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For these things they merited by the sentence of God, when they were convicted of sin — things which we see fulfilled not in them alone, but also in their successors, in some more, in some less, yet in all. Since, therefore, the first righteousness of those first human beings was to obey God and not to have in their members, against the law of their mind, a law of concupiscence, now, after their sin, our flesh of sin having been born of them, it is held as a great thing by those who obey God not to obey the desires of that same concupiscence, and to crucify in themselves the flesh with its passions and lusts, that they may belong to Jesus Christ — who figured this in His own cross — to whom by His grace He gave the power to become the sons of God.
For He gave it not to all men, but to as many as received Him, that they, who had been born to the world by the flesh, might be reborn to God by the Spirit. For thus it is said of these: 'But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, who were born not of flesh, not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.' And, following, he added: 'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,' as though saying: 'Great indeed is this that was done in these, that they should be born to God from God, who had first been born of the flesh to the world, though created by God Himself;
but far more wonderful is that which was done: that, whereas for these to be born of the flesh was of nature, but to be born of God was of grace, in order that this benefit might be imparted, He who was naturally born of God deigned also mercifully to be born of the flesh'; for this is: 'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.' Through this, he says, it came to pass that we who were born of the flesh, being flesh, might afterward, by being born of the Spirit, be spirit, and dwell in God — because God too, born of God, afterward, by being born of the flesh, was made flesh and dwelt among us. For the Word, which was made flesh, was in the beginning, and was God with God.
Yet His very participation in our lower things — that ours might be in His higher things — held a certain mean also in the nativity of the flesh: so that we indeed were born in the flesh of sin, but He in the likeness of the flesh of sin; we not only of flesh and blood, but also of the will of man and the will of the flesh; but He only of flesh and blood, not of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh, but was born of God. And therefore we passed unto death on account of sin, but He on account of us unto death without sin.
But just as those lower things of his, by which he descended to us, are not in every way made equal to our lower estate in which he found us here, so too our higher things, by which we ascend to him, will not be made equal to those higher things of his, in which we are destined there to find him. For we shall be made sons of God by his grace, whereas he was ever the Son of God by nature; we, having at some time been converted, shall cleave to God though unequal to him, whereas he, never turned away, remains equal to God; we are partakers of eternal life, whereas he is eternal life itself. He alone therefore, even when made man while remaining God, never had any sin, nor took upon himself the flesh of sin, although he took it from the sinful flesh of his mother.
For that portion of flesh which he took from thence he assuredly either cleansed before taking it up, or cleansed in the very taking of it. Therefore he created her whom he chose to be his virgin mother — one who conceived not by the law of sinful flesh, that is, not by any motion of carnal concupiscence, but who by devout faith merited that a holy seed should be formed within her. From her he chose to be created; her he chose. How much more then must the flesh of sin be baptized in order to escape judgement, if flesh without sin was baptized for the example of imitation! Now, as to what we answered above against those who say, 'If a sinner begot a sinner, a righteous man too ought to have begotten a righteous man,' the same we answer also to these who say that one born of a baptized man ought already to be counted as if baptized.
For why, they say, could he not have been baptized in the loins of his father, if — according to the epistle written to the Hebrews — Levi could be tithed in the loins of Abraham? Let those who say this take note that Levi was not exempt from being tithed afterwards because he had already been tithed in the loins of Abraham; rather, it was because he was so appointed to the honour of the priesthood that he should receive tithes, not render them. Otherwise even his other brethren, who rendered tithes to him, would not have been tithed, since they too had already been tithed in the loins of Abraham by Melchizedek. But lest anyone should say that on this account the sons of Abraham could rightly be tithed, even though they had already been tithed in the loins of their father, because tithing was such a matter —
a thing which must often be done in each individual man (just as the Israelites were accustomed all their years, indeed throughout their whole life, to render frequent tithes to the Levites from all their fruits); whereas baptism is such a sacrament as is given but once, so that if anyone had already received it while he was still in his father, he ought to be reckoned as nothing other than baptized when one who had been baptized begot him — whoever says this, that I may not argue at length, let him consider circumcision, which was performed once and yet was performed severally in each individual. As therefore, in the time of that sacrament, the one born of a circumcised man had to be circumcised, so now the one born of a baptized man must be baptized. 'But,' says the apostle, 'your children would be unclean, whereas now they are holy';
and therefore, they say, the children of believers ought by no means to have been baptized. I marvel that this should be said by those who deny that sin is derived originally from Adam. For if they so understand this saying of the apostle as to believe that from believers sanctified children are born, why do they not doubt that these too ought to be baptized? Why, in short, are they unwilling to confess that from a sinful parent some sin is derived originally, if from a holy parent some holiness is derived? And it is indeed not contrary to our assertion, even if holy children are propagated from believers, that we say of them that, if they are not baptized, they pass on into damnation — those very ones whom they themselves also shut out from the kingdom of heaven, although they say that these have no sin at all, whether proper or original.
Or if it seems to them unworthy that the holy should be damned, how will it be worthy that the holy should be separated from the kingdom of God? Let them rather attend to this: how is no sin derived from sinful parents, if some holiness is derived from the holy, and uncleanness from the unclean? For he who said, 'Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy,' said both. Let them explain too how it is just that the holy born of believers and the unclean born of unbelievers should nevertheless alike, if they have not been baptized, not be permitted to enter the kingdom of God. What good, then, does that holiness do them?
For if they were to confess that the unclean born of unbelievers are damned, but that the holy children of believers cannot indeed enter the kingdom of God unless they have been baptized, yet are not damned because they are holy — then there would be some sort of distinction. But as it is, they say that both the holy born of the holy and the unclean born of the unclean are equal: that because they have no sin they are not damned, and because they have no baptism they are separated from the kingdom of God. Who could believe that such minds fail to see this absurdity? But how far from contrary this saying is — the saying uttered when he was treating of another matter — to our own view, nay rather to the view of the apostle himself, who said, 'By one, all unto condemnation,' and, 'By one, all unto justification of life':
'Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy' — attend a little. Sanctification is not of one kind only. For I think that catechumens too are sanctified after a certain manner of their own, through the sign of Christ and the prayer of the laying on of hands; and what they receive, although it is not the body of Christ, is nevertheless holy, and holier than the food by which we are nourished, since it is a sacrament. Indeed even the very foods which we use for the necessity of sustaining this life, the same apostle said are sanctified through the word of God and prayer — the prayer by which we pray when we are about to refresh our little bodies.
As therefore this sanctification of foods does not bring it about that what enters the mouth does not go into the belly and is not cast out into the drain through that corruption by which all earthly things are dissolved (whence also the Lord exhorts us to another food, which does not perish), so the sanctification of a catechumen, if he has not been baptized, does not avail him for entering the kingdom of heaven or for the remission of sins. And hence that sanctification too, of whatever kind it be, which the apostle said is present in the children of believers, has nothing whatever to do with this question about baptism and about the origin or remission of sin. For he says that even unbelieving spouses are sanctified in believing spouses, speaking in that very passage thus:
'For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.' No one, I suppose, understands these words so faithlessly — whatever he may understand by them — as on this account to suppose that a husband who is not a Christian, because his wife has been a Christian, need not now be baptized, and has already attained to the remission of sins, and is going to enter into the kingdom of heaven, because he has been said to be sanctified in his wife. But whoever is still perplexed as to why those who are already born of the baptized should be baptized, let him briefly receive this.
As the generation of sinful flesh through one Adam draws unto condemnation all who are generated in that manner, so the regeneration of the spirit of grace through one Jesus Christ leads unto the justification of eternal life all who, being so predestined, are regenerated in that manner. Now the sacrament of baptism is assuredly the sacrament of regeneration. Wherefore, just as a man who has not lived cannot die, and one who has not died cannot rise again, so one who has not been born cannot be born again. From which it is concluded that no one, being unborn, could have been born again in his parent. But it behoves that, if he has been born, he be born again, because 'unless a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'
It behoves therefore that even the little child be steeped in the sacrament of regeneration, lest without it he depart in evil case from this life; and this is not done except unto the remission of sins. This too Christ showed in that very passage, when, being asked how these things could come to pass, he called to mind what Moses did in the lifting up of the serpent. When therefore through the sacrament of baptism infants are conformed to the death of Christ, it must be confessed that they are delivered from the serpent's bite — if we do not wish to stray from the rule of the Christian faith. Yet this bite they received not in their own proper life, but in him in whom they first received it. Nor let this mislead anyone, that a parent's own sins do him no harm after his conversion; 'how much less,' they say, 'can they harm his child!'
But those who think thus do not consider that, just as a parent's own sins do him no harm because he has been born again in the Spirit, so one who is born of him — unless he too be born again in that same manner — will be harmed by those things which are drawn from the parent. For even renewed parents beget not from the first-fruits of their newness, but from the remnants of their oldness, carnally; and the children, propagated in the flesh of sin wholly old from the remaining oldness of their parents, escape the damnation owed to the old man by the sacrament of spiritual regeneration and renewal.
For on account of the questions which have been or may still be raised concerning this matter, we ought especially to attend to and remember this: that by baptism there is made a full and perfect remission of all sins, but that the quality of the man himself is not all at once wholly changed; rather, the spiritual first-fruits in those who advance rightly, with newness increasing from day to day, change into themselves what is carnally old, until the whole is so renewed that even the animal weakness of the body attains to spiritual strength and incorruption. Now this law of sin — which the apostle also calls 'sin' when he says:
'Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to obey the desires thereof' — does not so remain in the members of those who have been born again of water and the Spirit as though its remission had not been made; for there is made a wholly full and perfect remission of sins, all the enmities being slain by which we were separated from God. Rather, it remains in the oldness of the flesh as something overcome and destroyed, unless by unlawful consentings it in some measure revives and is recalled into its own kingdom and dominion.
Now from this oldness of the flesh, in which is this law of sin — or sin, now already remitted — the life of the Spirit is so far distinguished, in whose newness the baptized are born again through the grace of God, that it was too little for the apostle to say that such men are not in sin, unless he also said that they are not in the flesh itself, before they departed from this mortal life. For he says, 'They that are in the flesh cannot please God; but ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.'
Yet nevertheless, just as they use well even the flesh, corruptible though it be, who turn its members to good works — in which flesh they are not, because they neither relish nor live according to it; just as, in short, they use well even death, which is the penalty of the first sin, who bravely and patiently expend it for their brethren, for the faith, for any true and holy righteousness — so also that law of sin, which, though already remitted, remains in the oldness of the flesh, married believers use well, who, from the fact that they are in the newness of Christ, by no means suffer lust to lord it over them, but from the fact that they still draw the oldness of Adam, mortally beget children to be immortally regenerated, together with that offshoot of sin, to which those who have been born again are not held liable, and from which those who are born are loosed by being born again.
So long therefore as the law of concupiscence remains in the members, while it itself remains, its guilt is loosed — but it is loosed for him who has received the sacrament of regeneration and has already begun to be renewed. But from that remaining oldness of concupiscence, what is born needs to be born again, that it may be healed, because believing parents, both born carnally and born again spiritually, have begotten children carnally; but before they were born, how could the children be born again? Nor marvel that I said that while the law of sin remains concupiscentially, its guilt is loosed through the grace of the sacrament.
For just as unjust deeds, words, and thoughts — as far as pertains to those very motions of soul and body — have already passed away and no longer exist, yet, though they be past and no longer existing, their guilt remains unless it be loosed by the remission of sins, so, on the contrary, in the case of this law of concupiscence — not now passed away, but still remaining — its guilt is loosed and shall not be, when in baptism there is made a full remission of sins. In short, if departure from this life should immediately follow, there will be absolutely nothing to hold a man liable, all the things that held him being loosed.
As therefore it is no wonder that the guilt of past deeds, thoughts, and words remains before the remission of sins, so, on the contrary, it ought to be no wonder that the guilt of remaining concupiscence passes away after the remission of sins.
Since these things are so, from the time when through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed on to all men, even to the end of this carnal generation and of the corruptible age — whose children beget and are begotten — there being no man, constituted in this life, of whom it could truly be said that he has no sin at all, save the one Mediator, who reconciles us to our Creator through the remission of sins: this same our Lord has denied his healing remedy to no times of the human race before the final judgement still to come, denied it not to those whom, by most certain foreknowledge and most just beneficence, he predestined to reign with him in life eternal.
For before the birth of his flesh, and the weakness of his passion, and the power of his resurrection, he shaped those who then lived, by faith in those things to come, unto the inheritance of eternal salvation; those who were present while these things were being enacted and beheld the predictions being fulfilled, he shaped by faith in those things present; and those who came afterwards — both ourselves and those who shall come hereafter — he ceases not to shape by faith in those same things now past. There is therefore one faith, which makes all safe who are saved by being born again from carnal generation into spiritual, a faith terminating in him who came to be judged and to die for us, the judge of the living and the dead. But the sacraments of this one faith have been varied through diverse times, according to the fitness of their signification.
This same one, therefore, is the Saviour both of little ones and of the greater, of whom the angels said, 'To you is born this day a Saviour,' and of whom it was said to the Virgin Mary, 'Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins' — where it is openly shown that by this name, by which he was called Jesus, he is named on account of the salvation which he bestows upon us; for Jesus in Latin is 'Saviour.' Who is there, then, that would dare to say that the Lord Christ is Jesus only to the greater and not also to the little ones? — he who came in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he might make void the body of sin, in which most weak body the rational soul is weighed down with pitiable ignorance amid infantile members useful for no fit or suitable purpose.
This ignorance I should by no means believe to have been present in that infant in whom the Word was made flesh, that he might dwell among us; nor would I suspect that in the child Christ there was that weakness of soul which we see in little ones. For through this weakness even, when they are disturbed by irrational impulses, they are restrained by no reason, no command, but sometimes by pain or by the terror of pain, so that you may see altogether the sons of that disobedience which is stirred in the members, warring against the law of the mind, and does not, when reason wills, subside; but it too is often either checked by bodily pain as though by a beating, or restrained by fright or by some such motion of the soul — yet not at the command of the will.
But because there was in him the likeness of sinful flesh, he willed to undergo the changes of the ages, beginning from infancy itself, so that even by growing old that flesh might seem to have been able to reach death, had he not been slain while a young man. Yet that death, in the flesh of sin, is rendered as owed to disobedience; but in the likeness of sinful flesh it was undertaken by the will of obedience. For, being about to go to that death and to suffer it, he said this: 'Behold, the prince of this world cometh, and shall find nothing in me; but that all may know that I do the will of my Father. Arise, let us go hence.' Having said these things, he went forward to a death not owed, being made obedient unto death. Wherefore those who say:
'If it came about by the sin of the first man that we should die, it should come about by the advent of Christ that those believing in him should not die' — and they add as it were a reason, saying: 'For the transgression of the offender did not harm us more than the incarnation or redemption of the Saviour profited us' — why do they not rather attend to this, hear this, believe this without dispute, which the apostle spoke without ambiguity: 'Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'? For he was speaking of nothing else than the resurrection of the body.
He said, therefore, that the death of the body of all was made through one man, and he promised that the resurrection of the body of all unto eternal life would come to pass through the one Christ. How then did 'that one harm us more by sinning than this one profited us by redeeming,' when through the sin of the former we die temporally, but through the redemption of the latter we rise again not to a temporal life but to a perpetual one? Our body, therefore, is dead because of sin; but Christ's body alone is dead without sin, that by his blood shed without guilt the bonds of all guilts might be blotted out, by which the debtors who believe in him were formerly held by the devil. Therefore: 'This is my blood, which shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins.'
Now he could indeed have granted this too to believers, that they should not experience even the death of this body; but if he had done so, a certain felicity would be added to the flesh, while the fortitude of faith would be diminished. For men so fear this death that they would call Christians happy for no other reason than that they could not die at all; and hence no one would hasten to the grace of Christ, for the sake of that life which after this death is to be blessed, through the virtue even of despising death itself, but rather would believe in Christ more daintily, for the sake of removing the trouble of death. He bestowed therefore more of grace; without doubt he gave more to his faithful. For what great thing was it, by seeing that those who believed did not die, to believe that oneself would not die?
How much greater is it, how much braver, how much more praiseworthy, so to believe as to hope that, though about to die, one shall live without end! Finally, this he will bestow upon certain ones at the end, that they shall not feel this death by a sudden change, but shall be caught up together with those rising again in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so shall ever live with the Lord. And rightly to them, because there will then be no posterity who believe on this account, not by hoping for what they do not see, but by loving what they do see. Such a faith is nerveless and feeble, and not to be called faith at all, since indeed faith has been thus defined: 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things which are not seen.'
Whence also in that same epistle to the Hebrews, where this too is written, when he had consequently enumerated certain ones who pleased God by faith, he says: 'According to faith all these died, not having received the promises, but seeing them afar off, and greeting them, and confessing that they are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth.' And a little after he thus concluded that same praise of faith: 'And these all,' he says, 'having obtained a testimony through faith, received not the promises of God; for God had provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.'
This praise of faith would not exist, nor would there be faith at all, as I have already said, if in believing men followed after visible rewards — that is, if the wages of immortality were rendered to the faithful in this world. Hence the Lord himself too willed to die, that, as it is written of him, 'through death he might make void him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to the guilt of bondage.' By this testimony that too is sufficiently shown, that this death of the body befell through the devil as its prince and author — that is, from sin — which he persuaded; for not otherwise would he most truly be said to have the power of death.
Whence that One who died without any sin, whether original or proper, said what I recalled a little before: 'Behold, the prince of this world' — that is, the devil, who has the power of death — 'cometh, and shall find nothing in me' — that is, of sin, on account of which he has caused men to die. And as if it were said to him, 'Why then dost thou die?' — 'But that all may know,' he says, 'that I do the will of my Father, arise, let us go hence' — that is, 'that I may die, having no cause of death from sin under the author of sin, but out of the righteousness of obedience being made obedient unto death.'
By that testimony, therefore, this too was demonstrated: that the fact that the faithful conquer the fear of death pertains to the very contest of faith — a contest which would assuredly have been lacking, if immortality had immediately followed upon believing.
Although therefore the Lord wrought many visible miracles, whereby faith itself might, as it were, sprout from certain milky beginnings and, growing from that tenderness, coalesce into its own strength — for it is the stronger the less it now seeks such things — nevertheless he willed that what we hope for as promised should be awaited invisibly, so that the just should live by faith; to such a degree that not even he who rose again on the third day willed to remain among men, but, having demonstrated in his own flesh the example of resurrection to those whom he deigned to have as witnesses of this thing, he ascended into heaven, withdrawing himself even from their eyes and now bestowing nothing of the sort upon the flesh of any of them such as he had demonstrated in his own flesh — that they too might live by faith, and might now for the time being, through patience, invisibly await the reward of that righteousness by which one lives by faith, a reward which afterwards shall be visible.
To this understanding I believe that too is to be referred which he said concerning the Holy Spirit: 'He cannot come, unless I go away.' For this was to say: 'You will not be able to live justly by the faith which you shall have from my gift, that is, from the Holy Spirit, unless I take away from your eyes this which you behold, so that your heart may spiritually advance by believing invisible things.' This righteousness which is of faith, again speaking of the Holy Spirit, he thus commends: 'He,' he says, 'will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgement:
of sin indeed, because they believed not in me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more.' What is this righteousness by which they should not see him, save that the just should live by faith, and that, not regarding the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen, we should in the Spirit by faith await the hope of righteousness? But those who say, 'If this death of the body had befallen because of sin, we surely should not die after the remission of sins which the Redeemer bestowed upon us,' do not understand how it is that the things whose guilt God has loosed, lest they harm after this life, he nevertheless allows to remain for the contest of faith, that through them men may be trained and exercised as they advance in the arena of righteousness. For another, not understanding this, might also say: