Letters 216.1–217.15

We received the venerable letter and the book of Your Holiness with such a trembling heart that, just as the blessed Elijah, when he stood at the entrance of the cave, veiled his face as the glory of the Lord passed by, so we covered our rebuked eyes, because through the boorishness of our brothers we blushed at our own judgment. Because of their disorderly departure we were afraid to greet Your Blessedness, since there is a time to speak and a time to be silent, lest, if we wrote through men who were doubting and wavering about the truth, we should seem to doubt, with the doubters, the words of your wisdom, which is like the wisdom of an angel of God. For we had no need to inquire about Your Blessedness and wisdom, which is known to us by the Lord's grace. For we were so eagerly delighted with the book of Your most sweet Holiness that, just as the apostles did not dare to ask the Lord, as he ate with them after the resurrection, who he was (for they knew it was Jesus), so we neither wished nor dared to ask about the book, whether it was by Your Holiness, since the very faithful grace that is generously commended in it testifies to us in most lively words that it is yours, holy lord pope.

Let us begin, most blessed lord pope, to set out the course of the disturbance itself. Our dearest brother Florus, the servant of Your Paternity, having set out, at the urging of love, to his home town of Uzalis, brought to the monastery, as blessings, during his stay in his city, some of the works of Your Holiness, one brother, Felix, who is known to have come to Your Holiness after his companions, devoutly dictating that same book. The book came to the monastery while brother Florus had set out from the city of Uzalis to Carthage. Without the book being shown to me, they began to read it aloud to unlearned brothers. It disturbed the hearts of some who did not understand; just as, when the Lord said, “He who does not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood will not have life in himself,” those who understood it impiously departed, not through the fault of the Lord who spoke but through the hardness of their most impious heart.

The brothers mentioned, who overturned everything, began to disturb the souls of the innocent, my littleness being utterly unaware, so far was I ignorant of their murmuring gatherings, that, had not brother Florus, returning from Carthage and recognizing their disturbances, anxiously told me … there was a stealthy and, as it were, servile dispute among them about the truth they did not understand. To remove these impious questions, I proposed that we should send to the holy father, lord Evodius, so that he might write back to us something more certain about this most sacred book, for the sake of the unlearned. They would not accept even this patiently, but seized on a departure we did not at all wish, brother Florus being almost overwhelmed by their fury; they raged against him because, as they thought, he had brought them the wounds of this book, in which, being sick, they could not recognize the medicine. Hence we also asked the holy presbyter Sabinus, for greater authority, and His Holiness read the book with clear explanations. Not even so was the wounded soul cured. Out of that very devotion we gave them their expenses, so as not to add to their wounds, which the grace of the book itself, in which your holy presence shines, could heal. When they had left, quiet and peace rejoiced in the Lord among all the brothers. For this dispute arose from the animosity of five brothers or a few more.

But since sometimes, lord pope, joy comes from sorrow, we are not so saddened, because through these ignorant and curious men we have been found worthy to be enlightened by the most gentle admonitions of Your Holiness. For the doubt of the blessed apostle Thomas, seeking the holes of the nails, was the strengthening of the universal Church. So we received, lord pope, the medicine of your devoutly healing letter with its grace, and we beat our breasts, so that at least in this way our conscience might be healed, which grace heals and gives life through our free will, the gift of mercy; but this is in the present time, while we still sing of mercy, in the time of delay. For when we begin to sing of judgment to the Lord, we shall receive the reward for our work, because the Lord is merciful and just, compassionate and upright; because, as Your Holiness teaches us, we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil; because the Lord will come and his reward with him; because a man will stand and his work before him; because the Lord will come like a burning oven to burn up the ungodly like stubble, and for those who fear the name of the Lord the sun of righteousness will rise, when the ungodly are punished by the judgment of righteousness. This the righteous man, whose friend you are, lord pope, cries out, trembles, and humbly says: “Lord, do not enter into judgment with your servant.” If it were the grace of one who rewards, the righteous man would not fear the tribunal of the majesty of judgment. This is the faith of your servant Florus, father, not as those brothers said. In person they heard him say that the gift of godliness is given not according to our merits but through the grace of the Redeemer; for who would doubt that on that day grace is far away, when justice has begun to be angry? This we cry out, father; this, as you teach us, we sing, not secure but trembling: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor chasten me in your wrath.” This we say: “Correct us, Lord, and teach us out of your law, that you may give us rest from evil days.” This we believe, venerable father, as you teach, that the Lord examines the righteous and the ungodly, that, with the good and the evil set on the right and on the left, he credits the works of godliness to be rewarded and lists the obstinacy of ungodliness to be punished. Where will grace be when works, both good and evil, are reckoned according to their quality?

But why is a lie not afraid to be put forward openly? We do not deny free will healed by the grace of God; but we believe that it makes progress through the daily grace of Christ, and we trust that it is helped. And men say, “It is in my power to do good.” If only men did good! O empty boasting of the wretched! Every day they are convicted of sins, and yet they claim for themselves, boasting of bare free will, without examining their conscience, which cannot be healed except by grace, so as to say, “Have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.” What would those who boast of free will (which is not denied, provided it is with God's help) do if death had already been swallowed up in victory, if our mortal nature had already put on immortality and our corruptible nature had put on incorruption? Look, the wounds stink, and the medicine is proudly sought. They do not say, as the righteous man does, “Unless the Lord had helped me, my soul would soon have dwelt in hell”; they do not say, as the holy man does, “Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.”

But pray, most devout father, that we may have no care except to expiate our sin with tears and to commend the grace of God; pray, lord father, that the pit may not close its mouth over us, that we may be saved from those who go down into the pit, that our soul may not perish with the ungodly through our pride, but be healed through the Lord's grace. So, as you commanded, lord pope, our brother Florus, the servant of Your Holiness, has set out with all eagerness; the fatigue does not hinder him but profits him, so that a clearer instruction of heart may come to him. We humbly commend him to Your Holiness, and likewise ask that you commend the ignorant too to the Lord in your prayers, to be most gently set right. Pray, lord and sweetest father, that the devil may flee from our community, and that, every storm of strange questions removed, the ship of our way of life, laden with passengers of quiet, may stand secure within the shelter of a most safe harbor while it sails through this great and boundless sea; and that in that harbor, within which the voyage of life will no longer be fearful, it may receive the agreed price of its pleasing wares. This we trust we shall obtain by the help of Your Holiness, through the grace that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We beg you to be good enough to greet with our respects all the sons of your apostolate, our lords the clergy, and the holy ones serving in the community of our way of life, so that all, with Your Blessedness, may be good enough to pray for us. May the undivided Trinity of the Lord our God preserve for us in his Church your holy apostolate, which he chose by grace, and, mindful of us, crown it in the great Church, which we desire, lord. And if brother Florus, the servant of Your Holiness, suggests anything for the rule of the monastery, we ask you, father, to be good enough to receive it willingly and to instruct us, weak as we are, in all things.

Since reports about you that were not good had reached me, I both asked God, and still ask him until good reports reach me, that you may receive my letter without scorn and read it to your profit. If he hears this prayer of mine for you, he also grants that I may offer thanksgiving concerning you. And if I obtain this, you will certainly not contradict this very beginning of my letter. For this is what I pray for you: that you may be of right faith. If, then, it does not displease you that we pray this for those dear to us, if you recognize this prayer as Christian, if you too remember praying such things for those dear to you, or recognize that you ought to pray them, how can you say what I hear you say, that our believing rightly in God and assenting to the gospel is not a gift of God, but that we have this from ourselves, that is, from our own will, which he himself has not worked in our heart? And when you hear in reply, “What, then, does the apostle mean when he says, ‘God works in us both to will’?” you answer that God works in us to will through his law, through his Scriptures, which we either read or hear; but that assenting or not assenting to them is so much ours that, if we will, it happens, but if we do not will, we make God's working of no effect in us. “He works, indeed,” you say, “as far as is in him, that we may will, when his words become known to us; but if we refuse to acquiesce in them, we bring it about that his working profits us nothing.” If you say this, you certainly contradict our prayers.

Say, then, quite openly that we ought not to pray for those to whom we preach the gospel, that they may believe, but only preach to them. Direct your arguments against the prayers of the Church; and when you hear the priest of God at God's altar exhorting the people of God to pray for unbelievers, that God may convert them to the faith; and for catechumens, that he may inspire in them the desire for regeneration; and for the faithful, that by his gift they may persevere in what they have begun to be: mock these devout words, and say that you do not do what he exhorts, that is, that you do not ask God for unbelievers that he may make them believers, because these are not benefits of divine mercy but duties of the human will. And, though a man educated in the church of Carthage, condemn also the book of the most blessed Cyprian on the Lord's Prayer, in expounding which that teacher showed that those things are to be asked of God the Father which you say man has from man, that is, from himself.

But if you think what I have said of the prayers of the Church and of the martyr Cyprian is too little, dare greater things: rebuke the apostle Paul, because he said, “We pray to God that you may do no evil.” For you will not say that he does no evil who does not believe in Christ, or who deserts the faith of Christ. And so he who says, “That you may do no evil,” does not wish these things to happen, and it is not enough for him to command it, but he confesses that he asks God that they may not happen, knowing that man's will is corrected and directed by him so as not to do them. For “the steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will will his way.” He did not say, “and he will learn his way,” or “keep it,” or “walk in it,” or anything of the kind which you could say is given indeed by the Lord, but to a man already willing; so that, of course, man would precede by his own will the benefit of God by which he directs a man's steps to learn, keep, and walk his way, and would merit this gift of God by his preceding will. But he said, “The steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will will his way,” so that we might understand that the very good will by which we begin to will to believe (for what is the way of God if not right faith?) is the gift of him who first directs our steps precisely so that we may will. For Scripture does not say, “The steps of a man are directed by the Lord because he willed his way,” but, “They are directed,” it says, “and he will will it.” So it is not because he willed that they are directed, but because they are directed that he will will.

Here you will perhaps say again that this is done by the Lord when his teaching is read or heard, if a man assents by his own will to the truth that he reads or hears. “For if the teaching of God were hidden from him,” you say, “his steps would not be directed so that, once directed, he would will the way of God.” And so you think that a man's steps are directed by the Lord to choose the way of God only in the sense that without God's teaching the truth cannot become known to him for him to assent to it by his own will. “And if he assents to it,” you say, “which is placed in his free choice, his steps are certainly rightly said to be directed by him, so that he wills his way, whose teaching he follows, persuasion preceding and assent following; which by natural freedom he does if he wills, and does not do if he does not will, and he will receive reward or punishment for what he has done.” This is that notorious opinion of the Pelagians, deservedly condemned, and condemned even by Pelagius himself, fearing to be condemned, at the trial before the Eastern bishops, by which they say that the grace of God is not given for individual acts, but consists in free will or in the law and teaching. And shall we be so heavy of heart, brother, as to hold concerning the grace of God, or rather against the grace of God, that Pelagian opinion which Pelagius himself, with a feigned heart indeed but still fearing the Catholic judges, condemned?

“And how,” you will say, “is this to be answered?” How do you think more easily and plainly than by so embracing what we discussed above about praying to God that no creeping in of forgetfulness may take it from our mind and no cleverness of argument wrest it away? For consider what is written: “The steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will will his way,” and “The will is prepared by the Lord,” and “For it is God who works in you both to will,” and many such texts, by which the true grace of God is commended, that is, the grace that is not given according to our merits but gives the merits themselves when it is given, because it goes before a man's good will and does not find it in anyone's heart but makes it. If, then, God so prepared and so worked a man's will that he merely applied his law and teaching to his free choice, and did not by that deep and secret calling so move his mind as to bring it to assent to that same law and teaching, it would certainly be enough to read it, or to understand it by reading, or even to expound and preach it, and there would be no need to pray that God would convert the hearts of unbelievers to his faith, and grant to the converted, by the generosity of the same grace of his, a perseverance that makes progress. If, then, you do not refuse that these things are to be asked of the Lord, what remains, brother Vitalis, but that you confess that they are given by him of whom you agree they are to be asked? But if you deny that we ought to ask these things of him, you contradict his very teaching, since in it too we have learned to ask these things of him.

You know the Lord's Prayer, and I do not doubt that you say to God, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” and the rest. Read its expositor, the most blessed Cyprian, and attend carefully and understand obediently how he expounded what is said there: “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” He will certainly teach you to pray for the unbelieving enemies of the Church, according to the command of the Lord who says, “Pray for your enemies,” and to pray this: that God's will may be done, as in those who are already believers and bear the image of the heavenly man and are therefore worthy of the name of heaven, so also in those who through unbelief bear only the image of the earthly man and for this reason are rightly called earth. Surely these, the enemies for whom the Lord commanded us to pray, and for whom the most glorious martyr so expounded what we say in the prayer, “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth,” that we ask for them too the faith that believers have; surely, I say, these enemies of Christian godliness either refuse altogether to hear the law and teaching of God by which the faith of Christ is preached, or hear or even read it only to mock and detest it and blaspheme it with all the contradiction they can. So we pour out prayers to God for them, that they may assent by believing to the teaching they oppose, emptily and perfunctorily rather than truly, if it does not belong to his grace to convert to his faith the wills of men that are contrary to that faith; and emptily and perfunctorily rather than truly do we give great thanks to God with rejoicing when some of them believe, if he himself does not do this in them.

Let us not deceive men; for we cannot deceive God. We certainly do not pray to God, but only pretend to pray, if we believe that we ourselves, not he, do what we pray for; we certainly do not give thanks to God, but only pretend to, if we do not think that he does what we thank him for. If deceitful lips are found in any human conversations, at least let them not be found in prayers. Far be it from us to deny in our hearts that God does what we ask him to do with our mouths and voices; and, what is worse, not to keep silent about this in our arguments, so as to deceive others too; and, while we wish to defend free will before men, to lose before God the help of prayer, and not to have true thanksgiving, while we do not acknowledge true grace.

If we truly wish to defend free will, let us not attack that by which it is made free. For he who attacks the grace by which our will is freed to turn away from evil and do good wishes his own will to remain captive still. Answer, I beg you: how does the apostle say, “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for a share in the lot of the saints in light, who has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love,” if it is not he who frees our will, but the will frees itself? Then we lie in giving thanks to the Father, as though he did what he does not do, and the apostle erred in saying that he makes us fit for a share in the lot of the saints in light, because he has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love. Answer: how did we have free will to turn away from evil and do good when it was under the power of darkness? If, as the apostle says, God rescued us from there, he certainly made it free. And if he does so great a good of ours only by the preaching of his teaching, what shall we say of those whom he has not yet rescued from that power of darkness? Is divine teaching only to be preached to them, or is prayer also to be made for them, that they may be rescued by God from the power of darkness? If you say that it is only to be preached, you contradict the Lord's command and the prayers of the Church; but if you confess that prayer is to be made for them, you certainly confess that prayer is to be made that, with their will freed from the power of darkness, they may assent to that same teaching. So it comes about that they become believers only by free will, and yet become believers by the grace of him who freed their will from the power of darkness. In this way neither is the grace of God denied, but it is shown to be true, without any preceding human merits; and free will is so defended that it is made firm by humility, not cast down by pride; and he who boasts boasts not in man, whether another or himself, but in the Lord.

For what is the power of darkness if not the power of the devil and his angels, who, though they had been angels of light, did not stand in the truth by free will, but falling from it became darkness? I do not teach you these things, but remind you of what you know, so that you may remember. To this power of darkness, then, the human race became subject through the fall of him, the first man, to whom transgression was suggested by that power, and in whom we all fell. For this reason even little children are rescued from this power of darkness when they are reborn in Christ. Nor does this appear in their freed will until they reach the years of an age that uses reason, having a will that assents to the saving teaching in which they were brought up, and ending this life in it, if they were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love, predestined to adoption as sons.

This power of darkness, that is, the devil, who is also called the prince of the power of the air, works in the sons of unbelief; this prince, the ruler of darkness, that is, the devil, rules the sons of unbelief according to his will, a will that he himself does not have free for doing good, but hardened to the greatest malice by the punishment of his crime. Hence no one of sound faith believes or says that these apostate angels will ever be converted, with their will corrected, to their former godliness. What, then, does this power work in the sons of unbelief if not his own evil works, and first and above all unbelief and faithlessness itself, by which they are enemies of the faith through which he knows they can be cleansed, can be healed, can reign in eternity as most perfectly free, which he greatly envies them? So he allows some of them, through whom he aims to deceive more, to have certain seemingly good works, for which those are praised among all peoples, and above all among the Roman people, who lived splendidly and gloriously. But since, as the most truthful Scripture says, “whatever is not from faith is sin,” and “without faith it is impossible to please” God (not men), this prince does nothing so much as to bring it about that men do not believe in God, nor come by believing to the Mediator, by whom his works are destroyed.

But the Mediator himself enters the strong man's house, that is, this world of mortals, set, as far as the devil is concerned, under his power; for of him it is written that he has the power of death. He enters the strong man's house, that is, the house of him who holds the human race in his dominion, and first binds him, that is, restrains and checks his power by the stronger bonds of his own power, and so plunders his goods, whichever he has predestined to plunder, freeing their will from his power, so that, without his hindering, they may believe in Christ with free will. Accordingly, this is the work of grace, not of nature: the work, I say, of the grace which the second Adam brought us, not of the nature which the first Adam lost entirely in himself. It is the work of grace, which takes away sin and gives life to the dead sinner, not the work of the law, which shows sin and does not give life from sin; for that great preacher of grace says, “I did not know sin except through the law,” and, “If a law had been given that could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law.” This is the work of grace, by which those who receive it, even if they were enemies, become friends of the saving teaching of the holy Scriptures; not the work of that same teaching, of which those who hear and read it without the grace of God become worse enemies.

So the grace of God does not consist in the nature of free will and in the law and teaching, as Pelagian perversity foolishly holds, but is given for individual acts by the will of him of whom it is written, “God setting apart a voluntary rain for his inheritance”; because we lost free will for loving God by the greatness of the first sin, and the law and teaching of God, though holy and just and good, nevertheless kills if the Spirit does not give life, through whom it comes about that it is held not by hearing but by obeying, not by reading but by loving. Therefore, that we may believe in God and live devoutly, it depends not on the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who has mercy; not because we ought not to will and run, but because he himself works in us both to will and to run. Hence the Lord Jesus himself too, distinguishing believers from unbelievers, that is, vessels of mercy from vessels of wrath, said, “No one comes to me unless it has been granted him by my Father”; and indeed he said this when his disciples who afterward did not follow him had been scandalized at his teaching. So let us not say that grace is teaching, but let us acknowledge the grace that makes teaching profitable; for if this grace is lacking, we see that teaching even does harm.

Therefore God, as he foreknew all his future works in predestination, so arranged them that he converts some unbelievers to his faith by hearing the prayers of believers for them; by which those are refuted, and, if he is gracious to them, corrected, who think that the grace of God is the nature of free will with which we are born, or that the grace of God is teaching, however useful, which is preached through tongues and letters. For we do not pray for unbelievers that their nature may come to be, that is, that they may be human beings, or that teaching may be preached to them, which they hear to their own harm if they do not believe (and we often pray for those who, though they read or hear, refuse to believe); but we pray that the will may be corrected, that the teaching may be assented to, that nature may be healed.

Furthermore, believers also pray for themselves, that they may persevere in what they have begun to be. For it is useful to all, or almost all, for the sake of a most wholesome humility, that they cannot know what they will be. To this end it is said, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” Because of the usefulness of this fear, lest, having been reborn and begun to live devoutly, we should think highly of ourselves as though secure, some who will not persevere are mixed, by God's permission or provision and arrangement, with those who will persevere; so that, alarmed by their fall, we may walk the righteous way with fear and trembling, until from this life, which is a trial on earth, we pass to the other, where there is no longer pride to be suppressed nor need to struggle against its suggestions and temptations ….

But on this question, that is, why some who will not persevere in Christian faith and holiness nevertheless receive this grace for a time and are allowed to live here until they fall, when they could be snatched from this life, lest wickedness change their understanding, as is written in the book of Wisdom of the holy man who died at an early age, let each inquire as best he can; and if he finds, besides the one I have given, another probable reason that does not depart from the rule of right faith, let him hold it, and I with him, if it does not escape me. But let us walk in what we have attained, until God reveals to us if we think otherwise in anything, as we are admonished in the apostolic letters. And we have attained those things which we know most firmly belong to the true and Catholic faith; in these we must so walk, with the help and mercy of him to whom we say, “Lead me, Lord, in your way, and I will walk in your truth,” that we may in no way stray from them.