1. 1. In the Letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, so far as can be understood from its text, he raises a question of this kind: whether the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ came to the Jews alone on account of the merits of the works of the Law, or whether, rather, with no merits of works going before, the justification of faith that is in Christ Jesus came to all the nations, so that it was not because people were righteous that they believed, but rather, having been justified by believing, they then began to live righteously. This, then, is what the Apostle intends to teach: that the grace of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has come to all. And he shows why it is also called grace, namely, because it was not repaid as a debt owed to righteousness but given freely. For some who had believed from among the Jews had begun to make an uproar against the nations, and especially against the apostle Paul, because he was admitting the uncircumcised and those free from the bonds of the old Law to the grace of the gospel, preaching to them that they should believe in Christ with no yoke of carnal circumcision laid upon them. But he does this with such great moderation that he allows neither the Jews to grow proud, as if on the merits of the works of the Law, nor the nations to be puffed up against the Jews on the merit of faith, because they had received Christ, whom the Jews had crucified; for, as if (as he says in another place) serving as an ambassador on behalf of the Lord himself, that is, on behalf of the cornerstone, he joins together both peoples, both those from the Jews and those from the nations, in Christ through the bond of grace, taking away from both all pride in merits and uniting both, to be justified, through the discipline of humility.

2. 2. And so he begins the Letter thus: Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God (Rom 1:1). In a few words he distinguishes the dignity of the Church from the antiquity of the Synagogue. For the Church takes its name from a calling, but the Synagogue from a gathering together. To be called together suits human beings better, whereas to be herded together suits cattle better, which is why flocks are properly said to be of cattle. And so, although in very many places of the Scriptures the Church itself is called the flock of God and the cattle of God and the sheepfold of God, nevertheless, when by comparison human beings are called cattle, they pertain to the old life. And it is plain that such people are content not with the food of everlasting truth, but with temporal promises as with earthly fodder. Paul, then, a servant of Christ Jesus, was called to be an apostle, and this calling fitted him into the Church. And he was set apart for the gospel of God—set apart from what, if not from the flock of the Synagogue, granted that the meaning of the Latin words agrees in every way with the Greek?

3. 3. Indeed, the gospel of God, for which he recalls that he was set apart, he commends by the authority of the prophets, so that—since he had set those who believe in Christ, among whose number he was called, before the Jews, from whom he had said he was set apart—he might in turn warn the nations not to grow proud after all. For the prophets, through whom he testifies that the gospel was promised beforehand—the gospel by faith in which believers are justified—came from the people of the Jews. For set apart, he says, for the gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his prophets (Rom 1:1-2). For there were also prophets not his own, among whom there are likewise found certain things that they sang of Christ from what they had heard, as is said even of the Sibyl, which I would not easily believe were it not that one of the poets most renowned in the Roman tongue, before saying those things about the renewal of the age that seem to harmonize and accord well enough with the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, prefaced them with a verse, saying:
Now the last age of the Cumaean song has come.
And no one would doubt that the Cumaean song is the Sibylline song. The Apostle, therefore, knowing that such testimonies of the truth are found in the books of the nations—as he also shows most plainly when speaking to the Athenians in the Acts of the Apostles—did not only say through his prophets, lest anyone be seduced by false prophets, through certain confessions of the truth, into some impiety, but he added also in the holy Scriptures (Rom 1:2), wishing surely to show that the writings of the nations, most full of superstitious idolatry, ought not to be held holy for the reason that in them something is found that pertains to Christ.

4. 4. And lest anyone perhaps prefer certain prophets remote and foreign to the people of the Jews, in whom there was no worship of idols—at least as far as concerns the idols that human hands fashion; for every error deludes its followers with the idols of their own fancies—lest anyone, nevertheless, by preferring something of this kind because it displays the name of Christ, assert that these are rather the holy Scriptures, and not those that have been divinely entrusted to the Hebrew people, it seems to me quite fitting that, when he had said in the holy Scriptures, he added concerning his Son, who was made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom 1:2-3). Now David was certainly king of the Jews. And it was fitting that from that people there should arise the prophets who foretold Christ, from which people he was to take flesh, the one whom they were foretelling. But provision had also to be made against the impiety of those who receive our Lord Jesus Christ only as the man whom he took on, but do not understand in him the divinity set apart from communion with the whole of creation—as did the Jews themselves, who supposed that Christ was only the son of David, ignorant of the excellence by which the Lord is the Lord of David himself in respect of his being the Son of God. Hence he refutes them in the Gospel by means of the prophecy uttered by the mouth of David himself. For he asks them how the one whom David himself calls Lord is his son, to which they ought surely to have answered that according to the flesh he was the son of David, but according to divinity the Son of God and the Lord of David himself. And because the apostle Paul had now learned this, after saying for the gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him from the seed of David, he added according to the flesh (Rom 1:3), lest they should think that this alone and the whole of Christ was that which had been made according to the flesh. By adding according to the flesh, then, he preserved for the divinity its proper dignity. And this dignity can be ascribed not only to no seed of David, but to the generation of no angelic or any most excellent creature whatsoever, since it is itself the Word of God, through which all things were made. This Word was made flesh from the seed of David and dwelt among us, not changed and turned into flesh, but clothed with flesh, so that he might fittingly appear to those who are carnal. Therefore the Apostle distinguished the humanity from the divinity not only by the word according to the flesh, but also by that word in which he says was made. For he was not made in respect of that which is the Word of God. For all things were made through him, nor could he be made along with all things, he through whom all things were made. Nor was he made before all things in order that all things might be made through him, for, leaving himself aside, if he had already been made before those things, those things would not all be that came to be through him, nor could they truly be said to be all made through him among which he himself would not be, if he too had been made. And therefore the Apostle, when he said that Christ was made, added according to the flesh, so as to show that according to the Word, which is the Son of God, he was not made by God but born.

5. 5. The very same one, indeed, who according to the flesh was made from the seed of David, he says was predestined Son of God in power—not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, and not just any spirit, but the Spirit of sanctification, from the resurrection of the dead (Rom 1:3-4). For in the resurrection the power of the one who dies appears, so that it might be said: predestined in power according to the Spirit of sanctification from the resurrection of the dead. Then sanctification brought about the new life, which was signified by the resurrection of our Lord. Hence the same Apostle says in another place: If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col 3:1). The order of the words can indeed also be such that we attach the phrase from the resurrection of the dead not to the Spirit of sanctification, but to that which he says, was predestined, so that the order is who was predestined from the resurrection of the dead, into which order these words are interposed: Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification. And this order doubtless seems more certain and better, namely, that he is the son of David in weakness according to the flesh, but the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification. He was made from the seed of David, then, that is, the son of David from a mortal body, on account of which he also died. But he was predestined Son of God and Lord of David himself from the resurrection of the dead. For insofar as he died, this pertains to his being the son of David; but insofar as he rose from the dead, to his being the Son of God and the Lord of David himself, just as the same Apostle says elsewhere: For although he died from weakness, yet he lives by the power of God (2 Cor 13:4), so that the weakness pertains to David, but the eternal life to the power of God. And so in these very words David designates him his Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool under your feet (Ps 110:1 (109:1)). For it is from the fact that he rose from the dead that he sits at the right hand of the Father. Predestined, then, from the resurrection of the dead to sit at the right hand of the Father, David, seeing him in the Spirit, would not dare to call him his son, but his Lord. And hence the Apostle here consequently adds Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 1:4), after he had said from the resurrection of the dead, as if reminding us why David testified that he was his Lord rather than his son. But he did not say that he was predestined from the resurrection from the dead, but from the resurrection of the dead. For it is not by his own resurrection that he appears Son of God, by that proper and most eminent dignity by which he is also the head of the Church, since the other dead too will rise, but he was predestined Son of God by a certain primacy of resurrection, because he himself was predestined from the resurrection of all the dead, that is, marked out to rise before and ahead of the rest, so that what is set here—Son of God—when he had said was predestined, may serve as proof of so great a sublimity. For none but the Son of God ought to have been thus predestined, in respect of his being also the head of the Church, whence in another place he calls him the firstborn from the dead. For it was fitting that he should come to the judgment of those who rise, who had gone before as their example—not as the example of all who rise, but as the example of those who are to rise in such a way that they may live and reign with him forever, whose head he also is, as of his own body. For it is from their resurrection that he was also predestined, so that he might become their prince; but of the rest, who rise in their own condition, he is not prince but judge. Therefore he was not predestined from the resurrection of those dead whom he is going to condemn. For the Apostle wishes it understood that he was predestined from the resurrection of the dead so that he might precede the resurrection of the dead; and he preceded those who are to follow him to that heavenly kingdom to which he preceded them. On this account he did not say: who was predestined Son of God from the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, but from the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord, as if he were to say: who was predestined Son of God from the resurrection of his own dead, that is, of those belonging to him, into eternal life—as if it were asked: of which dead? and he were to answer: of Jesus Christ our Lord himself. For he was not predestined from the resurrection of the rest of the dead, whom he did not precede to the glory of eternal life, since they are surely not going to follow, because the impious will rise to their punishments. Therefore he, as the only-begotten Son of God, also the firstborn from the dead, was predestined from the resurrection of the dead. Of which dead, if not of Jesus Christ our Lord?

6. 6. Through whom we have received, he says, grace and apostleship (Rom 1:5)—grace together with all the faithful, but apostleship not together with all. And therefore, if he had said that he received apostleship only, he would have proved ungrateful to the grace by which his sins were forgiven; for he would have seemed to have received apostleship as if by the merits of his earlier works. And so he excellently holds to the hinge of the matter, so that no one may dare to say that he was led to the gospel by the merits of his earlier life, since not even the apostles themselves, who rise above the other members after the head of the body, could properly have received apostleship unless they had first received in common with the rest the grace that heals and justifies sinners. And what he adds—unto obedience to the faith among all the nations for his name (Rom 1:5)—means that he received apostleship for this, that obedience might be given to the faith for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, that all who desire to be saved may believe in Christ and be sealed in his name. And that this salvation has not come to the Jews alone, as some who had believed from among them supposed, he now shows when he says among all the nations, among whom, he says, are you also, called of Jesus Christ (Rom 1:5-6), that is, so that you too may be his, of Jesus Christ, who is the salvation of all the nations, although you are found not in the number of the Jews but in the number of the other nations.

7. 7. Up to this point he has said who he is that writes the Letter. For the one who writes the Letter is Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. But because the question arose, What gospel? he answered: which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son. Again, because the question arose, Concerning which Son? he answered: who was made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification from the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord. And, as if it were said: How do you belong to him? he answered: through whom we have received grace and apostleship unto obedience to the faith among all the nations for his name. Again, as if it were said: What, then, is the reason that you should write to us? he answered: among whom are you also, called of Jesus Christ. Now next he adds, according to the custom of a letter, those to whom he writes: to all, he says, who are at Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints (Rom 1:7)—here too he indicated the kindness of God rather than their merit. For he did not say: to those who love God, but beloved of God. For he first loved us before all merits, so that we too, being loved, might love him. Hence he also added called to be saints. For although one may ascribe to himself the fact that he obeys the one who calls, no one can ascribe to himself the fact that he was called. And called to be saints must not be understood as if they were called because they were saints, but rather they were made saints because they were called.

8. 8. It remains, then, that he should bid them good health, so as to complete the customary opening of a letter, namely, his greeting of health to them. And in place of saying, in effect, "good health," he says: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 1:7). For not every grace is from God. For even bad judges grant a favor in showing partiality to persons, enticed by some greed or terrified by fear. Nor is every peace God's or from him, whence the Lord himself, distinguishing them, says: My peace I give to you (John 14:27), adding too and saying that he does not give such peace as this world gives. Grace, then, is from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace by which our sins are forgiven, those sins by which we were set against God; and peace itself is that by which we are reconciled to God. For when, through grace, our sins having been forgiven, the enmities have been consumed, it remains that we cling in peace to him from whom only our sins had been parting us, as the prophet says: He will not burden his ear so as not to hear, but your sins separate between you and God (See Isa 59:1-2). And these being forgiven through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, with no separation coming between, there will be peace.

9. 9. But perhaps someone may wonder how the righteousness of God the judge is to be understood, when he grants grace by pardoning sins. But this is plainly just before God, because it is truly just that those who repent of their sins should, at the time when the manifest terror of punishments does not yet appear, be mercifully separated from those who, obstinately seeking out defenses of their sins, are willing to be corrected by no repentance. For it is unjust that those should be joined in the fellowship of punishment together with these who have not spurned God when he calls and who, when they sinned, were displeasing to themselves, so that, just as he hated their sins, they too might hate their own. For this is at last the discipline of human righteousness: to love nothing in oneself except what is God's, and to hate what is one's own; neither to approve one's own sins nor to condemn another in them, but oneself; nor to think it enough that one's own sins displease, unless thereafter they are also avoided with the most vigilant attention; nor to suppose that one's own strength suffices for avoiding them, unless one is helped from above. It is just, therefore, before God that such people should be pardoned whatever they previously committed, lest—what is most unjust—they be confounded and mingled with those who are not such. Wherefore both that such people are not pardoned is the righteousness of God, and that they are pardoned is grace. The grace of God is therefore just, and his righteousness gracious, since in this case too grace precedes even the merit of repentance, in that no one would repent of his sin but for some admonition of God's calling.

10. 10. Furthermore, so great is the constancy of divine righteousness that, even when the spiritual and everlasting punishment has been remitted to the penitent, nevertheless the bodily afflictions and torments by which we know even the martyrs to have been exercised, and finally death itself, which our nature earned by sinning, are remitted to no one. For that even just and devout people pay these penalties must be believed to come from the just judgment of God. This is what in the sacred Scriptures is also called discipline, which no one of the just is permitted to escape. For he excepted no one when he said: Whom God loves he corrects, and he scourges every son whom he receives (Heb 12:6). Hence even Job himself, who suffered all those many things precisely so that it might shine forth to people what a man he was and how great a servant of God, nevertheless often testifies that he was paying the penalties of the body for his own sins. The apostle Peter too, exhorting the brethren to endure sufferings for the name of Christ, speaks thus: But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or a reviler or a meddler in other men's affairs; but if he suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name, because it is the time for the judgment to begin from the house of God; and if it begins with us, what shall be the end of those who do not believe the gospel of God? And if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the sinner and the impious appear? (1 Pet 4:15-18) He plainly shows that these very sufferings that the just endure pertain to the judgment of God, which he said begins from the house of God, so that from this it may be inferred how great are the things kept in store for the impious. Hence Paul himself also says to the Thessalonians: So that we ourselves boast of you in the churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and afflictions, which you endure as an example of the just judgment of God (2 Thess 1:4-5). And this looks altogether to what Peter says, that it is the time for the judgment to begin from the house of God, and to that which he inserted from the Prophet: And if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the sinner and the impious appear? Hence it seems to me that even those things that God threatened to King David through the prophet Nathan—although he at once pardoned the penitent—nevertheless all came to pass for this reason, that it might be shown that that pardon was given spiritually on account of the future judgment of punishments, which awaits those who in this present time are unwilling to be corrected. For Peter also says elsewhere: For this reason the gospel was preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit (1 Pet 4:6). I have said this in order to show, as far as I can and as far as the opportunity of the present passage of the Scriptures allows, that the grace and peace of God, when they are spoken of, are not to be understood in such a way that people should suppose God can depart from righteousness. For even when promising that very peace, the Lord said: These things I have said, that in me you may have peace, but in the world affliction (John 16:33). But the tribulations and troubles that are repaid to sins through the righteousness of God do not turn the good and the just—those to whom their very sins now displease more than any punishment of the body—back to sinning, but cleanse them thoroughly from every stain. For perfect peace, even of the body, will be strengthened in its own time, if now our spirit holds, unshaken and unchanging, the peace that the Lord has deigned to give through faith.

11. 11. As for the fact that the Apostle says grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ without also adding the Holy Spirit, no other reason seems to me likely, except that we understand the Holy Spirit himself to be the gift of God. And what else are grace and peace but the gift of God? Hence in no way can the grace by which we are freed from sins, and the peace by which we are reconciled to God, be given to people except in the Holy Spirit. And therefore the Trinity itself, and likewise its unchangeable unity, is recognized in this greeting. This I believe especially for the following reason: that, apart from the Letter he wrote to the Hebrews—where he is said to have deliberately omitted the salutatory opening, lest the Jews, who pugnaciously barked against him, being offended by his name, should either read with a hostile mind or take no care to read at all what he had written for their salvation, on which account some have been afraid to receive it into the canon of the Scriptures; but however that question may stand—apart from this Letter, all the rest, which the Church without any doubt affirms to be the apostle Paul's, contain such a greeting, except that in both letters to Timothy he inserts mercy. For he writes thus: Grace, mercy, peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Tim 1:2). For the more familiarly and thus the more sweetly he was writing to Timothy, he inserted that word, by which it is plainly opened up and shown that the Holy Spirit is given to us not by the merits of earlier works but according to the mercy of God, so that both the abolition of sins may take place, by which we were sundered from God, and reconciliation, that we may cling to him.

12. 12. Nor do the other Letters of the Apostles, which ecclesiastical usage receives, fail to remind us of this Trinity in their openings. For Peter says thus: Grace and peace be fulfilled to you (1 Pet 1:2), then immediately adds: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:3), so that, the Holy Spirit being understood through grace and peace, the mention of the Father and the Son may remind the mind of the Trinity. And in another place he says thus: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Christ Jesus our Lord (2 Pet 1:2). John, for some reason I do not know, omitted such an opening, but he plainly did not himself neglect the mention of the Trinity, interposing fellowship in place of grace and peace: What we have seen, he says, we announce also to you, that you too may have fellowship with us, and that our fellowship may be with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3). But in his second letter he is in accord with the letters to Timothy, saying: Grace, mercy, peace be with you from God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son of the Father (2 John 1:3). In the opening of the third he is wholly silent about the Trinity—because, I believe, it is altogether very short. For it begins thus: The elder to the most beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth (3 John 1:1). And this truth I think is set in place of the Trinity itself. Jude, having named God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, sets three words for the understanding of the Holy Spirit, that is, the gift of God; for he begins thus: Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, called: mercy and peace and love be fulfilled to you (Jude 1-2). For grace and peace cannot be understood without mercy and love. James, however, made the most customary beginning of a letter, writing thus: James, a servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes that are in the dispersion, greeting (Jas 1:1)—considering, I believe, that there is no health except in the gift of God, where grace and peace are. And although before this word he named God and our Lord Jesus Christ, nevertheless, because by no grace and no peace are people saved except that which is from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, just as John in the third letter set truth, so this one seems to me to have set greeting in place of the Trinity itself.

13. 13. At this point I think I should by no means pass over what father Valerius observed, marveling, in the conversation of certain country folk. When one had said to another Salus ("Salvation"), he asked of the man, who knew both Latin and Punic, what Salus meant, and the answer was: Tria ("Three"). Then, recognizing with joy that our salvation is the Trinity, he judged that this agreement of the languages had so sounded forth not by chance but by the most hidden dispensation of divine providence, so that when in Latin one names Salus ("Salvation"), it is understood by the Punic speakers as Tria ("Three"), and when the Punic speakers in their own tongue name three, it is understood in Latin as salvation. For the Canaanite—that is, the Punic—woman who went out from the borders of Tyre and Sidon, who in the Gospel bears the character of the nations, was seeking salvation for her daughter, and to her the Lord answered: It is not good to throw the children's bread to the dogs (Matt 15:26). And not denying the charge brought against her, as though about to obtain by the confession of her sins the salvation of her daughter, that is, of her own new life, she said: Yes, Lord, for even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters (Matt 15:27). For in the woman's tongue three is called salvation, for she was a Canaanite. Hence, when our country folk are asked what they are, answering in Punic Chanani—one letter, of course, being corrupted, as usually happens in such cases—what else do they answer but Canaanites? And so, in seeking salvation, she was seeking the Trinity, because the Roman tongue too, which in the name of salvation sounds the Trinity in Punic, was found to be the head of the nations at the coming of the Lord; and we have said that the Canaanite woman sustains the character of the nations. And when the Lord calls bread the very thing that was being sought by the woman, to what else does he bear witness but to the Trinity? For in another place he most plainly teaches that the same Trinity is to be understood in three loaves. But whether this harmony of the words came about of itself or was provided beforehand, the matter is not to be pressed pugnaciously, so as to compel everyone to agree to it, but only so far as the cheerfulness of the hearer allows the elegance of the interpreter.

14. 14. This, indeed, is plain enough, that it must be considered with great intentness of mind and embraced with all the powers of devotion: that, if grace and peace are set down by the Apostle as fulfilling the mention of the Trinity, as if he were naming the Holy Spirit, then he sins against the Holy Spirit who, despairing of or deriding and despising the preaching of grace—by which sins are washed away—and of peace—by which we are reconciled to God—refuses to do penance for his sins and resolves that he must persist in a certain impious and deadly sweetness of them, and persists to the very end. As for the fact, then, that the Lord says it is forgiven a man if he speaks a word against the Son of man, but if he speaks a word against the Holy Spirit it is not forgiven him, neither here nor in the age to come, but he is guilty of an eternal sin (See Matt 12:32; Mark 3:29)—this is not to be heard carelessly. For let us suppose someone ignorant of the Latin tongue, who, when the words "Holy Spirit" have been uttered by someone in his hearing, asks what reality is signified under that sound of syllables; and let some deceiver or impious mocker answer something else, some cheap and base thing, in order to deceive the questioner, as such people are wont to do for the sake of a laugh; and let the man, through ignorance, have despised this name, while he does not know what it means, and even have hurled some abuse at it in this matter—I think there is no one so foolish and inconsiderate as to brand this man with any charge of impiety. On the contrary, if, the name being left unspoken, the reality itself is brought, by such words as are possible, to the understanding of the questioner, then indeed, if he should utter any words or do any deeds contumeliously against so great a holiness, he will be held guilty. Since these things are so, I think it is plain that the one who, hearing this name, supposed that one thing was signified for another, and spoke a word against that thing which he believed to be signified by this name, does not sin in such a way as to be judged to have spoken a word against the Holy Spirit. And so, if anyone asking what the Holy Spirit is should hear from an unskilled person that he is the Son of God, through whom all things were made, who also at a fixed opportunity of time was born of the Virgin and slain by the Jews and rose again, and on hearing these things should deny or deride what was said, he is not to be thought held as if he had spoken a word against the Holy Spirit, but rather against the Son of God or the Son of man, as he deigned both to be called and to be. For it is not what is set before the unskilled person by the word, but what is set forth by reasoning, that is to be considered. For when that man uttered curses, he was surely cursing the one whom he beheld in his thought as it had been recounted to him. But whatever it was called, whether the reality itself was to be venerated or denied or reviled—this is the question. In this way too, if anyone should ask who Jesus Christ is, and there are given to him in answer things that fit not the Son of God but rather the Holy Spirit, and on hearing these he should blaspheme, he will surely be held to have spoken a word not against the Son but against the Holy Spirit.

15. 15. But if we attend in a passing and careless way to what was said—If anyone speaks a word against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the one to come (See Matt 12:32)—who could be found to whom God has granted pardon of sins? For even those who are called pagans, although now they are forbidden by sword and slaughter, still pursue our whole religion with curses and insults, and despise whatever we say about the Trinity itself, denying and blaspheming. For they do not reserve the Holy Spirit for themselves to venerate while raging against the rest, but at one and the same time they bark with all the fury of impiety they can against all the things whatsoever that we carefully say about the threefold majesty of God. For neither do they think worthily even of God the Father himself, whom in part they utterly deny, and in part so confess that, by fashioning false things about him, they venerate not him at all but their own figments. Much more, then, did they choose to deride, in their impious way, what we say about the Son of God or the Holy Spirit than to honor it in our devout fellowship. Yet these people, as far as we can, we exhort to come to know Christ, and we urge that through him God the Father must be served and that they must do battle for the highest and true Emperor, and we invite them to the faith by the promise of impunity for all their past sins. In which matter we judge it sufficient that, even if they have said anything against the Holy Spirit in their sacrilegious superstition, when they have been made Christians it is forgiven without any cloud of doubt. But what the Jews were like against the Holy Spirit, Stephen is witness, whom they stoned when he was full of the Holy Spirit himself, since the Spirit himself spoke all those things that he said against them. In which words it was said most plainly to the Jews: You have always resisted the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51). Yet in that number of Jews resisting the Holy Spirit and stoning Stephen, his vessel, for no other reason than that he was full of him, the apostle Paul too was present, in the hands of all of whom he kept their garments—which afterward he reproaches himself with, in penitence, now most full of that very Spirit whom at first, most empty, he was resisting, and now ready to be stoned for such sayings as those of whose preacher he had been a stoner. What of the Samaritans? Do they not so oppose the Holy Spirit that they try utterly to extinguish that very prophecy which was ministered through the Holy Spirit? Yet to their salvation the Lord himself bears witness in the one who, of the ten lepers cleansed, alone returned to give thanks, though he was a Samaritan, and in that woman with whom he spoke at the well at the sixth hour, and in those who believed through her. And after the Lord's ascension, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, with how great rejoicing of the saints did Samaria receive the word of God! Simon too, the great one, the apostle Peter, rebuking him for thinking so ill of the Holy Spirit that, supposing him for sale, he demanded to buy him for money, nevertheless did not so despair of him as to leave no room for pardon, for he even kindly admonished him to repent. And finally, that so distinguished authority of the catholic Church itself, which, fruitful in the same gift of the Holy Spirit, is spread abroad as the mother of all the saints throughout the whole world, from what heretic or schismatic has it ever cut off the hope of liberation, if he corrects himself? To whom has it closed the way of appeasing God? Does it not call them all back with tears to its breasts, which they have abandoned in proud disdain? But who is found, whether among the leaders or the flocks of the heretics, who does not oppose the Holy Spirit? Unless perhaps someone thinks so perversely as to suppose that the one who has said anything against the Holy Spirit is held guilty, but the one who has done many things against the Holy Spirit is not held guilty. But who fight against the Holy Spirit with such evidence as those who, against the peace of the Church, rage with the proudest contentions? But if the question is about words, I ask whether they say nothing against the Holy Spirit, when some assert that he, in what properly pertains to him, does not exist at all, but that God is one in such a way that the very same one is called the Father, the very same the Son, the very same the Holy Spirit; while others indeed confess that the Holy Spirit exists, but deny that he is equal to the Son or is God at all; while others indeed confess that there is one and the same substance of the Trinity, but think so impiously about that divine substance as to suppose it changeable and corruptible, and pretend that the Holy Spirit himself, whom the Lord promised that he would send to the disciples, came not on the fiftieth day after his resurrection, as the Acts of the Apostles testify, but after about three hundred years through a man; while others likewise deny his coming, which we hold, and contend that he chose prophets in Phrygia, through whom he was to speak so long after; while others blow away his sacraments, and do not hesitate to baptize again those baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But, not to go through them one by one, since they are innumerable, to all of these certainly whom I have briefly touched on for the time, when they return to the bride of Christ and condemn their error and impiety by repenting, no catholic discipline has judged that the peace of the Church should be denied them or the bowels of mercy closed.

16. 16. But if anyone thinks that a word is then spoken against the Holy Spirit when it is spoken by one whose sins have already been forgiven through baptism, let him attend to the fact that not even from such people is the place of repentance taken away, through the holiness of the Church. For if he believes that pardon is not given for this reason, that, the grace of faith and the sacraments of the faithful having already been received, one cannot be said to have sinned in ignorance, let him see that it is one cause when it is said that there is no pardon because the sin was not committed in a time of ignorance, and another cause when it is said that there is no pardon because one spoke a word against the Holy Spirit. For if ignorance alone merits pardon, and ignorance is not granted except before one has been baptized, then not only if one speaks a word against the Holy Spirit, but even if one speaks a word against the Son of man after baptism, and altogether if one defiles oneself with any fornication or murder or any disgrace or crime after baptism, he cannot be healed by repenting. Those who have held this have been excluded from catholic communion, and it has been sufficiently judged that, in that cruelty, they cannot be partakers of the divine mercy. But if it is thought that only what is spoken against the Holy Spirit is without pardon after baptism has been received: first, the Lord, when he was speaking on this matter, excepted no time, but said as a rule: Whoever speaks a word against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the one to come (See Matt 12:32). Then Simon, whom I mentioned a little before, had already received baptism when he believed the Holy Spirit to be subject to a most shameful traffic; yet Peter, having rebuked him, gave him counsel to repent. And what do we do about those who, having received the sacraments of baptism as boys or even infants, are afterward brought up negligently and lead a most shameful life through the darkness of ignorance, knowing nothing at all of what Christian discipline commands or forbids, what it promises and what it threatens, what is to be believed, what hoped for, what loved? Shall we dare to reckon their sins, on this account, not sins of ignorance, because they sinned as baptized—when, being wholly ignorant and not knowing at all, as the saying goes, where they have their head, they sinned in great error?

17. 17. But if one is said to have sinned with knowledge at the time when he knows that what he does is evil and yet does it, why is this judged unforgivable only against the Holy Spirit and not also against the Lord Jesus Christ? Or if it is believed that this very thing is to sin or to speak a word against the Holy Spirit—to commit any sin whatever with knowledge—so that whatever people sin in ignorance is judged to be sinning against the Son, but whatever they sin knowingly is judged to be sinning against the Holy Spirit, I ask: who does not know that it is evil, for example, to corrupt the chastity of another man's wife—if only because he would not be willing to endure this in his own spouse—or to defraud anyone in business, or to circumvent him by lying, or to crush him by false testimony, or, for the sake of carrying off his property, to lie in wait and kill someone; and, in short, whatever there is that one does not want done to himself by another, and which, if he perceives it being done, he without hesitation accuses with his whole heart? Or if we say that these things are done by the ignorant, what shall we find in which people are seen to sin knowingly? It remains, therefore, that if this is to sin against the Holy Spirit—to sin with knowledge—the place of repentance is denied to those sins that I have mentioned, since the Lord cut off all hope of pardon for the sin against the Holy Spirit; but if the Christian rule rejects this and does not cease to call all those who sin thus to amendment of life—it must still be asked what it is to sin against the Holy Spirit, the sin to which no pardon is granted.

18. 18. Or is one perhaps not to be said to sin with knowledge who knows that the sin itself is evil, and yet sins while being ignorant of God and his will? For this is what he also seems to say to the Hebrews, when he says: For if we sin willingly after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins (Heb 10:26). For it would have been too little if he had only said if we sin willingly, unless he added after we have received the knowledge of the truth, in which surely God and his will are known. And this knowledge seems to accord with that saying of the Lord, when he says: The servant who, not knowing his master's will, does things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few; but the servant who, knowing his master's will, does things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with many (Luke 12:47-48)—so that we may suppose that what was said, shall be beaten with few, was said as if he were saying: lightly corrected, he shall belong to pardon; but in that which was said, shall be beaten with many, the everlasting punishment is understood that is threatened to those who sin against the Holy Spirit, to whom he says that the sin can never be forgiven—so that this is to sin against the Holy Spirit: to sin when God's will is known. But if this is so, it must first be thought over and discussed when God's will is known. For some have known it even before receiving the sacrament of baptism. For the centurion Cornelius came to know God's will, surely by the teaching of the apostle Peter, and received the Holy Spirit himself, with most manifest signs attesting it, before he was baptized—yet he did not for that reason despise those sacraments, but was baptized all the more surely, so that he might in no way delay to receive those most sacred seals too, the reality of which had gone before in him, for the perfecting of the knowledge of the truth. But many, even after receiving baptism, do not care to come to know God's will. Wherefore, whoever before baptism has sinned with knowledge of God's will, I cannot say or in any way believe that, when he has come to baptism, all the things whatsoever he has sinned are not forgiven him. To this is added that, since God's will is briefly conveyed to believers in loving God and one's neighbor—so that on these two precepts the whole Law and all the Prophets depend—and since the love of neighbor, that is, the love of one's fellow even to the love of one's enemy, the Lord himself commends to us; we see how many, already baptized, both confess these things to be true and venerate them as the Lord's precepts; but when they have suffered the enmities of someone, they are so carried off in mind to vengeance and burn with such great torches of hatred that they cannot be appeased even when the Gospel is brought out and read aloud; and the churches are full of such people, already baptized. Yet spiritual men do not cease to admonish them fraternally and earnestly instruct them in the spirit of gentleness, so that they may be ready to meet and resist temptations of this kind, and may love rather to reign in the peace of Christ than to rejoice over the crushing of an enemy. And this would be done in vain if for such sins no hope of pardon, no medicine of repentance, remained. And let those who hold this view certainly beware lest they affirm that the patriarch David, approved and praised by divine election, was ignorant of God's will when, struck by love of another man's wife, he saw to it that her husband too was deceived and killed; from which crime, nevertheless, having been condemned first by his own voice, then by that of the Prophet, he was set free by the humility of repenting and the confession of his sin. But he was plainly beaten with many stripes, and taught by his own example that what was said by the Lord—But he who knows his master's will and does things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with many—is to be understood as pertaining not to everlasting punishment but to severer discipline.

19. 19. For those too who treat the passage to the Hebrews more carefully understand it in such a way that what was said—there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins—is to be taken not of the sacrifice of a contrite heart through repentance, but of the sacrifice of which the Apostle was then speaking, that is, the holocaust of the Lord's passion, which everyone offers for his own sins at the time when he is dedicated by faith in that same passion and, baptized, is imbued with the name of the Christian faithful—so that the Apostle meant by this that the one who has sinned cannot thereafter be purged by being baptized again. By this understanding, the place of repentance is not shut off, provided, of course, that we confess that those who are not yet baptized have not yet received the full knowledge of the truth. From which it follows that everyone who has received the knowledge of the truth is understood to be also baptized; but not everyone who is baptized has also received the knowledge of the truth, on account of the slow progress of certain people afterward, or their pitiable negligence; and yet that sacrifice of which he was speaking, that is, the holocaust of the Lord, which is then offered in a way for each one when he is sealed in his name in being baptized, cannot, if he sins again, be offered again. For those who have once been baptized cannot be baptized anew, even though after baptism they have sinned through ignorance of the truth. And so it comes about that, since without baptism no one is rightly said to have received the knowledge of the truth, everyone who receives it has no sacrifice left for his sins, that is, cannot be baptized anew; nor yet ought everyone who does not receive the knowledge of the truth through teaching to suppose that that sacrifice can be offered for him, if it has already been offered—that is, if he has already received the sacraments of that same truth after baptism, he cannot be baptized again. It is as if we were to say that, although every man is not a quadruped, not for that reason is every animal that is not a man a quadruped. For those who have already been baptized we say are better healed through repentance, not renewed, because the renewal is in baptism, where repentance indeed operates, but as in the foundation. And so, the foundation remaining, the building can be recovered; but if anyone should wish to lay the foundation again, he must of necessity overturn the whole building. On this account he says to the Hebrews, who seemed to have turned aside from the New Testament to the Old priesthood: And so, leaving aside the word of the beginning of Christ, let us look toward perfection, not again laying the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of washings, of the laying on of hands, and of the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment (Heb 6:1-2). All these things are handed on in baptism, which he denies are to be repeated, surely in the consecrating of the faithful. For in the treatment and teaching of the word of God they are to be spoken not once only but often, as the need of the matters under discussion demands.

20. 20. Or does this now occur to us, that it is judged to have no pardon not when one knowingly commits any sin whatever, but when one knowingly commits the sin properly against the Holy Spirit? At this point it can be asked whether the Jews knew that the Lord was working through the Holy Spirit when they blasphemed that he cast out demons by the prince of demons. But I wonder how they could recognize the Holy Spirit in him, when they did not know that the Lord himself was the Son of God, in that blindness, namely, which has come upon part of Israel, until the fullness of the nations should enter in (See Rom 11:25). Of which there will be a more fitting treatment in its own place, the Lord helping and permitting. Then, if there is understood that discerning of spirits by which one discerns whether in someone the Holy Spirit or a spirit of deceit is at work—and this discerning is given to believers through the Holy Spirit at a certain definite time, as the same Apostle says in another place—how could the unbelieving Jews, without this gift, discern whether the Lord was working through the Holy Spirit? And yet in them, so that they might be struck by a just punishment, the most manifest indications of ill will shone forth, when they both procured false witnesses against him and sent in pretenders to catch him in his word, and, when the awesome marvels that were done at his resurrection were reported to them, tried to spread a false report and to hide the truth by the corruption of the guards, and other signs of a malicious and venomous mind appear in them, so far as the Gospel narrative shows.

21. 21. Hence it has now begun, as it were, to shine forth that he sins against the Holy Spirit who with a malevolent mind contradicts the works that are done through the Holy Spirit. For although he may not know whether it is the Holy Spirit, nevertheless he who is of such a mind as to prefer that the works at which he is envious should not be of the Holy Spirit—not because they are evil, but because he envies them, because he is contrary to goodness itself through his malice—is rightly judged to sin against the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, if even from that number of people to whom the Lord imputes that crime, someone, coming to faith in Christ and, his envy subdued by the torments of repenting, seeking salvation with tears—as perhaps some of them did—I ask whether anyone should grow hardened in so great an error as either to deny that they ought to have been admitted to the baptism of Christ, or to contend that they were admitted in vain. For if anyone blasphemes the divine works through envy, since he resists the good things of God, that is, the gifts of God, with his malice, and is therefore to be reckoned to sin against the Holy Spirit and on that account to have no hope of pardon, let us consider whether the apostle Paul himself was of that number. For he says: I who was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a doer of injury, but I obtained mercy, because I acted in ignorance, in unbelief (1 Tim 1:13). Or did he perhaps not belong to this kind of crime because he was not envious? Let us hear what he says elsewhere: For we ourselves too, he says, were once foolish and unbelieving, going astray, slaves to pleasures and various desires, acting in malice and envy, abominable, hating one another (Titus 3:3).

22. 22. If, then, neither to pagans nor to Hebrews nor to heretics or schismatics not yet baptized is the approach to the baptism of Christ closed—where, their former life condemned, they are changed for the better—although, while opposing Christianity and the Church of God, before they were washed by the Christian sacraments, they resisted the Holy Spirit too, with as much hostility as they could; if also to people who up to the reception of the sacraments had received the knowledge of the truth, and after this, having lapsed, resisted the Holy Spirit, the aid of mercy is not denied when they return to soundness and seek the peace of God by repenting; if, finally, of those very people to whom the Lord imputed the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that they had uttered, any who came to their senses took refuge in the grace of God and without any doubt were healed—what else remains but that the sin against the Holy Spirit, which the Lord says is forgiven neither in this age nor in the one to come, should be understood to be none other than perseverance in wickedness and malignity, with despair of God's indulgence? For this is to resist that grace and peace of which our discourse has now arisen. For from this it may be observed that, even for the Jews themselves, whose blasphemy the Lord rebukes, the place for correcting and repenting was not closed; for in that very rebuke the same Lord says to them: Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad (Matt 12:33). And this would surely by no reason be said to them if, on account of that blasphemy, they could not now change their mind for the better and produce the fruit of right deeds, or if they would produce it in vain, without the forgiveness of their sin.

23. 23. Therefore, since the Lord in the Spirit of God cast out demons and healed the other diseases and infirmities of human bodies for no other reason than that the one who said to them might be believed: Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven will draw near (See Matt 4:17). For sins are forgiven invisibly, and for this forgiveness he procured faith by miracles, which is shown most plainly in that paralytic. For when he had first offered him the visible gift, on account of which he had come—for the Son of man had now come not to judge the world but to save the world—when, then, he had said Your sins are forgiven you (Matt 9:2), and there was murmuring by the Jews, indignant that he seemed to have arrogated such great power to himself, he said: Which is easier, to say, Your sins are forgiven you, or to say, Rise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of man has power to forgive sins (Matt 9:5-6), he said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise, take up your bed, and go into your house (Matt 9:6). By doing which and saying which things he sufficiently declared that he did those things in bodies for this reason, that it might be believed that he frees souls by the forgiveness of sins, that is, so that from the visible power the invisible power might earn faith. Since, then, he was doing all those things in the Spirit of God, in order to bestow grace and peace on people—grace in the remission of sins, peace in reconciliation to God, from whom sins alone separate—when the Jews had said that he cast out demons by Beelzebub, he wished mercifully to admonish them not to speak a word and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that is, not to resist the grace and peace of God, which the Lord had come to bestow through the Holy Spirit. Not because they had already done that which would be forgiven them neither in this age nor in the one to come, but lest, by despairing of pardon, or as it were presuming on their own righteousness and not doing penance, or persevering in sins, they should do it; for in this way they would speak a word, that is, blasphemy, against the Holy Spirit, in which the Lord was working those signs for the sake of bestowing grace and peace, if by perseverance in sins they should resist that very grace and peace. For to speak a word does not here seem to be set down so that only that is understood which we fashion with the tongue, but what, conceived in the heart, we also express by deed. For just as those do not confess God who confess only with the sound of the mouth and not also with good works—for of these it is said: For they confess that they know God, but by their deeds they deny him (Titus 1:16)—from which it is plain that something is said by deeds, just as it is plain that something is denied by deeds. And just as that which the Apostle says—No one says, Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3)—cannot be rightly understood except so that it is understood as said by deeds (for those are not to be thought to say this in the Holy Spirit to whom the Lord himself says: Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? (Luke 6:46) and that other saying: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matt 7:21))—so too the one who speaks this word, which the Lord wishes to be understood as without pardon, against the Holy Spirit, that is, who, despairing of the grace and peace that he gives, says that he must persevere in his sins, must be understood to speak by deeds, so that, just as those deny the Lord by deeds, so these say by deeds that they will persevere in their evil life and lost ways, so that they even act accordingly, that is, persevere. And if they do this, who would now wonder, or who would not understand, both that the Lord Jesus Christ called the Jews to repentance through that threat, in order to bestow grace and peace on them if they believed in him, and that to those who resist this grace and peace and in this way speak a word and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit—that is, who, with desperate and impious obstinacy of mind, persevere in their sins and grow proud against God without the humility of confession and repentance—pardon can be granted neither in this age nor in the one to come? And if these things are so, by the opportunity of treating of grace and peace, which is for us from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, a great and most difficult question has been resolved, that same Lord bestowing it. But whoever still desires a more careful consideration and treatment of so great a matter, let him know that it is to be sought for him in the treatment of the Gospel and in the words of the Evangelists, and let him remember that we have now undertaken to treat the Letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans, the subsequent text of which Letter we shall, if the Lord wills, trace in other volumes—so that this may at last be the limit of this one.