THE PRESBYTER'S BOOK OF DEFENSE. It is not of my ability nor of my presumption, most blessed priests, but of a most pressing and almost extreme necessity—as you yourselves recognize—that I should now appear as I do. To do this, indeed, I have been compelled by an injury, being not only the defender of my own faith but also the discloser of another's perfidy. For just as I ought to be zealous for my own purgation on account of conscience—and I mean conscience not my own but another's—so too I am forced to point out with the finger the wolves caught among the flock of sheep, on account of faith and zeal—and I mean zeal not my own but Christ's. Yet neither do I, being the least of all, presume anything out of rashness: it is a necessity for me to make manifest the injury which I have suffered.
Let it be plain to all who have done these things. For it is both the will and the ordinance of God that the evil which was being tolerated through patience should of necessity be brought forth, and that—through the contention of their fury, while they themselves receive the fitting reward which their error deserved—there should be made not only a marking of their most wicked dogmas but a disclosure of the persons to be corrected. For the fathers, both those martyrs and confessors who have already gone to rest—Cyprian, Hilary, and Ambrose—and those for whom it is even now necessary to remain still in the flesh, who are the pillars and bulwarks of the Catholic Church—Aurelius Augustine and Jerome—have already published, in writings most approved, many things against this abominable heresy, without designating the names of the heretics.
And yet this abomination of most venomous dogmas has even now both living dead and dead living. For Origen and Priscillian and Iovinian, long since dead in their own persons, live on in these men, and not only live but even speak; but now Pelagius and Caelestius, if they persevere in these errors as living dead, behold, against the Church—which is a wretched thing—and, what is far more wretched, within the Church, they openly hiss, and as impious serpents, licking with quivering tongues their mouths infected with poison, while they besiege the holy and most fortified see into which they have subtly crept in, they terrify all the faithful, lest we fly together to that once most firm refuge in Zion.
Indeed the stench of their mouth, diffused far and wide, has turned, for all to whom the odor of life was unto life, that odor into death. Against this serpent and its suffocating breath the most blessed men whom we have mentioned above prepare many and manifold sweet ointments of the Scriptures, and, to restore the burning hearts of the peoples, they kindle a most fragrant incense together with the offering of prayer. But it is too little a thing to contend with an almost uncertain author and, by substituting contraries for contraries, to temper the air infected with a pestilential breath, unless the serpents themselves are dragged forth into the midst and trampled.
Since they, for the sake of guarding the head alone, expose the rest of the body to wounding and injury, reckoning no loss so long as that part of them is free from peril which holds within itself manifold and venomous tongues, even if all their other members be cut off: does it then seem enough to us to be satisfied with merely tempering the stench, but not to move the serpents themselves from their inner chambers?—as though there were any end to the fetid exhalation except by the author being made an end of. And amid these things does not that testimony of Solomon occur to mind? 'One building up, another tearing down—what shall profit them but their labor?'
There stands also the most monstrous Goliath, swollen with pride and with carnal power, confident that he can do all things by himself, in head and hand, and moreover clothed over his whole body with abundant bronze, having behind him his armor-bearer, who, though he himself does not fight, nevertheless supplies all the aids of bronze and iron. And it is no wonder if Scripture, fittingly foreseeing this place, declares, where it says, 'The Philistines were standing upon the mountain on this side.' For from the Church the assailant of heresy is expelled, while the heretic is found being nourished in the bosom of the Church; and for this reason, through the Holy Spirit, Israel is there declared to stand, and on the other side the enemy. And this often. For even king David, the godly father, was driven from Jerusalem, having laid aside the kingly garb, even by his impious son:
whereupon straightway Absalom the tyrant enters in. So Goliath stands—alas the grief!—on this side, that is, within the Church, and not only stands but even provokes, and at the same time, for very many days, reproaches holy Israel with manifest fear. Let no one, I beseech you, most blessed priests, suppose that I, under the pretext of the figure of Goliath, glory in the name of David: you it was who wished me to be a sharer in your contest, that I might come as a helper, not as an author. For I was lying hidden in Bethlehem, an unknown, poor stranger—why do I wretchedly speak thus, perhaps again to be marked for boastfulness? since David himself too was such a one and came forth from there—I was lying hidden, then, in Bethlehem, handed over by my father Augustine that I might learn the fear of the Lord, sitting at the feet of Jerome.
Thence, when those of Jerusalem summoned us, I came, being called; and from there I ascended into your assembly at the bidding of the bishop John together with you. There you all at once asked of my littleness that, if I knew of anything done in Africa concerning this heresy which Pelagius and Caelestius had sown, I should faithfully and simply report it. I set forth to your reverend body, briefly as I could, that Caelestius, already creeping in toward the honor of the presbyterate at Carthage, had—with very many bishops judging—been exposed, heard, convicted, confessed, and abhorred, and had fled from the Church out of Africa;
that against the book of Pelagius the blessed Augustine, at the urging and request of Pelagius's own disciples, had most fully replied; that there was moreover in my hands a letter of the aforesaid bishop which he had recently directed to Sicily, in which he had refuted many questions of the heretics—which letter you also bade me read there, and I read it. To these things the bishop John asked that Pelagius be brought in to his face. And to him, both out of reverence for his fatherly dignity and for the usefulness of the proceeding, since you believed he would be more rightly refuted by the bishop while present, the indulgence of admitting him was granted. Pelagius being brought in, you all unanimously asked him whether he acknowledged that he had taught those things to which the bishop Augustine had replied.
Straightway he replied: 'And who is Augustine to me?' And when all cried out that the one blaspheming against the bishop—through whose mouth the Lord had granted health of unity to all Africa—was to be expelled not only from that assembly but from the whole Church, the bishop John forthwith ordered him, namely a layman, to sit guilty of manifest heresy in the midst of the Catholics in the session of presbyters, and then said: 'I am Augustine'—so that, having assumed as it were the person of one present, he might the more freely, by the authority of him who was being wronged, pardon and soothe the minds of those who grieved. To him it was at once said by us: 'If you take the person of Augustine, follow the opinion of Augustine.' Then the same bishop said to us all:
'These things which are read were said against others; but you think it should be suggested that they were said of Pelagius; if therefore you have anything to say against Pelagius himself, set it forth.' And I, with you assenting, said: 'Pelagius told me that he teaches that a man can be without sin and can easily keep the commandments of God, if he will.' Pelagius replied, with us hearing: 'That I both said this and say it, I cannot deny.' I straightway continued: 'This the African synod abhorred in Caelestius; this the bishop Augustine, in his writings, as you have heard, shuddered at; this, now in Pelagius's own writings, he condemns by his own reply;
this too the blessed Jerome—whose eloquence the whole West awaits, as dew upon the fleece—for already many heretics, with their dogmas, have been struck down by his very assault—condemned in his letter which he recently issued to Ctesiphon, and likewise refutes in the book which he now writes, contending in the manner of a dialogue brought together as a debate. For this is to hold the slippery dragon on a hook, lest it be able to escape.' But further, the bishop John, hearing none of these things, was endeavoring to exact of us that we should confess ourselves accusers with himself as judge. It was answered very often by all of us:
'We are not accusers of this man, but we make known what your brothers, our fathers, have judged and decreed concerning this heresy which now a layman openly preaches, lest it should trouble the Church—your own especially, to whose bosom we have fled—without your knowing it.' But he, when he often tried under the pretense of instruction to lead us into some show of profession, saying that it was said to Abraham by the Lord, 'Walk before me and be without blemish,' and that Zacharias and Elizabeth were pronounced both righteous before the Lord, walking in all the justifications of the Lord without complaint—which indeed, said by Origen, we knew well was being brought forth by him before very many of us—to him it was answered through me: 'We are sons of the Catholic Church;
do not demand of us, father, that we should dare to be teachers over teachers, or judges over judges. The fathers, whom the whole Church throughout the world approves, in whose communion you rejoice to cling, have decreed these dogmas to be damnable: with them approving, it is fitting that we obey.
Why do you ask the sons what they think, when you hear the fathers as to what they decree?' To which he, disputing long, and—to us, on account of our inexperience, through an interpreter unknown to us, whom very often the foremost and religious men, the presbyters Passerius and Avitus and the former leader Domnus, refuted as either interpreting wrongly, or suppressing much, or substituting some things for others—to us, as I have said, with our proceedings for the most part either tampered with or passed over in silence, the bishop John said: 'If he were to say that a man can do this without the help of God, it would be most wicked and damnable; but now, since he adds that a man can be without sin not without the help of God, what do you say? Or do you perhaps deny the help of God?' To whom I replied:
'With you yourselves even now bearing witness and testifying, and with the men mentioned above, anathema to him who denies the help of God. I certainly do not deny it, especially since, on the contrary, I have refuted it against the heretics.' Then, when—the judge having been recognized and the interpreter exposed—we cried out that he was a Latin heretic, that we were Latins, that a heresy better known to the Latin parts should be discussed before Latin judges, and that he was thrusting himself almost shamelessly forward to judge—when indeed we were not accusers—being both a single man and a suspect one, it was necessary that it should be said by many: 'No one can be at the same time both a heretic and an advocate and a judge.'
And after many other things were transacted, the bishop John brought forth his final sentence, confirming at last our demand and intention, that to the blessed Innocent, the Roman pope, brethren and letters should be sent, all parties about to follow whatever he should decree; but that the heretic Pelagius, with silence imposed upon him thus far, should keep quiet, and that our people should cease from the railing of the convicted and confessed John. We all consented to this sentence; and when thanksgiving had been celebrated, peace made and completed, we departed with a prayer as a testimony of peace.
But now, when after forty-seven days, on the first day of the dedication festival, as I had been accustomed when I was present, I had hastened to attend upon the bishop John, I straightway received from him, in place of the grace of a greeting, the brand of a false charge. For he said to me: 'Why do you come to me, you man who blasphemed?'—not wishing, as I believe, to be understood: 'Touch me not, for I am clean and without sin.' But I, conscious of nothing in myself, asked: 'When, or in whose hearing, or of what sort is that thing said, which could be ascribed to blasphemy?' The bishop replied: 'I heard you say that not even with the help of God can a man be without sin.'
I indeed, most blessed priests—as you yourselves are my witnesses, and the whole brotherhood, and besides the holy men who, out of love of the truth, stand by for this testimony—straightway testified, saying that such a word as the bishop now alleged was said by me had never before proceeded from my mouth. And yet, while I ruminate over this incongruity of a wretched falsehood, by frequent rehearsal I may seem not so much to have proved my own case as to have disclosed another's. For I grant that, whatever sort that saying was, I did say it: how did a Greek, devoid of Latinity, hear a Latin word?
Or, if he did hear the sacrilegious word, why did he not at once convict the blasphemer, or—to act more gently—why did he not, like a godly father, admonish a heedless son about restraining the license of dangerous speech? But on the contrary, after very much forgetfulness of a long time, he himself by himself brought the accusation, he himself bore the testimony, he himself promulgated the judgment, taking upon the authority of his own person the offices of all crimes—especially he who had been diligently instructed by the Gospel reading that our Lord Jesus was not condemned save by the testimony of the ruler. On one side my brethren stood by me, on the other side the false brethren.
Then in that same assembly, on one side with me sat the presbyters Avitus and Vitalis; on the other, some unknown interpreter, and then men approved both in the world and before God, the presbyter Passerio and Domnus the former duke. Both of these, that they might deign to be present as interpreters in keeping with their experience and faith, were summoned and brought together at the request of your assembly, with bishop John himself agreeing. You yourselves also were in the midst, and in that gathering it is no less astonishing to have heard than to have seen how a word once let fall could pass by so many adversaries, colleagues, and hearers, and enter the unsuspecting ears of one understanding hearer. But I, driven by the heat of truth, am pressed hard enough: I go beyond the measure of my profession.
It must rather be granted that the interpreter seemed to have erred in speaking than that the bishop feigned in hearing; and now, in return for the wages he paid to the heretics, he must be made to seek out false witnesses in his own support, demanding them. Indeed no one ought any longer to wonder that false witnesses are sought out and arise in Jerusalem from the priests and elders: this the blood of Stephen cried out, this the standards of the Lord's cross signify, this even now the wrong stirred up by them makes plain. But whether these things seem to have been rashly believed by the bishop, or maliciously feigned, or ignorantly misheard, I commit to Christ the judge to be sifted. Far be it from me ever that I, a poor man, a sinner, unknown, should dare to challenge a bishop, and especially the bishop of Jerusalem, before the bishops.
My simplicity and integrity before the most eminent Trinity of God's omnipotence, and before all His catholic servants, is enough for me. I call God to witness upon my soul, most blessed priests—you who know these same things and bear witness with me—that I uttered no blasphemy with my mouth in that assembly of yours, nor spoke such words as were laid against me by bishop John: namely, that not even with God's help can a man be without sin. As for the contention of an opinion unknown to me, I am unwilling to make satisfaction, lest perhaps you, thinking that what was not even heard by you was nevertheless spoken by me, should labor under an ambiguous testimony.
And to the common report and rumor likewise, lest, while one would not believe that a bishop could lie, he should sin by another kind of innocent credulity. And who from this would not recognize the authors, whether in the accusation of Susanna or in the stoning of Naboth? And lest perhaps anyone be unaware that in Jerusalem there was never lacking, for the shedding of Christian blood, either the bribes of silver or the scourges of soldiers—now, since I reckon myself free from this word, whatever it be, free by your faith, free by my own conscience, the ambiguity of the word itself having been sifted, I shall try to inquire: those who assert that we so answered, in what manner they themselves seem to have questioned.
Perhaps through the manner of their own questioning the secret of the dogma will be laid bare, so that, striking with reciprocal wounds, they may with surer aim chastise their own marksman with the darts he shot back. For he says that this was answered by us: 'Not even with God's help can a man be without sin.' If anyone of men should think this must be so said as to affirm that God cannot act under the weakness of man, and should suspect that something is impossible to God's omnipotence in all the creation of things heavenly, earthly, and infernal—him I would call, not only by my own sentence, a blasphemer to be detested with anathema, but also one to be condemned, after the example of Nadab and Abihu, by divine fire, or, in keeping with the perdition of Dathan and Abiram, to be received alive by the gaping of the earth and plunged down to hell.
For both alike, by the presumption of their heart, detracted from the power of God: those, while they offer strange fire, as if God needed this; these, while, resisting Moses, they distrust that they can be brought into the land of promise. God can do all things, and what He wills He can always do; as mighty in making something from nothing, so easy in bringing to completion what is already done. For to Himself it is subject to be able, when He wills. This the grace granted according to the Spirit confesses; this the law written according to the letter testifies; this the natural law understands in all men; this the most orderly motion of the world displays. For what Gentile would dare to say this, who has ever before his eyes the distinct elements of heaven and earth and sea?
Or what Jew could suspect this, to whom even the slightest knowledge of the law handed down through Moses has come, since he both recognizes and believes what is written: that the deep lay open when the waves of the Red Sea were cleft, and offered a safe path in the sea to the foot upon dry land; that the Jordan, divided, flowed back upon itself to its source in upturned currents; that Elijah was carried up mortal in his body by the fire of a fiery chariot and yet not harmed; or that Habakkuk, laden with prepared food, that he might minister a meal to the fasting just man among the hungering beasts, was, as the common edition relates, in a moment of a day carried straightway from Judea to Babylon and brought back?
What Christian would admit this even in an atom of thought, who knows that Lazarus, four days dead, with limbs already stinking and his skin now flowing in liquid decay within itself, sprang forth at the devoted service of the Lord; who has read that the man blind from birth and now of full age suddenly flourished, his eyes either made or restored; who has proved that winds, waves, and tempests, and the elements at strife with one another at once, grew gentle when they heard the Lord's rebuking command; who believes that Peter, heavy with the burden of the flesh and about to deny the Lord three times in quick succession, walked upon the swelling waves with footsteps hung in air?
And so I judge that all men—whether those endowed with surpassing faith and wisdom, or those who are otherwise—venerate, believe, and confess this, that God can do all things. For this reason indeed He is called Almighty by every creature in general, because He can do all things. And this is God alone who says: 'These things are impossible with men.' And elsewhere He teaches, saying: 'Without me you can do nothing.' He therefore who can do all things can do all things in man. But further, why is earth and ashes proud, that it should say, 'man can,' when it is God who can? The apostle cries out: 'By His grace I am what I am, and His grace was not empty in me, but I labored more abundantly than they all—yet not I, but the grace of God with me.'
What, rash presumptuous man, do you regard in that he said 'with me'? Attend, that he prefaced it with 'not I.' Wherefore between these two words 'not I' and 'with me' the grace of God stands in the middle, whose it is truly both to will and to accomplish for the sake of good will, and yet by the will of man. Whence too the one was confident to say 'with me' who had said 'not I.' In the will of man, therefore, the grace of divine power operates, which has granted this very willing itself. Thus the conscience of man professes, so that he says 'not I'; the grace of God bestows, so that 'with me.' The apostle cries: 'By the grace of God I am what I am.' For he remembered the Lord proclaiming: 'No one comes to me unless the Father has drawn him'; and again elsewhere:
'But I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the age.' And in another place He so speaks of the Holy Spirit: 'It is expedient for you that I go; for if I do not go, that Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.' Unhappy, O man, according to the truth of God's sentence! The Father draws you, the Son is with you, and the Spirit the Comforter; and in this so great encompassing of the divine majesty you dare to say: 'By the grace of God indeed assisting, but by my own possibility, I am what I am'! For you now assert, after this correction allied to your ancient error: 'a man can be without sin with God's help';
although in your book, which you marked with the title of 'Testimonies,' this very sentence is written in this manner: that a man can be without sin and easily keep God's commandments, if he will. There no grace of God, no help is named, however often you may speak of the grace of God. 'I did not therefore deny it, because I did not say it'—but I am to be taken as having said it, because I did not deny it. As if indeed Susanna were therefore to be believed to have confessed adultery, because she did not deny it to those accusing her, or as if the Lord Jesus had approved the testimony of false witnesses because He was silent. But if with you not to have denied is to have said, and to have been silent is to have cried out, then in vain does David ask: 'Set, O Lord, a guard over my mouth and a door of enclosure over my lips';
in vain too do I confirm, by witnesses and by testimony, that I did not say that of which I am accused, and another could hear what my speech did not say. But I grant that you should reckon as said what you by no means said. What do we do about this, that, finding from the sense a diversity of speech, they do not cohere with discordant joinings, since the very page does not admit words at variance with one another? For you write that a man can be without sin and easily keep God's commandments, if he will; and, just as the most blessed father Jerome expounded concerning this same sentence in the letter which he wrote to Ctesiphon, at last, as if waking from a most heavy sleep, you add: 'not without the help of God.'
For in this very thing truth itself fights against you and cries out. Why, through a disdainful swelling and a queasy false modesty, do you withhold from your own mouth the help of God as unnecessary to you, you who reckon all things easy for yourself? You honor me with the tips of your lips, but your heart is far from me. There is no need of two in a work which is easy for one, and in vain does the grace of the Godhead interpose itself where a man confesses that he can do easily what he wills. You said that the commandments are easy to one who wills; but I assert this too, that you should say even hard things are fulfilled. Yet however you promise it can be done through man, you reproach the Lord with envy, who attempts to ascribe to His added help what man alone by his own will could have accomplished.
Either take away from man the 'if he will' and ascribe to grace what he can do; or, since you attribute to man the being able when he wills, remove the feigned, flattering, and incoherent participation of grace, and out of the abundance of the heart profess your naked blasphemy. But it is not for my part to track these things out more widely, especially since the most blessed fathers Augustine and Jerome have handed over to the western provinces a fullest proof of the heresy convicted. Let me return to the question proposed above, to which I came, roused not by confidence of talent but moved by wrong. You say that a man can be in this world without sin with God's help. You say 'man can,' I say 'God can.' The three boys the seething flame within did not harm.
Which of them could do what was done against nature: was it they themselves, or the fourth in their midst, like to the Son of God? The leper cries out: 'Lord, if you will, you can make me clean,' manifesting the will by the possibility, confirming the will by the possibility. For He alone is the one to whom, when He wills, the being able subsists. The blind came to Him, praying that they might be enlightened; to whom Jesus says: 'Do you believe that I can do this?' The Lord Christ judges worthy of the highest reward of faith whoever has believed that the Son of God can do these things; and our Briton soon trusts that, as soon as he wills, he himself can! To the faithful paralytic the Lord says: 'Be of good courage, son: your sins are forgiven you';
and now this ninth master and minister of tables has dared to presume the remission of sins rather from his own possibility, nor does he wait to hear it from the Lord! The scribes, not understanding the truth, murmur and say: 'Who can forgive sins but God alone?'; and this man judges those things to be abolished which he does not know God to have forgiven! Behold, puffed up with the spirit of your flesh, as though it were nothing, you glory proud in free will and say: 'I am a sinner because I will; I sin while I will; but when I will again, I can be without sin.' What you say, 'I sin when I will,' is true, because even what you have not done in deed, you have done in thought;
Again, 'when I will, I do not sin'—a hard thing indeed and difficult, nor always within the power of all, but yet that it can sometimes come to pass is not doubtful; but truly that one who has sometime sinned can be without sin is impossible, apart from the grace of baptism alone, where, in the person of the Lord, it is said: 'Your sins are forgiven you.' This I am persuaded to believe, because I am permitted to hear it: 'I can therefore be without sin'—'in this corruption at least, in which we live, I do not accept it, I do not presume it, I do not dare it.' For if David prays to God, 'Against you only have I sinned and done evil before you,' and, according to the Apocalypse of John, the dead are to be judged out of those things which they sinned before God, out of those things which are written in the books, receiving according to their works: