Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 12 part 10/10

so praised him that he said not even by his enemies could anything be found in his books to be reprehended. Since, then, the Pelagians say that there is no original sin with which infants are born, and cast the charge of the Manichaean heresy at the Catholics who withstand them on behalf of the most ancient and most firm faith of the Church, let Ambrose answer them on this matter—a Catholic man of God, praised by Pelagius himself in the truth of the faith. Who, when he was expounding the prophet Isaiah, said: For that reason Christ was immaculate, because not even was He stained by the usual condition of being born. And in another place in the same work, speaking of the apostle Peter, he says: He offered himself.

He asked that what he had formerly thought to be sin might be washed for him—not only his feet, but his head as well—because he had at once understood that by the washing of the feet is abolished the filth of that liable succession by which those who fell in the first man are stained. Likewise in the same work he says: 'It has therefore been so ordained that from man and woman—that is, through that commingling of bodies—no one should be seen to be free of transgression; but whoever is free of transgression is also free of a conception of this kind.' Likewise, writing against the Novatians, he says: 'All men are born under sin, whose very origin is in fault, as you have read where David says: Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in transgressions did my mother bring me forth.' Likewise in the Apology of the prophet David:

He says: 'Before we are born we are stained by contagion, and before we enjoy the light we receive the injury of our very origin; we are conceived in iniquity.' Likewise, speaking of the Lord, he says: 'For it was fitting that He who was not to have the sin of bodily lapse should feel no natural contagion of generation.' Rightly therefore did David tearfully bewail in himself the very defilements of nature, and that in man the stain should begin sooner than life. Likewise in On the Ark of Noah he says: 'Through the one Lord Jesus salvation is declared to be coming to the nations—He who alone could be righteous, when all generation went astray, being born of a virgin, He who was in no way held bound by the privilege of a liable generation.'

'Behold,' he says, 'I was conceived in iniquities, and in transgressions did my mother bring me forth'—these are the words of one who was reckoned righteous above the rest. Whom then should I now call righteous, save one free of these bonds, one whom the bonds of common nature do not hold? Behold a holy man, most highly approved in the catholic faith even by the testimony of Pelagius himself, who with such manifest evidence refutes the Pelagians denying original sin—and yet does not, like the Manicheans, deny God as the maker of those being born, nor accuse the marriage which God instituted and blessed. The Pelagians say that merit begins from man through free will, and that God, following after, repays with the help of grace.

Let the venerable Ambrose here too refute them, saying in his Exposition of the prophet Isaiah: 'Since human care is weak to heal without divine aid, it requires God as helper.' Likewise in the book entitled On Fleeing the World he says: 'Frequent is our discourse about fleeing this world—and would that our affection were as cautious and earnest as our discourse is easy! But what is worse, often the enticement of earthly desires creeps in, and the fog of vanities occupies the mind, so that what you strive to avoid, this you ponder and turn over in your soul. This is hard for a man to guard against, and impossible to strip away. In short, the prophet testifies that it is a matter more of prayer than of achievement, saying: Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not unto covetousness.'

For it is not by our own power that our heart and our thoughts—which, unforeseen, pour over the mind and soul, confound them, and drag them elsewhere than you had purposed—recall us to worldly things, insert mundane concerns, thrust in pleasures, weave in enticements; and at the very time when we make ready to lift up the mind, we are for the most part cast down to earthly things by vain thoughts that intrude. Who then is so blessed that in his heart he always ascends? But how can this be done without divine aid? By no means at all. Indeed the same Scripture says above: 'Blessed is the man whose help is from thee, O Lord; ascent is in his heart.' What can be said more plainly and more sufficiently?

But lest the Pelagians perhaps reply that, by the very fact that divine aid is sought, man's merit goes before—saying that this very thing is a merit, because by praying he becomes worthy of the divine grace to succor him—let them attend to what this same holy man says in his Exposition of Isaiah: 'And to pray to God is itself a spiritual grace; for no one says Lord Jesus except in the Holy Spirit.' Whence also, expounding the Gospel according to Luke, he says: 'You surely see that everywhere the Lord's power cooperates with human endeavors, so that no one can build without the Lord, no one keep watch without the Lord, no one begin anything without the Lord.'

Does the great Ambrose, because he says these things and commends the grace of God with grateful piety, as befits a son of promise, thereby destroy free will? Or does he wish that grace to be understood which the Pelagians, by their various expressions, refuse to regard as anything but the law—so that, namely, God is believed to help us not to do what we have come to know, but only to know what we should do? If they think this man of God holds such a view, let them hear what he says of the law itself. In the book On Fleeing the World he says: 'The law was able to stop every mouth, but not to convert the mind.' Likewise elsewhere in the same book he says: 'The law condemns the deed, it does not take away malice.' Let them see this faithful and catholic man agreeing with the Apostle when he says:

'We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God; because by the law no flesh shall be justified in his sight.' For from this apostolic sense Ambrose took and wrote those words. Now further, since the Pelagians say that in this life there are or have been righteous men who lived without any sin—so much so that the future life, which is to be hoped for as a reward, cannot be more advanced or more perfect—let Ambrose here too answer and refute them. For expounding the prophet Isaiah, on account of what is there written:

'I have begotten sons and exalted them, but they have despised me,' he undertook to discuss the generations that are from God, and in that very discussion he cited the testimony of John, where he says: 'Whosoever is born of God sinneth not.' And treating that most difficult question he says: 'Since in this world there is no one who is immune from sin—since John himself says: If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar—but if those born of God do not sin, and we understand this of those who are in this world innumerable, we must reckon them to be those who through the regeneration of the washing have obtained the grace of God. Yet nevertheless, since the prophet says: All wait upon thee, that thou mayest give them food in due season:

When thou givest to them, they gather; when thou openest thy hand, all things are filled with goodness; but when thou turnest away thy face, they are troubled. Thou takest away their spirit, and they fail and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, and they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth'—these may seem to be spoken not of any and every time, but of that future when there will be a new earth and a new heaven. 'They shall be troubled,' therefore, so as to take a beginning, 'and when thou openest thy hand all things shall be filled with goodness,' which is not easily of this age. For what does Scripture say of this age? 'There is none that doeth goodness, no, not one.'

If therefore the generations are diverse, and this entrance into this life is a receiver of transgressions—so much so that even he who begot is despised—while another generation does not receive sins, let us see whether our regeneration may perhaps be after the course of this life, that regeneration of which it was said: 'In the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory.'

For just as there is called a regeneration of the washing, by which, the pollution of sins being wiped away, we are renewed, so there seems to be called a regeneration by which, purified from all stain of bodily concretion, with the soul's sense made clean, we are regenerated into life eternal—because there is a certain purer quality of that regeneration than of this washing, so that not only into its acts, but not even into our very thoughts should any suspicion of sins fall. Likewise in another place in the same work he says: 'We see that it is impossible for anyone to be perfectly unstained while established in the body, since even Paul calls himself imperfect. For thus he says: Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect.' And yet a little later he says:

'As many of us therefore as are perfect'—unless perhaps because there is one perfection in this world, and another after that perfection of which he says to the Corinthians: 'When that which is perfect is come,' and elsewhere: 'Till we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' Just as, therefore, the Apostle says that many perfect ones are placed in this world—who, if you look to true perfection, could not be perfect, since he himself said: 'We see now through a glass darkly, but then face to face;

now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known'—so they are both unstained in this world and shall be unstained in the kingdom of God; whereas surely, if you examine more closely, no one can be unstained, since no one is without sin. Likewise in the same he says: 'You see that, while we live this life, we ought to cleanse ourselves and seek God and begin from the cleansing of our soul, and as it were lay the foundations of virtue, so that we may deserve to attain the perfection of purification after this life.' And again in the same: 'But burdened and groaning, who would not say: Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' Thus by the same teacher we have resolved all the varieties of interpretation.

For if everyone is wretched who recognizes himself entangled in the troubles of the body, then surely every body is wretched; nor indeed would I call him happy who, confounded by certain darknesses of his mind, does not know his own condition. This too has come to the understanding not absurdly: for if a man who knows himself is wretched, then surely all are wretched, since each one either recognizes his own infirmity through wisdom or, through folly, knows it not. Likewise in the book On the Good of Death he says: 'Let death therefore work in us, that life also may work—a good life after death, that is, a good life after victory, a good life when the contest is finished, so that now the law of the flesh may not know how to fight against the law of the mind, so that now we may have no strife with the body of death.'

Again in the same work he says: 'Since therefore the righteous have this reward, that they may see the face of God and that light which enlightens every man, let us henceforth put on this kind of zeal, that our soul may draw near to God, that prayer may draw near, that our desire may cleave to him, that we may not separate ourselves from him. And here indeed, being placed here, let us by meditating, reading, and seeking be joined to God, and let us know him as far as we can. For here we know in part, because here all things are imperfect, there perfect; here we are little ones, there strong. We see now, he says, through a glass darkly, but then face to face.'

Then, with unveiled face, it will be permitted to behold the glory of God, whom now souls—wrapped in the compacted inward parts of this body and overshadowed by certain stains and pollutions of this flesh—cannot see purely. 'For who,' he says, 'shall see my face and live?' And rightly so; for if our eyes cannot bear the rays of the sun, and if anyone gazes too long straight at the sun he is wont to be blinded—if a creature cannot behold a creature without harm and offense to itself, how can one, covered by the cast-off garments of this body, without peril to himself, discern the quivering face of the eternal Creator?

For who is justified in the sight of God, when not even an infant of a single day can be clean from sin, and no one can boast of the integrity and chastity of his own heart? It would be far too long, were I willing to recount all that holy Ambrose said and wrote against this heresy of the Pelagians which was to arise so long afterward—not indeed answering them, but preaching the catholic faith and building men up in it.

But neither could I, nor ought I, recount all those things which Cyprian, most glorious in the Lord, set down in his letters, whereby it may be demonstrated how this faith which we hold is the true faith, truly Christian and catholic—as it was of old handed down through the holy Scriptures, so was it kept and preserved by our fathers even to this present time, in which these men have attempted to tear it apart, and henceforth, with God's favor, is to be kept and preserved.

For that it was thus handed down to Cyprian and by Cyprian, the testimonies of this kind brought forth from his letters bear witness; and that it was thus preserved even to our times, the writings which Ambrose composed on these matters—before these men began to boil up—make plain, and that catholic ears, which are everywhere, have shuddered at their profane novelties; and that it is henceforth to be so preserved, the condemnation of some of these men and the correction of others have quite salutarily declared. For whatever they may dare to mutter against the sound faith of Cyprian and Ambrose, I do not think they will burst out into so great a fury as to dare call those remembered and memorable men of God Manicheans.

What then is it that, with the raging blindness of their mind, they now boast that 'a dogma no less foolish than impious has been received throughout the whole West'—when in fact, by the Lord's mercy, mercifully governing his own Church, the catholic faith has kept such vigil that a dogma no less foolish than impious, just as that of the Manicheans, so also that of these men, might not be received? Behold, holy and learned men, with the reputation of the whole Church attesting them catholic, praise—with due and fitting proclamations—both the creature of God, and the marriage instituted by him, and the law given by him through holy Moses, and the free will implanted in man's nature, and the holy patriarchs and prophets—all of which five things the Manicheans, partly by denying, partly even by detesting, condemn.

Whence it appears that these catholic teachers are far removed from the notions of the Manicheans. And yet they assert original sin; they assert that the grace of God goes before every merit of free will, so as to furnish a truly gratuitous divine help; they assert that the saints have so lived righteously in this flesh that they had need of the help of prayer, whereby their daily sins might be forgiven; and that perfect righteousness, which can have no sin, will be in another life the reward for those who have here lived righteously. What then is it that they say: 'A subscription was extorted from simple bishops sitting in their own places without the assembly of a synod'?

Was a writing extorted from those most blessed men, most excellent in the catholic faith, Cyprian and Ambrose—before these men, and against these men—who overthrow their impious dogmas with such manifest evidence that we can scarcely find things to say more manifest against them? Or indeed was there need of the assembly of a synod for an open pestilence to be condemned? As if no heresy has ever been condemned except by the assembly of a synod—when rather very rarely are found those for whose condemnation such necessity has arisen, and far and incomparably more numerous are those which, where they arose, there deserved to be reproved and condemned, and thence could become known to the rest of the lands as things to be avoided.

But the pride of these men, which so exalts itself against God that it wishes to glory not in him but rather in free will, is understood to be grasping also at this glory: that on their account a synod of the East and the West should be assembled.

For since, the Lord resisting them, they cannot pervert the catholic world, they at least attempt to disturb it—whereas rather, with pastoral vigilance and diligence, after a competent and sufficient judgment has been passed concerning them, wherever these wolves appear they are to be crushed, whether that they may be healed and changed, or that they may be shunned for the safety and integrity of others; with the help of the Shepherd of shepherds, who seeks the lost sheep even among the little ones, who makes the sheep holy and righteous by grace, who—though they be sanctified and justified—yet in this frailty and infirmity, for the daily sins without which one does not live here even when one lives well, providently instructs them to ask for daily remission and mercifully hears them when they ask.

There follow four books which I wrote against two letters of the Pelagians to Boniface, bishop of the Roman church; for when these had come into his hands, he himself had sent them to me, finding my name slanderously inserted in them. This work thus begins: 'I had known you indeed by fame most widely proclaiming you.'