On whatever day of his birth an infant is baptized in Christ, he is as it were circumcised on the eighth day, since he is circumcised in him who rose again on the third day indeed from when he was crucified, but on the eighth in the weeks. And he is circumcised unto the stripping off of the body of the flesh—that is, that the grace of spiritual regeneration may release the debt which the contagion of carnal generation drew in; for no one is clean from filth—from what filth, I ask, but that of sin?—not even an infant whose life is of one day upon the earth. But thus they argue, saying:
'So then, is marriage evil, and is a man whom marriage begets not the work of God?' As if the good of marriage were the disease of concupiscence, whereby those who know not God love their wives—which the Apostle forbids. And is it not rather conjugal chastity, by which carnal lust is reduced to the ordered good use of procreating children? Or could a man be anything but the work of God—not only he who is begotten of marriage, but even he who is begotten of fornication or of adultery? But in this question, where it is asked not for what thing a creator is necessary, but for what a savior is necessary, one must not look at what good there is in the procreation of nature, but at what evil there is in the sin by which it is certain that nature has been corrupted.
But both are propagated together, both nature and the fault of nature, of which the one is good, the other evil. The former is taken from the bounty of the Creator, the latter is drawn in from the origin of condemnation; of the former the good will of the most high God is the cause, of the latter the evil will of the first man; the former shows God the establisher of the creature, the latter shows God the punisher of disobedience. In short, the same Christ is the maker of man for the sake of that which was to be created, and was made man for the sake of this which was to be healed. Marriage therefore is good in all that is proper to marriage. And these are three: the ordering of begetting, the fidelity of chastity, the sacrament of wedlock. On account of the ordering of begetting it is written: 'I will that the younger marry, bear children, be mothers of households';
on account of the fidelity of chastity: 'the wife has not power over her own body, but the husband; likewise also the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife'; on account of the sacrament of wedlock: 'what God has joined, let not man put asunder.' Concerning these things we remember that we have discoursed sufficiently, so far as with the Lord's help we were able, in other little works of ours which are not unknown to you. On account of all these things, 'marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.' For inasmuch as marriage is good, so far it makes very much good even out of the evil of lust, since not lust but reason makes good use of lust.
But lust is in that which the Apostle marks as the law of the members warring against the law of the mind of the disobedient; whereas reason, well using lust itself, is in the law of marriage. For if no good could be made out of evil, God would not make a man even from an adulterous union.
Just as, therefore, the damnable evil of adultery—when even from it a man is born—is not imputed to God, who certainly in the evil work of men himself does a good work, so whatever is shameful in that disobedience of the members, at which those blushed who after the sin covered those same members with fig leaves, is not imputed to marriage, on whose account conjugal intercourse is not only lawful but even useful and honorable, but is imputed to the sin of disobedience, whose penalty this has followed: that man, disobedient to God, should feel his members also disobedient to himself. Blushing at these, because they were moved not at the choice of his will, but as if by their own choice, at the incitement of lust, he judged them shameful and took care to cover them.
For man ought not to have been confounded at the work of God, nor in any way ought those things to have been blush-worthy which, being appointed, appeared good to the Creator. And so that simple nakedness displeased neither God nor man, when there was nothing shameful, because nothing had gone before that needed punishment. But without doubt there would have been marriage even had sin not preceded, since for no other cause was not another man but a woman made as a helper for the man; and those words of God, 'increase and multiply,' are not a foretelling of sins to be condemned, but a blessing of fruitful marriages. For by these ineffable words of his—that is, by his divine reasons living in the truth of his Wisdom, through whom all things were made—God implanted the power of seed in the first human beings.
But if nature had not been dishonored by sin, far be it from us to suppose that marriages in paradise would have been such that in them, for the sowing of offspring, the genital members would be moved not by the beck of the will—as the foot for walking, the hand for working, the tongue for speaking—but by the heat of lust; nor that, as now happens, the integrity of virginity would be corrupted for conceiving offspring by the violence of turbid ardor; but that they would obey the command of most tranquil love, and in that way there would be neither pain nor blood of the virgin in intercourse, just as there would be no groan of the mother in giving birth. These things are not believed, because in this condition of mortality they are unexperienced. For nature, changed for the worse by the fault, does not find an example of that first purity.
But we speak to the faithful, who know how to believe the divine oracles even when no examples of experienced truth are brought forward. For how should I now show a man made from the dust without any parents, and to him a wife from his own side? And yet what the eye no longer finds, faith believes. So then also the tranquility of the first marriages without the passion of lust, and the movement of the genitals like that of the other members not at the incitement of unbridled heat but at the choice of the will—such marriages as would have continued, had the reproach of sin not intervened—cannot now be shown, but from those things which are written by divine authority it can not undeservedly be believed. For thus at present I do not find one lying together without itching lust;
just as I do not find one giving birth without pain and groaning, nor one being born without a future death; and yet according to the truth of the holy Scriptures the groaning of her who gives birth and the death of man would not have been, had sin not preceded. So neither would that whereat those blushed who covered those members have been, because this too is written in those same holy writings to have followed upon the preceding sin.
For unless the unseemly movement of those members had announced them as things to be noticed to their eyes—not indeed closed, but in this respect not opened, that is, not attentive—they would have felt nothing in their body (which God had made wholly praiseworthy) as shameful and to be veiled, because unless the crime had gone before which disobedience dared to commit, there would not have followed the disgrace which modesty would wish to hide. It is clear, therefore, that this is not to be imputed to marriage, which even if this were not, marriage would nevertheless be, whose good is not taken away by this evil, but rather from marriage even this evil is turned into a good use.
But because now, in this condition of mortals, intercourse and lust are carried on together, it comes about that when lust is reproved, even the lawful and honorable conjugal intercourse is thought to be reproved by those who are unwilling or unable to distinguish these things. Nor do they attend that that is the good of marriage in which marriages glory—namely, offspring, chastity, sacrament—but that this other is not the good of marriage, but the evil of carnal concupiscence, at which even marriages blush.
But because without that evil the good of marriage—that is, the propagation of children—cannot be accomplished, when it comes to a work of this kind, secret places are sought, witnesses are removed, and even the presence of the children themselves, if any have already been born from thence, is avoided when through age they have begun to perceive these things; and thus marriage is permitted to exercise what is lawful in such a way that it does not neglect to conceal what is unseemly. Hence it is that even infants, who cannot sin, are nevertheless not born without the contagion of sin—not from that which is lawful, but from that which is unseemly. For from that which is lawful nature is born, from that which is unseemly the fault.
The author of the nature being born is God, who created man and who joined man and woman by the marriage law; but the author of the fault is the cunning of the deceiving devil and the will of the consenting man—wherein God did nothing except that, by his just judgment, he condemned with his stock the man sinning by his will; and therefore there whatever was not yet even born was deservedly condemned in the transgressing root, in which condemned stock carnal generation holds man, whence spiritual regeneration alone sets free.
Therefore, when the parents have been regenerated—provided they have persevered in the same grace—without doubt this lust, on account of the remission of sins which has been wrought in them, will not harm them, unless they make evil use of it not only in all unlawful corruptions, but even in their very spouses, when they devote their labor to creating children not with the will of propagating, but serve to sate their craving with the pleasure of wantonness. This the Apostle grants to husbands and wives, that on account of avoiding fornications they should not defraud one another except by consent for a time, that they may be free for prayers—by concession, not by command. For evidently, while he grants concession, he denotes fault.
But conjugal intercourse, which the marriage tablets also declare to take place for the sake of procreating children, is good in itself absolutely, not merely in comparison with fornication. And although, on account of the body of death, which is not yet renewed by resurrection, it cannot take place without a certain bestial motion at which human nature blushes, nevertheless that intercourse itself is not sin, where reason uses lust for good and is not overcome unto evil. This concupiscence of the flesh would be a hindrance merely by being present, were it not that the remission of sins so profits that this concupiscence which is in them—both in the one born and in the one reborn—can indeed both be present and be a hindrance in the one born, but in the one reborn can be present indeed, yet not be a hindrance.
But it is so much a hindrance to those born, that unless they be reborn, it can profit them nothing, even if they are born of the reborn. For it remains in the offspring in such a way that it makes them guilty by the fault of origin, even if in the parent the guilt of that same fault has been washed away by the remission of sins—until every fault, by consenting to which one sins, be consumed by the final regeneration, that is, by the very renewal of the flesh itself, which is promised to be in its resurrection, where we shall not only commit no sins, but shall not even have any vicious desires by consenting to which we might sin. To this blessed perfection one arrives by the grace of that holy laver which is now given.
For by that regeneration of the spirit which now takes place, so that all sins are remitted, by its merit there will also take place the regeneration of the flesh unto eternal life, whereby, the flesh itself rising incorruptibly, the incitements of all sins will be healed. But that salvation is as yet made in hope, it is not held in reality nor possessed by presence, but is awaited through patience. And through this, not only all sins, whose remission now takes place in baptism—which make guilty while assent is given to vicious desires and sin is committed—but even the vicious desires themselves, by which, if assent is not given, no guilt of sin is contracted, and which will be nonexistent not in this but in the other life, are all purged by that same laver of baptism.
The guilt therefore of that fault of which we speak will remain in the carnal offspring of the regenerated so long, until there too it be washed away by the laver of regeneration. For the regenerated man does not regenerate his carnal sons, but begets them; and thereby he transmits to them not that whereby he was regenerated, but that whereby he was begotten. So then, whether guilty as unbeliever or absolved as believer, neither begets absolved offspring, but guilty ones—just as the seeds not only of the wild olive but even of the cultivated olive do not beget olives, but wild olives. So then the first birth holds man in condemnation, whence only the second sets free. The devil therefore holds, Christ sets free; the deceiver of Eve holds, the Son of Mary sets free;
he holds who came to the man through a wife, he sets free who was born of a wife who did not endure a husband; he holds who brought the cause of lust upon the woman, he sets free who was conceived in a woman without lust. That one indeed was able through one man to hold all, and none is freed from his dominion except the one whom he could not hold. Finally, the very sacraments of the Church, which she celebrates with the authority of so ancient a tradition, that although these men suppose them to be done in little ones rather in pretense than in truth, yet they dare not reject them by open disapproval—these sacraments, I say, of the holy Church sufficiently indicate that even infants most recently from birth are freed by the grace of Christ from the servitude of the devil.
For besides that they are baptized unto the remission of sins by no deceitful but a faithful mystery, the contrary power is also first exorcized in them and breathed out upon, which they answer, by the words of those by whom they are carried, that they renounce. By all which sacred and evident signs of hidden realities they are shown to pass over from the worst captor to the best Redeemer, who, having taken up infirmity for us, bound the strong man, that he might snatch away his vessels—because the weakness of God is stronger not only than men, but also than angels. And so God, freeing the little ones together with the great, shows in both that which the Truth spoke through the Apostle;
for he rescued not only the older in age, but even the little ones, from the power of darkness, that he might translate them into the kingdom of the Son of his love. Nor let anyone marvel and say: why then does the goodness of God create what the malignity of the devil may possess? For this he bestows upon the seeds of his creature out of that goodness whereby he also makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust. For by this goodness he even blessed those very seeds, or by blessing established them.
This blessing of nature the damnable fault did not take away from the praiseworthy nature—which fault, though it prevailed, through the justice of the punishing God, so that men should be born with the vice of original sin, yet did not prevail so that men should not be born—just as in those who are older in age, whatever vices of sins do not take man from man, but the good work of God remains in however great evils of the ungodly works. For although 'man being placed in honor and not understanding is compared to the beasts and is made like them,' yet he is not made so like that he becomes a beast. For he is compared through vice, not through nature; not through the vice of a beast, but of nature.
For man is of such great excellence in comparison with a beast, that the vice of man is the nature of a beast; nor yet on that account is the nature of man turned into the nature of a beast. And through this, God condemns man on account of the vice by which nature is dishonored, not on account of the nature, which is not taken away by the vice; but as for the beasts, far be it from us to suppose them liable to the penalty of condemnation, which it is just that they should be exempt from misery, seeing that they cannot be partakers of blessedness either.
What wonder then, or what injustice, is it that man should be made subject to an unclean spirit, not on account of his nature, but on account of his uncleanness, which he contracted, coming not from the divine work but from human will, in the stain of origin—since even that unclean spirit itself is good in that it is spirit, evil in that it is unclean? For the former is from the work of God, the latter from its own will. The nature therefore that is stronger—that is, the angelic—holds the lower nature—that is, the human—subjected by the fellowship of vice. Therefore the mediator, stronger than the angels, was made weak for the sake of men; thus the pride of the captor is destroyed by the humility of the Redeemer, so that he who glories over the sons of men with angelic strength may be conquered by the Son of God through the human weakness he assumed.
But now, being about to conclude this book also, we think it fitting that we should make Ambrose, God's bishop—whom, among the ecclesiastical writers of the Latin tongue, Pelagius especially proclaims to be of most unimpaired faith—answer, just as we did concerning grace, so also concerning original sin (in the blotting out of which grace itself is more evidently commended), the slanderous loquacity of these men. In that work which he wrote on the Resurrection, holy Ambrose says: 'I fell in Adam, I was cast out of paradise in Adam, I died in Adam: how does he recall me, unless he find me in Adam—so that, as in that one I am subject to guilt, owing to death, so in Christ I may be justified?' Likewise, writing against the Novatians, he says:
(We are all born human beings under sin, whose very origin is in fault, as you have read where David says: 'Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bring me forth.' For this reason Paul's flesh was a body of death, as he himself says: 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' But Christ's flesh condemned sin, which it did not feel in being born, and which it crucified in dying, so that in our flesh there might be justification through grace, where before there had been defilement through fault.' Likewise the same man, when he was expounding the prophet Isaiah, speaking of Christ, says: 'Therefore he too was tempted in all things as a man, and endured all things in the likeness of men; yet, as one born of the Spirit, he abstained from sin;
for every man is a liar, and no one is without sin except the one God alone. It has therefore been preserved so, that from man and woman, that is, through that commingling of bodies, no one may be seen to be exempt from fault. But he who is exempt from fault is also exempt from a conception of this kind.' Likewise, when he was expounding the Gospel according to Luke, he says: 'For no man's intercourse unlocked the secret places of the virginal womb, but the Holy Spirit poured an unstained seed into the inviolate womb;
for alone among all those born of woman the Lord Jesus is holy, who by the newness of an unstained birth did not feel the contagions of earthly corruption, and by his heavenly majesty drove them away.' Yet against these words of the man of God, whom Pelagius himself praised with such great acclaim, he contradicts and says: 'Just as we are begotten without virtue, so also we are begotten without fault.' What then remains, except that either Pelagius should condemn this error of his own, or repent of having so praised Ambrose?
But since blessed Ambrose spoke these things according to the catholic faith as a catholic bishop, it follows that Pelagius, having gone astray from this way of faith, together with his disciple Caelestius, is deservedly condemned by the authority of the catholic Church, unless he repents of not having praised Ambrose, but of having held views contrary to Ambrose. I know that you read insatiably the things that are written for the edification or confirmation of the faith; nevertheless this book, however useful it may be for this purpose, must now at last be brought to an end.