Works 1 part 1/7

PROLOGUE. A PROFESSION OF FAITH AGAINST THOSE WHO, WHILE THEY SAY THAT SOME ARE DRAWN TO LIFE AND OTHERS PRESSED DOWN INTO DEATH BY THE WILL OF GOD ALONE, ON THE ONE HAND ASSERT FATE ALONG WITH THE PAGANS, AND ON THE OTHER DENY FREE WILL ALONG WITH THE MANICHAEANS. To the most blessed and most reverend Pope Leontius, Faustus. In that, for your pastoral solicitude, most blessed Pope Leontius, you assembled a council of the highest bishops for the condemning of the error of predestination, you rendered a service to all the churches of the Gauls.

But in that you committed to my weak shoulders the task and care of ordering those things which you most learnedly set forth in the public conference, you consulted too little, I think, for so great a business, too little for your own holy esteem; me you burdened with the judgment of your charity, yourselves with the peril of the choice. Since therefore you know that your own person also labors under the burden laid upon us, in this you plead a common cause, if you extend to him whom in your opinion you perceive to be unequal the hand of your support. Fittingly and wholesomely does he undertake the zeal for asserting grace who joins to it the obedience of servile labor, as though an attendant minister were inseparably to cleave to a patron or lord.

But if the one shall be without the other, either a lord will appear dishonored without a servant, or a servant, forgetful of his created condition, will usurp the place of his lord. Rightly therefore shall this order be preserved between him who aids and him who strives alike, that the former may hold dominion by full right and the latter render service in total subjection. And the dignity of him who commands shall be increased, if the diligence of him who obeys is ever at his disposal. Let the lowest be joined to the highest, and so joined that they be indeed subjected, not made equal. But just as it does not befit the helmsman to lack his oarsman, the priest his minister, the emperor his soldier, so it is fitting that grace be, as it were, a foster-child bound to obedience by inseparable service.

But because Pelagius too importunately exalts bare labor and, mad, foolishly believed that human weakness could suffice for itself without grace, and impiously preached this, attempting to raise the tower of his arrogance into heaven, we judged it necessary to constrain and refute his blasphemies in a brief discourse, lest perhaps he who excludes the gift of labor—that is, the precept of the one who commands—when we assert that God's mercy is to be merited by faith and works, should, ignorant of discernment, apply the Catholic voice to Pelagius's meaning, and, the royal way being abandoned, believe that we, falling to the right, decline to the left, and lest, while we speak of labor as servant to grace, we should seem to have set a stumbling-block before the feet of a blind man.

But when we make mention of work and labor, we shall use both the words and the meanings of the prophets, apostles, and evangelists. If anyone presumes to contradict these, he will attempt to destroy not our inventions, but without doubt to dissolve the heavenly ordinances and to undermine the foundations of the faith. We have drawn out the discourse concerning foreknowledge and predestination somewhat at length, so that things thought obscure might be rendered more clear to the slower. But let it not offend certain persons who delight in the trappings of words, that, content with the force of the testimonies, without loftiness of speech we have brought forth the light of truth; in which little work, indeed, after the subscription of the Council of Arles, when new errors had been detected, the Synod of Lyons demanded that some things be added.

CHAPTERS OF THE FIRST BOOK. I. That the sense of Pelagius, who denied grace, must in the first place be destroyed. II. Against the objection of Pelagius, by which he says that infants have no need of baptism. III. Against this, that they say that by grace alone every man is saved without any labor; against that sense which, by saying, 'One is predestined to death, another predestined to life,' by the very facts shuts off the hope of praying. IV. Where the works of the law are destroyed and grace is commended. V. On that which he says: By the grace of God I am what I am. VI. How this is to be understood: By grace, he says, you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves. VII. Against this, that they say free will was entirely taken away. VIII.

In what manner the weakness of free will is to be understood. IX. How this is to be understood: It is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy; or that: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. X. Against this, that they say man's will is prompt only to evil, and not at all to good. XI. Against that sense which says that a vessel unto dishonor cannot rise up to be a vessel unto honor. XII. Likewise, that to will and not to will, as to the bad so also to the good part, was committed to man's free will. XIII. Where the grace of God and the human will are joined together by the assertion of testimonies, and the empty calumny concerning infants is briefly touched upon in passing. XIV.

Against this, that they say those who perish after baptism did not truly believe in baptism at all. XV. On the fall of the angel, and that the holy angels have a likeness of God, against the persuasion of certain persons. XVI. That Christ died for all. XVII. Against this, that they say God's violence hardens a man, so that he cannot come to salvation. XVIII. That none perishes if God wills it. THE FIRST BOOK. THAT THE SENSE OF PELAGIUS, WHO DENIED GRACE, MUST IN THE FIRST PLACE BE DESTROYED.

Being about to treat, with the Holy Spirit enlightening us, of the grace of God and the frailty of free will according to the evangelical teachings and apostolic rules, we believed that in the first place the blasphemies of Pelagius—already long since betrayed by the faith of the Catholic Church, confounded by learning, trodden down by authority—must be constrained in a brief and necessary discourse, for the reason that, among the other abominations of his dogma, he even attempted with damnable pride to affirm that man's labor can avail without grace.

And therefore we shall take care to bring his wicked opinions, at least in some part, into the open, so that each anxious person may recognize that it is a very different thing to join the office of labor to saving grace, and quite another thing with the sole rashness of the heart to assert bare labor apart from the patronage of grace. Here therefore, while, forgetful of the fear of God, he exalts human frailty too highly, he lost the soundness of his judgment, and thus fell on the other side, while he preaches the freedom of the will to be whole and unimpaired, like those who assert that it was entirely emptied out. In this place, therefore, twin errors wrestle with each other, of which the one insinuates grace alone, the other labor alone, the path and measure of truth being abandoned.

Different in the kind of their sects, but alike in impiety, with diverse zeal indeed, but they hiss with the spirit of one serpent. Of these, the one—that is, the preacher of grace alone—at the very front conceals his poison under the appearance of piety; the other—that is, the asserter of labor—straightway manifests his prominent swelling with wicked arrogance. This profession, by insinuating labor alone, is to be detested by its very title; that one, under a religious color, is the more to be feared. This one betrays its sacrilege to the very ears; that one pours its venom into the innermost bowels almost before it is felt. You would think two rocks besieged a narrow strait, of which the one is sunk down into the deep, the other threatens toward heaven.

The one is seen to be dangerous to those sailing, the other unforeseen works blind shipwrecks. That one speaks of grace, this one of labor. The divine oracles confirm both. If you remove the discordant elements and join the sayings, the full sincerity of the faith will appear. But because, like rash oarsmen, they commit their sails to an unexplored sea without a master, and know not how to temper the steering, nor have they learned to handle the rudder, here one is carried, as it were, into the evil peril of Scylla on the right, there the other stretches toward the sheer abyss of Charybdis on the left. And if you ask what they ought to do amid these: with a helmsman provided, let them entrust the ship to the waves, let them hold a middle course, and both, with a favorable breeze, will be brought to port.

Let us see to what impiety we may liken or compare this twin error. In like manner they strike against the rock of scandal, both those who presumed to assert that Christ the Lord is God alone, and those who, the light of discernment being lost, presumed to assert that he is man alone. Almost each excess, while it knows not how to hold the distinction and the difference, incurs an equal crime. Accordingly, he who says that Christ is man alone has denied the power of the Author; he who says he is God alone has lost the mercy of the Redeemer. And thus those who confess one substance in the Lord and Savior will be constrained to this necessity, that they be compelled to say either that God alone fell from heaven, or that man alone was crucified. But it is not so.

For neither could God alone have felt death, nor man alone have overcome it; and therefore, by reason of the twofold substance, man took it up and God conquered it. If therefore you render to the parts their own properties and believe and assert Christ to be at once God and man, it is just as if you were to join grace with labor and not to repel the effort of man from the help of God—yet in such a way that you in no wise mingle the guilt of arrogance with the devotion of the one who strives, since it is as much a loss not to labor as it is a peril to presume upon labor. Pelagius therefore says that for obtaining salvation the nature of man suffices for itself alone. Thus this pestilent teacher affirms, as though the workmanship of our creation still remained in its own state unimpaired.

I judge that the freedom of the will could not suffice for itself alone without the aid of grace, even before the first transgression violated its privilege. But how now can it suffice for itself alone, to whose arrogance it is said: For without me you can do nothing; to whose presumption the divine word is directed: Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do they labor who build it? This indeed is denied to pride, that it should accomplish anything without grace, but it is granted to humility to fulfill it with grace. Pelagius goes on further to say that Adam was made mortal, who, whether he had sinned or had not sinned, would have died. But since the Apostle says:

Therefore, he says, just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, you understand that, if sin had not gone before, death would not have followed, and the granted immortality would have endured—which it is indeed manifest was bestowed under a proposed law and conferred with a condition, so that, if the proud one had not withdrawn from obedience, he would have remained eternal in glory. For when the heavenly interdict had sanctioned it, saying: On whatever day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall die the death, the ill-advised presumption of the forbidden tasting became the occasion of death by accident. You shall die the death, he says. If the grace of the Giver conferred nothing, what is it that the offense of the Condemner took away?

Death, therefore—that is, an alien and adventitious evil—is not the order of nature, but the penalty of a sentence. For, he says, the Lord did not make death. That immortality had been entrusted to man the very envy of the enemy testifies, and, because, being cast down, he envied him his immortality, he therefore brought in the cause of death by saying: On whatever day you eat of this tree, your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods. If he had said only this: When you have eaten, you shall take your fill of the sweetness of the food, the transgression would have reached only as far as the enticement of carnal concupiscence. But when he set this as the end of the prevarication, by saying: You shall be as gods, the guilt of gluttony advanced even to the ambition of divinity and even to the crime of high treason against majesty.

They were made, therefore, as gods by the gift of heavenly grace, and yet stripped of it and thrust down from the summit of their blessed station; and thus the cunning serpent, cast out of heaven for the evil of his pride, contrived from his own fall and downfall engines for the overthrow of man, and in the very manner he fell, so did he deceive. But what else is to be understood, even in that image of God according to which man was fashioned, save the mark of perpetuity? And this perpetuity you recognize as not only not taken from the soul, but even restored to the body by the power of the resurrection. Wherefore do not doubt that immortality was entrusted to man before his fault, since you perceive it restored even after his ruin. Pelagius, then, asserts that Adam, whether he had sinned or not sinned, would in every case have died.

And this proceeds from that very depravity by which he denies original sin. For while he strives to affirm that mortality was a necessity of man's condition and not of his transgression, he wishes it to appear that the origin of this debt began not from the servant but from the Lord, not from a despiser but from the Author, so that the law of death may be believed to be a matter of ordinance and not of crime. And is it to be thought that this lamentable ruin brought upon the human race was transmitted not by the transgressor but by the Creator? And where then is that word: 'By the envy of the devil death entered into the world'? But while he denies the sin of origin, he utterly removes the cause for which the Redeemer came. Let us see whether this unhappy and lamentable condition took its beginning through the will of God or through the depravity of man.

Hear what the trumpet of truth sounds forth: 'Therefore,' it says, 'as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death, so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.' By saying that Adam was made mortal, Pelagius sets death in the first order of his making, whereas it is agreed that death was imposed in the third degree, as punishment for the guilt of transgression. For man is the work of God, sin the work of the devil, death the penalty of sin. For the Apostle did not say, 'the will of God is death,' but 'the wages of sin is death.' Let us then more carefully examine his deceits lying hidden in the deep. He therefore attributes death to the Creator, so that from which evil above all it takes its beginning cannot be recognized, and thus he may more freely affirm that infants are not held by the bond of origin.

In saying this he blasphemes with a twofold impiety, since he both refers death back to the reproach of the Author and, by denying the bond of origin, makes void the grace of the Restorer. And so, in order to be able to assert that little ones have no need of baptism, he denied the universal sin. This having been denied, such was the sequence of his error, that he did not know whence death was generated. What wonder if he does not recognize that tree in its fruits, which he was unwilling to acknowledge in its root? For he suppresses the cause of the wound and hides the sword by which the wound was inflicted. 'The wages of sin,' he says, 'is death.' Because he neglected to understand the prince of so great an evil, he was therefore ignorant that the imposed condition of death is the handmaid following upon sin, concerning which we spoke before: 'The wages of sin is death.'

He received a reward worthy of such a work; he who served the devil earned such wages. Whence the vessel of election most plainly shows and proclaims the reason of redemption, saying: 'For why, when as yet we were weak, did Christ die for the ungodly? For scarcely for a righteous man will one die.' This is as much as to say: if righteousness had abounded upon earth, the medicine would not have been sent from heaven; but that the one healing might come, the universal infirmity demanded it. Amid all this, since Pelagius is bound by so many chains of sacrileges, it is no wonder if, through a reprobate sense, he is given over to manifold error, who thinks that he can be saved by his own labor alone.

Rightly against the presumption of this arrogance the divine word put forth the force of its authority and rebuke: 'No man,' it says, 'comes to me, unless the Father draw him,' and again: 'It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.' And whoever, with Pelagius, places his salvation in his own will and power will justly reckon this to have been said against himself. But this need not be objected against him who does not presume upon labor alone, but knows that God's daily mercy and constant grace must be implored by his own efforts, and who begs for the Lord's help with unwearied supplication. II. AGAINST THE OBJECTION OF PELAGIUS, BY WHICH HE SAYS THAT LITTLE ONES HAVE NO NEED OF BAPTISM. Pelagius also urges this:

If original sin is taken away by the gift of baptism, then children born of two baptized persons ought to lack this sin. 'How,' he says, 'do they transmit to their descendants what they themselves in no way have in them?' To these it is easily answered that there are two births, of which in the one sin is transmitted through the pleasure of the one begetting, while from the other sanctification is bestowed through the adoption of the One who regenerates. 'How,' he says, 'do they transmit to their descendants what they themselves in no way have in them?' O how irrational and full of iniquity an objection! You do not wish that they should transmit to their descendants what belongs to nature, and yet you wish that they should be able, as of their own, to confer on them what belongs to grace, concerning which nature the Apostle says: 'We were,' he says, 'by nature children of wrath.'

Rightly they cannot give as of their own what they received from above and from without. Most imprudently does Pelagius believe that purity of innocence is given to children by their parents. The second birth does not pertain to the ministry of parents. He would make an office of man what is a gift of God, so that what stands outside human substance should run, as by a kind of hereditary order, through the succession of men. But there is no doubt that original sin passes from parents—even baptized ones—to their children through the origin of the flesh, since we daily say with the prophet: 'Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me,' just as the Apostle also confirms that this incurable guilt has passed from one to all men.

But Pelagius says that there is no original sin, because the very desire of generation is from God. If, however, you ask whence this bond comes that drags down posterity: without doubt it is through the ardor of accursed generation as its incentive, and through the enticing embrace of both parents. For since you see him alone to be free from the original contagion, who was conceived not of flesh but of the Spirit, not by a shameful passion but by a wondrous benediction, recognize that the cause of the original evil was born from the delight of conception and from the vice of pleasure.

For this reason also this condition did not hold Adam and Eve as liable in their origin, because their coming into being, being foreign to the ministry of two persons, knew no enticement in its birth and creation. But perhaps you ask why original sin is placed in conception. The beginning of the whole ruin was disobedience. For man was first exalted, and afterward was humbled and confounded.

And because, when he was in honor, he did not understand, therefore he was compared to the senseless beasts and was made like unto them. As long, therefore, as humility maintained reverence toward obedience to the Author, an unstained conscience did not feel its nakedness; but when, with that mind of becoming a god, he craved a taste of the deadly food and stretched out his damnable desire in ambition for majesty, then, forgetful of the law and rebellious against the commandments of the law, he is punished by the warring of his own members, and, while he presumes upon equality with his Lord, he lost the mastery over his own body. From pride was born incontinence. For he showed what had been struck in him, when he covered his shameful parts. Elation went before; confusion followed.

He who was ambitious of divinity began to be a captive of lust. But perhaps you say: while you discuss these things, you are caught condemning marriage. It is not so. The ordinance of marriage began from blessing; generation conceived corruption from transgression. Between the gift of marriage, still granted in paradise by the Creator, and the use of it, which took its beginning already outside paradise, sin came in the midst. Between generation and concupiscence, whatever the divine precept established, this I praise; whatever human transgression added, this I reprove. Just as if someone should sprinkle the whiteness of a snowy garment with a black stain, it is not the making that displeases, but the blemish. The garment did not lose its use, though it lost its dignity.

The generation would undoubtedly have been chaste and sincere, had not the hostile transgression intervened. But the flesh, given over to the curse, defiled the unstained marriage-bed, and through the spirit of pride corrupted the simple affection, and, as it lost the privilege of immortality, so it lost the gift of purity. It is not the grace of marriage that is called into complaint, but the injury of obscene passion. It is not gold that comes under blame, but whatever adulterating fraud of iniquity has mingled with the pure gold—just as the very spirit of Pelagius, created by God for better pursuits, the author of wickedness has infected with the pestilential corruption of malice. III. AGAINST THIS, WHICH THEY SAY: THAT BY GRACE ALONE EVERY MAN IS SAVED WITHOUT ANY LABOR.

Now we must come to those who, while they assert that grace is given to some and denied to others, have lost the gift of grace along with Pelagius. They say, therefore, that for the worship and service of God, even after the saving gift of baptism, no obedience of devoted service is required, but that grace alone by itself works the effect of human salvation. 'The whole,' they say, 'belongs to grace alone.' This could better be said by us; this rather befits our side to apply, who confess that the benefits of grace are extended not to a part, but to the whole human race—yet in such a way that we judge the zeal of human vigilance to be joined to it in all things. For whoever denies that the effort of the servant's labor is to be associated with grace takes away from man the duty of service.

I know not where or when he ought to take rest from work, when he ought to be left to idleness, who even in paradise is commanded to labor, in which, as we read, he was so placed that he should till it and keep it. AGAINST THAT NOTION WHICH, BY SAYING THAT ONE IS FOREORDAINED TO DEATH AND ANOTHER PREDESTINED TO LIFE, BY THE VERY FACTS CUTS OFF THE HOPE OF PRAYING. When they have said, 'The whole belongs to the grace of God,' who would not bow with every affection of his heart at so revered a name? But when we have answered, 'The whole assuredly belongs to grace, but the Creator and Redeemer offers and presses it upon all for the salvation of all,' to this they, departing far from the path of piety, will presume to answer: 'The Savior did not give it to all, because neither did He die for all.'

Behold, at once, in his second words, appears the assailant of grace, who in his first words was thought to be its champion. They put forward the name of grace, that they may cover the abominable meaning of blasphemy. And so, on either side, they exclude the supports of prayer. For what further should he hope for, whom grace has already made its own? On the contrary, in what should he not despair, whom a violent predetermination has condemned? In the one there is no place for fault, in the other none for grace. In both, justice is imperiled. The one taken up without the merit of faith will be rewarded; the other forsaken without a crime of his own will be condemned. Salvation is to be thrust upon the former who does not seek it, and taken away from the latter who labors. But you say: 'For this reason he ought to pray, because he does not know to which part he belongs.' Who would not think this a reasonable and wise answer?

But what will it profit a man to pray, when he is in every way established in one of these two conditions? For although he is ignorant to which part he has been assigned, yet he is not ignorant that both parts are fixed and unchangeable. What does it matter if he does not yet know his place, who knows most definitely that he can now receive neither peril on the right hand nor advancement on the left? But if such a confused persuasion still holds prayer to be necessary, let him acknowledge without doubt that, contrary to his own determination, he can pass both from salvation to perdition and from perdition to salvation. If, therefore, he does not think the practice of praying is to be omitted, let him not exclude the zeal of working. What is this? Do you judge that I must knock, and yet despair that it must be opened to me?

Let him therefore do one or the other: either deny the fruit of prayer, or exclude the law of appointed perdition. And so we see that this whole assertion, full of error, while it cuts off the cause of praying, begins from the light of grace and its end runs down and fails into the darkness of sacrilege. Thus the devil, by the cunning of his old craft and manifold ingenuity, seasons the allurements of sinning. Thus too poisoners are wont to do, who temper the deadly juices of herbs, and in a spiced or some sweet cup compose for the unsuspecting drinkers a taste of counterfeit sweetness, and hide the venom of bitterness under the deceit of sweetness. The first scent of the cup allures, but the enclosed savor of the poison chokes.

It is honey that rises to the lips, but gall that descends into the inward parts. They say that in either state of things death claims the one for itself, life defends the other. And when they say this—affirming the one lost in his origin, the other chosen in predestination—see to what a wicked persuasion they decline. For what else do they say, than that neither has need of the help of prayer? For to those already foreordained to life it will not be necessary; to those assigned to death it will be able to profit nothing. In the one it will be judged superfluous, in the other ineffectual. The benefits of supplication he does not require who is in the predestination of acquisition; but he who is in the part of perdition does not receive them.

But if he judges that care must be bestowed upon prayer, let him understand without doubt that the things which threaten can be changed, according to that word of the Gospel: 'Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation'; likewise: 'Watch therefore at all times, praying, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are to come, and to stand before the Son of man'; and again: 'This kind of demon is not cast out except by prayer and fasting.' But if prayer is not necessary, why did He Himself, who is to be entreated, institute a form of prayer and pray? In him, therefore, who with the assertion of grace alone flatters untaught ears, that prophetic word will be fulfilled: 'The malignant one,' it says, 'does harm, when he mingles himself with the just.'