Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 46 part 4/7

Not therefore, as you say — deceiving yourself and others — 'if anyone says either that there is free will in men or that God is the Creator of those who are born, he is called a Caelestian and a Pelagian' — for this the Catholic faith says — but rather: if anyone says that in men there is free will for rightly worshiping God without His help, and whoever so says that God is the Creator of those who are born as to deny that He is the Redeemer of little ones from the power of the devil — he himself is called a Pelagian and a Caelestian. Both of us therefore say that there is free will in men and that God is the Creator of those who are born; you are not Caelestians and Pelagians on this account.

But that anyone is free to do good without the help of God, and that the little ones are not rescued from the power of darkness and so transferred into the kingdom of God — this you say, and on this account you are Caelestians and Pelagians. Why do you hold out the covering of a common doctrine in order to deceive, so as to cloak your own crime, from which the name has been fastened upon you? And in order to terrify the unskilled with a wicked term, you say: 'Therefore, lest they be called heretics, they become Manichees.' Hear then briefly what is at issue in this question. The Catholics say that human nature, founded good by the good Creator God, but corrupted by sin, needs Christ the physician;

the Manichees say that human nature was not founded good by God and corrupted by sin, but that man was created by the prince of the eternal darkness from the mixture of two natures which always existed, one good and one evil; the Pelagians and Caelestians say that human nature was founded good by the good God, but that it is so healthy in newborn little ones that they do not need the medicine of Christ at that age. Recognize therefore your own name in your own doctrine, and cease to cast at the Catholics — by whom you are refuted — a doctrine and a name that are not theirs. For the Truth refutes both, the Manichees and you. For to the Manichees it says: 'Have you not read that He who made man from the beginning made them male and female?' And He said:

'For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.' Thus indeed He shows God to be, against the Manichees, both the Creator of men and the Joiner of spouses — both of which they deny. But to you He says: 'The Son of man came to seek and to save that which had perished.' But you, excellent Christians, answer Christ: If you came to seek and to save that which had perished, you did not come to the little ones — these had not perished and were born safe; go to the grown-up. From your own words we prescribe to you: 'The healthy do not need a physician, but those who are sick.'

So it comes about that the Manichee, who says an evil nature is mixed into man, wishes that at least from thence the good soul be saved by Christ; but you, in the little ones — since they are safe [in body] — contend that nothing is to be saved by Christ. And by this the Manichee indeed detestably disparages human nature, but you cruelly praise it. For whoever believes you, the praiser, will not offer their infants to the Savior. What does it profit you, who hold so wicked an opinion, not to fear what is done to you — so that you might fear it wholesomely, and make yourself to be a man and not a beast which is surrounded with feathers so that it may be driven into nets? It was necessary that you should hold to the truth and, by zeal for it, not be afraid;

but now you are so unafraid that, if you feared, you would rather escape the malignant nets than run into them. Mother Church terrifies you for this reason, because she fears both for you and for others on your account; and if, through her sons placed in some position of power, she brings it about that you should fear, she does not do this out of cruelty but out of charity. But you, most valiant man, think it cowardly to fear men. Fear God, then, and do not attempt with such obstinacy to overthrow the ancient foundations of the Catholic faith. Yet would that this spirited mind of yours might at least fear men in this cause; would, I say, that it might at least tremble at cowardice, rather than perish by audacity! Let us look at the rest that he connects. But what shall I do?

Shall I set forth his individual points, to which I may reply, or, passing over those which the Catholic faith contains, shall I treat and refute only those in which he strays from the path of truth and attempts to graft in the Pelagian heresy, like poisonous shoots among Catholic saplings? This indeed is certainly the briefer course. But I think it must be provided against, lest anyone, having read my book and not having read all that has been said by him, should suppose that I was unwilling to set forth those things upon which these opinions of his depend and from which, as though consequently, those things are shown to be true which I refute as false. Let it therefore not be irksome to the reader to attend to and consider all things inserted into this little work of ours — namely both the things which he said and the things which I myself answer.

Therefore the things which follow, the man who sent the little document to your Charity thus prefaced: 'Against those,' he says, 'who condemn marriage and assign its fruits to the devil.' It is not, then, against us, who neither condemn marriage — which we even praise in its own order with due proclamation — nor assign its fruits to the devil; for the fruits of marriage are human beings, who are begotten from it in an orderly manner — not the sins with which they are born. Nor are men under the devil for this reason, that they are men, where there is the fruit of marriage, but because they are sinners, where there is the offshoot of vices; for the devil is the author of fault, not of nature. Attend to the rest, in which he thinks himself, by this prefixed title, to be in harmony against us.

'God,' he says, 'who had fashioned Adam from the mud, constructed Eve from a rib and said: This one shall be called life, because she is the mother of all the living.' It is not indeed thus written, but what is that to us? For it is wont to happen that memory fails in the words, provided the sense be held. Nor did God impose Eve's name, that she should be called Life, but her husband did. For it is read thus: 'And Adam called the name of his wife Life, because she is the mother of all the living.' But perhaps he understood it thus, that God is believed to have imposed that name upon Eve through Adam, as though by prophecy.

For in this, that she is called Life and the mother of the living, there is a great sacrament of the Church, concerning which it would now be long to discourse and unnecessary to the work undertaken. For that also which the Apostle said: 'This sacrament is great; but I speak in Christ and in the Church' — Adam himself said: 'For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh.' Which nevertheless the Lord Jesus in the Gospel records that God said, because God assuredly said through the man what the man foretold by prophesying. Therefore consider what follows. 'By the first appellation,' he says, 'He showed for what work she had been prepared, and said: Increase and multiply and fill the earth.'

For which of us denies that woman was prepared by the Lord God, the good Creator of all good things, for the good work of childbearing? To this, see what he adds. 'God therefore,' he says, 'the Creator of male and of female, formed members suited for generations, and ordained that bodies be begotten from bodies, whose efficacy the power of His operation attended, administering everything that exists by that same virtue by which He founded it.' This too we confess to be Catholic, and what he then subjoins.

'If therefore,' he says, 'offspring come only through sex, sex only through body, body only through God, who would doubt that fecundity is rightly reckoned to God?' After these things, which were truly and Catholicly said — nay rather, truly written in the divine books, but not Catholicly said by this man, because they were not said with the intention of a Catholic breast — now, on account of the very thing for which he said them, the Pelagian and Caelestian heresy begins to be introduced. For attend to what follows. 'But you,' he says, 'who say:

"those who are born of whatever kind of parents, we do not deny are still under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ" — show now, therefore, what the devil recognizes as his own in the sexes, through which he may, as you say, rightly possess their fruit. The diversity of the sexes? But this is in the bodies which God made. The intermingling? But it is claimed by the privilege no less of blessing than of institution. For it is the voice of God: A man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh; it is the voice of God: Increase and multiply and fill the earth. Or perhaps fecundity itself? But it is the cause of the institution of marriage.'

You see, therefore, how he questions us: what the devil recognizes as his own in the sexes, through which those who are born of whatever kind of parents are under him unless they are reborn in Christ — whether we say the diversity of the sexes pertains to the devil, or the intermingling, or fecundity itself. We answer therefore: none of these; because the diversity of the sexes pertains to the vessels of those who beget, and the intermingling of both pertains to the sowing of children, and fecundity itself pertains to the blessing of marriage. But all these things are from God.

But this man, in all these things, was unwilling to name the concupiscence of the flesh, which is not from the Father but is from the world — of which world the devil is called the prince, who did not find it in the Lord, because the Lord, as man, did not come to men through it. Whence He Himself also says: 'Behold, the prince of this world comes, and in Me he finds nothing' — nothing, that is, of sin, neither what is drawn from the one being born nor what is added by the one living. This man was unwilling to name it among all those natural goods which he mentioned — that concupiscence on account of which even marriages are confounded, which glory in all these goods. For why is that work of the married withdrawn and hidden even from the eyes of children, unless because they cannot be in the praiseworthy intermingling without shameful lust?

Of this even those who first covered the shameful parts were ashamed — parts which before were not shameful, but rather to be proclaimed and glorified as works of God. They covered them, then, when they were ashamed; but they were ashamed when, after their own disobedience, they felt their members disobedient. Of this even this praiser was ashamed; for he mentioned the diversity of the sexes, he mentioned the intermingling, he mentioned fecundity, but he was too modest to mention that. Nor is it any wonder if it shames the praisers, since we see it shames the very ones begetting. But he adds and says: 'Through what, then, are those under the devil whom God made?' And he answers himself, as though in our voice: 'Through sin,' he says, 'not through nature.'

Then, referring his own to our reply, he says: 'But just as there cannot be offspring without the sexes, so neither can there be a fault without the will.' It is indeed so, it is so; for thus 'through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed unto all men, in whom all sinned.' Through the one evil will of that one, all sinned in him, when all were that one man, from whom therefore the individuals drew original sin. 'For you say,' he says, 'that they are under the devil for this reason, because they are born of the intermingling of both sexes.' I say plainly that they are under the devil on account of the fault;

and I say that they are not free from the fault for this reason: because they are born of that intermingling which cannot, even in what is honorable, operate without shameful lust. This also Ambrose, bishop of the church of Milan, of most blessed memory, said, when he affirmed that the carnal nativity of Christ was free from fault for this reason, that His conception is free from the intermingling of both sexes; but that no one of men who has been conceived of that intermingling is without fault. For his words are these: 'Therefore,' he says, 'even as man He was tempted in all things, and in the likeness of men He endured all things; but because He was born of the Spirit, He abstained from sin. For every man is a liar, and no one is without sin except the one God.

It was therefore ensured,' he says, 'that from man and woman — that is, through that intermingling of bodies — no one should be seen to be free from fault. But whoever is free from fault is also free from this manner of conception.' Will you dare, O Pelagians and Caelestians, to call even this man a Manichee? — the man whom the heretic Jovinian used to say was a Manichee, against whose impiety that holy man defended the virginity of holy Mary remaining even after the birth. If therefore you dare not call him a Manichee, why, since in the same cause we defend the Catholic faith with the same opinion, do you call us Manichees?

Or if you boast that even that most faithful man held this opinion according to the Manichees, boast, boast, so that you may more perfectly fill up the measure of Jovinian; we with that man of God patiently endure your curses and reproaches. And yet your own heresiarch Pelagius so praises the faith and the most pure sense of Ambrose in the Scriptures that he says not even an enemy dared to reprove him. Consider, therefore, how far you have gone, and restrain yourselves at last from the audacities of Jovinian. For although he, by praising marriages too much, made them equal to that holy virginity, yet he did not deny that Christ the Savior and the necessary Redeemer from the power of the devil was needed even for the fruits of marriage while still fresh from the womb:

which you deny; and because we resist you for the salvation of those who cannot yet speak for themselves, and for the foundations of the Catholic faith, you boast that we are Manichees. But now let us look at what follows. For again, questioning, he says: 'Whom, then, do you confess to be the author of the little ones? The true God?' I answer: the true God. Then he subjoins: 'But He did not make evil.' And again he asks whether we confess the devil to be the author of the little ones, and again he answers: 'But he did not found the nature of man.' Then, as though he concludes and infers: 'If the intermingling is evil, and deformed also the condition of bodies, then bodies too are assigned by you to an evil author.' To whom I answer:

I do not assign bodies to an evil author, but faults — on account of which it came to pass that, although in the bodies (that is, in the works of God) everything was pleasing, yet there befell the male and the female something that shamed them, so that there was not such intermingling as could have been in the body of that life, but such as we see with blushing in the body of this death. 'But God,' he says, 'divided in sex what He would join in operation. From Him, therefore, is the intermingling of bodies, from whom is the origin of bodies.' We have already answered above that this is from God — but not the fault, not the disobedience of members through the concupiscence of the flesh, which is not from the Father. Then he says:

'Therefore, of so many good things — that is, of bodies, of sexes, of conjunctions — there cannot be evil fruits, nor can men be made by God for this, that they should be held by the devil,' he says, 'by legitimate right, as you say.' It has already been said that they are not held for this reason, that they are men — which is a name of nature, of which the devil is not the author — but because they are sinners, which is a name of fault, of which the devil is the author. But among so many names of good things — that is, of bodies, of sexes, of conjunctions — this man does not name lust or the concupiscence of the flesh. He is silent, because he is ashamed; and, by a wondrous — if it may be said — shamelessness of shame, what it shames him to name, it shames him not to praise. Finally, see how he preferred to signify it by circumlocution rather than to say it.

'But after the man,' he says, 'by natural appetite knew his wife.' Behold, again he was unwilling to say: 'by the concupiscence of the flesh he knew his wife,' but he says 'by natural appetite,' where we can still understand that just and honorable will itself, by which he willed to beget children — not that lust, of which this man is so ashamed that he prefers to speak to us ambiguously rather than to express clearly what he feels. What is 'by natural appetite'? Is not both to will to be safe, and to will to receive, nourish, and instruct one's own children, a natural appetite, and one that belongs to reason, not to lust? But because we know his intention, we therefore do not think that by these words he wished to signify anything but the lust of the genital members.

Do not these words seem to you to be fig leaves, under which lies hidden what else but that which shames? For thus indeed this man has sewn together for himself the obstacles of this circumlocution, just as those first ones sewed together their aprons. Let him weave on and say: 'But after the man by natural appetite knew his wife, the divine Scripture says, Eve conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Cain. But what,' he says, 'does Adam say — let us hear: I have acquired a man through God. Whence it is established that he is the work of God, whom the divine Scripture testifies to have been acquired through God.' Who would doubt this? Who would deny it — especially a Catholic Christian? Man is the work of God;

but the concupiscence of the flesh — without which, if sin had not gone before, man would have been sown as the other members are, with the genitals obedient to a tranquil will — is not from the Father, but is from the world. But now, I beg you, look a little more attentively at what name he found, by which again he might cover what he blushes to disclose. 'For Adam had begotten him,' he says, 'by the potency of his members, not by the diversity of merits.' What he meant by 'the diversity of merits,' I confess I do not understand; but by 'the potency of members' I believe he wished to say that which it shames one to say plainly. For he preferred to say the potency of members rather than the concupiscence of the flesh. Clearly, even if he did not intend it, he signified something that seems to pertain to the matter.

For what is more potent than the members of a man, when they do not serve the will of the man? Which members, even if they be reined in by temperance or continence, their use is somewhat in the man's power, yet their motion is not. Adam therefore begot sons by this potency of his members, as this man says — by that potency of which he blushed after sin, before he begot them. But if he had not sinned, he would not have begotten them by the potency of members, but by the obedience of members. For he himself would have been potent, so as to command them subject by his will, if he too, subject to a more Potent One, had served by that same will. After some space, again: 'The divine Scripture says,' he says, 'Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Seth, saying:

The Lord has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel, whom Cain slew.' Then he adds and says: 'As proof of the instituted intercourse, the divine power is said to have stirred up the very seed.' This man did not understand what is written; for he supposed that it was said for this purpose — 'The Lord has raised up for me another seed in place of Abel' — that God might be believed to have stirred up in him the lust of intercourse, by whose motion the seed might be stirred up so that it could be poured into the woman's womb. He does not know that 'He stirred up seed for me' was not said, but 'He gave me a son.' Finally, Adam said this not after his intercourse, by which he emitted the seed, but after his wife's childbirth, by which he received a son by God's gift.

For what cause of thanksgiving is there — except perhaps that of the lustful and of those who possess their own vessel in the disease of concupiscence, which the Apostle forbids — if the seed be poured out in the extreme pleasure of intercourse, and there follow neither conception nor birth, where is the true fruit of marriage? Nor would I say this for the reason that any other than the supreme and true God is to be thought the Creator either of human seed or of man himself from the seed; but this would have come forth from man by a tranquil obedience of the members to the beck of the will, if sin had not gone before. Nor is it now a question of the nature of man, but of the vice. For that nature has God as its author; but from this vice original sin is drawn. For if the seed itself has no vice, what is that which is written in the book of Wisdom:

'Not being ignorant that their race was wicked and their malice inborn, and that their thought could never be changed, for their seed was accursed from the beginning?' Now, of whomsoever he says these things, it is of men that he speaks. How then is the malice of any man natural, and his seed accursed from the beginning, unless we have regard to this: that through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned? And of what man is the evil thought unable ever to be changed, save because by itself it cannot be changed, but only if divine grace comes to its aid?

And if that grace does not come to aid, what are men but — as the apostle Peter says — like brute beasts, born by nature for captivity and destruction? Whence in one place the apostle Paul, commemorating both — both the wrath of God with which we are born, and the grace by which we are set free — says: 'And we all also once had our conversation in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the affections, and we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest; but God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ, by whose grace we have been saved.'

What then is a man's natural malice, and the seed accursed from the beginning, and being begotten by nature into captivity and destruction, and being by nature children of wrath? Was this nature so constituted in Adam? God forbid; but because in him it was corrupted. Thus it has already run and does run naturally through all, so that nothing frees us from this perdition save the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. What is it then that this man adds and says concerning Noah and his sons, that 'they were blessed in like manner as Adam and Eve, God saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and have dominion over it'? To which words of God he adds his own, saying:

'This pleasure therefore, which you would have appear to be diabolical, was already possessed by the aforesaid spouses, which, as it endured by a good institution, so it also endured by benediction. For there is no doubt that concerning this bodily commingling — the practice of which had already become customary — it was said to Noah and his sons: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.' There is no need to repeat the same things in many words.

Here the discussion is about the fault by which the good nature has been depraved — whose author is the devil — not about the goodness of the nature itself, whose author is God, who did not even withdraw his goodness from the nature vitiated and depraved by that fault, so as to take away from men their fecundity, their vitality, their soundness, and the very substance of soul and body, sense and reason, food, nourishment, growth — he who also makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust, and whatever good there is of human nature comes from the good God, even in those men who will not be delivered from evil. Yet this man said 'pleasure' here too, because pleasure can also be honourable; he did not say 'the concupiscence of the flesh' or 'lust,' which is shameful.

But in what follows he laid open his own shame, nor could he dissemble it in the matter which nature herself has violently prescribed. 'And that too,' he says, 'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh; and after these words of God, subjoining his own — in order to express,' he says, 'the fidelity of works — the prophet came near to the peril of shame.' O confession utterly open and wrung out by the force of truth! The prophet therefore, in order to express the fidelity of works, came near to the peril of shame, because he said: They two shall be one flesh, where he wished the commingling of male and female to be understood. Let the reason be told why, in expressing the works of God, the prophet came near to the peril of shame.

Ought human works then, in truth, not to be shameful, but rather altogether to be gloried in, while divine works are shameful? Is it truly so, that in declaring and expressing the works of God, neither the prophet's love nor his labour is honoured, but his modesty is imperilled? For what could God have done, that his herald should be ashamed to speak it — and, what is more grievous, that a man should be ashamed of some work which not man, but God, wrought in man — when all craftsmen, with as much labour and industry as they can, strive to keep from blushing at their works? But assuredly what we are ashamed of is that whereof those first men were ashamed, when they covered their shameful parts.

That is the penalty of sin, that the wound and vestige of sin, that the enticement and kindling of sin, that the law in the members warring against the law of the mind, that disobedience rendered by a most just reciprocation to us who were disobedient, springing from our very selves against our very selves. Of this we are ashamed, and deservedly ashamed. For if this were not so, what could be more ungrateful, what more irreligious in us, than that in our members we should be confounded not over our fault or our punishment, but over the works of God? This man too says many things in vain about Abraham and Sarah, how by promise they received a son; and at last he names 'concupiscence' — yet does not add 'of the flesh,' because that is shameful.

But under the name of concupiscence there is sometimes cause for glorying, since there is also a concupiscence of the spirit against the flesh, and there is also a concupiscence of wisdom. He says therefore: 'Surely you have defined this concupiscence — without which there is no fecundity — as naturally evil. Whence then is it stirred up in the aged by a heavenly gift? Prove now, if you can, that it pertains to the work of the devil, which you see God bestowing as a gift.' Thus he speaks, as though the concupiscence of the flesh had been lacking to them before, and God had given this to them — which was without doubt present in the body of this death; but fecundity was lacking, whose author is God, and it was given when God willed.

But God forbid that we should say — what he supposed we would say — that Isaac was begotten without the heat of intercourse. But let him now tell why the soul of a child would perish from its people if it were not circumcised on the eighth day; what that child had sinned, wherein it had offended God, that it should be punished by so severe a sentence for another's negligence, if there were no original sin. For concerning infants to be circumcised God thus commanded: The male who shall not circumcise the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, his soul shall perish from his people, because he has broken my covenant.