Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.19–1.41

Now does not what follows show most clearly from what standpoint he is speaking? "For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh." For if he had not explained by adding "that is, in my flesh", what he said, "in me", might perhaps have been taken otherwise. And so he turns this over, repeating and impressing the same point: "For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good is not." For this is to accomplish the good: that a man should not even desire; but the good is incomplete when he desires, even if he does not consent to the desire for evil. "For I do not do the good that I will," he says, "but the evil that I do not will, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who work it, but the sin that dwells in me." He repeated this, impressing it and as it were rousing the very slow from sleep: "I find, then, a law," he says, "for me, when I will to do good, that evil is present with me." That law, then, is a good to one who wills to do good, but evil is present from concupiscence, to which he does not consent who says, "It is no longer I who work it."

And what follows declares both more openly: "For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members." But his saying "taking me captive" may trouble us, if there is no consent. Hence, because of these three things, namely the two we have already discussed, his saying "But I am carnal" and "sold under sin", and this third, "taking me captive in the law of sin which is in my members", the apostle may seem to be describing one who still lives under the law, not yet under grace. But just as we explained those two as said on account of the flesh still corruptible, so this too can be understood: that he said "taking me captive" by the flesh, not by the mind, by motion, not by consent, and "taking me" captive because in the flesh itself too there is not an alien nature, but our own. So just as he himself explained what he said, "For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh", so we ought to take this place too according to his explanation, as if he had said: "taking me captive (that is, my flesh) in the law of sin which is in my members."

Then he adds that for the sake of which all has been said: "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." And from this he concludes: "So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin": with the flesh, that is, the law of sin by desiring, but with the mind the law of God by not consenting to that same concupiscence. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." For no one is condemned except him who consents to the concupiscence of the flesh for evil. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death", namely, so that the concupiscence of the flesh may not claim your consent for itself. And what follows shows the same sense more and more; but a limit must be observed.

It had once seemed to me also that a man under the law was described in this discourse of the apostle; but afterward these words compelled me, where he says: "But now it is no longer I who work it." For to this belongs also what he says afterward: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." And also because I do not see how a man under the law could say, "I delight in the law of God according to the inner man", since the very delight in good, by which one does not consent even to evil, not from fear of punishment but from love of righteousness (for this is to "delight in"), must be ascribed to nothing but grace.

For as to his saying, "Who will set me free from the body of this death?", who would deny that the apostle, when he said this, was still in the body of this death? From it the ungodly are certainly not set free, since the same bodies are given back to them for eternal torments. To be set free from the body of this death, then, is to receive the body, every languor of the concupiscence of the flesh having been healed, not for punishment but for glory. With this place that other agrees well enough: "And we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body." For surely we groan with this groaning in which we say, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" Also where he says, "For what I work, I do not know", what else is this than "I do not will it, I do not approve, I do not consent, I do not do it"? Otherwise it contradicts what he said above: "Through the law comes knowledge of sin", and "I did not know sin except through the law", and "Sin, that it might appear sin, worked death for me through what is good." For how has he come to know through the law a sin which he does not know? How does a sin appear which is not known? So "I do not know" was said in the sense of "I do not do it", because I myself do not commit it by any consent, in the way in which the Lord will say to the ungodly, "I do not know you", from whom beyond doubt nothing can be hidden; and as it was said, "him who did not know sin", that is, had not committed it; for he was not ignorant of what he rebuked.

When these and similar things in this context of the apostolic writing have been carefully considered, the apostle is rightly understood to have signified, in his own person, not himself alone, but also others established under grace, yet, like himself, not yet established in that perfect peace in which death will be swallowed up in victory. Of this he says afterward: "But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. If, then, the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you." When our mortal bodies have been given life, then, not only will there be no consent to sinning, but not even the concupiscence of the flesh, to which one does not consent, will remain. Only that man could be without it, resisting the spirit, in mortal flesh, who came to men not through it. And therefore, of the apostles, since they were men and carried in the mortality of this life the body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, far be it from us to say, as this man slanders, that they were always polluted by immoderate lust; but we say that they were free from consent to depraved lusts, yet that concerning the concupiscence of the flesh, which they bridled by restraining it, they groaned with such humility and piety that they wished rather not to have it than to master it.

As for what he added, that we say that Christ too was not free from sins, but lied through the necessity of the flesh and was stained with other offenses, let him see from whom he heard it or in whose writings he read it; perhaps indeed he did not understand something and, deceived by malice, turned it into slanderous senses.

"They say also," he says, "that baptism does not give full forgiveness of sins nor take away crimes, but shaves them, so that the roots of all sins are retained in the evil flesh." Who but an unbeliever would affirm this against the Pelagians? We say, then, that baptism gives forgiveness of all sins and takes away crimes, and does not shave them, nor so that the roots of all sins are retained in the evil flesh, as of hair shaved on the head, from which the sins may grow again, to be cut back once more. For I have found that they also use this comparison in their slander, as though we thought and said this.

But concerning this concupiscence of the flesh I believe they are deceived or deceive, with which even one who has been baptized (and this if he advances most diligently and is led by the Spirit of God) must contend with a devout mind. But this, even if it is called sin, is certainly called so not because it is sin, but because it was made by sin, just as a piece of writing is called someone's hand because a hand made it. But sins are the things which are unlawfully done, said, or thought according to the concupiscence of the flesh or through ignorance; and these, when done, hold men guilty even afterward, if they are not forgiven. And this very concupiscence of the flesh is forgiven in baptism in such a way that, although it has been contracted by those who are born, it does no harm to those who are reborn. Yet from them, if they beget children carnally, it is contracted again and will again harm those who are born, unless it is forgiven in the same way to those who are reborn; and it remains in them, doing no harm to the life to come, since its guilt, contracted by generation, has been forgiven by regeneration; and therefore it is no longer sin, but is called so, either because it was made by sin, or because it is moved by the delight of sinning, even though, when the delight of righteousness prevails, no consent is given to it. Nor is it because of it, whose guilt has already been consumed by the washing of regeneration, that the baptized say in the prayer, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors", but because of the sins which are committed, whether in consenting to it, when through it one is overcome by whatever pleases, or when through ignorance evil pleases as if it were good. And they are committed whether by acting, or by speaking, or, what is easiest and quickest, by thinking. From all these, who even among the faithful will boast that he has a chaste heart, or who will boast that he is clean from sin? That which follows in the prayer, indeed, is said on account of it: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." For each one, as it is written, "is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and enticed; then concupiscence, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin."

All these offspring of concupiscence, and the ancient guilt of concupiscence itself, have been forgiven by the washing of baptism; and whatever this concupiscence now brings forth, if they are not those offspring which are called not only sins but also crimes, is cleansed by that covenant of the daily prayer in which we say, "Forgive, as we forgive", and by sincerity in almsgiving. For no one is so foolish as to say that that command of the Lord does not apply to the baptized: "Forgive, and it will be forgiven you; give, and it will be given to you." But no minister could rightly be ordained in the church if the apostle had said "if anyone is without sin" where he says "if anyone is without crime", or if he had said "having no sin" where he says "having no crime". For many baptized believers are without crime; but I would not say that anyone is without sin in this life, however much the Pelagians, because we say this, puff themselves up against us and burst with madness: not because anything of sin remains that is not forgiven in baptism, but because, while we remain in the weakness of this life, there do not cease to be committed daily sins which are forgiven daily to those who pray faithfully and act mercifully. This is the soundness of the Catholic faith, which the Holy Spirit sows everywhere, not the vanity of heretical depravity and the presumption of spirit.

Now then, as to the rest, let us see how, after he thought fit slanderously to charge us with what we believe and to invent what we do not believe, he himself professes his own faith, or that of the Pelagians. "Against these things," he says, "we argue daily, and for this reason we refuse to give our consent to the prevaricators: because we say that free choice exists naturally in all and could not perish by the sin of Adam, which is confirmed by the authority of all the Scriptures." If you said these things as you ought, not against the grace of God, you would not be giving consent to prevaricators, but would be correcting your own opinion. But on this we have argued above as much as we could and as much as seemed sufficient.

"We say," he says, "that these marriages which are now contracted throughout the world were instituted by God, and that spouses are not guilty, but that fornicators and adulterers are to be condemned." This is true and Catholic; but what you wish to draw from it, that those who are born contract from the union of male and female no sin to be expiated by the washing of regeneration, this is false and heretical.

"The movement of the genitals," he says, "that is, virility itself, without which there can be no union, we say was instituted by God." To this we answer that the movement of the genitals and, to use his word, the virility without which there can be no union, God instituted in such a way that it had nothing shameful. For it was not right that his creature should blush at the work of its Creator; but the disobedience of the members was rendered as a just punishment to the first human beings when they disobeyed, and at this they blushed when they covered with fig leaves the shameful parts, which before had not been shameful.

For after the sin they did not sew themselves tunics, to cover the whole body, but loincloths, which some of our translators, less carefully, have rendered "coverings". This is indeed true; but "covering" is a general word, by which every garment and covering may be understood. And therefore the ambiguity should have been avoided, so that, as the Greek put perizōmata, by which only the shameful parts of the body are covered, so the Latin too should either have put the Greek word itself, since custom already uses it for a Latin word, or have named them, as some did, "succinctoria", or, as others did better, "campestria". For this name comes from the fact that, in the ancient Roman manner, young men covered their private parts when they exercised naked on the Campus; hence those who cover the same members by girding them are still today called "campestrati". And yet, if what had been used to sin was to be covered after the sin, they ought not to have been clothed even with tunics, but to have covered the hand and the mouth, because they sinned by taking and eating. What, then, does it mean that, when the forbidden food had been taken and the transgression of the command had been committed, their gaze is directed to those members? What unknown novelty is felt there that compels itself to be noticed? This is signified by the opening of the eyes. For their eyes were not closed, either when he was giving names to the cattle and birds or when she saw that the tree was beautiful and good; but they were opened, that is, made attentive to looking, as it is written of Hagar, Sarah's maidservant, that she opened her eyes and saw a well, which she certainly did not have closed. That they should suddenly be so ashamed of their nakedness, which they surely looked upon every day without being confounded, that they could no longer bear those members naked but at once took care to cover them, was it not because both he, in open movement, and she, in hidden, felt those members disobedient against the choice of their will, which they certainly ought to have ruled by the will's command like the others? This they deservedly suffered, because they too had not been obedient to their Lord. They blushed, then, at having so failed to render service to their Creator that they deserved to lose mastery in those members from which children were to be begotten.

This kind of shame, this necessity of blushing, is certainly born with every human being and is in a manner commanded by the very laws of nature, so that even chaste marriages feel modesty in this matter; nor does anyone make such bad and shameful progress that, because he has learned that God is the maker of nature and the author of marriage, he would therefore, when about to have intercourse with his wife, not blush at these movements if anyone saw him, and not seek a private place where he can avoid the sight not only of strangers but of all his own household. So let human nature be permitted to acknowledge the evil that befell it by its own fault, so that it is not forced either, what is most shameless, not to blush at these movements of its own, or, what is most ungrateful, to blush at the works of its Creator. Yet chaste marriages make good use of this evil for the sake of the good of begetting children; but to consent to lust for the sake of carnal pleasure alone is sin, although for married people it is allowed by way of pardon.

But decide, Pelagians, keeping the honor and fruitfulness of marriage intact, what kind of life you wish to imagine for those human beings in paradise if no one had sinned, and choose one of these four things. For beyond doubt, either they would have lain together as often as they pleased; or they would have bridled lust when intercourse was not necessary; or lust would have arisen at the command of the will at the time when chaste prudence foresaw that intercourse was necessary; or, with no lust at all existing there, the genitals too, like each of the other members for its own tasks, would have served their own task at the commands of those who willed it, without any difficulty. Choose which of these four you like. But I think you will reject the first two, where lust is either served or resisted. For so noble an honor does not admit the first, nor so great a happiness the second. For far be it that the glory of that great blessedness should either perform a most shameful slavery by always following lust as it leads, or not have the fullest peace by resisting it. Far be it, I say, that that mind should be pleased to satisfy by consenting a concupiscence of the flesh rising not at the fit time for begetting but with disordered agitation, or that that tranquility should need to restrain it by refusing consent.

But whichever of the other two you choose, there is no need to toil in any dispute against you. For even if you refuse to choose the fourth, where there is the highest tranquility of all the members obeying without any lust, since the impetus of your disputations has already made you its enemies, you will at least be pleased by what we put in the third place: that that carnal concupiscence, whose movement arrives at the final pleasure which delights you so much, would never in paradise have arisen at the command of the will except when it was necessary for begetting. If you like to place this in paradise, and it seems to you that in that happiness children could have been begotten through such a concupiscence of the flesh, which would neither anticipate nor delay nor exceed the command of the will, we do not object. For our purpose it is enough for us that it is not now such in human beings as you grant it could have been in that place of happiness. For what it is like now, the sense of all mortals surely confesses, though with shame: it troubles even the chaste against their will, and those who chastise it with temperance, with disordered and untimely restlessness, and often withdraws itself from those who want it and thrusts itself on those who do not, so that by its disobedience it testifies that it is nothing other than the punishment of that ancient disobedience. Hence rightly the first human beings were confounded by it then, when they covered their shameful parts, and now everyone who considers himself in any way a human being, modest or immodest, is confounded by it: far be it that this is at the work of God, but at the punishment of the first and ancient sin. But you, not for a religious reason but out of spirited contention, not from human modesty but from your own fury, lest even the concupiscence of the flesh be believed to have been vitiated and original sin to be contracted from it, try in your disputing to call back into paradise just such a concupiscence as it now is, and contend that it could have existed there, one which either shameful consent would always follow or pitiable refusal of consent would sometimes restrain. But we do not care much what you like to think about it. Yet whatever human being is born through it, if he is not reborn, is without doubt condemned, and must be under the devil if he is not set free from there by Christ.

"We maintain," he says, "that human beings are the work of God, and that no one is compelled against his will by his power either to evil or to good, but that by his own will he does either good or evil; and that in a good work he is always helped by the grace of God, but to evil he is incited by the suggestions of the devil." To this we answer that human beings are the work of God in so far as they are human beings, but are under the devil in so far as they are sinners, unless they are rescued from there by him who was made mediator between God and men for no other reason than that he could not be a sinner by descent from men; and that no one is compelled against his will by the power of God either to evil or to good, but that when God forsakes a man he goes into evil according to his merits, and when God helps him he is converted to good without merits. For a man is not good if he is unwilling; but by the grace of God he is helped even to this, that he wills, since it is not written in vain: "For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for good will", and: "The will is prepared by the Lord."

But you think that a man is helped by the grace of God in a good work in such a way that you believe it does nothing in arousing his will to that good work. Your own words declare this well enough. For why did you not say that a man is aroused to a good work by the grace of God, as you said that he is "incited to evil by the suggestions of the devil", but said "in a good work he is always helped by the grace of God"? As though, having undertaken a good work by his own will, with no grace of God, he is helped by God in the work itself, namely in return for the merits of the good will, so that grace is paid as due, not given as undue; and so grace is no longer grace, but it is that which Pelagius at the Palestinian judgment condemned with a feigned heart: that the grace of God is given according to our merits. Tell me, I beg you, what good did Paul, still Saul, will, and not rather great evils, when, breathing slaughter, he went to lay waste the Christians with horrible blindness and fury of mind? For what merits of good will did God convert him from those evils to good things by a wonderful and sudden calling? Why should I speak of merits, when he himself cries out: "Not from works of righteousness which we did, but according to his mercy he saved us"? What of what I have already mentioned that the Lord said: "No one can come to me" (which is understood as "believe in me") "unless it has been given him by my Father"? Is this given to one already willing to believe, in return for the merits of a good will, or rather is the will itself aroused from above, as Saul's was, so that he may believe, even if he is so turned away from the faith as even to persecute believers? For why does the Lord command us to pray for those who persecute us? Do we pray for this, that the grace of God be paid back to them in return for their good will, and not rather that their evil will itself be changed into good? As we believe that the saints whom he was persecuting then did not pray in vain for Saul, that his will might be converted to the faith which he was laying waste. And his conversion, indeed, wrought from above, appeared also by a manifest miracle; but how many enemies of Christ are daily drawn suddenly to Christ by the hidden grace of God! If I had not taken this word from the gospel, how much this man would have said about me on account of it, when even now he struggles not against me, but against him who cries: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him"! For he did not say "leads", so that we might in some way understand that the will goes first. Who is drawn, if he was already willing? And yet no one comes unless he wills. He is drawn, then, in wonderful ways, so that he wills, by him who knows how to work inwardly in the very hearts of men: not so that men believe unwillingly, which cannot happen, but so that from unwilling they become willing.

That this is true we do not suspect by human conjecture, but recognize by the most evident authority of the divine Scriptures. We read in the books of Chronicles: "And indeed in Judah the hand of God was at work to give them one heart, to do the command of the king and of the princes by the word of the Lord." Likewise the Lord says through the prophet Ezekiel: "I will give them another heart, and I will give them a new spirit, and I will pluck out their heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may walk in my commandments and keep my ordinances and do them." And what is it that Queen Esther prays, saying: "Put a well-ordered speech in my mouth, and make my words shine in the sight of the lion, and turn his heart to hatred of him who fights against us"? Why does she say this to God in prayer, if God does not work the will in the hearts of men? But perhaps the woman prayed foolishly. Let us see, then, whether the petitioner's desire went before in vain and the effect of the one who heard did not follow. Look, she goes in to the king (not to say much), and because she was not going in in her proper turn, being driven by great necessity, he looked at her, as it is written, like a bull in the onset of his indignation. "And the queen was afraid, and her color changed through faintness, and she bowed herself upon the head of her maid who went before her. And God turned and changed his indignation into gentleness." What need is there now to recall what follows, where the divine Scripture testifies that God fulfilled what she had asked, by working in the king's heart what else but the will by which he commanded, and what the queen had asked of him was done? God had already heard her so that it should be done, he who, before the king heard the speech of the woman making her request, turned his heart with a most hidden and most effective power, and changed it from indignation to gentleness, that is, from a will to harm to a will to favor, according to that saying of the apostle: "God works in you both to will." Did the men of God who wrote these things, or rather the Spirit of God himself, by whose authorship they were written through them, attack the free choice of man? Far from it; but it commended both the most just judgment and the most merciful help of the Almighty in all things. For it is enough for a man to know that there is no iniquity with God. But as to how he arranges these things, making some according to merit vessels of wrath, others according to grace vessels of mercy, "who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" If, then, we belong to the honor of grace, let us not be ungrateful by attributing to ourselves what we have received. "For what do we have that we have not received?"

"We say," he says, "that the saints of the Old Testament passed from here to eternal life with perfect righteousness, that is, that by zeal for virtue they withdrew from all sins, since even those whom we read to have sinned somewhat, we know nevertheless to have amended afterward." However great the virtue he proclaims the ancient righteous to have had, nothing saved them but faith in the Mediator, who shed his blood for the forgiveness of sins. For theirs is the voice: "I believed, therefore I spoke." Hence the apostle Paul too says: "But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, 'I believed, therefore I spoke', we too believe, and therefore we also speak." What is "the same spirit" but that which those righteous men also had who said these things? The apostle Peter also says: "Why do you wish to put a yoke on the Gentiles which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as they also are." This you do not want, enemies of this grace, that the ancients be believed to have been saved by the same grace of Jesus Christ; but you divide the times according to Pelagius, in whose books this is read, and you say that before the law men were saved by nature, then through the law, finally through Christ, as though for the men of the two earlier times, namely before the law and under the law, the blood of Christ were not necessary; making void what was said: "For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

"We confess," he says, "that the grace of Christ is necessary for all, both adults and little children, and we anathematize those who say that one born of two baptized parents ought not to be baptized." We know in what sense you say this, not according to the apostle Paul but according to the heretic Pelagius: namely, that baptism is necessary for little children not for the forgiveness of sins but only for the kingdom of heaven. For you give them, outside the kingdom of God, a place of salvation and eternal life, even if they have not been baptized; nor do you pay attention to what is written: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." For this reason, in the church of the Savior, little children believe through others, just as they contracted from others the sins which are forgiven them in baptism. Nor do you consider that those cannot have life who have had no share in the body and blood of Christ, as he himself says: "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you." Or if you are compelled by the words of the gospel to confess that little children departing from the body cannot have life and salvation unless they have been baptized, ask why the unbaptized are compelled to undergo the punishment of the second death by the judgment of him who condemns no one undeservedly, and you will find what you do not want: original sin.

"We also condemn," he says, "those who say that baptism does not wipe out all sins, because we know that full cleansing is conferred through these very mysteries." This we too say; but you do not say that little children too are loosed through these very mysteries from the bonds of their first birth and of their guilty descent. For this reason you too, like other heretics, must be separated from the church of Christ, which has held this from ancient times.