Letters 194.35–195.1

But it is amazing, when they are hemmed in by these straits, over what precipices they throw themselves, fearing the nets of truth. 'He hated one of the unborn and loved the other', they say, 'because he foresaw their future works.' Who would not be amazed that the apostle lacked this most acute insight? For he did not see it when, having put the question to himself as if from an opponent, he did not give this answer, so short, so plain, and, as they think, true and complete. For when he had set forth an astonishing thing, how it could rightly be said of those not yet born and doing nothing good or evil that God loved one and hated the other, he put the question to himself, expressing the hearer's reaction: 'What then shall we say?' he says; 'Is there injustice with God? By no means!' Here, then, was the place to say what these men think: 'For God foresaw their future works when he said that the elder would serve the younger.' But the apostle does not say this; rather, so that no one might dare to boast of the merits of his works, he wanted what he says to serve to commend God's grace and glory. For when he had said, 'Far be it that there should be injustice with God', as if we said to him, 'How do you show this, when you assert that it was not from works but from him who calls that it was said, The elder will serve the younger?', he says: 'For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I have been compassionate. So it depends not on the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.' Where now are merits, where are works, past or future, as if fulfilled or to be fulfilled by the powers of free choice? Has not the apostle pronounced a clear judgment in commendation of free grace, that is, true grace? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of heretics?

What was at stake, that the apostle should say this, that he should mention the example of those twins? What was he trying to persuade? What did he wish to drive home? Surely this, which their madness attacks, which the proud do not grasp, which those refuse to understand who, ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For the apostle was occupied with grace itself, and therefore he mentioned the children of the promise. For what God promises, no one does but God; for it has some reason and truth that a man should promise and God do; but that a man should say he does what God has promised is the reprobate mind of proud ungodliness.

Commending, then, the children of the promise, he shows that this was first signified through Isaac, the son of Abraham. For the work of God appears more evidently in one whom the usual order of nature did not beget from a barren womb worn out with old age, so that in the children of God who were foretold as to come there might be this sign of a divine, not a human, work. 'In Isaac', he says, 'your offspring will be called'; that is, 'not the children of the flesh are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is the word of promise: At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son. And not only so, but also Rebecca, having conceived from one act of intercourse with our father Isaac.' Why did he add 'from one act of intercourse', except so that Jacob might not boast, not only of his own merits nor of those of other parents, but not even of a will of his one father perhaps changed for the better, saying that he was loved by the Creator because his father, when he begot him, was more praiseworthy in better conduct? 'From one act of intercourse', he says: one merit of the father then in begetting them, one merit of the mother in conceiving them; because even if the mother, carrying them enclosed in her womb until she gave birth, perhaps varied in her wishes and feelings, she certainly varied them not for one but for both, whom she carried equally in her womb.

We must look, then, to the apostle's intention: how, in order to commend grace, he wants the one of whom it was said, 'Jacob I loved', to glory only in the Lord; so that, since from the same father, the same mother, one act of intercourse, before they had done anything good or evil, God loves one and hates the other, Jacob may understand that from that mass of original iniquity, in which he sees that his brother, with whom he had a common case, deserved by justice to be condemned, he could have been distinguished only by grace. 'For while they were not yet born', he says, 'and had done nothing good or evil, so that God's purpose according to election might stand, not from works but from him who calls, it was said to her: The elder will serve the younger.'

And the same apostle shows most plainly in another place that the election of grace takes place with no preceding merits of works: 'So too at the present time', he says, 'a remnant has been saved by the election of grace. But if by grace, it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.' In accordance with this grace, then, he consequently adds the prophetic testimony too: 'As it is written,' he says, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated', and at once: 'What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? By no means!' But why 'by no means'? Because of the works of both which he foresaw as future? Rather, by no means that either: 'For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I have been compassionate. So it depends not on the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.' And so that in the vessels made for destruction, which is owed to the condemned mass, the vessels made for honour from the same mass may recognize what divine mercy has bestowed on them: 'For the Scripture says', he says, 'to Pharaoh: For this very purpose I raised you up, to show my power in you, and that my name may be glorified in all the earth.' Finally he concludes to both: 'So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills.' He does this with whom there will be no injustice. He has mercy, then, by free gift, but hardens by most just desert.

But let the arrogance of the proud unbeliever, or the excuse of the condemned under punishment, still say: 'Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?' Let him say it, and let him hear what befits a human being: 'O man, who are you to answer back to God?', and the rest, on which I have already spoken enough and often, as far as I could. Let him hear these things and not despise them. But if he despises them, let him find that he has been hardened even so as to despise them; and if he does not despise them, let him believe that he has been helped even so as not to despise them; but hardened as he deserved, helped freely.

For even if it could be said of the twins born of the patriarch Isaac (and we have already shown with what blindness it is said) that God foresaw their future works, because they lived and grew old, and therefore loved Jacob but hated Esau, no one can for that reason say of little children who are going to die that God foresees their future works, so that he does not provide for this one to receive baptism but does provide for that one. For how can works be called future that will never exist?

'But God', they say, 'foresees in those whom he takes from here how each would have lived if he had lived; and so he makes the one whom he knew would have lived wickedly die without baptism, punishing in him evil works, not those he did, but those he would have done.' If, then, even evil works that were not committed are punished by God, let them first notice how falsely they promise that little children who die without baptism will not go to condemnation. For if they are not baptized because they would have lived badly if they had lived, they will surely be condemned for that very bad life, if even the evils that would have been are condemned. Next, if the sacrament of baptism is provided for those whom God knew would have lived well if they had lived, why are not all kept alive in the life they will adorn with good works? Why do some even of the baptized, living long, live very badly, and sometimes even go as far as apostasy? Why did he not cast out of paradise beforehand the first couple of sinners, whom he certainly knew would sin, so that they would not commit there what was unworthy of so holy a place, if even sins not yet committed are justly punished? Finally, what is granted to one who is snatched away 'lest wickedness change his understanding and lest deceit beguile his soul', if those things too are justly punished which, though he did not do them, he would have done by living? Lastly, why is it not rather provided for the one who is going to die, and who would have lived badly if he had lived, to receive the washing of regeneration, so that the sins he would have committed may be remitted in baptism? For who is so senseless as to deny that those things can be forgiven through baptism which he says can be punished without baptism?

But in arguing against those who, convicted on every side, try to persuade us that God is the avenger even of sins not committed, we must fear lest we be thought to invent these things against them, and lest they be believed in no way so dull as to think these things or try to persuade anyone of them. Yet I would not have thought them worth refuting if I had not heard them say these things. For they are hemmed in both by the authority of the divine readings and by the firm rite of the Church, handed down and kept from of old, in the baptism of little children, in which it is most plainly shown that infants, both when they are exorcized and when they answer through those who carry them that they renounce him, are set free from the dominion of the devil; and not finding where to go, they rush into headlong folly, rather than change their opinion.

They do indeed seem to themselves to say something very acute: 'How does sin pass to the children of believers, when we do not doubt it has been forgiven in the parents through baptism?' As if carnal generation could therefore not have what only spiritual regeneration takes away! Or is the weakness of the concupiscence of the flesh healed at once in baptism, as its guilt is at once abolished, but by the grace of being reborn, not by the condition of being born? Hence whoever is born through this concupiscence, even of one reborn, will beyond doubt be harmed by it, unless he too is likewise reborn. But whatever difficulty there is in this question, in the field of Christ it does not prevent his workers from baptizing infants for the remission of sins, whether they are born of unbelievers or believers; just as it does not prevent farmers from turning wild olives into olives by the care of grafting, whether they spring from wild olives or from olives. For if this question were put to a countryman for him to answer, what is the reason why, though the olive is one thing and the wild olive another, nothing but a wild olive grows from the seed of either, he does not omit the work of grafting even if he cannot solve this question. Otherwise, while he supposes that the shoots sprung from the seed of the olive are nothing but olives, he would by the sloth of his vanity make that whole field run wild in bitter barrenness.

For what they devised when pressed by the weight of truth (that the Lord is faithful in his words, and therefore his Church in no way baptizes little children deceitfully for the remission of sins, but, so that what is done is done in faith, what is said certainly happens), what they devised, then, when this most evident mass of truth pressed on them, what Christian would not laugh at, however very cunning he sees it to be? For they say that little children truly answer through the mouths of those who carry them that they believe in the remission of sins, not because sins are remitted to them, but because they believe that sins are remitted in the Church or in baptism to those in whom they are found, not to those in whom there are none. And therefore they will not have them baptized for the remission of sins as if the remission takes place in them, since they contend that they have no sin, but because, though without sin, they are nevertheless baptized in that baptism in which remission of sins takes place in all sinners.

It may indeed be that this shifty cunning could be refuted more subtly and sharply at leisure. Yet with this cleverness of theirs they find nothing to answer to the fact that infants are exorcized and breathed upon. For this is certainly done deceitfully if the devil does not rule over them; but if he does rule over them, and therefore they are not exorcized and breathed upon deceitfully, through what does he rule, if not through sin, being indeed the prince of sinners? Accordingly, if they now blush and do not dare to say that these things are done falsely in the Church, let them confess that what was lost is sought even in little children. For it was lost only because of sin, and it cannot be sought, cannot be found, except through grace. But thanks be to God that at least, while arguing against the remission of sins so that it may not be believed to take place in little children, they nevertheless now confess that little children believe, though through the hearts and mouths of their elders. Just as, then, they hear the Lord saying, 'Whoever is not reborn of water and the Spirit will not enter the kingdom of heaven', for which reason they concede that they are to be baptized, so let them hear the same Lord saying, 'Whoever does not believe will be condemned'; for just as they confess that they are reborn through the ministry of those who baptize, so they confess that they believe through the hearts and mouths of those who answer. Let them dare, then, to say that an innocent will be condemned by a just God, if he is entangled in no bond of original sin.

If this discourse is long and burdensome to your occupations, forgive me; for in order to write this to you and, prompted by your letter, the token of your kindness toward us, to converse with you on these things, I too did violence to myself by interrupting my occupations. If you learn of any other things they devise against the Catholic faith, and whatever you too argue against them with faithful and truly pastoral love, so that they may not lay waste the weak of the Lord's flock, let us know. For by the restlessness of heretics our diligence is roused, as from the sleep of sloth, to search the Scriptures more vigilantly for the means by which they can be met, so that they may not harm the fold of Christ. So, through the manifold grace of the Saviour, God turns to our help even what the enemy contrives for our ruin, since for those who love him all things work together for good.

At all times I have revered Your Blessedness with fitting honour and have loved the Lord the Saviour dwelling in you; but now, if possible, we add something to the heap and fill up what is full, so that we do not let even a single hour pass without mention of your name, you who have stood firm with ardent faith against the blowing winds and preferred, as far as it lay with you, to be set free from Sodom alone rather than to stay with those who were perishing. Your prudence knows what I mean. Well done! You are celebrated throughout the world. Catholics revere and embrace you as the restorer of the ancient faith, and, what is a sign of greater glory, all heretics detest you, and they persecute me with equal hatred, so that those whom they cannot kill with swords they kill in wish. May the clemency of Christ the Lord keep you safe and mindful of me, venerable lord and most blessed father.