Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 12 part 4/10

From this too anyone likewise foolish could think or say that the Apostle is an assertor of fate. But here these men lay themselves open enough. For since they calumniate us on this account, saying that we assert fate under the name of grace, because we say that the grace of God is given not according to our merits, they without doubt confess that they themselves say it is given according to our merits; and so their blindness could not hide or dissemble that they hold and think this — the very thing which, objected against him, Pelagius, in the episcopal judgment of Palestine, condemned out of a crafty fear. For it was objected against him, indeed from the words of his disciple Caelestius, that he too said 'the grace of God is given according to our merits.'

This teaching he detested, or seemed to detest, and with his mouth at least he did not delay to anathematize it; but, as his later books show and as the assertion of these his followers lays bare, he kept it in a feigned heart, until afterward the boldness he then covered by fear, with the cunning of one who denies it, he brought forth even into writing. And still the Pelagian bishops are not afraid, nor do they even blush, to send their letters to the catholic bishops of the East, in which they charge us with being assertors of Fate, because we do not say that the grace of God is given according to our merits — the very thing which Pelagius, fearing the Eastern bishops, both did not dare to say and was compelled to condemn.

Is it so indeed, you sons of pride, you enemies of the grace of God, O new Pelagian heretics — that whoever says the grace of God goes before all a man's good merits, and that the grace of God is not given for merits, lest it should not be grace (for if it is not given freely, but rendered as owed to the deserving, it is no grace) — does he seem to you to assert Fate? Do not you yourselves, with whatever intention, say that baptism is necessary for all ages? Did you not in this very letter of yours set this opinion about baptism side by side with what you say about grace? Why has the baptism which is given to infants not admonished you, by its very nearness, what you ought to think about grace? For these are your own words:

'We confess that baptism is necessary for all ages, and that grace also aids the good purpose of each one, yet does not force the pursuit of virtue upon one who resists, since there is no respect of persons with God.' In all these your words about grace, what you have said I pass over for the moment. Concerning baptism, render an account: why do you say it is necessary for all ages? Say why it is necessary for little ones — surely because it confers upon them something good, and that something neither small nor moderate, but great. For although you deny that they contract that original sin which is remitted in baptism, yet you do not deny — nay, you even proclaim — that by that laver of regeneration they are adopted out of the sons of men into the sons of God.

Tell us then: those little ones who, baptized in Christ, have departed from the body — by what preceding merits did they receive so sublime a gift? If you say that they merited this by the piety of their parents, it will be answered us: Why is this good sometimes denied to the children of the pious and granted to the children of the impious? For sometimes offspring born of religious parents is, in tender age and freshly from the womb, forestalled by death before it is washed in the laver of regeneration; while an infant born of the enemies of Christ is, by the mercy of Christians, baptized into Christ. A baptized mother bewails her own unbaptized child, and a chaste woman gathers up, to be baptized, another's offspring exposed by an unchaste one.

Here surely the merits of the parents count for nothing; they count for nothing — by your own admission — even the merits of the little ones themselves. For we know that you do not believe this about the human soul: that before the earthly body it lived somewhere and did something, either good or evil, whereby it should merit this difference in the flesh. What cause, then, procured baptism for this little one and denied it to that one? Or do they have Fate, because they have no merit? Or is there in these cases a respect of persons on the Lord's part? For you have alleged both — first Fate, afterward respect of persons — so that, since both must be refuted, there may remain what you wish to introduce against grace: merit.

Answer, then, concerning the merits of little ones: why do some depart from their bodies baptized and others unbaptized, when by their parents' merits they neither abound in, nor lack, so excellent a good — that they should become sons of God out of the sons of men, by no merits of their parents and no merits of their own? Assuredly you fall silent, and in that very charge which you bring against us you rather find yourselves. For if, where there is no merit, you consequently say there is Fate, and on this account you wish man's merit to be understood in the grace of God, lest you be compelled to confess Fate — behold, you rather assert Fate in the baptism of little ones, of whom you confess there is no merit.

But if in the case of little ones to be baptized you concede that no merit at all goes before, and yet that there is no Fate, why do you boast that we are assertors of Fate when we say that the grace of God is therefore given freely, lest it should not be grace, and is not rendered as owed to preceding merits? You do not understand that, in the justifying of the impious, just as there are no merits because it is the grace of God, so there is no Fate because it is the grace of God, and so there is no respect of persons because it is the grace of God. For those who affirm Fate contend that not only our acts and outcomes, but even our very wills, depend upon the position of the stars at the time when each is conceived or born — what they call constellations;

but the grace of God transcends not only all the stars and all the heavens, but even all the angels. Furthermore, the assertors of Fate attribute both the good and the evil of men to Fate; but God, in the evils of men, pursues their merits with the retribution that is owed, while the good things He bestows through undeserved grace by a merciful will — doing both not through any temporal fellowship of the stars, but through the eternal and profound counsel of His own severity and goodness. Neither of these, then, do we see as pertaining to Fate. Here, if you answer that this very benevolence of God, whereby He does not follow merits but bestows undeserved goods by gratuitous goodness, must rather be called Fate — since the Apostle calls this grace, saying:

'By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not of works, lest anyone perhaps be lifted up' — do you not observe, do you not perceive, that Fate is not asserted by us under the name of divine grace, but rather that divine grace is called by you by the name of Fate? Likewise, respect of persons is rightly said to occur where a judge, leaving aside the merit of the case he is judging, gives his vote for one man against another because he finds something in the person that is worthy of honor or of pity. But if someone has two debtors and wishes to remit the debt to one and to exact it from the other, he gives to whom he will, but defrauds no one; nor is it to be called respect of persons, since there is no injustice;

otherwise, to those who understand little, it may seem to be respect of persons where the lord of the vineyard gave to the laborers who had worked there one hour as much as to those who had borne the burden and heat of the day, making them equal in wages though their difference in labor had been so great. But what did he answer to those who murmured against the householder as though at some such respect of persons? 'Friend,' he said, 'I do you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a penny? Take what is yours and go. But I will also give to this last one as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Or is your eye evil because I am good?' Here indeed lies the whole of justice: 'This I will.'

'To you,' he says, 'I have rendered what is owed; to this one I have given a gift; nor, in order to give to this one, have I taken anything from you, or either diminished or denied what I owed. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Or is your eye evil because I am good?' As therefore here there is no respect of persons, because one man is freely honored in such a way that another is not defrauded of what is owed him, so also, when according to the purpose of God one man is called and another is not called, to the one who is called there is given a gratuitous good — of which good the calling itself is the beginning; to the one not called there is rendered an evil, because all are guilty by reason of that sin which entered into the world through one man.

And indeed in that parable of the laborers, where those who worked one hour and those who worked twelve times as long received one penny — those who, according to human but empty reckoning, ought to have received twelve pennies for the amount of their labor — both were made equal in the good; not were some set free and others condemned, because even those who labored more had both the fact that they were called so as to come, and the fact that they were so fed as not to fail, from the very householder. But where it is said:

'Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and He hardens whom He wills' — He who makes one vessel unto honor, another unto dishonor — the good is indeed given without merit and freely, because it is given to one from the same mass; but the evil is rendered as deserved and owed, because in the mass of perdition evil is not evilly rendered to evil. And to him to whom it is rendered it is an evil, because it is his punishment; but to Him by whom it is rendered it is good, because it is His just deed. Nor is there any respect of persons in two debtors equally guilty, if to one it is remitted and from the other exacted what is equally owed by both. But that what we say may become clear by the demonstration of some example, let us suppose some twins born of a certain harlot and, that they might be gathered up by others, exposed:

of these one expired without baptism, the other baptized. What here shall we say was Fate or Fortune, which are altogether nothing? What respect of persons — since with God there was none, even if in these there could have been any, who assuredly had nothing whereby the one should be preferred to the other, and no merits of their own, whether good, by which the one should merit to be baptized, or evil, by which the other should die without baptism? Or were there any merits of the parents, where the father was a fornicator, the mother a harlot? But whatever those were, they were surely not different for these two dying in so different a condition, but common to both.

If, then, neither Fate — because no stars decree these things — nor Fortune — because no chance happenings bring these about — nor any diversity of persons or of merits produced this, what remains, as far as pertains to the one baptized, but the grace of God, which is freely given to vessels made unto honor; and, as far as pertains to the one not baptized, the wrath of God, which is rendered to vessels made unto dishonor according to the merits of the mass itself? But in the one who was baptized we compel you to confess the grace of God, and we convince you that no merit of his went before;

but concerning the one who died without baptism, why the sacrament was lacking to him — the sacrament which even you confess to be necessary for all ages — and what in this manner was avenged in him, you must see to it, you who do not wish there to be original sin. To us, in these two twins who without doubt have one and the same cause, the difficulty of the question — why the one died thus and the other thus — the Apostle resolves, as it were, by not resolving it. For when he too had proposed something of this kind about two twins, on account of which it was said (not of works, since they had not yet done anything good or evil, but of Him who calls): 'The elder shall serve the younger,' and: 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,' and had carried the dread of this depth even to the point of saying:

'Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and He hardens whom He wills' — he at once perceived what he was stirring up, and set against himself the words of one contradicting, which he might restrain by apostolic authority. For he says: 'You will say to me then: Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?' And he replied to the one saying this: 'O man, who are you that answer back to God? Shall the thing formed say to Him who formed it, Why have you made me thus? Or has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?' Then, having pursued so great and hidden a secret, so far as he judged it ought to be opened to men, he opened it, saying:

'But if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath which were fitted for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy which He prepared unto glory.' This is not only the help of the grace of God, but also its demonstration: help, namely, in the vessels of mercy; but in the vessels of wrath, demonstration. For in these He shows His wrath and makes His power known, because His goodness is so powerful that He uses well even the evil; and in them He makes known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy, since what the justice of the One who punishes exacts from the vessels of wrath, this the grace of the One who delivers remits to the vessels of mercy.

Nor would the benefit which is freely bestowed upon some appear, unless God, upon others equally guilty from the same mass and condemned to just punishment, showed what was owed to both. 'For who makes you to differ?' says the same Apostle to a man glorying as it were of himself and of his own proper good. 'For who makes you to differ?' — from the vessels of wrath, surely; from the mass of perdition, which through one man sent all into damnation. 'Who makes you to differ?' And as though he had answered, 'My faith makes me to differ, my purpose, my merit,' he says: 'For what have you that you did not receive? But if you also received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?' — that is, as if it were of your own, whence you are made to differ.

Therefore He makes you to differ, who imparts that whereby you differ, by removing the owed punishment and bestowing the undeserved grace. He makes you to differ, who, when there was darkness over the abyss, said: 'Let there be light,' and there was light; and He divided — that is, made a distinction — between the light and the darkness. For when there was only darkness, He did not find what He might distinguish, but by making light He made a distinction, so that to the justified impious it might be said: 'For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord'; and thus he who glories should glory not in himself, but in the Lord. He makes you to differ, who, concerning those not yet born nor who had done anything good or evil, that His purpose according to election might stand, not of works but of Himself who calls, said:

'The elder shall serve the younger,' and commending this very thing afterward through the prophet, said: 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.' For He spoke of election, where God does not find what He may elect already made by another, but Himself makes what He may find — as it is written of the remnant of Israel: 'The remnant has been made by the election of grace. But if by grace, then no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.' On which account you are assuredly senseless, for when the Truth says, 'not of works, but of Him who calls it was said,' you say that 'Jacob was loved out of future works which God foreknew he would do,' and thus you contradict the Apostle who says, 'not of works,' as though he could not have said:

'not of works, but of future works.' But he says, 'not of works,' in order to commend grace; 'but if by grace, then no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.' For grace goes before — not owed, but gratuitous grace — that through it good works may come to be; lest, if good works went before, grace should be rendered as it were for works, and thus grace should be no more grace. But that every hiding-place of your obscurity might be taken from you, I therefore proposed such twins, who would neither be aided by their parents' merits, and would both die in the very beginning of infancy, one baptized, the other without baptism — lest you should say that God, as you say against the Apostle concerning Jacob and Esau, foreknew their future works.

For how could He have foreknown as future those things which — since His foreknowledge cannot be deceived — He rather foreknew as not going to be, in the case of those who were to die in infancy? Or what does it profit those who are snatched from this life, lest malice change their understanding or deceit beguile their soul, if a sin which was neither done nor spoken nor thought is, as though it had been committed, thus punished?

But if it is most absurd, most tasteless, most insane that any men whatever should be condemned for those sins whose guilt they neither draw from their parents (as you say), nor could not only commit but not even so much as think — then that twin brother, the unbaptized of the baptized, returns to you, and silently asks of you whence he was separated from his brother's felicity, why he was punished with that unhappiness, so that, while the other was adopted into the sons of God, he himself did not receive the sacrament necessary for all ages (as you confess) — if, just as there is no Fortune or Fate or respect of persons with God, so there is no gift of grace apart from merits, no original sin.

To this infant you utterly submit your tongue and voice; to him who does not speak you have nothing to say. Now then let us see, as we can, this very thing which they wish to precede in man, so that he may be held worthy of the help of grace, and so that grace may be rendered to him not as though undeserved but as owed to his merit — and thus grace be no more grace — let us see nevertheless what that is. 'Under the name of grace,' they say, 'they so assert Fate as to say that, unless He inspires into an unwilling and resisting man the desire even of the good, and of that imperfect good itself, he can neither turn away from evil nor lay hold of good.' We have already shown how vainly they speak about Fate and grace.

Now this is what we ought to attend to: whether God inspires the desire of the good into an unwilling and resisting man, so that he is now no longer resisting, no longer unwilling, but consenting to the good and willing the good. For these men wish the desire of the good to begin in man from man himself, so that the grace even of completing may follow upon the merit of this beginning — if indeed they wish even this much; for Pelagius says that what is good is fulfilled 'more easily' if grace helps. By which addition, that is, by adding 'more easily,' he surely signifies that he holds this: that even if the help of grace were lacking, the good can be fulfilled, though with more difficulty, through free will.

But what these men hold in this matter, let us not prejudge from that author of this heresy — let us permit them to be free with their free will even from Pelagius himself — and rather let us attend to those very words of theirs which they have set down in the letter to which we are replying. For they thought this should be objected against us: that we say 'God inspires into an unwilling and resisting man' not the desire of some great good, but 'of that imperfect good itself.' Perhaps, then, they in this way at least reserve a place for grace, so that without it they think a man can have the desire of the good, but of an imperfect good; whereas of the perfect he cannot 'more easily' through it, but cannot at all except through it.

But even so they say that the grace of God is given according to our merits — which Pelagius, fearing in the East to be condemned by the ecclesiastical records, condemned. For if without the grace of God the desire of the good begins through ourselves, that very beginning will be a merit, to which help may come as though owed by grace; and thus the grace of God will not be freely given, but will be given according to our merit. But the Lord, that He might answer the future Pelagius, did not say, 'Without me you can do something with difficulty,' but said: 'Without me you can do nothing.' And that He might answer these men too in that same evangelical sentence, He did not say, 'Without me you can perfect nothing,' but 'do.'

For if He had said 'perfect,' these men could say that the help of God is necessary not for beginning the good, which is of us, but for perfecting it. But let them hear the Apostle also. For the Lord, when He says, 'Without me you can do nothing,' comprehended beginning and end in this one word; but the Apostle, as an expositor of the Lord's sentence, more openly distinguished both, saying: 'Because He who began a good work in you will perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus.' But in the holy Scriptures, in the same Apostle, we find still more on this matter of which we are speaking. For we are now speaking of the desire of the good, which, if they wish it to begin from us and to be perfected by the Lord, let them see what they answer to the Apostle who says:

'Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.' 'To think,' he says, 'anything' — surely something good; but it is less to think than to desire. For we think all that we desire, yet we do not desire all that we think, since sometimes we think even what we do not desire.

Since therefore it is less to think than to desire — for a man can think a good which he does not yet desire, and by advancing afterward desire what he formerly thought without desiring — how is it that for that which is less, namely for thinking anything good, we are not sufficient as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God; and yet for that which is more, namely for desiring anything good, we are sufficient of our free will without divine help? For here too the Apostle does not say, 'not that we are sufficient to think what is perfect, as of ourselves,' but he says 'to think anything,' to which the contrary is 'nothing.' Whence comes that word of the Lord: 'Without me you can do nothing.' But doubtless because it is written:

'It is man's part to prepare the heart, and from the Lord is the answer of the tongue' — by not understanding it well they are deceived, so as to suppose that to prepare the heart, that is, to begin the good, pertains to man without the help of the grace of God. Far be it that the sons of promise should so understand it, as though, when they have heard the Lord saying, 'Without me you can do nothing,' they should as it were refute Him by saying, 'Behold, without you we can prepare the heart'; or when they have heard from Paul the Apostle, 'Not that we are sufficient to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God,' they should as it were refute even him by saying, 'Behold, we are sufficient of ourselves to prepare the heart and thereby also to think something good.'

For who can prepare the heart unto good without a good thought? Far be it that any should so understand it, save the proud defenders of their own free choice and the deserters of the catholic faith. For it is therefore written, 'It is man's part to prepare the heart, and from the Lord is the answer of the tongue,' because man prepares the heart — yet not without the help of God, who so touches the heart that man prepares the heart. But in the answer of the tongue, that is, in that whereby the divine tongue answers the prepared heart, man has no work at all, but the whole is from the Lord God. For as it is said, 'It is man's part to prepare the heart, and from the Lord is the answer of the tongue,' so also it is said: 'Open your mouth, and I will fill it.'

For although, unless He helps whose help we cannot do anything without, we cannot open the mouth, yet we open it by His aid and our own work; but the Lord fills it without our work. For what is it to prepare the heart and to open the mouth but to prepare the will? And yet in the same writings it is read: 'The will is prepared by the Lord,' and: 'You will open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.' Behold, God admonishes that we should prepare the will, in that we read, 'It is man's part to prepare the heart'; and yet, that man may do this, God helps, because 'the will is prepared by the Lord.' And He says 'Open your mouth' by commanding in such a way that no one can do it unless He Himself does it by helping — He to whom it is said, 'You will open my lips.'

Or do these men perhaps so far dote as to contend that the mouth is one thing and the lips another, and with wonderful vanity say that man opens the mouth, but God the lips of man? Although God restrains them even from this absurdity, where He says to Moses His servant: 'I will open your mouth and instruct you what you ought to speak.' In that sentence, then, where it is said, 'Open your mouth, and I will fill it,' one of them seems to pertain to man, the other to God; but in this one, where it is said, 'I will open your mouth and instruct you,' both pertain to God. Why is this, unless because in the one of these He cooperates with man who is acting, but the other He alone does?

Wherefore God does many good things in man which man does not do; but man does none which God does not cause man to do. Accordingly, the desire of the good would not come to man from the Lord if it were not good; but if it is good, it is not ours except from Him who is supremely and immutably good. For what is the desire of the good but charity, of which the Apostle John speaks without ambiguity, saying: 'Charity is of God'? Nor is its beginning of us and its perfection of God; but if charity is of God, the whole of it is of God for us. For may God avert this madness, that in His gifts we should make ourselves the prior and Him the posterior, since 'His mercy shall go before me' — and He it is to whom it is faithfully and truthfully sung:

'For you have gone before him with the blessings of sweetness.' And what here is more fitly understood than that very desire of the good of which we speak? For the good then begins to be desired when it begins to grow sweet; but when the good is done through fear of punishment, not through love of righteousness, the good is not yet well done, nor is that done in the heart which seems to be done in the deed, when a man would rather not do it, if he could with impunity. Therefore the blessing of sweetness is the grace of God, whereby it comes to pass in us that what He commands us delights us and we desire — that is, we love — it. In which, if God does not go before us, not only is it not perfected, but not even begun by us. For if without Him we can do nothing, assuredly we can neither begin nor perfect; because, that we may begin, it is said:

'His mercy shall go before me'; and that we may perfect, it is said: 'His mercy shall follow after me.' What, then, is it that in what follows, where they mention what they themselves hold, they say they confess 'that grace also aids the good purpose of each one, yet does not force the pursuit of virtue upon one who resists'? For they say this in such a way as though a man had, from himself, without the help of God, a good purpose and the pursuit of virtue, by which merit going before he should be worthy to be aided by the grace of God following after. For they perhaps think that the Apostle spoke thus: