Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.4–4.16

This being so, what does it profit the new heretics, enemies of the cross of Christ and assailants of divine grace, that they seem sound from the error of the Manichees and die of another pestilence of their own? What does it profit them that, in praise of the creature, they say that the good God, through whom all things were made, is the maker of those who are born, and that the sons of men are his work, whom the Manichees say are the work of the prince of darkness, when between the two, or at the hands of both, God's creature which is in infants perishes? For both refuse to let it be set free by the flesh and blood of Christ: the former because they destroy the very flesh and blood of Christ, as though he did not take them at all in man or from man; the latter because they assert that there is no evil in infants from which they need to be set free through the sacrament of this flesh and blood. Between them, in little children, lies the human creature, good by its making, vitiated by its descent, confessing by its good things the best of makers, seeking by its evils the most merciful Redeemer; having the Manichees as censurers of its good things, the Pelagians as deniers of its evils, and both as persecutors. And although in infancy it cannot speak, yet by its silent appearance and hidden weakness it rebukes the ungodly vanity of both, saying to the former, "Believe that I am created by him who creates good things", and to the latter, "Let me be healed by him who created me." The Manichee says, "Nothing of this infant is to be set free except the good soul; the rest, belonging not to the good God but to the prince of darkness, is to be rejected." The Pelagian says, "On the contrary, nothing of this infant needs to be set free, because we have shown that the whole is sound." Both lie; but the accuser of the flesh alone is now milder, because the praiser is shown to rage against the whole. But neither does the Manichee help the human soul, by blaspheming God, the author of the whole man, nor does the Pelagian allow the divine medicine to help human infancy, by denying original sin. God, then, has mercy through the Catholic faith, which, by refuting both destructions, comes to the infant's help for salvation, saying to the Manichees: "Listen to the apostle crying: 'Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit in you?' and believe that the good God is the creator of bodies too, because the temple of the Holy Spirit cannot be the work of the prince of darkness"; and saying to the Pelagians: "'In iniquities was he conceived, and in sins did his mother nourish him in the womb', this little one whom you see. Why, by defending him as free from all harm, do you not allow him to be set free by pardon? 'No one is clean from filth, not even an infant whose life on earth is one day.' Let the wretched one receive the forgiveness of sins through him who alone, neither small nor great, could have sin."

What does it profit them, then, that they say that all sin comes down not from nature but from the will, and resist by the truth of this statement the Manichees who say that an evil nature is the cause of sin, when, refusing to admit original sin, though it too without doubt comes down from the will of the first man, they make little children depart from the body guilty? What does it profit them to confess that baptism is necessary for all ages, which the Manichees say is superfluous for every age, when these men say that in little children it is false, as far as the forgiveness of sins is concerned? What does it profit them that, as to the flesh of Christ, which the Manichees contend was either nonexistent or feigned, these men maintain against them that it was not only real, but that both it and his soul were sprinkled with no stain of sin, when they make the other infants so equal to his infancy in no unequal purity that his infancy does not seem, in comparison with theirs, to keep its own holiness, and they gain no salvation from it?

In their saying, indeed, that death passed to us through Adam, not crimes, they do not have the Manichees as adversaries, because neither do these assert that original sin passed and passes, together with death, from the first man, at first pure and upright in body and spirit and afterward depraved through free choice, into all thereafter; but they say that the flesh was from the beginning an evil body, created from an evil body and by an evil spirit and together with an evil spirit, while the soul, being good, namely a part of God, comes into man in accordance with the merits of its pollution through the foods and drink in which it was previously bound, and so through intercourse is bound also by the chain of the flesh. And therefore the Manichees agree with the Pelagians that the crime of the first man did not pass into the human race, neither through the flesh, which they say was never good, nor through the soul, which they hold comes into man's flesh with the merits of its pollutions, by which it was defiled before the flesh. But how do the Pelagians say that death alone passed to us through Adam? For if we die because he died, and he died because he sinned, they say that punishment passes without guilt, and that innocent little children are punished with unjust punishment, contracting death without the merits of death. This the Catholic faith knows of the one and only mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who deigned to undergo death for us, that is, the punishment of sin, without sin. For just as he alone became son of man for this purpose, that through him we might become sons of God, so he alone undertook punishment for us without evil merits, so that through him we might obtain grace without good merits; because, as nothing good was owed to us, so nothing evil was owed to him. Commending, then, his love toward those to whom he was going to give an undue life, he willed to suffer for them an undue death. This singular prerogative of the Mediator the Pelagians try to make void, so that this would no longer be singular in the Lord, if Adam suffered a due death because of guilt in such a way that little children, contracting no guilt from him, suffer an undue death. For although much good is conferred on the good through death, for which reason some have fittingly discoursed even on the good of death, yet what is to be proclaimed from this too but the mercy of God, in that the punishment of sin is turned to good uses?

But these men say these things because they want to twist people to their own sense from the words of the apostle. For where the apostle says, "Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed into all men", there they want it to be understood that not sin passed, but death. What, then, is it that follows: "in whom all sinned"? For the apostle says that all sinned either in that one man, of whom he had said, "Through one man sin entered into the world", or in that sin, or else in death. For it should not trouble us that he did not say "in which" (feminine) but "in whom" (masculine) all sinned; for "death" in the Greek language is of the masculine gender. Let them choose, then, whichever they like. Either "in that man all sinned" was said because, when he sinned, all were in him; or all sinned in that sin, because what all were to contract by being born became, in general, the deed of all; or it remains for them to say that all sinned in that death. But how this can be understood I do not clearly see. For men die in sin; they do not sin in death; for when sin goes before, death follows, not sin when death goes before. For "the sting of death is sin", that is, the sting by whose pricking death comes about, not the sting with which death pricks; just as poison, if it is drunk, is called the cup of death because death is brought about by that cup, not because the cup is brought about by death or given by death. But if "sin" cannot be understood in those words of the apostle, "in which all sinned", because in the Greek, from which the letter was translated, "sin" is put in the feminine gender, it remains that all are understood to have sinned in that first man, because all were in him when he sinned; hence sin is contracted by being born, and is not loosed except by being reborn. For so holy Hilary too understood what is written, "in whom all sinned"; for he says: "'In whom', that is, in Adam, all sinned." Then he added: "It is clear that all sinned in Adam as in a lump; for he himself, having been corrupted by sin, all whom he begot were born under sin." Writing this, Hilary pointed out without ambiguity how "in whom all sinned" was to be understood.

But why does the same apostle say that we are reconciled to God through Christ, except because we had been made enemies? And what is this but sin? Hence the prophet too says: "Your sins separate you from God." Because of this separation, then, the Mediator was sent, to take away the sin of the world, through which we were separated as enemies, so that, reconciled, we might be made sons instead of enemies. From this certainly the apostle was speaking; from this it came about that he inserted his statement that sin entered through one man. For these are his preceding words: "But God commends his love toward us," he says, "in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, then, having now been justified in his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in his life; and not only so, but also glorying in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation." Then he adds: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed into all men, in whom all sinned." Why do the Pelagians shuffle? If reconciliation through Christ is necessary for all, sin passed through all, by which we were enemies, so that we needed to be reconciled. This reconciliation is in the washing of regeneration and in the flesh and blood of Christ, without which not even little children can have life in themselves. For just as there was one unto death because of sin, so there is one unto life because of righteousness; since "as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive", and "as through the offense of one unto all men to condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one unto all men to justification of life." Who has grown so deaf against these apostolic words with such hardness of abominable impiety that, having heard them, he contends that death without sin passed to us through Adam, except the assailants of the grace of God, the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, if they persist in this obstinacy? But let it suffice to have said this because of that serpentine cunning of theirs by which they wish to corrupt simple minds and turn them away from the chastity of the Catholic faith, as if by praise of the creature.

Further, as to the praise of marriage, what does it profit them that, against the Manichees, who assign marriage not to the true and good God but to the prince of darkness, they resist with words of true piety, saying that the Lord says in the gospel: "He who made them from the beginning made them male and female. And he said: Increase and multiply and fill the earth. What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate"? What does it profit them to lead astray by means of truth to falsehood? For they say this so that infants may be believed to be born free from all harm, and so may not need to be reconciled to God through Christ, having no original sin; whereas reconciliation is necessary for all through one who came into the world without sin, just as enmity came about for all through one, through whom sin entered into the world. This is believed in the Catholic way for the saving of human nature, with the praise of marriage kept safe; for the praise of marriage is the just union of the sexes, not the unjust defense of faults. And therefore, when these men, by praising marriage, wish to bring people over from the Manichees to themselves, they desire to change their disease, not to heal it.

Again, in the praise of the law, what does it profit them that they say what is true against the Manichees, when from this they wish to lead to what they falsely hold against Catholics? For they say: "We confess that even the old law, according to the apostle, is just and holy and good, and that it could confer eternal life on those who kept its commandments and lived righteously by faith, such as the prophets and patriarchs and all the saints." By these most cunningly placed words they praise the law against grace. For it was not that law, however holy and just and good, but faith which is in Christ, that could confer eternal life on all those men of God. For this faith works through love, not according to the letter which kills but according to the Spirit who gives life; and to this grace of God the law, by terrifying with transgression, leads like a tutor, so that there may thus be conferred on man what it itself could not confer. For to these words of theirs, in which they say that the law could confer eternal life on the prophets and patriarchs and all the saints who kept its commandments, the apostle replies: "If righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing." "If the inheritance is from the law, it is no longer from the promise." "If those who are through the law are heirs, faith is emptied and the promise made void." "But that no one is justified in the law before God is evident, because the righteous lives by faith; but the law is not from faith, but he who does these things will live in them." This testimony from the law, cited by the apostle, is understood either with respect to temporal life, for fear of losing which men did the works of the law, not from faith, since transgressors of the law were commanded by that same law to be put to death by the people; or, if "He who does these things will live in them" is to be understood more deeply as written with respect to eternal life, the command of the law was expressed in this way so that the weakness of man, failing in itself to do what the law commands, might rather seek help from the grace of God by faith, by whose mercy faith itself too is given. For faith is had as God has apportioned to each the measure of faith. For if men do not have from themselves, but receive, the spirit of power and love and self-control (hence the same teacher of the Gentiles says, "For we have not received a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control"), surely the spirit of faith too is received, of which he says, "But having the same spirit of faith." The law, then, speaks truly: "He who does these things will live in them." But in order that he may do them and live in them, it is not the law, which commands this, but faith, which obtains this, that is necessary. And yet this faith, in order that it may deserve to receive these things, is itself given freely.

But nowhere do these enemies of grace contrive more hidden snares for attacking that same grace more vehemently than where they praise the law, which without doubt is to be praised. For in all their disputations, by different turns of speech and variety of words, they want the law to be understood as grace, namely that we have from the Lord God the help of knowledge, by which we may know what is to be done, not the inspiration of love, so that we may do with holy love what we know, which is properly grace. For knowledge of the law without love puffs up, it does not build up, according to the same apostle, who says most plainly: "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." This saying is like the one in which it was said: "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." For "knowledge puffs up" is like "the letter kills", and "love builds up" is like "the Spirit gives life", because "the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." So knowledge of the law makes a proud transgressor, but through the gift of love one delights to be a doer of the law. "We do not, then, make the law void through faith, but we establish the law", which by terrifying leads to faith. For the law works wrath precisely so that, to one terrified and turned to fulfilling the righteousness of the law, the mercy of God may give grace through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the wisdom of God, of whom it is written: "She carries the law and mercy on her tongue": the law, by which to terrify; mercy, by which to help; the law through a servant, mercy through himself; the law as in the staff which Elisha sent to raise the widow's son, and he did not rise ("for if a law had been given which could give life, righteousness would certainly be from the law"), but mercy as in Elisha himself, who, bearing the figure of Christ, was joined to the dead boy in giving him life, as a sign of the great sacrament, the New Testament.

Likewise, as to their praising free choice against the Manichees by citing the prophetic testimony, "If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you are unwilling and do not listen to me, the sword will consume you", what does this profit them? For they do not so much defend free choice against the Manichees as exalt it against Catholics. For they want "If you are willing and listen to me" to be understood in such a way that the merit of the grace that follows lies in the will that goes before, and so grace is no longer grace, since it is not free when it is paid as due. But if they understood "If you are willing" in such a way as to confess that even the good will itself is prepared by him of whom it is written, "The will is prepared by the Lord", they would be using this testimony as Catholics, and they would not only overcome the old heresy of the Manichees but would not found the new one of the Pelagians.

What does it profit them that, in praise of free choice itself, they say that grace helps the good purpose of each person? This would be accepted without hesitation as said in a Catholic sense, if they did not place merit in the good purpose, to which merit a reward would then be paid according to debt, not according to grace; but if they understood and confessed that even the good purpose itself, which grace following helps, could not have existed in man unless grace went before. For how is there a good purpose in man without the Lord first having mercy, when it is itself the good will which is prepared by the Lord? And as for their adding at once, after saying that grace also helps the good purpose of each person, "but does not implant the zeal for virtue in one who resists", this could be well understood if it were not said by these men, whose meaning is known. For to one who resists, the hearing of the divine calling is first procured by the grace of God itself, and then in him, no longer resisting, the zeal for virtue is kindled. But in all that anyone does according to God, his mercy goes before him; and this these men do not want, because they want to be not Catholics but Pelagians. For it greatly delights proud impiety that even what it is compelled to confess as given by the Lord should seem not given to it but paid back; so that, namely, the sons of perdition, not of the promise, may be believed to have made themselves good, and God to have paid a due reward to those already made good by themselves, for this work of theirs.

For their very swelling has so stopped up the ears of their heart that they do not hear: "For what do you have that you did not receive?"; they do not hear: "Without me you can do nothing"; they do not hear: "Love is from God"; they do not hear: "God has apportioned the measure of faith"; they do not hear: "The Spirit breathes where he wills", and "Those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God"; they do not hear: "No one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father"; they do not hear what Ezra writes: "Blessed is the Lord God of our fathers, who put this into the heart of the king, to glorify his house which is in Jerusalem"; they do not hear what the Lord says through Jeremiah: "And I will put my fear in their heart, so that they may not depart from me; and I will visit them to make them good"; and above all that saying through the prophet Ezekiel, where God shows plainly that he is moved by no good merits of men to make them good, that is, obedient to his commandments, but rather that he repays them these good things for evil ones, doing this for his own sake, not for theirs. For he says: "Thus says the Lord: I do this not for your sake, house of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you went. And I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says Adonai the Lord, when I am sanctified in you before their eyes. And I will take you from the nations and gather you from all lands and bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be cleansed from all your uncleannesses, and I will cleanse you; and I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; and the heart of stone will be taken from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and make you walk in my ordinances and keep my judgments and do them." And some time after, through the same prophet: "Not for your sake do I do this, says the Lord God; let it be known to you. Be ashamed and blush for your ways, house of Israel. Thus says the Lord God: On the day when I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will also establish the cities, and the waste places will be rebuilt, and the desolate land will be tilled, instead of being desolate before the eyes of everyone who passes by; and they will say: That desolate land has become like a garden of delight, and the cities that were waste and desolate and dug up are fortified and inhabited. And the nations that are left round about you will know that I the Lord have built up what was destroyed and planted what was desolate; I have spoken and I have done it. Thus says the Lord: This further I will be sought by the house of Israel to do for them: I will multiply them like sheep, men, like holy sheep, like the sheep of Jerusalem on her feast days; so will those desolate cities be full of sheep, men; and they will know that I am the Lord."

What is left to the dead skin from which it could be puffed up and disdain, when it glories, to glory in the Lord? What is left to it, when, whatever it says it has done, so that, with this merit of man arising from man going before, God afterward does what man is worthy of, it will be answered, it will be cried back, it will be contradicted: "I do it, but for the sake of my holy name; not for your sake do I do it, says the Lord God"? Nothing so overturns the Pelagians who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits (which indeed Pelagius himself condemned, though not by correcting himself, but by fearing the Eastern judges); nothing so overturns this presumption of those who say: "We act, so that we may deserve that the Lord act with us." Not Pelagius, but the Lord himself answers you: "I do it, and not for your sake, but for the sake of my holy name." For what good can you do from a heart that is not good? But that you may have a good heart, "I will give you," he says, "a new heart, and I will give you a new spirit." Can you say: "We first walked in his ordinances and kept his judgment and did them, so that we might be worthy that he should give us his grace"? For what good would you do, being evil men, and how would you do these good things unless you were good? But who makes men good except him who said, "And I will visit them to make them good", and who said, "And I will put my Spirit in you and make you walk in my ordinances and keep my judgments and do them"? Are you not yet awake? Do you not yet hear: "I will make you walk", "I will make you keep", and finally, "I will make you do"? Why do you still puff yourselves up? We indeed walk, it is true; we keep, we do; but he makes us walk, keep, and do. This is the grace of God making us good; this is his mercy going before us. What do the waste, desolate, and dug-up places deserve? Yet they will be rebuilt and tilled and fortified. Is it for the merits of their wasting, desolation, and digging up? Far from it. For those merits are evil, these gifts good. So good things are repaid for evil; free, then, not due, and therefore grace. "I," says the Lord, "I the Lord." Does not this voice press you down, O human pride, you who say, "I act so that I may deserve to be built up and planted by the Lord"? Do you not hear: "Not for your sake do I do it; I the Lord have built up what was destroyed, planted what was desolate; I the Lord have spoken and done it", yet not for your sake, but for the sake of my holy name? Who multiplies men like sheep, like holy sheep, like the sheep of Jerusalem? Who makes those desolate cities full of sheep, men, but he who follows and says, "And they will know that I am the Lord"? But with what sheep, men, does he fill the cities, as he promised: those he finds, or those he makes? Let us ask the psalm. See, it answers; let us listen: "Come, let us worship and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us; for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand." He himself, then, makes the sheep with which to fill the desolate cities. What wonder? For to that one sheep, that is, the church, whose members are all the sheep, men, it is said: "For I am the Lord who makes you." Why do you put forward free choice to me, which will not be free to do righteousness unless you are a sheep? He who makes men sheep, then, himself sets human wills free for the obedience of piety.

But why does he make these men sheep and not those, he with whom there is no respect of persons? That is the question to which the blessed apostle said, to those who raised it with more curiosity than capacity: "O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Why have you made me thus?'" That is the question which belongs to that depth which the same apostle, wishing to look into it, in a manner took fright at and exclaimed: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and unsearchable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory for ever and ever." So let those not dare to search into this inscrutable question who, defending merit before grace and therefore against grace, want to give to God first, so that it may be repaid to them (to give first, that is, something or other from free choice, so that grace may be repaid as a reward); and let them wisely understand or faithfully believe that even what they think they gave first they received from him from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. But why this one receives and that one does not, when neither deserves to receive and whichever of them receives, receives undeservedly, let them measure their own strength and not search into things too strong for them. Let it suffice them to know that there is no iniquity with God. For when the apostle had found no merits by which Jacob preceded his twin brother before God, he says: "What then shall we say? Is there iniquity with God? Far from it. For he says to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I have been merciful. So then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy." Let his free mercy, then, be welcome to us, even if this deep question remains unsolved. Yet it is solved thus far, as far as the same apostle solves it, saying: "But if God, willing to show his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath, fitted for perdition, and in order to make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory." For wrath is not paid except as due, lest there be iniquity with God; but mercy, even when it is given undeservedly, is not iniquity with God. And from this the vessels of mercy understand how freely mercy is given to them, in that on the vessels of wrath, with whom they share a common cause and lump of perdition, due and just wrath is repaid. And let this now be enough against those who wish to destroy the bounty of grace through the freedom of choice.