But original sin belongs to that third class, in which sin is of such a kind that it is at once itself a sin and the penalty of sin; it is indeed present in those who are born, yet it begins to show itself in them as they grow, when wisdom becomes necessary for the foolish, and continence for those who desire evil things. Nevertheless the origin even of this sin descends from the will of the sinner. For there was Adam, and in him we all were; Adam perished, and in him all perished. Bring forth the means by which you may teach a natural sin. 48. JULIAN: But it merits both execration from honorable men and, from that very justice on which this whole case here turns, a lawful condemnation. And so, with all the curtains drawn back, bring forth at last, plainly into the light, the means by which you teach that sin is natural.
Certainly nothing above has been falsely inferred, whether concerning the praise of divine justice or concerning the definition of fault. Show, then, that these two things can hold good in little children: if there is no sin without will, if there is no will where liberty is not unfolded, if there is no liberty where there is no faculty of choice through reason—by what monstrous thing is sin found in infants, who do not have the use of reason? Therefore they have neither the faculty of choosing, and through this no will either; and once these things are irrefutably conceded, no sin at all whatever. Pressed, then, by these masses, let us see whither you break out. 'By no sin of their own,' you say, 'are little children burdened, but they are burdened by another's.' It is not yet clear what evil you hold.
For we suspect that you have brought these things forward to stir up hatred against some man, whose iniquity you would portray like a Punic orator. In whose presence, then, did an alien crime weigh down unstained innocence? Who was that man who would adjudge these as guilty—so mindless, so savage, so forgetful of God and of equity, a barbarous foe? We praise your talent outright; your erudition is evident; you could not do otherwise than to allege the person of some judge—nay rather of a tyrant—worthy of the human race's hatred, than that by swearing you might charge him with not only not sparing those who had committed no sin, but even those who could not have sinned.
For in a suspicious mind a good conscience is wont to labor in its own defense, lest perchance it may have transgressed, because it even could transgress; but he is absolutely acquitted of the charge who is defended by the very impossibility of the thing. Reveal, then, who this consigner of the innocent is. You answer: God. You have indeed struck the mind; but since so great a sacrilege scarcely deserves belief, let us be in doubt as to what you have said. For we know that this name can be used equivocally: For there are many gods and many lords; yet for us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things. Which God, then, do you call into accusation?
Here you, most religious priest and most learned rhetorician, exhale something more grievous and more horrible than either the vale of Amsanctus or the pit of Avernus—nay, more wicked than the very worship of idols had committed in those places. God Himself, you say, who commends His charity toward us, who has loved us and did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us, He Himself so judges, He Himself is the persecutor of the newborn, He Himself for an evil will delivers little children to eternal fires—little children whom He knows could have had neither a good nor an evil will. After this sentiment, then, so monstrous, so sacrilegious, so deadly, if we were dealing with sane judges, I ought to report nothing concerning you but execration.
For with just and probable gravity I would judge you unworthy of debate, since you had fled so far from religion, from erudition, and finally from common sense, that—what scarcely any barbarism would do—you should think your own Lord a criminal. AUGUSTINE: It is no great matter that you see that little children do not have their own will for choosing good or evil. I would rather that you saw what he saw who, writing to the Hebrews, said that Levi the son of Israel was in the loins of his father Abraham when Abraham was tithed, and that therefore he too was tithed in him. If for this you had a Christian eye, you would discern by faith—if you were not strong in understanding—that all were in the loins of Adam who were to arise from him through the concupiscence of the flesh;
which nakedness of his, after the sin by which his nakedness was announced to him, he felt, beheld, blushed at, and covered. Whence Ambrose, my teacher—and one excellently praised by the mouth of your own teacher—says: 'What is therefore more grievous, Adam girded himself with this interpretation, in that very place where he ought rather to have girded himself with the fruit of chastity. For in the loins, by which we are girded, certain seeds of generation are said to be. And so Adam was ill-girded there with useless leaves, where he signified not the future fruit of the future generation, but certain sins.' Rightly too he says what I mentioned a little before: 'There was Adam, and in him we all were; Adam perished, and in him all perished.' Not seeing this, you bark against me, blind man;
but whatever you say against me, you assuredly say also against him. Would, then, that I might so share a common reward with him, as I hear from you that I share a common reviling with him! What is it that you cry out and say: 'If we were dealing with sane judges, I ought to report nothing concerning you but execration'? Can I deal with you more generously, more beneficently, more liberally than to set up as judge between us the very man whose judgment—that of your teacher Pelagius—we already hold? Behold, here he is who among the writers of the Latin tongue shone forth as a certain beautiful flower, whose faith and most pure understanding in the Scriptures not even an enemy has dared to censure. This Pelagius judged concerning Ambrose. What, then, concerning this matter which is being contested between us, did Ambrose judge?
I set forth above his opinions concerning original sin, without any obscurity or ambiguity; but if that is too little, hear yet more: 'We are all born under sin,' he says, 'whose very origin is in fault.' What do you answer to these things? Those splendid things Pelagius said about Ambrose; these manifest things Ambrose pronounced for me against you. Censure the man of whom your master says that not even an enemy has dared to censure him; and you who seek sane judges, deny that this man is sane, so that you may plainly profess yourself insane.
But you are indignant, most pious man, that little children not reborn, if they die before the exercise of their own will, are said to be damned on account of another's sins by Him who commends His charity toward us, who has loved us and did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us—as though foolish and unlearned men like you did not complain more grievously about Him, who say: 'Why does He create those whom He foreknew would be impious and to be damned? Why, finally, does He make those live, until they arrive at damnable impiety, whom He could have taken from this life before they became such—if He loves souls, if He commends His charity toward us, if He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all?' To whom, if it be said:
'O man, who are you who answer back to God? His judgments are inscrutable'—they are angered rather than softened. But the Lord knows those who are His. If, then, you desire to make use of sane judges, hear a sane judge singularly praised by your own teacher. 'There was Adam,' he says, 'and in him we all were; Adam perished, and in him all perished.' 'But by another's sins,' you say, 'they surely ought not to have perished.' They are another's, but they are their father's; and through this, by the right of sowing and germination, they are also ours. Who frees from this perdition, save Him who came to seek what had perished? In those, therefore, whom He frees, let us embrace mercy;
but in those whom He does not free, let us acknowledge a judgment most hidden indeed, yet without any doubt most just. Which of you is worse than the others I leave to be estimated. 49. JULIAN: That the god of light fought with the prince of darkness, Manichaeus feigned and believed, and added that a captive substance of his is held in this world; but he strives to excuse so great an unhappiness with a color of piety, affirming that this god fought as it were a good citizen for his fatherland, and therefore exposed his members lest he lose his kingdom. You who had learned these things, see how much you have profited by deserting them even for a time; you say that God did not endure the necessity of war, but committed the iniquity of judgment; and that He lies subject not to shadowy enemies, but to manifest crimes;
and finally that He did not impart His own substance, but violated eternal justice. By which of you is worse, I leave to others to estimate. This, however, is clear: that you come round to one and the same wickedness of opinion. For Manichaeus too ascribes iniquity to his god, when he alleges that he will condemn, on the last day, the members which he handed over; and you through this assert that One unhappy, through which He corrupts the glory by which He was renowned, and by persecuting the innocence which He created, has lost the justice by which He was most holy. Therefore this God whom you introduce is surpassed by that god whom your master had contrived, by just as much as it is more excusable to have been overcome in battle than by vice. AUGUSTINE:
If the innocence of little children pleases you, remove from them, if you can, the heavy yoke which is upon the sons of Adam from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb. But I think that the Scripture, which said this, knew better than you what the innocence of the creature was, and what the justice of the Creator. Who, moreover, does not see that, if little children have such innocence as you preach, in their heavy yoke there is no justice of God? Furthermore, since in their heavy yoke there is divine justice, there is not in them such innocence as you preach. Unless perchance for you, laboring in this question, God, just indeed but in some manner weak, will be able to come to the aid—since He could not aid His own images lest the innocent be pressed by the misery of a heavy yoke;
so that you may say that He indeed willed it, because He is just, but was not able, because He is not omnipotent; and thus you may escape from these straits in such a way as to lose the head of the faith, by which faith we first confess in the Creed that we believe in God the Father Almighty. Your God, therefore, amid so many and such great evils which little children suffer, is going to lose either His justice, or His omnipotence, or His very care for human affairs; and whichever of these you say, see what you will be. Guilty, not God. 50. JULIAN: Away, then, with you and such a God of yours from the midst of the Churches; He is not the one in whom the Patriarchs, in whom the Prophets, in whom the Apostles believed, in whom the Church of the firstborn, which is enrolled in heaven, has hoped and hopes;
He is not the one whom the rational creature believes to be its judge, whom the Holy Spirit declares will judge justly. No one of the prudent would ever have shed his own blood for such a Lord; nor indeed would He have merited the affection of love, that He should lay upon us the burden of a Passion to be undergone for Him. Finally, this one whom you introduce, if he existed anywhere, would be convicted of being guilty, not a god—to be judged by my true God, not to judge in God's place. That you may therefore know the first foundations of the faith: our God, the God of the catholic Church, is unknown to us in His substance, and likewise removed from sight; whom no man has seen, nor can see; as eternal without beginning, so holy and just without fault;
most omnipotent, most equitable, most merciful, becoming known by the splendor of His virtues alone; the maker of all things that were not, the dispenser of the things that are, the examiner of all who both are and shall be and have been, on the last day; who shall move the earth, the heaven, and all the elements together; the raiser of ashes and the restorer of bodies; but for the sake of justice alone He shall do all these things which we have said. AUGUSTINE: If you worship the God of the Patriarchs, why do you not believe that the circumcision of the eighth day, which was enjoined upon Abraham, was a prefiguration of the regeneration in Christ?
For if you believed this, you would see that the soul of a little child could not justly be exterminated from his people if he were not circumcised on the eighth day, unless it had been bound by some sin. If you worship the God of the Prophets, why do you not believe that through them God so often said: 'I will render the sins of the fathers upon the children'? If you worship the God of the Apostles, why do you not believe that the body is dead because of sin? If you worship the God in whom the Church of the firstborn, which is enrolled in heaven, has hoped and hopes, why do you not believe that little children who are to be baptized are rescued from the power of darkness, since for this reason the Church breathes upon them and exorcizes them, that the power of darkness may be sent forth out of them?
But that One whom the rational creature—which is in His saints and faithful—hopes to be its judge: read to us what third place, apart from the kingdom for the good and the punishment for the evil, He has prepared and promised for your unregenerate innocent ones. But how do you say that no prudent man sheds his blood for the Lord whom we worship, when the most glorious Cyprian both worshiped Him and shed his blood for Him—Cyprian who chokes you in this very question, saying that a little child born carnally from Adam contracts, at his first birth, the contagion of the ancient death? Do you not see that you are rather the guilty one, who blaspheme this God of the holy martyrs? You say that you worship a God most omnipotent, most equitable, most merciful;
but that One is most omnipotent who could beyond doubt take away from the sons of Adam the heavy yoke by which they are pressed from the day of their birth—nay, could bring it about that they be not burdened at all by any such yoke; and that One is most equitable who would by no means impose it, or permit it to be imposed, unless He found in them sins with which they were born, whose guilt this same most merciful One would loose in those who are reborn. If, therefore, divine justice delighted you, you would surely see that it comes from that very justice—not beginning unjustly with little children—the human misery known to all, by which this life is carried through, from the first weepings of the newborn to the last breaths of the dying; happiness being promised only to the holy and faithful, but in another life.
By my God! 51. JULIAN: For this my God, then, whom all creation and holy Scripture proclaim to me to be such as I believe Him to be, I would more rightly act if I did not even think you worthy of the contest of books. But since this task above all has been laid upon me by holy men, the confessors of our time, that I should examine what weight and reason your sayings have, it was fitting first to show that the God who has always been preached in the Church of the Catholics, and will be preached to the end wherever that Church shall be, is not believed by you. AUGUSTINE: I have shown rather that you have not shown what you say you have shown; and I have taught—if you are not too blind—that I believe in that God who has always been preached by the Church of the Catholics.
All these and others are mine. 52. JULIAN: But now I shall consequently examine by what testimonies you attempt to affirm this thing which assails the faith of the pious. But since I have determined to meet your second book, which Alypius delivered, lest the sequence of the reply be thrown into confusion, a few things must still be answered, up to the point where the discourse arrives at the testimony of the Apostle by which you seem to yourself to be most fortified. To those words of yours, then, which I set down above, you join these which follow:
In those things, therefore, which he passed over, he feared this, because it concerns all the hearts of the catholic Church, and he addresses with a certain clear voice the faith itself which was handed down and founded of old, and stirs it up most vehemently against those who say what we mentioned, namely, that 'there is no sin in little children which is washed away by the laver of regeneration.' For all run with their little children to the Church for no other reason than that in them the original sin, drawn from the generation of the first birth, may be expiated by the regeneration of the second birth. Then he returns to our earlier words, which I know not why he repeats: 'But those who are born from such intercourse, we say draw original sin;
and them, of whatever sort of parents they be born, we do not deny to be still under the devil, unless they be reborn in Christ.' These words of ours he had also said a little before. Then he subjoined what we said about Christ: 'who was unwilling to be born from the same intercourse of both sexes.' But even here he passed over what I set down: 'that by His grace, rescued from the power of darkness, they may be transferred into the kingdom of Him who was unwilling to be born from the same intercourse of both sexes.' See, I beseech you, what words of ours he avoided, as one altogether an enemy of the grace of God, which comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. For he knows that from that saying of the Apostle, by which he said concerning God the Father:
'He rescued us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love'—that it is most wicked and most impious that little children should be separated from it; therefore beyond doubt he preferred to pass over those words rather than to set them down. Am I an enemy of the grace of God, most shameless of all men—I who, in my first book, from which you snatched these things torn from their context so that you might babble something without reason, condemned your mouth, dripping with the mysteries of the Manichees and of your own, by a pure and full profession? AUGUSTINE: Are you, by reviling, going to make your cause good? Say whose mouths of mine, as you boast to have condemned my mouth. You will say: the Manichees'; but as a slanderer, not as a truthful man.
For I both detest the Manichees and their helpers, among whom you seek the chief place, and I refute both by the catholic truth, with our Lord God helping and coming to my aid. But I will show my own men, whom you accuse in me as much more wickedly as more cunningly. For in this cause, where the question of original sin is turned, on account of which you judge me worthy of most atrocious reproaches under the name of the Manichees, mine is Cyprian, who, though he said that a little child had sinned nothing, yet did not keep silent that he had contracted from Adam, by the first birth, the contagion of sin. Mine is Hilary, who, when he was expounding what is read in the Psalm: 'My soul shall live and shall praise You,' said: 'He does not reckon that he lives in this life; inasmuch as he who had said:
"Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me"—he knows that he was born under the origin of sin, and under the law of sin.' Mine is Ambrose, most excellently praised by your teacher, who said: 'All men are born under sin, whose very origin is in fault; as you have read, David saying: "For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me." Therefore the flesh of Paul was a body of death.' Mine is Gregory, who, when he was speaking of Baptism, said: 'Venerate the nativity through which you have been freed from the bonds of earthly nativity.' Mine is Basil, who, when he was treating of fasting, said: 'Because we did not fast, we fell from Paradise;
let us fast that we may return to it.' Mine is John of Constantinople, saying: 'Adam committed that great sin, and condemned the whole human race in common.' All these, and others their companions holding the same views, whom it is long to recount, are mine; and if you acknowledge it, they are also yours—but as my teachers, and your reprovers. How, then, have you condemned my mouth and the mouths of my own, when you yourself are rather condemned by the most harmonious and most truthful mouth of these men whom you see to be mine? Is it against these lights of the city of God that you, with a most darkened mind, a most shameless brow, a most impudent tongue, dare to hurl the charge of Manichaeism? But if you dare not, why do you dare it against me for no other reason than that I say what those men say against whom you dare not?
We believe the grace of Baptism to be rich. 53. JULIAN: For there, this order of words was set down by me, when I had said that God is the author of heaven and earth and of all things that are in them, and through this also of men, on account of whom all things were made. 'It does not escape me,' I say, 'that when we say these things, this is disseminated about us, namely, that we do not think the grace of Christ necessary for little children.' Which laudably and vehemently offends Christian peoples; if only they did not think us the authors of a saying in itself nefarious; for in that way they would neither incur guilt by believing false things about their brethren, and would prove themselves zealous concerning the love of the faith.
This part, therefore, must be fortified by us against the onslaught of vanity, and the mouth of the gainsayers must be sewn up by a brief confession. We therefore confess the grace of Baptism to be useful to all ages to such a degree that we strike with an eternal anathema all who think it not necessary even for little children. But we believe this grace to be rich in spiritual gifts, which, opulent with many gifts and reverend with virtues, heals—according to the kinds of infirmities and the diversities of human conditions—by one power that is at once the bestower of remedies and of gifts. When it is applied, it is not to be changed according to the cases; for now it dispenses its own gifts according to the capacity of those who approach.
For just as all the arts, not according to the diversity of the materials which they seize upon to be worked, themselves also either suffer detriment or increase, but, remaining always the same and in one manner, are adorned with a manifold effect; so also, according to the Apostle: 'one faith, one Baptism.' And they are both multiplied and enlarged in gifts, nor yet are they changed in the orders of the mysteries. But this grace is not opposed to the justice which washes away the stains of iniquity; nor does it make sins, but purges them; it absolves the guilty, it does not calumniate the innocent. For Christ, who is the Redeemer of His own work, increases with continual bounty His benefits toward His own image; and those whom He had made good by creating, He makes better by renewing and adopting.
This grace, therefore, through which pardon for the guilty, spiritual illumination, the adoption of the sons of God, citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem, sanctification, and translation into the members of Christ, and possession of the Kingdom of heaven, is given to mortals—whoever thinks it must be denied to any, deserves the execration of all good men. AUGUSTINE: In all these gifts of the grace of God which you have mentioned, that which you placed first—that through it pardon is given to the guilty—you do not wish to pertain to little children, whom you deny to draw any guilt from Adam. Why, then, does God deny the rest to the many little children who die at that age without this grace?
Why, I say, is spiritual illumination not given to them, the adoption of the sons of God, citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem, sanctification, and translation into the members of Christ, and possession of the Kingdom of heaven? Would God deny these so many gifts, so necessary, to so many of His own images having, according to you, no sin—God, in whose power is the highest authority—since no contrary will of the little children prohibits this benefit from Him? You, certainly, in order to remove from yourselves this odium by which you are said to deny the grace of Baptism to little children, have said that whoever thinks that grace must be denied to any deserves the execration of all good men.
The equity of the omnipotent God, therefore, would not deny it to the innumerable little children who die under His omnipotence without this grace, if they merited nothing evil in His hidden judgment. From which judgment, owed to all who come from the stock of Adam, whoever are freed according to grace, not according to debt, let them glory not in their own merits, but in the Lord. You, therefore, if you wish to be rid of the reproach by which you have become detestable to the catholic Church, allow Christ to be Jesus to little children. Which will by no means be so, if He does not confer upon them that on account of which He received this name—that is, if He does not save them from their sins.
Say, therefore, concerning this grace—that you may be rid of the offense of Christians, of which you complain—what the learned catholic and teacher Gregory said: 'Venerate the nativity through which you have been freed from the bonds of earthly nativity.' By no means, therefore, do you confess that little children pertain to this grace, so long as you deny that they are freed by the heavenly nativity from the bonds of earthly nativity. The mysteries ought not to be changed for the variety of cases. 54. JULIAN: Since I have fortified these things, as the place here for the time allowed, let us return to that point whence we digressed; being about to speak more fully concerning this very matter wherever it shall be opportune.
Behold, with how great a light of confession I have reproved both those who would deny Baptism to little children, and you who dare to stain the justice of God by its prejudice; protesting that I hold nothing else than that the instituted mysteries are to be handled in absolutely every age with the same words with which they were handed down, and ought not to be changed for the variety of cases; but that the sinner is made from evil perfectly good, while the innocent, who has no evil of his own will, is made from good to better, that is, to best; so that both indeed pass over, consecrated, into the members of Christ; but the one caught in an evil life, the other in a good nature. For the former corrupted by depraved action the innocence which at his origin he had received;
but the latter, without praise, without any fault of will, has only this, which he received from God his Creator, who—happier in his unpainted primal state—could not vitiate the good of his own simplicity, having no merit from acts, but retaining only this, which by the condescension of so great a Maker he possessed. AUGUSTINE: Why, then, is there a heavy yoke upon him from the day of his coming forth from his mother's womb? Why so great a corruptibility of the body, that his soul is weighed down by it? Why so great a dullness of mind, that his slowness is instructed even by blows? How long, Julian, are you heavy of heart? How long do you love vanity and seek a lie, by which your heresy may be propped up?
Would a man, if no one had sinned, if human nature had remained in the goodness in which it was created, be born even in paradise to these miseries—to be silent about others? Infants too are old men. 55. JULIAN: That age, therefore, just as it proclaims the mercy of Christ when renewed—that is, advanced by the power of the renewing mystery—so it convicts, whether accused or aggravated, the iniquity of the judge and the infamy of justice. AUGUSTINE: From what oldness is that age said to be renewed, when it is new by its origin? These are deceitful lips;