Without me you can do nothing, by this one word he comprehends both beginning and end; but the Apostle, as though an expositor of the Lord's sentence, distinguished both more openly, saying: Because he who began a good work in you will perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6). But in the holy Scriptures, in the same Apostle, we find more about this of which we are speaking. For we are now speaking of the desire of good, which, if they wish it to begin from us, to be perfected by the Lord, let them see what they answer the Apostle saying: Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor 3:5). He says to think anything—something good, surely; but to think is less than to desire. For we think everything that we desire, yet we do not desire everything that we think, since sometimes we think even what we do not desire. Since, therefore, to think is less than to desire—for a man can think a good which he does not yet desire, and by advancing afterward desire what before, not desiring, he thought—how is it that for that which is less, that is, for thinking something good, we are not sufficient as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, and for that which is more, that is, for desiring something good, we are sufficient without divine help from free choice? For here too the Apostle does not say: Not that we are sufficient to think what is perfect as of ourselves, but he says to think anything, to which the contrary is nothing. Whence is that of the Lord: Without me you can do nothing.

2. 9. 19. But doubtless what is written—It is for a man to prepare the heart, and from the Lord comes the answer of the tongue (Prov 16:1)—they are deceived by not understanding well, so that they suppose that to prepare the heart, that is, to begin the good, pertains to a man without the help of the grace of God. Far be it that the sons of promise should so understand, as though, when they have heard the Lord saying Without me you can do nothing, they should as it were refute him, saying: "Behold, without you we can prepare the heart," or when they have heard from Paul the Apostle Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, they should as it were refute him too, saying: "Behold, we are sufficient of ourselves to prepare the heart and thereby to think something good for it." For who can, without a good thought, prepare the heart for good? Far be it that any should so understand except the proud defenders of their own choice and the deserters of the Catholic faith. For it is written, It is for a man to prepare the heart, and from the Lord comes the answer of the tongue, because a man prepares the heart, yet not without the help of God, who so touches the heart that a man prepares the heart. But in the answer of the tongue, that is, in this, that the divine tongue answers the prepared heart, a man has no work, but the whole is from the Lord God.

2. 9. 20. For as it was said, It is for a man to prepare the heart, and from the Lord comes the answer of the tongue, so too it was said: Open your mouth and I will fill it (Ps 81:10 (80)). For although, unless he helps without whom we can do nothing, we cannot open the mouth, yet we open it by his help and by our work, but the Lord fills it without our work. For what is it to prepare the heart and to open the mouth except to prepare the will? And yet in the same writings it is read: The will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 LXX), and: You will open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise (Ps 51:15 (50)). Behold, God admonishes that we prepare the will, in that we read It is for a man to prepare the heart, and yet, that a man may do this, God helps, because the will is prepared by the Lord. And Open your mouth he so says, commanding, that no one can do it unless he himself does it by helping, to whom it is said: You will open my lips. Or are these men so foolish as to contend that the mouth is one thing, the lips another, and to say, with a marvelous vanity, that the man opens the mouth, God the lips of the man? Although God restrains them even from this absurdity, where he says to his servant Moses: I will open your mouth and will instruct you what you ought to speak (Exod 4:12). In that sentence, then, where it is said Open your mouth, and I will fill it, one of them seems to pertain to the man, the other to God; but in this, where it is said I will open your mouth and will instruct you, both pertain to God. Why this, except because in the one of these he cooperates with the man doing it, the other he alone does?

2. 9. 21. Wherefore God does many good things in a man which the man does not do, but a man does none which God does not bring about that the man should do. Accordingly, the desire of good would not be in a man from the Lord if it were not good; but if it is good, it is in us from none but him who is supremely and unchangeably good. For what is the desire of good except love, of which the apostle John speaks without ambiguity, saying: Love is from God (1 Jn 4:7)? Nor is its beginning from us and its perfection from God; but, if love is from God, the whole of it is in us from God. For let God avert this madness, that in his gifts we should make ourselves first, himself later, since his mercy will go before me (Ps 59:10 (58)), and he himself it is who is faithfully and truly sung of: for you went before him with blessings of sweetness (Ps 21:3 (20)). And what is more aptly understood here than that very desire of good of which we are speaking? For the good begins to be desired when it begins to grow sweet; but when the good is done out of fear of punishment, not love of righteousness, the good is not yet done well, nor is that done in the heart which seems to be done in the deed, when a man would prefer not to do it if he could with impunity. Therefore the blessing of sweetness is the grace of God, by which it comes about in us that what he commands us delights us and we desire, that is, love, it. In which, if God does not go before us, it is not only not perfected but not even begun from us. For if without him we can do nothing, surely we can neither begin nor perfect, since, that we may begin, it was said: His mercy will go before me; and that we may perfect, it was said: His mercy will follow me (Ps 23:6 (22)).

2. 10. 22. What is it, then, that in the things that follow, where they recall what they themselves think, they say they confess "that grace also helps the good purpose of each, yet does not instill zeal for virtue into one who resists"? For they say this as though a man has, of himself, without the help of God, a good purpose and zeal for virtue, by which preceding merit he is worthy to be helped by a grace that follows. For they suppose perhaps that the Apostle said: We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28), meaning that he wished the purpose of man to be understood, which purpose, as though a good merit, the mercy of the God who calls follows; not knowing that it was said who are called according to his purpose so that the purpose of God, not of man, might be understood, by which he chose, before the foundation of the world, those whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom 8:29). For not all who are called are called according to his purpose, since many are called, few chosen (Matt 22:14). They, then, are called according to his purpose who were chosen before the foundation of the world. About this purpose of God that too was said which I have already recalled about the twins Esau and Jacob: That the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of the one who calls, it was said to him that the elder shall serve the younger (Rom 9:11-12). This purpose of God is recalled also in that place where, writing to Timothy, he says: Labor together for the Gospel according to the power of God who saves us and calls us with his holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before times eternal, but is now manifested through the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ (2 Tim 1:8-10). This, then, is the purpose of God, whence it is said: All things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. But the good purpose of man, indeed, a following grace helps, but it itself would not be unless grace preceded. The zeal too of man, which is called good, although, when it has begun to be, it is helped by grace, yet does not begin without grace, but is breathed in by him of whom the Apostle says: But thanks be to God, who gave the same zeal for you in the heart of Titus (2 Cor 8:16). If God gives that anyone have zeal for others, who else is going to give that he have it for himself?

2. 10. 23. Since these things are so, I see nothing commanded to man by the Lord in the holy Scriptures, for the sake of proving free choice, which is not found either to be given by his goodness or to be asked for in order to demonstrate the help of grace; nor does a man begin at all to be changed from evil to good through the beginning of faith, unless the unowed and gratuitous mercy of God works this in him. About which mercy, recalling his own thought, a certain man, as we read in the Psalms, says: Will God forget to be merciful, or will he in his anger restrain his mercies? And I said: Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High (Ps 77:9-10 (76)). When, therefore, he had said Now I have begun, he did not say this is the change "of my choice," but of the right hand of the Most High. Let the grace of God, then, be so considered that from the beginning of his good change to the end of his consummation he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31), because, just as no one can perfect the good without the Lord, so no one can begin it without the Lord. But let this be the end of this volume, that the attention of the reader may be refreshed and restored for what follows.

BOOK THREE

3. 1. 1. Thus far follow the things which they slanderously charge against us; they do not yet begin to weave together the things which they themselves think. But lest the length of the volumes give offense, we have divided these very things which they charge into two books; the earlier of these being finished, which is the second book of this whole work, we begin from here the other and join it, as the third, to the first and the second.

3. 2. 2. "We say"—they assert—"that the Law of the Old Testament was given not for this, that it might justify the obedient, but that it might become the cause of a graver sin." They utterly fail to understand what we say about the Law, because we say what the Apostle says, whom they do not understand. For who would say that those who are obedient to the Law are not justified, when, unless they were justified, they could not be obedient? But we say that it comes about through the Law that what God wills to be done is heard; but through grace that the Law is obeyed; for not the hearers of the Law, says the Apostle, are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified (Rom 2:13). The Law, then, makes hearers of righteousness, grace makes doers. For what was impossible for the Law, says the same Apostle, in that it was weakened through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and on account of sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit (Rom 8:3-4). Behold what we say; let them pray that they may at some time understand, let them not wrangle that they may never understand. For it is impossible to fulfill the Law through the flesh, that is, through carnal presumption, by which the proud, being ignorant of the righteousness of God—that is, the righteousness which is from God for a man to be just—and wishing to establish their own, as though through their own choice, not helped divinely, the Law could be fulfilled, are not subject to the righteousness of God (Rom 10:3). Therefore the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in those who walk not according to the flesh, that is, according to a man ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish his own, but who walk according to the spirit. But who walks according to the spirit except whoever is led by the Spirit of God? For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). Therefore the letter kills, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). Nor is the letter evil because it kills, but it convicts the evil by their transgression. For the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did then that which is good, he says, become death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through what is good, that the sinner, or sin, might become through the commandment exceedingly sinful (Rom 7:12-13). Behold what is meant by the letter kills. For the sting of death is sin, but the power of sin is the Law (1 Cor 15:56); for it increases by forbidding the desires of sin, and thence it kills, unless grace gives life by coming to help.

3. 2. 3. Behold what we say, behold the very thing they charge against us, that we so "say"—say they—"the Law was given that it might be the cause of a graver sin"; not hearing the Apostle saying: For the Law works wrath; for where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15); and: The Law was set forth for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made (Gal 3:19); and: If a law had been given which could give life, righteousness would indeed be entirely from the Law. But the Scripture has shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe (Gal 3:21-22). Hence it is that the Old Testament, from Mount Sinai, where the Law was given, begets unto slavery, which is Hagar. But we, he says, are not the children of the slave woman, but of the free (Gal 4:31). They, then, are not the children of the free woman who received the Law of the letter, by which they could be shown to be not only sinners but, besides, transgressors, but those who received the spirit of grace, by which the Law itself, holy and just and good, can be fulfilled. Behold what we say; let them attend and not contend, let them be enlightened and not slander.

3. 3. 4. They also assert, they say, that baptism does not truly make men new, that is, does not give full remission of sins, but they contend that men become in part sons of God, but in part remain sons of the world, that is, of the devil. They lie, they lie in wait, they shuffle; we do not say this. For we say that all men who are sons of the devil are also sons of the world; but we do not say that all sons of the world are also sons of the devil. For far be it that we should say that the holy fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and others of this kind, were sons of the devil, when they begot through marriage, and those faithful who up to now and henceforth still beget. Nor yet can we contradict the Lord saying: The sons of this world marry and are given in marriage (Luke 20:34). Some, then, are sons of this world and yet are not sons of the devil; for although the devil is the author and prince of all sins, yet not all sins make sons of the devil. For even the sons of God sin, since, if they say that they have no sin, they deceive themselves and the truth is not in them; but they sin by that condition by which they are still sons of this world; but by the grace by which they are sons of God, they surely do not sin, because everyone who is born of God does not sin (1 Jn 3:9). But it is unbelief that makes sons of the devil, which is properly called sin, as though it alone were sin, if it is not expressed what kind of sin it is—just as, when "the Apostle" is said, if it is not expressed which apostle, none is understood but Paul, because he is better known by his many letters and labored more than all those others. Hence what the Lord says about the Holy Spirit: He will convict the world of sin (Jn 16:8), he wished to be understood as unbelief. For in expounding this he says: Of sin indeed, because they did not believe in me (Jn 16:9); and where he says: If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin (Jn 15:22). For they did not before lack sin, but he wished to be understood that very distrust by which they did not believe even him present and speaking, belonging to him of whom the Apostle says: According to the prince of the power of the air, who now works in the sons of distrust (Eph 2:2). Therefore those in whom there is no faith are sons of the devil, because they do not have in the inner man wherefore there should be forgiven them whatever is committed by human weakness or ignorance or by any evil will at all; but those are sons of God who surely, if they say that they have no sin, deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them—surely, as follows, "when they confess their sins—which the sons of the devil do not do, or do not do according to the faith which is proper to the sons of God—he is faithful and just to forgive them their sins and to cleanse them from all iniquity" (1 Jn 1:8-9). But that what we say may be more fully understood, let Jesus himself be heard, who was surely speaking to the sons of God, saying: If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matt 7:11) For if they were not sons of God, he would not say to them your Father who is in heaven. And yet he says that they are evil and know how to give good things to their children. Are they then evil whence they are sons of God? Far be it; but they are evil whence they are still sons of the world, yet already made sons of God by the pledge of the Holy Spirit.

3. 3. 5. Baptism, therefore, indeed washes away all sins—absolutely all, of deeds, words, thoughts, whether original or added, whether committed in ignorance or knowingly; but it does not take away the weakness against which the regenerate man resists when he wrestles the good fight, but to which he consents when, as a man, he is caught beforehand in some fault—rejoicing on account of the former in the giving of thanks, but groaning on account of the latter in the pleading of prayers; there saying, What shall I render to the Lord for all the things that he has rendered to me? (Ps 116:12 (115)); here saying, Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12); on account of the former saying, I will love you, Lord, my strength (Ps 18:1 (17)); on account of the latter saying, Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak (Ps 6:2); on account of the former saying, My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the snare (Ps 25:15 (24)); on account of the latter saying, My eye is troubled because of anger (Ps 6:7)—and innumerable things with which the divine writings are full, which are said by the sons of God out of faith, in alternating voices, either exulting over the goods of God or grieving over our own evils, as long as they are still sons even of this world, on account of the weakness of this life—whom yet God distinguishes from the sons of the devil not only by the washing of regeneration but also by the uprightness of that faith itself which works through love (Gal 5:6), because the just man lives by faith (Rom 1:17). But this weakness, with which we struggle until the death of the body, with failing and advancing alternating, and it greatly matters which overcomes in us, will be consumed by another regeneration, of which the Lord says: In the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, you also will sit upon twelve seats (Matt 19:28), and the rest. For in this place, with no one in doubt, he calls the final resurrection "regeneration," which Paul the Apostle too calls both adoption and redemption, saying: But even we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). Were we not, through the holy washing, regenerated, adopted, redeemed? And yet there remains a regeneration, adoption, redemption which we ought now patiently to await as coming at the end, so that then we may in no part be any longer sons of this world. Whoever, therefore, detracts from baptism what we now receive through it corrupts faith; but whoever attributes to it now what indeed we will receive through it, yet afterward, cuts off hope. For if anyone asks me whether we have been saved through baptism, I cannot deny it, the Apostle saying: He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). But if he asks whether through the same washing he has already made us saved in every way whatever, I will answer: It is not so. For likewise the same Apostle says: For by hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he also hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it with patience (Rom 8:24-25). The salvation of man, then, was effected in baptism, because what he contracted of sin from his parents was remitted, or whatever even he himself sinned properly before baptism; but his salvation will afterward be so great that he can in no way sin.

3. 4. 6. These things being so, by them too those things which they next charge against us are refuted. For what Catholic says what they boast that we say, "that the Holy Spirit was not a helper of virtue in the Old Testament," except when we understand the Old Testament as the Apostle said, begetting unto slavery from Mount Sinai (Gal 4:24)? But because in it the New was prefigured, those men of God who understood this then are shown, according to the distribution of the times, to be dispensers and bearers indeed of the Old Testament, but heirs of the New. Or shall we deny that he pertains to the New Testament who says: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew an upright spirit within me (Ps 51:10 (50))? Or he who says: He set my feet upon a rock and directed my steps, and put into my mouth a new song, a hymn to our God (Ps 40:2-3 (39))? Or him, before the Old Testament which is from Mount Sinai, the father of the faithful, of whom the Apostle says: Brethren, I speak after the manner of men: yet a man's ratified testament no one annuls or adds to. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say: And to seeds, as in many, but as in one: And to your seed, which is Christ. But this I say, he says, the testament ratified by God the Law, which was made after four hundred and thirty years, does not annul, so as to make void the promise. For if the inheritance is from the Law, it is now no longer from the promise; but to Abraham God gave it through the promise (Gal 3:15-18).

3. 4. 7. Here surely, if we ask whether this testament, which he says, ratified by God, is not annulled by the Law which was made after four hundred and thirty years, is to be understood as New or Old, who would hesitate to answer "New"—but hidden in the prophetic recesses, until there should come the time when it would be revealed in Christ? For if we say "Old," what will that be, begetting unto slavery from Mount Sinai? For there the Law was made after four hundred and thirty years, by which Law he affirms that this testament of the promise of Abraham cannot be annulled; and what was done with Abraham he wishes rather to pertain to us, whom he wishes to be sons of the free woman, not of the slave, heirs by promise, not by Law, when he says: For if the inheritance is from the Law, it is now no longer from the promise; but to Abraham God gave it through the promise—so that the Law, which was made after four hundred and thirty years, entered in for this, that sin might abound; when, through the sin of transgression, the pride of a man presuming on his own righteousness is convicted, and where sin abounded, grace might superabound (Rom 5:20) through the faith of a man now humble, failing in the Law and fleeing to the mercy of God. Therefore, when he had said, For if the inheritance is from the Law, it is now no longer from the promise; but to Abraham God gave it through the promise—as though it were said to him: To what end, then, was the Law afterward made?—he added and said: What then is the Law? To which question he soon replied: It was set forth for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made (Gal 3:19). This same thing he says thus: For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise is made void. For the Law works wrath; for where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:14-15). What he says in that testimony—For if the inheritance is from the Law, it is now no longer from the promise; but to Abraham God gave it through the promise—this he says in that one: For if those who are through the Law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise is made void; showing sufficiently that what God gave to Abraham through the promise pertains to our faith, which surely is of the New Testament. And what he says in that testimony—What then is the Law?—and answered, It was set forth for the sake of transgression, this he likewise added in that one: For the Law works wrath; for where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

3. 4. 8. Whether, therefore, Abraham, or the just men before him, or those after him up to Moses himself, through whom was given the Testament begetting unto slavery from Mount Sinai, or the other prophets after him and the holy men of God up to John the Baptist, they are sons of the promise and of grace, according to Isaac the son of the free woman, heirs of God not from the Law but from the promise, and coheirs of Christ. For far be it that we should deny that just Noah, and the just men of an earlier time, and whoever from him to Abraham could be just, whether conspicuous or hidden, pertain to the heavenly Jerusalem, which is our mother (Gal 4:26), although they are found to be earlier in time than Sarah, who bore the prophecy and figure of that free mother herself. How much more evidently, then, after Abraham, to whom that very promise was so declared that he was called the father of many nations, whoever pleased God are to be held sons of the promise! For from Abraham onward it is not a truer begetting of the just that is found, but a more manifest prophecy.

3. 4. 9. But to the Old Testament, which is begetting unto slavery from Mount Sinai, which is Hagar (Gal 4:24-25), those belong who, when they have received the Law, holy and just and good, suppose that the letter can suffice them unto life; and therefore they do not seek the divine mercy whereby they may become doers of the Law, but, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own by righteousness, are not subject to the righteousness of God (Rom 10:3). Of this kind was that multitude which murmured against God in the wilderness and made an idol, and that which already, in the very land of promise, fornicated after strange gods. But this is, even in the Old Testament itself, a very reprobate multitude. Those too, whoever were there, following only the earthly things which God there promises and ignorant of what they themselves signify in regard to the New Testament, by love of obtaining them and fear of losing them kept the precepts of God—nay, did not keep them but seemed to themselves to keep them; for faith did not work in them through love, but earthly desire and carnal fear. But he who does the precepts thus does them without doubt unwillingly, and thereby does them not in his soul; for he would prefer not to do them at all, if, according to the things he desires and fears, he were permitted with impunity. And thereby in his very will he is guilty within, where he himself who commands, God, looks. Such were the sons of the earthly Jerusalem, of which the Apostle says: For she is in slavery with her children, pertaining to the Old Testament: begetting unto slavery from Mount Sinai, which is Hagar. Of that same kind were those who crucified the Lord and remained in the same unbelief. Thence too are still their sons, in the huge multitude of the Jews, although the New Testament has now, as was prophesied, been laid open and confirmed through the blood of Christ, and the Gospel spread abroad from the river where he was baptized and professed his teaching, even to the ends of the earth. These Jews, according to the prophecies which they read, are scattered everywhere through all lands, so that from their books too the testimony to Christian truth may not be lacking.

3. 4. 10. God therefore established the Old Testament too, because it pleased God, until the fullness of time, to veil the heavenly promises with earthly promises set up as a reward, and to give to a people gaping after earthly goods and therefore having a hard heart a Law that was nevertheless spiritual, yet on tables of stone. For, apart from the sacraments of the old Books, which were commanded for the sole purpose of signifying by reason—although in these too, since they are to be understood spiritually, the Law is rightly called spiritual—the rest, surely, which, pertaining to piety and good morals, are to be referred by no interpretation to any signification but to be done utterly as they are said, no one would doubt that that Law of God is necessary, not only for that people then but even now for us, for the right ordering of life. For if Christ has taken away from us that most heavy yoke of many observances—that we should not be circumcised carnally, not immolate victims of cattle, not rest from even necessary works on the sabbath, with the cycle of seven days returning, and other things of this kind, but should hold them understood spiritually, and, the signifying shadows removed, should keep watch in the light of the very things which are signified—shall we therefore say that what is written does not pertain to us, that whoever finds anything lost belonging to another should restore it to him who lost it, and many other similar things by which one learns to live piously and rightly, and especially the Decalogue itself, which is contained in those two tables of stone, except the carnal observance of the sabbath, which signifies spiritual sanctification and rest? For who would say that Christians ought not to observe that one God be served by the obedience of religion, that an idol be not worshiped, that the name of the Lord be not taken in vain, that parents be honored, that adulteries, murders, thefts, false testimonies be not perpetrated, that a wife, that anything at all of another's be not coveted? Who is so impious as to say that he does not keep these precepts of the Law for this reason, because he himself is a Christian and established not under the Law but under grace?

3. 4. 11. But there is plainly a great difference, in that those set under the Law, whom the letter kills, do these things either by desire of obtaining earthly happiness or by fear of losing it, and therefore do not truly do them, since carnal desire, by which sin is rather changed or increased by another desire, is not healed. These pertain to the Old Testament, which begets unto slavery; because carnal fear and desire make them slaves, not evangelical faith and hope and love free. But those set under grace, whom the Spirit gives life, do these things out of that faith which works through love, in hope of goods not carnal but spiritual, not earthly but heavenly, not temporal but eternal, especially believing in the Mediator, through whom they do not doubt that both the spirit of grace is ministered to them, that they may do these things well, and that pardon can be granted when they sin. These pertain to the New Testament, sons of the promise, regenerated by God the Father and the free mother. Of this kind were all the ancient just men and Moses himself, the minister of the Old Testament, heir of the New, because by the one and same faith by which we live they lived, believing the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ would come, which we believe has come—up to John the Baptist himself, as a certain boundary of the past dispensation, who, signifying that the Mediator himself would come, not by any shadow of the future or allegorical signification or any prophetic foretelling, but pointing him out with his finger, said: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1:29); as though saying: "He whom many just men longed to see, in whom, as about to come, they believed from the very beginning of the human race, about whom the promises were spoken to Abraham, about whom Moses wrote, of whom the Law and the Prophets are witnesses: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world." From this John onward there began to be done concerning Christ, as past or present, the things which by all those just men of the earlier time were believed, hoped, desired as future. The same faith, therefore, is both in those who before were Christians not yet in name but in the reality itself, and in these who not only are but are also called so, and in both the same grace through the Holy Spirit. Whence the Apostle says: But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written: I believed, therefore I have spoken, we also believe, therefore we also speak (2 Cor 4:13).

3. 4. 12. Thus, the custom of speaking now prevailing, the Old Testament is called in one way—the Law and all the Prophets who prophesied up to John (which is more distinctly called the old instrument than the Old Testament)—and in another way as the apostolic authority calls it, whether expressing this name or signifying it. For he expresses it where he says: Even to this present day, as long as Moses is read, the same veil remains in the reading of the Old Testament, which is not unveiled, because in Christ it is done away (2 Cor 3:14). For thus surely he referred the Old Testament to the ministry of Moses. Likewise he says: That we may serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the letter (Rom 7:6), signifying that same Testament by the name of letter. Likewise in another place: Who also made us fit, he says, ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). And here, by mention of the New, he surely wished that Old to be understood. But much more evidently—although he did not say either Old or New—he distinguished those two Testaments by the two sons of Abraham, one by the slave woman, the other by the free, which we have already recalled above. For what is more express than that he should say: Tell me, you who wish to be under the Law, have you not heard the Law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free; but he indeed who was of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but he who was of the free, by promise. These things are in an allegory; for these are the two Testaments, one indeed from Mount Sinai, begetting unto slavery, which is Hagar—for Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is joined to that which is now Jerusalem; for she is in slavery with her children—but the Jerusalem which is above is free, who is our mother (Gal 4:21-26). What is clearer, what more certain, what more removed from all obscurity and ambiguity? And a little later: But we, brethren, he says, according to Isaac are sons of the promise (Gal 4:28). Likewise a little later: But we, brethren, are not children of the slave woman but of the free; by which freedom Christ has set us free (Gal 4:31; 5:1). Let us choose, then, whether we say that the ancient just men were sons of the slave woman or of the free. But far be it that they were of the slave woman; therefore, if of the free, they pertain to the New Testament in the Holy Spirit, whom, as giving life, the Apostle sets against the killing letter. For in what way do those not pertain to the grace of the New Testament, from whose sayings and Books we, by refuting, convict these most senseless and most ungrateful enemies of that same grace?

3. 4. 13. But someone will say: "How is that called old which was made through Moses after four hundred and thirty years, and that called new which was made so many years before, to Abraham?" Let him who is moved by this not contentiously but studiously understand, first, that if it is called old from the earlier time and new from the later, their revelations are considered in these names, not their institutions. For through Moses was revealed the Old Testament, through whom the Law was given, holy and just and good, by which there came about not the abolition but the knowledge of sin; by which the proud were convicted, wishing to establish their own righteousness as though not needing divine help, and, made guilty by the letter, fled to the spirit of grace, to be justified not by their own righteousness but by God's, that is, by the one which was theirs from God. For, as the same Apostle says: Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested without the Law, attested by the Law and the Prophets (Rom 3:20-21). For the Law, by this very fact that in it no one is justified, bears witness to the righteousness of God. For that in the Law no one is justified before God is manifest, because the just man lives by faith (Gal 3:11). So, then, when the Law does not justify the ungodly man convicted of transgression, it sends him to the justifying God, and thus bears witness to the righteousness of God; but the Prophets bear witness to the righteousness of God by foretelling Christ, who was made for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, as it is written: He who glories, let him glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:30-31). But this law was hidden from the beginning, when nature itself convicted unjust men as they did to others what they would not have wished done to themselves. But the revelation of the New Testament was made in Christ, when he was manifested in the flesh (1 Tim 3:16); in whom appeared the righteousness of God, that is, the one which is for men from God. For thus he says: But now the righteousness of God has been manifested without the Law. Behold for what cause that is called the Old Testament, because it was revealed in an earlier time, and this the New, because in a later. Then, because the Old Testament pertains to the old man, from whom a man must necessarily begin, but the New to the new man, into whom a man ought to pass out of his oldness, therefore in the former are earthly promises, in the latter heavenly promises; because this too pertained to the mercy of God, lest anyone should suppose that even earthly happiness, of whatever kind, could be conferred on anyone except by the Lord, the creator of the universe. But if God is worshiped for the sake of that, it is a servile worship pertaining to the sons of the slave woman; but if for the sake of God himself, that in eternal life God may be all in all (1 Cor 15:28), it is a free service pertaining to the sons of the free woman, who is our eternal mother in heaven. She, who first appeared as it were barren, when she did not have conspicuous sons, now we see what was prophesied of her: Rejoice, you barren one who do not bear; break forth and cry out, you who do not travail, for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband (Isa 54:1)—that is, "more than of that Jerusalem which is in a way wedded by the bond of the Law and is in slavery with her children." In the time of the Old Testament, therefore, we say that the Holy Spirit was, in those who even then were sons of the promise according to Isaac, not only a helper—which these men suppose suffices for their dogma—but even a bestower of virtue, which these men deny, attributing it rather to free choice, against those fathers who knew how to cry out to the Lord with truthful piety: I will love you, Lord, my strength! (Ps 18:1 (17))

3. 5. 14. They also say: "That all the Apostles or Prophets are defined by us as not fully holy, but that we say they were less evil in comparison with worse men, and that this is the righteousness to which God bears witness, so that, just as the Prophet says Sodom was justified in comparison with the Jews, so too we say that the saints exercised some virtue in comparison with criminals." Far be it that we should say these things; but either they are not able to understand, or they are unwilling to notice, or out of zeal for slandering they dissemble that they know what we say. Let them hear, then, either themselves, or rather those whom they are striving to deceive as unlearned and uninstructed simple folk. Our faith, that is, the Catholic faith, distinguishes the just from the unjust not by the law of works but by that of faith itself, because the just man lives by faith (Rom 1:17). By which distinction it comes about that a man leading a life without murder, without theft, without false testimony, without coveting of any other's thing, rendering due honor to his parents, chaste even to continence from all intercourse whatever, even conjugal, most generous in almsgiving, most patient of injuries, who not only does not take away what belongs to others but does not even demand back his own that has been taken, or even, with all his goods sold and distributed to the poor, possesses nothing of his own and proper—yet with these of his, as it were praiseworthy, morals, if he does not hold a right and Catholic faith in God, departs from this life to be condemned. But another, having indeed good works from a right faith, which works through love, yet not so well-mannered as that one, supports his incontinence by the honorableness of marriage, both renders and demands the carnal debt of wedlock, and that not for the cause of propagation alone but also of pleasure, although he lies only with his wife, which the Apostle concedes to the married by way of pardon; receives injuries not so patiently, but, angry, is carried away by desire of avenging, although, that he may be able to say As we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12), when asked, he forgives; possesses a family estate, making from it indeed alms, yet not so generous as that one; does not take away what belongs to others, but demands back his own, though by an ecclesiastical, not however a forensic, judgment—surely this man, who in morals seems inferior to that one, on account of the right faith which is his in God, by which he lives, and according to which in all his faults he accuses himself, in all his good works praises God, attributing to himself disgrace, to him glory, and receiving from him both the forgiveness of sins and the love of right deeds, departs to be set free from this life and received into fellowship with those who will reign with Christ. Why, except on account of faith? Which, although without works it saves no one (for it is the faith not reprobate which works through love), yet through it even sins are loosed, because the just man lives by faith; but without it even those works which seem good are turned into sins; for whatever is not of faith is sin (Rom 14:23). And it comes about, on account of this greatest difference, that, while with no one in doubt persevering virginal integrity is more excellent than conjugal chastity, yet even a Catholic woman twice married is preferred to a heretical woman who has professed virginity; nor is she so preferred that this one is better in the kingdom of God, but that the other is not there at all. For even that man whom we described as of, as it were, better morals, if a right faith is present to him, surpasses that other; but both will be there; but if faith is lacking to him, he is so surpassed by the other that he himself is not there.

3. 5. 15. Since, therefore, all the just, both the more ancient ones and the Apostles, lived by a right faith, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, and had morals so holy together with faith that, although they could not be of so perfect a virtue in this life as is to be after this life, yet whatever of sin crept in from human weakness was at once blotted out by the piety of that faith itself—whence can it come about that, in comparison with the unjust, whom God will condemn, they ought to be said to have been just, when by their pious faith they are so far removed to the contrary from those ungodly that the Apostle cries: What part has the believer with the unbeliever? (2 Cor 6:15)? But evidently the new Pelagian heretics seem to themselves to be religious lovers and praisers of the saints, if they do not dare to say that they were of imperfect virtue, although the Vessel of election confesses this, who, considering where he still was and that the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul: Not that I have already received, he says, or am already perfect, brethren; I do not reckon that I myself have laid hold of it (Phil 3:12-13). And yet a little later, he who had denied that he was perfect says: Let us, then, as many as are perfect, be of this mind (Phil 3:15); that he might show that, according to the measure of this life, there is a certain perfection, and that to that perfection this too is reckoned, if each has come to know that he is not yet perfect. For what was more excellent in the old people than the holy priests? And yet God commanded them first to offer sacrifice for their own sins. And what is holier in the new people than the Apostles? And yet the Lord commanded them to say in prayer: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12). Of all the pious, therefore, groaning under this burden of corruptible flesh and in the weakness of this life, there is one hope: that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the just; and he is the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 2:1-2).

3. 6. 16. This advocate those men do not have who are removed far to the contrary from the just—even if this alone were the difference. Far be it that we should say, as they slander, that this just advocate "lied out of the necessity of the flesh," but we say that he, in the likeness of the flesh of sin, condemned sin on account of sin (Rom 8:3). Which, perhaps, these men, not understanding and blinded by desire of slandering, ignorant in how diverse ways the name of sin is wont to be put in the holy Scriptures, boast that we affirm a sin of Christ. We say, then, that Christ both had no sin, neither in soul nor in flesh, and, by taking on flesh, in the likeness of the flesh of sin condemned sin on account of sin. This, said somewhat obscurely by the Apostle, is resolved in two ways: either because the likenesses of things are wont to be called by the names of those things to which they are like, so that the Apostle is understood to have wished to call the very likeness of the flesh of sin "sin"; or because in the Law the sacrifice for sins was called sins, all of which were figures of the flesh of Christ, which is the true and only sacrifice for sins—not only for those which are all washed away in baptism, but also for those which afterward creep in from the weakness of this life. On account of which the whole Church daily cries to God in prayer: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12), and they are forgiven us through the singular sacrifice for sins, which the Apostle, speaking according to the Law, did not hesitate to call sin. Whence is also that much more evident saying of his, uncertain by no crossroad of anyone's ambiguity: We beseech you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin he made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor 5:20-21). For as to what I recalled above, he condemned sin on account of sin—because it was not said "on account of his own sin"—someone could so understand it as to say that he condemned sin on account of the sin of the Jews, because it came about, on account of the sin of those who crucified him, that he poured out his blood for the remission of sins; but this, where it is said that God made Christ himself, who knew no sin, to be sin, seems to me to be understood no more fittingly than that Christ was made a sacrifice for sins and on this account was called sin.

3. 7. 17. But who could endure them charging against us "that we say such advances will be in the future after the resurrection that men will there begin to fulfill the commandments of God which here they were unwilling to fulfill," since we say that there will be there no sin at all, nor any conflict with any desire of sin—as though they themselves dared to deny this? Who too will deny that wisdom and the knowledge of God will then be perfected in us, and in the Lord so great an exultation that it is full and true security, unless he be so averse to the truth that on this account he cannot attain to it? But these things will not be in the precepts, but in the reward of the precepts which here are to be observed. The contempt of which precepts does not lead there to the reward; but here zeal for keeping the precepts the grace of God bestows. And if anything even in these precepts is less kept, he pardons it; on account of which in prayer we say both Your will be done, and Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:10-12). Here, then, is the precept, that we sin not; there the reward, not to be able to sin; here is the precept, that we obey not the desires of sin; there the reward, that we have not the desires of sin; here is the precept: Understand, then, you who are foolish among the people, and be wise at last, you fools (Ps 94:8 (93)); there the reward is full wisdom and perfect knowledge—For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, says the Apostle, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known (1 Cor 13:12); here is the precept: Exult in God our helper (Ps 81:1 (80)), and Exult, you just, in the Lord (Ps 33:1 (32)); there the reward is to exult with a perfect and ineffable joy; lastly, in the precept it is set down: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; but in the reward: for they shall be satisfied (Matt 5:6). With what, I ask, will they be satisfied except with what they hunger and thirst for? Who, then, is so abhorrent not only from the divine but from human sense as to say that there can be in a man so great a righteousness, while it is hungered and thirsted for by him, as there will be when he will be satisfied with it? But when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, if the faith of Christ is awake in us, what is to be believed but that we hunger and thirst for Christ? Who was made for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, as it is written: He who glories, let him glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:30-31). And because now, not seeing him, we believe in him, therefore we thirst and hunger for righteousness. For as long as we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:6-7). When we shall see him, coming surely to sight, we shall exult with unspeakable joy, and then we shall be satisfied with righteousness, because now we say to him in pious desire: I shall be satisfied when your glory shall be manifested (Ps 17:15 (16)).

3. 7. 18. But how—I do not say impudent, but insane—is the pride of one not yet equal to the angels of God and yet thinking that he can already have a righteousness equal to the angels of God, and not perceiving so great and holy a man, who surely hungered and thirsted for that very perfection of righteousness, when by the greatness of revelations he was unwilling to be lifted up; and yet, that he might not be lifted up, he was not committed to his own choice and will, but received a sting of the flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet him. On account of which he asked the Lord three times that it might depart from him, and the Lord said to him: My grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:7-9). What power, except that to which it pertains not to be lifted up? And who doubts that this pertains to righteousness? With the perfection of this righteousness, then, are endowed the angels of God, who always see the face of the Father, and thereby of the whole Trinity, because through the Son they see in the Holy Spirit. But nothing is more sublime than that revelation; and yet none of the angels rejoicing in that contemplation has need of an angel of Satan by whom he may be buffeted, lest so great a greatness of revelation lift him up. This perfection of virtue the apostle Paul surely did not yet have, not yet equal to the angels of God, but there was in him the weakness of lifting himself up, which had to be repressed even through an angel of Satan, lest he be lifted up by the greatness of revelations. Although, therefore, that first elation cast down Satan himself, yet that supreme physician, who knows how to use well even evils, applied from an angel of Satan, against the vice of elation, a wholesome though troublesome medicine, as an antidote is wont to be made even from serpents against the venoms of serpents. What, then, is My grace is sufficient for you, except "lest, failing, you sink under the buffet of the angel of Satan"? And what is Power is made perfect in weakness, except that in this place of weakness the perfection of virtue can be so far only that, with weakness itself present, elation is repressed?—which weakness surely will be healed by future immortality. For how can it be called full health, where even against the buffet of the angel of Satan medicine is still necessary?

3. 7. 19. From this it has come about that virtue, which is now in a just man, is called perfect only so far that to its perfection there pertains even both the knowledge in truth and the confession in humility of its own imperfection. For then this small righteousness is, according to this weakness, perfect for its own measure, when it understands also what is lacking to it. And therefore the Apostle calls himself both imperfect and perfect; imperfect, namely, in thinking how much is lacking to him for righteousness, the fullness of which he still hungers and thirsts for; but perfect in that he is not ashamed to confess his own imperfection and advances well that he may arrive—just as we can say that a wayfarer is perfect whose advance is well promoted, although his aim is not perfected unless the arrival has been made. Therefore, when he had said According to the righteousness which is in the Law, having been blameless, he soon added: The things that were gains to me, these I have counted loss for the sake of Christ. But indeed I count all things to be loss on account of the eminent knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, for the sake of whom I counted all things not only detriments but even reckoned them to be dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness which is from the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is from God in faith (Phil 3:6-9). Behold, the Apostle says, surely not falsely, that he was blameless according to the righteousness which is from the Law; and yet these things which were gains to him he casts away for the sake of Christ and counts as losses, detriments, and dung—not only these, but all the rest which he recalled above—on account of not just any knowledge but the eminent, as he himself says, knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, which without doubt he still had in faith, not yet in sight. For then will the knowledge of Christ be eminent, when he will be so revealed that what is believed is seen. Whence in another place he says thus: For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, your life, then you too shall appear with him in glory (Col 3:3-4). Hence the Lord himself: He who loves me, he says, will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him (Jn 14:21). Hence John the Evangelist: Beloved, we are the sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2). Then will the knowledge of Christ be eminent; for now it is indeed hidden in faith, but does not yet appear eminent in sight.

3. 7. 20. Blessed Paul, therefore, casts away those past things of his righteousness as detriments and dung, that he may gain Christ and be found in him, not having his own righteousness which is from the Law. Why "his own," if it is from the Law? For that Law surely is not other than God's. Who said this except Marcion and Mani and other similar plagues? Since, then, that Law is God's, he says that the righteousness which is from the Law is his own; which righteousness of his own he was unwilling to have, but cast it away as dung. Why so, except because this is what we also demonstrated above: that they are under the Law who, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, are not subject to the righteousness of God? For they suppose that by the strength of their own choice they fulfill the Law that commands, and, entangled in this pride, are not turned to the grace that helps. So the letter kills them, either openly, by their not doing what it commands, also making themselves guilty; or by their supposing that they do, what they do not do, with the spiritual love which is from God. Thus they remain either openly unjust or falsely just, in open iniquity evidently dashed down, in false righteousness foolishly lifted up. And thereby in a wondrous way indeed, yet a true one, the righteousness of the Law is not fulfilled by the righteousness which is in the Law, or from the Law, but by the one which is in the spirit of grace. For the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in those, as it is written, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. But the Apostle says that he was blameless according to the righteousness which is in the Law, in the flesh, not in the spirit, and he says that the righteousness which is from the Law was his own, not God's. It is to be understood, therefore, that the righteousness of the Law is not fulfilled according to the righteousness which is in the Law, or from the Law, that is, according to the righteousness of man, but according to the righteousness which is in the spirit of grace; therefore according to the righteousness of God, that is, the one which is for a man from God. Which can be said more plainly and briefly thus: that the righteousness of the Law is not fulfilled when the Law commands and a man does it as though by his own strength, but when the spirit helps and a man's will, not free but freed by the grace of God, does it. The righteousness of the Law, then, is to command what pleases God, to forbid what displeases; but the righteousness which is in the Law is to serve the letter and to seek outside it no help of God for living rightly. For when he had said not having my own righteousness which is from the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, he added: which is from God. That, then, is the righteousness of God, which the proud, being ignorant, wish to establish as their own. For it is not called the righteousness of God because God is just by it, but because it is for a man from God.

3. 7. 21. But according to this righteousness of God, that is, the one which is for us from God, faith now works through love. And it works this: how a man may arrive at him in whom, not now seeing him, he believes. When he shall see him, then what was in faith through a mirror in an enigma will be in sight face to face; then love itself too will be perfected. For it is said too foolishly that God is loved as much before he is seen as he will be loved when he will be seen. Furthermore, if in this life, with no pious person in doubt, the more we love God, so much the more surely are we more just, who doubts that pious and true righteousness, when the love of God shall be perfect, will then be perfected? Then, therefore, the Law, so that absolutely nothing at all is lacking, will be fulfilled, of which Law, according to the Apostle, love is the fullness (Rom 13:10). And thereby, when he had said not having my own righteousness which is from the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is from God in faith, he then added: to the knowing of him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings (Phil 3:9-10). All these things were not yet full and perfect in the Apostle, but, as one set on the way, he was running to their fullness and perfection. For how had he already perfectly come to know Christ, who says in another place Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known (1 Cor 13:12)? And how had he already perfectly come to know the power of his resurrection, when it remained for him to come to know it more fully by experiencing it at the time of the resurrection of the flesh? And how had he already perfectly come to know the fellowship of his sufferings, not yet having experienced for him the suffering of death? Finally he adds and says: If in any way I may attain to the resurrection of the dead (Phil 3:11), and then he says: Not that I have already received or am already perfect (Phil 3:12). What, then, does he confess he has not yet received, and in what is he not yet perfect, except in that righteousness which is from God, which, desiring it, he was unwilling to have his own, which is from the Law? For from here he was speaking, and this was the cause that he said these things, resisting the enemies of the grace of God, for the bestowing of which Christ was crucified; of whose kind these men too are.

3. 7. 22. For from the place where he undertook to say these things, he thus began: Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the mutilation. For we are the circumcision, who serve God in the spirit—or, as some manuscripts have, who serve God in spirit, or the Spirit of God—and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh (Phil 3:2-3). Hence it is manifest that he is dealing against the Jews, who, observing the Law carnally and wishing to establish their own righteousness, were killed by the letter, were not given life by the spirit, and gloried in themselves, while the Apostles and all the sons of the promise gloried in Christ. Then he added: Although I might have confidence even in the flesh. If any other thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I more (Phil 3:4). And, enumerating all the things which have glory according to the flesh, he ended at this, where he says: According to the righteousness which is in the Law, having been blameless (Phil 3:6). And when he had said that these things had been to him altogether losses and detriments and dung, that he might gain Christ, he added what is in question: And be found in him, not having my own righteousness which is from the Law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is from God (Phil 3:9). The perfection, then, of this righteousness, which will be only in that eminent knowledge of Christ, on account of which he said all things were loss to him, he confessed he had not yet received, and therefore was not yet perfect. But I follow on, he says, if I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus (Phil 3:12). Such is I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of as is I shall know even as I am known. Brethren, he says, I do not reckon that I myself have laid hold of it. But one thing—forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth to the things that are before, according to my aim I follow on to the prize of the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:13-14). The order of the words is but one thing I follow on. About which one thing it is well understood that the Lord too admonished Martha, where he says: Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. But one thing is necessary (Luke 10:41-42). This, wishing to lay hold of it, as one set on the way, he said that he followed on to the prize of the heavenly calling of God in Christ Jesus. But who would hesitate that, when he has laid hold of what he asserts that he follows on to, he will then have a righteousness equal to the righteousness of the holy angels, none of whom, surely, an angel of Satan buffets, lest he be lifted up by the greatness of revelations? Then, admonishing those who might suppose themselves already perfect by the fullness of that righteousness: Let us, then, as many as are perfect, he says, be of this mind—as though he said: "If, according to the capacity of mortal man, we are perfect for the measure of this life, let us understand that this too pertains to that very perfection, that we are of this mind, that we are not yet perfect with respect to that angelic righteousness which will be ours in the manifestation of Christ"—And if you are of a different mind in anything, he says, this too God will reveal to you (Phil 3:15). How, except to those walking and advancing on the way of the right faith, until this pilgrimage is finished and one comes to sight? Whence he consequently added: Nevertheless, in that to which we have come, let us walk (Phil 3:16). Then he concludes, that those may be guarded against from whom this passage of his discourse took its beginning: Be imitators of me, brethren, he says, and observe those who so walk as you have us for a model. For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, as the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction (Phil 3:17-19), and the rest. These are the very ones of whom, beginning, he had said: Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, and what follows. All, then, are enemies of the cross of Christ who, wishing to establish their own righteousness which is from the Law, that is, with the letter only commanding, not the spirit fulfilling, are not subject to the righteousness of God. For if those who are heirs through the Law, faith is made empty (Rom 4:14). If righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died in vain (Gal 2:21), therefore the stumbling-block of the cross is done away (Gal 5:11). And thereby those are the enemies of his cross who say that righteousness is through the Law, to which it pertains to command, not to help. But the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, helps our weakness.

3. 7. 23. Wherefore he who lives according to the righteousness which is in the Law, without faith in the grace of Christ, as the Apostle recalls that he lived blamelessly, is to be thought to have no true righteousness—not because the Law is not true and holy, but because to wish to obey the commanding letter, without the life-giving Spirit of God, as it were by the strength of free choice, is not true righteousness. But the righteousness according to which the just man lives by faith, since it is for a man from God through the spirit of grace, is true righteousness. Which, although it is not undeservedly called perfect in some just men according to the capacity of this life, yet is small compared with that great righteousness which the equality of the angels receives. He who did not yet have this both called himself perfect on account of the one which was already in him and imperfect on account of the one which was still lacking. But plainly that lesser righteousness makes merit, that greater becomes the reward. Whence he who does not follow on to the former does not attain to the latter. Therefore to deny the fullness of righteousness to come after the future resurrection of man, and to suppose that there will be only so much righteousness in the body of that life as can be in the body of this death, is of singular madness. But it is most true that men do not there begin to fulfill the commandments of God which here they were unwilling to fulfill. For there will be the fullness of a most perfect righteousness—not, however, of men pursuing commandments and striving by advancing to that fullness, but in the twinkling of an eye, just as the resurrection of the dead itself is to be, since that greatness of perfect righteousness will be given as a reward to those who here did the commandments, not also itself commanded to be done. But I would so say "did the commandments" that we remember that the very commandments pertain to the prayer in which daily the holy sons of the promise say truly both Your will be done, and Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:10-12).

3. 8. 24. When, therefore, the Pelagians are pressed by these and similar testimonies and voices of the truth, that they may not deny original sin; that they may not say that the grace of God, by which we are justified, is given not freely but according to our merits; that they may not say that in mortal man, however holy and well-doing, there is so great a righteousness that the remission of sins is not necessary for him even after the washing of regeneration, until he ends this life—therefore, when they are pressed that they may not say these three things, and through these alienate from the grace of the Savior the men who believe them, and persuade men, lifted up into pride, to go headlong into the judgment of the devil, they send in the fogs of other questions, in which their impiety may lurk among simpler men, whether the more sluggish or the less learned in the holy writings. These are the fogs "about the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the Law, the praise of free choice, the praise of the saints," as though any of us found fault with these, and did not rather proclaim them with due praises in honor of the Creator and Savior. But neither does the creature wish to be so praised that it does not wish to be healed; and the more marriage is to be praised, the less is to be imputed to it the shameful concupiscence of the flesh, which is not from the Father but is from the world. Which surely marriage found in men, did not make, because both that concupiscence is in very many without marriage, and marriage itself, had no one sinned, could have been without it. And the Law, holy and just and good, is not itself grace, and nothing is rightly done from it without grace, because it was not given as one that could give life, but was set down for the sake of transgression, that it might shut up the convicted under sin, and that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. And free choice, taken captive, avails only for sin, but for righteousness it does not avail unless it is divinely freed and helped. And thereby all the saints too, whether from that ancient Abel up to John the Baptist, or from the Apostles themselves up to this time, and henceforth up to the end of the world, are to be praised in the Lord, not in themselves, because both the voice of those earlier ones is In the Lord shall my soul be praised (Ps 34:2 (33)), and the voice of these later ones is By the grace of God I am what I am (1 Cor 15:10). And to all pertains That he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31), and the confession is common to all: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 Jn 1:8).

3. 9. 25. But since in these five matters which I have set forth, in which they seek lurking-places and out of which they weave slanders, they are exposed and overcome by the divine documents, they have devised to deter, by the detestable name of the Manichees, such unskilled persons as they could, lest these lend ears to the truth against their most perverse dogmas—because, namely, the Manichees condemn by blaspheming the first three of these five, saying that neither the human creature nor marriage nor the Law was instituted by the most high and true God. But they do not accept what the truth says, that sin took its beginning from free choice and that from it is every evil, whether of angel or of man, because, straying too far from God, they preferred to believe the nature of evil always evil and coeternal with God. The holy Patriarchs and Prophets too they pursue with as great execrations as they can. Behold whence the new heretics think, by putting forward the name of the Manichees, to escape the bond of the truth; but they do not escape. For it pursues them and at once overthrows both the Manichees and the Pelagians. For man, while he is born, because he is something good, insofar as he is a man, refutes the Manichee and praises the Creator; but insofar as he contracts original sin, he refutes Pelagius and has a necessary Savior. For the fact too that this nature is said to be healed strikes back at both, because it would not need medicine if it were healthy—which is against Pelagius—nor could it be healed at all if it were an eternal and unchangeable evil—which is against the Manichee. Likewise, that we do not say that the concupiscence of the flesh is to be imputed to marriage, which we praise as instituted by the Lord, is both against the Pelagians, who place it among things to be praised, and against the Manichees, who attribute it to an alien evil nature, when it is an evil accidental to our nature, not to be separated by a sundering of God but to be healed by the mercy of God. Likewise, that we say the Law, holy and just and good, was set down for the sake of transgression, not to justify the ungodly but to convict the proud, is both against the Manichees, because, according to the Apostle, it is praised, and against the Pelagians, because, according to the Apostle, no one is justified by the Law, and therefore the spirit of grace freely helps to give life to those whom the letter kills, that is, whom the good Law, commanding, makes guilty by transgression. Likewise, that we say free choice, free in evil, is to be set free by the grace of God for doing good, is against the Pelagians; but that we say there arose from it that which before was not, an evil, is against the Manichees. Likewise, that we honor the holy Patriarchs and Prophets with due praises in God is against the Manichees. But that we say that even to them, although just and pleasing to God, the propitiation of the Lord was necessary, is against the Pelagians. The Catholic faith, then, finds both, like the other heretics, to be adversaries, and convicts both by the authority of the divine testimonies and the light of the truth.

3. 10. 26. The Pelagians, to be sure, add to the fogs of their lurking-places a question about the origin of the soul, not necessary, to this end: that by disturbing manifest matters with the obscurity of other matters they may contrive a place for hiding. For they say: "We hold the transmission of souls together with the transmission of sin." Where and when they heard this in the discourses, or read it in the writings, of those who defend the Catholic faith against them, I do not know; because, even though I find something written by Catholics about this matter, the defense of the truth had not yet been undertaken against these men, nor was it being done that an answer might be made to them. But this I say: that original sin is so manifest according to the holy Scriptures, and that it is remitted by the washing of regeneration in little ones is confirmed by so great an antiquity and authority of the Catholic faith, so well known by the clear celebration of the Church, that whatever is discussed, by anyone's inquiry or affirmation, about the origin of the soul, if it be against this, cannot be true. Wherefore whoever, whether about the soul or about any obscure matter, builds up that whereby he may destroy this which is most true, most well-founded, most well-known, whether he be a son or an enemy of the Church, is either to be corrected or to be guarded against. But let this be the end of this volume, that what follows may have another beginning.

BOOK FOUR

4. 1. 1. After these things which we have treated and to which we have replied, they repeat the same things—they whose letter we are refuting—but in a different way. For first they set them forth as charges against us, as things we wrongly think; but afterward, expounding what they themselves think, they rendered the same things conversely, adding certain two things which they had not said, that is, "that they say baptism is necessary for all ages," and "that through Adam death passed to us, not crimes." Which things too are to be treated in their place. Accordingly, since in the earlier book, which we have just finished, we said that they hold out the obstacles of five matters, in which their dogmas, hostile to the grace of God and to the Catholic faith, lie hidden—namely, the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the Law, the praise of free choice, the praise of the saints—I judge it more convenient to distinguish by kind all the things which they defend, the contraries of which they charge against us, and to demonstrate which of their things pertain to which of these five, so that, by the distinction itself, our reply may be clearer and briefer.

4. 2. 2. The praise of the creature, so far as pertains to the human race, about which the question now is, they pursue with these statements: "That God is the founder of those being born and that the sons of men are the work of God, and that all sin descends not from nature but from will." To this praise of the creature they apply "that they say baptism is necessary for all ages, namely, that that creature may be adopted into the sons of God, not that it contracts anything from its parents which must be expiated by the washing of regeneration." To this praise they join also "that they say the Lord Christ was sprinkled with no stain of sin, so far as pertains to his infancy," because they assert that his flesh is most pure from all contagion of sin not by his proper excellence and singular grace but by a communion of nature, which is in all infants. To this also pertains the fact that they insert a question "about the origin of the soul," thus striving to make equal to the soul of Christ all the souls of little ones, which they wish to be likewise sprinkled with no stain of sin. On this account they also say: That from Adam nothing of evil passed through the rest except death, which is not always an evil, they say, since it is for the martyrs the cause of rewards, and what makes a death be called good or evil is not the dissolution of bodies, which will be raised up in every kind of men, but the diversity of merits, which comes about from human liberty. These things they write in this letter about the praise of the creature. But marriage they praise according to the Scriptures, "because the Lord speaks in the Gospel: He who made them from the beginning made them male and female. And he said: Increase and multiply and fill the earth." Although this is written not in that place of the Gospel but rather in the Law. They add also: What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder (Matt 19:6). Which evangelical words we acknowledge. In the praise of the Law they say: "The old Law, according to the Apostle, just and holy and good, could confer perpetual life on those who keep its commandments and live justly through faith, as on the Prophets and Patriarchs and all the saints." In the praise of free choice they say: "Free choice has not perished, since the Lord speaks through the Prophet: If you are willing and will hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land; if you are unwilling and will not hear, the sword shall devour you (Isa 1:19-20). And thereby grace also helps the good purpose of each, yet does not instill zeal for virtue into one who resists, because there is no respect of persons with God." With the praise of the saints they cover themselves, saying: "That baptism perfectly renews men, since indeed the Apostle is a witness, who testifies that through the washing of water the Church is made holy and immaculate from among the Gentiles. That the Holy Spirit too helped good minds in ancient times, the Prophet saying to God: Your good Spirit will lead me into the right way (Ps 143:10 (142)). That all the Prophets and Apostles, or saints, of the New as well as of the Old Testament, to whom God bears witness, were just not in comparison with the wicked but by the rule of virtues; but that in the time to come there is a reward both of good works and of evil; and, moreover, that no one can fulfill there the commandments which here he despised, because the Apostle said: We must be made manifest before the tribunal of Christ, that each may receive the proper things of the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil (2 Cor 5:10)."

4. 3. 3. Whoever, with a Catholic mind, shrinks from these wicked and damnable dogmas in this threefold division, let him avoid the lurking-places and ambushes of that fivefold one, and let him be so cautious between the two that, in declining the Manichee, he does not incline toward Pelagius; and again, let him so separate himself from the Pelagians that he does not join himself to the Manichees; or, if he is already held by one of the two, let him not so rescue himself from either party as to rush into the other. For they seem to be contrary to one another, since the Manichees manifest themselves by disparaging those five things, the Pelagians hide themselves by praising them. Wherefore whoever, according to the rule of the Catholic faith, both so glorifies the Creator over the good creature of flesh and soul in men being born—which the Manichee does not wish—that yet, on account of the vice which passed over into them through the sin of the first man, he confesses a Savior necessary even for little ones—which Pelagius does not wish; so distinguishes the evil of shameful concupiscence from the goodness of marriage that, neither like the Manichees does he find fault with that whence we are born, nor like the Pelagians does he praise that whereby we are confounded; so defends that the Law given through Moses, holy and just and good, was given by the holy and just and good God—which, against the Apostle, the Manichee denies—that he says it both shows sin, yet does not take it away, and commands righteousness, yet does not give it—which again, against the Apostle, Pelagius denies; so asserts free choice that he says that both the evil of the angel and of man began not from I know not what always-evil nature, which is none, but from choice itself—which overthrows the Manichean heresy—nor yet that the captive will can therefore breathe again into wholesome freedom except by the grace of God—which overthrows the Pelagian heresy; so praises in God the holy men of God, not only from the Christ manifested in the flesh and thenceforward, but also of the earlier times—whom the Manichees dare to blaspheme—that yet about them he believes themselves confessing rather than the Pelagians lying. For it is the voice of the saints: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 Jn 1:8).

4. 4. 4. These things being so, what does it profit the new heretics, the enemies of the cross of Christ and the assailants of divine grace, that they seem sound from the error of the Manichees and die of another pestilence of their own? What does it profit them that in the praise of the creature they say, "the good God is the founder of those being born, through whom all things were made, and the sons of men are his work"—whom the Manichees say are the work of the prince of darkness—when, between both or in both, the creature of God which is in infants perishes? For both are unwilling that it be freed by the flesh and blood of Christ: the former, because they destroy the very flesh and blood of Christ, as though he did not take these up at all in man or from man; the latter, because they assert that there is no evil in infants whence they should be freed through the sacrament of this flesh and blood. The human creature lies between them in the little ones, good by institution, vitiated by propagation, confessing by its goods a most excellent founder, seeking by its evils a most merciful redeemer; having the Manichees as disparagers of its goods, having the Pelagians as deniers of its evils, both as persecutors. And although through infancy it cannot speak, yet by its silent appearance and its hidden weakness it accuses the impious vanity of both, saying to the former: "Believe that I am created by him who creates good things"; and saying to the latter: "Allow me to be healed by him who created me." The Manichee says: "There is nothing of this infant except the good soul to be freed; the rest, pertaining not to the good God but to the prince of darkness, is to be rejected." The Pelagian says: "Nay, of this infant nothing is to be freed, because we show the whole to be safe." Both lie; but the accuser of the flesh alone is now milder, because the praiser is convicted of raging over the whole. But neither does the Manichee help the human soul by blaspheming God the author of the whole man, nor does the Pelagian allow the divine medicine to help human infancy by denying original sin. God, therefore, has mercy through the Catholic faith, which, refuting both ruins, helps the infant unto salvation, saying to the Manichees: "Hear the Apostle crying: Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? (1 Cor 6:19), and believe that the good God is the creator of bodies too, because the work of the prince of darkness cannot be the temple of the Holy Spirit"; saying to the Pelagians: "In iniquities he was conceived, and in sins his mother nourished him in the womb, whom you behold a little one. Why, by defending him as though free from all harm, do you not allow him to be freed through pardon? No one is clean from filth, not even an infant whose life is of one day upon the earth (Job 14:4-5 LXX). Allow the wretched one to receive the remission of sins through him who alone, neither small nor great, could have sin."

4. 4. 5. What, then, does it profit them that they say, "All sin descends not from nature but from will," and resist by the truth of this statement the Manichees, who say that an evil nature is the cause of sin, when, unwilling to admit original sin—although it too, without doubt, descends from the will of the first man—they make little ones depart from the body guilty? What does it profit them "to confess that baptism is necessary for all ages," which the Manichees say is superfluous for every age, when these men say it is false in the case of little ones, so far as pertains to the remission of sins? What does it profit them that, against the Manichees, who contend that the flesh of Christ was none, or simulated, these men defend against them not only "that it was true, but that the soul itself was sprinkled with no stain of sin," when they so make the other infants equal to his infancy in no unequal purity that both he does not seem to keep, by comparison with these, his own proper holiness, and these obtain from him no salvation?

4. 4. 6. In that indeed which they say, "that through Adam death passed to us, not crimes," they do not have the Manichees as adversaries, because neither do these build up that original sin passed and passes, together with death, into all from the first man, who was first pure and upright in body and spirit and afterward depraved through free choice; but they say that the flesh was from the beginning created an evil body from an evil body and by an evil spirit and with an evil spirit, but that the good soul—a particle, namely, of God—on account of the merits of its own defilement through the foods and drinks in which it was previously bound up, comes into a man, and thus through intercourse is bound also by the chain of the flesh. And thereby the Manichees agree with the Pelagians that the crime of the first man did not pass into the human race, neither through the flesh, which they say was never good, nor through the soul, which they declare comes into the flesh of man with the merits of its own defilements by which it was polluted before the flesh. But how do the Pelagians say "that death alone passed to us through Adam"? For if we die for this reason, because he died—but he died because he sinned—they say that the punishment passes without fault, and that innocent little ones are punished by an unjust penalty, contracting death without the merits of death. This the Catholic faith knows about the one and only mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who deigned for us to undergo death, that is, the penalty of sin, without sin. For just as he alone was made the son of man, that we through him might be made the sons of God, so he alone took up for us, without evil merits, the penalty, that we through him might obtain, without good merits, grace; because, just as nothing of good was owed to us, so neither anything of evil to him. Commending, therefore, his love toward those to whom he was about to give undeserved life, he willed to suffer for them an undeserved death. This singular prerogative of the Mediator the Pelagians try to make void, so that it is now no longer singular in the Lord, if Adam so suffered owed death on account of his fault that the little ones, contracting no fault from him, suffer undeserved death. For although much good is conferred on the good through death, whence some have fittingly even discussed the good of death, yet what is here to be proclaimed except the mercy of God, that the penalty of sin is turned to good uses?

4. 4. 7. But these men say these things while they wish to twist men, from the words of the Apostle, into their own sense. For where the Apostle says: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed into all men, there they wish it to be understood that not sin passed but death. What, then, is that which follows: in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12)? For the Apostle says either that all sinned in that one man, of whom he had said Through one man sin entered into the world, or in that sin, or surely in death. For it ought not to disturb us that he did not say "in which" but in whom all sinned; for death, in the Greek tongue, is of the masculine gender. Let them choose whichever they will. For either "in that man all sinned" was said for this reason, that when he sinned all were in him; or in that sin all sinned, because what those being born were going to contract became generally the deed of all; or it remains that they say all sinned in that death. But how this can be understood I do not plainly see. For men die in sin, not in death that sins; for sin going before, death follows, not death going before, sin. For the sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15:56)—that is, the sting by whose pricking death comes about, not the sting with which death pricks, just as poison, if it is drunk, is called the cup of death, because by that cup death was caused, not because the cup was made by death or was given by death. But if, for this reason, sin cannot be understood by those words of the Apostle, in whom all sinned, because in the Greek, from which the letter was translated, sin is put in the feminine gender, it remains that all be understood to have sinned in that first man, because in him all were when he sinned, whence sin is contracted by being born, which is not loosed except by being reborn. For thus too holy Hilary understood what is written, in whom all sinned; for he says: In whom, that is, in Adam, all sinned. Then he added: It is manifest that all sinned in Adam as in a mass; for he himself, corrupted through sin, all whom he begot were born under sin. Writing these things, Hilary without ambiguity reminded us how it was to be understood, in whom all sinned.

4. 4. 8. But on what account does the same Apostle say that we are reconciled to God through Christ, except on account of the fact that we had been made enemies? And what is this except sin? Whence the Prophet too says: Your sins separate between you and God (Isa 59:2). On account of this separation, therefore, the Mediator was sent, to take away the sin of the world, by which, as enemies, we were separated, and that, reconciled, we might from enemies be made sons. From here surely the Apostle was speaking; from here it came about that he interposed what he says, that through one man sin entered. For these are his words above: But God commends his love toward us, he says, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us; much more, then, being now justified in his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved in his life; and not only so, but glorying also in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation (Rom 5:8-11). Then he adds: On account of this, just as through one man sin entered into this world and through sin death, and so it passed into all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). Why do the Pelagians shuffle? If reconciliation through Christ is necessary for all, sin passed through all, by which we were enemies, so that we had need to be reconciled. This reconciliation is in the washing of regeneration and in the flesh and blood of Christ, without which not even little ones can have life in themselves. For just as there was one unto death on account of sin, so there is one unto life on account of righteousness, because, as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive (1 Cor 15:22); and: As through the offense of one, unto all men, unto condemnation; so also through the justification of one, unto all men, unto justification of life (Rom 5:18). Who, against these apostolic words, has become deaf with so great a hardness of wicked impiety that, having heard these things, he contends that death passed into us through Adam without sin, except the assailants of the grace of God, the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction (Phil 3:19), if they persist in this obstinacy? But let it suffice to have said these things on account of that serpentine craftiness of theirs, by which they wish to corrupt simple minds and turn them away from the chastity of the Catholic faith under the guise, as it were, of the praise of the creature.

4. 5. 9. But further, concerning the praise of marriage, what does it profit them that, against the Manichees, who assign marriage not to the true and good God but to the prince of darkness, these men oppose them with words of true piety, saying: "Because the Lord speaks in the Gospel: He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and he said: Increase and multiply and fill the earth. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matt 19:4-6)? What does it profit them to seduce, through the true, to the false? For they say this so that infants may be believed to be born free from all harm, and thus there be no need for them to be reconciled to God through Christ, since they have no original sin, on account of which reconciliation is necessary for all through the one who came into the world without sin, just as the enmities of all were caused through the one through whom sin entered into the world. Which is believed in a Catholic manner for the saving of the nature of men, with the praise of marriage preserved, because the praise of marriage is the just coupling of the sexes, not the iniquitous defense of vices. And thereby, when these men, by praising marriage, wish to draw men over from the Manichees to themselves, they desire to change their disease for them, not to heal it.

4. 5. 10. Again, in the praise of the Law, what does it profit them that they say the truth against the Manichees, when from this they wish to lead to that which they falsely think against Catholics? For they say: We confess also that the old Law, according to the Apostle, is just and holy and good, which could confer perpetual life on those who keep its commandments and live justly through faith, as on the Prophets and Patriarchs and all the saints. By which words, most cunningly placed, they praise the Law against grace. For that Law, although holy and just and good, could confer perpetual life not on all those men of God, but faith, which is in Christ, could. For this faith works through love, not according to the letter which kills, but according to the Spirit which gives life; to which grace of God the Law leads, terrifying by transgression as a pedagogue, so that there may be conferred on a man what it itself could not confer. For to those words of theirs, by which they say "the Law could confer perpetual life on the Prophets and Patriarchs and all the saints who keep its commandments," the Apostle answers: If righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died in vain (Gal 2:21). If the inheritance is from the Law, it is now no longer from the promise (Gal 3:18). If those who are through the Law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promise is made void (Rom 4:14). But that in the Law no one is justified before God is manifest, because the just man lives by faith; but the Law is not of faith, but he who does these things shall live in them (Gal 3:11-12). This testimony from the Law recalled by the Apostle is understood either on account of temporal life, for fear of losing which men did the works of the Law, not out of faith, because transgressors of the Law were commanded by that same Law to be killed by the people; or, if it is to be understood more deeply that it was written on account of eternal life, He who does these things shall live in them, then the command of the Law was so expressed that the weakness of man, failing in itself for doing the things which the Law commands, might rather seek the help of the grace of God out of faith, by whose mercy even faith itself is given. For faith is so had, as God has apportioned to each the measure of faith (Rom 12:3). For if men have not of themselves but receive the spirit of power and of love and of self-control—whence the same Teacher of the Gentiles says: For we have not received the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control (2 Tim 1:7)—surely there is received also the spirit of faith, of which he says: But having the same spirit of faith (2 Cor 4:13). Truly, then, the Law says: He who does these things shall live in them. But that one may do them and live in them, not the Law which commands this but faith which obtains this is necessary. Yet this faith, that it may merit to receive these things, is itself given freely.

4. 5. 11. But nowhere do these enemies of grace contrive more hidden ambushes for more violently assailing that same grace than where they praise the Law, which without doubt is to be praised. For by diverse modes of speaking and by a variety of words, in all their disputations they wish grace to be understood as the Law—namely, that from the Lord God we have the help of knowledge, by which we may know the things which are to be done, not the inspiration of love, that we may do, with holy love, the things known, which is properly grace. For the knowledge of the Law without love puffs up, does not build up, according to the same Apostle saying most openly: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Cor 8:1). Which sentence is like that by which it was said: The letter kills, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). For such as is knowledge puffs up is the letter kills; such as is love builds up is the spirit gives life, because the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). The knowledge of the Law, therefore, makes a proud transgressor, but through the gift of love it delights one to be a doer of the Law. We do not, then, make void the Law through faith, but we establish the Law (Rom 3:31), which, by terrifying, leads to faith. For the Law works wrath for this reason, that, to one terrified and turned to fulfilling the righteousness of the Law, the mercy of God may bestow grace through our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the wisdom of God, of which it is written: She carries the Law and mercy on her tongue (Prov 3:16 LXX)—the Law by which she terrifies, the mercy by which she helps; the Law through a servant, the mercy through herself; the Law as in the staff which Elisha sent to raise the widow's son and he did not rise—For if a law had been given which could give life, righteousness would indeed be entirely from the Law (Gal 3:21)—but the mercy as in Elisha himself, who, bearing the figure of Christ, was joined to the dead one to be made alive, by the signification of a great sacrament, as of the New Testament.

4. 6. 12. Likewise, that against the Manichees they praise free choice, employing the prophetic testimony: If you are willing and will hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you are unwilling and will not hear me, the sword shall consume you (Isa 1:19-20)—what does this profit them? Since indeed they not so much defend free choice against the Manichees as exalt it against Catholics. For they so wish what was said—If you are willing and will hear me—to be understood, as though in that preceding will there were the merit of the consequent grace, and thus grace be now no longer grace, which is not gratuitous when it is rendered as owed. But if they so understood what was said, If you are willing, that they confessed that even that good will is prepared by him of whom it is written The will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 LXX), then, as Catholics, they would use this testimony, and not only would they conquer the old heresy of the Manichees but they would not found the new one of the Pelagians.

4. 6. 13. What does it profit them that, in praise of free choice itself, they say, "Grace helps the good purpose of each"? This would be received without scruple as said in a Catholic way, if they did not place merit in the good purpose, to which merit the reward would now be rendered according to debt, not according to grace, but understood and confessed that even the good purpose itself, which a consequent grace helps, could not have been in a man if grace did not precede. For how is there a good purpose of a man without the Lord first showing mercy, since the good will itself is what is prepared by the Lord? But that when they had said, "Grace also helps the good purpose of each," they soon added, "yet does not instill zeal for virtue into one who resists"—this could be well understood, if it were not said by these men, whose meaning is known. For to one resisting, the very hearing of the divine calling is procured by the grace of God itself, and then in him, now no longer resisting, zeal for virtue is kindled. But truly, in all the things which anyone does according to God, his mercy goes before him (Ps 59:10 (58)), which these men do not wish, because they wish to be not Catholics but Pelagians. For it greatly delights proud impiety that even that which it is compelled to confess given by the Lord should seem to be not bestowed on it but rendered to it—namely, that the sons of perdition, not of promise, may be believed to have made themselves good, and that God has now rendered the owed reward, for this work of theirs, to those made good by themselves.

4. 6. 14. For their very swelling has so blocked up the ears of their heart that they do not hear: For what do you have that you have not received? (1 Cor 4:7); do not hear: Without me you can do nothing (Jn 15:5); do not hear: Love is from God (1 Jn 4:7); do not hear: God has apportioned the measure of faith (Rom 12:3); do not hear: The Spirit breathes where he wills (Jn 3:8); and: Those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Rom 8:14); do not hear: No one can come to me unless it has been given to him by my Father (Jn 6:65); do not hear what Ezra writes: Blessed is the Lord of our fathers, who put these things into the heart of the king, to glorify his house which is in Jerusalem (Ezra 7:27); do not hear what the Lord says through Jeremiah: And I will put my fear into their heart, that they may not depart from me, and I will visit them, that I may make them good (Jer 32:40-41); and especially that through the prophet Ezekiel, where God shows plainly that he is provoked by no good merits of men to make them good, that is, obedient to his commandments, but rather that he repays these goods to them for evils, doing this for his own sake, not for theirs. For he says: Thus says the Lord: I do this not for your sake, O house of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name, which you profaned among the nations, into which you entered. And I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you profaned in their midst, and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says the Lord Adonai, when I will have been sanctified in you before their eyes. And I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all lands, and bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be cleansed from all your uncleannesses, and I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you; and the heart of stone will be taken away from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and will cause you to walk in my judgments and to keep my decrees and to do them (Ezek 36:22-27). And after a little, through the same Prophet: Not for your sake, he says, do I do it, says the Lord God, be it known to you. Be confounded and ashamed of your ways, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord God: In the day in which I will cleanse you from all your iniquities, and will resettle the cities, and the deserts will be built up, and the desolated land will be tilled, whereas it was desolated before the eyes of every passer-by, and they will say: That desolated land has become like a garden of delight, and the deserted and desolated and dug-up cities sit fortified; and the nations, whoever have been left around you, will know that I the Lord have built up the destroyed places, have planted the desolated ones; I the Lord have spoken and have done it. Thus says the Lord: Yet for this too will I be sought by the house of Israel, that I may do for them: I will multiply them like sheep—men, like holy sheep, like the sheep of Jerusalem in her feast days; so will those desolated cities be full of sheep—men, and they will know that I am the Lord (Ezek 36:32-38).

4. 6. 15. What has remained to the dead skin, whence it can be inflated and disdain, when it glories, to glory in the Lord? What has remained to it, when, whatever it shall have said that it did, so that, with the merit of man preceding and arising from man, God should consequently do that of which man is worthy, it will be answered, it will be cried out against, it will be contradicted: I do it, but for the sake of my holy name, not for your sake do I do it, says the Lord God (Ezek 36:22, 32)? Nothing so overthrows the Pelagians saying "the grace of God is given according to our merits"—which indeed Pelagius himself, even if not by correcting himself, yet by fearing the Eastern judges, condemned—nothing so overthrows this presumption of those saying, "We do that we may merit those with whom the Lord may do." There answers you not Pelagius but the Lord himself: I do it, and not for your sake, but for the sake of my holy name. For what can you do of good from a heart that is not good? But that you may have a good heart: I will give you, he says, a new heart, and a new spirit I will give you. Can you say: We first walked in his judgments and kept his judgment and acted so as to be worthy to whom he would give his grace? For what good would you, evil men, do, and how would you do these good things unless you were good? But that men may be good, who makes it except he who said And I will visit them, that I may make them good; and who said And I will put my Spirit within you and will cause you to walk in my judgments and to keep my decrees and to do them? Do you not yet awaken? Do you not yet hear: I will cause you to walk, I will cause you to keep, and finally I will cause you to do? Why do you still inflate yourselves? We indeed walk—it is true—we keep, we do; but he causes that we walk, that we keep, that we do. This is the grace of God making us good; this is his mercy going before us. What do the deserts and desolated and dug-up places merit?—which yet will be built up and tilled and fortified. Are these things for the merits of their desertion, desolation, digging up? Far be it! For those merits are evil, these gifts good. Goods are therefore rendered to the evil; gratuitous, then, not owed, and therefore grace. I, says the Lord, I the Lord. Does not this voice repress you, O human pride, who say, "I do it, that I may merit to be built up and planted by the Lord"? Do you not hear: Not for your sake do I do it? I the Lord have built up the destroyed places, have planted the desolated ones; I the Lord have spoken and have done it—yet not for your sake, but for the sake of my holy name? Who multiplies men like sheep, like holy sheep, like the sheep of Jerusalem? Who causes those desolated cities to be full of sheep—men, except he who follows and says And they will know that I am the Lord? But with what sheep—men does he fill the cities, as he has promised: whether those he finds or those he makes? Let us ask the Psalm. Behold, it answers; let us hear: Come, let us adore and fall down before him, and let us weep before the Lord who made us, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand (Ps 95:6-7 (94)). He himself, then, makes the sheep with which he fills the desolated cities. What wonder? Since to that one sheep, that is, the Church, whose members are all the sheep—men, it is said: For I am the Lord who makes you. Why do you hold out to me free choice, which will not be free for doing righteousness unless you have been a sheep? He, therefore, who makes men sheep, he himself frees human wills unto the obedience of piety.

4. 6. 16. But why he makes these men sheep and does not make those, he with whom there is no respect of persons—this is the very question which the blessed Apostle, to those who propose it more curiously than capably, says: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing molded say to him who molded it: Why have you made me thus? (Rom 9:20) This is the very question which pertains to that depth which the same Apostle, wishing to look into it, in a way was terrified and cried out: O depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him? For of him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory forever and ever (Rom 11:33-36). Let them not, therefore, dare to scrutinize this unsearchable question, who, defending merit before grace and therefore now against grace, wish to give first to God, that it may be repaid to them—to give first, surely, something out of free choice, that there may be grace to be repaid as a reward—and let them wisely understand, or faithfully believe, that even what they suppose they have given first they have received from him of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. But why this one receives, that one does not receive, when both do not merit to receive, and whichever of them receives, receives undeservedly—let them measure their own strength and not scrutinize things stronger than themselves. Let it suffice them to know that there is no iniquity with God. For when the Apostle had found no merits by which Jacob the twin might precede his brother before God: What then shall we say? he says; is there iniquity with God? God forbid! For he says to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will be merciful. So then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:14-16). Let his gratuitous mercy, then, be pleasing to us, even if this deep question remains unresolved. Which, however, is resolved only so far as the same Apostle resolves it, saying: But if God, willing to show his wrath and to make known his power, bore in much patience the vessels of wrath, which are fitted for perdition, and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he prepared unto glory (Rom 9:22-23). For wrath is not rendered except as owed, lest there be iniquity with God; but mercy, even when it is offered unowed, is not iniquity with God. And from this the vessels of mercy understand how gratuitous a mercy is offered to them, in that to the vessels of wrath, with whom the cause of perdition and the mass is common to them, owed and just wrath is repaid. And let these things now suffice against those who, through the freedom of choice, wish to destroy the generosity of grace.

4. 7. 17. But as to the fact that, by the praise of the saints, they are unwilling that we, with the disposition of that Publican, hunger and thirst for righteousness, but rather, with the vanity of that Pharisee, belch as though satisfied and full, what does it profit them that, against the Manichees, who destroy baptism, these men say "men are perfectly renewed by baptism," and to this employ the testimony of the Apostle, who testifies that through the washing of water the Church is made holy and immaculate from among the Gentiles, when with a proud and perverse sense they put forth their disputations against the prayers of the Church herself? For they say this so that the Church may be believed, after holy baptism, in which there comes about the remission of all sins, to have no further sin, when against them she, from the rising of the sun to its setting, in all her members cries to God: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12). What of the fact that even about themselves, if they are questioned in this cause, they find nothing to answer? For if they say that they have no sin, John answers them that they deceive themselves and the truth is not in them. But if they confess their sins, since they wish to be members of the body of Christ, how will that body, that is, the Church, be in this present time perfectly, as these men think, without spot or wrinkle, whose members confess, not falsely, that they have sins? Wherefore both in baptism all sins are remitted, and through that same washing of water in the word the Church is presented to Christ without spot or wrinkle, because, unless she had been baptized, she would say fruitlessly Forgive us our debts, until she is brought to glory, where more perfectly no spot or wrinkle will be in her.

4. 7. 18. It is to be confessed that "the Holy Spirit" too, "even in ancient times," not only "helped good minds," which these men too wish, but also made them good, which they do not wish. There is no doubt too that "all the Prophets and Apostles, or saints, both of the Gospel and ancient, to whom God bears witness, were just not in comparison with the wicked but by the rule of virtues." Which is against the Manichees, who blaspheme the Patriarchs and Prophets; but which is against the Pelagians too, since all of them, questioned about themselves while they lived in this body, would answer with one most harmonious voice: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 Jn 1:8). "But in the time to come" it is not to be denied "that there is a reward both of good works and of evil, and that no one is commanded to fulfill there the commandments which here he despised"; but the fullness of perfect righteousness, where sin cannot be, which here is hungered and thirsted for by the saints, is here to be hoped for in the precept, there to be received in the reward, with almsgiving and prayers obtaining that what here was less fulfilled of the commandments may be made unpunished through the forgiveness of sins.

4. 7. 19. These things being so, let the Pelagians cease, by the most treacherous praises of these five matters—that is, "the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the Law, the praise of free choice, the praise of the saints"—to pretend that they wish to rescue men, as it were, from the snares of the Manichees, in order that they may entangle them in their own nets; that is, in order that they may deny original sin and begrudge little ones the help of Christ the physician, and that they may say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, and thus grace be now no longer grace, and that they may say that the saints in this life had no sin, and thus the prayer be made void which he handed to the saints who had no sin, and through whom all sin is remitted to the saints when they pray. To these three evils they seduce incautious and unlearned men by the fraudulent praise of those five goods. About all of which I judge that I have sufficiently answered their most cruel and most impious and most proud vanity.

4. 8. 20. But since they say: "Our enemies have taken up our sayings in hatred of the truth, and throughout the whole West a dogma no less foolish than impious has been taken up, and they complain that a subscription was extorted from simple bishops, sitting in their own places without the gathering of a synod, for confirming this"—when rather the Church of Christ, both of the West and of the East, has shrunk in horror from their profane novelties of words—I judge it to pertain to my care not only to bring forward the holy canonical Scriptures as witnesses against them, which we have already done sufficiently, but also to bring forth some documents from the writings of the saints, who treated them before us with most widespread renown and immense glory; not that the authority of any disputant is made equal by us to the canonical Books, as though there were not at all something that might be thought better or more truly by one Catholic than by another likewise Catholic, but that those who suppose these men to say something may be admonished how, about these matters, before the new empty talk of these men, the Catholic bishops, following the divine words, thought, and that they may know that by us the right and anciently founded Catholic faith is defended against the recent presumption and ruin of the Pelagian heretics.

4. 8. 21. The most blessed Cyprian, most glorious also by the crown of martyrdom, most well known not only to the African and Western but also to the Eastern Churches by the proclamation of fame and the writings that spread him far and wide—even the very heresiarch of these men, Pelagius, recalls him with assuredly due honor, where, writing a book of Testimonies, he asserts that he is imitating him, saying that "he does to Romanus what that man did to Quirinus." Let us see, then, what Cyprian thought about original sin, which through one man entered into the world. In the letter On the Work and Almsgiving he speaks thus: When the Lord, in his coming, had healed those wounds which Adam had borne and had cured the ancient poisons of the serpent, he gave a law to the healed man and commanded him not to sin any more thereafter, lest something graver befall the one sinning. We had been hemmed in and shut up in the narrowness of innocence by the prescription. Nor would the weakness and feebleness of human frailty have anything to do, had not the divine piety again coming to help, by showing the works of justice and mercy, opened a certain way of guarding salvation, so that whatever filth we afterward contract we may wash away by almsgiving. By this testimony this witness refutes two falsehoods of these men: one, by which they say that the human race contracts nothing of vices from Adam which is to be cured and healed through Christ; the other, by which they say that the saints have no sin after baptism. Again, in the same letter: Let each one, he says, set before his eyes the devil with his servants, that is, with the people of perdition and death, leaping into the midst, to provoke the people of Christ, with Christ himself present and judging, to the examination of a comparison, saying: For these whom you see with me I neither received blows nor endured scourgings nor bore a cross nor shed blood nor redeemed my household by the price of suffering and gore; but neither do I promise them the heavenly kingdom nor call them back again to paradise, with immortality restored. Let the Pelagians answer when we were in the immortality of paradise and how we were expelled from there, that we may be called back to it by the grace of Christ. And when they cannot find what to answer here for their perversity, let them attend how Cyprian understood what the Apostle says, in whom all sinned, and let the new Pelagian heretics not dare to pour out any slander on any Catholic, drawn from the old Manichean heretics, lest they be convicted of doing so wicked an injury even to the ancient martyr Cyprian.

4. 8. 22. For he says this too in the letter which is entitled On Mortality, thus: The kingdom of God, most beloved brethren, has begun to be at hand; the reward of life and the joy of eternal salvation and perpetual gladness and the possession of paradise lately lost are now coming, with the world passing away. This again in the same: Let us embrace, he says, the day which assigns each to his dwelling, which, when we have been snatched from here and loosed from worldly snares, restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Likewise, in the letter On Patience: Let the sentence of God be considered, he says, which Adam, forgetful of the precept and a transgressor of the law given, received straightway at the origin of the world and of the human race. Then we will know how patient we ought to be in this world, we who are born in such a way that here we labor under afflictions and conflicts. "Because you have heard the voice of your wife and have eaten from that tree, from which alone I had commanded you not to eat, the earth will be cursed in all your works. In sadness and groaning you will eat from it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it will cast forth for you, and you will eat the fodder of the field. In the sweat of your face you will eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken, since you are earth and into earth you will go." Bound and constrained by the chain of this sentence we all are, until, death being paid out, we depart from this world. And likewise, in the same: For since, in that, he says, first transgression of the precept, the firmness of the body departed together with immortality, and with death came weakness, nor can firmness be received again unless immortality too has been received, it is necessary always to wrestle and contend in this frailty and weakness of the body. Which wrestling and contending cannot be sustained except by the strength of patience.

4. 8. 23. But in the letter which he wrote to Bishop Fidus, together with his sixty-six fellow bishops, by whom he had been consulted on account of the law of circumcision, whether it was permitted to baptize an infant before the eighth day, this cause is treated in such a way as though, by divine provision, the Catholic Church were already confuting the Pelagian heretics, destined to come into being so long afterward. For he who had consulted did not on that account doubt whether those being born contract original sin, which they wash away by being reborn—for far be it that the Christian faith should ever have doubted this!—but he doubted whether the washing of regeneration, by which he did not doubt that original sin was to be loosed, ought to be administered before the eighth day. Answering this consultation, the most blessed Cyprian says: But as to the cause of the infants, whom you said ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after they are born, and that the law of ancient circumcision was to be considered, so that you thought one who is born ought not to be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day—it seemed far otherwise to our whole council. For in this which you thought ought to be done, no one consented, but we all rather judged that the grace of the merciful God is to be denied to no man born. For since the Lord in his Gospel says: "The Son of man did not come to destroy souls but to save them," so far as is in us, if it can be done, no soul is to be destroyed. And a little later: Nor ought any of us, he says, to shudder at this which the Lord deigned to do. For although an infant is still new from birth, yet it is not so that anyone ought to shudder to kiss him in the giving of grace and the making of peace, since in the kiss of an infant each one of us ought, by his own religion, to think of the very recent hands of God, which in a man only just formed and recently born we in a way kiss, when we embrace that which God has made. Likewise, a little later: But if anything could hinder men from obtaining grace, the graver sins could rather hinder the adult and the advanced and the older. Furthermore, if even to the gravest offenders and to those who sinned much before against God, when they have afterward believed, the remission of sins is given, and no one is barred from baptism and grace, how much more ought not an infant to be barred, who, recently born, has sinned in nothing except that, born carnally according to Adam, he has contracted by his first nativity the contagion of the ancient death—who comes the more easily, for this very reason, to receive the remission of sins, in that what are remitted to him are not his own but another's sins!

4. 8. 24. What will they say to these things, not only the deserters but even the persecutors of the grace of God? What will they say to these things? In what way is the possession of paradise restored to us? How are we restored to paradise, if we were never there? Or how were we there, except because we were in Adam? And how do we pertain to the sentence which was spoken against the transgressor, if we do not contract the harm from the transgressor? Finally, he judges that they are to be baptized even before the eighth day, lest the souls of little ones perish through the contagion of the ancient death contracted by the first nativity. How do they perish, if those who are born even of faithful parents are not held by the devil until they are reborn in Christ and, rescued from the power of darkness, are transferred into his kingdom? And who says that the souls of those being born, unless they are reborn, will perish? Surely he who so praises the creator and the creature, the maker and the work, that, by interposing the veneration of the Creator himself, he checks and corrects the horror of human sense by which men disdain to kiss little ones recent from the womb, saying that in the kiss of that age the recent hands of God are to be thought of. Did he, then, by confessing original sin, either condemn nature or accuse marriage? Did he, because to one born guilty from Adam he applied the purgation of regeneration, therefore deny that God is the founder of those being born? Did he, because, fearing that the souls of any age perish, he judged, with the council of his colleagues, that they were to be freed even before the eighth day by the sacrament of baptism, therefore accuse marriage—since, in the infant, whether from marriage or from adultery, yet because a man is born, he showed the recent hands of God worthy even of the kiss of peace? If, then, the holy bishop and most glorious martyr Cyprian could judge that original sin in infants is to be healed by the medicine of Christ, with the praise of the creature preserved, with the praise of marriage preserved, why does the new pestilence, since it does not dare to call him a Manichee, think that another's crime is to be charged against the Catholics who defend these things, in order to cover its own? Behold, a most renowned treater of the divine words, before even the slightest odor of the Manichean pestilence had touched our lands, without any disparagement of the divine work and of marriage, confesses original sin, not saying that Christ was sprinkled with any stain of sin, nor yet comparing to him the flesh of sin in the other infants, to whom through the likeness of the flesh of sin he furnishes the help of cleansing, nor is he terrified by the obscure question of the origin of souls from confessing that those who are freed by the grace of Christ return to paradise. Does he say that the condition of death passed into men from Adam without the contagion of sin? For it is not on account of avoiding the death of the body, but on account of the sin which through one entered into the world, that he says little ones, however recent from the womb, are helped through baptism.

4. 9. 25. But now how Cyprian proclaims the grace of God against these men, where he discusses On the Lord's Prayer, plainly appears. For he says: We say: "Hallowed be your name," not that we wish God to be hallowed by our prayers, but that we ask of God that his name be hallowed in us. But by whom is God hallowed, who himself hallows? But because he himself said: "Be holy, for I too am holy," we ask and request this, that we who have been hallowed in baptism may persevere in what we have begun to be. And in another place in the same letter: We add also, he says, and say: "Your will be done in heaven and on earth," not that God may do what he wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills. For who resists God, that he may not do what he wills? But because we are resisted by the devil, that our mind and act may not in all things obey God, we pray and ask that the will of God be done in us. And that it may be done in us, there is need of the will of God, that is, of his aid and protection, because no one is strong by his own strength, but is safe by the indulgence and mercy of God. Likewise in another place: But we ask, he says, that the will of God be done in heaven and on earth, both of which pertain to the consummation of our well-being and salvation. For since we possess a body from the earth and a spirit from heaven, we ourselves are earth and heaven, and in both, that is, in body and spirit, we pray that the will of God be done. For there is a struggle between flesh and spirit, and a daily contention of them disagreeing against each other, so that we do not do the very things that we will, while the spirit seeks heavenly and divine things, the flesh covets earthly and worldly things. And therefore we ask that, by the aid and help of God, concord be made between these two, so that, while the will of God is carried out both in spirit and in flesh, the soul which has been reborn through him may be preserved. Which the apostle Paul openly and manifestly declares with his own voice: "The flesh," he says, "lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to one another, so that you do not do the very things that you will". And a little later: It can also be so understood, he says, most beloved brethren, that, since the Lord commands and teaches us to love even our enemies and to pray also for those who persecute us, we ask also for those who are still earth and have not yet begun to be heavenly, that even concerning them the will of God may be done, which Christ accomplished by preserving and restoring man. And likewise in another place: But we ask that this bread, he says, be given to us daily, lest we who are in Christ and daily receive the Eucharist as the food of salvation, with some graver offense intervening, while we are kept off and, not communicating, are barred from the heavenly bread, be separated from the body of Christ. And somewhat later in the same: But when we ask, he says, that we may not come into temptation, we are admonished of our weakness and feebleness, while we ask thus, that no one may insolently lift himself up, that no one may proudly and arrogantly take anything to himself, that no one may count as his own the glory either of confession or of suffering, since the Lord himself, teaching humility, said: "Watch and pray, that you may not come into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak"; so that, while a humble and submissive confession goes before and everything is given to God, whatever is suppliantly asked with fear and honor of God may be granted by his own piety. Likewise, To Quirinus, in which work Pelagius wishes to seem his imitator, he says in the third book: That in nothing is one to glory, since nothing is ours. To which proposition, adding the divine testimonies, he set down among the rest that apostolic one by which the mouths of these men especially are to be shut: For what do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it? Likewise in the letter On Patience: For that virtue is, he says, common to us with God; thence patience begins, thence its brightness and dignity takes its head, the origin and greatness of patience proceeds with God as author.

4. 9. 26. Does this holy and so memorable instructor of the Churches in the word of truth deny that there is free choice in men, because he attributes wholly to God that we live rightly? Does he find fault with the Law of God, because he signifies that a man is not justified by it, since indeed he declares that what it commands is to be obtained from the Lord God by prayers? Does he assert fate under the name of grace, although he says: "In nothing is one to glory, since nothing is ours"? Does he, like these men, believe the Holy Spirit to be a helper of virtue in such a way that the very virtue which is thus helped arises from us, when, asserting that nothing is ours, he recalls that the Apostle on this account said: For what do you have that you have not received? And does he say that the most excellent virtue, that is, patience, begins from us and is then helped by the Spirit of God—or rather that it takes its head, its origin, from him? Finally, he confesses that neither a good purpose nor zeal for virtue nor good minds begin to be in men without the grace of God, when he says: "In nothing is one to glory, since nothing is ours." What is so set in free choice as that which the Law says: not to adore an idol, not to commit adultery, not to perpetrate murder? But these and such are crimes which, if anyone has committed them, he is removed from the communion of the body of Christ. And yet, if the most blessed Cyprian thought that for not committing these our will suffices, he would not so understand what we say in the Lord's prayer, Give us this day our daily bread, as to assert that we ask this lest "with some graver offense intervening, while we are kept off and, not communicating, are barred from the heavenly bread, we be separated from the body of Christ." Let the new heretics surely answer what good merits precede in men who are enemies of the Christian name. For not only do they not have a good merit, but they have even a most evil one. And yet even so Cyprian understands what we say in the prayer, Your will be done in heaven and on earth, that we pray also for those very men who on this account are understood as earth. We pray, then, not only for the unwilling, but even for those who resist and assail. What, then, do we ask, except that from unwilling they become willing, from resisting consenting, from assailing loving? From whom except from him of whom it is written The will is prepared by the Lord? Let those learn to be Catholics who disdain, if they do anything of evil and if they do anything of good, to glory not in themselves but in the Lord.

4. 10. 27. Let us now see that third matter, at which no less, in these men, does every member of Christ and his whole body shudder, because they contend that there are or were in this life just men having no sin at all. By which presumption they most openly contradict the Lord's prayer, in which all the members of Christ cry, with a truthful heart and daily voices: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12). Let us see, then, what about this too Cyprian, most glorious in the Lord, thought; what, for the instructing of the Churches—not of the Manichees, surely, but of Catholics—he not only said but even committed to writing and memory. In the letter On the Work and Almsgiving: Let us therefore acknowledge, dearest brethren, he says, the wholesome gift of the divine indulgence, and let us cure our wounds with spiritual remedies for cleansing and purging our sins, we who cannot be without some wound of conscience. Nor let anyone so flatter himself about a pure and immaculate breast that, relying on his innocence, he thinks medicine ought not to be applied to his wounds, since it is written: Who will glory that he has a chaste heart, or who will glory that he is clean from sins? And again, John sets down and says in his letter: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." But if no one can be without sin, and whoever has said himself blameless is either proud or foolish, how necessary, how kind is the divine clemency, which, since it knows that to the healed certain wounds afterward are not lacking, gave wholesome remedies for curing and healing the wounds anew! Again in the same: And since daily, he says, that cannot be lacking which is sinned in the sight of God, the daily sacrifices were not lacking, by which sins could be wiped away. Likewise in the letter On Mortality: We have a struggle with avarice, he says, with unchastity, with anger, with ambition; we have a constant and troublesome wrestling with carnal vices, with worldly enticements; the mind of man, besieged and on every side hedged about by the assault of the devil, scarcely meets them one by one, scarcely resists. If avarice is laid low, lust rises up; if lust is repressed, ambition succeeds; if ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride inflates, drunkenness invites, envy breaks concord, jealousy cuts off friendship; you are forced to curse, which the divine law forbids, you are compelled to swear, which is not lawful. The mind suffers so many persecutions daily, the breast is pressed with so many perils: and does it delight to stand long here among the swords of the devil, when rather it should be desired and wished to hasten to Christ by a swifter death coming to help? Likewise in the same: The blessed apostle Paul, he says, sets down and says in his letter: "To me to live is Christ and to die is gain," counting it the greatest gain to be no longer held by worldly snares, to become no longer liable to any sins and vices of the flesh. Likewise, On the Lord's Prayer, expounding what we ask when we say Hallowed be your name, he says among the rest: For we have need of daily sanctification, so that we who daily fall into fault may cleanse our faults anew by constant sanctification. Again in the same, when he expounded what we say, Forgive us our debts: But how necessarily, he says, how providently and wholesomely are we admonished that we are sinners, since we are compelled to ask for our sins, so that, while indulgence is sought from God, the mind may recall its conscience! Lest anyone please himself as though innocent, and by exalting himself perish the more, he is instructed and taught that he sins daily, while he is commanded daily to pray for his sins. So, finally, John too in his letter admonishes, saying: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins". Deservedly too, to Quirinus, about this matter, he set forth his most absolute opinion, to which he would add the divine testimonies: That no one is without filth and without sin. Where he set down also those testimonies by which original sin is confirmed, which these men try to twist into I know not what new and depraved senses—whether that which holy Job says: that no one is without filth nor he whose life is of one day upon the earth; or that which is read in the Psalm: In wickedness I was conceived, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb (Ps 51:5 (50)). To which testimonies, on account also of those who are now holy at a greater age, because not even they are without filth and sin, he added also that of the most blessed John, which he often recalls in many other places too: If we say that we have no sin (1 Jn 1:8), and the rest of the same sentence, which by all Catholics are not kept silent against these men who deceive themselves, and in whom the truth is not.

4. 10. 28. Let the Pelagians say, if they dare, that this man of God was perverted by the error of the Manichees, because he so praises the saints that yet he confesses that no one in this life arrives at so great a perfection of righteousness as to have no sin at all, confirming his opinion by the clear truth of the canonical testimonies and the divine authority. For does he deny "that all sins are remitted in baptism," because he confesses that there remains a frailty and weakness whence, he says, we sin after baptism, and that up to the end of this life we have an unceasing conflict with carnal vices? Or had he therefore forgotten what the Apostle had said about the immaculate Church, because he commanded "that no one ought so to flatter himself about a pure and immaculate breast that, relying on his innocence, he thinks medicine ought not to be applied to his wounds"? I suppose that the new heretics concede that this Catholic man knows "the Holy Spirit helped good minds even in ancient times"; nay, even—what they themselves do not wish—that they could not have good minds except through the Holy Spirit. I suppose that Cyprian knew that "all the Prophets and Apostles, or any saints whatever who pleased the Lord at any time, were just not in comparison with the wicked," as these men slander us as saying, "but by the rule of virtues," as they boast that they say—Cyprian, who yet says: No one can be without sin, and whoever has said himself blameless is either proud or foolish. Nor does he understand it written for any other reason: Who will glory that he has a chaste heart, or who will glory that he is clean from sins? I suppose that Cyprian did not need to be taught by these men what he knew most excellently, "that in the time to come there is a reward of good works, but of evil works a punishment; but that no one can fulfill there the commandments which here he despised"; and yet he understands and asserts that even the apostle Paul himself, surely not a despiser of the divine commandments, said for no other reason To me to live is Christ and to die is gain, except because he counted it the greatest gain to be, now after this life, no longer held by worldly snares, to become no longer liable to any sins and vices of the flesh. The most blessed Cyprian, then, perceived and saw in the truth of the divine Scriptures that even the life of the Apostles themselves, although good, holy, and just, endured some bonds of worldly snares, was liable to some sins and vices of the flesh, and that therefore they desired death, that they might lack these evils and that they might arrive at that perfect righteousness which would not suffer these things, and which was now to be not done in a commandment but received in a reward. For when there shall come that which we pray for, saying Your kingdom come, there will not be in that kingdom of God any lack of righteousness, since the Apostle says: For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17). Surely these three are commanded among the other divine precepts. Here righteousness is commanded us when it is said Do righteousness; peace is commanded when it is said Have peace among yourselves (Mark 9:50); joy is commanded when it is said Rejoice in the Lord always (Phil 4:4). Let the Pelagians, then, deny that these will be in the kingdom of God, where we shall live without end, or, if it seems good, let them rave to such a degree as to contend that righteousness, peace, joy will be there such as they are here for the just. But if they both will be and will not be such, surely the doing of them here in the precept is to be cared for, the perfection of them there in the reward is to be hoped for, where, held by no worldly snares and liable to no sins and vices of the flesh—on account of which the Apostle, as Cyprian took this testimony, said that to die was gain for him—we may perfectly love God, of whom there will be the contemplation face to face, and may perfectly love our neighbor too, when, with the thoughts of the heart made manifest, no suspicion of any evil about anyone can disturb anyone concerning anyone.

4. 11. 29. But now, to the most glorious martyr Cyprian, for refuting these men more fully, let us add the most blessed Ambrose, since Pelagius too so praised him that he said not even by enemies was anything found in his books to be reproved. Since, therefore, the Pelagians say that there is no original sin with which infants are born, and charge the Catholics, who resist them on behalf of the most ancient and most firm faith of the Church, with the crime of the Manichean heresy, let Ambrose answer them about this matter, a Catholic man of God and praised in the truth of the faith by Pelagius himself. Who, when he was expounding the prophet Isaiah, said: Therefore Christ is immaculate, because not even he was stained by the usual condition of being born. And in another place in the same work, speaking of the apostle Peter: He himself offered, he says, what before he thought to be a sin, asking that not only his feet but also his head be washed, because he immediately understood that by the washing of the feet the filth of a guilty succession—those who fell in the first man—is abolished. Likewise in the same work: It was therefore so arranged, he says, that from man and woman, that is, through that intermingling of bodies, no one is seen to be free from offense; but he who is free from offense is free also from this kind of conception. Likewise, writing against the Novatians: All men, he says, are born under sin, whose very origin is in vice, as you have read, David saying: "Behold, in iniquities I was conceived, and in offenses my mother bore me". Likewise in the Apology of the prophet David: Before we are born, he says, we are stained by contagion, and before the enjoyment of light we receive the injury of our very origin; in iniquity we are conceived. Likewise, speaking of the Lord: For it was fitting, he says, that he who was not going to have the sin of a bodily lapse should feel no natural contagion of generation. Rightly, then, did David tearfully bewail in himself the very defilements of nature and that the stain begins in a man before life. Likewise, On the Ark of Noah: Through the one Lord Jesus, he says, salvation to come for the nations is declared, who alone could be just, when all generation went astray, except that, born of a virgin, he was held by no privilege of a guilty generation. "Behold," he says, "in iniquities I was conceived, and in offenses my mother bore me," says he who was thought just above the rest. Whom, then, shall I now call just except him who is free from these bonds, whom the bonds of the common nature do not hold? Behold a holy man, by the testimony of Pelagius too most approved in the Catholic faith, refuting the Pelagians who deny original sin by so great a manifestation, and yet, with the Manichees, neither denying that God is the founder of those being born nor accusing marriage, which God instituted and blessed.

4. 11. 30. The Pelagians say that merit begins from man through free choice, to which God consequently repays the help of grace. Here too let the venerable Ambrose refute them, saying in the Exposition of the prophet Isaiah: Because human care without divine aid is feeble for healing, it seeks God as helper. Likewise in the book which is entitled On Fleeing the World: Frequent is our discourse, he says, about fleeing this world; and would that, as the discourse is easy, so were the disposition cautious and careful! But what is worse, frequently the enticement of earthly desires and the diffusion of vanities creeps in and occupies the mind, so that what you strive to avoid, this you think of and turn over in your mind. Which it is difficult for a man to beware of, but impossible to put off. Finally, that it is a matter of wishing rather than of accomplishing the Prophet testifies by saying: "Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to avarice." For our heart and our thoughts are not in our power, which, suddenly diffused, confound the mind and the spirit and drag it elsewhere than you had proposed, recall it to worldly things, insert mundane things, bring in voluptuous things, weave in enticing things, and at the very time at which we prepare to lift up the mind, with empty thoughts inserted we are for the most part cast down to earthly things. But who is so blessed as to ascend always in his heart? But how can this be done without divine aid? In no way at all. Finally, above, the same Scripture says: Blessed is the man whose help is from you, O Lord, ascents in his heart. What can be said more openly and more sufficiently? But lest perhaps the Pelagians answer that by this very fact, that divine aid is asked for, the merit of man precedes—saying that this itself is a merit, because by praying he becomes worthy to whom divine grace comes to help—let them attend to what the same holy man says in the Exposition of Isaiah: And to pray to God, he says, is a spiritual grace. For no one says "the Lord Jesus" except in the Holy Spirit. Whence too, expounding the Gospel according to Luke: You see surely, he says, that everywhere the power of the Lord cooperates with human endeavors, so that no one can build without the Lord, no one guard without the Lord, no one begin anything without the Lord. Does so great a man as Ambrose, because he says these things and commends the grace of God, as befits a son of promise, with grateful piety, therefore destroy free choice? Or does he wish that grace to be understood which the Pelagians, by diverse modes of speech, are unwilling should seem anything but the Law—namely, that God is believed to help us not for doing what we have come to know but for coming to know what we should do? If they suppose this man of God to relish this, let them hear what he said about the Law itself. In the book On Fleeing the World: The Law, he says, could stop the mouth of all, it could not convert the mind. Likewise in another place in the same book: The Law, he says, condemns the deed, it does not take away malice. Let them see a faithful and Catholic man agreeing with the Apostle saying: But we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are in the Law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may be made guilty before God, because no flesh will be justified by the Law before him (Rom 3:19-20). For from this apostolic sense Ambrose took and wrote those things.

4. 11. 31. But now, since the Pelagians say that there are or were just men in this life who lived without any sin, to such a degree that the future life, which is to be hoped for as a reward, cannot be more advanced and more perfect, let Ambrose answer them about this too and refute them. For, expounding the prophet Isaiah, on account of what is there written—I have begotten sons and exalted them, but they have despised me—he undertook to discuss the generations which are from God, and in that very discussion he recalled the testimony of John, where he says: He who is born of God does not sin. And, treating that same most difficult question: Since in this world, he says, there is no one who is immune from sin, since John himself says: "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar"; but if those born of God do not sin, and we understand this of those who are in this world, it is necessary that we reckon innumerable those who through the regeneration of the washing have obtained the grace of God. But yet, since the Prophet says: "All things wait for you, that you may give them food in due time: when you give to them, they will gather for themselves; when you open your hand, all things will be filled with goodness; but when you turn away your face, they will be troubled. You will take away their spirit, and they will fail and return to their dust. You will send forth your spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth"—these can seem to be said not of any time whatever, but of the future, in which there will be a new earth and a new heaven. They will be troubled, then, that they may take a beginning, and "when you open your hand, all things will be filled with goodness," which is not easily of this world. For about this world what does the Scripture say? "There is none that does goodness, there is not even one." If, therefore, there are diverse generations, and this entrance into this life is a receiver of offenses, to such a degree that even he who begot is despised, but the other generation does not receive sins, let us see whether there be, after the course of this life, that regeneration of ours, of which it was said: "In the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory." For just as there is called a regeneration of the washing, by which, the foul flood of sins wiped away, we are renewed, so there seems to be called a regeneration by which, purified from all stain of bodily concretion, with the sense of the soul clean, we are regenerated into eternal life; in that there is a certain purer quality of that regeneration than of this washing, so that not only into its acts, but not even into our very thoughts, does any suspicion of sins fall. Likewise in another place in the same work: We see, he says, that it is impossible that anyone be perfectly immaculate while set in the body, since even Paul says that he is imperfect. For he has it thus: "Not that I have already received or am already perfect"; and yet a little after he says: "As many of us therefore as are perfect"—unless perhaps because there is one perfection in this world, another after that perfect thing of which he says to the Corinthians: "When that which is perfect shall have come"; and elsewhere: "Until we all meet into the unity of faith and the acknowledgment of the Son of God, into a perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ." So, then, as the Apostle says that there are many perfect men set in this world, who, if you look to true perfection, could not be perfect, because he himself said: "We see now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known"; so there are immaculate men in this world, and there will be immaculate men in the kingdom of God, although surely, if you examine more minutely, no one can be immaculate, because no one is without sin. Likewise in the same: You see, he says, that, while we live this life, we ought to cleanse ourselves and to seek God, and to begin from the cleansing of our soul, and as it were to lay the foundations of virtue, so that after this we may merit to attain the perfection of purification. And likewise in the same: But who, weighed down, he says, and groaning, would not say: "Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death?" Thus, with the same teacher, we have resolved all the varieties of interpretation. For if everyone is wretched who recognizes himself entangled in the troubles of the body, surely every body is wretched; for neither would I call him happy who, confounded by certain shadows of his mind, does not know his own condition. That too came into the understanding not absurdly. For if a man who knows himself is wretched, surely all are wretched, because each either recognizes his own weakness through wisdom, or, through folly, does not know it. Likewise in the book On the Good of Death: Let death therefore work in us, he says, that life too may work—a good life after death, that is, a good life after victory, a good life with the contest finished, so that now the law of the flesh may not know how to fight against the law of the mind, so that now there may be for us no contention with the body of death. Again in the same: Therefore, he says, since the just have this reward, that they see the face of God and that light which enlightens every man, let us hence put on such zeal that our soul may draw near to God, that prayer may draw near, that our desire may cleave to him, that we may not be separated from him. And here indeed, set in this place, by meditating, by reading, by seeking, let us be joined to God, let us come to know him, as we can. "For here we know in part," because here all things are imperfect, there perfect; here we are little ones, there robust. "We see," he says, "now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face." Then, with the face unveiled, it will be permitted to behold the glory of God, whom now souls, wrapped in the compacted inwards of this body and overshadowed by certain stains and foulnesses of this flesh, cannot purely see. "For who," he says, "will see my face and live?" And rightly; for if our eyes cannot bear the rays of the sun, and, if anyone gazes too long over against the sun, he is wont, it is said, to be blinded—if a creature cannot gaze upon a creature without harm and offense to itself, how can one, covered with the spoils of this body, without peril to himself behold the flashing face of the eternal Creator? For who is justified in the sight of God, when not even an infant of one day can be clean from sin, and no one can glory about the integrity and chastity of his own heart?

4. 12. 32. It will be too long if I should wish to recall all the things which holy Ambrose said and wrote against this heresy of the Pelagians, destined to arise so long afterward—not, indeed, answering them, but proclaiming the Catholic faith and building men up in it. But neither could I, nor ought I, to recall all those things which Cyprian, most glorious in the Lord, set down in his letters, by which it is demonstrated how this faith which we hold is true and truly Christian and Catholic—as anciently handed down through the holy Scriptures, so retained and preserved by our fathers and up to this time, in which these men have attempted to tear it away, and henceforth, with God favorable, to be retained and preserved. For that it was handed down thus to Cyprian and by Cyprian, these and similar testimonies brought forth from his writings attest; and that it was preserved thus up to our times, those things show which, about these matters, before these men began to bubble forth, Ambrose wrote, and that the Catholic ears which are everywhere shuddered at their profane novelties; and further, that it is to be preserved thus henceforth, the partly condemnation, partly correction of these men has wholesomely enough declared. For whatever they dare to mutter against the sound faith of Cyprian and Ambrose, I do not think they will burst forth into so great a fury as to dare to call those recalled and memorable men of God Manichees.

4. 12. 33. What is it, then, that with a raving blindness of mind they now boast, "that throughout the whole West a dogma no less foolish than impious has been taken up," since, with the Lord showing mercy and mercifully governing his Church, the Catholic faith was so watchful that a dogma no less foolish than impious—just as that of the Manichees, so also that of these men—was not taken up? Behold, holy and learned men, Catholic by the attestation of the fame of the whole Church, praise with due and fitting proclamations both the creature of God, and the marriage instituted by him, and the Law given by him through holy Moses, and the free choice implanted in the nature of man, and the holy Patriarchs and Prophets—all of which five things the Manichees condemn, partly by denying, partly even by detesting. Whence it appears that these Catholic teachers are far removed from the views of the Manichees. And yet they assert original sin, they assert that the grace of God precedes all merit over free choice, that it may furnish a truly gratuitous divine help, they assert that the saints so lived justly in this flesh that there was necessary to them, in order that their daily sins be forgiven, the help of prayer, and that perfect righteousness, which can have no sin, will be in the other life the reward for those who here lived justly.

4. 12. 34. What is it, then, that they say: A subscription was extorted from simple bishops, sitting in their own places without the gathering of a synod? Was a writing extorted from the most blessed and most excellent men in the Catholic faith, Cyprian and Ambrose, before these men, against these men—who overthrow their impious dogmas with so great a manifestation that we can scarcely find things more manifest to say against them? Or was there indeed need of a gathering of a synod, that an open ruin might be condemned?—as though no heresy were ever condemned except by the gathering of a synod, when rather most rarely are found those for whose condemnation such a necessity has arisen, and far and incomparably more are those which, where they arose, there deserved to be disapproved and condemned, and from there could become known throughout the other lands as to be avoided. But the pride of these men, which so exalts itself against God that it wishes to glory not in him but rather in free choice, is understood to grasp at this glory too, that for their sake a synod of the East and West be gathered. For since, with the Lord resisting them, they cannot pervert the Catholic world, they try at least to disturb it—when rather, with pastoral vigilance and diligence, after a fitting and sufficient judgment has been made about them, wherever these wolves appear, they are to be crushed, either that they may be healed and changed, or that they may be avoided away from the salvation and integrity of others, with the help of the Shepherd of shepherds, who seeks the lost sheep even in the little ones, who freely makes the sheep holy and just, who, although they are sanctified and justified, yet in this frailty and weakness, for the daily sins without which one does not live here, even when one lives well, both providently instructs them to ask for daily remission, and mercifully hears them asking.