Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 39 part 1/5

Against the Pelagian heretics, who say that Adam, even if he had not sinned, would still have died in body, and that in him the human race was not corrupted (whence it follows that they contend that deaths, and deadly diseases, and all the evils which we see even little children suffer, would have existed even in paradise, though no one had sinned), I wrote a book to Count Valerius, the title of which is 'On Marriage and Concupiscence,' because I had learned that word had reached him that the Pelagians said we were condemners of marriage.

Finally, in that work I distinguished, with such argument as I could, the good of marriage from the evil of carnal concupiscence which conjugal chastity uses well. On receiving this book, the illustrious man I mentioned sent me on a leaflet certain sentences excerpted from the work of Julian the Pelagian heretic (in which work, in four books, he thought he had answered that one book of mine which I have recorded I wrote, 'On Marriage and Concupiscence') — sentences sent to him by I know not whom, who saw to it that they were excerpted, as he pleased, from Julian's first book; and that same Valerius requested that I answer them as quickly as possible. And so it came about that under the same title I wrote a second book also, against which Julian composed eight others with excessive loquacity.

To these I now reply, setting forth his words and appending to them my response to each passage, as the refutation of them seemed fit to be rendered; since I have already refuted his four earlier books, after they came into my hands, clearly enough in six books. I discharge my promise. 1. JULIAN. Though hindered by great anguishes, which — as I look upon the state of the Churches in this tempest — are stirred up in me partly by indignation, partly by pity, I had not yet cast off the pledge of my promise, namely that I, who had become a debtor by promising, should take care to be so also by paying.

For in the books which I dictated against Augustine's writings, addressed to our brother Bishop Turbantius, a man conspicuous for the great splendour of his virtues, I promised that, if no misfortune should occur to hinder my studies, I would forthwith meet all the arguments of those who, from the doctrine of the Manichees, defend the transmission of sin, that is, natural evil — from which task I have been held back until now by various and undissimulable necessity. AUGUSTINE. Would that you might imitate Turbantius, who after those writings of yours, and after these praises of yours by which you call him a man conspicuous for the great splendour of his virtues, was freed from your error!

But an answer has been made to those books of yours, and it has been shown you what most brilliant Catholic lights, in the treatment of the holy Scriptures, you attempt to darken with this reproach, that is, with the appellation of Manichees. The work is dedicated to Florus. 2. JULIAN. In truth, as soon as I was permitted to breathe again, my plan was, as far as the very nature of the matter would allow, briefly to fulfil my promises — had you not willed, most blessed father Florus, that I should enter yet again upon a more strenuous province; you who, since you avail so much by the reverence of your holiness that I judge it irreligious to obey your precepts sluggishly, have easily obtained that I extend into longer roads the compendium of that brevity which I had chosen.

You will therefore favour a work undertaken by your authority, whose name I have inserted for this reason above all, that my pen might proceed more secure and more cheerful under the patronage of so great a command. There was, then, conceived in my mind a plan of brevity not untimely; because in those four books nearly all that had been brought forth by the mouth of Augustine against us — things devised by the Manichees — the truth of the Catholic faith (for which, and with which, we earn the hatred of a falling world) had crushed, armed as much with invincible disputations as with the testimonies of the sacred Law, nor was almost anything left over, if we had fair judges to deal with. AUGUSTINE. Against those four books of yours, six books have been written by me.

For after commemorating the Catholic teachers (whom you make out to be Manichees, casting up against me under this charge what they learned and taught in the Catholic Church), which I set forth in the two earlier volumes, I answered in the following four books your single books one by one; refuting the darkness of your heresy by the light of Catholic truth, which by forsaking it you are blinded and rage insane, and, concerning a matter about which there was never any controversy in the Church of Christ, you, like a new heretic, seek fair judges — as though any could seem to you fair judges save those whom you have deceived with your error. But what judge better than Ambrose will you be able to find?

Of whom your master Pelagius says that not even an enemy dared to reprove his faith and his most pure sense in the Scriptures. Would this man, then, with a most pure sense in the Scriptures, retain the most impure dogma of the Manichee, when he says: 'We are all born under sin, whose very origin is in fault'? You yourself, then, now judge with how impure a sense you reprove this Catholic dogma, and do not delay to correct yourself with Ambrose as judge. They are confirmed by the reasoning of the Scriptures. 3. JULIAN.

Nevertheless I had passed over some testimonies of the Scriptures by which they think something can be urged against us, which I had promised I would go on to explain, so as to teach that whatever ambiguous words of the Law are wont to be seized upon by our enemies neither prejudice the plain truth, and are to be understood according to that which is confirmed by the most absolute authorities of holy Scripture and by insuperable reasoning. Since indeed by this very fact anyone shows himself an unskilled and profane interpreter of the divine Law, whoever thinks that to be defended by its sanction which cannot be vindicated by justice. AUGUSTINE. What you assert, rather, cannot be defended by any reasoning of justice.

For the misery of the human race, from which we see no man exempt from birth to death, does not pertain to the just judgment of the Almighty, if there is no original sin. The divine equity cannot be assailed by biblical testimonies. 4. JULIAN. For if the Law of God is the fountain and mistress of justice, God's equity can also be aided by its helps, but cannot be assailed. Therefore the nature of things allows no support for iniquity to be procured from the strength of that Scripture, which had this one cause of its promulgation: that by its testimonies, remedies, threats, and punishments iniquity might be destroyed. AUGUSTINE. By its testimonies it is declared that 'Man is become like to vanity; his days pass away like a shadow.'

That man is born with this vanity is shown not only by the truthful Scripture by which he is bewailed, but also by the toilsome and troublous care by which he is trained. Among its remedies it is read that, even when a little child has been born, a sacrifice must be offered for sin. Among its threats it is read that the soul of a little child would perish if it were not circumcised on the eighth day. Among its punishments it is read that even little children were commanded to be slain, whose parents provoked God to wrath, so that they were destroyed by the slaughter of war. The biblical testimonies which seem ambiguous must be explained. 5. JULIAN. Nothing, therefore, can be done through the Law of God against God the author of the Law. By this one summary is excluded whatever the erring are wont to object;

but we, to teach how rich in truth is he in whom we believe, are wont to bring the light of exposition also to those passages of the Scriptures which have veiled the understanding of their meaning by the perplexity of their expression; that, once unlocked, they may possess the dignity of their origin, and not be separated, as it were, like bastard or degenerate offspring from the sacred lineage. AUGUSTINE. On the contrary, you are attempting to obscure the lights of the holy Scriptures, shining with sure truth, by the perplexity of your depraved disputations. For what is more luminous than what I just said: 'Man is become like to vanity; his days pass away like a shadow'? Which surely would not happen if he remained in the likeness of God in which he was created. What is more luminous than what is said:

'As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'? What is more luminous than what is said: 'For who is clean from filth? Not even an infant whose life is of one day upon the earth'; and very many other passages, which you strive to wrap up in your darkness and to turn, by vain loquacity, into your perverse sense? The biblical texts are just, because divine. 6. JULIAN. This, then, according to my custom, I was thinking to carry through as the only thing so far, namely to free from the interpretations of the Traducianists those members of the divine Law which lay subject to insult; that is, by showing them to be divine, since they were just. AUGUSTINE.

With insulting mouth you call Traducianists Cyprian, Ambrose, Gregory, and the rest of their fellows who confess original sin. But it is no wonder that new heretics impose a new name on the Catholics from whom they go out; this others too have done, when they likewise went out. A rather long response has been made by me. 7. JULIAN. But because you exacted it at great cost, nay commanded it by fatherly authority, that I should confront the book of the African tractator, which Alypius — a home-bred slave of his sins — recently brought to Count Valerius, hence my response has been made longer. AUGUSTINE. A great punishment for you is this African disputant; and long before you were born, Cyprian the African was prepared as a great punishment for your heresy. Insults against Augustine. 8. JULIAN.

For he has once again given monuments of his talent and his faith, which are understood most grievously, expounded most difficultly, scarcely heard without horror; but are convicted most easily, pierced through most sharply, and, for reverence of decency, consigned to oblivion when exterminated. AUGUSTINE. Those who read do not judge as you wish. They charge that we are new heretics. 9. JULIAN. His first book, then, which alone was published before this one, charges that we are new heretics;

because we resist an opinion which, after the manner of a whitewashed sepulchre — which, according to the sentence of the Gospel, is clothed outwardly with colour, but within is full of filth and iniquity — belches forth, under the praise of Baptism, the filth of the Manichees and natural sin, so as to contaminate the hitherto pure Sacraments of the Catholic Church. AUGUSTINE. That you are new heretics is shown by the ancient Catholic faith, which you have but now begun to attack, preached by the most illustrious teachers who were before us.

But I need not answer all your revilings rather than your accusations, which you hurl not against me only, but also against Ambrose, Hilary, Gregory, Cyprian, and the other most renowned teachers of the Church, with a most shameless brow and a most impudent tongue. Suspicions against Valerius. 10. JULIAN. He also praises a powerful man, because — to our petitions, we who clamoured for nothing else than that judges be granted for so great a business, that the things which stood established as done by underhand dealings might rather be amended than punished by examination — he opposed the mass of his dignity, and did not permit time or place to be obtained for the debate. Whether the man to whom he writes did this so wickedly as this praise attests, let him see to it himself.

We however, insofar as we have thought the better of him, the mention of his name honourably inserted into my little work has made plain. But perhaps that book contains false things about its patron. Furthermore, it faithfully shows what its writer desires: namely, that against reason, against faith, against all sanctity of morals and of doctrines, the fight be waged with savage force and blind lack of self-control. AUGUSTINE. Far be it from the Christian powers of the earthly commonwealth to doubt the ancient Catholic faith, and on this account to grant its assailants place and time for examination; and not rather, being certain and grounded in it, to impose the discipline of coercion on such enemies of it as you are.

For what was done against the Donatists, their most violent mobs compelled to be done, ignorant of what had been transacted before, which ought to have been shown them; may God avert that you should have such mobs; yet, God being propitious, you do not have them. Augustine's foul conscience. 11. JULIAN. When these things had been transacted among the first parts of the volume, he proceeded to the distinction of marriage and concupiscence, as he had promised in the inscription of the title; and thereafter throughout the whole work he gave proof of his skill and virtue. For, vexed by extreme necessity between the denial of confessors and the confession of deniers, he published what a foul conscience suffers as anguish. AUGUSTINE. Revile as much as you can; for what reviler cannot do this? I could have kept silent.

12. JULIAN. To the earlier work, then, I replied in four little books, with such ability as truth supplied; having stated beforehand that I would indeed pass over those things which appeared to have no weight even for his own dogma, and which could convict me of loquacity, had I pursued whatever was feeble and empty. And yet, if it had been permitted to keep this rule, as was fitting — that is, that they should not merit even an attack because of their inept profession — nearly all his inventions ought to have been spurned in public silence. But since, with matters hastening to the worse part (which is an indication of a world sinking to its end), in the Church of God too folly and baseness have obtained dominion;

we discharge an embassy for Christ, and, in our manly portion, as much strength as we have, we bring to the defence of the Catholic religion; nor does it irk us to commit to writing the remedies which we compound against the poisons of errors. AUGUSTINE. Folly and baseness gave you birth; but if they had obtained dominion in the Church, there they would certainly have held you. An appeal to the readers. 13. JULIAN. I had certainly testified, as I said, that in the first work I would neither dispute against all the species of the transmission to be defended, nor recapitulate all the things which that book contained; but that I would grapple with those in which he had placed the sum and force of his dogma. And that I have faithfully promised this, any reader — however biased, provided he be a diligent reader of both works — will recognize.

But I, secure in the honesty of my conscience, both exhort and goad our enemy: that if he judges any argument brought forth by himself to have been passed over by me, which he himself reckons to be of any moment, he should bring it forth into the open and convict me of fear and guile. AUGUSTINE. I do not believe that you supposed the things you passed over to be of no moment; and yet, even if I grant that you did suppose this, that it is nevertheless not so, a Catholic and intelligent reader will find — if he has both that one book of mine and your four, and applies diligence. Nothing has been fulfilled by me otherwise than promised. 14. JULIAN. Certain testimonies of the Scriptures I have indeed expounded more at length, others more briefly; because I promised I would do this fully in the work that was to follow.

And so nothing there remained unexploded of all Augustine's arguments and propositions; nothing has been fulfilled by me otherwise than promised; many things among his inventions I have convicted as false, many as stupid, many as sacrilegious. AUGUSTINE. This indeed you say, but you say it; whereas he who reads and understands, if he is not a Pelagian, does not say this. No arrogance. 15. JULIAN. By this profession no ill fame of arrogance need be feared by us; because we confess that truth has been defended not by my talent, but that the weakness of our talent has been aided by the strength of truth. AUGUSTINE. You would have said 'crushed,' if you had been willing to speak the truth. Augustine admits both that I spoke falsely and that he did not read what I said. 16. JULIAN. Since therefore these things stand fulfilled no otherwise than I have said;

I cannot sufficiently marvel at the man's impudence, who in this recent work of his accuses my books of falsity, which nevertheless he attests have not yet come into his hands. It is hard indeed that the habit of sinning produces love of the offence; but nothing is harder than that it extinguishes shame; which, though it was established to arise from the practice of wickedness, yet present perils have taught more fully than any of us could have surmised. For when should I have believed that the African had so hardened his brow, that in one work and in one line he should confess both — that I had spoken false things, and that he had not read what I said? AUGUSTINE. If you did not do this, he did who excerpted from your books those things which he thought ought to be sent to Count Valerius.

Because, not believing that he had done this deceitfully, I attributed to the author what I owed to the excerptor. For I had not yet read your books, but I had read what he had excerpted from them. If you would consider that you are a man, when you saw that this could have happened, you would by no means seek out for a man, on this occasion, so odious a calumny. Augustine read only the excerpts. 17. JULIAN. For, writing to him whom he marvels to be a student of his books, though he is occupied with the sweats of military service, he indicates that leaflets were brought to him by Alypius, which were superscribed thus: 'Chapters from the book of Augustine which he wrote, against which I have excerpted a few things from the books.'

Here I see that the one who directed those writings to your Excellency wished to excerpt them from I know not what books, for the sake — as far as I judge — of a swifter response, lest he delay your insistence. But when I considered which those books might be, I judged them to be those of which Julian makes mention in the letter which he sent to Rome, a copy of which came all the way to me at the same time. For there he says: 'They say also that these marriages which are now transacted were not instituted by God, which is read in the book of Augustine, against which I have now replied in four little books.' And after these words he again infers, in his own words: 'I believe these things were excerpted from these little books;'

whence perhaps it had been better that our effort should labour to refute and confute his whole work itself, which he unfolded in four volumes; had I not been unwilling to delay my response, just as neither did you delay the transmission of the writings which must be answered. He shows therefore here most plainly that he suspects those excerpts to have been hastily collected from my work; but that he is ignorant of the whole books, to which nevertheless he dares to say he could have replied. AUGUSTINE. Why should I not dare, since I ought certainly not to doubt that you had spoken vain things in them? For you could not speak against true things save vain ones. Nor did my mind deceive me;

for I found those books of yours to be such, when I read them, as I had presumed them to be before I read them. A letter directed to Rome. 18. JULIAN. He also makes mention of a letter which he says was directed by me to Rome; but through the words which he set down, we were unable to recognize of what writing he was speaking. For to Zosimus, once bishop of that city, I addressed two letters upon these questions; but at that time when I had not yet begun the books. AUGUSTINE. This letter is not to Zosimus; but to seduce those who at Rome could be seduced by such persuasion. But if you do not acknowledge it, behold, let it not be yours. Would that those books too were not yours, but another's; lest through them you should be made far estranged from the truth.

How great his levity and weakness. 19. JULIAN. Furthermore, let him make use of the indication of the letter, by which he either received, or feigned, that I had unfolded in four volumes a reply against the new Manichees (because he disdains to seem an old one); why did he not take care to learn beforehand the things we had objected? Why did he not, being about to engage, study to recognize them; but, stirred by most base levity into the greatest contest with his eyes bandaged, advanced after the manner of the Andabatae? A deed which he defends with such an allegation as to say that he wished, by a headlong response, to imitate his patron's haste, which the latter had in transmitting the papers; as though he could not most honourably have intimated that some time ought to be granted him, in which he might arrive at the reading of the published work;

that it is a disgrace among the learned to transgress in the gravity of writing, and, in the impatience of deliberating, to assail what you do not know. To this is added that, contriving against us the odium of craftiness — namely, that it curtailed the sequence of his sayings — he lent credence to these excerpts, which seem to have been composed more plausibly by his own falsity and malignity than by the unskilled simplicity of any of us. But with whatever mind, by whatever author this came about, it nevertheless supports us in two ways;

because at once it became plain both how great is the levity, and how great the weakness, in the enemy of truth, who has demonstrated of himself both that, when he ought not to speak, he cannot keep silence, and that, from a few half-full and torn-apart rather than gathered sentences — yet only from my first book — he so gave way, broken, that he stirred the breasts of the common crowd against us with womanish voices indeed; which will appear in the courses of our disputation. AUGUSTINE. Why are you angry with me, that your books could reach me rather late; or that, seeking them, I could not swiftly find them?

Yet I could, and altogether ought to, inspect with plainly open, not bandaged, eyes the things which the leaflet sent to me contained — of whatever sort and quality they were — lest they be thought unconquered, and to refute them without delay; because, even if I could never find your books, it behoved me to convict, as far as I was able, the things which he judged to be of some moment, who reckoned they ought to be sent to so great a man, lest anyone reading them should be deceived by them. You would not, then, cast up against me what you have cast up, unless you were rather speaking with — I will not say extinguished, but certainly closed — eyes. But in no way would you say that the breasts of the common crowd are stirred by us against you, unless you knew that the Catholic faith, which you are trying to overthrow, is not hidden from the Christian multitude in either sex.

The opinion of natural evil. 20. JULIAN. Yet here too I give warning, as was done by us in the earlier work, that I shall not set down all his words exactly; but those heads by whose destruction the opinion of natural evil may be crushed. AUGUSTINE. The things you pass over will perhaps be gathered either by us or by others, so that it may appear why you passed them over. The truncation of texts. 21. JULIAN. Although this is established to have been fully accomplished in the first work; yet because he has now proposed to himself to refute some things from one book of mine alone, and charges me, as I have said before, that I have for the most part truncated the heads of his sayings which I inserted; I shall show first that what he reproaches was not done by me, and was most impudently practised by him in this very work.

Then I shall prove, by those very concise and brief sentences which he inserts from my writings by which he had been assailed, that he has so opposed them with no solid responses, that both those sentences remain unshaken, and here he confesses more plainly what is to be detested than our operation had laboured to unfold. AUGUSTINE. I have already answered these things above. Omissions. 22. JULIAN. Astonished, then, let us hear what he has written against me. 'He set down,' he says, 'these words from my book, sent to you by me and most well known to you, which he attempted to refute: "they clamour most invidiously 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 union contract original sin;"

'and we do not deny that they, of whatever parents 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 which I had interposed, by the great weight of which he felt himself pressed. For when I had said that men contract original sin, I straightway added: 'Of which the Apostle says: "through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed unto all men, in whom all sinned."' This testimony, as we said, having been passed over, he wove together the rest of those things which have been recalled above. For he knows in what way the hearts of the Catholic faithful are wont to receive these apostolic words which he passed over;

These words, so upright and shining with such great light, the new heretics strive to obscure and corrupt with dark and twisted interpretations. Then he wove in other words of mine, where I had said: 'They observe that, just as the good of marriage cannot be accused on account of the original evil which is drawn from it, so neither can the evil of adulteries and fornications be excused on account of the natural good which is born from it. For as sin, whether it be drawn by little children from the one source or the other, is the work of the devil, so man, whether he be born from the one or the other, is the work of God.' Here too he passed over those things wherein he feared Catholic ears. For, that these words might be reached, it had been said above by us:

'Therefore, because we say what is contained in the most ancient and most firm rule of the Catholic faith, these asserters of a new and perverse dogma, who say that there is no sin in little children to be washed away by the laver 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 man who is born of marriage—were the work of the devil.' These words of ours, then, being passed over, there follow those words of ours which he set down, as is written above. How long, you who speak these things, will you persist in mocking the simplicity of religious hearts and unskilled ears? To what end will unbridled shamelessness fling itself?

When you were writing these things, did the censure of learned men move you not at all, nor the reverence of the coming judgement, nor the very monuments of literature themselves? Now let your deceit lie open; do you not see that, once detected, it is held fast? What you wrote in your first work, what in your second—which of us do you suppose is ignorant of it? For it pleased you outright, and it was fitting, to accost you in those modes with which an eloquent consul thundered against a public parricide. AUGUSTINE: You do well to point out to us, lest perhaps we should not recognize it, that you took these things from the invectives of Cicero and turned them to your use; but we do not fear Julian, when we see that he has become a man of Tullius; rather we grieve at the madman, when we see that he has lost the Christian sense.