Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love)

It is impossible to say, my dearest son Laurentius, how much your learning delights me, and how much I desire you to be wise: not one of those of whom it is said, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” but one of those of whom it is written, “The multitude of the wise is the health of the world,” and such as the apostle wishes those to be to whom he says, “I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple in what is evil.” [But as no one can exist of himself, so no one can be wise of himself, but only by the enlightening of him of whom it is written, “All wisdom is from God.”]

Now man's wisdom is godliness. You have this in the book of holy Job; for there we read that Wisdom herself said to man, “Behold, godliness is wisdom.” If you ask what godliness he meant in that place, you will find it more distinctly in the Greek, theosebeia, that is, the worship of God. For in Greek godliness is also called by another word, eusebeia, which signifies good worship, although this too refers chiefly to the worship of God. But nothing is more fitting than the name by which the worship of God is plainly expressed, when it was being said what wisdom is for man. Do you want anything said more briefly, you who ask me to speak of great things briefly? Or perhaps you desire this very thing to be briefly opened to you and gathered into a brief discourse: how God is to be worshipped?

Here, if I answer that God is to be worshipped by faith, hope, and love, you will surely say that this is said more briefly than you would like, and will then ask that the things belonging to each of these three be explained to you briefly: that is, what is to be believed, what hoped for, what loved. When I have done this, all the things you set down as questions in your letter will be there; if you have a copy of it with you, it is easy for you to turn back and reread them; if not, recall them as I mention them.

For you want, as you write, a book to be made by me which you may have as what they call an enchiridion, a handbook, and which may never leave your hands, containing what you ask: namely, what is chiefly to be followed; what, because of the various heresies, is chiefly to be avoided; how far reason supports religion, or what does not belong to reason, since there faith stands alone; what is to be held first and what last; what is the sum of the whole definition; what is the certain and proper foundation of the catholic faith. All these things you ask you will without doubt know by diligently knowing what ought to be believed, what hoped for, what loved. For these are chiefly, indeed solely, to be followed in religion. Whoever contradicts them is either wholly a stranger to the name of Christ or a heretic. These are to be defended by reason, whether reason that begins from the bodily senses or reason discovered by the understanding of the mind. But those things which we have neither experienced by bodily sense nor been, or are, able to reach by the mind must be believed without any doubt on the word of those witnesses by whom the Scripture that has now deservedly been called divine was composed; who, divinely helped, were able, whether through the body or through the mind, to see or even to foresee them.

But when the mind has been imbued with the beginning of faith, which works through love, it strives by living well to arrive also at sight, where there is the ineffable beauty known to holy and perfect hearts, the full vision of which is the highest happiness. This, surely, is what you ask, what is to be held first and what last: to begin with faith, to be completed in sight. This is also the sum of the whole definition. But the certain and proper foundation of the catholic faith is Christ: “For no one can lay another foundation,” says the apostle, “than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” Nor is it to be denied that this is the proper foundation of the catholic faith because it may be thought that some heretics have this in common with us. For if the things that pertain to Christ are carefully considered, Christ is found in name among all the heretics who wish to be called Christians, but in reality he is not among them. To show this would be too long, since all the heresies would have to be mentioned, those that have been, those that are, and those that could have been under the Christian name, and how true this is would have to be shown in each one. That discussion would take so many volumes as to seem endless.

But you ask of us an Enchiridion, that is, a handbook, something something that can be held in the hand, not something to load bookcases. To return, then, to those three by which we said God is to be worshipped, faith, hope, and love: it is easy to say what is to be believed, what hoped for, what loved; but how this is to be defended against the calumnies of those who think otherwise belongs to more laborious and fuller teaching, to have which one must not fill the hand with a brief handbook but kindle the heart with great zeal.

For see, here are the Creed and the Lord's Prayer: what is heard or read more briefly? What is more easily committed to memory? For because the human race was weighed down by sin with grievous misery and needed divine mercy, the prophet, foretelling the time of God's grace, says, “And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”: hence the Prayer. But the apostle, when he had cited this prophetic testimony to commend that very grace, at once added, “But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?”: hence the Creed. In these two see those three: faith believes, hope and love pray. But they cannot exist without faith; and so faith too prays. For this reason indeed it was said, “How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?”

But what can be hoped for that is not believed? On the other hand, something that is not hoped for can be believed. For which of the faithful does not believe in the punishments of the ungodly? Yet he does not hope for them; and whoever believes that they threaten him and shrinks from them with a movement of the mind to flee is more rightly said to fear than to hope. Distinguishing these two, a certain poet says: “Let him who fears be allowed to hope.” But another poet, though a better one, did not speak properly: “If I could have hoped for so great a grief.” Indeed some in the art of grammar use this word as an example to show improper diction, and say, “He said ‘hope’ for ‘fear.’” Faith, then, is both of evil things and of good, because both good and evil things are believed, and this with good faith, not bad. Faith is also of things past, present, and future. For we believe that Christ died, which is now past; we believe that he sits at the right hand of the Father, which is now; we believe that he will come to judge, which is future. Likewise faith is of one's own concerns and of others'. For each believes that he began to be at some time and was certainly not eternal, and believes the same of others and of other things; and we believe many things pertaining to religion not only about other men but also about angels. But hope is only of good things, and only of future ones, and of things pertaining to him who is said to hold the hope of them. Since this is so, for these reasons faith will have to be distinguished from hope both by name and by a reasoned difference. For as to not seeing, whether the things believed or the things hoped for, this is common to faith and hope. For in the Letter to the Hebrews, whose witness illustrious defenders of the catholic rule have used, faith is said to be “the conviction of things that are not seen.” And yet when someone says that he has believed, that is, given faith, not to words, nor to witnesses, nor finally to any arguments, but to the evidence of things present, he does not seem so absurd that he can rightly be faulted in his wording and told, “You saw; so you did not believe”; hence it can be thought that it does not follow that whatever is believed is not seen. But we do better to call faith what the divine oracles have taught, namely faith of things that are not seen. Of hope too the apostle says: “Hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” When, then, good things are believed to be coming to us, this is nothing else than hoping for them. What, now, shall I say of love, without which faith profits nothing? But hope cannot exist without love. Finally, as the apostle James says, “Even the demons believe, and tremble”; yet they neither hope nor love, but rather, believing that what we hope for and love will come, they dread it. For this reason the apostle Paul approves and commends the faith that works through love, which certainly cannot exist without hope. So neither is there love without hope, nor hope without love, nor either without faith.

When, then, it is asked what is to be believed that pertains to religion, the nature of things is not to be searched into as it is by those whom the Greeks call physici; nor is it to be feared that a Christian may be ignorant of something about the force and number of the elements, the motion, order, and eclipses of the stars, the shape of the heavens, the kinds and natures of animals, plants, stones, springs, rivers, mountains, the extents of places and times, the signs of impending storms, and six hundred other things about the matters which they have found or think they have found. For not even they, so excellent in talent, burning with zeal, abounding in leisure, investigating some things by human conjecture and searching out others by historical experience, have discovered everything; and in the things they boast of having found they hold opinions more than knowledge. It is enough for a Christian to believe that the cause of created things, whether heavenly or earthly, visible or invisible, is nothing but the goodness of the Creator, who is the one and true God; that there is no nature which is not either himself or from him; and that he is a Trinity, namely the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

By this supremely, equally, and unchangeably good Trinity all things were created; and they are not supremely, nor equally, nor unchangeably good, but they are good even taken singly, and all together very good, because from all of them consists the wonderful beauty of the universe.

In this universe even what is called evil, well ordered and set in its place, sets off the good more eminently, so that good things please more and are more praiseworthy when compared with evils. For almighty God, “who has supreme power over things,” as even unbelievers confess, since he is supremely good, would in no way allow anything evil to be in his works, were he not so almighty and good as to make good even out of evil. For what is that which is called evil but the privation of good? For as in the bodies of animals to be affected by diseases and wounds is nothing else than to be deprived of health (for when a cure is applied, the aim is not that those evils that were present, the diseases and wounds, should withdraw from there and be elsewhere, but that they should not exist at all; for a wound or disease is not a substance but a defect of the fleshly substance, since the flesh itself is the substance, certainly a good, to which these evils happen, that is, privations of the good which is called health), so too whatever vices there are in souls are privations of natural goods; and when they are healed they are not transferred somewhere else, but those that were there will be nowhere when they are not in that health.

All natures, then, are good, since the Maker of absolutely all natures is supremely good; but because they are not, like their Maker, supremely and unchangeably good, the good in them can be diminished and increased. But for good to be diminished is evil; although, however much it is diminished, something must remain (if it is still a nature) by which it is a nature. For, whatever the kind and however small the nature, the good by which it is a nature cannot be consumed unless the nature itself is consumed. Rightly indeed is an uncorrupted nature praised; and further, if it is also incorruptible, unable to be corrupted at all, it is without doubt much more praiseworthy. But when it is corrupted, its corruption is evil precisely because it deprives it of some good; for if it deprives it of no good, it does no harm; but it does harm; therefore it takes away good. As long, then, as a nature is being corrupted, there is good in it of which it may be deprived; and therefore if something of the nature remains that can no longer be corrupted, the nature will certainly be incorruptible, and through corruption it will arrive at so great a good. But if it does not cease to be corrupted, it certainly does not cease to have good of which corruption can deprive it. And if corruption consumes it utterly and wholly, there will be no good in it, because there will be no nature. Therefore corruption cannot consume the good except by consuming the nature. Every nature, then, is good: a great good if it cannot be corrupted, a small one if it can; but that it is good cannot be denied except foolishly and ignorantly. And if it is consumed by corruption, neither will the corruption itself remain, since there will be no nature in which it can exist.

And therefore there is nothing that is called evil if there is no good. But a good wholly without evil is an entire good; one in which there is evil is a flawed or faulty good; nor can there ever be any evil where there is no good. Hence a strange result follows: since every nature, in so far as it is a nature, is good, when a faulty nature is called an evil nature, nothing else seems to be said than that what is good is evil, and that nothing is evil except what is good, since every nature is good, and nothing would be evil if the thing itself that is evil were not a nature. There cannot, then, be evil except some good. Though this seems absurd to say, the connection of this reasoning compels us, as if inevitably, to say it. And we must beware of falling under that prophetic sentence where we read: “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good; who call darkness light and light darkness; who call sweet bitter and bitter sweet.” And yet the Lord says: “The evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things.” But what is an evil man but an evil nature, since man is a nature? Further, if man is some good because he is a nature, what is an evil man but an evil good? Yet when we distinguish these two, we find that he is not evil because he is a man, nor good because he is unrighteous; but good because a man, evil because unrighteous. Whoever, then, says, “It is evil to be a man,” or, “It is good to be unrighteous,” himself falls under that prophetic sentence, “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good.” For he blames God's work, which is man, and praises man's vice, which is unrighteousness. Every nature, therefore, even if it is faulty, is good in so far as it is a nature, and evil in so far as it is faulty.

Therefore, in those contraries which are called evil and good, that rule of the dialecticians fails by which they say that two contraries cannot be present in any one thing at the same time. For no air is at once dark and bright; no food or drink at once sweet and bitter; no body at once white where it is black, nor beautiful where it is deformed. And this is found in many and almost all contraries, that they cannot be in one thing at the same time. But though no one doubts that good and evil are contraries, not only can they exist at the same time, but evils cannot exist at all without goods and except in goods, though goods can exist without evils. For a man or an angel can be not unrighteous; but no one can be unrighteous except a man or an angel; and it is good that he is a man, good that he is an angel, evil that he is unrighteous. And these two contraries are so together that, if there were no good in which evil could be, evil could not exist at all; for corruption would have no place to abide nor source to arise from unless there were something to be corrupted; and unless it were good, it would not be corrupted, since corruption is nothing else than the destruction of good. Evils, then, arose from goods, and exist only in some goods; nor was there any other source from which any nature of evil could arise. For if there were, in so far as it was a nature it would certainly be good; and either it would be an incorruptible nature, a great good, or, even as a corruptible nature, it would in no way exist unless it were some good, which good corruption could harm by corrupting it.

But when we say that evils arose from goods, let this not be thought to contradict the Lord's saying, “A good tree cannot bear evil fruit.” For, as the Truth says, grapes cannot be gathered from thorns, because grapes cannot grow from thorns; but from good ground we see that both vines and thorns can grow. And in the same way, as an evil tree, an evil will cannot produce good fruits, that is, good works; but from the good nature of man both a good will and an evil one can arise; nor was there at all any source from which an evil will first arose except the good nature of angel and man. The Lord himself showed this most plainly in the same place where he spoke of the tree and the fruits; for he says, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree evil and its fruit evil,” sufficiently warning that evil fruits cannot grow from a good tree, nor good fruits from an evil one, yet that from the very ground to which he was speaking either tree can grow.

Since this is so, when that verse of Maro pleases us, “Happy he who could know the causes of things,” let it not seem to us to pertain to attaining happiness if we know the causes of the great bodily motions in the world, which lie hidden in nature's most secret recesses, “whence comes the trembling of the earth, by what force the deep seas swell, bursting their barriers, and sink back again into themselves,” and other things of this kind; but we ought to know the causes of good and evil things, and only so far as it is granted to man in this life, so full of errors and troubles, to know them for escaping those very errors and troubles. For we must strive toward that happiness where we shall be shaken by no trouble and deceived by no error. For if the causes of bodily motions were to be known by us, we ought to know none more than those of our own health. But since, being ignorant of these, we seek physicians, who does not see with how much patience we must remain ignorant of what is hidden from us of the secrets of heaven and earth?

For although error is to be avoided with all the care we can, not only in greater things but also in lesser, and one cannot err except from ignorance of things, yet it does not follow that whoever does not know something at once errs, but whoever thinks he knows what he does not know; for he approves the false as true, which is the mark of error. Yet it matters very much in what matter each one errs. For in one and the same matter right reason prefers the one who knows to the one who does not know, and the one who does not err to the one who errs. But in different matters, that is, when one knows some things and another others, and the one more useful things, the other less useful or even harmful ones, who would not, in the things the latter knows, prefer to him the one who does not know them? For there are some things which it is better not to know than to know. Likewise erring has sometimes profited some, but on the road for the feet, not on the road of morals. For it happened to us ourselves that we went wrong at a fork in the road and did not go through the place where an armed band of Donatists had lain in wait for our passing; and so it came about that we reached where we were going by a roundabout way, and, having learned of their ambush, we rejoiced to have erred and therefore gave thanks to God. Who, then, would hesitate to prefer the traveler erring in this way to the robber not erring in this way? And perhaps this is why in that greatest poet a certain wretched lover says, “As I saw, how I perished, how evil error carried me away!” because there is also a good error, which not only does no harm but even does some good. But when the truth is more carefully considered, since to err is nothing else than to think true what is false and false what is true, or to hold the uncertain as certain or the certain as uncertain, whether it is false or true; and since this is as deformed and unseemly in the mind as we feel it beautiful and becoming, in speaking or in assenting, to say “Yes, yes; no, no”: surely for this very reason this life we live is wretched, that sometimes error is necessary to it so that it may not be lost. Far be it that that other life should be such, where truth itself is the life of our soul, where no one deceives and no one is deceived. But here men deceive and are deceived; and they are more wretched when they deceive by lying than when they are deceived by believing liars. Yet so much does rational nature flee from falsehood, and shun error as much as it can, that even those who love to deceive do not wish to be deceived. For he who lies does not think that he errs, but that he leads into error another who believes him. And indeed he does not err in the matter which he covers with a lie, if he himself knows what is true; but he is deceived in this, that he thinks his lie does not harm him, since every sin harms the doer more than the one it is done to.

But here there arises a most difficult and obscure question, on which we have already completed a large book, when the need to answer pressed us: whether it ever belongs to the duty of a just man to lie. For some go so far as to contend that sometimes even to commit perjury, and to say something false about matters pertaining to the worship of God and about the very nature of God, is a good and pious work. To me, however, it seems that every lie is indeed a sin, but that it makes a great difference with what intent and about what things each one lies. For he who lies with the will to help does not sin as he does who lies with the will to harm; nor does he who by lying sends a traveler on a different road do as much harm as he who by a deceiving lie perverts the way of life. Certainly no one is to be judged a liar who says something false that he thinks true, since, as far as he is concerned, he does not deceive but is deceived. So he is to be charged not with lying but sometimes with rashness, who holds as true false things too incautiously believed. And rather, on the contrary, as far as he is concerned, that man lies who says something true that he thinks false. For as regards his mind, because he does not say what he thinks, he does not say what is true, although what he says is found to be true; nor is he in any way free from lying who with his mouth unknowingly speaks the truth but in his will knowingly lies. Not considering, then, the things themselves of which something is said, but only the intention of the speaker, he who unknowingly says something false, because he thinks it true, is better than he who knowingly bears the intent to lie, not knowing that what he says is true. For the one does not have one thing in his mind and another in his word; but the other, whatever what he says may be in itself, has one thing shut in his breast and another ready on his tongue, which is the evil proper to the liar. But in considering the things said, it makes so much difference in what matter each is deceived or lies that, although to be deceived is a lesser evil than to lie as far as the will of man is concerned, yet it is far more tolerable to lie in matters separate from religion than to be deceived in those without belief in or knowledge of which God cannot be worshipped. To illustrate this by examples, let us consider what it would be if someone, lying, announced that a dead man was alive, and another, deceived, believed that Christ would die again after however long a time: is it not incomparably better to lie in the first way than to be deceived in the second, and much less evil to lead someone into the first error than to be led by someone into the second?

In some matters, then, we are deceived with great evil, in some with small, in some with none, and in some even with some good. For a man is deceived with great evil when he does not believe what leads to eternal life, or believes what leads to eternal death. But he is deceived with small evil who, by approving the false as true, falls into some temporal troubles, which, however, by applying faithful patience to them, he turns to good use, as when someone, thinking a man good who is evil, suffers some evil from him. But he who believes an evil man good in such a way that he suffers no evil from him is deceived with no evil; nor does that prophetic denunciation fall on him, “Woe to those who call evil good.” For it is to be understood as said of the very things by which men are evil, not of the men. Hence he who calls adultery good is rightly rebuked by that prophetic voice. But he who calls a man good whom he thinks chaste, not knowing that he is an adulterer, is deceived not in the doctrine of good and evil things but in the hidden matters of human conduct: he calls a man good in whom he thinks there is what he does not doubt is good, and calls an adulterer evil and a chaste man good; but he calls this man good not knowing that he is an adulterer, not chaste. Further, if by error someone escapes destruction, as I said above happened to us on a journey, something good is even conferred on a man by error. But when I say that in some matters someone is deceived with no evil, or even with some good, I do not call the error itself no evil or some good, but I mean the evil that is not reached, or the good that is reached, by erring, that is, what does not happen or what comes about from the error itself. For error in itself, whether great in a great matter or small in a small one, is always an evil. For who but one in error would deny that it is evil to approve false things as true, or reject true things as false, or hold uncertain things as certain, or certain things as uncertain? But it is one thing to think a man good who is evil, which belongs to error; and another not to suffer a further evil from this evil, if the evil man who was thought good does no harm. Likewise it is one thing to think a road the right one when it is not; and another to gain some good from this evil of error, such as being freed from the ambush of evil men.

I do not know whether errors of this kind too are to be called sins: when a man thinks well of an evil man, not knowing what he is like; or when, instead of the things we perceive through the bodily senses, similar things present themselves which are perceived by the spirit as if by the body, or by the body as if by the spirit, as the apostle Peter thought when, suddenly freed by an angel from prison and chains, he supposed he was seeing a vision; or when in bodily things themselves what is rough is thought smooth, or what is bitter sweet, or what stinks is thought to smell good, or it is thought to thunder when a carriage passes, or a man is thought to be one person when he is another, when two are very like each other, as often happens with twins (whence the poet says, “and an error pleasing to the parents”); and other things of this kind. Nor have I now undertaken to untie that most knotty question which tormented the very acute men, the Academics: whether the wise man ought to approve anything, lest he fall into error if he approves false things as true, since all things, as they assert, are either hidden or uncertain. On this I wrote three volumes at the beginning of my conversion, so that what opposed us as it were at the very door might not hinder us. And certainly the despair of finding truth, which seems to be strengthened by their arguments, had to be removed. Among them, then, every error is thought to be a sin, which they contend cannot be avoided unless all assent is suspended. For they say that whoever assents to uncertain things errs; and they argue, in most acute but most impudent disputations, that nothing is certain in men's perceptions, because of the indistinguishable likeness of the false, even if what is perceived happens to be true. But with us, “The just lives by faith.” But if assent is taken away, faith is taken away, since without assent nothing is believed. And there are true things, though they are not seen, without believing which one cannot reach the happy life, which can only be eternal. But whether we ought to speak at all with those men I do not know, who know not that they will live forever, but do not even know that they live now; indeed, they say they do not know what they cannot fail to know. For no one is allowed not to know that he lives, since if he does not live he cannot even not know anything; for not only to know but also not to know belongs to one who lives. But by not assenting that they live, they evidently think they guard themselves against error, when even by erring they are proved to live, since one who does not live cannot err. As, then, it is not only true but certain that we live, so there are many things true and certain, and far be it that refusing assent to them should be called wisdom rather than madness.

But in those matters where it makes no difference for attaining the kingdom of God whether they are believed or not, or whether they are, or are thought to be, true or false, to err, that is, to think one thing for another, is not to be judged a sin, or if it is, a very small and very light one. Finally, whatever its kind and size, it does not belong to the way by which we go to God, which way is the faith of Christ that works through love. For that error pleasing to the parents in the case of twin sons did not turn aside from this way; nor did the apostle Peter turn aside from this way when, thinking he was seeing a vision, he took one thing for another in such a way that he did not distinguish the real bodies among which he was from the images of bodies among which he thought he was, until the angel by whom he had been freed departed from him; nor did the patriarch Jacob turn aside from this way when he believed that his living son had been killed by a beast. In these and similar falsehoods we are deceived with our faith in God unharmed, and we err without leaving the way that leads to him. These errors, even if they are not sins, are still to be counted among the evils of this life, which is so subjected to vanity that here false things are approved as true, true things rejected as false, and uncertain things held as certain. For although these are absent from that faith through which we tend, by a true and certain way, toward eternal happiness, they are not absent from the misery in which we still are. For in no way would we be deceived in any sense of mind or body if we already enjoyed that true and perfect happiness.

Further, every lie must be called a sin, because a man, not only when he himself knows what is true, but also if at any time he errs and is deceived, as a man may be, ought to speak what he bears in his mind, whether it is true or is thought true and is not. But everyone who lies speaks against what he thinks in his mind, with the will to deceive. And certainly words were instituted not so that men might deceive one another through them, but so that each might convey his thoughts to the knowledge of another. To use words for deception, then, and not for what they were instituted, is sin. Nor is any lie to be thought not a sin because we can sometimes help someone by lying. For we can do so by stealing too, if the poor man to whom it is openly given feels the benefit and the rich man from whom it is secretly taken does not feel the loss; yet no one would say that such theft is not a sin. We can do so by committing adultery too, if some woman appears about to die of love unless she is yielded to in this, and, if she lives, would be cleansed by repentance; yet such adultery will not therefore be denied to be sin. But if chastity rightly pleases us, what has truth done wrong, that the one is not to be violated by adultery for another's benefit, while the other is violated by lying? It is indeed not to be denied that men have made great progress toward the good who lie only for the safety of a man; but in such progress of theirs it is their benevolence that is rightly praised, or even rewarded in this life, not their deceit, which it is enough to pardon, not also to proclaim, especially among the heirs of the New Testament, to whom it is said, “Let your speech be, Yes, yes; no, no; for whatever is more than this is from evil.” Because of this evil, since it does not cease to creep in during this mortal life, even the co-heirs of Christ themselves say, “Forgive us our debts.”

These matters having been treated as the need for brevity requires, since the causes of good and evil things must be known as far as suffices for the way that leads us to the kingdom, where there will be life without death, truth without error, happiness without disturbance, we ought in no way to doubt that the cause of the good things that pertain to us is nothing but the goodness of God, and that the cause of evil things is the will of a changeable good falling away from the unchangeable good, first the will of an angel, afterwards of man.

This is the first evil of the rational creature, that is, the first privation of good. Then, even against their will, there crept in ignorance of what should be done and desire for what is harmful, and with them, as their companions, error and pain; and when these two evils are felt to be impending, the movement of the mind fleeing them is called fear. Further, when the mind obtains what it desired, though harmful or empty, since through error it does not perceive this, it is either overcome by a diseased delight or puffed up by an empty joy. From these, as from fountains not of abundance but of want, all the misery of rational nature flows.

Yet this nature in its evils could not lose the desire for happiness. But these are the evils common to men and to angels condemned by the Lord's justice for their wickedness. But man also has a punishment of his own, by which he was punished with the death of the body too. For God had threatened him with the penalty of death if he sinned, so endowing him with free choice as still to rule him by command and deter him with the threat of destruction; and he placed him in the happiness of paradise, as in the shade of life, from which, if he kept justice, he would ascend to better things.

Hence, made an exile after his sin, he bound his stock too, which by sinning he had vitiated in himself as in its root, with the penalty of death and condemnation; so that whatever offspring was born of him and of the wife, condemned with him, through whom he had sinned, through carnal concupiscence, in which a punishment like his disobedience was repaid, should contract original sin, by which it would be drawn through various errors and pains to that final punishment without end with the deserting angels, its corrupters, masters, and companions. “Thus through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned.” By “world” in that place the apostle meant the whole human race.

So, then, things stood: the condemned mass of the whole human race lay in evils, or even wallowed in them, and was hurled headlong from evils into evils; and, joined to the party of the angels who had sinned, it was paying the most deserved penalties of its impious desertion. For to the just wrath of God belongs whatever the wicked do willingly through blind and untamed concupiscence, and whatever they suffer unwillingly in manifest and open punishments; though the goodness of the Creator does not cease to supply life and living power even to the evil angels (if this supply were taken away, they would perish), and, in the case of men, though they are born of a vitiated and condemned stock, to form and animate their seed, to order their members through the ages of life, to quicken their senses through the extents of place, and to give them food. For he judged it better to bring good out of evil than to permit no evil to exist. And if indeed he had willed that there should be no reformation of men for the better at all, as there is none for the impious angels, would it not have come about deservedly that the nature which deserted God, which, using its power ill, trampled on and transgressed the command of its Creator, which it could most easily have kept, which, obstinately turned away from his light, violated in itself the image of its Maker, which by its evil free choice broke off its wholesome servitude to his laws, should be wholly deserted by him forever and pay the eternal penalty it deserved? Certainly he would have done so, if he were only just and not also merciful, and if he did not show his undeserved mercy much more evidently in the deliverance of the unworthy.

When, then, some angels in impious pride deserted God and were cast down from their high heavenly dwelling into the lowest darkness of this air, the remaining number of angels persisted in eternal happiness and holiness with God. For the others were not descended from one fallen and condemned angel, so that original evil should bind them, as it does men, with the chains of a guilty succession and drag them all to deserved punishments; but when he who became the devil was lifted up with his companions in impiety, and by that very pride cast down with them, the rest clung to the Lord in pious obedience, receiving also what those had not had, certain knowledge, by which they might be secure of their eternal stability that would never fall.

It pleased God, then, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, that, since not the whole multitude of angels had perished by deserting God, the part that had perished should remain in everlasting perdition, while the part that had stood firm with God when the other deserted should rejoice in its happiness, most certainly known to be forever; but that the other rational creature, which was in men, since it had wholly perished through sins and punishments both original and personal, should, by a part of it being restored, make up what that diabolical ruin had diminished in the angelic society. For this is promised to the saints when they rise, that they will be equal to the angels of God. Thus the Jerusalem above, our mother, the city of God, will be cheated of no part of the number of her citizens, or perhaps will even reign with a more abundant number. For we do not know the number either of holy men or of unclean demons, in whose place the sons of the holy mother, who appeared barren on earth, succeeding, will remain without any limit of time in that peace from which those fell. But the number of those citizens, whether that which is or that which is to be, is in the contemplation of that Maker who calls the things that are not as though they were, and orders all things in measure and number and weight.

But can this part of the human race, to which God has promised deliverance and an eternal kingdom, be restored by the merits of its own works? Far from it. For what good does a lost man do, except so far as he has been freed from perdition? Can it be by the free choice of the will? This too, far from it. For man, using free choice ill, destroyed both himself and it. For as one who kills himself certainly kills himself while living, but by killing himself no longer lives, and will not be able to raise himself again once he has killed himself, so, when sin was committed by free choice, sin being the victor, free choice was lost: “For by whom a man is overcome, to him he is also enslaved.” This is certainly the judgment of the apostle Peter; and since it is true, what liberty, I ask, can a slave so bound have, except when it delights him to sin? For he serves freely who willingly does the will of his master. And therefore he is free to sin who is the slave of sin. Hence he will not be free to act justly unless, freed from sin, he begins to be the slave of justice. That is true liberty, because of the joy of right doing, and at the same time pious servitude, because of obedience to the commandment. But whence will this liberty to do well come to a man bound and sold, unless he redeems him whose voice is this: “If the Son makes you free, then you will be truly free”? Before this begins to be done in a man, how can anyone glory in free choice in good work, who is not yet free to work well, unless, puffed up with vain pride, he exalts himself? This the apostle restrains, saying, “By grace you have been saved through faith.”

And lest they should claim for themselves at least faith itself, so as not to understand that it was given by God (as the same apostle says in another place that he had obtained mercy to be faithful), here too he added and said, “And this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone should be lifted up.” And lest it be thought that good works would be lacking to the faithful, he added again: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them.” We are made truly free, then, when God fashions us, that is, forms and creates us, not to be men, which he has already done, but to be good men, which he now does by his grace; that we may be a new creation in Christ Jesus, according to what was said, “Create a clean heart in me, O God.” For God had not failed to create his heart already, as far as the nature of the human heart is concerned.

Likewise, lest anyone glory, if not in his works, then in the very free choice of his will, as though merit began from himself, and the very liberty to do well were repaid to him as a reward owed, let him hear the same herald of grace saying, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will.” And in another place: “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” For without doubt, if a man is of an age to use reason, he cannot believe, hope, or love unless he wills, nor reach the prize of the upward calling of God unless he has run willingly. How, then, is it “not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy,” unless because the will itself, as it is written, is prepared by the Lord? Otherwise, if it was said, “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy,” because it comes about from both, that is, from the will of man and the mercy of God, so that we take the saying as if it meant, “The will of man alone does not suffice unless there is also the mercy of God,” then neither does the mercy of God alone suffice unless there is also the will of man; and therefore, if it was rightly said, “It is not of man who wills but of God who shows mercy,” because the will of man alone does not accomplish it, why is it not rightly said conversely, “It is not of God who shows mercy but of man who wills,” because the mercy of God alone does not accomplish it? But if no Christian will dare to say, “It is not of God who shows mercy but of man who wills,” lest he most openly contradict the apostle, it remains that “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy” is rightly understood as said so that the whole may be given to God, who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared. For the good will of man precedes many gifts of God, but not all; and among those which it does not precede is the good will itself. For both are read in the holy oracles: “His mercy will go before me,” and “His mercy will follow me.” It goes before the unwilling, that he may will; it follows the willing, that he may not will in vain. For why are we told to pray for our enemies, who are certainly unwilling to live piously, unless that God may work in them even to will? And likewise why are we told to ask that we may receive, unless that what we will may be done by him by whom it was brought about that we will? We pray, then, for our enemies, that the mercy of God may go before them, as it went before us; and we pray for ourselves, that his mercy may follow us.

The human race, then, was held under just condemnation, and all were children of wrath. Of this wrath it is written: “For all our days have failed, and in your wrath we have failed; our years will be considered like a spider's web.” Of this wrath Job too says: “For man born of woman is short of life and full of wrath.” Of this wrath the Lord Jesus too says: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son does not have life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” He does not say “will come” but “abides.” For every man is born with it. For this reason the apostle says: “For we too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest.” Since men were in this wrath through original sin, all the more grievously and destructively as they had added greater or more numerous sins on top of it, there was need of a mediator, that is, a reconciler, who would appease this wrath by offering a unique sacrifice, of which all the sacrifices of the Law and the Prophets were shadows. Hence the apostle says: “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being now reconciled by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” But when God is said to be angry, no disturbance of his is signified, such as is in the mind of an angry man; but by a word transferred from human emotions his vengeance, which is only ever just, has received the name of wrath. That we are reconciled to God through the mediator, then, and receive the Holy Spirit, so that from enemies we are made sons (“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”): this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Of this mediator it would take long to say as much as he deserves, though worthy things cannot be said of him by man. For who could explain in fitting words this alone: that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” so that we might believe in the only Son of God the Father almighty, born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary? For the Word was made flesh in this way: flesh being taken up by the divinity, not the divinity changed into flesh. And by “flesh” here we should understand man, by a figure of speech in which the part signifies the whole, as it was said, “For by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified,” that is, no man. For it is not right to say that anything of human nature was lacking in that taking up; but it was a nature in every way free from every bond of sin: not such as is born of both sexes through the concupiscence of the flesh with the obligation of guilt, whose guilt is washed away by regeneration, but such as was fitting to be born of a virgin, whom the faith, not the lust, of the mother had conceived. And if her integrity had been corrupted even as he was born, he would no longer be born of a virgin, and the whole Church would falsely (far be it) confess him born of the virgin Mary: the Church, which, imitating his mother, daily gives birth to his members, and is a virgin. Read, if you like, my letter on the virginity of holy Mary to the illustrious man Volusianus, whom I name with honor and affection.

Accordingly Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is both God and man: God before all ages, man in our age. God, because he is the Word of God, for “the Word was God”; and man, because a rational soul and flesh were joined to the Word into unity of person. Therefore, in so far as he is God, he and the Father are one; but in so far as he is man, the Father is greater than he. For since he was the only Son of God, not by grace but by nature, he became also the son of man so as to be full of grace too; and the same one is both, from both, one Christ. For “being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery,” what he was by nature, “to be equal with God. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” not losing or lessening the form of God. And therefore he was both made less and remained equal, being both in one, as has been said; but the one because of the Word, the other because of the man: because of the Word equal to the Father, because of the man less. One Son of God, and the same the son of man; one son of man, and the same the Son of God; not two sons of God, God and man, but one Son of God: God without beginning, man from a definite beginning, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here the grace of God is commended greatly and plainly. For what did human nature in the man Christ merit, that it should be uniquely taken up into the unity of person of the only Son of God? What good will, what zeal for a good purpose, what good works went before, by which this man should merit to become one person with God? Was he a man before, and was this unique benefit given him because he had uniquely earned God's favor? Surely, from the moment he began to be a man, he began to be nothing else than the Son of God, and this the only Son, and, because of God the Word who became flesh by taking him up, certainly God; so that, as any man is one person, namely rational soul and flesh, so Christ is one person, Word and man. Whence such great glory for human nature, without doubt freely given with no preceding merits, unless it is that here the great and sole grace of God is plainly shown to those who consider faithfully and soberly, so that men may understand that they are justified from sins by the same grace by which it came about that the man Christ could have no sin? So also the angel greeted his mother when he announced to her this future birth: “Hail,” he says, “full of grace.” And a little later: “You have found grace with God.” And she indeed is called full of grace, and is said to have found grace with God, so that she might be the mother of her Lord, indeed of the Lord of all. But of Christ himself the evangelist John, having said, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” says, “And we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” What he says, “The Word was made flesh,” is “full of grace”; what he says, “the glory of the only-begotten from the Father,” is “full of truth.” For the Truth himself, the only-begotten Son of God, not by grace but by nature, by grace took up man in such unity of person that the same one was also the son of man.

For the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten, that is, the only Son of God, our Lord, was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary. And certainly the Holy Spirit is the gift of God, a gift which is itself equal to the giver; and therefore the Holy Spirit too is God, not less than the Father and the Son. From the fact, then, that Christ's birth according to his humanity is from the Holy Spirit, what else is shown than grace itself? For when the virgin asked the angel how what he announced to her could come about, since she knew no man, the angel answered: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the holy one to be born of you will be called the Son of God.” And Joseph, when he wished to put her away, suspecting adultery, since he knew she was not pregnant by him, received this answer from the angel: “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife; for what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit”: that is, what you suspect is from another man is of the Holy Spirit.

Shall we therefore say that the Holy Spirit is the father of the man Christ, so that God the Father begot the Word and the Holy Spirit the man, and from both substances there is one Christ, son of God the Father according to the Word and son of the Holy Spirit according to the man, because the Holy Spirit begot him as his father from a virgin mother? Who will dare to say this? Nor is there need to show by argument how many other absurdities follow, since this itself is already so absurd that no faithful ears can bear it. Accordingly, as we confess, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God from God, but as man was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, in both substances, divine and human, is the only Son of God the Father almighty, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds. How, then, do we say that Christ was born of the Holy Spirit, if the Holy Spirit did not beget him? Is it because he made him? For our Lord Jesus Christ, in so far as he is God, is he through whom “all things were made”; but in so far as he is man, he himself was also made, as the apostle says: “He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.” But since the whole Trinity made that creature which the virgin conceived and bore, though it belongs to the person of the Son alone (for the works of the Trinity are inseparable), why was the Holy Spirit alone named in making it? Or is it that, even when one of the three is named in some work, the whole Trinity is understood to work? So indeed it is, and it can be shown by examples. But we must not linger longer on this. For what troubles us is how it was said, “born of the Holy Spirit,” when he is in no way the son of the Holy Spirit. For because God made this world, it is not right to say that it is the son of God or born of God; but made, or created, or founded, or established by him, or whatever of this kind we can rightly say. Here, then, since we confess him born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, it is difficult to explain how he is not the son of the Holy Spirit and is the son of the virgin Mary, when he was born both of him and of her. Without doubt he was born of him not as of a father, but of her as of a mother.

It is not to be granted, then, that whatever is born of something must at once be called the son of that thing. For, to pass over that a son is born of a man in one way, and a hair, a louse, or a worm in another, none of which is a son; to pass over these, I say, since they are unseemly comparisons for so great a matter: certainly no one would rightly call those who are born of water and the Holy Spirit sons of the water; but they are plainly called sons of God the Father and of mother Church. So, then, born of the Holy Spirit, he is the son of God the Father, not of the Holy Spirit. For what we said about the hair and the rest serves only to remind us that not everything born of something can also be called the son of that from which it is born. Likewise it does not follow that all who are called sons of someone are also said to be born of him, as with those who are adopted. People are also called sons of Gehenna, not as born of it but as prepared for it, as sons of the kingdom are those who are prepared for the kingdom.

Since, then, something may be born of something else even not in such a way as to be its son, and again not everyone called a son is born of him whose son he is called, surely this way in which Christ was born of the Holy Spirit not as a son, and of the virgin Mary as a son, suggests to us the grace of God, by which a man, with no preceding merits, at the very beginning of his nature when he began to be, was joined to God the Word in such unity of person that the same one was the Son of God who was the son of man, and the son of man who was the Son of God; and so in the taking up of human nature grace itself became in a certain way natural to that man, so that it could admit no sin. This grace had to be signified through the Holy Spirit because he is properly God in such a way as to be called also the gift of God. To speak of this sufficiently (if indeed it can be done) would require a very long discussion.

Begotten or conceived, then, with no pleasure of carnal concupiscence, and therefore contracting no sin by origin; and by the grace of God joined and united in a wonderful and ineffable way, in unity of person, to the only-begotten Word of the Father, a Son not by grace but by nature, and therefore himself committing no sin: yet because of the likeness of sinful flesh in which he had come, he too was called sin, since he was to be sacrificed to wash away sins. For in the old Law sacrifices for sins were called sins; and this he truly became, of whom those were shadows. Hence the apostle, having said, “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God,” at once added and said: “Him who knew no sin he made sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him.” He does not say, as is read in some faulty manuscripts, “He who knew no sin did sin for us,” as though Christ himself sinned for us; but he says, “Him who knew no sin,” that is, Christ, God, to whom we are to be reconciled, “made sin for us,” that is, a sacrifice for sins, through which we might be reconciled. He, then, was made sin, that we might be righteousness, not ours but God's, not in us but in him; just as he showed, by the likeness of sinful flesh in which he was crucified, that he was sin, not his own but ours, not established in himself but in us: so that, since there was no sin in him, he might in a certain way die to sin by dying to the flesh in which there was the likeness of sin; and, since he himself had never lived according to the oldness of sin, he might by his resurrection signify our new life, reviving from the old death by which we had been dead in sin.

This is what is celebrated in us, the great sacrament of baptism: that all who belong to this grace die to sin, as he is said to have died to sin because he died to the flesh, that is, to the likeness of sin; and live by being reborn from the washing, as he lived by rising from the tomb, whatever the age of their body.

For from the infant just born to the decrepit old man, as no one is to be barred from baptism, so there is no one who does not die to sin in baptism: infants only to original sin, but older people also to all the sins which by living badly they have added to that which they contracted by being born.

But even these are often said to die to sin, in the singular, although without doubt they die not to one sin but to many, to all those which they have already committed themselves, whether in thought, word, or deed; because the plural number is often signified by the singular, as the poet says, “And they fill the belly with armed soldiery,” although they did this with many soldiers. And in our Scriptures we read, “Pray, then, to the Lord, that he may take away the serpent from us”: he does not say “serpents,” which the people were suffering, though he meant this; and there are countless such cases. But when that one original sin is signified by the plural number, as when we say that infants are baptized “for the remission of sins” and do not say “for the remission of sin,” that is the converse expression, by which the singular number is signified by the plural. So in the Gospel, when Herod had died, it was said, “For those who sought the child's life are dead”; it was not said “he is dead.” And in Exodus: “They made for themselves,” it says, “gods of gold,” when they had made one calf, of which they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”: here too putting the plural for the singular.

Yet even in that one sin which entered the world through one man and passed to all men, on account of which even infants are baptized, many sins can be understood, if that one is divided, as it were, into its separate members. For there is pride in it, because man loved to be in his own power rather than in God's; and sacrilege, because he did not believe God; and murder, because he cast himself headlong into death; and spiritual fornication, because the integrity of the human mind was corrupted by the serpent's persuasion; and theft, because forbidden food was seized; and avarice, because he desired more than ought to have sufficed him; and whatever else can be found in this one offense by careful consideration.

It is also said, not improbably, that infants are bound by the sins of their parents, not only of the first humans but also of their own, from whom they themselves were born. For that divine sentence, “I will repay the sins of the fathers on the children,” certainly holds them before they begin to belong to the New Testament through regeneration. This Testament was prophesied when it was said through Ezekiel that sons would not bear the sins of their fathers, and that that proverb would no longer be used in Israel: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.” For each one is reborn precisely so that whatever sin there is with which he is born may be loosed in him. For the sins that are committed afterwards by doing evil can also be healed by repentance, as we see happens even after baptism. And therefore regeneration was instituted only because generation is faulty; so much so that even one procreated in lawful marriage says, “I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb.” Nor did he say here “in iniquity” or “sin,” though this too could rightly be said; but he preferred to say “iniquities” and “sins.” For both in that one sin, which passed to all men and is so great that by it human nature was changed and turned into the necessity of death, many sins are found, as I argued above; and there are also other sins of the parents, which, though they cannot change nature in this way, still bind the children by guilt, unless the free grace and mercy of God come to their aid.

But about the sins of the other ancestors, through whom each one descends in succession from Adam himself down to his own father, it may not unreasonably be debated whether he who is born is entangled in the evil acts and multiplied original offenses of all of them, so that each one is born the worse the later he is born; or whether God threatens their descendants to the third and fourth generation for the sins of the parents because, in the moderation of his compassion, he does not extend his wrath any further as regards the faults of the ancestors, lest those on whom the grace of regeneration is not conferred should be pressed by too heavy a burden in their very eternal condemnation, if they were compelled to contract by origin the sins of all their preceding parents from the beginning of the human race and to pay the penalties owed for them; or whether something else about so great a matter can or cannot be found by more diligent searching and treatment of the holy Scriptures: I do not dare rashly to affirm.

Yet that one sin, which was committed in a place and state of such great happiness that in one man the whole human race was condemned by origin and, so to speak, at the root, is not loosed and washed away except through the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who alone could be so born that he had no need to be reborn.

For those who were baptized with the baptism of John, by whom he himself was also baptized, were not reborn; but by a certain forerunning ministry of him who said, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” they were prepared for this one in whom alone they could be reborn. For his baptism is not in water only, as John's was, but also in the Holy Spirit, so that whoever believes in Christ may be regenerated by that Spirit by whom Christ was generated and therefore needed no regeneration. Hence that voice of the Father which came over him when he had been baptized, “Today I have begotten you,” pointed not to that one day of time on which he was baptized but to the day of unchangeable eternity, to show that that man belonged to the person of the Only-begotten. For where a day is neither begun by the end of yesterday nor ended by the beginning of tomorrow, it is always today. He willed, then, to be baptized in water by John, not that any iniquity of his might be washed away, but that great humility might be commended. For baptism found nothing in him to wash away, as death found nothing to punish; so that the devil, overcome and conquered by the truth of justice, not by the violence of power, since he had most unjustly killed him without any desert of sin, might through him most justly lose those whom he held by desert of sin. Both, then, baptism and death, were taken up by him for the sake of a definite dispensation, not from pitiable necessity but rather from a pitying will, so that one might take away the sin of the world as one had sent sin into the world, that is, into the whole human race.

Except that that one man sent one sin into the world, but this one took away not only that one but all those together that he found added to it. Hence the apostle says: “Not as through one who sinned is the gift: for the judgment was from one to condemnation, but grace from many offenses to justification.” For certainly that one sin which is contracted by origin, even if it is alone, makes men liable to condemnation; but grace justifies from many offenses the man who, besides that one sin which he contracted by origin in common with all, has also committed many of his own.

Yet what he says a little later, “As through the offense of one to all men to condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one to all men to justification of life,” sufficiently indicates that no one born of Adam is anything but held in condemnation, and no one is freed from condemnation except one reborn in Christ.

Having spoken of punishment through one man and grace through one man, as much as he judged sufficient in that place of his letter, he then commended the great mystery of holy baptism in the cross of Christ in such a way that we understand baptism in Christ to be nothing else than a likeness of Christ's death, and the death of Christ crucified nothing else than a likeness of the remission of sin; so that as in him a true death took place, so in us a true remission of sins, and as in him a true resurrection, so in us a true justification. For he says, “What then shall we say? Shall we remain in sin, that grace may abound?” For he had said above, “For where sin abounded, grace superabounded.” And therefore he put the question to himself whether one should remain in sin in order to obtain abundance of grace. But he answered, “Far from it,” and added, “If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it?” Then, to show that we have died to sin, he says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?” If, then, we are shown to have died to sin from the fact that we have been baptized into the death of Christ, surely infants too who are baptized into Christ die to sin, because they are baptized into his death. For it was said with no exception, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death.” And it was said in order to prove that we have died to sin. But to what sin do infants die by being reborn, except that which they contracted by being born? And therefore what follows also pertains to them: “We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be done away, that we might no longer serve sin. For he who has died has been justified from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more; death will no longer have dominion over him. For in that he died to sin, he died once; but in that he lives, he lives to God. So you also consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” For he had begun to prove from this that we must not remain in sin that grace may abound; and he had said, “If we have died to sin, how shall we live in it?” And to show that we have died to sin, he had added, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?” So he closed this whole passage as he began it. For he so set forth the death of Christ as to say that he too died to sin. To what sin, except the flesh, in which there was not sin but the likeness of sin, and which was therefore called by the name of sin? To those baptized, then, into the death of Christ, into which not only older people but also infants are baptized, he says, “So you too,” that is, as Christ, “so you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Whatever, then, was done in the cross of Christ, in his burial, in his resurrection on the third day, in his ascension into heaven, in his seat at the right hand of the Father, was so done that the Christian life which is lived here might be conformed to these things, not only spoken of mystically but also done. For because of his cross it is said: “But those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.” Because of his burial: “We were buried with Christ through baptism into death.” Because of his resurrection: “So that as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.” Because of his ascension into heaven and his seat at the right hand of the Father: “But if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; set your mind on the things that are above, not on things on earth; for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

But what we confess of Christ as future, that he will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead, does not pertain to our life which is lived here, because it is not among the things he has done but among those to be done at the end of the age. To this pertains what the apostle added next: “When Christ, your life, appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

That he will judge the living and the dead can be taken in two ways: either we understand by the living those whom his coming will find not yet dead but still living in this flesh, and by the dead those who have departed or will depart from the body before he comes; or by the living the just, and by the dead the unjust, since the just too will be judged. For sometimes God's judgment is used in a bad sense, whence the saying, “But those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment”; sometimes also in a good sense, according to what was said, “O God, save me by your name, and judge me by your power.” For it is through God's judgment that the very separation of good and evil takes place, so that the good, to be freed from evil and not destroyed with the evil, are set apart at the right hand. For this reason the psalmist cried, “Judge me, O God,” and, as if explaining what he had said, “and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation.”

When we have said of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord, what belongs to the brevity of the Creed, we add that we believe also in the Holy Spirit, so that the Trinity which is God may be completed; then the holy Church is mentioned. From this we are given to understand that the rational creature belonging to the free Jerusalem was to be placed after the mention of the Creator, that is, of that supreme Trinity. For whatever was said of the man Christ belongs to the unity of the person of the Only-begotten. The right order of the Creed, then, required that the Church be placed after the Trinity, as the house after its inhabitant, the temple after its God, the city after its founder. This Church is to be understood here as a whole, not only in the part that sojourns on earth, praising the name of the Lord from the rising of the sun to its setting and, after the captivity of the old life, singing a new song, but also in that part which in heaven has always clung to God from the time it was founded and has experienced no evil of a fall of its own. This part persists in happiness in the holy angels, and helps its sojourning part as it should; because both will be one in the fellowship of eternity, and are now one in the bond of love, the whole Church having been instituted to worship the one God. Hence neither the whole nor any part of it wishes to be worshipped instead of God, nor to be God to anyone belonging to the temple of God, which is built of the gods whom the uncreated God makes. And therefore, if the Holy Spirit were a creature, not the Creator, he would certainly be a rational creature, for that is the highest creature. And so he would not be placed in the rule of faith before the Church, because he too would belong to the Church, in that part of it which is in heaven. Nor would he have a temple, but he would himself be a temple. But he has a temple, of which the apostle says: “Do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?” Of these bodies he says in another place: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” How, then, is he not God, who has a temple? Or how is he less than Christ, whose members he has as his temple? For his temple is not one thing and God's temple another, since the same apostle says, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God?” and, to prove this, adds, “And the Spirit of God dwells in you.” God, then, dwells in his temple: not the Holy Spirit only, but also the Father and the Son; and the Son, speaking of his body, through which he was made head of the Church that is among men, so that he might have the first place in all things, says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The temple of God, then, that is, of the whole supreme Trinity, is the holy Church, namely the whole Church in heaven and on earth.

But of that Church which is in heaven, what can we affirm except that no one in it is evil, nor has anyone since then fallen from it or will fall, from the time when God did not spare the angels who sinned, as the apostle Peter writes, but, thrusting them down into the prisons of the darkness of the underworld, delivered them to be kept for punishment at the judgment?

But how that most blessed and heavenly society is ordered; what differences of rank there are there, so that, while all are called angels as by a general name (as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, “For to which of the angels did he ever say, Sit at my right hand?”, for in this way he signified that all are universally called angels), there are nevertheless archangels there; and whether the same archangels are called Powers, so that it was said, “Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers,” as if it were said, “Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his archangels”; and how those four names differ from one another by which the apostle seems to have included the whole heavenly society itself, saying, “whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or authorities”: let those say who can, if they can prove what they say; I confess that I do not know these things. Nor am I even certain whether the sun and moon and all the stars belong to the same society, although to some they seem to be shining bodies, without sense or understanding.

Likewise, who could explain with what kind of bodies angels have appeared to men, so that they were not only seen but also touched; and again how, not by solid bodily substance but by spiritual power, they present certain visions, not to bodily eyes but to spiritual eyes or minds, or say something not to the ear from outside but within the soul of a man, being themselves present there too, as it is written in the book of the Prophets, “And the angel who spoke in me said to me”? For he does not say “who spoke to me” but “in me.” Or how they appear in dreams too, and converse in the manner of dreams; for we have in the Gospel, “Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying.” For in these ways the angels seem to indicate that they do not have bodies that can be handled; and they raise a most difficult question: how the patriarchs washed their feet, and how Jacob wrestled with an angel with such solid handling. When these things are inquired into, and each conjectures as he can, minds are not unprofitably exercised, if the discussion is moderate and the error of those who think they know what they do not know is absent. For what need is there for these and similar things to be affirmed or denied or defined at our peril, when they may be unknown without blame?

There is more need to judge and recognize when Satan transforms himself as if into an angel of light, lest by deceiving he lead us astray into something harmful. For when he deceives the bodily sense but does not move the mind from the true and right judgment by which each one leads a faithful life, there is no danger in religion; or when, pretending to be good, he does or says things that befit good angels, even if he is believed good, it is not a dangerous or sickly error of Christian faith. But when through these things that are not his own he begins to lead us to his own, then to recognize him and not to go after him requires great and necessary vigilance. But how many men are fit to escape all his deadly snares, unless God rules and protects them? And the very difficulty of this is useful for this purpose: that no one may be his own hope, nor one man another's, but God the hope of all his own. For that this is rather expedient for us no pious person at all doubts.

This Church, then, which is in the holy angels and Powers of God, will become known to us as it is when we have been joined to it at the end, to have eternal happiness together. But this part, which sojourns on earth away from it, is better known to us because we are in it, and because it consists of men, which we too are. This Church has been redeemed from all sin by the blood of the Mediator who had no sin, and its voice is, “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” For Christ did not die for the angels. But whatever of mankind is redeemed through his death and freed from evil is done for the angels too, because men in a certain way return into favor with them after the enmities that sins had caused between men and the holy angels, and by the very redemption of men the losses of that angelic ruin are repaired.

And certainly the holy angels, taught by God, in the eternal contemplation of whose truth they are happy, know how great a number the completeness of that city awaits from the human race to make it up. For this reason the apostle says that all things are restored in Christ, the things in heaven and the things on earth, in him. For the things in heaven are restored when what fell from there among the angels is made good from men; and the things on earth are restored when the men themselves who have been predestined to eternal life are renewed from the oldness of corruption. And so through that singular sacrifice in which the Mediator was offered, which one sacrifice the many victims in the Law prefigured, heavenly things are made at peace with earthly, and earthly with heavenly. For, as the same apostle says, “In him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

This peace, as it is written, surpasses all understanding, and cannot be known by us except when we have come to it. For how are heavenly things brought to peace except with us, that is, by coming into harmony with us? For there there is always peace, both among all the intellectual creatures themselves and with their Creator. This peace surpasses, as has been said, all understanding; but certainly ours, not the understanding of those who always see the face of the Father. But we, however great human understanding may be in us, know in part and see now through a mirror in an enigma; but when we shall be equal to the angels of God, then we too, as they do, shall see face to face; and we shall have as great peace toward them as they have toward us, because we shall love them as much as we are loved by them. So their peace will be known to us, because ours too will be of such a kind and so great, nor will it then surpass our understanding. But the peace of God which is there toward them will without doubt surpass both our understanding and theirs. For every rational creature that is happy is happy from him, not he from it. Hence on this view it is better to take what is written, “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding,” so that in saying “all” not even the understanding of the holy angels can be excepted, but only God's; for his peace does not surpass his own understanding.

The angels are in harmony with us even now, when our sins are forgiven. Therefore, after the mention of the holy Church, the forgiveness of sins is placed in the order of the Creed. For by this the Church that is on earth stands; by this what had been lost and is found does not perish. For apart from the gift of baptism, which was given against original sin, so that what was contracted by generation may be removed by regeneration (and yet it also takes away actual sins, whatever it finds committed in heart, word, or deed): apart, then, from this great pardon, from which man's renewal begins, in which all guilt, both inborn and added, is loosed, the rest of life too, once the age of reason is reached, however strong it may be in the fruitfulness of righteousness, is not lived without the forgiveness of sins. For the sons of God, as long as they live mortally, are in conflict with death. And although it is truly said of them, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God,” yet they are so stirred by the Spirit of God, and as sons of God advance toward God, that by their own spirit too, especially as the corruptible body weighs it down, as sons of men they fall back upon themselves through certain human impulses, and so sin. It matters indeed how much: for though every crime is a sin, not every sin is a crime. So we say that the life of holy men, as long as it is lived in this mortal state, can be found without crime; but “if we say that we have no sin,” as so great an apostle says, “we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

But not even regarding crimes, however great, which are to be remitted in the holy Church, is the mercy of God to be despaired of by those who do penance according to the measure of each one's sin. In the act of penance, however, where such a thing has been committed that he who committed it is also separated from the body of Christ, it is not so much the measure of time that is to be considered as the measure of sorrow. For “a contrite and humbled heart God does not despise.” But since the sorrow of one heart is usually hidden from another, and does not come to the knowledge of others through words or any other signs, though it is before him to whom it is said, “My groaning is not hidden from you,” times of penance are rightly appointed by those who preside over the churches, so that satisfaction may be made also to the Church, in which the sins themselves are remitted; for outside it they are not remitted. For it is the Church that has properly received the pledge of the Holy Spirit, without whom no sins are remitted in such a way that those to whom they are remitted obtain eternal life.

For the forgiveness of sins takes place more with a view to the future judgment. In this life, however, what is written holds so far, “A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb to the day of their burial in the mother of all,” that we see even infants, after the washing of regeneration, tormented by the affliction of various evils; so that we may understand that all that is done by the saving sacraments pertains more to the hope of future goods than to the keeping or gaining of present ones. Many things also seem to be overlooked here and punished by no penalties; but their punishments are reserved for later. For not in vain is that day properly called the day of judgment, when the judge of the living and the dead is to come. Just as, on the contrary, some things are punished here, and yet, if they are remitted, they will certainly do no harm in the world to come. Therefore, speaking of certain temporal punishments which are inflicted in this life on sinners whose sins are blotted out so that they may not be reserved for the end, the apostle says: “For if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged by the Lord; but when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened, so that we may not be condemned with this world.”

Some believe, however, that even those who do not abandon the name of Christ, and are baptized with his washing in the Church, and are not cut off from it by any schism or heresy, in whatever great crimes they live, which they neither wash away by penance nor redeem by almsgiving, but persist in them most stubbornly to the last day of this life, will be saved through fire: punished, it is true, according to the greatness of their crimes and shameful deeds, by a long-lasting but not eternal fire. But those who believe this, and yet are catholics, seem to me deceived by a certain human kindness; for divine Scripture, when consulted, answers otherwise. I have written a book on this question, whose title is On Faith and Works, in which I showed, as far as I could with God's help, according to the holy Scriptures, that the faith which saves is that which the apostle Paul expressed clearly enough, saying, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” But if it works evil and not good, without doubt, according to the apostle James, it is dead in itself. He says again: “If someone says he has faith but does not have works, can faith save him?” Further, if a wicked man will be saved through fire because of faith alone, and this is how the blessed Paul's words are to be taken, “But he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire,” then faith will be able to save without works, and what his fellow apostle James said will be false; false also will be what the same Paul himself said: “Do not be deceived,” he says; “neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God.” For if, even persisting in these crimes, they will still be saved because of faith in Christ, how will they not be in the kingdom of God?

But since these most manifest and plain apostolic testimonies cannot be false, what was said obscurely about those who build on the foundation, which is Christ, not gold, silver, and precious stones, but wood, hay, and straw (for of these it was said that they will be saved through fire, because by the merit of the foundation they will not perish), must be understood in such a way that it is not found contrary to these manifest testimonies. For wood and hay and straw can not unreasonably be taken as such desires for worldly things, though lawfully granted, that they cannot be lost without grief of mind. But when this grief burns, if Christ has the place of the foundation in the heart, that is, so that nothing is preferred to him, and the man who is burned by such grief would rather lack the things he so loves than Christ, he is saved through fire. But if in time of temptation he prefers to hold such temporal and worldly things rather than Christ, he did not have him as the foundation, because he held these in the first place, since in a building nothing comes before the foundation. For the fire of which the apostle spoke in that place must be understood to be such that both pass through it, that is, both he who builds on this foundation gold, silver, and precious stones, and he who builds wood, hay, and straw. For having said this, he added: “The fire will test what sort of work each one's is. If anyone's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” Not of one of them, then, but of both will the fire test the work. There is a certain fire, the trial of tribulation, of which it is written plainly in another place: “The furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation tests just men.” This fire meanwhile, in this life, does what the apostle said, if it befalls two of the faithful: one who thinks of the things of God, how he may please God, that is, who builds on the foundation, Christ, gold, silver, and precious stones; the other who thinks of the things of the world, how he may please his wife, that is, who builds on the same foundation wood, hay, and straw. For the work of the first is not burned, because he has not loved the things whose loss would torment him; but the work of the second is burned, since things possessed with love do not perish without grief. But since, given the choice between the two, he would rather lack them than Christ, and does not desert Christ for fear of losing such things, though he grieves when he loses them, he is indeed saved, yet so as through fire, because grief for the loss of the things he had loved burns him; but it does not overthrow or consume him, protected as he is by the stability and incorruptibility of the foundation.

It is not incredible that something of the kind takes place even after this life, and whether it is so can be asked, and either found out or left hidden: namely, that some of the faithful are saved through a certain purgatorial fire, more slowly or more quickly according as they have loved perishing goods more or less; not, however, those of whom it was said that they will not possess the kingdom of God, unless those same crimes are remitted to them when they do fitting penance. I said “fitting” so that they may not be barren in almsgiving, to which divine Scripture attributes so much that the Lord foretells that he will reckon to those on his right only the fruit of alms, and to those on his left only their barrenness in alms, when he will say to the former, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom,” but to the latter, “Go into the eternal fire.”

Certainly one must beware lest anyone think that those unspeakable crimes whose doers will not possess the kingdom of God may be committed daily and redeemed daily by alms. For life is to be changed for the better, and through alms God is to be propitiated for past sins, not bought, as it were, so that it may always be permitted to commit them with impunity. For he has given no one license to sin, although in his mercy he blots out sins already done, if fitting satisfaction is not neglected.

For the daily, brief, and light sins, without which this life is not lived, the daily prayer of the faithful makes satisfaction. For it is theirs to say, “Our Father who are in heaven,” who have already been reborn to such a Father of water and the Spirit. This prayer entirely blots out the smallest and daily sins. It blots out also those from which the life of the faithful departs, even life once lived wickedly but changed for the better by repentance, if, as it is truly said, “Forgive us our debts,” since there is no lack of things to be forgiven, so it is truly said, “as we also forgive our debtors,” that is, if what is said is done; for to pardon a man who asks forgiveness is itself also an alms.

And therefore what the Lord says applies to everything done in useful mercy: “Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.” So not only he who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, hospitality to the traveler, refuge to the fugitive, a visit to the sick or imprisoned, ransom to the captive, support to the weak, guidance to the blind, consolation to the sad, healing to the unwell, the way to the wanderer, counsel to the one deliberating, and whatever is necessary to each one in need; but also he who gives pardon to the sinner gives alms; and he who corrects with blows one over whom power is given him, or restrains him with some discipline, and yet forgives from the heart the sin by which he was hurt or offended by him, or prays that it may be forgiven him, gives alms not only in that he forgives and prays, but also in that he rebukes and punishes with some corrective penalty, because he shows mercy. For many good things are bestowed on the unwilling, when their benefit is consulted, not their will; because they are found to be their own enemies, while those whom they think enemies are rather their friends; and by erring they return evil for good, when a Christian ought not to return evil even for evil. There are, then, many kinds of alms, by doing which we are helped to have our sins forgiven.

But none is greater than that by which we forgive from the heart what anyone has sinned against us. For it is a lesser thing to be benevolent, or even beneficent, toward one who has done you no evil; it is much greater, and belongs to the most magnificent goodness, that you love even your enemy, and always wish good, and do it when you can, to him who wishes you evil and does it if he can, hearing God saying, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you.” But these things belong to the perfect sons of God, toward which every believer ought indeed to stretch himself, and to bring the human mind to this disposition by praying to God and by dealing and struggling with himself. Yet, because this so great good does not belong to so great a multitude as we believe are heard when they say in prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” without doubt the words of this pledge are fulfilled if a man who has not yet advanced so far as to love his enemy still, when he is asked by a man who has sinned against him to forgive him, forgives from the heart; since he certainly wishes to be forgiven himself when he asks, when he prays and says, “as we also forgive our debtors,” that is, “So forgive our debts when we ask, as we also forgive our debtors when they ask.”

Now he who asks the man against whom he has sinned, if he is moved by his sin to ask, is no longer to be counted an enemy, so that it would be difficult to love him, as it was difficult when he was carrying on enmity. But whoever does not forgive from the heart one who asks and repents of his sin, let him in no way think that his own sins are forgiven by the Lord, since the Truth cannot lie. And what hearer or reader of the Gospel does not know who said, “I am the truth”? He, having taught the prayer, strongly commended this sentence placed in it, saying: “For if you forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your sins. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your sins.” Whoever is not awakened at so great a thunder is not asleep but dead; and yet he is able to raise even the dead.

Certainly those who live most wickedly and take no care to correct such a life and conduct, and yet amid their very crimes and shameful deeds do not cease to give alms frequently, flatter themselves in vain because the Lord says, “Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.” For they do not understand how far this extends. But that they may understand, let them consider to whom he said it. For in the Gospel it is written thus: “As he was speaking, a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him; and he went in and reclined. But the Pharisee began to say, reasoning within himself, why he had not washed before dinner. And the Lord said to him: Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but what is inside you is full of robbery and iniquity. Fools, did not he who made what is outside make also what is inside? Nevertheless, as for what remains, give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.” Are we to understand this to mean that for Pharisees who do not have the faith of Christ, even if they have not believed in him nor been reborn of water and the Spirit, all things are clean, provided only that they give alms as these men think alms should be given? For all are unclean whom the faith of Christ does not cleanse, of which it is written, “cleansing their hearts by faith”; and the apostle says, “But to the unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean, but both their mind and conscience are defiled.” How, then, would all things be clean to the Pharisees if they gave alms and were not believers? Or how would they be believers if they refused to believe in Christ and to be reborn in his grace? And yet what they heard is true: “Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.”

For he who wishes to give alms in due order ought to begin with himself and give it first to himself. For almsgiving is a work of mercy; and it is most truly said, “Have mercy on your soul, pleasing God.” For this we are reborn, that we may please God, to whom what we contracted by being born is rightly displeasing. This is the first alms, which we have given to ourselves, since through the mercy of a merciful God we have sought ourselves out in our wretchedness, confessing his just judgment by which we were made wretched, of which the apostle says, “The judgment was from one to condemnation,” and giving thanks for his great love, of which the same herald of grace says, “But God commends his love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”; so that we too, judging truly of our wretchedness and loving God with the love which he himself has given, may live piously and rightly. While the Pharisees passed over this judgment and love of God, they nevertheless tithed even the smallest of their fruits for the alms they gave; and so they did not give alms beginning with themselves and first showing mercy to themselves. Because of this order of love it is said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” When, then, he had rebuked them because they washed themselves outwardly while inwardly they were full of robbery and iniquity, warning them to be cleansed inwardly by a certain alms which a man owes first to himself, he said, “Nevertheless, as for what remains, give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you.” Then, to show what he had warned them of and what they took no care to do, lest they think he was ignorant of their alms, he said, “But woe to you Pharisees,” as if he were saying: “I have indeed warned you that alms must be given through which all things may be clean for you; but woe to you who tithe mint and rue and every herb” (for I know these alms of yours, so do not think I have now warned you about them) “and pass over the judgment and love of God,” an alms by which you could be cleansed from all inner defilement, so that even the bodies you wash would be clean for you. For this is “all things,” namely both the inner and the outer, as we read elsewhere, “Cleanse what is inside, and what is outside will be clean.” But lest he seem to have rejected those alms which are made from the fruits of the earth, he says, “These you ought to have done,” that is, the judgment and love of God, “and not to have left those undone,” that is, the alms of earthly fruits.

Let them not deceive themselves, then, who think that by any alms whatever, however lavish, of their fruits or of any money, they buy impunity to remain in the monstrousness of crimes and the wickedness of shameful deeds; for not only do they do these things, but they so love them that they would always wish to live in them, if only they could do so with impunity. But “he who loves iniquity hates his own soul”; and he who hates his own soul is not merciful to it but cruel; for by loving it according to the world he hates it according to God. If, then, he wished to give it the alms by which all things would be clean for him, he would hate it according to the world and love it according to God. But no one gives alms of any kind unless he receives what to give from him who needs nothing; therefore it was said, “His mercy will go before me.”

But which sins are light and which grave must be weighed not by human but by divine judgment. For we see that some things have been granted by way of indulgence even by the apostles themselves, such as what the venerable Paul says to married people: “Do not deprive one another, except by agreement for a time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” This might be thought not to be a sin, namely to have intercourse with one's spouse not for the sake of procreating children, which is the good of marriage, but also for carnal pleasure, so that the weakness of the incontinent may avoid the deadly evil of sexual immorality, or adultery, or any other uncleanness which it is shameful even to name, into which lust can drag them when Satan tempts. It might therefore, as I said, be thought not to be a sin, had he not added: “But I say this by way of concession, not of command.” But who would deny that it is a sin, when he admits that pardon is granted by apostolic authority to those who do it? Something similar is where he says: “Does any of you, having a matter against another, dare to go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?” And a little later: “If, then, you have worldly cases, appoint those who are least esteemed in the Church. I say this to your shame: is there not among you anyone wise who can judge between his brothers? But brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers!” For here too it might be thought that to have a case against another is not a sin, but only to wish it to be judged outside the Church, had he not gone on to add: “Already it is altogether a fault that you have lawsuits among you.” And lest anyone excuse this by saying that he had a just cause, but was suffering injustice which he wished removed by the sentence of judges, he at once meets such thoughts or excuses and says: “Why do you not rather suffer injustice? Why are you not rather defrauded?” So that we return to what the Lord says, “If anyone wishes to take your tunic and go to law with you, let him have your cloak too”; and in another place, “Whoever takes away your goods, do not ask for them back.” He forbade his own, therefore, to have lawsuits with other men about worldly things; and on the basis of this teaching the apostle says it is a fault. Yet when he allows such cases to be settled in the Church between brothers with brothers judging, but outside the Church forbids it terribly, it is plain here too what is conceded by way of indulgence to the weak. Because of these and similar sins, and others less than these which happen through offenses of words and thoughts (as the apostle James confesses, saying, “For in many things we all offend”), we must daily and often pray to the Lord and say, “Forgive us our debts,” and not lie in what follows, “as we also forgive our debtors.”

There are some things which would be thought very light, if they were not shown in the Scriptures to be graver than they are thought. For who would think that one who says to his brother, “Fool,” is liable to Gehenna, if the Truth did not say so? Yet he at once applied a remedy to this wound, adding the precept of brotherly reconciliation; for he soon says, “If then you offer your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,” and so on. Or who would think how great a sin it is to observe days and months and years and seasons, as those observe them who are willing or unwilling to begin something on certain days or months or years because, following the vain teachings of men, they think the times lucky or unlucky, unless we weighed the greatness of this evil from the fear of the apostle, who says to such people, “I fear for you, lest perhaps I have labored among you in vain”?

Add to this that sins, however great and horrible, when they have become customary, are believed to be small or none; so much so that they seem not only not to be hidden but even to be proclaimed and published abroad, when, as it is written, “The sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, and he who does iniquity is blessed.” Such iniquity is called in the divine Books a cry. As you have in the prophet Isaiah about the bad vineyard: “I waited,” he says, “for it to do judgment, but it did iniquity; and not righteousness, but a cry.” Hence also that in Genesis: “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has multiplied.” For not only were those shameful deeds no longer punished among them, but they were publicly practiced as though by law. So in our times so many evils, even if not such as those, have now come into open custom that for them we dare not only not excommunicate any layman, but not even degrade a cleric. Hence when some years ago I was expounding the Letter to the Galatians, at the very place where the apostle says, “I fear for you, lest perhaps I have labored among you in vain,” I was compelled to cry out: “Woe to the sins of men, at which we shudder only when they are unusual! But the usual ones, for the washing away of which the blood of the Son of God was shed, though they are so great as to cause the kingdom of God to be wholly closed against them, by often seeing we are compelled to tolerate them all, and by often tolerating we are compelled even to commit some! And would, O Lord, that we do not commit all those that we have been unable to prevent!” But I shall consider whether immoderate grief compelled me to say something incautiously.

This I will say now, which indeed I have often said already in other places of my works. We sin for two reasons: either by not yet seeing what we ought to do, or by not doing what we already see ought to be done; of these two the first is the evil of ignorance, the second of weakness. Against these it is fitting for us to fight; but we are surely overcome unless we are helped by God, so that we not only see what is to be done but also, as health is added, the delight of righteousness overcomes in us the delights of those things for which, by desiring to have them or by fearing to lose them, we sin knowingly and with open eyes; no longer only sinners, as we were even when we sinned through ignorance, but also transgressors of the law, when we do not do what we already know is to be done, or do what we know is not to be done. Therefore we must ask, not only that he may pardon if we have sinned, for which we say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” but also that he may guide us so that we may not sin, for which we say, “Lead us not into temptation,” him to whom it is said in the Psalm, “The Lord is my light and my salvation”: so that the light may remove ignorance and the salvation weakness.

For even penance itself, when there is a worthy reason for doing it according to the custom of the Church, is often not done because of weakness; for shame too is a fear of displeasing, while the esteem of men delights more than the righteousness by which each humbles himself in doing penance. Hence God's mercy is necessary not only when penance is done, but also in order that it may be done. Otherwise the apostle would not say of certain people, “lest perhaps God grant them repentance.” And before Peter wept bitterly, the evangelist first put, “The Lord looked at him.”

But he who, not believing that sins are remitted in the Church, despises so great a bounty of the divine gift, and ends his last day in this obstinacy of mind, is guilty of that unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, in whom Christ forgives sins. I have discussed this difficult question as carefully as I could in a little book written for this purpose alone.

But as to the resurrection of the flesh, not as some have come back to life and died again, but to eternal life, as the flesh of Christ himself rose, I do not find how I can discuss it briefly and satisfy all the questions that are usually raised on this matter. Yet a Christian ought in no way to doubt that the flesh of all men who have been born or will be born, and have died or will die, will rise again.

Hence the first question that occurs concerns aborted fetuses, which have indeed been born in their mothers' wombs, but not yet so as to be able to be reborn. For if we say that they will rise, what is said can somehow be tolerated concerning those already formed; but who would not more readily think that unformed abortions perish, like seeds that have not been conceived? But who would dare deny, though he would not dare affirm, that the resurrection will bring it about that whatever was lacking of form is filled up? And so the perfection will not be lacking which was to come with time, just as there will be no defects that had come with time; so that nature is neither cheated of what was apt and fitting that the days were going to bring, nor disfigured by what was adverse and contrary that the days had brought; but what was not yet whole will be made whole, as what had been vitiated will be restored.

And therefore it can indeed be most scrupulously inquired into and disputed among the most learned, though I do not know whether it can be found out by man, when a human being begins to live in the womb: whether there is a certain hidden life which does not yet show itself in the movements of a living being. For to deny that those fetuses lived which are cut out limb by limb and removed from the wombs of pregnant women, lest the mothers too be killed if they are left there dead, seems too great an impudence. But from the time a human being begins to live, from then certainly he can die. And once dead, wherever death could befall him, I cannot find how he would not belong to the resurrection of the dead.

Nor will monstrous births that are born and live, however quickly they die, be denied to rise again, or be believed to rise as they were, rather than with nature corrected and amended. For far be it that we should think that that two-bodied man who was recently born in the East, of whom both most faithful brothers who saw him have reported and the presbyter Jerome of holy memory has left a written account; far be it, I say, that we should think one double man, and not rather two, as would have been the case if twins had been born, will rise. So other births, which are called monsters through having something more or less than each individual has, or through some excessive deformity, will be brought back in the resurrection to the shape of human nature, so that individual souls will possess their own individual bodies, none of them joined together even if they were born joined, but each bearing for itself its own members, by which the integrity of the human body is completed.

Moreover, the earthly matter from which the flesh of mortals is created does not perish for God; but into whatever dust or ashes it is dissolved, into whatever vapors and breezes it flees, into whatever substance of other bodies or into the elements themselves it is turned, into the food of whatever animals, even of men, it passes and is changed into their flesh, in an instant of time it returns to that human soul which first animated it so that it became a man, lived, and grew.

That earthly matter, then, which becomes a corpse when the soul departs, will not be restored at the resurrection in such a way that the parts which slip away and are turned into one and another species and form of other things, though they return to the body from which they slipped away, must also return to the same parts of the body where they were. Otherwise, if what such frequent cutting took away returns to the hair, and what trimming so often removed returns to the nails, an excessive and unseemly deformity presents itself to those who think about it, and who therefore do not believe in the resurrection of the flesh. But just as, if a statue of some soluble metal were melted by fire, or ground into dust, or fused into a mass, and the artist wished to restore it again from the same quantity of that material, it would make no difference to its integrity which particle of the material was given back to which member of the statue, provided that the restored statue took back the whole of which it had been made: so God, the wonderful and ineffable artist, will restore our flesh from the whole of which it had consisted, with wonderful and ineffable speed; nor will it matter for its reintegration whether hairs return to hairs and nails to nails, or whatever of them had perished is changed into flesh and called back into other parts of the body, the providence of the artist taking care that nothing unseemly result.

Nor does it follow that the stature of individuals when they come back to life will be different because it was different when they were alive, or that the thin will come back to life with the same thinness or the fat with the same fatness. But if it is in the Creator's plan that the individuality and recognizable likeness of each, placed in his features, be preserved, while in the other goods of the body all are made equal, that matter will be so adjusted in each one that nothing of it perishes, and whatever was lacking to anyone will be supplied by him who could make what he willed even from nothing. But if in the bodies of those who rise there is a reasonable inequality, as there is in the voices with which a song is filled, this will be done for each from the matter of his own body, so that it both makes the man fit for the angelic company and brings nothing unfitting before their senses. For there will be nothing unseemly there; but whatever will be there will be seemly, since it will not be there if it is not seemly.

The bodies of the saints, then, will rise without any defect, without any deformity, as without any corruption, burden, or difficulty; in them there will be as great ease as happiness. For this reason they are also called spiritual, though without doubt they will be bodies, not spirits. But as now the body is called natural (literally “ensouled”), though it is a body, not a soul, so then it will be a spiritual body, yet a body, not a spirit. Accordingly, as regards the corruption which now weighs down the soul, and the vices by which the flesh lusts against the spirit, it will then be not flesh but body, since there are also bodies called heavenly. For this reason it was said, “Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God”; and, as if explaining what he had said, “nor will corruption possess incorruption.” What he first called “flesh and blood” he later called “corruption”; and what he first called “the kingdom of God” he later called “incorruption.” But as regards substance, even then it will be flesh. For this reason even after the resurrection the body of Christ was called flesh. But the apostle says, “It is sown a natural body, it will rise a spiritual body,” because there will then be such harmony of flesh and spirit, the spirit giving life to the flesh subject to it without need of any sustenance, that nothing in us will fight against us; but as we shall suffer no enemy outside, so we shall not suffer ourselves as enemies within.

But whoever are not freed from that mass of perdition which was made through the first man, through the one Mediator between God and men, will also rise, each with his own flesh, but to be punished with the devil and his angels. Whether they will rise with the defects and deformities of their bodies, whatever defective and deformed members they bore, what need is there to labor in inquiring? For the uncertain condition or beauty of those whose condemnation will be certain and eternal ought not to weary us. Nor let it trouble us how their body will be incorruptible if it can suffer pain, or how corruptible if it cannot die. For there is no true life except where one lives happily, nor true incorruption except where health is corrupted by no pain. But where the unhappy one is not allowed to die, death itself, so to speak, does not die; and where perpetual pain does not destroy but afflicts, corruption itself does not end. This in the holy Scriptures is called the second death.

Yet neither the first death, by which the soul is compelled to leave its body, nor the second, by which the soul is not permitted to leave its penal body, would have befallen man if no one had sinned. Certainly the mildest punishment of all will be that of those who, besides the sin which they contracted by origin, added none further; and among the rest, who did add, each will have a condemnation there the more tolerable, the less iniquity he had here.

While, then, the reprobate angels and men remain in eternal punishment, the saints will know more fully what good grace has conferred on them. Then it will appear more evidently from the facts themselves what is written in the Psalm, “Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord”; because no one is freed except by undeserved mercy, and no one is condemned except by deserved judgment.

Then what is now hidden will not be hidden: why, when of two infants one was to be taken up by mercy and the other left by judgment (in which the one taken up might recognize what was owed him by judgment, had mercy not come to his aid), the one rather than the other was taken up, though the case was the same for both; why miracles were not done among some who, if they had been done, would have done penance, and were done among those who were not going to believe. For the Lord says most plainly: “Woe to you, Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes.” And certainly God did not unjustly will that they should not be saved, though they could have been saved if he had willed. Then it will be seen in the clearest light of wisdom what the faith of the pious now holds before it is seen by manifest knowledge: how certain, unchangeable, and most effective is the will of God; how many things he can do and does not will, but wills nothing that he cannot do; and how true is what is sung in the Psalm, “But our God is in heaven above; in heaven and on earth he has done all things whatsoever he willed.” This is certainly not true if he willed some things and did not do them, and, what is more unworthy, did not do them because the will of man prevented what the Almighty willed from being done. Nothing, then, is done unless the Almighty wills it to be done, either by permitting it to be done or by doing it himself.

Nor is it to be doubted that God does well even in permitting whatever is done badly. For he permits this only by just judgment; and certainly everything that is just is good. Although, then, the things that are evil, in so far as they are evil, are not good, yet it is good that not only good things but also evil things should exist. For unless it were good that evils too should exist, they would in no way be permitted to exist by the almighty Good, for whom without doubt it is as easy not to permit what he does not will to exist as it is to do what he wills. Unless we believe this, the very beginning of our Creed is endangered, in which we confess that we believe in God the Father almighty. For he is truly called almighty for no other reason than that he can do whatever he wills, and the effect of the almighty will is not hindered by the will of any creature.

Therefore we must see in what sense it is said of God (for the apostle said this too most truly), “who wills all men to be saved.” For since not all, but far more, are not saved, it certainly seems that what God wills to be done is not done, the human will, that is, hindering the will of God. For when the cause is asked why not all are saved, the usual answer is that they themselves do not will it. This certainly cannot be said of infants, who do not yet have willing or not willing. For if what they do by infantile movement were to be judged attributable to their will, since when they are baptized they resist as much as they can, we would say that they are saved even against their will. But more plainly the Lord in the Gospel, addressing the impious city, says, “How often I willed to gather your children as a hen her chicks, and you would not!” as though the will of God were overcome by the will of men, and the most powerful could not do what he willed because the weakest prevented it by not willing. And where is that omnipotence by which “in heaven and on earth he has done all things whatsoever he willed,” if he willed to gather the children of Jerusalem and did not do it? Or rather, was it not that she did not will her children to be gathered by him, but even against her will he gathered those of her children whom he willed? For in heaven and on earth he did not will some things and do them, and will other things and not do them; but “all things whatsoever he willed, he has done.”

Further, who would be so impiously foolish as to say that God cannot turn to good the evil wills of men, which he wills, when he wills, where he wills? But when he does it, he does it through mercy; when he does not, he does not through judgment. For “he has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills.” In saying this the apostle was commending grace, and to commend it he had already spoken of the twins in Rebecca's womb, of whom, when they were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad, so that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not from works but from him who calls, it was said to her, “The elder will serve the younger.” For this reason he added another prophetic testimony, where it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” But perceiving how what was said could disturb those who cannot penetrate this depth of grace by understanding, he says, “What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? Far from it.” For it seems unjust that without any merits of good or evil works God should love one and hate the other. In this matter, if he had wished the future works to be understood, good of the one or evil of the other, which God certainly foreknew, he would by no means say “not from works” but would say “from future works,” and in that way would solve this question, or rather would raise no question needing to be solved. But now, having answered, “Far from it,” that is, far be it that there be injustice with God, at once, to prove that this happens by no injustice of God, he says: “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.” For who but a fool would think God unjust, whether he inflicts penal judgment on the deserving or shows mercy to the undeserving? Finally he infers and says, “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” Both twins, then, were born by nature children of wrath, bound not by any works of their own but by origin from Adam with the chain of condemnation. But he who said, “I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy,” loved Jacob through free mercy and hated Esau through deserved judgment. Since this judgment was owed to both, the one recognized in the other that he must not glory in his own differing merits for not incurring the same punishment in the same case, but in the bounty of divine grace, because “it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” For by a most profound and most wholesome mystery the whole face, and so to speak the countenance, of the holy Scriptures is found by those who look well to admonish this: that “he who glories should glory in the Lord.”

Having commended God's mercy in saying, “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy,” then, to commend judgment too (for where mercy is not shown, it is not injustice but judgment, since there is no injustice with God), he at once added and said: “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Having said this, he concluded with reference to both, that is, to mercy and to judgment: “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills.” He has mercy, that is, by great goodness; he hardens with no injustice; so that neither may the one freed glory in his own merits, nor the one condemned complain except of his own merits. For grace alone distinguishes the redeemed from the lost, whom a common cause derived from their origin had fused into one mass of perdition. But whoever hears this in such a way as to say, “Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” as though an evil man should not be blamed because God has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills: far be it that we should be ashamed to answer what we see the apostle answered: “O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does what is formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me thus? Or does the potter not have power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” At this place some foolish people think the apostle failed in his answer and, for lack of a reason to give, repressed the boldness of the objector. But what was said has great weight: “O man, who are you?” In such questions it recalls a man to consider his own capacity, in a brief word indeed, but in reality it is a great giving of reason. For if he does not grasp these things, who is he to answer God? But if he does grasp them, he finds still less what to answer. For he sees, if he grasps it, that the whole human race was condemned in its apostate root by so just a divine judgment that even if none were freed from it, no one could rightly find fault with God's justice; and that those who are freed had to be freed in such a way that, from the greater number not freed but left in most just condemnation, it might be shown what the whole lump deserved, and whither God's deserved judgment would lead even these, if undeserved mercy did not come to their aid: so that every mouth of those who would glory in their own merits may be stopped, and he who glories may glory in the Lord.

These are the great works of the Lord, sought out in all his wills; and so wisely sought out that, when the angelic and human creature had sinned, that is, had done not what he willed but what it willed, through the same will of the creature by which what the Creator did not will was done, he himself fulfilled what he willed, using even evils well, as the supremely good, for the condemnation of those whom he justly predestined to punishment, and for the salvation of those whom he kindly predestined to grace. For as far as they themselves were concerned, they did what God did not will; but as far as God's omnipotence is concerned, they were in no way able to bring that about. For by the very fact that they acted against his will, his will was done concerning them. For this reason “the works of the Lord are great, sought out in all his wills,” so that in a wonderful and ineffable way what is done even against his will is not done apart from his will. For it would not be done if he did not permit it; and certainly he permits it not unwillingly but willingly; nor would he, being good, permit evil to be done unless, being almighty, he could make good even out of evil.

Sometimes, however, a man with a good will wills something which God does not will, though God's will too is good, much more fully and much more certainly; for his will can never be evil. As if a good son wishes his father to live, whom God by his good will wills to die. And again it can happen that a man wills with an evil will what God wills with a good one: as if a bad son wishes his father to die, and God wills this too. The former wills what God does not will, the latter wills what God also wills; and yet the piety of the former, though willing something else, is more in harmony with God's good will than the impiety of the latter, willing the same thing. So much does it matter what is fitting for man to will and what for God, and to what end each refers his will, for it to be approved or disapproved. For God fulfills some of his wills, certainly good ones, through the evil wills of evil men: as through the malevolent Jews, by the good will of the Father, Christ was killed for us; which became so great a good that the apostle Peter, when he did not want it to happen, was called Satan by him who had come to be killed. How good appeared the wills of the pious faithful who did not want the apostle Paul to go to Jerusalem, lest he suffer there the evils which the prophet Agabus had foretold! And yet God willed him to suffer these things for proclaiming the faith of Christ, training a martyr of Christ. And he fulfilled this good will of his not through the good wills of the Christians but through the evil wills of the Jews; and those who did not will what he willed belonged more to him than those through whose willing what he willed was done; for they did the very same thing, but he through them with a good will, they with an evil one.

But however many may be the wills of angels or of men, of the good or of the evil, whether they will what God wills or something other than God, the will of the Almighty is always unconquered; and it can never be evil, because even when it inflicts evils it is just, and certainly what is just is not evil. God almighty, then, whether through mercy he has mercy on whom he wills, or through judgment hardens whom he wills, does nothing unjustly, does nothing except willingly, and does all things whatsoever he wills.

And therefore, when we hear and read in the sacred Writings that he wills all men to be saved, although it is certain to us that not all men are saved, we must not on that account detract anything from the most omnipotent will of God; but we must understand what is written, “who wills all men to be saved,” as if it were said that no man is saved except one whom he himself willed to be saved: not that there is no man whom he does not will to be saved, but that no one is saved except one whom he wills; and therefore he is to be asked to will it, because it necessarily comes about if he wills it. For the apostle was speaking about praying to God when he said this. For so we also understand what is written in the Gospel, “who enlightens every man”: not because there is no man who is not enlightened, but because no one is enlightened except by him. Or certainly it was said, “who wills all men to be saved,” not because there was no man whom he did not will to be saved (he who did not will to do miracles among those who, he says, would have repented if he had done them), but so that we understand “all men” as the whole human race distributed through all its differences: kings, private persons, nobles, commoners, the exalted, the lowly, the learned, the unlearned, the sound in body, the weak, the clever, the slow-witted, the foolish, the rich, the poor, those of middle means, men, women, infants, boys, adolescents, young men, the elderly, the old; in all languages, all customs, all arts, all professions, placed in the innumerable variety of wills and consciences, and whatever other difference there is among men. For which of these is there from which God does not will men to be saved through all nations by his only-begotten Son our Lord, and therefore saves them, since the Almighty cannot will in vain whatever he wills? For the apostle had commanded that prayer be made for all men, and had added specially for kings and those in high places, who might be thought to shrink from the humility of the Christian faith out of worldly pride and arrogance. Accordingly, saying, “For this is good before God our Saviour,” that is, that prayer be made even for such, at once, to remove despair, he added, “who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” For God judged this good, to deign to grant salvation to the exalted through the prayers of the lowly; which we now certainly see fulfilled. The Lord too used this manner of speaking in the Gospel, where he says to the Pharisees, “You tithe mint and rue and every herb.” For the Pharisees did not tithe the herbs of others and all the herbs of all foreigners in all lands. As, then, here “every herb” means every kind of herb, so there we can understand “all men” as every kind of men; and in whatever other way it can be understood, provided only we are not compelled to believe that the almighty God willed something to be done and it was not done; for if without any ambiguity “in heaven and on earth,” as the Truth sings of him, “he has done all things whatsoever he willed,” he certainly did not will to do whatever he has not done.

Therefore God would have willed to keep even the first man in that salvation in which he was created, and at a suitable time, after children had been begotten, to bring him without the intervention of death to better things, where he could not only not commit sin but could not even have the will to sin, if he had foreknown that he would have a perpetual will to remain without sin, as he had been made. But because he foreknew that he would use free choice badly, that is, would sin, he rather prepared his own will for this: that he himself might do good even from one doing evil, and so the good will of the Almighty might not be made void by man's evil will, but might nonetheless be fulfilled.

For it was fitting that man should first be made so that he could will both good and evil, not without reward if good, not without punishment if evil; but afterwards he will be such that he cannot will evil, and will not on that account lack free choice. For choice will be much freer that cannot serve sin at all. For the will is not to be blamed, nor is it not a will, nor is it to be called not free, by which we so will to be happy that we not only do not will to be wretched but cannot will it at all. As, then, our soul even now does not will unhappiness, so it will always not will iniquity. But the order was not to be passed over in which God willed to show how good a rational animal is that is able not to sin, though one that is unable to sin is better; just as that immortality was lesser, but still was immortality, in which man was able not to die, though that will be greater in which he will be unable to die.

That immortality human nature lost through free choice; this it will receive through grace, which it would have received through merit if it had not sinned; although even then there could have been no merit without grace. For though sin lay in free choice alone, yet free choice was not sufficient for keeping righteousness unless divine help were given through participation in the unchangeable good. For as it is in man's power to die when he wills (for there is no one who cannot kill himself, to say nothing else, by not eating), but for keeping life the will is not enough if the helps of food or of any protections are lacking: so man in paradise was capable of killing himself through his will by abandoning righteousness, but for the life of righteousness to be kept by him, willing was too little unless he who had made him helped him. But after that ruin God's mercy is greater, since choice itself has to be freed from the slavery in which sin rules together with death. And it is not freed at all by itself, but only by God's grace, which is set in faith in Christ; so that the will itself, as it is written, is prepared by the Lord, the will by which the other gifts of God are received, through which one comes to the eternal gift.

Hence the apostle calls even eternal life itself, which is certainly the reward of good works, the grace of God: “For the wages of sin,” he says, “is death; but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Wages are paid as owed for military service, not given as a gift; therefore he said, “The wages of sin is death,” to show that death was inflicted on sin not undeservedly but as owed. But grace, unless it is gratuitous, is not grace. It is to be understood, then, that even the good merits of man are gifts of God; and when eternal life is rendered to them, what is rendered but grace for grace? So, then, man was made upright in such a way that he could both remain in that uprightness, not without divine help, and become perverse by his own choice. Whichever of these he chose, God's will would be done, either even by him or at any rate concerning him. Accordingly, because he preferred to do his own will rather than God's, God's will was done concerning him, who from the same mass of perdition which flowed from his stock makes one vessel for honor and another for dishonor: for honor through mercy, for dishonor through judgment; so that no one may glory in man, and therefore not in himself.

For we would not be freed even through the one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, unless he were also God. But when Adam was made, an upright man, there was no need of a mediator. But when sins had separated the human race far from God, we had to be reconciled to God through a Mediator, who alone was born, lived, and was killed without sin, even to the resurrection of the flesh to eternal life: so that human pride might be rebuked and healed through the humility of God; that it might be shown to man how far he had gone away from God, when he was called back through God incarnate; that an example of obedience might be given to disobedient man through the God-man; that, as the Only-begotten took the form of a servant, which had merited nothing before, the fountain of grace might be opened; that the resurrection of the flesh promised to the redeemed might be shown beforehand in the Redeemer himself; that the devil might be conquered through the same nature which he rejoiced to have deceived; and yet that man might not glory, lest pride be born again; and whatever else about so great a mystery of the Mediator can be seen and said by those who make progress, or only seen even if it cannot be said.

The time that lies between a man's death and the final resurrection holds souls in hidden receptacles, as each is worthy of rest or of affliction according to what it obtained in the flesh while it lived.

Nor is it to be denied that the souls of the dead are relieved by the piety of their living friends, when the sacrifice of the Mediator is offered for them or alms are given in the Church. But these things profit those who, while they lived, merited that these things might afterwards profit them. For there is a certain way of living neither so good that it does not need these things after death, nor so bad that these things do not profit it after death; but there is one so good that it does not need them, and again one so bad that, when it has passed from this life, it cannot be helped even by these. Therefore every merit by which anyone can be relieved or burdened after this life is acquired here. And let no one hope to merit with God after he has died what he has neglected here. So these things which the Church frequently does to commend the dead are not contrary to that apostolic saying, “For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive according to what he has done through the body, whether good or bad”; because each one also acquired for himself, while he lived in the body, this merit, that these things could profit him. For they do not profit all. And why do they not profit all, except because of the difference of life which each one led in the body? When, then, sacrifices, whether of the altar or of any alms, are offered for all the baptized dead, for the very good they are thanksgivings; for the not very bad they are propitiations; for the very bad, even if they are no help to the dead, they are some sort of consolation to the living. And for those whom they profit, they profit either so that there may be full remission, or at least so that the condemnation itself may become more tolerable.

After the resurrection, when the universal judgment has been made and completed, the two cities will have their ends, one of Christ, the other of the devil; one of the good, the other of the evil; both, however, of angels and of men. The former will have no will, the latter no possibility, of sinning, nor any condition of dying; the former living truly and happily in eternal life, the latter enduring unhappily in eternal death without the power of dying, since both will be without end. But in happiness some will remain more excellent than others, and in misery some more tolerable than others.

In vain, then, do some, indeed very many, pity with human feeling the eternal punishment and unceasing perpetual torments of the damned, and so do not believe that it will be so; not indeed opposing the divine Scriptures, but softening every hard saying according to their own feeling, and bending to a milder sense those things in them which they think were said more to terrify than truly. For “God will not forget,” they say, “to have mercy, or shut up his compassions in his anger.” This indeed is read in a holy psalm; but it is understood without any scruple of those who are called vessels of mercy, because they too are freed from misery not by their own merits but by God's mercy. Or if they think this applies to all, it does not therefore follow that they must suppose that the condemnation can end of those of whom it was said, “And these will go away into eternal punishment”; lest in this way it be thought that the happiness too of those will at some time have an end of whom it was said by contrast, “but the righteous into eternal life.” But let them think, if this pleases them, that the punishments of the damned are mitigated to some extent at certain intervals of time. For even so it can be understood that the wrath of God remains on them, that is, the condemnation itself (for this is called the wrath of God, not a disturbance of the divine mind), in such a way that in his wrath, that is, while his wrath remains, he still does not shut up his compassions; not by putting an end to the eternal punishment, but by applying or interposing relief in the torments. For the psalm does not say, “to end his wrath” or “after his wrath,” but “in his wrath.” And even if that alone were there which is the least that can be thought of there, to perish from the kingdom of God, to be exiled from the city of God, to be estranged from the life of God, to lack so great an abundance of God's sweetness, which he has hidden for those who fear him and perfected for those who hope in him, it is so great a punishment that no torments we know could be compared to it, since it is eternal, while those, however many ages they last, are not.

That perpetual death of the damned, then, that is, estrangement from the life of God, will remain without end, and it will be common to all, whatever men may suppose, according to their human feelings, about the variety of punishments and about the relief or interruption of pains; just as the eternal life of all the saints will remain in common, with whatever difference of honors they shine together in harmony.

From this confession of faith, which is briefly contained in the Creed, and which, thought of carnally, is milk for infants, but considered and treated spiritually is food for the strong, is born the good hope of the faithful, accompanied by holy love. But of all the things that are to be faithfully believed, only those pertain to hope which are contained in the Lord's Prayer. For “cursed is everyone,” as the divine oracles testify, “who places his hope in man”; and therefore he too who places hope in himself is bound by the chain of this curse. Therefore we ought to ask from no one but the Lord God whatever we hope either to do well or to obtain for good works.

Accordingly, in the evangelist Matthew the Lord's Prayer seems to contain seven petitions: in three of them eternal things are asked, in the other four temporal things, which are nevertheless necessary for attaining the eternal. For what we say, “Hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” (which some have not unreasonably understood as “in spirit and in body”), are things to be kept wholly without end; begun here, they increase in us as much as we advance, but perfected, which is to be hoped for in the other life, they will be possessed forever. But what we say, “Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors, And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil,” who does not see pertains to the needs of the present life? In that eternal life, then, where we hope always to be, the hallowing of God's name, and his kingdom, and his will in our spirit and body will remain perfectly and immortally. But the bread is called daily because it is necessary here, as much as is to be given to soul and flesh, whether it is understood spiritually or carnally or in both ways. Here too is the forgiveness we ask, where the committing of sins is; here are the temptations that either entice or drive us to sin; here, finally, is the evil from which we desire to be freed; but there none of these exists.

The evangelist Luke, however, included in the Lord's Prayer not seven but five petitions; nor did he in any way disagree with Matthew, but by his very brevity he reminded us how these seven are to be understood. For God's name is hallowed in the spirit, but God's kingdom will come in the resurrection of the flesh. Luke, then, showing that the third petition is in a certain way a repetition of the two above, makes this better understood by omitting it. Then he adds three others: about daily bread, about the forgiveness of sins, about avoiding temptation. But what Matthew put last, “But deliver us from evil,” Luke did not put, so that we might understand that it belongs to what was said above about temptation. For this is why Matthew says “But deliver,” not “And deliver,” showing it to be one petition (not this, but this), so that each may know that he is delivered from evil in that he is not led into temptation.

Now love, which the apostle called greater than these two, that is, faith and hope, the greater it is in anyone, the better is he in whom it is. For when it is asked whether someone is a good man, it is not asked what he believes or hopes, but what he loves. For he who loves rightly without doubt believes and hopes rightly; but he who does not love believes in vain, even if what he believes is true; he hopes in vain, even if what he hopes for is taught to belong to true happiness; unless he also believes and hopes this, that it can be given him at his request to love. For although he cannot hope without love, it can yet happen that he does not love that without which he cannot reach what he hopes for: as if he hopes for eternal life (and who does not love that?) and does not love righteousness, without which no one reaches it. But this is the faith of Christ which the apostle commends, which works through love; and what it does not yet have in love, it asks so that it may receive, seeks so that it may find, knocks so that it may be opened to it. For faith obtains what the law commands. For without God's gift, that is, without the Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured out in our hearts, the law will be able to command, not to help; and moreover to make a transgressor, who cannot excuse himself on the ground of ignorance. For carnal desire reigns where the love of God is not.

But when one lives according to the flesh in the deepest darkness of ignorance, with no reason resisting, this is the first state of man. Then, when knowledge of sin has come through the law, if the divine Spirit does not yet help, a man wishing to live according to the law is overcome, and sins knowingly, and, made subject to sin, he serves it (“For by whom a man is overcome, to him he is also enslaved”); the knowledge of the commandment bringing it about that sin works in man every desire, with the weight of transgression added, and so what is written is fulfilled, “The law came in, that the offense might abound.” This is the second state of man. But if God has looked upon him, so that he believes that God himself helps him to fulfill what he commands, and he begins to be led by the Spirit of God, he desires against the flesh with the stronger strength of love; so that, although there is still in man what fights against man, his weakness not yet wholly healed, yet the just man lives by faith, and lives justly in so far as he does not yield to evil desire, the delight of righteousness conquering. This is the third state of a man of good hope; and if anyone advances in it with pious perseverance, there remains the final peace, which will be fulfilled after this life in the rest of the spirit, and then also in the resurrection of the flesh. Of these four differences, the first is before the Law, the second under the Law, the third under grace, the fourth in full and perfect peace. So also the people of God has been ordered through intervals of time, as it pleased God, who orders all things in measure and number and weight. For it was first before the Law; second under the Law, which was given through Moses; then under grace, which was revealed through the first coming of the Mediator. This grace indeed was not lacking before to those to whom it had to be imparted, though veiled and hidden according to the dispensation of the time. For none of the righteous of old could find salvation apart from the faith of Christ; nor, unless he had been known to them too, could he have been prophesied to us through their ministry, sometimes more openly, sometimes more obscurely.

But in whichever of these four ages, as it were, the grace of regeneration finds any individual man, there all his past sins are forgiven him, and that guilt contracted by being born is dissolved by being reborn. And so much does it avail that “the Spirit breathes where he wills” that some have not known that second slavery under the Law, but begin to have divine help together with the commandment.

Before a man can be capable of receiving the commandment, he must live according to the flesh; but if he has already been imbued with the sacrament of regeneration, it will not harm him if he departs from this life then. For Christ died and rose for this, that he might be Lord of both the living and the dead; nor will the kingdom of death hold him for whom he died who was free among the dead.

All the divine precepts, then, are referred to love, of which the apostle says: “But the end of the commandment is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and unfeigned faith.” The end of every commandment, then, is love; that is, every commandment is referred to love. But what is done either from fear of punishment or from some carnal intention, so that it is not referred to that love which the Holy Spirit pours out in our hearts, is not yet done as it ought to be done, though it seems to be done. For this love is of God and of neighbor; and certainly “on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Add the Gospel, add the apostles; for from nowhere else comes this voice, “The end of the commandment is love,” and “God is love.” Whatever, then, God commands, one of which is, “You shall not commit adultery,” and whatever is not commanded but advised by spiritual counsel, one of which is, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman”: these are rightly done when they are referred to loving God, and the neighbor for God's sake, both in this age and in the age to come; now God through faith, then through sight, and the neighbor himself now through faith. For we mortals do not know the hearts of mortals; but then “the Lord will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart; and then each will have praise from God”; because what is praised and loved in a neighbor by a neighbor is that which God himself will bring to light so that it may not be hidden. Desire diminishes as love grows, until love here comes to such greatness that it cannot be greater: “For greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” But there who can explain how great love will be, where there will be no desire for it to overcome by restraining? For there will be supreme health when there is no struggle with death.

But let there at last be an end of this volume; you yourself will see whether you ought to call it an enchiridion or to keep it as one. I, however, since I did not think your zeal in Christ should be despised, believing and hoping good things of you with the help of our Redeemer, and loving you very much among his members, have written for you, as I was able, a book on faith, hope, and love; would that it were as useful as it is long.