1. It cannot be told, most beloved son Laurentius, how much I delight in your learning, and how much I desire you to be wise—not among the number of those of whom it is said, Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? (1 Cor 1:20) but among those of whom it is written, A multitude of the wise is the health of the world (Wis 6:24), and such as the Apostle wishes those to become to whom he says, I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil (Rom 16:19).

2. Now the wisdom of man is godliness. You have this in the book of holy Job. For there one reads that Wisdom itself said to man, Behold, godliness is wisdom (Job 28:28). But if you ask what godliness he meant in that place, you will find it more precisely in the Greek, [GREEK WORD MISSING], which is the worship of God. For godliness is also expressed in Greek in another way, that is, [GREEK WORD MISSING], a word by which good worship is signified, although this too refers especially to the worship of God. But nothing is more apt than that word by which the worship of God was plainly expressed, when it was being said what the wisdom of man is. Do you ask that anything be said more briefly, you who ask of me that great things be said briefly? Or do you perhaps desire that this very thing be opened to you briefly and gathered into a brief discourse: in what way God is to be worshiped?

3. If here I answer that God is to be worshiped by faith, hope, and charity, you will surely say that this has been put more briefly than you wish, and then you will ask that those things be explained to you briefly which pertain to each of these three: namely, what is to be believed, what is to be hoped for, and what is to be loved. And when I have done this, all those things will be there which you set down in your letter to be asked: a copy of which, if you have it by you, it is easy for you to turn back to and reread; but if you do not, you may recall it as I call it to mind.

4. For you wish, as you write, that a book be made for me by you which you may have as an Enchiridion, as they call it, and which never leaves your hands, containing your requests, that is, what is chiefly to be followed, what is principally to be shunned on account of the various heresies, how far reason contends on behalf of religion, or what there is in reason when faith alone does not avail, what is to be held first and what last, what is the sum of the whole definition, what is the sure and proper foundation of the Catholic faith.

Now all these things that you ask about you will doubtless know by knowing diligently what ought to be believed, what hoped for, and what loved. For these are the things chiefly—indeed, the only things—to be followed in religion: whoever contradicts them is either wholly a stranger to the name of Christ or a heretic. These are to be defended by reason, whether they have their beginning in the senses of the body or are discovered by the understanding of the mind.

But those things which we have neither experienced by bodily sense nor have been or are able to attain by the mind must, without any doubt, be believed on the testimony of those witnesses by whom that Scripture, which has already deserved to be called Divine, was composed: men who, divinely aided whether through the body or through the mind, were able either to see or even to foresee them.

5. But when the mind has been imbued with the beginning of the faith which works through love (See Gal 5:6), it strives by living well to arrive also at vision, where there is, for holy and perfect hearts, that known and ineffable beauty whose full sight is the highest happiness. This is surely what you ask, what is to be held first and what last: to begin with faith, to be perfected in vision. For this is the sum of the whole definition. But the sure and proper foundation of the Catholic faith is Christ: for other foundation, says the Apostle, no one can lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor 3:11). Nor is this therefore to be denied to be the proper foundation of the Catholic faith because it may be thought by some heretics to be common to us with them. For if the things that pertain to Christ are diligently considered, Christ is found in name only among any heretics whatsoever who wish to be called Christians, but in reality he is not among them. To show this would be far too long, since all heresies would have to be recounted—whether those that have been, or that are, or that could be under the Christian name—and it would have to be shown through each one how true this is: a discussion of so many volumes that it would seem even endless.

6. But you ask of us an Enchiridion, that is, something that can be held fast in the hand, not something that can load down bookcases. So then, to return to those three by which we said God is to be worshiped—faith, hope, charity—it is easy to say what is to be believed, what hoped for, and what loved. But how it is to be defended against the slanders of those who think otherwise calls for a more laborious and fuller teaching: and to possess this, one must not fill the hand with a brief enchiridion, but kindle the breast with great zeal.

7. For behold, you have the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. What is heard or read more briefly? What is more easily committed to memory? Since the human race was pressed down by the great misery of sin and was in need of divine mercy, the prophet, foretelling the time of God's grace, says, And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Joel 2:32. See Acts 2:21; Rom 10:13). On account of this, prayer. But the Apostle, when he had recalled this prophetic testimony to commend grace itself, immediately added, But how shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? (Rom 10:14) On account of this, the Creed. In these two, behold those three: faith believes, hope and charity pray. But they cannot exist without faith, and through this faith too prays. For this reason indeed it was said, How shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed?

8. But what can be hoped for that is not believed? Further, something even that is not hoped for can be believed. For what one of the faithful does not believe in the punishments of the wicked, and yet does not hope for them? And whoever believes that they threaten him, and shudders at them with a recoiling motion of the mind, is more rightly said to fear than to hope.

Distinguishing these two, a certain man said, Let it be allowed the fearful to hope (Lucan, Pharsalia 2, 15). But by another poet, though a better one, it was not said in the proper sense, If I could hope for so great a grief as this (Virgil, Aen. 4, 419).

In short, some in the art of grammar use this verb as an example to show an improper expression, and say, "He said hope for 'fear.'" And so there is faith both of evil things and of good things, since both good things and evil things are believed, and this by a good faith, not an evil one. There is also faith of past things and of present things and of future things. For we believe that Christ died, which is now past; we believe that he sits at the right hand of the Father, which is now; we believe that he will come to judge, which is future. Likewise faith is both of one's own things and of others' things; for each one believes that he himself began to be at some time and was certainly not everlasting, and believes the same of others and of other things. And not only about other men do we believe many things that pertain to religion, but also about angels.

But hope is only of good things, and only of future things, and of things pertaining to him who is said to bear hope of them. Since this is so, for these reasons faith had to be distinguished from hope, as by name so also by a reasonable difference. For as regards not seeing—whether what is believed or what is hoped for—it is common to faith and hope. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, indeed, which the illustrious defenders of the Catholic faith and Rule have used as a witness, faith is said to be the conviction of things that are not seen (Heb 11:1).

Although when anyone says that he has believed (that is, has accorded faith) not to words, not to witnesses, not finally to any arguments, but to the evidence of present things, he does not seem so absurd that he is rightly reproached in the word and told, "you saw; therefore you did not believe"; whence it may be thought not to follow that whatever is believed is not seen.

But we better call "faith" what the divine words have taught, namely of those things which are not seen. Of hope too the Apostle says, Hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Rom 8:24). So when good things are believed to be in store for us, this is nothing other than that they are hoped for. Now what shall I say of love, without which faith profits nothing? Hope, indeed, cannot exist without love. In short, as the Apostle James says, even the demons believe and tremble (Jas 2:19): yet they neither hope nor love, but rather they dread what we, by believing it will come, hope for and love. On account of this the Apostle Paul approves and commends the faith which works through love (See Gal 5:6), which certainly cannot exist without hope. Therefore neither is there love without hope, nor hope without love, nor either without faith.

9. When, therefore, it is asked what is to be believed in matters pertaining to religion, the nature of things is not to be searched out as it is by those whom the Greeks call physicists, nor is it to be feared that the Christian may be ignorant of something concerning the force and number of the elements, the motion and order and eclipses of the heavenly bodies, the shape of the heaven, the kinds and natures of animals, shrubs, stones, springs, rivers, mountains, the dimensions of places and times, the signs of approaching storms, and six hundred such things concerning those matters which they have either discovered or think they have discovered:

since they themselves have not discovered everything, for all their excelling genius, burning zeal, and abundant leisure, investigating some things by human conjecture and scrutinizing others by historical experience—and in those things which they boast to have discovered, conjecturing more than knowing.

It is enough for the Christian to believe that the cause of created things, whether heavenly or earthly, whether visible or invisible, is nothing other than the goodness of the Creator, who is the one and true God, and that there is no nature which is not either he himself or from him; and that he is a Trinity, namely the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of both the Father and the Son.

10. By this Trinity, supremely and equally and unchangeably good, all things were created, neither supremely nor equally nor unchangeably good, yet good even singly; but taken all together, very good (See Gen 1:31), for out of them all consists the wonderful beauty of the universe.

11. In which universe even that which is called evil, well ordered and set in its place, commends the good things more eminently, so that they please more and are more praiseworthy when compared with the evils. For not even would God almighty—whom even unbelievers confess to be the one with supreme power over things (See Virgil, Aen. 10, 100)—since he is supremely good, in any way allow there to be anything of evil in his works, unless he were so far almighty and good as to do good even out of evil. But what else is that which is called evil except the privation of good? For just as, in the bodies of animals, to be afflicted with diseases and wounds is nothing other than to be deprived of health (nor is the aim, when a cure is applied, that those evils which were present—that is, the diseases and wounds—should depart hence and be elsewhere, but rather that they should not be at all; for a wound or a disease is not any substance, but a defect of the fleshly substance, since the flesh itself is the substance, certainly some good to which these evils befall, that is, privations of that good which is called health); so too whatever defects there are of souls are privations of natural goods: and when these are healed, they are not transferred elsewhere, but those that were there will be nowhere, when they will not be in that health.

12. All natures, therefore, since the Maker of absolutely all natures is supremely good, are good. But because they are not, like their Maker, supremely and unchangeably good, therefore in them good can be both diminished and increased. But for good to be diminished is an evil, although, however much it is diminished, something must necessarily remain (if it is still a nature) from which it is a nature. For if a nature is of whatever kind and however small, the good by which it is a nature cannot be consumed unless the nature itself is also consumed. Rightly indeed is an uncorrupted nature praised: and further, if it is also incorruptible, such that it cannot be corrupted at all, it is without doubt far more praiseworthy. But when it is corrupted, its corruption is therefore an evil because it deprives it of some good. For if it deprives of no good, it does no harm; but it does do harm: therefore it takes away good. So long, then, as a nature is being corrupted, there is in it a good of which it is being deprived, and through this, if something will remain of the nature that can no longer be corrupted, then surely the nature will be incorruptible, and through corruption it will arrive at this so great a good. But if it does not cease to be corrupted, neither will it cease to have a good of which corruption can deprive it. And if corruption should utterly and wholly consume it, then there will be no good in it because there will be no nature. Wherefore corruption cannot consume good except by consuming nature. Every nature, therefore, is a good: a great good if it cannot be corrupted, a small good if it can; yet that it is a good cannot be denied at all, except foolishly and ignorantly. And if it is consumed by corruption, the corruption itself too will not remain, since no nature will subsist in which it could be.

13. And through this there is nothing that is called evil if there is no good. But a good lacking all evil is an entire good; one in which there is true evil is a vitiated or vicious good. Nor can there ever be any evil where there is no good. From this a wonderful thing follows: that since every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is a good, when a vicious nature is said to be an evil nature, nothing else seems to be said than that what is good is evil; and that there is no evil except what is good; since every nature is a good, and no thing would be evil if the very thing that is evil were not a nature. Therefore there cannot be evil except some good. And though this seems to be said absurdly, yet the connection of this reasoning compels us as if inevitably to say it: and care must be taken that we do not fall into that prophetic statement where it is read, Woe to those who call good evil, and evil good; who call darkness light, and light darkness; who call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet (Isa 5:20). And yet the Lord says, The evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things (Luke 6:45; see Matt 12:35). But what is an evil man except an evil nature, since man is a nature? Further, if a man is some good because he is a nature, what is an evil man except an evil good? Yet when we distinguish these two, we find him to be evil not because he is a man, nor good because he is wicked, but good because he is a man, evil because he is wicked. Whoever, therefore, says, "It is evil for a man to be," or, "It is good to be wicked," he himself falls into that prophetic statement, Woe to those who call good evil and evil good; for he blames the work of God, which is man, and praises the defect of man, which is wickedness. Every nature, therefore, even if it is vicious, insofar as it is a nature, is good; insofar as it is vicious, is evil.

14. Wherefore, in these contraries which are called evil and good, that rule of the logicians fails by which they say that two contraries cannot be present in one thing at the same time. For no air is at the same time both dark and bright; no food or drink is at the same time both sweet and bitter; no body, where it is white, is also at the same time black there; none, where it is deformed, is also handsome there. And this is found in many—indeed in almost all—contraries, that they cannot be present in one thing at the same time.

But although no one doubts that good and evil are contraries, not only can they exist at the same time, but evils cannot exist at all without goods, and only in goods, although goods can exist without evils. For a man or an angel can be not unjust, but a thing cannot be unjust unless it is a man or an angel: and it is a good that he is a man, a good that he is an angel, an evil that he is unjust. And these two contraries are so present together that, if the good in which the evil was had not existed, the evil could not have existed at all: for corruption would have not only no place in which to subsist, but no source from which to arise, unless there were something to be corrupted; and unless that something were good, it would not be corrupted; since corruption is nothing other than the destruction of good.

Evils, therefore, have arisen from goods, and they do not exist except in certain goods. Nor was there any other source from which any nature of evil could arise. For if there were, insofar as it was a nature it would surely be good; and either it would be an incorruptible nature, which is a great good, or even a corruptible nature, which could in no way exist unless it were some good, a good which, by corrupting, corruption could harm.

15. But when we say that evils have arisen from goods, let it not be thought that this contradicts the Lord's statement in which he said, A good tree cannot bear bad fruit (Matt 7:18). For, as the Truth says, grapes cannot be gathered from thorns (See Matt 7:16), because grapes cannot be born from thorns; but we see that from good ground both vines and thorns can be born. And in this way, like a bad tree, an evil will cannot bear good fruit, that is, good works, but from the good nature of man both a good will and an evil will can arise. Nor was there in the first place any source from which an evil will could first arise except the good nature of the angel and of man. The Lord himself showed this most plainly in the very place where he was speaking of the tree and the fruits. For he says, Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad (Matt 12:33): sufficiently warning that from a good tree bad fruit, or from a bad tree good fruit, cannot be born, but that from the very ground to which he was speaking, either tree can be born.

16. Since this is so, when that verse of Maro pleases us, Happy is he who has been able to know the causes of things (Virgil, Georgics 2, 490), let it not seem to us to pertain to attaining happiness if we know the causes of the great motions of corporeal things in the world, which are hidden in the most secret recesses of nature:

and the rest of this kind. But we ought to know the causes of good and evil things, and that only so far as it is granted to man to know them, in this life which is most full of errors and hardships (See Cicero, Hortensius, frag. 95 (Müller)), for the sake of escaping those same errors and hardships. For we must press on toward that happiness where we are shaken by no hardship and deceived by no error. For if the causes of corporeal motions had to be known by us, we ought to know none more than those of our own health; yet when, being ignorant of them, we seek physicians, who does not see with what great patience we must remain ignorant of what is hidden from us concerning the secrets of heaven and earth?

17. For although error is to be avoided with as much care as we can, not only in greater but also in lesser matters, and one cannot err except through ignorance of things, yet it does not follow that whoever does not know something at once errs, but rather whoever thinks he knows what he does not know; for he approves the false as true, which is the proper mark of error (See Cicero, Academica 2, 66).

Nevertheless, it matters very much in what matter each one errs. For in one and the same matter, by right reason the one who knows is preferred to the one who does not know, and the one who does not err to the one who errs. But in different matters—that is, when this one knows certain things and that one knows others, and this one knows more useful things and that one less useful or even harmful things—who would not prefer the one who does not know in those things which the other knows?

For there are certain things which it is better not to know than to know. And likewise it has sometimes profited some to err—but on a road for the feet, not on a road of morals. For it happened to us ourselves that at a certain fork we were deceived and did not go by the place where an armed band of Donatists had lain in wait, watching for our passing, and so it came about that we arrived at our destination by a roundabout detour, and, having learned of their ambush, we congratulated ourselves on having erred and thereupon gave thanks to God. Who, then, would hesitate to prefer such a traveler who errs to a robber who does not err? And perhaps for this reason, in that supreme poet, a certain wretched lover speaks: How I beheld, how I perished, how an evil error swept me away! (Virgil, Eclogues 7, 41) since there is also a good error which not only does no harm but even profits something.

But when the truth is considered more carefully, since to err is nothing other than to think true what is false, and false what is true, or to hold the certain for uncertain, or the uncertain for certain, whether it be false or true—and this is as deformed and unbecoming in the mind as we feel it to be beautiful and fitting, whether in speaking or in assenting, Yes, yes; No, no (Matt 5:37)—surely for this very reason too this life we live is wretched, in that error is sometimes necessary to it, lest it be lost. Far be it that such be that life where Truth itself is the life of our soul (See John 14:6), where no one deceives and no one is deceived.

But here men deceive and are deceived, and they are more wretched when by lying they deceive than when, by believing liars, they are deceived. To such a degree, however, does a rational nature shrink from falsehood and avoid error as much as it can, that even those who love to deceive do not wish to be deceived. For the one who lies does not seem to himself to err, but to send another into error who believes him. And in that matter which he covers with a lie he does not indeed err, if he himself knows what is true; but in this he is deceived, that he thinks his lie does not harm himself, whereas every sin harms the doer more than the one who suffers it.

18. But here arises a most difficult and most obscure question, on which—when the necessity of answering pressed us—we have already completed a large book: whether it ever pertains to the duty of a just man to lie. For some go so far as to contend that to perjure oneself, and even to say something false about matters pertaining to the worship of God and about the very nature of God, is sometimes a good and pious work.

But to me it seems that every lie is indeed a sin, yet that it matters greatly with what intention and concerning what matters one lies. For the one who lies with the will to be helpful does not sin in the same way as the one who lies with the will to harm; nor does the one who by lying sends a traveler onto a different road do as much harm as the one who depraves the way of life by a deceiving lie.

Surely no one is to be judged a liar who says what is false thinking it true, since, as far as in him lies, he does not deceive but is deceived. And so the one who too incautiously holds as true what he has believed falsely is to be charged not with lying but sometimes with rashness; and rather, on the contrary, as far as in him lies, the one who says what is true thinking it false is lying. For as regards his mind, since he does not say what he thinks, he does not say what is true, although what he says is found to be true; nor is one in any way free from lying who with his mouth speaks the truth unknowingly, but knowingly lies in his will.

And so, when the things themselves about which something is said are not considered, but only the intention of the speaker, the one who says what is false unknowingly, because he thinks it true, is better than the one who knowingly has the intention of lying while not knowing that what he says is true. For the former does not have one thing in his mind and another in his word; but in the latter, whatever in itself the thing said by him may be, yet one thing is shut up in his breast and another is ready on his tongue (See Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline 10)—which is the evil proper to the liar.

But in the consideration of the things themselves that are said, it matters so much in what matter each one is deceived or lies, that although to be deceived is less an evil than to lie, as far as the will of man is concerned, yet it is far more tolerable to lie in those matters which are separated from religion than to be deceived in those without faith in or knowledge of which God cannot be worshiped. That this may be illustrated by examples, let us consider what it is like if someone, while lying, reports that a dead man is alive, and another, while being deceived, believes that Christ will die again after however long a time: is it not incomparably better to lie in the former way than to be deceived in the latter way, and is it not a far lesser evil to lead someone into that error than to be led into this one by someone?

19. In some matters, therefore, we are deceived to great evil, in some to small evil, in some to no evil, and in some even to some good. For a man is deceived to great evil when he does not believe that which leads to eternal life, or believes that which leads to eternal death. But he is deceived to small evil who, by approving the false for the true, falls into some temporal troubles which, however, by applying faithful patience, he turns to good use—as if someone, thinking a man good who is evil, should suffer some evil from him.

But one who believes an evil man to be good in such a way that he suffers no evil from him is deceived to no evil, nor does that prophetic curse fall upon him, Woe to those who call evil good (Isa 5:20). For this is to be understood as said about the very things by which men are evil, not about the men.

Hence the one who says that adultery is good is rightly reproached by that word of the prophet; but the one who says that the man himself is good whom he thinks chaste, not knowing him to be an adulterer, is deceived not in the doctrine of good and evil things but in the hidden things of human morals, calling a man good in whom he thinks there is that which he knows to be good, and saying the adulterer is evil and the chaste man good—but saying this man is good through not knowing that he is an adulterer, not chaste.

Further, if anyone escapes destruction through error, as I said above happened to us on the journey, even some good is conferred on the man by his error.

But when I say that in some matters one is deceived to no evil, or even to some good, I do not call the error itself no evil or some good, but the evil that is not arrived at, or the good that is arrived at, by erring—that is, what does not come about, or what comes about, from the error itself. For the error in itself, whether great in a great matter or small in a small matter, is nevertheless always an evil. For who, unless he is in error, would deny it an evil to approve false things for true, or to reject true things as false, or to hold uncertain things for certain or certain things for uncertain? But it is one thing to think a man good who is evil, which belongs to error, and another thing to suffer no further evil from this evil, if the evil man who was thought good does no harm. Likewise it is one thing to think that road to be the very road which it is not, and another thing to obtain some good from this evil of error—as it is to be freed from the ambush of evil men.

20. I do not indeed know whether errors of this kind too are to be called sins: when a man thinks well of an evil man, not knowing what sort he is; or when, in place of the things we grasp through the senses of the body, there occur similar things, which are perceived by the spirit as though by the body, or by the body as though by the spirit (such as the Apostle Peter thought it was when he supposed he was seeing a vision, having suddenly been freed from the prison and chains by an angel (See Acts 12:7));

or when, in corporeal things themselves, what is rough is thought to be smooth, or what is bitter sweet, or what is foul to smell sweet, or it is thought to thunder when a wagon passes by, or it is thought to be one man when it is another, when two are very much alike, as has often happened with twins—whence that poet says, an error pleasing to the parents (Virgil, Aen. 10, 392)—and other such things: whether these too are to be called sins.

Nor is the most knotty question that tortured those most acute Academics now undertaken by me to be unraveled: whether the wise man ought to approve anything, lest he fall into error if he should approve false things for true, since all things, as they affirm, are either hidden or uncertain. On this account I composed three volumes at the beginning of my conversion, lest those things which contradicted us as if at the very threshold should be a hindrance to us: and certainly that despair of finding the truth, which seems to be strengthened by their arguments, had to be removed. Among them, then, every error is thought to be a sin, which they contend cannot be avoided unless all assent is suspended. For they say that whoever assents to uncertain things errs, and that there is nothing certain in human perceptions because of the indistinguishable likeness of the false—even if what is perceived happens to be true—and they argue this with most acute but most shameless disputes.

But among us, the just man lives by faith (See Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17; Heb 10:38). But if assent is taken away, faith is taken away, because without assent nothing is believed. And there are things that are true although they are not seen, which, unless they are believed, the blessed life—which is none other than eternal—cannot be reached. But with those men I do not know whether we ought to speak, who do not know that they not only will live forever but are living in the present: indeed, they say they do not know what they cannot fail to know. For no one is permitted not to know that he is alive, since if he is not alive he cannot even not know anything: for not only to know, but also not to know, belongs to one who is alive. But evidently, by not assenting that they are alive, they think to guard themselves from error, when even by erring they are proved to be alive: since one who is not alive cannot err. As, therefore, it is not only true but also certain that we are alive, so there are many true and certain things, not to assent to which—far be it—is to be named dementia rather than wisdom.

21. But in those matters in which it makes no difference for laying hold of the kingdom of God whether they are believed or not, or whether things true are so or are only thought to be so, or are false, to err in these—that is, to think one thing for another—is not to be judged a sin, or if it is, to be a very small and very light one. Finally, whatever and however great it may be, it does not pertain to that way by which we go to God, which way is the faith of Christ that works through love (See Gal 5:6). For that error pleasing to the parents in the twin sons did not turn aside from this way; nor did the apostle Peter turn aside from this way when, supposing he was seeing a vision, he so thought one thing for another that, from the images of bodies among which he believed himself to be, he did not distinguish the true bodies among which he was, until the angel by whom he had been freed departed from him (See Acts 12:9–11); nor did the patriarch Jacob turn aside from this way when he believed his living son had been killed by a beast (See Gen 37:33). In these and such falsehoods we are deceived while the faith we have in God is kept safe, and we err without leaving the way that leads to him.

These errors, even if they are not sins, are nevertheless to be reckoned among the evils of this life, which is so subjected to vanity (See Rom 8:20) that here false things are approved for true, true things are rejected as false, and uncertain things are held for certain. For although these things are absent from that faith by which we tend, true and certain, to eternal blessedness, yet they are not absent from that misery in which we still are; for we would in no way be deceived in any sense of mind or body, if we were already enjoying that true and perfect happiness.

22. Furthermore, every lie must be said to be a sin for this reason: that a man—not only when he himself knows what is true, but even when he errs and is deceived as a man—ought to speak what he holds in his mind, whether that be true, or be thought so and is not. But everyone who lies speaks against what he feels in his mind, with the will to deceive. And certainly words were instituted not as a means by which men might deceive one another, but as a means by which each might convey his thoughts into the knowledge of another. To use words for deception, therefore, and not for what they were instituted, is a sin.

Nor is any lie therefore to be thought no sin because we can sometimes profit someone by lying. For we can also profit by stealing, if the poor man to whom it is openly given feels the benefit, and the rich man from whom it is secretly taken feels no loss: yet no one would say that such a theft is no sin.

We can also profit by committing adultery, if some woman appears about to die of love unless it be consented to her in this, and, if she lives, to be purified by repentance: yet such adultery will not therefore be denied to be a sin. But if chastity rightly pleases us, what offense does truth give, that for another's benefit chastity should not be violated by adultery, yet truth should be violated by lying?

It is not to be denied that men who lie only for the salvation of a man have indeed advanced far toward the good; but in such advancement of theirs, what is rightly praised, or even temporally rewarded, is their benevolence, not their deceit; and it is enough that this be pardoned, not that it be even commended—especially among the heirs of the New Testament, to whom it is said, Let it be in your mouth: Yes, yes; No, no: for what is more than this is from evil (Matt 5:37). On account of which evil, since it does not cease to creep in during this mortality, even the coheirs of Christ (See Rom 8:17) themselves say, Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12).

23. These things, then, having been treated as the brevity of this work requires—since the causes of good and evil things are to be known only so far as is enough for the way that leads us to the kingdom where there will be life without death, truth without error, happiness without disturbance—we ought by no means to doubt that the cause of the good things which pertain to us is nothing but the goodness of God; but that the cause of evil things is the will, falling away from the unchangeable good, of a changeable good—first that of the angel, afterward that of man.

24. This is the first evil of the rational creature, that is, the first privation of good. Then there crept in, even upon the unwilling, ignorance of the things to be done and desire for harmful things, attended by error and grief as their companions. When these two evils are felt as imminent, the motion of the mind that flees from them is called fear. Further, when the mind attains the things it desired, though they be ruinous and empty, since through error it does not perceive this, it is either overcome by a diseased delight or buffeted by an empty joy. From these fountains, as it were—of disease, not of plenty, but of want—all the misery of the rational nature flows.

25. Yet this nature, in its evils, could not lose the desire for blessedness. But these are evils common to both men and angels, condemned by the justice of the Lord for their own malice. But man has also a proper punishment, by which he was punished even with the death of the body. For God had threatened him with the penalty of death if he should sin (See Gen 2:17), endowing him with free choice in such a way that he nevertheless ruled him by his command, frightened him with the threat of destruction, and placed him in the happiness of paradise (See Gen 2:15), as in the shade of life, from which, if justice were kept, he might ascend to better things.

26. Hence, made an exile after his sin, he bound his stock too—which by sinning he had vitiated in himself as in a root—with the penalty of death and damnation, so that whatever offspring was born from him and from the wife, condemned along with him, through whom he had sinned, by carnal desire (in which a punishment matching the disobedience was repaid) should contract original sin, by which it would be drawn through various errors and griefs to that last punishment without end, together with the deserting angels, who vitiated, possessed, and shared its lot. Thus through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). For in that place the Apostle called the whole human race the world.

27. So, then, things stood. The condemned mass of the whole human race lay in evils, or even rolled about, and was hurled headlong from evils into evils, and, joined to the part of the angels that had sinned, paid the most fitting penalties of impious desertion. For to the just wrath of God belongs whatever the evil do willingly through blind and untamed desire, and whatever they suffer unwillingly through open and manifest punishments—while the goodness of the Creator does not, indeed, cease to supply even to the evil angels life and the power of living (which supply, if it were taken away, they would perish); and, although men are born of a vitiated and condemned stock, to form and animate their seeds, to order their members through the ages of times and across the spaces of places, to quicken their senses, and to give them nourishment. For he judged it better to do good out of evils than to permit no evils to be.

And if indeed he had willed that there be no reformation of men to something better, just as there is none of the impious angels, would it not rightly come about that the nature which deserted God, which—by misusing its own power—trod underfoot and transgressed the precept of its Creator that it could most easily have kept, which by stubbornly turning away from his light violated in itself the image of its Maker, which by an ill-used free choice broke off the wholesome servitude under his laws, should be wholly deserted by him forever and pay an everlasting punishment according to its desert? Plainly he would do so, if he were only just and not also merciful, and he shows his undue mercy far more evidently in the liberation of the unworthy.

28. Some of the angels, then, by impious pride deserting God and being cast down from the heavenly dwelling above into the lowest darkness of this air, the remaining number of angels remained in eternal blessedness and holiness with God. For the rest were not propagated from one fallen and condemned angel, so that original evil should, as it does with men, bind them with the bonds of a liable succession and draw them all to their due punishments; but, when the one who became the devil had been lifted up with his companions in impiety and, by that very lifting up, cast down with them, the rest clung to the Lord in dutiful obedience, receiving also—what those others did not have—the sure knowledge by which they might be secure of their everlasting and never-falling stability.

29. It pleased God, therefore, the Creator and Governor of the universe, that since not the whole multitude of the angels had perished by deserting God, that part which had perished should remain in perpetual perdition; but that the part which, while the other deserted, had stood firm with God should rejoice in its most certainly known and ever-future happiness; and that the other rational creature, which was in men, since by sins and punishments, both original and proper, it had wholly perished, should, when part of it was repaired, supply what that diabolical ruin had diminished from the angelic society. For this is promised to the saints when they rise, that they shall be equal to the angels of God (See Luke 20:36).

Thus the heavenly Jerusalem, our mother, the city of God, will be defrauded of no part of the number of her citizens, or perhaps will reign with an even more abundant multitude. For we do not know the number either of the holy men or of the unclean demons, in whose place the children of the holy mother—who appeared barren on earth (See Isa 54:1)—succeeding, will remain without any limit of time in that peace from which those others fell. But the number of those citizens, whether what it is or what it will be, is in the contemplation of that Maker who calls those things that are not as though they were (See Rom 4:17), and arranges all things in measure and number and weight (See Wis 11:21).

30. But this part of the human race, to which God promises liberation and an eternal kingdom—can it be restored by the merits of its own works? Far from it! For what good can the lost one do, except insofar as he has been freed from perdition? Can it be by the free choice of the will? This too, far from it. For by misusing free choice, man destroyed both himself and it. For just as one who kills himself certainly kills himself by living, but by killing himself he does not live, nor will he be able to raise himself up again when he has killed himself, so when sin was committed by free choice, sin being the victor, free choice too was lost. For by whatever a man is overcome, to this he is also assigned as a slave (2 Pet 2:19). This is surely the statement of the apostle Peter. And since it is true, what freedom, I ask, can there be in a slave thus assigned, except when it delights him to sin? For he serves freely who willingly does the will of his master, and through this he who is the slave of sin is free to sin. Whence he will not be free to act justly unless, freed from sin, he begins to be the slave of justice.

This is true freedom, on account of the joy of right action, and at the same time a dutiful servitude, on account of obedience to the precept. But whence will this freedom to act well come to a man assigned and sold, unless he redeem him whose voice it is, If the Son frees you, then you will be truly free (John 8:36)? But before this begins to happen in a man, how does anyone glory in free choice in a good work who is not yet free to act well, unless he exalts himself, puffed up with empty pride—which the Apostle restrains, saying, By grace you have been saved, through faith (Eph 2:8)?

31. And lest they should arrogate even faith itself to themselves in such a way that they should not understand it to be divinely given—just as the same Apostle says in another place that he obtained mercy to be faithful (See 1 Cor 7:25)—here too he added, saying, and this not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God, not of works, lest perhaps anyone be exalted (Eph 2:8–9). And lest good works should be thought to be lacking to the faithful, he added again, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them (Eph 2:10). Then, therefore, are we made truly free, when God fashions us, that is, forms and creates us—not that we may be men, which he has already done, but that we may be good men: which he now does by his grace, that we may be a new creature in Christ Jesus (See 2 Cor 5:17), according to what is said, Create in me a clean heart, O God (Ps 51 (50):10). For God had not failed to create his heart, as far as pertains to the nature of the human heart.

32. Likewise, lest anyone should glory—if not in works—in free choice of the will itself, as though merit began from himself, to which the very freedom of acting well were rendered as a due reward, let him hear the same herald of grace saying, For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will (Phil 2:13), and in another place, So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16). Since, without doubt, if a man is of an age to use reason already, he cannot believe, hope, or love unless he wills, nor reach the prize of the heavenly calling of God unless he runs with his will (See Phil 3:14), how then is it not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy—except because the will itself, as it is written, is prepared by the Lord (See Prov 8:35 (LXX))?

Otherwise, if it was said, It is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, because it comes about from both—that is, from both the will of man and the mercy of God—so that we should take it as said, It is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, as though it were said: The will of man alone does not suffice unless there is also the mercy of God; then neither does the mercy of God alone suffice unless there is also the will of man; and through this, if it was rightly said, It is not of him who wills—that is, of man—but of God who shows mercy, because the will of man alone does not fulfill it, why is it not on the contrary also rightly said, "It is not of God who shows mercy, but of man who wills," because the mercy of God alone does not fulfill it? Further, if no Christian will dare to say, "It is not of God who shows mercy, but of man who wills," lest he most openly contradict the Apostle, it remains that it be understood rightly said, It is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, so that the whole be given to God, who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared.

For the good will of man precedes many gifts of God, but not all; and of those it does not itself precede, it too is one. For both are read in the sacred words: His mercy will go before me (Ps 59 (58):10), and His mercy will follow me (Ps 23 (22):6): it goes before the unwilling, that he may will; it follows the willing, that he may not will in vain. For why are we admonished to pray for our enemies (See Matt 5:44)—who certainly do not will to live devoutly—except that God may work in them even the willing? Likewise, why are we admonished to ask that we may receive (See Matt 7:7), except that what we will may be done by him by whom it was brought about that we should will? We pray, then, for our enemies, that the mercy of God may go before them as it has gone before us also; and we pray for ourselves, that his mercy may follow us.

33. The human race, therefore, was held under a just condemnation, and all were children of wrath. Of this wrath it is written, For all our days have failed, and in your wrath we have failed; our years shall be considered as a spider (Ps 90 (89):9). Of this wrath Job too says, For man, born of woman, is of short life and full of wrath (Job 14:1). Of this wrath the Lord Jesus also says, He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son does not have life, but the wrath of God remains upon him (John 3:36). He does not say "will come," but remains upon him. For with this every man is born; on account of which the Apostle says, For we too were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (Eph 2:3).

Since men were in this wrath through original sin—the more grievously and ruinously the greater or more numerous the sins they had added besides—a mediator was necessary, that is, a reconciler, who should appease this wrath by the offering of that one sacrifice of which all the sacrifices of the Law and the Prophets were shadows. Whence the Apostle says, For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, now reconciled, shall we be saved from wrath through him by his blood (Rom 5:10, 9). But when God is said to be angry, no disturbance such as is in the mind of an angry man is signified, but, by a word transferred from human movements, his vengeance—which is never anything but just—has received the name of wrath. That, then, we are reconciled to God through the mediator, and receive the Holy Spirit so that from enemies we are made children—for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God (Rom 8:14)—this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

34. Concerning this mediator it would take long to say as much as is worthy of him, although such things cannot be worthily said by man. For who could explain in fitting words even this alone, that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), so that we might believe in the only Son of God the Father almighty, born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary? For so was the Word made flesh, by flesh being taken up by the divinity, not by the divinity being changed into flesh. Moreover, by flesh here we ought to understand "man," by a manner of speaking in which the part signifies the whole, as it was said, since by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified (Rom 3:20), that is, no man.

For it is not lawful to say that anything of human nature was lacking in that assumption, but a nature in every way free from all bond of sin: not such as is born of both sexes through the desire of the flesh with the obligation of guilt, whose liability is washed away by regeneration, but such as it was fitting should be born of a virgin, whom the faith of the mother, not lust, had conceived. And if her integrity had been corrupted even in his being born, he would no longer be born of a virgin, and the whole Church—which, imitating his mother, daily brings forth his members and is a virgin—would falsely (far be it) confess him born of the Virgin Mary. Read, if you please, my letter On the Virginity of Saint Mary to that illustrious man, whom I name with honor and love, Volusianus.

35. Accordingly Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is both God and man: God before all ages, man in our age; God because he is the Word of God—for the Word was God (John 1:1)—but man because into the unity of his person there came to the Word a rational soul and flesh. Wherefore, insofar as he is God, he and the Father are one (See John 10:30); but insofar as he is man, the Father is greater than he (See John 14:28). For although he was the only Son of God not by grace but by nature, in order that he might also be full of grace (See John 1:14), he was made the son of man as well; and he is the same, both at once, one Christ from both, because, though he was in the form of God, he did not count it robbery that which he was by nature, that is, to be equal to God. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (See Phil 2:6–7), not losing or diminishing the form of God. And through this he was both made less and remained equal, both being one, as has been said. But one thing is on account of the Word, another on account of the man: on account of the Word equal, on account of the man less; one Son of God, the same the son of man; one son of man, the same the Son of God; not two sons of God, God and man, but one Son of God; God without beginning, man from a certain beginning, our Lord Jesus Christ.

36. Here altogether grandly and evidently is the grace of God commended. For what did human nature merit in the man Christ, that it should be singularly taken up into the unity of the person of the only Son of God? What good will, what zeal for a good purpose, what good works went before, by which this man should merit to become one person with God? Was he a man beforehand, and was this singular benefit bestowed on him that he should singularly merit God? Surely, from the time he began to be a man, he began to be nothing other than the Son of God, and that the only one; and on account of God the Word, which by taking him up was made flesh, certainly God—so that, just as any man is one person, namely a rational soul and flesh, so Christ is one person, the Word and the man. Whence comes so great a glory to human nature, undoubtedly gratuitous, with no preceding merits, except because here the great and sole grace of God is evidently shown to those who consider faithfully and soberly—so that men may understand that they are justified from sins by the same grace by which it came about that the man Christ could have no sin?

So too the angel greeted his mother when he announced to her this birth that was to come: Hail, he said, full of grace; and a little later, You have found grace with God (Luke 1:28, 30). And she indeed is said to be full of grace, and to have found grace with God, that she might be the mother of her Lord—indeed, of the Lord of all.

But concerning Christ himself, the evangelist John, when he had said, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, says, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). What he says, the Word was made flesh, this is, full of grace; but what he says, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, this is, full of truth. For Truth itself, the only-begotten Son of God, not by grace but by nature, by grace took up a man in so great a unity of person that the same one was also the son of man.

37. For the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten—that is, the only—Son of God, our Lord, was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. And certainly the Holy Spirit is the gift of God, which gift is itself equal to the giver, and therefore the Holy Spirit too is God, not less than the Father and the Son. And so this too—that the nativity of Christ according to the man is of the Holy Spirit—what else does it demonstrate but grace itself? For when the virgin had asked the angel how that which he announced to her could come about, since she did not know a man, the angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and therefore what is born of you shall be called holy, the Son of God (Luke 1:35). And Joseph, when he wished to dismiss her, suspecting her of adultery, whom he knew was not pregnant by himself, received from the angel this answer: Do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit (Matt 1:20): that is, what you suspect to be of another man is of the Holy Spirit.

38. Are we, however, going to say on this account that the Holy Spirit is the father of the man Christ—so that God the Father begot the Word, and the Holy Spirit the man, and from both these substances Christ was one, both the son of God the Father according to the Word and the son of the Holy Spirit according to the man, because the Holy Spirit, as his father, begot him of the Virgin mother? Who will dare to say this? Nor is there need to show by argument how many other absurdities follow, since this very thing is already so absurd that no faithful ears can endure it. Accordingly, as we confess, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God of God, but as man was born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary, in both substances, namely the divine and the human, is the only Son of God the Father almighty, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds. How then do we say that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit, if the Holy Spirit did not beget him? Or is it because he made him? For our Lord Jesus Christ, insofar as he is God, all things were made through him (John 1:3); but insofar as he is man, he himself too was made, as the Apostle says, he was made of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:3).

But since the whole Trinity made that creature which the Virgin conceived and bore—although it pertains to the person of the Son alone, for the works of the Trinity are not separable—why, in the making of it, was the Holy Spirit alone named? Or is it that, when one of the three is named in some work, the whole Trinity is understood to work? It is indeed so, and it can be taught by examples. But we need not dwell longer on this. For this is what raises the question: how it was said, Born of the Holy Spirit (See Matt 1:20), when he is in no way the son of the Holy Spirit. For it is not lawful, because God made this world, to call it his son, or born of God; but made or created or founded or established by him, or whatever of this kind we can rightly say. Here, then, since we confess that he was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, it is difficult to explain how he is not the son of the Holy Spirit, yet is the son of the Virgin Mary, although he was born of both her and him; for without doubt he was not born of him as of a father, but he was born of her as of a mother.

39. It is therefore not to be granted that whatever is born of some thing must straightway be named the son of that same thing. For—to leave aside that a son is born of a man in one way, a hair, a louse, a worm in another, none of which is a son; so then, to leave these aside, because they are unbecomingly compared to so great a matter—certainly those who are born of water and the Spirit (See John 3:5), no one would rightly call sons of the water, but they are plainly called sons of God the Father and of mother Church.

So, then, he was born of the Holy Spirit, the son of God the Father, not of the Holy Spirit. For that which we said about the hair and the rest has this much force only: that we may be warned that not everything born of something can also be called the son of that of which it is born; just as not all who are called the sons of someone consequently are also said to be born of him, as are those who are adopted. There are also said to be "sons of Gehenna" (See Matt 23:15), not born of it but prepared for it, just as the sons of the kingdom (See Matt 8:12) are prepared for the kingdom.

40. Since, then, something is born of something even not in such a way as to be its son, and again not everyone who is called a son is born of him whose son he is called, surely this manner in which Christ was born of the Holy Spirit not as a son, and of the Virgin Mary as a son, suggests to us the grace of God by which a man, with no preceding merits, in the very beginning of his nature by which he began to be, was joined to the Word of God in so great a unity of person that the same one was the Son of God who was the son of man, and the son of man who was the Son of God; and thus, in the assumption of human nature, that very grace became in a certain way natural to that man, a grace that could admit no sin. And this grace was to be signified through the Holy Spirit for this reason: that he properly is God in such a way that he is also called the gift of God (See John 4:10; Acts 8:20); whence to speak of it sufficiently would take a long while, indeed—if it can be done at all—it is a matter of a very lengthy discussion.

41. Sown or conceived, therefore, with no pleasure of carnal desire, and so contracting no sin originally, and joined and united also by the grace of God to the Word, the only-begotten of the Father—a Son not by grace but by nature—in a wonderful and ineffable manner in unity of person, and so himself too committing no sin, he was nevertheless, on account of the likeness of the flesh of sin in which he had come (See Rom 8:3), called sin himself, to be sacrificed for the washing away of sins. For in the old law sacrifices for sins were called sins (See Lev 6:23; Num 8:8; Hos 4:8). This he truly became, whose shadows those were. Hence the Apostle, when he had said, We beseech you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God (2 Cor 5:20), immediately added, saying, He who knew no sin he made sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor 5:21). He does not say, as it is read in certain faulty manuscripts, "He who knew no sin sinned for us," as though Christ himself had sinned for us, but he says, He who knew no sin—that is, Christ—God made sin for us, to whom we are to be reconciled, that is, a sacrifice for sins by which we might be able to be reconciled. He himself, then, is sin, that we may be righteousness—not our own but God's, not in ourselves but in him: just as he is sin not his own but ours, established not in himself but in us, by the likeness of the flesh of sin (See Rom 8:3) in which he was crucified he showed; so that, since sin was not in him, he might in a certain way die to sin while he dies to the flesh in which there was the likeness of sin, and, though he had never himself lived according to the oldness of sin, might by his resurrection mark out our new life rising again from the old death by which we had been dead in sin (See Rom 6:3–4; 8:3).

42. This is what is celebrated in us, the great sacrament of baptism: that whoever belong to this grace may die to sin, just as he himself is said to have died to sin because he died to the flesh, that is, to the likeness of sin, and may live by being reborn from the font, just as he, by rising from the tomb—whatever the age of body they bear.

43. For from a newborn little child to a decrepit old man, just as no one is to be forbidden baptism, so there is no one who does not die to sin in baptism. But little children die only to original sin, while older people die, besides this, to all those sins which by living badly they have added to that which they contracted by being born.

44. But they too are for the most part said to die to sin, although without doubt they die not to one but to many sins, and to all those they have already committed as their own, whether in thought or in speech or in deed, because by the singular number the plural number too is wont to be signified, as that poet says,
and they fill the womb with armed soldiery (Virgil, Aen. 2, 20), although they did this with many soldiers. And in our Scriptures it is read, Pray therefore to the Lord that he take away the serpent from us (Num 21:7 (LXX)); it does not say "serpents," though the people were suffering many when they said this. And there are countless such cases. But when that one original sin too is signified by the plural number—as when we say that little children are baptized for the remission of sins, and do not say for the remission of sin—that, on the contrary, is the manner of speech by which the singular number is signified by the plural. As in the Gospel, when Herod was dead, it was said, For those who sought the life of the child are dead (Matt 2:20); it was not said, "is dead." And in Exodus it says, They have made for themselves golden gods (Exod 32:31), although they made one calf, of which they said, These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt (Exod 32:4), here too putting the plural for the singular.

45. Although even in that one sin which entered into the world through one man and passed to all men (See Rom 5:12)—on account of which little children too are baptized—many sins can be understood, if that one sin is divided, as it were, into its several members. For there is pride there, by which man loved to be in his own power rather than in God's; and sacrilege, because he did not believe God; and murder, because he cast himself into death; and spiritual fornication, because the integrity of the human mind was corrupted by the serpent's persuasion; and theft, because the forbidden food was taken; and avarice, because he sought more than ought to have sufficed him—and whatever else can be found by diligent consideration in this one offense committed.

46. It is also said, not improbably, that little children are bound by the sins of their parents—not only of the first men but also of their own, from whom they themselves were born. For that divine statement, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (See Exod 20:5; Deut 5:9), certainly holds them before they begin, through regeneration, to belong to the New Testament. Which Testament was prophesied when it was said through Ezekiel that the children would not receive the sins of their fathers, and that the proverb would no longer be current in Israel, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the teeth of the children are set on edge (Ezek 18:2).

For each one is reborn for this reason, that whatever of sin there is with which he is born may be dissolved in him. For the sins which are afterward committed by acting badly can also be healed by repenting, as we see done even after baptism. And through this, regeneration was instituted for no other reason than that generation is vitiated—to such a degree that even one procreated of lawful marriage says, In iniquities I was conceived, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb (Ps 51 (50):5). Nor did he here say, In iniquity, or sin—though this too could rightly be said—but he preferred to say iniquities and sins, because even in that one sin which passed to all men, and which is so great that by it human nature was changed and turned into the necessity of death, there are found, as I discussed above, many sins; and there are the others of the parents, who, even if they cannot thus change nature, nevertheless bind their children with guilt, unless gratuitous grace and divine mercy come to their aid.

47. But concerning the sins of the other parents, the forefathers in whom each one succeeds from Adam himself down to his own father, it may not unreasonably be disputed: whether the one who is born is involved in the evil acts and the multiplied original offenses of them all, so that each is born so much the worse the later he is born; or whether God threatens the descendants with the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generation (See Deut 5:9) for this reason—that, by the moderation of his mercy, he does not extend his wrath any further as regards the faults of their forefathers, lest those on whom the grace of regeneration is not conferred should be pressed with too great a burden in their very eternal damnation, if they were forced, from the beginning of the human race, to contract originally the sins of all their preceding parents and to pay the penalties due for them; or whether something else concerning so great a matter can or cannot be found, by Holy Scripture being more diligently searched out and treated—I do not dare to affirm rashly.

48. That one sin, however—which was committed in a place and condition of so great happiness, so great that in one man the whole human race was condemned originally, and, so to speak, radically—is not dissolved and washed away except through the one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5), who alone could be so born that he had no need to be reborn.

49. For those who were baptized with the baptism of John, by whom he himself too was baptized, were not reborn, but by a certain forerunning ministry of him who said, Prepare the way of the Lord (Isa 40:3; Matt 3:3; Luke 3:4), they were being prepared for this one in whom alone they could be reborn. For his baptism is not in water only, as John's was, but also in the Holy Spirit (See Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8), so that whoever believes in Christ may be regenerated by that Spirit—of whom Christ, being generated, had no need of regeneration. Hence that voice of the Father which came over him when baptized, Today I have begotten you (Ps 2:7; Heb 1:5; 5:5. See Matt 3:17), showed not the one day of time on which he was baptized, but the day of unchangeable eternity, in order to show that this man belonged to the person of the Only-begotten. For where the day is begun by no end of a yesterday nor ended by the beginning of a tomorrow, it is always "today."

He willed, then, to be baptized in water by John (See Matt 3:15), not that any iniquity of his might be washed away, but that great humility might be commended. So baptism found in him nothing to wash away, just as death found nothing to punish, in order that the devil—overcome and conquered by the truth of justice, not by the violence of power—since he had most unjustly killed him who had no merit of sin, might most justly lose, through him, those whom he held by the merit of sin. Both, therefore—that is, both baptism and death—were undertaken by him for the sake of a sure dispensation, not by a pitiable necessity but rather by a pitying will, so that one might take away the sin of the world (See John 1:29), just as one sent sin into the world (See Rom 5:12, 18), that is, into the whole human race.

50. But that one man sent one sin into the world; this one man, however, took away not only that one but at the same time all those which he found added. Whence the Apostle says, The gift is not as it was through the one who sinned; for the judgment indeed was from one to condemnation, but the grace from many offenses to justification (Rom 5:16). For certainly that one sin which is contracted originally, even if it were alone, makes men liable to condemnation; but grace justifies from many offenses the man who, besides that one which he contracted originally in common with all, has also committed many of his own.

51. Nevertheless, what he says a little later, As through the offense of one, upon all men to condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one, upon all men to the justification of life (Rom 5:18), sufficiently indicates that no one born of Adam is held except in condemnation, and no one is freed from condemnation except by being reborn in Christ.

52. When he had spoken of this punishment through one man and this grace through one man, as much as he judged sufficient for that place in his epistle, he then commended the great mystery of holy baptism in the cross of Christ in such a way that we understand baptism in Christ to be nothing other than a likeness of the death of Christ, and the death of the crucified Christ to be nothing other than a likeness of the remission of sin, so that as in him there was a true death, so in us there is a true remission of sins, and as in him there was a true resurrection, so in us there is a true justification. For he says, What then shall we say? Shall we remain in sin, that grace may abound? (Rom 6:1) For he had said above, For where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more (Rom 5:20). And so he set himself the question whether, for the sake of obtaining an abundance of grace, one should remain in sin. But he answered, Far from it. And he added, If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it? (Rom 6:2) Then, to show that we have died to sin, he says, Or do you not know that whoever of us have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized in his death? (Rom 6:3) If, then, we are hereby shown to have died to sin because we have been baptized in the death of Christ, surely little children too, who are baptized in Christ, die to sin, because they are baptized in his death. For it was said with no one excepted, Whoever of us have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized in his death. And it was said in order to prove that we have died to sin. But to what sin do little children die by being reborn, except that which they contracted by being born? And through this, what follows pertains also to them, when he says, We were buried, then, with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in that of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that we should no longer serve sin; for he who has died is justified from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live together with him, knowing that Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more: death shall no longer have dominion over him. For in that he died to sin, he died once; but in that he lives, he lives to God. So you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:4–11). For he had begun to prove from this that we should not remain in sin that grace may abound, and had said, If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it? And to show that we have died to sin, he had added, Or do you not know that whoever of us have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized in his death? And so he closed this whole passage as he began it. For he so set forth the death of Christ as to say that he too had died to sin; but to what sin except to the flesh, in which there was not sin but the likeness of sin, and therefore was called by the name of sin? And so to those baptized in the death of Christ—in which not only older people but also little children are baptized—he says, So you also, that is, just as Christ, so you also reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

53. Whatever, therefore, was done in the cross of Christ, in the burial, in the resurrection on the third day, in the ascension into heaven and the sitting at the right hand of the Father, was so done that by these things—not only spoken mystically but also done—the Christian life that is lived in them might be figured. For on account of his cross it was said, But those who are Jesus Christ's have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:24). On account of the burial, For we were buried with Christ through baptism into death (Rom 6:4). On account of the resurrection, That as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life (Rom 6:4). On account of the ascension into heaven and the sitting at the right hand of the Father, But if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; relish the things that are above, not those that are upon the earth: for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:1–3).

54. But now what we confess concerning Christ is to come—that he will come from heaven and will judge the living and the dead—does not pertain to our life that is lived here, because it is not among the things he has done, but among the things to be done at the end of the age. To this pertains what the Apostle, following on, added, When Christ, your life, shall appear, then you too shall appear with him in glory (Col 3:4).

55. Now in two ways can it be taken that he will judge the living and the dead: either so that we understand by the living those whom his coming will find not yet dead but still living in this flesh, and by the dead those who have departed from the body before he comes, or are to depart; or the just by the living, the unjust by the dead, since the just too will be judged. For sometimes the judgment of God is put in a bad sense, whence comes this: but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:29); sometimes also in a good sense, according to what was said, Save me, O God, by your name, and judge me by your power (Ps 54 (53):1). For by the judgment of God comes about that very separation of the good and the evil, so that the good—who are to be freed from evil, not destroyed with the evil—may be set apart on the right hand (See Matt 25:31–46); on account of which that man cries out, Judge me, O God; and, as if explaining what he had said, and distinguish, he says, my cause from a nation that is not holy (Ps 43 (42):1).

56. But when we have spoken—as far as pertains to the brevity of a confession—of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord, we add that, as you know, we believe also in the Holy Spirit, so that the Trinity which is God may be completed. Then the holy Church is mentioned, whereby it is given to be understood that the rational creature belonging to the free Jerusalem (See Gal 4:26) had to be placed after the mention of the Creator, that is, of that supreme Trinity, since whatever has been said of the man Christ pertains to the unity of the person of the Only-begotten. The right order of the confession, therefore, required that the Church be joined to the Trinity, as the dwelling to its inhabitant, and as his temple to God, and as its city to its founder. And it is to be understood here as a whole—not only as to the part that is a pilgrim on earth, praising the name of the Lord from the rising of the sun to its setting (See Ps 113 (112):3), and, after the captivity of the old life, singing a new song (See Rev 5:9); but also as to that part which in the heavens has always, from the time it was created, clung to God and has experienced no evil of its own fall. This part persists blessed among the holy angels, and, as is fitting, helps the part of itself that is on pilgrimage, because both will be one in the fellowship of eternity, and now are one in the bond of love; and the whole of it was established to worship the one God.

Whence neither the whole of it nor any part of it wishes to be worshiped as God, nor to be God to anyone belonging to the temple of God, which is built of the gods that God, who is not made, makes (See Ps 82 (81):6; John 10:34–35). And through this, the Holy Spirit, if he were a creature and not the Creator, would surely be a rational creature; for that is the highest creature. And therefore in the Rule of faith he would not be placed before the Church, because he too would belong to the Church, in that part of it which is in the heavens, nor would he have a temple, but would himself too be a temple.

But he has a temple, of which the Apostle says, Do you not know that your bodies are a temple within you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God? (1 Cor 6:19) Of which he says in another place, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (1 Cor 6:15)

How, then, is he not God, who has a temple, or how is he less than Christ, whose members have a temple? For his temple is not one thing and the temple of God another, since the same Apostle says, Do you not know that you are the temple of God? And to prove this, he added, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? (1 Cor 3:16) God, therefore, dwells in his temple—not only the Holy Spirit, but also the Father and the Son; who also, concerning his body, through which he was made the head of the Church which is in men, that he himself might hold the primacy in all things (See Col 1:18), says, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19). For the temple of God—that is, of the whole supreme Trinity—is the holy Church, namely the whole Church in heaven and on earth.

57. But concerning that Church which is in heaven, what can we affirm except that no one in it is evil, and that no one henceforth has fallen from there or will fall, ever since God did not spare the angels who sinned, as the apostle Peter writes, but, thrusting them down into the prisons of the darkness of the lower world, delivered them to be kept for punishment at the judgment (2 Pet 2:4)?

58. But how that most blessed and heavenly society is constituted, what differences of offices there are there—so that, although all are named angels as if by a general name, as we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, For to which of the angels did he ever say, Sit at my right hand? (Heb 1:13) (for in this way he signified that all are called angels universally)—yet there are archangels there; and whether these same archangels are called virtues, and so it was said, Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his virtues (Ps 148:2), as if it were said, "Praise him, all you angels; praise him, all you archangels"; and what difference there is among those four names by which the Apostle seems to have embraced that whole heavenly society itself, saying, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers (Col 1:16)—let those say who can, if at least they can prove what they say: I for my part confess that I do not know these things. But not even this do I hold for certain, whether the sun and moon and all the heavenly bodies belong to the same society, although to some they seem to be luminous bodies without sense or understanding.

59. Likewise, who could explain with what sort of bodies the angels appeared to men, so that they were not only seen but even touched; and again, not by solid corpulence but by spiritual power, present certain visions not to bodily eyes but to spiritual eyes or to minds, or say something not to the ear from without but within the soul of man, being themselves stationed there—as it is written in the book of the Prophets, and the angel who was speaking in me said to me (Zech 1:9); for it does not say "who was speaking to me," but in me—or appear even in dreams and converse after the manner of dreams (for we have in the Gospel, Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in dreams, saying (Matt 1:20))? For by these means the angels, as it were, indicate that they do not have tangible bodies, and they raise a most difficult question: how the fathers washed their feet (See Gen 18:4; 19:2), how Jacob wrestled with the angel in so solid a grappling (See Gen 32:29–32). When these things are inquired into, and each one conjectures about them as he can, talents are exercised not unprofitably, if a moderate discussion is brought to bear and there is no error of those thinking they know what they do not know. For what need is there that these and such things be either affirmed or denied or defined at the risk of fault, when they are not known without fault?

60. There is greater need to judge and discern when Satan transforms himself as an angel of light (See 2 Cor 11:14), lest by deceiving he should seduce to some ruinous things. For when the sense of the body is deceived, but the mind is not moved from the true and right judgment by which one leads a faithful life, there is no danger in religion; or when, feigning himself good, he does or says the things that befit good angels, even if he is believed good, the error is not a ruinous or diseased one for Christian faith.

But when, through these things that are not his own, he begins to lead to his own, then to discern him, and not to go after him, requires great and necessary vigilance. But how few of men are fit to escape all his deadly snares, unless God rules and protects them? And the very difficulty of this matter is useful for this: that no one should be a hope to himself, nor one man to another, but God to all his own; for that this rather is to our advantage, let no one of the pious at all doubt.

61. This Church, then, which is in the holy angels and virtues of God, will become known to us as it is when we have been joined to it at the end, to hold everlasting blessedness together. But that Church which is a pilgrim away from it on earth is the more known to us in that we are in it, and because it is of men, which we too are. This Church has been redeemed from all sin by the blood of the Mediator who has no sin, and its voice is, If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all (Rom 8:31). For Christ did not die for the angels. But yet whatever of men is redeemed through his death and freed from evil is done also for the angels, since in a certain way it returns into favor with them after the enmities which sins made between men and the holy angels, and from the very redemption of men the losses of that angelic ruin are repaired.

62. And certainly the holy angels—taught by God, in the eternal contemplation of whose truth they are blessed—know how great a number, to complete that city, its integrity awaits from the human race. On account of this the Apostle says that all things are restored in Christ, both the things that are in the heavens and the things that are on earth, in him (Eph 1:10). For the things that are in the heavens are restored when that which fell from there among the angels is restored from among men; and the things that are on earth are restored when those very men who are predestined to eternal life are renewed from the oldness of corruption. And so, through that one sacrifice in which the Mediator was immolated—which the many victims of the Law figured as one—the heavenly things are made at peace with the earthly, and the earthly with the heavenly. For, as the same Apostle says, in him it pleased that all fullness should dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether the things on earth or the things in the heavens (Col 1:19–20).

63. This peace surpasses, as it is written, all understanding (See Phil 4:7), and cannot be known by us except when we have come to it. For how are the heavenly things made at peace except with us, that is, by being made to agree with us? For there peace always exists, both among all the intellectual creatures themselves and with their Creator. Which peace surpasses, as has been said, all understanding—but certainly ours, not that of those who always see the face of the Father (See Matt 18:10). But we, however great the human understanding in us may be, know in part, and now see through a mirror, in a riddle (See 1 Cor 13:9, 12). But when we have been made equal to the angels of God (See Luke 20:36), then we too, just as they do, shall see face to face, and shall have as much peace toward them as they have toward us, because we shall love them as much as we are loved by them. And so their peace will be known to us, because ours too will be as great and of the same kind, nor will it then surpass our understanding; but the peace of God, which is there toward us, will without doubt surpass both our understanding and theirs. For the rational creature, whatever blessed creature there is, is blessed from him, not he from it. Whence, according to this, what is written is better taken—the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding—so that in what he said, all, not even the understanding of the holy angels can be excepted, but only that of God; for his peace does not surpass even his own understanding.

64. Now the angels agree with us even now, when our sins are remitted. Therefore, after the mention of the holy Church, the remission of sins is placed in the order of the confession. For by this the Church which is on earth stands; by this what had perished and was found does not perish (See Luke 15:32). For, apart from the gift of baptism—which was given against original sin, so that what was contracted by generation might be taken away by regeneration; and yet it also takes away the active sins, whatever it finds committed in heart, mouth, or deed—apart, then, from this great indulgence, with which the renewal of man begins, in which all guilt, both inborn and added, is dissolved: even the rest of one's life, once one is of an age that uses reason, however it may abound in the fruitfulness of justice, is not lived without the remission of sins, since the children of God, as long as they live mortally, struggle with death.

And although it was truly said of them, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God (Rom 8:14), yet they are so stirred by the Spirit of God and, as children of God, make progress toward God, that nevertheless, by their own spirit too—especially as the corruptible body weighs it down (See Wis 9:15)—they fall short, as children of men, to their own selves in certain human movements, and therefore sin. It matters, indeed, how much: for not because every crime is a sin is therefore every sin also a crime. And so we say that the life of holy men, as long as it is lived in this death, can be found without crime; but if we say that we have no sin, as that great Apostle says, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).

65. But not even concerning crimes themselves, however great—which are to be remitted in the holy Church—is the mercy of God to be despaired of by those who do penance according to the measure of each one's own sin. But in the carrying out of penance, where such an offense has been committed that the one who committed it is even separated from the body of Christ, not so much the measure of time is to be considered as that of grief; for God does not despise a contrite and humbled heart (See Ps 51 (50):17). But because for the most part the grief of one heart is hidden from another, and does not come into the knowledge of others through words or any other signs—though it is before him to whom it is said, My groaning is not hidden from you (Ps 38 (37):9)—times of penance are rightly appointed by those who preside over the Churches, so that satisfaction may be made also to the Church, in which those very sins are remitted. For outside it they are not remitted: for it is the Church that has properly received the Holy Spirit as a pledge (See 2 Cor 1:22), without whom no sins are remitted in such a way that those to whom they are remitted obtain eternal life.

66. For it is rather on account of the future judgment that the remission of sins comes about in this life. So far does what is written hold true—A heavy yoke is upon the children of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb until the day of their burial into the mother of all (Sir 40:1)—that we see even little children, after the washing of regeneration, tormented by the affliction of various evils; so that we may understand that everything done by the saving sacraments pertains rather to the hope of goods to come than to the retention or attainment of present ones.

Many things, too, seem here to be pardoned and avenged with no punishments, but their penalties are reserved for the time to come. For not in vain is that day properly called the Day of Judgment, when the judge of the living and the dead is to come. Just as, on the contrary, some things are avenged here, and yet, if they are remitted, will surely do no harm in the future age. Therefore, concerning certain temporal punishments which in this life are imposed on sinners—on those whose sins are blotted out, lest they be reserved for the end—the Apostle says, If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord; but when we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with this world (1 Cor 11:31, 32).

67. It is believed by some that even those who do not abandon the name of Christ, and are baptized in his font in the Church, and are not cut off from it by any schism or heresy—in however great crimes they live, which they neither wash away by repenting nor redeem by almsgiving, but persevere in them most stubbornly to the last day of this life—will be saved through fire, though punished, in proportion to the magnitude of their crimes and shameful deeds, by a long but not eternal fire.

But those who believe this, and yet are Catholics, seem to me to be deceived by a certain human benevolence. For Divine Scripture, when consulted, answers otherwise. Now I have written a book on this question, whose title is On Faith and Works, where, according to Holy Scripture, as far as I could with God's help, I demonstrated that the faith which saves is that which the Apostle Paul expressed clearly enough, saying, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which works through love (Gal 5:6). But if it works badly, not well, without doubt, according to the Apostle James, it is dead in itself (Jas 2:17), who again says, If anyone says he has faith but does not have works, can faith save him? (Jas 2:14)

Further, if a wicked man is to be saved through fire on account of faith alone, and what blessed Paul says is to be taken thus—but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire (1 Cor 3:15)—then faith will be able to save without works, and what his fellow apostle James said will be false. That too will be false which this same Paul says: Do not, he says, be deceived; neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor those who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the avaricious, nor drunkards, nor the foul-mouthed, nor the rapacious shall possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9–10). For if those who persevere in these crimes will nevertheless be saved on account of faith in Christ, how will they not be in the kingdom of God?

68. But because these most manifest and most plain apostolic testimonies cannot be false, that which was said obscurely about those who build, upon the foundation which is Christ, not gold, silver, precious stones, but wood, hay, stubble (See 1 Cor 3:11–12) (for it was said of these that they will be saved through fire, since by the merit of the foundation they will not perish) is to be so understood that it is not found to be contrary to these manifest ones.

For wood and hay and stubble can not absurdly be taken to mean such desires for worldly things—though lawfully permitted—that they cannot be lost without grief of mind. But when this grief burns, if Christ holds the place of a foundation in the heart, that is, so that nothing is set before him, and the man who is burned by such grief prefers to lack the things he so loves rather than Christ, he is made safe through fire. But if at the time of temptation he prefers to keep temporal and worldly things of this kind rather than Christ, he did not have him in the foundation, because he held these in the first place, since in a building nothing is prior to the foundation.

For the fire of which the Apostle spoke in that place ought to be understood as such that both pass through it, that is, both the one who builds upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, and the one who builds wood, hay, stubble. For when he had said this, he added, The work of each, what sort it is, the fire will test; if anyone's work that he built upon it endures, he will receive a reward; but if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire (1 Cor 3:13–15). The fire, therefore, will test the work not of one of them but of both. There is a certain fire, the temptation of tribulation, of which it is plainly written in another place, The furnace tests the vessels of the potter, and the temptation of tribulation tests just men (Sir 27:6; see 2:5).

This fire, meanwhile in this life, does what the Apostle said, if it should befall two faithful men: one, namely, thinking of the things that are God's, how he may please God—that is, building upon Christ the foundation gold, silver, precious stones; the other thinking of the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife (See 1 Cor 7:32–33)—that is, building upon the same foundation wood, hay, stubble. For the work of the former is not burned up, because he did not love things by the loss of which he would be tormented. But the work of the latter is burned up, since things possessed with love do not perish without grief; but because, when either condition is set before him, he would rather lack them than Christ, and does not desert Christ through fear of losing such things—although he grieves when he loses them—he is indeed saved, yet so as through fire, because the grief over the lost things he had loved burns him, but does not overthrow or consume him, fortified by the stability and incorruption of the foundation.

69. It is not incredible that something of this kind happens even after this life, and whether it is so can be asked, and either found or remain hidden—that some of the faithful are saved through a certain purgatorial fire, the more or less slowly the more or less they loved perishing goods; not, however, such as those of whom it was said that they will not possess the kingdom of God (See 1 Cor 6:10), unless those same crimes are remitted to them when they repent fittingly.

I said "fittingly," that they may not be barren in almsgiving, to which Divine Scripture attributes so much that the Lord declares he will impute to those on the right only the fruit of it, and to those on the left only the barrenness of it, when he will say to these, Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom (Matt 25:34), but to those, Go into the eternal fire (Matt 25:41).

70. We must indeed beware lest anyone suppose that those unspeakable crimes—such that those who do them will not possess the kingdom of God—may be perpetrated daily and redeemed daily by almsgiving. For life must be changed for the better, and God must be propitiated for past sins through almsgiving, not, as it were, bought off so that it may always be permitted to commit them with impunity. For he has given no one license to sin (See Sir 15:21), although in his mercy he blots out sins already done, if fitting satisfaction is not neglected.

71. But for the daily, small, and light sins without which this life is not lived, the daily prayer of the faithful makes satisfaction. For it belongs to them to say, Our Father who are in heaven (Matt 6:9), who have now been regenerated with such a Father from water and the Holy Spirit (See John 3:5). This prayer wholly blots out the least and daily sins. It blots out also those from which the life of the faithful—lived even criminally, but changed for the better by repenting—departs, if, just as it is truly said, Forgive us our debts (since there are not lacking things to be forgiven), so it is truly said, as we also forgive our debtors (See Matt 6:12)—that is, if what is said is done; for it is itself an almsgiving to pardon a man who asks for pardon.

72. And through this, to all that is done with profitable mercy applies what the Lord says, Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you (Luke 11:41). Not only, then, does he who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, lodging to the traveler, a refuge to the fugitive, a visit to the sick or imprisoned, ransom to the captive, support to the weak, guidance to the blind, consolation to the sorrowful, healing to the unwell, the way to the wanderer, counsel to one deliberating, and whatever is necessary to one in need—not only such a one, but also he who gives pardon to the sinner, gives alms.

And he who corrects with a blow one over whom power is given to him, or restrains him by some discipline, and yet forgives from the heart the sin by which he was harmed or offended by him, or prays that it be forgiven him—not only in that which he forgives and prays, but also in that which he corrects and chastises with some corrective punishment—gives alms, because he shows mercy. For many good things are bestowed on the unwilling, when their advantage rather than their will is consulted, since they are found to be enemies to themselves, while their friends are rather those whom they think enemies, and by erring they return evil for good—though a Christian ought not to return evil even for evil (See Matt 5:44–47; Rom 12:17–21). There are, then, many kinds of almsgiving, by doing which we are helped that our sins may be forgiven.

73. But there is nothing greater than that almsgiving by which we forgive from the heart what anyone has sinned against us. For it is a lesser thing to be kind, or even beneficent, toward one who has done you no evil. That other is far grander, and belongs to the most magnificent goodness: that you love even your enemy, and that to one who wishes you evil and does it if he can, you always wish good and do what you can—hearing Jesus say, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44). But since these things belong to the perfect children of God, to which indeed every one of the faithful ought to stretch himself, and bring the human mind to this disposition by praying to God and contending and wrestling with himself—yet because this so great good does not belong to so great a multitude as we believe is heard when in prayer it is said, Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12)—without doubt the words of this pledge are fulfilled if a man who has not yet advanced so far as already to love his enemy nevertheless, when he is asked by a man who has sinned against him to forgive him, forgives from the heart; since he too certainly wishes to be forgiven when he himself asks, when he prays and says, as we also forgive our debtors—that is, "so forgive our debts when we ask, as we too forgive our debtors when they ask."

74. But now, one who asks the man against whom he has sinned, if he is moved by his own sin to ask, is no longer to be reckoned an enemy, so that it should be difficult to love him, as it was difficult when he was carrying on enmities. But whoever does not forgive from his heart one who asks and repents of his sin, let him in no way suppose that his own sins are forgiven by the Lord, since the Truth cannot lie. And what hearer or reader of the Gospel could fail to know who said, I am the Truth (John 14:6)? Who, when he had taught the prayer, vehemently commended this statement placed in it, saying, For if you forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your sins; but if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your sins (Matt 6:14–15). Whoever is not awakened by so great a thunder is not asleep but dead: and yet he who can even raise the dead is mighty.

75. Indeed, those who live most wickedly and do not care to correct such a life and morals, and amid their very crimes and shameful deeds do not cease to be frequent in almsgiving, flatter themselves in vain on the ground that the Lord says, Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you; for they do not understand how widely this extends. But, that they may understand, let them attend to those to whom he said it. For thus it is written in the Gospel, While he was speaking, a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him, and he went in and reclined. But the Pharisee began, considering within himself, to ask why he had not washed before the meal. And the Lord said to him, 'Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the dish; but what is within you is full of robbery and iniquity; fools, did not he who made what is outside also make what is inside? But yet give as alms what remains, and behold, all things are clean for you (Luke 11:37–41).'

Are we then to understand this in such a way that, for the Pharisees, who do not have faith in Christ—even if they have not believed in him nor been reborn of water and the Holy Spirit—all things are clean if only they give alms, as those people think alms are to be given, when all are unclean whom the faith of Christ does not cleanse, of which it is written, cleansing their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9); and the Apostle says, but to the unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled (Titus 1:15)? How, then, would all things be clean for the Pharisees, if they gave alms and were not believers? Or how would they be believers, if they were unwilling to believe in Christ and to be reborn in his grace? And yet what they heard is true: Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.

76. For one who wishes to give alms in due order ought to begin with himself, and give it first to himself. For almsgiving is a work of mercy, and it is most truly said, Have mercy on your soul, pleasing God (Sir 30:24). For this we are reborn, that we may please God, to whom what we contracted by being born rightly displeases. This is the first almsgiving we have given to ourselves, since we sought ourselves out in our misery through the mercy of a merciful God, confessing his just judgment by which we were made miserable—of which the Apostle says, The judgment indeed was from one to condemnation (Rom 5:16)—and giving thanks for his great love, of which the same preacher of grace says, But God commends his love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8), so that we too, judging truly of our misery, and loving God with the love which he himself has given, may live devoutly and rightly. And while the Pharisees passed over this judgment and love of God, they did indeed tithe even the most minute of their fruits on account of the alms they gave, and therefore they did not give alms beginning with themselves and first showing mercy to themselves. On account of which order of love it was said, You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:27). When, therefore, he had rebuked them because they washed themselves on the outside, but within were full of robbery and iniquity, admonishing that the inner parts be cleansed by a certain almsgiving which a man ought first to give to himself, he said, But yet give as alms what remains, and behold, all things are clean for you.

Then, to show what he had admonished and what they themselves did not care to do—lest they should think he was ignorant of their alms—he says, But woe to you Pharisees, as though he said, "I indeed admonished you that alms should be given by which all things may be clean for you, but woe to you who tithe mint and rue and every herb; for these I know to be your alms, lest you suppose that I have now admonished you about them; and you pass over the judgment and love of God (Luke 11:42), by which almsgiving you could be cleansed from all inner defilement, so that even your bodies, which you wash, might be clean for you." For this is all things—namely both the inner and the outer—as is read elsewhere, Cleanse the things that are within, and the things that are without will be clean (Matt 23:26). But lest he should seem to have rejected those alms that are given from the fruits of the earth, he says, These you ought to have done—that is, the judgment and love of God—and not to have left those undone (Luke 11:42), that is, the alms of earthly fruits.

77. Let them not, then, deceive themselves who suppose that by however lavish almsgiving from their fruits or any money they purchase impunity to remain in the enormity of crimes and the wickedness of shameful deeds. For they not only do these things, but love them so as to wish always to be engaged in them, if only they could do so with impunity. But he who loves iniquity hates his own soul (See Ps 11 (10):5), and he who hates his own soul is not merciful but cruel to it. For by loving it according to the world, he hates it according to God. If, then, he wished to give it the alms by which all things would be clean for it, he would hate it according to the world and love it according to God. But no one gives any alms unless he receives from him who is in want of nothing that out of which he may give: therefore it was said, His mercy will go before me (Ps 59 (58):10).

78. But which are light and which grave sins is to be weighed not by human but by divine judgment. For we see that certain things were granted by the apostles themselves through pardon, such as that which the venerable Paul says to married couples, Do not defraud one another, except by consent for a time, that you may have leisure for prayer, and again come together, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence (1 Cor 7:5). This might be thought not to be a sin—namely, to come together with one's spouse not for the sake of procreating children, which is the good of marriage, but also for carnal pleasure—so that the weakness of the incontinent might avoid the deadly evil of fornication or adultery or any other uncleanness, which is shameful even to mention, to which lust, with Satan tempting, can drag one.

It might, then, as I said, be thought not to be a sin, had he not added, But I say this by way of pardon, not by way of command (1 Cor 7:6). But who would now deny it to be a sin, when by apostolic authority he confesses that pardon is given to those who do it? There is something similar where he says, Does any of you, having a matter against another, dare to be judged before the unjust and not before the saints? (1 Cor 6:1) And a little later, If, then, you have worldly cases, he says, set those who are contemptible in the Church to judge them: I say it to your shame: is there not among you any wise man who can judge between his brother and his brother, but brother goes to law with brother, and this before unbelievers? (1 Cor 6:4–6)

For here too it might be thought that to have a case against another is not a sin, but only to wish it to be judged outside the Church, had he not gone on to add, It is indeed altogether a fault that you have lawsuits among yourselves (1 Cor 6:7). And lest anyone should so excuse this as to say that he has a just case, but is suffering an injustice which he would wish removed from himself by the sentence of judges, he immediately met such thoughts or excuses; and so he says, Why not rather suffer the injustice? Why not rather be defrauded? (1 Cor 6:7) so that we return to what the Lord says, If anyone wishes to take away your tunic and go to law with you, let him have your cloak also (Matt 5:40), and in another place, From him who takes away your goods do not ask them back (Luke 6:30).

He forbade, then, his own people to have lawsuits with others over worldly matters, which doctrine the Apostle says is a fault. Yet since he allows such cases to be settled in the Church, brothers judging among brothers, but terribly forbids it outside the Church, it is manifest here too what is granted to the weak by way of pardon. On account of these and such sins, and others, though smaller than these, which come about through offenses of words and thoughts—the Apostle James confessing and saying, For in many things we all offend (Jas 3:2)—we ought daily and frequently to pray the Lord and say, Forgive us our debts, nor to lie in what follows, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12).

79. But there are certain things which would be thought very light, were they not shown in Divine Scripture to be graver than is supposed. For who would think that one who says to his brother, You fool, is guilty of Gehenna, unless the Truth said it (See Matt 5:22)? To which wound, however, he immediately applied medicine, adding the precept of brotherly reconciliation; for soon he says, If, then, you offer your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you (Matt 5:23), and so forth.

Or who would suppose how great a sin it is to observe days and months and years and seasons, as those observe who on certain days or months or years wish or refuse to begin something, because, according to the empty doctrines of men (See Col 2:22), they reckon times to be favorable or unfavorable, did we not weigh the magnitude of this evil from the fear of the Apostle, who says to such people, I fear for you, lest perhaps I have labored among you in vain (Gal 4:11)?

80. To this is added that sins, however great and horrible, when they have turned into custom, are believed to be either small or none, so much so that they seem not only not to be concealed but even to be proclaimed and published abroad, when, as it is written, the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does iniquity is spoken well of (Ps 10 (9):3). Such iniquity is called a "cry" in the divine books, as you have in the prophet Isaiah concerning the bad vineyard: I waited, he says, that it should do justice, but it did iniquity, and not righteousness but a cry (Isa 5:7). Whence comes also that in Genesis, The cry of the Sodomites and Gomorrhites has been multiplied (Gen 18:20), because among them those shameful deeds were not only no longer punished, but were even publicly practiced as if by law. So in our times so many evils, even if not such as those, have now come into open custom, that for them we dare neither to excommunicate any layman nor to degrade a cleric. Whence, when some years ago I was expounding the Epistle to the Galatians, in that very place where the Apostle says, I fear for you, lest perhaps I have labored among you in vain (Gal 4:11), I was compelled to exclaim: "Woe to the sins of men, at which we shudder only when they are unusual; but the usual ones, for the washing away of which the blood of the Son of God was shed—though they are so great that they make the kingdom of God to be wholly shut against them—we are often forced, by seeing them, to tolerate them all, and, often by tolerating them, even to do some of them; and would, O Lord, that we may not do all the things we could not prevent!" But I shall see whether immoderate grief incautiously compelled me to say something.

81. This I will now say, which indeed I have often already said in other places of my works: For two causes we sin, either by not yet seeing what we ought to do, or by not doing what we already see ought to be done; of which two, the former is the evil of ignorance, the latter of weakness. Against these it is fitting that we fight. But surely we are overcome, unless we are divinely helped, so that we not only see what is to be done, but also—health being added—the delight of justice may overcome in us the delights of those things which, by desiring to have or fearing to lose, we sin against knowingly and seeingly; being now not only sinners, which we were even when we sinned through ignorance, but also transgressors of the law, when we do not do what is to be done, or do what we now know ought not to be done. Wherefore not only that he may pardon us if we have sinned—on account of which we say, Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors—but also that he may govern us lest we sin—on account of which we say, Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:12–13)—he is to be asked, to whom it is said in the Psalm, The Lord is my light and my salvation (Ps 27 (26):1), so that the light may take away ignorance, and salvation weakness.

82. For even penance itself, when there is a worthy reason according to the custom of the Church why it should be done, is for the most part not done through weakness, since shame too is a fear of displeasing, while the esteem of men delights more than the justice by which each one humbles himself by repenting. Whence not only when penance is done, but also that it may be done, the mercy of God is necessary. Otherwise the Apostle would not say of certain people, lest perhaps God give them repentance (2 Tim 2:25); and that Peter might weep bitterly, the Evangelist prefaced and said, The Lord looked upon him (Luke 22:61).

83. But he who, not believing that sins are remitted in the Church, despises so great a bounty of the divine gift, and in this obstinacy of mind closes his last day, is guilty of that irremissible sin against the Holy Spirit (See Matt 12:32), in whom Christ forgives sins. On this difficult question I have disputed as plainly as I could in a certain little book written for this purpose alone.

84. But now concerning the resurrection of the flesh—not as some have come to life again and died again, but unto eternal life, as the flesh of Christ himself rose—how I might briefly discuss it, and satisfy all the questions that are wont to be raised on this matter, I do not find. Yet that the flesh of all men whatsoever who have been born and will be born, and have died and will die, will rise again, a Christian ought in no way to doubt.

85. Whence there first arises the question concerning aborted fetuses, who have indeed already been born in their mothers' wombs, but not yet in such a way that they could already be reborn. For if we say that they will rise again, what is said can be somehow tolerated concerning those who are already formed. But who would not more readily think that the unformed abortions perish like seeds that have not been conceived? But who would dare to deny—even if he dare not affirm—that the resurrection will bring it about that whatever was lacking of form is filled out, and so the perfection that would have come with time is not lacking, just as the defects that had come with time will not exist; so that neither in that which the days would have brought of what is apt and fitting is nature defrauded, nor in that which the days had brought of what is adverse and contrary is nature disfigured, but what was not yet whole is made whole, just as what had been vitiated will be restored?

86. And through this it can indeed be most scrupulously inquired and disputed among the most learned—whether it can be discovered by man I do not know—when a man begins to live in the womb, whether there is a certain hidden life that does not yet appear by the movements of one living. For to deny that those have lived, who are for this reason cut out limb by limb and cast out from the wombs of pregnant women lest the mothers too be killed if they are left there dead, seems too great an impudence. But from the moment a man begins to live, from that moment he can certainly already die; and, being dead, wherever death could befall him, how he does not belong to the resurrection of the dead I cannot discover.

87. Nor will the monstrosities that are born and live, however quickly they die, either be denied to be going to rise, or be believed to be going to rise as they are, rather than with their nature corrected and amended. For far be it that that two-bodied being recently born in the East—of whom most trustworthy brothers reported that they had seen him, and which Jerome the priest of holy memory left in writing—far be it, I say, that we should reckon one double man, and not rather two (which would have been the case if twins had been born), to be going to rise; and so too the rest, which, by having something more or less, or by some excessive deformity, are called monstrosities, will be recalled by the resurrection to the figure of human nature; so that each soul possesses its own single body, with nothing remaining joined even of whatever had been born joined, but each, separately, bearing its own members by which the wholeness of the human body is completed.

88. But the earthly material from which the flesh of mortals is created does not perish for God; rather, into whatever dust or ashes it is dissolved, into whatever vapors and breezes it disperses, into whatever substance of other bodies or into the elements themselves it turns, into the food of whatever animals or even of men it passes and is changed into their flesh, in a point of time it returns to that human soul which first animated it, that the man might come to be, grow, and live.

89. That earthly material, then, which when the soul departs becomes a corpse, will not be so repaired by the resurrection that the parts which fall away and are turned into the various appearances and forms of other things must, although they return to the body from which they fell away, also return to the same parts of the body where they were.

Otherwise, if there returns to the hair what so frequent a cutting has removed, and to the nails what trimming has so often taken away, an immoderate and unbecoming shapelessness presents itself to those who consider it, and who therefore do not believe in the resurrection of the flesh.

But just as, if a statue of some meltable metal were either melted by fire, or ground into dust, or fused into a mass, and the craftsman wished to restore it again from the quantity of that material, it would make no difference to its wholeness which particle of the material were restored to which member of the statue, provided only that the restored statue took up again the whole of which it had been composed; so God, the wonderfully and ineffably skilled craftsman, will restore our flesh, with wonderful and ineffable speed, out of the whole of which it had consisted.

Nor will it matter at all for its restoration whether the hair returns to hair and the nails to nails, or whatever had perished of them is changed into flesh and recalled to other parts of the body, the providence of the craftsman taking care that nothing unbecoming come about.

90. Nor does it follow that the stature of the several persons coming to life again will be different because it had been different while they were living, or that the lean rise with the same leanness, or the fat with the same fatness. But if it is in the plan of the Creator that, in each one's shape, his property and discernible likeness be preserved, while in the other goods of the body all be rendered equal, then that material will be so modified in each one that nothing of it perishes, and what was lacking to anyone he supplies who could even work what he willed out of nothing. But if in the bodies of those rising there will be a reasonable inequality, as there is of the voices that complete a song, this will be done for each one out of the material of his own body, in such a way as both to render the man fit for the angelic assemblies (See Matt 22:30) and to bring nothing unfitting to their senses. For there will be nothing unseemly there; but whatever there shall be, this will be becoming, because it will not be at all if it is not becoming.

91. The bodies of the saints, then, will rise without any defect, without any deformity, without any corruption, weight, or difficulty, in which there will be as great an ease as there will be happiness. On account of which they are also called spiritual, though without doubt they will be bodies, not spirits. But just as now a body is called animal (See 1 Cor 15:44–46), which yet is a body, not a soul, so then there will be a spiritual body, which yet will be a body, not a spirit.

Accordingly, as regards the corruption which now weighs down the soul (See Wis 9:15), and the defects by which the flesh desires against the spirit (See Gal 5:17), then it will not be flesh but body, for the heavenly bodies too are spoken of (See 1 Cor 15:40). On account of which it was said, Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God, and, as if explaining what he had said, nor, he says, shall corruption possess incorruption (1 Cor 15:50). What he said first, flesh and blood, this he said afterward, corruption; and what first, the kingdom of God, this afterward, incorruption.

But as regards the substance, even then it will be flesh; on account of which, after the resurrection too, the body of Christ was called flesh (See Luke 24:39). But the Apostle says, It is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44), because there will then be so great a concord of flesh and spirit, the spirit giving life to the subjected flesh without need of any sustenance, that nothing of ourselves will resist us, but, just as we shall have no enemy without, so neither shall we suffer ourselves as enemies within.

92. But whoever are not freed from that mass of perdition, which was made through the first man, by the one Mediator of God and men (See 1 Tim 2:5), will indeed rise also themselves, each one with his own flesh, but so as to be punished with the devil and his angels (See Matt 25:41). Whether indeed they rise with the defects and deformities of their bodies—whatever vicious and deformed members they bore in them—what need is there to labor in inquiring? For the constitution or beauty of those whose damnation will be sure and everlasting ought not to weary us with uncertainty. Nor let it trouble us how there will be in them an incorruptible body if it can feel pain, or how a corruptible one if it cannot die. For there is no true life except where one lives happily, nor true incorruption except where health is corrupted by no pain. But where the unhappy one is not allowed to die, there, so to speak, death itself does not die; and where perpetual pain does not destroy but afflicts, corruption itself is not ended. This is called in Holy Scripture the second death (See Rev 2:11; 20:6, 14).

93. Yet neither the first death, by which the soul is forced to leave its body, nor the second, by which the soul is not permitted to leave its penal body, would have befallen man if no one had sinned. The mildest punishment of all, indeed, will be that of those who, besides the sin they contracted originally, added none beyond it; and among the rest who added, each one will there have a damnation the more tolerable the less iniquity he had here.

94. And so, the reprobate angels and men remaining in eternal punishment, the saints will then know more fully what good grace has brought them. Then it will appear more evidently in the very facts what is written in the Psalm, Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord (Ps 101 (100):1), because no one is freed except through undeserved mercy, and no one is condemned except through deserved judgment.

95. Then it will not be hidden, what is now hidden, when, of two little children, one was to be taken up through mercy, the other to be left through judgment (See Rom 9:10–11)—wherein the one who was taken up might recognize what would be due to him through judgment, did not mercy come to his aid—why the one rather than the other was taken up, when the case was one and the same for both; and why among certain people the mighty works were not done which, if they had been done, those men would have repented, and were done among those who were not going to believe. For most plainly the Lord says, Woe to you, Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida; for if in Tyre and Sidon the mighty works had been done which were done in you, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes (Matt 11:21). Nor certainly did God unjustly refuse them to be saved, when they could have been saved if they had willed.

Then, in the clearest light of wisdom, will be seen what now the faith of the pious holds before it is seen by manifest knowledge: how sure and unchangeable and most efficacious is the will of God; how many things he can do and will not, but wills nothing that he cannot do; and how true is what is sung in the Psalm, But our God is in heaven above; in heaven and on earth he has done all things whatsoever he willed (Ps 115 (113):3). Which certainly is not true if he willed some things and did not do them, and—what is more unworthy—did not do them because the will of man prevented what the Almighty willed from being done. Therefore nothing comes about unless the Almighty wills it to come about, either by allowing it to come about or by doing it himself.

96. Nor is it to be doubted that God does well even in allowing whatever is done badly to be done. For he does not allow it except by a just judgment, and surely everything that is just is good. Although, therefore, the things that are evil, insofar as they are evil, are not goods, yet that there should be not only goods but also evils is good. For unless it were good that evils too should exist, they would in no way be allowed to exist by the omnipotent good, for whom—without doubt—just as it is easy to do what he wills, so it is easy not to allow what he does not will to exist. Unless we believe this, the very beginning of our confession is endangered, by which we confess that we believe in God the Father almighty. For he is truly called almighty for no other reason than that he can do whatever he wills, and the effect of the omnipotent will is not impeded by the will of any creature.

97. For which reason we must see how that was said of God which the Apostle too most truly said, who wills that all men be saved (1 Tim 2:4). For since not all, but far more, are not made saved, it certainly seems that what God wills to be done is not done, the human will, namely, impeding the will of God. For when the cause is asked why not all are made saved, the answer is usually that this is because they themselves do not will it. Which indeed cannot be said of little children, who do not yet have willing or not willing. For if what they do by their infantile movement were to be judged to be attributable to their will when they are baptized, since they resist as much as they can, we would say that they are made saved even against their will.

But in the Gospel the Lord, more plainly addressing the impious city, says, How often have I willed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks, and you would not (Matt 23:37)—as though the will of God had been overcome by the will of men, and the most powerful one could not do what he willed because the most feeble ones impeded it by being unwilling.

And where is that omnipotence by which in heaven and on earth he has done all things whatsoever he willed, if he willed to gather the children of Jerusalem and did not do it? Or rather, did she indeed not will her children to be gathered by him? But even with her unwilling, he himself gathered those of her children whom he willed; for in heaven and on earth he did not will some things and do them, and will other things and not do them, but he did all things whatsoever he willed.

98. Furthermore, who would be so impiously foolish as to say that God cannot turn the evil wills of men to good—whichever he wills, when he wills, where he wills? But when he does it, he does it through mercy; and when he does not do it, he does not do it through judgment, since he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills (Rom 9:18). And in saying this the Apostle was commending grace; for the commendation of which he had already spoken of those twins in Rebecca's womb, of whom, when they were not yet born or doing anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him who calls, it was said to her that the elder shall serve the younger (Rom 9:11–13. See Gen 25:23). On account of which he brought in another prophetic testimony where it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated (Mal 1:2–3).

But perceiving how what was said might disturb those who cannot penetrate by understanding this depth of grace, he says, What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? Far from it (Rom 9:14). For it seems unjust that, without any merits of good or evil works, God should love one and hate another. And if in this matter he wished the future works—either the good ones of the one or the evil ones of the other, which God certainly foreknew—to be understood, he would by no means say not of works, but would say "of future works," and in that way would solve this question; rather, he would raise no question that needed to be solved. But now, when he had answered, Far from it—that is, far be it that there should be injustice with God—soon, to prove that this comes about through no injustice of God, he says, For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I have been merciful (Rom 9:15. See Exod 33:19).

For who, except a fool, would think God unjust, whether he inflicts a penal judgment on the deserving or shows mercy to the undeserving? Finally he infers and says, So then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16). And so both twins were born by nature children of wrath (See Eph 2:3), bound, indeed, by no works of their own but originally from Adam, by the bond of damnation; but he who said, I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, loved Jacob through gratuitous mercy, but hated Esau through deserved judgment.

And since this judgment was owed to both, in the one the other recognized that he should glory not in his own differing merits, that in the same case he did not incur the same punishment, but in the bounty of divine grace, because it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For by a most lofty and most wholesome mystery, the whole face and, so to speak, the countenance of the holy Scriptures, when well beheld, is found to admonish this: that he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31).

99. But when he had commended the mercy of God in what he said, So then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16), then, that he might commend judgment also (since in him on whom mercy is not shown there comes about not injustice but judgment, for there is no injustice with God), he immediately added, saying, For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth (Rom 9:17. See Exod 9:11). And having said these things, concluding as to both—that is, both as to mercy and as to judgment—he says, Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills (Rom 9:18).

He has mercy, namely, by his great goodness; he hardens by no injustice, so that neither does the one freed glory in his own merits, nor does the one condemned complain except of his own merits. For grace alone distinguishes the redeemed from the lost, whom a cause derived from their origin had clotted together into one mass of perdition.

But whoever hears this in such a way as to say, Why then does he find fault? For who resists his will? (Rom 9:19)—as though the evil man therefore seemed not to be blamed because God has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills—far be it that we should be ashamed to answer what we see the Apostle answered: 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 has not the potter power over the clay, from the same mass to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? (Rom 9:20–21)

For in this place certain foolish men think that the Apostle failed in his reply, and that for want of a reason to give he repressed the boldness of the objector. But what was said has great weight: O man, who are you?, and in such questions he recalls man to the consideration of his own capacity—in a brief word indeed, but the giving of the reason is in fact great. For if a man does not grasp this, who is he to answer God? But if he does grasp it, all the more he finds nothing to answer.

For he sees, if he grasps it, the whole human race condemned in the apostate root by so just a divine judgment that, even if no one were freed from it, no one could rightly find fault with the justice of God;

and that those who are freed had to be so freed that, out of the many not freed and reduced to most just damnation, it might be shown what the whole lump had deserved, and whither the deserved judgment of God would lead even these others if his undeserved mercy did not come to their aid—so that, of those who wish to glory in their own merits, every mouth may be stopped (Rom 3:19), and he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31).

100. These are the great works of the Lord, sought out in all his wills (See Ps 111 (110):2), and so wisely sought out that, when the angelic and human creature had sinned—that is, had done not what he willed but what it itself willed—even through that same will of the creature by which was done what the Creator did not will, he himself fulfilled what he willed, using even evils well, as one supremely good, both for the damnation of those whom he justly predestined to punishment, and for the salvation of those whom he kindly predestined to grace.

For, as far as concerns themselves, they did what God did not will; but as far as concerns the omnipotence of God, they were in no way able to effect this. For by this very fact, that they did it against his will, his will was done concerning them. For on this account the great works of the Lord are sought out in all his wills, that in a wonderful and ineffable way what is done even against his will is not done apart from his will, because it would not be done if he did not allow it; and certainly he allows it not unwillingly but willingly; nor would he, being good, allow evil to be done, were he not, being almighty, able also to do good out of evil.

101. But sometimes a man with a good will wills something that God does not will, God too with a will much more abundantly and much more surely good—for his will can never be evil—as if a good son wills his father to live, whom God with a good will wills to die. And again it can happen that a man wills with an evil will what God wills with a good one, as if an evil son wills his father to die, and God too wills this. Certainly the former wills what God does not will, but the latter wills what God too wills; and yet the devotion of the former, though willing something other than God, is rather in accord with the good will of God than the impiety of the latter, who wills the same thing.

So much does it matter what is fitting for a man to will, what for God, and to what end each one refers his will, that it be approved or disapproved. For God fulfills certain of his wills—certainly good ones—through the evil wills of evil men, as through the malevolent Jews, by the good will of the Father, Christ was killed for us; which so great a good was done that, when the apostle Peter was unwilling for it to be done, he was called Satan by the very one who had come to be killed (See Matt 16:21–23). How good the wills of the pious faithful appeared who did not wish the apostle Paul to go to Jerusalem, lest he suffer there the evils which the prophet Agabus had foretold (See Acts 21:10–14); and yet God willed him to suffer these for the sake of proclaiming the faith of Christ, training a martyr of Christ. And this good will of his he fulfilled not through the good wills of the Christians but through the evil ones of the Jews; and those who did not will what he willed belonged to him rather than those through whom, willing, was done what he willed, because they indeed did the very same thing, but he did it through them with a good will, and they with an evil one.

102. But however great the wills may be, whether of angels or of men, whether of the good or of the evil, whether willing what God wills or something other than God, the will of the Almighty is always invincible; which can never be evil, because even when it inflicts evils it is just, and surely what is just is not evil. God almighty, therefore, whether through mercy he has mercy on whom he wills, or through judgment hardens whom he wills, neither does anything unjustly nor does anything except willingly, and he does all things whatsoever he wills.

103. And through this, when we hear and read in the sacred Scriptures that he wills all men to be saved, although it is certain for us that not all men are saved, we ought not on that account to detract anything from the will of almighty God, but so to understand what is written, who wills all men to be saved (1 Tim 2:4), as though it were said that no man is made saved except whom he himself willed to be saved; not that there is no man except one whom he wills to be saved, but that no one is made saved except whom he wills, and that therefore he is to be asked that he may will, because it must come to pass if he wills it. For the Apostle was treating of praying to God, so as to say this.

For so too we understand what is written in the Gospel, who enlightens every man that comes (John 1:9), not because there is no man who is not enlightened, but because no one is enlightened except by him. Or certainly it was said, who wills all men to be saved, not that there was no man whom he did not will to be saved, who was unwilling to do the mighty works of miracles among those whom he says would have repented if he had done them (See Matt 11:21)—but that by all men we understand every kind of men, distributed through whatever differences: kings and private persons, noble and ignoble, exalted and lowly, learned and unlearned, those of sound body and the weak, the talented, the dull, and the foolish, the rich, the poor, and those of middling means, males and females, infants, boys, adolescents, young men, the elderly, and the aged, in all tongues, in all customs, in all arts, in all professions, set in an innumerable variety of wills and consciences, and whatever else of differences there is among men. For which of these is there from among whom God does not will men to be made saved, through his Only-begotten our Lord, throughout all nations, and therefore does it, since the Almighty cannot will anything whatsoever in vain?

For the Apostle had commanded that prayer be made for all men, and had specially added, for kings and those who are in high places (1 Tim 2:1–2), who might be thought, by their more powerful pomp and worldly pride, to shrink from the humility of the Christian faith. Accordingly, saying, For this is good before God our Savior (1 Tim 2:3)—that is, that prayer be made even for such people—at once, to remove despair, he added, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). For God judged this good, that by the prayers of the lowly he should deign to grant salvation to the exalted, which indeed we now see fulfilled.

This manner of speaking the Lord too used in the Gospel, where he says to the Pharisees, You tithe mint and rue and every herb (Luke 11:42); for the Pharisees did not tithe whatever was others' and all the herbs of all the foreigners throughout all lands. As, then, here every herb means every kind of herb, so there too all men we can understand to mean every kind of men. And in whatever other way it can be understood, provided only we are not compelled to believe that the Almighty willed anything to be done and it was not done; for he who, without any ambiguity, if in heaven and on earth—as the Truth sings of him—did all things whatsoever he willed (See Ps 115 (113):3), surely did not will whatever he did not do.

104. Wherefore God would have willed to keep even the first man in that state of salvation in which he was created, and, at a fitting time, after his children were begotten, to lead him without the intervention of death to better things, where he would now be able not only not to commit sin but not even to have the will to sin—if he had foreknown that he would have a perpetual will to remain without sin, as he had been made. But because he foreknew that he would use free choice badly—that is, that he would sin—he rather prepared his own will for this: that he himself would do good even out of the one doing evil; and so the evil will of man would not be made void but would nonetheless be fulfilled by the good will of the Almighty.

105. For so the man had to be made at first, that he could will both well and badly—not without reward if well, nor without punishment if badly. But afterward he will be such that he cannot will badly, nor will he on that account lack free choice. Indeed, that choice will be much more free which will not at all be able to serve sin. For the will is not to be blamed, nor is it not a will, nor is it to be called not free, by which we so will to be blessed that we not only do not will to be miserable but cannot in any way at all will it. As, therefore, our soul even now is going always to have the will not to be unhappy, so it will have the will not to be wicked. But the order was not to be passed over, in which God willed to show how good is the rational animal that can even not sin, although that is better which cannot sin; just as the immortality was lesser—yet it was an immortality—in which one could even not die, although that is going to be greater in which one cannot die.

106. The former human nature lost through free choice; the latter it is going to receive through grace, which it would have received through merit if it had not sinned. Although even then no merit could have existed without grace, because, even though sin was placed in free choice alone, yet free choice did not suffice for retaining justice, unless, by participation in the unchangeable good, divine help were provided. For just as to die is in man's power when he wills—for there is no one who could not kill himself, to say nothing else, even by not eating—but for holding on to life the will is not enough if the aids, whether of food or of any protections, are lacking: so man in paradise was capable, through his will, of killing himself by abandoning justice; but that the life of justice should be held by him, it was too little to will, unless he who had made him helped him. But after that fall the mercy of God is greater, when even choice itself is to be freed from the servitude in which sin, with death, lords it over it. And it is freed not at all through itself, but solely through the grace of God which is placed in faith in Christ; so that the will itself, as it is written, is prepared by the Lord (See Prov 8:35 (LXX)), by which the other gifts of God are received, through which one comes to the eternal gift.

107. Whence the Apostle calls even eternal life itself—which certainly is the reward of good works—the grace of God: The wages, he says, of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 6:23). Wages due for the work of military service are paid back, not given as a gift; therefore he said, the wages of sin is death, to show that death was inflicted on sin not undeservedly but as a debt. But grace, unless it is free, is not grace (See Rom 11:6). It is to be understood, therefore, that even the good merits of man are gifts of God; and when eternal life is rendered for them, what is rendered but grace for grace (See John 1:16)? So, then, man was made upright (See Eccl 7:30), in such a way that he could both remain in that uprightness—not without divine help—and become perverse by his own choice. Whichever of these he should choose, the will of God would be done, either by him or at least concerning him. Accordingly, because he preferred to do his own will rather than God's, the will of God was done concerning him, who, out of the same mass of perdition that flowed from his stock, makes one vessel for honor, another for dishonor: for honor through mercy, for dishonor through judgment (See Rom 9:20–21); that no one may glory in man, and through this not even in himself.

108. For we would not be freed through the one Mediator of God and men (See 1 Tim 2:5), the man Christ Jesus, unless he were also God. But when Adam was made—an upright man, namely—there was no need of a mediator. But when sins had far separated the human race from God, we had to be reconciled to God, even unto the resurrection of the flesh into eternal life, through the Mediator who alone was born, lived, and was killed without sin; that human pride might be reproved and healed through the humility of God, and that it might be shown to man how far he had withdrawn from God, when he was recalled through God incarnate, and an example of obedience might be set before stubborn man through the God-man, and, the Only-begotten taking up the form of a servant which had merited nothing beforehand, a fountain of grace might be opened, and the resurrection of the flesh, promised to the redeemed, might be foreshown in the Redeemer himself, and the devil might be conquered through the same nature which he rejoiced to have deceived, yet without man's glorying, lest pride be born again; and whatever else can be seen and said by those making progress concerning so great a mystery of the Mediator, or only seen even if it cannot be said.

109. But the time that is interposed between the death of a man and the last resurrection holds the souls in hidden receptacles, as each one is worthy either of rest or of hardship, according to what it has obtained as its lot while it lived in the flesh.

110. Nor is it to be denied that the souls of the departed are relieved by the piety of their living relations, when the sacrifice of the Mediator is offered for them or almsgivings are made in the Church. But these things profit those who, while they lived, merited that these things could afterward profit them. For there is a certain manner of living neither so good that it does not require these things after death, nor so bad that these things do not profit it after death; but there is such a one in good that it does not require them, and there is again such a one in evil that it cannot be helped by these things either, when it has passed from this life. Wherefore here all merit is acquired by which anyone can be relieved or burdened after this life. But let no one hope to merit with the Lord, when he has died, what he neglected here.

These things, then, which the Church frequently does for commending the dead, are not opposed to that apostolic statement in which it was said, For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive according to the things he did through the body, whether good or evil (2 Cor 5:10; see Rom 14:10); because this merit too each one acquired for himself while he lived in the body, that these things could profit him. For they do not profit all. And why do they not profit all, except because of the difference of the life that each one led in the body? When, therefore, the sacrifices, whether of the altar or of any almsgivings, are offered for all the baptized dead, for the very good they are thanksgivings; for the not very good they are propitiations; for the very bad, even if they are no aids to the dead, they are some kind of consolations to the living. But for those whom they profit, they profit either to this end, that there may be full remission, or at least that the damnation itself may become more tolerable.

111. But after the resurrection, when the whole judgment has been done and completed, the two cities will have their ends: one of Christ, the other of the devil; one of the good, the other of the evil; both, however, of angels and of men alike. The former will be able to have no will, the latter no power, to sin, nor any condition of dying: the former living truly and happily in eternal life, the latter unhappily enduring in eternal death without the power of dying, since both are without end. But in blessedness these will remain one more eminently than another, while in misery those will remain one more tolerably than another.

112. In vain, then, do some—indeed very many—out of a human feeling pity the eternal punishment of the damned and their perpetual torments without intermission, and so do not believe it will be so: not, indeed, by opposing the Divine Scriptures, but, according to their own feeling, softening whatever is harsh and bending toward a milder sense those things which they think were said in them more to inspire terror than as truth. For God will not forget to show mercy, they say, nor will he restrain his mercies in his anger (See Ps 77 (76):9). This is indeed read in a holy Psalm; but it is understood, without any scruple, of those who are called vessels of mercy (See Rom 9:23), because they too are freed from misery not by their own merits but by God showing mercy.

Or if they think this pertains to all, it is not therefore necessary that they suppose the damnation can be ended of those of whom it was said, And these shall go into eternal punishment—lest in this way the happiness too be thought to be going to have an end at some time, even of those of whom, on the contrary, it was said, but the just into eternal life (Matt 25:46). But let them suppose that the punishments of the damned are, at certain intervals of time, somewhat mitigated, if this pleases them.

For even so it can be understood that the wrath of God remains upon them (See John 3:36)—that is, the damnation itself (for this is called the wrath of God, not a disturbance of the divine mind)—so that in his wrath, that is, while his wrath remains, he nevertheless does not restrain his mercies, by not giving an end to the eternal punishment, but by applying or interposing a relief amid the torments; for the Psalm does not say "to end his wrath" or "after his wrath," but in his wrath.

And if this alone existed—however slight it can be thought there—to perish from the kingdom of God, to be exiled from the city of God, to be estranged from the life of God, to lack so great a multitude of the sweetness of God which he has hidden for those who fear him, and perfected for those who hope in him, is so great a punishment that no torments we know (See Ps 31 (30):19) can be compared to it, if that one is eternal, but these are long for however many ages.

113. That perpetual death of the damned, then—that is, estrangement from the life of God—will remain without end, and will be common to all of them, whatever men may suppose, according to their human feelings, about a variety of punishments, about a relief or intermission of pains; just as the eternal life of the saints will remain common to all, however they may shine in concord with whatever difference of honors.

114. From this confession of faith, which is briefly contained in the Creed—and which, thought of carnally, is the milk of little children (See 1 Cor 3:1–2), but considered and treated spiritually is the food of the strong—is born the good hope of the faithful, which holy charity accompanies. But of all those things which are to be believed faithfully, only those pertain to hope which are contained in the Lord's Prayer. For cursed is everyone, as the divine words testify, who puts his hope in man (Jer 17:5): and through this, whoever puts his hope in himself too is bound by the chain of this curse. Therefore we ought to ask of none but the Lord God whatever we hope either to work well or to obtain for our good works.

115. Accordingly, in the evangelist Matthew the Lord's Prayer seems to contain seven petitions (See Matt 6:9–13), of which in three eternal things are asked, in the remaining four temporal things, which are nevertheless necessary for obtaining the eternal. For what we say—Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, as in heaven so on earth (Matt 6:9–10) (which some have not absurdly understood as "in spirit and in body")—is to be held altogether without end; and here, begun, they are increased in us however much we make progress, but perfected—which is to be hoped for in the other life—they will be possessed forever. But what we say—Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:11–13)—who does not see that it pertains to the need of the present life? In that eternal life, then, where we ever hope to be, both the hallowing of the name of God, and his kingdom, and his will, will remain perfectly and immortally in our spirit and body. But it is called daily bread because here it is necessary, in the measure to be allotted to soul and flesh, whether it be understood spiritually or carnally or in both ways. Here too is the remission we ask for, where there is the committing of sins; here are the temptations which either entice or impel us to sin; here, finally, is the evil from which we desire to be freed; but there none of these things exists.

116. But the evangelist Luke embraced in the Lord's Prayer not seven petitions but five (See Luke 11:2–4), and certainly did not differ from Matthew, but, by his very brevity, reminded us how those seven are to be understood. For the name of God is hallowed in the spirit, but the kingdom of God is to come in the resurrection of the flesh. Luke, then, showing that the third petition is in a certain way a repetition of the two above it, made it understood rather by passing it over. Then he adds the three others: concerning daily bread, concerning the remission of sins, concerning the avoiding of temptation. But what Matthew placed last, but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13), Luke did not place, that we might understand it to pertain to that above, which was said about temptation. For he says, but deliver, not "and deliver," as if showing it to be one petition: "not this, but this," so that each one may know that he is freed from evil in this, that he is not led into temptation.

117. Now further, charity, which the Apostle calls greater than these two—that is, faith and hope (See 1 Cor 13:13)—the greater it is in anyone, the better is the one in whom it is. For when it is asked whether anyone is a good man, it is not asked what he believes or what he hopes, but what he loves. For he who loves rightly without doubt believes and hopes rightly; but he who does not love believes in vain, even if what he believes is true; hopes in vain, even if what he hopes for is taught to pertain to true happiness—unless he also believes and hopes this: that it can be granted to him, when he asks, that he may love.

For although he cannot hope without love, yet it can happen that he does not love that without which he cannot arrive at what he hopes for—as if he should hope for eternal life (and who does not love that?) and not love justice, without which no one arrives at it. This indeed is the faith of Christ which the Apostle commends, which works through love (See Gal 5:6), and what it does not yet have in love it asks that it may receive, seeks that it may find, knocks that it may be opened to it (See Matt 7:7). For faith obtains what the law commands. For without the gift of God—that is, without the Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured out in our hearts (See Rom 5:5)—the Law will be able to command but not to help, and besides to make a transgressor of one who cannot excuse himself from ignorance. For carnal desire reigns where the love of God is not.

118. But when, in the deepest darkness of ignorance, with no reason resisting, one lives according to the flesh, this is the first condition of man.

Then, when through the Law the knowledge of sin has been made (See Rom 7:7), if the divine Spirit does not yet help, one who wishes to live according to the Law is overcome and knowingly sins, and, subjected to sin, serves it: for by whatever a man is overcome, to this he is also assigned as a slave (See 2 Pet 2:19); the knowledge of the commandment bringing it about that sin works in man all manner of desire, with the heap of transgression added, and so that what is written is fulfilled: The Law entered in that the offense might abound (Rom 5:20). This is the second condition of man.

But if God looks upon him, so that he is believed to help him himself to fulfill what he commands, and the man begins to be led by the Spirit of God, then, with the stronger strength of charity, the desire is against the flesh (See Gal 5:17), so that, although there is still something in the man that fights against the man—the whole weakness not yet healed—nevertheless the just man lives by faith (See Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:38), and lives justly insofar as he does not yield to evil desire, the delight of justice overcoming. This is the third condition of the man of good hope, in which, if anyone makes progress with devout perseverance, the final peace remains, which after this life will be fulfilled in the rest of the spirit, and then, in the resurrection, also of the flesh.

Of these four conditions, the first is before the Law, the second under the Law, the third under grace, the fourth in full and perfect peace. So too the people of God have been ordered through the intervals of times, as it pleased God, who arranges all things in measure and number and weight (See Wis 11:21). For it was first before the Law, secondly under the Law which was given through Moses, then under grace which was revealed through the first coming of the Mediator (See John 1:17).

This grace, indeed, was not lacking even before to those to whom it had to be imparted, although veiled and hidden according to the dispensation of the time. For none of the ancient just men was able to find salvation apart from faith in Christ; nor, indeed, unless he had been known to them also, could he have been prophesied to us through their ministry—now more openly, now more obscurely.

119. But in whichever of these four ages, as it were, the grace of regeneration finds each single man, there all his past sins are remitted to him, and that guilt contracted by being born is dissolved by being reborn; and so much does it avail that the Spirit breathes where it wills (John 3:8), that some have not known that second servitude under the Law, but together with the commandment begin to have divine help.

120. But before a man can be capable of the commandment, he must of necessity live according to the flesh. But if he has already been imbued with the sacrament of regeneration, it will do him no harm if he then departs from this life: for Christ died and rose again for this, that he might be Lord both of the living and of the dead (See Rom 14:9); nor will the reign of death hold him for whom he died who was free among the dead.

121. All the divine precepts, therefore, are referred to charity, of which the Apostle says, But the end of the precept is charity, from a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith (1 Tim 1:5). The end of every precept, then, is charity—that is, every precept is referred to charity. But what is done either through fear of punishment or through some carnal intention, so that it is not referred to that charity which the Holy Spirit pours out in our hearts (See Rom 5:5), is not yet done as it ought to be done, although it seems to be done. For this charity is of God and of neighbor, and certainly on these two precepts the whole Law and the Prophets depend (See Matt 22:40): add the Gospel, add the apostles; for it is from nowhere else that this voice comes, the end of the precept is charity, and God is charity (1 John 4:8).

Whatever, therefore, God commands—of which one is You shall not commit adultery (Matt 5:27; Rom 13:9)—and whatever is not commanded but is advised by spiritual counsel—of which one is It is good for a man not to touch a woman (1 Cor 7:1)—are then rightly done when they are referred to loving God, and the neighbor for God's sake, both in this age and in the future: now God by faith, then by vision, and the neighbor himself now by faith. For we mortals do not know the hearts of mortals. But then the Lord will illuminate the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and then each one will have praise from God (See 1 Cor 4:5), because that will be praised and loved by the neighbor in the neighbor which, lest it lie hidden, will be illuminated by God himself.

But cupidity is diminished as charity grows, until it comes here to such greatness that there can be none greater: for greater charity no one has than that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). But there, who could explain how great the charity will be where there will be no cupidity for it to overcome by restraining? For there will be the highest health, when there will be no struggle of death.

122. But let there be at last an end of this volume, which you yourself will see whether you ought to call or to hold as an Enchiridion. I, however, since I did not think your studies in Christ were to be despised, believing and hoping good things of you in the help of our Redeemer, and loving you greatly among his members, have written for you, as I was able—would that it were as convenient as it is lengthy—a book On Faith, Hope, and Charity.