Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 12 part 3/10

That this is true we do not surmise by human conjecture, but recognize by the most evident authority of the divine Scriptures. We read in the books of Paralipomenon: 'And indeed in Judah the hand of the Lord was at work, to give them one heart, that they might carry out the command of the king and of the princes according to the word of the Lord.' Likewise through the prophet Ezekiel the Lord says: 'I will give them another heart, and a new spirit I will give them; and I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my precepts and keep my ordinances and do them.' And what is it that Queen Esther prays, saying: 'Give a well-ordered speech in my mouth, and make my words clear in the sight of the lion, and turn his heart to the hatred of him who assails us'?

To what purpose does she say these things to God in prayer, if God does not work the will in the hearts of men? But perhaps this woman prayed foolishly. Let us see, then, whether the affection of the one praying was sent up in vain and whether the effect of the One who hears did not follow. Behold, she enters in to the king — to be brief — and because she was entering out of her turn, compelled by great necessity, he looked upon her, as it is written, like a bull in the onrush of his indignation. And the queen was afraid, and her colour changed with faintness, and she leaned upon the head of her delicate maid who went before her. And God turned and transferred his indignation into gentleness.

What need is there now to recall what follows, where the divine Scripture testifies that God fulfilled what she had asked, working in the king's heart what else but the will by which he commanded, and that was done which the queen had requested of him? This God had already heard, so that it might come to pass, He who, before He had heard the words of the woman making her request, by a most hidden and most effective power turned and transferred the king's heart from indignation to gentleness — that is, from the will to harm to the will to favour — according to that word of the Apostle: 'It is God who works in you both to will.' Did the men of God who wrote these things — nay rather, the very Spirit of God, by whose authorship these things were composed through them — assail the free will of man?

By no means; but it commended both the most just judgment and the most merciful help of the Almighty in all things. For it is enough for man to know that there is no unrighteousness with God. But as to how He dispenses these things, making some vessels of wrath according to desert, others vessels of mercy according to grace — 'who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor?' If, then, we belong to the honour of grace, let us not be ungrateful by attributing to ourselves what we have received. For what have we that we have not received? 'We say,' he says, 'that the saints of the Old Testament passed over hence to eternal life by a perfected righteousness, that is, that by zeal for virtue they withdrew from all sins; for even those whom we read to have sinned in some respect, we afterward learn to have amended themselves.'

However great the virtue he may proclaim the ancient righteous to have had, nothing saved them save the faith of the Mediator, who shed His blood for the remission of sins. For theirs is the voice: 'I believed, therefore have I spoken.' Whence the Apostle Paul also says: 'Having the same spirit of faith, according to that which is written, I believed, therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore we also speak.' What is 'the same spirit' but the one which those righteous men also had, who said these things? The Apostle Peter also says: 'Why do you wish to lay upon the Gentiles a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? But by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we believe we shall be saved, even as they.' This you do not want.

Being enemies of this grace, unwilling that the ancients should be believed to have been saved by the same grace of Jesus Christ, you divide up the ages according to Pelagius — in whose books this is read — and you say that before the law men were saved by nature, then through the law, and lastly through Christ, as though for the men of the two earlier ages, namely before the law and under the law, the blood of Christ was not necessary — thus voiding what is said: 'For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.' 'We confess,' he says, 'that the grace of Christ is necessary for all, both the elder and the little ones; and those who say that a child born of two baptized persons ought not to be baptized, we anathematize.'

We know how it is that you say these things not according to the Apostle Paul, but according to the heretic Pelagius — namely, that baptism is necessary for little ones not for the remission of sins, but only for the kingdom of heaven. For you assign to them, outside the kingdom of God, a place of salvation and eternal life, even if they have not been baptized, and you do not attend to what is written: 'He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be condemned.' Wherefore in the Church of the Saviour the little ones believe through others, just as from others they have contracted those sins which are remitted to them in baptism. Nor do you consider that they cannot have life who are without part in the body and blood of Christ, He Himself saying:

'Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life in you.' Or if by the words of the Gospel you are compelled to confess that little ones departing from the body cannot have life and salvation unless they have been baptized, then ask why the unbaptized are compelled to undergo the punishment of the second death, when He judges who condemns no one undeservedly — and you will find what you do not want: original sin. 'Those too who say,' he says, 'that baptism does not blot out all sins, we condemn, because we know that a full purgation is conferred through these mysteries.' This we also say; but that little ones too are loosed through these same mysteries from the bonds of first birth and of a liable succession — this you do not say.

Wherefore concerning the Church of Christ, which holds this from antiquity, you too, like other heretics, must be separated off. Now indeed as to how he concludes his letter, saying: 'Let no one, then, deceive you; nor let the impious deny that they hold these views; but, if they speak the truth, either let a hearing be granted, or at least let these same bishops who now dissent condemn the holding of the things I have stated above along with the Manichaeans, just as we condemn the things they cast up against us, and let full concord be established. But if they refuse, know that they are Manichaeans, and abstain from their fellowship' — this is to be despised rather than refuted.

For who of us hesitates to pronounce anathema upon the Manichaeans, who say that neither men nor marriage were instituted by the good God, nor the law given which was ministered through Moses to the Hebrew people?

But upon the Pelagians too we not undeservedly pronounce anathema, who are such enemies of the grace of God which comes through our Lord Jesus Christ, that they say it is given not freely, but according to our merits — and thus grace is no longer grace — and they set up so much in free will, in which man has been plunged into the deep, that they say that by using it well man merits grace, whereas no one can use it well except through grace, which is not rendered according to debt, but is bestowed by God freely showing mercy; and they contend that little ones are already so saved that they dare to deny that they need be saved by the Saviour. And holding and sowing these execrable dogmas, they still moreover demand a hearing, when, being condemned, they ought rather to do penance. SECOND BOOK.

Now let us consider another letter — not of Julian alone, but common to him with several Pelagian bishops — which they sent to Thessalonica, and let us, with the Lord's help, answer it as we can. And that our work may not become longer than the necessity of the case itself demands, what need is there to refute also those things which do not contain the insidious poisons of their dogma, but only seem to demand, in their own support or on behalf of the catholic faith against the profanity (as they call it) of the Manichaeans, the agreement of the Eastern bishops — striving for nothing else than that, by casting up a horrible heresy of which they pretend to be adversaries, they may lie hidden as enemies of grace under the guise of praising nature? For who ever stirred up against them a question on that score?

Or to which of the catholics are they displeasing on that account — because they condemn those whom the Apostle foretold would depart from the faith, having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, abstaining from foods which they think unclean, and not thinking that all things were created by God? Who ever compelled them to deny that every creature of God is good, and that there is no substance which the most high God did not make, except God Himself who is made by no one? These things are not reprehended nor condemned in them, in what is agreed to be catholic. For indeed the exceedingly foolish and noxious impiety of the Manichaeans not only the catholic faith detests, but also all heretics who are not Manichaeans.

Whence these Pelagians too do well in this, that they pronounce anathema upon the Manichaeans and contradict their errors. But they do two evils, for which they themselves also are to be anathematized: one, that they slander catholics with the name of the Manichaeans; the other, that they too introduce a heresy of a new error. For not because they do not labour under the disease of the Manichaeans are they therefore of a sound faith. There is not one kind of pestilence, in bodies as also in minds. As, therefore, a physician of the body would not at once have pronounced free from the danger of death one whom he had denied to be dropsical, if he had perceived him sick with another deadly disease, so truth does not congratulate these men merely because they are not Manichaeans, if they rave with another kind of perversity.

Wherefore one thing is what we anathematize together with them, another what we anathematize in them. For we detest together with them what rightly displeases even themselves, yet in such a way that we detest in them that whereby they rightly displease us. The Manichaeans say that the good God is not the creator of all natures; the Pelagians say that God is not the cleanser, saviour, and deliverer of men of all ages. The catholic faith refutes both — defending God's creature against the Manichaeans, lest any nature be denied to have been instituted by Him, and against the Pelagians, that in all ages a lost human nature may be sought out.

The Manichaeans blame the concupiscence of the flesh not as an accidental vice, but as a nature evil from eternity; the Pelagians, on the contrary, praise it as no vice at all, but rather as a natural good. The catholic faith refutes both — saying to the Manichaeans: 'It is not a nature, but a vice'; saying to the Pelagians: 'It is not from the Father, but from the world' — so that both may allow it to be healed as it were a bad state of health: the former ceasing to believe it incurable, the latter to proclaim it praiseworthy. The Manichaeans deny that from man's good free will there was a beginning of evil; the Pelagians say that even the evil man has sufficient free will to fulfil a good precept. The catholic faith refutes both, saying to the former:

'God made man upright'; and to the latter saying: 'If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.' The Manichaeans say that the soul, a particle of God, has sin by the admixture of an evil nature; the Pelagians say that the just soul, not indeed a particle, but a creature of God, has no sin even in this corruptible life. The catholic faith refutes both — saying to the Manichaeans: 'Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree evil and its fruit evil' — which would not be said to a man who cannot make a nature, save that sin is not a nature but a vice — and saying to the Pelagians: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.'

With these diseases mutually contrary, the Manichaeans and Pelagians contend — with unlike will, with like vanity; separated by diverse opinion, yet near by a perverse mind. Now indeed they attack the grace of Christ together, they void His baptism together, they dishonour His flesh together, but even this in diverse manners and for diverse causes. For the Manichaeans hold that divine aid is given to the merits of a good nature, while the Pelagians hold that it is given to the merits of a good will. The former say: 'God owes this to the labours of His members'; the latter say: 'God owes this to the virtues of His servants.' To both, therefore, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt.

The Manichaeans say that 'the laver of regeneration, that is, the water itself, is superfluous,' and contend that it profits nothing to a profane heart; the Pelagians, on the other hand, assert that 'what is said in sacred baptism to be for the expiation of sins avails nothing to infants who have no sin.' And hereby, in the baptizing of little ones, as far as pertains to the remission of sins, the Manichaeans destroy the visible element, while the Pelagians destroy even the invisible sacrament. The Manichaeans dishonour the flesh of Christ by blaspheming the Virgin's childbearing; the Pelagians, on the other hand, by equating the flesh of those to be redeemed with the flesh of the Redeemer.

For indeed Christ was born not truly in the flesh of sin, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin, because the flesh of other men is born as flesh of sin. The Manichaeans, therefore, utterly detesting all flesh, take away from the flesh of Christ its manifest truth; the Pelagians, on the other hand, asserting that no flesh is born of sin, take away from the flesh of Christ its proper dignity. Let the Pelagians therefore cease to charge against catholics what they are not, but let them rather hasten to amend what they are; nor let them wish to be esteemed lovable because they oppose the hateful error of the Manichaeans, but let them rightly acknowledge themselves hateful because they do not turn away from their own error. For two errors can be mutually contrary, yet both are to be detested, because both are contrary to the truth.

For if the Pelagians are to be loved because they hate the Manichaeans, then the Manichaeans too are to be loved because they hate the Pelagians. But far be it that the catholic mother should, for hatred of the one party, choose to love the other, when, with the Lord admonishing and helping, she ought to shun both and desires to heal both. Moreover, they even accuse the Roman clergy, writing that 'these men, stricken by the terror of an order, did not blush to commit the crime of prevarication, so as, contrary to their former sentence, by which they had by official acts supported the catholic dogma, afterward to pronounce that the nature of men is evil.'

Nay rather, the Pelagians had thought with false hope that the new and execrable Pelagian or Caelestian dogma could be persuaded into the catholic minds of certain Romans, at the time when those talents — though perverted by a wicked error, yet not contemptible — since they seemed to be corrected zealously rather than to be easily condemned, were dealt with somewhat more leniently than the sterner discipline of the Church demanded:

For amid so many and such great ecclesiastical writings running and running back between the Apostolic See and the African bishops — and with proceedings on this matter completed also at that See, in the presence and with the responses of Caelestius — what letter, pray, of Pope Zosimus of venerable memory, what interlocution is found, in which he prescribed that it ought to be believed that man is born without any defect of original sin? Nowhere at all did he say this, nowhere at all did he write it. But when Caelestius had set this down in his little book — among those matters, at least, about which he confessed that he still doubted and wished to be instructed — in a man of most keen genius, who assuredly, if he had been corrected, would have profited very many, it was the will to amendment, not the falsity of the dogma, that was approved.

For this reason his little book was called catholic, because it is the mark of a catholic mind, if perchance it holds some view otherwise than truth requires, not to define those things as most certain, but, when they are uncovered and demonstrated, to reject them. For it was not to heretics, but to catholics that the Apostle was speaking, where he says: 'As many, therefore, as are perfect, let us be thus minded; and if in anything you are otherwise minded, this also God shall reveal to you.' This was thought to have been done in him, when he answered that he consented to the letters of Pope Innocent of blessed memory, by which the whole doubt about this matter was removed. And that this might be more fully and manifestly done in him, letters were awaited to come from Africa, in which province his cunning had become somewhat more evidently known.

After those letters had come to Rome, containing this — that it did not suffice for men of slower and more anxious mind that he confessed he generally consented to the letters of Bishop Innocent, but that he ought openly to anathematize the depraved things he had set down in his little book, lest, if he did not do so, many of little understanding should believe those poisons of the faith in his book to have been approved by the Apostolic See (on account of its having been said by that See that the book was catholic) rather than amended (on account of his having himself answered that he consented to the letters of Pope Innocent):

then, therefore, when his presence was demanded, so that either the man's cunning or his correction might be made clear by certain and lucid answers and remain ambiguous to none, he withdrew himself and refused examination. It was not to be deferred any longer — as indeed was done — what would profit others, if it could not profit the obstinacy and madness of the exceedingly perverse. But if — far be it! — it had then been so judged concerning Caelestius or Pelagius in the Roman Church that those dogmas of theirs, which Pope Innocent had condemned in them and together with them, were pronounced to be approved and to be held, then rather from this would the brand of prevarication have been to be burned upon the Roman clergy.

But now, since first the letters of the most blessed Pope Innocent, replying to the letters of the African bishops, condemned this very error which these men attempt to persuade, and his successor too, the holy Pope Zosimus, never said, never wrote that what these men hold about little ones ought to be held, but moreover constrained Caelestius — who was striving to clear himself — by frequent interlocution to consent to the aforesaid letters of the Apostolic See: assuredly whatever meanwhile was done more leniently with Caelestius, with the firmness at least of the most ancient and most robust faith preserved, was the most clement persuasion to correction, not the most destructive approval of depravity.

And that afterward Caelestius and Pelagius were condemned by the same priest with reiterated authority, was the reason for a severity that had been for a time necessarily suspended and must now be brought forth — not a prevarication regarding a truth previously known, nor a new discovery of it. But what need is there for us to linger longer in speaking about this matter, when there exist, from both sides, proceedings and letters that were sent, where all those things — how they were transacted — can be either known or reviewed?

For from the interrogations of your holy predecessor and the responses of Caelestius, by which he professed to consent to the letters of blessed Pope Innocent, who does not see how Caelestius was bound up and fettered with a most salutary bond, so that he should no longer dare to defend that in the baptism of little ones original sin is not remitted? For these are the words of the venerable Bishop Innocent on this matter to the Council of Carthage:

'For free will,' he says, 'that man of old, having endured it, while he uses his goods too inconsiderately, falling, plunged into the depths of prevarication, found no way by which he might thereafter rise up; and deceived forever by his own liberty, he would have lain hidden under the oppression of this ruin, had not the advent of Christ afterward, by His own grace, raised him up — He who by the purification of the new regeneration purged every past defect by the laver of His baptism.' What is clearer and more manifest than this sentence of the Apostolic See? To this Caelestius professed that he consented, when, since it had been said to him by your holy predecessor: 'Do you condemn all those things which have been bruited about under your name?', he himself answered:

'I condemn them according to the sentence of your predecessor Innocent of blessed memory.' But among the other things which had been bruited about under his name, the deacon Paulinus had charged against Caelestius that he said 'Adam's sin harmed himself alone and not the human race, and that infants newly born are in that state in which Adam was before his sin.' Accordingly, if he condemned the charges of Paulinus with truthful heart and mouth according to the sentence of blessed Pope Innocent, what would remain to him thereafter, whereby he might contend that there is no defect in little ones from the past transgression of the first man — a defect which is purged through the purification of the new regeneration by sacred baptism?

But that he had answered this deceitfully he showed by his final exit, when he withdrew himself from examination, lest he be compelled, according to the African rescripts, to recall and anathematize those very words on this question which he had set down in his little book. What of the fact that the same pope also wrote back on this same cause to the bishops of Numidia, because he had received writings from both councils, namely from the Carthaginian and from the Milevitan — does he not most openly speak of little ones? For these are his words: 'But that which your fraternity asserts them to preach, that little ones can be granted the rewards of eternal life even without the grace of baptism, is exceedingly foolish.

For unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, they shall not have life in themselves; and those who defend that they have this without regeneration seem to me to wish to make void baptism itself, when they proclaim that these have what we believe is to be conferred upon them by baptism alone.' What does the ingrate say to these things, whom the Apostolic See had already, by its most kindly leniency, spared as though corrected by his own profession — what does he say to these things? Whether after the end of this life little ones, even if while they live they are not baptized in Christ, will be in eternal life, or will not be? If he shall say 'they will be,' how then did he answer that he had condemned those things bruited about under his name according to the sentence of Innocent of blessed memory?

Behold, Pope Innocent of blessed memory says that little ones do not have life without the baptism of Christ and without partaking of the body and blood of Christ. If he shall say 'they will not be,' how then, not receiving eternal life, are they not consequently condemned to eternal death, if they draw no original sin? What do these men say to these things — men who dare even to write down their calumnious impieties, dare even to send them to the Eastern bishops? Caelestius is held to have given his consent to the letters of the venerable Innocent; those very letters of the aforesaid prelate are read, writing that unbaptized little ones cannot have life. But who will deny it to be consequent that they have death who do not have life?

Whence, then, in infants this miserable penalty, if there is no original guilt? How, therefore, are the Roman clergy accused of prevarication under Bishop Zosimus by these deserters of the faith and assailants of grace — as though they had held a different view in the later condemnation of Caelestius and Pelagius from what they held under Innocent in the earlier one? For since, by the letters of the venerable Innocent, the antiquity of the catholic faith was made clear concerning little ones — that, unless they were baptized in Christ, they would remain in eternal death — assuredly whoever deviated from that sentence would rather be a prevaricator against the Roman Church.

And since, God being favourable, this did not happen, but rather, by the constantly reiterated condemnation of Caelestius and Pelagius, it was preserved, let these men understand that they are the ones from whom they accuse others, and let them at some time be healed of their prevarication of the faith. For the catholic faith does not say that the nature of men is evil, in so far as man was first instituted by the Creator; nor is that which God now creates in that nature — when He makes men from men — His evil, but rather what it draws from that vice of the first man. Now let us look at those things which, objecting against us in their letter, they have briefly set down, to which this is our reply:

We do not say that by Adam's sin free will perished from the nature of men, but that it avails for sinning in men subjected to the devil; while for living well and piously it does not avail, unless the very will of man be freed by the grace of God and aided unto every good deed, word, and thought. We say that none but the Lord God is the founder of those who are born, and that marriage was instituted not by the devil, but by Him; yet that all are born under sin because of the vice of propagation, and are therefore under the devil until they are reborn in Christ. Nor do we assert fate under the name of grace, because we say that the grace of God is preceded by no merits of men.

But if it pleases certain persons to call the will of Almighty God by the name of fate, we indeed avoid the profane novelties of words, yet we do not love to contend about words. But whence it seemed good to them to object this against us — that we assert fate under the name of grace — as I pondered somewhat more attentively, I first inspected their words which follow. For thus they thought this ought to be objected against us: 'Under the name of grace,' they say, 'they so assert fate as to say that, unless God inspires in the unwilling and reluctant man the desire even of an imperfect good, he can neither turn away from evil nor lay hold of good.' Then somewhat later, where they themselves recall what they defend, I noted what was said by them on this matter:

'We confess,' they say, 'that baptism is necessary for all ages, and that grace also aids the good purpose of each one, yet does not instil zeal for virtue into the reluctant, because there is no respect of persons with God.' From these words of theirs I understood that they, on this account, either think or wish it to be thought that we assert fate under the name of grace, because we say that the grace of God is given not according to our merits, but according to His own most merciful will, who said: 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I shall be merciful.' Where it is consequently added: 'So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.'