Against the Pelagian heretics, who say that Adam, even if he had not sinned, would have died in body, and that the human race was not corrupted in him (from which it follows that they maintain that deaths, deadly diseases, and all the evils we see even little ones suffer would have existed in paradise too, even if no one had sinned), I wrote a book to Count Valerius, whose title is: Marriage and Desire; for I had learned that the Pelagians, after this book reached him, were saying that we condemn marriage. In that work, accordingly, I distinguished, with such argument as I could, the good of marriage from the evil of carnal desire, of which conjugal chastity makes good use.

When he had received this book, the renowned and illustrious man sent me on a sheet certain statements excerpted from the work of the Pelagian heretic Julian (a work in which, in four books, he thought he had answered that one book of mine, which I have recorded as having written under the title Marriage and Desire), statements sent to him by I know not whom, who saw to it that they were excerpted, as he chose, from Julian's first book; and Valerius asked that I reply to them as quickly as possible. And so it came about that under the same title I wrote a second book as well, against which Julian, with excessive verbosity, composed another eight. To these I now reply, setting out his words and appending my response to each passage, as their refutation seemed best to require; for I had already refuted his earlier four books, after they came into my hands, clearly enough in six books.

1. JULIAN. Though hindered by great distresses, which—as I look upon the state of the Churches in this season—are prompted in me partly by indignation, partly by pity, I had nonetheless not cast off the pledge of my promise: namely, that having become a debtor by promising, I should take care also to discharge the debt by paying. For in the books I dictated to our brother Bishop Turbantius, a man conspicuous for the great splendor of his virtues, against the writings of Augustine, I promised that, if no setback should arise to hinder my efforts, I would forthwith confront all the arguments of those who, following the view of the Manicheans, defend a transmission of sin—that is, a natural evil; and from this task I have until now been held back by various and undisguisable necessity.

AUGUSTINE. Would that, after those writings of yours, and after these praises of yours in which you call him a man conspicuous for the great splendor of his virtues, you might imitate Turbantius, who has been set free from your error! For those books of yours have been answered, and it has been shown you what catholic lights, most brilliant in the treatment of the holy Scriptures, you are trying to obscure with this reproach—that is, with the name of the Manicheans.

2. JUL. But as soon as I was permitted to breathe again, my plan was, so far as the nature of the matter itself would allow, to fulfill my promises briefly—had you not wished, most blessed father Florus, that I should enter once more upon a more active campaign. Since you have such weight by the reverence of your holiness that I judge it irreligious to obey your commands sluggishly, you have easily obtained that I should extend the brevity I had chosen into longer paths.

And so you will favor with your authority a work undertaken on your account, whose name I have inserted for this reason above all, that my pen might proceed more securely and more cheerfully under the patronage of so great a command. There was, then, conceived in my mind a not untimely plan of brevity; for in those four books the truth of the catholic faith—for which, and with which, we earn the hatred of a falling world—armed both with unconquered arguments and with the testimonies of the sacred Law, had ground down nearly everything that Augustine, with what the Manicheans devised, had uttered against us; and scarcely anything was left, if we had fair judges.

AUG. Against those four books of yours, six books have been written by me. For after the recollection of the catholic teachers (whom you make out to be Manicheans, throwing in my face under this charge what they learned and taught in the catholic Church), which I set out in the first two volumes, I assigned the following four, one to each of yours; refuting the darkness of your heresy by the light of catholic truth—a truth from which, by deserting it, you are blinded and rave; and on a matter about which there was never any controversy in the Church of Christ, you, like a new heretic, seek fair judges, as though any could seem fair to you except those whom you have deceived by your error. But what judge better than Ambrose will you be able to find? Of him your own teacher Pelagius said that not even an enemy dared to find fault with his faith and his most pure sense of the Scriptures. Would this man, then, with his most pure sense of the Scriptures, hold to the doctrine of the most impure Manichean, when he says: We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (AMBROSIUS, De paenitentia 1, 3, 13; cf. C. duas epp. Pelag. 4, 11, 29)? Judge now, then, with how impure a sense you find fault with this catholic doctrine, and do not delay to correct yourself with Ambrose as judge.

3. JUL. Some testimonies of the Scriptures, however, by which they think something can be alleged against us, I had passed over—testimonies I had promised to explain, in order to show that any ambiguous words of the Law which our enemies are accustomed to take up neither prejudge what is plain, and are to be understood in accordance with what is established by the most absolute authorities of holy Scripture and by unanswerable reason. Indeed, by this very fact anyone shows himself an unskilled and profane interpreter of the divine Law who thinks that something is defended by its sanction which cannot be vindicated by justice.

AUG. It is rather what you say that cannot be defended by any reasoning of justice. For the misery of the human race, from which we see no one exempt from birth to death, does not belong to the just judgment of the Almighty if there is no original sin.

4. JUL. For if the Law of God is the source and mistress of justice, the equity of God can also be helped by its aids, but cannot be assailed. The nature of things therefore allows no support for iniquity to be drawn from the power of that Scripture, which had this one cause for its promulgation: that by its testimonies, remedies, threats, and punishments iniquity might be destroyed.

AUG. It is declared by its testimonies that man has become like to vanity; his days pass away like a shadow (Ps 144:4 (143:4)). And that he is born with this vanity is shown not only by the truthful Scripture in which it is lamented, but also by the laborious and toilsome care with which he is educated. Among its remedies it is read that even when a little one has been born, a sacrifice must be offered for sin (Cf. Lev 12:6-8). Among its threats it is read that the soul of a little one would perish if he were not circumcised on the eighth day (Cf. Gen 17:14). Among its punishments it is read that even little ones whose parents had provoked God to anger were ordered to be slain, so that they might be destroyed in the slaughter of war (Cf. Josh 6:21; 10:32).

5. JUL. Nothing, then, can be done through the Law of God against God the author of the Law. By this one short formula everything is indeed excluded that is wont to be objected by those who err; but, to teach how rich is the truth in which we believe, we are accustomed to bring the light of exposition also to those passages of the Scriptures which have veiled the understanding of their sense by the intricacy of their phrasing—so that, opened up, they may possess the dignity of their origin, and not be separated from the sacred lineage as though spurious or degenerate.

AUG. On the contrary, it is the lights of the holy Scriptures, shining with sure truth, that you are trying to obscure by the intricacy of your perverse arguments. For what is clearer than what I just said: Man has become like to vanity; his days pass away like a shadow (Ps 144:4 (143:4))? This would certainly not happen if he remained in the likeness of God in which he was created. What is clearer than what was said: As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22)? What is clearer than what was said: For who is clean from filth? Not even the infant whose life upon earth is of a single day (Job 14:4-5 (sec. LXX)); and very many other passages, which you labor to wrap in your darkness and to twist, by empty loquacity, into your perverse sense?

6. JUL. This alone, then, I was still thinking to pursue after our manner: that is, to free from the interpretations of the Traducianists those members of the divine Law which lay open to insult—members which were divine precisely by being shown to be just.

AUG. With insulting tongue you call them Traducianists—Cyprian, Ambrose, Gregory, and the rest of their company who confess original sin. But it is no wonder that new heretics impose a new name on the catholics from whom they go out; others too have done this, when they likewise went out.

7. JUL. But because you demanded it earnestly—nay, enjoined it by a father's authority—that I confront the book of the African disputant which Alypius, a home-bred slave of his sins, recently delivered to Count Valerius, on this account my response has been made longer.

AUG. This African disputant is a great punishment to you; and long before you were born, Cyprian the African was prepared as a great punishment for your heresy.

8. JUL. For he has once again given proofs of his talent and his faith—proofs that are understood with the greatest difficulty, expounded with the greatest difficulty, and scarcely heard without horror; but refuted with the greatest ease, pierced through most sharply, and, out of regard for decency, consigned to oblivion once they have been driven out.

AUG. Those who read judge otherwise than you wish.

9. JUL. His first book, then, which was published alone before this one, accuses us of being new heretics (Cf. De nupt. et concup. 1, 1); because we resist the opinion which, like a whitewashed tomb—which, according to the saying of the Gospel, is clothed on the outside with color, but within is full of filth and iniquity (Cf. Matt 23:27)—belches forth, under the praise of Baptism, the filth of the Manicheans and natural sin, so as to contaminate the hitherto pure sacraments of the catholic Church.

AUG. That you are new heretics is shown by the ancient catholic faith, which you have just now begun to attack—a faith proclaimed by the most illustrious teachers who were before us. But we need not answer all your reproaches rather than your accusations, which you hurl with most shameless brow and most insolent tongue not only at me, but also at Ambrose, Hilary, Gregory, Cyprian, and the other most renowned teachers of the Church.

10. JUL. He also praises a powerful man because, against our petitions—we who clamored for nothing other than that judges be appointed for so great a matter, so that what had been done by stealth might rather be corrected than punished by examination—that man stood in the way with the mass of his dignity, and would not allow time or place for a hearing to be obtained. Whether the one to whom he writes acted as wickedly as this praise testifies, let him see to it himself. But insofar as I have judged better of him, the honorable mention of his name inserted into my little work has made plain. Still, that book may perhaps contain falsehoods about its patron. Yet it faithfully shows what its writer desires: namely, that against reason, against faith, against all holiness of morals and of teachings, the fight be carried on by savage force and blind violence.

AUG. Far be it from the Christian powers of the earthly commonwealth that they should doubt the ancient catholic faith, and on this account grant its assailants place and time for examination, instead of, being themselves sure and grounded in it, imposing the discipline of correction on such enemies of it as you are. For what was done on account of the Donatists, their most violent crowds compelled to be done, not knowing what had been done before, which ought to have been shown them; may God turn away from you having such crowds; yet, God being favorable, you do not have them.

11. JUL. When these things had been done, among the first parts of his volume he proceeded to the distinction between marriage and desire, as he had promised in the inscription of his title; and throughout the rest of the work he gave a demonstration of his art and his virtue. For, tormented by the utmost necessity between the denial of confessors and the confession of deniers, he made public, with foul conscience, the sufferings he was undergoing.

AUG. Revile as much as you can; for what reviler cannot do this?

12. JUL. To his earlier work, then, I replied in four little books, with such ability as truth supplied; having stated at the outset that I would pass over what both appeared to carry no weight for his doctrine and could convict me of long-windedness, had I pursued every feeble and empty point. And yet, if I had been allowed to keep this rule, as was fitting—that is, that things should not earn refutation by their inept profession—nearly all his inventions ought to have been spurned by public silence. But since, as matters hasten to the worse (which is a sign of a world bearing down toward its end), folly and baseness have gained mastery even in the Church of God, we discharge an embassy on behalf of Christ (2 Cor 5:20), and to the best of our manly portion we bring, so far as we are able, our help for the defense of the catholic religion; nor do we shrink from committing to writing the remedies we prepare against the poisons of errors.

AUG. Folly and baseness gave you birth; but if they had gained mastery in the Church, they would certainly have kept you there.

13. JUL. I had testified, as I said, that in my first work I would neither argue against every form of the transmission to be refuted, nor repeat everything that book contained, but would grapple with those points in which he had placed the sum and force of his doctrine. That I faithfully promised this, anyone—however biased, provided he is a careful reader of both works—will recognize. And I, secure in the honesty of my conscience, both exhort and goad our enemy: if he thinks that any argument put forward by him has been passed over by me which he himself judges to be of any weight, let him bring it forward into the open and convict me of fear and trickery.

AUG. I do not believe that you thought the things you passed over to be of no weight; though even if I grant that you thought this, a catholic and intelligent reader, if he has both that one book of mine and your four, and applies diligence, will find that it is not so.

14. JUL. Some testimonies of the Scriptures, indeed, I expounded more fully, others more briefly; for I promised that I would treat the matter fully in the work that was to follow. So nothing remained there of all Augustine's arguments and propositions that was not exploded, nothing was carried through by me otherwise than I had promised; many things among his inventions I convicted as false, many as foolish, many as sacrilegious.

AUG. This you say, but it is you who say it; whoever reads and understands, if he is not a Pelagian, does not say this.

15. JUL. By this profession we need not fear a reputation for arrogance; for we confess that the truth was defended not by my talent, but that the weakness of our talent was helped by the strength of truth.

AUG. You would have said "crushed," if you had wished to speak the truth.

16. JUL. Since, then, these things stand fulfilled no otherwise than I have said, I cannot sufficiently wonder at the impudence of the man who, in this recent work of his, accuses my books of falsehood—books which he nonetheless testifies have not yet come into his hands (Cf. De nupt. et concup. 2, 2). It is a hard thing that the habit of sinning produces love of the offense; but nothing is harder than that it extinguishes shame. Although this was already evident from the practice of wickedness, present dangers have taught it more fully than any of us could have surmised. For when would I have believed that the African's brow had grown so hardened that, in one work and one line, he would confess both that I had said false things and that he had not read what I said?

AUG. If you did not do this, the man did who excerpted from your books what he thought should be sent to Count Valerius. Because I did not believe that he had done this falsely, I attributed to the author what I owed to the excerptor. For I had not yet read your books, but I had read what he had excerpted from them. If you would consider yourself a human being, when you saw that this could happen, you would by no means seek so spiteful a slander against a man on this occasion.

17. JUL. For, writing to the one whom he admires as a devoted student of his books, though occupied with the toils of military service, he indicates that sheets were delivered to him by Alypius, sheets inscribed thus: Chapters from the book of Augustine which he wrote, against which I have excerpted a few things from the books. Here I see that the man who directed these writings to Your Excellency wished, for the sake (as I suppose) of a quicker reply, so as not to delay your insistence, to excerpt them from I know not what books.

But when I considered which books these were, I judged them to be those which Julian mentions in the letter he sent to Rome, a copy of which reached me at the same time. For there he says: They also say that the marriages now contracted were not instituted by God, which is read in the book of Augustine, against which I have just now replied in four little books. And after these words he again adds in his own words: I believe these things were excerpted from those little books; whence it had perhaps been better that our effort should have labored to refute and confute that whole work of his, which he set forth in four volumes—had I not been unwilling to delay my reply, just as you did not delay the transmission of the writings to which a reply was to be made (De nupt. et concup. 2, 2). Here, then, he shows most plainly that he suspects those excerpts to have been hastily collected from my work, but that he is ignorant of the whole books, to which nonetheless he dares say he could have replied.

AUG. Why should I not dare, when I certainly ought not to doubt that you said empty things in them? For you could not speak against true things except empty ones. Nor did my judgment deceive me; for when I read those books of yours, I found them to be such as I had presumed them to be before I read them.

18. JUL. He also makes mention of a letter which he says was directed by me to Rome; but from the words he set down, we could not recognize which writing he was speaking of (Cf. De nupt. et concup. 2, 2). For to Zosimus, once bishop of that city, I addressed two letters on these questions; but at that time, when I had not yet begun the books.

AUG. This letter is not to Zosimus, but to those at Rome who could be led astray by such persuasion. But if you do not acknowledge it, then let it not be yours. Would that those books too were not yours, but another's, so that you might not through them be made an utter stranger to the truth.

19. JUL. Further, let him make use of the evidence of the letter by which he either received or fashioned the claim that I had set forth a reply against the new Manicheans (for he disdains to seem the old kind) in four volumes; why did he not take care to learn the points we had objected? Why did he not strive, when he was about to engage, to acknowledge them; but, driven by most shameful frivolity into a very great contest with eyes muffled, did he advance in the manner of the gladiators called Andabatae? This deed he defends by an allegation of such a kind that he says he wished to imitate, by his headlong reply, the haste his patron showed in transmitting the sheets—as though he could not most honorably have intimated that some time ought to be granted him, in which he might come to read the published work; that it is a disgrace among the learned to offend against the gravity of writing, and out of impatience of deliberating to attack what one does not know. To this is added that, intending to stir up against us an odium of cunning—as though we had cut short the sequence of his statements—he gave credence to these excerpts, which seem to have been put together more probably by his falsehood and malice than by the unskilled simplicity of any of us. But by whatever intent, by whatever author, this came about, it nonetheless supports us in two ways; for at once it became plain both how great is the frivolity and how great the weakness in this enemy of truth—who showed himself unable to be silent even when he ought not to speak; and who, by a few half-full and torn-up sentences rather than gathered ones, yet only from my first book, gave way so broken that, with very womanish cries, he stirred the breasts of the crowd against us—as the progress of our argument will make plain.

AUG. Why are you angry with me, because your books could reach me rather late, or because, seeking them, I could not quickly find them? Nevertheless I both could and most certainly ought, with eyes plainly open, not muffled, to inspect what the sheet sent to me contained—whoever's and of whatever kind it was—lest it be thought unconquered, and to refute it without delay;

for even if I could never find your books, it was fitting that I should refute, as far as I was able, what he believed to be of some weight—he who judged it should be sent to so great a man—lest anyone reading it be deceived.

You would therefore not be throwing in my face the charge you have thrown, were it not rather that you speak these things with eyes—I will not say extinguished, but at least closed. And you would by no means say that the breasts of the crowd are stirred by us against you, did you not know that the catholic faith, which you are trying to overthrow, is not hidden from the Christian multitude of both sexes.

20. JUL. Yet here too I give notice, as was done by us in the earlier work, that I will not set down all his words exactly, but those chief points by whose destruction the opinion of a natural evil is crushed.

AUG. The things you pass over will perhaps be gathered up, either by us or by others, so that it may appear why you passed them over.

21. JUL. Although this stands fully accomplished in my first work, yet because he has now proposed to himself to refute certain things from one book of mine only, and accuses me—as I said before—of having for the most part mutilated the chapters of his statements which I inserted; I will first show that what he reproves was neither done by me, and was most shamelessly practiced by him in this very work. Then I will prove that, by those very concise and brief sentences which he inserts from my writings (by which he had been assailed), he has opposed them with no solid replies, so that both those points remain unshaken, and here he confesses more plainly the things to be detested than our effort had labored to set forth.

AUG. I have already replied to these things above.

22. JUL. Astounded, then, let us hear what he has written against me. The words, he says, from my book sent to you by me and most well known to you, he set down thus, words he tried to refute: "they cry out most spitefully that we are condemners of marriage and of the divine work by which God creates human beings from males and females, because we say that those who are born of such a union contract original sin; and that those born of whatever sort of parents we do not deny are still under the devil, unless they are reborn in Christ" (Cf. De nupt. et concup. 2, 2).

In these words of mine he passed over the testimony of the Apostle which I had interposed, by whose great weight he felt himself pressed. For when I had said that human beings contract original sin, I at once added: Of which the Apostle says: through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12); and with this testimony, as I said, passed over, he wove together those other things mentioned above. For he knows in what manner these apostolic words, which he passed over, are wont to be received by the hearts of faithful catholics; words so right and shining with such great light that the new heretics labor to obscure and corrupt them with shadowy and twisted interpretations.

Then he appended other words of mine, where I said: "they do not notice that the good of marriage can no more be accused of the original evil that is drawn from it than the evil of adulteries and fornications can be excused by the natural good that is born from it. For just as sin, whether drawn from this side or that by little ones, is the work of the devil, so a human being, whether born from this side or that, is the work of God."

Here too he passed over the things in which he feared catholic ears. For, that one might come to these words, it had been said above by us: "because, then, we say what is contained in the most ancient and firmest rule of the catholic faith, these assertors of a novel and perverse doctrine—who say there is no sin in little ones to be washed away by the bath of rebirth—charge us, unfaithfully or unskillfully, with condemning marriage, as it were, and with saying that the work of God, that is, the human being born of marriage, is the work of the devil" (Cf. De nupt. et concup. 1, 1). With these words of ours, then, passed over, there follow those words of ours which he set down, as is written above (De nupt. et concup. 2, 3s).

How long, you who say these things, will you go on mocking the simplicity of religious breasts and unskilled ears? To what end will unbridled impudence vaunt itself? When you wrote these things, did the censure of learned men move you nothing, the reverence of the coming judgment nothing, the very monuments of letters nothing? Lie open now in your deceit, and do you not see that, once detected, you are held fast? What you wrote in your first and second work, whom of us do you suppose to be ignorant? For it pleased me, and was fitting, to address you in those modes in which an eloquent consul thundered against a public parricide (Cf. CICERO, Catil. 1, 1).

AUG. You do well to indicate to us—lest perhaps we should not recognize it—that you took these things from the invectives of Cicero and turned them about; but we do not fear Julian, when we see him become Tullian; nay rather, we grieve over the madman, when we see him lose the Christian sense. For what is more insane than to keep little ones away from Christ the physician, by saying there is nothing in them for him to come and heal? Cicero, inveighing against the parricide of his fatherland, was defending the city which its king Romulus founded by gathering sinners from everywhere; but you both cry out that so many little ones, who die without sacred Baptism, have no sin, and do not permit them to come to the city of the King to whose image they were made.

23. JUL. You feign that I passed over the testimony of the Apostle—which can neither help you nor was passed over by me, but was inserted in the order in which it had been placed by you; and just as it was faithfully recalled in the first book, so in the fourth book of my work, though cursorily and briefly, it was explained (Cf. C. Iul. 6, 75). The mention too of the catholic Church, which you had made for this purpose—that those deceived by you might desert the catholic faith, and the wretches rejoice in the catholic name—I did not pass over. And although there was no force of argument in such words, yet the chapter of your statements was set forth by me no otherwise than it had been arranged by you. Read my published books, and looking at the fidelity of the reply, which you charge with fraud, pronounce me meanwhile to speak the truth; but you, if your custom permit it, blush. But now that the inexcusable falsehood has been shown—which is always base, but becomes baser when it invades the place of a censor, and reproaches its own deformity to another's decency—answer: what do the name of the Church or the words of the Apostle profit Manichean senses, that you should allege them passed over with such great odium?

AUG. I have already replied above to this slander of yours, by which you throw in my face the falsehood of your words being set down less than whole. But what that excerptor did, you would not so gladly attribute to me, were you not willing to be a deceiver of those who read these things.

24. JUL. This was always the greatest distinction between the Manicheans and the catholics, and a certain very broad boundary by which the doctrines of the pious and the impious are separated from each other—nay rather, a great mass that divides our views from theirs as deeply as heaven from earth: that we ascribe every sin to an evil will, but they to an evil nature; and they, though they follow diverse errors, yet, flowing as it were from the head of this same spring, consequently arrive at sacrileges and crimes; just as the catholics, on the other side, beginning from a good beginning, increased by good progress, are carried up to the summit of religion, which reason and piety fortify. You, then, trying to assert a natural evil—with a profane wish indeed, but with ineffective intent—usurped the testimony of the Apostle, whom by this very passage I show to have felt nothing such as you try to persuade us of; for in contradictory ways you both confess him catholic, and judge his words to support a Manichean.

AUG. What catholic teachers you would assert to support a Manichean—who understood in the apostolic words that little ones contract original sin, and did not, in your insane manner, praise nature as though sound, but applied to it, to be healed, a rather Christian medicine—if you thought with a Christian heart, you would blush, tremble, and fall silent.

25. JUL. Did not Adimantus and Faustus (whom in the books of your Confessions you call your teacher (Cf. Confess. 5, 6-7. 13)) do the very same thing, by the tradition of their heresiarch, snatching up and corrupting the more obscure sentences whether of the Gospel or of the Epistles of the apostles, so as to protect a profane doctrine by the authority of names? Yet why do I speak of the Manicheans? Absolutely all heresies fortify their inventions—by which they have strayed from piety and faith—with the phrasings and sentences of the Scriptures.

AUG. They turned obscure sentences to their doctrine; you try to obscure plain ones by your very doctrine. For what is plainer than that the Apostle says that sin entered into this world through one man, and through sin death, and so it passed to all human beings (Cf. Rom 5:12)? And if the Apostle were compelled to prove this, he would give as his witness the very misery of the human race, which begins from the wailings of little ones and reaches to the groans of the decrepit. For in no way, under the care of the Almighty and just God, would so great a misery be inflicted on human nature, unless in two human beings the whole was driven, by the deserved merit of sin, from the felicity of paradise into this unhappiness.

26. JUL. Will the authors of the sacred Books therefore be proved authors of errors, or will the dignity of the Scriptures expiate the crimes of those who perish?

AUG. Say this to yourselves.

27. JUL. Let the lust for undisciplined expositions therefore be extinguished; let no words be believed to do anything against the manifest justice of God; if they are of that Person whom it is necessary to venerate, let them be defended by explanations befitting the divine equity; but if they have been uttered by an author not to be feared, let them be driven away even unrefined. Now, then, the discussion concerns the judgment of God, of whom it is written: God is faithful, in whom there is no iniquity; just and holy is the Lord God (Deut 32:4). And again: Just is the Lord, and he has loved justice; his countenance has beheld equity (Ps 11:7 (10:8)). And again: All your judgments are equity (Ps 119:172 (118:172)). Innumerable are the testimonies by which the divine equity is proclaimed in the sacred Volumes; of which, however, no one—whether of the gentiles or of the heretics, save the Manicheans and Traducianists—has doubted.

AUG. From this equity there is a heavy yoke upon the children of Adam from the day they come forth from their mother's womb (Cf. Sir 40:1); which he who denies original sin asserts to be altogether unjust.

28. JUL. For it has been so impressed upon all men generally, by the teaching of nature, that God is just, that it is manifest he is not God who is found not to be just. A human being, therefore, can also be just; but God cannot be anything except just.

AUG. Say it to yourself.

29. JUL. Since this one true God, in whom we believe and whom we venerate in the Trinity, is such, beyond doubt he is most just toward all in the reckoning of judgment.

AUG. Say it to yourself: and show that he is just, who, with such manifest misery, or unto such manifest misery, is born—he from whom original sin is not drawn.

30. JUL. From his laws, then, what is established to be unjust can in no way be proved and vindicated; so that, if this could be done, his whole divinity would become worthless. By him, therefore, it will be proved that a doctrine of injustice is established from the holy Scriptures, by whom it could be approved that the Trinity, in which we believe, can be deprived of the glory of divinity.

AUG. You speak the truth: but say it to yourselves, who labor to take away from Christ the glory by which he heals little ones.

31. JUL. Since neither any reason nor any piety can sustain this, either teach that a natural sin can exist, or that it is just for it to be imputed to anyone; or else depart from the contamination of the holy Scriptures, by whose sentences you judge to be sanctioned what you are compelled to confess unjust.

AUG. You err: it is rather you who are compelled to confess a heavy yoke upon little ones to be unjust, if, just as they have no sin of their own, so they draw no original sin.

32. JUL. But if you will do neither of the things we have mentioned, and yet assert that you believe in this God, by whose institutions you judge injustice to be fortified, know that you are much worse than the old Manichean, you who have such a God as the Manichean devised as the enemy of his own God.

AUG. You rage against little ones worse than the Manicheans. For they at least wish the soul, which they think a part of God, to be healed through Christ in the little one; but you permit the one whom you say has no evil either in soul or in flesh to be healed by Christ in no part. And you, illustrious preachers, so preach Jesus that you deny him to be the Jesus of little ones. Read in the Gospel from where he received this name (Cf. Matt 1:21), and do not deny the Savior to little ones who are not saved.

33. JUL. What roundabouts of lies and inanities, then, what cushions—which the prophet Ezekiel charges against fornicating Jerusalem (Cf. Ezek 13:18)—will you bring against me here, cushions on which womanish souls recline, holding the names of mysteries, while in their disclosed profanity they have committed an offense against divinity itself? With all illusions removed, and the throngs of the lowly little folk you so often summon, teach that what you try to affirm through the holy Scriptures is just.

AUG. The throngs of the lowly little folk you mock know the catholic faith, who confess that infants are saved by the Savior; and therefore they detest the error of the Pelagians, who deny this.

34. JUL. Lest, then, the discourse be drawn out into endless volumes, here, here let the genus, species, difference, mode, and quality of the things we are treating be discerned; nay, more carefully, whether they are, whence they are, where they are, what too they deserve, and from whom. For in this way there will be no long wandering through the windings of disputations, and what ought to be held as certain will appear.

AUG. You wrote eight books against one book of mine, precisely because, by your dialectical shortcuts, you were unwilling to dispute at length.

35. JUL. Here, then, the account of Creator and creature is in question, that is, of God and man; the one judges, the other is judged; and so let it be seen what is the nature of justice and of fault. Justice is—as it is wont to be defined by the learned, and as we can understand—the virtue (if, against the Stoics, one may be preferred to another) greatest of all virtues, diligently discharging its office of rendering to each his own without fraud, without favor.

AUG. Say, then, by what justice the heavy yoke of so great and manifest a misery has been requited to little ones; say by what justice that little one is adopted in Baptism, while that one dies without this adoption; why this honor is not common to both, or this estrangement from the honor, when the cause—whether good or bad—is common to both. You do not say it, because, more a Pelagian than a Christian, you have no taste either for the grace of God or for the justice of God.

36. JUL. But if Zeno will not allow it to be called the greatest—Zeno, who affirms so great a bond and unity of the virtues that he says where one is present, all the virtues are present, and where one is absent, all are absent, and that that is true virtue which is perfected by this fourfold partnership—then too he will furnish us very much help, when he has taught that neither prudence nor fortitude nor temperance can be contained without justice; according to which truth Ecclesiastes too declares: He who sins in one thing will lose many good things (Eccl 9:18).

AUG. Hear the same Ecclesiastes saying: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity; what abundance has a man in all his labor with which he labors under the sun (Eccl 1:2-3), and so on? And tell me, why has man also been made like to vanity (Ps 144:4 (143:4)), who had been made like to truth? Or do you except little ones from this—little ones whom we see, as they grow and (if they are well educated) make progress, lessen the great vanity with which they were born, and not be wholly free of it until all the days of vanity have passed like a shadow (Cf. Ps 144:4 (143:4))?

37. JUL. This august virtue, then, the assessor of each one's merits, in the works indeed of the image of God, that is, of the human soul, gleams in proportion to the measure and powers of the creature itself; but in God himself, the maker from nothing of all things that are, it shines resplendent through an immense and bright orb forever. Its origin is divinity, its age eternity, and eternity that knows neither to cease nor to have begun, this way or that. As therefore its genus (by which name I wish nothing else to be understood than its origin) is God, so its species appears in the promulgation of laws and in the effects of judgments.

AUG. If the origin of justice is God, as you confess, why do you not confess that justice is given to man by him, and would rather have justice be the choice of the human will than the gift of God—so that you are among those of whom it was said: Being ignorant of the justice of God, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to the justice of God (Rom 10:3)? Blush at last, I beseech you, and ask justice from him who is, as you have been compelled to confess, the origin of justice.

38. JUL. Its difference, indeed, we can not absurdly understand to be the varied dispensation suited to the opportunities of the times. For example, sacrifices of beasts had been commanded in the Old Testament. To fulfill them then belonged to reverence for the command; but now the prescribed disregard of them serves the justice that commands, just as then the offering served it. Its mode, indeed, is its state: that it enjoins on no one more than his powers can bear, or that it does not blunt mercy. Its quality, moreover, is understood to be that by which it tastes sweetly to pious minds. There is, then, beyond doubt, justice, without which there is no deity; which, if it did not exist, God would not exist; but God exists, and therefore, without ambiguity, justice exists. And it is nothing other than the virtue containing all things and rendering to each his own, without fraud, without favor. It consists chiefly in the depth of divinity.

AUG. You have defined justice to be the virtue containing all things and rendering to each his own, without fraud, without favor. Accordingly we see that, without fraud, it rendered the denarius to those who had labored all day in the work of the vineyard; for this had pleased them, this had been agreed, and they could not deny that they had been hired for this wage (Cf. Matt 20:1-10). But tell me, I beg you, how, without favor, it gave just as much to those who had been at that work for one hour? Had it perhaps lost its justice? Restrain yourself, then. For the divine justice defrauds no one, but its grace gives many things to those who do not deserve them. But why it does so for this one and so for that one, look at what you go on to add. For you say most truly that it consists chiefly in the depth of divinity. In this depth lies that it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Rom 9:16). In this depth lies that this little one is adopted into honor through the bath of rebirth, while that one is left in dishonor, not to be admitted to the Kingdom; though neither has any merit, in either direction, through the choice of the will.

39. JUL. Testimony, indeed, as from its author, so also it earns either from the good or from the wicked, in that it has by right both advanced the former and condemned the latter. But when it permits liberal mercy toward those who deserve, of themselves, neither anything good nor anything evil, it feels no injury; for this very thing—that God should be merciful to his own work, when he is not compelled to severity—is a great part of justice.

AUG. Attend at least to the name of mercy, and consider whence it is named. What need, then, is there of mercy where there is no misery? Further, if you say there is no misery in little ones, you deny that mercy is to be shown them; if you say there is any, you show an evil merit. For under a just God no one can be miserable unless he deserves it. Behold, two little ones lie there: one of them baptized, the other expires unbaptized; to which of them do you say God was merciful?

If to the one, show the evil merit of the other—you who deny there is original sin; if to both, show some good merit of the baptized one—you who deny grace, where there is no respect of persons; and say, if you can, why he was unwilling to adopt both, who certainly created both to his own image. Or is he so just that he is not omnipotent, if he willed and could not? Where certainly neither of them was unwilling—lest you refer the hindrance of the divine power to the merit of the human will; here certainly God can say to neither of them: I willed, and you were unwilling. Or if the infant is unwilling because he cries when he is baptized, then let both be left, for both are unwilling; and yet one is taken up and the other left, because the grace of God is great and the justice of God is true. But why this one rather than that one: The judgments of God are inscrutable (Rom 11:33).

40. JUL. For those whom he made because he willed it, he condemns only when scorned; if, when he is not scorned, he makes them better by consecration, he both suffers no detriment of justice and is adorned by the munificence of his mercy.

AUG. He who condemns only when scorned—say whether he scorns his own image except when scorned. If you dare not, say whence he scorns those little ones whom he does not adopt, by whom you will not find him scorned, unless you find them in Adam. There you will at the same time find that, by justice, it is owed to all that they be scorned, and yet that not all are scorned, on account of his ineffable and inscrutable grace.

41. JUL. With these divisions of justice, which we set forth, explained, let us discuss what is the definition of sin. For me, indeed, the writings both of the philosophers and of those who were catholics abundantly supply what we seek; but I fear that you will object, and that, if I summon the senate of the philosophers, you will at once inflame against us the stool-bound craftsmen and the whole crowd.

AUG. You are insulting toward the weak things of the world, which God chose to confound the strong (Cf. 1 Cor 1:27). Indeed, these very ones confound those who trust in their own strength (Ps 49:6 (48:7)). Here, what shall I say: You are they? Plainly, even while I am silent, you appear so, since you are not silent.

42. JUL. Crying out with the women and all the curs and tribunes, for whom your colleague Alypius recently brought eighty or more horses fattened throughout all Africa.

AUG. Either you slander, or you do not know what you are saying; and therefore, either as a liar or as a reckless man, you speak these things. But what is more wicked than you, if you yourself invented them? What more stupid, if you believed those who invented them?

And now, as for what you even dared to write, not fearing that it might reach those places of your book which received my colleague Alypius crossing land and sea, whether going or coming—places where your falsehoods can plainly be read—it cannot be done without your derision, or rather your detestation; to what, I do not say impudence, but madness, is it to be compared?

43. JUL. That you by no means acquiesce in the sentences of the learned, so that you add that the Apostle, in accordance with what suits your understanding, said that God made foolish the wisdom of the world (1 Cor 1:20); and that our disputants can be despised by you without fear, because you are pressed by no authority of such men.

AUG. You despise those who, by teaching original sin, you so resist that you charge them besides as Manicheans—naming me, signifying them.

44. JUL. What then? Shall I acquiesce entirely to you, and here make a sacrifice of all those whose support I could use, and be content with the definition which escaped from the mouth of your honorable self—to the testimony of good nature—after the Manichean secret? In that book, then, whose title is either The Two Souls, or Against the Two Souls, you speak thus: Wait, let us first define sin. Sin is the will to admit or to retain what justice forbids, and from which one is free to abstain. Although, if one is not free, it cannot be called will; but I preferred to define it roughly rather than scrupulously (Cf. De duab. anim. 15).

AUG. Here sin is defined which is only sin, not which is also the penalty of sin. For this was what had to be treated, when the origin of evil was sought, such as was committed by the first man before any evil of man. But you either cannot understand, or do not wish to.

45. JUL. O gold gleaming in dung! What could have been said by anyone, even an orthodox man, more true, more full? Sin, you say, is the will to admit or to retain what justice forbids, and from which one is free to abstain (Ibidem). Ecclesiasticus shows this: God, he says, made man, and left him in the hand of his own counsel; he set before him life and death, water and fire; whatever pleases him will be given him (Sir 15:14. 17-18). And through Isaiah God says: If you are willing and hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the earth. If you are unwilling and do not hearken, the sword shall devour you (Isa 1:19-20). And the Apostle: Come to your senses justly, and do not sin (1 Cor 15:34); and again: Do not be deceived; God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he shall also reap (Gal 6:7-8).

AUG. These testimonies were spoken on account of that will by which each one does what he wills; so that if it is not had, it may be asked of him who works in us even to will (Phil 2:13); but if it is had, let the works of justice be done, and let thanks be given to him who has worked it.

46. JUL. The will, then, is a motion of the mind, which has it within its own right whether to run leftward to depraved things, or to strive rightward toward lofty ones.

AUG. What, then, is this: Do not turn aside to the right hand, nor to the left (Prov 4:27)?

47. JUL. It is a motion of the mind of one who can already, by reason of age, use the judgment of reason; to whom, when penalty and glory are shown, or on the contrary advantage or pleasure, a help and, as it were, an occasion is offered, but no necessity is imposed of either part. This will, then, which alternates, received the origin of its possibility in free choice; but the existence of the act itself it takes from itself, nor is it at all a will before it wills, nor can it will before it could also be unwilling; nor does it have either of these—that is, to will and to be unwilling—in the matter of sin, before it attains the use of reason.

From these things gathered, it appears that you defined most truly: Sin is the will to retain or to admit what justice forbids, and from which one is free to abstain (De duab. anim. 15). This sin, then, which it is clear is nothing but the will, takes its genus, that is, its very origin, from one's own appetite. Its species is now found in each one of those who are called individuals. Its difference lies both in the variety of faults and in the reckonings of the times. Its mode is immoderation itself; for if it is a mode to serve whom you ought, he who neglects this offends by transgressing the true mode. Here, however, it can be subtly said that there is a mode of sin, because no one offends more than he can; for if it is beyond his powers, the sin is by an ineffective will; this very thing could happen by the will alone. Its quality, moreover, is ascribed to the vice, by which it is shown what bitterness it conveys, whether of disgrace or of grief. There is, then, sin, because if there were not, you too would not pursue errors; but it is nothing other than the will straying from that path on which it ought to keep, and from which it is free not to deviate. It arises from the appetite for forbidden things; and it is nowhere except in that human being who both had an evil will and could have not had it.

AUG. It is Adam himself whom that definition of ours which pleased you was regarding, when I said: Sin is the will to retain or to obtain what justice forbids, and from which one is free to abstain (Ibidem). For Adam, when he sinned, had absolutely no evil in himself by which, unwilling, he was urged to do evil, and on account of which he might say: It is not the good I will that I do, but the evil I do not will, this I do (Rom 7:19). And by this he did, in sinning, what justice forbade, and from which he had been free to abstain. For he who says, The evil I do not will, this I do, is not free to abstain from it. And by this, if you distinguish these three things, and know that one thing is sin, another the penalty of sin, another both—that is, sin in such a way that it is also the penalty of sin—you understand which of these three belongs to that definition, where there is a will to do what justice forbids, and from which one is free to abstain. For sin in this way was defined, not the penalty of sin, not both. But these three kinds have also their own species, of which it would be long to dispute now. If indeed examples of these three kinds are sought, that of the first kind occurs in Adam without any knot of question. For there are many evils that human beings do, from which they are free to abstain; but to no one is it so free as it was to him who stood before his God, by whom he had been created upright, depraved by no vice at all.

But of the second kind, where there is only the penalty of sin, the example is in that evil which one in no part does, but only suffers; as when one who has sinned is, for his crime, killed, or tortured by any other bodily penalty. But the third kind, where the sin itself is also the penalty of sin, can be understood in him who says: The evil I do not will, this I do. To this belong also all those things which, when evils are done through ignorance, are not thought evils, or are even thought good. For the blindness of heart, if it were not sin, would be unjustly reproved; but it is justly reproved, where it is said: Blind Pharisee! (Matt 23:26); and in very many other passages of the divine words. And again that same blindness, if it were not the penalty of sin, it would not be said: For their malice blinded them (Wis 2:21); and if this did not come from the judgment of God, we would not read: Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back always (Ps 69:23 (68:24)). Moreover, who is blind in heart by willing it, when no one wills to be blind even in body?

Accordingly, original sin belongs neither to that which we placed first, where there is a will to do evil from which one is free to abstain—otherwise it would not be in little ones, who do not yet use the choice of the will; nor to that which we mentioned second. For we are now treating of sin, not of penalty, which is not sin, although it follows by the merit of sin; which penalty indeed little ones too suffer, because there is in them a body dead on account of sin (Cf. Rom 8:10). Yet the death of the body is not itself sin, nor any bodily torments;

but original sin belongs to this third kind, where it is sin in such a way that it is also the penalty of sin; which is in those who are born, but in them begins to appear as they grow, when wisdom is necessary to the foolish, and continence to those desiring evil things; yet the origin of this sin too descends from the will of the one sinning. For Adam existed, and in him we all existed; Adam perished, and in him all perished (AMBROSIUS, In Luc. 7, 234).

48. JUL. It earns, moreover, both execration from the honorable, and from that justice—on which the whole case here turns—a lawful condemnation. With all the curtains drawn back, then, bring forth at last, plainly in the light, that by which you teach sin to be natural. Surely nothing above has been falsely gathered, either about the praise of divine justice, or about the definition of fault. Show, then, that these two things can hold true in little ones: if there is no sin without will, if there is no will where freedom has not been unfolded, if there is no freedom where there is no faculty of choice through reason; by what monstrosity is sin found in infants, who do not have the use of reason?

Therefore neither the faculty of choosing, and by this neither the will; and with these granted irrefutably, neither any sin at all. Pressed, then, by these masses, let us see where you have broken out. No sin, you say, presses little ones as their own, but another's presses them (Cf. De nupt. et concup. 1, 22). It is not yet clear what evil you mean. For we suspect that you have brought these things forward to stir up odium against some man, whose iniquity you, as an African orator, were expressing. With whom, then, did a crime not his own burden unstained innocence? Who was he so senseless, so savage, so forgetful of God and of equity, a barbarous foe, who would adjudge these guilty?

We praise your talent outright; your learning appears; you could not otherwise allege a person worthy of the hatred of the human race—of some judge, nay rather tyrant—than by swearing that he not only did not spare those who had committed no sin, but even those who could not even have sinned. For a good conscience is wont, in a suspicious mind, to labor in its own defense, lest perhaps it has offended, because it even could offend; but he is absolutely vindicated from a crime who is defended by the very impossibility of the deed. Disclose, then, who is this assigner of the innocent to punishment. You answer: God; you have indeed struck the mind, but since so great a sacrilege scarcely earns belief, let us be in doubt as to what you said. For we know that this name can be used homonymously: For there are many gods and many lords; yet to us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things (1 Cor 8:5-6). Which God, then, do you summon to the charge? Here you, most religious priest and most learned rhetorician, exhale something gloomier and more horrid than even the valley of Amsanctus or the pit of Avernus—nay, more wicked than the very cult of idols had committed in those places (Cf. VERG., Aen. 7, 565). It is God, you say, the very one who commends his love toward us (Rom 5:8), who has loved us, and did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us (Rom 8:32)—he himself judges thus, he himself is the persecutor of the new-born, he himself, for an evil will, hands over to eternal fires little ones whom he knows could have had neither a good nor an evil will. After this sentence, then, so monstrous, so sacrilegious, so deadly, if we had sane judges, I ought to report nothing concerning you except execration. For with just and probable gravity I would judge you unworthy of disputation, you who had fled so far from religion, from learning, and finally from common sense, that you would think your own Lord criminal—what scarcely any barbarism would do.

AUG. It is no great thing that you see little ones not to have a will of their own for choosing good or evil. I would that you saw what he saw who, writing to the Hebrews, said that Levi, son of Israel, was in the loins of his father Abraham when the latter was tithed, and that therefore he too was tithed in him (Cf. Heb 7:9-10). To this, if you had a Christian eye, you would discern by faith—if you were not strong in understanding—that all were in the loins of Adam who were to arise from him through the concupiscence of the flesh; which, after the sin by which his nakedness was announced to him, he felt, beheld, blushed at, and covered.

Whence Ambrose, my teacher, praised so excellently by the mouth of your own teacher: What is more grave, he says, Adam girded himself with this interpretation in that place where he ought rather to have girded himself with the fruit of chastity. For in the loins, with which we are girded, certain seeds of generation are said to be. And therefore Adam was badly girded there with useless leaves, where he signified not the future fruit of future generation, but certain sins (AMBROSIUS, De paradiso 13, 67). Rightly too he says what I recalled a little before: Adam existed, and in him we all existed; Adam perished, and in him all perished (AMBROSIUS, In Luc. 7, 234). Not seeing this, you bark at me as a blind man; but whatever you say against me, you say assuredly also against him. Would, then, that I might have a reward in common with him, just as I hear from you that I have abuse in common with him.

What is it that you cry out and say: If we had sane judges, I ought to report nothing concerning you except execration? Can I deal with you more generously, beneficently, liberally, than to set up between us as judge that very one of whose judgment concerning your teacher Pelagius we already hold the verdict? Behold, here is present that man who shone forth as a certain beautiful flower among the writers of the Latin tongue, whose faith and most pure sense in the Scriptures not even an enemy dared to find fault with (PELAGIUS, De lib. arb. 3). This Pelagius judged concerning Ambrose. What, then, did Ambrose judge concerning the matter that is in question between us? I have said above his sentences concerning original sin, without any obscurity or ambiguity; but if that is too little, hear yet more: We are all, he says, born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (AMBROSIUS, De paenitentia 1, 3, 13). What do you answer to this? Those praises of Ambrose Pelagius spoke; these clear things in my favor against you Ambrose pronounced. Reprove the man of whom your master says that not even an enemy dared reprove him; and you who seek sane judges, deny that this man is sane, so that you may plainly profess yourself insane.

But you, most pious man, are indignant that little ones not reborn, if they die before the choice of their own will, are said to be condemned for another's sins by him who commends his love toward us (Rom 5:8), who has loved us, and did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us (Rom 8:32); as though fools and unlearned men like you did not complain more grievously of him, who say: Why does he create those whom he foreknew would be impious and to be condemned?

Why, finally, does he make those live until they reach a damnable impiety, whom he could have taken from this life before they became such; if he loves souls, if he commends his love toward us, if he did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all? If it be said to them: O man, who are you to answer back to God? (Rom 9:20) His judgments are inscrutable (Rom 11:33); they grow angry rather than grow gentle. But the Lord knows who are his (2 Tim 2:19).

If, then, you wish to use sane judges, hear a sane judge praised singularly by your own teacher. Adam existed, he says, and in him we all existed; Adam perished, and in him all perished (AMBROSIUS, In Luc. 7, 234). But, you say, they ought not to have perished by another's sins. They are another's, but they are a father's; and by this, by the right of sowing and sprouting, they are also ours. Who frees from this perdition, except he who came to seek what had perished (Luke 19:10)? In those, then, whom he frees, let us embrace mercy; but in those whom he does not free, let us acknowledge a judgment most hidden indeed, but without any doubt most just.

49. JUL. That the god of light fought with the prince of darkness, Manichaeus invented and believed, and he added that the god's substance is held captive in this world; but he strives to excuse so great an unhappiness with a color of piety, affirming that the god fought, as it were, like a good citizen for his fatherland, and therefore exposed his members lest he lose his kingdoms.

You who had learned these things, consider how much you have profited even by deserting them for a time; you say that God did not endure the necessity of war, but committed the iniquity of judgment; that he is subject not to dark enemies, but to manifest crimes; that he finally did not impart his own substance, but violated eternal justice. Which of you is the worse, I leave for others to estimate.

This, however, is clear: that you come back to one and the same impiety of opinion. For the Manichean too subscribes iniquity to his God, when he alleges that he will condemn, on the last day, the members he handed over; and you assert that one unhappy through this, by which he corrupts the glory in which he was famed, and, by persecuting the innocence he created, lost the justice by which he was most holy. By so much, then, does this God whom you bring in surpass that one whom your master devised, as it is more excusable to have been overcome in battle than by vice.

AUG. If the innocence of little ones pleases you, remove from them, if you can, the heavy yoke that is upon the children of Adam from the day they come forth from their mother's womb (Cf. Sir 40:1). But I think that the Scripture which said this knew better than you what the innocence of the creature was, and what the justice of the Creator. But who would not see that, if little ones have such innocence as you proclaim, there is no justice of God in their heavy yoke? Further, because in their heavy yoke there is the divine justice, there is not in them such innocence as you proclaim.

Unless perhaps, in this question on which you labor, a God who is just indeed, but in some manner weak, can come to your aid—because he could not come to the aid of his own images, lest the innocent be pressed by the misery of a heavy yoke; so that you say he willed indeed, because he is just, but could not, because he is not omnipotent; and thus you escape these straits in such a way that you lose the very head of the faith, by which faith we first confess in the Creed that we believe in God the Father almighty. Your God, then, in so many and so great evils which little ones suffer, will lose either his justice, or his omnipotence, or his very care for human affairs; whichever of these you say, see what you will be.

50. JUL. Remove yourself, then, with such a God of yours, from the midst of the Churches; he is not the one in whom the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles believed, in whom the Church of the firstborn, which is enrolled in heaven (Cf. Heb 12:23), hoped and hopes; he is not the one whom the rational creature believes to be judge, whom the Holy Spirit announces will judge justly. No prudent man would ever have shed his own blood for such a Lord; for he did not deserve the affection of love, that he should impose the burden of a passion to be undertaken for him.

Finally, this god whom you bring in, if he existed anywhere, would be convicted of being guilty, not a god; to be judged by my true God, not to judge in God's place. That you may know, then, the first foundations of the faith: our God, the God of the catholic Church, is unknown to us in substance, and likewise removed from sight; whom no man has seen, nor can see (1 Tim 6:16); as eternal without beginning, so holy and just without vice; most almighty, most equitable, most merciful, made known only by the splendor of his virtues; the maker of all things that were not, the dispenser of the things that are, the examiner of all things that both are and will be and have been, on the last day; about to move earth, heaven, and all the elements together; the rouser of ashes and the restorer of bodies; but on account of justice alone about to do all the things we have said.

AUG. If you worship the God of the Patriarchs, why do you not believe that the circumcision of the eighth day, which was commanded to Abraham, was a prefiguration of rebirth in Christ? For if you believed this, you would see that the soul of a little one could not justly be exterminated from his people if he were not circumcised on the eighth day (Cf. Gen 17:12-14), unless he were bound by some sin?

If you worship the God of the Prophets, why do you not believe what God said through them so often: I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Exod 34:7; Jer 32:18)? If you worship the God of the Apostles, why do you not believe that the body is dead on account of sin (Cf. Rom 8:10)? If you worship the God in whom the Church of the firstborn, which is enrolled in heaven (Cf. Heb 12:23), hoped and hopes, why do you not believe that little ones to be baptized are rescued from the power of darkness (Cf. Col 1:13), since for this reason the Church breathes upon them and exorcizes them, that the power of darkness may be sent forth from them?

But that one whom the rational creature, which is in his saints and faithful, hopes will be judge—read to us what third place, besides the kingdom for the good and the punishment for the wicked, he has prepared and promised for your unregenerate innocents. And how do you say that no prudent man sheds his blood for the Lord whom we worship, when most glorious Cyprian worshiped him and shed his blood for him—Cyprian, who chokes you in this very question, saying that a little one born carnally from Adam contracts, by his first birth, the contagion of the ancient death (Cf. CYPRIANUS, Ep. ad Fidum 64, 5)? Do you not see that you are rather the guilty one, who blaspheme this God of the holy martyrs?

You say that you worship the most almighty, most equitable, most merciful God; but he is the most almighty who could without doubt remove from the children of Adam the heavy yoke by which they are pressed from the day of their birth (Cf. Sir 40:1)—nay, bring it about that they be not burdened at all by any such yoke; but he is the most equitable, who would in no way impose it, or permit it to be imposed, unless he found in them sins with which they were born, the guilt of which he, the most merciful, himself looses in the reborn.

If, then, divine justice delighted you, you would assuredly see that from it comes—not unjustly, beginning from little ones—the human misery known to all, by which this life is carried through, from the first weepings of the newborn to the last breaths of the dying; while felicity is promised, but in another life, only to the holy and the faithful.

51. JUL. For this God of mine, then, whom every creature and holy Scripture proclaim to me to be such as I believe him, I would more rightly act if I judged you unworthy even of a contest of books. But since this task above all has been imposed on me by holy men, the confessors of our time—that I discuss what weight and reason your statements have—it was opportune to show first that you do not believe in that God who has always been proclaimed in the Church of the catholics and will be proclaimed to the end wherever that Church shall be.

AUG. I have rather shown that you have not shown what you say you have shown; and I have taught—if you are not too blind—that I believe in that God who has always been proclaimed by the Church of the catholics.

52. JUL. Now, then, I will consequently examine by what testimonies you try to affirm this thing which the faith of the pious assails. But since I have set out to confront your second book, which Alypius delivered, lest the series of the reply be confused, a few things must still be answered, until the discourse reaches the testimony of the Apostle by which you seem to think yourself most fortified. To those words of yours, then, which I set down above, you add these that follow: In the things, therefore, which he passed over, he feared this—because it addresses, in a certain clear voice, all the breasts of the catholic Church and the faith itself handed down and founded of old, and most vehemently moves them against those—what we said, namely, that "they say there is no sin in little ones to be washed away by the bath of rebirth" (De nupt. et concup. 1, 1).

For all run to the Church with their little ones for no other reason than that in them the original sin contracted by the generation of the first birth may be expiated by the regeneration of the second birth. Then he returns to our earlier words, which I know not why he repeats: "but those who are born of such a union, we say, draw original sin; and those born of whatever sort of parents we do not deny are still under the devil, unless they are reborn in Christ" (Ibidem). These words of ours he had also said a little before. Then he added what we said of Christ: "who was unwilling to be born of the same union of both sexes." But here too he passed over what I set down: "that by his grace, rescued from the power of darkness, they may be transferred into the kingdom of him who was unwilling to be born of the same union of both sexes."

See, I beseech you, what words of ours he avoided, as one altogether an enemy of the grace of God which came through Jesus Christ our Lord. For he knows that from that sentence of the Apostle, by which he said of God the Father: "who rescued us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love" (Col 1:13), little ones are most wickedly and most impiously separated; and therefore he doubtless preferred to pass over these words rather than to set them down (De nupt. et concup. 2, 4-5).

Am I an enemy of the grace of God, most impudent of all men—I who, in my first book, from which you snatched these things torn from their context to chatter something without reason, condemned with a pure and full profession your mouth dripping with the mysteries of the Manicheans and of your own people?

AUG. Will you really, in order to have a good case, do it by reviling? Say whose mouth—as you boast that I condemned mine. You will say: the Manicheans'; but as a slanderer, not as a truth-teller. For I both detest the Manicheans, and their helpers, among whom you aspire to the chief place, and I refute both, with the Lord our God helping and supporting, by catholic truth. But I will show who are mine, whom you charge against me the more wickedly the more cunningly. For in this case, where the question of original sin is in dispute—on account of which you judge me, under the name of the Manicheans, worthy of most atrocious reproaches—mine is Cyprian, who, though he said the little one had sinned in nothing, yet was not silent that he had contracted from Adam, by his first birth, the contagion of sin (CYPRIANUS, Ep. ad Fidum 64, 5).

Mine is Hilary, who, when he was expounding what is read in the Psalm: My soul shall live and shall praise you (Ps 119:175 (118:175)), says: He does not reckon himself to live in this life; since indeed he had said: "behold, in iniquities was I conceived, and in offenses did my mother bear me" (Ps 51:5 (50:7)), he knows himself born under the origin of sin, and under the law of sin (HILARIUS, In Ps 119 (118), 175). Mine is Ambrose, most excellently praised by your teacher, who said: We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault; as you have read, with David saying: "for behold, in iniquities was I conceived, and in offenses did my mother bear me." Therefore Paul's flesh was a body of death (AMBROSIUS, De paenitentia 1, 3, 13). Mine is Gregory, who, when he spoke of Baptism: Venerate, he says, the birth through which you have been freed from the bonds of earthly birth (GREGORIUS NAZ., Orat. in Christi Natalem 38, 17).

Mine is Basil, who, when he was treating of fasting: Because we did not fast, he says, we fell from paradise; let us fast that we may return to it (BASILIUS, Serm. I de ieiunio 4). Mine is John of Constantinople, saying: Adam committed that great sin, and condemned the whole human race in common (IOANNES CONSTANTINOP., Ep. ad Olymp. 3, 3). All these, and others, their companions, holding the same view, whom it would be long to recall, are mine; if you acknowledge them, they are also yours; but they are my teachers, your reprovers.

How, then, did I condemn the mouth of myself and of mine, when by the most concordant and most truthful mouth of these men, whom you see to be mine, you yourself are rather condemned? Do you dare, with most darkened mind, most impudent brow, most insolent tongue, to throw the charge of the Manichean at these lights of the city of God? But if you do not dare, why do you dare it against me for no other reason than that I say what they say, whom you do not dare to charge?

53. JUL. For there this order of words was set down by me, when I had said that God is the author of heaven and earth and of all things that are in them, and by this also of human beings, on whose account all things were made. It does not escape me, I say, when we say these things, that this will be spread about concerning us: that we think the grace of Christ not necessary for little ones. This rightly and vehemently offends Christian peoples; if only they did not judge us the authors of a thing in itself nefarious; for in that way they would neither incur a crime by believing falsehoods about their brothers, and would prove themselves zealous about the love of the faith. This part, then, must be fortified by us against the assault of empty rumor, and the mouth of detractors must be sewn shut by a brief confession. We, then, so far confess the grace of Baptism to be useful to all ages, that we strike with an eternal anathema all who think it not necessary even for little ones. But this grace we believe to be rich in spiritual gifts, which, opulent with many gifts and venerable for its virtues, according to the kinds of infirmities and the diversities of human conditions, heals by one virtue, the bestower both of remedies and of gifts.

And when it is applied, it is not to be changed for the cases; for it now dispenses its gifts according to the capacity of those who approach. For just as all the arts do not themselves suffer either losses or increases on account of the diversity of the materials they take up to be worked, but, remaining always the same and in one manner, are adorned by a manifold effect; so too, according to the Apostle: "one faith, one Baptism" (Eph 4:5).

And they are multiplied and enlarged in gifts, yet are not changed in the orders of the mysteries. But this grace is not opposed to justice, which washes away the stains of iniquity; nor does it make sins, but purifies them; which absolves the guilty, does not slander the harmless.

For Christ, who is the redeemer of his own work, increases his benefits toward his own image with continual bounty; and those whom he had made good by creating, he makes better by renewing and adopting (C. Iul. 3, 8 ss). This grace, then—through which pardon for the guilty, spiritual illumination, the adoption of the children of God, citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem, sanctification, and translation into the members of Christ, and the possession of the Kingdom of heaven are given to mortals—whoever thinks it ought to be denied to any, deserves the execration of all good men.

AUG. Among all these gifts of the grace of God which you have recalled, the one you set first—that through it pardon is given to the guilty—you are unwilling to have belong to little ones, whom you deny to draw any guilt from Adam. Why, then, does God deny the rest, so many, to little ones who die at that age without this grace? Why, I say, is there not given to them spiritual illumination, the adoption of the children of God, citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem, sanctification, and translation into the members of Christ, and the possession of the Kingdom of heaven? Would God, with whom is the highest power, deny these so many and so necessary gifts to so many of his images who, according to you, have no sin, when no contrary will of the little ones bars this benefit from him? You certainly, in order to remove from yourselves this odium—by which you are said to deny to little ones the grace of Baptism—said that whoever thinks that grace ought to be denied to any deserves the execration of all good men.

The equity, then, of God the Almighty would not deny it to the innumerable little ones who die without this grace under his omnipotence, if they deserved no evil in his hidden judgment. From which judgment, owed to all who come from the stock of Adam, whoever are freed according to grace, not according to debt, let them glory not in their own merits, but in the Lord. You, then, if you wish to be free of the reproach by which you have been made detestable to the catholic Church, allow Christ to be the Jesus of little ones.

And this will not be at all, if he will not confer on them that on account of which he received this name—that is, if he will not save them from their sins (Cf. Matt 1:21). Say this, then, of that grace, so that you may be free of the offense to Christians of which you complain, what the learned catholic teacher Gregory said: Venerate the birth through which you have been freed from the bonds of earthly birth (GREGORIUS NAZ., Orat. in Christi Natalem 38, 17). In no way, then, do you confess little ones to belong to that grace, as long as you deny that they are freed by the heavenly birth from the bonds of earthly birth.

54. JUL. Since I have fortified these things, as the place here meanwhile allowed, let us return to where we digressed; about this very matter we shall speak more fully wherever it is opportune. See with how great a light of confession I have reproved both those who would deny Baptism to little ones, and you who dare, by the prejudice of it, to stain the justice of God;

protesting that I hold nothing other than that the instituted mysteries are to be administered, in the very words by which they were handed down, in absolutely every age, and ought not to be changed for the variety of cases; but that a sinner is made from evil perfectly good, while an innocent—one who has no evil of his own will—is made from good better, that is, best; so that both indeed pass over, consecrated, into the members of Christ; but the one was caught in an evil life, the other in a good nature.

For the one corrupted by a depraved action the innocence he had received at his origin; but the other, without praise, without crime of will, has only this, which he received from God his Creator—he who, happier in his uncolored newness, could not vitiate the good of his own simplicity, having no merit from his acts, but retaining only this, which by the favor of so great a maker he possessed.

AUG. Why, then, is there a heavy yoke upon him from the day he comes forth from his mother's womb (Cf. Sir 40:1)? Why so great a corruptibility of body that his soul is weighed down by it (Cf. Wis 9:15)? Why so great a dullness of mind that his slowness is even instructed by blows? How long, Julian, will you be heavy of heart? How long will you love vanity, and seek a lie (Cf. Ps 4:2 (4:3)), by which your heresy may be propped up? Surely, if no one had sinned, if human nature had remained in the goodness in which it was created, would man be born even in paradise unto these miseries—to pass over others?

55. JUL. That age, then, just as it proclaims the mercy of Christ when renewed—that is, advanced by the virtue of the renewing mystery—so it convicts the iniquity of the judge, the infamy of justice, whether accused or aggravated.

AUG. From what oldness is that age said to be renewed, when by birth it is new? These are deceitful lips; if you wish to recognize the oldness from which little ones are renewed by Christian grace, hear faithfully what the man of God Reticius, bishop of Autun, says—who once sat as judge with Melchiades, bishop of Rome, and condemned the heretic Donatus. For when he spoke of Christian Baptism: This, he says, is the chief indulgence in the Church, as no one fails to know, in which we lay down the whole weight of the ancient crime, and blot out the former misdeeds of our ignorance; where we also put off the old man with his inborn wickednesses (C. Iul. 1, 7).

Do you hear "not the misdeeds afterward perpetrated, but even the inborn misdeeds of the old man"? Was this Reticius a Manichean? How, then, do you say—not deceitfully—that little ones are renewed in Christian regeneration, you who are unwilling to acknowledge in the old man the evils which the weight of the ancient crime engendered? Then, if that age aggravated convicts the iniquity of the judge, as you say, is it not aggravated by the heavy yoke upon the children of Adam? And yet God is not on this account unjust; and so it is deservedly aggravated. But there is no evil merit of this age, if there is no original sin.

56. JUL. Infancy, then, is shown guilty not by the unity of the sacrament, but by the truth of judgment it is approved as nothing other than innocent.

AUG. You think you have found why an infant is baptized; say why he is breathed upon. Surely the sentence of Pelagius, your author, has been thought great and unconquered, where he says: If Adam's sin harmed even those who do not sin, then Christ's justice profits even those who do not believe (Cf. De pecc. mer. et rem. 3, 2).

What, then, do you say of little ones when they are baptized? Do they believe, or do they not believe? If you say: They do not believe, how does the justice of Christ not profit them, who do not believe, so that they may possess the Kingdom of heaven?

Or if it profits them, as you are compelled to confess; then in this way Adam's sin harmed them, who do not yet have a will to sin, just as the justice of Christ profits them, who do not yet have a will to believe. But if you say: They believe through others, then they sinned too through another. And since it is true that they believe through others (for on this account they are also called faithful throughout the whole Church), they assuredly belong to that which the Lord said: But he who will not have believed shall be condemned (Mark 16:16).

They will be condemned, then, if they do not believe through others, since through themselves they cannot believe; but they could in no way be justly condemned, if they were not born under sin, and by this also under the prince of sin. For this reason, then, they are also breathed upon. Remove from them your deceptive vanity; allow little ones to come to Jesus (Mark 10:14; cf. Matt 19:14; Luke 18:16), who saves his people (among whom they too certainly are) from their sins (Matt 1:21).

57. JUL. Although the consequence of reason indicates to me that I should dwell on explaining the condition of little ones—a reason which does not allow things joined by their own law to be divided. But the loss of the newborn would be easier to bear, if majesty itself were not endangered along with them. Excuse God, then, and accuse the little one; let him be taught to be just in what he does, who without justice cannot be God; and let whatever person you please undergo the punishment. But as it is, apart from the sacrilege, the things you think are joined together vehemently fight against each other. For you say that, because little ones too are imbued with the same mysteries as idolaters and parricides, all can be convicted as criminals; and you add a thing far more absurd, that by the author of this sacrament we are treating of, the sins of others are imputed to the innocent.

This is what I said fights, because the nature of things does not admit that at one and the same time God should be both so merciful as to pardon to each one confessing his own sins, and so cruel as to charge another's upon the innocent. Of these two, when you grant the one, you have taken away the other; if he grants pardon to the guilty, he does not slander the harmless; if he slanders the innocent, he never spares the liable.

AUG. It is rather you who make God unjust, since it seems to you unjust to repay the sins of the fathers upon the children—which he often both testifies in words that he does, and shows by deeds.

You, I say, make God unjust, under whose almighty care, when you see little ones pressed by the heavy yoke of misery, you contend that they have no sin, accusing at once both God and the Church: God indeed, if the undeserving are burdened and afflicted; the Church, if those free from the right of the devil's power are breathed upon. But where did you dream that we equate the original sins of little ones with idolaters and parricides?

Nevertheless, the remission of sins placed in the mysteries is true in sins—both greater and lesser, both more and fewer, both single ones; but in no sins, as you say is the case with little ones, it is false. But original sins are another's, on account of there being in them no choice of our will, in such a way that, on account of the contagion of origin, they are found to be also ours. What is it, then, that you cry out and say that God cannot both forgive their own sins to adults and impute another's to little ones; and you are unwilling to attend to this, that he forgives both only in those reborn in Christ, but to those not reborn in Christ, neither?

For these are the sacraments of Christian grace hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed to little ones (Cf. Matt 11:25). If you were among them, and did not trust as though great in your own virtue, you would assuredly understand that the injustice of the first man is so imputed to little ones who are generated, for the undergoing of punishment, as the justice of the second man is imputed to little ones who are regenerated, for the obtaining of the Kingdom of heaven; although in will and in their own work neither are they found to have imitated the former in evil, nor the latter in good.

58. JUL. Nothing, then, did I pass over in your words, compelled, as you say, by fear. For what could I dread in the monuments of so elegant a talent, except perhaps this alone—that I suffer horror at the assault of your obscenity?

AUG. If you were buying these insults, I would call you a spendthrift; they lie ready for you free of charge; why do you not enjoy them, with which you feed your abusive mind?

59. JUL. Hear, then, briefly, against what you have said: they are not the breasts of the catholic Church which your discourse addresses, if they disagree with piety and reason. And they commit both, since they neither judge well of the equity of God, nor understand the wisdom and riches of the mysteries which they charge. This is not the faith handed down and founded of old, except in the councils of the malign, inspired by the devil, brought forth by Manichaeus, celebrated by Marcion, Faustus, Adimantus, and all their satellites, and now belched out by you into Italy—which we grievously bewail.

AUG. With what mouth, with what brow do you call a council of the malign the agreement of so many catholics who were the teachers of the Churches before us? As though, if in a council of bishops—which you say ought to be gathered, not wholesomely but boastfully, on account of your questions—those bishops were to sit whom I recalled above, to pass over others—Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory, Basil, John of Constantinople—you would easily find any of those who now remain whom you could equate with them, much less prefer to them, in the ecclesiastical teaching handed down of old. Since, then, these very men bring forth against you, concerning original sin, open and clear sentences—both those I set down a little before, and very many others—do you dare to call the agreement of these men in catholic truth a council of the malign? And do you consider what you contradict in these men, and not rather where you may flee, if you are unwilling to agree with them?

But since you said that I have belched out into Italy what you bewail, I throw back against your brow that same bishop of Italy praised by your teacher—Ambrose. We are all, he says, born under sin, whose very origin is in fault; as you have read, with David saying: "in iniquities was I conceived, and in offenses did my mother bear me" (Ps 51:5 (50:7)). Therefore Paul's flesh was a body of death, as he himself says: "who will free me from the body of this death?" (Rom 7:24). But the flesh of Christ condemned sin, which it did not feel by being born, which it crucified by dying, so that in our flesh there might be justification through grace, where before there was filth through fault (AMBROSIUS, De paenitentia 1, 3, 13).

This faith, then, I call handed down and founded of old; you refuse it, and you do not see whom you are resisting. Will you be able to say it was inspired in him by the devil? Is this man a Manichean? Is he Marcion, Faustus, Adimantus? By no means, but far unlike these, and far contrary to them. Let Pelagius, surely, say who this man is. It is he, it is he, whose faith and most pure sense in the Scriptures not even an enemy dared to find fault with. What is this, Julian? Where do you see yourself? He, whose faith not even an enemy dared to reprove, held this faith which you so reprove that you ascribe it to councils of the malign.

Behold, it is not theirs, but it is Ambrose's; because it is true, because it is sound, because, as I said, it is handed down and founded of old, this is also mine. I have not, then, belched this out into Italy (which you say you bewail), but rather I received the bath of rebirth from this bishop of Italy who proclaimed and taught it. Since this faith is catholic, and yet is not yours, where, then, are you? See, I beseech you, and return. It is to your advantage to see, not to envy; we desire that you return, not that you perish.

60. JUL. There is no sin in a human being if there is nothing of his own will or assent; this the class of men that has even a little sense agrees with me without hesitation. But you grant that there was nothing of their own will in little ones; not I, but reason concludes: there is therefore no sin in them. By no means, then, are they brought to the Church for this purpose, to be defamed—nay, to defame God; but they are brought that they may praise God, whom they attest to be the author both of natural goods and of spiritual gifts.

AUG. They are not defamed when they are breathed upon, but rescued from the power of darkness; nor do they defame God, but by whatever Creator they are born, they need this Savior; and therefore by being reborn, they are transferred from Adam to Christ.

And where you said: There is no sin in a human being if there is nothing of his own will or assent, you would speak more fully the truth if you added: Or of contagion.

61. JUL. But original sin, if it is drawn by the generation of the first birth, can indeed condemn marriage as instituted by God, but cannot be taken away from little ones; since what is born in is permanent, even to the end of the one to whom it has clung from the causes of its beginnings.

AUG. It neither condemns marriage, because marriage is not its cause; and it is taken away by that Almighty who could also be born a man without it.

62. JUL. We stir up no slander against you, then, as though you condemn marriage, and as though you say that the human being who is born of it is the work of the devil; nor do we object this unfaithfully, nor conclude it unskillfully; but we attend carefully and simply to what is the effect of the consequent sentences. For carnal marriages are never without union. You say that all who are born of that union belong to the devil; beyond doubt you pronounce that marriage belongs to the right of the demon.

AUG. Do we say that marriage in paradise could have been without bodily union, if no one had sinned? But there would not be there the evil of which conjugal chastity now makes good use. That evil is from the wound which diabolical cunning inflicted. From this the offspring of mortals is held guilty; from this it is that one is born under the prince of sins, until he is reborn in Christ, who had no sin at all; by whom alone the bond of death is loosed, because he alone was free among the dead.

63. JUL. You say that sin is drawn by the condition of nature, you who would have this evil to have happened from the will of the first man. I defer here the reply by which you must be convicted of lying without shame. But as for what pertains to the present point, I gather, and I believe the reasoning of wisdom, that you are without ambiguity defining nature to be diabolical. For if there is in it, or through it, that on account of which a man is possessed by the devil, then irrefutably it is the devil's, that through which he could claim for himself the image of God. Nay, it is not even the image of God, which through its origin is in the kingdom of the devil.

AUG. You believe, but a believing folly, not a reasoning wisdom. Allow little ones to be rescued from the power of darkness, to be transferred into the kingdom of Christ. For by saying that they have no contagion of the ancient offense, and thus removing them from the mercy of the Savior who saves his people from their sins (Matt 1:21), whence he was called Jesus; you do nothing except cause the wrath of God to remain over them, of which Job spoke, saying: Man born of woman, of short life and full of wrath, falls like a flower and flees like a shadow, and shall not stand; and have you not made an account of him too, and made him to enter into judgment in your sight? For who shall be clean from filth? Not even one, even if his life upon earth has been of a single day (Job 14:1-5 (sec. LXX)).

But you, of course, merciful man, pity the image of God, lest you say it is born carnally under sin. O how cruel is this empty mercy of yours, which denies to little ones the mercy of their own Savior, who came to seek what had perished (Luke 19:10)! Through that filth, then, without which the man of God says there is no one—even if his life upon earth be of a single day—the devil claims for himself the image of God, not through the substance which God created. For the nature is vitiated, not the vice. But you say: It is not the image of God, which through its origin is in the kingdom of the devil. What if another should say to you: It is not the image of God, which, guilty of no sin, yet does not enter the kingdom of God?

Will you not be unable to answer, if you are unwilling to answer empty things? And certainly a man is the image of God for this reason, that he was made to the likeness of God (Cf. Gen 1:26; 5:1). Why, then, has he also been made like to vanity, on account of which his days pass away like a shadow (Ps 144:4 (143:4))? For you will not separate little ones from this vanity, since their days too pass away like a shadow. Finally, will you also separate them from the living? Hear, then, him who says in the Psalm: Behold, you have made my days old, and my substance is as nothing before you; nevertheless, all is vanity, every living man (Ps 39:5-6 (38:6)). Since, then, every living man is the image of God, say whence every living man is also vanity. But what will you say, who are unwilling to acknowledge that one of these is from the condition of God, the other has happened from the condition of sin? Permit, we beseech you, that the living man, who was made to the likeness of God, be rescued from the power of darkness, under which he has been made like to vanity; and let him be rescued now, for the time being, from the bond of guilt; but after this corruptible life, also from all vanity.

64. JUL. If, then, you read my work, you will cease to wonder why I have returned to your words, which I had set down above. For I had promised that I would prove from your writings that, between the impiety you had drunk in and the odium of it which you fear, you had stated both equally—both what is wont to be asserted by the catholics, and what by the Manicheans. There is, then, such an order of words applied to your chapter, which you have now, with the brow of a sycophant, lied to have been interpolated.

I know I promised great things, that is, that I would approve from the adversary's discourses both that those who deny human beings to be the work of God are rightly condemned, and that this very man who confesses this does nothing else but confirm that whatever proceeds from the fecundity of marriage is the devil's property.

For in this way, by the very laws of his own patronage, the opinion of the Manicheans will be destroyed. Indeed, the whole opening of his book made this public. For he says that human beings are a divine work, who are born of marriage, that is, of males and females; by which sentence he overturns all that he was about to do, and agrees with us who say that those are impious who dare to deny these things.

One part, then, is now finished: it remains that I show that he builds up what he had just attacked. With these things said, I have reviewed part of your chapter, in which you had said: Those who are born of such a union we say draw original sin, and those born of whatever sort of parents we do not deny are still under the devil, unless they are reborn in Christ, and through his grace, rescued from the power of darkness, are transferred into the kingdom of him who was unwilling to be born of the same union of both sexes (De nupt. et concup. 1, 1).

Why, then, do you think you can be excused from the error of the Manicheans, because you dared to insert a sentence with which you wrestled with all the strength of your talent; when this is not a patronage of your error, but a testimony of singular folly—you who think that, in the manner of Calliphon, virtue and vices, justice and iniquity, can be brought into a treaty by your oratory? But as for what the Apostle says: Who rescued us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love (Col 1:13); read the fourth book of my work, and then it will be made known to you what the Teacher of the gentiles meant.

AUG. My sixth book answered your fourth, and now I rather urge that those of yours and mine be read by those who wish to know how far you wandered there from the truth, and by how great a truth you are convicted. But about this sheet, in which certain things excerpted from your books are written down, you are free to impute to me what that man did who sent it to the man by whom it was sent to me. For he set down in it what he wished from your work, and passed over what he wished; on which I have already answered you above, briefly and sufficiently. Why do you try to wrap your obscurities around the plain things of the Apostle? He, proclaiming God, says: Who rescued us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love (Ibidem); and you say this was said by him with little ones excepted. If, then, little ones are not rescued from the power of darkness, they are not dead; if they are not dead, Christ did not die for them; but you confess that Christ died even for them; and the same Apostle says: One died for all; therefore all died (2 Cor 5:14).

This conclusion of the Apostle is unconquered; and by this, because he died also for little ones, assuredly little ones too died. Moreover, Christ died to destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil (Heb 2:14). Allow, then, little ones to be rescued from the power of darkness, that they may live. But what is it that you throw in my face the manner, or the error, of Calliphon—in that you say I think virtue and vices, justice and iniquity, can be brought into a treaty by my oratory?

Far be it from me to hold this in my heart, or to urge it in speech; but I congratulate you on having understood this philosopher so well (Cf. CICERO, De fin. 2, 11, 34; 5, 25, 73; LACT., De falsa sap. 3, 7). For since he thought the good of man to lie in the virtue of the mind and the pleasure of the body, you say that he wished to join virtues and vices; and by this, as was fitting, you judged the appetite for bodily pleasure to be a vice; lust, then, which you praise, is a vice. Thus the truth crept into your thoughts from somewhere, so that, abandoning the case you had undertaken a little, you said what we say.

65. JUL. I have therefore been reproved—and rightly reproved—for a downcast and feeble inconsistency, by which it came about that you both prefaced that you do not condemn marriage, and said that, on account of the union of man and woman—which it is plain comes from the condition and nature of marriage, nay, in which alone (so far as concerns our dispute) the truth of marriage lies—human beings are transcribed into the right of the devil.

AUG. If the truth of marriage is in the union of man and woman alone, then the truth of adulteries is the same as that of marriages, because in both there is this union of both sexes. But if this is most absurd, then the truth of marriage is not in the union of male and female alone, as you rave—although without it marriages cannot propagate children; but there are other things properly belonging to marriage, by which marriages are distinguished from adulteries, such as the fidelity of the conjugal bed, the care to procreate children in an orderly way, and—what is the greatest difference—the good use of an evil, that is, the good use of the concupiscence of the flesh, of which evil adulterers make evil use.

66. JUL. This union you have tried to persuade us is so execrable that you would have it understood that Christ willed to be born of a virgin mother not on account of the splendor of the sign, but on account of the union of the sexes to be condemned. What, then, could ever have been said by anyone more wickedly or more impudently than this—that, with these signs you have set up two kings, as it were, contending for the possession of humanity, and their two kingdoms—so that you said that whatever marriage brought forth was the devil's, but God's alone what the Virgin bore? What else is this than to show the one who made the Virgin fruitful to be most needy through the lack of his own portion, and to deny the same to be the Creator of those who come forth from the marriages of human beings? Let the careful reader, then, hold the handwriting of your word, and know that you—a faithful disciple of the Manicheans and chief of the Traducian nation—have condemned nothing other than the union of lawful wedlock.

AUG. You do not have senses exercised to separate good from evil. Both the nature and substance of human beings and of angels, whether good or evil, subsists with God as Creator; but the vices of natures and substances—which the Manicheans say are natures and substances, but the truth denies—the just and almighty God permits to exist by a judicial ordering; and these are themselves evils, which can be only in good and from good natures.

But whatever things, by God's judging, are subjected to the devil, are so in the power of the devil that they cannot be foreign to the power of God, under which the devil himself too has been placed. Since, then, all angels and all human beings are under the power of God, empty is your loquacity, by which you say that God and the devil have divided between themselves which of them should have under his own power those whom each has. But upon whom, with raw breast, you vomit these insults on which you feed, attend a little.

Behold, here is Ambrose; concerning this matter against which you inveigh, see what he says: How could he alone be just, he says, when all generation was erring, unless, born of a Virgin, he was not held by the privilege of a liable generation? (AMBROSIUS, De Arca Noe 3, 7) Hear yet more, hear, and curb your insolent tongue by the striking of your brow: For no virile intercourse, he says, unlocked the secret places of the virginal womb; but the Holy Spirit poured immaculate seed into the inviolable womb; for alone among all those born of woman is the holy Lord Jesus, who did not feel the contagions of earthly corruption, by the newness of his immaculate birth, and drove them off by his heavenly majesty (AMBROSIUS, Lib II in Lc 2, 23. 56). You see, surely, what I say, who said it? You see, whatever you say against me, against whom you say it? For if I am hence a disciple of the Manichean, so too is he. But this man is not, who said these things before us. Therefore neither is he, whoever says these things; but he is a manifest heretic, whoever contradicts this ancient catholic doctrine.

67. JUL. But let us now proceed to the rest. Writing of me, then, after those words of yours which I wove above, you add these that follow: After these things he set down that statement of ours, where we said: For this desire to be ashamed of—which is praised shamelessly by the shameless—would not exist, had man not first sinned; but marriage would exist, even if no one had sinned; for the sowing of children would take place without this disease.

Thus far he set down my words. For he feared what I added: It could be done in the body of that life, without which it now cannot be done in the body of this death. And here, so as not to finish my sentence, but in a manner to cut it short, he dreaded that testimony of the Apostle where he says: "wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom 7:24-25). For there was no body of this death in paradise before sin, on which account we said: In the body of that life, which was there, the sowing of children could be done without this disease, without which it cannot be done in the body of this death (DE NUPT. ET CONCUP. 2, 6).

You hold to your custom, indeed, in this work above all consistently—that you, who act against the truth, speak nothing true; but for the numerous sins of your erudition a multitude of corrections scarcely suffices. So here I will now note briefly that you deceive; but me—you will understand, even after this work—to be unaccustomed to lying. Claim, then, for yourself the whole possession of this vice, so that you may, and not undeservedly, hear from the Gospel that you are a liar from the beginning, like your father (Cf. John 8:44)—whether the one to whose dominion you say you belonged when you were born, or the other, the secondary one, who imbued you with elegant sacraments, which yet cannot be named among the honorable. This whole thing, then, I set forth in my earlier work, which you pretend was passed over; and by how great a truth and light of disputation it was refuted, you yourself will be able to confess, if you read the nearly final parts of my first volume. Your sentence, then, was destroyed not cut short, but whole, by a strong reply. But now hear briefly that this which the Apostle says: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord; he referred not to the mortality of our body, which the flesh of animals received from the institution of nature, but to the habit of offending;

from which guilt, after the incarnation of Christ, through the New Testament, whoever migrates to the pursuits of virtue is freed. There, then, speaking under the person of the Jews—who, even after the prohibition of the sacred law, were erring through the desire of enticements—he shows that there was a single help in that season: if they should believe in Christ;

who so enjoined cautions about future things that he pardoned what was done; nor did he press upon the guilty in the temptation of punishment, but cherished those running with a most liberal bosom; not dispiriting the depressed by terror, but restoring the corrected by kindness.

This kindness he had already felt who said: It is a human saying, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first; but for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me Christ Jesus might show all patience, as an example to those who are to believe in him unto eternal life (1 Tim 1:15-16).

That you might understand this to belong to an evil life, not to the nature of human beings—lest, on account of the cause of Christ's coming, you should think that even little ones were pronounced sinners by him—he says: In me he showed all patience. But the patience of God is that of which he speaks to the Romans: Or do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you store up for yourself wrath on the day of wrath (Rom 2:4-5). The patience of God, then, is exercised when human conversion is awaited for no small time. But in little ones patience cannot appear. For if there were sins of nature, which the Savior ascribed to them; he would indeed be called patient falsely, but most certainly savage. But God cannot be anything except pious and just, which is my God Jesus Christ; whose patience either Paul, long a persecutor, or others under whose person he speaks, experienced; because they were long awaited, though freed late.

And by this the life of human beings, not their nature, is condemned by the Apostle. Commending, then, this grace to the Jews—because the law punishes the wicked, and does not have that efficacy of mercy which Baptism has, in which, by a brief confession, the offenses of deeds are purified—he shows that they ought to run to Christ, to implore the help of this indulgence; and to notice that the law threatens the wounds of morals, but grace heals efficaciously and quickly. The body of death, then, he said sins are, not the flesh; for if he had pronounced concerning the misery of the members, which you judge happened by sin, he would more rightly have called it the death of the body than the body of death. But that you may know that, according to the custom of the Scriptures, sins are called members, read to the Colossians, where the Apostle himself says: Mortify your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, and avarice, which is the service of idols; on account of which the wrath of God comes upon the children of unbelief, among whom you too once walked, when you lived in them (Col 3:5-7).

See how he calls members what he pronounces to be sins. But the body of sin—here he himself, to the Romans: Our old man, he says, was crucified together with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that we might no longer serve sin (Rom 6:6). In this manner, then, here too he exclaimed under the person, as we said, of the Jews: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:24) That is: Who will free me from the guilt of my sins, which I committed when I could have avoided them? Which the severity of the law does not pardon, but avenges? Who will be able to vindicate me from these members, that is, from the vices which I gathered by the imitation of the wicked, so that I built up a body full of sin? Who, I say?

And he answered, as though admonished by the voice of the very things: The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25). The grace of God, which brings the imputed justice of the faithful without works, according to what David says: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin (Ps 32:1-2 (31:1-2)). He, then, who makes a man blessed, is himself also blessed, eternal justice, through which he does not pardon sin except what he could by right have imputed. But he could not by right impute it, if the one to whom it is imputed could not also have guarded against it. But no one can guard against natural things. Therefore no one at all can have sin from the necessity of nature. Let it suffice to have said these things briefly.

AUG. You tried indeed, by disputing, to turn what the Apostle says: Who will free me from the body of this death? into your sense; but that you could not do this, that man saw better who sent the sheet to the illustrious man; and therefore, recalling my words, he passed this over, lest your awaited and produced reply be laughed at.

For who would not laugh at what—I know not whether you could persuade yourselves of it, and yet thought ought to be persuaded to others—that the Apostle introduced the person of a Jew, not yet established under the grace of Christ, and saying: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24-25). Is he, then, really a Jew, and not yet a Christian, who says: The grace of God will free me through Jesus Christ our Lord? But this I omit; but who would bear that a man should be thought to say of his past sins: Who will free me from the body of this death? that they might be remitted to him through the grace of the pardoning Christ; when it appears clearly whence he came to these words? Behold his words are in our ears; let us see, then, whether from what he did willingly, or from what he does unwillingly, he confesses himself to be wretched.

The man cries out: It is not what I will that I do, but what I hate, that I do (Rom 7:15). He cries out: Now it is no longer I that work it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, what is good; for to will is present to me, but to accomplish the good I do not find. For it is not the good I will that I do, but the evil I do not will, this I do (Rom 7:17-19).

He does not say: I did, but: I do; he does not say: I worked, but: I work; he does not say: I acted, but: I act; and this: not what I will, but: what I do not will. Finally, he delights in the law of God according to the inner man; but he sees another law in his members, fighting against the law of his mind; by which law indeed he is compelled not to do the good he wills, but to do the evil he does not will. On account of this he exclaims: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:24) And you, against the most clear truth, close your eyes, and expound his groan not as it is plain to all, but as it pleases you, saying: Who will free me from the body of this death? that is: Who will free me from the guilt of my sins which I committed? He says: The evil I do not will, this I do; and you say: which I committed.

Do you so despair of the men who read these things that they should not prefer to hear him rather than you, and to believe him rather than you? Allow a man to ask for the grace of God, not only because he has sinned, that he may be absolved, but also that he may not sin, that he may be helped: which is what is at issue in this place. For he who says: The evil I do not will, this I do, has no occasion to say: Forgive us our debts, but: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:12-13).

But each one is tempted, as the apostle James says, drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence (Jas 1:14). This is the evil of which he says: I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, what is good (Rom 7:18). This is the evil in the body of this death. This evil was not in paradise before sin; because this flesh was not yet the body of this death; to which it will be said in the end: Where, O death, is your striving? (Cf. 1 Cor 15:54-55) But it will then be said, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53-54); but now it is a body of death; because the same Apostle said: The body is dead on account of sin (Rom 8:10). Hear the catholic understanders of the Apostle; take their words, not mine, with whom I take your insults; hear not Pelagius, but Ambrose. Even Paul's flesh, he says, was a body of death, as he himself says: "who will free me from the body of this death?" (AMBROSIUS, De paenitentia 1, 3, 13; Rom 7, 24).

Hear not Celestius, but Gregory: Within ourselves, he says, we are assailed by our own vices and passions, and day and night we are pressed by the fiery goads of this lowly body and of the body of death, now secretly, now even openly, with the enticements of visible things everywhere provoking and irritating us; this clay of dregs, to which we have clung, exhaling the stench of its mire through the more capacious veins; but also with the law of sin, which is in our members, resisting the law of the spirit (GREGORIUS NAZ., Orat. I de fuga sua 2, 9). Barking at these lights of the heavenly city, you say: The body of death he called sins, not the flesh; denying that the Apostle referred this to the mortality of our body: Which, you say, the flesh of animals received from the institution of nature.

For you have a taste for this, which Pelagius, with a feigned heart, condemned in the Palestinian trial—namely, that Adam was made mortal, so that whether he sinned or did not sin, he would die. And so, resisting these men, and others their companions in sound faith, so many and so great teachers, you are compelled to fill paradise, even if no one had sinned, with the pain of those giving birth, the labor of those being born, the groans of the sick, the funerals of the dying, the mourning of those lamenting. What wonder, then, if you are also outside this paradise, which is the Church, you who make that paradise—out of which they went who, by sinning, sent us into these miseries—such as I say no Christian, nay no human being at all, dares to suspect, unless he is insane?

68. JUL. For in my first work these things have been disputed more broadly. Although you do not even speak clearly which death you wish to be understood, whose body you say was not in paradise before sin; for in the books which you published in the name of Marcellinus, you professed that Adam was made mortal (Cf. De pecc. mer. et rem. 1, 3-4). But as for your addition that the business of marriage is a disease, it can be heard mildly, if you say this only of your own parents. For perhaps you can be aware of some hidden disease of your mother, whom in the books of your Confessions—to use the very word—you noted to have been called a tippler (Cf. Confess. 9, 18). But in the wedlock of the saints, and of all the honorable, there is no disease at all. For the Apostle did not concede a disease for a remedy, when, through reverence for marriage, he fortified the men of the Church against the disease of fornication; and how this sense has utterly erased both your brow and your doctrine is shown in the nearly final part of my first volume; which has also been explained throughout the whole body of that reply, as the opportunity of the places afforded.

AUG. Nowhere has your guile so appeared, and your conscience condemned through knowledge. For you know, you know entirely; it is so plain that whoever reads those books cannot fail to know it; you know, I say, that in the books I published to Marcellinus, I argued vehemently against your heresy, which was even then beginning to rise, lest it be believed that Adam, even if he had not sinned, would have died. But because I called him mortal only in this sense—that he could die, for he could sin—you wished, by an insidious gloss, to filch upon those who have not read those books, and perhaps will not read them, were they to read these words of yours, as though I had said that Adam was made mortal in such a way that, whether he sinned or did not sin, he would die.

For this is what is at issue with you; here the whole question on this matter turns between us and you—that we say that Adam, if he had not sinned, would not have suffered even the death of the body; but you, that whether he had sinned or had not sinned, he would have died in body. What is it, then, that you pretend not to know which death I wish to be understood, whose body I say was not in paradise before sin; when you know what I argued in those books, and how openly and clearly I argued—that God, in punishing, would not have said to the sinner: You are earth, and into earth you shall go (Gen 3:19) (which who does not understand was said of the death of the body?), if Adam, even with no iniquity committed, were going to go into the earth, that is, were going to die even in body?

But as for the fact that you thought my mother too—who did you no harm, nor argued anything against you—ought to be torn with insult, you were overcome by the lust of abuse, not fearing what is written: Nor will the abusive possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10). But what wonder is it that you show yourself an enemy even of her, when you are an enemy of the grace of God, by which I said she was freed from that girlish vice?

But I hold your parents in honor as catholic Christians, and I congratulate them that they died before they saw you a heretic. But we do not say that the business of marriage is a disease—which is to have intercourse for the sake of procreating children, not for the satisfying of lust; which lust you deny is a disease, though you confess that the conjugal remedy was provided against it. For surely, lest fornication be committed, the lust which you praise is contradicted, opposed, resisted.

So that if anyone oversteps the limit which has been set for procreating children, at least he who yields to it may sin venially in his spouse; for the Apostle was speaking to spouses, when, having said: Do not defraud one another, except by consent for a time, that you may have leisure for prayer; and again return to it together, lest Satan tempt you on account of your intemperance; he at once added, and said: But this I say by way of indulgence, not by way of command (1 Cor 7:5-6).

This evil, then, conjugal chastity alone makes good use of, with the intention of propagating offspring; to this evil one yields venially in a spouse, not for the sake of offspring, but only for carnal pleasure; this evil is resisted, lest the damnable appetite of pleasure be satisfied. This evil dwells in the body of this death; on account of whose motion, importunate even when the mind does not consent, it is said: I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, what is good (Rom 7:18). This evil was not in the body of that life, where either, with the genital members serving the will, there was no lust at all, or it never moved itself against the choice of the will. Of this evil, suddenly arisen, they were ashamed (Cf. Gen 3:7), who before they sinned were naked, and were not ashamed (Cf. Gen 2:25). The praises of this evil you have shamelessly scattered even in those four books of yours, which I was compelled to answer with six of mine.

69. JUL. But that the Apostle might come to this mention of human misery and divine grace, he had said above: I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin (Rom 7:23); after these words he exclaimed: Who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:24-25). It is established, indeed, with those premises which you set down, that the Apostle added: Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. But we do not ask at present whether the Apostle said this; what we ask is by what faith, in what sense, with what reasoning he said it. For he called the law in his members—rebellious against holy counsels through the use of disgraceful deeds, yet in the very beginnings of amendment—an evil habit, which by the learned even of the world is wont to be called a second nature. For a little before he had said to those to whom he speaks, in reproach: It is a human thing that I say, on account of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity; so now present your members to serve justice unto sanctification (Rom 6:19). And that he might show that by flesh he called, abusively, not this body which has its causes in the seeds, but the vices; after two chapters perhaps he adds: When we were in the flesh, the passions of sins which are shown through the law worked in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death (Rom 7:5). He spoke thus: When we were in the flesh, as though at the time when he was disputing, he were not in the flesh; but he who knows the Scriptures recognizes this kind of expression. And therefore, where the commonness of words brings up a question, let the rule of reason be applied, to whose equality the things that seemed to have deviated may be directed. But Faustus, the bishop of the Manicheans, your teacher, leans on this testimony of the Apostle above all against us, saying that by these words—namely, the law that, fighting against counsel, dwells in the members—nothing else was signified by him than an evil nature. Whence nothing less ought to have been done by you than that this passage be understood as it is expounded by them, lest, since you walk along the same lines that Faustus twisted, you should seem not to have disputed, but to have repeated past things.

AUG. Let there answer you not Faustus the Manichean, but the learned catholic teacher Gregory, who called the law in the members—rebellious against holy counsels through the use of disgraceful deeds, not in the beginnings (as you say) of amendment—an evil habit, which by the learned is wont to be called a second nature; rather, the law of sin which is in our members, fighting against the law of the mind, he plainly and openly attributed to this mortal and earthly body of ours, saying: That the law of sin which is in our members fights against the law of the spirit, while it strives to lead captive the royal image which is within us, so that whatever it is that flowed into us by the benefit of the divine and first creation should yield as its spoils. Whence scarcely anyone, he says, perhaps ruling himself by long and strict philosophy, and gradually recollecting the nobility of his soul, recalls and turns back to God the nature of the light which is in him, joined to this lowly and dark clay. Or if indeed he acts with God favorable, he will recall both together; if at least, by long and assiduous meditation, he grows accustomed always to look upward, and to lift up, with tighter reins, the matter that drags him downward badly and weighs him down, bound to himself (GREGORIUS NAZ., Orat. I de fuga sua 2, 9).

These things blessed Gregory said, not in the beginnings of his amendment, but already a bishop, wishing to expound—or rather to admonish of things that are known—in what kind and how great a contest with their inner vices the saints are placed, on account of the body that weighs down the soul. Which contest certainly would not have been in that place of blessed peace, that is, in the paradise of holy delights, if no one had sinned.

For there would not be there the body of this death, by whose corruptibility the soul might be weighed down; but the body of that life, where the flesh would not desire against the spirit, so that it would be necessary for the spirit to desire against the flesh (Cf. Gal 5:17); but human nature would rejoice in the happy concord of both.

If, then, you wished to assail the Manicheans, who introduce another nature and substance of evil, not to help them; you would assuredly not deny, with your deceivers, these miseries of human life, plain to all, beginning from little ones; but you would say, with the faithful catholics and the most illustrious teachers, whence our nature—which was first established blessed—has collapsed into them.

70. JUL. That, then, what we have done may be gathered together: neither did I bring fraud upon your statements, nor did you bring anything by which you might wash them over with even a fainter color of piety, much less prove them with the Scriptures as witnesses. Neither did the Apostle understand this which you think; nor was there at all another condition of union in paradise than such as is now carried on in marriages—which God taught to be instituted by him, both by the very condition of the sexes and the quality of the members, and by the often-repeated blessing.

With these things settled, it is plain that all who are deceived by you are worthier of wrath than of mercy, since, to excuse their own crimes, which they commit by an evil will, they—with you as author—defame birth, that they may not correct their action.

AUG. The pious action in this life is to worship God, and by his grace to fight against inner vices, and not to yield to them when they instigate or compel to unlawful things; and where one yields, to ask for pardon, and that one may not yield, to ask for the help of God with the affection of religious piety. But in paradise, if no one had sinned, it would not be an action of piety to assail vices; since the permanence of happiness would be to have no vices. But the praise of vices which is shamelessly frequented by you is no sign of men truly fighting against vices. Was it really so, Julian, that when Ambrose said: We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (AMBROSIUS, De paenitentia 1, 3, 13); either he said it with me as author, or he defamed birth, that he might not correct action? Was it really so that Gregory, when he said: Venerate the birth through which you have been freed from the bonds of earthly birth (GREGORIUS NAZ., Orat. in Natalem Domini 41, 14); or when he said, speaking of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit: Through him the stains of the first birth are purified, through which we are conceived in iniquities, and in offenses our mothers begot us (GREGORIUS NAZ., Orat. in Pentecosten); or when Hilary said of king David: He knows himself born under the origin of sin, and under the law of sin (HILARIUS, In Ps. 118, 75); did these men defame birth, that they might not correct action?

Will you dare persuade your heart that the action of the Pelagians is to be preferred to the action of these men? Grant pardon: we would never believe that you live a better life than they, not even if you did not so love the concupiscence of the flesh that you would place it—such as it now is, desiring against the spirit—even in paradise before sin. For if, as you say: There was no other condition of union in paradise than such as is now carried on in marriages; then there was there, even before sin, the carnal lust without which now neither sex can be joined.

If, then, you are unwilling, in that blessedness, that the genital members—not yet shameful—could, for accomplishing their work, by which offspring was to be sown, serve the will of human beings without lust; I still ask of what kind you believe that same lust to have been then. Did it certainly follow the will, when it was necessary; or even when it was not necessary for propagating children, did it nonetheless stimulate the mind, and drive it on into acts of intercourse, whether damnable or venial with a spouse?

For if it was such as it is now, it did this without doubt, whether it was resisted by temperance, or yielded to by intemperance. And thus a man would be compelled either to serve lust by sinning, or to resist it by inner war; one of which does not befit honor, the other does not befit the peace of that felicity—as you perceive, if you have human sense. It remains, then, that if lust were there, it would be so subject to the will that it would neither draw the upright and quiet mind to an offense, nor provoke it to battle; and would compel the spirit—obedient to God and enjoying God—neither to sin nor to fight.

Since now it is not such, but greedily seeks even lawful things, not obediently; and in unlawful things either casts down the spirit, or desires against the spirit; acknowledge the evil contracted by the vitiated integrity of nature; of which evil the chastity of spouses makes good use in the office of propagating, and from which evil is drawn the bond of liable generation, to be loosed by regeneration.

71. JUL. But about this let it suffice; now let me take up what follows. In the body of this death, then—such as certainly was not in paradise before sin—another law in our members fights against the law of the mind; because both when we are unwilling, and when we do not consent, nor present our members to it to fulfill what it craves, it nonetheless dwells in them, and solicits the resisting and reluctant mind; so that the very conflict, even if it is not damnable, because it does not accomplish iniquity, is nonetheless wretched, because it does not have peace (De nupt. et concup. 2, 6).

That the pleasure of all the senses is natural, we teach by the testimony of the universe. But that this pleasure and concupiscence existed before sin in paradise, that thing declares, that the way to the offense was through concupiscence, which, when it had incited the eyes with the beauty of the apple, also stirred up the hope of a pleasant taste. This concupiscence, then, could not—which, when it does not keep its measure, sins; but when it is kept within the limit of permitted things, is a natural and innocent affection—could not, I say, be the fruit of sin, which is taught to have been, not indeed by its own vice, but by that of the will, the occasion of sin. Read about this too my second book: you will find that this which we say can be persuaded even to your mind.

But as for what you set down, as though acutely, that there is indeed a law of sin in our members; but that it has sin then, when we consent to it; but that it stirs up war only when we do not consent, and brings in misery with peace disturbed; who, being prudent, would not see that it fights against itself? For if the law of sin—that is, sin, and the necessity of sin—is naturally inserted into the members; what does it profit not to give consent to it, when, on account of this very thing that it is, it is necessary to undergo punishment? Or if there is indeed a law of sin, but when I do not consent to it, it does not sin; inestimable is the power of the human will, which (if absurdity permit the saying) compels sin itself not to sin. But it comes back to this, that what you say is inconsistent; for if it does not sin, neither is it a law of sin; if it is a law of sin, it sins; but if it sins, only because it exists, how can it be resisted that there be no sinning, which cannot be repelled that one should cease from the work of sin?

AUG. I have already answered your second book in my fourth, and convicted you of having said empty things; but let those who read see whether one should answer a man who advances into such madness that, while he confesses that sin is an evil, he says the concupiscence of sins is good. And yet we are compelled to answer, unwilling to abandon the slower talents of men, to whom these writings could come. What is it, then, that you say, not knowing what you say? Was there, then, even in paradise—before the poisons of the evil-counseling serpent, before the will was corrupted by sacrilegious speech—already a lust for unlawful food?

And—what is more intolerable to say—did it provoke to evil, and yet was not evil? And did those human beings see the fruit of the forbidden tree, and did it crave it, but, that they might not eat, did the concupiscence of the spirit resist the concupiscence of the flesh; and did they live in that place of so great blessedness, not having within themselves peace of mind and body?

You are not so demented as to believe these things; not so shameless as to say these things. Therefore understand, or do not, with empty loquacity, clamor against those who understand. An evil will went before, by which the cunning serpent was believed; and an evil concupiscence followed, by which the unlawful food was craved. Not, then, did some desire there resist some will; but rather, depraved, it served the depraved. And by this, although now both were evil, yet the will led the desire, not the desire the will; it did not go before the will, nor resist the will. Finally, if before the consummation of the sin the will had been turned away from the unlawful work, without any labor the unlawful desire would have been calmed.

Speaking of this, blessed Ambrose: The flesh, he says, returned to the nature of its vigor, recognizes its nurse; and, the daring of its contumacy laid aside, is joined to the moderating choice of the soul;

such as it was, when it received the secret places of paradise to be inhabited, before, infected by the poison of the pestiferous serpent, it knew sacrilegious hunger, and, by its zeal for gluttony, passed over the memory of the divine precepts clinging to the senses of the soul.

Hence it is disclosed that sin flowed forth as it were from parents, body and soul; while the nature of the body is tempted, the unsound soul suffers along with it; and if the soul had reined in the appetite of the body, in its very rising the origin of sin would have been extinguished (AMBROSIUS, In Luc. 7, 142-143). Do you see how the catholic teacher, endowed with Christian wisdom, called that very concupiscence of unlawful food—which you, if it is not permitted to fulfill what it craves, assert to be innocent—already a sacrilegious hunger? And yet, if the soul, with the will indeed corrected, had reined in this appetite of the body, in its very rising, as he says, the origin of sin would have been extinguished; but because, with the appetite for unlawful food not repressed, the consummation of sin was reached, the origin of sin was not extinguished, but even flowed into posterity; and so great a dissension of flesh and spirit followed, that, as the same teacher says in another place, it turned into nature through the transgression of the first man (AMBROSIUS, In Luc. 7, 141).

But you, against these things: You say you teach by the testimony of the universe that the pleasure of all the senses is natural; as though there could not be, in a body—not of this death, but of that life—a pleasure of all the senses sufficient for nature, in such a way that, by the highest concord of the virtue of the mind and of the flesh, no unlawful things should be craved. O how greatly you err, who from this corruptibility and infirmity of nature, which now is, conjecture the holy delights of paradise and that blessedness! Other was that immortality, where man was able not to die; other is this mortality, where man is not able but to die; other will be the highest immortality, where man will not be able to die.

Why do you wrangle about the wrangling concupiscence, that is, about the law in the members fighting against the law of the mind? It is called the law of sin, because it persuades sins and, so to speak, commands them; and if it is served by the mind, sin is committed without excuse. It is called sin, because it was made by sin, and craves to sin. Its guilt has been loosed by regeneration, its conflict has been left for the struggle. It is an evil, this is clear. We do not, as you think, resist it by the strength of our will, unless we are helped from on high. This evil must be warred down, not denied; conquered, not defended. Finally, if you consent to it, acknowledge the evil by sinning; if you resist it, acknowledge the evil by fighting.

72. JUL. Or what does the moderation of that thing profit, whose very presence accuses itself? See, then, whither your subtleties are carried. First, that nature sins without will; which cannot be. Second, that it is sin, and does not sin, that is, it is one thing, and is not. Then, when it disturbs peace, it is wretched, and is not punished for so great a crime of disrupted quiet; but when it accomplishes iniquity, it is damnable. But the law of sin, just as it itself earns torment, so it excuses the will of the man. Because the law—both compelling, and natural, and never withdrawing—certainly cannot be overcome by the will; and no one is guilty for this, that he could not avoid it.

But neither does the law itself sin, because it could do nothing else. But God ascribes unavoidable things to guilt; nor is he compelled by anyone to do even this much evil; with all, then, absolved, this one alone is found in the crime, who with wondrous brow imputes necessity to others, while he himself offends without necessity.

Well done, by the virtue of prudence, most noble disputant, who by the steps of African dialectic—in order to commend gifts—overturned judgments; in order to feign grace, undermined justice; in order to defame nature, accused the Creator of human beings; and so accused him that not only by some sinner, but by the very law of sin, your God should appear more harmful.

And after these things you most profanely cast insult at the catholic priests, saying that they deny the grace of Christ, whose equity they protect; whereas we praise indeed the clemency of the remedies, but with the justice of the laws remaining.

AUG. Would that you would acknowledge the catholic priests, who, long before you began to exist, said that the concupiscence of the flesh—which desires against the spirit, although the spirit too desires against it, which is understood to be the law of sin, resisting the law of the mind after the sin which was perpetrated in paradise—vitiated human nature; whence now no one is born without it; and that the spirit opposes it in the saints, that they may live justly, by fighting against it, until, with the salvation of man perfected, and the flesh fully agreeing with the spirit, it is no more.

Ambrose says that through the transgression of the first man the dissension of flesh and spirit turned into nature (AMBROSIUS, In Luc. 7, 141); and that dissension Cyprian shows thus—the African in whom, I think, you do not dare mock African dialectic, as you have dared to do in me: There is, he says, between the flesh and the spirit a struggle, and a daily encounter of things at variance with each other, so that we do not do the very things we will, while the spirit seeks heavenly and divine things, the flesh craves earthly and worldly things; and therefore we ask that between these two, by the help and aid of God, concord may be made, so that, while the will of God is carried out both in the spirit and in the flesh, the soul which has been reborn through him may be saved.

Which the Apostle openly and manifestly declares with his own voice: The flesh, he says, desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other; so that you do not do the very things you will (Gal 5:17; CYPRIANUS, De Orat. Dominica 16). This concord of flesh and spirit, which we desire, and which Cyprian says we pray for from the Lord, you do not grant to have existed even in paradise before sin; or if it existed, why do you not confess that, with nature vitiated, it perished through the transgression of the first man, and that a wretched discord succeeded the blessed peace of soul and body? And you are indignant with us, because, as though against catholic priests—that is, against you—we cast insult by our discourse, in saying that you deny the grace of Christ; when you cast insult most impudently and most profanely against these truly catholic priests, with those words which, against me, who follow and protect their faith, you belch out with undigested fury. The Apostle says: Walk by the spirit, and do not accomplish the concupiscences of the flesh (Gal 5:16).

I ask, why does he call them so, if they are none? Why does he forbid them to be accomplished, if they are good? But further, what kind they are, he shows and says: For the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other; so that you do not do the things you will (Gal 5:17). To whom did he say: So that you do not do the things you will?

Was it to the Jews, according to your wonderful understanding, not yet established under the grace of Christ; and not to those to whom he had said: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? (Gal 3:2) He was therefore saying that faithful Christians did not do the things they willed, with the flesh desiring against the spirit.

Why so, except because they willed their lower part to consent to the higher, that is, the flesh to the spirit, and were not able to accomplish what they willed; and there remained for them not to consent to that vice, but to desire, against the flesh, in the spirit? But even if there was in them what you suppose—that on account of an evil habit they lived badly even when unwilling; what is it, then, that you say, that nature cannot sin without will, when you confess that these men sinned unwilling?

But why the concupiscence of the flesh is called sin, or the law of sin, we have already said above (Cf. supra 71); and if it is good not to consent to it in unlawful things, then it is itself surely an evil, by which unlawful things are craved, even if they are perpetrated by no consent and no deed.

Moreover, you overturn the judgments of God, you who say that the miseries of the human race, beginning from little ones, come about without any merit of sin; nor do you ask the gift of God, that you may not enter into temptation (Matt 26:41), that is, that you may not sin; for you trust in your own virtue, and that you have been noted and condemned in the holy Psalm (Cf. Ps 49:6 (48:7)), either being blind you do not see, or being stupid you do not grieve.

73. JUL. But now let us proceed also to my words, which, taken from the preface, he set down for himself to attack: Let me have sufficiently warned, then, that this man wished to set down my words as though to be refuted by him, in such a way that in one place, with the middle removed, he interrupted the sentences; in another, with the ends not added, he cut them short; and why he did this I have shown sufficiently. Now let us see, in those things which, as he wished, he set forth as ours, what he set down as his own. For now his words follow; and as the man who sent you the sheet indicated, he first wrote something from the preface—without doubt of those books from which he excerpted a few things.

And it stands thus: The teachers, he says, of our time, most blessed brother, and the authors of the nefarious sedition which still rages, have decided to arrive, through the ruin of the whole Church, at insults to and the destruction of men, by whose holy pursuits they are burned; not understanding how much honor they have conferred on those whose glory they have shown could not be torn down except along with the catholic religion. For if anyone says either that there is free choice in human beings, or that God is the Creator of those who are born, he is called a Celestian and a Pelagian. Lest, then, they be called heretics, they become Manicheans; and while they fear a false reproach, they incur a true crime; like wild beasts, which are encircled with feathers that they may be driven into the nets; which, since they lack reason, are thrust into true destruction by an empty fear (De nupt. et concup. 2, 6-7).

I recognize my words, but not set down by you with integrity; and although the sum of the contest does not consist in these, since they are from the preface; yet, that your frivolity may be plain, most blessed brother, it was not placed in that location, but at the very first line of the book. Likewise, when I had said: To insults to and the destruction of men, by whose holy pursuits they are burned; I added: because no other way lay open, they decided to arrive through the ruin of the whole Church.

After which I also said: Because a confessor of free choice and of the Creator God is called a Celestian and a Pelagian, by which speech the simple, terrified by an unjust word, so that they may strip off the odium of the name, even desert sound faith; about to believe, without doubt, that there is neither free choice in human beings, nor that God is the Creator of those who are born, when they shall have deserted both of those things which they had earlier affirmed. But all this was passed over by you. After which come those things you set down, how true and how unassailable, it will not be a difficult task to prove. Neither did I, then, set down anything less of your statements, nor did you report even the first chapter as it had been arranged by me. This I press home for this reason, that the gravity of the African writer may stand out.

AUG. He who transmitted from your books what he wished excerpted, to whom he wished, to be read, himself did what you impute to me; nor do I think that you yourself believe otherwise. For in that very book of mine, against which you bark, I did preface to what sheet I had been compelled to reply; but you ask, by reviling, what you may say, feeling that you say nothing strong by disputing.

And yet even in these words of mine, which you presently set forth as though to be refuted, you could notice what I say; for I would not say: It is not as you say, whoever it was who said these things (De nupt. et concup. 2, 8); if I were certain that you had said them, not the man who sent the writing such as he wished, and to whom he wished, which, sent to me, I had undertaken to refute. But thanks be to God, that to your whole work—from which this man excerpted what he wished, as it pleased him—I have so, with the Lord helping, replied, that I have subverted all your engines, which, as a new heretic, you had erected against the most ancient catholic faith.

74. JUL. Against these words of mine, then, let us hear what you have written in reply: It is not as you say, whoever it was who said these things, it is not so; you are much deceived, or you are plotting to deceive; we do not deny free choice; but: if the Son frees you—says the Truth—then you will be truly free (John 8:36). This Liberator you envy, you who bestow an empty freedom on captives. For by what one is overcome—as Scripture says—to that he is also assigned as a slave (2 Pet 2:19); nor is anyone loosed from this bond of slavery except by the grace of the Liberator, from which no human being is free. For through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12; De nupt. et concup. 2, 8). That the dignity of our business is very great—as the very consideration and weighing of the things we defend shows—so also your dread shows it; you who, fighting against our blood with the pouring out of money, the lavishing of inheritances, the sending of horses, the seditions of peoples, the corruption of authorities, both blush to profess your faith, which is assailed by us, and flee to the words of our view, from which you have deviated.

AUG. Either you slander knowingly, if you lie about these things; or you do not know what you say, when you believe liars; but let it now suffice what I have answered above to your vanity, or even your malice, on these matters (Cf. supra 42).

75. JUL. For so wicked is what the shameful prevarication of Babylon has undertaken, that when it is objected by us, it is denied by you; and so holy is what is believed by us, that you desire to hide beneath its shade, though with an adverse mind. For when I expressed whatever of your disputation was held scattered through its members, and forced the sum of the question into brevity, that the cause of the ecclesiastical dissension—how great and of what kind it was—might be brought forth without smoke and mist, I said that free choice was denied by you, and that God is the Creator of those who are born; but that both of these are defended by us; and that on this account you, to unskilled ears, stir up an empty din about the names of catholic men, who labor with us for the apostolic faith which we defend, so that those who had feared to be called Celestians by you would lose the dignity of the heavenly faith; and those who had dreaded to be called Pelagians by you would be hurled into the sea of the Manicheans; and the unskilled would think themselves unable to be called Christians, if the Traducianists called them Pelagians; while on the other side the prudent decided that the odium and injury of names was rather to be endured than the catholic faith to be relinquished. But lest you should glory that even this kind of insult was invented by your talent; recall that from all heretics we are wont to receive diverse names; but in the Synod of Ariminum it shone forth more vehemently what the ambiguity of a word, or the threat of a new name, can obtain of crime among leaden minds. For when, under an Arian prince, a man of great constancy, of most sound faith, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, had withstood—with almost the whole world fallen away from the faith of the Apostles, and the times made impious—and on this account had been driven into exile; of six hundred and fifty bishops, as is reported, scarcely seven were found to whom the precepts of God were dearer than those of the king: namely, who neither came together for the condemnation of Athanasius, nor denied the confession of the Trinity. But all that multitude of cast-down breasts, apart from the fear of injuries, was deceived chiefly either by this threat of the name, lest it be called Athanasian, or by the cunning of the question.

AUG. The Arians call the catholics Athanasians or Homoousians, and no other heretics do. But you are called Pelagians not only by the catholics, but even by heretics like yourselves who dissent from you; just as the Arians are called Arians not only by the catholic Church, but also by heresies. But you alone call us Traducianists, just as they call us Homoousians, as the Donatists call us Macarians, as the Manicheans call us Pharisees, and the other heretics by diverse names.

76. JUL. For when the Arians, who at that time were in power, proposed: Do you wish to follow the Homoousion, or Christ? they at once answered, as though under the name of religion, that they followed Christ; they repudiated the Homoousion; and so they go out exulting, as though they believed in Christ, whom they had already denied, by denying the Homoousion, that is, the one-substance with the Father.

So, then, even now you fabricators of guile terrify unskilled ears, so that, if they do not wish to be bespattered with the name of men laboring for the faith, they should both deny free choice and deny that God is the Creator of human beings. This, then, was objected by me in that place; and how not falsely, the present disputation will make plain. You answered, then, in this way: We do not deny free choice; and you added nothing else of your own. For it would have been consequent that you should fill out the sentence without evasion; and, having premised that you do not deny the freedom of choice, you should add: But we confess that the freedom of choice given by God remains in the nature of human beings.

AUG. How does freedom remain in those who, that they may be freed from the slavery to which they have been assigned, having been overcome by sin, need divine grace, unless because they are free, but only of justice? Whence the Apostle says: When you were slaves of sin, you were free of justice (Rom 6:20).

77. JUL. For you had completed something by this discourse, against which, if you had spoken further, you would have been too impudent; but if you had said everything continuously, you could at least belatedly have appeared more corrected.

But as it is, you say that I deceive, who prove what I objected by your own words; and you at once lie in that which you think you have consequently set forth. For you say: We do not deny free choice; and you add the testimony of the Gospel, but: if the Son frees you—says the Truth—then you will be truly free (John 8:36). Since it is established that in that place this was not brought forth by our Lord Jesus concerning free choice, deferring a little the exposition of that sentence, let us, by definitions and divisions, explain what each of us thinks. For, according to the discipline of all teachers, the beginning of a disputation ought to be taken from a definition.

AUG. The apostles, then, who did not take the beginnings of their disputations from a definition, were not learned? And yet they were teachers of the gentiles, and despisers of such teachers as you delight to be puffed up with. But as for what the Lord says: If the Son frees you, then you will be truly free, you will indeed try to twist it into your own sense; but how it does not follow you, when you have begun to try, will appear.

78. JUL. For every disputation, as he says, which is undertaken by reason concerning anything, ought to proceed from a definition, that it may be understood what that is about which the dispute is held (CICERO, De officiis 1, 7). So, then, we too, just as above we discussed the definition of justice and of sin, let us now also see what definition befits the freedom of choice, so that it may be clear which of us agrees with it, which resists it. The freedom of choice, by which man is emancipated from God, consists in the possibility of admitting sin and of abstaining from sin.

AUG. You say that man is emancipated from God; and you do not attend that with one emancipated this is done, that he should not be in his father's household.

79. JUL. For he was made a rational, mortal animal, capable of virtue and of vice, who could, by the possibility granted him, either keep God's commandments or transgress them, or by natural guidance preserve the right of human society, and who had it free to will either part, in which is the sum of sin and of justice. For when one bestows something according to virtue on the needy, whether from the fountains of mercy or from the udders of justice; this justice itself now works outwardly, which the holy will within has conceived and brought forth.

AUG. Whether it conceives justice from itself, this is what is at issue with you, who, ignorant of the justice of God, wish to establish your own (Cf. Rom 10:3); whereas the holy will certainly conceives justice by a holy thought, of which it is written: A holy thought will preserve you (Prov 2:12 (sec. LXX)); but the Apostle says: Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God (2 Cor 3:5). If you understand this, you will understand that there is no other choice praiseworthily free, except that which has been freed by the grace of God.

80. JUL. So too when, on the other side, one resolving to act wickedly to the injury of others is either unjust or cruel; the operation by which he harms others proceeds outward from the wickedness which an evil will within sowed and begot; but when the faculty is lacking through which the force of the secret will might break out upon one's neighbors, yet in the will alone—which has accomplished something either good or evil, not by a brief impulse, but by thought and appetite—either the reckoning of kindness or of malignity is fulfilled.

AUG. Just as you understand that the will fulfills, even by thought alone, the reckoning either of kindness or of malignity, if you understand it in this way—that, as the Apostle, speaking of good and holy thought, says, we are not sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God; you will be able to be corrected, and humbly to receive the grace to which pride has made you an enemy, while you wish to be among those who trust in their own virtue (Ps 49:6 (48:7)); not among those who say: I will love you, O Lord, my strength (Ps 18:1 (17:2)).

81. JUL. Both the possibility of good, then, and of evil, is good; since to be able to do good is the court of virtue; to be able to do evil is the testimony of freedom.

AUG. God, then, is not free, of whom it was said: He cannot deny himself (2 Tim 2:13); and of whom you yourself said: God cannot be anything except just; and in another place: But God cannot, you say, be anything except just and pious (Cf. supra 28. 67).

82. JUL. Through this, then, it falls to man to have a good of his own, through which it lies within him to be able to do evil. The whole fullness of divine judgment, then, has its business so joined with this freedom of human beings, that whoever has acknowledged one of them has known both. Whence it comes about that whoever has violated one of them, violates both. So, then, let the freedom of human choice be guarded, just as the divine equity is guarded. This is the understanding of free choice, which subjected to ecclesiastical truth both the opinion of the fates, and the calculation of the Chaldeans, and the phantasms of the Manicheans. This is the understanding which shows you, along with those we have enumerated, to be also strangers to Christ. The freedom of choice, then, is the possibility either of admitting or of avoiding sin, free of compelling necessity, which has within its own right, as it were, which part of those rising it will follow—that is, either the steep and rough things of the virtues, or the sunken and marshy things of the pleasures.

AUG. As long as man stood in the good will of free choice, he had no need of that grace by which he might be lifted up, since he could not himself rise; but now, in his ruin, he is free of justice and a slave of sin, nor can he be a slave of justice and free from the dominating sin, unless the Son frees him.

83. JUL. That this may be briefly settled, it is a possibility keeping watch over this alone: lest a man be either driven into sin by anyone, or drawn away from sin, with the will captive; which will, that it cannot be captured if it has not itself willed to surrender, fortitude testifies, whose sinews have shone forth assiduously, in the contempt of pains, both through gentiles and through Christians.

AUG. This is precisely what your heresy does; for to this you add even the gentiles, lest it be believed that Christians, by the grace of God, could do or did the work of pious fortitude; which is proper to Christians, not common to Christians and gentiles. Hear, then, and understand: the fortitude of the gentiles, worldly desire makes; but the fortitude of the Christians, the love of God makes; which has been poured out in our hearts, not through the choice of the will, which is from us, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5).

84. JUL. If, then, the freedom of choice is, as reason has disclosed, a repeller of necessities, so that no one is either good or evil who is not free to be the contrary; how did you either confess free choice, while using such a testimony as suits captives, or set down such a testimony, after you had confessed free choice? For you say: We do not deny free choice; but: if the Son frees you—says the Truth—then you will be truly free (John 8:36). It is manifest that Christ in that place spoke his words to a captive conscience; which he disclosed to be not free, but liable to that punishment which condemns sins committed by a free will. This sentence you, understanding it badly—that is, not understanding it, or perhaps understanding it in you, and dragging it hither though its nature resists—you set in that place where it disagrees, by all its own property, with your discourse. For, that we may join the very words: What is freed, is captive; what is captive, is not free; what is free, is not captive.

AUG. The remission of sins, in those things which were done evilly, is one thing; the love which makes free for those good things which are to be done, is another. In both ways Christ frees; for he both takes away iniquity by pardoning, and bestows love by inspiring.

85. JUL. You, confess here simply one or the other, and cease to quibble; either say with us that choice is free, and remove the testimony, which was brought forth fittingly in its own time; or, as in those books which you have now sent through Alypius to Boniface, say that choice is captive, which we say is free, and cease to deny that you are a Manichean.

AUG. The Manichean, insane, mixes an unchangeable substance of evil with the nature of his god, and rather makes the same nature of god corruptible, and wishes it to be captive under an alien nature; but the catholic faith says that the creature, good but yet changeable, was changed for the worse by the will; and by this, with its own nature depraved and vitiated, is held in slavery, guilty, not under an alien substance, but under its own sin.

And by this, even concerning the Liberator himself our view is very different from his. For the Manichean says that a liberator is needed, to separate an alien nature from us; but we, that he may heal and vivify our own. You, then, show that you are not a helper of the Manichean, if you can—you who, since the human race without doubt perceives the miseries with which men are born, and without doubt consents that it perceives them, by being unwilling to attribute them to the sin of our vitiated nature, cause him to attribute them to an alien nature mixed with us.

86. JUL. But for the rest, these two which you join, free and not free, that is, free and captive, cannot indeed befit the matter we are treating; but they testify that singular folly, a new impudence, an old impiety, are in you.

AUG. We call free for doing the works of piety those to whom the Apostle says: But now freed from sin, and made slaves to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life (Rom 6:22). This fruit unto sanctification—which fruit is without doubt love, and its works—we can in no way have from ourselves; but we have it through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). For of this very fruit the Teacher God was speaking, when he said to the branches abiding in him: Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5). But you reproach us with having singular folly, because God is our strength, and we do not trust in our own strength; and a new impudence, because we do not, with your brow, praise the concupiscence of the flesh, by which the flesh desires against the spirit; and an old impiety, because we defend, with whatever labor we can, the ancient catholic teachings, which those taught who ruled the Church of Christ before us in his grace with true piety, against your novel perversity. In yourself, then, acknowledge folly, in yourself impudence, in yourself impiety—not indeed old, but new.

87. JUL. But now it is time that the sentence of the Gospel be discussed. Jesus was saying, says the evangelist John, to the Jews who believed in him: If you abide in my word, you will truly be my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will free you (John 8:31-32). That is, our Lord Jesus was speaking to those who believed in him, that—rejoicing in no nobility of the world, nor claiming glory for themselves from the seed of Abraham—they should strive and be zealous for the virtues, and serve no sins after the knowledge of Christ, so that they might retain true freedom with a rejoicing conscience, and, by the hope of sure things, that is, of eternal things, be vindicated from the desire of all others, which, on account of their fragility, are frequently called empty and false. Then the Jews answered him, not understanding of what freedom Jesus had spoken: We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never served anyone; how do you say: You will be free? (John 8:33)

For freedom is wont to be called by many modes, as in this place sanctity; as resurrection in the Apostle, where he says that the creation is freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom 8:21); as the freedom which is more familiar is spoken of in distinction from slavery. And by that name the freedom of choice too is called. Let the cases, then, be divided, lest things far apart be confused by the community of a name. Here, then, the Lord does not say that the freedom of choice is to be freed; but, with it remaining whole, it suits the Jews that, receiving indulgence, they be freed from guilt, and seize that freedom which is greatest with God, so that they begin to owe nothing to crimes. Finally, the Evangelist follows: Jesus answered them: Amen, amen, I say to you, that everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. But the slave does not abide in the house forever; the son, however, abides forever. If, then, the Son frees you, then you will truly be free (John 8:34-36).

AUG. Attend to what was said: Everyone who commits sin. For he does not say: who committed; but: who commits. And you do not wish him to free men from this evil; you do not wish him in this place to promise such a freedom by which we may not commit sin; but only to free for this reason, because we have committed it.

88. JUL. He disclosed of what slavery he was here speaking. Everyone, he says, who commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34). But how vehemently is this very thing against your error, in that he says that no one is a slave of sin except him who himself has committed sin; and that sin can cling to no one which the one in question has not himself committed, either by action or by will alone? Which also shows that the universality of the human race cannot now be possessed by the devil, since he makes a distinction between slave and son, that is, between just and unjust? For here, as Christ separated himself, so also each one of the saints, from the condition of slaves: such as were both before the Old, and in the Old Testament, whom he declares to abide in the house of his Father, and to rejoice at his table (Cf. Luke 13:28-29). But this whole kind of exhortation would have been brought forth ineptly, if it did not befit human beings of free choice.

AUG. It befits, plainly, those committing sin for this reason, that they are slaves of sin, so that, having received the freedom which he promises, they may cease to commit sin. For sin reigned in their mortal body, so that they obeyed its concupiscences, and presented their members as weapons of iniquity to sin (Cf. Rom 6:12-13. 17-19). Against this evil, then, by which they committed sin, they needed the freedom which he promised: For everyone, he says, not who committed, but who commits sin, is a slave of sin. Why do you try to obscure clear words with murky disputations?

They break forth altogether, and, though you oppose, by their splendor conquer your darkness. Everyone, he says, who commits sin is a slave of sin. You hear: who commits; and you wish not to expound but to substitute: Who committed. Let them hear, then, to whom he himself opens the sense, that they may understand the Scriptures; let them hear: Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. And let them seek to receive freedom, that they may not commit sin, crying out to him to whom it is said: Direct my steps according to your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me (Ps 119:133 (118:133)). But why do you mock slow minds, and so insinuate the words of the Lord, as though he had said that no one is a slave of sin except him who himself has committed sin? You act with fraud; he did not say this; for he did not say: No one is a slave of sin except him who commits sin; but he said: Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

For there are slaves of original sin, who do not yet themselves commit sin; and from this bond of slavery they are loosed by regeneration. Not, then, everyone who is a slave of sin commits sin; but everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin; just as not every animal is a horse, but yet every horse is an animal. Where is your dialectic, with which you are accustomed to puff yourself up? Why do these things escape you, who are so learned and acute? Or why do you lie in wait for the unlearned and slow, if these things do not escape you? But who of us says that the universality of human beings is possessed by the devil, when there are so many thousands of saints who are not possessed by the devil? But we say that those alone are not possessed by the devil whom the grace of Christ frees; of which grace you are the enemies. For if you did not assail this grace, but understood it, you would assuredly see that even before the Old Testament, and in the time of the Old Testament, all the saints, separated from the condition of slaves, were freed by the same grace of Christ.

89. JUL. Finally, that you may understand that he does not reproach their nature, but their life, it follows: I know that you are children of Abraham (John 8:37). Behold, of what dignity of origin they had said they were free; now he shows to what slavery they are liable, saying: You seek to kill me, because my word does not take hold in you. I speak what I have heard from my Father; and you do what you have seen with your father (John 8:37-38).

AUG. What is: My word does not take hold in you, if a nature even such as now needs a liberator is already capable of his word, even though his grace does not open the sense, as it opened it to the Apostles, that they might understand the Scriptures (Cf. Luke 24:27); as it opened it to that seller of purple of the Thyatirans, that she might attend to the things spoken by Paul (Cf. Acts 16:14)?

90. JUL. See how diverse is the account of nature and of will. Jesus did not deny that their flesh belonged to the seed of Abraham, but he presses upon them that, by the iniquity of will, they had migrated to the devil their father; who is called their begetter for this reason, that he is convicted as the instructor of their crimes.

They answered, he says, and said to him: Our father is Abraham. Jesus says to them: If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham; but now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken to you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do; but you do the works of your father (John 8:39-41). Do you see what divisions of words Wisdom makes? He denies that they are children of Abraham, whom above he had said to be children of Abraham; but because the treatment of nature and of will is diverse, he shows that one is the begetter of harmless flesh, the other the seducer of a wretched will.

AUG. You speak the truth incautiously. For in paradise the devil was the seducer of a blessed will, which by seducing he made wretched; but now, as you confess, he is the seducer of a wretched will. From this misery, then (lest through it the will be still more easily seduced now by the devil than it was then seduced unto it), no one frees it except him to whom the whole Church daily cries: Lead us not into temptation, but free us from evil (Matt 6:13).

91. JUL. Here, then, where the Lord said: If the Son frees you, you will truly be free (John 8:36), he promised indulgence to the guilty, who, by sinning, lost not the freedom of choice, but the conscience of justice. But free choice, even after sins, is as full as it was before sins; since indeed it is by its own work that many renounce the hidden things of disgrace (Cf. 2 Cor 4:2), and, casting off the filth of crimes, are adorned with the badges of virtues.

AUG. Hear at least yourself, where you say (Cf. supra 69) that on account of the habit of sins it was written: It is not what I will that I do, but what I hate, this I do (Rom 7:15. 19). How, then, is it free after sins—those whose freedom, if not by propagation (because you are unwilling), yet certainly by habit (which alone you concede to this necessity, overcome and twisted)—it has so lost, that its groaning strikes your ears, and beats your brow, when you hear: It is not what I will that I do; and: It is not the good I will that I do, but the evil I do not will, this I do (Rom 7:19)?

92. JUL. Cease, then, to make yourself impious (if indeed any right or wrong remains to you), by so expounding the words of Christ that he may seem to have denied free choice, without whose integrity the equity of his own judgment cannot stand.

AUG. Nay rather, there is a heavy yoke upon the children of Adam, from the day they come forth from their mother's womb (Sir 40:1), for this reason, that the equity of his judgment stands; which would be altogether unjust, if they did not draw original sin, through which man has been made like to vanity (Ps 144:4 (143:4)).

93. JUL. Hear, indeed, where he shows the force of human freedom: I came in the name of my Father, and you did not receive me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive (John 5:43). And likewise: Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad (Matt 12:33). And likewise: If you will not believe me, believe the works (John 10:38). And more vehemently than all, that he says his own intention was hindered by human will: Jerusalem, he says, Jerusalem, how often have I willed to gather your children, as a hen her chicks under her wings, and you would not! (Matt 23:37)

After which there does not follow: But, you being unwilling, I gathered them; but: Your house will be left to you desolate (Matt 23:38); so that he shows them to be justly punished for an evil work indeed, but that they ought not to have been recalled by any necessity from their own intention. For thus too he had spoken through the Prophet: If you are willing, and hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the earth; if you are unwilling, and do not hearken, the sword shall devour you (Isa 1:19-20). How, then, do you not deny free choice, which—not indeed by your discourse, but by the testimony of the Gospel, yet by your sense—you have pronounced not free?

AUG. You are to be pardoned, because in a matter very hidden you err as a man. Far be it that the intention of the omnipotent and all-foreknowing God be hindered by a man. They think too little of so great a matter, or are not sufficient to think it out, who suppose that God Almighty wills something, and, with a weak man hindering, cannot.

Just as it is certain that Jerusalem was unwilling to have her children gathered by him, so it is certain that he, even with her unwilling, gathered as many of them as he willed. For God, as his man Ambrose said, calls those whom he deigns, and makes religious whom he wills (Cf. AMBROSIUS, In Luc. 7, 27).

But Scripture for the most part addresses the will of man, that, admonished, he may perceive what he does not have, or cannot do; and from him from whom are all good things, being needy, may ask. For if he be heard in that which we are commanded to say: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13); without doubt he will be deceived by no ignorance, overcome by no desire.

For this reason, then, it was said through the Prophet: If you are unwilling and do not hearken to me, the sword will devour you (Isa 1:20); and other things of this kind; so that, when they had found in themselves victorious desires, they might know from whom they ought to ask help for driving off the evil.

But for this reason it was said: Behold, your house will be left to you desolate (Cf. Acts 9:1); because there were many there whom he had judged worthy of hardening and desertion, by a hidden judgment, yet a just one. For if, as you say: From his own intention—certainly evil—a man ought not to be recalled by any necessity, why is the apostle Paul, while still Saul, breathing slaughter and thirsting for blood, recalled from his most wicked intention by a violent blindness of the body, and by a terrible voice from above; and, from a persecutor cast down, raised up to be a preacher of that Gospel which he was assailing—about to be more laborious than the rest (Cf. Acts 9:4-5. 20)? Acknowledge grace; God calls one in this way, another in that, whom he deigns; and: The Spirit breathes where it wills (John 3:8).

94. JUL. For in that work which I said above you recently sent to Rome, you disclosed more boldly what you think. For in the first book, when you had likewise set down for yourself what we object—that you deny free choice—you discuss thus, a most constant and most subtle disputant. But which of us would say that by the sin of the first man free choice perished from the human race? Freedom indeed perished through sin, but that freedom which was in paradise, of having full justice with immortality; on account of which human nature needs divine grace, with the Lord saying in his Gospel: "if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free" (John 8:36)—free, certainly, for living well and justly. For free choice has so not perished in the sinner, that through it they sin—especially all who sin with delight and with love of sin, and to whom that pleases which delights them. Whence the Apostle: "when you were," he says, "slaves of sin, you were free of justice" (Rom 6:20).

Behold, they are shown to have been able to serve sin too by no other than another freedom. They are not, then, free of justice except by the freedom of choice; but they are not made free of sin except by the grace of the Savior. On account of which the admirable Doctor distinguished even the very words: "for when," he says, "you were slaves of sin, you were free of justice. What fruit, then, did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death; but now freed from sin, and made slaves of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life" (Rom 6:20-22).

He said free of justice, not freed; but of sin not free, lest they should ascribe this to themselves, but most vigilantly he preferred to say freed; referring this to that sentence of the Lord: "if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free." Since, then, the children of men do not live well unless made children of God, what is it that this man wishes to attribute to free choice the power of living well; when this power is not given except "by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom 7:25), with the Gospel saying: "but as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become children of God" (John 1:12; C. duas epp. Pelag. 1, 2, 4).

And likewise after a little: Power, then, you say, is given that they may become children of God, who believe in him. Which power, unless it be given by God, can be none from free choice; because what the liberator has not freed will not be free in good; but it has free choice toward evil, into which a deceiver, whether hidden or manifest, has implanted the delight of malice, or it has persuaded itself.

Not, then—as some say we say, and this man dares besides to write—are all compelled into sin, as though unwilling, by the necessity of their flesh; but if they are now of that age that they use the choice of their own mind, both they are retained in sin by their own will, and they are hurled headlong from sin to sin by their own will. But this will, which is free in evil things, because it delights in evil things, is for that reason not free in good things, because it has not been freed. Nor can a man will any good thing, unless he is helped by him who cannot will evil (C. duas epp. Pelag. 1, 6-7).

In all these words of yours, which I have set down, I so see the name of grace knit together with the denial of free choice, that the evil things of your sense can not so be vindicated by the good names, as the dignity of the names is cheapened by the adherence of your doctrines. Not, then, did you honor yourself by these discourses, but you befouled the very ornaments. We, however, separate the things which have been joined by you, so that the divinity of grace, untangled from these awkward bindings, may neither be shaken by a reply; and may be praised by the gravity of catholics, not by the flattery of Manicheans. We confess, then, the grace of Christ to be manifold. His first gift is that we have been made from nothing. The second, that we excel the living by sense, as the sentient by reason; which has been impressed upon the mind, so that it might be taught the image of its Creator: to whose dignity the granted freedom of choice equally looks.

We reckon among the gifts of grace also the increases of the benefits which it does not cease to bestow upon us. This grace itself sent the law as a help (Isa 8:20 (sec. LXX)); to its office it pertained, that it should rouse with manifold instructions the light of reason, which the examples of depravity and the habit of vices blunted, and should cherish it with its invitation. To the fullness of this grace, then—that is, of the divine benevolence which gave a cause to things—it looked, that the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (Cf. John 1:14). For God, demanding from his image a return of love, made plain how wholly, with inestimable affection, he had acted toward us, that we might at least belatedly love in return him who, commending his love toward us (Cf. Rom 5:8), did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us (Rom 8:32); promising that if we should henceforth be willing to obey his will, he would grant that we be coheirs of his Only-begotten (Cf. Rom 8:17).

AUG. Pelagian man, love wills good, and love is from God; not through the letter of the law, but through the spirit of grace. In this the letter is a help to the predestined, because, by commanding and not helping, it admonishes the weak to flee to the spirit of grace. Thus they use the law lawfully, to whom it is good (Cf. 1 Tim 1:8), that is, useful; otherwise, by itself the letter kills (Cf. 2 Cor 3:6); because, by commanding good, and not bestowing the love which alone wills good, it makes them guilty of transgression.

95. JUL. This grace, then, which in Baptism not only pardons sins, but, with this benefit of indulgence, both advances, and adopts, and consecrates; this grace, I say, changes the merit of the guilty, does not found free choice; which we receive at the time when we are created, but use when we attain the strength of discernment between good and evil. We do not, then, deny that to the good will there are present innumerable kinds of divine help; but in such a way that neither, through the kinds of help, is there fashioned a freedom of choice that was destroyed, nor, that freedom being at any time excluded, is a necessity of either good or evil to be believed to press upon anyone; but every help cooperates with free choice.

AUG. If it does not go before, so as to work it, but grace cooperates with a will already existing, how is it true: God works in you even to will (Phil 2:13)? How: The will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 (sec. LXX))? How: Love is from God (1 John 4:7), which alone wills the beatific good? Or if the knowledge of the law and of the words of God works love in us, so that not through the gift of God, but through the choice of our will we love what we recognize, with God teaching, ought to be loved; how is the lesser thing from God to us, and the greater from ourselves? For without God giving knowledge, that is, teaching, we cannot know; but without him giving the love which surpasses knowledge (Cf. Eph 3:19), we can love. None think thus, except the new heretics and the too-great enemies of the grace of God.

96. JUL. This free choice, then—on account of which alone the Teacher of the gentiles writes that we are made manifest before the tribunal of Christ, that each one may carry back the things proper to the body, according as he has done, whether good or evil (2 Cor 5:10)—as the catholics indeed confess, so you deny, not only with the Manichean, but even with Jovinian (whom you dare to fasten upon us), by a diverse kind indeed, but a like impiety. That this may be made plainer, let the examination of divisions be applied. We say that by the sin of man not the state of nature is changed, but the quality of merit; that is, both in the sinner there is this nature of free choice, through which he can cease from sin, which was in him so that he could deviate from justice.

AUG. We know that you say for this reason that the state of nature is not changed by the sin of man, because you have deserted the catholic faith, which says that the first man was so made that he did not have a necessity of dying; but that by sin this state of nature was so changed that it is necessary for man to die, to such a degree that, even to those already regenerated and vivified by the spirit, the Apostle says: If Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead on account of sin, but the spirit is life on account of justice; if, then, the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will vivify also your mortal bodies, through his Spirit dwelling in you (Rom 8:10-11).

For he said this for this reason: He will vivify also your mortal bodies, which we hope for in the resurrection of the flesh, because he had said: The body is dead on account of sin; and you are unwilling that the state of nature was changed by sin. Nevertheless, when it was objected to Pelagius in the Palestinian trial that he said newly born infants are in that state in which Adam was before sin, he denied that he said it, and condemned it (Cf. De gestis Pelag. 11, 23-24). If he had done this with a true heart, perhaps your heresy would already have perished; at least he himself would have been healed of that plague. Then I ask whether the sinful nature is free of vice; which if it is most absurd, then it has a vice; if it has a vice, without doubt it has been vitiated.

How, then, was it not changed, which, when it had been sound, was vitiated? And by this, even apart from that sin of which John of Constantinople says: Adam committed that great sin, and condemned all in common (IOANNES CONSTANTINOP., Ep. ad Olymp. 3, 3);

even that, then, excepted, from which human nature draws condemnation originally, how can it be soberly said that the state of nature was not changed in man, who says: The law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin; for what I work, I do not understand; for it is not what I will that I do (Rom 7:14-15), and other things of this kind; even if he drew this change not by the condition of being born, but, as you wish, contracted it by the habit of sinning?

Do you see that it is empty, what you say, that by the sin of man not the state of nature is changed, but the quality of merit? Unless perhaps you say that nature is not changed by sin, but man. And what is this, except to deny that man is a nature? When would you say these things, if you considered with a sound mind what you say?

97. JUL. The Manichean says that an evil will is inspired by that nature which cannot will good; but a good will is poured in by that nature which cannot will evil; thus indeed he imposes upon the natures of single things a necessity, so that their wills cannot will contrary things. Between us and him there is certainly a great chasm; let us now see how far you have receded from him. You say that the will is free, but only so that it does evil; but that it is not free in this, that it should cease to do evil, unless there be imposed upon it a necessity of willing good, by that nature which—to use your words—cannot will evil (C. duas epp. Pelag. 1, 7). You define, then, the kind of human beings through free choice to do nothing else than to sin, nor to be able to do anything else. By which you absolutely pronounce that human nature always craves the one thing which is evil, and cannot will the contrary; but the nature of God cannot will evil; and therefore, unless it makes the evil nature of human beings a partaker of its necessity, there can be no good of action in it. After these things, then, whether you do not greatly love the Manichean, God will see in the secret of your heart; yet, so far as is shown by the kinship of your doctrines, you have done absolutely nothing else than, with the order changed, to build up the very thing he had affirmed.

AUG. Would that you would strongly destroy the Manichean, not basely help him! For he, perverted by excessive madness, does not say that the nature of evil is compelled to do well by another nature of good, which cannot will evil; but that the nature of good is compelled to do evil by that nature of evil, which cannot will good; and by this, wondrously demented, he wishes the nature of evil to be unchangeable, but the nature of good changeable.

Accordingly, that an evil will is inspired by that nature which cannot will good, it is certain that the Manichean says; but that a good will is poured in by that nature which cannot will evil, the Manichean does not say, as you more mildly suspect of him; since he in no way believes the nature of good to be unchangeable, which cannot will evil—the nature into which he believes an evil will is inspired by that nature which cannot will good; and so it comes about, through the nature of evil, that the nature of good wills evil, which he wishes to be nothing other than the nature of God.

You, then, help this man, by denying that human nature was vitiated by the sin of the first man, so that he may attribute to the nature of evil, which he fabricates, whatever of evils he finds in the most manifest misery of little ones. Then, since it displeases you that a man cannot will good unless he is helped by him who cannot will evil, do you not consider that you contradict him who said: Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5); and the Scripture, where it is read: The will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 (sec. LXX)); and where it is read: For it is God who works in us even to will (Phil 2:13); and where it is read: By the Lord the steps of a man will be directed, and he will will his way (Ps 37:23 (36:23))? At which I wonder at nothing, except whence you call yourself a Christian, when you contradict these divine words, so many and so clear.

98. JUL. With Jovinian, moreover, you are joined in one part; for he says, in the second book of his work, that a baptized man cannot sin; but before Baptism he can both sin and not sin. With you, then, he thinks that from the time of Baptism a necessity of good is imposed on men; which is equally false as what you think, that before Baptism there is in men a necessity of doing evil. For when you say: A man cannot will any good thing, unless he is helped by him who cannot will evil (C. duas epp. Pelag. 1, 7); by the participation, certainly, of grace and of the good nature, you wish a man to attain the possibility of doing good; which you say, nonetheless, can happen from the time of Baptism. Between impiety, then, and fear, you have fled in the middle to the fellowship of Jovinian, but you have not yet left the brothel of the Manichean. Nevertheless, by so much is Jovinian more innocent than you, by as much as the Manichean is more profane than Jovinian.

For that what we have done may be gathered yet more briefly: the Manichean says: In all human beings the nature of darkness, the inspirer of the evil will, offends, and can do nothing else. You say: In all human beings nature, infected by the darkness of the first sin, and through this the author of the evil will, offends, and cannot will good. Jovinian says: The will indeed of human beings, but up to Baptism, offends; but afterward it cannot will anything but good. The catholics, that is, we, say that from the beginning to the end, without any compulsion of natural things, the will offends, even before Baptism, in each one—the will which, at that very time when it sins, has the power to withdraw from evil, and to do good, so that the account of freedom may stand.

The truth of your doctrines, then, stands for none of you; yet, since you have gone forth from one principle of error, it would have been less dishonorable, if you admitted the things that follow, and—because you say with the Manichean that there is offending by an evil, that is, a maimed freedom—you said with the same that it can in no way be cleansed (which indeed you affirm elsewhere); but you added what necessarily followed, that therefore there is no need for it of the sacraments of baptism. Or if, with Jovinian, you assert that from the time of receiving the faith good desires are impressed; you said with the same that nature was good even before Baptism, which, though it had the possibility of evil, yet did not have the necessity, and by this came, consecrated, to an undissembling good. For in this way, even if you would not contravene reason, you would yet by no means contravene the doctrines of those whom you follow.

AUG. You have forgotten what we say: recall it, I beg. We are they who, against your protests, say that even to the just, as long as they are in this life, there is not lacking that on account of which, in their prayer, they truly say of themselves: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12). For if they say they have no sin, they deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them (Cf. 1 John 1:8). What is it, then, that you say emptily, that I am joined with Jovinian in that part where he says a baptized man cannot sin? Far be it that we should be so deaf and dumb that we should not hear the voice of those who are baptized, or should not say with them: Forgive us our debts. But from the time a man begins to use the choice of the will, he can both sin and not sin; but he does not do one of these except helped by him who said: Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5); but the other by his own will, whether seduced by himself, or by another deceiver, or assigned as a slave to sin.

But we know that men are helped by the Spirit of God, so that they will the things that are of God, even before Baptism, as Cornelius (Cf. Acts 10:1-3); but some not even after Baptism, as Simon Magus (Cf. Acts 8:9-13. 18-24). For the judgments of God are like a great abyss (Ps 36:6 (35:7)); and his grace is not of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace (Cf. Rom 11:6).

Cease, then, to revile us with the Manichean and Jovinian; for those whom you would revile in us—whom, following them, we cannot deny original sin—you would see, if you had eyes, and would be silent, if you had a brow. But you are so slanderous that you say I affirmed elsewhere that a man cannot be cleansed from sins; whereas I say he can, in such a way that he is even led to that point where, most blessed, he cannot sin.

99. JUL. But now, faithless in all things, you say that a necessity has been made in the nature of the flesh of sin.

AUG. Deny that the Apostle said: When you were slaves of sin, you were free of justice (Rom 6:20). Or if you do not deny that this was said by him, refute that he said it rightly. But if you dare not, deny, if you can, that those to whom he said this had a free will in evil things, when they were free of justice; or that they had a free will in good things, when they were slaves of sin; and dare to say that they were freed from this slavery by themselves, not by the grace of God—those to whom it is said: But now freed from sin, you have been made slaves of justice (Rom 6:18).

But if you say that they were freed by the grace of God from the guilt of past evils, not from the dominion of sin, by which one is not permitted to be just; but that, that sin should not have dominion over them, they themselves could do, if they willed, nor needed for this the grace of the Savior; where do you place him who says: It is not the good I will that I do, but the evil I do not will, this I do (Rom 7:19)? For if, established under the law, not under grace, he speaks these things, deny that this man groans under the heavy weight of necessity; assert that this man is free for living well and acting rightly through the choice of the will—he who cries out to you: You lie, or you are deceived; it is not what I will that I do. But if, as Ambrose better understood, the Apostle says this even of himself; then there is not in this life such freedom of the just for accomplishing good by their own will as there will be in that life, where it will not be said: It is not what I will that I do.

100. JUL. So that, with the possession of eternity lost (which indeed it is established it never had through its own origin), the will should incline assiduously to the seeking of depravity. And you add: The will which is free in evil things, is not free in good things; with no less a profession plainly of folly than of profanity, you call free that which you say can will only one thing.

AUG. If nothing is free except what can will two things, that is, both good and evil; God is not free, who cannot will evil, of whom you yourself too said, and said truly: God cannot be anything except just (Cf. supra 28). Do you so praise God that you take away from him freedom? Or rather, ought you to understand that there is a certain blessed necessity, by which God cannot be unjust?

101. JUL. But although you stand firm in no part, yet let the prudent reader attend to what you have brought forward. Let us agree that a will can be called free which cannot will good; but you assert that this will is freed in Baptism. I ask, in what manner is it freed? So that it is compelled always to will good, and cannot will evil? Or so that it can crave either? Here, if you answer: So that it is compelled always to will good; how much of a Jovinianist you are, you yourself too recognize. But if you say: How can a will be free, if it is compelled always to will good? I answer: How was it before said to be a free will, if it was compelled only to will evil? If, then, you answer that the free will is so made free after Baptism that it can both sin and not sin; by this very thing you will pronounce that there was no free choice, when it could not do both. You are shut in on every side by the snares of your own disputation; choice before Baptism was free; it had the faculty of doing good, just as it had the faculty of doing evil; and the whole stage-set of your doctrine, by which you persuade a natural evil, collapses.

AUG. Concerning the Manichean and Jovinian, he who reads will already find me to have answered you above; but how you say that he whose will we say is prepared by the Lord, is so made of good will that he is compelled to will good (which far be it that it be said by us), let your splendid understanding see to it. For if he is compelled, he does not will; and what is more absurd than to say that one unwilling wills what is good? Concerning the nature of God too, see what you think, you who say that a man is compelled to will good, if he cannot will evil. For is God compelled to will good, because he cannot will evil, since he is altogether unchangeable? But human nature, although changeable, as far as pertains to that which it was created, is good; which is not only made without vice, but even when through vice it is evil, is capable of the good by which it may be good. This true sentence overturns the deceptive madness of the Manicheans. But in Baptism all sins are so remitted in the grace of God—by which a man is even led to Baptism itself with a will prepared by him—that henceforth, although his spirit desires against the flesh that it may not consent to iniquity, yet also the flesh desires against the spirit, so that he too does not do what he wills. For he wills not to have this concupiscence of the flesh, but he cannot now; on account of which he still groans within himself, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of his body (Cf. Rom 8:23), where he will so have flesh that he can no longer sin. Now, then, not only can he sin after Baptism, but even because, while struggling well against the concupiscence of the flesh, he is sometimes drawn by it to consent; and although venial, yet he commits some sins; he has reason always to say here: Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12). This catholic truth too refutes the vanity of Jovinian. But both—that is, both what we say against the Manichean, and what against Jovinian—subverts your heresy and your slanders.

102. JUL. But if it was not free toward good before, and was made after Baptism so free that it cannot do evil; then indeed the freedom of choice was never present to it, and it is proved both to have sinned beforehand without guilt, and afterward to possess the glory of sanctity without any care.

AUG. Then neither in God is there freedom of choice, because he cannot do evil, just as he cannot deny himself (2 Tim 2:13)—he who will also bestow on us, by that highest reward, that we too may be unable to sin, equal not indeed to God himself, but yet to his angels. For he is to be believed to have granted this to them, after the fall of the devil, for the merit of the good will by which they stood in the truth, so that afterward none through free choice should become a new devil.

103. JUL. From which gathered, you are convicted of utterly contradicting your own doctrine; so that you promise that you do not deny free choice, which you subvert, before by a necessity of evil, afterward of good.

AUG. You are about to say, as I see, that God is pressed by necessity, so that he cannot sin; he who certainly neither can will, nor wills to be able, to sin. Nay rather, if it is to be called a necessity by which it is necessary that something either be or come about; this is altogether a most blessed necessity, by which it is necessary to live happily, and in that same life it is necessary not to die, it is necessary not to be changed for the worse. By this necessity—if it too is to be called a necessity—the holy angels are not pressed, but they enjoy it; for us, however, it is future, not present.

104. JUL. Nevertheless, it profits toward the whole destruction of your doctrine, that we also recall the earlier definitions. If sin is nothing but the will to retain and to admit what justice forbids, and from which one is free to abstain, no sin at all is found in things.

AUG. That definition is of sin which is only sin, not which is also the penalty of sin, by which the freedom of not sinning perished; from which evil he frees not, except he to whom we say not only: Forgive us our debts, but also: Lead us not into temptation, but free us from evil (Matt 6:12-13).

105. JUL. For if justice does not impute except that from which one is free to abstain; and before Baptism there is a necessity of evil, since the will, as you said, is not free for doing good, and through this can do nothing else but evil; it is defended from the infamy of evil by the very necessity it suffers; since with that justice it cannot be burdened by its own works, which does not impute evil except that from which one is free to abstain. But after Baptism, if there is a necessity of good, there can certainly be no sin. See, then, how that which reason demonstrates to be sin cannot be found in the seeds, when according to your definitions it is now not even found in morals.

AUG. You err greatly, who either think there is no necessity of sinning, or do not understand it to be the penalty of that sin which was committed with no necessity. For if there is no necessity of sinning (to omit the force of that evil which is drawn originally; for this you would have to be none), what, I ask, was he suffering who, according to your sense, was pressed by so great a mass of evil habit that he said: It is not the good I will that I do, but the evil I do not will, this I do (Rom 7:19)?

Then I suppose you consider with how great labor it is learned what is to be sought, what to be avoided in the conduct of life. But those who do not know this, by the very ignorance of the good to be sought and the evil to be avoided, suffer a necessity of sinning. For it is necessary that he sin who, not knowing what he ought to do, does what he ought not. Of which kind of evils God is asked, where it is said: Remember not the offenses of my youth and of my ignorance (Ps 25:7 (24:7)). Which kind of offenses, if the just God did not impute, a faithful man would not ask that they be forgiven him. Whence the servant of God Job too says: You have sealed up my sins in a bag, and have noted if I have committed anything unwillingly (Job 14:17 (sec. LXX)). You yourself too, in the last book of those four you published against my one, say, concerning the affections and passions of the mind: That an affective quality befalls human beings and so inheres, that it is separated either with great efforts, or with none at all (Cf. C. Iul. 6, 54). Whoever, then, sins by that timidity which cannot be separated from him, what else will he do but sin by necessity?

But you grant that these sins come from those sins which were committed by no necessity, at least in him who says: The evil I do not will, this I do. For he who, that he may suffer this necessity, is pressed only by the habit of sinning; without doubt, before he sinned, was not yet pressed by the necessity of habit. And by this, even according to you, the necessity of sinning, from which one is not free to abstain, is the penalty of that sin from which it was free to abstain, when no weight of necessity urged. Why, then, do you not believe that that ineffably great sin of the first man availed at least so much, that by it the whole of human nature was vitiated, as a second nature now avails in one man? For thus you thought we ought to be reminded that habit is called by the learned (Cf. supra 69). Since, then, we both confess that there are in men sins which are committed not by necessity, but by will, which are only sins, from which one is free to abstain; and the human race is full of sins coming from the necessity of ignorance or of the affections, which are now not only sins, but also penalties of sins; how do you say that, by our definitions, sin is not found even in morals? But hear what you are unwilling to. From all sins, whether original or moral, whether those that have been done, or that they may not be done, none frees except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we have been reborn, and from whom we have learned to say in prayer, not only: Forgive us our debts, that is, because we have sinned; but also: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:12-13), that is, that we may not sin.

106. JUL. But, with the sum of this disputation sealed in the mind of the prudent reader, let us shake out what your Baptism—which you say was provided on account of the mere stirring of the genitals—carries out of the office entrusted to it. It professes to expiate men from sins, but when the case of the will is tried before justice, that will is not pronounced guilty which could not will otherwise. But with the odium of guilt vanishing, the pomp too of the indulgent one vanished; for he cannot pardon what he cannot by right impute. And by this it is frustrated of the effects of its own promise; since it neither finds crimes by the remission of which it may be praised, nor has debtors of this benefit by which the bonds of sins are loosed; because it cannot convict of an evil will those placed in the sanctuary of necessity; through all which it is found superfluous. But because the grace which was provided by Christ is not superfluous, let its reasonable munificence be held, through which the guilty will of the sinner is convicted, which could surely will good as well as it willed evil. The whole fiction of necessity, then, has vanished; and by this, there is no sin from the condition of nature; but free choice abides in the nature of human beings; which, as you deny with the Manicheans, so we confess with the Apostles and all the Catholics.

AUG. It is necessary that he sin by whom justice is not known; is it for that reason that, when he has come to know justice, the sins which he committed by the necessity of ignorance are not to be remitted to him? Or because he now knows in what way he ought to live, is it to be presumed of himself that he will live justly, and not of him to whom it is said: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13)? There is not, then, a security of impunity in the necessity of sinning; but, that this necessity may not harm, he grants it to whom it is said: From my necessities deliver me (Ps 25:17 (24)). And he grants in two ways: both by remitting past iniquity, and by helping that we may not enter into temptation. But each one is tempted, drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence (Jas 1:14). This, undertaken by you, is so pleasing to you that, when one is not drawn by it into consent, you think it is itself to be praised; as though that were not an evil thing which impels into evil, if he who is impelled does not yield to it, but resists.

Although you, even if it is consented to, contend with great empty talk that it is he who fell, not the very thing that impelled; he who was drawn, not the very thing that drew; he who was enticed, not the very thing that enticed—that is to be blamed; namely because, as you define, he made bad use of a good; for you have so evil a spirit that the concupiscence by which the flesh desires against the spirit seems to you good. But you think you have elegantly mocked our sentence about Baptism, most mendaciously affirming that we say Baptism was provided on account of the mere stirring of the genitals. We do not say this, but that—which you, with a new and heretical perversity, try to subvert—we say that for this reason the help of the second, spiritual birth was divinely provided, which Christ instituted to be effected in himself, because those born carnally according to Adam contract, by their first birth, the contagion of the ancient death (See Cyprian, Letter to Fidus 64.5). Behold, I have used the words of the African bishop Cyprian, against whom you bark even though he is a martyr, when you assail the most firmly founded faith of the Church, for which Church his blood was shed. For just as Paul the apostle said: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12); so too Cyprian the bishop, an understander of this Apostle, confessed that those born carnally according to Adam contract, by their first birth, the contagion of the ancient death. What is it, then, that you fallaciously join yourself to the Apostles and all the Catholics; since you most openly contradict the Apostle fraudulently, and the Catholic bishop and martyr, in what he held with the Eastern and Western Catholic Church?

107. JUL. The exposition, indeed, which you applied to the words of the apostle Paul would have to be passed over with laughter, did it not terrify those ignorant of the Scriptures. When you were, the Apostle says, slaves of sin, you were free of justice (Rom 6:20).

He certainly could not say: freed; since this word of liberation is then fittingly and properly brought in, when a man is freed from harmful things; but those can be called free of virtues who decree that they owe nothing to the virtues. Free, then, both from good and from evil, can be called one who, serving the one, is zealous to owe nothing to the other; but freed cannot be said except from evil; because this word of liberation has in itself the indication of that distress from which one is rescued.

What question, then, could be raised with the Apostle about his own words, when he, in the manner of the human race, called those free of good, freed of evil? When, then, he says, you were slaves of sin, you were free of justice; what fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? (Rom 6:21) But lest you should think that we are made slaves to sin by nature, hear the Apostle himself speaking in those same places: Or do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves to obey, his slaves you are whom you obey, whether of sin, or of the obedience of justice? (Rom 6:16) You presented yourselves, he says, as slaves to sin; that you might understand that he imputes sin to the will, not to birth. For this reason alone, then, he said they were free of justice, because they had refused to keep its precepts.

AUG. If for this reason alone men were said to have been free of justice, because they had refused to keep its precepts; then before they received the precepts of justice, which they would refuse to keep, were they not free of justice, and slaves of sin? Who would say this? From this necessity of slavery, then, he frees who not only gives precepts through the law, but also bestows love through the spirit, by whose delight the delight of sin is overcome; otherwise it perseveres unconquered, and holds its slave. For by what one is overcome, to that he is also assigned as a slave (2 Pet 2:19).

108. JUL. Finally, he at once adds that they are slaves of justice in the same way as they had been slaves of sin before. By which you can now, if you please, call them free of sin, when they serve justice; just as they were called by him free of justice, when they served the offense. Most ineptly, then, did you wish to stir up a slander against apostolic simplicity. For he did not, as you think, most vigilantly intimate what you suppose; but you most drowsily look at what he brought forth. For you argue that he therefore preferred to say freed rather than free, that we might understand that by the freedom of choice one can indeed do evil, but cannot be made to do good.

But the very order of his words resists you. For if he had thought what you do—that by freedom one sins only—he ought to have said: You were free of sin; not: You were free of justice (Rom 6:20); so that he would be called free for whom freedom itself worked. For if it pleases to weigh even the moments of the cases, he said they were free of this justice, not free from this justice. More consequently, then, would we be helped by this expression, if we too wished to press such trivial matters.

But far be it: we understand the sense of the Apostle, and are content with the office of expressions simply set forth. The Teacher of the Gentiles said nothing else but: You were free—you did not serve—justice; you have been freed—you have received the pardon of sins, with the freedom of choice remaining; through which they could both obey sin before, and afterward obey justice.

AUG. By this heretical sense of yours—by which you say that freedom from sin does not come about through grace, except when pardon is received for the past; but not also that sin may not have dominion, when each one is drawn by his own concupiscence into consent to it—you contradict even the prayers of the saints. For why is it said to God: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13), if, that this may not happen, it is in the power of our free choice, which is naturally implanted in us? Why does the Apostle say: But we pray to God that you do nothing evil (2 Cor 13:7), if God does not free from sins except by giving pardon to past ones?

109. JUL. Finally, what his exhortation held, he showed by premising: It is a human thing that I say, on account of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity; so now present your members to serve justice unto sanctification; for when you were slaves of sin, you were free of justice (Rom 6:19-20). Most orderly, indeed, he says that those were free of justice whom he had addressed, that they should retain their members in all sanctification.

But because we have dwelt here not a little, in order to show that what I had said was most certain (See above, 1.73)—that men who had been terrified by your discourse would deny free choice, and would be thrust into true destruction by an empty fear; and that you are the chief denier of free choice—let us return to that book which is addressed to Valerius, that we may prove first that you denied God the Creator; but now, that you deny it in one place, and in another, far more wickedly than you had denied it, confess it. And indeed, how absolutely you denied God the Creator of human beings in that earlier book of yours, has appeared sufficiently when it was discussed; for you said that the devil plucked the human race, as it were, like the fruit of a shrub planted by himself, by right (Marriage and Desire 1.26); and many other things which, placed by you in the place of arguments, cooperate with this error. But in this second book, although you do the same thing by the universality of your doctrine, yet you strive more perniciously to amend the sentence you brought forth before.

AUG. If the Apostle is too little for you, who says: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12); Ambrose certainly—not as a Manichean, by which name you charge such men, of such faith as he was; but as a Catholic—understood the Apostle, and understanding him says: We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13). Behold of what, as of his own shrub, the devil plucked the fruit by right; not of the nature which God created, but of the vice which he himself planted. For neither can those who are born under sin be except under the author of sin, if they are not reborn in Christ.

110. JUL. But let us briefly supply the reply which is owed to your chapter, which we set down above (See above, 1.74). Constantly and faithfully, then, I answer that we do not envy men the Lord Jesus Christ as Liberator; men whom we address, lest, believing you, they be broken by despair of amendment, and withdraw from the instruction of Christ, as though commanding things which the nature of mortals cannot grasp, being weighed down forsooth by a congenital evil.

AUG. But death too is congenital; and yet he frees from it who vivifies whom he wills (John 5:21); to whom they ought to flee who wish to be freed from a congenital evil; and that they may do this, read in the Gospel who draws them (See John 6:44).

111. JUL. But let them run to him who cries: My yoke is sweet, and my burden is light (Matt 11:30); who both bestows pardon on an evil will by inestimable liberality, and the innocence which he creates good, makes better by renewing and adopting.

AUG. They are the very men whom you envy the Liberator, whom you deny to have an evil from which they may be freed. How, then, do you constantly and faithfully answer that you do not envy men the Lord Jesus Christ as Liberator; when you rather act, pertinaciously and unfaithfully, that little ones be not believed to be saved by him, as he saves his people from their sins (See Luke 19:10); on account of which, the Gospel speaking, we have learned that he was called Jesus (See Matt 1:21)? You will not, then, be able to teach that you do not envy men Christ the Liberator, because you can in no way show that little ones are not human beings.

112. JUL. I wonder, then, that you dared to set down the testimony where it is said: For by what one is overcome, to that he is also assigned as a slave (2 Pet 2:19). Which most manifestly makes for us, who assert that no one can be liable to the devil except him who, after a contest of the will, has been overcome by a degenerate surrender. But by you it ought not to have been usurped, since it vehemently resists you, who persuade that those are in the kingdom of the devil who are born, who without a will of their own could neither be conquered nor sin.

AUG. Those whom you say, being born, could neither be conquered nor contend, draw their origin from him in whom all sinned; who—man, which is worse—was conquered without a contest. For Adam existed, and in him we all existed; Adam perished, and in him all perished (See Ambrose, On Luke 7.234). Allow, then, little ones to be found by him who came to seek what had perished (See Luke 19:10; Rom 5:12); otherwise you altogether envy men Jesus the Liberator, since they too are men, with whatever loquacity you may believe the cruelty of this error of yours is to be covered.

113. JUL. Seeing that this avails very much against you, as though questioned by the testimony itself: Through what, then, are little ones in the kingdom of the adverse power, if Scripture is believed that each one, when he is conquered, is then the slave of the conqueror, and it is established that infancy, without the use of reason and of will, could neither fight nor yield?, you add: for through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12; Marriage and Desire 2.8). But God is the Creator of those who are born in such a way that all from one go into condemnation, of whom he is not the Liberator of those who are reborn. For he himself was called the potter, making from the same lump one vessel for honor according to mercy, another for dishonor according to judgment (Marriage and Desire 2.8), to whom the Church sings: mercy and judgment (Ps 101:1 (100)). This which you say, that through one man sin entered—a testimony of the Apostle by which you have moved the breasts of very many of the unlearned—although in the fourth book I have briefly shown how it ought to be understood (See below, 2.20), yet, with the help of Christ, in this work we shall expound it more fully, so that in the second book, with other things passed over, that apostolic passage itself may be most fully discussed in its own context.

AUG. To that which in your fourth book you say you have briefly shown, you have been answered in my sixth (Answer to Julian 6.75); but as for what you promise in this work, when you have begun to render it, there it will appear how empty a talker you are.

114. JUL. But here let me briefly admonish, since it cannot support you toward the confirmation of that sentence which all erudition, all reason, and the law of God convict of being most unjust. Let the diligent reader attend, then, to what you have pronounced—that God is the maker of evils; and that he creates such men as go into condemnation, absolutely all, without any merit of their own will.

AUG. This I said: that he makes the nature of human beings, who are evil by the vice of evil which he himself did not make; and of which nature he himself does good, even when the men he makes are evil; because, insofar as they are men, not insofar as they are evil, he makes them. For neither would vessels be made for dishonor, unless they were evil; who yet, by the nature which God makes, are surely good; but evil according to the vice which the enemy implanted, against nature indeed, but yet in nature; so that from this there should be an evil nature, that is, an evil man. For there can be no evil except in some good; because it cannot be except in some nature; but every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is a good (Prosper, Excerpts 296.8). Diligently attend in what manner those things are said which seem to be said as though contrary to each other, and are not; if indeed you have not utterly lost your eyes by the smoke of proud contention.

115. JUL. And lest we should not know of what time you were speaking, you pronounce that from Adam, whom you say all were one, to the end, those who are not baptized are found liable to condemnation and to the devil. In which sentence you strive to wound much more perniciously than you had wounded before. For, to remove the odium which was rushing upon you—that you said the devil was the Creator of human beings—corrected, you confess God the Creator, but of such as the Manichean ascribes to the prince of darkness.

AUG. We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13). This was not said by the unclean heretic Manichaeus, but by the holy Catholic Ambrose. Moreover, the Manichean neither says that every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good; nor does he say that the nature which he calls evil can in any way be healed and made good; which the Catholic faith says of the human nature of the small and the great, both against the Manicheans and against the Pelagians—both insane with diverse diseases, but equally.

116. JUL. For indeed, believing men to be evil by the condition of being born, he deputed to them that author through whom the crime of an evil work might be separated from the good God; and because he had erred in the definition of sin, so as to think that natural which cannot be except voluntary, he consequently afterward devised an evil artificer of an evil origin; here more religious toward God, more contumacious toward nature. But you say that men are indeed born evil, but that God is the author of the evils; you more contumacious toward God, more honoring toward nature; for nature is defended by the majesty of its author, but the author is accused by the foulness of the work.

AUG. Accuse God, then, if you please, by the foulness of the work; since some bodies are born so foul that some among them, by reason of excessive deformity, are even called monsters. For not another god, as the Manichean feigns, nor lesser gods, as Plato errs, are the creators of bodies; but assuredly the good and just God works even such bodies; which, if you refer to the heavy yoke upon the children of Adam (See Sir 40:1), you will find him neither evil, such as the Manichean applies to the fashioning of bodies; nor conquered and entangled with and mixed into evils, which the Manichean does not fear to believe of the good God; but plainly just on account of original sin, such as the Catholic faith knows him, from which your error has strayed. For if no one had sinned, foul and monstrous bodies would not be born even in paradise.

117. JUL. You did not fear, most wicked man, to apply to God this which, lest he might apply it to him, the Manichean devised another creator; both of you indeed are enemies of the truth, but before you it was thought that he could not be surpassed in impiety.

AUG. Before me was Ambrose, who was not a Manichean; before him Hilary, Gregory; before these Cyprian, and the rest, whom it would be long to recall, who were not Manicheans. And yet they taught the Church what they learned in the Church—that little ones draw original sin, and are to be breathed upon in the exorcisms, that they may be rescued from the power of darkness, and transferred into the kingdom of their Savior and Lord (See Col 1:13). Since Christ, if he died even for them—which you too were compelled to confess—therefore all died; and he died for all (2 Cor 5:14-15), as the Apostle says; who assuredly, if according to your words he too will be a Manichean, then what will you be?

118. JUL. But you have justified, as the Prophet says, your sister Sodom (See Ezek 16:48.51.55); the Manichean will be thought acquitted, if he is compared with your blasphemies. I had gloried, in the first book of my work, that I was torn by the same mouth by which the apostles too had borne injury; but now I dread the greatness of my felicity; I am reviled by him who charges God.

AUG. You are reviled by him who, with Ambrose and the rest of his companions, proclaims Christ the Liberator even of little ones; whom you not only charge as a liar, where he says he came to save and to seek what had perished (See Luke 19:10); but you even contradict him, lest he seek little ones to be saved.

119. JUL. Whence has there befallen me the dignity of so great an insult? You could have conferred nothing such on me by praising. You say my views are to be reproved, but God's works to be condemned; that I dispute badly; but you pronounce that God creates wickedly; you cry that I err; that he is savage; you assert that I do not know the law; but that God does not know justice; you vociferate that I am not Catholic, because I say that Christ summons those whom he saves; but you swear that God creates those whom he condemns, and creates for no other reason than that all may go into condemnation.

AUG. This can be said also of the foreknowledge of God, which yet cannot be denied by the faithful, and I think not by you either. Either deny that God foreknows that he will condemn many whom he creates, lest he seem to create those whom he condemns; and—what is more wonderful and more inscrutable—that he does not snatch from this life many, lest malice change their understanding (See Wis 4:11), whom he cannot fail to know will be evil. Give honor to God: let the babbling ruin of your words—glistening and sharp as it were, but glassy—yield to the depth of his judgments.

120. JUL. Between you, then, and the Manichean, the begetter of your views, I see that, by the progress of your erudition, a great distance has been made. For he, although he had introduced two authors, yet left a hope of salvation from that part where he said the good God is most alien from iniquity and from cruelty; but you, speaking of one God indeed as good, but the same as the Creator of evils, have utterly taken away both the reverence of divinity and the hope of salvation.

AUG. The Manicheans feign a God cruelly weak, who handed over his own part, his own substance, the members of his nature, to be torn and contaminated by enemies, by whom he saw devastation threatening him; but you, who do not deny that God is most almighty, wish him to be believed unjust in the heavy yoke of little ones, by denying original sin.

121. JUL. For there is none to come to the aid of the guilty, when he himself, who is one, by a desire of creating miseries, punishes even those in whom he acknowledges nothing other than this, which he himself made.

AUG. He acknowledges there also what he himself did not make; for sin he himself did not make. But another, empty like you, could say that God, by a desire of creating miseries, creates even those whom he could not fail to know he would condemn—incomparably more than those whom he foreknew he would free.

122. JUL. With the abyss of your impiety inspected, then—though nothing more profane could ever be found—yet how this has no force, and what is to be gathered from those things you had appended, will be shown by a brief disputation. God, who willed to be called by this name, is believed, as he is most almighty, so also most just; of which if one be lacking, neither will be present; as the most benign Creator of human beings, so the most equitable assessor of merits; everything that he makes is very good (See Gen 1:31). And by this, no one is naturally evil, but whoever is guilty is accused by his morals, not by his beginnings.

AUG. Why, then, is there a heavy yoke upon the beginnings of little ones under a God most powerful and most just?

123. JUL. And so evil is not natural, nor can God create the guilty, nor place them in the kingdom of the devil. With these gathered, you too are shown a Manichean, nay worse than the Manichean; and the entrance of humanity into this world without sin, and the fruit of fecundity under the right of God, not of the devil, and natural innocence, have shone forth.

AUG. Then Ambrose too, who said: In the first beginnings of their nature, little ones who have been baptized are reformed from malice (Ambrose, On Luke 1.37), is shown a Manichean, or worse than the Manichean, as you revile—or you are raving.

124. JUL. With this sealed, then, attend to what follows from your progress. It is established that the Prophets and Patriarchs, and all the saints of the Old Testament, were without Baptism, but created by God, and thereafter shone with their own virtues; they will therefore be believed to be under the kingdom of the devil—against the testimony of the law—to be consigned to eternal punishments; because from Adam all are pronounced by you created unto condemnation.

AUG. The same grace, against which you have declared war, freed those ancient just ones too; although they used diverse sacraments for the time. For what we believe about Christ, they too believed. For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5), whose coming in lowliness was foretold to them, but announced to us; but the coming in glory, which will be at the end, was both foretold to them and to us.

Both theirs, then, and ours, in this one Mediator, is one faith, and the same spirit of faith both in them and in us; whence the Apostle says: But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written: I believed, on which account I have spoken; and we too believe, on which account we also speak (2 Cor 4:13). But whence this faith is, lest we glory as though it were from ourselves, let us hear the same Apostle: By grace, he says, you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God (Eph 2:8). And in another place: Peace, he says, to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph 6:23).

125. JUL. But if you say this, even your patrons will be able to confess how openly you are a Manichean. But if you understand that so great an army of the true King fights against your view, and that you can bring no prejudice against them; acquiesce that what you had built up has been destroyed, and that by this not all from one go into condemnation (See Rom 5:16); but only those who, rebellious against the will of God, without repentance, without correction, have been caught at the last end.

AUG. Add also the generated, if they have not been regenerated; because in one all sinned (See Rom 5:12).

126. JUL. But as for the fact that God was called: The potter making from the same lump one vessel for honor, another for dishonor (Rom 9:21), it ought by no means to have been recalled by you; because, as it is consequently expounded by us, so it is wholly opposed to you; for when some are said to be made for honor, others for dishonor, the sense of the Catholics is helped, by which, according to the diversity of the human will, a diverse outcome too of the vessels is proclaimed.

AUG. Hear Ambrose, who says: We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13). For so he understood, with the rest of his fellow disciples and fellow teachers, without any doubt Catholics, what was written of sin and death, that it entered through one, and passed to all human beings (See Rom 5:12). And understand that this is the lump from which the vessels are made, whether those or these. For if the solution of this inscrutable question were that which you think, according to the merits of wills, it would be so manifest that the Apostle would not be compelled by any difficulty of it to say: O man, who are you to answer back to God? (Rom 9:20) For it was treated concerning those not yet born, of whom, not from works, but according to his own purpose, God loved one and hated the other; whence it came to these words, that of the same lump and the diverse vessels, and of the power of the potter, it was said.

127. JUL. But you, who said above that all go into condemnation, with what brow did you set down the testimony by which it is pronounced that one goes into honor, another into dishonor?

AUG. But grace frees from the condemnation of the whole lump those whom it frees; which by denying, you are heretics. For so far as pertains to the merit of origin, from one all go into condemnation (Rom 5:16); but so far as pertains to grace, which is given not according to merits, whoever are freed from this condemnation are called vessels of mercy; but those who are not freed, the wrath of God remains over them (John 3:36), coming from the just judgment of God; which is not for that reason to be blamed because it is inscrutable; and therefore they are called vessels of wrath, because God uses even these well, to make known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy (Rom 9:23). For what is exacted from the rest, by God judging, is granted to these, by him being merciful; whose unsearchable ways of the Lord, if you judge to be condemned, hear: O man, who are you to answer back to God? (Rom 9:20)

128. JUL. For nothing so fights as to say: all, and not all. You say that all are made for condemnation by God the potter; the Apostle says, not all for condemnation, nor all for honor; which, in its own place, what dignity it has, I will resolve. Yet in the very pronouncement of the sentence, it is established that there is a great discord between you, and that the potter who fashions all things for condemnation is not the same as the one whom Paul says fashions others for honor; and that you do not believe him who is proclaimed by the admirable teacher; since your potter fashions all for condemnation, the Apostle's potter fashions very many for glory.

AUG. When all from one are said to go into condemnation, that very lump is signified, from which the potter makes other vessels for honor, that is, those which are taken up into grace; others for dishonor, that is, those which are left to pay the debt; so that the children of grace may know that this is granted to them, which, if it were exacted, would not be unjust; and so they may glory not in themselves, but in the Lord (See 1 Cor 1:31).

129. JUL. And these things indeed I have said, that it might at once appear that you are of singular ignorance or impudence, who, in place of your own people, would use contraries; but for the rest, piety and reason will explain that my God forms no one for dishonor.

AUG. If your God forms no one for dishonor, he is not the God of the apostle Paul; for he was speaking of the true God: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Or does not the potter of the clay have power, from the same lump, to make one vessel for honor, another for dishonor? (Rom 9:20-21; see Isa 45:9) But you, forsooth, a great craftsman, bring forth from the Pelagian workshop a better god, who makes no vessel for dishonor.

130. JUL. But to create his own image, that is, all human beings good, who desires to reform even those demolished by the depravity of their pursuits, by the bounty of his remedies. To him indeed the Church sings mercy and judgment (Ps 101:1 (100)); because he is both benign to those who have committed no offense, and punishes with a just judgment those who, created good by God, sinned by their own will, and spurned the helps of mercy. This mercy, then, and this judgment, the Church of the Catholics sings; but in yours nothing such can resound, which says that God, without justice, without judgment, without mercy, the Creator of evils, forms those whom he may punish; and for this reason punishes, because he himself formed them from Adam.

AUG. You have indeed already been answered above on all these things; yet hear here too briefly. God does not withhold the good of his fashioning even from the condemned stock; but if it displeases you that God creates those whom he condemns; contradict him, if you can, lest he create those whom he foreknew would be evil, and would persevere in malignity even to the end, and on this account, without doubt, were to be condemned; or suggest to him, if it seems good, that he should snatch from this life so many thousands of unbaptized little ones, whom he knows will live perdition, and will go, by his condemning, with the devil into eternal fire, while they are innocent and good; so that, if not in his kingdom, yet certainly in some place of a second felicity—which your heresy has built for such—they may hold everlasting life.

You have still what to suggest, as a counselor of God, on behalf of his children whom he has regenerated, whom he has adopted, and yet has foreseen will be evil and to be condemned; that, before they come into a guilty life, they be deprived of life itself, and belong to his kingdom, not to eternal punishments.

For when you think you say spitefully that God creates those whom he condemns; consider how much more spitefully another, empty in like manner, could say that God regenerates those whom he condemns; since it is in the power of his omnipotence, before they become damnable, to take them away from the temptations of this mortal life.

But if you cannot say these things, nor contradict God, nor offer your counsel to that wisdom; for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? (Rom 11:34; see Isa 40:13), cease to introduce to us another potter, who does not make vessels for dishonor; and restrain yourself from reproving this one who makes them, and recognize yourself; for, that you may not entangle yourself in this sacrilege, therefore the Apostle says to you: O man, who are you to answer back to God? (Rom 9:20)

131. JUL. But now let the dignity of the apostolic sentence be asserted, lest it be thought to have meant of some what you have judged of all. The apostle Paul, then, disputing with the questions of the Jews—who, swollen with the dignity of their race, disdained that believers from the Gentiles should be made equal to them—both commends the justice of God and his grace, disputing that it belongs to their munificence both that first the recognition of the law had ennobled the Jews, and that afterward the preaching of Christ had admitted the Gentiles also.

For there is one Creator of both peoples, about to judge both these through the law, and those without the law, and these in the law (See Rom 2:12; 3:29-31); because he was not the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, rendering to each his own without fraud, without favor (See Rom 3:29)—that is, without any respect of persons (which the name of favor expresses in the definition of justice)—so that those coming from the seed of Abraham, when they live wickedly, he by right condemns, and drives from his inheritance, just as the Gentiles too, caught in a like working; and on the other side, the good wills and the true faith and uprightness of actions of both peoples he rewards with everlasting joys.

The Teacher of the Gentiles, then, represses the swelling of the Jews, and shows that the distance is not in the seeds of the human race, but in morals; so that they might recognize themselves to be vindicated by no prerogative of a circumcised race, unless they had taken care to be faithful; since indeed Jacob and Esau, conceived by one taking of seed, and poured forth by one force of her giving birth, suffered exceedingly diverse outcomes according to the diversity of their merits.

AUG. If you had a taste according to the Apostle, you would not here recall the merits of Jacob, where he says that the one was loved not from works; that he might commend grace, which is not given according to our merits; otherwise the reward is not reckoned, as he himself says, according to grace, but according to debt (Rom 4:4). By which words what does he show, except that grace is not owed, but gratuitous? This, then, he was commending, where he said: For when they were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, that according to the election the purpose of God might stand, not from works, but from him who calls, it was said: That the elder shall serve the younger (Rom 9:11-12). The things you try to obscure are clear; remove the smoke, attend to the light of the Scriptures. For grace goes before a man, that he may love God, by which love he may work good. Which the apostle John too most openly shows, where he says: Let us love, because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). Not, then, are we loved because we have loved; but because we have been loved, let us love.

132. JUL. For Esau, profane and a fornicator, selling his birthright for one meal, sought the blessing he had spurned, and did not obtain it, although he had begged for it with tears. But Jacob, quiet and meek, obedient to his parents' precepts, and most desirous of sanctifications, was advanced to this point, that, as of Abraham and Isaac, so also of Jacob God should be called among the holy people (See Exod 3:6; Matt 22:32; Heb 12:16-17). Since, then, it was established by all examples that God by a just judgment does not deny his mercy to good minds in whatever nation, but allows evil minds to be defended by no nobility of stock; the Jews were to understand that the faith of the Gentiles ought not to be despised by them; because, just as the lineage of the Israelites does not patronize crimes, so too the origin of the Gentiles is no hindrance to virtues. Doing all this in that contest, then, the Apostle, in certain places nonetheless, to curve down the arrogance of the circumcised, under the name of grace makes a prejudgment from the power of God alone.

AUG. Then, to curve down the arrogance of the circumcised, the Apostle lies under the name of grace; for God chooses from works, not from grace. Who would think thus, except a heretic, an enemy of grace, a friend of pride? The Vessel of election, and the preacher of the grace by which he was made such, cries out that Jacob was loved not from works, and you recall the works of Jacob, from which you contend he was loved; and doing this, you think you contradict me, when you are a new Antichrist, and most openly contradict him in whom Christ spoke (See 2 Cor 13:3).

133. JUL. So that, to those glorying in the observance of ceremonies and sacrifices, and on this account judging that other nations, consecrated by no rites of the law, could neither be admitted suddenly to their fellowship, nor ought to be, he might say that, even if in those observances were the sum of justice, yet God had in his power to make a certain interchange of peoples, so as to reject whom he willed, and take up whom he willed. To which sense he answers under the person of the Jews, that nothing ought now to be exacted from the will of man; since indeed God has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills (Rom 9:18). To which the Apostle replies: O man, who are you to answer back to God? (Rom 9:20) And he brings in the testimony of the prophet Isaiah: Does the thing formed say, he says, to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? (Isa 45:9; Rom 9:20)

And he adds of his own: Or does not the potter of the clay have power, from the same lump, to make one vessel for honor, another for dishonor? (Rom 9:21) And the sense is of this kind: Because I commended the will of God, and set forth the authority of his grace, saying that he would show mercy to whomever he had mercy on; you, O Jew, stirred up a slander against me, as though the commendation brought forth by me of the divine will and power pertained to the destruction of that justice; and because I said: He does what he wills; you argued that nothing now ought to be required of the will of man, if God did everything according to his own will; whereas the dignity of the person excluded the place for the question. For if I had said: God does what he ought according to the laws of his justice, which judges of the merits of individuals; you would surely have brought forward nothing of the kind you now object; but now, because I said: God does what he wills, you thought I had stolen something from the dignity of justice. Both, then, are the same. For when I say of God: He does what he wills, I say nothing else than: He does what he ought; for I know that he wills nothing other than what he ought. Where, then, the will inseparably clings to equity, whichever of them I shall have named, I have signified both.

AUG. In whatever way you say that God does what he ought; he owes grace to no one, and to many he does not render the punishment which he owes to their evil works, and he bestows the grace which he owes to none of their good works. For what did he owe to Paul himself, while still Saul he was persecuting the Church? Was it not punishment? That, then, he cast him down by a voice sent from heaven, that he blinded him, that he so violently drew him to receive the faith he was laying waste (See Acts 9:4.8), he did without doubt according to grace, not according to debt, so that he might be among those remnants of the people of Israel, of whom he says: So then even at this time the remnants have been made by the election of grace; but if by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace (Rom 11:5-6). What did he owe even to those except punishment, to whom he says: Not on your account do I act, O house of Israel, but on account of my holy name, which you have profaned among the Gentiles (Ezek 36:22)?

He says, then, that he makes their good things in them, but on account of his own name which they profaned, not on account of those who profaned it; for if he willed to do it on their account, he would render them the punishment owed, not bestow grace unowed. For what he says he will do pertains to this, that they may do good things, not because they were good who profaned his holy name. Finally, he says most openly that they will do good things; but he doing it, that they may do them; for he says, among other things: And I will make you walk in my justifications, and observe and do my judgments (Ezek 36:27). To these works certainly the reward is reckoned according to debt; for the reward is owed, if they be done; but grace, which is not owed, goes before that they may be done. The reward, I say, is owed to the good works of men; but grace is not owed, which works the men themselves good out of evil.

Finally, you who said that God does what he ought, and with high neck fanned about human merits, say, I beg, by what merits of little ones the kingdom of heaven is owed them. You will say perhaps that he owes this to his grace, by whose help they have been reborn. For on account of having received this grace, they now deserve to come into his kingdom; but that very grace, which he shows to those to be regenerated, he owes to none of their merits at all. For this reason your Pelagius, in the episcopal Palestinian trial, that he might not himself be condemned, was compelled to condemn those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits; where he condemned without doubt both you yourself, and himself, who do not cease to say this (See The Deeds of Pelagius 13.30).

This grace, truly grace, that is, gratuitous, and owed to no preceding merits, the Apostle was commending, when he said: For when they were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, that according to the election the purpose of God might stand (Rom 9:11-12). This is the election, of which it is also said: The remnants have been made by the election of grace; but if by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace (Rom 11:5-6). Whence here too, when he had said: That the purpose of God might stand according to the election; he at once added: Not from works, but from him who calls, it was said: That the elder shall serve the younger (Rom 9:12).

Against this trumpet of truth you cry out, and you say: To curve down the arrogance of the circumcised, the apostle Paul, under the name of grace, makes a prejudgment from the power of God alone. Where what do you say else, except: To curve down the arrogance of the circumcised, the Apostle lies, saying that Jacob was loved not from works; whereas he was loved from works, because he was quiet, and meek, obedient to his parents' precepts, and most desirous of sanctifications (See above, 1.132)? Nor do you understand that he was loved not because he was such, or would be such; but was made such, because he was loved. Blush: the Apostle does not lie; Jacob was not loved from works; for if by grace, then no longer from works (Rom 11:6); but loved by grace, it behooved that, by the same grace working, he should be strong in good works. Spare your own soul, do not be an enemy of this grace.

134. JUL. Therefore that pride, which wished to be idle, and to veil its sloth under the color of necessity, so as to clamor against the Gospel in the reception of the Gentiles, hears that even if it were as you contrive, yet you ought to supplicate God, not to stir up sedition; with which words he beats down the wickedness of a man who, hunting the ambiguity of the expression, was trying to ascribe to divine necessity the diversity of merits coming from the quality of the will, so as to assert that one of two things was necessary: that is, either that the Gentiles should not come to the fellowship of the promise, or, if this were permitted to God, that the offices of free will should be extinguished.

But because this was not sufficient for the matter; for from such a teacher, just as the authority of God was commended, so justice was not to be left undefended; he most consequently adds that the vessels which are made for dishonor and which for honor have this from the wage of their own will. For if God, willing to show wrath, and to make known his power, in much patience, on the vessels of wrath, fitted for perdition; and that he might make known, he says, the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory, whom also he called, us, not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles (Rom 9:22-24).

Certainly here he resolves what the earlier contest had covered: that wrath is brought by God only upon those vessels which have been fitted for perdition; but glory is given to those which have been prepared for this. But by whom vessels of this kind are prepared for the reception of those things we have mentioned, the Apostle's own discourse made plain. In a great house, he says, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware; some indeed for honor, others for dishonor. If, then, anyone cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work (2 Tim 2:20-21).

AUG. Then the vessels themselves so prepare themselves, that it was said in vain of God: Which he prepared for glory? For this you say most openly; nor do you understand that it was said: If anyone cleanses himself, in such a way that the work of man too through the will might be shown; but, ungrateful man, the will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 (LXX)); therefore both are true—both that God prepares the vessels for glory, and that they prepare themselves.

For that man may do it, God does it; because that man may love, God first loves. Read the prophet Ezekiel, whence I recalled above what seemed sufficient (See above, 1.133); you will find also these words—that is, that God makes those of whom he has mercy do his precepts, not on account of their merits, which he there recalls to be evil, but on account of his own name; so that, with God, without their merits, making that they do his precepts, they may begin to have the merits of good deeds. This is the grace which you deny—not from the works that are done, but that they may be done.

135. JUL. Behold the office of free will: If, he says, anyone cleanses himself from the fellowship of vile vessels (by which name vices are denoted), he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work (2 Tim 2:21). These vessels, then, by their own pursuits, are prepared either for wrath or for glory; but God makes known his power in both, either by exerting severity upon the impious, or by bestowing blessing upon the faithful. It appeared, then, that this sentence of the excellent preacher both brought no help to the Manichean senses, and on the contrary armed us consequently.

AUG. Why do you slander, why do you falsely charge, and do not attend whom and what kind of teachers of the Church you charge? Not with the words of any Manichean, but of holy Ambrose I answer you: God calls those whom he deigns, and makes religious whom he wills (Ambrose, On Luke 7.27). This he does in truth, this Ambrose understood in the truth of the divine Scriptures; but the judgment, when he makes some and does not make others, is hidden.

On account of which it is said to man through man, but not from man: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Or does not the potter of the clay have power, from the same lump, to make one vessel for honor, another for dishonor? (Rom 9:20-21) Take away your mists from the serenity of these words, by which the judgment of God indeed is signified to be hidden; but they themselves are so clear that they do not suffer themselves to be shadowed and obscured by your fog.

136. JUL. And by this it is vehemently opposed to you too, saying that not all are fashioned for condemnation, into which you pronounce all to go. But you are wont to argue most absurdly, so that you say: But these are not fashioned for condemnation, who are afterward freed; whereas not even thus can even the surface of the apostolic discourse fit you. For when you say: All are created for condemnation by the law of being born, but some thence, though very few, are freed by the mysteries; you do not assert this which he does, who not only proclaims that some are freed from the condemned, but that not all are fashioned for condemnation, but others for dishonor, others for honor.

AUG. Where the Apostle said: From one all into condemnation (Rom 5:16); he showed that very lump, which, wholly vitiated, flowed from Adam; but where he says that from it vessels are made for honor, he commends the grace by which God even frees the men he creates; but where, that from it vessels are made for dishonor, he shows the judgment by which God, although he creates men, yet does not free them.

Which you too are compelled to confess concerning little ones, whose lump—of all of them—you certainly cannot deny to be one, of whatever sort you think it; from which lump, nevertheless, you confess that some are adopted into the kingdom of God, whom without doubt you grant to be made vessels for honor; but others not adopted, whom—made vessels for dishonor—unless you intelligently consent, you impudently deny.

For even if this is not, as you wish, the penalty of damnation, will it not be at least the dishonor of the image of God, to be separated from the kingdom of God? But you, if you will persevere in denying that grace, will show yourselves to belong to this judgment; which certainly in little ones would be unjust, if there were no original sin.

137. JUL. But just as it has become clear that the Apostle spoke of morals, so it appears with what great poverty of the testimonies of the Law you labor, who from these sentences seek help against the thunderbolts of reason—sentences which disdain, nay, by their own nature cannot, come to your aid.

AUG. Against the Apostle, who says that God makes from the same lump one vessel for honor, another for dishonor; and does not say, neither for honor nor for dishonor—which he certainly would say, if he believed concerning little ones what you do; against him, then, thundering divinely, your reasoning is not a thunderbolt, but smoke.

138. JUL. And these things indeed have been disputed so far as concerns the testimony of the Apostle. But in Isaiah, whence Paul took the sentence itself, so far is God from deterring the rational creature from the consideration of his judgment, that, just as through the same Prophet he had said: Cease to act perversely, learn to do well, come to the aid of the oppressed; and come, accuse me, says the Lord (Isa 1:16-18); so here too, lest he should seem to have done anything by power alone, not by justice, he deigns to open the reason of his dispensations. For he announces to the people of the Jews, afflicted in captivity, that the time of redemption is drawing near, in which they would return to their own land; and he discloses the cause both of the preceding distresses and of the impending joys. Let the heaven feast from above, he says, and let the clouds rain down justice; let mercy spring up from the earth, and let justice spring up together. I am the Lord God who created you, making you better; I have prepared you as the clay of the potter. Does he who plows, plow the earth all day? Does the clay say to the potter: What do you make, since you do not work, since you have no hands? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: You have formed me wisely? Or who says to a father: What will you beget? And to a mother: What will you bring forth? For thus says the Lord God of Israel, the Holy One, who made things to come: Ask me concerning my sons and daughters, and concerning the works of my hands command me. I made the earth, and man upon it; I with my hand established the heaven; I gave command to all the stars; I raised up a king with justice, and all his ways are straight; he will build my city, and bring back the captivity of my people, not with reward, nor with gifts, says the Lord of Sabaoth (Isa 45:8-13).

AUG. If you understood the words of the Prophet, you would understand that the king there, of whom it was said: I raised up a king with justice, and all his ways are straight (Isa 45:13), is the Mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus; but you would understand it as it is to be understood. For you will not dare to say that, by preceding merits of works, he was made the Son of God from the beginning, that is, from the womb of the Virgin. By what grace, then, that man was from the beginning made good, by the same grace human beings who are members of him are made good out of evil. For what you may say of Christ according to the man, you do not find—that is, according to that by which the Word became flesh; that he who was God both remained God and was made man; that the man himself was never so a man as not to be the only-begotten Son of God, on account of the only-begotten Word.

For not, that he might be this, did he obtain it by the merits of his own morals coming from his own will; but, as Ambrose truly said, as though born of the Spirit he abstained from offense (Ambrose, On Isaiah; see Marriage and Desire 1.40). Otherwise, according to you, there would be many such, if they had willed to be; and that he was the only such one, was in the power of human beings who were unwilling to be such; which, if you attend with how great impiety they are said, or even believed by silent thought; just as you acknowledge the nature of the Only-begotten, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1); acknowledge also the grace, that the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He, then, calls those whom he deigns, and makes religious whom he wills (Ambrose, On Luke 7.27), who made the man he willed, alone without any preceding merits of human will, the Mediator of God and human beings.

139. Jul. In this passage, then, so far as the historical sense is concerned, this meaning is contained: that God speaks to the people thus—It was not out of hatred that I handed you over into captivity, nor have I now released you from the bonds of the Babylonian captivity through any forgetfulness of judgment; rather, for my own part, I am ready to cherish you with unbroken kindness, yet I owed it to my own justice both to hand over wrongdoers to their enemies and to restore and set free those who had been afflicted. For just as one skilled in farming does not always press on with a single task, cleaving the fields with the ploughshares all day long, but arranges his lands for a hoped-for fruitfulness by various means, so too do I vary the turns of my dispensations, that now by hardships, now by consolations, I may make your will fit for the harvest of justice.

Finally, that you may understand with how great fairness I deal with you—I could, by my power, despise your mutterings, so that, just as the thing fashioned cannot say to the potter, What have you made? so I might likewise lay the weight of silence upon you; yet, against such precedents, I invite you, as my sons and daughters, that is, for your own sake and for the works of my hands, to question me, and to learn that I have done everything justly and never anything cruelly.

Aug. You say what you wish, not what Isaiah said; he speaks of grace, against which you speak.

140. Jul. Both by the prophet, then, and by the Apostle the potter has been brought forward as an illustration, offering nothing more than the service of a comparison; not, however, so as to show that human beings are as cheap before God as clay is in the furnace and on the potter's wheel. Having completed the exposition we set forth above, we note that, according to the recent translation, something else shines forth in this same passage. Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down the just one; let the earth be opened and bring forth a Savior, and let justice spring up together; I the Lord have created him. Woe to him who contradicts his maker, a potsherd among the earthen vessels of Samos. Does the clay say to its potter, What are you making? And your work is without hands? (Isa 45:8-9) By these words, even though according to history King Cyrus is signified, according to prophecy the incarnation of the Savior is expressed; and since he was to be born of a Virgin, the obstinacy of the Jews and of all unbelievers is confronted, lest they wage war against the signs of the faithful. For when he had first said, Let the earth be opened and bring forth a Savior, and let justice spring up together, he says, I the Lord have created him.

Aug. Tell me by what works the man Christ Jesus merited this, and by what justice of God he alone merited it—dare to prattle on; or, if you do not dare, then at last confess that grace is without merits, grace that not only remits sins to a human being but also works justice in human nature by the Holy Spirit. For did not grace also remit sins to the man Christ, or did not grace make him such that from the beginning he was always good, just as from the beginning he was always the Son of God? Surely, just as those who in the desert were being deadly afflicted by the bites of the serpents were admonished to look to the one who had been lifted up as a sign, lest they perish (See Num 21:6-9), so too must those who are being poisoned by your disputations be admonished to look to Christ, and to see in the justice of that mediating man a grace without merits, so that they may shut out from themselves the venom of your mouth.

Then in the words of the prophet, even according to the recent translation that you have cited, where Christ has been more clearly prophesied, you took up nothing from which to argue except that he was born of a Virgin, because it was said, Let the earth be opened and bring forth a Savior; but about his justice, which here is foretold along with it, you chose to say nothing—even though you yourself set forth the very words of the prophet, where he says, Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down the just one; let the earth be opened and bring forth a Savior, and let justice spring up together.

Tell me what just one the clouds rained down, except that the prophets and the apostles preached Christ, who was born with justice from the very womb of the Virgin? Hence, when it had been said, Let the earth be opened and bring forth a Savior, there was at once added, and let justice spring up together.

And through this, human beings become just by that grace, being reborn in Christ, by which grace Christ was born a just man. Just as, then, he is an example of life, so that by imitating him we may act justly, so too is he an example of grace, so that by believing in him we may hope to be made just by him from the same source from which he himself was made, who was made for us wisdom from God, and justice and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. (1 Cor 1:30-31)

Therefore, whomever you have bitten with your deadly tooth, let them gaze upon this just one, and they will be healed; that is, let them believe that they receive justice from the same source from which justice was born in Christ, and so let them boast not in their own choice, nor in their own merit, but in the Lord.

141. Jul. The earth is opened to bring forth a shoot before the works of the cultivator receive the seed; this is borne out in the childbearing of the Virgin, who anticipated and excluded the office of a wife by the gift of a mother. What was not, then, in the customary order, this almighty God promises that he will do; and he adds, foreseeing the multitude of unbelievers, Woe to him who contradicts his maker, a potsherd among the earthen vessels of Samos. (Isa 45:9) That is, Woe to those who contend that, when God promised it, a virgin could not be made pregnant; for though they themselves are fashioned in their mothers' wombs from just so many seeds appointed by God, yet by the intervening power of God, they affirm with stubborn zeal that flesh could not be fashioned from the flesh of a virgin without the ministry of a man.

Such, then, is the case: you, O obstinate ones, do not think that I could have done this, and you lay down rules for me about the difficulty of the matter, when it is established that you yourselves were made by my hands—just as if the clay, when it is being handled by its potter, should say to him, You have no hands, by which it was then being formed into some vessel. So too you, who ask who gave a son to a virgin without the seed of a man, recognize that he is the same one who made you from seed. But now, since a varied exposition of the holy Scriptures is permissible—though both expositions, pious and religious, have agreed together—let the first book be brought to a close; yet let it admonish at its very end that God is to be believed the maker of those who are born, the guardian of the innocent, the rewarder of Catholics, and the condemner of the Manichees.

Aug. So that those who read intelligently may know how you have attempted to becloud the clear words of the Apostle and to pervert what is right, I must answer this disputation of yours from that same disputation of the Apostle. Wishing, then, to show that what God has promised he is also able to do—where grace, of which you are the enemies, is especially commended; for it is not in the power of human beings that God should fulfill what he has promised, but in the power of him who promised—wishing, then, to show this, blessed Paul says, It is not as though the word of God had failed; for not all who are of Israel are Israel; nor, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all sons; but through Isaac shall your descendants be named, that is, it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as descendants. For this is the word of promise: At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son. (Rom 9:6-9) Hold in mind the children of the promise, since he who promised is also able to do it. (Rom 9:10-13) And not only so, but also Rebecca, having conceived Isaac by one act of intercourse with our father. For when they had not yet been born, and had done nothing either good or evil, in order that God's purpose according to election might stand, not by works but by him who calls, it was said: The elder shall serve the younger. (Rom 9:14) And here hold in mind the election not from works, which in a certain way the later prophet expounded; and the Apostle, adding it, says, As it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. (Rom 9:15-16)

Here a question arises that could disturb those who do not understand the depth of grace; and, setting it before himself, he says, What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? By no means! (Rom 9:16) And to teach what he meant by By no means, he says, For Moses says: I will have mercy on whomever I have had mercy, and I will show compassion to whomever I have been compassionate. So then it depends not upon him who wills or upon him who runs, but upon God who has mercy. (Rom 9:16) If you attended to this, you would not exalt the merits of the will against grace, where you hear, not upon him who wills or upon him who runs, but upon God who has mercy. God did not, therefore, have mercy because Jacob willed and ran; rather, Jacob willed and ran because God had mercy. For the will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35); and by the Lord the steps of a man are directed, and he will choose his way. (Ps 37:23 (36))

Then, because that general statement—not upon him who wills or upon him who runs, but upon God who has mercy—was made on account of Jacob, the example of Pharaoh is also given, on account of what was said, but Esau I hated; and there is added, For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. (Rom 9:13.16-17) After these things a conclusion is drawn regarding both: So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. (Rom 9:18) But he has mercy, surely, according to grace, which is given freely, not repaid for merits; and he hardens according to judgment, which is repaid for merits. For to make from the condemned mass a vessel for honor is manifest grace; but to make from it a vessel for dishonor is just judgment.

Hence, now setting forth the words of those who are displeased by this, he says, You will say to me then: Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will? And, restraining them, he says, O man, who are you to answer back to God? Will what is fashioned say to him who fashioned it: Why have you made me thus? Or has the potter no power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? (Rom 9:19-21)

See whether this does not accord with what he said before, and disagree with what you say—you who suppose this to have been said according to the merits of wills, against what he himself says: For when they had not yet been born, nor had done anything good or evil, in order that God's purpose according to election might stand, not by works but by him who calls, it was said: The elder shall serve the younger; and against what he himself says: So then it depends not upon him who wills or upon him who runs, but upon God who has mercy.

And not only against what preceded, but also against what follows. For he speaks of vessels of wrath, which are made ready for destruction—which would be unjust, unless the mass were already condemned, all coming into condemnation from the one; and he speaks of vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory; for it belongs to mercy that is free, not owed, to prepare from the condemned mass vessels for glory—not only from the Jews, as he says, but also from the Gentiles, on account of which he sets down the testimony from the prophet Hosea: I will call those who are not my people, my people (Rom 9:24; Hos 1:9); and from Isaiah: For the sake of Israel a remnant shall be saved. (Isa 10:22; see Rom 11:5)

But that there might be this remnant, he teaches by the following testimony that it was brought about by the grace of God, the same prophet saying, If the Lord of hosts had not left us seed. (Isa 1:9) Then he shows that the Gentiles laid hold of justice from faith; but that Israel did not lay hold of it, because it was not from faith, but as though from works. For faith holds what he says somewhat later: For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. (Rom 10:13) To this salvation it belongs that good works should be ours, and that justice should be ours from God, not from ourselves.

For which reason, concerning those who, not from faith but as though from works, stumbled over the stone of stumbling, there follows, and he says, Brethren, the good will indeed of my heart, and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation; for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of God's justice and seeking to establish their own justice, they have not submitted to the justice of God. (Rom 10:1-3) This is altogether what you also do; for you wish to establish your own justice, to which God would repay grace according to merits; and you are unwilling that the grace of God should go before, the grace that would make you have justice.

Then, by the series of his disputation linked together, he arrives at the point where he says, I ask, then: Has God rejected his people? By no means! For I too am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets, and dug down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what does the divine response say to him? I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal. So too, then, at this present time there is a remnant brought about by the election of grace. But if by grace, then it is no longer from works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. (Rom 11:1-6)

Then see what he adds. What then? he says. What Israel sought, this it did not obtain; but the election obtained it. (Rom 11:7) But look back above to what sort of election it is, where he says, A remnant was brought about by the election of grace; but if by grace, then no longer from works. And he refers this back to that from which this disputation set out: For when they had not yet been born, nor had done anything good or evil, in order that God's purpose according to election might stand, not from works. (Rom 9:11) This is the election of grace, not from works, by which vessels are made for honor, so that they may do good works; for good works follow grace, they do not precede it, since the grace of God brings it about that we do them; nor do we establish our own justice, but the justice of God is in us, that is, the justice which God gives to us.

But the rest were blinded (Rom 11:7); this is the judgment by which vessels are made for dishonor; from which judgment it was said, but Esau I hated. From which judgment it was also said to Pharaoh, For this I have raised you up. Hence it appears that you, understanding the Apostle in this way—or rather not understanding him—wish to boast from works against grace, and, wishing to establish your own justice, are not subject to the justice of God. We, however, preach God indeed as the maker of little children; but from the same mass we do not grant a middle place for vessels, where they would be made neither for honor nor for dishonor—a place which the Apostle did not grant. By granting it, you would escape the judgment of God, if you could show him to be the condemner only of the Manichees and not of all heretics.

1. Julian. It would go well for us if either the opportunity were given to defend the cause of truth before learned judges or—since for the present this is denied—we were at least battered by no uproar of the unskilled.

Augustine. The sort of learned judges you seek are surely those who, unless they have been cultivated and adorned with the liberal disciplines and are not ignorant of what even the philosophers of this world have thought, cannot pass judgment on your sayings. Such was Ambrose here, whom, if you do not flee him as judge, you ought not to doubt that you have been most justly condemned. For he said, We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13); so that by these words of his he might show that Christ the Savior, that is, Jesus, is necessary for little children. Since you contradict him, you must confess that you wish to have learned judges in such a way that you are unwilling to have Catholic Christian judges.

2. Jul. And since we endure the loss of a trophy that was to be raised for the welfare of the Churches—a loss that the prudence of the examiners would, by their admirable votes, have conferred upon a good cause; or else the assent of the crowd would have availed nothing toward our reproach.

Concerning these classes of people, then, of which I have spoken, the one would benefit us, the other would do no harm, if either the former held power or the latter held a sense of shame. But because there is great confusion of affairs, and the greatest multitude of the dull-witted, the rudder of reason is wrested away from the Churches, so that the popular dogma sails on with horn upraised.

Aug. If what we assert is a popular dogma, then this which you attack with a deranged mind among Christian peoples is not the dogma of the Manichees. For you rightly despise the madness of the Manichees, found in only a few; but you have your own madness too, by which, under the name of the Manichees, you try to make those peoples whom you flee as judges hostile to us—as though peoples deceived by your loquacity could call Ambrose a Manichee, could call Cyprian a Manichee, who for the sake of the salvation even of little children taught that there is original sin. But Ambrose did not make such peoples, he found them; Cyprian himself did not make them, he found them too; such Catholic peoples your own father also found, when you were baptized, as is said, as a little child (See Answer to Julian 1.14); such Catholic peoples, in short, you yourselves found. Restrain yourselves; we confess that our dogma is popular, because we are the people of him who was called Jesus for this reason, that he saves his people from their sins (See Matt 1:21); from which people, when you wish to separate little children, you rather separate yourselves.

3. Jul. Thus, since with the prudent little is permitted, but to the worthless whatever they please is even permitted, the assessment of virtues has been excluded from the Churches by a decree of seditions; and this stands in our way among the people of the crowd, because we refuse to be an accession to error—of the crowd, I say, who, weighing the merit of an opinion by its prosperity, judge that one to be truer which they observe to please the greater number.

Aug. Does Manichaeus please the greater number? Are they not, like parricides, both few and most wicked? Do not, then, boast of fewness and—what is more empty—say that our dogma pleases the greater number, and charge us with the dogma of a detestable few.

4. Jul. And what Tully says against Epicurus—that those things are not spoken with subtlety, since it is by manifest argument that all sorts of men everywhere profess that they are pleased by them (See Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.7)—this these men, as in all things, in their perverse way suppose to pertain to the testimony of wisdom.

Aug. But in this matter Tully was overcome and refuted by him who says, Praise the Lord, all you nations; praise him, all you peoples. (Ps 117:1 (116)) Whom you seek not to teach truthfully but to deceive subtly—some few of them—and to add to your own fewness, by praising the subtlety of a few worldly philosophers and reproaching us because our teachings are said not to be subtle, and therefore all sorts of men everywhere profess that they are pleased by them. Yet you have several times said of me that I do nothing more than make myself not understood; how, then, does what I defend please the multitude, unless because that multitude is Catholic, to whom your heresy rightly is displeasing?

5. Jul. For it gives outright delight to defame, with rutting souls, whatever there has ever been of holy men anywhere, lest they be chastened by the examples of illustrious deeds.

Aug. The rutting souls, then, run rather after you, who praise lust; for chaste souls, by finding fault, prove that they are praised by your assault upon them.

6. Jul. It gives outright delight, and touches them to the depths, to plead the weakness of nature, to say that the flesh is liable to congenital sins, and to locate the effect of amendment not in the will of a human being, but to call the crimes of zeal the duties of the members; that this is the Catholic faith—to confess free choice, but free choice through which a human being is compelled to do evil and cannot will the good.

Aug. Why are you angry at us, who seek the effect of amendment all the more surely the more faithfully we ask it of the Lord? In vain do you spread out your puffed-up tongue with a proud voice; we are altogether unwilling, unwilling, to be numbered among those who trust in their own strength. (Ps 49:7 (48)) Our soul thirsts for God (See Ps 63:2 (62)), to whom it says, I will love you, Lord, my strength. (Ps 18:2 (17)) For a human being can will the good; but the will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35 (LXX)); toward evil, however, the wounded nature willingly inclines, on account of which nature must be healed.

7. Jul. The empty and heretical sayings, indeed, of those men who assert that a just God created the human being free for good work, and that it is in each one's power to withdraw from evil and to shine with zeal for virtue, so that to those who pour off their disgraceful deeds onto the necessity of the flesh, the sting of anxieties and fears may be fixed.

Aug. We do not call empty and heretical the sayings of those men who assert that a just God created the human being free for good work. For such did he create Adam, in whom we all were; but by sinning he ruined himself, and all in himself. Hence it is now not in the power of the sons of men to be freed from evil, unless the grace of God gives them the power to become sons of God (See John 1:12). For this reason, the sting of anxiety and fear is fixed not in those who, as you say, pour off their disgraceful deeds onto the necessity of the flesh, but in those who, that they may not be led into temptations of disgraceful deeds, pour out prayers to God—lest they consent to your most proud disputations, most ungrateful to God.

8. Jul. Lastly, that in Churches which possess great honor and a great people, it should be preached that the power of sin is so great that, before the form of the members, before the beginning and the coming of the soul, it flies over the seeds once cast and bursts into the secret place of the mother and makes those about to be born guilty, and that guilt, older than the birth itself, awaits the substance; that this law of sin, dwelling thereafter in the members, compels the captive human being to be a slave to crimes, more deserving of mercy than of chastisement amid its shameful deeds—since what we call the vices of a depraved will is, in the Church, called by men and women and great pontiffs an original passion.

Aug. Ambrose, the great pontiff, praised with such excellence by the mouth of your own heresiarch, answers you and says, Eve gave birth in evil, so that her offspring should leave to women an inheritance, and each one, formed by the pleasure of concupiscence, poured into the genital innards, and curdled in blood, wrapped in swaddling clothes, should first undergo the contagion of sins before he draws in the gift of the vital breath (Ambrose, On the Sacrament of Regeneration). Human nature, therefore, Julian, must be healed by God's mercy; it is not to be praised, by your empty declaiming, as though it were sound.

9. Jul. These, then, are the harlots of the Manichees, pandering to the ears with their most impure dogmas.

Aug. Charge Ambrose with being a Manichee, if you dare. Attend to the one against whom you say what you wish to seem to say against me; and if you have any fear of God or any human shame, be silent. With such men I must hear your reproaches not only patiently but even gladly; but you ought, in tearing such men apart, both to blush before human judgments and to dread the divine.

10. Jul. This nettle has stirred up our enemies, placed in both sexes—a nettle that was once indeed stinging through the vice of a bad habit, yet was being cured, as it were, by certain ointments of salutary exhortations.

Aug. He itches with the stinging nettle, but it is the one who praises lust. But if, on account of a bad habit, as you understand it, a man cries out, I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I do not will, this I do (Rom 7:19), then surely even in this you confess that the human will has lost the strength for good works; and unless the help of divine grace comes to its aid, what does the copious and ornate eloquence of any exhorter profit it?

11. Jul. But now, after authority has begun to be offered in place of a remedy, and authority has been added to pleasure, so that, by the consent of almost the whole world, shamefulness—the queen mighty in her members, the conqueror of honor, and the unconquered captivator of all minds—runs riot; for us the cause of defending the truth has been made as much harder as it is more honorable. For against headlong peoples, hostile to their own remedies, the rarity of those who heal by speech does not avail much. What then? In view of these, ought we to sound the retreat, and avenge our reproaches by silence, and from the harbor of conscience laugh at the shipwrecks of others? But against this hatred there speaks, first, the kindness we owe to the human race; then the hope and faith we have in God, who, apart from the fact that he has often raised up the ruins of desperate times, has nevertheless rewarded with eternal recompense the constancy that he willed to be exercised even to the hour of death, even if no effect should follow for the present.

Aug. How does God raise up the ruins of evil wills—through which times are surely blamed, when they are rightly blamed—except by working good wills in the hearts of human beings? Or, if they can, let them raise themselves up, just as, by thinking most senselessly, you have become a great ruin. Hence we pray for you, and would that he might deign to hear us concerning you, as concerning your brother Turbantius (See above, 1.1).

12. Jul. Rejoicing, then, in this consolation of faith, let us press on with the work begun, and render the promises of our disputations, not doubting that this very thing is the greatest part of the reward—that we have taken our stand on the citadel of a dogma which, though the malice of so many and the error of still more assails it, has nonetheless so escaped its doubtful chances that it is famed for the possession of victory.

Aug. You award yourself the palm against so many of God's prelates, who before us learned and taught in the Church of Christ the very things you assail, drinking and ministering from the fountains of Israel (See Ps 68:27 (67)). This, then, that you do, is not to be famed for the possession of victory, but to flow deformedly into the sewer of hateful arrogance. To be famed is to be strong; but how can you be strong in the possession of victory, you who try to pollute the Catholic dogmas, ancient and unconquered?

13. Jul. For if, as the foregoing discourse has made plain and as the one to follow will teach, whatever is reason, whatever is learning, whatever is justice, whatever is piety, whatever is of the sacred testimonies, supports this dogma which we defend, then our enemies obtain by their whole effort nothing other than that they should be shown, to all learned men, to be most shameless; to the saints, most defiant; toward God, most profane.

Aug. But you speak falsely; for neither reason, nor sound learning, nor justice, nor piety, nor the sacred Testimonies support your dogma; rather, all these, as those who understand rightly judge, overturn your dogma. For reason discerns that it can scarcely arrive at any truth, the slowness of nature hindering it; learning has the penalty of toil in that same slowness of nature; justice cries out that it does not belong to it that the sons of Adam should be pressed by a heavy yoke from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb (See Sir 40:1), without any merit of sins; piety, against this evil, asks for divine help; the sacred Testimonies admonish the human mind that this should be done.

14. Jul. And indeed how little the Traducianists have to oppose, by force of reason, to the force by which they are crushed—as their other writings do, so do these very pamphlets bear witness against which we are contending. Addressed to a military man (as he himself can also profess), occupied with other affairs more than with letters, they beg the help of a power against us, and on their own behalf commend, up and down, the decrees of the little common folk, or of rustics, or of theatergoers—by what counsel these were promulgated, no history records.

Aug. We do not beg the help of a power against you; rather, on your behalf, that you may be restrained from your sacrilegious daring, we praise the duty of Christian power. See, indeed, how you call rustics and theatergoers Cyprian, and Ambrose, and so many learned scribes in the kingdom of God, their companions.

15. Jul. This, however, we can by no means deny: that it pleases the crowds greatly, as I have said, to impute the faults of the will to nature, men of clay, and to vindicate the wantonness of morals by defaming the seeds; so that no one ever tries to amend what he hopes another perpetrates in himself.

Aug. Who told you that another perpetrates anyone's sin? Since even he who says, It is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me, at once adding, For I know that the good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh (Rom 7:17-18), shows that whatever it is, it is his own; because the flesh itself belongs to him who is composed of flesh and spirit. And yet you are unwilling to think with Ambrose that this evil, by which the flesh has desires against the spirit, passed over into nature by the transgression of the first man (See Ambrose, On Luke 7.141). But you too, though you are accustomed to say that in these apostolic words the violence of a bad habit is expressed, what is it that you now wished to say: So that no one ever tries to amend what he knows another perpetrates in himself? For surely you would want him to amend himself who says, It is not I who do it; and you would want this to be done by the strength of his own will, though you see how weak is the will of him who says, It is not what I will that I do. (Rom 7:15) At least allow this man, I beg, to ask for divine help, in whom you see that the choice of his own will has failed.

16. Jul. But the feeble patronage of a blind opinion multiplies sins, it does not lessen them. This itching, then, of wretched men who fall sick of their own accord will be able to bring no weight to bear against reason itself; but because they assert that natural sin is confirmed by some passages of the Scriptures, and especially by the discourses of the apostle Paul—the exposition of which I deferred to the second volume, and the time has come to render it—I will first, briefly (that the reader may become better instructed), distinguish both what has been done and what is to be done. It has been shown, then, that nothing can be proved through the holy Scriptures which justice cannot defend; for if in the law of God there is a perfect form of justice, nothing is allowed through it to its adversary, that is, to injustice, to acquire any virtue; and through this, what reason refutes, authority cannot vindicate. Then it was proved that God is known to us by his virtues; that his justice, therefore, must be confessed as his omnipotence; and if the ruin of it be admitted, his whole majesty will begin to totter; for God is just in such a way that, if he were proved not to be just, he would be convicted of not being God. And it was concluded that we venerate a most equitable God in the Trinity; and it appeared irrefutably that another's sin cannot be imputed by him to little children.

Aug. Why do you not confess that a heavy yoke could not be set by the omnipotent and just God upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb, without any merit of sin?

17. Jul. But as concerning the definition of justice, so also concerning the condition of sin it was discussed, where sin appeared to be nothing other than an evil will, which was free to abstain from what it had wrongly desired.

Aug. This is altogether the sin of the first man, from which the origin of evil descended into human beings. For he was indeed quite free to abstain from what he had wrongly desired; because there was not yet the vice by which the flesh has desires against the spirit; he did not yet say, It is not what I will that I do (Rom 7:15); not yet placed in the flesh of sin, he had no need of any help from the likeness of the flesh of sin.

18. Jul. And through this, it has been thoroughly taught by a most illustrious testimony that there is no sin in the newborn, because in them the use of the will could not be found.

Aug. And whence the heavy yoke, except that, although they do not have the use of the will, they nonetheless have the binding chain of their liable origin?

19. Jul. But that free choice is denied by those who say that sins are natural has been shown by a lucid argument. This indeed the Carthaginian denied, not in his own discourse, lest it should have less weight, but by the testimony of the Gospel, as though with more authority; which, by expounding it, we restored to its gospel dignity. We have also freed the testimony of the apostle Paul from the snares of the slanderer, and have shown, with the prophet as witness, that our God, the potter of the good vessels, is the maker of all.

Aug. There you have been answered, and it has been shown how far you have strayed from the truth.

20. Jul. These things, then, having been chiefly done in the first book—any one of which abundantly suffices for the victory of truth—it yet remains, though it be more than enough, that we discuss the opinion of the Teacher of the Gentiles, where he said that through one man sin entered into the world (See Rom 5:12); and, when it is necessary, we shall be helped by the definitions we have set forth beforehand, and shall prove that reason has lied in nothing, but that it is a crime of injustice to impute the pursuits of some to the births of others; and that this very thing which is unjust—although no one ought to doubt this—is nonetheless displeasing to God and forbidden by him, we shall teach by the testimonies of the law, either in this book or in the next. From which it is necessarily concluded both that we most rightly defend that no one is born with sin, and that God cannot judge the newborn guilty; and through this, that free choice is as whole, as nature is harmless in each one before the use of his own will.

Aug. Speak, let us see what you are going to say about the Apostle's testimony—as emptily as you have said the foregoing things.

21. Jul. But the Manichees are rebels against both piety and reason, who suppose both that there is sin before the time of the will—which the nature of things does not allow—and that God, whom they argue to be unjust, exists; and that they defame the holy Pages, by whose records they allege that the crime of the divinity is proved; and since none of these three can be shown by reason—that is, neither sin without the will, nor iniquity in God, nor perversity in the law—those men alone are shown to be foolish, shameless, and impious.

Aug. Blush: Ambrose was not a Manichee when he said that a human being undergoes the contagion of sins before he draws in the gift of the vital breath (See Ambrose, On the Sacrament of Regeneration); but neither did these sins exist except from the will, whence they draw their origin; and therefore there is neither iniquity in God, who for this reason placed a heavy yoke upon the newborn, nor perversity in the law, in which this is learned to be most true—which you yourselves would also see, were it not that you have rather perverse eyes.

22. Jul. Let this, then, cleave above all to the mind of the prudent reader: that in all the sacred Scriptures only that is contained which has wisdom for the honor of the Catholic God, as is illustrated by the light of frequent statements; and that, if anywhere a harsher expression should raise a question, it is certain that the author of that passage did not have in mind what is unjust there, but it must be understood according to that which both clear reason and the splendor of other passages, in which there is no ambiguity, have made plain. Now, then, let us set down the words of the one with whom we are dealing. Indeed, in that chapter of his sayings in which he had brought forward his God as far as the potter of sinners—against which we contended in the foregoing book—he said slightly that through one man sin entered into the world; but he did not linger over the exposition of that passage.

After he had argued at length against those excerpts which he confirms to himself were sent to him, he came to a certain passage of my sayings, which he set before himself as though about to assail it; but referring nothing to that on which he had been pressed, he flew off to this opinion of the Apostle, in which he says that through one man sin entered into the world; and according to his own dogma he labored to expound the context of that passage. On account of which I, leaving other things aside, hastened to that part, so that—since I had promised that I would solve this question in the second volume (See above, 1.113)—I might both fulfill the pledge of my promise and show what his argumentation was, lest I should be thought to have committed a fraud if, suppressing his exposition, I were to bring in the one we confess to be Catholic.

Aug. You are going to bring in the Pelagian one, not the Catholic. The Catholic is that which shows God to be just amid so many and so great punishments and torments of little children—which not one of them would suffer in paradise with any equity, if human nature had not been corrupted by sin and deservedly condemned.

23. Jul. In my first work, then, reconsidering his statement in which he had said, For just as sin, whether it be drawn from here or from there in little children, is the work of the devil, so a human being, whether he be born from here or from there, is the work of God (Marriage and Desire 1.1)—it is now reported by me here just as it is contained in my work, from which this man had stolen the greatest part.

Aug. You argue as truly as it is true that I stole those things—when rather the man whose little paper was sent to me transferred, by his own choice and judgment, what he wished and as he wished, from your work.

24. Jul. I answered there, then: You indeed—I would say it with the leave of your magisterial office—shuffle and evade; but understand that the truth has taken from you the license of roaming about. For behold, we too acquiesce that sin is the work of an evil will, or the work of the devil; but through what is this sin found in a little child? Through the will? But there was none in him. Through the form of the body? But God bestowed this. Through the entrance of the soul? But it owes nothing to the bodily seed, being created new by God. Through marriage? But this pertains to the work of the parents, whom you had premised did not sin in this act; and if you had not truly conceded that, as the progress of your discourse indicates, then they themselves are to be execrated, who made the cause of the evil.

But they do not have a substance of their own; they signify by their name the work of persons; the parents, therefore, who by their intercourse made the cause for the sin, are by right damnable. It can no longer, then, be doubted that spouses are consigned to eternal punishment, by whose labor it was brought about that the devil should arrive at exercising dominion over human beings. And if you concede this, you will lose all that you before seemed to hold, that is, that you had said a human being is the work of God. For it necessarily follows that, since the origin of those begotten is through the mingling of bodies, if there is evil in human beings through origin, and through evil the right of the devil over human beings, then the devil is the author of human beings, from whom is the origin of those who are born (Marriage and Desire 2.44-49).

After which I again repeated his words: For just as sin, whether it be drawn from here or from there, is the work of the devil, so a human being, whether he be born from here or from there, is the work of God. And I at once rose up in this way: When I consider that voice of your fear, by which you say that marriage is not an evil, I cannot consider those other discourses of yours without laughter. For if you believe that human beings are made by God, and that spouses are innocent, see how it cannot stand that original sin is drawn from them. Surely this one who is born does not sin, that one who begot does not sin, that one who created does not sin; through what cracks, amid so many safeguards of innocence, do you imagine that sin entered?

Aug. To these words of yours, even when I had read your very books, it suffices that I have already answered (Answer to Julian 3.54.57). But here too I admonish that the Apostle is rather to be heard than you, who showed not a hidden crack but a most open door, by which sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12); and when you begin to expound these words of his according to you, not according to him, then it will appear against what rectitude of truth you struggle with your most tortuous loquacity.

25. Jul. This passage, then, from my earlier work he set before himself for himself in this second book of his, though with interpolation (Marriage and Desire 2.44-49). For both the formation of the body mentioned by me, and the entrance of the soul—which both reason and the authority of the sacred law and of the Catholic Church confirm to be created new in each one—he, as I suppose, artfully passed over.

Aug. Whoever reads my six books, by which I refuted your four—from the first of which the man to whom I replied in this book plucked what he wished and as he wished, the book which you now vainly try to refute with most loquacious vanity—will find that I have answered you in my third book in such a way that he sees that I did not artfully pass over what you say; but rather the man whose little paper I was answering chose not to transfer this from your work, whether from a zeal for brevity or because he did not think it pertained to the case.

26. Jul. Now he has woven together the rest, though varied with some discourses. Against these objections of mine, then, he devised nothing with which to strike back; but, confessing by his poverty of argument that I had reasoned truly, he says that to all these things the Apostle ought to answer for him, who pronounces that through one man sin entered into this world. In which passage, what learned man would judge that he had a sound head, who did not understand that he must either pass over those things against which he could find nothing, or devise whatever he might bring to bear against the objections, to the confirmation of which he might join the Apostle's words?

Aug. But you are better refuted by the apostolic words than by mine, and yet you do not yield even to the apostolic ones; rather, you prefer to pervert even these than to correct yourself.

27. Jul. I asked, then, most consistently—that all learning may recognize it with me—through what the sin which is called the work of an evil will, and the work of the devil, would be found in a little child: if through the will; but that there was none in him, even this man with whom we are dealing confesses; if through marriage, but that this pertains to the work of the parents, no one doubts, whom he had premised did not sin in this mingling (Marriage and Desire 2.46);

or, if the disputant should repent of this concession, as the progress of the work indicated, he would profess that the parents are guilty, by whose intercourse a kingdom over the image of God would be prepared for the devil; and I added, by the necessary steps of disputation, that through original sin the devil is defined as the author of bodies; for if there is evil in human beings through origin, and through evil the right of the devil over human beings, then the devil is the author of human beings, from whom is the origin of those who are born.

Since I had caught that these things were going to shut up the Traducianists in the cave of the Manichees, I turned the key, that I might offer the captives an escape, and I admonished that, if he truly believed human beings to be made by God and purely confessed spouses to be innocent, he should understand that original sin cannot be drawn from them. Surely, I said, this one who is born does not sin, that one who begot does not sin, that one who created does not sin; through what cracks, amid so many safeguards of innocence, do you imagine that sin entered? (Marriage and Desire 2.47) What could, I ask, be composed more holy, more true, more lucid, more brief and firm, than that, after the three premises which I had taken up with my enemy conceding them, I should bring in a fourth, in which was the sum of the conclusion? For since sometimes, from one or two premises, a third is necessarily gathered, by what law would it not be permitted to me, after three concessions, to bring in a fourth that adheres to them? And this indeed in the second disputation; but in the earlier one, five or more are conceded to me, after which a legitimate and unconquered conclusion is made.

Aug. See through how many things you wander, fearing lest the Apostle's words, heard without your prejudices, should condemn you, as they have already condemned you with the Catholic Church judging. But run wherever you will, delay as much as you will, multiply your circlings in whatever direction you will; whenever the ship of your fallacies arrives at the same words of truth, without doubt you will be shipwrecked.

28. Jul. Now, then, let us turn to him. You had granted me that sin is the work of the will; I could at once have said, consistently: But there is no will to sin in little children; therefore there is no sin in little children. But, that you might be pressed by more witnesses, I asked step by step through what this sin would be found in a little child—lest perhaps through the will? After which, with you assenting, I took up that there was in him no consciousness of will. I added: lest he had drawn the outlines of his members through the first fault. But you had conceded that these are formed by God, and through this are good. I sought a third point: whether you thought guilt was conveyed through the entrance of the soul. But it was established that this is new, lest it should owe anything to the seeds. I next brought in—since nothing remained for you to be argued about these—lest you should call marriage, that is, the mingling of bodies, the work of the devil?

But that this pertains to the labor of the parents, with you also nodding assent, I showed. All those things, then, which we said above being settled, your traducianism consigned the spouses, who had been the cause of the sin, to the devil. After all which, I drove home what was drawing near to you, so that I might say that you believe the devil to be the author of bodies, to whom you had assigned the labor of mingling, without which the origin of bodies could not be. And this disputation indeed showed by what disease you were oppressed; but that second one proved both you to be wretched with such opinions, and the Catholics to be unconquered by the very support of your fear.

For with you granting that human beings are made by God, and that spouses are innocent, and that little children do nothing of themselves—these three being taken up, it was irrefutably brought in that, since this one who is born does not sin, that one who begot does not sin, that one who created does not sin, no crack remained through which sin might be taught to have entered. If, then, what has been gathered displeases you, deny what you granted, and say either that the one who begot sinned, or the one who created, or the one who was born; of which one is insane, another Manichean, the third beyond the Manichees: insane, if you say that little children offend; Manichean, if you accuse the spouses; beyond the Manichees, if you judge God to be the author of sin. But if all these are so alien from the truth that you still fear to confess them freely, with what shamelessness, O man most senseless of all, do you persist in denying what has been brought in by us?

Aug. When you come to the Apostle's words, there you will find not a crack but a most open door, by which sin entered into the world; which you will indeed try to shut, but by the mouth of infants and sucklings, who seek Christ as Savior rather than you as praiser, and who, not by winding disputations but by mute weepings, far more surely attest their misery (which assuredly, if the rectitude and blessedness of the first man had remained, they could in no way have had in paradise)—by these you, with all your loquacity, are overcome.

29. Jul. Here the case of four persons is at issue: of God the maker, of the two parents from whom material is supplied to the one working, and of the little child who is born. You say that sin dwells in this chorus; I ask, by whom is it made—whether by God? You deny it. By the father? You likewise deny it. By the mother? The same you deny. By the little child? You deny it; and do you still not think it has been concluded that there cannot be among these four what none of these four admits?

Aug. Whatever you wish to say, you will at some point come to the Apostle's words; and whoever recalls them through the several passages of these argumentations of yours—which we, for the reader's weariness, are unwilling constantly to repeat—answers you by his very own recollection.

30. Jul. To what end, then, do you either read out the Scriptures or name accomplices, to persuade of something which you still cannot define as you hold it? What does it help you to teach that Adam offended, which I do not at all refute? We ask, with Adam dead so many ages ago, through what the sin, by which the image of God is transferred into the right of the devil, is found in a little child.

Aug. Why do you yourself not admit into the kingdom of God the image of God, who according to you has no merit of sin? Why is the blood ministered, which was poured out from the likeness of the flesh of sin for the remission of sins, for the little child to drink, so that he may have life, if he comes into death from the origin of no sin? If this displeases you, openly deny Christ to the little child, openly deny that he died for little children, he who alone died for all; from which is gathered what the Apostle says, Therefore all have died, and he died for all. (2 Cor 5:14-15) Say openly: Little children are not dead, who have no sin; they have no need of Christ's death for themselves, in which they are baptized. Now say plainly what you secretly hold, since you sufficiently betray by your disputation what you hold; say, I say, that little children are made Christians in vain; but see whether you ought to call yourself a Christian.

31. Jul. If through the mingling of the parents, condemn by profession the marriage which you condemn by argument; and spare us the labor by which we have convicted you of being a Manichee.

But if you do not dare to say that, and, defiant against reason, you incline toward those who lie together, so that by portents of arguments hitherto unheard you say that lust is diabolical, and that it, placed in the sense of those who couple, pertains to the pleasure of the parents and to the guilt of those who are born—you betray, indeed, your own madness and shamefulness;

but I beg that you not arrogate so much to yourself as to think that we are not free to behold the innocence of the newborn with honor to God, when it is permitted and pleasing to you, with an accusation of God, to purge the members of those who lust from the guilt of lust which you allege.

Aug. With whatever itching you praise lust, that is, the concupiscence of the flesh, the apostle John says that it is not from the Father but is from the world (See 1 John 2:16); on account of which the devil is rightly said to be the prince of the world (See John 12:31; 14:30). For we know that God made the world. This evil of the concupiscence of the flesh, then, conjugal chastity uses well; and the guilt of that evil, drawn by those who are born, spiritual regeneration looses. As long as you do not have wisdom about this, you will be not a Catholic but a Pelagian; and you will contradict the holy Scriptures, however much you may seem to yourself to defend them. But as often as, on account of this which you contradict, you call me a Manichee, you surely also call him a Manichee who says that a human being, poured into the genital innards and formed by the pleasure of concupiscence, takes on the contagion of sins before he draws in the gift of the vital breath (See Ambrose, On the Sacrament of Regeneration). This is Ambrose, Julian; you call Ambrose a Manichee, you madman!

32. Jul. For when you pronounce that the concupiscence of the flesh was planted in the human being by the prince of darkness, and that it is the shrub of the devil, bringing forth the human race from itself like its own fruit, you betray plainly that you say not God but the devil is the maker of human beings; by which most impious dogma both the business of marriages, that is, the mingling of the genitals, and all flesh is condemned.

Aug. It is not condemned; but it is not to be praised by you as though sound, so that—with you also confessing it—it may be healed by its Maker and Savior. For in those in whom this does not happen, it will without any doubt be condemned.

33. Jul. But when, after this sacrilege, you add and say that you profess the pleasure of begetting spouses to be indeed diabolical, the movement of the genitals diabolical, but that nevertheless the very members which are moved, and the spouses who are affected by pleasure, are not guilty—but for all these you accuse the new human beings, that is, the deity's raw work in the newborn—you lay aside nothing of the Manichees' impiety; but you show so monstrous a frenzy of your shaken head that it would more consistently be judged to need fostering than amputating, did not your will and zeal in this matter speak through both the overthrow of many, and your own obstinacy, and the multiplication of Scriptures.

Aug. I ought not to hear these reproaches with indignation, since I share them with those teachers of the Church who understand that through one man sin entered into the world as the upright Apostle speaks, not as the most perverse Julian supposes. Among these are—to be silent about others—Cyprian the African, Hilary the Gaul, Ambrose the Italian, Gregory the Greek; by which most learned and most prudent judges—the like of whom you complain, with vain presumption, that you do not find—your heresy was condemned before it was born.

34. Jul. Read about this too the fourth book of my work; and you will understand how much you flatter the devil, whom you call your father, and lust, your mother, under the appearance of accusing them.

Aug. I have read your fourth book too, and in my sixth I have answered you in all things against his; but which of us has conquered, let the pious reader of us both judge.

35. Jul. But now let us see the words of the Apostle, who you said would answer me as to all the things I set forth above: To all these things the Apostle answers this man, who neither blames the will of the little child, which is not yet his own for sinning; nor marriage, insofar as it is marriage, which has from God not only its institution but also its blessing; nor the parents, insofar as they are parents, lawfully and legitimately joined to each other for procreating children; but he says, Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned. (Rom 5:12) If these men perceived this with Catholic ears and minds, they would not have minds rebellious against the faith and grace of Christ, nor would they try in vain to turn these apostolic words, so clear and so manifest, to their own heretical sense, asserting that this was said for the reason that Adam sinned first, in whom thereafter whoever willed to sin found an example of sinning—so that sin, namely, passed into all human beings not by generation from that one man, but by imitation of that one man; whereas surely, if the Apostle had wished imitation to be understood here, he would have said that sin entered into this world and passed through all human beings not through one man, but rather through the devil. For of the devil it is written, They imitate him who are of his party. (Wis 2:25) But he said through one man—from whom, surely, the generation of human beings began—in order to teach that original sin passed through all by generation. (Marriage and Desire 2.45)

Aug. You have spoken the words of my book; now say how those words of the Apostle which I set down there are to be taken—so that you may be ever more clearly shown a heretic, putting yourself forward as a praiser, in order to take away the Savior from little children.

36. Jul. That you abuse the inexperience of those who favor you, and hide beneath the ambiguity of words, whoever shall be a learned reader of our works understands. But the rest of the crowd—of which the prophet speaks to God, You have made human beings like the fish of the sea (Hab 1:14)—is deceived by a mutual leap forward, and, ignorant of saving discernment, thinks that all can be joined in fact which it has seen joined in words. But what is consequent, what is contradictory, and, certain things being conceded, what the inexpugnable and venerable law of discourse compels to be inferred, no one judges but the most learned and most attentive.

Aug. Still you go around seeking dialecticians and avoiding ecclesiastical judges. Now say how it is to be taken: Through one man sin entered into the world—understanding this better, no doubt, than he who said: All die in Adam, because through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). Therefore the death of all is from his fault (Ambrose, On Luke 4.67). And the same man elsewhere: There was Adam, and in him we all were; Adam perished, and in him all perished (Ambrose, On Luke 7.234). This is Ambrose, not someone of the crowd, whose unlearned multitude—unable to judge of your disputations—you despise with too high a neck and too brazen a brow; this is Ambrose, I say, to whom you are in no respect equal even in those secular letters of which you are much puffed up; but in ecclesiastical matters, what sort of man he is, hear or read Pelagius your teacher, and do not love a sense alien to the sense of so great a teacher.

37. Jul. And this is the reason why especially, pitying the ruins of the Churches, we appeal to the examination of men illustrious for prudence, so that it may appear not what is said, but what is consequently said. For if it were debated under such a council, you surely would not be permitted either to bring in what you had denied, or to deny what you had affirmed; but in your book, which no censure of shame chastens, you confidently heap together both what the Catholics say and what the Manichees say, content with this one opinion: if you are said to have answered. But what weight your discourse has, what consistency, you think it foolish even to consider.

Aug. I beg you, say now how it is to be understood: Through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12); why do you still slander, revile, evade? If in a council, whose judgment you seem to desire, there sat Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory, Basil, John of Constantinople—to be silent about others—would you dare to seek more learned, more prudent, more truthful judges? They themselves cry out against your dogmas, they themselves condemn your writings by their writings; what more do you seek? This I have already taught sufficiently in the first and second of my books, of which I have published six against your four; but behold, I am still prepared to hear you; say now how it is to be taken that through one man sin entered into the world.

38. Jul. Finally, granting without hesitation what I asked, and seeing what was concluded from these things, you profess that you are too feeble for what we have constructed; that the apostle Paul opposes all those things which we have said; whom, however, you bring in conceding the very things you had granted. For you say: The Apostle neither blames the will of the little child, which is not yet his own for sinning (Marriage and Desire 2.45); with which granted, it is now convicted that there cannot be any sin in him whose only condition, even according to your own definition, is the will to admit what justice forbids, and from which it is free to abstain.

Aug. This is the definition of that sin which is not also a punishment of sin. For where you contend that they are the voices of a bad habit, and so suffocate the voices of your dogma, say, if you dare, how it is free for the will of a human being to abstain from evil, where you hear, It is not what I will that I do (Rom 7:15); or deny that it is evil, where you hear, It is not the good that I will that I do, but the evil that I do not will, this I do (Rom 7:19). But surely we acknowledge that this sin is a punishment of sin; and therefore it must be distinguished from that definition of sin where the will commits that from which it is free to abstain. Understand what I say; and now, I beg, say how it is to be taken: Through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12).

39. Jul. Therefore, if the Apostle does not blame in him his own will, which he understands could not even have existed, he surely pronounces that no sign of crime appears in him either—justice especially judging this, which does not impute sin except where it is free to abstain. But not content to have granted this alone, you add: Nor does the Apostle blame marriage, insofar as it is marriage, which has from God not only its institution but also its blessing (Marriage and Desire 2.45). Which by itself alone could equally suffice to overcome natural sin; because, if the Apostle knows, as he does, that marriage is not to be blamed, to whose reconciliation, ministry, and instrument belongs the mingling of the sexes with pleasure, instituted and blessed by God, then no diabolical possession can sprout from these, nor is their fruit guilty—especially before that justice which does not impute sin except where it is free to abstain.

Aug. Do not, I beseech you, imagine the mingling of spouses in paradise with such pleasure as lust now makes—lust that does not rise at the nod of the will, that solicits even the minds of the saints, to be restrained indeed, but nonetheless importunate. Far be it that such pleasure of paradise, such peace and happiness, be conceived by the faithful and the prudent.

40. Jul. Let us consider the third point too, in which your kindness may be discerned in the readiness of your assent. Nor does the Apostle blame the parents, insofar as they are parents, lawfully and legitimately joined to each other for procreating children (Marriage and Desire 2.45). Weigh what you have said: that the parents are not blamed by the Apostle, insofar as they are parents. Therefore he pronounces that, insofar as they are parents, they cannot bear fruit to the devil, nor does anything of them, insofar as they are parents, pertain to the devil; but children pertain to parents only insofar as they are parents; therefore they are proved neither guilty, nor under the kingdom of the devil, nor to be blamed by the devil. For—that what we have said may grow clear by repetition—the union of the sexes shares in offspring only insofar as those who are spouses become parents; but if they should wish to do something more wanton between themselves, or to stray through the unlawful couplings of adulteries, this cannot pertain to the children, who are born from the force of the seeds, not from the obscenity of vices.

Aug. Do you now confess that even between spouses there can be wantonness of mingling? Behold what that fine thing of yours, taken up by you, does; for this does not happen except when one yields to it, when no necessity of sowing offspring drives even spouses, joined for the sake of procreating children, to the wantonness which you too reprehend; of which you wished to be so great a praiser that no one would believe you would even dare to be its assailant—seeing that you have not blushed to praise it in such a way that you would, and would not be ashamed to, place it even in the blessedness of paradise.

41. Jul. Therefore, to those who are born, not the disgraceful deeds but the seeds of those who beget are conveyed; but the force of the seeds God instituted, and, as you are compelled to confess, blessed.

Aug. The seeds God instituted; but those who can so distinguish, in a corrupted nature, its good from its evil that they neither think nature an evil nor think the vice to be nature—these can distinguish which of these two it belongs to God to create, and which to heal. But this you cannot do, so long as you are Pelagians, not Catholics. Say now, I beg, say now how it is to be taken that through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12).

42. Jul. Children, therefore, are not guilty even then, when the parents sin in their generation; because they pertain to their children only insofar as they are parents; therefore children too pertain to parents only insofar as they are children. For it is established that those who beget share the germs of nature, not of fault. And if, as reason shows, you pronounce that the Apostle likewise confirms this, then rightly do we, with him teaching, defend that the sins of parents cannot pertain to children; since both the Apostle, illustrious by the Holy Spirit, and we, instructed by the light of reason, and you, oppressed by the weight of the truth you have attacked, may commonly and truly confess that parents, insofar as they are parents, are not guilty; and that they pertain to children only insofar as they are parents; therefore that children, insofar as they are children—that is, before they do anything by their own will—cannot be guilty.

Aug. Parents indeed are parents by begetting, and children are children by being born; but neither to beget nor to be born is an evil, which pertains to the institution of God, and both could happen in paradise without shameful lust, if no one had sinned. For shameful lust, unless it had either arisen from sin or been corrupted by sin, would not be shameful; and either it would be none at all, and without it the genital members would so serve those who beget as the hands serve those who work; or it would so follow the will that it could never solicit one who is unwilling;

such as it now is not, chastity teaches, which overcomes such movements of it both in the married, lest even between themselves they should sport indecently or slip into adulteries, and in all who are continent, lest by consenting to it they be cast down. Behold from what original sin is drawn; behold through what he willed not to be born, who came not to bear his own sin, but to take away ours.

43. Jul. Let them go now, and let the wits of Manichean reasoning contrive whatever they can; let them suffer as long as they wish the toils of cogitations; not arrogantly, but religiously I promise that this structure can never be shaken.

Aug. What you call a structure is, for you, a ruin, which has so pressed you that it has compelled you to praise what you attack—if indeed there is in you any chastity whatever, which makes you attack what you praise.

44. Jul. With what brow, then, do you add: But through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12)? Which you interpret in this way, that the Apostle says sin was transmitted from that man by generation into his descendants (Marriage and Desire 2.45). Above you had conceded that the Teacher of the Gentiles accuses in nothing the marriage which God had blessed; that there is no will to sin in the one being born; that the parents, insofar as they are parents, are lawfully and legitimately joined for procreating children; and you add at once, as though, sleeping, you had said the foregoing, that the crime is transmitted to descendants by generation. For if they beget only insofar as they are parents, and insofar as they are parents they are joined lawfully and legitimately, and this union is not disapproved by the Apostle, because it is by God not only instituted but also blessed—with what mouth, by what law, with what brow, do you affirm this generation to be the cause of guilt, the root of crimes, the slave of the devil?

Aug. I no longer know how often these things have been said, and answered. By your much speaking you stir up for yourself a darkness that does not permit you to distinguish the malice of vices from the goodness of nature; and, repeating the same things by the same things to a hateful weariness, you do not yet say how it is to be taken that through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12).

45. Jul. It does not, then, deserve to be blamed by the Apostle, and yet is possessed by the devil; it is instituted by God, and is the source of crimes; it is, finally, as you confess, blessed by God, and is accused by you as a diabolical shrub.

Aug. God blessed marriage, not the concupiscence of the flesh resisting the spirit, which was not before sin; but sin—just as neither that concupiscence which resists the spirit—God did not bless. Moreover, the marriage which he blessed, if the sin had not been committed by which nature was corrupted, would either so use the genital members as we use the others, obeying the will without any lust; or there would be no shameful lust there, since it would never resist the will, such as it now certainly is not—which assuredly you too perceive, when you dissent from it as it solicits and entices. Marriage, nevertheless, is even now praiseworthy; because it neither institutes this evil in human beings, but finds it; and it uses that evil well, with the intention of begetting, although those who are begotten draw thence original sin, on account of which they must be regenerated.

46. Jul. How you have accomplished nothing with me, the learning of all letters testifies; but how you strive against the Apostle, and rave against God, the conflict of your own opinions shows. But, it having now been shown that these things cannot be joined which the nature of things dissociates, let us question the Apostle too, lest there be thought to be in his thoughts the barbarism which is proved to be in your opinions.

Aug. Say now at least what you were deferring by such windings.

47. Jul. I hear, then, Paul pronouncing that through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). Which you affirm to have been said not on account of the example of sin, but on account of generation; and you call us heretics, who refer it to example; and you think yourself helped by this argument: Surely, you say, if the Apostle had wished imitation to be understood, he would have said that sin entered and passed through all human beings not through one man, but through the devil. For of the devil it is written, They imitate him who are of his party (Wis 2:25). But he said through one man—from whom, surely, the generation of human beings began—in order to teach that original sin passed through all by generation (Marriage and Desire 2.45). But I see that the Apostle brought forth nothing that would look toward the defaming of human generation, nothing toward the condemnation of natural innocence, nothing toward the crime of the divine work.

Aug. For a long time you say, Nothing; and when you have ceased to repeat this word, you are going to say nothing. For who would not laugh at you, trying to persuade that what the Apostle says—Through one man sin entered into the world—does not pertain to generation, since that very man was not begotten by anyone from whom the rest might be begotten? But you say it pertains to example, when the example of sin which the later ones might imitate did not enter into the world except through him who sinned by imitating no one. For he sinned first. But who among Christians is ignorant that this is not Adam, but the devil? What is it, then, that pleases you, except both not to be silent and to say nothing?

48. Jul. Finally, that which the words themselves had not indicated, you, trying to gather by argument, subjoin: that if he were speaking of imitation, he ought to have mentioned the devil; but because he wished it to be understood of generation, he preferred to say man rather than demon. I ask, then, what was the occasion for you of this opinion. For what? Do you deny that men offend by the imitation of men? And although the matter, being settled, does not need the attestation of the Scriptures, yet hear David: Do not strive among the malicious, nor be envious of those who do iniquity (Ps 37:1 (36)); do not be envious of him who prospers in his way (Ps 37:7 (36)).

Then all the Scriptures of the Old Testament admonish Israel not to imitate the rite of a profane nation. What necessity, then, compelled this—that the Apostle, if he wished imitation to be understood, should name the devil rather than man, when he knew that men offend by the imitation both of men and of the devil? Either, then, prove that men cannot sin by the imitation of men, and that this is nowhere contained in the law, and thus assert that a place has been prepared for your supposition; or surely, if it is manifest that sins have grown strong by nothing more than the imitation of vices, you have concluded with great ignorance that the Apostle would surely have spoken of the devil, had he wished imitation to be understood.

Aug. Did I not say before that you would say nothing, O man most loquaciously speaking nothing? There are indeed sins of imitation in the world, when human beings follow the examples of sinning human beings; yet it was not through those human beings whom anyone imitates that the sin which the sinners imitated entered into the world, but through him who first, imitating no one, sinned; this is the devil, whom all imitate who are of his party (Wis 2:25). So too the sin which is committed not by imitating but is drawn by being born, entered into the world through him who first begot a human being. You have said nothing, then, and have been unwilling to be silent only in order to deceive some readers and to weary others.

49. Jul. Since, then, it is clear that the imitation of evil men is spoken of not only consequently but even necessarily, it is for the present evident that this argument of yours lies prostrate. But as for your addition, that it is written of the devil, They imitate him who are of his party (Wis 2:25)—I too assent that it was prudently said by whoever is the author of that book; but it does not help you that some are written to sin by imitation of the devil, unless you teach that men cannot offend by the imitation of men.

Aug. The question here is not whether men sin by imitation of men; for who does not know that men sin even by imitation of men? But the question is, what sort of sin entered into the world through one man—whether that which is committed by imitating, or that which is drawn by being born. Because the former, that is, that which is committed by imitating, entered into the world only through him who first, imitating no one, introduced for the rest who would imitate the example of sinning, that is, the devil; but the latter, that is, that which is drawn by being born, entered into the world only through him who first, begotten by no one, brought in for the rest who would be begotten the beginning of origin; this is Adam.

Understand, then, that concerning the imitation of angels and of men you say nothing that pertains to the case; you have only been unwilling to be silent. For we are disputing not about any sinner whatever, who at some time sinned in the world, but about that one through whom sin entered into the world; where, if the example of imitation is sought, the devil is found; if the contagion of generation, Adam. Accordingly, when the Apostle says, Through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12), he wished the sin of generation to be understood. For the sin of imitation entered into the world not through one man, but through the devil.

50. Jul. For since each is said in customary speech—sometimes that someone, having imitated the devil, envies; sometimes that, having emulated a man, he is smeared with either envy or the filth of the disgraceful—this name of imitation too could suit either person, that is, both when it is said of a man and when it is said of the devil; you have wished, most ridiculously, to play the fool, as though through the understanding of imitation Adam could not be shown.

Aug. Did sin then enter into the world through any man whom another imitates by sinning? Say, if you can, what this means: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings (Rom 5:12)—whether death, or sin, or rather sin together with death. For the sin by whose imitation one sins entered into the world only through the devil, who first, not by imitating, did what others would do by imitating.

51. Jul. The discourse hastens on to the rest, but the passage must still be pressed, so that by divisions as brief as we can make them both the understanding of the matter and the memory of it may be supplied to the reader. In almost all things, indeed, the condition of homonyms—which we call equivocals—is found.

Aug. You had promised that you would supply understanding to the reader, and you speak of homonyms and equivocals; how, then, will even the Pelagians themselves understand you, unless they are first sent to the schools of the dialecticians, wherever in the world they can be found, to learn these things? Or will you perhaps yourself read out Aristotle's Categories to them, expounding them, before they read your books? Why not do this too, O most ingenious man, since you are fed in idleness by the wretches you have deceived?

52. Jul. But that our discourse may now be about the matters before us: generation is properly imputed to the sexes, but imitation is always of minds. This affection of the mind, then, which the imitator possibly willed, either accuses or advances a human being according to the diversity of causes; thus it comes about that in the good one is said to imitate both God, and the angels, and the apostles. God: Be perfect, as your Father is perfect (Matt 5:48); the angels: Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10); the apostles: Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (1 Cor 11:1).

But in the evil one imitates the devil, as it is said, They imitate him who are of his party (Wis 2:25); one imitates men: Do not be sad like the hypocrites, who disfigure their faces (Matt 6:16); one imitates animals, when it is commanded, Do not become like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding (Ps 32:9 (31)). By these words, then, both exhorting and deterring, the affection of imitation is shown, which surely, if it could not exist, would not be declared something to be guarded against.

Aug. But the sin of imitation, that is, that which is done by imitation, did not enter into the world except through him who, that there might be sin by imitation, sinned without imitation; and this surely is not Adam, but the devil. For he who said, It entered into the world (Rom 5:12), shows the beginning of this sin; which beginning is manifest to have been made not through a man, but through the devil—if we wish to attend to the sin which sinners would imitate. It remains, therefore, that the sin which entered into the world through one man can rightly be attributed not to imitation, but to generation. We give thanks, surely, to God, since, speaking against your error, you have confessed—as though the truth were flashing upon you—that the good will by which we imitate the good is to be attributed not to the strength of our free choice, but to the help of God; since you have shown that, in order to imitate the angels, it is not to be presumed by us but to be asked of the Lord, thus expounding what we pray and say: Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10).

53. Jul. But as the term of imitation is manifestly common to diverse things, so generation truly and properly indicates the substance that generates; but it is applied to pursuits not properly, but by misuse. And yet, because this is now the usage of speech, both what it indicates is recognized, and it is not allowed to bring prejudice to proprieties. The devil, then, is said to generate sinners, according to what the Lord says in the Gospel: You are from your father the devil (John 8:44).

By which discourse he called him the father of the criminal, whose malignity they were convicted of imitating; and yet the understanding is settled, that through this name, namely of father, neither is sex ascribed to the devil, nor an airy substance to those men. Now, then, let it appear what we wished to be concluded from this. If a man were never properly judged to imitate a man, and the Apostle had said that all sinned through Adam, I would freely lay it down that the Apostle must be vindicated by the usage of the Scriptures, so that, just as the Lord had called the devil a father, who could not generate by substance, so the Apostle had written that man is imitable, lest he be believed to have taught anything against clear reason.

Aug. Was Adam the earlier in sin who was imitable, so that this kind of sin might rightly be said to have entered into the world through him? Was not the devil the earlier who stood forth imitable in sin? Through him, then, the Apostle would have said that sin entered into the world, if he had wished, in that passage, the sin which others would do by imitating to be understood.

54. Jul. But now, if I should gather together what in the Gospel is uttered by misuse, they do not bear it out; much more did the apostle Paul give no occasion for error, who said nothing improper, if he pronounced that the first man, a sinner, was an example to the sinners who followed.

Aug. Then he ought not to have set forth those two, one for sin, the other for justice—namely, Adam and Christ. For if he had set down Adam as the first sinner, on account of the sin which the rest imitated, surely he would set down, as the first just one whose justice was to be imitated by the rest, not Christ, but Abel; for Abel was the first who, imitating no human being but to be imitated by the rest, was just. But the Apostle, knowing what he was speaking of, set down Adam for sin, Christ for justice; because he knew the former to be the author of generation, the latter of regeneration.

55. Jul. And through this you have argued most dully, that if the apostle Paul had wished sin to be understood to have passed through imitation, he would have named the devil rather than Adam; since it is clear that the evil both of man and of the devil could not pass except by imitation. But with what you had constructed scattered—not so much by my hands as by the hands of reason itself—attend now to what is brought forward by us.

Aug. That you have not scattered what I had constructed, and that you have brought to bear upon our structure, in vain, the hands not of sound reason but of your empty opinion—those who read the words of us both will judge.

56. Jul. The Apostle shows that it was not said by him that sin passed by generation, when, naming the man, he added one; for one is the beginning of number; and, explaining through whom he was saying sin entered, he not only named him but also numbered him: Through one man, he says, sin entered into this world (Rom 5:12). But this one suffices for offering imitation; it does not suffice for fulfilling generation. But sin passed, yet through one. It is manifest that imitation, not generation, is here at issue, which cannot be done except through two.

Either, then, show that generation came about through Adam alone, without the woman—for this too is not foreign to the elegance of your wit; or surely, since you see that generation cannot stand except through two, assent at last that the work of two was not accused through the number one. Through one man, he says, sin entered into the world; he who said through one did not wish it to be understood through two. What, I ask, was number seeking amid these dogmas, that the Apostle should with such care name not only man, but one man? But it appears that the august discourse was wary of design, which, by the revealing of the Holy Spirit, forestalled and disarmed the errors of our times; lest, indeed, he be thought to have said anything to the defaming of the marriage instituted by God or of blessed fecundity, when the case required that he unfold the beginnings of sin, he said that sin passed through that number which could not suit offspring.

And surely the first human beings, both of them, had offended, who are both rightly said to have been a form of sin to their descendants; why, then, did the Apostle not say that sin passed through two—which would also have agreed better with the faith of history? But nothing could have been done by him more prudently; for he saw that, if he had named the two who had furnished the beginning and example of the transgression, and had affirmed that sin passed through them, an occasion would lie open for error, that he might be thought, through the names of the two, to have condemned union and fecundity. And therefore most prudently he preferred to name one, who, not sufficient for an indication of generation, would abound for a sign of example; and, being accused, would burden imitation, but, being numbered, would not accuse fecundity. And, that what we have done may be briefly gathered: fecundity, instituted in the first human beings, cannot be carried on except through two; but the Apostle pronounces that sin entered, yet through one.

Aug. I had foretold that you would say nothing; and that it is so is clear to anyone, however slow. For do not sinners imitate Eve, or did not the sin of the human race take its beginning rather from her? From a woman the beginning of sin was made, and on account of her, as it is written, we all die (Sir 25:24 (25:33)). Why, then, will you not attend that the Apostle said one man, through whom sin entered into the world, rather for this reason, because he wished not imitation but generation to be understood? For just as the beginning of sin was from the woman, so the beginning of generation is from the man; for the man first sows, that the woman may bear; therefore through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12), because it entered through the seed of generation, which the woman, receiving from the man, conceived; in which manner he willed not to be born, who alone was born of a woman without sin.

57. Jul. It has been irrefutably concluded that the Apostle shows that sin to have been conveyed to descendants by morals, not by seeds. See, then, how great a falsity has flowed from your mouth: But for this reason the Apostle said through one man, from whom the generation of human beings surely began, in order to teach that original sin passed through all by generation (Marriage and Desire 2.45)—whereas the Apostle said through one man (Rom 5:12) for this reason, lest original sin be thought to have passed through all. You play the fool so that I can scarcely hold my laughter, you who say that generation began from one man—when both the diversity of the sexes and the divine reading testify that generation could not have been, unless two human beings, that is, a man and a woman, had first existed.

Aug. Those who read this, let them read again my earlier answer; or, if they remember it well, let them laugh at this man's ravings. Although I could say that the Apostle said not two but one man, through whom sin entered into the world, for this reason, because it is written, They shall be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24); whence the Lord says, Therefore they are now no longer two, but one flesh (Matt 19:6)—especially when a man cleaves to his wife and intercourse is entered upon. But from intercourse offspring is begotten, drawing original sin, the vice propagating the vice, God creating the nature; which nature spouses, even using the vice well, cannot nonetheless so generate that it can be without the vice; which he who was born without that vice empties out in little children, even with Julian unwilling.

58. Jul. Or if perhaps—since otherwise your dogma cannot stand—you should answer that Adam conceived and bore from himself, no one doubts that the Apostle did not mean this; but you will show what you would wish to befall your own sex.

Aug. Do you not shudder at what is written, Nor will the slanderous possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10)? For you would not speak such foul reproaches, which help you in nothing, except from a lust for reviling.

59. Jul. But let us pass over these things, and grind down, by the strength of reason, that which appears can be brought forward by you in this passage. If, then, you should say that it is written of this mingling that they become two in one flesh, and that according to this manner the Apostle said through one man (Rom 5:12), in order to signify the members of those who generate cleaving to each other, I will answer that this too avails against your impiety. For it was not said, They shall be two human beings in one human being, but, They shall be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24); by which name of union that pleasure of those who couple, and the lust which, affecting the senses, prostrates the members and, as that prudent man understood, longs to make one flesh, would be taught to have been instituted by God and inserted into bodies before sin.

Aug. If only lust could bring it about that there should be two in one flesh (lust which, taken up by you to be quite such as it is now both praised and assailed by you, which you confess to be shameful and yet without shame so love that you dare even to endow it with the possession of paradise)—then in no way could it be understood of Christ and the Church, They shall be two in one flesh. For you do not stray so far from the way of truth as to dare to import this lust even into the union of Christ and the Church. Moreover, if Christ and the Church can be two in one flesh without it, so too could a man and his wife, if no one had sinned, be joined not by shameful lust—at which even he blushes who does not blush to praise it—but by the love that deserves to be praised, and could be two in one flesh for the sake of procreating children. Whence the Lord, when he says, Therefore they are now no longer two, but one flesh (Matt 19:6), surely does not say, They are not two flesh, but one flesh. What, then, are they that are not two, except human beings? Just as Christ and the Church together are not two Christs, but one Christ; whence it is also said to us, Then you are the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:29), since it was said of that seed of Abraham, And to your seed, which is Christ (Gal 3:16).

60. Jul. And through this the devil can claim nothing for himself either of its pleasantness or of its modesty.

Aug. What do you mean by saying, of its modesty? Are you ashamed to name shame? And yet you say that shameful lust existed even before sin in those of whom Scripture says, They were naked, and were not ashamed (Gen 2:25).

61. Jul. Yet here, if the Apostle had meant anything of the sort, he would have said that sin entered through one flesh, not through one man. But by generation only the substance of the flesh is shared with the offspring; for it is not the soul that is drawn from the soul, but the flesh from the flesh; whereas in the name of man both the mind properly and the body are judged, and through this the Apostle, by naming one man, neither showed the business of fecundity, in which he knew that nothing is imparted but the substance of the flesh; nor wished two to be understood, he who pressed home one, in order to teach that sin passed by imitation, not by generation.

Aug. What, then, is They are now no longer two, but one flesh (Matt 19:6), except: They are not two human beings, on account of one flesh? Since the flesh itself can be called man, the whole from the part; as in The Word was made flesh (John 1:14)—because he was made man, of whom it was said. The Apostle too, when he says, The outer man is being corrupted (2 Cor 4:16), I think wished the flesh to be understood.

On account of which we rightly speak when we say, A man's tomb, although only the flesh is buried there. Nor did she err who said, They have taken away my Lord from the tomb (John 20:2.13), although only the flesh had been laid there. With the most obscure question about the soul, then, remaining, it could be said, Through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12), even if only the flesh pertains to propagation. Attend to these things, then, and see how you have said nothing.

62. Jul. Here now, although truth has played its parts, yet I admonish, that the reader may be attentive. I have laid down much, then, of my own right in this conflict, and, following where the rashness of my adversary had provoked, I have so defended the decrees of sound faith that, even if they were the words of the Teacher of the Gentiles which the Traducianist thought he had used, it would yet be clear that he meant nothing of natural sin, who, by naming a man—but one—had blamed surely not the generation of crime, but examples.

Aug. You have given an example—but of vanity in yourself; for if the Apostle were setting down an example of sin from the first sinning man, that is, Adam, surely he would set down an example of justice from the first just man, that is, Abel.

63. Jul. But it is established that the order of the apostolic words is not that which our enemy supposed. For he argues in this way: If the Apostle, he says, had wished imitation to be understood, he would have said that sin entered and passed through all human beings not through one man (Rom 5:12), but through the devil. For of the devil it is written, They imitate him who are of his party (Wis 2:25). But for this reason he said through one man, from whom the generation of human beings surely began, in order to teach that original sin passed through all by generation (Marriage and Desire 2.45).

In this, then, he lies, in that he affirms that blessed Paul pronounced that through one man sin entered into the world and so passed into all human beings; this, I say, is not held in the discourses of the Teacher of the Gentiles; for he did not say that sin passed, but death. The order of the words, then, is: As through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). The sublime instructor of the Church weighed what he ought to say: Through one man, he says, sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings. He had already named death and sin; what need was there that, in that which he said passed, he should separate death from the fellowship of sin, so as to show pointedly that into this world sin indeed entered through one man, and through sin death, but that into all human beings not sin passed, but death—death surely brought in by the severity of judgment, the avenger of transgression, pursuing not the seeds of bodies but the vices of morals—unless because he took care to commend it and fortify it beforehand, lest he be thought to have given any aid to your dogma?

Aug. In that passage, indeed, where it was said, Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed into all human beings, whether sin, or death, or both is said to have passed into all human beings, seems ambiguous; but which of these it is, the matter itself shows clearly enough. For if sin had not passed, not every human being would be born with the law of sin, which is in the members; if death had not passed, not all human beings, as far as pertains to this condition of mortals, would die. But what the Apostle says, in whom all sinned—the in whom is understood only as in Adam, in whom he says they also die; because it was not just that the punishment should pass over without crime. Whichever way you turn yourself, in no way will you overturn the foundations of the Catholic faith; especially because you yourself contradict yourself, you who now say that not sin passed, but death—when above you said that the Apostle pressed home not two men but one, in order to teach that sin passed by imitation, not by generation (See above, 56.61). Sin, then, passed together with death; what is it that you now say, that not sin passed, but death?

64. Jul. Consider, then, how great is the distance between you and Paul. He says, Through one man (Rom 5:12); you, Through two, that is, through generation. He pronounces that in the first man there was both sin and death, but that to his descendants death alone passed; you, on the contrary, assert that both sin and destruction ran on to all.

Aug. It has already been answered; let those who wish reread what we have said above, lest we superfluously repeat the same things again and again.

65. Jul. Shamelessly, then, do you hide beneath the shadow of his name, since you say things exceedingly diverse and contrary. For he blames the work of human beings, you the work of God; he the pursuits of those who offend, you the innocence and life of those who are born; he the will of human beings, you nature.

Aug. Above, all these things have been answered; whence he who remembers already laughs at you; but he who does not remember, if he rereads those things, will surely, when he has laughed at these empty things of yours, grieve for you.

66. Jul. According to the Apostle, then, through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, since the world beheld him both guilty and destined to the condemnation of perpetual death. But death passed into all human beings, because one form of judgment also embraced all the transgressors of the remaining age; which death, however, is not permitted to rage against any saints or any innocent persons, but invades those whom it shall have seen to have emulated the transgression (The Deeds of Pelagius 23.57).

Aug. You say what was objected to your heresiarch Pelagius in the episcopal judgment of Palestine: that Adam was so made that, whether he sinned or did not sin, he would die. For this death, by which we all die, of which it was said, From a woman the beginning of sin was made, and on account of her we all die (Sir 25:24 (25:33))—this you are unwilling should have made its passage into all from sin originally, lest you be compelled to confess that at the same time sin too passed originally; for you perceive how unjust it is that punishment should pass over without merit.

But so Catholic is what you try to assail that, unless that man—to whom, as I said, it was objected—had condemned it, he would surely have gone out condemned from that judgment. Both this death, then, by which the spirit is separated from the body, and that which is called the second, by which the spirit will be tormented together with the body, as far as pertains to the merit of the human race, passed into all human beings; but the grace of God, through him who came to take away the reign of death by dying, did not allow death to reign, by that resurrection whose example went before in him.

This the Catholic faith holds, this the judges hold whom Pelagius dreaded, this the heretics do not hold whom Pelagius sowed.

67. Jul. Which transgression, although it was not made natural, was nonetheless a form of sin, and on account of this, although it does not weigh down those who are born, yet it accuses those who imitate.

Aug. And if you have forgotten the heavy yoke that weighs down those who are born, we do not cease to remind you.

68. Jul. But judicial death passed in him in whom all sinned, yet by free will; by which word, that is, all, a multitude is indicated, after the manner of the Scriptures, not the whole.

Aug. In vain do you try to twist straight words and to obscure clear ones: in him all sinned, in whom all die. He himself is Adam, in whom, if little children do not die, surely neither will they be made alive in Christ; but since, as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22), therefore those who wish to pervert these words are themselves overturned while the words remain.

69. Jul. But now let us proceed to the rest, so that the Apostle may show, by the advances of his sacred discourse, with what dogma he is in concord, as has appeared in great part. But what else do the following apostolic words also indicate? For when he had said this, he added, Until the law sin was in the world—that is, because not even the law could take away sin—but sin was not reckoned, when there was no law (Rom 5:13). It was, then, but it was not reckoned, because that was not shown which might be reckoned; for, as he says elsewhere, Through the law is the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20); but death, he says, reigned from Adam until Moses—this is what he had said above, until the law—not until Moses, as though thereafter there were no sin, but because not even the law given through Moses could take away the reign of death, which surely does not reign except through sin. Moreover, its reign is to cast the mortal man down even into the second death, which is everlasting. But it reigned. In whom? Even in those, he says, who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a form of the one to come (Rom 5:14).

Of what one to come, except Christ? And what sort of form, except by contrast? Which he also says elsewhere: As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22). As in the one that, so in the other this; this is the form. But this form is not in every part conformable; whence the Apostle, following on, added, But the gift is not as the offense; for if by the offense of one many have died, much more has the grace of God and the gift, in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, abounded unto many (Rom 5:15). What is much more abounded? Because all who are freed through Christ die temporally on account of Adam, but on account of Christ himself shall live without end (Marriage and Desire 2.46). You professed that the following discourses of the Apostle indicate nothing other than original sin; which we have shown was not shown by him at its very outset, because he had signified that sin passed through one, not through two.

Aug. It has already been answered, and still you speak empty things; nor is this surprising, for you still do not know what I have answered. You will be more shameless then, when you do know—if, leaving empty things, you are unwilling to hold the true.

70. Jul. Yet it must be weighed whether he intimates even now that which he had passed over. Until the law, he says, sin was in the world (Rom 5:13). You say that the Apostle wished this sin to be understood as natural; I ask, then, if it was until the law, why it ceased to be after the law. For I do not acquiesce in understanding until the law as up to its end rather than up to its rise; the propriety of the word makes for me: in saying that it was until the law, he shows that it is not after the law; and whatever has been taken away in time was not natural. What, then, the censure of the law broke and, by breaking, in great part extinguished, appears to have been taken on by imitation, not by generation.

Aug. O understanding—what else shall I call it than heretical! If, then, the law took away sin, because you wish until the law to be understood thus, then there was justice through the law. If justice through the law, then Christ died in vain (Gal 2:21). But if the law did not take away sin so that it should not be—which you had first said it did, and soon repented of it—but the law nonetheless broke sin, as you afterward corrected yourself, and in great part extinguished it, then he lied who said, The law entered in, that the offense might abound (Rom 5:20); but since he spoke the truth, you say nothing, and yet, by saying nothing, you contradict with heretical stubbornness.

71. Jul. But, lest I seem here to deal too tenaciously with you, let us acquiesce that until the law (Rom 5:13) can be understood as up to Christ; you concede, then, that this sin which you call original is not after Christ. And how do you say that, both in the members of the apostles and in all the baptized and even today, after so many ages of Christ's coming, the work of the devil, the shrub of the adversary power, and the law of sin remain, flourish, live?

Aug. I do not say this; you say nothing. One thing is sin, another the concupiscence of sin, to which he who does not sin by the grace of God does not consent—although that concupiscence of sin too is called sin, because it was made by sin, just as any writing is called the hand of him by whose hand it was made. But he of whom it was said, Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), himself dissolves by regeneration the guilt of the sin that is drawn by generation; he himself, giving the Spirit, brings it about that sin does not reign in our mortal body so as to obey its concupiscences (See Rom 6:12); he himself, by his daily indulgence, on account of which we daily say, Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12), mercifully blots out whatever the concupiscence of sin has evilly persuaded even to those who struggle by resisting well; he himself raises up the penitent who have been dashed down by a grievous fall; he himself, where there can be no sinning at all, will lead through and establish those who reign, when it will be said, Where, O death, is your strife? Where, O death, is your sting? But the sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15:55-56). Behold how that Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, which the law could not take away.

72. Jul. But let us see the rest also. But sin was not reckoned, says the Apostle, when there was no law (Rom 5:13); after which you subjoin: It was, then, but it was not reckoned, as he says elsewhere, Through the law is the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20; Marriage and Desire 2.46). If, then, through the law there was made the knowledge of sin, and you say that the sin of traducianism was not imputed before the law, show that this was imputed under the law. For if through the law there is the knowledge of sin, before the law the ignorance of sin, it cannot be doubted that this was the greatest cause of promulgating the law: that what was previously hidden might be brought forth and guarded against.

Aug. That it might be brought forth, you speak truly, and this we too say; but that it might be guarded against, not the law but grace, not the letter but the spirit, brought about; for the law entered in, not that it might be guarded against, but that sin might abound and grace superabound, by which sin both committed might be blotted out and, lest it be committed, guarded against.

73. Jul. Here, then, let the sum of the contest be: either show that original sin was imputed to anyone under the law, show that it was demonstrated, and I will consent that the Apostle was speaking of this sin.

Aug. I do indeed show what you challenge me to show; but what if you close your eyes to those things which you do not wish to see, and, lest they be seen by others, pour out the clouds of contention? Circumcision of the flesh was commanded by the law (See Gen 17:11-14), by which it could not be better signified that original sin is taken away through Christ, the author of regeneration. For every human being is born with a foreskin, just as with original sin, and the law commanded the flesh to be circumcised on the eighth day, because Christ rose on the Lord's day, which is the eighth after the seventh of the Sabbath; and the circumcised man begets one uncircumcised, transferring into him that which he himself now lacks, just as the baptized man transfers into the son whom he begets in the flesh the guilt of origin from which he himself has been absolved. Finally, in the law was written the Psalm: I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb (Ps 51:7 (50)). Which you would surely see, and would not dare to contradict anything, if you had eyes of faith like those of Cyprian and Ambrose and the other such Doctors of the Church.

74. Jul. Or surely, because this cannot be found in the law, acquiesce, most shameless one, that the Apostle is speaking of that sin which is drawn by imitation, committed by the will, refuted by reason, shown by the law, punished by equity.

Aug. Of all sin which is taken away through Christ it was said, Until the law sin was in the world (Rom 5:13), since by the law there is taken away neither the original nor the added, neither what was also before the law nor what abounded even with the law entering in. But when you say that the Apostle is speaking of that sin which is punished by equity, wake up and see that original sin is there too; for otherwise the equity of God would not impose the heavy yoke even upon the very beginnings of little children—which yoke our care often recalls, so that, if it does not bend your neck, it may break it. For I have shown that this sin too is demonstrated by the law, by the precept of circumcision; and if you deny this, teach by what sin of his own the soul of a little child, if it were not circumcised, perished from his people (See Gen 17:14). I know you do not teach it, but, wishing to weary us, you do not keep silent either.

75. Jul. For the rest, what you imagine—that original sin cannot even be transmitted through one, since generation is carried on through two.

Aug. It has already been answered: read what has been said by me on this, and you will find that you have said empty things.

76. Jul. Nor could it ever have been, if it can at some time not be, because natural things persevere from the beginning of the substance to its end.

Aug. This you could say of death too, for we are born even with it. For the body is dead because of sin (Rom 8:10); but even if not because of sin, as you foolishly hold, we are nonetheless born without doubt mortal, and yet death and mortality will not be when we live immortally. As, then, death is original and yet could have been, can not be while our nature remains—indeed, better—so too original sin both could have been drawn by generation and can not be, taken away by regeneration.

77. Jul. Nor was it shown by the law, or could be shown, because never would a lawgiver come to such madness as to command anyone, Do not be born thus or thus; and what it was not fitting to be admonished of, in order to be corrected, cannot justly be punished.

Aug. A human being is not commanded how to be born, but it was commanded how that man should live, and he violated the precept; from which parent original sin is derived. It is also commanded that an infant be circumcised, to be condemned if he is not circumcised—yet to whom not only is nothing else commanded, but not even circumcision itself; and through this a human being is indeed not commanded how to be born, yet not even an infant, whose life upon the earth is of one day (Job 14:4-5), is clean from the filth of sin. Read the words of holy Job, and you will find yourself to be a liar, with him speaking whom God said to be truthful.

78. Jul. And what is until the law is shown not to be after the law, is shown finally not to be after Christ.

Aug. Thus the guilt of this sin is shown not to be after the abolition of sins, as death is not after the resurrection of the flesh.

79. Jul. And through this, according to your own argument too, it once is not; according to the testimony of truth, it never was.

Aug. O that you did not exist, who against the testimony of truth both speak your false testimony and, on top of that, write it!

80. Jul. And, that what we have done may be pressed home upon the reader's memory: you once defined sin, and most excellently, to be nothing other than the will to admit what justice forbids and from which it is free to abstain.

Aug. It has already been answered, that this is the definition of sin, not of that which is also a punishment of sin (See above, 1.74).

81. Jul. Which definition opened the way also to understanding the justice of God, so that we might judge that the equity of the divine judgment in no way stands, unless it had imputed as sin that from which it knew it was free for him who is afflicted on account of it to abstain.

Aug. On account of what, then, are little children afflicted, if they have no sin at all? Or could the omnipotent and just God not prevent unjust punishments from so many innocent ones?

82. Jul. But the Teacher of the Gentiles, arming reason with the privilege of authority, pronounced that through one man guilt passed into this world; by which name he separated the works of marriage, which cannot be without the business of two; and we noted that for this reason one was named by him, lest anyone should dare to understand two.

Aug. It has already been answered; you constantly delight to prattle empty things.

83. Jul. And in truth, much more consistently do I assert that the one whom the Apostle calls one is one, in order to teach that it was a vice of imitation, not of generation; whereas the Traducianist, under the name of one, who is said to have been the vestibule of sin, applies to seeds a matter of the will, which the nature of things does not receive.

Aug. Cease to repeat what we have already refuted. Why do you compel us still to say the same things again and again against your great wisdom—by which you think that generation is not signified where it was said, Through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12), because generation is done through two, not through one, as though one had admitted that sin which you are unwilling to have passed by generation but by imitation? Since, then, that sin too was admitted by two, why was it said that through one man sin entered into the world, except because the beginning of generation is not from the woman conceiving and bearing, but from the man sowing—or because they are now no longer two, when through coitus they become one flesh?

84. Jul. Afterward, too, we came to the law, up to whose time the Apostle wrote that sin, not being shown, flourished; which time you tried to prolong up to the end of the law, not understanding that you argued to no purpose, since you would have to be constrained by us to prove that this sin—of which you lie that Paul spoke, and which you assert reigned up to the abolition of the Old Testament—was either imputed or could have been imputed under the law; or surely you would acquiesce that it does not reign after Christ, so that the Apostle's opinion, violently bent at least to your views, might be in concord with them. But none of these things can be rendered by you; the purity of our faith, then, is set on solid ground, with which both the institutions of reason and the dignity of justice and the decrees of the Apostle in all things agree.

Aug. That you say nothing, both what we have answered and you yourself show. The Apostle, when he says, Until the law sin was in the world (Rom 5:13), wished not only original but all sin to be understood, and therefore it was until the law, because not even the law could take away sin. Until the law, indeed, was said so that this statement might include even the law itself, just as it was said in the Gospel, So all the generations from Abraham until David are fourteen (Matt 1:17); for that number is completed not by excepting David, but by counting him too. As, then, when we hear fourteen generations until David, we do not except David but count him too, so when we hear, Until the law sin was in the world, we ought not to except the law but to count it too; because, as David is not outside the number which was said to be up to him, so the law is not outside the persistence of sin which was said to have been up to it; and through this no one takes away the sin which not even the law, though holy and just and good, could take away, except he of whom it was said, Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). But he takes them away both by remitting those that have been committed, where original sin too is comprehended, and by helping that they be not committed, and by leading to the life where they can in no way be committed.

85. Jul. But let us see the rest also. After you had said, This form is not in every part conformable, you add: Whence the Apostle, following on, added, But the gift is not as the offense; for if by the offense of one many have died, much more has the grace of God and the gift, in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, abounded unto many (Rom 5:15). Which opinion you expound in this way: What is much more abounded, except that all who are freed through Christ die temporally on account of Adam, but on account of Christ himself shall live without end? (Marriage and Desire 2.46) The Apostle, surely, about whose opinion is our contest, pronounced that the grace of the Savior works more efficaciously and more copiously toward the conferring of salvation than the sin of Adam, in order to show that Christ profited much more vehemently and profited more people, whose grace—to use his own word—abounded unto many, than the transgression of the first man harmed, whom you say bound sin to the seeds.

Aug. He said much more abounded, not, Unto more many, that is, not, Unto more people. For who does not see that there are more in the human race unto whom it did not abound, so that from the more might be shown what was owed to the whole mass by just judgment, unless that the Spirit breathed where he would, and God called those whom he deigned, and made religious whom he would (See The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins 1.14; Ambrose, On Luke 7.27)?

86. Jul. Prove, then, that what the Apostle meant coheres with your dogmas.

Aug. Let his words be read without the perversity of readers, such as is in you, and no other proof will be required.

87. Jul. For if Adam, as you say, by natural sin generated all unto condemnation and poured out from his innards so much venom into his offspring that in the nature of the human being he disturbed all the institutions of God.

Aug. When an unclean spirit vexes a little child and afflicts his soul and body, perverts his senses and health, is not all his nature, which God instituted, disturbed? Nor do you find at all the merit of so great an evil, denying original sin. For why do you not here attend that in the nature of the human being all the institutions of God are disturbed through the venom of the devil? State the case of the little child, state his guilt, to whom, newly born, these things befall—you who are unwilling to take the apostolic words as the Catholic Church takes them, from when it was instituted, and as nature herself confesses by her own so manifest evils. And yet, if we consider well, the institutions of God are in no way disturbed, since, foreknowing things to come, he established all things, and does not repay to individuals the whole that the apostate creature deserves, but, disposing all things in measure and number and weight (See Wis 11:21), allows no one to suffer any evil that he does not deserve—although each single one suffers not so much as is owed to the whole mass.

88. Jul. So that without the gift of the devil, to which you say the lust of the sexes pertains, the marriage which God had created could not exist; rather, with those marriages which he had ordained flying away with the honor of his institution, he would compel and convict that these, whose order has remained—with the movement of the genitals, with the shame of those who couple, with the heat and prostration of the members, with the pleasantness of the senses, with the iniquity of those who are born—are the work of the devil, not of God.

Aug. If you would distinguish the evil of vices, which cannot exist except in some good, from the goodness of natures, you will neither excuse the devil nor accuse God, neither excuse the evil of lust nor accuse the good of marriage.

89. Jul. Finally, he would undermine the very liberty of choice by the impulse of one sin, so that no one thereafter would have it in his power to reject old crimes by the choice of virtue, but all would be swept by one torrent into the condemnation of overthrown humanity.

Aug. Why do you not rather wonder at the so great misery of the whole human race from the very outset of birth, that no one becomes blessed except from being wretched, nor lacks all evils except after this life—he to whom, through the grace of God, it is granted that he should lack them? By wondering at this you will correct yourself, and will recognize the just judgment of God—since through one man sin entered into the world—in the not unjust affliction of the human race.

90. Jul. If, I say, the iniquity of the first man brought all these things into the image of God, it is too manifest that the grace of Christ is feeble in its gifts, which found nothing to heal these so many beam-like evils; or, if it found something, affirm it. For let us now compare individual things with individual. If Adam, beyond the works of the will, subverted the institutions of nature itself, Christ ought to have done nothing more than to repair those things which had been dashed down by him—and by these very footsteps, namely, by which he had undermined them.

Aug. This he does, but not as you wish. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? (Isa 40:13; Rom 11:34)

91. Jul. That is, so that in the marriages of the baptized lust would in no way be felt, nor would the genitals be moved in the same manner as in the rest of the nations.

Aug. Then the baptized ought not to have given birth with groaning, since this—which you cannot deny—is the punishment of the sinning woman.

92. Jul. Finally, after the gift of grace the shame of those who couple would withdraw, nor would the imitation of repose pass through the members, nor would the senses suffer the burdens of sweetness; finally, free choice would be restored to the baptized, so that, the law of sin being expelled through the correction of nature, you would confess it as possible for mortals to strive to shine with the splendor of virtues as to shudder at the filth of vices—rather, those who are imbued with the sacraments ought not to be mortal at all.

Aug. And yet, Julian, you are not ashamed to set up such marriages in paradise, where you confess the shame of those who couple. Was there, then, anything shameful where the Creator, who is to be praised above all things, had instituted nothing but what is to be praised? But who can have wisdom about this and say it, except one who is not ashamed to praise that which is shameful?

93. Jul. For if medicine fights with the wound, and death is said to have befallen on account of sin, then the removal of sin ought to work the removal of death.

Aug. You still say that Adam was so made that, whether he sinned or did not sin, he would die; but in saying these things, your teacher Pelagius himself, in the episcopal judgment of Palestine, already condemned you—and not without himself, since he did not correct himself (See The Deeds of Pelagius 23-24.57). But God does not make his own blessed in this evil age, to whom here he forgives sins and imparts the pledge of the Spirit of grace. Therefore to those who, of the evils of this age—whether delightful or savage and harsh—partly do not use them, partly use them well, he promised a future age in which they suffer no evils, where marriages would be such as they could have been in that paradise, if no one had sinned, in which there would be nothing shameful; but there will not even be such, since, the number of the blessed being completed, for whom marriages might be necessary, generation itself will not be.

94. Jul. But since it is established that none of those things which we have mentioned befalls the bodies of the baptized, and since truth clearer than the sun has shown that the whole could not have been done otherwise—that is, ought not to have been done otherwise—than by these modes of medicine, you must confess either that those things which we enumerated above did not befall on account of sin, and therefore were not wounds of nature, so that the account of grace may stand, by which it is manifest that those things were not moved from their orders; or surely you must deny that there is anything of medicine in the mysteries of Christ, which, of so many diseases according to you, could not heal even one.

Aug. Rather, indeed, from this you ought to recognize, if you lived with a sober mind, how great that sin was which entered into the world through one man and passed with death into all human beings, since not even the baptized, their guilt now taken away, are delivered from the evils of this age, with which human beings are born, until after this life—in which it is fitting that we be exercised, even with goods promised, still by evils. For if the reward of faith were rendered at once, then there would no longer even be faith itself, which, seeing present evils, therefore piously endures them, because, not seeing the promised goods, it faithfully and patiently awaits them.

95. Jul. So far I have argued as though the Apostle had judged the force of the gifts and of the wounds, in their contrary effects, to be nevertheless equal; but without doubt the sublimity of the sound faith which we defend grows, when it is considered that Paul not only did not prefer the sickness of faults to the remedies of grace, but even judged the benefits more copious than the losses.

Aug. It is true; for the losses of the regenerated are temporal, but the benefits will without doubt be everlasting; but the losses which those who are born attest by weeping, say by what merit they are inflicted on them under a most just and most omnipotent judge, if they draw to themselves no sin.

96. Jul. Let the prudent reader attend, then, to what this disputation too has gathered. The Apostle said that the gift of Christ abounded unto more people for salvation than the fault of Adam had harmed.

Aug. He did not say this, but, Much more did grace abound unto many (Rom 5:15), that is, It abounded more, not unto more many, that is, not unto more people, as has already been answered (See The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins 1.14).

97. Jul. By which fault you say those disasters befell nature which we enumerated above, of which not one is established to be healed in those who arrive at the sacraments of Christ; and through this you assert that the iniquity of the first man had much more power to harm than the grace of Christ obtains to heal; from which, when it is gathered, it has been shown that there is as great a discord between you and the apostle Paul as between Catholics and Manichees.

Aug. The grace of Christ takes away the guilt of original sin, but it takes away the invisible thing invisibly; it also remits all the sins which human beings have added on top by living badly. For the judgment is from one offense unto condemnation, because even that one which is drawn by those who are born draws unto eternal condemnation, if it is not remitted; nor, however, does grace remit only this—otherwise it would be of equal value—but together with it, it remits the rest also; therefore it is of more value, on account of which it was said, The judgment indeed was from one unto condemnation, but grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16).

Grace also grants that the spirit may have desires against the concupiscence of the flesh; and, if ever the faithful man is in this struggle venially overcome, it remits his debts as he prays; and, when he is damnably overcome, it gives a more humble penance, to which it may grant indulgence; finally, it grants eternal life to both soul and body, where—of what sort and how great the goods are—who could conceive? How, then, did the iniquity of the first man harm more than the goodness of the second man, that is, Christ, profited, when the former harmed temporally, but Christ both helps temporally and frees and beatifies eternally? Since these things are so, our opinion is Catholic, not Manichean, and therefore is not Pelagian either, because it is Catholic.

98. Jul. I would, indeed, with the best right, despise your frivolous exposition in this passage and pass it by unrebuked, as too much cleaving to the ground, did I not fear that it would be ascribed to trickery rather than to constancy. You speak, then, in this way: What is much more abounded (Rom 5:15), except that all who are freed through Christ die temporally on account of Adam, but on account of Christ himself shall live without end? (Marriage and Desire 2.46) By which discourse, if you attended to what would be said consistently, you would confess that your whole citadel, that is, traducianism, has fallen; for you say that the grace of Christ abounded much more for this reason, because through it eternal life is conferred, whereas through Adam's sin temporal corruption must be undergone. If, then, Adam brought in nothing else but the death of the body, against whom Christ conferred, with a more copious benefit, a life enduring without end, it appears that not Adam's sin passed to his descendants, but death.

Aug. It appears that you laughed at what I said—or rather pretended to laugh—for this reason: that to those who do not understand you, you might seem to say something, when you said nothing. First, because I said that Adam harmed by temporal death those whom the grace of Christ frees; for those whom, by the truth of a hidden but just judgment, it does not free, even if they die as little children, are stricken with eternal death. How, then, does it appear from this that not Adam's sin passed to his descendants, but death, except because you wish that to be thought which your words clamor, not that which follows my words? For we say that both passed, and we proclaim that both are taken away by Christ—the guilt of sin, namely, by a most full remission of sins, but death by the most blessed resurrection of the saints, which therefore is not given at once to the regenerated, so that faith may be exercised, by which what is not seen is hoped for; for when the faithful hope this, both for themselves and for their little children, they are surely faithful. Behold what we say, behold the Catholic truth you contradict; but you say more against yourselves than against it, whatever you say in your heretical disputations.

99. Jul. But it will be established most consistently that perpetual death, that is, everlasting punishment, was not transmitted to us, and through this that the sin of traducianism cannot exist. For that it may briefly appear what is established to be held: by the Apostle the gifts of Christ are preferred to the sin of the first man; do you, through this sin of yours, that is, traducianism, say that one death or two passed? If one, and that bodily, as here you confessed, it is established that the grace of Christ surpasses the sin of the first man, and now no one is born a sinner; because, if—as you said above—the reign of sin is that a human being should be cast into the second death, that is, into perpetual punishment, and you say that through Adam only the death of the body was conveyed, then neither does sin pass through Adam to his descendants, nor eternal death.

Aug. It has already been answered: you say nothing. For the reign of sin casts even into eternal death, unless it is remitted through the grace of Christ; yet this temporal death too would be none, had not Adam lost, by the merit of sin, the possibility of not dying; for this God announced to the sinner, saying, You are earth, and into earth you shall go (Gen 3:19). This Christ deigned to undergo without the merit of sin, so that through it he might indeed, by dying, go into the earth, but, by rising, might lift the earth into heaven, and thus, eternal death being destroyed, might for this reason not take temporal death away from the faithful: that against it the faith of the resurrection might contend in the struggle of this life.

100. Jul. But if you should say that through Adam's sin iniquity was made natural and that two deaths befell, one eternal, the other temporal, but that through the grace of Christ one is for the present taken away from the person, not from the nature—that is, the perpetual one—while the temporal remains, then the Apostle is convicted of falsity, who said that grace profited much more than sin harmed (See Rom 5:15); but the Apostle cannot be charged; you, therefore, are by right reproved.

Aug. I said that by one resurrection of the blessed both deaths are taken away—both that one, lest the soul be without its body, and that one, lest the soul be weighed down or afflicted even by its body. But this is left to the faithful for a time in such a way that faith may have help through it, just as afterward it is taken away from the guilty, so that, in that they do not depart from their body, it may be an increase of their misery. And through this, to those who are regenerated in Christ and go out as his elect from this evil age, it is manifest that grace profits more than the sin harmed which entered into the world through one man and passed with death through all human beings. The Apostle, then, cannot be refuted, because he spoke the truth; but you do not understand, or, against what you understand, you try by heretical contention to assert what is false.

101. Jul. The Apostle said that the grace of Christ abounded more than the fault of Adam; therefore not nature is accused by him, not generation, not fecundity, but the will, the choice of evil, the depravity of morals.

Aug. If generation harmed nothing, regeneration bestows nothing; if nature is not corrupted, little children do not have Christ as savior; if the evil and good merit of individuals is in their own will, by what merit does Christ confer the kingdom of God on little children, who have used their will toward neither part? Finally, since the Apostle set down two, one for sin—not the devil but Adam—and one for justice—not Abel but Christ—so that imitation might be referred not to examples but regeneration to generation, if Adam does not transfer sin into the human beings generated, neither does Christ grant justice to the little children regenerated, because neither the generated nor the regenerated little children have used their own liberty.

Go now, if you wish, and cry out, if you dare, that justice is not granted to little children and that they will not have justice when they dwell in that kingdom, where there will be, as it is written, new heavens and a new earth, in which justice dwells (See 2 Pet 3:13); or, from that most unmixed dogma with which you are inebriated, rave that in that kingdom little children will indeed have justice, but by the merits of their own will, not by the bounty of divine grace. But if you do not dare to say this (for you confess that here merits are gained, but there rewards are repaid), why do you doubt to confess—or are unwilling—that they could so have had sin from Adam without the merits of their own bad will, as they will receive from Christ justice without their own preceding merits of good will?

102. Jul. And through this, if truth has any place in human affairs still, and the whole world has not become utterly deaf with the din of iniquity, anyone will confess that he has been thoroughly taught—by reason, by disputation, and with the faith of the Apostle and his very opinion as witness—that there is as great a difference between Traducianists and Catholics as between Paul and Manichaeus, as between wisdom and folly, as between reason and madness, as between constancy of statements and that fluctuation which you suffer with a new foulness, so that in almost the same lines you deny what you have said and assert what you have denied.

Aug. It has already been answered. I ask you, if you can say nothing, be silent—if you can; but, what is worse, you cannot do even this.

103. Jul. And the gift, he says, is not as through one who sinned; for the judgment was from one unto condemnation, but grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16). To which words of the Apostle you bring your exposition, which runs thus: From one, then, you say, what, except offense? Because there follows, but grace from many offenses. Let these men say how it is from one offense unto condemnation, except because even one original sin, which passed into all human beings, suffices for condemnation; but grace is from many offenses unto justification for this reason, because it looses not only that one which is drawn originally, but also the rest, which in each human being are added by the movement of his own will. For if, by the offense of one, death reigned through one, much more shall those who receive the abundance of grace and of justice reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through the offense of one unto all human beings unto condemnation, so also through the justice of one unto all human beings unto the justification of life (Rom 5:17-18; Marriage and Desire 2.46).

After which words of the Apostle, as though you had accomplished something, you speak insultingly of us: Let them still remain in the vanity of their mind, and say that one man did not transmit propagation but furnished an example of sin. How, then, through the offense of one unto all human beings unto condemnation, and not rather through the many offenses of each one, except because, even if that one is alone, it is sufficient to lead unto condemnation even with no others added, just as it leads the dying little children who are born of Adam, if they are not reborn in Christ? What, then, does this man seek from us which he is unwilling to hear from the Apostle—through what sin is found in a little child, whether through the will or through marriage or through the parents? Behold, let him hear through what, let him hear and be silent, through what sin is found in a little child. The Apostle: Through the offense of one, he says, unto all human beings unto condemnation (Marriage and Desire 2.46). We know that you fear nothing more than the question that searches out your mind and your dogma; thence it is that with all your resources you procure from the powers of the world a denial of examination; for you understand that you must act by force, when you are deserted by the help of reason.

Aug. Do you wish not to fear the power? Do good (Rom 13:3). But it is not good to put forth, against the apostolic sense, and to assert, the heretical sense. Why do you still seek an examination which has already been made at the Apostolic See, which finally has already been made in the episcopal judgment of Palestine, where Pelagius, the author of your error, would without doubt have been condemned, had he not condemned those dogmas of yours which you defend? A heresy condemned by bishops, then, is not still to be examined, but to be restrained by the Christian powers.

104. Jul. But your opinion will not prevail so much among the prudent that, since you are the head of these men and the cause of these evils (Virgil, Aeneid 11.361), you may withdraw yourself from the midst of the conflict by an objection of the Apostle, and think that he is to be struck for you—he by whom especially we are armed against you as our instructor and prince.

So that you may consistently recognize what is to be said to you: if there were no disagreement between me and you over this, that the Apostle confirmed the dogma of the Manichees by natural sin, then you would constantly set him in the way of one seeking your head; but now, since the dignity of the Teacher of the Gentiles remains inviolable with me, and I will not allow his words to be injured by your exposition—which, according to the rule of reason set forth, I assert to be repugnant to a foolish, impure, and impious dogma, and I convict that he said nothing for natural sin—with what shamelessness do you press that either he, who is not questioned (since his wisdom is not doubted), should answer me for you, or that you cry out that I am unwilling to hear from the Apostle what, in you, I detest by the soundness of understanding handed down to us by the Apostle?

Aug. Ought you not, after the Apostle's words interposed by me, to have done nothing but be silent? And yet, saying nothing against them, and saying nothing according to them, you do not keep silent to me, and you boast, among other things, that I am the head of these men and the cause of these evils—as though I had first either believed or argued that there is original sin. For you believe that those who will read these things of yours are so unlearned as not to know how many before us, Doctors of the Church and illustrious ones, so understood and expounded these words of the Apostle as the whole Catholic Church, from its very beginning, understands or believes; and if those words of the Doctors are evil, as you do not fear to say, how am I, I ask you, the head of these men and the cause of these evils, except because you are the head of these slanders which you, raging, press upon me?

For if with a sound brain you considered the miseries of human life from the first weepings of infants to the last groans of the dying, you would surely see that neither I nor you, but that Adam, was the head of these men and the cause of these evils; which, unwilling to see, with closed eyes you cry out both that the judgment of God is just and that there is no original sin. How contrary these two are to each other you would without doubt discern—I do not say, if you were not the head of these evils, for surely you are not, but if you had a sound head, which you could have, if, by following the Catholic Doctors, you did not have Pelagius as your head.

105. Jul. Let the force of your arguments, then, be brought out. After Paul had said that the grace of the Savior abounded much more for healing than the transgression of the first man for harming, there follows: And the gift is not as through one who sinned; for the judgment was from one unto condemnation, but grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16). Which one offense you contend to be original, sufficient for condemnation, passing, namely, into all human beings; but that grace is for this reason said to be from many offenses unto justification, because it looses not only that one which is drawn originally, but also the rest, which in each human being are added by the movement of his own will (Marriage and Desire 2.46). To confirm which, a little later you argue that, if the Apostle had said this one offense, sufficient for condemnation, was taken on by imitation, he ought to have added that all human beings go unto condemnation not through one offense, but through their many, each committed by his own will.

In which passages, since the Apostle's discourse must be disentangled from the nets of the Manichees, I admonish that the reader be attentive. You say, then, according to our sense, by which it is asserted that the first fault furnished a form to those who sin, that the Apostle ought—just as he said that grace works justification from many offenses—so to have said that death reigned from many sins. Moreover, by this argument you struggle altogether against yourself; for I convict that, according to your dogma, the Apostle pronounces inconsistently, But grace from many offenses unto justification, who had said, From one sin the judgment unto condemnation.

For, going out of our borders to dwell in your region: if the liberty of choice was overthrown by the first sin and thereafter remained in all the race of human beings so maimed that it is not possible for it to do anything but evil, and it does not have in its power the choice of the other part—that is, to withdraw from evil and to do good—but, depressed by the necessity of iniquity, is compelled to obey the appetite of crimes;

if, every law of justice being broken through, those things have become natural which had been voluntary; if the law of sin dwells in the members, which has obtained its tyranny over the image and work of God by the shame and pleasantness of marriage; if the shrub of the devil is planted in the innards before the soul, and grows up with the natural increases, puts forth leaves, and grows heavy with pestilent fruit; if these things, I say, as you say, one fault of the first man begot,

then it is said more consistently that the race of mortals goes unto condemnation from one offense than that grace frees from many offenses, so that it may be understood more properly that this grace can be said to free from one offense those whom it frees. For no others are added by the movement of one's own will, if every evil, the liberty of choice being broken and the honor of desire shut out, is worked by the seed-infecting fault of the first parent.

Aug. How can it come about that a man who tries to pervert the apostolic words should be able to speak except perversely? For surely, when the use of the will—which little children do not have—has come to that offense which generation draws, the tree of many sins sprouts into many and varied desires; which, before it came about, even that one was drawing unto damnation, if the little child should end this life before the use of the will. For not because a greater damnation is owed to an evil now great and multiplied, was none therefore owed to one small and not yet multiplied. How, then, does regeneration, which takes away the evil multiplied through the use of the will, not bestow more than generation harmed, which drew the beginning of this evil—however great and manifold—not yet increased and not yet multiplied, which alone would remain without any sprouting, if no use of the will, by which it might be increased and multiplied, were added? But the will, before it is restored to good liberty for working true justice by the help of God's grace, is moved to sin, or not moved, by many other causes too besides the vice of origin; whence it comes about that even the impious themselves, to whom either the grace which justifies the impious has not yet come or never will come, sin, some more, some less. The judgment, then, is from one unto condemnation (Rom 5:16), because even those are damned who drew that one by generation; but grace is from many offenses unto justification, because it takes away not only that with which a human being is born, but whatever else of offenses the use of the will has added to that evil. This is the Catholic truth of the apostolic words, which you deprave by no heretical loquacity, however great a prolixity of vanity and loquacity you exercise upon us.

106. Jul. And through this, if natural sin is the author of so many evils, the grace of Christ in no way works justification by remitting many offenses, but, by pardoning one sin, carries out the business of its kindness; which, when it pledges that it will do, will make good its promises, if it heals these things which are said to have been brought in through the wound of sin; but if, even after the remedies it has brought, the same series of diabolical diseases nonetheless persists, then to its will is owed gratification, to its presumption pardon, because for healing the inborn pestilences it lacked power, not will.

Aug. It has already been answered; understand and be silent. In one way grace makes one struggle and helps him, in another way it preserves the victor, without any enemy either external or internal, in eternal peace; the former is a laborious warfare in the present age, the latter a blessed rest in the future. But if you wage no war with the carnal vices in yourself, blush; if you do wage it, fall mute.

107. Jul. What, then, has been accomplished by this disputation? Namely, that your view and the Apostle do not agree. For the Apostle says that many offenses are remitted by the liberality of grace; but your dogma asserts that one natural sin, which you call the law of sin, forms desires of iniquity in all human beings. It is therefore settled that nature, which is the work of God, is accused by you, the will by him. But he ought not to have spoken otherwise at all than he did speak—that is, that condemnation can come from one sin, because both that first man, through one sin, furnished an example of offending, and, just as for that man himself one transgression abounded unto condemnation, so also for the rest one fault can suffice unto guilt. On account of which Ecclesiastes: He who sins in one thing loses many goods (Eccl 9:18); and James: If you observe the whole law, but offend in one point, you have become guilty of all (Jas 2:10).

Aug. Then Adam's sin harmed only himself, and not the human race too? For you will not be so absurd as to say that human beings were harmed, or are harmed, by his sin who do not know, or do not believe, whether he existed and what he did; because, although human beings unknowingly imitate something, yet to say that they are harmed and made sinners by that sin which they do not know was committed thousands of years ago is to speak too foolishly—unless you confess that this sin passed to all generations. But those who say that Adam's sin harmed only himself and not the human race, unless Pelagius had condemned it, would be condemned by those judges who surely are not Manichees.

108. Jul. But the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ was not so given that, for individual sins, as for individual wounds, it should provide individual remedies of indulgence, and, by diverse baptisms, grant pardon to varied sins; but, according to the power of a most efficacious medicine, which is applied to crimes, that is, to the works of an evil will, it so comes to aid in common that it wipes away the diverse kinds of guilt by the force of one consecration.

Aug. In whatever way you say the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ was given, you separate from it the little children, whom you deny it makes saved—so that, with you dividing the very words at your pleasure, Christ may seem to pertain to little children on account of the kingdom of God, into which you concede that none but the baptized can arrive, but Jesus may be utterly alien to them, since he does not work in them that from which he is so called. For it is written, You shall call his name Jesus, and at once subjoining the reason why Jesus, For he himself, he says, will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21). Denying that this is done in little children, you separate them both from the name of Jesus and from his people, and you dare to be indignant that you yourselves are rather separated from that same people. But as far as pertains to voluntary offenses, just as from many the judgment sends unto condemnation, so from many grace sends unto justification. Why, then, was it said, The judgment from one unto condemnation, but grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16), except because in this passage will is not set against will, nor imitation against imitation, but regeneration against generation? For as generation has the judgment from one unto condemnation, so regeneration has grace from many offenses unto justification. It is clear what the Apostle wished to be understood; if you open submissive ears, you will close your contentious mouths.

109. Jul. Prudently, then, when he was speaking of Adam, he named one sin, which he wished to be understood to have been a form of transgression; for this reason, I say, he mentioned one and not many, because he knew that only one sin of Adam is contained in the history of the law. But he praised those imbued by him for putting forth grace from many offenses unto justification, lest a suspicion of a poor benefit should arise; and if he had said, Grace from one unto justification, he would seem to abolish not so much all things as single ones. In that, then, he set forth one sin, he kept the faith of history; in that he subjoined, From many grace unto justification, he commended the munificence and abundance of the mystery.

Aug. But what need was there that he should speak of Adam, when he was commending the grace of Christ, except because through the former is generation, through the latter regeneration?

110. Jul. Which exposition, as it accords with reason, so it destroys you; for by this very thing you are compelled to confess that in all the foregoing words the Apostle was not speaking of the sin of the Manichean traducianism, since in the mention of grace he showed that many sins are loosed.

Aug. You help the Manichees, to whom you give a place for introducing another evil nature, by denying that in the original evil is the cause of the misery of little children—a misery which they surely would not have in paradise, if they were born there with the rectitude and blessedness of human nature persisting.

111. Jul. For from the kind of those sins which he commended as being many and as all remitted through grace, he shows that he had above called that one a sin too; but you agree that these many are those which are committed by each human being by the movement of his own will; that one, then, is also of the same kind.

Aug. Together with that one I say there are many, not apart from it; but this too can rightly be said to be of the same kind, if it is referred to origin, because that one also flowed from the will of the first man, when his sin entered into the world and passed through all human beings.

112. Jul. So that it may be understood to be drawn by each one by the movement of his own will; and now not the fecundity of the seeds, but the depravity of pursuits will be accused. But if he had wished that one original sin to be understood, he surely would not in what follows have spoken of many sins, which he testifies are remitted through grace.

Aug. Why would he not have spoken of them, except because the Pelagians wish it so? But the truth does not wish it, by which the Pelagian novelty is refuted and the vanity is conquered. For the many offenses, from which grace sends unto justification, are many together with that one; from which one the judgment, even if no others be added, sends unto condemnation. So, then, Adam could insert one offense into the generated, but Christ could remit many to the regenerated, since the latter is shown to have profited more than the former harmed.

113. Jul. And although the things that have been done overflow for the defense of truth, yet I admonish that the reader be attentive to what we bring forward. For it will appear irrefutably that in these passages the apostle Paul disputed nothing about nature, but about the conduct of mortals; for, setting the force of the grace of Christ and of the sin of the first man over against each other, and comparing the effects of both, he labored to show that the mystery of Christ profited more than the sin of the first man harmed.

But this we have taught cannot stand in the sense of traducianism; so, just as the many things he enumerated, so this he wished especially to pertain to the praise of grace, where he says, The judgment from one unto condemnation, but grace from many offenses unto the justification of life (Rom 5:16-18).

Which the asserter of natural evil expounded in this way: For this reason, he says, from one unto condemnation, because that one sin, which is drawn originally, is sufficient to lead unto condemnation, as it leads the little children who are born of Adam, if they are not reborn in Christ, even if there be no other sins. But grace from many offenses unto justification, because it remits not only that which is drawn originally, but also the rest, which are added by each one by the movement of his own will (Marriage and Desire 2.46). Behold, you have professed—though with Manichean impiety—that there is indeed a natural sin, yet one, on account of which you say those who are born must be damned.

Aug. He who said, We are all born under sin (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13), was not a Manichee; but you—answer—what are you, who separate so many images of God, without the merit of any sin, from the kingdom of God, deny that they are damned by the judgment of God, and make two eternal felicities, one which is in the kingdom of God, another which is outside the kingdom of God; tell me, I beseech you, in that felicity which will be outside the kingdom of God, will anyone reign, or no one?

If no one, that felicity, without any king, will without doubt be freer; but if anyone will reign in it, who will be the king of the images of God, who will not be God? Moreover, if he will be God, you introduce another god, and you call me a Manichee? But if God himself will reign there, whose images those are, then those images of his too will be happy in the kingdom of their own true God. And where will be, Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:5)? But at last, at some point, you confess that the little children not reborn will be unhappy outside the kingdom of God. State, then, the merit of this unhappiness, you wordy and contentious ones, who deny original sin.

114. Jul. Prove, then, that this which the apostle Paul ascribed to the grace of Christ is fulfilled in them, namely that it works justification from many offenses, that is, that it confers the justice of several sins by one single remission; either, then, teach that little children are liable to many crimes, so that you may persuade that to them too applies that in which the Apostle placed the praise of Christ's munificence, that they are established to have been freed from many sins; or confess that Paul disputed nothing in these passages about little children, nothing about the nature of human beings, since he testified that those things are remitted by the liberality of grace which, with you also nodding assent, cannot be found in the newborn.

Aug. What is it that you say, what is it that your most loquacious vanity bawls at you, lest the most manifest truth enter into your ears? Surely Jesus, who from many offenses saves his people, does not pass over even the single original sins of little children, because among those same many are these very ones.

115. Jul. Grace, he says, from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16); but you say that little children are liable to no more than one sin. You see, then, in their person, the praise of grace limping, because it does not find many sins by whose remission it may be praised; what the apostle Paul said, then—But grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16)—is betrayed to be most false in the case of little children. From this, then, how will you try to leap out? Without doubt you are going to say—for your foregoing discourse has made plain this view of yours—that what the Apostle says, But grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16), is fulfilled in human beings of perfect age, who are convicted of being liable to many offenses through the movement of their own will, but that in little children justification is wrought not from many, but from one offense.

Aug. It was not a great thing for you to understand that from this justification, which the Savior confers on his own by the remission of many offenses, you rather withdraw the little children, to whom you contend no sin can be remitted, but not we, who, when we say that through one who sinned all were sent unto condemnation, except no age, because this offense even human beings of greater age have; and likewise, when we say that grace justifies from many offenses, we nonetheless except no age, since he who remits many sins—by which name of "many" surely all are understood—surely passes over none, that is, neither the more sins of the worst, nor the fewer of some, nor the single sins of little children. That you might see this, then, was no great thing, unless you grudged little children Christ as physician, and were utterly unwilling that he be Jesus to them, with horrible impiety, marvelous blindness, blasphemous loquacity. But what is more insane than to wish the grace of Christ to pertain only to those whose sins are many? For by this reasoning—or rather by this blinding of the mind—you withdraw from this grace not only the little children alone, whom you think draw no guilt from origin, but absolutely all who do not have many sins, since you think it must be understood thus, what the Apostle says, But grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16)—that no one pertains to this grace except him to whom it remits many sins. And through this, since a little child, as you suppose, has no sin, surely, when he has grown and has now begun to sin—I do not say if he commits a few sins, but if he has perhaps committed even one more—and comes to the baptism of Christ, he will in no way pertain to this grace, because he is sent unto justification not from many offenses, but from one. I think that the deafness of heart in you does not prevail so far that so great an absurdity does not compel you to blush. Moreover, if even he to whom it remits one sin pertains to this grace, then the Apostle so said, Grace from many offenses unto justification, that he wished the sins of the whole people, which is justified by it, to be understood—some there having more, others fewer, others even single ones, which surely all together are many.

116. Jul. But by such an exposition, by which indeed you will be able neither to pervert the sense nor to escape, you have nonetheless lost not only your sleights of hand, but also the figment of envy which you were inflaming against us. For you boasted that we had gravely offended against the faith, who say that the grace of Christ is indeed to be handed on uniformly, and that his words and institutions ought not to be shaken, but that it confers equally on all who are imbued by it the gifts of adoption and sanctification and advancement, yet does not find all who approach in the same guilts, but indeed frees from guilt and makes good out of evil those who have sinned by their own will (without whose work no sin can exist), but does not accuse the innocent, happy in their unstained earliest age, for any work of an evil will, the experience of which it knows there was not in them.

Aug. O singular madness! Is this to dispute, or to rave? When little children testify by weeping that they were born into misery, you are unwilling that they have Christ as Jesus, and you call them happy whom nonetheless you do not admit into his kingdom; which kingdom, if you loved it with Christian love, you would judge that to be separated from it is a great misery.

117. Jul. But it makes better out of good; and it raises all whom it receives to one and the same hill of sanctification, but does not find all in the same marsh of vices, but finds some in the state of the innocent, others in the pursuits of the harmful. Because we say this, then—which is fortified by the soundness of faith, by the protection of reason, and by the piety of understanding, through which both the grace of Christ is rightly praised and no guilt is applied to God—you say that the authority of the sacrament totters, and you assert, with a point blunter than any pestle, that the authority of grace is taken away, unless the disgrace of slandering be ascribed to it, unless it has perverted the institutions of justice, unless it has charged the crime of another's conscience upon those who have no knowledge, and finally that it accomplishes nothing, if it is not preached to work uniformly in all.

Aug. Why have you thought that a point—not mine, but that of all Catholic disputants, with whom I hold unshaken what you try in vain to weaken—must be compared to a pestle? Or have you begun to perceive that it grinds you, who are fragile? And yet, you who strive, as though in defense of the justice of God, to overturn what the whole Church of Christ holds about the damnation of the little children not regenerated, will never say whence it is just that there is a heavy yoke upon little children, if they do not draw original sin; nor do you notice that you rather pervert the institutions of justice, and this the institutions of omnipotent God, by whom or under whom you say this punishment is inflicted, without any merit, upon the innumerable thousands of all human beings, that is, of the images of God, from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb.

Finally, you will never say whence it is just that little children, dying without baptism through no fault of their own—and very often none even of their own people—are separated from their faithful parents and kinsfolk and not admitted to the kingdom of God, and are reckoned, with no evil merits, not among the vessels made for honor, like other baptized little children, but among the vessels made for dishonor (since there is no third kind of vessels). For it displeases your heretical prudence, what the Catholic faith believes: that, after all went from the one unto condemnation, in some the mercy of grace is shown, in others the judgment of truth abides, through the inscrutable ways of the Lord, which are all mercy and truth (See Ps 25:10 (24)).

118. Jul. That whole thing, then, by which you were deceiving minds sordid with folly, it is manifest has vanished by your own exposition.

Aug. You have vanished—you, who are unwilling to see or confess that the remission of sins pertains even to those who have one; to which medicinal grace little children do not pertain, if they have none; whom you impiously slay, because you deny them the Savior.

119. Jul. For when the Apostle pronounces, But grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16), and you say that this cannot stand in little children, but is fulfilled only in those who are now of perfect age, for this reason: that to that one they have added others too by the movement of their own will, you confess without doubt that the operation of grace is diverse according to the diversity of those who come. For in those who use the movement of their own will, there is supplied to it matter for boasting, because it leads out, from many crimes unto justification, those whom it has adopted; but in little children, according to you, more meagerly, more narrowly, more thinly—neither with great power, nor with a fitting medicine, nor with honor preserved, nor with shame secure—it promises that it will take away that one sin, which it ought not even to have imputed, and from this one it tries to send forth, unto justification, those whom it frees.

Aug. It has already been answered; you say the same things much, by not finding what to say. When you say that no sin must be imputed to little children, you make God unjust, who placed a heavy yoke upon them from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb (See Sir 40:1); which, even if Scripture did not say it, who is so blind of mind that he does not see that the misery of the human race begins from the weepings of little children? You also make the law of God unjust, which damns the soul of an infant not circumcised on the eighth day (See Gen 17:14); you also judge to be empty the precept where a sacrifice for sin is commanded to be offered for a born infant (See Lev 12:6).

But if this guilt of origin is both betrayed by holy Scripture and betrays itself, then this sin too is among those many sins from which grace justifies, which beatifies little children too out of this misery—and this not in this age, which God willed to be wholly penal for human beings, from when he sent the first human beings out of the happiness of paradise, but in the future eternal age, of which now Christ imparts to his members the pledge of the Holy Spirit (See 2 Cor 1:22).

120. Jul. You have confessed, then, that grace works in one way in the older, in another in the younger. And do not think any place left to your answer, if you should bring in that there is indeed a great distinction, but in the remission of sins, so that, even if there is one sin, it nonetheless finds what to remit. But by this argument you advance nothing; for it does not matter in what kind you confess the various effects of one grace, provided you confess that they can be various.

Aug. One thing is to speak of various effects of grace—for holy Scripture too calls the grace of God manifold (See 1 Pet 4:10)—and another is to deny to little children the grace of the remission of sins, and to contend that in the Church of truth, if they are not delivered from the power of darkness, they are falsely exorcized and breathed upon, with great injury to the Creator, if they do not need the help of the Savior to be delivered from the power of the deceiver.

121. Jul. For I am content with this, which you were compelled to grant me: that what the Apostle preached in the liberality of grace cannot suit all ages equally; you, if you have brought forward anything to confirm that remission carries through even in the first age of those who are born, have nonetheless not brought forward that which is not fulfilled in little children—that from which the Apostle pronounced the grace of Christ to be praiseworthy. For when he preferred the medicine of the mystery to the sin of the first man, whom he was teaching to have been a form to those who follow, he said, The judgment from one offense unto condemnation, but grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16). That, then, by which he preferred grace—namely, because it works justification from many offenses—does not, according to you, stand in little children; and to this, although you struggled, you have been drawn: to confess that grace is not engaged equally in the diverse ages.

Aug. It has already been answered; you speak empty things. The grace of God is glorious, even when it remits the single sins of any, because those single sins too pertain to that multitude of sins from which it justifies human beings—he who saves his people from their sins (Matt 1:21); to which people you most deservedly do not pertain, because you are unwilling that little children pertain to it.

122. Jul. Which, when it has been accepted by you, it appeared that there was no necessity for stirring up a slander against human nature for this alone: lest the grace of baptism should rather be said to have various effects according to the ages. With this color of persuasion removed, if you have any sinews, any wit, any power, strive to prove natural sin, which you see destroyed by reason, authority, and equity. For with what intent were you deceived, that you should call the mingling of bodies, which God instituted, and the conciliator of that mingling, the pleasure of the sexes—which, flourishing as much in human beings as in cattle, indicates as its author the one whom it shows to be the Creator of bodies—the work and shrub of the devil?

Aug. Blush; you are that praiser of lust. Blush, I say. This lust, which much pleases you, against which he must necessarily fight who does not wish, by consenting to it as it solicits, to perpetrate sin, was not in paradise before sin; either, then, there was none there, or it neither preceded nor exceeded the will of the mind.

It is not such now; this every human being perceives in himself, and you are a human being; restrain your zeal for striving, and recognize the vice from which original sin is drawn. This marriage found in propagated human beings, it did not make; this it uses by necessity, uses well by chastity, and therefore is in no way blamed; this in cattle is for this reason not an evil, because in them the flesh does not have desires against the spirit (Gal 5:17)—which evil in human beings must be healed by divine goodness, not praised by human vanity.

123. Jul. But what reason was there that you should first wound innocence with another's crime, then try to mingle a matter of pursuits with seeds?

Aug. You say the same things by the same things; but without doubt the things you say are empty. The seeds are good by nature, but the seeds too are corrupted, and, they being corrupted, the vices too are propagated. Let at least the forms of bodies teach you, of which, though the maker is supremely good and depraved by no vice, many things are nonetheless born defective; and surely, if no one had sinned, no such things would be born in paradise.

124. Jul. That you might take from baptism the truth of its proper operation? That you might ascribe to God, who is wholly equity, who cannot be God without justice, the crime of manifest iniquity?

Aug. You rather do this, since, if little children are pressed by a heavy yoke without the merit of any sin, God is unjust; but because he is not unjust, you are slanderous and blind.

125. Jul. So manifest, I say, that he himself has condemned, by the authority of his own law, this very kind of injustice which you falsely allege to cleave to his judgments.

Aug. In his law it is written that the soul of a little child, if he is not circumcised on the eighth day, shall perish from his people (See Gen 17:14); by what merit? Say, if you can; but you cannot at all, and yet, by denying original sin, you do not keep silent.

126. Jul. What necessity, then, was there for so many blasphemies, if not even that one which you were embracing existed? Which, indeed, having no weight, nonetheless seemed like a certain plank to which you might cling in so great a shipwreck—a plank which, conquered, you let go, late though it be, with slackened arms.

For—that the matter may grow clear by repetition—you were for this reason believed a Manichee, to be tolerated by every foolish person, lest the grace of Christ should seem not to have one efficacy in all; to this you now, without our compulsion, by the advances of your own exposition, have brought yourself, saying that the opinion of the Apostle, which says, But grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16), can in human beings of greater age, but in little children cannot, be fulfilled, but that in little children there is something else briefer, thinner, more needy, which, though you devise it, you nonetheless confess the Apostle in no way said.

Aug. Let what was answered to you be reread (See above, 115), that it may be understood that you say nothing and yet cannot keep silent, O tongued man. Grace sends from many offenses unto justification, when Jesus saves his people from their sins. Among those same many it finds also the single sins of little children, just as, even if there were no original sins, among those same many it would find also the single sins of older persons beginning to sin, to whom, coming to the baptism of Christ, it would in no way be said: You cannot now be baptized, because you do not yet have many offenses; for grace sends from many offenses unto justification. For they would most truly answer: In the multitude of offenses, from which grace justifies, our offenses too are single ones, where some have more, some fewer, which together with our single ones are all many.

127. Jul. Therefore, even according to you, in adoption the effect of grace is indeed equal through all ages; but in the remission of sins there is not one reckoning in all. But so far I have acted too sparingly and patiently.

Aug. If you speak so much while speaking sparingly, so that you assail one book of mine—and not even the whole of it—with your eight books, your sparingness is too profuse and luxurious. But if so far you have acted sparingly, why, crying out in so many things against the truth, have you not spared your own soul?

128. Jul. Content, namely, with the foregoing disputation, to prove that you too—who were stirring up against us by this the greatest sedition—say that there is not one reckoning of the remission of sins in all; so that, even if you could persuade of this one natural sin, it would nonetheless necessarily be clear that the state of those who come to grace is not always one, and that this saying of the Apostle, From many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16), is fulfilled only in the adult, but not also in the first age.

Aug. According to your empty talk it is not fulfilled even in the adult age, since many adults have single sins—even if, according to you, they have no original ones—to whom it has befallen to come to baptism when they began to sin; some have even very few, yet not many; they will not, then, pertain to this grace of Christ, since it justifies from many offenses, which these do not have; and if anyone has wisdom about this, he is unspeakably foolish. Recognize Christ as justifying from many offenses and saving his people, and, understanding that among those same many can be counted both the few and the single sins of any, do not withdraw from this people the lot of little children; believe that Jesus is necessary even to them, who is not so called except because he saves his people (See Matt 1:21)—in which surely are little children too—from their sins.

129. Jul. But now I consistently assert that the Apostle suspected nothing of the Manichean traducianism; for he showed that it would pertain to a grave injury of the mysteries, if they were compared in all things with sins—that is, if grace did not profit more efficaciously than the form of fault had harmed. The greatest dignity of the Christian faith, then, the Teacher of the gentiles placed in this: that he affirmed it to stand before offenses; on account of this it was his care that he should prefer the effect of medicine to the old diseases.

Aug. This medicine you deny to little children, whom by a false and hostile defense you contend to be saved; but their God, who out of the mouth of infants and sucklings perfects the praise of his medicine, surely destroys you too, who apply to them a hostile defense, when he destroys the enemy and the defender.

130. Jul. Thence he shows grace to be praiseworthy, if there suited it in all respects what he said: The judgment from one unto condemnation, but grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16). By what license, then, will you defraud the grace of Christ of that praise by which the Apostle wished it to be preached, so as to cast down the title of dignity by which alone the vessel of election wished its honor to be recognized?

Aug. This does not reach little children, if, according to you, they are bound by no offense; but because they are bound, surely grace—justifying from many offenses the multitude of its faithful—reaches also to the healing of that one offense of theirs, so that out of the mouth of infants it may destroy the mouths of the deceiving enemies and defenders.

131. Jul. He said, Grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16); he preferred the abundance of medicine to the efficiency of sin; which view agrees with the dogma of Catholics, who understand that the remission of sins takes place in those in whom many can be detected, that is, those drawn by the movement of one's own will; but in those in whom this movement of one's own will does not exist, that is, in little children, they are no less none than many.

Aug. No medicine of the Savior, then, pertains to them, and Christ is not Jesus to them; and you, who say this, dare to be called a Christian. Further, if, as you define, the remission of sins takes place in those in whom many can be detected—since you so take what the Apostle says, Grace from many offenses unto justification—then those do not pertain to the remission of sins who, according to you not having original sin, come to the laver of regeneration with single or few sins? See what you say, and do you not blush, do you not shudder, are you not silent? But if human beings beginning to sin and not yet having many offenses nonetheless receive grace justifying from many offenses, why are you unwilling to count, among those same many, the single sins of any—for no other reason than that you may impiously separate little children from it, and the ruin of a most wicked iniquity falls upon you, so that you say that from it even older persons first beginning to sin, and not yet having many but single or few sins, are alien?

132. Jul. The Apostle, then, where he preferred grace to sin, fortifies our dogma.

Aug. Rather, he overturns your dogma; for this grace, which he preferred to sin, justifies from many offenses, and therefore, pertaining to the small along with the great, it passes over none of the small, since it remits all the sins of all its own, that is, of the small and the great.

133. Jul. Now do you bring forth where he made grace equal to sin, so that, since your faith does not grasp remedies preferred to wounds, it may at least grasp them reduced to a comparison not exceeding into the narrow; but if you should find this written anywhere, it will nonetheless be established that Paul shrinks from this opinion; and that the whole sense of the Apostle may shine forth in brief, he says, Grace from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16). But many offenses little children do not have even according to you, who according to the Apostle have none.

Aug. Many offenses, even according to you, those do not have who have first begun to sin; and yet you cannot deny that they pertain to this grace justifying from many offenses, when they come to baptism. The many offenses, then, are of the whole people, in which there are little children too; to which people of the city of God, when grace justifying from many offenses arrives, it finds there both the many offenses of some and the few of others and the single ones of little children; which together surely are all many, and by their multitude refute your many and empty words. But if, according to the Apostle, as you think, little children have no offense, whence, then, according to the Apostle, are they dead? For even according to you Christ died also for them: For one died for all; therefore all have died, and he died for all (2 Cor 5:14-15). Julian, not Augustine but the Apostle said this—rather, Christ himself through his Apostle; restrain yourself from empty talk, yield to God.

134. Jul. It is established here, then, that the Teacher of the gentiles disputed not about those who are born, but about those who already use the movement of their own will.

Aug. Digest the drunkenness of contention, and wake up, and understand the offense both of one and one, of which it was said, For if by the offense of one many have died (Rom 5:15); for these many are the very same as all, of whom in another place he says, As in Adam all die (1 Cor 15:22); and there you will see little children too, because even for them Christ died, with you confessing it. Surely, when the Apostle had said that one died for all, he at once showed what necessarily followed, saying, Therefore all have died, and he died for all (2 Cor 5:14-15).

135. Jul. But now what the Apostle added—As through the offense of one unto all unto condemnation, so also through the justice of one unto all human beings unto justification (Rom 5:18)—imparts as much help to us as it stirs up crashing ruin against your dogma. For setting in contrary parts all, with which words there can be no conjunction, he refers us to the manner of the Scriptures, that we may understand all usually said for "many." For in the very front of the words there is great barbarism; for how do all come unto justification, if all proceeded unto condemnation? Or how all unto punishment, if all are snatched unto glory? The generality of one part excludes the place of the other.

Aug. Then where it was said, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12), are "many," not "all," to be understood? But if that is so, you are compelled to say that not all sinners sinned by the imitation of that one man, but many; and if you say that for this reason not all but many sinned by his imitation—because many, not all, sinned—wishing those who did not sin to be understood as little children, you will be answered that neither did little children die in him, and through this Christ did not die for them, because he died only for the dead, as the Apostle proclaims; and thus you will both come against yourself and utterly separate from the grace of Christ the little children, for whom you are going to say Christ did not die. Consequently you will also deny that they must be baptized in Christ.

For whoever of us have been baptized in Christ, as the same Apostle says, have been baptized in his death (Rom 6:3); but those are baptized in the death of Christ for whom Christ died. In no way, then, will you alienate little children from original sin, unless you make them at the same time alien from the grace of the baptism of Christ.

But in that these two seem to you to be contrary to each other—that all go unto condemnation through Adam and all again unto justification through Christ—you err altogether; for no human being is drawn to damnation except through Adam, from which damnation human beings are freed through the laver of regeneration, and no human being is freed from this damnation except through Christ; therefore on both sides all were said, because no one comes to the damnation of generation except through the former, no one to the life of regeneration except through the latter. And through this the generality of one part does not exclude the place of the other, because from these very ones who generally die in Adam, Christ makes alive whom he wills. These things, then, will not seem to you contrary to each other, if you are not contrary to yourself.

136. Jul. But that you may notice here too how much we are fortified, from the case of the healer understand the case of the wounder. If Christ saved all, let Adam too be imagined to have harmed all.

Aug. Are not all, then, sent unto damnation through Adam, because Christ frees from this damnation whom he wills? Who for this reason is himself too said to free all, since no one frees anyone but he, just as he is said to enlighten every man (See John 1:9), because no one enlightens anyone, if not he.

137. Jul. If Christ changed the offices of the genitals, let it be believed that Adam perverted them; if Christ corrected something in the senses of the flesh, let it be reckoned that the fault of Adam disturbed them; if Christ made medicine go through propagation, let Adam be said to have transmitted offense through generation.

Aug. To these things it has already been answered; but hear briefly even now. If you were a Catholic Christian, there would appear to you both Adam transmitting offense by generating and Christ remitting it by regenerating; but Adam generates carnally, Christ regenerates spiritually; do not, then, seek in both the propagation of the flesh—which propagation does not pertain to spiritual regeneration, as you notice, if you do not contend. But against the infirmity of the flesh the grace of Christ now establishes a struggle, and afterward will perfect its health, of which future and perpetual health he has now given the pledge, the Holy Spirit (See 2 Cor 5:5), through whom love is poured out in our hearts (See Rom 5:5), that the infirmity of the flesh, left for the present for the struggle, may not conquer us.

138. Jul. But if, with all these things remaining in the order which they receive from nature, the will is allured to faith by exhortations, signs, examples, the promise of rewards or punishments, without the inducement of necessity, and is healed through institutions, through mysteries, through gifts—not oppressed, but awaited, but free, but provoked—it appears that, even if the whole world with one spirit, whether roaring or raging, gainsays, it was the will of each one, not his birth, that was dyed by the imitation of sin.

Aug. Whichever way you turn yourself, you will not alienate little children from original sin, unless you deny that they are dead; and if you do this, you will at the same time deny that Christ died for them; but if, lest you deny this, you confess that little children are dead, you will surely not deny that they are dead in Adam—or, if not there, say where.

139. Jul. Although I have acted too gently; for even if Christ, from the time he came, were taught to have both barred the way of death and granted perpetual life to all human beings, so that no one at all, from the day on which the Word was made flesh (John 1:14), should either slip into sin or fear punishment for sin, yet that condition of the first iniquity, which would be taught of the utmost liberality, would not be the same; since God can and is wont, with the praise of clemency, to come to the aid of those who do not deserve it, but cannot, without the overthrow of justice, punish those who do not sin.

Aug. Since, then, little children have been punished by a heavy yoke from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb, recognize the just judge and confess original sin. For to punish those who have the merit of no sin—as you yourself also confess—cannot be without the overthrow of justice.

140. Jul. Attend, then, to what the whole disputation has accomplished. If the grace of Christ and the fault of Adam were reckoned equally in their diverse effects, so as to be equal even in the number of operations, though they differed in the kind of operations, it would have to be taught that grace profited as many as fault had harmed, so that the equity and weights of that scale by which they were balanced might stand.

The medicine, then, ought to have come to the aid of altogether those very places and those very parts in which the sickness had settled, that is: if the ancient crime had wrought something in the movements of the genitals, in the senses of those who couple, in the obscenity of the members, in the unhappiness of those who are born, it would have conferred remedies by the change of these things which we have mentioned; otherwise it is a great proof of a feeble art, profiting in nothing, both not to have found the place of the sickness and to have applied inert poultices to wills languishing and overthrown.

Aug. It has already been answered, when we spoke of the distance between the present and the future age (See above, 93-94.106). For here we receive, through the pledge of the Spirit, the strength both to struggle and to conquer; but there, without any enemy external and internal, we shall fully enjoy ineffable and everlasting peace. Whoever, then, wishes to have here all the things which are to be had there, shows that he does not have faith.

141. Jul. But amid these things truth has shown that, even if the medicine poured out generally profited the movements and the mortal, even those who had merited it by no zeal nor any intention, fault nonetheless would not forthwith harm those who are born, who could have brought to it nothing of assent. And through this, even if the reckoning of grace and of sin were equal, it would yet be clear that not even then would such a balance stand so far that anyone should be proved to be born guilty.

Aug. In that heavy yoke by which little children too are pressed, how is God just, if no one is born guilty?

142. Jul. But now, since the Apostle not only did not place grace after fault, but even placed it before, saying that the benefits abounded much unto more people than the losses crept in—but according to the opinion of traducianism it is established that sins harmed much more than grace profited—it has been irrefutably proved that the apostle Paul meant nothing of traducianism, but that by his opinion the Traducianists were destroyed together with their Manichean masters.

Aug. The apostle Paul did not say, "The benefits abounded much unto more people than the losses crept in"—he did not say this; you are utterly deceived, if you yourself do not deceive. For he said that grace abounded much more unto many, not unto more many, but abounded more. For in comparison with those who perish, few are those who are saved; but without comparison with those who perish, even they are many. But why those are more than these, to wish to know the counsel of God belongs to many, but to know it belongs to very few human beings, or to none at all.

For the omnipotent could refrain from creating those whom, foreknowing all things, he could not be ignorant would be evil, unless he could also use even the more numerous evil ones in the best way—of which the Apostle taught us something, that is, that he might show his wrath and power in those whom he brought, in much patience, as vessels of wrath, and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy (See Rom 9:22-23).

But the Pelagians are unwilling to believe that in one man the whole mass was corrupted and the whole condemned; from which corruption and condemnation grace alone heals and frees. For why will the just man scarcely be saved (See 1 Pet 4:18)? Is it labor for God to free the just? By no means!

But, that it may be shown by what merit nature was condemned, not even the omnipotent himself wills easily to free from so great an evil; on account of which both sins are easy and justice laborious, except to those who love; but the love which makes these lovers is from God (See 1 John 4:7).

143. Jul. But, because I have been rather long here, let us proceed to the rest.

Aug. You say this as though elsewhere you were going to be briefer, when you inquire most loquaciously how you may bring clouds of vanity upon the most manifest words of the Apostle.

144. Jul. But he said all unto condemnation through Adam and all unto the justification of life through Jesus Christ, although Christ surely does not transfer to life all who die in Adam, but he said all and all, because, just as without Adam none unto death, so without Christ none unto life. As we say of a teacher of letters, if he is the only one in a city: This man teaches all here their letters—not because all learn, but because no one except from him. But those whom he had called all, he afterward called many, signifying nonetheless the same all and many. For as through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many shall be made just (Rom 5:19). Let him still ask through what sin is found in a little child; the holy Pages answer him: Through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12; Marriage and Desire 2.46-47). We confess indeed that the pages of the Apostle are holy, for no other reason than that, agreeing with reason, piety, and faith, they instruct us both to believe God of inviolable equity, and to defend his works as good and honorable, and to vindicate for his precepts moderation, prudence, justice.

Aug. The very equity of God convicts you in the case of little children, since it is a great iniquity if little children too are pressed by a heavy yoke without any merit and bond of sin.

145. Jul. And through this, to deny that anyone can be damned for another's sin, to deny that any sin passes to descendants by the condition of nature, and to believe and assert that a human being, born of the fecundity instituted by God, is dealt with by the just laws of free choice, so that he may avoid all that is evil and practice all that is good, and may not, according to you, reckon that the love and necessity of crimes cleaves to the causes of his substance, that is, to the very seeds, nor accept so foolish, so insane, so impious an opinion—namely, that it is contained in the volume of the Apostle, to the reproach of nature, of reason, of God—because he said that through one man sin entered into this world and that death passed into all human beings (See Rom 5:12), when he did not allow this to remain long in darkness, adding that those whom he had called all must be understood as many, who had sinned by imitation, not by generation (See Rom 5:19).

Aug. Can you say that not all nations were promised to the seed of Abraham, where it was said, In your seed all nations shall be blessed (Gen 22:18), because he called the same ones also many, where it is read, I have made you the father of many nations (Gen 17:5)? Can you, I say, say this, and in that passage too of Scripture foretelling what we see fulfilled in the facts themselves, contradict by your empty talk and forbid us to understand all nations, where they were promised, as anything other than all nations? For by your dialectic you teach that all is set down and to be understood not for "all" but for "many," which are not all. But if, indeed, where many are said, not all can be understood, yet where all are said and truly are all, they are rightly called many too, lest those same all be understood as few—just as those holy ones whom the burning fire was forbidden to scorch, all amid the harmless flames were praising God, and yet those all were few, since they were three (See Dan 3:49-51)—what force has your argument, by which you are unwilling that all be understood as all, because the same ones were called many? Since those who truly are all are for this reason sometimes called many too, that they may be distinguished from those who are all in such a way that they are nonetheless few. For all the hairs of a man are also many, but the fingers, even all of them, are few.

146. Jul. Finally, he unraveled the whole of what he had done, saying, For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many shall be made just (Rom 5:19); so that, just as no one merits the rewards of virtue except him who, after the incarnation of Christ, has striven toward them by the imitation of his holiness, so in Adam no one is held a transgressor except him who, in the transgression of the law—by which there was made the knowledge of sin—has offended by the imitation of the first man.

Aug. This is the hidden and horrible venom of your heresy, that you wish the grace of Christ to be in his example, not in his gift, saying that human beings are made just through his imitation, not led, through the supplying of the Holy Spirit, to imitate him—the Spirit which he most richly poured out upon his own (See Phil 1:19); and, as though vigilantly, you add: after his incarnation, however—namely on account of the ancients, whom you say were just without his grace, in that they did not have his example.

What, then, if even after the incarnation of Christ, before the Gospel was heard, some human beings set before themselves the examples of the earlier just ones and lived justly? What do you do? Where do you see yourselves? Do those, then, indeed not merit the rewards of virtue? If, then, justice is from the imitation of the just, Christ died in vain (See Gal 2:21), because there were just ones even before him whom those who wished to be just could imitate. What is it, too, that the Apostle does not say, Be imitators of Christ, as I am, but says, Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (1 Cor 11:1)? Did he wish, then, to be to them in place of Christ? Do you see what evils follow you, when, with the Apostle setting forth Adam and Christ, you wish to oppose imitation to imitation, not regeneration to generation?

147. Jul. But that the grace of Christ reaches also to the innocent, to whom the fault of Adam does not reach—on account of which he vigilantly pressed home, Much more did the grace of God and the gift of the one man Jesus Christ abound unto more people (Rom 5:15)—so that that earlier equalization, of that age which uses reason, indicates imitation in contrary pursuits, but this preferment, in the bounty of grace, proves the innocent to be consecrated and advanced. Since these things are so, perceive that the Apostle stands in your way, not mine; recognize that he bears arms against you, who would vehemently overturn your dogma and that of your teacher Faustus—by whom you were dyed, as it were, with the first hand—by this one thing, if the rest were lacking: because he says that through the disobedience of one, many, not all, were made sinners, and through the obedience of one, not all were made just, but many. For that it may be carefully supplied to the reader's understanding how this discourse is repugnant to you: the Apostle pronounces that not all were made sinners through Adam; you say that absolutely all, through Adam, pertain by natural sin to the right of the devil; it cannot be doubted that there is a great battle between you and the Apostle.

Aug. He says all and the same ones many; by saying many he does not deny all, lest he be contrary to himself, as your wickedness either deceives or your blindness is deceived. For because the Apostle said both all and many, I have shown that these two do not battle each other, because those same all were for this reason called also many, because all are sometimes called even few; but you, by saying not all those whom the Apostle called all, are without doubt convicted of being contrary to the Apostle.

148. Jul. For when you and Manichaeus say, All are by nature sinners, but the Apostle says, Many are sinners, not all, he removes the accusation from the seeds, which is armed against morals, and destroys original sin. And that we may press home this very thing which we have done: the Apostle lays it down that many must be understood as made sinners through Adam's disobedience, and many as made just through Christ's obedience—showing surely that those who are just are distinguished from those who are criminal; do you, because you strive with shamelessness to argue, prove natural sin from these discourses? For when you say that all are born criminal through Adam, and on account of this pertain to the devil, but that some are afterward freed thence through Christ, you do not mean what the Apostle means, who says that not all were made sinners through Adam, but many.

Aug. Since it is not contrary, as we have already shown, that the same be many who are all, therefore the Apostle says that those who are many are the same all; but it is not the Apostle, it is you, who say "not all," and through this you contradict the Apostle. But what the Apostle says is true; therefore what you say is false. And as for what you said above (See above, 147)—that the Apostle vigilantly pressed home, Much more did the grace of God and the gift of the one man Jesus Christ abound unto more people (Rom 5:15), wishing it to be understood that for this reason "more people" was said, because his grace reaches the little children, to whom the imitation of the first man does not pertain—either a faulty codex has lied to you, or you yourself lie, or you have been deceived by some false or deceiving person, or by forgetfulness.

For the Apostle did not say "more people," but many. Attend to the Greek codex, and you will find "pollous," not "pleiosus." He said, then, that grace abounded much more unto many, not unto more many, that is, not unto more people, as we have already shown; since, if he had said "more people," on account of the little children whom grace holds, though the imitation of the first man does not hold them, he would have said something false and would be like you. For if all the imitators of Christ after his incarnation, with the regenerated little children added, were compared with the sinners—whom you wish all, on account of the choice of liberty, to pertain to the imitation of the first man, from Adam himself to the end of the age, sinning by their will—how much more numerous these are appears evidently, so that you are conquered by your own falsity too.

149. Jul. For if he had meant something such as you do, he ought surely to have said: Through the disobedience of one all were made sinners, but through the obedience of Christ some of these returned to justice. For so he would altogether have had to speak, if he had wished that to be understood which you imagine. Yet with this opinion he could not have asserted that other thing—that the grace of Christ profited much more than the iniquity of Adam had injured. Even if, then, we were utterly ignorant what the manner was by which, through the disobedience of one man, many were said to be made sinners, it would yet remain on solid ground that this does not pertain to original sin, which the Apostle had pressed home as suiting many, not all.

Aug. About many and all it has already been answered. And that the Apostle did not speak as you say he ought to have spoken, if he meant what we say—what wonder is it? Since even if, according to you, the Apostle had said that through the offense of one many were made sinners in such a way that those same many could not be understood as all, but only those who sinned by their own will from the imitation of the first man, he did not say that some of these were justified through the obedience of Christ, which is nonetheless true. What is it, then, that you say—that, if the Apostle had meant something such as we do, he ought to have said: Through the disobedience of one all were made sinners, but through the obedience of Christ some of these returned to justice? As though you denied that, of the transgressors of the law—the only sinners you contend pertain to the likeness of Adam's transgression—some were converted to justice through the obedience of Christ. We too, then, can say to you: If the Apostle had meant something such as you do, he ought surely to have said: Through the disobedience of one many indeed, not all, were made sinners, but of these too some returned to justice through the obedience of Christ; or even much more openly he would so speak, if he meant something of the sort, as to say: Many indeed of the Jews were made sinners through the disobedience of one man, who, having received the law, sinned by a like transgression, but of these too the obedience of Christ justified some. But if it did not prejudge you that he did not so speak, as I said he ought to have spoken if he meant what you do, neither surely ought it to prejudge me that he did not speak as you say he ought to have spoken if he meant what I do. Since, then, the Apostle so spoke as he judged it ought to be spoken, it must be seen which of us agrees with him—whether I, who say that what he says is true, Through the offense of one unto all human beings unto condemnation (Rom 5:18), and that what he says is true, Through the disobedience of one many were made sinners (Rom 5:19), since it is not repugnant that those who are many should be all, and those who are all should be many—or you, who say: Where he says many, they are many; where he says all, they are not all.

150. Jul. Your inexperience, then, or your shamelessness—which either does not care or is not able to expound what is said—being laid bare, and it having been shown, by the light of truth itself, which Christ called himself (See John 14:6), that nothing of the apostle Paul's discourses coheres with the Manichean, that is, your, madness, let us now devote our effort to exposition, so that, just as it has been shown how Paul cannot be understood, so it may grow clear how he both ought and can be understood.

Aug. You are so deserted by truth and, against the manifest words of the Apostle, can find nothing to say, that what so many holy and illustrious Doctors understood in them—who learned and taught this in the Catholic Church (for, having a sound sense, they could not understand otherwise in such manifest words)—you say is of the Manichees, which you are compelled to confess those men were not, however much you rave with the venom of the Pelagian pestilence.

151. Jul. Writing, therefore, to the Romans at that time when a mingling of the gentiles had begun, and therefore the Churches were being filled both from Jews and from gentiles, he composes the tumults of both peoples, pressing home that the gentiles cannot wash away their impiety—by which they had changed the glory of God into the likeness of the image of a man and of birds and of four-footed beasts and of serpents—by ignorance of the law, since by the force of inborn reason, even if not the rite of the Jewish ceremonies, yet God, made known by his works but secret in the depth of his substance, they could have recognized from these things which were made by him.

But the norm of the law, as far as regards uprightness of life, each one's own affection suggested—namely, that he should bring upon his neighbor nothing such as he would have been unwilling to suffer; and therefore he proves that the profanity of the gentiles can with the best right be refuted, even if not through the law, yet through that justice which founded the law,

and by whose judgment those who sinned without the law shall also perish without the law. But the Jews—whose concern it was the more, because they were swelling up especially in contempt of the gentiles, claiming honor for themselves from the purifications of the law and thereby reckoning that the grace of Christ remitting sins did not profit them as it did the gentiles, since by that institution of the law they had avoided them—he shatters with great force of disputation, alleging to them that so much the more was conferred through indulgence, the more, after the admonition of the law, they had sinned without any ignorance;

through which he proves that they were guilty and could vehemently have been damned in the examination of justice, before whom those who sinned in the law shall be judged through the law: For it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified (Rom 2:13). With this purpose, then, disputing through the whole book, he both represses the pride of the Jews and removes from the gentiles the excuse of vanity, so as to teach that the medicine of Christ profited both peoples equally.

Aug. This medicine you deny to little children, whom the law itself commanded to be circumcised on the eighth day, prefiguring the grace of him whose resurrection the Lord's day—that is, the eighth day after the seventh of the Sabbath—shows; nor are you able and willing to attend that a dying little child will so perish without the grace of Christ, as it was said that the soul of the uncircumcised little child perishes from his people (See Gen 17:14)—the merit of whose perishing you cannot find, so long as you say that little children do not draw the sin of origin.

152. Jul. He who both pardoned the crimes of the will, from which it was free to abstain, and granted the glory of blessed eternity to those corrected by the imitation of himself, who was the form and norm of virtues. Since, then, it suits him to deal with both nations according to the time and right of his volume, yet in these passages, about which is the question, he wholly joins hands with the Israelites, who, coming from the stock of the circumcised, dared to despise them so far as to affirm that they could not, even by the support of faith, pass over to their fellowship; against which haughtiness he unfolds the beginnings of the Jewish nation and shows, in the very root of circumcision, that the foreskin is not of such moment that either its retention makes men unjust or its removal makes them just.

Aug. When the Apostle said these things, he was treating not of circumcision or the foreskin, but of the precepts of the law (See Rom 7:5), among which is also, You shall not covet (Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21), which he himself also mentioned. Why do you evade? You harm those who know, while you pour out darkness upon those who do not know.

153. Jul. Not through the law, then, was the promise to Abraham that he should be heir of the world, but through the justice of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, the promise is destroyed. For the law works wrath; but where there is no law, there is no transgression.

Therefore it is of faith, that according to grace the promise might be firm to all the seed, not only to that which is of the law, but to that which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written: For I have made you the father of many nations, before God in whom he believed, who makes alive the dead and calls those things which are not as though they were; who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was said, So shall your seed be; and, not weakened in faith, he considered his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, and the dead womb of Sarah; but in the promise of God he did not hesitate through distrust, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, most fully knowing that whatever he promised he is also able to do; on account of which it was reckoned to him for justice (Rom 4:13-22).

Aug. Are you not ashamed to mention these things, you who assail the grace by which these promises are fulfilled? For you speak against God by saying: We do what he promised that he would do. For in Isaac, the son promised to Abraham, those were prefigured not who make themselves just, but whom God himself was going to make. Whence he says to the whole Church through the prophet, For I am the Lord who makes you (Isa 45:8).

On account of which they are also called the children of the promise, the Apostle saying most plainly: But the word of God cannot fail; for not all who are of Israel are Israel, nor, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children, but: In Isaac shall your seed be named; that is, it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as the seed (Rom 9:6-8). What, then, God promised, God does. This whole thing, therefore, as it builds up those whose hope is in God, so it overthrows those who trust in their own strength (Ps 49:7 (48)); and through this, as it builds up the Catholic faith, so it overthrows the Pelagian error.

154. Jul. How hostile this passage is, in its entirety, to your opinion, both was disputed in my first work and, if anything from here ought to be recalled, will be discussed. But now let it be noticed that the promise made to Abraham as a reward for his faith—in which it is said that he would be made the father of many nations—showed both that he ought not to be defended as the begetter of one people only, who is foretold to be the father of many nations, and that he so received the reward of his belief that he should not be thought to exclude from the fellowship of the reward others believing likewise. But it was not written, he says, only on account of him, that it was reckoned to him, but also on account of us, to whom it will be reckoned, believing in him who raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead, who was handed over on account of our offenses and rose again on account of our justification (Rom 4:23-25).

Aug. Tell us, O empty ones—not defenders, but inflaters of free choice, who, being ignorant of God's justice and wishing to establish your own justice, are not subject to the justice of God (See Rom 10:3)—tell us, I say: If the gentiles had been unwilling to believe and to live justly, would the promise made to Abraham have been made void? No, you will say. Therefore, that Abraham, as the wage of his faith, might obtain the dilation of his seed, the will of the gentiles was prepared by the Lord, and that they should will what they could also have not willed was brought about by him who is able to do what he promised.

155. Jul. Since, then, he, while still in the foreskin, was pronounced a witness of faith, and as its wage obtained the dilation of his seed, by what rule, he says, do you, O Jew, think that the gentiles do not pertain to the fellowship of justice, who restore the faith of Abraham by believing equal things about the powers of God?

Aug. You speak well against yourselves, because surely, if they believe about the powers of God, they do not, as you do, trust in their own strength that they may be justified, that is, made just, but in the strength of him who justifies the impious.

156. Jul. Why, he says, should you think that the nations cannot be led to the lineage of Abraham without the consecrations of the law, when it is established that the promise made to Abraham was earlier than the law and was bestowed not by washings, but by morals?

Aug. These morals, which you without doubt wish to be understood as good—if, as you suppose, a man makes them for himself—the foreknowing God ought to have foretold, not promised, so that it might not be said of him in this case, What he promised he is also able to do (Rom 4:21), but: What he foreknew he is also able to foretell, or: He is also able to show. But when men say, What God promised, we do, they make themselves powerful by their effort, and him a liar by their arrogance.

157. Jul. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, the promise is destroyed (Rom 4:14). Which discourse, unless it is understood, brings in a very great question; for without doubt he says that those are of the law whom above he had called of the circumcision, who, he knew, claimed so much for themselves that they thought no one besides themselves was taken up to the dignity of the seed of Abraham; and he had gathered this by disputation, that, because not only those who are of the circumcision, but also those of the foreskin who wished to follow the footsteps of Abraham's faith, were not undeservedly reckoned the children of Abraham.

Aug. What if they had been unwilling—would the promise have been made void? I admonish you to understand to what grace you are enemies by denying that God works wills in the minds of human beings—not that the unwilling believe, which is most absurdly said, but that of the unwilling they become willing—not as a human teacher does by teaching and exhorting, threatening and promising, in the word of God, which is done in vain unless God works within both to will, by his inscrutable ways. For when the teacher plants and waters with words, we can say: Perhaps the hearer believes, perhaps he does not believe; but when God gives the increase (See 1 Cor 3:8), without doubt he believes and advances. Behold what is the difference between the law and the promise, between the letter and the spirit.

158. Jul. Since, then, above he had done this, that we might understand that the nations could not be excluded from the fellowship of justice, but through the same faith were numbered with the children of the circumcision in the stock of Abraham, now he brought in that no one of the circumcision pertains to that promise which was given to Abraham; but this, unless it is wholly understood, is repugnant.

So that what he says—For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is destroyed (Rom 4:14)—he did not pronounce so as to make it believed that no one of the Jews becomes through faith an heir of the ancient promise, but a word is lacking, whose place the understanding fills: that not only those are heirs who are of the law, as if it had been said thus: For if those who are of the law are the only heirs, faith is made void. For the foreskin would truly seem to be excluded, if the inheritance of the blessing reached none besides those who were of the circumcision. The custom of the Scriptures, then, must be understood: that what is not said is not at once denied, so that, by the work of understanding, the losses of words may be supplied.

Aug. So understand those who do not understand. Why do you not attend, I ask, that for this reason they are not heirs of the law, because the law works wrath—for where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15)—but for this reason of the promise, because God himself does what he promises? For he who thinks he can fulfill the precepts of the law by the choice of his own will without the spirit of grace, wishes to establish his own justice, not to take up the justice of God. For why does the same Apostle say, That I may be found in him, not having my own justice, which is of the law, but the justice which is of faith, the justice from God (Phil 3:9)?

Why does he call that justice his own which is of the law, and reprove that justice, but call the justice from God, which is of faith, not his own? Is the law not from God? Who but an unbeliever would say this? But he calls his own justice that of the law, in which a human being thinks the law suffices him for doing the divine commands, trusting in his own strength.

But he says the justice of faith is from God for this reason, because God distributes to each one a measure of faith (See Rom 12:3); and it pertains to faith to believe that God works in us also to will (See Phil 2:13), as he was working in that seller of purple, whose understanding he had opened, that she might attend to the things which were said by Paul (See Acts 16:14). And through this not even the Jews themselves who believed in Christ, among whom Paul was, are at all to be called heirs of the law, but rather of the promise. For it was said, In Isaac shall your seed be named, because it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as the seed (Rom 9:7-8).

159. Jul. The Apostle, then, gathered the argument in this way: If there were no heirs of the blessing except those who are of the law, just as the foreskin was established to be excluded, so it was consequent that no one who was of the law should be deprived of the blessing—that is, if circumcision were of such worth that without it faith were worth nothing, just as it was clear that the nations were repelled, so it was proved that no one of the Jews could ever go to perdition.

Aug. How was it consequent, O gross dialectician? How was it consequent, if there were no heirs of the blessing except those who are of the law, that no one who was of the law should be deprived of the blessing? Is it, because no one is an heir unless he is baptized, that therefore all who are baptized are heirs? But I would say this (See above, 117), not because the question that is at issue between us is there, but to show how acute you yourself are, who say that I am blunter than a pestle.

160. Jul. But now, since you confess that transgressors in the law are not heirs of the blessing, because for such the law works wrath, it is established that that promise does not suit circumcision, but faith. But the promise would be destroyed if, apart from the law, no one were just, since the law, brought in four hundred and thirty years after the promise (See Gal 3:17), would show that Abraham himself and Isaac and Jacob and all the saints in the middle were without share in the blessing, which could not have been conferred on anyone without the law.

Aug. Rather, the promise would be destroyed if anyone were just from the law. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is emptied, the promise is made void; for the law works wrath (Rom 4:14-15)—surely to this end, that, to escape wrath, the grace of God may be sought.

161. Jul. Because this is manifestly false—for both under the law sinners were deserving punishment, and before the law justice and faith were not deprived of the fruits of their reward—it is established that the glory of that promise pertains not to flesh cut by the knife, but to minds illustrious for uprightness. But there follows a thunderbolt of an opinion against traducianism: For the law, he says, works wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15). Persuade us, then, that the law was given to the conceived, that the law can be given to those who are born, so that it can accuse them as guilty of transgression. But we believe, with the Apostle—whom we defend as having meant nothing against reason—that there is no transgression in that age in which the law could not exist, because where there is no law, neither is there transgression; which law works wrath not by its own fault, but by the iniquity of those who set sins before virtues.

Aug. Is it not, then, the law of Christ, Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:5)? Which law you see pertains even to little children. But do you rather say: A little child, whose soul perished from his kindred if he were not circumcised on the eighth day (See Gen 17:12-14), of what transgression was he accused, that he should be stricken with such a punishment? Except because, sinning nothing in himself, he was held guilty in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12.14). Which apostolic words, so clear, you try to obscure, so straight, to bend, with great but empty labor.

162. Jul. The Apostle proved, then, that it was written not only on account of Abraham, that it was reckoned to him for justice (See Rom 4:23), but also on account of us, to whom without doubt it is reckoned, when we believe in God, who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, who was handed over, he says, on account of our offenses and rose again on account of our justification (Rom 4:24-25).

Aug. From this grace you separate little children, whom you contend have no offense drawn from origin; whence it follows that the benefit by which Christ was handed over on account of our offenses does not pertain to them; and, holding and dogmatizing these things, you dare to call yourselves Catholic Christians!

163. Jul. How vehemently he presses home that, before the just judge God, the sins of others do not harm others—he who, commending the death of Christ, vigilantly declares that he met death on account of our offenses, which were both many and ours, not on account of one and another's, the death of a man long since dead!

Aug. The disobedience of one man is indeed not absurdly called another's offense, because, not yet born, we had not yet done anything of our own, whether good or evil; but because in him who did this, when he did it, we all were, and the offense was so great and of such a kind that by it the whole human nature was corrupted—which the so manifest misery itself of the human race sufficiently indicates—this offense of another becomes ours by liable succession; on account of which it was said by a Catholic Doctor, who rightly understood the Apostle, We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13).

If you are willing to follow his understanding and that of others, his fellows in the Catholic truth, you will not be compelled to alienate little children from the benefit of the death of him who was handed over on account of our offenses and died as one for all (Rom 4:25); where what follows the Apostle proclaims, Therefore all have died, and he died for all (2 Cor 5:14-15); and you cry back, Little children are not dead; cry out also what follows: Therefore he did not die for them; and see whether you do not lie dead, who deny to the dead, that they be not made alive, the death of Christ—because, as you think, the sin of one and long-dead man ought not to be imputed to them. Nor do you attend that the first man Adam was so long since dead that nonetheless after him the second man is Christ, though so many thousands of men arose between that one and this. And therefore it is manifest that every one who is born of him by the succession of propagation pertains to him, just as every one who is reborn in him by the bounty of grace pertains to this one; whence it comes about that the whole human race is, in a certain way, two men, the first and the second.

164. Jul. He, then, who says many offenses, suspects nothing of the one of the Manichees, that is, of traducianism.

Aug. But surely, O contentious man, there would be many offenses which many had—even single ones, each having one, of their own will—if they came to the laver of regeneration when they had first begun to sin; all of whom, according to this not reasoning but distortion of yours, you make alien from this grace which justifies from many offenses, since you are unwilling that any human beings whose offenses are single should be partakers of it; how much more, then, are they many when there are added those which some have more, some fewer. From all of which, nonetheless, that grace frees, of which it was said, From many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16). For there was Adam, and in him we all were; Adam perished, and in him all perished (Ambrose, On Luke 7.234). Ambrose said this; slanderously, he was not a Manichee. That little children contract the contagion of the ancient death by their first birth Cyprian said (Cyprian, Letter 64.5); slanderously, he was not a Manichee. That all sinned in one Adam Hilary said (See Hilary, 1.52); slanderously, he was not a Manichee; the Church in which they learned these things—slanderously, it was not Manichean; and because it was Catholic and perseveres Catholic, therefore it could not bear you who think and contend against these things; and, that it might remain Catholic, it fortified the weakness of its little children by your condemnation.

165. Jul. Justified, therefore, by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access into this grace in which we stand, and we glory in the hope of the glory of God (Rom 5:1-2). You who see, he says, that justification was conferred through the pardon of sins, hold firm concord and with equal minds praise the gifts of the Mediator, by whose gift it was conferred on us that we should have entrance into this grace; and those whom justice held guilty—because not nature but will had made us guilty—he restored to liberty and rescued from vengeance, and granted that we who were hoping for eternal punishments should now glory in the hope of the glory of God.

Aug. This justification is not conferred by the remission of sins alone, except with you as the authors. For God justifies the impious not only by remitting the evils he does, but also by granting love, that he may turn from evil and do good, through the Holy Spirit (See Phil 1:19), whose continual supplying the Apostle was asking for those to whom he said, But we pray to God that you do nothing evil (2 Cor 13:7). Against this grace you wage war, so that you may not defend free choice of the will by discourse, but deceive concerning it by presumption.

166. Jul. But, that the power and security of this doctrine might be more expressed—what Christian philosophy confers on the faithful—he continues: And not only so, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, and patience trial, and trial hope, and hope does not confound, because the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom 5:3-5). That is: They have not only conferred on us these benefits, that we may at some time rejoice in the amplitude of the gifts, but already in the present, set in the midst of the heats of anguish, we are eager with the possession of virtue itself, and we laugh at the cruelty of the impious from the fury of persecutors, judging it the instruction of patience rather than the disturbance of joy, so that we both do not sin on account of rewards and reckon this very thing—not to sin—a reward.

Aug. If not to sin is a reward, who gives this reward? I think you will not say: The man himself to himself—although the perversity of your heresy compels you to say this. If, then, God gives this reward, that a human being not sin, I see that it ought rather to be called a gift than a reward, lest some merits seem to have preceded—since even Pelagius himself condemned those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits (The Deeds of Pelagius 30). But how this gift is given, that is, not to sin, you yourself said a little before, mentioning the words of the Apostle: Because the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom 5:5).

And through this, in Christian philosophy, that we glory in tribulations is not ours, because we have received this too; otherwise it is said to the man glorying as of something gained by himself for himself, For what do you have that you have not received? But if you have also received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it? (1 Cor 4:7) And yet we glory—not as though we had not received, but we glory in him who gave this, so that he who glories may glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31). This is the grace which the Catholic faith preaches; why, I ask, does your error assail it, when it convicts you even by your own mouth?

167. Jul. Then, when we behold those things which are promised being carried on in the Testaments, we count among the trifles of the present life all goods and evils whatsoever, estimating the faith of God's promise from the greatness of his love toward us. For the frustration of eternal benefits will not refute our hope, since we hold as the surety of future blessedness the love of God, which is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (See Rom 5:5)—that is, through the gifts of the Holy Spirit God has proved his love toward the human race.

Aug. You are unwilling that even not to sin be among these gifts, but, trusting in your own strength (See Ps 49:7 (48)), you wish to give this to yourself, yourself. Do not be angry, I beseech you; cursed is everyone who has his hope in man (Jer 17:5).

168. Jul. He will faithfully restore, then, the whole that he promised to the faithful.

Aug. He will plainly restore even this very thing, that they be faithful, because he promised the faith of the nations to Abraham, and a certain great faithful one says, I have obtained mercy, that I might be faithful (1 Cor 7:25).

169. Jul. For he who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all—through whom he consecrated us by the working of the Holy Spirit—without doubt has, with him, given us all things (Rom 8:32). For why did Christ, while we were yet weak, according to the time die for the impious? (Rom 5:6)

Aug. You mention the divine testimonies by which your error is overturned; for it was not said: Christ died even for the impious, but, he says, he died for the impious. But, as you yourself elsewhere confessed, he died even for little children, and yet—with what brow I do not know—you deny that the impiety of the first man passed into them originally (See Answer to Julian 3.58). How, then, do they pertain to him who died for the impious?

170. Jul. For scarcely for a just man will one die; for perhaps for a good man one might dare to die. But God commends his love toward us, since, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us; much more, then, being now justified in his blood, shall we be saved through him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved in his life. And not only so, but we also glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Rom 5:7-11). He opened with how great piety Christ had done the whole, who deigned to die for those meriting no good.

Aug. These words of yours are so tempered as to seem to touch even little children, since you concede that they too have merited no good, whom you confess to have done no good; but the Apostle did not so speak, who said that Christ died for the impious and for sinners. In vain, then, did you think the great mercy of Christ must be attenuated; for he died for those meriting ill, from which so great a benefit of the Savior you separate little children, since you say they are saved; but he says, The healthy have no need of a physician (Matt 9:12); little children, then, have no need of Christ, to whom surely, according to you, he is not Jesus; but those who have need, to them without doubt he is Jesus. But depart, you malicious ones; little children have need. Them too, then, he saves from their sins, since he received such a name for this reason, when the angel said, You shall call his name Jesus; for he himself will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21).

171. Jul. Since indeed they had trodden underfoot reason and the law of crimes by their love, going after their own desires, which their very conscience—whose force is greatest—chastised. But because it was established that the prophets too often shone with contempt of death on account of justice, and that very many ran to destruction with an untroubled mind for any great things and for the gleam of inborn dignity, lest the singularity of Christ's virtue should not be more clear than such examples, the Apostle brought in that by which he might show that his love and fortitude rise to a unique summit. I too assent that, though rarely, though scarcely, yet some have chosen to die for just and good things. But for them the dignity of the affairs, that is, the renown of the very things for which they had fought, tempered the pain of the dangers; but Christ had nothing that he could love in the pursuits of the impious, and he did not disdain to be spent for those who were deformed by their own will; it appears that he excels all in virtue, because, even if in endurance he can have few partners, in cause he can have none. Let us, then, despair of nothing concerning his munificence, because, if he died for us while we were yet sinners, much more, being now justified in his blood, shall we be saved through him from wrath.

Aug. Do not, then, take little children out of the number of sinners, since you confess that Christ died for them too.

172. Jul. And after the reconciliation which we have deserved to have with God—namely through the works of the Mediator—we ought to receive in our mind everlasting joys, and not only to hope for salvation, but also for glory.

Aug. I beg you, attend to what the Apostle says, on account of which it came about that he spoke of the first man; he was treating of reconciliation, which you too concede was made through the mediator Christ out of the enmities which we had with God. Behold, see the words of the Apostle: Justified, therefore, by faith, he says, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5:1); and a little after: For if Christ, while we were weak, still according to the time died for the impious (Rom 5:6); likewise a little after: But God commends his love toward us, since, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us; much more now, being justified in his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him (Rom 5:8-9). Attend still: For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved in his life (Rom 5:10). This reconciliation, which he so often commended, he set down also at the last, saying, Through whom we have now received reconciliation (Rom 5:11); and then he brought in, On account of this, as through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12). As, then, through this one man enmities, so through one Christ reconciliation. Whoever, therefore, says that little children are free from the sin in which the enmities were made, surely denies that they pertain to this reconciliation on account of which Christ was made mediator; accordingly he separates them also from the justification which takes place in the blood of Christ, the cause of whose shedding, when he commended it to be drunk, was said to be nothing other than the remission of sins (See Matt 26:27-28).

Whence it follows that the death of Christ profits nothing at all to little children not having sins; for through it we were reconciled to God while we were enemies, which little children, according to you, were not. For, that on account of this reconciliation we might die to the sin in which the enmities were, whoever of us have been baptized in Christ, as the same Apostle says, have been baptized into his death (Rom 6:3). But that he might arrive at these words, he says, For if we have died to sin, how shall we live in it? (Rom 6:2) And at once, to show that we are dead to sin: Or do you not know that whoever of us have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? (Rom 6:3) Where is the liberty and fortitude of your mind? Why do you fear to say what you do not fear to believe—that little children ought not to be baptized in Christ, who, you say, have no sin to which they may die?

173. Jul. On account of this, as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so death passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). To tame the pride of the Jews, who reckoned that the pardon of sins necessary for them was not as great as for the gentiles, claiming holiness for their race by the prerogative of the law, he invades the disease of human conduct and seeks back the multitude of offenders, so that the authority of antiquity itself may betray how much dominion iniquity has seized in this world, and may show how many and how chronic crimes—handed down to descendants by the hands of mutual imitation from the obscenity of those who preceded—the grace of Christ had taken away. And on account of this he makes recollection of the first man—not from whom sin had begun, for it is established that the woman first offended, but who by the privilege of his sex had seized the magisterium of the offense: through this one, then, sin entered and through sin death—without doubt that which is promised to sinners, that is, eternal—and so, he says, death passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned. He plainly opened how this death passed to descendants, namely on account of imitation, not generation.

Aug. It has already been answered you why he named not the woman, from whom was the beginning of sin, but one man: either that she too might be understood in him, on account of the one flesh, or because generation begins from the man, through which he wished to show that sin entered into the world. But, O men, who say that the death which is in sin passed to descendants on account of imitation, not generation, why do you not openly say that little children ought not to be baptized in Christ Jesus? For if they are to be baptized in Christ, since whoever are baptized in Christ are baptized into his death, without doubt they too die to sin. For from this the Apostle proved that we are dead to sin, because we have been baptized into the death of Christ; for when he had said, If we are dead to sin, how shall we live in it? (Rom 6:2) at once, to show that we are dead to sin: Or do you not know that whoever of us have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? (Rom 6:3) Whoever, then, has no sin, has nothing to die to in baptism; but whoever, when he is baptized, does not die to sin, is not baptized into the death of Christ, and through this is not baptized in Christ. Why do you evade? Freely open your underworld; freely let those enter to you who are unwilling that their little children, dead in offense, be made alive in baptism.

174. Jul. For after he had said, It passed into all human beings, he at once subjoined, in whom all sinned; this, in whom all sinned, indicates nothing other than: Because all sinned—according to that saying of David, In what does a young man correct his way? That is: How does he correct his way? In keeping your words (Ps 119:9 (118)). In that, then, he is said to be corrected by which he is also corrected. So too the Apostle said that death passed in that, in which all sinned by their own will—not so that this, in whom, should seem to point out either Adam or sin, but so that it should be understood to express, in which all sinning.

Aug. Open your eyes: in Adam all die, in whom, if little children are not dead, neither are they made alive in Christ; why do you run with them to the baptism of the one who makes alive and saves, by a damnable pretense, whom, by crying out that they are alive and healthy, you are unwilling to have made alive and healed?

175. Jul. But that all is put for many, innumerable examples of the Scriptures testify, according to that: All have turned aside, together they have become useless, and after a little: Who devour my people, he says, as the food of bread (Ps 14:3-4 (13)), showing that this people was distinguished from all those whom he had pronounced to work evil. In the Gospel it is reported: And all the people cried out: Crucify! Crucify! (Luke 23:21; Mark 15:13; see Matt 27:23) And yet by the generality of this word the apostles or Nicodemus or the holy women are in no way included. This same Apostle, those whom he now called all, a little after names many.

Aug. To this it has already been answered that many is not repugnant to all, because those same all are not few, but many; and what you mentioned from the Psalm, All have turned aside, together they have become useless, is altogether true; for it distinguished the children of men, who all turned aside, from the children of God, whom, not turning aside, they were devouring; for God looked down upon the children of men; these all turned aside—for from them the children of God were excepted. From these, then, all the children of men turning aside, was also that whole people which cried out, Crucify! Crucify! For to this people in no way did those pertain who had already believed in Christ. From this extricate yourself, if you can—that one died for all—and dare to say that not all are dead for whom Christ died, when at once the Apostle presses your throat and crushes your most audacious voice, showing what follows and saying, Therefore all have died. Do not so praise the Apostle; do not so expound, that you may be unwilling to hear: If one died for all, therefore all have died (2 Cor 5:14-15). Into these all, death with sin passed through him in whom all die. There are little children too, because for them too Christ died, who for this reason died for all, because all have died. Whatever you argue, whatever you evade, whatever of the apostolic words you try to overturn or pervert, you do not show little children immune from the death which is in sin, because you do not dare to deny that for them too Christ died.

176. Jul. Let it appear, then, what we have done: the Apostle said all, meaning very many, whom he therefore said to be liable to death, since they sinned by their own will. He accuses, then, not the original, but the voluntary crime; and in truth the words indicate nothing else, if their faith and propriety be weighed. For if he believed that sin passed to descendants by generation—that is, that it was hurled by that man unto those who had not been there—he would most falsely pronounce that all sinned.

Aug. I could say to you: How did descendants follow the example of sinning Adam, who were not there nor either saw or heard or believed that very sin? But I do not say this. For there was Adam, and in him we all were; Adam perished, and in him all perished (Ambrose, On Luke 7.234), on account of which in him all die. Hear the Apostle speaking most plainly, not yourself prattling most tortuously.

177. Jul. For what one does and directs to others, all are not truly said to have done this; for either it passed to them and they themselves did not sin, or they themselves sinned—by which discourse the business of operation is expressed—and it did not pass to them except by imitation alone.

Aug. If anyone by intemperance makes gout for himself and transmits it into his sons, which often happens, is it not rightly said that that vice passed into them from the parent, and that they too did this in the parent, since, when he did it, they were in him? And thus they and he were still one; they did it, then, not by the action of men, but by the principle now of the seeds. What, therefore, is sometimes found in the diseases of the body, this he knew was done in that ancient and great sin of the one first begetter, by which the whole human nature was corrupted—he who, with most lucid speech, which you try to darken, said, Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). For he had intended to commend the grace of Christ, setting up the form by contrast and opposing the prince of regeneration to the prince of generation.

178. Jul. But that which you believed you were setting against me, either in this book to which I now reply, or in those which you had written to Marcellinus—that sin passed then, when all human beings, to use your words, were that one man (The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins 1.11)—truth grinds down without difficulty and exposes to the laughter of any prudent person. For by such an argument nothing else is indicated than your impiety—impiety, I say, by which you believe that the traducianism of souls, long since condemned in the profanity of Tertullian and Manichaeus, exists just as there is also a traducianism of bodies—which is so nefarious that, when it had been objected to you by us in that letter which we sent to the East, you, in those books which you recently sent to Boniface, by denying try to repel it from yourself.

For you say: They say that we confess a traducianism of souls; in whose books they have read it, I do not know (See Answer to Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.26)—so that you might, namely, swear that nothing of the sort was said by you. Moreover, that your falsity may be betrayed by the comparison of your own words: how do you say that traducianism of souls—an opinion truly profane—is not held in your views, when you profess that all human beings were that one man? For if you do not believe a part of the soul bound to the seeds, with what mouth do you write that all human beings were Adam alone, since a human being surely cannot exist except as soul and body together?

Aug. Do you think that the body alone of a man cannot be called a man, when you know that the only Son of God himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried, as his whole Church confesses and many heresies, among which is yours too; and yet only the body of Christ was buried. According to you, then, Jesus Christ the only Son of God, our Lord, ought not to be said to have been buried, since Christ the only Son of God, our Lord, is not of body alone, but of the Word of God and a rational soul and a body; but when the confession had come to these words, Crucified under Pontius Pilate, it ought to have been subjoined: and his body was buried.

Nor ought Scripture, about that very first man of whom we treat, to have said, God formed man, dust of the earth (Gen 2:7), because only the body of man is of earth. Cry out, finally, that God himself erred, who, threatening death, said to the man, You are earth, and into earth you shall go (Gen 3:19), when rather, according to your doctrine, he ought to have said: Your body is earth, and into earth it shall go. Because, then, there was Adam, and in him we all were (Ambrose, On Luke 7.234)—which before us the Catholic Doctors learned and taught according to the holy Scriptures in the holy Church—therefore I said: All were that one man, because even those two, the male and the female, were now not two, but one flesh (See Matt 19:6).

And I said of all the begotten, that, when sin was committed, all were that one man; for not yet had any been transfused thence into a mother by sowing, and surely sons are transfused from men into women. From whatever part, then, and however great a part, all who are born of him were that one man, whether according to the body alone or according to both parts of man—which I confess I do not know, nor am I ashamed, as you are, to confess that I do not know what I do not know; nor for that reason, however, am I ignorant that it is written of every man, Man has become like vanity, his days pass away like a shadow (Ps 144:4 (143)), because the same holy Scripture says elsewhere, Yet truly every living man is altogether vanity (Ps 39:6 (38))—which, with the just God creating, would not be, if there were no original sin.

179. Jul. Then, even if you refer this to the flesh alone, not even thus can this fatuity of your understanding be excused, by which you say: All were that one man, when at that time, in which Adam sinned, there were now two human beings, not one—that is, he and his wife, from whose substance, not fault, the human race sprouted, according as God had instituted.

Aug. I have already said, and behold I say again: I said of these, All were that one man, whom Adam was going to sow, that is, to generate; from that one, then, principally—who begot—those who are born were going to draw original sin; but she, with whom, being joined, the two were, what the latter received she conceived and bore, although the former sinned. Whence holy Scripture too says that the sons of Levi were in the loins of their father Abraham and in him were tithed by the priest Melchizedek (See Heb 7:5.9-10). Read the Letter to the Hebrews and correct your tongue.

180. Jul. Finally, that the sin of the parents harmed nothing to their son Abel, his holiness, celebrated in all the Scriptures, testifies.

Aug. Why, then, did the Apostle not set down him to be imitated, who was the first just man, but, when he was treating of two men, one of whom would send unto condemnation, the other unto justification, said Adam and Christ? But if Abel did not have the law in his members fighting against the law of his mind (See Rom 7:23), which, like a just man, he overcame in the inner struggle, and if his flesh did not have desires against the spirit (See Gal 5:17), the sin of his parents harmed him nothing. But whoever says Abel was such, let him say that he did not have the flesh of sin—since without doubt the Lord Christ would not have had the likeness of the flesh of sin, unless the flesh of all other human beings were the flesh of sin.

181. Jul. On the opposite side Cain—envious, a parricide, begotten of the same nature, advanced by not the same will—is laid waste by a trembling that tortures his mind. Therefore the Apostle said that sin entered into this world through one, and through sin death, and so death passed into all human beings, who sinned. Which opinion, agreeing with the Catholic dogma, imparts no help to you.

Aug. The Apostle showed that death passed with sin by saying, And so it passed into all human beings (Rom 5:12). On account of this, infants too, when they are baptized, are delivered from the power of darkness; otherwise, with great injury to God—as we have already said and must often say—the image of God is exorcized and breathed upon, if there is not there exorcized and breathed upon that prince of the world who is cast out, that there may be there a dwelling of the Holy Spirit (See John 12:31). But the crime which Cain did does not pertain to the cause of origin, since it was committed by the will.

182. Jul. For it is ordered with these words, by which the preceding example and the following zeal of the imitator are shown.

Aug. It has already been said to you: Abel, then, ought to have been opposed to him from the contrary part, not Christ.

183. Jul. But if he had wished to show generation either infected with sin or liable to it, he would not have said that sin entered through one man, but through two.

Aug. It has already been answered. You say nothing, and yet you say and say, since you cannot find anything straight to say.

184. Jul. Nor would he have said: In him death passed, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12), but: In that they flowed from the diabolical pleasure and flesh of the first man and the first woman; and if he had pronounced this, he would not have confirmed your dogma, but would have undermined all his own opinions. Therefore he accuses the will of those who sin and the example of sin; and through this both reason and Paul do battle against you.

Aug. Therefore in Abel, the first just man, he ought to have set down the example of justification, just as you think the example of sin was set down in Adam, the first sinner. For why should it weary us to answer you the same things, when it does not shame you to repeat the same things so often in vain?

185. Jul. For until the law sin was in this world; but sin was not imputed, when there was no law; but death reigned from Adam until Moses, even in those who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a form of the one to come (Rom 5:13-14). He distinguishes the quality of sin by a variety of appellations, so as to show that sin is one thing, transgression another; and he wishes, in this passage at least, that every transgression indeed seem sin, but not every sin transgression, so that through the term of transgression the odium against sin may grow, and those may seem to be more guilty who have transgressed precepts than those who have offended without the admonition of the law, by dissimulation of inborn reason. Before that law, then, which was given through Moses and consigned to letters, by whose sanction the form of acts was prescribed, which it was not permitted the people living under it to be ignorant of—that middle time between Adam and Moses—the Apostle accuses the mortals, polluted by various depravity of pursuits, of sin, not of transgression.

Aug. What, then, is, Death reigned from Adam until Moses, even in those who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam? For however you distinguish it, the Apostle is found to have spoken against you. For if you distinguish, Death reigned even in those who did not sin, how is it just except on account of original sin?—and therefore, as though it were asked why it reigned even in those who did not sin, the answer was given: In the likeness of the transgression of Adam, that is, not on account of their own proper sins, but because the transgressor Adam begot ones like himself, as the Catholic Doctors who were before us also expounded these words. For although that first and one sin which entered into the world through one man is common to all, on account of which it was said, In whom all sinned, yet little children do not have their own proper sins. And therefore of them too it could truly be said that they did not sin, but that death reigned in them in the likeness, as it was said, of the transgression of Adam. But if, Death reigned from Adam until Moses, even in those who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam—that is, even in those who did indeed sin, but did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam—you find no one, according to you, because you contend that all who sinned sinned in his likeness, that is, followed his example. The pit, then, has been closed on the little fox from both sides; there is no way by which it may enter, that it may lie hidden, or, if it was already lying hidden there, there is no way by which it may go out, that it may escape.

186. Jul. So that those to whom the law was not given may be understood not to have transgressed precepts, but may yet be convicted as guilty, since, neglecting the reason which each one's own affections attest in him, they violated the rights either of human society or of shame; and therefore by mutual imitation, yet not by transgression of the law—which had not yet been brought in—they are said to have sinned; until the law, then, there was sin, not transgression; but after the law, not only sin, but also transgression.

But eternal death reigned, which God had pledged he would ascribe to Adam if he sinned. Therefore that death owed to sin, the penal death, reigned even before the law in those who sinned—as in the Sodomites and in those who, at the time of the flood, were consumed on account of iniquity, yet voluntary, at various ages—and reigned after the law in those whom it found guilty of transgression.

Aug. Since you are unwilling that any death but the eternal be penal—if the death which separates the soul from the body is not penal, why does the nature which you so praise as to deny it corrupted fear it? What is the cause that an infant, when he has begun to advance a little from infancy, already dreads to be killed? Why is the sense not as inclined to death as to sleep? Why are they held great who do not fear death, and these so rare? Why does even he himself, who said he had the desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ (See Phil 1:23), nonetheless wish not to be stripped, but to be further clothed, that the mortal may be swallowed up by life (See 2 Cor 5:4)? Why was it said to Peter, about his very glorious end, Another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish (John 21:18)? If, then, death is feared in vain, the very fear of it is a punishment; but if the soul naturally does not wish to be separated from the body, death itself is a punishment, although divine grace turns it to a good use.

187. Jul. Since, with that justice judging which does not impute sin except where it is free to abstain, those who sinned without the law shall be judged without the law (See Rom 2:12), and those who sinned in the law shall be judged through the law. But what the Apostle says, But death reigned from Adam until Moses, even in those who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam (Rom 5:14), he made to shine through what he had meant—that is, defining that the Jews sinning under the law transgressed similarly to Adam, because to that first man too the law of abstaining from the taste of the tree had been entrusted—though not by books, yet to his ears—in which was the testing of obedience, in which, by eating against the precept, he incurred the crime of transgression. Therefore, after the law given by the ministry of Moses, the people sinning is convicted of having offended in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, because it sinned just as he did, by transgression of the law; but in the middle age of the two laws—the first given, not written, the second both brought in and handed down in letters—those who sinned are shown not to be alien from sin, but are reported to have erred not in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, because they had not received the law.

Aug. Where you deny the likeness of Adam's transgression, you refute yourself, since those who sinned without the Law are not held guilty by the example of the first man; it is therefore not imitation but generation by which, through sin, death passed to all human beings. For if this death, which entered the world through the sin of the first man, had leaped over those long ages that came before the Law and had only begun to creep upon the Jews, who became transgressors of the Law, so as to preserve the likeness of Adam's transgression, it would not be said of it that it entered through one man and passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12). For to whom will you persuade—I do not say a fool, but an idiot—that death entered through one man and passed to all human beings, when you say that it passed over so many peoples and so many ages and reached, with all the rest untouched, only those who had received the Law, while you also say that death reigned even over those who sinned not in the likeness of Adam's transgression, but without any transgression, because without the Law? There is simply no way for you to correct your error, unless you return to the catholic faith, which sets over against the first man, the head of generation, the second man, the head of regeneration.

188. Jul. Adam is called a form of the one to come, that is, of Christ—yet a form by contrast, so that, as the one is believed to be the form of sin, the other is believed to be the form of justice;

but just as the incarnation of Christ was a form of justice—not the first, but the greatest, since even before the Word was made flesh the virtues shone forth, both in the prophets and in many other holy persons, out of that faith which was in God; yet when the fullness of time had come, the exact rule of justice shone resplendent in Christ, and he who had been foretold as the father of the age to come stood forth as the rewarder both of the saints who preceded and of those who followed.

Aug. We recognize your heresy; for Pelagius defined that the ancient just did not live by faith in the incarnation of Christ, on the ground that Christ had not yet come in the flesh—though assuredly they would not have foretold that this was to come unless those earlier ones had indeed believed. But you have fallen into this absurdity by defending the view that justice could exist through nature and the Law; yet if either of these is true, then Christ died for nothing (Gal 2:21).

189. Jul. So too, on the contrary side, Adam is called a form of sin—not the first, but the greatest.

Aug. How, then, is he not the first but the greatest? Since, on account of the beginning of the human race, you do not deny that he is the first, and you find no reason to call him the greatest, unless you confess that Adam sinned all the more gravely inasmuch as there was a greater ease of not sinning where nature was not yet corrupted and the law of sin in the members did not yet war against the law of the mind. With this penalty every human being is born, doomed to perish forever if he is not reborn, and lost unless he is found by him who came to seek what had perished (See Luke 19:10).

190. Jul. I call him the greatest, however, not because I would deny that the devil was more guilty, but because, when the account of the institution was sought, the Apostle more fittingly made mention of the man, on whom the succession of humanity chiefly looked, than of the airy substance. But within humanity itself it was settled that the first woman had transgressed; yet because in all things the authority of the fathers is more effective and greater, he said that the man was the form of sin—not the one by whom the transgression began, but the one who, through the power of the male sex, is shown to have been more apt for imitation. You see, surely, how the sequence of thought bears witness that truth is present within it.

Aug. That the Apostle set, not imitation against imitation, but regeneration against generation, the very form of Christ shows, since the second man is set over against the first man. If, then, those who are reborn do not belong to the justice of Christ, then those who are born do not belong to the sin of Adam, and Christ is not a form by contrast; but because he is a form, then beyond doubt, just as the reborn pass over to the justice of Christ—even little ones, though unable to work justice—so, by the passing over of sin, those born of Adam were born, or are born, into it, though they too are not yet able to work sin. Acknowledge the form, and do not make yourself deformed by contradiction.

191. Jul. Now consider how greatly at variance with your exposition are, along with the rest of the same passage, those words by which the Apostle declares that death reigned even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a form of the one to come (Rom 5:14). For if he were treating of a natural sin, of which he had said, as it seems to you, in whom all have sinned (Rom 5:12), who would those be whom he immediately declares to be found guilty not only of no transgression of Adam, but not even of any likeness of that fault?

Aug. But so you understand, who do not understand; the Apostle, however, gave the reason why death reigned even over those who did not sin, by adding the words in the likeness of Adam's transgression—showing, that is, that death reigned even over those who did not sin because they drew a certain form of likeness from Adam's transgression. For those who are born put on Adam, just as those who are reborn put on Christ.

192. Jul. Death reigned, he says, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression (Rom 5:14). You see that he made a clear distinction between those who erred just as Adam did and those who erred unlike him.

Aug. If they erred unlike him, where then is the example of imitation? Render regeneration to generation, not imitation to imitation, and you will find the form which the Apostle of truth commended, not the one which Pelagius, the author of your error, invented.

193. Jul. This distinction cannot fit a natural sin, for if there were such a sin, it would bind absolutely all alike; there would then be no one in whom this evil was not present, and none could be found of whom it could truly be said that he had not sinned in the likeness of that sin in whose reality all had sinned.

Aug. What you cry out in resistance is true and tells against you: original sin has bound absolutely all alike; there would be no one in whom this evil was not present, were it not that the grace of God benefits through Christ. For upon those who did not sin—that is, who did not commit sins of their own—the likeness of Adam's transgression deserved that death should reign, Adam who is a form of the one to come, that is, of Christ; for just as those who are born are clothed in the first man, so those who are reborn are clothed in the second man.

194. Jul. The Apostle gathers and declares that there are some who sinned as Adam did, and others whom not even the likeness of the ancient transgression has stained; it is therefore plain beyond question that the crimes are crimes of conduct, not of seeds. And, to recall briefly what has been done, the Apostle says that sin entered through one man. Reason shows that this fits imitation, not generation, which is the work of two.

Aug. How much you say the same things and say nothing, nor do you see that, if a sin of imitation begun by the human race were meant in this passage, it would be said to have entered the world through one woman rather than through one man, since she sinned first in such a way that her husband too imitated her.

But because he wished generation, not imitation, to be understood, he says, Through one man sin entered the world (Rom 5:12)—either including both under the singular number, on account of what was said, Therefore they are now not two (Matt 19:6), or mentioning especially the one from whom the principle of generating comes, when the sowing begins so that conception may follow. We have already said these things often, but we too do not yield to your repetitions, even though we repeat ours more rarely.

195. Jul. He went on: And so death passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12).

Aug. What does so it passed mean, except in the way it entered—that is, with sin or through sin?

196. Jul. He made the distinction lest anyone should think that sin had passed over in such a way that death, which had run ahead, was shown—by justice judging—to have followed up the materials of vengeance which it had found in each sinner from the pursuit of an evil will. He showed, therefore, that nature is not to be accused, but pursuits.

Aug. In vain do you twist and turn yourself about. Look at Adam and Christ: the one is a form of the one to come; the latter, then, is not conformed to him by contrast, casting his justice over into the little ones who are being reborn, if the former does not cast sin over into those who are being born.

197. Jul. He added that death reigned in him in whom all have sinned (Rom 5:12); by which expression not the ruin of the one being born, but the deeds of the one acting are expressed. He thus showed that he was reproving depravity and not wounding innocence.

Aug. In him all have sinned, in whom all die; whose form by contrast is the one in whom all are made alive. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22). This was said because, just as no one slips into death except through Adam, so no one rises into life except through Christ. O man, who can say nothing—could you not at least be silent?

198. Jul. After this he added that sin reigned until the Law, showing that the reign of sin fell when the Law was passed.

Aug. If the reign of sin fell when the Law was passed, then justice is through the Law. If justice is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing (Gal 2:21). That is the Apostle's voice, not mine. Now burst forth into the open, enemies of the cross of Christ. Why do you fear the great people of Christ and yet do not fear the great judgment of Christ? Say openly: We could be justified by nature, we could be justified by the Law; Christ died for nothing.

But, dreading the Christian multitude, you slip in your Pelagian word, and to those who ask you why Christ died, if nature or the Law makes people just, you reply: So that this very thing might be done more easily—as though it could be done, even if more laboriously, either through nature or through the Law. O Christ, answer, conquer, and convict; cry out, Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5), that they may fall silent who cry out: Even if more laboriously, yet we could do it even without you.

Or, if they cannot keep silent, let them lead themselves off into some hiding places, that they may not lead others astray. Why, then, does the Apostle say, For until the Law sin was in the world (Rom 5:13), except that not even the Law, once passed, could take away sin, but only he of whom it was said, Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29)?

199. Jul. But the generation that began from Adam remains even after the Law; and if it were the fountain of sins and the shrub of the devil, as you argue, this crime would surely flourish not only until the Law, but even after the Law and after Christ. The sin, therefore, of which the Apostle declares that it was until the Law and could not remain after the Law, is shown to be a sin of action, not of birth.

Aug. See, you say openly that the Apostle did not say Until the Law sin was in the world (Rom 5:13) because not even the Law could take away sin, but because sin could not remain after the Law. And you do not shudder at the voice of God, through the man of God, pointing to Christ and saying, Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)? Why do you talk nonsense? Why are you mad? Not nature, not the Law, but behold him who takes away the sin of the world. And do you dare to say that the reign of sin fell when the Law was passed, and that sin could not remain after the Law—when the Apostle says, If justice is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing (Gal 2:21); when the Apostle says, that in the Law no one is justified (Gal 3:11); when the Apostle says, The Law slipped in, that the offense might abound (Rom 5:20); when the Apostle says, If a law had been given which could give life, justice would altogether be from the Law; but Scripture has shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe (Gal 3:21-22)?

If you have ears, now close your mouths; if you wish to open your mouths rightly, first open your ears to the divine words. And take good note that you have said that generation began from Adam—you who are wont to say that generation begins only from two, and therefore that the Apostle did not wish it to be understood in that sin which he said entered the world through one man. Who would believe that you could forget what you had so often called false? Yet you have forgotten it, so that for once you might say something true. Wake up, and listen even to yourself: from Adam generation began, and so it was through generation that sin entered, the sin which entered the world through one man. For you yourself said: But the generation that began from Adam remains even after the Law. Fittingly, then, the Apostle named one man from whom sin entered the world, the sin that was drawn by generation—not the devil, from whom that sin entered the world which imitation would follow.

200. Jul. But sin, he says, is not imputed when there is no law (Rom 5:13); by which sentence, as by all his statements, he has destroyed the opinion you are defaming.

Aug. Plainly, when there is no law, sin is not imputed—but by human beings, who do not know the inscrutable judgments of God. For if God does not impute sin when there is no law, then by what justice of God shall those who have sinned without the Law perish without the Law (Rom 2:12)?

201. Jul. For if before the Law the propagation of sin was not imputed, and after the Law it did not exist, then never at all did this poison gain power to harm the human race. For before the Law natural sin was not imputed; under the Law it was not imputed, since in no passage of the Law is it taught either to be shown or to be imputed. It is clear, then, that the Apostle is censuring sin before the Law as a matter of free will, and transgression after the Law as just as much a matter of free will.

Aug. If original sin is not shown in the Law, why then in the Law is the soul of a little one not circumcised on the eighth day said to perish from its people (See Gen 17:12, 14)? Why, when an infant was born, was a sacrifice offered for sin (See Lev 12:6)? Now, I beg you, be silent; attend to the infant and imitate the one who does not speak.

202. Jul. And by this it stands established that he said nothing about a propagation of sin; and though his words were copious, they prove that the Apostle thought nothing about a natural sin—which cannot exist and is fashioned by the Manicheans. Yet out of abundance he also pressed home the distinction, namely that not absolutely all were polluted by Adam's transgression, since even among those in whom destruction reigned for iniquity, very many would be found who would be taught to be strangers to Adam's transgression.

Aug. O slanderer, O man of tongue: We are all born under sin, and our very origin is in fault (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13)—he who said this was no Manichean, but, as he is praised by the mouth of your own teacher, he shone forth among ecclesiastical writers as a certain comely flower. But how do you say that not all were polluted by Adam's transgression and—what is worse—impute to the Apostle what you yourself foolishly fancy you know? For he says, Death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin—meaning the little ones, who committed no sins of their own—and he adds, in the likeness of Adam's transgression (Rom 5:14), showing why death reigned over them, which we have already treated sufficiently above. For how did sin enter the world through one man, and through sin death (Rom 5:12), if death nevertheless reigned over some to whom the sin of the one man did not pertain? For those over whom death reigned belong to the sin through which it entered; but those who do not belong to the sin through which death entered—by what just judgment do they belong to death? Now those who did not sin in the likeness of that transgression do not belong to the sin which entered the world through one man, as you yourself said; death therefore did not reign over them. What then is, Death reigned even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression, except that death reigned even over those who did not sin, because they committed no sins of their own? But it reigned in the likeness of Adam's transgression because, although they themselves committed no sins of their own, they nonetheless belong to the sin through which death entered the world, drawing the likeness of the transgression—not by perpetrating the transgression through a sin of their own, but by being born of the transgressor through whom the whole of human nature was corrupted.

203. Jul. See, then, whether it ought any longer to be doubtful even to you, what we say—namely, that the innocent, before the use of their own will, the raw work of God, did not sin in Adam, since, on the Apostle's testimony, even among the wicked, very many are taught not to have transgressed in the likeness of Adam's transgression.

Aug. The answer has already been given. You ought to be silent; for you can say nothing but perverse things in trying to pervert the Apostle's words. For he said that death reigned even over those who did not sin—that is, the little ones who have no sins of their own—yet in the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a form of the one to come, because Christ casts justice over into them just as Adam casts sin; Christ casts life just as Adam casts death. Otherwise they will be strangers to the form of Christ and will not be Christians—which is indeed what you hold, but you dread to say openly.

204. Jul. But let us look at the rest as well. But the gift is not as the offense; for if by the offense of one many died, much more has the grace of God and the gift, in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ, abounded unto many (Rom 5:15). He says that the evil of the offense is overcome by the abundance of grace, and he sets the number of those who are saved before those whom he asserts to have perished by the transgression.

Aug. We have already said it often: he does not say more, but many; nor more numerous, but has more abounded—since those into whom the life of Christ has passed will live forever, those whom the death passing into them through Adam harmed only for a time. See how grace has much more abounded unto them than sin.

205. Jul. If you defend the truth of the Apostle's words and do not shamelessly suppose that he lied, teach how this sentence, in one speaking of natural sin, does not strike him with the shame of public falsehood. For if there were an original sin which made the whole of human nature without exception belong to the right of the devil, what room was there for matching the number of the parts—namely those who are saved and those who perish? In the Gospel the Lord, when he showed the rarity of the blessed, said, How strait and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there are who find it! How broad and spacious is the way that leads to perdition, and many there are who enter by it! (Matt 7:13-14)

Aug. This is the very thing by which that view of yours is overthrown, since those who are saved are few in comparison with those who perish (See Luke 13:23-24); for, apart from that comparison, in themselves they too are many. Indeed, the Apocalypse says that no one can number their multitude (See Rev 7:9). Therefore, if Paul had called them not many but more numerous, we could not call them fewer; for more numerous is a word of comparison—a word which you slip in, which the Apostle does not use. But not even so will your reasoning hold. For that imitation of yours, which you seem to yourselves to have shrewdly devised against the most manifest truth of the apostolic words—so that all sinners may be believed to belong to the sin of the first man not through generation but through imitation—affirms that far more perish by the offense of the one, or on account of the offense of the one, than are set free by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ. For who does not see that sinners are more numerous than the just?

And these sinners—not some, but all—you say belong to the offense of the one, not indeed through generation, but yet through imitation. But even if you say that not all sinners, but only the transgressors of the Law, are bound to the sin of the first man by the bond of imitation, even so, ever since the Law of God is preached among many peoples, how broad and spacious is the way that leads to destruction, and many transgressors enter by it! How strait and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there are who find it—few, surely, in comparison with the many who perish—even if to the few who are set free there be added the little ones who die baptized. How, then, could the Apostle say, Much more has the grace of God abounded unto many? What you say, he did not say; but he said, Much more has it abounded unto many, because even those who are saved, as has already been said, are few in comparison with those who perish, but apart from that comparison are so many that no one can number them. And grace much more abounds unto them, because for a time, through Adam, they live wretchedly and subject to death, but through Christ they will live most blessedly and without end. Your invention is in disorder; let your aim at last be corrected.

206. Jul. This, surely—what you say, "many" and "few"—pertains to unlimited quantity, since it is in mutual comparison that either multitude or fewness is found; and so the Lord, comparing those who are to be saved with the multitude of those who perish, called them few; and here the Apostle, comparing those whom the grace of Christ saves with those who had sinned as Adam did, declares them to be far more numerous.

Aug. He does not declare them "more numerous," but "many." He spoke in Greek: he said "pollous," not "pleious"; read and be silent.

207. Jul. Assert, then, that this fits the sin of the Manicheans, that is, propagation.

Aug. It was the catholic teachers, not the Manichean deceivers, who said that all sinned in Adam; those said this who understood the Apostle, which you deny against the Apostle. Therefore you too are deceivers; for you too, like the Manicheans, are mad—though with a different disease.

208. Jul. For if natural sin has made over to the kingdom of the devil the whole multitude that human fruitfulness has brought forth, and from it, at the world's last age, some are thought to be set free through Christ, what truth is there, or what authority belongs to that Teacher, who, against so clear a testimony of the whole world, says that justice has abounded unto more than fault? Why, then, is he believed when he discourses on involved teachings, if he lies about matters so plain? And because it is sacrilege to think this—though it is your dogma that has driven it to be said—let the worthlessness of the Manicheans be crushed by the honor of the Apostle.

Aug. It is rather you who strive to cloud over plain things, not only by not understanding what the Apostle said, but even by changing it and substituting what he did not say; for he did not say more, but many—those who, however, are found to be few when they are compared with those who perish. O slanderer, O brazen, O wordy one, the Apostle said what Ambrose understood, who was no Manichean: We are all born under sin, and our very origin is in fault (Ambrose, On Penance 1.3.13). Listen to the comely flower, as your teacher praised him, and pluck out of your heart that deformity of thorns—that is, the foul sharp points of dishonest contention.

209. Jul. The Apostle does not lie; therefore the grace of Christ abounded unto more than the fault of Adam, by whose imitation those are said to have sinned who sinned under the Law; but under the Law, until Christ, the Jews alone transgressed. Compare, then, the Jewish nation alone—placed under the Law, and at least of the age of maturity, and therefore sinning in the likeness of Adam's transgression, who sinned after receiving the Law—with the thousands, from the multitude of the gentiles called through the preaching of the Gospel, who are saved by the bounty of grace; and then you will understand that the apostle Paul truly declared that the grace of God and the gift of Jesus Christ reached more people than the fellowship of the ancient transgression.

Aug. Since the Apostle is found to have said not "more," but "many," the whole engine of this argument of yours is overthrown—although not the Jews alone, as it pleases you, but all are found to be transgressors who, by transgressing the Law preached together with the Gospel itself, become more deserving of damnation. With such transgressors, together with the Jews, the world is so full that, in comparison with them all, those who are set free are few—even with the addition of the baptized little ones who die. This too I covered in my earlier answer. The Teacher of the gentiles cries out evidently against you: As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22)—and these "all" are not few, but many. And by this, many die in Adam, many shall be made alive in Christ; but more die in Adam than shall be made alive in Christ. More, then, belong to the death of the one; to the life of the other belong fewer in comparison with those—yet even these in themselves are so great a multitude that no one can number them (See Rev 7:9). What then is, All shall be made alive in Christ, except that no one shall be made alive except in him? Of this I gave the likeness of a teacher of letters: if there be one in a city by whom all there are said to learn their letters—not because all learn, but because no one learns except from him (See Marriage and Desire 2.46). This manner of speaking you did not even try to refute, because you saw it was most correct and known to all.

210. Jul. Having set forth the bounty of grace in the abundance of human beings who are saved, he compares the gift and sin, and most learnedly applies to the praise of the gift the fact that by one power it heals many wounds: And the gift is not as that which came through one sin, he says.

Aug. He said "through one who sinned," not "through one sin," so that what he then says, judgment from one offense unto condemnation (Rom 5:16), can be understood only of the offense of that one who sinned—which indeed you do not wish; but what will you do, since the Apostle said this even against your will? Be corrected, then; for here you have nothing else that you ought to do.

211. Jul. For judgment is from one unto condemnation, but grace is from many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16)—that is, sins which are grave can suffice, even singly, for the accusation and condemnation of the guilty.

Aug. Why did you say "grave," which the Apostle did not say, except that you saw that if one offense were slight it would not suffice for the condemnation of which he was speaking? This judgment, then, is not from any one offense of anyone whatever, but from that one offense which was committed through one who sinned, that is, Adam—the judgment is unto condemnation. And do you still wish to pervert the right words of the Apostle, rather than correct your own, which are perverse?

212. Jul. But grace is not bestowed in the same way, so as to be repeated again and again, applied equally to each single sin; rather, poured in once by one onset and shortcut of its power, it blots out crimes diverse and very many. So he says, From many offenses unto justification (Rom 5:16)—that is, it leads human beings, set free from many offenses, to the glory of the justification granted. Here, then, he does not understand the one sin of Adam, as you suspect, but he brought in the number of the one and of the many only for this purpose, to look to the praise of grace: that grace was not repeated as often as a sin had been committed by each mortal, as though single baptisms could heal nothing but single sins.

Aug. You speak of this as though the Apostle had said: But grace is once from many offenses unto justification. He did not say this. Attend to what he said, and correct what you said. Grace, he says, is from many offenses unto justification. What has it to do with this, that all sins are forgiven to each person once and together in baptism? Is not that condemnation too, to which the last judgment leads, beyond doubt made once, of all the sins that have not been remitted? And rather is that damnation made once than is the remission of sins through the grace of Christ made once; for if anyone sins after baptism, they are not the same sins, but they are forgiven to those who sin through the same grace—not once, nor seven times, but even seventy times seven (See Matt 18:22). The same grace daily forgives even daily sins to those who pray, when they say, Forgive us our debts, truthfully adding, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt 6:12). Grace, then, from many offenses—whether it finds single offenses in single persons, or in some few, in others very many, whether those committed before baptism or those committed afterward and healed by repenting, praying, and giving alms—sends unto justification those whom it sets free from damnation; for all these are the very "many" out of which grace justifies. And if grace did not come to the rescue, then surely even from one offense—not the one each person commits as his own (for in this passage the Apostle was not speaking of that), but the one that entered the world through one who sinned—one goes into damnation; for this the Apostle expressed most evidently. For he does not say, as you do, "the gift is not as through one sin," as though wishing each person's single sin to be understood, but he says, The gift is not as through one who sinned (Rom 5:16). Open your eyes and read, and do not, as though to the blind, wish to substitute one thing for another.

213. Jul. But he took care to express this: When, he says, single sins had wounded their authors mortally, this grace, by its single power and once delivered, saved human beings pierced through past counting.

Aug. Through one who sinned (Rom 5:16), he said, where Adam is understood—not "through one sin," where you, with the word changed and substituted, wish the single sins of single persons to be understood.

214. Jul. For if by the offense of one death reigned through one, much more shall those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of justice reign in life through the one Jesus Christ (Rom 5:17). He consistently affirms what he had begun; for he set down two statements, wishing what he subjoined at the end to fit both. For through one who was the form of sin, and in whose likeness those who sin under the Law transgress, he declares that death reigns; and through one he declares that all who have obtained the abundance of grace reign in life—which grace benefits those who imitate virtue. No question, then, remained about the one; for this, which was added—namely, that those reign in life who have received the abundance of grace—also resolves that first point: that no one, namely, is forced into death except one who has fallen in love with the example of the one who sinned.

Aug. With whose example, the example of one who sinned, has he fallen in love? Surely the first man's; for you say that he is the form of sin on account of imitation, not on account of generation. Accordingly, as you say, "no one is forced into death except one who has fallen in love with the example of this one who sinned," then those are not forced into death who did not, as you suppose, sin in the likeness of his transgression. How, then, do you say that death reigned even over those who did indeed sin through free choice, but not in the likeness of Adam's transgression, because they sinned without the Law? They did not sin by his example, then, since those not sinning in the likeness of his transgression did not love the example of the one who sinned; for as far as they are from this likeness of the one who sinned, so far are they strangers to the imitation of his example. Since, then, death reigned even over them, what becomes of your statement, "that no one is forced into death except one who has fallen in love with the example of the one who sinned"—namely of him whom, on account of imitation, you wish to have been the form of sin? See, those who did not sin in the likeness of his transgression did not love the example of the one who sinned, and yet death reigned even over them. Or will you return to catholic truth, so as to confess that death reigned even over those who did not sin by not committing sins of their own, but who underwent the reign of death in the likeness of the transgression of him from whose stock they were born, as it were by a hereditary right of misery? For so the teachers of the Church understood these apostolic words, who saw that they cannot be rightly understood unless in them is understood the origin of a sin bound up in our succession; on which account they said that little ones, born carnally according to Adam, contract the contagion of the ancient death at their first birth (See Cyprian, Letter 64.5)—and they were no Manicheans, but, by the Spirit of God who spoke through them, condemned you Pelagians.

215. Jul. But the life in which the saints are to reign is shown to be eternal; therefore let the death too, which follows voluntary iniquity, be believed to be eternal. And so, as through the offense of one unto condemnation upon all human beings, so also through the justice of one unto justification of life upon all human beings. For as through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many will be made just (Rom 5:18-19). The whole tangle is undone; the slander about the universal multitude is impudently stirred up; most ineptly is a knot sought in a bulrush. The Apostle declares that they are not all, but many, who had learned to sin through the disobedience of the first man, and that they are many, not all, who through another's obedience had obtained justice. Nothing here is treated about the origin of humanity; ways of conduct are made known in their various pursuits; disobedience and obedience show the work of pursuits, not of generation. Surely, where could the Apostle more fittingly declare—if he had any view such as yours—that all go to condemnation by being born, but few to life by believing, than in this passage, where the sum of the disputation was to be completed? For he ought to have said: As through the disobedience of one man all were made sinners—nay, not through the disobedience, but as through the generation of the first man all were born sinners—so also through the obedience of one many will be made just.

Aug. Rather, he ought to have said: As through his own disobedience many were made sinners, so through his own obedience many will be made just. Or, if he had wished to commend in this passage that imitation which you—set in great straits and hemmed in as truth pursues you—think you have devised as a way out, he ought to have said: As through the imitation of one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also through the imitation of one man's obedience many will be made just. See, I too have said how the Apostle ought to have spoken, if he wished to say what you say; do not think it any great thing to compose words to suit our own will, rather than to set forth the author's will in his own words.

He said, then, that through the disobedience of one man, whom he knew to be the head of generation, many were made sinners, because by that disobedience human nature was corrupted; and that through the obedience of one man, who is the head of regeneration, many were made just, because by his obedience human nature is healed—he who was made obedient unto the death of the cross, so that even those might be made just through his grace who could not here be just by their own way of life, such as those who breathe their last immediately after the bath of regeneration, whether of greater or of infant age (See Phil 2:8). Hence he chose rather to put a verb of the future tense and to say "will be made," not "have been made," since those who are just with that justice which will be without any sin are to live in the eternity of the age to come. But when, of sinners, he did not say "will be made," but "have been made," he expressed by a verb of past time this present age, which passes away, where human nature is already corrupted. As for the "many," since these are indeed all, you have been answered enough; you, however, could expound those whom the Apostle called "all" only by contradicting and saying, "they are not all"—to which no necessity would force you, if you had preferred to hold a catholic rather than a Pelagian sense; for they are called both "all" and "many," that they may be distinguished from those who, though they are all, are nonetheless few.

216. Jul. But if he had inferred it so, the opinion would be shown no less impious than inept—by which the comparison itself, set in the differing case of the persons, would be shown most stupid, since things unlike would come up for comparison, namely nature and will: so that on the side of evil the necessity of seeds would be placed, but on the side of good only the freedom of pursuit—nay, no longer freedom, since there would be no power of choosing the good and avoiding the evil if there were a natural guilt. The Apostle, then, a wise and learned Teacher of the Church, says that through disobedience sin arose and passed over, and that justice is multiplied.

Aug. Where now is what you had said, that not sin but death passed over (See above, 63-64)? See, now you say that through the disobedience which was recorded of one man not only did sin arise, but also that it passed over. Or have you perhaps forgotten what you said before? We must be thankful for your forgetfulness, by which you are compelled to say something true. For as to your view that, in a comparison of contrary sides, the necessity of seed ought not to be placed on the one side and the pursuit of will on the other—you would find it stupid, if you saw that on the evil side those who belong to the first man drew the contagion of sin by the connection of generation, without any pursuit of their own will, just as those little ones who belong to the second man are made partakers of justice without any pursuit of their own will, through the peace of regeneration. But if you demand seed on both sides: just as through Adam the carnal seed was corrupted, so through Christ the spiritual seed flourishes—the seed which the apostle John conveyed to us, saying, And he cannot sin, because his seed abides in him (1 John 3:9). This will appear rather in the good age to come, where those who will be cannot sin—not in this evil age, where even those who belong to the age that will have no sins have reason daily to ask the Father for the pardon of sins.

217. Jul. And by this he destroys the opinion of natural sin and teaches that the causes of substance are one thing, the causes of will another; and lest this understanding be imputed to our own wit rather than to apostolic teaching, let us hear what he added to this passage: But the Law slipped in, he says, that the offense might abound; but where sin abounded, grace abounded yet more, that, as sin reigned unto death, so grace also might reign through justice unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 5:20-21). Assert, then, how your sin—that is, the sin of propagation—began to abound after the Law, which received its increases after the ministry of Moses.

Aug. Rather, you assert how, as you said above (See above, 198), the reign of sin fell when the Law was passed, when the Apostle says that, when the Law was passed, sin abounded. As for me, I assert what I said, since, even if I did not assert it, it is clear. For original sin existed even before the Law, since through one man sin entered the world, and with it death passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12). And there was also voluntary sin, since those who sinned without the Law will perish without the Law (Rom 2:12). But the Law slipped in, that sin might abound (Rom 5:20), because to those kinds of sin which existed before the Law there was added also that which is called transgression. For where there is no law, neither is there transgression (Rom 4:15).

Where, then, sin abounded in all these kinds of sin, grace abounded yet more (Rom 5:20), because in those who belong to it grace blots out the guilt of all these kinds and besides grants that the delight of sin be overcome by the delight of justice, and that one afterward arrive at that life where there will be no sin at all. How, then, ought things unlike not to come up for comparison, as you said a little before, when this comparison is made from contraries: on the one side generation is set, on the other regeneration; on the one side the reign of death, on the other the reign of life; on the one side abundance of sin, on the other remission of sins; on the one side the delight of sin, through the fault of nature unto the evil of habit, on the other the battle against the concupiscence of the flesh, through the help of the Holy Spirit unto the peace of victory, which will suffer no enemy within and none without? Hold to these things, if you wish to be sound, and do not rage against these things, which belong to sound doctrine.

218. Jul. You certainly contend that in these passages the Apostle discoursed about natural sin. To this end he had said above that it existed until the Law, so that it might be understood to have ceased after the Law; but now he says of the same sin that it began to grow and abound after the Law. We have shown that both of these fit the catholic understanding, which we follow; but with what impudence is it claimed for your dogma, that one and the same sin should be said both to have failed earlier when the Law was passed and now to have grown? How, then, did natural sin abound after the Law? Did the generative parts begin to be more keenly stirred, so that from the increase and novelty of motions some power might seem added to your sin? Or was the Law given to those being born, so that those begotten of the lust which you say is diabolical and the root and fruit of sin might be warned to amend what they had been made, and to correct the act they had performed when their parents begot them? Would it, finally, force what had been done to be undone—which, refusing to hear, they would incur the charge of disobedience? But this could be imputed by none of fools, much less by the Law which God gave.

Aug. Have we anywhere said that original sin grew after the Law? Or do we wish this to be understood in what the Apostle says, The Law slipped in, that the offense might abound (Rom 5:20)? For it abounded—not because that kind which had already existed before grew, but because another kind of sin was added, which did not exist without the Law, that is, transgression, as we showed a little before. But the concupiscence of the flesh is the lust of the generative parts, against which the chastity of the saints fights; this lust, which pleases you so much—because, together with its own warfare, against which even conjugal modesty struggles, using it well only for begetting children but resisting its other motions—this lust, then, together with this warfare of its own, because you try to admit or let into the peace of paradise as well, you yourself are not minded to enter paradise.

But however much it be fortified by your defense and adorned with praises, it is either a fault or is itself faulted, and not without reason is it hateful to the soldiers of Christ, by whom it is fought down; with it you yourself dally, so that you say both that you assail it and are not ashamed to praise it. Through it the human flesh that is born is the flesh of sin; on which account he was unwilling to be born through it who was born in the likeness of the flesh of sin (See Rom 8:3)—and thus, though in true flesh, yet not in the flesh of sin. From this concupiscence, taken up by you, beautiful indeed to you but foul to all the saints, the bond of original sin is drawn by generation, to be loosed by regeneration alone. The former was done through Adam, the latter is done through Christ; the former through him by whom sin entered the world, the latter through him who takes away the sin of the world. So does he acknowledge Adam and Christ who has passed over from Adam to Christ.

219. Jul. What, then, has been added after the Law to natural sin, which is proved in the Law to be not only not prohibited or condemned, but not even lightly censured or faintly shown?

Aug. It is shown even in the Law—if only the veil be taken away from you (See 2 Cor 3:16); for what else is shown by the condemnation of the soul of the one who is not circumcised on the eighth day (See Gen 17:12, 14)? What else is shown when, an infant being born, a sacrifice is commanded to be offered for sin (See Lev 12:6), which I have already mentioned above?

220. Jul. Surely not even you are so foolish as to say that the propagation of sin became greater after circumcision was instituted; how, then, did it abound after the Law, since it is neither charged in the Law nor disclosed? But see how well it accords with a sound understanding, which places sin in the will of the offender alone. The Apostle says that sin existed until the Law, so that after the Law transgression might be understood to exist (See Rom 5:13)—transgressing, namely, the precepts promulgated; and by this kind sin abounded as the Law slipped in, since, from the transgression, the odium attaching to its guilt grew, and the work of an evil will, just as before the Law it was sin, so after the Law began to be transgression—although God did not pass the Law with the design that mortals should be made worse by its sanction. For the Law is not sin or the cause of sin, but a commandment holy and just and good (Rom 7:12). But because the depravity of offenders wounded itself with that very iron by which it ought to have been healed, and resisted the counsel of God, so that it was endangered from the very thing by which it ought to have been healed, the Apostle says that, from the outcome of things, the design of the divine counsel by which the Law had been given suffered injury; and because the result of human amendment was not that at which the giver of the Law aimed, but in very many the contrary came about, he says that the pursuits of sinners went so far that the Law seemed to have been given for no other reason than that the wicked might become more wicked and that transgression might be joined to sin.

Aug. You say these things, you who do not yourself grasp the very counsel of God in giving the Law which the apostle Paul shows, and you fling yourself into such blasphemies as to say that the design of the divine counsel, by which the Law had been given, suffered injury—as though something other had been done than God had foreseen would be, and as though, the Law being passed, what the giver of the Law had aimed at did not come about. According to your wisdom, then, his own intention deceived God, who foreknows all things to come. Do you not attend to what is written: Many are the thoughts in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord abides forever (Prov 19:21)?

If, then, you wish to know, as far as is lawful for a man, with what counsel of God almighty and foreknowing all things the Law was given, look at what the Apostle says: For if a law had been given which could give life, justice would altogether be from the Law (Gal 3:21). And as though we said, Why then was it given? But Scripture, he says, has shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe (Gal 3:22).

See what is the counsel of the Law's being given. But who does not know that sin abounded as the Law slipped in by the fault not of the Law but of human beings? But this fault, by which forbidden things give more delight and the law becomes the power of sin (See 1 Cor 15:56), is healed only by the life-giving Spirit, not by the killing letter—which letter was nonetheless useful for this, that, while it killed through transgression as the desire to sin grew through the prohibition, it caused the life-giving Spirit to be sought, and compelled the human being, mortally trusting in his own power, to beg for the help of God's grace—a human being who, under a Law that is holy and just and good, was nonetheless failing, and unable by his own strength to come to his own aid in doing what is holy, what is just, what is good.

221. Jul. Rightly, then, the offense is said to have abounded by this kind, which the will of each one committed both before the Law and after the Law—but before the Law as a sinner, after the Law also as a transgressor. Something grows and abounds, then, when it gathers increases within its own kind, just as to the sin of free will, after Moses, the accumulation of transgression was added; for it was of the same kind, though at a different time, that is, of an evil will, which both before the Law and after the Law offended not by an insuperable compulsion, but by a blameworthy pursuit. Since these things are so, nothing in the apostolic words can fit you; for the sin of propagation is taught neither to have been made more copious nor greater as the Law slipped in; nor is that rightly said to abound by sins of the will which is shown in no way to pertain to the will of those being born. It did not, then, abound after the Law, which the Law could neither prohibit nor punish. But where sin abounded, grace abounded yet more, that, as sin reigned unto death, so grace might reign through justice unto eternal life (Rom 5:20-21).

Aug. Original sin did not indeed grow after the Law; yet the Law found even it—whose abolition it signified by the circumcision of an infant—just as it found also the sins of ignorance, which themselves did not grow when the Law was given, since rather that ignorance was diminished, because the knowledge of the Law was added; but the sin without which no one is born grew by the addition of the will, as original concupiscence drew on the sinner's consent. Sin abounded, that is, grew exceedingly, after through the Law there came the knowledge of sin and one began to sin even by transgression (See Rom 3:20). And if you are willing to attend and acquiesce in the truth, you will be forced by no necessity openly to contradict the Apostle, who cries out: Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12); for when he says, "it passed to all," while you say it did not pass to all, what else do you do but contradict the Apostle? And if the Apostle, then surely Christ. Why, then, do you marvel that the Church of Christ abominates you, who try, by your deadly opinions, to snatch sick little ones away from the saving remedies of Christ?

222. Jul. The Apostle opens himself more clearly as he goes on, and teaches that in the ruin of human salvation God, prompted by the abundance of his own mercy, brought to desperate matters a medicine more effective than usual, so that those whom he had not corrected by precepts he might bind by benefits, and so exact devotion for the future as not to impute what was done, and that human beings might thenceforth be eager to keep the justice which they had obtained by the shortcut of belief. The abundance, then, of preceding sins demanded the help of so abundant a mercy, since, unless there had been so great an abundance of one who pardons, no other discipline would have come to the rescue of diseases so grave. But in this commendation of the divine benefit the Apostle saw that room lay open for the objection of those who could say: If we rightly estimate the deserts of causes from their effects, then the abundance of sins, too, obtained that the mercy of God should flow forth; we must persist in sins, that the richness of grace may not be wanting. So, meeting an opinion of this kind: What then shall we say? he says. Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid! For we who have died to sin, how shall we still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? We are therefore buried together with him through baptism into death, so that, as Christ rose in the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life (Rom 6:1-4).

Aug. Do these apostolic words then fail to choke you, just because you yourselves cite them—lest we forget how firm are the foundations of God's house that you try to wrench away? O madman, when the Apostle had said, If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it?, he therefore added, Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?—so as to prove that those baptized in Christ are dead to sin. Are you so deaf as not to hear these things? So blind as not to see them? Confess, then, that little ones baptized are dead to sin; confess at last original sin; for they had nothing else to which they might die. Either say openly that they ought not to be baptized, or that, when they are baptized, they are not baptized in Christ Jesus, or that they are not baptized into his death—and blot out, if you can, the Apostle's words, who says, All of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death. But if you cannot blot out these words, as you cannot, then, when you hear "all of us," do not wish to separate little ones from this; allow Christ to be Jesus even to little ones, since not with them excepted, but together with them, he saves his people from their sins—on which account it was said by the angel, You shall call his name Jesus (Matt 1:21).

223. Jul. He says that we have died to sin at that time when, in order to receive the gift of pardon, we professed to renounce the world and all sins, and that therefore, mindful of the gift, we ought so to live as to be taught that we are buried together with Christ and to bear his resurrection by a conspicuous holiness; and that, just as he, after he rose from the dead, suffers no weaknesses of body, no scourges, so we too should strive to be invulnerable to all sins and vices. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be so also in the likeness of his resurrection—knowing this, that our old self has been crucified together with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, that we may no longer be slaves to sin; for whoever has died has been justified from sin (Rom 6:5-7). He binds the faithful by a clear reasoning: If, he says, you wish to be made partakers of his resurrection, imitate also the power of his death, that, dead to vices, you may live in virtue; for then you will be sharers in that happiness if, by dying to sins, you have borne the image of his death; for our old self ought to be taught, fastened to his cross, to destroy the body of sin—namely by the strength of the Passion. And by "the body of sin," Paul, by his own custom, calls the vices, not the substance of the flesh; for so it follows: that the body of sin may be destroyed, that we may no longer be slaves to sin; for whoever has died has been justified from sin.

Aug. However you interpret "the body of sin," you will not deny that little ones baptized in Christ Jesus are dead to sin—unless you most openly deny that they are baptized into the death of Christ Jesus, and thereby deny that they are baptized in Christ Jesus. For all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death (Rom 6:3). Say, then, to what sin do they die, when little ones are baptized in Christ Jesus? But you will have nothing at all to say, unless, with the whole Church of Christ, you understand and answer: Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all have sinned (Rom 5:12). See to what sin they die, when little ones are baptized into the death of Christ Jesus. I beg: Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding (Ps 32:9 (31:9)). Listen: If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? (Rom 6:3) All of us, therefore, who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have died to sin, because we have been baptized into his death. Listen: "all of us who have been baptized"; for it is not little ones and not the older, or rather the older and not little ones, but "all of us"—that is, whether little ones or older, we who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death, and thereby have died to sin. Either, then, say openly that the baptism of Christ is not necessary for little ones, or name the sin to which they die when they are baptized in Christ—the sin of little ones—or, because you can find no other, at last acknowledge original sin.

224. Jul. Surely he was speaking with the living, and to these he was saying that justice had been conferred through the mysteries. How, then, does he say that the one is justified whom he calls dead, except that he shows without any ambiguity that here he calls the renunciation "death," and that therefore the name of death is taken up by him in order to show that the faithful ought to cease from sins just as the dead cease from acts?

Aug. O contentious man, if in this passage of the apostolic words "death" is called "renunciation," so that one who renounces sin dies to sin, recall how, in the Church of Christ, in which you were baptized, the mysteries of baptism are celebrated, and you will find that little ones too renounce through the mouths of those who carry them, just as they believe through the mouths of those who carry them—which among you perhaps now is not done; for you have so advanced for the worse, yourselves erring and sending others into error, that those who agree with you say that the little one to be baptized ought not to renounce, because he has drawn no original sin (See 2 Tim 3:13); or, if he ought to renounce sin, say which sin, and at last correct your error.

225. Jul. For if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Christ—knowing that Christ, raised 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 too, reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:8-11). As Christ, he says, who died to sin once—that is, died once for our sins—dies no more, but lives in the glory of God, so you too, reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, to live for and serve the virtues alone.

Aug. O wondrous exposition! The Apostle says that Christ died to sin, and you say it means "for our sins"; so what he says, So you too, reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, is he to be supposed to mean: Reckon yourselves to be dead for your sins? Surely he does not say this in that passage, nor do you so understand it, but you confess that they died to sin, that they might not live to sin. Show, then, that Christ too died to sin, lest the Apostle have said unfittingly, "so you too"; for it was to take away our sins, yet he nonetheless died to sin—and how, he who had no sin at all, neither original nor of his own, except that the likeness took the name of the thing of which it was the likeness? For we know that Christ came in the likeness of the flesh of sin (See Rom 8:3), since he came in true flesh, but not, like other human beings, in the flesh of sin; he died, then, to the likeness of sin which he bore in his mortal flesh, and so fulfilled the mystery of our salvation, that we might die to the sin whose likeness he bore. Therefore we are baptized into his death, because, just as in him a true death took place, so in us a true remission of sins takes place. But here are little ones too: For all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death (Rom 6:3). For human beings are not baptized in Christ in such a way that some are baptized into his death and others not into his death; but, as he says, in whom Christ himself was speaking, All who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized into his death; and thereby, all who are baptized in Christ Jesus die to sin; if all, then surely also little ones. But to what sin do little ones die? Now at last, I beg, let generation confess, lest regeneration lie; let it confess in little ones the flesh of sin, so that the likeness of the flesh of sin be not denied to have died even for little ones.

226. Jul. Where, then, is nature accused here? Where are the beginnings of human substance found at fault? Where is the motion of the one begetting censured? It is clearer than light that the will alone is addressed by the Teacher of the gentiles, that it may renounce the hidden things of shame (See 2 Cor 4:2) and advance into a better life by the correction of its acts. But now let our exposition take a shortcut, and not persist in interpreting the words of the Apostle in these passages; let us hear him discoursing on his own views. At the end of his disputation it will appear with what teaching and faith he agrees.

We, surely, say that the Apostle spoke of the sin of the human will, which is in each one who sins; you, however, of that which you believe, with Faustus, to be transmitted by generation and received by all without will. Let our wranglings, then, if you please, be done away with; and, to deal moderately, let us pass over the dignity of the Apostle, by which it could be laid down that, even if all his words accorded with you in every respect, nonetheless, for the splendor of his office, he held no view so deformed, and that there is an ambiguity of expressions, not a depravity of meanings; let only this be granted him in the present business, that a man of an untroubled mind is to be believed to have understood his own writings better than you. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to obey it (Rom 6:12), he says. I could now say here that it is proved, by the testimony of his exhortation, that he is treating of sins of the will, because evils, if they were natural, could be defended by justice, or at last be bewailed by mercy, but could by no means be warned against. For with any natural evil whatever, if any could exist, this evil was greater—the madness that gripped whoever demanded devotion in guarding against natural things. But the Apostle sanctioned nothing that could be rightly reprehended; he therefore showed it to be a sin of the will, which he urges ought to be avoided.

Aug. Who does not know that the Apostle is not speaking to little ones, but to those who can understand the words of the one speaking and, with the help of God's grace, obey the precepts? But surely they also work with their children, that, as the use of reason grows in them, so the fruit of obedience may be brought forth, lest they have received the grace of God in vain when they were regenerated without knowing it. Nevertheless, that beautiful thing you have taken up, which is deformed to all who fight it down—I mean the concupiscence of the flesh, through which a human being is born and with which he is born—this concupiscence of the flesh the Apostle commands to be restrained (See 2 Cor 6:1), and does not permit it to reign, and he calls it by the name of sin, because it both draws its origin from the first sin and because whoever consents to its motions toward unlawful things sins; this concupiscence will be none at all in us when we have an immortal body. And so, when he could have said, "Let not sin reign in your body," why did he add a word and say, in your mortal body (Rom 6:12), except that we should then hope that this concupiscence, which he calls sin, will not exist when we no longer have a mortal body?

For you tell us why he did not say, "Let there be no sin in your mortal body," but said, "Let it not reign," except that this concupiscence, which cannot but be in mortal flesh, reigns in those who consent to its desires for the perpetrating of evils and are dragged off, conquered, wherever it allures—with a greater onset, because they are forbidden by the Law if they are not helped by grace; but in those who, by God's gift, do what is commanded—that is, do not obey it when it stirs and presses, nor furnish their members to it as arms—it is indeed present, but does not reign. It is proved to be present while evils are desired, and proved not to reign while, the delight of justice prevailing, they are not done. For how are we commanded not to obey it except when it commands or persuades? And how can it do this, if it is not present?

227. Jul. Neither present your members as arms of iniquity to sin, but present yourselves to God, as those alive from the dead, and your members as arms of justice to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the Law, but under grace (Rom 6:13-14). You ought, he says, to serve God all the more faithfully, the more freely you do so; for sin had dominion over you when the vengeance of your guilt hung over you; but after you have obtained the benefits of God's grace and, the weights of your guilt laid aside, have breathed again, then, prompted by a noble shame, you ought to render thanks to your healer.

Aug. After your manner, which descends from your error, you acknowledge grace only in the remission of sins, so that thenceforth, through free choice, the human being may fashion himself just by his own doing. But the Church does not say this, the Church that cries out as a whole what she learned from the good Teacher: Lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13); he does not say this who says, We pray to God that you may do no evil (2 Cor 13:7); he does not say this who says, I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail (Luke 22:32). For in this way grace acts that we may not sin, and not only washes away the sins we have committed; for grace helps in both ways, both by forgiving what we have done wrongly and by aiding us to turn away from evils and do good.

228. Jul. But because the occasion arose for the same question he had expounded above—namely, that it might be objected that those set free from the Law, which threatened wrath, could sin securely under the kindness of God's grace—he immediately added: What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the Law, but under grace? God forbid! Or do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obey, you are the servants of him whom you obey, whether of sin or of obedience unto justice? (Rom 6:15-16) Do we now believe him, about whose condition of sin he has thus far discoursed? To whom, he says, you present yourselves as servants to obey, of him you are the servants, whether of sin or of justice. Where, then, is that sin indicated here by the Apostle which is imagined to have flown over upon the very seeds themselves, before the times of will, before the pursuit of those who obey, before the age of knowledge and conscience? A thing which surely cannot be found except in the books of the Manicheans.

Aug. They are not the books of the Manicheans where one reads, For we too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest (Eph 2:3)—which you, in a new manner but with a most impudent mouth, interpret from the Greek, so that the Apostle may seem to have said not "by nature," but "altogether," that is, "We were altogether children of wrath"; and perhaps you will dare to emend this in your codices, for you are unwilling to acquiesce in the fact that, unless this faith were as true as it is ancient, all the Latin codices would not have it. Nor for that reason ought the Apostle not to have warned that one must obey justice, not sin, just because we are all born under sin, and our very origin is in fault (See Ambrose, On Penance 1.3).

For when the guilt of generation has been absolved by the indulgence of regeneration, one must obey the spirit of justice, to which we must consent, and not obey the concupiscence of the flesh, against which we ought to struggle—yet so, to be sure, that we remember that this pious obedience itself is the gift of God, which he promised through the prophet, saying, I will give them a heart to know me, and ears that hear (Jer 24:7); and what is this but "obedient ears"?

229. Jul. For the rest, the Apostle shows—if indeed he obtains any belief from human beings in this storm—that he calls servants of sin only those who, it is agreed, obeyed sin by their own will, and who, by the change of that same will, began to serve justice; he placed obedience, then, in the middle, and imputed to it that they were eager either to obey vices before or virtues afterward.

Aug. Those who trust in their own strength (Ps 49:6 (48:7)) are empty like you, and will be destroyed like you.

230. Jul. But thanks be to God that you were, he says, servants of sin; but you have obeyed from the heart that form of teaching to which you were delivered; and, set free from sin, you have been made servants of justice (Rom 6:17-18).

Aug. O deaf one, hear the Apostle giving thanks to God that they obeyed his teaching from the heart—since he did not say, "Thanks to God, because his teaching was preached to you," but, "because you have obeyed." For not all obey the Gospel (Rom 10:16), but those to whom it is given that they should obey, as the Lord says: To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given (Matt 13:11; see Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10). They would not, then, have obeyed from the heart—that is, from the will—if the will were not prepared by the Lord; otherwise the Apostle falsely gives him thanks for this matter, if he himself did not bring it about.

231. Jul. The change of obedience, made from the heart, he says, set you free from sin and made you cleave to holiness.

Aug. But this change is of the right hand of the Most High; hear the man of God confessing this grace in the Psalm, and learn who changes a human being's will for the better: And I said, Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High (Ps 77:10 (76:11)).

232. Jul. I speak in a human way, on account of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now present your members to serve justice unto sanctification (Rom 6:19). O teacher full of the Spirit of God, truly a golden vessel and a trumpet sounding not with broken shrillness but with clear notes! He wins authority for his discourse by the humaneness of his exhortation.

Aug. O you deceiver full of a heretical spirit, giving everything to the human being's will, against him who says, For what have you that you have not received? (1 Cor 4:7) O Pelagian man, the Apostle said these things while planting and watering; but knowing that neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase (1 Cor 3:7), he not only gave precepts, but also prayed to God that those to whom he preached his words might not do evil. For he plainly says elsewhere: We pray to God that you may do no evil (2 Cor 13:7).

233. Jul. For lest he should seem to command anything arduous and inaccessible to a human being, he borrowed a word from common usage, calling it "human," that is, easily manageable, and such as is softened by the comparison of causes. I do not demand of you, he says, an effort equal to lofty matters, nor do I set for you precepts as new as the riches of the virtues are great, by which you may lay hold of those riches; I bring in nothing savage, I lay down nothing that can scarcely be borne—lest, if for the splendor of justice I commanded something of that sort, you should complain of the weakness of the flesh and plead that you cannot bear continual toil.

Now, therefore, I approach you with this moderation: that you apply to the virtues such zeal as you applied before to crimes; and although it be an injury to honorable things if they are sought with such a purpose as is spent on shameful things, nonetheless for this discipline, in which you are, it suffices if you pursue justice even with such intent as you pursued iniquity and uncleanness.

Aug. Yet they will not do this unless they resist, by the strength of love, that beautiful concupiscence of the flesh you have taken up; with which law of the members, about to war against the law of the mind, every human being is born, and by whose binding he is guilty if he is not reborn—a concupiscence which mortals do not conquer by their own spirit if they are not led by the Spirit of God: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). Go now, and against this Christian and apostolic truth fling free choice into the abyss by extolling it, and trust in your own strength—not by rising, but by falling.

234. Jul. Let us, then, believe the Teacher of the gentiles, and render him the testimony of his own truth. For truly, as he said, what he commanded is "human": that the correction of the will should amend the faults of the will.

Aug. But this human correction does not come about except by divine aid. For who corrects a human being's will except him to whom it is said, O God of hosts, turn us back (Ps 80:7 (79:8)), and, O God, you will turn and give us life (Ps 85:6 (84:7))? For by the Lord are a man's steps directed, and he will choose his way (Ps 37:23 (36:23)). But if they are not directed by him, a human being will not choose the way of God, even though the Law command that he choose it.

235. Jul. But, just as this is "human," so the other thing he would have thought—if he had thought it—not only inhuman, not only savage, but even unjust, not only unjust but even insane: that, if he knew sin to be born in us, he should reproach the human beings of his own age with the faults of an ancient birth, and command that they abstain from things he believed to be inborn, and with a threat prescribe that I ought to lay aside what I had begun to have before my soul entered into my body, and before my body entered into this world.

Aug. Then the concupiscence of the flesh is not inborn, or else he does not command abstinence from it, who says, Restrain yourself (Sir 30:24), and, Flee youthful desires (2 Tim 2:22). Why did he not say, "Flee voluntary desires"? "Youth," surely, is the name of an age, and ages nature has, not will; and that concupiscence is kindled most of all from the age of youth—a concupiscence whose force, to be sure, is dormant in an infant, as is that of reason and of will itself. But the Christian eye, not the Pelagian, discerns what nature takes from the Creator's institution and what it contracts from the defilement of fault, proclaiming its Maker by reason of its good, and by reason of the evil by which it is corrupted standing in need of a Savior; for as to the guilt with which a human being is born, there is nothing to be commanded him except that he be reborn.

236. Jul. He would more justly be admonished by those whom he was eager to amend, that he should weigh how much he commanded, and know that the first step of constant counsel is to keep measure in commanding; for that teaching is stripped of authority which equity does not guard, and that is full of authority which the balance of justice commends. And by this it is established that the Apostle, the reverend instructor of the Churches, rendering the reason of his teaching with counsel, equity, and humaneness, thought nothing about natural sin, but pressed home, as the matter stood, both that we were servants of vices only through the will, and that, if it be corrected, we can serve justice by that same will.

But since I have thus far been occupied in the exposition of this passage, to show that through the words of the apostle Paul nothing can be defended for the Manicheans, and the truth has appeared in the context of his discourse, which he carries through the whole body of his sayings, let this be the end of the second little book—by which, however, we necessarily admonish that nothing has remained to the Traducianists except impudence; for, since they confessed that they had no defense in reason, they claimed all their solace for themselves from the sayings of the Apostle, which have been expounded. And since it has become clear that in these nothing deformed, nothing not consonant with holiness and reason, was prescribed, it appears that the opinion has fallen which reason, together with many authorities of the Scriptures, and the religion of catholics, which is in God, has overthrown, and which the sense of this passage no longer protects.

Aug. It is apparent to all who read these things with a sound head and intelligently that, when you said many things against words that are not so much mine as the blessed Apostle's, you found nothing to say, and that you acted, by the tortuous noise of your loquacity, so as to seem to those who do not understand to have said something. Whether you will or not: Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12). What is "so" except "through sin," not "without sin"? For death would not pass over except with sin leading the way; for death follows sin, it does not precede it.

Hence come all the miseries of mortals from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb (Sir 40:1), as it is written. And when you say that these miseries befall little ones without any sin, you truly make God unjust, and you horribly help the Manicheans. For they, lest they make God unjust, attribute these miseries, from the birth of mortals, to an unchangeable nature of evil and to a substance coming from another principle, the principle of darkness.

The catholic faith conquers these impious men and yourselves together—the faith which attributes all these things to that sin which entered the world by the will of the first man, which sin was followed by this death too, the death that, putting the soul to flight, destroys the body—a death which you say would naturally have come to a human being even if he had not sinned. From which it follows that you say that not only that imperious lust, in which you delight too much, but even the most troublesome fever and the countless other diseases by which we see little ones afflicted and dying, would have existed in paradise, even if no one had sinned, because you say that little ones suffer these things without the desert of any sin. Restrain yourselves, I beg, with your false and harmful praises; restrain yourselves from infants and sucklings, whom by a cruel error you praise as though having nothing evil; let the little ones come to Christ the liberator, to be set free; conquered and corrected, permit the wretched nature, which the first man corrupted, to be healed by the second man.

1. Jul. It ought indeed to have been that among the human race reverence for all the virtues flourished; it ought to have been that with an ever-wise mind one resisted crimes and earned the favor of the Creator by good pursuits; it was fitting, finally, that, since the prior and happier step of continual devotion seems here both rare and exceedingly arduous, one should at least spit out faults that had long been cherished and return to the help of amendment and repentance. It ought certainly to have been that at least in this the reverence due to God remained inviolable: that it should not be necessary for us to vindicate the divine Law with so great a contest; but, because the madness of sinners has come to such a point that with the greatest labors we must teach that God is just, presuming upon the help of that very justice whose cause is being pleaded, let us render what we promised in the preceding book.

Aug. You seek the help of God, that your empty books may be filled, and you do not seek that your perverse meanings may be corrected. Yet I would have you say why in this work you beg the help of God, when it is in your free choice either to do this or not to do it. Is it that those things may be at hand for you which are not in your power, and without which this cannot be accomplished—such as, to omit others, your very food and leisure? But these God supplies to us almost always through the wills of others. You see, then, that when you beg help for the filling of your books, you are begging this of God almighty: that in the wills of human beings he should work what helps you and does not hinder you. For if human beings should be unwilling to supply you with food and fitting provisions, if, finally, they should be unwilling to cease from disturbing and hindering you, you will not be able to write or dictate these things. You hope, then, that by the help of God the wills of the human beings among whom you live are so directed that nothing necessary is wanting to you. For—what you do not believe—the will is prepared by the Lord (Prov 8:35). Either, then, correct your dogma now, or cease to ask divine help for defending it.

2. Jul. Since in the first volume it had been established by clear definitions that God is so just that, if it could be proved that he is not just, he would be convicted of not being God, and since over this no doubt remained, it became clear also that justice is nothing other than the virtue that never judges anything iniquitously, does nothing iniquitously, but renders to each his own without fraud and without favor—that is, without acceptance of persons.

Aug. You speak truly "without fraud," that the undeserving may not be punished; but if the justice of God were "without favor," Christ would never have died for the impious—that is, for those who deserve no good and much evil—nor, finally, would he have adopted into his kingdom little ones whose good works and will did not precede, nor, in the same case, would he have defrauded other little ones of participation in that same kingdom, he who never judges iniquitously, does nothing iniquitously, and renders to each his own without fraud. Acknowledge, then, that little ones who are taken up into the kingdom of God are vessels unto honor through grace, and other little ones who are not taken up into that honor are vessels unto dishonor through judgment; and at last, lest you make God unjust, confess original sin.

3. Jul. But the reason of that virtue then holds good, if he punished none of his subjects except for those offenses which it was established were committed by free will.

Aug. And that too was committed by free will—the will of him in whom human nature was condemned, from which human beings are born subject to condemnation, unless they are reborn in him who was not born subject to it. You wish this Christian dogma to be overthrown; but, while it stands, you are overthrown.

4. Jul. Nor would he command human beings things which he knew could not be kept through their nature, nor would he judge anyone guilty for natural things.

Aug. But there was Adam, and in him we all were (Ambrose, On Luke 7.234), when he so sinned as to destroy in himself all—except those whom he willed to set free from it, he who came to seek what had perished (See Luke 19:10).

5. Jul. Nor would he impute the sins of some to others, and thereby would not, on account of the iniquities of parents, adjudge to eternal punishments their innocent children, who had done nothing of themselves, whether good or evil, through which they might be shown to have imitated the crimes of their parents (See Sir 40:1). From which gathered together, it is established that God both exists and is just—he of whom it had become clear that, if he were to do anything unjust, he would suffer in his divinity as great a loss as he would have undergone in equity.

Aug. You speak truly; and thereby he does nothing unjust when he presses with a heavy yoke the children of Adam from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb—which would surely be unjust if there were no original sin.

6. Jul. And yet—O the unhappiness of human error! for, pondering too deeply the very reason of our conflict, I am shaken with grief—could this have come into doubt, and could this cause have needed assertion? Could it, I say, in churches that professed to believe in Christ, have been doubted whether God judges justly—that is, reasonably?

Aug. Because this is not doubted, therefore it is written that there is a heavy yoke upon the children of Adam from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb (Sir 40:1); for the Pelagian wisdom is no better than the ecclesiastical.

7. Jul. But I have too much forgotten, in the very reverence for the matter, the contention with which we are dealing. For I marvel that it could be doubted about the equity of God, when it is established that in the synagogues of the Traducianists nothing about his iniquity is doubted.

Aug. Because the equity of God is not doubted, therefore the heavy yoke upon the little one is believed to be just; and because this is believed to be just, therefore the little one is not believed to be without original sin. Accordingly, in the catholic Church, from which you Pelagians went out from us, it is not, as you say, that nothing about the iniquity of God is doubted, but rather that nothing about his equity is doubted—where even the infant, whose life upon the earth is of one day, is taught and said not to be without the stain of sin (See Job 14:4-5), and therefore, in the evils that he suffers, God is acknowledged not as unjust, but as just.

8. Jul. Which is surely so much the worse, the graver the zeal for evils is than the neglect of goods, the more pernicious the intent of profanity than the doubt of truth, the more wicked, finally, it is to dare to accuse God than to be unwilling to venerate him.

Aug. But it is you who accuse God, when, while you see that little ones are pressed by his judgment with a heavy yoke, you nonetheless deny that they have any sin.

9. Jul. The fool had indeed said in his heart, as the prophet David is witness, that there is no God (Ps 14:1 (13:1); 53:1 (52:1)); yet he had not said that there is indeed a God, but that God is unjust; so harmoniously did the voice of all nature resound that justice cleaves inseparably to God, that one would more easily be found to deny his substance than his equity. One could exist who supposed that what he did not see did not exist; yet no one had been found to call iniquitous what he believed to be divine.

Aug. And you yourself have been found such a one; for to whom but such a one does he say, You supposed iniquity, that I would be like you (Ps 50:21 (49:21))? But since catholic Christians know both that God exists and that he is just, they therefore cannot doubt that human beings who are born—if they die unregenerate in early childhood—although they are images of God, are nonetheless not unjustly, but by the desert of original sin, not received into the kingdom of God.

10. Jul. That fool, then, by denying God, seemed to have stood at the farthest edge of crimes. But there has been found a nation of Manicheans and Traducianists, by whose profanities he is outdone.

Aug. Knowing how illustrious and approved teachers of the Church of Christ believed, concerning original sin and the justice of God, what I believe, taught what I teach, and defended what I defend, I ought to hear your insults as I hear my own praises.

11. Jul. But, to return to where we digressed: it had become clear that nothing can be done in judgment by him whom we confess to be the true God which is contrary to justice, and thereby that none can be held guilty for the sins of others, and that therefore the innocence of those being born is by no means condemned on account of the iniquity of their parents, because it would be unjust that guilt should be transmitted through seeds.

Aug. Why then would it have been said, Their seed is accursed from the beginning (Wis 12:11)? For it was not said in the way that You are the seed of Canaan and not of Judah (Dan 13:56), where it was shown to whom they had been made like and from whom they had degenerated; rather, he called the seed of those very ones accursed, whom he wished to be understood as naturally evil, as are all the children of Adam, who by grace become children of God.

For where it is said, Not unaware that their nation is wicked, and that their malice is natural, and that their thought could not be changed forever, for their seed is accursed from the beginning (Wis 12:10-11), I think it is nature, not imitation, that is reproved; and how is it nature, except as corrupted by sin, not so created in the first man? From what beginning, then, is the seed accursed, except from the time when through one man sin entered the world? But they could not be changed by themselves—not by God almighty, who, however, by a most just though most hidden judgment did not change them. For the Apostle knew that he had been changed from this mass not by his own choice but by the grace of God, when he said, We too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest (Eph 2:3).

12. Jul. And although this stands in so great a light that nothing can be found either more conclusive or more true, nonetheless I had promised to prove this very thing by the testimony of the divine Law—namely, that it is most iniquitous if the crimes of those who beget are imputed to their children when born, and that God opposes this so far as even to prescribe in his own Law that the deformity of those judging should perpetrate no such thing. This, then, I had pledged myself to render; but since the second book was occupied in expounding the sentences of the apostle Paul, it is fitting that the faith of my promise be fulfilled in the first parts of this volume. We read, then, in Deuteronomy, in the catalogue of precepts by which the life and conduct of that people is ordered, that this too was most plainly commanded by God—for, that it may be understood from what precedes and what follows, among which it is placed: You shall not defraud the hired servant who is poor and needy, of your brethren or of the proselytes who are in your cities; you shall render his wages each day, let not the sun go down upon it, for he is poor and has hope in it; and let him not cry out against you to the Lord, and it become sin in you. The fathers shall not die for the sons, and the sons shall not die for the fathers; everyone shall die in his own sin (Deut 24:14-16).

Aug. He said this of sons already born, not condemned in their first parent, in whom all have sinned and in whom all die. And this precept he indeed gave to human beings who judge, lest a father should die for a son or a son for a father, when only the father, or the son, had been found guilty. But God did not bind his own judgments—whether he judges by himself or through human beings to whom he gives the prophetic spirit—by this law. For when, except for Noah with his household, he destroyed all the rest by the flood, he did not set apart the infants who had not yet imitated their parents; nor did that fire take up the Sodomites without their little ones (See Gen 7:21-23; 19:24-25)—which, had he wished, the Almighty surely could have done. And that Achar, found to be the one transgressor of the precept, was nonetheless slain together with his sons and daughters (See Josh 7:24-25).

What of so many cities subdued under the same leader, Joshua son of Nun, the man of God? Were they not all so slain that not one breathing was left (See Josh 6:21; 10:32-40)? What evil, then, had the little ones done? Did they not, by the sins of their parents—of which they could not yet be either conscious or imitators—undergo, by divine judgment, the common penalty? God, then, judges in one way, and commands a human being to judge in another, since God is, beyond any doubt, more just than a human being. These things you ought to have considered before, lest you dwell on examples that do not pertain to the case.

13. Jul. You shall not turn aside the judgment of the proselyte and the orphan and the widow; you shall not take a widow's garment as a pledge, because you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God set you free from there; for this reason I command you to do this thing (Deut 24:17-18). When God established the form of judging, he at once took care to sanction this: that neither parents should be struck in the crime of their children, nor children in that of their parents. He showed, then, that the beginning and entrance of the justice which he commanded to be kept in judging is this: that kinship should not burden the guiltless, and that the hatred which a person had deserved should not run out into the whole stock.

In the case of acts, then, justice distinguishes those whom kinship joins; which it surely would not do if the reason of will and of seed were one, or if the work of choice passed over to posterity by fruitfulness. We have therefore taught enough and more than enough, by this one testimony, that this most foul depravity of judgment, which the new error embraces, is crushed by the ancient authority of the Law that was passed. And this sentence is surely brought forward into the case in such a way as to leave no room for doubting.

Aug. God resists you, who said in the book of Leviticus, And those of you who remain shall perish for their own sins and for the sins of their fathers (Lev 26:39).

14. Jul. For God, in establishing what form ought to be kept in trials, prescribed that innocence should not be joined to the perils of its own kinship, and just as he separated the father from the punishment of an offending son, so he separated the son from the condemnation of the father—showing surely, by the like outcome of either person, that the sins of parents can as little pass over to children as the sins of children pass over to parents.

Aug. The little ones choke you—those who are read to have been slain so many times not even for their own sins, but for the sins of their parents alone.

15. Jul. Whoever, then, says against this sentence that there is a propagation of sin, let him say also that there is a recurrence of sin, so that, if sins descend from parents to children, they ascend from children to parents, since the authority of the divine Law shows that the crimes of parents harm children just as little as the crimes of children harm parents.

Aug. The authority of the divine Law, in human judgments, did not wish children to pay penalties for parents—not in divine judgments, where God says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Exod 20:5; see Num 14:18; Deut 5:9; Jer 32:18). You must so read the words of the Law that you wish, as to consider that you will hear those you do not wish.

16. Jul. Striving, then, to go against this sentence, let him assert that what was commanded should equally not be done, is equally done. For the Law of God can more easily be denied than emended; and although the denial be profane, more profane and more absurd is the correction. For if, of his two decrees, you should venerate the one and execrate the other, ungrateful to that side of him which you accept, you are forced also to obey what you reject—since by the dignity of the one which is dear to you, even that which you opposed is defended; and most absurdly does anyone believe himself to venerate those precepts, part of which he dares to assail.

Hence the whole Law can more consistently be denied than corrected; but no one, except some impious person, will attempt to correct it; by the religious and prudent, therefore, it is wholly received, wholly praised. Nor indeed should anyone be moved by the fact that he sees the rite of the ancient sacrifices to have ceased in the age of the New Testament. The reason of virtues and of victims is not one: the perennity of precepts is one thing, the temporality of sacrifices another. Yet when Christ came, who was prefigured by the ancient victims, what had been instituted was fulfilled, not condemned; for they are not foretold as performed in their own times, but, perfection succeeding, the things that had been promised by their offices rested.

Aug. What has this to do with the matter? God said that he would repay the sins of the fathers upon the children, not the sacrifices; and although parents too can imitate evil children, God nonetheless never said, "I will repay the sins of the children upon the fathers," but wherever he said this—and he said it often (See above, 15)—he said "of the fathers upon the children," where surely he shows himself to be pursuing the faults of generation, not of imitation.

17. Jul. But the precepts in which piety, faith, justice, and holiness are contained not only have not ceased, but have even been multiplied. And this law of the justice to be kept in judgments, which we have brought forward from Deuteronomy, looks not to the age of the ceremonies, but to the perennity of the precepts; nor did it depart with circumcision, but it perseveres with justice.

Aug. It has already been said to you that these are judgments commanded to human beings, not prejudgments laid down for God. In short, if a human being judging should say, "I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children," he speaks most unjustly and contradicts the divine command; nor for that reason, however, is God either a liar or unjust, when he says this.

18. Jul. It is settled, therefore—if Moses, through whom God speaks, is believed rather than Augustine, through whom Manichaeus speaks—that children are not held guilty by nature for the sins of their parents.

Aug. That I defend against you the faith which the holy, catholic, and illustrious teachers who were before us learned and taught in the catholic Church, you yourself also know; but because, if you should dare to tear them apart, not even your own people would bear with you, therefore you have singled out me alone, whom, assailed with the reviling of a false charge, you would persuade men to flee as though to be shunned, so that that faith may be fled which, when defended, condemns you. I have already said this to you above too: when, in defense of the catholic faith, I hear insults from heretics, I count them as praises.

Why do you labor to proclaim to us what we know? Moses spoke the truth, but you say nothing. I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Exod 20:5; see Num 14:18; Deut 5:9; Jer 32:18)—not a human being said this, but God; nor did God in this passage command that a human being should do it, but he indicated what he himself does.

19. Jul. And so the crimes of those who beget do not pass over to posterity, although they are born of them, just as neither do the crimes of children pass over to parents, who could by no means be begotten of their own children. So, then, his own birth can no more harm innocence than it can stand in the way when it does not exist.

Aug. Yet you cannot deny that parents can imitate their own children, and that God never said, "I will repay the sins of the children upon the fathers." When, therefore, he says "of the fathers upon the children," he reproves not imitation but generation—not in the way that, from that one man in whom nature itself was changed for the worse (so that on this account it is even necessary for a human being to die), but yet in some manner certain sins of various fathers are repaid upon the children, punished not by imitation but by generation; and therefore he does not say, "unto the third and fourth imitation," but "generation" (Exod 20:5)—you indeed being unwilling, but yet you too, will you or not, hearing it.

20. Jul. The matter is indeed concluded; but nonetheless, that the reader may be attentive to what I bring forward, I give warning. If anyone should arise who professed, with freedom of words, what the Traducianist tries to accomplish by arguing—that is, who should declare war on the Law of God and, without any fear, despise the sentence we have brought forward, and assert, by whatever means he could, that both of these are false which God willed to be kept, and should undermine the sentence of which we speak from both sides, as far as in him lay—he would think outright that parents are wont, as much as they ought, to be condemned for the sins of their children, and children for the sins of their parents; and yet not even this man, of such a kind, could assert a propagation of sin, even according to his own opinions.

Why? Namely because, even if it were established that the sentence of the Law is false—which testified that kinships of this sort cannot be bespattered with mutual crimes—nonetheless it remained unshaken that there is no propagation of sin. For by this very thing, that the guilt both of parents returned to children and of children to parents, it was established that it was not a matter of generation that the sins of those who beget had reached the children, since they had also returned from children to parents, where generation could not be the cause. Let it appear, then, what I have here accomplished: that the authority of the divine Law is indeed inviolable, and such as no arguments of impieties can overthrow; and that by its sanction it has been most expressly and most conclusively prescribed that the opinion and perversity of judgment is foul which it had commanded to be vehemently guarded against—namely, if children were pronounced guilty for the sin of their parents; by which thunderbolt the structure of propagation has burst asunder—but nonetheless that the faith we maintain is fortified with such defenses of truth that it is not even shaken by that profanity which can deny the Law of God.

Aug. You seek where you may range about, with a wandering loquacity—not copious, but hateful to those who, cleaving to the matter, despise superfluous words. For you are conquered by the adversaries you have, and you set before yourself adversaries to be conquered whom you do not have. For who tells you that what God willed to be kept in human judgments is false, since fathers and sons already have their own proper cases, pertaining to the life of each, which is led separately, so that neither sons may be punished for fathers nor fathers for sons? No one opposes either the Law or you when you say these things. Do you only not grow deaf against God, who says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (See above, 15), and who, while he says this continually, nowhere says that he repays the sins of children upon fathers—that you may understand that it is regarded not whom they imitate, but from whom they are begotten.

21. Jul. Now, then, let the discourse look back to him with whom we are dealing. Do you acquiesce in the Law of God (in profession, for the present; but what you do by arguing, we know), or do you resist? If you acquiesce, the contention is removed; if you resist, agreement is removed; if you acquiesce, the perfidy of the Traducianists is extinguished; if you resist, that of the Manicheans is revealed—provided it be established that your opinion and the Law of God in no way agree.

Aug. I acquiesce in the Law of God, but you do not acquiesce. I do not deny that neither a son for a father nor a father for a son ought to be condemned, when they have their own separate cases; but you are unwilling to hear in Leviticus, They shall perish for the sins of their fathers (Lev 26:39), and in the book of Numbers, Repaying the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation (Num 14:18), and in Jeremiah, Repaying the sins of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them (Jer 32:18).

These and other like testimonies you do not hear; in these and such testimonies of the Law you do not acquiesce; and yet you do not rest from talking and from flinging the Manicheans in the face of catholics.

22. Jul. Unless perhaps you say that God indeed commanded this, but does not do what he commanded—nay, does the contrary of what he ordered to be done.

Aug. And why do you not attend to how foolishly you think this too? For God sometimes does the contrary of what he commanded to be done. Nor is there need for me to recall many instances, lest it be long. See, I say what is known to all: divine Scripture commanded a human being, saying, Let not your own mouth praise you (Prov 27:2); nor yet is God to be called arrogant or proud, when he does not cease innumerable times to praise himself. And as to the matter at hand, I have already shown above how God, without any iniquity, slew little ones for the sins of their parents together with them, although he commanded a human being not to condemn children for the sins of their fathers when he judges. If you attended to these things, you would not say those; or if you do attend to these and yet say those, attend also to the fact that what you say is empty.

23. Jul. And although it now strongly appears, scarcely even pointed out, how great a profanity this is, nonetheless, with the leave of that very divinity whose equity we maintain, let us see, even by a light examination, what sort of thing this is. So that he himself becomes a transgressor of his own Law: is he compelled by the necessity of things that press upon him, or by his own weakness? Or, because it is neither of these, by the lust of offending alone? But this not even Manichaeus could say, and therefore he devised that your God endured a heavy battle.

Aug. You toss out words when you are pressed by the facts; he is not a transgressor of his own Law, when God does one thing as God, and commands another to a human being as a human being.

24. Jul. If, then, neither calamity nor weakness nor lust of transgression weighs upon him, how can it come about that he destroys by judging that form of justice which he commended by commanding—nay, rages not against this justice, but against his own reverence (for so great is the power of equity that it both reproves those who deviate and is diminished by no authority of those who flee from it)—and, finally, that he should wish just things to be done by us, and himself do what is unjust? Does he desire us to seem more just than he himself is—nay, not more just, but us upright and himself iniquitous?

Aug. What is this you say, O man, who are very foolish? The higher the divine justice is than the human, the more inscrutable it is, and the more distant the one from the other. For what just human being permits a crime to be perpetrated which it is in his power not to permit? And yet God permits these things—God, incomparably more just than all the just, and whose power is incomparably greater than all powers. Consider these things, and do not compare God the judge with human judges—God, who, it must not be doubted, is just even when he does what seems unjust to human beings, and what, if a human being did it, he would be unjust.

25. Jul. Or is it just, indeed, what he himself does, that is, imputing the sins of some to others, while he commands us what is unjust, that we should pronounce each one guilty for the offenses of his own will?

Aug. Read what was answered to you above, and learn, if you can, how original sins are understood as both another's and our own—not another's by the same cause by which they are our own; for they are another's, because each one did not commit them in his own life, but our own, because there was Adam, and in him we all were (Ambrose, On Luke 7.234).

26. Jul. And whence comes to him either so great envy or so great malignity? For it is envy, if he deceived his creature by commanding to this end, that it should not try to imitate his virtues so far as it could; but it is malignity—nay, cruelty—if he punishes mortals for unjust works which they perpetrated while obeying his Law.

Aug. I have already shown above that God justly does certain things which, if a human being did them, he does unjustly. For God also avenges his own injuries justly; but to human beings it is said, Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord (Rom 12:19).

27. Jul. Or perhaps he does not punish—which indeed he does prudently—but even rewards servants who have obeyed his precepts, though they teach injustice? And what did it profit him to envy, if by doing unjust things too mortals have arrived where they would have arrived even by keeping justice? And while nothing of happiness is lost to those whom he circumvents, he himself is here deprived at once of the conscience and of the honor of kindness and justice. How much more tolerable it would have been to withdraw one's neck from the profession of religion than to lead the bereaved through such precipitous, such deadly paths?

Aug. You follow yourself, saying nothing. Distinguish divine justice from human, and you will see that God justly repays the sins of the fathers upon the children—which, however, if a human being usurped it for himself in his own judgment, he would be unjust. Do not you stray from the just way, so that, when you hear that the sins of the fathers are avenged upon the children, you either wish God not to do it, or wish a human being to do it, resisting the divine testimonies and commands.

28. Jul. Therefore, since God does not even permit his servants to commit such a thing as you assert is perpetrated by him, it is manifest that you have fled no less from his honor than from human reason; and thereby we are not deceived, as you say, by a Pelagian error, but are guided by the Law of God to assert that it is iniquitous for the crimes of parents to be imputed to their children.

Aug. Not once, but more often, God said that he repays the sins of the fathers upon the children, where surely he did not say that he repays the sins of children upon fathers, or of brothers upon brothers, or of friends upon friends, or of fellow citizens upon fellow citizens, or anything of this sort—so that we might know that, when that is said, generation is reproved, not imitation; which you too could understand in the divine words, if you were not hindered by a Pelagian error.

29. Jul. That the propagation of sin, daughter of the Manicheans, your mother, is bewailed as having, in this storm, monstrously given birth.

Aug. You do not reason, but revile and slander. Reread the ancient expounders of the divine word, and see that not in this storm, but long before us, it was understood in the words of the Apostle—what he most plainly said, that is, that through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12)—to pertain to generation, which regeneration heals, not to imitation, which you rather, in this storm, have given birth to. Hence the storm of your novel dogma has cast you from the face of the Catholic Church like the dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth (See Ps 1:4).

30. Jul. It has become clear, then, that this is commanded by God which we assert; and although the open kinship of that very sentence, in accord with the understanding of all, has admitted in itself no blemish of obscurity, nonetheless, lest you take refuge in the slowness of our wit and say that we do not understand what was commanded, let us teach also by another testimony—now not of a precept, but of a deed carried out according to the precept—how the Law was understood. We read in the fourth book of Kings, concerning Amaziah, son of Joash, king of Judah: It came to pass, after the kingdom was established in his hands, that he slew his servants who had slain his father; but their sons he did not slay, according to the covenant of the Law of the Lord, in which it is commanded: The fathers shall not die for the sons, nor the sons for the fathers (2 Kgs 14:5-6). You see how the trustworthiness of the history has shown the justice of the king who judged, who, although he had been devout, yet—since he is reported in some matters to have halted in mind—has the authority of the recorded Law of God added to confirm his judgment; for lest this deed should have too little weight from consideration of the doer, it is commended as fulfilled according to the Law and covenant of God.

Aug. This judgment God willed to be that of human beings, not his own—he who said, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (See Deut 5:9). Which he also did through a human being, when through Joshua son of Nun he slew not only Achar but also his sons (See Josh 7:24-25); or, through the same leader of his people, he condemned the sons of the Canaanites—even little ones who had not yet imitated their parents' sins by their own conduct—together with those same parents, to perish, by a severity surely not unjust (See Josh 6:21; 10:40). Do not, then, loquaciously and emptily multiply your writings, but attend diligently to the Scripture of God, lest what you think you have opened in one part of it you find closed against you in another.

31. Jul. By two and three witnesses it is wont to be believed even against a man's blood; how much more, by two sacred witnesses—the Law contained in Deuteronomy, and the history that embraces the deeds of the kings—should it be believed, for the honor of God! How he wished judgment to be passed, he himself prescribed; how what he had commanded ought to be received, the judgments rendered according to his Law bear witness; and is it still doubted that a propagation of sin cannot be proved by the authority of the Scriptures? Surely these are contraries, for which we contend with such long conflicts—that is, the one defended by you, the other by us—and so contrary and opposed that you fight by persecuting, we by disputing; you by fury, we by reason.

Both sides, then, agree that these differ from each other and are opposed—namely, that children are punished for the sins of their parents, and that children are not punished for the sins of their parents; that there is a natural crime, and that there is no natural crime; that it is prescribed by the Law of God that the sins of parents be imputed to children, and that it is prescribed by the Law of God that the sins of parents not be imputed to children. It is manifest that these opinions and sentences, warring against each other, cannot both be true. For it is shown also by the rules of learned disputation that, when about uncertain matters a double opinion arises, both can be false, but both cannot be true—which indeed can happen in differing kinds, and in things said to have a mean, but not in things which are contrary and lack a mean. These things are known to dialecticians; but for the sake of the reader unversed in this discipline, let us open it up by some example.

Aug. So you seek whence to fill your most loquacious books, that you even try to teach dialectic, where there is no need, to their readers—not considering how the Church of Christ casts away the dialectician whom she perceives to be a heretic. For who does not understand that you are at work to empty the cross of Christ by the wisdom of word (See 1 Cor 1:17)—Christ, who for all for whom he died (among whom, by your own confession, are little ones) poured out his blood unto the remission of sins?

32. Jul. Let it come into question, for example's sake, with what color of complexion Goliath was endowed, and let one affirm that he was black, another that he was white (See 1 Sam 17:4-5); this differing opinion can both be false, but cannot both be true. For it cannot be true that he was black, if he was always white, or that he was white, if he remained black his whole life. These two opinions, then, which cannot be true together, can be false together in this way: if he was neither white nor black, but his color was tawny, or, with the whiteness broken yet without blackness suffused, moderately tempered from the contraries. Differing and contrary things, then, can more easily be denied together than approved together. But those contraries which have no mean—such as good and evil, just and unjust, innocence and guilt—just as they cannot meet in one and the same at one time, so it is necessary that, when one of them is posited, the other is denied; that is, just as a precept, or a counsel, or an aid cannot at one and the same time be both just and unjust, so a human being cannot at one and the same time be both guilty and innocent, both good and evil.

Aug. No one asks of what color Goliath was; but you ask, in order to lie in wait, with what colors, like a turncoat, you may wrap yourself. If this dialectic—which does not build you up but puffs you up, and makes you ridiculous because it makes you a little braggart—if this dialectic, I say, which asserts that each thing cannot be good and evil at once, is admitted to the laws of Christian disputation, then one human being cannot be at once both good by nature and evil by fault—which, however, truth cries out can be so, and which you do not deny; and you are produced even as a witness against your own dialectic, since, as the matter stands, of these two things, which you do not doubt to be contrary, you attribute the one to the Maker of the human being, the other to the will. Let your dialectic, then, blush, and just as you depart from communion, so let it too depart from the disputation of Catholics; but if, as we wish, you should be willing to return, let it remain outside.

33. Jul. Let the examples, then, be referred to the case. That the sins of parents be imputed to children, and that the sins of parents not be imputed to children—these two contraries cannot both be proved equally just; but if it is justice for the offspring of those who beget to be held guilty, it is necessary that it be injustice if, for those same sins, it is said not to be guilty; and just as it is good to command justly, so it is evil to order anything unjustly; and although a plain matter becomes the lighter by arguing, nonetheless, since it helps to confirm a case set in clear standing even by the votes of the divine Law, let us cleave to this passage, in which whoever takes his stand with a sound mind is not allowed to wander through the precipices of the present questions.

You acquiesce, then, O herald of natural evil, that it is prescribed by the Law of God that children not be punished for the sins of their parents; you acknowledge also that this precept was understood by that people in no other way than as we now defend that it ought to be observed. And therefore that King Amaziah, obedient to the precepts of God, bridled with laudable moderation the indignation he had conceived over the murder of his father, and, the slayers of his father slain, yet spared their sons—not through cowardice, but through justice. Amaziah is indeed praised, and is reported to have done this according to the Law of God, and is commended for having obeyed the will of the Lord; yet, darkened with the remnants of vanity, it is not passed over in silence, and he is shown not to have imitated the devotion of David his father (See 2 Kgs 14:6). Yet here, degenerating from that holiness of his stock, he held in judgment the justice commended by the divine Law; so great was the power of reverence for clear equity. Weigh, then, what evil your faith embraces: you ascribe to God—whom we confess to be eternal and pious and just—this iniquity which neither the pride of one clothed in purple nor the grief of one bereaved committed.

Aug. Amaziah was a human being, to whom it was not lawful to judge concerning hidden things, which he could not know; therefore the precept that was given to a human being he held in his own judgment, that he should not slay sons for the sin of their parents. But a sin so great that it turned into nature—the sin that entered the world through one man, without which no human being is born—how could it be avenged by human beings, since it so passed to all human beings together with death that its own penalty is its companion even to everlasting destruction, except where divine grace has healed generation by regeneration?

This, then, pertains to the judgment of God, not of human beings—as do many other things concerning which human beings can in no way judge. And therefore he commanded a human being in one way, that parents and children, now leading their own lives separately, be judged separately; but he himself judged in another way, when, according to his own inscrutable justice, he condemned, together with its stock, the transgressing nature which he knew in its root, although it had not yet sprouted in the shoot—about to set free from this condemnation those whom he willed, by a grace no less inscrutable; although even upon children now living separately he repaid the sins of fathers living separately, which he was unwilling that a human being judging should be permitted to do, because he himself knows why he does this justly when he does it, but human weakness does not know.

34. Jul. But, to press the passage: it has been established, surely, that injustice cannot cleave to God; it has been established also that it was prescribed by him that the sins of those who beget should not harm their children; and the very dignity of the one commanding asserted that what he forbids is unjust. Further, to deal more liberally with you, I grant you the power of answering about these two opinions, which I set above face to face—that is, that the sins of parents be imputed to children, or not be imputed: which do you think ought to be believed to be justice? If you say that yours is the one which you wish to accord even with the last judgment, I ask whether you think the other, which remains—ours—just or unjust: without doubt you will pronounce it iniquitous; but this is the one commanded to be kept by the authority of the Law. You see, then, that of three things one necessarily remains: that either you confess the Law of God to be unjust—nay, through the Law accuse God himself of iniquity—or else take refuge in the voice of your teachers and say that the Law given through Moses was not commanded by your God, or, if you dare to bring forward neither of these, confess that a propagation of sin is asserted against the documents and precepts of the Law. For it is not to be believed that you can be so foolish as to say that God holds justice indeed in his precepts, but iniquity in his judgments, or, according to your dogma, that he keeps justice indeed in his judgments, but teaches iniquity in his precepts—which, although we have dealt with it above, we have now necessarily repeated.

Aug. You hatefully repeat what you idly say; for you have leisure to revolve by loquacity the same matters which you cannot assert by truth, and to say without measure what you are unable to establish in any way. For you wish these two things to seem contrary to each other—that the sins of fathers are repaid upon children, and that children are not to be punished for the sins of fathers—as though I said the one of these, and God the other.

O deaf one, God said both; therefore both are just, because the Just One said this. But that God did not speak things contrary to each other—that you may understand—distinguish the persons of God the judge and of a human being the judge according to the diversity of cases; thus you will neither make God guilty, though he repays the sins of fathers upon children, nor compel a human being so to judge; but you fling these two things at me, as though contrary to each other, with such prolixity and perplexity of disputation for no other reason than that you talk much and understand little.

35. Jul. But if you say that both are just—both what we say and what you say, that is, both what the Law of God sanctioned and what Manichaeus and the Traducianist fabricated—here, restraining the power of clear reasoning, we approach you more kindly and more gently. Why, then, if you believe both that this is good which we say, and that that is good which you say, have you stirred all Italy with so great factions? Why have you roused seditions at Rome with hired mobs? Why, from the expenses of the poor, have you fattened, through almost all Africa, herds of horses, which, with Alypius in attendance, you dispatched to the tribunes and centurions? Why, with the inheritances of matrons offered, have you corrupted the powers of the world, that the stubble of public fury might burn against us? Why have you scattered the peace of the Churches? Why have you stained the times of a religious prince with the impiety of persecutions, if nothing else is said by us than what even you are forced to confess to be good?

Aug. As false are the crimes which you fling at us, so false are the dogmas which you fabricate for yourselves; but say, as much as you can, every evil against us, lying; we will only defend against you the Christian and Catholic faith. And what need is there for you to return like insults, rather than to believe the Gospel and rejoice that, out of these most false insults of yours, our reward is increased for us in heaven (See Matt 5:11-12)? But how, in this matter of which we now treat, can we believe that both what you say and what we say is good, when we say that God said, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9), while you so praise what he commanded to a human being judging—that he not repay the sins of fathers upon children—that you accuse what he himself said he repays, as though it were ours, and condemn it as though it were false and unjust, and do not perceive that in this you are resisting and slandering not us, but God?

36. Jul. But thus far I have used a gentler speech; now, however, the splendor of flaming reason shows that between evil and good, profane and sacred, pious and impious, just and iniquitous there is no fellowship, and therefore that between the precepts and the judgments of God there are no conflicts,

but that it is contrary to impute the sins of some to others, and to command that those same sins not be imputed, since, of these two, it is necessary that, one being granted, the other be removed—that is, one being just, the other be shown iniquitous; but in the Law of God it is prescribed that the sins of parents not be imputed to children (See Deut 24:16), and thereby, by the same authority, its contrary—that is, the opinion of propagation—has, together with the Manicheans, utterly collapsed.

Aug. It wearies me to say true things so often, when it does not shame you to say empty things so often. God says that he repays the sins of fathers upon children; that he not repay the sins of fathers upon children, God indeed says, but to a human being. Both are to be approved, because God says both.

37. Jul. I have certainly shown that we defend nothing other than what, first, reason marks as most just, then also God confirms by his own Law, and, third, what had been commanded was completed, with praise of the deed, in no other way than as we assert. It has also been pressed home that this is the true justice which God showed, even by commanding, pleases him. And by this it is established that the Manichean propagation finds no support either in reason or in the testimonies of the Law.

Aug. The Manicheans say that nature is, without beginning, always evil, whence they contend that all evil exists; but Catholics say what you have been unwilling to hold—that it was created good and corrupted by sin, and stands in need of Christ the physician, from little ones to the aged, since he died for all; therefore all have died (2 Cor 5:14).

Hence the Manicheans suppose that evil must be separated from good in such a way that it be outside; but we, although by understanding we separate evil from good, and do not believe that what is called evil is any substance, yet do not think that evil must be so separated from those who are set free that it be outside, but we know that it must be healed in them, so that it not be. For they say that evil is an evil substance; we say it is the fault of a good substance, and no substance.

Attend to how great the difference is, and cease to begrudge Christ the physician the healing of little ones, lest the wrath of God remain upon them, who says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9). Look at him who said this: he is God, not Manichaeus; look at him who said, Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:21-22): he is the Apostle of Christ, not a disciple of Manichaeus. Look at him who said, We are all born under sin (Ambrose, De paenit. 1.3.13): he is a Catholic bishop, not Manichaeus or Pelagius or a Pelagian heretic. Wherefore, since a human being too punishes the sin of deed, but only God the sin of origin, therefore God, while he says that he repays the sins of fathers upon children, nonetheless commands a human being not to condemn children too for the sins of their fathers. Distinguish divine and human judgments, and you will find that these two are not contrary to each other.

38. Jul. But lest perhaps there arise someone so utterly bent over as to wish it proved to him by clear sentences that God, namely, does not judge otherwise than he commanded judgment to be passed—which indeed belongs to a wicked contentiousness—nonetheless, since truth supplies arms to every satiety of documents, it will not be irksome to show most keen witnesses to this very point. Filled, then, with the Holy Spirit, the prophet Ezekiel speaks: The word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, what is this proverb to you, of those who say in the land of Israel: The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, says the Lord Adonai, this proverb shall no more be spoken in Israel; for all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son; all souls are mine. The soul that sins shall die. But the man who is just, who does judgment and justice, who does not eat upon the mountains, and does not lift up his eyes to the desires of the house of Israel, and does not defile his neighbor's wife, and does not approach a menstruous woman, and does not oppress a man, and restores his pledge to the debtor, and does not seize by robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, does not give his money for usury and does not take any increase, and turns away his hand from injustice, and does just judgment between a man and his neighbor, and has walked in my precepts and kept my ordinances to do them—this man is just, he shall surely live, says the Lord Adonai.

And you said: The way of the Lord is not right. Hear now, O house of Israel: is my way not right? Now your way is not equitable. When the just turns himself away from his justice and does an offense, he shall die in that offense which he did; in it he shall die. And when the iniquitous turns himself away from his iniquity which he did, and does judgment and justice, this man has kept his soul alive and lives, because he turned himself away from all his iniquities which he did; he shall surely live and shall not die. And the house of Israel says: The way of the Lord is not upright. Is my way not upright, O house of Israel? Is it not rather your way that is not upright? Therefore I will judge each one of you according to his own ways, O house of Israel, says the Lord Adonai (Ezek 18:1-30).

Aug. This, through the prophet Ezekiel, is a promise of the New Testament, which you do not understand, where God distinguishes the regenerated from the merely begotten—if they are already of greater age—according to their own deeds; for of those of whom it is said, The soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine (Ezek 18:4), beyond doubt lead their lives separately. But if the son were still in the loins of his father—as it is written of Levi, that he was in the loins of Abraham when Abraham was tithed by Melchizedek (See Heb 7:9-10)—it could not then be said, "The soul of the father is mine, and the soul of the son is mine," when there was surely one soul. But the prophet, veiling a mystery to be revealed in its own time, did not name regeneration, through which each son of man passes from Adam to Christ; but what he did not say at that time, he wished to be understood in this time, when the veil was to be taken away from those passing over to Christ.

For since you profess to be a Christian—although you show that you are striving to bring it about, like antichrist, that Christ died for nothing—I ask you whether, if a human being does all those works of justice which the prophet Ezekiel records by repeating them so often, he shall surely live even unregenerated. If you say that he shall surely live, Christ contradicts antichrist and says, Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life in you (John 6:54); which food and drink you are forced, will you or not, to confess pertain to the regenerated. But if, crushed by so great a mass of authority, you answer that one who has done all those good things, if he has not been regenerated, shall not live, then answer what the cause is, and see that regeneration is set over against generation, not imitation over against imitation, in that the Apostle sets forth Adam on the side of sin and Christ on the side of justice. But I will show you more evidently that what you record the prophet Ezekiel to have said pertains to the New Testament, in which is the inheritance of the regenerated—not now, however, but after you have said all that, in the manner of your loquacity, you are about to say from his very words.

39. Jul. Does not God seem a rich asserter of his own judgments, who, in so many chapters, has not only judged on this question but even disputed? Plainly, foreseeing the errors of our times, by so great a light and abundance of his words he justly and providently accomplished two things: one, that no one should be moved by any ambiguity of the questions; the other, that among those who had plunged themselves of their own accord into shipwreck no plank of excuse should remain. He speaks to the Jews, who, exacting their captivity by their crimes, to turn aside the odium of their own transgression, boasted that it was owed to their parents, not to their own ways; and he confronts them by paternal authority: Why is this proverb to you, he says, that you say: The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, says the Lord Adonai, this proverb shall no more be spoken in Israel; for all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so the soul of the son; all souls are mine. The soul that sins shall die (Ezek 18:2-4).

Aug. When he says, if this proverb shall be spoken any more in Israel, he shows that it was wont to be said, "The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge"—and he does not reprove the fact that it was said, but promises a place where it shall not be said. But whence did they say this, except that they knew God had said, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9)?

40. Jul. To exemplify and confirm the equity of his judgment, God uses an oath, and heaps up the authority of his decree with a solemn attestation. The Apostle understood this manner of speaking, who discoursed thus to the Hebrews: God, wishing, he says, to show to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have the strongest consolation (Heb 6:17-18).

Aug. And there too the New Testament was being promised.

41. Jul. By these two things, then, he says, it is shown that God cannot lie: by this very thing, that he promised, and that what he promised, he testifies that he fulfills. Not that God is wont, without such attestation, to have a feeble and doubtful word, but that, to weigh down his truth with great documents, he made use of that kind of expression which makes even human beings, who are wont to deceive, to be believed. With this weight, then, in the present case too, God admonishes and prescribes, both that no one of his people should suspect this which the Traducianists assert, and that he should know that God cannot judge in the way he detests: As I live, says the Lord Adonai, this proverb shall no more be spoken in Israel (Ezek 18:3).

Aug. "It shall not be said in Israel"—you would say rightly, if you saw the true Israelites, the regenerated, in whom this shall not be said. For in those who are not regenerated it is rightly said, since they are not Israel, according to what the Apostle says to the Romans: For not all who are of Israel are Israel (Rom 9:6), where without doubt he wished the children of the New Testament—that is, the children of the promise—to be understood. Then it follows: But in Isaac shall your seed be called, that is, not those who are children of the flesh are children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as the seed (Rom 9:7-8).

42. Jul. What is this, "It shall no more be said," when even today it is asserted with such great efforts of the Manicheans? But this is what he indicates: that no one who is of the people of Israel, or who accepts the authority of this Scripture, after my definition will dare to give credence to any such thing. Further, everyone who has persisted in that opinion and does not obey these writings shall not be numbered among those who are the true Israel.

Aug. If, then, God wishes it to be understood that after his definition no one will believe this, it must be asked why before this it was not wrongly believed that the sins of fathers were to be repaid even upon children. And if it be well asked, it will be found that on account of guilty generation it was said, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9), whence arose that proverb about the sour grapes.

But on account of free regeneration the New Testament was promised, where this shall no more be said, because the inheritance damaging to us, which comes from Adam, is renounced through the grace of Christ, when this age is renounced—the age in which it is necessary that the children of Adam be pressed by a heavy yoke, surely not unjustly, from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb until the day of their burial in the mother of all (Sir 40:1); whence the sacred mysteries, even when little ones renounce, show well enough what is being done.

43. Jul. After he had reproved the vanity of that proverb, he sanctioned the sentence by a divine promulgation and attestation, and deigns also to disclose the reason of his justice, why kinships are not burdened with one another's sins. Since all souls, he says, are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son; all souls are mine; the soul that sins shall die (Ezek 18:4). Why, then, this moderation of the sentence should be most equitable, he shows also by the property of souls.

Aug. This property of souls pertains to separate lives; for no one can be reborn unless he has been born. But why was Levi tithed when he was in the loins of Abraham, except that the property of their own souls was not yet in them?

44. Jul. Since, he says, the soul of the father is mine and the soul of the son is mine—by which testimony, as by many others, it is taught that the soul owes nothing to seeds, the soul which God claims for his own right—it is, he says, most iniquitous and stupid that my own thing, my own image, should be burdened with another's works.

Aug. You separate, then, the flesh from the right of God, you who think that he claims the soul alone for his own right, and you have forgotten what is written: For as the woman is from the man, so also the man is through the woman; but all things are from God (1 Cor 11:12). Which surely is said either of the flesh or of both, but not of the soul alone. But as for what pleases you—that God should say, "It is most iniquitous and stupid that my own thing, my own image, should be burdened with another's works"—why do you not ask whence it is just that the soul, with the flesh drawn from its parents, should be burdened even with the works of God himself? For the corruptible body weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15).

And I think you acknowledge that even the corruptible body is the work of God. What, then, did the image of God deserve, that it should be weighed down by a corruptible body, to the hindrance of the things to be known, if there is no original sin? But why do you not also make God say this: "It is most iniquitous and stupid that my own thing, my own image, should, through the unbelief or negligence of its parents or of any among whom it lives, or through any necessity whatever, depart from the body without baptism and not be admitted to my kingdom, nor live, because it did not eat the holy flesh nor drink the blood" (See John 6:53-54)?

Or will you dispute even against this sentence of Christ and cry out, saying: Outright, even if it has not eaten the flesh of Christ nor drunk his blood, it shall surely live? O voice of none but antichrist! Go, say these things, teach these things; let Christian men and women hear you, let human beings hear you who are corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith; let them hear you, love you, honor you, feed, clothe, adorn you, and by following one who is lost, lose themselves too. But the Lord knows who are his (2 Tim 2:19); nor must one despair even of you, so long as his patience is spent upon you.

45. Jul. To whom I gave this state, that, against his will, no one from outside might harm him, but that of his own accord he should take up either sin or justice, either reward or guilt.

Aug. This can be said of the first nature of the human being, not of this corrupted and condemned one. For in paradise, before sin, a corruptible body did not weigh down the soul; or are you so far corrupt in mind that you dare to say even this? But if you do not dare, say why the image of God deserved to be weighed down by a corruptible body—you who are unwilling, with the Catholic Church, to confess the origin of sin.

46. Jul. You are indignant with me, then, that I believe God swearing rather than Manichaeus dreaming—Manichaeus, who, especially if his faith is not sound, brings forward no testimonies or arguments of a wakeful wit, which, though they could never be found so great as to avail to wrench away the foundations of truth, would yet, if they were aptly stated, bring at present some solace against the shame of stupidity. God persists in fortifying by an oath what he had made sacred by commanding. He goes on to make plain by examples too what he sanctions, and says that if a man should keep all the kinds of justice with undefiled devotion and should beget a son who clings to pestilent ways and turns aside from his father's paths, the so great care of justice acquired by the father profits him nothing; and likewise, over against this sinner, he sets the son who, by better counsel, flees the ways of his father, and shows that the iniquity of the parent does him no harm. And he makes the condition of justice and of sin equal, asserting that the faults of those who beget do not pass through the seeds, just as the virtues cannot pass, but that all souls belong to his own right—through which that too is shown profane which you say, that both the souls and the bodies of those being born are possessed by the right of the devil.

Aug. You have already been answered: you wordily talk to no purpose. The whole human being—that is, both soul and body—through his substance belongs to the right of the Creator; but through fault, which is no substance, he is made over to the devil—yet under the same power of the Creator, under which the devil himself too is set.

47. Jul. Having asserted the balance of his trial, he then accuses your opinion in those who thought such things. And you said: Why is it that the son has not borne the iniquity of his father? Because the soul, he says, that sins shall die; but the son does not bear the injustice of his father, nor does the father bear the injustice of his son; the justice of the just shall be upon him, and the iniquity of the iniquitous shall be upon him (Ezek 18:19-20). Who of us could ever have disputed on this with such great diligence as God disputed through the mouth of his prophet, by dividing, comparing, and repeating?

Aug. And yet, though God has done this, you mix your loquacity with so great a clarity of his words, knowing that your cause is not good.

48. Jul. But not content to have explained this alone, he also brings forward another argument from the works of mercy, for the confirmation of this justice, and declares that to those very persons who sinned of their own accord, if they take refuge in repentance and amendment, their past errors do no harm. The iniquitous, he says, if he turn himself away from his iniquities which he did, and keep my commandments, all his offenses which he did shall not be remembered; in his justice which he did he shall surely live (Ezek 18:21-22). That is: since I am of this purpose of clemency, that I pardon even their own sins to those who are corrected, how can it come about that I impute another's to those being born? Or do things allow that innocence should be guilty before me, when it is created—before whom it is effective, even if it be repeated after interruption?

Aug. The case of the penitent is one thing, the case of those being born another. For outright you do not find how you may show God just, if he finds no sins in those being born and yet weighs them down with a corruptible body and, besides, with so many and so great calamities. For the evils that infants suffer cannot be numbered: fever, cough, scab, pains of various members, flux of the belly, worms, and countless other things arising from the flesh itself, and the torments of the very cures, more numerous than those of the diseases, and the blows of wounds from outside, the strokes of beatings, the assaults of demons. But you wise heretics, lest you confess original sin, are prepared to fill paradise with such flowers. For if you say these things would not have been there, I ask why they are in little ones who have, as you contend, no sin at all. But if you are not ashamed to say that these things too would have been there, what need is there for us to say what sort of Christians you are?

49. Jul. This displeased the worshipers of idols, and our faith displeases you too, which you see formed by this Law. The profane, then, said: The way of the Lord is not right. Hear, then, he says, O house of Israel. Is my way not right? Is it not your way that is not equitable? Therefore I will judge each one of you according to your way, says the Lord Adonai (Ezek 18:29-30).

Do you see by what testimonies we are fortified? Do we pursue anything ambiguous? Do we hunt for general words? Do we guard our faith with weak or involved arguments? We execrate what God execrates, we understand what God expounds, we discourse on what God disputed, we believe that for which God swore: The son shall not bear the iniquity of his father, nor shall the father bear the injustice of his son; the justice of the just shall be upon him, and the iniquity of the iniquitous shall be upon him (Ezek 18:20).

How God promises that he will judge shines forth—that is, that he imputes neither the sins of parents to children nor those of children to parents; and thereby it is established, even by the testimonies of the Scriptures, what reason did not allow to be doubted—namely, that God holds in his judgments the same justice which he held in his precepts.

Aug. From this at least understand that God said these things of those fathers and sons who already lived separately, because, when he had said, The son shall not bear the iniquity of his father, nor shall the father bear the injustice of his son, he soon added, The justice of the just shall be upon him. For can it be said in this age of a little one that his justice is upon him, since through his own life he cannot yet live either justly or iniquitously? Whatever punishments, then, he suffers at this age, by what desert does he suffer them, if he has drawn nothing from his parents? Since the most just God neither inflicts undeserved punishments on anyone nor permits them to be inflicted, and it cannot be said that the little one suffers these evils for the exercising of a virtue which as yet is none in him.

Further, if you consider the age to come, which pertains to the inheritance of the New Testament, it is most rightly said even of the little ones who die at that age: The justice of the just shall be upon him, and the iniquity of the iniquitous shall be upon him. For so will the begotten be distinguished from the regenerated, that the one shall surely live in that kingdom where justice dwells, but the other shall surely die in that punishment where iniquity is tormented. But what is the justice of the one, except that which passes into him from Christ, in whom all shall be made alive? And what is the iniquity of the other, except that which passes into him from Adam, in whom all die?

50. Jul. But lest perhaps you try to mock the ears of the simpler by such a cavil, saying that God here spoke of those who are of mature age—that is, that he said the crimes of parents do no harm to those sons who had emptied out the natural evil by the holiness of their own works—it must be shown that this fraud advances nothing. For although God prescribed absolutely that the iniquity of parents does not condemn innocent children, but each one is reproved by his own iniquities, and a faithful mind cannot doubt this, nonetheless, that we may handle the corpse of your opinion, pierced through by so many thunderbolts of the Law: how will you think this disputation of God ought to be received—namely, that the offenses of parents harm neither adult nor newborn sons? Or that they are not permitted to harm only those of greater age and working justice, but that little ones, before they exhaust the natural poison by their own justice, are burdened by the crime of those who beget—and so there comes about what God, through the prophet, denied would be?

Aug. Rather, there comes about what God says in another place: I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9). For since he himself says both—that is, both that the sins of fathers do not pertain to children, and that he repays the sins of fathers upon children—he surely cannot be contrary to himself; and therefore, to those who rightly ask how both are true, the one of these is understood to fit generation, the other regeneration. You, who pervert your own heart, beware of him; and what you hear to be true, you will not call a cavil.

51. Jul. But to this we come back. Profess, then, that that other thing too, which is weighed in equal measures, comes about—that is, that the acts of justice of parents profit their children and sanctify them, and are said not to profit only those who, already of greater age, have worn away the acts of justice of their birth by their own crimes—so that, since both were denied by God and the one expounded and pressed home by the example of the other, you, seeing that denial to be contrary to your reasonings, contend that in little ones it lied, and refute both its sides by the condition of those being born. And when you have done this, you will perpetrate two evils equally: one, that it attacks the sentence of God; the other, that you assert that of a just man is born a just man, and of a criminal a criminal.

Aug. I do not say that the prophet's denial lied, but that it was not understood by you. For he prophesied regeneration, which alone makes sons strangers to the sins of parents—sins that pertain to the judgment of God, not of human beings; but you, while you deny that generation draws the contagion of the ancient death from the fathers, try to extinguish the very cause of regeneration. For although the bath of regeneration washes away whatever sins it finds, yet other sins could be healed even by repenting, as they can be in those whom it is not lawful to regenerate again; but that which is contracted by generation is not loosed except by regeneration. The just man, then, is born of God, not of man, since by being reborn, not by being born, he becomes just; whence too such are called the sons of God. Read the Gospel: Not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God they were born (John 1:13). Why do you seek to join kinds of things much diverse? Human beings are born of the flesh of human beings; they are reborn of the Spirit of God. What wonder, then, if, just as a human being takes justice from the Spirit of justice, so he draws original sin from the flesh of sin? For the one man would not have come to set us free in the likeness of the flesh of sin, were not the flesh of us all the flesh of sin. Since, then, your heresy is the enemy of this Christian grace, do you still dare to marvel and complain that the Church of Christ detests you?

52. Jul. But if, not bearing the clamor of resisting truth, you try to flee elsewhere, you will fall into stronger snares. For if you say: The sentence of the prophet is indeed true, but in the case of persons of greater age, where it says that kinships are not burdened with one another's faults; but in little ones it lies in one part, where it says that they are not guilty for the crimes of those who beget, while in another it does not lie, where it asserts that they are relieved by no virtues of their parents—then plainly you will publish the lust not of disputing but of fabricating, not of speaking eloquently but of mere talking, and finally not of a sound human being but of Manichaeus, falling from his senses, if you think it lawful for you, against clear reason, against the honor of God, against the examples, against the testimonies of the precepts, against the exposition of the judgments, to reject what you please and take up what delights you.

Aug. The sentence of the prophet lies in no part. But you, not understanding what is prophesied through it—not to say that you lie, at least, what I may say without injury to you, you do not know what you are saying. For even this, that you say the prophet asserts that sons are relieved by no virtues of their parents—how and in what sense it is to be taken matters very much. For do you deny that sons are offered, by the faith of their parents, to mother Church to be regenerated, and to the ministers of God to be baptized? How, then, are sons relieved by no virtues of their parents? Or will you dare to say that the Christian faith is no virtue? Or are they not relieved, when they are sent into the kingdom of God in no other way than by that same regeneration?

And in temporal benefits too, why is it said to Isaac, I will do it for you on account of Abraham your father (Gen 26:24)? Why also is Lot, the son of Abraham's brother, helped by the merits of his uncle, if sons are relieved by no virtues of their parents (See Gen 14:14-16)? Why, finally, is the kingdom diminished for Solomon's son on account of Solomon's sins, and not wholly taken away on account of the good merits of David, if sons are burdened by no sins of their parents or relieved by no virtues (See 1 Kgs 11:11-13)? O man of tongue, not of heart, distinguish these things; see here, if you can, what was prophesied through Ezekiel (Ezek 18:21).

For it is in the open that a father who is not regenerated does not harm a regenerated son in the laying hold of eternal life, of which it was said, he shall surely live,

nor does a regenerated father profit, to this very end, a son who is not regenerated; nor, in turn, does a son either, being regenerated, profit an unregenerated father, or, being unregenerated, harm a regenerated father, so that the one should surely live or the other surely die. But if you cannot see these things, why can you not at least keep silent?

53. Jul. Who are you, who, stirred up by the gadfly of Marcion, burst forth to the destruction of equity? Who force under the censure of your tongue, still slippery with the mysteries of the Manicheans, both the judgments and the precepts of God? No one ever attempted to do this except one who first denied them. Will you dare, with Manichaeus as your authority, to break through the testament of God, which reason, equity, piety, truth—the prophets writing in faith, as it were a certain order of sacred witnesses—have sealed? Long ago you lost both the holiness of understanding and the appearance of religion, if by this sentence which is in Ezekiel you think that either help is found for your propagation, or destruction is not held.

Aug. Loquacity, copious in its poverty, ranges about where truth is not perceived, or, even if it is perceived, is spurned—where there is an abundance not of words, most empty, but of facts, most sure. A speaker of truth, in a straight line, is one thing; an eloquent slanderer another. The prophet speaks truth to sons and fathers leading their lives separately; you, in the name of the Manicheans, slander with Pelagian rage Catholics who rightly understand the prophet.

54. Jul. The iniquity of the iniquitous, he says, shall be upon his head; I will judge each one of you according to his ways (Ezek 18:20, 30). The fathers shall not die for the sons, nor the sons for the parents; the soul, he says, that sins shall die; since all souls are mine, I will judge each one for his own iniquities (Ezek 18:4, 30).

Aug. God, who says these things, is the same God who says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9). Unless you understand how both are true, in no way believe that you have understood the truth-telling prophet, however much I bear with you as a slanderer of such loquacity.

55. Jul. See against what light, against what host of sentences, against what dignity of judgments your propagation does not fear to revile, and tries to bring in a prejudgment. Here there is no doubt that you are not ashamed to say that which seems to remain—that is, that you answer that the sentence of the prophet, nay, of God through the prophet, is true: the insuperable reason of the prudent, by which it is taught that it is most iniquitous for the sins of parents to be imputed to children.

Aug. Blush: you are the most iniquitous; for he who said, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9), is not iniquitous.

56. Jul. Nor that you think this—that the seeds of all human beings are polluted by the guilt of the will, but that this justice does not hold in the crime of Adam alone, his being one sin which is imputed to all. To which I know not what I ought to do first: should I laugh, as such singular absurdities demand? But the perdition of the many whom you deceive awaits pity and tears. Should I, then, be consumed with serious grief? But the portents of your arguments strike out a guffaw, though from a mournful mind.

Aug. Say what you are going to say, O excellent corrector. On whose authority is Ambrose to be believed a deceiver—Ambrose, of whom Pelagius (Pelagius, De lib. arb. 3), your master, says that not even an enemy dared to reprove his faith and his most pure understanding in the Scriptures? Do you reprove him; for you are a braver and more powerful enemy of the cross of Christ than if you were an enemy of Ambrose; more boldly do you begrudge the grace of God than if you begrudged that man of God. Reprove him, I say; mock him by harrying him, bewail him with grief; for you can, by the great force of your eloquence, lead your vanity into wit and transfigure your madness into mercy.

Say, then, that that man erred deformedly, was unhappily out of his senses, in affirming that the discord of the concupiscence of the flesh and of the spirit turned into nature out of the transgression of the first man (See Ambrose, In Luc. 7.141). For who is born without it, from the time when human beings began to be born—being born, surely, in the flesh of sin? But you, a most acute man, not believing that that sin was such and so great that it could then change nature itself into this evil, and make it, by the desert of an unspeakable apostasy, to be condemned together with its stock, assert, drunk with the Pelagian dogma, to be good this which all sober persons feel to be evil and judge to be evil.

For by a wondrous eloquence you can adorn with praises that lust which the saints accuse with groans, and place it—just such as it is even now, namely, forcing itself upon those who do not will it and provoking the hearts of the chaste to combat—among the groves of paradise, as a beautiful and pleasant tree, even if no one had there sinned. Blush, O beatitude of the Pelagians, and see whither you flee, since the chaste flee from you.

57. Jul. For who—if anything of this age survives into this world—could believe by the monuments of letters that there existed a man who would believe and swear that what was natural is not natural, that what was of generation is not of generation, that what pertained to the condition of parents did not pertain to certain persons for any other reason than that they had been parents? I think the generation to follow would judge these things to be fabricated rather than defended by any mortals. For your nation and faith suffer these swimmings and these nauseas and these vomitings, you who say: The sins of parents cannot run down to children through nature, because a matter of choice is not bound to the seeds; but the sin of Adam, which was conceived of will, passes into all human beings through nature, because a matter of choice is bound to the seeds; God does not condemn children too for the sins of parents, because it is of the highest iniquity—but he condemns the posterity of Adam on account of the sin of their parent, which can be vindicated by no justice. It does not, finally, pertain to the condition of generation, because those who are spouses become parents—which pertained to Adam for no other reason than that he begot by the law of marriage. Is this to steer one's course, or to flounder? Is this to accomplish something, or to be nauseous? Is this to take in something solid, or always to vomit it up? By the same words you affirm what you denied; by the same lines you deny what you affirmed; and you are angry that we do not acquiesce in a man who, ruptured by a grave disease, cannot keep down what he takes in.

Aug. Far be it from us to say that God does not repay the sins of other fathers upon their children, since divine Scripture testifies so often and by name, for which sins of fathers the vengeance went forth upon which of their children—so far that God, sparing King Ahab, deferred the vengeance for a certain grave sin of his upon his son (See 1 Kgs 21:29). But who can search out what the measure is, and what the reason and divine measure of justice, concerning the sins of other fathers, that they should be repaid upon their children?

On account of which God kept these judgments to himself, but forbade a human being judging so to take vengeance. But the apostasy of the first man—in whom the freedom of his own will was at its height and was impeded by no fault—was so great a sin that by his ruin the whole of human nature collapsed; which is indicated by the so great misery of the human race, known to all from the first wailings of the crying infant to the last breaths of the dying, so that those who deny it claim for themselves the greater part of human misery by so horrible and incredible a blindness—as you do, who do not fear to say even now, after the Palestinian judgment, where Pelagius himself condemned you for saying these things (The Deeds of Pelagius 23-24, 57), that Adam was so made mortal that, whether he sinned or did not sin, he would die. But go on, as it pleases you, and accuse even those many Palestinian bishops themselves of being Manicheans; cry out that Pelagius for the hour yielded to the Manicheans, lest he be condemned by them. Fill paradise with the fruits of lusts, and pour out through those happy meadows the so many and so great evils which we see infants suffer, as though they were not penal pains, but vernal scents. And mock me as though swimming, while you, plunged into these depths, perish; mock me as though nauseous and vomiting, while you lie dead and, as though with rotting putrefaction, so molder with restless loquacity; accuse me as though affirming what I have denied, and denying what I have affirmed, while it is rather you who have done this, as I showed in your earlier volume—and those who read can attend to the fact that I have not done this, and find how falsely you have said that I did; call me ruptured by a grave disease, unable to keep down what I take in, while you, having utterly lost the spirit of life, cannot even take in what is set before you.

58. Jul. You see indeed yourself that the matter is not worthy of contention; nonetheless, that aid may be brought to incautious minds, which take up the coarser opinions, and those flattering evil ways, as a solace for a wounded conscience, we ask whether you discovered the invention of such great stupidity from any occasion of the Scriptures. If you say, Through one man sin entered the world (Rom 5:12), we admonish you to reread the earlier book of the present work; and if you remember it, you will not be able to make use of the Apostle's testimony.

Aug. We rather admonish you to read the Apostle himself and see that those very few words of his, about which we are dealing, are so manifest against you that, not in a book, but plainly in a most long and most loquacious book, you have tried in vain not to turn but to pervert them into your heretical sentence, not to expound but to obscure them.

59. Jul. But if you say that there is one form of baptism by which human beings of different ages are consecrated, you will confess, even though I be silent, that there is contained there no mention either of an infected generation or of diabolical flesh or of Adam; to which, however, in its own place, although it does not bear on propagation, we shall fully answer.

Aug. When you begin to answer, how will you appear there except, as you are wont, a heretic?

60. Jul. Bring forth, then, at least one sentence against so great a dignity of the witnesses we have produced, against manifest justice, against the clear reason of the Law, through which you may show that you have been deceived; which I have added for this reason, because, even if there were a sentence that, by the ambiguity of its words, was thought to show something of the sort, it would nonetheless be compelled, by the splendor and instruction of the other sentences, to be expounded as accorded with justice.

Aug. Certain, not ambiguous, divine testimonies are brought forward against you, as many have already been brought forward by us (Deut 5:9); but because they refute your darkness, they do not seem luminous to you; and whatever things, by their radiant light, are troublesome to you, against these you close your heart, lest from there the night of your error be put to flight.

61. Jul. But now, since neither the slightest occasion for this opinion is found in the holy Scriptures, and, on the other side, the faith we maintain is fortified no less by its reasonings than by examples and testimonies, you are wholly possessed by a deadly obstinacy, you who think that, at the cost of the Law, at the cost of reason, at the cost of prudence, at the cost of justice, one must assent to the dreams of the Manicheans.

Aug. At the cost of the Law you do not hear, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9); at the cost of reason you do not see that the evils which little ones suffer—who committed no sins of their own in this life—have just causes before God only from the sins of origin; at the cost of prudence you do not beware of bringing forward or defending, against the most ancient foundation of the Catholic faith, a novel dogma by which original sin is denied; at the cost of justice you are so iniquitous that, under my name, you do not fear to fling the contagion of the Manichean plague at so many holy men—sons and fathers, disciples and teachers of the Church of Christ, who were before us—and at the very mother of all, the Catholic Church.

62. Jul. Yet attend to what we bring forward to this purpose. Even if you could prove that Adam's sin is imputed to his children, you would nonetheless agree that the crimes of other parents do not harm their offspring.

Aug. Who would agree with this error, except one who does not believe God when he says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children?

63. Jul. It was manifest that it was not of generation, but of some other cause whatever, that the sons seemed liable—before an iniquitous judge, however—for the sin of one who begot them.

Aug. Most openly you call God iniquitous—God, who most openly says that he will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children.

64. Jul. And it came about that, just as the judge's estimate was stained by the innocent being condemned, so the state of generation was vindicated by the examples of other parents. For if the cause of the path, if the cause of the crime, lay in the work of fruitfulness, this condition would pollute all fruitfulness.

Aug. I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9), God cries out; therefore, because he is truthful, you stray from the path of truth.

65. Jul. But since, though the generation was not different, the state nonetheless appeared different, it shone forth outright, even in that marriage whose guilt its offspring had shared, that the generation had not been corrupted.

Aug. Although the generation is not different, when those doomed to die are born of those doomed to die, nonetheless what the Apostle says, The body indeed is dead because of sin (Rom 8:10), pertains not to other fathers, but to that one who sinned with so great an impiety as we cannot measure or estimate. But how great God judged it to be, we have learned by sufficiently fitting witnesses, namely both divine Scripture and the very misery of the human race—how great a misery we perceive to have been repaid, by a judgment of God surely not unjust, to his offspring for his sin. For we say that not—I do not say the eternal death of soul and body, but—even the temporal death of the body, nor the so many and so great evils which we see little ones suffer, would have existed even in paradise, if no one had sinned, since we are Christians. But other fathers, even if they sin much, yet, because they sin with a weak soul and in a corruptible body that weighs down the soul, their sins do not make nature doomed to die, and their sins are repaid upon their children by a far different and far lesser punishment, by the hidden and just judgment of him who orders all things in measure and number and weight (See Wis 11:21), and who says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9), not falsely.

66. Jul. What, then, has been accomplished? Namely, that it is so certain that there is no propagation of sin that, even if you should teach that children are punished on account of Adam's sin, it would nonetheless be established that sins cannot be born, nor a crime go with the seed—since you would confess that this is not so in all fruitfulness; and thereby, even if faults were transmitted to persons, they would not be mingled with conceptions. But now, since it is agreed between me and you that the sin of parents could not pass over to children except by the fault and guilt of generation, and since it has accorded with reason, with examples, and with the Law that the state of generation could in no way be corrupted—which is confirmed even by your own concession, you who say that the sins of no parents but two pass over to their children—it has been most invincibly concluded that neither was the fruitfulness of the first human beings corrupted by the devil, nor can any sin be born.

Aug. This is not said to you; you yourself say to yourself what we do not say. The sins of other fathers too are repaid upon their children by divine, not human, justice; for God knows when and how he does this most justly, but a human being does not know, and according to his own knowledge ought to render judgment. For he can know, when he judges—though not even this always—the deed of each person; but whence does he know with what and what sort of bonds is bound the nature from which that nature arose? But that one sin, by which human nature was changed into the necessity of death, even if there were no others, suffices for condemnation, unless the bond of generation be loosed by regeneration—this we say, even though you are unwilling to hear it; this you do not conquer by truth, even though you persist in attacking it by loquacity.

67. Jul. It is asked of us, then, why we do not agree that sin is natural. We answer: Because it has no color of verisimilitude, much less of truth, none of justice, none of piety, because it makes the devil seem to be the creator of human beings.

Aug. It plainly makes it seem so—but to you, not to those who know how to distinguish fault from nature, although the fault is in the nature. Read the Epistle to the Hebrews and see that solid food is for those who have their senses exercised to separate good from evil—which you do not have (See Heb 5:14). Therefore, when we say, "A human being is born with a fault," you think the devil is called his creator, being so blind or contentious that you can neither attend to, nor are willing to attend to, even the faults of bodies with which some are born; and if the deserts of those faults are asked of you, you find no place to flee except to the precipice, so long as you are unwilling to return to the solid rock of the Catholic faith.

68. Jul. Because it fixes the charge of iniquity upon God the judge.

Aug. It is you who do this, because the heavy yoke upon little ones is iniquitous if there is no original sin.

69. Jul. Because it breaks down and destroys free choice, the chief defense by which the Church of Christ is fortified against various errors.

Aug. It is you who oppress free choice, to which, for its restoring or its helping, you deny the grace of God.

70. Jul. Saying that all human beings are so incapable of any virtue that in their very mothers' wombs they are filled with ancient crimes.

Aug. How could we say that human beings are justified by grace—that is, made just—if we denied that they are capable of virtue?

71. Jul. The force of which crimes, however, you devise as not only the expeller of natural innocence, but even thereafter, through the whole of life, the compeller into all vices.

Aug. Through the grace of God our necessity is lessened, through the grace of God it is ended; here your loquacity has nothing to do.

72. Jul. Which law of sin you swear remained and flourished even in the prophets and apostles—already conspicuous for the great brightness of their conduct and signs—and even after that grace of the mysteries of Christ, which you think comes to the aid of all the disgraceful parts of your dogma.

Aug. That lust you have taken up—that is, the concupiscence of the flesh warring against the concupiscence of the spirit—the prophets and apostles faithfully fought down, because they did not praise it.

73. Jul. Since it extinguishes the effort of all honesty, since it consoles and increases the obscenity of conduct with the infamy of God's works—that is, of human nature—since it adjudges all the commandments of the Law to the guilt of impossibility—that is, of iniquity.

Aug. He who says, I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do (Rom 7:15), places the possibility of his perfection in the grace of God, against you; he does not trust in his own strength, lest he be empty—as in you.

74. Jul. Since it has no less of baseness than of profanity, when, for the highest testimonies of its assertion, it embraces the shame of the generative parts.

Aug. We do not embrace the shame of the generative parts, but rather we acknowledge whence this shame is—which you are unwilling to do. For we hear the most manifest testimony of Scripture (See Gen 2:25), against which you grow deaf, when you ought to fall mute. For who, hearing that those first human beings were naked and were not ashamed, does not see whence it came about that, after sin, they were ashamed to be naked and hastened to veil with girdles of whatever sort those members of which they were ashamed (See Gen 3:7)? But a man has been found who would place even such a lust—which must be resisted, lest one sin, and of which even the shameless are ashamed—in paradise, even if no one had there sinned; nor is he, in saying these things, ashamed of so great and so sacrilegious a deformity. I ask you: if that lust, as we believe, brings upon you only the trouble of resisting, but presents no will, why do you think so great a reward of praise must be paid to it, even though that praise be false?

75. Jul. And it swells, in place of the sacred authorities of God, with accusations.

Aug. Is this, then, not sacred authority: The body is dead because of sin (Rom 8:10)? And is it an accusation of God, not a praise: He will give life to your mortal bodies also (Rom 8:11)? I think that it was no accuser, but one full of God himself, a herald of God, who said these things, where he showed that Adam was not so made—as you say—that, whether he sinned or did not sin, he would die.

76. Jul. That in his precepts there is a tyrannical immoderation.

Aug. The precept of God is not tyrannical, but, that it may be fulfilled, he himself must be asked; this you are unwilling to do, because you trust in your own strength.

77. Jul. That in his judgments there is a barbarous iniquity.

Aug. Because the judgment of God is not iniquitous, therefore in the misery of the human race, which begins from the weeping of little ones, original sin must be acknowledged.

78. Jul. It affirms that in his oaths there is a Punic falsehood.

Aug. When God says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9), does he speak as a Punic?

79. Jul. Since, in place of disputations and all syllogisms, it relies on the dreams and frenzy of Manichaeus.

Aug. He was no Manichean, nor did he dream, nor did he rave—neither he who said, We too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest (Eph 2:3), nor he who said, We are all born under sin, and our very origin is in fault (Ambrose, De paenit. 1.3.13).

80. Jul. These, then, are the causes that kindle us to the assault upon natural evil, that make us disdain and despise the fellowships of the lost.

Aug. The pious consensus of so many and so great Catholic teachers you would in no way call a fellowship of the lost, unless you were lost yourself.

81. Jul. Which bring it about that we are no more terrified by the uproar of the whole world than if we saw a wood of dismal lupines sounding, stirred either by unclean swine or by inrushing winds (See Virgil, Georg. 1.75-76).

Aug. The Catholic Church spread throughout the whole world, which prudently shuddered at your mouths, is no wood of lupines, but wished to be safe from the bites of wolves.

82. Jul. We believe, then, that God is both just and pious and truthful, and thereby we hold that his Law has commanded nothing impossible, that its testimonies affirm nothing false, that its judgments pronounce nothing iniquitous; but that he himself is the creator of human beings, whom he creates liable to no crime, but full indeed of natural innocence, and capable of voluntary virtues.

Aug. Why, then, does he not admit to his own life his own image, unbreathed-upon, unexorcized, unbaptized? Is this how the reward of innocence is repaid? Or is it rather that, the guilt being drawn by generation and not remitted by regeneration, life is justly denied and the death that follows is the punishment? For the Apostle would not have detested those alienated from the life of God (See Eph 4:18), if there were no punishment.

83. Jul. From which gathered together, it is necessary that one of two be held: namely, that either God be believed such as the Traducianist Manichaeus fabricates, or that you be understood, with all who concede the decrees of propagation, to hold such a God as the honored God fights against. But God cannot be such as Manichaeus dreams; rather, he is the pious and just and true God, such as all holy Scripture, all the Law, and our faith venerates. And thereby this is your dogma, which, just as it is taken up with injury to God, so is destroyed with honor to him.

Aug. If you hold God to be pious, why do you impiously keep the Savior—that is, Jesus—from little ones? If just, why do you believe in a heavy yoke upon little ones without the deserts of any sin? If true, why do you not believe him when he says, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9)?

84. Jul. It is time for us to pass to other matters; but the dignity of the case demands of us that we render also those things which we think were passed over in the earlier book. Which indeed a prudent reader will perhaps judge superfluous; nonetheless, since it has been found that a case forsaken amid the perils of facts clings even to light things, it is worthwhile to take away the solaces of those from whom you have removed the defenses.

Aug. Since you have begun to pass to other matters, we ought now to show what we promised above—namely, that the prophecy of Ezekiel, in which it is said that the sins of fathers are not repaid upon children, just as those of children are not repaid upon fathers, pertains to the foretelling of the revelation of the New Testament. For the prophet Jeremiah too says something of the sort, and there he makes clear whence this is said. For among other things he says: Turn back, O virgin Israel, return to your cities, mourning; how long will you turn away, O dishonored daughter? For the Lord has created salvation for a new planting, in which salvation human beings shall go about. Thus said the Lord: Yet shall they say this word in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring back its captivity: Blessed be the Lord upon his just holy mountain, and those who dwell in Judea and in every city of it, together with the husbandman, and he shall be lifted up in the flock; for I have made drunk every thirsting soul and have satisfied every hungering soul. For this I rose up and saw, and my sleep became sweet to me. Therefore behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will sow Israel and Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. And it shall be: as I watched over them to pull down and to afflict, so will I watch over them to build up and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall not say: The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge; but each one shall die in his own sin, and the teeth of him who eats the sour grape shall be set on edge (Jer 31:21-30). Surely it is manifest that this pertains to the days of the new planting, of which, that he might say this, he was speaking.

Where also that seed of man and seed of beast, which God promised he would sow, understood spiritually, makes those who preside and those who are ruled to be acknowledged. But because it was inveterate in the hearts of the people that it was written in the Old Testament, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children (Deut 5:9), lest anyone think the Scripture of God to be at variance with itself, in order to show more openly that the one accords with the Old, the other with the New Testament, he immediately subjoined: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will accomplish for the house of Israel and the house of Judah a New Testament, not according to the Testament which I made with their fathers in the day when I took their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt (Jer 31:31-32), and the rest.

To that Testament, then, generation pertains, but to this, regeneration; whence in the one the sins of fathers are repaid upon children, but in the other, the bond of generation being loosed by regeneration, it is not said, "The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge," but, the teeth of him who eats the sour grape shall be set on edge (Ezek 18:2; Jer 31:29), because each one shall die not in his father's sin, but in his own, if he commits it. But you, in the prophecy where it is said, The son shall not bear the sin of his father (Jer 31:30), did not show how the Scripture agrees with that where it is said, I will repay the sins of the fathers upon the children. For these will remain contrary to each other, unless each of these two be referred to a separate Testament—which the prophet Jeremiah most evidently showed.

85. Jul. Therefore, when we had come to the sentence of the apostle Paul (See above, 2.56-57), which the Traducianist was wont to peddle to those unversed in the Scriptures—that is, Through one man sin entered the world (Rom 5:12)—I showed, first, by the testimony of that very discourse, that the Traducianists were driven from the inner shrines of that passage, since the Teacher of the Gentiles, recalling the antiquity of sin, had placed the determinate number, as it were a most stalwart bodyguard, for the keeping of generation; so that, saying that through one man sin entered the world, he prescribed that he thought nothing about generation, which cannot exist except through two. And I assigned that there is a distinction between the intercourse and the sin of parents, since it was said that sin indeed entered the world, but through that number which could not fit offspring.

And it was sufficiently shown through the whole little book that there not the nature of sin was indicated, but the form, which it was established was taken up by the transgressors who followed afterward by imitation, not by generation.

But because we read it written in the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the Jews, From one they sprang, and him as good as dead (Heb 11:12)—that is, from Abraham—and earlier too in the same epistle it is read of Christ, He who sanctifies, and those who are sanctified, are all of one (Heb 2:11)—lest the Traducianist seize upon any of these or similar things, if any can be found, and argue that something of weight has been shaken from our answer, by which we affirmed that "one" was said, through whom sin passed over, so that generation should not be allowed to be understood, since it is found in this epistle that generation is indicated by the name of one—therefore, I say, I thought this must be reconsidered. That the reader may be attentive, then, I give warning; for this objection will be destroyed by a manifold kind of refutation.

There, then, where mention is made of Abraham, Sarah, his wife, is inserted; for such is the order of the words: By faith he who is called Abraham obeyed to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he went. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he looked for the city having foundations, whose craftsman and maker is God. By faith Sarah herself, being barren, received power for the conception of seed even beyond the time of age, since she believed him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one they sprang, and him as good as dead, like the stars of heaven in multitude and like the sand which is on the seashore, innumerable (Heb 11:8-12).

When, then, he had mentioned both—that is, both Abraham and Sarah—and had said that she was, by the law of old age, past childbearing, but that by faith she received the power of conceiving seed, he securely subjoined that from one had sprung so many peoples, to be compared to the multitude of the stars. So that the union of the parents might be set forth, both the praise of persons so faithful and the truth of the deed required it; but that, of those two themselves, in commending the propagated multitude, he should name not both but one, the art of one praising advised. For he wished to show how great a thing sure faith had merited; and judging, in saying that a multitude exceeding number was propagated by the power of God, that it was more fitting for the praise of his work if he said they were begotten from one rather than from two—especially since, in the increase of praise which the last clause heaped up, there was no loss to the history, which he had supplied above by the mention of both persons.

Aug. Who does not understand that you say nothing, I know not what he understands. You had said that the Apostle therefore said, Through one man sin entered the world (Rom 5:12), because that man furnished the rest an example of sinning. For if, you say, he wished generation to be understood in that passage, he would say "through two," not "through one" (See above, 2.56)—when rather, if he wished an example to be understood, he would say "through one woman," not "through one man," since it is agreed that she furnished even her own husband the example of sinning. But because by generation sin entered the world, to be healed by regeneration alone, therefore he said "through one," because, just as the example of human sin began from the woman, so generation began from the man; for, as no one doubts, the sowing, which pertains to the man, precedes the conception, which pertains to the woman.

But behold, a most evident testimony has been found—whether by you yourself or by another who perhaps objected this to you—where, without any ambiguity, innumerable persons are said to have sprung from one, although they had a man and a woman, surely two parents, in order to spring; but it was most rightly said, on account of the beginning of generation, which is from the man's seed. In short, when he set forth praiseworthy examples of faith, he began from Abel himself and, having mentioned Abraham, came to Sarah. Now surely he had passed from the one and was speaking of his wife; and yet, when it came to mentioning the generation of an immense people, he returned to him, because he begot what she bore.

But if, as you ought, you considered this, you would not blaspheme the faithful herald of faith who wrote the epistle, nor say that he was "advised by the art of praise." Advised to what, I ask? That he should lie, asserting that those sprang from one who sprang from two?

More fittingly, as you suppose, judging this to be for the praise of God's work. You err much; false praise does not delight God. You indeed are wont gladly to offer it to lust; but falsehood greatly displeases the truth. For why you should offer yourself to lust itself, not as a praiser but as a flatterer, I do not know. Will it for that reason love you more? You are utterly deceived; it does not love a human being, but plainly goads him to love what he ought not to love.

But if, by whatever manner of speaking, it can be said not falsely but truly that those sprang from one who sprang from two, why do you think generation therefore could not be conveyed where it was said, Through one man sin entered the world, just because generation is made through two, not through one? Since it is known to all that he rather, or first, begets who sows, but that the woman either does not beget but bears, or, if the bearing itself can rightly be called begetting, first conceives from the begetting man and afterward begets the offspring she had conceived.

Accordingly the Apostle, when he wished it to be understood that sin entered the world by generation—the sin which Christ would wash away by regeneration—said "through one man," who then either first or rather begot; especially because, as we have already said and must be pressed home to you, if he said this on account of the precedence of the example, he would say "through one woman," from whom the example of sinning first proceeded in the human race, and would rather pass over the man, whom he knew to have followed the woman's example, so as himself to sin by imitating.

86. Jul. To the Hebrews, then, where the discourse is of generation, many are said to have arisen from one; but to the Romans, where the Apostle speaks of sin, he says that through one man sin entered—by which number he most conclusively taught that he thought nothing about generation.

Aug. To speak thus against plain things is not, as you think, praiseworthy eloquence, but incredible impudence.

87. Jul. But where it is said of Christ, He who sanctifies, and the one sanctified, are all of one (Heb 2:11), it can be taken not of Adam, but of God, by whose power Christ according to the flesh was made, and the whole human race; and thereby, to overthrow the understanding of the Apostle, by which he said that through one man sin entered the world, the likeness of other words could bring no weight. Yet let this, which follows, cling especially to the mind of a prudent reader, that he may understand that I have thus far dealt much more remissly than the matter demanded.

For let us grant that, by very many testimonies, it is taught that generation, which cannot be made except through two, is nonetheless wont to be said to be done even through one. But your opinion of propagation will advance nothing: why? Namely because some things we say improperly, others properly. Those, then, which are proper, grant their appellations without loss; but those which are said by usurpation are not allowed to bring prejudgments of their own definitions upon the principal, proper things; and all this is done blamelessly, when, to things about which there is no doubt, we impart by improper use the names of others.

Aug. But you are about to bring doubt even upon plain things, when they are against you.

88. Jul. But when some matter is introduced, against the opinion of all, by a word in whose sound it has all its defense, grievous wrong is done if, its proper name being at hand, it is signified by the borrowed appellation of an improper use. When, then, the discourse is of offspring, since no one doubts that each one born has two parents, nor does this need confirmation, it will not incommode the understanding if I say that he was begotten from one; for my speech will so move no one as to make him think that he could be born either without a father or without a mother.

Aug. One who is born indeed has two parents; but, that he may be born, one begets him by sowing, the other bears him by bringing forth. Hence it sufficiently appears to whom generation is chiefly, or first, to be attributed—that you may cease to spread the mists of loquacity over things set in the light. But who speaks so as to say that anyone was begotten from one? Since everyone who hears this thinks of nothing but the father, nor does any but one father beget a human being by sowing; but two or more are rightly wont to be said to be begotten from one, who could be supposed not to have one father.

But where father and mother are to be thought of, who is said to be born of one, except falsely? For if it be manifest that two walked together or did something together, do you therefore say without lying that one walked or that one did this, just because it is manifest that there were two? Will not your lie be the more impudent, the more open that is? The singular number is indeed put for the plural by a figurative manner of speaking, as in the plagues by which Egypt was struck, where it is said "the frog" or "the locust," surely in the singular number, when there were many (See Ps 78:45-46 (77:45-46); 105:34 (104:34)); but if it were said "one frog" or "one locust," who would doubt that this lie would be the more empty, the clearer that truth is? Cease, then, to sell these vapors to human beings most unskilled in these matters, and understand that through one man sin entered the world—not as you say, but as the Apostle says.

For through one man—preceding not by example, for that would be said of the woman, but begetting by way of beginning, because he first sowed what she would conceive, and he begot what she would bear—sin entered the world (Rom 5:12), just as it is written: Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob (Matt 1:2); and through the rest of the following generations this manner of speaking persists, nor is it said, "Abraham and Sarah begot Isaac," or "Isaac and Rebekah begot Jacob"; and where it was necessary to mention the mothers, the Evangelist does not say, "Judah and Tamar begot Perez and Zerah," but he says, Judah begot of Tamar (Matt 1:3); and wherever he added the mothers too, he nonetheless gave the begetting to the fathers, not saying, "He and she begot him," but, "He begot him of her." Whence you may understand that in this way it was said that innumerable were begotten of one Abraham, because he, one, begot them of Sarah. And therefore it was said, Through one man sin entered the world (Rom 5:12), so that there might be understood the beginning of generation, which is from the man, not the example of imitation, which entered the world in the human race through one woman rather than through one man.

89. Jul. But when the discourse is of sin, which against the opinion of all and against all reason is pretended to be inborn.

Aug. It is not pretended against the opinion of all and against all reason, but against your error, original sin is shown, with Scripture as witness and the very misery of the human race.

90. Jul. And this sin is properly said to have passed over through one, if he furnished the example of offending, but most unfittingly if he engendered that sin which could not pass to posterity except through two.

Aug. Rather, it entered through one, by whom was sown what she bore; but the example preceded in her, which he followed.

91. Jul. And though the Apostle commended that sin passed over, but through one, and though truth shows that this properly pertains to example, the Traducianist, with intolerable impudence, makes out that that number too, by an improper use, reaches and applies to himself.

Aug. What is this, that so often you think to act with a new name, as though insulting, so that the truth of the most ancient Catholic dogma may be fled, while the newness of the name is dreaded? What cannot be mocked in this way? But by vanity, not by wit. For the Apostle says, Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all human beings (Rom 5:12); these words both of us accept. If, then, we are "Traducianists" on account of the sin which was transmitted by generation, so that it might pass to all human beings, you are "Traducianists" on account of the sin which you pretend was transmitted by imitation, so that it might pass to all human beings; and the Apostle appeared the first "Traducianist," who—whether he thought this, which it is clear he thought, or that, which you in your error say—nonetheless, by saying that sin entered the world through one man and passed to all human beings, furnished the occasion of this name. But if the name "propagation" does not fit these words, where it is said that through one man sin entered and passed to all human beings, then this name fits neither us nor you nor the Apostle; but plainly, to say this, to object this, to repeat it assiduously and hatefully, fits your ineptitude well enough.

92. Jul. For although it is an unheard-of monstrosity if anyone, leaving aside the proper words, tries to establish a dogma—even a tolerable one, yet new—by improper and ambiguous words, that thing is infinitely more deformed in that Augustine strives to confirm matters obscene and accusing the justice of God by sentences so two-edged that he confesses they sound properly against him, but for him only by sufferance. Will any of the learned trust that argument which, when it comes into court, is weighed by his enemy as it were a home-born slave, but by him as a fugitive and kidnapped?

Aug. You speak of improper and proper words in such a way that, despising the fewness of those who understand you and find you raving, you choose to seem, to the many who do not understand you, to say something, when you say nothing. Better, then, do I leave you to the learned few, who, even without my showing it, most easily understand that you say nothing, than that, by refuting you, although I speak true things, I say things which the many do not understand. Nevertheless, where it is said, Through one man sin entered the world (Rom 5:12), on account of the author of generation; therefore, a form of the one to come, on account of the author of regeneration—these are not improper words, but proper.

93. Jul. What, then, is set down to the Hebrews, All of one, the praise of God demands—after the mention of the parents, however; but what is said of Christ, He who sanctifies, and those who are sanctified, are all of one (Heb 2:11), is referred to God.

Aug. Rather, after the mention of the parents—especially since he had already passed from the father and was speaking of the mother—the mother herself ought not to have been passed over, but it ought to have been said, "They sprang from two," who had sprung not from one but from two, so that the praise of God might be true, not false—were it not that this too is true, that they sprang from one, nor was it said improperly, but properly, on account of the author of the seed, the father; not in order to increase the praise of God by a lie, as you suppose. For to say, "A man did" what two or more men did, can be a figurative manner of speaking; but if anyone says that one man did what two did, unless one be the author of the deed of those two, he either lies or is deceived—as we have already said a little before about the locust and the frog.

94. Jul. For thus the Apostle to the Corinthians: For as the woman, he says, is from the man, so also the man is through the woman; but all things are from God (1 Cor 11:12). But, third, reason shows that, even if neither of these things which aid us had existed, nonetheless that sentence by which Paul argues that through one man sin entered this world entered into no compact with the Manicheans.

Aug. It is rather you, by saying these things, who appear to have entered a compact. For what compact has the Apostle with Manichaeus, when the Apostle says, The body indeed is dead because of sin (Rom 8:10)—which overthrows your heresy—but Manichaeus says, "The body is unchangeably evil, because of a nature of evil coeternal with the good"? And likewise, in that passage where it is said, The body is dead because of sin, the Apostle says, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also (Rom 8:11), but Manichaeus says that the bodies of the flesh do not belong to the creation of the good God, but to the nature of evil, and that Christ was not raised from the dead, but did not die? You, then, who are not Manichaeans, but by a different plague are no more sound than they, say how the body is dead because of sin—you who assert that the death of the body entered the world not through the sin of that man, but by the law of nature.

95. Jul. And thereby our answer remains unshaken, which shows that through one man it was not generation that was corrupted and made faulty, but, nature remaining whole, only the will of those sinning that is alleged by the Apostle to be faulty.

Aug. Are you so blind, or do you so blind human beings by your murky disputations, that you dare to deny that faulty bodies are born? Do bodies not belong to the nature of human beings? Or, as the Manicheans say—whose madness you do not indeed know, but you are unwilling to attend to and consider how much you aid it—is a good soul held mingled with the bodies of the nation of darkness? Say, then, the deserts of faulty bodies, you who deny that little ones draw any sins from their parents. Behold, the Manicheans say: This mortal flesh belongs so much not to the workmanship of God, but to the nation of darkness, that even the bodies of human beings, whom you maintain were made to the image of God, are born not only corruptible and subject to the condition of death, but even often faulty. What will your heresy answer them, except that this is human nature—under God the creator and craftsman, indeed, yet such that, even if no one had sinned, even in paradise such bodies of human beings would be born? O abominable and damnable voice! But we, since we do not say that the bodies of human beings—not only corruptible and bound by the necessity of death, but also many of them, languid, distorted, deformed with countless faultiness—would have arisen in paradise with no preceding sin of the parents, and judge those who say this most worthy of anathema, attribute these things not to a nature so instituted from the beginning, but to one afterward corrupted by the desert of iniquity—so that we destroy both you and the Manicheans by the unshaken and ancient stability of the Catholic faith.

96. Jul. But let us return to that book which he sent to Valerius, in which he set forth, for himself to examine and refute, sentences excerpted from one book only of mine. And indeed, in the first little book of the present work, I had reached those sayings of Augustine in which, the impudence being uncovered by which he fled the odium of that opinion—lest he should seem to assert the devil to be the creator of human beings—he declared that God is the author of evils, and that he himself creates a substance of such desert as to receive guilt before the use of reason, and which is placed in the kingdom of the devil by the hands of its own creator.

Aug. He who distinguishes nature from fault does not say what you say; he who reads with understanding what I say does not think that I say what I do not say.

97. Jul. And that he is a potter fashioning vessels of wrath and of perdition (See Rom 9:22).

Aug. However much you do not understand how God makes from the same mass one vessel unto honor, another unto dishonor (See Rom 9:21), he nonetheless so makes them as not to make a third kind of vessels, neither unto honor nor unto dishonor—such as you wish little ones to be, and you reckon it no dishonor for the image of God not to enter the kingdom of God. For you so love that kingdom that you believe it to be not even a light punishment for a human being not to be there, but none at all.

98. Jul. But that they are forced into perdition not by the advance of free will, but by the power of their own former.

Aug. You can say that not just any human beings, but his own already regenerated sons, God forces into perdition by making them live—those whom he foresees will fall away from the faith—when he could snatch them from here before they were changed by malice.