Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 40 part 1/4

[Heading:] You want learned judges, but not catholic ones. 1. JULIAN: It would be dealt with us conveniently, if either the opportunity were granted to defend the cause of truth before learned judges, or — since this is for the present denied — we were at least not battered by any tumult of the unlearned. AUGUSTINE: Such learned judges you certainly seek, who, unless they had been cultivated and adorned with the liberal disciplines, and were not ignorant of what even the philosophers of this world thought, could not judge concerning your sayings.

[Heading continued] Such a one here was Ambrose, whom, if you do not shun as judge, you ought not to doubt that you have been most justly condemned. For he said: 'All men are born under sin, whose very origin is in fault'; that by these words of his he might show Christ the Savior, that is Jesus, to be necessary for little children; and since you contradict him, you must confess that you wish to have learned judges in such a way that you refuse to have catholic Christian judges. [Heading:] We suffer losses. 2. JULIAN: And because we suffer the loss of a trophy that ought to be raised up for the salvation of the Churches — a trophy which the prudence of the examiners would have conferred upon a good cause by wondrous votes; or [failing that] the assent of the crowd would have availed nothing else than to our insults.

Of these two parts of men, then, which I have mentioned, the one would profit us, the other would do no harm, if either the former obtained power, or the latter modesty. But because there is great confusion of affairs, and a very great multitude of the stupid, the rudders of reason are snatched away from the Church, so that popular dogma sails with its horn raised aloft. AUGUSTINE: If what we assert is popular dogma, then this is not the dogma of the Manichees — this which, with a mind gone astray, you attack among Christian peoples. For you rightly despise the madness of the Manichees, found in a few; but you have your own madness too, by which, under the name of the Manichees, you try to render hostile to us those peoples whom you shun as judges;

as though the peoples, deceived by your loquacity, could call Ambrose a Manichee, could call Cyprian a Manichee — who, for the sake of the salvation even of little children, taught that there is original sin. But such peoples Ambrose did not make, but found; Cyprian himself likewise did not make, but found; such peoples your own father too found in the Church, when you were baptized, as is said, as a little child; such catholic peoples, finally, you also found. Restrain yourselves; we confess that our dogma is popular, because we are the people of Him who was called Jesus for this reason, that He saves His people from their sins; and when you wish to separate little children from this people, you rather separate yourselves. [Heading:] Do not glory in fewness. 3. JULIAN:

Thus, since to the prudent little is permitted, but to the base whatever they please is even permitted, by the decree of seditions the censorship of virtues has been excluded from the Churches; and this stands against us among the common people, that we refuse to be an addition to error; among the common people, I say, who, weighing the merit of an opinion by its prosperity, esteem that opinion the truer which they observe to please the greater number. AUGUSTINE: Does the Manichee please the greater number? Are they not, like parricides, both few and most wicked? Do not, then, glory in fewness, and — what is more vain — say that our dogma pleases the greater number, while casting in our teeth the dogma of a detestable few. [Heading:] Our teachings are not stated subtly. 4. JULIAN:

And what Tully says against Epicurus — that it is a manifest argument that those things are not stated subtly, since men of every sort everywhere profess that they find them pleasing — this these men, as with everything, in their perverse manner, think to pertain to the testimony of wisdom. AUGUSTINE: But in this sentence Tully was conquered and convicted by Him who says: 'Praise the Lord, all you nations; praise Him, all you peoples.' Whom you seek not truly to teach, but subtly to deceive some of them, and to add them to your fewness, by extolling the subtlety of a few secular philosophers, and by reproaching us that our teachings are not stated subtly, and that therefore men of every sort everywhere profess that they find them pleasing.

Yet you have several times said of me that I do nothing more than contrive that I not be understood; how, then, does what I defend please the multitude, unless because that multitude is catholic, to which your heresy deservedly gives displeasure? [Heading:] Chaste souls. 5. JULIAN: For it thoroughly delights souls in heat to defame whatever of the saints there ever was, anywhere, lest they be corrected by the examples of illustrious works. AUGUSTINE: Souls in heat, then, rather run after you, who praise lust; for chaste souls, by censuring, refute the very thing for which, by being assailed, they are said to be praised. [Heading:] What delights lustful souls. 6. JULIAN:

It thoroughly delights and deeply affects them to plead the weakness of nature, to say that the flesh is subject to inborn sins, and not to place the effect of amendment in the will of man, but to call the crimes of one's pursuits the functions of the members; [and to say] that this is the catholic faith — to confess free choice, but such that by it a man is compelled to do evil and cannot will the good. AUGUSTINE: Why are you angry with us, who seek the effect of amendment all the more surely, the more faithfully we ask it of the Lord? In vain do you spread out your puffed-up tongue with proud voice; we do not at all, we do not wish to be counted among those who trust in their own strength. Our soul thirsts for God, to whom it says: 'I will love you, O Lord, my strength.' For a man can will the good;

but the will is prepared by the Lord; while, being corrupted, it willingly inclines to evil, on account of which nature must be healed. [Heading:] Without the grace of God man cannot be freed from evil. 7. JULIAN: [You call] vain and heretical the words of men who assert that the just God created man free for good work, and that it is in each one's power to withdraw from evil and to shine with the pursuits of virtue — so that upon those who cast their disgraceful deeds back onto the necessity of the flesh, the goad of anxieties and fears may be fixed. AUGUSTINE: We do not call vain and heretical the words of men who assert that the just God created man free for good work. For such indeed He created Adam, in whom we all were; but by sinning he ruined himself, and all of us in himself.

Hence it is now not in the power of the sons of men to be freed from evil, unless the grace of God gives them the power to become sons of God. For this reason, not upon those who, as you say, cast their disgraceful deeds back onto the necessity of the flesh, but upon those who pour out prayers to God that they be not led into the temptations of disgraceful deeds, is the goad of anxiety and fear fixed — lest they consent to your most proud and most ungrateful-to-God disputations. [Heading:] Original passion. 8. JULIAN:

Finally, [you complain] that in Churches which possess great honor and a great people it is preached that the force of sin is so great that — before the form of the members, before the beginning and coming of the soul, hovering over the seeds once cast — it invades the secret place of the mother and makes those about to be born guilty, and that guilt, older than birth itself, awaits the substance; and that this law of sin, dwelling thereafter in the members, compels captive man to be a slave to crimes — a man worthier of mercy amid his shameful deeds than of chastisement; seeing that what we call the vices of a depraved will is, in the Church, by men and women and by great bishops, named 'original passion.' AUGUSTINE:

Ambrose, the great bishop, answers you — he whom your own heresiarch praised in glowing terms — and he says: 'It was to Eve's woe that she gave birth, so that childbearing bequeathed to women an inheritance, and that each one, formed by the pleasure of concupiscence, poured into the generative organs and curdled in blood, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, should first undergo the contagion of sins before drawing in the gift of the vital spirit.' And so human nature, Julian, is a thing to be healed by God's mercy, not — as you vainly declaim — to be praised as though it were whole. And that not only patiently, but even with thanksgiving. 9. JUL. These, then, are the harlots of the Manichaean doctrines, most impure, that pander to itching ears. AUG. Charge Ambrose with being a Manichaean, if you dare.

Consider against whom you are speaking, when you want it to seem that you are speaking against me; and if you have any fear of God or any human shame, be silent. It is fitting that I should hear your abuse against such men not only patiently but even with thanksgiving; but you, in tearing such men to pieces, ought both to blush before men and to dread the judgments of God. 'A stinging nettle itches.' 10. JUL. This nettle has stirred up our enemies of both sexes — a nettle once indeed made biting by the vice of bad habit, yet was being treated, as it were, with certain healing ointments of salutary exhortations. AUG. 'A stinging nettle itches' — yes, but for one who praises lust. But if, because of bad habit, as you rightly perceive, a man cries out, 'I do not the good that I would; but the evil which I would not, that I do';

then surely at least in this case you confess that the human will has lost the power of good works — a will to which, unless the help of divine grace comes to its aid, what does the copious and ornate eloquence of any exhorter profit it? 'God has often relieved the ruins of the times when they seemed past hope.' 11. JUL. But now, after lust has begun to be offered in place of medicine, and authority has been added to delight, so that by the consent of almost the whole world this baseness — a queen mighty in her members, ruler of minds, stormer of chastity, and unconquered captor of all souls — runs riot; the cause of defending the truth has become for us as much harder as it is more honourable. For against headlong peoples, hostile to their own remedies, the rarity of those who heal by discourse avails little. What then?

Should we, in view of these things, sound the retreat, and pass over our own insults with silence, and from the harbour of a clear conscience laugh at the shipwrecks of others? But against such indifference there speaks, first, the kindness which we owe to the human race; then the hope and faith which we have in God, who — beyond the fact that he has often relieved the ruins of the times when they seemed past hope — has nevertheless rewarded with eternal recompense that constancy which he willed to be exercised even up to the hour of death, even if for the present no effect should follow. AUG. In what way does God relieve the ruins of evil wills (through which the times are indeed reproached, when they are rightly reproached), except by working good wills in the hearts of men?

Or if they can, let the evil wills raise themselves up — as you, by holding a most senseless opinion, have become a great ruin. Wherefore we pray for you yourselves, and would that God might deign to hear us concerning you as he did concerning your brother Turbantius. 'Rejoicing in the consolation of faith.' 12. JUL. Rejoicing therefore in this consolation of faith, let us press on with the work we have begun, and make good the promised disputations; not doubting that this very thing is the greatest part of the reward, that we have taken our stand upon the citadel of that doctrine which, though the malice of so many and the error of yet more assail it, has nevertheless so escaped the doubtful hazards that it is renowned by its possession of an invincible victory. AUG.

You award yourself the palm against so many bishops of God, who before us learned and taught in the Church of Christ the very things you attack, drinking and ministering from the fountains of Israel. This, then, that you do, is not to be renowned by the possession of victory, but to flow shamefully into the sewer of hateful arrogance. For to be renowned is to be strong; but how can you be strong by the possession of victory, you who try to pollute Catholic doctrines, ancient and unconquered? 'You speak falsehoods.' 13. JUL. For if, as both the earlier discourse has disclosed and the one to follow will show, whatever is reason, whatever is learning, whatever is justice, whatever is piety, whatever belongs to the sacred testimonies, supports this doctrine which we defend;

our enemies gain nothing by all their effort except that they be proved most shameless toward the learned, most defiant toward the saints, and most profane toward God. AUG. But you speak falsehoods: for neither reason, nor sound learning, nor justice, nor piety, nor the sacred Testimonies support your doctrine; on the contrary, all these, as those who rightly understand judge, overturn your doctrine. For reason discerns that it can scarcely arrive at any truth, hindered as it is by the slowness of nature; learning has the penalty of toil in that same slowness of nature; justice cries out that it does not pertain to her that the sons of Adam should be pressed by a heavy yoke from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb, without any merit of sins;

piety, against this evil, implores divine help; the sacred Testimonies admonish the human mind that this may be done. 'We praise the office of Christian power.' 14. JUL. And indeed how little the Traducianists possess to oppose, by reason, to the force by which they are crushed, is attested by these very books against which we contend — as their other writings also attest — books which, directed to a military man (as he himself can profess) occupied more with other affairs than with letters, beg for the aid of powerlessness against us, and on their own behalf commend up and down the decrees of little mobs, whether rustic or theatrical, decrees which by what counsel they were promulgated no history records. AUG. We do not beg for the aid of powerlessness against you;

but rather on your behalf, that you may be restrained from your sacrilegious daring, we praise the office of Christian power. See, then, how you call rustics and theatricals such men as Cyprian and Ambrose and so many learned scribes in the kingdom of God, their associates. 'He hopes that another sins in himself.' 15. JUL. This, however, we can by no means deny, that it greatly pleases the crowds (as I have said) — namely, these muddy men — to impute the faults of the will to nature, and to vindicate the wantonness of morals by the defaming of seeds; so that no one may ever try to amend what he hopes another perpetrates in himself. AUG. Who told you that another perpetrates anyone's sin? Seeing that even he who says, 'Now it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me' —

immediately adding, 'For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing' — shows that whatever it is, it is his own; because even the flesh itself pertains to him who consists of flesh and spirit. And yet you are unwilling to hold with Ambrose the view that this evil, by which the flesh lusts against the spirit, has, through the transgression of the first man, been turned into our nature. But you too, since you are wont to say that in these apostolic words the violence of bad habit is expressed, what is it that you just now wished to say: 'that no one may ever try to amend what he knows another perpetrates in himself'? Since surely you would have him amend himself who says, 'It is not I that do it,' and would have this done by the strength of his own will;

whereas you see how weak is the will of him who says, 'The good that I would, I do not.' At least this man, I beg, permit to implore divine help — the man in whom you see the choice of his own will to have failed. 'The sin of another cannot be imputed by God to little ones.' 16. JUL. But the feeble patronage of a blind opinion multiplies sins, it does not diminish them. This itching, therefore, of the wretched and of those who fall sick of their own accord, will be able to bring no weight against reason itself; but because they assert that natural sin is confirmed by certain passages of the Scriptures, and especially by the words of the apostle Paul — the exposition of which I have deferred to the second volume, and the time for rendering it is at hand —

I shall first briefly distinguish (that the reader may be better instructed) both what has been done and what is to be done. It has been shown, then, that nothing can be proved by the holy Scriptures which justice cannot defend; because if in the law of God there is a perfect form of justice, then through it nothing is allowed to its adversary — that is, to injustice — to acquire of virtue; and by this, what reason refutes, authority cannot vindicate. Next it has been proved that God is known to us by his virtues; and therefore his justice, like his omnipotence, is to be confessed; and if the destruction of it be admitted, his whole majesty will begin to totter; because God is just in such a way that, if he were proved not to be just, he would be convicted of not being God; and it has been concluded that we venerate God as most just in the Trinity;

and it has appeared irrefutably that the sin of another cannot be imputed by him to little ones. AUG. Why do you not confess that a heavy yoke could not have been laid by the omnipotent Just One upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb, without any merit of sin? 'The definition of sin.' 17. JUL. But just as concerning the definition of justice, so also concerning the condition of sin it has been discoursed, that sin has appeared to be nothing else than an evil will, which was free to abstain from that which it had wickedly desired. AUG. This is altogether the sin of the first man, whence the origin of evil descended into men. For to him it was fully free to abstain from that which he had wickedly desired; because there was not yet the vice by which the flesh lusts against the spirit;

he did not yet say, 'The good that I would, I do not'; not yet placed in the flesh of sin, he had no need of any help from the likeness of sinful flesh. 'Without will there is no sin.' 18. JUL. And by this it has been most clearly taught by testimony that in those being born there is no sin, since in them the use of the will could not be found. AUG. And whence the heavy yoke, except because they so lack the use of the will that they nevertheless are bound by the chain of their guilty origin? 'We have restored to the evangelical dignity.' 19. JUL. Moreover, that free choice is denied by those who say that sins are natural, has been shown by a lucid disputation.

This indeed the African denied, not in his own words (lest it should have less weight), but by the testimony of the Gospel, as though more authoritative; which testimony we, by expounding it, have restored to its evangelical dignity. We have also rescued the testimony of the apostle Paul from the snares of the calumniator, and have shown, with the Prophet as witness, that our God, the potter of good vessels, is the Creator of all. AUG. There you have been answered, and it has been shown how far you have strayed from the truth. What remains? 20. JUL. These things, then, having been chiefly established in the first book — any one of which abundantly suffices for the victory of truth — it remains, out of abundance, that we discuss the opinion of the Teacher of the Gentiles, whereby he said that through one man sin entered into the world;

and, when necessary, to support it with the definitions which we set forth beforehand; and to prove that reason has in no way lied; but that it is the crime of injustice to impute the pursuits of some to the births of others; and that this very thing which is unjust — although no one ought to doubt it on this account — nevertheless displeases God and is forbidden by him, we shall teach by the testimonies of the law, whether in this book or in the following. From which it is necessarily concluded both that we most rightly defend that no one is born with sin, and that God cannot judge the newborn as guilty; and by this, that free choice is as entire, as nature is harmless in each one before the use of his own will. AUG.

Speak, let us see what you are going to say about the Apostle's testimony — as vainly as you have said the foregoing things. 'Rebels against both piety and reason.' 21. JUL. But the Manichaeans, rebels against both piety and reason — who think both that there is sin before the time of the will, which the nature of things does not allow; and that God, whom they argue to be unjust, exists as such; and that they defame the holy Pages, by whose monuments they allege the crime of the divinity to be proved — since of the three not one can be shown by reason, that is, neither sin without will, nor iniquity in God, nor perversity in the law: these alone are demonstrated to be foolish, shameless, and impious. AUG. Blush:

Ambrose was not a Manichaean when he said that a man first undergoes the contagion of sins before he draws in the gift of the vital spirit; but neither did those sins exist except from the will whence they draw their origin; and therefore neither is there iniquity in God, who on this account laid a heavy yoke upon the newborn; nor perversity in the law, in which this is learned to be most true — which you yourselves would see, unless you rather had perverse eyes. 'The Sacred Scriptures always guard the honour of God.' 22. JUL. Let it therefore cling above all to the mind of the prudent reader, that in all the sacred Scriptures only that is contained which is wise unto the honour of the Catholic God, as is illustrated by the light of frequent statements;

and if anywhere a harsher expression should raise a question, it is indeed certain that the author of that passage did not there hold what is unjust; but it must be understood according to that which both clear reason and the splendour of other passages, in which there is no ambiguity, have made plain. Now therefore let us set down the words of him with whom we are dealing. Indeed, in that chapter of his sayings which he had brought right up to God the potter of sinners — against which we contended in the preceding book — he said briefly that through one man sin entered into the world; but he did not linger over the exposition of the passage itself.

But after he had discoursed with many words against those excerpts which he confirms were sent to him, he came to some passage of my sayings, which he set before himself as though about to assail it; but, alleging nothing according to that on which he had been struck, he flew off to this saying of the Apostle, in which he says that through one man sin entered into the world; and according to his own doctrine he laboured to expound the context of the passage itself;

on account of which I, passing over other matters, hastened to that portion — since I had promised that this question would be resolved in the second volume — both to fulfil the pledge of my promise, and to show what his argumentation was, lest I should be thought to have committed a fraud if, suppressing his exposition, I brought in the one which we confess to be Catholic. AUG. It is a Pelagian one you are going to bring in, not a Catholic one. Catholic is that exposition which shows God to be just amid so many and so great punishments and torments of little ones; which none of them would suffer in paradise with any equity, if human nature had not been corrupted by sin and deservedly condemned. 'It is false that I stole.' 23. JUL. Reviewing, therefore, in my first work, his opinion in which he had said:

'For just as sin, whether it be drawn from this side or from that in little ones, is the work of the devil; so man, whether he be born from this side or from that, is the work of God' — it is thus now reported here by me, as it is contained in my work, whence this man had stolen the greatest part. AUG. You dispute truly in just such a way as it is true that I stole those things; whereas rather he to whom the little document was sent transferred, from your work, by his own arbitration and judgment, what he wished and as he wished. 'Understand that the truth has taken from you the licence of roaming.' 24. JUL. I answered therefore there: You indeed (I would say it with all deference to your mastership) shuffle, but understand that the truth has taken from you the licence of roaming.

For behold, even we acquiesce that sin is the work of an evil will, or is the work of the devil; but through what is this sin found in a little one? Through the will? But there was none in him. Through the form of the body? But this God bestowed. Through the entrance of the soul? But it owes nothing to the bodily seed, being newly created by God. Through marriage? But this pertains to the work of the parents, whom you had premised not to have sinned in this act; and if you had not truly conceded that, as the progress of your discourse indicates, then those very acts are to be execrated, which caused the evil. But those acts do not have a substance of their own; rather, by their own name they indicate the work of persons; therefore the parents, who by their union caused the sin, are by right damnable.

It therefore can no longer be doubted that spouses are consigned to eternal punishment, by whose labour it was brought about that the devil should attain to exercising dominion over men. And if you concede this, you will lose all that whole which you seemed before to have held — that is, what you had said, that man is the work of God. For it necessarily follows: since through the commingling of bodies there is origin for those begotten, if evil is in men through origin, and the devil's right over men through evil, then the devil is the author of men, from whom is the origin of those being born. After which I again repeated his very words: 'For just as sin, whether it be drawn from this side or from that, is the work of the devil; so man, whether he be born from this side or from that, is the work of God.' And forthwith I rose up in this manner:

When I ponder that timid utterance of yours, by which you say that marriage is not an evil, I cannot consider those other discourses of yours without laughter. For if you believe that men are made by God, and that spouses are innocent, see how it cannot stand that original sin is drawn from them. Surely he who is born does not sin, he who begot does not sin, he who created does not sin; through what cracks, amid so many safeguards of innocence, do you feign that sin has entered? AUG. Already, by these words of yours, even when I had read your very books, it suffices that I have answered. But here too I admonish that the Apostle rather is to be heard than you, who pointed out not a hidden crack but a most open door, by which sin entered into the world, and by sin death;

and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned; which words of his, when you begin to expound them according to yourselves and not according to their own meaning, then it will appear against what rectitude of truth you struggle with your most tortuous loquacity. 'Albeit with interpolation.' 25. JUL. This context, then, from my former work he has proposed to himself in this his second book, albeit with interpolation. For both the formation of the body I mentioned, and the entrance of the soul — which reason as well as the authority of the sacred law and of the Catholic Church confirms to be newly created by God in each one — he has, I suppose, artfully passed over. AUG.