LETTER TO COUNT VALERIUS

Though I had long been troubled that I had written to you several times and had not been thought worthy of any reply from your Highness, I suddenly received three letters from your Kindness: one delivered to me, though not to me alone, through my fellow bishop Vindemialis, and not long afterward two through my fellow presbyter Firmus. He is a holy man, joined to us, as you could learn from him, by a most intimate love; and by speaking with us at length about your Excellence and truly conveying what sort of man he had come to know you to be in the heart of Christ (See Phil 1:8), he outdid not only the letters that the bishop I mentioned and that he himself brought, but even those that we complained of not having received. And so his account of you was the more pleasant to us because he said the very things that you could not have written back yourself, even had I inquired, lest you become a herald of your own praises, which Holy Scripture forbids. And yet I too am afraid to write these things to you, lest I incur the suspicion of a flatterer, my illustrious lord, deservedly most excellent and most dear son in the love of Christ.

See, then, what delight and joy it was for me to hear your praises in Christ, or rather the praises of Christ in you, from one who could neither deceive me, because of his faith, nor be ignorant of them, because of his friendship with you. But we have also heard other things from others, even if not so many or so certain: how sound and catholic your faith is, how devout your expectation of things to come, what your love of God and of the brethren is, how you are not proud in your lofty honors and do not set your hope on uncertain riches but on the living God, and how you are rich in good works; how your house is the rest and solace of the saints and the terror of the wicked; what great care you take that no one lay snares for the members of Christ under cover of the name of Christ, whether among his old enemies or his more recent ones; and how watchful you are for the salvation of those same enemies and how hostile to their error. These things and the like, as I said, we usually hear from others as well; but now through the brother mentioned above we have learned them more fully and with better testimony.

But of your conjugal chastity, so that we might praise and love this too in you, what could we hear except from some intimate of your household who knew your life not on the surface but thoroughly? About this good of yours, then, this gift of God, it also delights me to speak with you somewhat more intimately and at somewhat greater length. I know that I am no burden to you if I send something lengthy, by reading which you may be longer in our company; for I have learned this too, that amid your many and great cares you read easily and gladly, and take much delight in our little works, even those we have written to others, if any have been able to come into your hands. How much more, then, what is written to you, where I speak as though to one present, will you deign to attend to more closely and to receive more gladly? From this letter, then, go on to the book that I have sent along with it, which will itself, at its own beginning, make known to your Reverence more conveniently both why it was written and why it was sent to you in particular.

BOOK ONE

1. 1. 1. The new heretics, most beloved son Valerius, who contend that the medicine of Christ, by which sins are healed, is not necessary for little ones born of the flesh, most spitefully cry out 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 intercourse contract original sin, of which the Apostle says, Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12), and because we do not deny that they, of whatever sort the parents from whom they are born, are still under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ and, rescued by his grace from the power of darkness, are transferred into the kingdom of him who was unwilling to be born from that same intercourse of the two sexes. Because, then, we say this, which is contained in the most ancient and most firm rule of the catholic faith, these assertors of a novel and perverse teaching, who say that there is no sin in little ones that is washed away by the bath of regeneration, slander us, faithlessly or ignorantly, as though we condemned marriage and as though we said that the work of God, that is, the human being who is born of marriage, is the work of the devil. They do not notice that, just as the good of marriage cannot be accused on account of the original evil that is contracted from it, so the evil of adulteries and fornications cannot be excused on account of the natural good that is born from it. For just as sin, whether contracted by little ones from this side or that, is the work of the devil, so the human being, whether born from this side or that, is the work of God. The intention of this book, then, is this: that, as far as the Lord deigns to help us, we may distinguish the evil of carnal desire, on account of which a human being who is born through it contracts original sin, from the goodness of marriage. For this shameful desire, which is shamelessly praised by the shameless, would not exist had the human being not sinned first; but marriage would exist even if no one had sinned, since the sowing of children would take place without this disease in a body of that life, without which it now cannot take place in the body of this death.

1. 2. 2. But why I wished to write to you in particular on this matter, there are three chief reasons, which I will briefly explain. One is that, by the gift of Christ, your observance of conjugal chastity is great. Another is that, by your authority, in caring for and pressing the matter, you effectively resisted these profane novelties, which we here resist by disputation. The third is that I have learned that a certain piece of writing composed by them has come into your hands, which, though you laughed at it with most robust faith, it is nevertheless good that we should know how to help by defending what we believe; for the apostle Peter directs that we be ready to give satisfaction to everyone who asks of us an account of our faith and our hope (See 1 Pet 3:15). And the apostle Paul says, Let your speech be seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer everyone (Col 4:6). These are chiefly the things that compelled me to have with you in this volume such speech as the Lord might deign to grant. For it has never pleased me to thrust some little work of mine to be read upon any illustrious man, distinguished by such eminence as you yourself are—especially one not yet enjoying a leisured dignity, but still occupied with public and indeed military affairs—when he had not asked me for it, doing so not so much diligently as shamelessly. If, then, I have now done anything of the sort, for the reasons I have recalled, graciously forgive me, and turn a kindly mind to what follows.

1. 3. 3. That conjugal chastity too is a gift of God, the most blessed Paul shows, where, speaking of this matter, he says, I wish all men to be as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that (1 Cor 7:7). See, he said that this too is a gift from God—though lower than that continence in which he wished all to be as himself—nevertheless a gift from God. From this we understand that, when these things are commanded to be done, nothing else is shown than that, in order to receive and have them, our own will too must be present in us. But when they are shown to be gifts of God, we learn from whom they are to be sought if they are not had, and to whom thanks are to be given if they are had, and that our wills avail little to seek, take, and retain these things unless they are helped from on high.

1. 3. 4. What, then, do we say, when conjugal chastity is found even in certain irreligious people? Are they to be said to sin in this, that they use a gift of God badly, not referring it to the worship of him from whom they received it? Or perhaps these things are not even to be thought gifts of God when unbelievers do them, according to the saying of the Apostle, Everything that is not from faith is sin (Rom 14:23)? But who would dare to say that a gift of God is sin? For the soul and the body and whatever goods of soul and body are naturally implanted are gifts of God even in sinners, since it is God, not they themselves, who made these things. But of the things that they do it is said, Everything that is not from faith is sin (Rom 14:23). When, therefore, people without faith do these things that seem to pertain to conjugal chastity, whether seeking to please human beings, either themselves or others, or avoiding human troubles in those matters that they viciously desire, or serving demons, sins are not restrained but other sins are overcome by other sins. Far be it, then, that anyone be truly called chaste who does not keep faith with his wife in marriage for the sake of the true God.

1. 4. 5. The union of male and female for the sake of begetting is, then, the natural good of marriage. But one uses this good badly who uses it in a bestial way, so that his intention is on the pleasure of lust, not on the purpose of offspring. And yet in some animals that lack reason, as in most birds, a kind of compact of marriages, as it were, is preserved—a shared diligence in nest-building, the times for hatching the eggs apportioned between them in turn, and the alternating labor of nurturing their young—which makes them seem, when they mate, to be carrying out the business of continuing their kind rather than of satisfying lust. Of these two, the former in the beast is like the human being, the latter in the human being is like the beast. But what I said pertains to the nature of marriage—that male and female be joined in a fellowship for begetting and so not defraud each other, just as every fellowship naturally does not want a fraudulent partner—this evident good, when unbelievers have it, they turn into evil and sin, because they use it without faith. In this way, then, the marriages of the faithful turn even that desire of the flesh, by which the flesh desires against the spirit (Gal 5:17), to the use of righteousness. For they have the intention of begetting those who are to be reborn, so that those who are born of them as children of this age may be reborn as children of God. Therefore those who beget children not with this intention, this will, this end—to transfer them from being members of the first man into being members of Christ—but who as unbelieving parents glory in unbelieving offspring, even if they are of such great observance that, according to the marriage tablets, they have intercourse only for the sake of procreating children, do not have true conjugal chastity in them. For since chastity is a virtue, to which the contrary vice is unchastity, and since all virtues, even those that operate through the body, dwell in the mind, how is the body asserted to be chaste by true reasoning when the mind itself fornicates away from the true God? This fornication that holy psalm denounces where it says, For behold, those who put themselves far from you shall perish; you have destroyed everyone who fornicates away from you (Ps 73:27 (72:27)). True chastity, then, whether conjugal or widowed or virginal, is not to be spoken of except as that which is given over to true faith. For although, by right judgment, consecrated virginity is preferred to marriage, what sober-minded Christian would not set even Catholic Christian wives who have had but one husband not only before the Vestals but also before heretical virgins? So much does faith avail, of which the Apostle says, Everything that is not from faith is sin (Rom 14:23); and of which it is likewise written to the Hebrews, Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6).

1. 5. 6. Since this is so, surely those err who, when carnal lust is blamed, suppose that marriage is being condemned, as though this disease came from marriage and not from sin. Were not those first spouses, whose marriage God blessed, saying, Increase and multiply (Gen 1:28), naked, and they were not ashamed (Gen 2:25)? Why, then, after sin came shame from those members, except because there arose there an unseemly movement that, had human beings not sinned, marriage would without doubt not have had? Or perhaps, as some suppose—because they attend too little carefully to what they read—were the first human beings created blind, like dogs, and (what is more absurd) did they obtain sight, not by growing as dogs do, but by sinning? Far be it to believe this. But what moves those who think this is what is read: Taking of its fruit she ate; and she gave to her husband with her, and they ate. And the eyes of both were opened, and they recognized that they were naked (Gen 3:6–7). Hence it is that those who understand too little suppose that their eyes had previously been closed, because divine Scripture testifies that they were then opened. But did Hagar too, the maidservant of Sarah, when her son was thirsting and crying, open her eyes and see the well, have her eyes closed before (See Gen 21:19)? Or did those two disciples after the Lord's resurrection walk on the road with him with their eyes closed, of whom the Gospel says that in the breaking of bread their eyes were opened, and they recognized him (Luke 24:31)? What is written, then, of the first human beings, The eyes of both were opened (Gen 3:7), we ought to understand as their being made attentive to behold and recognize what new thing had occurred in their body, which body certainly lay before their open eyes every day, both naked and known. Otherwise, how could Adam, with the land animals and all the flying creatures brought to him, have given them names with his eyes closed, which he would not do except by distinguishing them, and he could not distinguish except by seeing? How, finally, was the woman herself shown to him, when he said, This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh (Gen 2:23)? Finally, if anyone be so contentious as to say that he could do these things not by seeing but by touching, what will he say to what is read there, that the woman saw the tree, of which she was about to take the forbidden food, that it was beautiful to the eyes to behold (Gen 3:6)? So then they were naked and were not ashamed (Gen 2:25)—not because they did not see, but because they felt nothing in the members they saw whereby they might be ashamed. For it was not said, They were both naked and did not know it, but, they were not ashamed. For because nothing had gone before that was not lawful, nothing had followed that would cause shame.

1. 6. 7. There, when the human being had first transgressed God's law, he began to have in his members another law warring against his mind, and he felt the evil of his own disobedience when he found that the disobedience of his flesh had been most fittingly repaid to him. For such an opening of the eyes the serpent too had promised by seducing him—namely, the knowing of something that would better be unknown. Then indeed the human being felt in himself what he had done; then he distinguished evil from good not by lacking it but by suffering it. For it was unjust that he should be obeyed by his servant, that is, by his own body, who had not obeyed his Lord. For what is it that the eyes, lips, tongue, hands, feet, and the bendings of the back, neck, and sides are placed in our power to be moved to their proper tasks, when we have a body free of impediments and sound; but when it comes to begetting children, the members created for this work do not serve the will's command, but it is waited for that lust should move them, as though by its own right, and sometimes it does not act when the mind wills, while sometimes it acts even when the mind is unwilling? Would not human free choice blush at this—that, by despising God who commands, it had lost its own command even over its own members? But where could it be more fittingly shown that human nature was depraved by the deserved penalty of disobedience than in these disobedient parts, from which, by succession, that very nature subsists? For it is on this account that these parts of the body are properly called by the name of "nature." And so, since those first human beings had felt this movement—unseemly because disobedient—in their flesh and had blushed at their nakedness, they covered those same members with fig leaves, so that at least by the choice of those ashamed there might be veiled what was not moved by the choice of those willing; and since what was unseemly pleased them, by covering it what was seemly might be done.

1. 7. 8. Because, then, the good of marriage could not perish even with this evil added to it, the imprudent suppose that this is not an evil but pertains to that good. But it is distinguished not only by subtle reasoning but also by the most common natural judgment, which appeared in those first human beings and is still held today by married people. For what they afterward did by propagation is the good of marriage; but what they first covered out of shame is the evil of desire, which everywhere shuns sight and seeks privacy out of shame. Accordingly, marriage glories because it makes something good even out of that evil, and it blushes because it cannot take place without it. As if someone with an injured foot were to reach some good even by limping—the arrival there is not bad on account of the evil of the limping, nor is the limping good on account of the good of the arrival—so neither ought we to condemn marriage on account of the evil of lust, nor to praise lust on account of the good of marriage.

1. 8. 9. This indeed is the disease of which the Apostle, speaking even to the married faithful, says, For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the disease of desire like the gentiles, who do not know God (1 Thess 4:3–5). Therefore the married believer should not only not use another's vessel, which those do who covet others' wives, but should not even know how to possess his own in the disease of carnal desire. This is not to be taken as though the Apostle forbade conjugal—that is, lawful and honorable—intercourse, but so that this intercourse, which would have had nothing of diseased lust joined to it had the choice of freedom not perished in it through preceding sin, but which now has it joined to it, should be a matter not of will but of necessity—without which, however, in the procreating of children the fruit of the will itself cannot be attained. This will, in the marriages of the faithful, is not determined by the end that children may be born who will pass away in this age, but that they may be reborn to remain in Christ. If this comes about, the reward from the marriage will be one of full happiness; but if it does not come about, there will be peace for spouses of good will. With this intention of heart, whoever possesses his vessel, that is, his spouse, without doubt possesses it not in the disease of desire, like the gentiles who do not know God, but in sanctification and honor (1 Thess 4:4–5), like the faithful who hope in God. For a man uses that evil of desire, and is not overcome by it, when he reins in and restrains it as it seethes with disordered and unseemly movements and relaxes and applies it only with a view to offspring, so that he may carnally beget those who are to be spiritually reborn, not subject the spirit to the flesh in vile servitude. No Christian ought to doubt that the holy fathers from Abraham, and before Abraham, to whom God gives testimony that they pleased him, used their wives in this way, since to some of them, individually, it was even granted to have several wives, where there was a reason of multiplying offspring, not an appetite for varying pleasure.

1. 9. 10. For if that multitude of wives had not displeased the God of our fathers, who is also ours, for the reason that lust might more abundantly flaunt itself, then the holy women too would each have served several husbands. But if any woman did so, what would compel her but the baseness of desire, to have several husbands, since by that license she would not have more children? Yet that it pertains more to the good of marriage to have not one man and many women, but one man and one woman, is sufficiently indicated by that first union of spouses, made by God himself, so that marriages might take their beginning there, where a more honorable example might be observed. But as the human race advanced, good women were joined to certain good men, several to one man. From this it appears that the former sought rather the modesty of dignity, and the latter was permitted by the nature of fruitfulness. For rule too can more naturally belong to one over many than to many over one. Nor can it be doubted that, by the natural order, men have rule over women rather than women over men. Observing this, the Apostle says, The head of the woman is the man (1 Cor 11:3); and, Wives, be subject to your husbands (Col 3:18); and the apostle Peter says, As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord (1 Pet 3:6). Although this is so—that the nature of ruling principles loves singularity, while we more easily see plurality among the subject—nevertheless several women would never be lawfully joined to one man unless more children were born from it. Hence if one woman lies with several men, since there is for her from this no multiplying of offspring but only a frequenting of lust, she cannot be a wife, but a harlot.

1. 10. 11. Since indeed not only fruitfulness, whose fruit is in offspring, nor only chastity, whose bond is faith, but also a certain sacrament of marriage is commended to the married faithful (whence the Apostle says, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church (Eph 5:25)), the reality of this sacrament is, without doubt, that the male and female joined in marriage should persevere inseparably as long as they live, and that it not be lawful, except for the cause of fornication, for one spouse to be separated from the other. For this is preserved in Christ and the Church, that the living should never be separated from the living by any divorce. So great is the observance of this sacrament in the city of our God, in his holy mountain (Ps 48:1 (47:2)), that is, in the Church of Christ, among all the married faithful, who without doubt are members of Christ, that, although women marry or wives are taken for the sake of procreating children, it is not lawful to abandon even a barren spouse in order to take another who is fruitful. If anyone does this, he is guilty of adultery—not by the law of this age, where, by an intervening divorce, it is permitted without crime to contract other marriages with others (which the Lord testifies that even holy Moses permitted the Israelites because of their hardness of heart (See Matt 19:8)), but by the law of the Gospel; as is also that woman, if she marries another. To such a degree do the rights of marriage, once entered upon, remain between the living, that those who are separated from each other are spouses to each other rather than to those to whom they have attached themselves. For with others they would not be adulterers unless they remained spouses to each other. Finally, when the husband with whom there was a true marriage has died, a true marriage can be made with the one with whom there was previously adultery. So there remains between the living something conjugal, which neither separation nor union with another can take away. But it remains for the harm of guilt, not for the bond of the covenant—just as the soul of an apostate, withdrawing as it were from marriage with Christ, even with faith lost, does not lose the sacrament of faith that it received in the bath of regeneration. For it would without doubt be restored to one returning, had he lost it in departing. But the one who has withdrawn has this for the heaping up of punishment, not for the merit of reward.

1. 11. 12. But for those who have agreed by common consent to abstain forever from the use of carnal desire, far be it that the conjugal bond between them should be broken; rather it will be the firmer, the more they have entered upon those pacts together that are to be kept more dearly and harmoniously—not by the pleasurable bonds of bodies but by the willing affections of minds. For it was not falsely said by the angel to Joseph, Do not fear to take Mary your wife (Matt 1:20). She is called wife from the first faith of betrothal, which she had neither known nor was to know by intercourse; nor had the appellation "wife" perished or remained false, where there had not been nor was to be any union of flesh. For that virgin was therefore the more holily and wondrously pleasing to her husband, because she was even fruitful without a husband—unlike him in offspring, like him in faith. On account of which faithful marriage both deserved to be called the parents of Christ—and not only she his mother, but also he his father, as being the husband of his mother—both by mind, not by flesh. Yet whether he was a father by mind alone or she a mother also by flesh, both were nonetheless parents of his humility, not of his sublimity; of his weakness, not of his divinity. For the Gospel does not lie, where it is read, And his father and mother were marveling at the things that were said of him (Luke 2:33). And in another place, And his parents went every year to Jerusalem (Luke 2:41). Likewise a little later, And his mother said to him: Son, why have you done so to us? Behold, your father and I were grieving as we sought you (Luke 2:48). But he, to show that he had, besides them, a Father who begot him without a mother, answered them, Why is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? (Luke 2:49) And again, lest by this saying he be thought to have denied those parents, the Evangelist went on and added, And they did not understand the word that he spoke to them, and he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them (Luke 2:50–51). Subject to whom but his parents? And who was subject but Jesus Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God (Phil 2:6)? Why, then, was he subject to those who were far below the form of God, except because he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:7), of which form they were the parents? But if she had given birth though he did not sow the seed, surely both would not have been parents even of that form of a servant, unless they were spouses to each other, even without union of flesh. Hence also the series of generations, when the parents of Christ are recalled by the connection of succession, had to be carried down rather to Joseph, as in fact it was, lest in that marriage an injury be done to the male sex, which is certainly the more excellent, since nothing of the truth would be lost, because both Joseph and Mary were of the seed of David, from whom Christ was foretold to come.

1. 11. 13. And so every good of marriage was fulfilled in those parents of Christ: offspring, faith, sacrament. We recognize the offspring in the Lord Jesus himself; the faith, because there was no adultery; the sacrament, because there was no divorce.

1. 12. 13. Only nuptial intercourse was lacking there, because in the flesh of sin it could not take place without that desire of the flesh which befell from sin—without which he willed to be conceived who was to be without sin, not in the flesh of sin but in the likeness of the flesh of sin, so that hereby too he might teach that all flesh that is born of intercourse is flesh of sin, since only that flesh which was not born thereof was not flesh of sin. And yet conjugal intercourse, which is done with the intention of begetting, is not itself sin, because the good will of the mind leads the bodily pleasure that follows, and does not follow it leading, nor is human choice dragged along by sin subjugating it, when the wound of sin is justly turned to the use of begetting. A certain itching of this wound reigns in the foulnesses of adulteries and fornications and all sorts of debaucheries and uncleannesses, but in the bonds of marriage it serves. There, by such a master, baseness is condemned; here, by such an attendant, honorableness blushes. This lust, then, is not the good of marriage, but the obscenity of those who sin, the necessity of those who beget, the ardor of wantonness, the shame of marriage. Why, then, should those not remain spouses who by consent cease to have intercourse, if Joseph and Mary remained spouses who did not even begin to have intercourse?

1. 13. 14. For this propagation of children, which among the holy fathers was a most dutiful service for the begetting and preserving of the people of God, among whom the prophecy of Christ had to go before, now no longer has that necessity. For now there is an abundance of children to be spiritually begotten from all the nations, wherever they may have been born carnally. And what is written, A time for embracing, and a time for refraining from embracing (Eccl 3:5), is recognized as distributed through that time and this: for that was the time for embracing, but this is the time for refraining from embracing.

1. 13. 15. And so the Apostle too, when he spoke of this, said, But this I say, brethren: the time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though not having them, and those who weep as though not weeping, and those who rejoice as though not rejoicing, and those who buy as though not buying, and those who use this world as though they did not use it; for the figure of this world passes away. I wish you to be without anxiety (1 Cor 7:29–32). All this, to say something briefly here by way of exposition, I think is to be understood thus. This, he says, I say, brethren: the time is short—the people of God is no longer to be propagated by carnal generation but is now to be gathered by spiritual regeneration. It remains, then, that those who have wives not be subjected to carnal desire, and those who weep at the sadness of present evil rejoice in the hope of future good, and those who rejoice on account of some temporal advantage fear the eternal judgment, and those who buy possess by so having that they do not cleave by loving, and those who use this world think of themselves as passing through, not remaining; for the figure of this world passes away. I wish you, he says, to be without anxiety—that is, I wish you to have your heart on high in those things that do not pass you by. Then he adds and says, He who is without a wife is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he who is joined in marriage is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife (1 Cor 7:32–33). And so in a way he expounds what he had said above, Let those who have wives be as though not having them. For those who so have wives that they are concerned about the things of the Lord, how they may please the Lord, and are not concerned, in the things of the world, to please their wives, are as though not having them. This is done with the more ease when the wives too are such that their husbands please them not because they are rich, or exalted, or noble by birth, or lovable in the flesh, but because they are faithful, religious, chaste, and good men.

1. 14. 16. But in the married, as these things are to be desired and praised, so other things are to be tolerated, lest one fall into damnable disgraces, that is, into fornications or adulteries. On account of avoiding which evil, even those acts of intercourse of spouses that are not done for the cause of begetting but serve victorious desire—in which they are bidden not to defraud each other, lest Satan tempt them because of their incontinence—are indeed not commanded by way of precept, yet are conceded by way of indulgence. For thus it is written, Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The woman does not have power over her own body, but the man; and likewise the man does not have power over his own body, but the woman. Do not defraud each other, except by consent for a time, that you may have leisure for prayer, and return again to it, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. But this I say by way of indulgence, not by way of precept (1 Cor 7:3–6). Where, therefore, indulgence is to be given, by no reasoning will it be denied that there is something of fault. Since, then, intercourse with the intention of begetting, which is properly to be imputed to marriage, is not culpable, what does the Apostle concede by way of indulgence except that spouses, while they do not contain themselves, demand the debt of the flesh from each other not from the will of offspring but from the pleasure of lust? Yet this pleasure does not fall into fault on account of marriage, but receives indulgence on account of marriage. Wherefore from this too marriages are praiseworthy, because even that which does not pertain to themselves they cause to be pardoned on their own account. For not even this intercourse, by which desire is served, is so done that the offspring which marriage requires is impeded.

1. 15. 17. But still it is one thing not to have intercourse except with the sole will of begetting, which has no fault; another to seek the pleasure of the flesh in intercourse, but not outside one's spouse, which has venial fault, because, although intercourse is not had for the cause of propagating offspring, yet the propagation of offspring is not for the cause of this lust obstructed, whether by an evil wish or an evil deed. For those who do this, although they are called spouses, are not, nor do they retain any truth of marriage, but hold out an honorable name to veil baseness. They are exposed, however, when they go so far as to expose the children who are born against their will. For they hate to nourish or to have those whom they feared to beget. And so, when dark iniquity rages against its own children, whom it begot unwillingly, it is brought out into the light by clear iniquity, and the hidden baseness is convicted by manifest cruelty. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, goes so far that it even procures poisons of sterility, and, if these avail nothing, somehow extinguishes and pours out within the womb the offspring conceived—willing its own offspring to perish before it lives, or, if it was already living in the womb, to be killed before it is born. Surely, if both are such, they are not spouses; and if they were such from the beginning, they came together not by marriage but rather by debauchery. But if both are not such, I dare to say: either she is in a way the harlot of her husband, or he the adulterer of his wife.

1. 16. 18. Since, therefore, marriages cannot be such as those of the first human beings could have been had sin not gone before, let them be such as those of the holy fathers were, so that the shameful desire of the flesh—which neither existed in paradise before sin nor was permitted to exist after sin, since it is necessary that it exist in the body of this death—be not served, but rather be itself compelled to serve only for the propagating of offspring. Or, since this time, which we have already said is the time for refraining from embracing, does not have the necessity of this office, so great a fertility of children to be spiritually begotten lying at hand everywhere among all the nations, let him rather, who can receive that good of excellent continence, receive it (See Matt 19:12). But whoever cannot receive it, both if he takes a wife, does not sin (1 Cor 7:28), and a woman, if she does not contain herself, let her marry (See 1 Cor 7:9). For it is good for a man not to touch a woman (1 Cor 7:1). But because not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given (Matt 19:11), it remains that, on account of fornications, each man have his own wife and each woman have her own husband (1 Cor 7:2); and so the weakness of incontinence, lest it fall into the ruin of disgraces, is taken up by the honorableness of marriage. For what the Apostle says of women, I wish therefore the younger to marry (1 Tim 5:14), can be said of men too: I wish the younger to take wives, so that it may pertain to both sexes to procreate children, to be fathers and mothers of households, to give no occasion to the adversary for the sake of reviling (1 Tim 5:14).

1. 17. 19. In marriages, nevertheless, let the nuptial goods be loved: offspring, faith, sacrament. But offspring not only that it be born, but also that it be reborn; for it is born to punishment unless it is reborn to life. And faith—not such as even unbelievers have between themselves out of jealousy for the flesh; for what man, however irreligious, wants an adulterous wife? Or what woman, however irreligious, wants an adulterous husband? This good in marriage is indeed natural, yet carnal. But a member of Christ ought to fear adultery in a spouse for the spouse's sake, not for his own, and to hope from Christ for the reward of the faith that he shows to his spouse. And the sacrament, which neither those separated nor those committing adultery lose, let spouses keep harmoniously and chastely. For it alone is what even a barren marriage retains by the right of piety, the hope of fruitfulness, for which it had been joined, being now lost. Let him praise these nuptial goods in marriage who wishes to praise marriage. But carnal desire is not to be imputed to marriage, but to be tolerated. For it is not a good coming from natural marriage, but an evil befalling from ancient sin.

1. 18. 20. On account of this, then, it comes about that even from the just and lawful marriages of the children of God, not children of God but children of the age are begotten; for those who beget, even if they are now reborn, do not beget from that whereby they are children of God, but from that whereby they are still children of the age. For there is a saying of the Lord, The children of this age beget and are begotten (Luke 20:34). And so, from the fact that we are still children of this age, our outer man is corrupted (2 Cor 4:16), from this both the children of this age are begotten, and they do not become children of God unless they are reborn; but from the fact that we are children of God, the inner man is renewed from day to day (2 Cor 4:16). Although the outer man too has been sanctified through the bath of regeneration and has received the hope of future incorruption, on account of which it is deservedly called the temple of God. Your bodies, says the Apostle, are the temple within you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God, and you are not your own; for you were bought at a great price. Glorify, therefore, and bear God in your body (1 Cor 6:19–20). All this was said not only on account of present sanctification but chiefly on account of that hope of which he himself says elsewhere, But we ourselves too, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). If, then, according to the Apostle, the redemption of our body is awaited, surely what is awaited is still hoped for, not yet held. Hence he adds and says, For in hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is not hope; for what one sees, why does he also hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:24–25). Therefore it is not through that which we await, but through that which we tolerate, that carnal children are propagated. Far be it, then, that the faithful man, when he hears from the Apostle, Love your wives (Eph 5:25), should love carnal desire in his wife, which he ought not to direct even in himself, hearing another Apostle, Do not love the world nor the things that are in the world. Whoever loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the ambition of the age, which is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world will pass away and its desire; but he who does the will of God remains forever, just as God also remains forever (1 John 2:15–17).

1. 19. 21. From this desire of the flesh, then, whatever is born is born for the world, not for God; but it is born for God when it is reborn from water and the Spirit. The guilt of this desire regeneration alone remits, which generation contracts. Therefore let what has been generated be regenerated, because it cannot be otherwise, that what has been contracted be remitted. For that what is remitted in the parent should be contracted in the offspring comes about in wondrous ways indeed, yet it comes about. These things are invisible and, to unbelievers, incredible, yet true; and so that they might have some visible example, divine providence has provided this in certain trees. For why should we not believe that it was established for this purpose, that from the olive the wild olive should be born? Or is it not to be believed that, in some thing that was created for human uses, the Creator foresaw and established something that would serve as an example for the human race? It is a wonder, then, how those freed from the bond of sin through grace nevertheless beget those bound by the same bond, who must be freed in the same way; it is a wonder, we admit. But that the seeds of wild olives lie hidden even in the seeds of olives—when would this be believed, were it not proved by experience? Accordingly, just as a wild olive is begotten from the seed of a wild olive, and from the seed of an olive nothing but a wild olive—though there is the greatest difference between a wild olive and an olive—so from the flesh of a sinner and from the flesh of a just man each begets a sinner, though there is the greatest difference between a sinner and a just man. But a sinner is begotten, as yet no actual one and new in birth, but old in guilt: a human being from the Creator, a captive from the deceiver, a needy one from the Redeemer. But it is asked how the captivity of offspring can be contracted even from parents already redeemed. And because it is not tracked down by easy reasoning nor explained in speech, it is not believed by unbelievers—as if what we said of the wild olive and the olive, that of an unlike kind the offspring is like, were easily found by any reasoning or explained in speech. But this can be discerned by one who is willing to make trial; let it therefore serve as an example, whereby that too may be believed which cannot be discerned.

1. 20. 22. For the Christian faith, which the new heretics have begun to attack, does not doubt both that those who are washed in the bath of regeneration are redeemed from the power of the devil, and that those who have not yet been redeemed by such regeneration—even the little children of the redeemed—are held captive under the power of that same devil, unless they too be redeemed by the same grace of Christ. For we do not doubt that to all ages pertains that benefit of God of which the Apostle speaks, who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love (Col 1:13). From this power of darkness, then, of which the devil is prince—that is, from the power of the devil and his angels—whoever denies that little ones are rescued when they are baptized is refuted by the very truth of the Church's sacraments, which no heretical novelty is permitted to take away or change in the Church of Christ, the head ruling and aiding his whole body, the little ones together with the great. In truth, then, not in falsity, the diabolical power is exorcised in little ones, and they renounce it—because through their own powers they cannot, through the hearts and mouths of those who carry them—so that, rescued from the power of darkness, they may be transferred into the kingdom of their Lord. What, then, is there in them, by which they are held in the power of the devil until they are rescued thence through the sacrament of the baptism of Christ? What is it, except sin? For the devil found nothing else by which he could bind human nature to his own right—that nature which the good Author established good. But little ones have committed no sin of their own in their life. There remains, therefore, original sin, through which they are held captive under the power of the devil, unless they be redeemed thence by the bath of regeneration and the blood of Christ, and pass into the kingdom of their Redeemer, the power of their captor being thwarted, and power being given by which they may become, from children of this age, children of God.

1. 21. 23. Now, then, if in a manner we should question those nuptial goods, whence sin could be propagated through them into little ones, the work of propagating offspring will answer us: I would be happier in paradise, if sin had not been admitted. For to me pertains that blessing of God, Increase and multiply (Gen 1:28). For this good work the different members of the different sex were created, which indeed existed before sin but were not shameful. The faith of chastity will answer: If sin had not been, what could have been more secure for me in paradise, where neither my own lust would goad me nor another's lust tempt me? The sacrament of marriage will also answer: Of me it was said in paradise, before sin, A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24). This great sacrament, the Apostle says, is in Christ and in the Church (Eph 5:32). What, therefore, is great in Christ and in the Church is least in each and every husband and wife, yet a sacrament of inseparable union. Which of these is in marriage, whereby the bond of sin might pass into posterity? Surely none; and certainly the goodness of marriage would hold itself perfectly by these three goods, by which goods marriages are good even now.

1. 22. 24. But further, if that desire of the flesh be questioned, by which those things became shameful that previously had not been shameful, will it not answer that it began to be in the members of the human being after sin? And so it is called, in the words of the Apostle, the law of sin, because it has made the human being subject to itself, since he was unwilling to be subject to his God; and it is that very thing at which the first spouses then blushed, when they covered their shameful parts, and at which all now blush, when they seek out hidden places for intercourse, nor dare to have as witnesses of this work even the children whom they have begotten thereby. Against this natural shame the error of the Cynic philosophers struggled with wondrous shamelessness, since they judged that this act, because it was lawful and honorable, ought to be done openly with one's spouse. Hence deservedly the uncleanness of this shamelessness received a canine name; for from this the Cynics were so named.

1. 23. 25. This desire altogether, this law of sin dwelling in the members, which the law of righteousness forbids us to obey—the Apostle saying, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to obey its desires, nor present your members as weapons of iniquity to sin (Rom 6:12–13)—this desire, I say, which is expiated only by the sacrament of regeneration, surely passes the bond of sin by generation into posterity, unless they too be loosed from it by regeneration. For this desire itself is indeed no longer sin in the regenerate, when there is no consent to it for unlawful works, and the members are not given by the queen mind to perpetrate them, so that, if what is written, You shall not desire (Exod 20:17), is not fulfilled, at least what is read elsewhere may be fulfilled, Go not after your desires (Sir 18:30). But because in a certain manner of speaking it is called sin, both because it was made by sin and because it makes sin if it conquers, its guilt avails in the one generated, which guilt the grace of Christ, through the remission of all sins in the regenerate, does not allow to avail, if he does not obey it as it commands, in a manner, to evil works. But it is called sin in this way, because it was made by sin, although in the regenerate it is no longer itself sin—just as speech is called "tongue," which the tongue makes, and writing is called "hand," which the hand makes. And likewise it is called sin because it makes sin if it conquers—just as cold is called "lazy," not because it is made by the lazy, but because it makes people lazy.

1. 23. 26. This wound inflicted on the human race by the devil compels whatever is born through it to be under the devil, as if he plucked the fruit by right from his own bush—not that human nature is from him, which is only from God, but the defect, which is not from God. For human nature is condemned not on account of itself, which is praiseworthy because it is the work of God, but on account of the damnable defect by which it was vitiated. And on account of that for which it is condemned, on account of this it is also subjugated to the damnable devil, because the devil himself too is an unclean spirit—and certainly "spirit" is good, "unclean" is evil; since by nature he is spirit, by defect he is unclean: of which two the former is from God, the latter from himself. He does not, therefore, hold human beings, whether of greater or of infant age, on account of their being human beings, but on account of their being unclean. Whoever, then, wonders that a creature of God is subject to the devil, let him not wonder; for a creature of God is subject to a creature of God, the lesser to the greater, because the human being to the angel—yet not on account of nature but on account of defect, because the unclean to the unclean. This is his fruit from the ancient stock of uncleanness that he planted in the human being—he himself indeed to suffer greater punishments at the last judgment, the more unclean he is; yet even those for whom there will be a more tolerable lot in that condemnation are subject to him as to the prince and author of sin, because there will be no cause of condemnation except sin.

1. 24. 27. Wherefore the devil holds those born guilty—not from the good whereby marriages are good, but from the evil of desire, which marriages indeed use well, but of which even marriages blush. For although marriages are honorable in all the goods that properly pertain to them, even if they have an unstained bed not only from fornications and adulteries, which are damnable disgraces, but also from those excesses of intercourse which are not done for the cause of offspring with the will ruling, but for the cause of pleasure with lust conquering—which are venial sins in spouses—nevertheless, when it comes to the work of begetting, even that lawful and honorable intercourse cannot take place without the ardor of lust, so that what belongs to reason may be carried out, not what belongs to lust. This ardor surely, whether it follow or precede the will, nevertheless by a sort of command of its own moves the members that cannot be moved by the will; and so it shows itself to be not the servant of one commanding, but the punishment of a disobedient will, to be moved not by free choice but by some enticing goad, and therefore shameful. From this desire of the flesh, which, though in the regenerate it is no longer reckoned as sin, yet does not befall nature except from sin—from this desire of the flesh, I say, as from a daughter of sin and (when there is consent to it for base things) also the mother of many sins, whatever offspring is born is bound by original sin, unless it be reborn in him whom the Virgin conceived without this desire, and who therefore, when he deigned to be born in the flesh, alone was born without sin.

1. 25. 28. But if it is asked how this desire of the flesh remains in the regenerate, in whom the remission of all sins has been made, since through it the carnal offspring is sown and begotten even of a baptized parent—or at any rate, if in a baptized parent it can be present and not be sin, why the very same thing is sin in the offspring—to this it is answered that the desire of the flesh is remitted in baptism, not so that it should not be, but so that it should not be imputed as sin. But although its guilt is now loosed, it nevertheless remains until all our infirmity is healed, as the renewal of the inner man advances from day to day, when the outer man shall have put on incorruption. For it does not remain substantially, like some body or spirit, but it is a certain affection of an evil quality, like a languor. Therefore nothing remains that is not remitted when it comes about, as it is written, The Lord is gracious toward all our iniquities (Ps 103:3 (102:3)); but until what follows also comes about, who heals all your languors, who redeems your life from corruption (Ps 103:3–4 (102:3–4)), carnal desire remains in the body of this death, by whose vicious desires we are bidden not to obey for the perpetrating of unlawful things, lest sin reign in our mortal body. Yet this desire is daily diminished in those who advance and contain themselves, and most of all as old age also comes on. But in those who wickedly serve it, it gains such great strength that often, when the members are now failing with age, and those parts of the body are less able to be applied to that work, it does not cease to rave more basely and more boldly.

1. 26. 29. In those, then, who are regenerated in Christ, when they receive the remission of absolutely all sins, it is certainly necessary that the guilt also of this desire—though it still remains—be remitted, so that, as I said, it not be imputed as sin. For just as of those sins which cannot remain, since they pass away when they are committed, the guilt nevertheless remains and, unless it be remitted, will remain forever, so of that desire, when it is remitted, the guilt is taken away. For this is to have no sin: to be guilty of no sin. For if, for example, anyone has committed adultery, even if he never afterward commits it, he is guilty of adultery until the guilt of it is remitted by pardon. He therefore has sin, although that which he committed no longer is, because it passed away with the time in which it was done. For if to cease from sinning were to have no sins, it would suffice that Scripture admonish us of this, Son, have you sinned? do not do it again (Sir 21:1); but it does not suffice, and so it added, And pray concerning your former sins, that they may be remitted to you (Sir 21:1). They remain, then, unless they be remitted. But how do they remain, if they are past, except because they passed away in act, but remain in guilt? And so, conversely, it can come about that something remains in act, while it passes away in guilt.

1. 27. 30. For the desire of the flesh does something even when there is offered to it neither the heart's assent, where it might reign, nor the members as weapons, as it were, by which what it commands might be fulfilled. But what does it do except those very desires that are evil and base? For if they were good and lawful, the Apostle would not forbid us to obey them, saying, Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to obey its desires (Rom 6:12). For he does not say, To have its desire, but, To obey its desires—so that, since they are greater in some and lesser in others, according as each has advanced in the newness of the inner man, in this we may keep the contest of righteousness and chastity, that we not obey them. Yet we ought to will that those desires not even exist, even if in the body of this death we cannot obtain this. For hence also in another place the same Apostle, speaking as though by the introduction of his own person, instructs us, saying, For it is not what I will that I do, but what I hate, that I do (Rom 7:15)—that is, I desire, because he would not want to do this either, so as to be perfect in every part. But if what I do not will, he says, this I do, I consent to the law that it is good (Rom 7:16), because the law too does not want this, which I too do not want. For it does not want me to desire, that law which says, You shall not desire (Exod 20:17), and I do not want to desire. In this, then, the will of the law and mine consent. But because he did not want to desire and yet desired, but, by no means consenting to that same desire, did not serve it, he added and said, But now it is no longer I that work it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:17).

1. 28. 31. But a man is much deceived who, consenting to the desire of his flesh and resolving to do what it desires and determining upon it, thinks that it must still be said by him, It is not I that work it (Rom 7:17), even if he hates it, because he consents. For both are present together: he himself hates it, because he knows it to be evil, and he himself does it, because he has determined to do it. And if indeed he adds that too which Scripture forbids, saying, Nor present your members as weapons of iniquity to sin (Rom 6:13), so that what he determines to do in his heart he also completes in his body, and therefore says, It is not I that work it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:17)—because, when he determines and does it, it displeases him—he errs so greatly that he does not even recognize himself, when, although he wholly is himself, both in heart determining and in body fulfilling, he still thinks that it is not himself.

1. 29. 31. Whoever, then, says, It is no longer I that work it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:17), speaks truly if he only desires, but not if he determines upon it by the consent of his heart, or even accomplishes it by the ministry of his body.

1. 29. 32. Then the Apostle adds, For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, good; for to will is present to me, but to accomplish the good I do not find (Rom 7:18). This was said for the reason that the good is then accomplished when there are no evil desires, just as evil is then accomplished when evil desires are obeyed. But when they indeed exist, yet are not obeyed, neither is evil accomplished, because they are not obeyed, nor good, because they exist; but in one part good comes about, because there is no consent to the evil desire, and in one part evil remains, because there is still desire. Therefore the Apostle did not say that to do the good was not present to him, but to accomplish it. For he does much good who does what is written, Go not after your desires (Sir 18:30), but he does not accomplish it, because he does not fulfill what is written, You shall not desire (Exod 20:17). For to this end the law said, You shall not desire (Exod 20:17), that, finding ourselves lying in this disease, we might seek the medicine of grace, and that in that precept we might know both whither we ought to strive by advancing in this mortality, and whither it can be attained by us in that most blessed immortality; for unless it were at some time to be accomplished, it would never have been commanded.

1. 30. 33. Then, repeating, so that he may further commend the foregoing sentence, the Apostle says, For I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I will not, this I do. But if I do what I will not, it is no longer I that work it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom 7:19–20). And he goes on, I find, then, a law for me who will to do good; since evil is present to me (Rom 7:21)—that is: I find the law to be good for me who will to do what the law wills; since it is not to the law itself, which says, You shall not desire, but to me that the evil which I do not will is present, because even unwilling I desire. For I delight, he says, in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive under the law of sin which is in my members (Rom 7:22–23). This delight in the law of God according to the inner man comes to us from the great grace of God. For in it our inner man is renewed from day to day (2 Cor 4:16), when in it he advances perseveringly. For it is not fear that tortures, but love that takes pleasure. There we are truly free, where we are not delighted unwillingly.

1. 30. 34. But that which he says, I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind (Rom 7:23), is that very desire of which we speak, the law of sin in the flesh of sin. And what he said, And taking me captive under the law of sin (Rom 7:23)—that is, under itself—which is in my members, either he said taking captive meaning trying to take captive, that is, compelling to consent and fulfill, or rather (which is not in dispute) taking captive according to the flesh, which, unless carnal desire held it—which he calls the law of sin—it certainly would not stir up in it any unlawful desire that the mind ought not to obey. But that he did not say, Taking my flesh captive, but, taking me captive, came about so that another sense here might be sought, and that we might take taking captive as though he had said, Trying to take captive. But why should he not say, taking me captive, where he wished his flesh to be understood? Was it not said of Jesus, when his flesh had not been found in the tomb, They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him (John 20:13)? Surely it was not improperly said because it was not said, the Flesh or the Body of my Lord, but, my Lord?

1. 31. 35. Although a little earlier the Apostle himself made clear enough how he could rightly say of his flesh, Taking me captive (Rom 7:23). For when he had said, For I know that there does not dwell in me (Rom 7:18), expounding this very thing he added and said, that is, in my flesh, good (Rom 7:18). This, then, is taken captive under the law of sin, in which good does not dwell, that is, the flesh. But he now called "flesh" that in which there is a certain diseased affection of the flesh, not the very conformation of the body, whose members are not to be applied as weapons to sin, that is, to that same desire which holds this carnal part of ours captive. For as regards the bodily substance and nature itself, in faithful men, whether married or continent, it is already the temple of God. And yet, if nothing at all of our flesh were held captive—not indeed under the devil, because there too the remission of sin has been made, so that sin is not imputed, which is properly called the law of sin, but under the law of sin itself, that is, under its own desire—unless our flesh were somewhat held captive, how would it be true that the same Apostle says, Awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23)? To this degree, then, the redemption of our body is still awaited, in that it is still in some part captive under the law of sin. Hence too, crying out here, he says, Unhappy 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). Where what are we to understand, except that the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15)? When, therefore, this same body shall be received now incorruptible, there will be full liberation from the body of this death, from which those are not freed who are to rise again for punishment. To the body of this death, then, it is understood to pertain, that another law in the members indeed wars against the law of the mind, while the flesh desires against the spirit (Gal 5:17), even if it does not subjugate the mind, because the spirit too desires against the flesh. And so, although the law of sin itself holds something of the flesh captive, whence it may resist the law of the mind, nevertheless it does not reign in our body, though mortal, if its desires are not obeyed. For even enemies against whom one fights are wont both to be inferior in the contest and, though conquered, to hold something captive; and this, in our flesh, although it be held under the law of sin, is yet in the hope of redemption, because that vicious desire itself will remain in no way at all, but our flesh, healed of that plague and disease and clothed in entire immortality, will remain in eternal blessedness.

1. 31. 36. But the Apostle adds and says, So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25). This is to be understood thus: With the mind I serve the law of God by not consenting to the law of sin; but with the flesh I serve the law of sin by having the desires of sin, which, although I do not consent to them, I do not yet wholly lack. Finally, let us attend to what he inferred after these things. There is therefore now, he says, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). Even now, he says, when the law in the members wars against the law of the mind and holds something captive in the body of this death, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Hear why. For the law of the spirit of life, he says, in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). Freed it how, except that it dissolved its guilt by the remission of all sins, so that, although it still remains and is more and more diminished from day to day, it is nevertheless not imputed as sin?

1. 32. 37. And so, as long as this remission of sins does not take place in the offspring, this law of sin is there in such a way that it is even imputed as sin—that is, so that its guilt too is with it, which holds the offspring a debtor of eternal punishment. For this the parent passes into his carnal offspring: what he himself is as carnally born, not what he is as spiritually reborn; because that very thing whereby he was carnally born, although, its guilt being loosed, it does not impede its fruit, nevertheless lies hidden as in the seed of the olive, even if, on account of the remission of sins, it does no harm to the oil—that is, to that life by which, according to Christ, who is named from oil, that is, from chrism, the just man lives by faith (Rom 1:17). But this, which in the regenerate parent, as in the seed of the olive, is covered over without any guilt, because it has been remitted, is surely held, in the offspring not yet regenerated, as in the wild olive, with guilt, until there too the same grace remits it. For from the time that Adam, from such an olive—in which there was not even seed of the kind from which the bitterness of the wild olive would be born—was turned by sinning into a wild olive (because it was so great a sin, where so great a change of nature for the worse took place), he made the whole human race a wild olive, so that (as we now see in the trees themselves), if the divine grace turns anything thence into an olive, there the defect of the first birth—which was original sin, transmitted and drawn from carnal desire—is remitted, covered over, not imputed; yet from it a wild olive is nonetheless born, unless it too be reborn into an olive by the same grace.

1. 33. 38. Blessed, then, is the olive whose iniquities are remitted and whose sins are covered; blessed, to whom the Lord has not imputed sin (Ps 32:1–2 (31:1–2)). But that which is remitted and covered and not imputed, until the full change into eternal immortality comes about, has a certain hidden power whence a bitter wild olive may be sown, unless there too the same husbandry of God remits, covers, does not impute. But there will be nothing at all vicious even in the carnal seed, when, by the same regeneration which now takes place through the sacred bath, purging and healing all the evils of the human being unto the end, the same flesh, through which the soul was made carnal, shall itself become also spiritual, having no desire of the flesh resisting the law of the mind, sending forth nothing of carnal seed. For thus is to be taken what the same Apostle says, Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water in the word, that he might present to himself the Church glorious, having no spot or wrinkle or anything of the sort (Eph 5:25–27). Thus, I say, this is to be taken, that by the same bath of regeneration and word of sanctification absolutely all the evils of regenerated human beings are cleansed and healed—not only the sins which are all now remitted in baptism, but also those that are afterward contracted through human ignorance or weakness; not so that baptism be repeated as often as one sins, but because by that very baptism which is once given it comes about that not only beforehand but also afterward pardon of any sins whatsoever is obtained for the faithful. For what would penance profit, either before baptism, unless baptism followed, or afterward, unless it went before? In the Lord's Prayer too, which is our daily cleansing, with what fruit, with what effect would it be said, Forgive us our debts (Matt 6:12), unless it were said by those who are baptized? And likewise the generosity and beneficence of almsgiving, however great, to whom in the end would it profit for the remitting of his sins, if he were not baptized? Finally, that very happiness of the kingdom of heaven, where the Church will have no spot or wrinkle or anything of the sort, where there will be nothing of reproach, nothing of pretense, where there will be not only no guilt but not even any desire of sin—whose will it be except the baptized'?

1. 34. 39. And by this not only all sins, but absolutely all the evils of human beings, are taken away by the holiness of the Christian bath, by which Christ cleanses his Church, that he may present her to himself, not in this age but in the age to come, having no spot or wrinkle or anything of the sort. For those who now say that she is such, and yet are in her—since they themselves confess that they have sins—if they speak the truth, then surely, because they are not clean from sins, the Church has in them a spot; but if they speak falsely, because they speak with a double heart, the Church has in them a wrinkle. But if they say that they have these things, not she herself, then let them confess that they are not members of her, nor that they pertain to her body, so that by their own confession too they may be condemned.

1. 35. 40. But concerning this desire of the flesh, which we have taken care to distinguish from the nuptial goods by a lengthy disputation on account of the new heretics, who slander us when this is blamed, as though marriage were being blamed—so that, namely, by praising it as a natural good, they may confirm their pestilential teaching, by which they assert that the offspring which is born through it contracts no original sin—concerning this desire of the flesh, then, the blessed Ambrose, bishop of Milan, by whose priestly ministry I received the bath of regeneration, spoke thus briefly, when, expounding the prophet Isaiah, he introduced the carnal nativity of Christ: "Therefore," he says, "he was both tempted in all things as a man and endured all things in the likeness of men, but, as one born of the Spirit, he abstained from sin; for every man is a liar (Ps 116:11 (115:11)), and no one is without sin except the one God. It is therefore established that from man and woman, that is, through that union of bodies, no one is seen to be free of fault. But he who is free of fault is also free of this kind of conception." Did the holy Ambrose, then, by the truth of this sentence of his, condemn the goodness of marriage, and not rather the vanity of these heretics, though they had not yet appeared at that time? This I thought ought to be recalled, because Pelagius so praises Ambrose as to say: "The blessed bishop Ambrose, in whose books especially the Roman faith shines forth, who among Latin writers stood out as a kind of beautiful flower, whose faith and most pure sense in the Scriptures not even an enemy has dared to blame." Let him therefore repent of what he thought against Ambrose, lest he repent of having so praised Ambrose. You have a book troublesome both by the annoyance of its length and by the difficulty of the question—as troublesome for me to dictate as for you to read—in whatever fragments of time it could or shall be able to find you at leisure. This book, indeed, as far as the Lord has deigned to help me, worked out amid my ecclesiastical cares, I would not thrust upon you amid your public ones, had I not heard from a man of God, who knows you more intimately, that you read so gladly that you even spend some night hours watchfully on reading.

BOOK TWO

2. 1. 1. Amid the cares of your military service and of the illustrious office that you bear according to your merits, and the necessary affairs of the commonwealth, most beloved and honorable son Valerius, it cannot be sufficiently said with what great gladness of mind I am delighted that you burn with such zeal against the heretics for the divine words. And so, after I read the letter of your Highness, in which you give thanks for the book I wrote to you, but admonish me that, through my brother and fellow bishop Alypius, I should hear what the heretics take up from certain passages of that same book for their disputation, I was roused to write this. And because I learned this not only by the account of my brother whom I mentioned, but also read the little papers brought forward by him, which after his departure from Ravenna you yourself took care to send to Rome, where I was able to find the empty talk of our adversaries, I have set out, with the Lord's help, to answer it with as much truth and authority of the divine Scriptures as I can.

2. 2. 2. The paper to which I am now replying is headed with this title: "Chapters from the book of Augustine which he wrote, against which I have culled a few things from the books." Here I see that the man who sent these writings to your Excellence wished to cull them out of I know not what books, for the sake, as I suppose, of a quicker reply, lest he delay your urgency. But when I considered what these books might be, I judged them to be those of which Julian makes mention in the letter he sent to Rome, a copy of which has also reached me. 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 now replied in four little books." I believe that these things were culled from those little books. Hence it might perhaps have been better that my intention should labor to refute and rebut that whole work of his which he set out in four volumes, had I not been unwilling to delay my reply, just as you too did not delay the sending of the writings that must be answered.

2. 2. 3. He set down, then, these words from my book—sent to you by me and most well known to you—which he tried to refute: "They most spitefully cry out 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 intercourse contract original sin, and we do not deny that they, of whatever sort the parents from whom they are born, are still under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ." In these words of mine he passed over the testimony of the Apostle that I inserted, by whose great weight he felt himself pressed. For when I had said that human beings, when born, contract original sin, I at once added what the Apostle says, Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). This testimony, as we said, being passed over, he wove together the rest, which were recalled above. For he knows how the hearts of the catholic faithful are wont to receive these apostolic words that he passed over. These words, so straight and shining with so great a light, the new heretics strive to obscure and deprave with dark and twisted interpretations.

2. 2. 4. Then he appended other words of mine, where I said: "Nor do they notice that the good of marriage cannot be accused on account of the original evil that is contracted from it, just as the evil of adulteries and fornications cannot be excused on account of the natural good that is born from it; for just as sin, whether contracted from this side or that, is the work of the devil, so the human being, whether born from this side or that, is the work of God." Here too he passed over those things in which he feared catholic ears. For, that one might come to these words, it had been said by us above: "Because, then, we say this, which is contained in the most ancient and most firm rule of the catholic faith, these assertors of a novel and perverse teaching, who say that there is no sin in little ones that is washed away by the bath of regeneration, slander us, faithlessly or ignorantly, as though we condemned marriage and as though we said that the work of God, that is, the human being who is born of marriage, is the work of the devil." These words of ours, then, being passed over, there follow those words of ours that he set down, as written above. In these things, then, which he passed over, he feared this, because it summons together all the hearts of the catholic Church and the very faith handed down and founded from antiquity, calling them, as it were, with a clear voice, and most vehemently rousing them against those of whom we said, "Because they say that there is no sin in little ones that is washed away by the bath of regeneration." For all run to the church with their little ones for no other reason than that in them the original sin drawn by the generation of the first nativity may be expiated by the regeneration of the second nativity.

2. 2. 5. Then he returns to our earlier words, which I do not know why he repeats: "But those who are born of such intercourse we say contract original sin, and we do not deny that they, of whatever sort the parents from whom they are born, are still under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ." These words of ours he had already said a little before. Then he adds what we said of Christ: "who was unwilling to be born from that same intercourse of the two sexes." But here too he passed over what I set down: "so 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 from that same intercourse of the two sexes." See, I beg you, how he avoided our words, as one utterly an enemy of the grace of God, which came through Jesus Christ our Lord! For he knows that, by that sentence of the Apostle in 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 impiously separated off. Therefore, without doubt, he chose to pass over these words rather than to set them down.

2. 2. 6. After these things he set down that word of ours where we said: "For this shameful desire, which is shamelessly praised by the shameless, would not exist had the human being not sinned first; but marriage would exist even if no one had sinned, since the sowing of children would take place without this disease." Up to this point he set down my words; for he feared what I added: "in a body of that life, without which it now cannot take place in the body of this death." And here too, so as not to finish my sentence but in a way to lop it off, he dreaded that testimony of the Apostle where he says, Unhappy man that I am, who will free me in 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 account of which we said "in a body of that life" which was there, that "the sowing of children could take place without this disease, without which it now cannot take place in the body of this death." 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 warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members (Rom 7:23). And after these words he cried out, Unhappy 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). In the body of this death, then, such as was in paradise before sin, surely there was not another law in our members warring against the law of our mind, because, both when we do not will and when we do not consent nor present our members to it to fulfill what it craves, it nevertheless dwells in them and solicits the resisting and warring mind, so that the conflict itself, even if it is not damnable—because it does not accomplish iniquity—is yet wretched, because it does not have peace. I have admonished sufficiently, then, that this man wished to propose my words for himself as though to be refuted in such a way that in some places, with the middle taken away, he broke off the sentences, and in some places, with the ends not added, he cut them short; and I have shown sufficiently why he did this.

2. 3. 7. Now let us see, against the things he proposed of ours as he wished, what he set in opposition of his own. For his words now follow, and, as the man who sent you the paper indicated, he first wrote something from the preface—without doubt of those books from which he culled a few things. It runs thus: "The teachers of our time," he says, "most blessed brother, and the authors of the wicked sedition that still seethes, have decreed to arrive, through the ruin of the whole Church, at the insults and destruction of men by whose holy zeal they are burned; not understanding how much honor they have conferred upon 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 being born, he is called a Caelestian and a Pelagian. So then, lest they be called heretics, they become Manicheans, and while they dread a false ill-repute, they incur a true crime—like wild beasts that are surrounded with feathers so that they may be driven into the nets, into which, since they lack reason, they are thrust by an empty dread into true destruction."

2. 3. 8. It is not as you speak, whoever you are who said these things; it is not so; you are much deceived, or you are scheming to deceive. We do not deny free choice, but, If the Son frees you, says the Truth, then you shall be truly free (John 8:36). This liberator you begrudge, you who have assigned an empty liberty to captives. For by whomever one is conquered, as Scripture says, to him he is given over as a slave (2 Pet 2:19); nor is anyone loosed from this bond of slavery except through the grace of the liberator—a bond from which no human being is exempt. For through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). God is, then, the creator of those being born in such a way that all from the one go into condemnation, of whom he, when they are reborn, has not been the liberator. For he himself is called the potter, making from the same lump one vessel for honor according to mercy, another for dishonor according to judgment; to whom the Church sings, Mercy and judgment (Ps 101:1 (100:1)). Not therefore, as you, deceiving yourself and others, say, "If anyone says either that there is free choice in human beings or that God is the creator of those being born, he is called a Caelestian and a Pelagian"—for the catholic faith says these things—but, if anyone says that there is in human beings free choice for rightly worshiping God without his help, and whoever so says that God is the creator of those being born as to deny that he is the redeemer of little ones from the power of the devil, he himself is called a Pelagian and a Caelestian. That there is free choice in human beings, and that God is the creator of those being born, both of us say; not from this are you Caelestians and Pelagians; but that anyone is free to do good without the help of God, and that little ones are not rescued from the power of darkness and so transferred into the kingdom of God—this you say, and from this you are Caelestians and Pelagians. Why do you hold out, to deceive, the covering of a common teaching, that you may cover your own crime, from which the name has been put upon you? And so that you may terrify the inexperienced with a wicked word, you say, "So then, lest they be called heretics, they become Manicheans."

2. 3. 9. Hear, then, briefly what is at issue in this question. Catholics say that human nature, established good by God its good creator but vitiated by sin, needs Christ the physician. The Manicheans say that human nature was not established good by God and vitiated by sin, but that the human being was created by the prince of the eternal darkness from a mingling of two natures that always existed, one good and one evil. The Pelagians and Caelestians say that human nature, established good by the good God, is yet so healthy in little ones who are being born that they do not have need of Christ's medicine at that age. Recognize, then, your own name in your own teaching, and cease to throw against catholics, by whom you are refuted, both a teaching and a name that is not theirs; for the Truth refutes both, both the Manicheans and you. For to the Manicheans he says, Have you not read that he who from the beginning made the human being made them male and female? and he said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined, let no man separate (Matt 19:4–6). Thus indeed he shows God to be both the creator of human beings and the joiner of spouses, against the Manicheans, who deny both of these. But to you he says, The Son of man came to seek and to save what had perished (Luke 19:10). But you, excellent Christians, answer Christ: If you came to seek and save what had perished, you did not come to little ones—they had not perished and were born saved—go to the grown. From your own words we prescribe to you: The healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are sick (Matt 9:12). So it comes about that the Manichean, who says that an evil nature is mingled in the human being, wants at least the good soul to be saved thence by Christ; but you, in little ones, since they are saved in body, contend that there is nothing to be saved by Christ. And by this the Manichean indeed detestably blames human nature, but you cruelly praise it. For whoever believes you, the praiser, will not offer their infants to the Savior. For you who hold such wicked views, what does it profit you not to fear what is done to you, so that you might salutarily fear, and to make yourself a human being and not a beast that is surrounded with feathers so that it may be driven into the nets? It was needful that you hold the truth and, in zeal for it, not fear; but now you so do not fear that, if you did fear, you would escape the malignant nets rather than run into them. Mother Catholic therefore terrifies you, because she fears both for you and, through you, for others; and if, through her children placed in some power, she acts to make you fear, she does this not out of cruelty but out of love. But you, a most brave man, think it cowardly to fear men. Fear God, then, and do not try with such obstinacy to overturn the ancient foundations of the catholic faith. And yet, this spirited spirit of yours—would that at least in this cause it feared men; would, I say, that it were at least frightened by cowardice, that it not perish by audacity!

2. 4. 10. Let us see the rest too that he strings together. But what shall I do? Shall I set forth his points one by one, that I may answer them; or, passing over those that the catholic faith contains, shall I treat and refute only those in which he strays from the path of truth and tries to graft the Pelagian heresy, like poisonous shoots, onto catholic bushes? This indeed is certainly shorter. But I think it must be provided for, lest anyone, having read my book and not all that was said by him, should suppose that I was unwilling to set forth those things on which his points hang and from which, as if consequently, the things are shown to be true which I refute as false. Let it not, then, weary the reader to attend to and consider both things put into this little work of ours, both those that he said and those that I myself answer—all of them.

2. 4. 11. What follows, then, the man who sent your Love the paper headed thus: "Against those," he says, "who condemn marriage and assign its fruits to the devil." Not, therefore, against us, who neither condemn marriage—which we even praise in its own order with due commendation—nor assign its fruits to the devil; for the fruits of marriage are human beings, who are begotten thence in an orderly way, not the sins with which they are born. Nor are human beings under the devil because they are human beings, where there are the fruits of marriage, but because they are sinners, where there is the propagation of vices; for the devil is the author of fault, not of nature.

2. 4. 12. Attend to the rest, by which he supposes himself, with this title prefaced, to be in agreement against us. "God," he says, "who had fashioned Adam from clay, built Eve from a rib, and said, She shall be called Life, because she is the mother of all the living." It is not indeed so written, but what is that to us? For it usually happens that the memory fails in the words, provided the sense is held. Nor did God impose on Eve the name by which she would be called "Life," but her husband did. For thus it is read, And Adam called the name of his wife Life, because she herself is the mother of all the living (Gen 3:20). But perhaps he so understood this, that God is believed to have imposed that name on Eve through Adam, as by a prophecy. For in this, that she is called Life and the mother of the living, there is a great sacrament of the Church, on which it is now too long to discourse and not necessary for the work undertaken. For that too which the Apostle said, This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the Church (Eph 5:32)—Adam himself said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24). Which, nevertheless, the Lord Jesus in the Gospel recalls that God said, because God indeed said through the human being what the human being foretold by prophesying. Look, then, at what follows. "By the first naming," he says, "he showed for what work she was prepared, and said, Increase and multiply and fill the earth." For which of us denies that the woman was prepared for the work of childbearing by the Lord God, the good creator of all goods? To this, see what he adds. "God therefore," he says, "the creator of male and female, formed the members suited to generations and ordained that bodies be begotten from bodies, in whose effecting, nevertheless, the power of his operation intervenes, administering all that is by that power by which he founded it." This too we confess to be catholic, and what he then adds: "If, then," he says, "there is no offspring except through sex, no sex except through the body, no body except through God, who would doubt that fruitfulness is rightly attributed to God?"

2. 4. 13. After these things, which were truly and catholicly said—or rather truly written in the divine Books, but not catholicly said by this man, because they were not said with the intention of a catholic heart—already, on account of the reason he said them, the Pelagian and Caelestian heresy begins to be introduced. For attend to what follows: "But you," he says, "who say, 'Those who are born of whatever sort of parents we do not deny to be still under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ'; show, then, now, what the devil recognizes as his own in the sexes, through which, as you say, he rightly possesses their fruit. The diversity of the sexes? But this is in the bodies, which God made. The intercourse? But it is claimed no less by the privilege of blessing than of institution. For it is the voice of God, A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall be two in one flesh; it is the voice of God, Increase and multiply and fill the earth. Or perhaps fruitfulness itself? But it is the very cause for which marriage was instituted."

2. 5. 14. You see, then, how he questions us, what the devil recognizes as his own in the sexes, through which those are under him who are born of whatever sort of parents, unless they are reborn in Christ—whether we say that the diversity of the sexes pertains to the devil, or the intercourse, or fruitfulness itself. We answer, then: none of these, because the diversity of the sexes pertains to the vessels of those who beget, and the intercourse of the two pertains to the sowing of children, and fruitfulness itself pertains to the blessing of marriage. But all these are from God; yet in all these things he was unwilling to name the desire of the flesh, which is not from the Father but is from the world; of which world the devil is called the prince, who did not find it in the Lord, because the Lord, as a human being, did not come to human beings through it, whence he himself too says, Behold, the prince of this world comes, and in me he finds nothing (John 14:30)—nothing of sin, that is, neither what is drawn by one being born nor what is added by one living. This man was unwilling to name, among all those natural goods that he recalled, that of which even marriages are ashamed, which glory in all those goods. For why is that work of married people withdrawn and hidden even from the eyes of their children, except because they cannot be in the praiseworthy intercourse without shameful lust? At this even those blushed who first covered their shameful parts, which had not previously been shameful, but were rather to be proclaimed and gloried in as works of God. They covered them, then, when they blushed; but they blushed when, after their own disobedience, they felt their members disobedient. At this even this praiser blushed; for he recalled the diversity of the sexes, he recalled the intercourse, he recalled fruitfulness; but to recall that he was ashamed. And no wonder, if it shames those who praise, which we see shames those who beget.

2. 5. 15. But he adds and says, "Through what, then, are those under the devil whom God made?" And he answers himself, as it were from our mouth, "Through sin," he says, "not through nature." Then, reporting his own answer to our reply, "But just as," he says, "there cannot be offspring without the sexes, so neither can there be transgression without the will." So it is indeed, so it is. For thus through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). Through the evil will of that one man all sinned in him, when all were that one man, from whom for that reason individuals contracted original sin. "For you say," he says, "that they are under the devil for this reason, because they are born of the intercourse of the two sexes." I say plainly that they are under the devil on account of transgression; but that they are not free of transgression because they are born of that intercourse which cannot effect even what is honorable without shameful lust. This too the most blessed Ambrose, bishop of the Church of Milan, said, when he said that the carnal nativity of Christ was free of transgression for this reason, because his conception is free of the intercourse of the two sexes; but that no human being is without transgression who has been conceived of that intercourse. For these are his words: "Therefore," he says, "he was both tempted in all things as a man and endured all things in the likeness of men, but, because born of the Spirit, he abstained from sin. For every man is a liar (Ps 116:11 (115:11)), and no one is without sin except the one God. It is therefore established," he says, "that from man and woman, that is, through that intercourse of bodies, no one is seen to be free of transgression. But he who is free of transgression is also free of this kind of conception." Will you dare, O Pelagians and Caelestians, to call even this man a Manichean? as the heretic Jovinian called him, against whose impiety that holy man defended the virginity of holy Mary remaining even after childbirth. If, then, you do not dare to call him a Manichean, why, when in the same cause with the same view we defend the catholic faith, do you call us Manicheans? Or if you boast that even that most faithful man held this view in agreement with the Manicheans, boast, boast, that you may more perfectly fill up the measure of Jovinian; we, with that man of God, patiently endure your curses and revilings. And yet your heresiarch Pelagius so praises the faith and most pure sense in the Scriptures of Ambrose as to say that not even an enemy dared to blame him. Attend, then, to how far you have gone, and at long last restrain yourselves from the daring deeds of Jovinian. For although that man, by praising marriage too much, made it equal to that holy virginity, yet he did not deny that Christ the Savior and the redeemer from the power of the devil was necessary for the fruits of marriage even fresh from the womb; which you deny, and because we resist you for the salvation of those who cannot yet speak for themselves, and for the foundations of the catholic faith, you boast that we are Manicheans. But now let us see what follows.

2. 6. 16. For, questioning again, he says, "Whom, then, do you confess to be the author of little ones? The true God?" I answer: The true God. Then he adds, "But he did not make evil." And again he asks whether we confess the devil to be the author of little ones; and again he answers, "But he did not establish the nature of the human being." Then, as if concluding, he infers, "If the intercourse is evil, then the condition of the bodies too is misshapen, and therefore the bodies too are assigned by you to an evil author." To which I answer: I do not assign the bodies to an evil author, but the transgressions, on account of which it came about that, though in the bodies—that is, in the works of God—the whole was pleasing, there nevertheless befell the male and female what would shame them, so that there was not such an intercourse as could have been in the body of that life, but such as we see, blushing, in the body of this death. "But God," he says, "divided in the sex what he would join in the operation. From him, then, is the intercourse of bodies, from whom is the origin of bodies." We have already answered above that this is from God, but not the transgression, not the disobedience of the members through the desire of the flesh, which is not from the Father. Then he says, "It cannot be, therefore, that there are evil fruits of so many good things, that is, of bodies, sexes, unions, nor that human beings are made by God for this," he says, "that they be held by the devil by lawful right, as you say." It has already been said that they are not held for this reason, because they are human beings, which is a name of nature, of which the devil is not the author, but because they are sinners, which is a name of fault, of which the devil is the author.

2. 7. 17. But among so many names of good things, that is, of bodies, sexes, unions, this man does not name lust or the desire of the flesh. He is silent, because he is ashamed, and—wondrous, if it can be said, shamelessness of shame—what it shames him to name, it does not shame him to praise. Finally, see how he chose rather to signify it by circumlocution than to say it. "But after the man," he says, "by natural appetite knew his wife." See, again he was unwilling to say: By the desire of the flesh he knew his wife, but, "By natural appetite," he says, where we can still understand that very just and honorable will by which he willed to procreate children, not that lust at which this man so blushes that he chooses to speak ambiguously to us rather than to express clearly what he feels. What is "by natural appetite"? Is not both to will to be safe and to will to take up, nourish, and instruct the children themselves a natural appetite, and one of reason, not of lust? But because we know his intention, we therefore think that by these words he wished to signify nothing but the lust of the genital members. Do not these words seem to you to be fig leaves, under which lies hidden something other than what shames? For thus this man sewed for himself the obstacles of this circumlocution, just as those first sewed loincloths. Let him weave together and say: "But after the man by natural appetite knew his wife, the divine Scripture says, Eve conceived and bore a son, and called his name Cain. But let us hear," he says, "what Adam says: I have acquired a man through God. Whence it is established that he is the work of God whom the divine Scripture testifies to have been acquired through God." Who would doubt this? who would deny it, especially a catholic Christian? The human being is the work of God; but the desire of the flesh, without which—if sin had not gone before—the human being would be sown by the genital members obeying a tranquil will, as the other members do, is not from the Father but is from the world (1 John 2:16).

2. 7. 18. But now, I beg you, look a little more attentively at what name he found by which again to cover what he blushes to disclose. "For Adam had begotten him," he says, "by the power of the members, not by the diversity of merits." What he meant by "the diversity of merits," I confess, I do not understand; but by "the power of the members" I believe he wished to say that which it shames him to say plainly. For he chose to say "the power of the members" rather than the desire of the flesh. Plainly, even if he did not think of it, he signified something that seems to pertain to the matter. For what is more powerful than the members of a human being, when they do not serve the will of the human being? Yet, even if they are reined in by temperance or continence, their use is somewhat in the power of the human being, but their movement is not. Adam, then, begot children by this, as this man says, "power of his members," at which, before he begot them, he blushed after sin. But if he had not sinned, he would have begotten them not by the power of the members, but by the obedience of the members. For he himself would be powerful, so as to command them, subject to his will, if he himself, subject to a more powerful one, served him by that same will.

2. 8. 19. "After some things, again the divine Scripture says," he says, "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and called his name Seth, saying: The Lord has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain killed"; then he adds and says, "As a proof of the instituted coitus, the divinity is said to have stirred up the seed itself." This man did not understand what was written; for he supposed it was said for this purpose, The Lord has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel, that God might be believed to have stirred up for him the lust of coitus, by whose movement the seed would be stirred up so that it could be poured into the lap of the woman. He does not know that "He stirred up for me seed" was not said, except as "He gave me a son." Finally, Adam did not say this after his coitus, by which he emitted the seed, but after his wife's childbearing, by which he received a son by God's gift. For what congratulation is there—except perhaps of the lustful, and of those possessing their vessel in the disease of desire, which the Apostle forbids—if the seed is poured out in the final pleasure of coitus, and there does not follow conception or childbirth, where is the true fruit of marriage?

2. 8. 20. Nor would I say this for the reason that anyone besides the supreme and true God is to be thought the creator either of the human seed or of the human being himself from the seed; but this would have come from the human being by the tranquil obedience of the members to the will's command, if sin had not gone before. Nor is the question now about the nature of the human being, but about the defect. For nature has God as its author; but from the defect original sin is contracted. For if the seed itself has no defect, what is it that is written in the book of Wisdom, Not unaware that their generation was wicked and their malice natural, and that their thought could not be changed forever; for their seed was accursed from the beginning (Wis 12:10–11)? Surely of whomever it says these things, it says them of human beings. How, then, is the malice of any human being natural and the seed accursed from the beginning, unless it be referred to that, that through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12)? And of what human being can the evil thought not be changed forever, except because by itself it cannot, but only if divine grace come to its aid? When this does not come to aid, what are human beings except, as the apostle Peter says, like dumb animals naturally born for captivity and destruction (2 Pet 2:12)? Hence in one place the apostle Paul, recalling both—both the wrath of God with which we are born and the grace by which we are freed—says, And we all at one time lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of its affections; and we were by nature children of wrath like the rest; but God, who is rich in mercy, on account of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved (Eph 2:3–5). What, then, is the natural malice of the human being, and the seed accursed from the beginning, and being naturally born for captivity and destruction, and being by nature children of wrath? Was this nature established thus in Adam? Far be it; but because in him it was vitiated, it has thus already run, and runs, through all naturally, so that nothing frees from this perdition except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

2. 9. 21. What, then, is it that this man adds and says of Noah and his sons, that "they were similarly blessed as Adam and Eve, God saying, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and have dominion over it"? To which words of God he adds his own, saying: "This pleasure, then, which you want to seem diabolical, was already had in the spouses mentioned above, which remained as by a good institution, so also by a blessing. For it is not doubted that this intercourse of bodies, whose use had now become customary, was spoken of to Noah and his sons: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth." There is no need to repeat the same things in many words. The matter here is about the defect, by which the good nature was depraved, of which defect the devil is the author; not about the goodness of the nature itself, of which God is the author, who did not withdraw his goodness even from that nature vitiated and depraved, so as to take away from human beings their fruitfulness, vigor of life, health, and the very substance of mind and body, sense and reason, food, nourishment, growth—he who also makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil and rains upon the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45), and whatever good there is in human nature is from the good God even in those human beings who will not be freed from evil.

2. 9. 22. Yet here too this man said "pleasure," because pleasure can also be honorable; he did not say the desire of the flesh or lust, which is shameful; but in what follows he disclosed his bashfulness and could not dissemble it from that which nature itself violently prescribed: "And that," he says, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh." And after these words of God he himself adds his own: "in order to express," he says, "the faithfulness of the works, the prophet came near the danger of shame." O confession utterly open and wrung out by the force of truth! The prophet, then, in order to express the faithfulness of the works, came near the danger of shame, because he said, They shall be two in one flesh, where he wished the intercourse of male and female to be understood. Let the reason be stated why, in expressing the works of God, the prophet came near the danger of shame. Is it then so, that human works ought not to be shameful but plainly gloried in, and that divine works are shameful? Is it then so, that in proclaiming and expressing the works of God the prophet's love or labor is not honored, but his shame is endangered? For what could God have done that should shame his herald to say—and, what is graver, should shame a human being on account of some work that not the human being but God made in the human being—when all craftsmen with as much labor and industry as they can manage act so as not to blush at their works? But surely that shames us which shamed those first human beings, when they covered their shameful parts. That is the punishment of sin, that the wound and trace of sin, that the enticement and tinder of sin, that the law in the members warring against the law of the mind, that disobedience repaid to the disobedient out of ourselves against ourselves by a most just requital. At this we are ashamed, and deservedly ashamed. For if this were not so, what would be more ungrateful, what more irreligious in us, if in our members we were put to confusion not over our defect or our punishment, but over the works of God?

2. 10. 23. This man also says many things in vain about Abraham and Sarah, how by promise they received a son, and at last he names desire, yet does not add "of the flesh," because that is shameful. But in the name of desire there is sometimes occasion to glory, because there is also a desire of the spirit against the flesh, and there is a desire of wisdom. He says, then: "Surely this desire, without which there is no fruitfulness, you have defined as naturally evil; whence, then, is it stirred up in the aged by a heavenly gift? Show now, if you can, that what you see God to confer as a gift pertains to the work of the devil." Thus he says this, as though the desire of the flesh had previously been lacking to them and God had given it to them—which without doubt was present in the body of this death; but fruitfulness was lacking, of which God is the author, and it was given when God willed. But far be it that we should say what he supposed we would say, that Isaac was begotten without the heat of coitus.

2. 11. 24. But let him now say why his soul would perish from his kindred if he were not circumcised on the eighth day—what he himself had sinned, how he had offended God, that he should be punished by so severe a sentence for another's negligence toward him, if there were no original sin. For concerning infants to be circumcised God commanded thus: The male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, his soul shall perish from his kindred, because he has dissolved my covenant (Gen 17:14). Let this man say, if he can, how that boy of eight days dissolved the covenant of God—an innocent infant, as far as concerns him properly—and yet in no way would God or holy Scripture say this falsely. Then, therefore, he dissolved the covenant of God—not this one concerning the commanded circumcision, but that one concerning the prohibition of the tree—when through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). And this was signified to be expiated in him by the circumcision of the eighth day, that is, by the sacrament of the Mediator to come in the flesh; for by the same faith in Christ to come in the flesh and to die for us and to rise again on the third day—which, after the seventh of the sabbath, would be the eighth—the just ancients too were saved. For he was handed over for our transgressions and rose again for our justification (Rom 4:25). For from the time that circumcision was instituted in the people of God, which was then a seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom 4:11), it availed for signifying the purgation, even in little ones, of original and ancient sin, just as baptism too began, from the time it was instituted, to avail for the renewal of the human being—not that before circumcision there was no righteousness of faith; for while he was still in uncircumcision, Abraham himself was justified by faith, the father of the nations who were to follow his faith; but in the earlier times the sacrament of justification by faith was in every way hidden. Yet the same faith in the Mediator made the just ancients safe, the little ones together with the great—not the Old Testament, which begets unto slavery (Gal 4:24), not the law, which was not so given as to be able to give life, but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 7:25); because, just as we believe that Christ has come in the flesh, so they that he would come; as we that he has died, so they that he would die; as we that he has risen again, so they that he would rise again; and both we and they that he will come for the judgment of the dead and the living. Let this man, then, not by ill defending human nature, impede it from salvation, because we are all born under sin and are freed through the one alone who was born without sin.

2. 12. 25. "This intercourse of bodies," he says, "with heat, with pleasure, with seed, made by God, is approved as in its own way praiseworthy, which sometimes even becomes an ample gift of the devout." He said "with heat"; he said "with pleasure"; he said "with seed"; yet he did not dare to say "with lust." Why, except because he blushes to name what he does not blush to praise? But the gift of the devout is the fruitful propagation of children, not the shameful stirring of the members, which a sound nature would not have in begetting children, but which now a vitiated nature has. And by this both the one who is born thence needs to be reborn, that he may be a member of Christ; and the one of whom he is born, if he is already reborn, needs to be freed from that law of sin which is in the body of this death. Since these things are so, how does he add and say, "You must therefore confess that the original sin which you had feigned has perished"? I did not feign original sin, which the catholic faith has believed from antiquity; but you, who deny it, are without doubt a new heretic. But under the devil, by the judgment of God, are all who are generated with sin, if they have not been regenerated in Christ.

2. 13. 26. But because he was speaking of Abraham and Sarah, he added and said: "But if you say, 'The use was vigorous in them and there was no offspring,' I will answer: Whom the creator promised, the creator gave; it is not coitus but the work of God who is born. For he who made the first human being from dust fashions all from seed. As, then, the clay which was taken up was the material, not the author, of the human being, so now that force of pleasure. The producer and mixer of the seeds does not fulfill the role of the operation, but offers to God from the treasures of nature, whence he may deign to work the human being." All these things that he said—except for his saying that the seeds are produced and mixed by pleasure—he would rightly say, if in them he were striving to defend a catholic sense; but because we know what he is contriving to effect from them, surely he says even right things perversely. That point, then—apart from which I do not deny the rest to be true—is not true for this reason, because that pleasure of carnal desire does not produce the seeds, but those that already are in the bodies, established by the true God, by whom the bodies themselves too are established: they are not made by pleasure, but stirred up and emitted with pleasure. But whether the seeds of both sexes are mixed with pleasure in the woman's womb, let women see what they feel in their secret inward parts; it does not befit us to be idly curious even to that point. Yet that lust to be blushed at—whence the members themselves are called shameful—was not in the body of that life which was in paradise before sin, but began to be in the body of this death, disobedience being repaid for disobedience, after sin. Without this lust the work of spouses could be done in the begetting of children, just as many works are done by the obedience of the other members without that ardor of the members, which are moved by the will's command, not stirred by the heat of lust.

2. 13. 27. Attend to the rest: "This too," he says, "the authority of the Apostle confirms; for when the blessed Paul was speaking of the resurrection of the dead, he said, Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive, and below, But God gives it a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body. If, then," he says, "God has assigned to the human seed—which no one prudent or devout denies—its own body, as to all things, whence will you prove that anyone is born guilty? At last, I pray, look at the snares by which the assertion of a natural sin is choked. But come," he says, "I pray, deal more gently with yourself. Believe me, God made you too, but, as must be confessed, a grave error has infected you. For what can be said more profanely than that God either did not make the human being, or, as you say, made him for the devil, or at any rate that the devil fashioned the image of God, that is, the human being?—which is recognized to be no less foolish than impious. Is God then so poor," he says, "so shameless, that he had nothing to give to holy men as a reward except what the devil poured as a defect into the deceived? But do you wish to know that even in those who are not holy God is proved to have bestowed this power of generations? At that time, then, when Abraham, struck with fear of a barbarous nation, called Sarah, who was his wife, his sister, it is related that Abimelech, king of that province, brought her in for use at night. But God, who cared for the honor of the holy woman, coming to Abimelech in dreams, reined in his royal audacity, threatening destruction if he proceeded to violate the marriage. Then Abimelech said, Will you, Lord, destroy an ignorant and just nation? Did they not themselves say that they were joined by kinship? So Abimelech rose in the morning and took a thousand didrachms of silver and sheep and calves and male and female servants and gave them to Abraham, and sent the woman back from him untouched. And Abraham prayed to God for Abimelech; and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maidservants." But why he narrated these things at such length, hear briefly; for in what he went on to add he says: "God," he says, "at Abraham's prayer healed by the power of a secret dispensation that which was withdrawn from the modest parts of the lowly women, because God had closed up every womb from outside in the house of Abimelech. See, then," he says, "whether that ought to be called naturally evil which God, angered, sometimes takes away and, appeased, restores. He himself," he says, "makes both the children of the devout and of the irreligious, since that they become parents pertains to nature, which rejoices in God as its author; but that they are irreligious pertains to the depravity of their pursuits, which befalls each one from free will."

2. 14. 28. To all these things, which he said at such length, we answer that nothing was said by the divine testimonies he inserted about the shameful lust which we say was not in the body of the blessed, when they were naked and were not ashamed (Gen 2:25). For that first saying of the Apostle was said of the seeds of grain, which first die that they may be made alive. This apostolic sentence, indeed—with what purpose I do not know—this man was unwilling to complete; for he recalled it only this far: Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive. But the Apostle adds, unless it dies. But this man, as I suppose, wished what was said of grain to be taken of the human seed by those who read these things and either do not know the holy Scriptures or do not remember them. Finally, he not only cut short that sentence, so as not to add unless it dies, but also passed over what follows, where the Apostle disclosed of what seeds he was speaking. For the Apostle says, And what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of some of the rest (1 Cor 15:36–37). These things being passed over, this man wove together what the Apostle then says, But God gives it a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body (1 Cor 15:38)—as though the Apostle had said of the human being having coitus, Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive, so that we might understand the human seed to be made alive not by the human being sowing children by coitus, but by God. For he had thus said beforehand that "that pleasure does not fulfill the role of the operation, but offers to God from the treasures of nature, whence he may deign to work the human being." And he added the testimony as though the Apostle had said this: Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive—that is, is not made alive by you, but God works the human being from your seed—as though those middle parts which this man passed over were not said by the Apostle, and his sentence ran thus, as though he were speaking of the human seed: Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive, but God gives it a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body. Finally, after these words of the Apostle, he infers his own thus: "If, then," he says, "God has assigned to the human seed—which no one prudent or devout denies—its own body, as to all things," as though the Apostle had spoken in that testimony about the human seed.

2. 14. 29. As to how his intention would be helped by this deceit, when I considered it somewhat more attentively I could find nothing, except that he wished to bring forward the Apostle as a witness, by whom he might prove that God works the human being from human seeds—which we too say. And since no testimony occurred to him, he abused this one fraudulently. Fearing, no doubt, lest perhaps, if it should appear that the Apostle said those things not of human seeds but of grains, we should be admonished hereby whence this bashful namer—and shameless proclaimer—of not religious will but lustful pleasure might be refuted. For from the very seeds which farmers sow in the fields this man can be refuted. For why should we not believe that God could grant in paradise to the blessed human being, regarding his own seed, what we see granted to farmers regarding the seed of wheat—that it should be sown in that way without any shameful lust, the genital members obeying the will's command, just as this is sown without any shameful lust, the farmers' hands obeying the will's command—with a more honorable desire in the parents for begetting children than there is in the plowmen for filling the granaries; and then that the almighty Creator, by an incontaminable presence everywhere and a creative power, from the seeds of human beings, as he willed (which he does even now), should work in the woman, just as from the seeds of grain, as he wills, he works in the earth—blessed mothers conceiving without lustful pleasure, bearing without toilsome groaning—since in that happiness, and in a body not yet of this death but of that life, there would be in women, in receiving the seeds, nothing to shame them, just as there would be nothing in bearing the offspring to give them pain? Whoever does not believe, or does not wish it to be believed, that this could have been granted by the will and kindness of God to human beings dwelling, before all sin, in that happiness of paradise, is not a praiser of fruitfulness to be desired, but a lover of pleasure to be blushed at.

2. 15. 30. Again, the other testimony from the divine Book, which he set down concerning Abimelech and God's willing every womb in his house to be closed, so that his women might not bear, and opened again so that they might bear—what does it pertain to the matter? what has it to do with that shameful lust about which the question now is? Did God take that very thing away from those women and restore it when he willed? But it was a punishment that they could not bear, and a benefit that they could bear after the manner of this corruptible flesh. For God would not confer on the body of this death such a benefit as it would not have except for the body of that life in paradise before sin, namely that conception should come about without itching lust and childbirth without tormenting pain. But why should we not understand that, since indeed Scripture says that every womb was closed from outside, it came about by some pain that the women could not endure coitus—a pain that was inflicted by God's rousing and withdrawn by his pitying? For if lust were to be withdrawn to impede the sowing of offspring, it would have to be withdrawn from the men, not from the women. For a woman could lie with a man by her will, even with the lust by which she would be goaded having ceased, if the man were not lacking in that by which he would be aroused. Unless perhaps, because it is written that Abimelech too was healed, he will say that virile lust was restored to him. But if he had indeed lost it, what need was there for him to be divinely admonished not to have intercourse with Abraham's wife? But it says he was healed, because his house was healed of that plague.

2. 16. 31. Now, then, let us look at those three things, any one of which three, he says, if we should say it, nothing could be said more profanely: "that God either did not make the human being, or made him for the devil, or at any rate that the devil fashioned the image of God, that is, the human being." Of these three, the first and the last he himself confesses, if he be not senseless or too obstinate, are not said by us. The question is about that which he set in the second and middle place, where he is so deceived as to suppose that this is said by us, that God made the human being for the devil—as though, in the human beings whom God creates from human parents, he intended this, took care of this, provided for this by the design of his work, that the devil might have slaves whom he himself cannot make for himself. Far be it that any piety, even a childish one, should suspect this. By his goodness God made human beings, both the first without sin and the rest under sin, for the uses of his profound counsels. For just as, concerning the malice of the devil himself, he knows what he does, and what he does is just and good, although the one of whom he does it is unjust and evil—nor did he therefore refuse to create him because he foreknew that he would be evil—so concerning the whole human race, although no human being is born without the stain of sin, he who is supremely good works good; making some as vessels of mercy, whom grace distinguishes from those who are vessels of wrath, others as vessels of wrath, that he may make known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy (Rom 9:23). Let this man now go and argue against the Apostle, whose sentence this is—nay, against the potter himself, to whom the Apostle forbids replying, saying, O man, who are you to reply to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus? Has not the potter power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor, another for dishonor? (Rom 9:20–21) Does this man, then, deny that the vessels of wrath are under the devil? or that, because they are under the devil, another than he who makes the vessels of mercy makes them? or that he makes them from elsewhere and not from the same lump? Here, then, let him say: Therefore God makes vessels for the devil; as though God did not know how to use them for his just and good works, just as he uses the devil himself.

2. 17. 32. Or does he feed for the devil the children of perdition, the goats of the left hand, and for the devil nourish and clothe them, because he makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil and rains upon the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45)? So, then, he creates the evil in the same way as he feeds and nourishes the evil, because what he bestows on them by creating pertains to the goodness of nature, and what he gives them by feeding and nourishing as growth, he bestows as a good aid not, indeed, to their malice, but to that same good nature which the good God created. For insofar as they are human beings, it is a good of nature, of which God is the author; but insofar as they are born with sin, doomed to perish if they are not reborn, they pertain to the seed accursed from the beginning (Wis 12:11), by the defect of that ancient disobedience. Yet the maker uses even the vessels of wrath well, that he may make known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy (Rom 9:23), lest anyone attribute it to his own merits if, belonging to the same lump, he is freed by grace, but let him who glories glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:31).

2. 18. 33. Departing, with the Pelagians, from this apostolic and catholic faith, most true and most firmly founded, this man does not want those being born to be under the devil, lest the little ones be carried to Christ, to be rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into his kingdom. And so he accuses the Church spread throughout the whole world, in which everywhere all the little infants to be baptized are breathed upon for no other reason than that the prince of the world may be cast out from them—by whom the vessels of wrath are necessarily possessed when they are born of Adam, if they are not reborn in Christ and, made vessels of mercy by grace, transferred into his kingdom. Coming against this most firmly founded truth, so as not to seem to attack the whole Church of Christ, he addresses me alone, as it were, and, rebuking and admonishing me, says, "God made you too, but, as must be confessed, a grave error has infected you." Indeed, that God made me I acknowledge and give thanks—who nevertheless would have perished with the vessels of wrath, had he only made me from Adam and not remade me in Christ. And since, possessed by Pelagian impiety, he does not believe this, if he persists in such great evil to the very end, let catholics—not himself—see what sort and how great an error has not infected but plainly slain him.

2. 19. 34. Attend to what follows: "But that the children received from marriage," he says, "are naturally good, let us learn from the Apostle, who says of the wicked: Leaving the natural use of the woman, they burned in their desires for one another, males with males working baseness. He shows, then," he says, "that the use of the woman is both natural and in its own way praiseworthy; but that disgrace is practiced from one's own will against the modesty of the institution. Deservedly, then," he says, "both in those who use it well the kind and measure of desire is praised, and in the base its excess is punished. Finally, at the same time God invigorated the members of Abraham and Sarah withered by age, by which in Sodom he punished it with a rain of fire. If, then," he says, "you think the vigor of the members must be accused, because through it the Sodomites lost themselves in disgraces, you will also accuse the created things of bread and wine, because the divine Scripture signified that they sinned from these too; for the Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel, But these were the iniquities of Sodom your sister: pride; in fullness of bread and abundance of wine she herself and her children flowed, and they did not aid the hand of the poor and needy. Choose now," he says, "which you prefer: either attribute the intercourse of bodies to the divine work, or define the created things of bread and wine to be similarly evil. But if you do this, you are plainly convicted of being a Manichean. But whoever keeps a measure of natural desire uses a good well; whoever does not keep a measure uses a good badly. What, then, do you say," he says, "'that the good of marriage cannot be accused on account of the original evil that is drawn from it, just as the evil of adulteries cannot be excused on account of the natural good that is born from it'? By these words," he says, "you have conceded what you had denied, you have removed what you had conceded, and you labor at nothing more than to be little understood. Show me marriages of the body without intercourse; or impose some single name on this work, and call marriage either good or evil. You undertook, at any rate, to define marriages as good; if marriage is good, if the human being, the fruit of marriage, is good, if this fruit, the work of God, cannot be evil, who is born through a good thing from a good thing, where, then, is the original evil that has been destroyed by so many prejudices?"

2. 20. 35. To these things I answer that not only the children from marriage but even those from adultery are something good, according to the work of God by which they were created; but according to original sin they are born in condemnation from the first Adam—not only if they are begotten from adultery, but even if from marriage—unless they are regenerated in the second Adam, who is Christ. But what the Apostle says of the wicked, Leaving the natural use of the woman, they burned in their desires for one another, males with males working baseness (Rom 1:27), he did not say "the conjugal use," but wished it to be understood as "the natural," which is done with the members created for this, that through them either sex might be joined for begetting. And by this, when anyone has intercourse even with a harlot using these same members, it is a natural use, yet not praiseworthy but culpable. But if anyone uses even his spouse in that part of the body which was not instituted for begetting, it is against nature and disgraceful. Finally, the same Apostle first said of the women, For their women changed the natural use into that use which is against nature (Rom 1:26), then of the males working baseness with males, the female natural use being left behind. Not, therefore, by this name, that is, "natural use," was conjugal intercourse praised, but baser and more wicked disgraces were marked out than if they had used even women unlawfully, yet naturally.

2. 21. 36. But we do not blame bread and wine on account of the luxurious and the drunken, just as neither gold on account of the covetous and the greedy. Wherefore neither do we blame the honorable intercourse of spouses on account of the shameful lust of bodies. For that intercourse could exist with no preceding perpetration of sin, of which married people would not blush; but this lust arose after sin, which they were compelled, confounded, to veil. Hence it remained to later married people, although they use this evil well and lawfully, to avoid human sight in such a work, and so to confess what is shameful, though no one ought to be ashamed of what is good. Thus these two are conveyed: both the good of the union to be praised, whence children are begotten, and the evil of shameful lust, whence those who are begotten are to be regenerated, lest they be condemned. Accordingly, whoever lawfully has intercourse with shameful lust uses an evil well; but whoever unlawfully, uses an evil badly. For it more rightly takes the name of evil than of good, since both the evil and the good blush at it; and we more rightly believe him who says, I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, good (Rom 7:18), than this man who calls that a good thing of which, if he is confounded, he confesses an evil, but if he is not confounded, he adds shamelessness, a worse evil. Rightly, then, we said: "The good of marriage cannot be accused on account of the original evil that is drawn from it, just as the evil of adulteries cannot be excused on account of the natural good that is born from it"; because human nature, which is born either of marriage or of adultery, is the work of God. If it were evil, it would not be to be generated; if it had no evil, it would not be to be regenerated. And, to conclude both in a single word: human nature, if it were evil, would not be to be created; if there were nothing of evil in it, it would not be to be saved. Whoever, then, says that it is not good, denies the good creator of the thing created; but whoever denies that there is evil in it, begrudges the merciful savior of the thing vitiated. Wherefore, in human beings who are born, neither are adulteries to be excused on account of the good that has there been created by the good creator, nor are marriages to be accused on account of the evil that is there to be healed by the merciful savior.

2. 22. 37. "Show me," he says, "marriages of the body without intercourse." I do not show marriages of the body without intercourse, but neither does he show that same intercourse without confusion. But in paradise, if sin had not gone before, there would indeed not be generation without the intercourse of the two sexes, but there would be intercourse without confusion; for there would be in the coming together a tranquil obedience of the members, not a shameful desire of the flesh. Accordingly, marriage is good, whence in an orderly way the sown human being is born, and the fruit of marriage is good, which is the very human being who is thus born; but sin is evil, with which every human being is born. For God indeed made and makes the human being, but through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12).

2. 23. 38. "By a new manner of discoursing," he says, "you both profess yourself a catholic and patronize the Manichean, by calling marriage both a great good and a great evil." Plainly he does not know what he is saying, or pretends not to know. For either he does not understand or does not want it understood what we say. But if he does not understand, he is impeded by a preoccupation of error; but if he does not want it understood what we say, it is the vice of obstinacy, by which he defends his error. Jovinian too, who a few years ago tried to found a new heresy, said that catholics patronized the Manicheans, because against him they preferred holy virginity to marriage. But this man will answer that he does not, like Jovinian, hold a view of indifference between marriage and virgins. Nor do I say this, that these men hold this view; nevertheless, let the new heretics recognize that it is not new, through Jovinian, for catholics to be charged with being Manicheans. We, then, say that marriage is good, not evil. But just as the Arians charge us with being Sabellians, although we do not say that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one and the same, which the Sabellians say, but say that the nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one and the same, which catholics say: so the Pelagians charge us with being Manicheans, although we do not say that marriage is evil, which the Manicheans say, but say that the evil first befell the first spouses of the first human beings and thence passed upon all human beings, which catholics say. But just as the Arians, while fleeing the Sabellians, fell into something worse, because they dared to distinguish in the Trinity not the persons but the natures, so the Pelagians, while trying to avoid the plague of the Manicheans in a perverse direction, are convicted of holding, concerning the fruit of marriage, views more pernicious than the Manicheans themselves, by believing that little ones do not need Christ the physician.

2. 24. 39. "You define," he says, "that the human being, if he is born of fornication, is not guilty; if of marriage, is not innocent. For it comes to this, that you said the natural good can subsist from adulteries, and the original evil can be drawn even from marriage." He labors wholly in vain, before an intelligent reader, to pervert what is straight. For far be it that we should say that the human being, if he is born of fornication, is not guilty; but we say that the human being, whether he is born of marriage or of fornication, is something good on account of God the author of nature, and draws something evil on account of original sin. What, then, we say, "The natural good can subsist even from adulteries, but the original evil can be drawn even from marriage," does not come to this, to which he tries to lead it, that the one is not born guilty from adulteries nor innocent from marriages, but that from both he is made guilty by generation on account of the original transgression, and both are to be absolved by regeneration on account of the good of nature.

2. 25. 40. "One of these," he says, "is true, the other false." To this I answer with the same brevity: Nay, both are true, neither false. "It is true," he says, "that the human being who is born thence cannot excuse the fault of adulteries, because what the adulterers did pertains to the vice of the will; but what they begot regards the praise of fruitfulness, because, if anyone sows stolen wheat, the harvest is not born liable. I blame, then," he says, "the thief, but I praise the crop. I pronounce innocent the one who is born from the noble quality of the seeds, the Apostle saying, God gives it a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body; but I condemn the disgraceful one, who sinned from the perversity of his purpose."

2. 26. 41. To these things he adds and says: "But plainly, if evil is drawn from marriages, they can be accused, they cannot be excused, and you set their work and fruit in the right of the devil, because every cause of evil is devoid of good. But the human being," he says, "who is born of marriages is imputed not to crimes but to seeds. And the cause of the seeds is in the condition of the bodies, which bodies whoever uses badly wounds the merit, not the kind, of the good. Clearly, then," he says, "it is plain that the good is not the cause of evil. If, then," he says, "the original evil too is drawn from marriages, the conjunction of marriages is the cause of evil, and it must be evil, through which and from which the evil fruit appeared, the Lord saying in the Gospel, By its fruits the tree is known. How," he says, "are you to be thought worthy of a hearing, who say that marriage is good, from which you define that nothing else but evil comes forth? It is established, then, that marriages are guilty, if original sin is drawn from them, and that they cannot be defended unless their fruit is approved as innocent. But they are defended and pronounced good; therefore the fruit is approved as harmless."

2. 26. 42. About to answer these things, I first want the reader to be attentive that these men do nothing except aim at the Savior's not being necessary for little ones, whom they deny to have any sins at all from which they might be saved. This so great perversity, so hostile to the grace of God which was given through Jesus Christ our Lord, who came to seek and to save what had perished (Luke 19:10), strives to insinuate itself into the hearts of those who understand too little, by the praise of the divine works—that is, by praise of human nature, praise of the seed, praise of marriage, praise of the intercourse of the two sexes, praise of fruitfulness—all of which are good. For I will not say: by praise of lust, because he himself is confounded to name it, so as to seem to praise something else, not it. And by this, not distinguishing the evils that have befallen nature from the goodness of nature itself, he does not (because it is false) show it healthy, but does not allow the sick one to be healed. And therefore that which we said, "that the good which is born thence"—that is, "the human being"—"cannot excuse the fault of adulteries," he concedes to be true; and this, about which there is no question between us, he even builds up and confirms, as best he can, by the likeness of a thief sowing stolen wheat, from which indeed a good harvest is born. But that other thing which we said, "The good of marriage cannot be accused on account of the original evil that is drawn from it," he is unwilling to agree to be true; because if he agreed, he would be not a Pelagian heretic but a catholic Christian. "Plainly," he says, "if evil is drawn from marriages, they can be accused, they cannot be excused, and you set their work and fruit in the right of the devil; because every cause of evil is devoid of good." And to this he attaches the rest, to prove that the cause of evil cannot be a good thing, and therefore that marriages, because they are good, are not the cause of evil; and by this, that from them a sinner who has need of a savior cannot be born at all—as though we said that marriages are the cause of sin. Although the human being who is born of them is not born without sin, marriages were instituted for the cause of begetting, not of sinning. On account of which there is that blessing of marriage by the Lord, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth (Gen 1:28). But the sin which is thence drawn by those being born does not pertain to marriage, but to the evil that befell the human beings by whose union marriages exist. For the evil of shameful lust both can exist without marriage, and marriages could exist without it; but it pertains to the condition of the body not of that life but of this death, that now marriages cannot exist without it, although it can exist without them. For without doubt the shameful desire of the flesh exists without marriages, when it commits adulteries and all sorts of debaucheries and unclean things, far contrary to the chastity of marriage, or when it commits none of these, because the human being permits it by no consent, and yet it rises and moves and arouses, and often in sleep reaches the likeness of the act itself and the end of its own motion. This evil, then, is not, even in marriages themselves, the evil of marriages, but they have it ready in the body of this death, even if unwilling, without which they cannot fulfill what they will. It does not, therefore, come to them from their institution, which is blessed, but from that whereby, from one man, sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12).

2. 26. 43. What, then, is it that he says, By its fruits the tree is known, because we read that the Lord said this in the Gospel? Was the Lord speaking of that, and not rather of the two wills of human beings, the good and the evil, calling this the good and that the evil tree; because from a good will good works are born, and evil works from an evil will, and good works cannot come from an evil will nor evil from a good one? But if we set marriage as a good tree, according to that gospel likeness which he recalled, surely, on the contrary, we are going to set fornication as an evil tree. Wherefore, if the human being is said to be the fruit of marriage as a good thing from a good tree, without doubt a human being ought not to be born of fornication; for an evil tree does not produce good fruits (Matt 7:18). Further, if he says that not adultery is to be set in the place of the tree there, but rather human nature, from which the human being is born, then here too the marriage will not be the tree, but human nature, from which the human being is born. Accordingly, that gospel likeness avails nothing for this question, because marriages are not the cause of the sin which is drawn by one being born and expiated in one being reborn, but the voluntary sin of the first human being is the cause of original sin. "You say again," he says, "'for just as sin, whether it is drawn by little ones from this side or that, is the work of the devil, so the human being, whether he is born from this side or that, is the work of God.'" And I said this, and most truly said it; and if he were not a Pelagian but a catholic, he himself too would say nothing else in the Catholic Church.

2. 27. 44. What, then, is it that he asks of us: "Through what is sin found in the little one? Through the will, or through marriage, or through the parents?" For thus he speaks, and as though answering all these and purging, as it were, all these of sin, he wants nothing to remain whence sin may be found in the little one. Finally, attend now to his very words: "Through what, then," he says, "is sin found in the little one? Through the will? There was none in him. Through marriage? But this pertains to the work of the parents, whom you had premised did not sin in this act, but, as far as appears from what follows, you had not truly conceded this. Are they themselves, then, to be execrated," he says, "who made the cause for the evil? But they alone indicate the work of the persons. The parents, therefore, who by their coming together made the cause for the sin, are by right damnable. It can no longer be doubted, then," he says, "if we follow your view, that the spouses are handed over to eternal punishment, by whose labor it was brought about that the devil arrived at exercising dominion over human beings. And where is it that a little before you had called the human being the work of God? Because, if through origin there is evil in human beings, through evil the right of the devil over human beings, you say that the devil is the author of human beings, from whom is the origin of those being born; but if you believe that the human being is made by God and that the spouses are innocent, see how it cannot stand that original sin is drawn from these."

2. 27. 45. To all these things the Apostle answers this man, who neither blames the will of the little one, which is not yet his own in him for sinning, nor marriage, insofar as it is marriage, which has from God not only institution but also blessing, nor the parents, insofar as they are parents lawfully and legitimately joined to each other for procreating children, but, Through one man, he says, sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). If these men perceived this with catholic ears and minds, they would not have spirits 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 it was said for this reason, because Adam sinned first, in whom thereafter whoever wished to sin found an example of sinning—so that sin, namely, passed from that one to all human beings not by generation but by imitation of that one; 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, But they imitate him who are of his party (Wis 2:24–25). But he said through one man, from whom the generation of human beings certainly began, that through generation he might teach that original sin had gone through all.

2. 27. 46. But what else do the following apostolic words also indicate? For when he had said this, he added, For until the law sin was in the world (Rom 5:13)—that is, because not even the law could take away sin. But sin, he says, was not reckoned, when there was no law. It was, then, but it was not reckoned, because what would be reckoned was not shown. As he says elsewhere, Through the law is the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20). But death reigned, he says, from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14)—this is what he had said above, until the law—not that from Moses onward there was no sin, but because not even the law given through Moses could take away the reign of death, which certainly does not reign except through sin. Now its reign is to cast the mortal human being headlong 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 the 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 elsewhere too he says briefly, As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Cor 15:22). As in that one that, so in this one this; it is the same form, but this form is not in every part conformable. Hence the Apostle here went on and added, But not as the transgression, so also the gift; for if by the transgression of the one many died, much more 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, except that all who are freed through Christ die temporally on account of Adam, but on account of Christ himself will live without end? And not, he says, as through one man sinning, so also is the gift. For the judgment indeed was from one unto condemnation, but grace from many transgressions unto justification (Rom 5:16). From one, then, what but transgression? Because there follows, but grace from many transgressions. Let these men say how it is from one transgression unto condemnation, except because even one original sin, which passed upon all human beings, suffices for condemnation? But grace is from many transgressions unto justification for this reason, because it not only looses that one which is drawn from origin, but also the rest, which in each single human being are added by the movement of his own will. For if by the transgression of one death reigned through one, much more shall those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. And so, as through the transgression of one upon all human beings unto condemnation, so also through the justification of one upon all human beings unto justification of life (Rom 5:17–18). Let them still remain in the vanity of their mind and say that the one man did not transmit the propagation, but offered an example of sin. How, then, is it through the transgression of one upon all human beings unto condemnation, and not rather through each one's own many transgressions, except because, even if that one alone exists, it is sufficient to lead to condemnation even with no others added—as it leads little ones who die, who are born of Adam, unless they are reborn in Christ? What, then, does this man ask of us, which he does not want to hear from the Apostle, through what sin may be found in the little one—whether through the will, or through marriage, or through the parents? See, let him hear through what, let him hear and be silent, through what sin may be found in the little one: Through the transgression of one, says the Apostle, upon all human beings unto condemnation. But he said all unto condemnation through Adam, and all unto justification through Christ, although Christ certainly does not transfer to life all those who die in Adam. But he said all and all, because, just as without Adam no one comes to death, so without Christ no one comes to life; as we say of a teacher of letters, if he is the only one in a city: This man teaches everyone here letters—not because everyone learns, but because no one except from him. Finally, those whom he had called all, he afterward called many, signifying the same ones nevertheless as both all and many: For as, he says, through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many shall be made righteous (Rom 5:19).

2. 27. 47. Let him still ask through what sin may be found in the little one. Let the holy Pages answer him: Through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all human beings, in whom all sinned. By the transgression of one many died; the judgment was from one unto condemnation. By the transgression of one death reigned through one. Through the transgression of one upon all human beings unto condemnation. Through the disobedience of one many were made sinners (See Rom 5:12–19). See through what the transgression is found in the little one! Now let him believe original sin, let him allow the little ones to come to Christ, that they may be saved.

2. 28. 47. What is it that he says: "This one who is born does not sin, that one who begot does not sin, this one who created does not sin; through what cracks, amid so many guards of innocence, do you feign that sin entered?" Why does he seek a hidden crack, when he has a most open door? Through one man, says the Apostle; through the transgression of one, says the Apostle; through the disobedience of one man, says the Apostle. What more does he seek? what more open does he seek? what more impressed upon him does he seek?

2. 28. 48. "If sin," he says, "is from the will, the will that makes the sin is evil; if from nature, the nature is evil." I answer quickly: Sin is from the will. He asks, perhaps, whether original sin too. I answer: Plainly original sin too, because this too was sown from the will of the first human being, so that it might both be in him and pass to all. But as for what he went on to add, "If from nature, the nature is evil," I ask of him that he answer, if he can, this: just as it is manifest that from an evil will, as from an evil tree, its fruits become all evil works, so whence does he say that the evil will itself arose—that is, the evil tree itself of the evil fruits? If from an angel, what was the angel himself but a good work of God? If from a human being, what was the human being himself but a good work of God? Nay, because the evil will of the angel arose from the angel, and that of the human being from the human being; what were these two, before these evils arose in them, but a good work of God and a good and praiseworthy nature? See, then, from a good thing evil arises, nor was there at all anything whence it could arise except from a good thing—I mean the evil will itself, which no evil preceded; not the evil works, which are only from an evil will, as from an evil tree. Nor yet was the evil will able to arise from a good thing for the reason that the good was made by the good God, but because it was made from nothing, not from God. What, then, is it that he says: "If nature is the work of God, the work of the devil is not permitted to pass through the work of God"? Did not the work of the devil, when it first arose in the angel who became the devil, arise in a work of God? Wherefore, if evil, which was nowhere at all, could arise in a work of God, why could evil, which already was somewhere, not pass through a work of God—especially since the Apostle uses this very word, saying, And so it passed upon all human beings (Rom 5:12)? Are not human beings the work of God? Sin, then, passed through human beings, that is, the work of the devil through the work of God; and, to say the same thing in another way, because the work of the devil, that is, sin arising through the devil himself—since he is the making or work of God—passed through another work of God, that is, the human being: the work of the work of God through the work of God. And therefore God alone is unchangeable and of a most powerful goodness, because both, before there was any evil, he made all his works good, and, out of the evils that arose in the good things made by him, he works good through all things.

2. 29. 49. "In the one human being," he says, "the intention is by right blamed and the origin praised, because there are two things that are applied to contraries; but in the little one there is one thing, nature only, because there is no will. That one thing, then," he says, "will be ascribed either to God or to the demon. If nature," he says, "is through God, there cannot be original evil in it; if from the devil, there will be nothing through which the human being is vindicated to the divine work. He is therefore perfectly a Manichean who defends an original evil." Let him rather hear, against these things, what is true. In the one human being the intention is by right blamed and the nature praised, because there are two things that are applied to contraries; but even in the little one there is not one thing only, that is, the nature in which the human being was created by the good God; for it has also a defect, which passed through one upon all human beings, as the Apostle is wise, not as Pelagius or Caelestius or any disciple of theirs is foolish. Of these two, then, which we have said are in the little one, one is ascribed to God, the other to the devil. And that both, on account of one of them—that is, on account of the defect—are subjected to the power of the devil, is for that reason not incongruous, because it comes about not by the power of the devil himself but by that of God; and the defect is subjected to the defect, the nature to the nature; for in the devil too both are present, so that, when the beloved and the elect are rescued from the power of darkness, to which they are by right subjected, it may appear what is bestowed on the justified by the good God, working well even out of evils.

2. 29. 50. But as for what this man seemed to himself to say as if religiously, "If nature is through God, there cannot be original evil in it," does not another seem to himself to say more religiously: If nature is through God, no evil can arise in it? And yet it is false; for this the Manicheans wished to assert, and they tried to fill with all evils not a creature of God made from nothing, but the very nature of God. For evil arose only in a good thing—yet not in the supreme and unchangeable good, which is the nature of God, but in one made from nothing through the wisdom of God. There is, therefore, something through which the human being is vindicated to the divine work, because the human being would not exist unless he were created by the divine work. But evil would not be in little ones unless sin had been committed by the will of the first human being, and original sin had been drawn from the vitiated origin. Not, then, as this man says, "He is perfectly a Manichean who defends an original evil," but perfectly a Pelagian who does not believe an original evil. For neither did little ones to be baptized begin to be exorcised and breathed upon in the Church of God from the time that the pestilential doctrine of Mani began to be—so that by these very mysteries it might be shown that they are not transferred into the kingdom of Christ except when rescued from the power of darkness; nor is it read in the books of Mani that the Son of man came to seek and to save what had perished (Luke 19:10); or that through one man sin entered into this world (Rom 5:12), and the rest pertaining to the same sentence which we recalled above; or that God repays the sins of the fathers upon the children (See Exod 20:5); or what is written in the Psalms, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb (Ps 51:5 (50:7)); or, The human being has become like vanity, his days pass like a shadow (Ps 144:4 (143:4)); or, Behold, you have made my days old, and my substance is as nothing before you; yet all is vanity, every living human being (Ps 39:5–6 (38:6–7)); or what the Apostle says, Every creature is subjected to vanity (Rom 8:20); or in the book of Ecclesiastes, Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. What abundance is there for the human being in all his labor at which he labors under the sun? (Eccl 1:2–3); or in the book of Ecclesiasticus, A heavy yoke is upon the children of Adam, from the day of their coming out of the womb of their mother until the day of their burial into the mother of all (Sir 40:1); or what the Apostle says, In Adam all die (1 Cor 15:22); or what holy Job says, where he speaks of his sins, For the human being born of a woman is of short life and full of wrath, like the flower of grass he falls, but flees like a shadow and will not stand. And have you not made account of him too, and made him enter into judgment in your sight? For who will be clean from filth? Not even one, even if his life upon the earth be of one day (Job 14:1–5). For what filth he meant—because he wished sins to be understood—the very reading indicates, where it plainly appears of what he speaks. Hence is also that passage in the prophet Zechariah, where the filthy garment is taken away from the priest and it is said to him, Behold, I have taken away your sins (Zech 3:4). I think that all these things, and the rest of this kind, which indicate that every human being is born under sin and curse, are read not in the darkness of the Manicheans but in the light of the catholics.

2. 29. 51. But what shall I say of the very expounders of the divine Scriptures, who flourished in the catholic Church, how they did not try to turn these things into other senses, since they were stable in the most ancient and most robust faith and were not moved by a novel error? If I should wish to gather them and to use their testimonies, it would be both too long, and, regarding the canonical authorities, from which we ought not to be turned away, I would perhaps seem to have presumed less than I ought. Yet, to pass over the most blessed Ambrose, to whom Pelagius, as I have already recalled, gave so great a testimony of integrity in the faith—which Ambrose nevertheless defended nothing else in little ones, that they might have Christ as a necessary physician, except original sin—will it be said by anyone that even Cyprian, of most glorious crown, was, or could even have been, a Manichean, since he suffered before that plague appeared in the Roman world? And yet in the book On the Baptism of Little Ones he so defends original sin as to say that for this reason a little one ought, if need be, to be baptized even before the eighth day, lest its soul perish. Whom he wishes to be understood as coming the more easily to the indulgence of baptism, since the more there are remitted to it not its own but another's sins. Let this man dare to call these men Manicheans, and let him sprinkle with this wicked charge the most ancient tradition of the Church, by which, as I said, little ones are exorcised and breathed upon, that, rescued from the power of darkness, that is, of the devil and his angels, they may be transferred into the kingdom of Christ (See Col 1:13). But we are more ready, with these men and with the Church of Christ established in the antiquity of this faith, to endure any curses and insults whatever, than to be praised with the Pelagians by the proclamation of any eloquence whatever.

2. 30. 52. "You say again," he says, "'There would be no desire unless the human being had first sinned, but there would be marriage even if no one had sinned'"; I did not say: There would be no desire; because there is also a spiritual desire to be gloried in, by which wisdom is desired; but I said: "There would be no shameful desire." Let my words be reread, which he himself also set down, that it may appear with how great a fraud they are recalled. But let him call it by whatever name he wishes. I said that that would not exist unless the human being had first sinned, at which they blushed in paradise who covered their shameful parts—which no one denies followed afterward because the sin of disobedience had gone before. But whoever wishes to understand what they felt ought to consider what they covered. For they made for themselves from fig leaves loincloths, not garments—what in Greek are called "loincloths." But what the perizomata cover is known to all, which some Latins have interpreted as "campestria." And who is ignorant what parts of the body those cover who wear the campestria? For the Roman young men covered these when they exercised naked in the field (campus), whence this kind of covering received such a name.

2. 31. 53. "Those marriages, then," he says, "which could have been, as you say, without desire, without movement of the bodies, without necessity of the sexes, are pronounced praiseworthy by you; but these marriages which are now contracted you define as invented by the devil. Those, then," he says, "which you dream could have been instituted, you judge good; but these, of which the divine Scripture says, A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh, you profess to be evil and diabolical, and that they ought to be called, in the end, a disease, not a marriage." It is no wonder if the Pelagians try to twist our words into the senses they wish, when they are accustomed to do this even with the holy Scriptures—not where something is said obscurely, but where the testimonies are clear and open—after the manner indeed of the other heretics too. For who would say that marriages could have been without movement of the bodies, without necessity of the sexes? For God made the sexes, because he made them male and female (Gen 1:27), as it is written. And whence could it come about that those who were to be joined, and by that very joining were to beget, should not move their bodies, since there comes about no bodily approach of one human being to another if the movement of the body be lacking? The question here, then, is not about the movement of the bodies, without which they could not be united at all, but about the shameful movement of the genitals, which surely would not exist, and yet the seed-sowing intercourse would not be lacking, if the genitals served not lust but the will, like the other members. Is it not, even now, in the body of this death, commanded to the foot, the arm, the finger, the lip, the tongue, and are they not at our command immediately put forth? Finally, to the fluid—which is more wondrous—placed within in the bladder, which, even when we are not pressed by an abundance of it, is commanded to flow forth and obeys? Nay, the very hidden inner parts and sinews by which that same fluid is contained are commanded to drive it, press it out, eject it, and, if health is present, they serve the will without difficulty. How much more easily and tranquilly, then, would both the member itself be put forth and the human being be sown, the genital parts of the body obeying, if to those disobedient human beings the disobedience of these members had not been repaid as a just punishment? This punishment the chaste feel, who without doubt would prefer, if they could, to sow children by the command of the will rather than by itching pleasure. But the unclean, who on account of this disease love not only harlots but even their spouses, exult in this punishment of the flesh by a graver punishment of the mind.

2. 32. 54. Far be it, then, that we should say what this man feigns that we say, "These marriages which are now contracted were invented by the devil"; they are plainly the very marriages which God instituted from the beginning. For this good of his, instituted for the generation of human beings, he did not withdraw even from condemned human beings, from whom he did not withdraw even the senses of the flesh and the members—without doubt his own gifts—although now doomed to die by the debt of condemnation. These, I say, are the marriages of which it was said (apart from that which here was figured, namely that great sacrament of Christ and the Church), For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24). For this was said before sin, and, if no one had sinned, it could have come about without shameful lust. And now, although it does not come about without it in the body of this death, that is nevertheless the very thing which does not cease to come about, that a human being should cleave to his wife and they should be two in one flesh. Wherefore, although it is now said that some marriages exist, but that others could have existed if no one had sinned, it is said not according to their nature but according to a certain quality changed for the worse. Just as a person is said to be another, although he is the same human being, who has changed his life either for the better or for the worse—for one thing is a just man, another a sinner, although he is the same human being—so some marriages are without shameful lust, others with shameful lust; while nevertheless, according to their constitution, by which the woman is lawfully joined to the man, and the faith of the carnal debt is kept free of the sin of adulteries, and children are sown in this lawful manner, they are the very same marriages which God instituted, although the devil has wounded—not them, but the human beings of whom marriages are made—by the ancient persuasion of sin, persuading the sin of disobedience, to which, by the divine judgment, a reciprocal disobedience of the members was repaid, in which married people, although they have blushed at their nakedness, could nevertheless not by any means lose the goodness of marriage instituted by God.

2. 33. 55. Hence this man passes from those who are joined to those who are begotten, on whose account in this question we labor with such great disputations against the new heretics; and, compelled by a hidden prompting of God, he says something in which he dissolves this whole knot by his own confession. For wishing to stir up greater odium against us, because we say that even from lawful marriages little ones are born under sin: "Those, then," he says, "who were never born you say could have been good, but these, who have filled the world, for whom Christ died, you define to be the work of the devil and born of a disease and guilty from the very outset. I have proved, then," he says, "that you do nothing else than deny God to be the creator of these human beings who exist." I indeed call no one but God the creator of all human beings, although all are born under sin and perish unless they are reborn. For the defect was sown in by the persuasion of the devil, through which they were born under sin—not the nature established, by which they are human beings. But let shameful lust not move the members except when we will, and it is not a disease; let even the lawful and honorable intercourse of married people not blush at it, by avoiding sight and seeking privacy, and it is not a disease; let the Apostle not forbid wives to be possessed in this disease, and it is not a disease. For what the Greek has, some have interpreted into Latin: "in the disease of desire," or "of concupiscence," and others, "in the passion of concupiscence," or however else it is found in various manuscripts; but "passion" in the Latin tongue, especially by the usage of ecclesiastical speech, is not customarily understood as a reproach.

2. 33. 56. But whatever this man feels about the shameful desire of the flesh, regarding the little ones for whom we labor, that they may be believed to need a savior, lest they die without salvation, attend to what he has said. I repeat his words: "Those, then," he says, "who were never born you say could have been good, but these, who have filled the world, for whom Christ died, you define to be the work of the devil and born of a disease and guilty from the very outset." Oh, if only he would loose the knot of contention as well, as he looses the knot of this question! For will he say that he was now speaking these things of the grown? The matter is about little ones, about those being born—about these to us, because they are defined by us as guilty from the very outset, odium is stirred up by him, because we say that they are guilty for whom Christ died. Why, then, did Christ die for them, if they are not guilty? Thence, plainly, thence we shall win the cause, whence he thought to rouse odium. He himself says: "How are the little ones guilty for whom Christ died?" We answer: Nay, how are the little ones not guilty for whom Christ died? Let this controversy seek a judge. Let Christ, then, judge, and let him say for whose guilt his death has profited. This is, he says, my blood, which shall be poured out for many unto the remission of sins (Matt 26:28). Let the Apostle judge with him too, because in the Apostle too Christ himself speaks. He cries out and says of God the Father, that he did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all (Rom 8:32). I think that he says Christ was handed over for us all in such a way that, in this cause, the little ones are not separated from us. But what need is there to busy oneself about this, about which not even this man now contends, since he not only confesses that Christ died even for little ones, but even reproaches us with this, that we call those same little ones guilty for whom Christ died? Now, then, let the Apostle, who said that Christ was handed over for us all, say also why Christ was handed over for us. He was handed over, he says, for our transgressions, and rose again for our justification (Rom 4:25). If, then, as this man both confesses and professes and says and objects, among those for whom Christ was handed over are also the little ones, and Christ was handed over for our transgressions, the little ones too surely have original transgressions for which Christ was handed over; he has what to heal in them who, as he himself says, The healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are sick (Matt 9:12); he has why he should save them who came into the world, as the apostle Paul says, to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15); he has what to remit in them who testifies that he poured out his blood unto the remission of sins (Matt 26:28); he has why he should seek them who came, as he says, to seek and to save what had perished (Luke 19:10); he has what to loose in them, the Son of God who came for this, as the apostle John says, that he might loose the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). He, then, is an enemy to this salvation of the little ones who so asserts their innocence as to deny the necessary medicine to those wounded and hurt.

2. 34. 57. Now attend to what follows and what he adds. "If before sin," he says, "that whence human beings would be born was created through God, but that whence the parents would be moved through the devil, then without doubt holiness will be ascribed to those being born and fault to those begetting. And because this most manifestly condemns marriage, remove this sense, I pray, from the midst of the churches, and truly believe that through Jesus Christ all things were made and without him nothing was made." Thus he says this, as though we said that some substance was created in human beings through the devil. The devil persuaded an evil as sin; he did not create it as a nature. But plainly he persuaded the nature, because the human being is a nature, and therefore by persuading he vitiated it. For he who wounds does not create the members but harasses them. But wounds that are inflicted on bodies make the members limp or move with difficulty, not that virtue by which the human being is just; but the wound which is called sin wounds the very life by which one was living rightly. And this the devil then inflicted much greater and deeper than are those sins known to human beings. Hence, by that great sin of the first human being, our nature, there changed for the worse, was not only made a sinner but even begot sinners. And yet that very languor, by which the virtue of living well perished, is certainly not a nature but a defect—just as surely bad health in the body is not any substance or nature, but a defect; and although not always, yet very often, bad states of health of the parents are in a manner engendered and appear in the bodies of the children.

2. 34. 58. But this sin, which changed the human being himself for the worse in paradise—because it is much greater than we can judge—is drawn by everyone being born and is not remitted except in one being reborn, so that even from parents already reborn, in whom it has been remitted and covered, it is drawn into the guilt of the children being born, unless the second, spiritual birth absolve those whom the first, carnal nativity bound; of which wondrous thing the Creator produced a wondrous example in the olive and the wild olive, where not only from the seed of the wild olive but even from the seed of the olive nothing but a wild olive arises. Wherefore, although even in human beings generated by nature, regenerated by grace, there is this carnal desire warring against the law of the mind, nevertheless, because it has been remitted in the remission of sins, it is no longer reckoned to them as sin nor does it do any harm, unless there is consent to its movements toward unlawful things. But their offspring, because it is sown not through spiritual but through carnal desire, draws thence in being born—like a certain wild olive of our kind from that olive—such guilt that it cannot be freed from that plague except by being reborn. How, then, does this man affirm that we ascribe holiness to those being born and fault to those begetting, when rather the truth shows that, even if there be holiness in those begetting, the original fault is in those being born, which is not abolished except in those being reborn?

2. 35. 59. Since these things are so, about this desire of the flesh and about the lust that is imperious to the unchaste, to be tamed by the chaste, yet shameful to chaste and unchaste alike, let this man feel whatever he wishes, since, as I see, it much pleases him; let him not hesitate to praise what he is confounded to name; let him call it, as he has called it, the vigor of the members, and not stand in awe of the horror even of chaste ears; let him call it the power of the members, and not beware of shamelessness; let him say, if he does not blush, that in paradise, if no one had sinned, this vigor could there have flourished like a flower, and that there would have been no need for it to be covered, since it would be so moved that no one would be confounded thereby, but, with a spouse at the ready, it would always be exercised, never repressed, lest at any time so great a pleasure should be denied to so great a happiness. For far be it that that blessedness could either, in that place, not have what it willed, or, in its own body or mind, feel what it did not will; and by this, if the movement of lust anticipated the will of the human beings, the will would immediately follow; the wife, who on this account ought never to be absent, whether about to conceive or already pregnant, would at once be brought near, and either offspring would be sown or a natural and praiseworthy pleasure fulfilled; and the human seed would perish, lest the appetite of so good a desire be defrauded—only that the spouses would not turn themselves to that use which is against nature, but as often as it gave delight, they would use the members created for this and the genitals. But yet, what if even that use against nature should perhaps give delight—what if even to this pleasure that praiseworthy lust should whinny? would they follow it, because it was sweet, or resist it, because it was base? If they would follow it, where is the consideration of any honorableness whatsoever? If they would resist it, where is the peace of so great a happiness? Hence, if perhaps he blushes and says that the peace of that happiness, and the order in these things, could have been so great that the desire of the flesh would never anticipate the will of those human beings, but, when they themselves willed, then it would rise up, and they would then will it when there were need to sow children—so that no casting of seed would be in vain, no intercourse would occur that was not followed by conception and childbirth, the flesh serving at command, lust serving at command: if he says this, let him at least consider that now in human beings it is not as he says. And if he is unwilling to concede that lust is a defect, let him say at least that, through the disobedience of those human beings, the desire of the flesh itself too was vitiated, so that what would be moved obediently and in an orderly way is now moved disobediently and in a disordered way, in such wise that even to the chaste married it does not obey at command, but is moved both when it is not necessary, and, when it is necessary, sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly, follows their command but exerts its own movements. This disobedience of it, then, those disobedient human beings then received and transfused into us by propagation. For surely it was moved not at their command but in a disordered way, when they covered the members—first to be gloried in, then already shameful.

2. 35. 60. But, as I said, let this man feel about this lust whatever he wishes, let him proclaim it as he wishes, let him praise it as much as he wishes (for, as he has signified in many places, much pleases him), so that, if not by its uses, at least by its praises the Pelagians may be delighted—whoever of them, by a purpose of continence, do not enjoy the flesh of spouses—only let him spare the little ones, so as not to praise them uselessly and defend them cruelly, not to say that they are safe, but to allow them to come not to Pelagius the praiser but to Christ the savior. For—that this book may now be closed, since the discourse of the one who is written in the paper you sent was so ended that he said, "Truly believe that through Jesus all things were made, and without him nothing was made"—let him grant that Jesus is Jesus even for the little ones, and, as he confesses that all things were made through him by that whereby he is the Word, God, so let him confess also that the little ones are made safe by him through that whereby he is Jesus, if he wishes to be a catholic Christian. For thus it is written in the Gospel: And they shall call his name Jesus; for he himself shall save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21). Therefore Jesus, since in Latin "Jesus" is "Savior." For he himself shall save his people—in which people are surely the little ones too—shall save them indeed from their sins. There are, then, even in little ones original sins, on account of which Jesus, that is, the Savior, can be theirs too.