Poem on the Ungrateful (Against the Enemies of Grace)

Contents

Reading pages: 1–481 · 511–961

1. 1Prosper's preface states the poem's theme, the origin of a holy will and of faith, and the poem opens with a prayer and with Pelagius's teaching that Adam was created mortal and passed on no guilt.
2. 31Prosper sets out the Pelagian teaching on nature, law, grace, and baptism, and then tells how the Fathers, led by Rome, condemned it.
3. 61Prosper recounts the condemnation of Pelagianism in the East (Pelagius's recantation in Palestine), by Jerome, by Atticus of Constantinople, at Ephesus, in Sicily, and in Africa.
4. 91Prosper praises the African councils against Pelagianism, led by Aurelius of Carthage, and above all Augustine, through whom grace answered the heresy everywhere.
5. 121Through Augustine's books God answered the Pelagians, but now new opponents arise within the church who place the power to do good in natural free will, and Prosper asks how they differ from the Pelagians.
6. 151Prosper accuses his opponents of secretly cherishing Pelagian views, and imagines the Pelagian exiles offering to accept original sin and infant baptism provided free choice be left unimpaired.
7. 181The Pelagians' speech ends with a plea for admission, and Prosper weighs how his opponents would answer, since admitting them would violate the decrees of the Fathers and the emperors, yet refusing them while tolerating the same views at home would be unjust.
8. 211The imagined Pelagians complain that they are excluded while others teach the same views freely, and Prosper turns to examine what Pelagius taught and what was condemned.
9. 241Prosper lists the Pelagian propositions condemned by councils, including the one Pelagius himself disowned in Palestine (grace given according to fitness), and begins to state his opponents' view that grace calls all but each responds by his own choice.
10. 271Prosper finishes stating his opponents' view of grace and free will, then asks how they can say grace passes over no one, when the gospel has not yet reached all lands.
11. 301Prosper argues that his opponents' account of the unreached nations agrees with the Pelagian view that grace is given according to merit, and asks why, if God wills all to be saved, not all are saved.
12. 331Prosper answers that grace does not merely advise, as the Law does, but changes and re-creates the heart, so that the growth of faith comes from grace alone, not from the preacher or the hearer.
13. 361Prosper quotes his opponents' claim that grace guards those it calls but that the will, informed by preaching, must first rouse itself, and objects that this leaves grace wholly outside man, acting only as a speaker or a book acts on a reader.
14. 391Grace, unlike preaching, which only knocks at the soul, completes its own work, giving life, light, and love; without faith even virtuous works are sin, so that grace is wholly free.
15. 421If grace rewarded merit it would choose only the just, but Christ came to seek the lost; deathbed converts baptized after wicked lives show that faith itself, and the will to be reborn, is grace's gift.
16. 451Faith, which creates the merit of the will, is born of God alone; Prosper attacks his opponents' view that seeking, asking, and believing before baptism are man's own, which makes grace a wage and no longer grace.
17. 481Prosper charges that his opponents, by making grace no more than law and teaching and by denying that Adam's fall wounded the soul, adopt the condemned Pelagian dogma, and he ironically invites them to draw its consequences.
18. 511Prosper ironically lays out the Pelagian conclusions his opponents' premises imply, including that infants need no inner cleansing, and calls on them instead to confess that fallen nature is wounded and can rise only by Christ's grace.
19. 541Prosper says his opponents belong with the Pelagians, then states that all fell in Adam, as Paul teaches, and that grace, not a judge of merits, alone leads to itself; he quotes his opponents' objection that this abolishes reward and punishment.
20. 571Prosper answers that all humanity, made in God's image, fell in Adam, so that the will is darkened and wounded; grace does not destroy choice but heals it, and man must feed on the tree of life rather than on the fruit of his own choice.
21. 601Restored nature and merit come from God as gift, which we return to him; infants, who have no merits, show this, since grace brings some to baptism and leaves others, apart from any merit of their parents.
22. 631Twins, one saved and one lost, show that grace distinguishes without merit; all are justly condemned in Adam, so no one may complain that not all are freed.
23. 661Those freed by grace do not complain that others are left but pray for them and learn how much they were forgiven; only the ungrateful complain, making salvation depend on their own choice, while the faithful owe all to Christ.
24. 691Why some are chosen and others left, though all are alike, is hidden, and faith does not pry; as with the calling of the Gentiles, the last day, and the unequal conditions of birth, the potter distinguishes his vessels.
25. 721Just as the unequal conditions of birth do not lead anyone to accuse the creator, so the hidden counsel of election is not to be pried into; with Paul, Prosper trembles and confesses God's judgment inscrutable but true and just.
26. 751Prosper warns the new people of God, grafted in by grace, not to be misled by the ascetic virtue of his opponents, who build on their own choice rather than on Christ the rock and cornerstone.
27. 781Prosper says his opponents reject Pelagianism in words while keeping its core; Pelagius at least showed his poison openly, while they confess original sin and infant baptism but deny that the soul was wounded.
28. 811Prosper reports his opponents' view that the will can see and do good, come to Christ by its own way, and persevere without God's help so that merit may be its own, and warns the faithful that Christ is their righteousness and all are born wounded.
29. 841The fallen soul, blinded, cannot even know its wound; the arts and sciences that remain to it cannot lead to true life, and if nature were unharmed Christ would have died in vain.
30. 871The depth of the fall is shown by the incarnation and death of the Word, by which alone captives are redeemed; the redeemed must not be proud of what nature retains or credit their recovered sight to free will, as the serpent persuaded Adam.
31. 901The serpent persuades men that the mind can love Christ by nature and that grace only repays merit; Prosper calls the faithful to confess that they are a new creation, members of Christ the head, from whom all their strength flows.
32. 931Like branches in the vine, believers bear fruit only in Christ; whatever good they do, they do by freedom, but freedom redeemed and moved by Christ's grace.
33. 961The poem ends with a prayer: God crowns his own gifts, yet this does not make human effort idle, since without him the will only strays; may our choice proceed from his help, and his will be done in us as a true sabbath rest.