Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 48

ON THE GRACE OF CHRIST AND ON ORIGINAL SIN, BOOK TWO. ON ORIGINAL SIN. Now then, attend diligently concerning the baptism of little ones, how cautiously you ought to listen to men of this sort, who neither openly dare to deny to that age the laver of regeneration and of the remission of sins — lest Christian ears cannot bear it — and yet persist in maintaining and defending their own opinion, by which they hold that carnal generation is not bound liable to the sin of the first man, although they seem to grant to them baptism unto the remission of sins.

Indeed, you yourselves wrote that, in the presence of Pelagius, you heard, as he read to you from his own booklet — which he also asserted that he had sent to Rome — that they say 'infants ought to be baptized with the same sacramental words as adults.' Who, after these words, would suppose that any question ought to be raised with them concerning this matter? Or, when he did raise it, to whom would he not seem most slanderous, were not their plain words read out, where they deny that little ones draw original sin and contend that all are born without any defect?

And Caelestius indeed stood forth in this error more unrestrainedly, to such a degree that not even in the episcopal trial at Carthage was he willing to condemn those who say 'that the sin of Adam injured him alone and not the human race, and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression.' And in the city of Rome, in his booklet which he gave to the most blessed pope Zosimus, he asserted this more expressly, 'that original sin binds none of the little ones'; for from the ecclesiastical proceedings at Carthage we have transcribed these his words: 'Aurelius the bishop said: Let the following be read. And there was read that the sin of Adam harmed himself alone and not the human race. And when it had been read, Caelestius said:

I said that I am in doubt about the transmission of sin, yet in such a way that I would assent to him to whom God has given the grace of expertise; for I have heard differing views from those who are, at any rate, appointed presbyters in the catholic Church. Paulinus the deacon said: Tell us their names. Caelestius said: The holy presbyter Rufinus at Rome, who stayed with the holy Pammachius; I heard him saying that there is no transmission of sin. Paulinus the deacon said: Is there any other? Caelestius said: I have heard several also say so. Paulinus the deacon said: Tell their names. Caelestius said: Does not one priest suffice for you? And after some things, in another place: Aurelius the bishop said: Let the rest of the booklet be read.

And there was read that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression, right up to the end of the lesser booklet inserted above. Aurelius the bishop said: Did you at some time teach, Caelestius, as the deacon Paulinus says, that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression? Caelestius said: Let him explain what he meant by 'before the transgression.' Paulinus the deacon said: Deny that you taught this. It is one of two things: either let him deny that he taught it, or let him now condemn it. Caelestius said: I have already said, let him explain how he meant 'before the transgression.' Paulinus the deacon said: Deny that you taught those things. Aurelius the bishop said:

I ask what I have gathered from this man's objection. I say: Adam, set in paradise, is said first to have been made imperishable, but afterwards, through the transgression of the precept, to have been made corruptible. Do you say this, brother Paulinus? Paulinus the deacon said: This, my lord. Aurelius the bishop said: The deacon Paulinus wishes to hear this — whether the condition of the infants to be baptized today is such as it was before Adam's transgression, or whether, rather, it draws the guilt of the transgression from that same origin of sin from which each is born. Paulinus the deacon said: Let him not deny whether he taught this or not. Caelestius said:

I have already spoken about the transmission of sin, that I have heard many within the catholic body demolish it, and also others uphold it, though this is a matter of question, not of heresy. I have always said that infants need baptism and ought to be baptized. What else does he seek? You surely perceive that Caelestius so granted baptism to little ones that he was unwilling to confess that the sin of the first man — which is washed away by the laver of regeneration — passes over into them, though he did not dare to deny it either, and on account of this doubt of his did not condemn those who say 'that the sin of Adam injured him alone and not the human race, and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression.'

But in the booklet which he published at Rome, which was there adduced in the ecclesiastical proceedings, he so speaks concerning this matter as to show that he believes that of which he had here said he was in doubt. For these are his words: 'But infants,' he says, 'ought to be baptized unto the remission of sins, according to the rule of the universal Church and according to the sentence of the Gospel, since the Lord has determined that the kingdom of heaven cannot be conferred except upon the baptized. Because they do not have the powers of nature, it is necessary that it be conferred through the liberty of grace.' If he said nothing further about this matter, who would not believe that he confessed that even in infants the original sins are remitted in baptism, by saying that they ought to be baptized unto the remission of sins?

Hence, then, comes also that which you wrote — that Pelagius thus answered you 'that infants are baptized with the same sacramental words as adults,' and that you were glad to have heard what you desired, and yet still preferred to consult us about his words. Attend, therefore, to what Caelestius said most openly, and there you will see what Pelagius concealed from you. For Caelestius adds and says: 'But we have not said that infants are to be baptized unto the remission of sins, in order that we should seem to affirm sin by transmission; for that is far removed from the catholic sense, since sin is not born with man, which afterwards is practised by man, because it is shown to be a fault not of nature but of the will.'

'And so it is fitting to confess that too, lest we seem to make diverse kinds of baptism; and this it is necessary to safeguard beforehand, lest, through the occasion of the mystery, to the injury of the Creator, evil be said to be transmitted to man through nature before it is done by man.' This sense of his Pelagius either feared or blushed to disclose to you — the very thing which his disciple neither feared nor blushed to profess openly, without any obscurity of ambiguities, before the apostolic see.

But the prelate of that see, very merciful, when he saw the man borne headlong with such great presumption as though raving, preferred — until, if it could be brought about, he might come to his senses — to bind him gradually by his own questions and the other's answers, rather than, by striking with a severe sentence, to drive him into that precipice toward which he already seemed to be inclining. And for this reason I did not say 'he had openly fallen,' but 'he seemed to be inclining,' because earlier in the same booklet of his, when about to speak of questions of this kind, he had said beforehand: 'If perchance, as happens to men, some error of ignorance has crept in, let it be corrected by your judgment.'

Holding fast to this preliminary statement of his, the venerable pope Zosimus dealt with the man whom the wind of false doctrine had puffed up, that he should condemn those things which had been objected against him by the deacon Paulinus, and that he should give his assent to the letters of the apostolic see which had proceeded from his predecessor of holy memory. But he was indeed unwilling to condemn the deacon's objections, yet he did not dare to withstand the letters of the blessed pope Innocent; nay, he promised that he would condemn all things which that see should condemn. And thus, like a frenzied man who, that he might rest, was as it were gently soothed, he was nevertheless not yet believed to be loosed from the bonds of excommunication.

But with an interval of two months' time interposed, until a reply should be written back from Africa, a place for coming to his senses was granted him under a certain medicinal leniency of the sentence, since in truth, if — having laid aside the vanity of his obstinacy — he were willing to attend to what he had promised, and diligently to read those very letters to which he had answered that he would consent, he would be healed. But after replies had been sent from the African council of bishops, what followed — so that most justly a sentence was pronounced against him — read the whole, for we have transmitted the whole. Whence Pelagius too, if he considers himself and his writings without guile, does not rightly say that he ought not to have been detained by the same sentence. For he deceived the Palestinian judgment, and for that reason he seems there to have been cleared;

but he was in no way able altogether to deceive the Roman Church, where you know that he is very well known, although in this too he made some attempt; yet, as I have said, he by no means prevailed. For the most blessed pope Zosimus recalled what his predecessor, worthy to be imitated, had judged concerning those very proceedings. He attended also to what the faith of the Romans, to be proclaimed in the Lord, felt concerning him — the faith whose harmonious zeal for the catholic truth he saw burning concordantly against Pelagius's error; among whom that man had long lived, and from whom his dogmas could not lie hidden, who knew Caelestius to be his disciple in such a way that they could bear most faithful and most firm testimony concerning this matter.

What, then, holy pope Innocent judged concerning the proceedings of the Palestinian synod — by which Pelagius boasts that he was absolved — although you can read it also in his letters which he wrote back to us, and it was recalled, when the African synod replied to the venerable pope Zosimus (which, together with the other instructions, we have sent to your charity) — nevertheless it seems that it ought not to be passed over even in this work.

For when we, in the epistle which we five bishops wrote to him, had made mention of those same Palestinian proceedings — the report of which had already reached us — saying that in the East, where he dwells, ecclesiastical proceedings had been held by which he is thought to have been cleared, and when to this, among other things, he wrote back, he said: 'Since there are certain things set down in those very proceedings, some of which he suppressed by evading the objections, while others he confused with total obscurity by twisting many words about himself, some things he cleared away by a reasoning more false than true, as could at the time appear — denying some things, turning others by a false interpretation.

But would that — which is rather to be wished — that man might now turn himself from that error of his to the true way of the catholic faith, and might desire and be willing to be cleared, considering the daily grace of God and acknowledging His help, so that he might be seen truly, and be approved by all, to have been corrected by manifest reason, not by the judgment of the proceedings, but by a heart converted to the catholic faith. Whence we can neither approve nor blame their judgment, since we do not know whether the proceedings are true, or, if they are true, whether it is rather established that he escaped by evasion than that he cleared himself with the whole truth.' You certainly see in these words how the most blessed pope Innocent seems to speak, as it were, not of an unknown matter; you see what a sentence he passed concerning his acquittal;

you see what his successor, holy pope Zosimus, ought to have recalled, as indeed he did recall, so that in him he might, with all hesitation removed, confirm the judgment of his predecessor. Now then, attend diligently to that from which it is shown that Pelagius deceived the Palestinian judges — to pass over other matters — in this very question concerning the baptism of little ones, lest perchance to anyone we should seem, in what we said (that he had concealed from you that sense in which Caelestius was more unrestrained, since he himself feels no otherwise), rather to be slandering or suspecting than to have grasped anything certain.

For surely it has already been made sufficiently clear above that Caelestius was unwilling to condemn what is said — 'that Adam's sin harmed himself alone, not the human race, and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression' — because he saw that, if he condemned these things, he would confirm the passing-over of sin from Adam into infants. But when these things had been objected to Pelagius — namely, that he too, along with Caelestius, held them — he condemned them without any retraction. And although I know that you have read this, yet, because this is written not for you alone, that it may not irk the reader to have recourse to the proceedings themselves, or, if he does not have them, even with labour to search them out, we transcribe from thence the very words which are written below. 'The synod said:

Now, since Pelagius has anathematized the inserted foolish talk, rightly answering that a man, with the help and grace of God, can be without sin, let him answer to the other chapters also. Another chapter in the teaching of Caelestius, disciple of Pelagius, from those things which were heard and recorded at Carthage by the holy Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, together with other bishops: That Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or did not sin, was going to die. That the sin of Adam injured himself alone, and not the human race. That the law sends to the kingdom just as also the Gospel does. That before the coming of Christ there were men without sin. That infants newly born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression.

That neither through the death nor through the transgression of Adam does the whole race of men die, nor through the resurrection of Christ does the whole race of men rise again. That the holy bishop Augustine, against the disciples of that man in Sicily, replied to Hilary, writing to him on the appended chapters a book in which these things are contained: that a man can be without sin, if he wills; that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life; that baptized rich men, unless they renounce all things, if they seem to do any good, it is not reckoned to them, nor can they have the kingdom of God. Pelagius said: Concerning a man's being able to be without sin, it has been said above;

but concerning this — that there were men before the coming of the Lord without sin — we too say that before the coming of Christ certain men lived in holiness and righteousness according to the tradition of the holy Scriptures. But the rest of the things, even according to their own testimony, were not said by me, on behalf of which I ought not to give satisfaction; yet nevertheless, for the satisfaction of the holy synod, I anathematize those who so hold or ever have held these things.' Behold — to omit other matters — you see that Pelagius anathematized those who hold 'that Adam's sin injured himself alone and not the human race, and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression.'

What else, then, could the episcopal judges here understand, save that he confessed that sin passes over from Adam into little ones? Which, lest he confess it, Caelestius was unwilling to condemn those things which this man condemned. Accordingly, if I shall have shown that he too feels nothing else concerning little ones save that they are born without any contagion of anyone's defect, what will stand between this man and Caelestius in this question, save that the one was more open, the other more concealed; the one more obstinate, the other more mendacious; or at any rate the one more unrestrained, this one more crafty? For the one was unwilling, even in the Church of Carthage, to condemn what he afterwards, in the Roman Church, confessed that he held, and professed himself ready to be corrected, if error had crept upon him as upon a man.

But this man both condemned that dogma as contrary to the truth, lest he himself should be condemned by the catholic judges, and afterwards reserved it to himself to be defended — either mendaciously condemning it or craftily interpreting it. But I see that it is now most justly demanded of me that I not defer to demonstrate what I promised — namely, whether he too feels the same as Caelestius. In the first book of his more recent work, which he wrote 'on free will,' of which work he made mention in the letter which he sent to Rome, he says: 'Every good and evil, by which we are either praiseworthy or blameworthy, does not arise with us, but is done by us;

for we are born capable of either, not full of either, and just as we are procreated without virtue, so also without vice; and before the action of one's own will, that alone is in a man which God has fashioned.' You surely perceive that in these words of Pelagius there is contained the dogma of both concerning little ones being born without the contagion of any defect from Adam. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Caelestius was unwilling to condemn those who say 'that Adam's sin harmed himself alone and not the human race, and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression'; but it is much to be wondered at with what face Pelagius condemned these things.

For if, as he says, 'evil does not arise with us, and we are procreated without vice, and before the action of one's own will that alone is in a man which God has fashioned,' then assuredly Adam's sin harmed himself alone, since it made no passing-over into his offspring. For either sin is not an evil, or sin is not a vice, or God fashioned sin. But this man says: 'Evil does not arise with us, and we are procreated without vice, and this alone is in those being born which God has fashioned.' And through this, since — according to this his own opinion — he deems it most true that Adam's sin harmed himself alone, not the human race, why did Pelagius condemn this, save that the catholic judges might be deceived? Similarly, that too can be said:

If evil does not arise together with us and we are begotten without fault, and if that alone is in a man being born which God created, then beyond doubt the infants who are born are in that same state in which Adam was before his transgression, in whom there was no evil or fault whatsoever, and in whom there was that alone which God had created. And yet Pelagius pronounced anathema against those who 'hold, or once held, that infants newly born are in that state in which Adam was before his transgression' — that is, without any evil, without any fault, having only that which God created. Why then did Pelagius condemn even this, unless it was that the catholic synod might be deceived, and the new heretic might not be condemned?

But as you know, and as I set down in that book too which I wrote about the proceedings in Palestine to our venerable elder Aurelius, I was rejoicing that by that reply of Pelagius this whole question had been settled, and it seemed to me that he had most openly confessed that there is original sin in little ones, since he pronounced anathema against those who believed that by Adam's sin he alone, and not the human race as well, had been harmed, and who supposed that little ones are in that state in which that first man was before his transgression.

But afterwards, when I had read his four books — from the first of which I copied out the words mentioned a little earlier — and had found the man still thinking against the catholic faith concerning little ones, I first began to marvel at so shameless a lie in an ecclesiastical trial and on so great a question. For if he had already written those same books beforehand, how did he say that he pronounced anathema against those who once held such a view? But if he promised that work only afterwards, how did he pronounce anathema against those who hold such a view now?

Unless perhaps he means to say, absurdly, that he condemned those who once held such a view and those who hold it now, but that concerning future time — that is, those who were going to hold such a view hereafter — he could not prejudge either himself or others, and that therefore he had not lied, because it was only afterwards that he was caught holding such a view. But he does not say this — not only because it is absurd, but because it cannot be true. For in those very books he both speaks against the passing of sin from Adam into little ones, and boasts of the proceedings of the Palestinian synod, where he was thought to have truly condemned those who hold such a view, and where by deception he stole his own acquittal.

For what does it bear on the matter now under discussion, that he answers his disciples that he condemned those objections for this reason: because he himself also says that not only the first man but the human race too was harmed by that first sin — not by propagation but by example; that is, not that those propagated from him drew any fault from him, but that all who sinned afterward imitated him who sinned first? Or that he says infants are not in that state in which Adam was before his transgression, for this reason: because these cannot yet grasp a commandment, whereas he could, and they do not yet use the choice of a rational will, which unless he had used it, no commandment would have been given him?

What does this bear on the matter — that by thus explaining the words objected against him he thinks he rightly condemned the statement that Adam's sin harmed him alone and not the human race, and that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before his sin — and yet, though these were condemned, he does not without lying hold what is afterward found in the little works he composed: that little ones are born without any evil, without any fault, and that there is in them only that which God created, not the wound which the enemy inflicted? Does he then, by saying these words, achieve — through explaining in one way objections that were meant in another — the demonstration that he did not deceive his judges? By no means does he accomplish this; for the more cunningly he explains these things, the more secretly he deceived the judges.

For when the catholic bishops heard the man pronouncing anathema against those who say that Adam's sin harmed him alone and not the human race, they supposed that he held nothing other than what the catholic Church is accustomed to preach — on which account she truly baptizes little ones for the remission of sins: not the sins they committed by imitating, on account of the first sinner's example, but the sins they drew by being born, on account of the fault of their origin. And when they heard him pronouncing anathema against those who say that infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before his transgression, they believed he was saying nothing other than that he condemned those who think that little ones have drawn no sin from Adam and are, accordingly, in that state in which he was before his sin.

For this indeed was what was objected against him, and nothing else, since it was on this that the question turned. Accordingly, when this man so explains it as to say that infants are not in the state in which Adam was before his sin because they are not yet in the same firmness of mind or body — not because any guilt of propagation has passed into them — let this be answered to him: When those things to be condemned were objected against you, the catholic bishops did not so understand them; therefore, when you condemned them, they believed you to be a catholic. For that reason, then, what they supposed you to hold had to be acquitted; but what you really held had to be condemned. You, then, were not acquitted, who held things that deserved condemnation; rather, that was acquitted which you ought to have held.

But in order that you might be thought acquitted, you were believed to hold praiseworthy views, since the judges did not perceive that you were concealing what deserved condemnation. Rightly were you judged the associate of Caelestius, whose partner you are manifestly shown to be; for although in the trial you covered up your books, yet after the trial you published them. Since these things are so, you surely perceive that, against the authors of so wicked an error, the episcopal councils and the Apostolic See and the whole Roman Church and the Roman Empire — which, by God's favor, is Christian — were most rightly moved, until such men come to their senses out of the devil's snares. For who knows whether God may perhaps grant them repentance, that they may acknowledge and confess and even proclaim the truth, and truly condemn the damnable falsehood?

But in whatever way these men wish to conduct themselves, we cannot doubt that the Lord's mercy has taken care of many who were following them for this reason: because they saw them united to catholic communion. But diligently attend to how Pelagius attempted to creep in so as to deceive even the episcopal judgment of the Apostolic See on this very question of the baptism of little ones. For in the letters which he sent to Rome to Pope Innocent of blessed memory — since they did not find him alive but were delivered to the holy Pope Zosimus, and from there forwarded to us — he says that he is being defamed by men as though he denies to little ones the sacrament of baptism, and promises the kingdom of heaven to some apart from the redemption of Christ.

But these things are not objected against them in the way he has stated. For they neither deny to little ones the sacrament of baptism, nor promise to any the kingdom of heaven apart from the redemption of Christ. And so the thing about which he complains of being defamed he has set forth in such a way that he could easily answer the charge objected while keeping his own doctrine safe. But what is objected against them is that they are unwilling to confess that unbaptized little ones are liable to the condemnation of the first man, and that original sin, to be purged by regeneration, has passed into them — since they contend that these are to be baptized only for the sake of receiving the kingdom of heaven: as though, apart from the kingdom of heaven, those could have anything but eternal death who, without partaking of the body and blood of the Lord, cannot have eternal life.

Behold what is objected against them concerning the baptism of little ones — not what he himself has stated in such a way that he could answer his own proposition according to his doctrines, as though it were the objection of an opponent. Finally, observe how he answers, and see that he prepares hiding-places of ambiguity as refuges for falsehood, pouring darkness over the truth, so that even we, when we first read them, rejoiced as though at things right or nearly corrected. But his more extensive disputations in his books — where, however much he covers himself, he is for the most part compelled to reveal himself — made even these things suspect to us, so that, looking more attentively, we found them ambiguous. For when he had said that he had never heard even any impious heretic say what he had propounded about little ones, he then added and said:

'For who is so ignorant of the reading of the Gospel that he would try not only to affirm this, but could even lightly say or so much as think it? And then, who is so impious as to wish little ones to be excluded from the kingdom of heaven, by forbidding them to be baptized and reborn in Christ?' In vain does he say these things; he does not thereby clear himself. That little ones cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven without baptism, not even they themselves have ever denied. But that is not the question; the question is about the purging of original sin in little ones. Let him clear himself of this, who is unwilling to confess that in little ones the laver of regeneration has something to purge. And therefore let us attend to the rest of what he is about to say.

For after inserting the testimony from the Gospel — that unless one is born again of water and the Spirit, no one can enter the kingdom of heaven, on which point, as we have said, there arises no question for them — he went on and added, saying: 'Who is so impious as to forbid to a little one of whatever age the common redemption of the human race?' And this too is ambiguous, as to what redemption he means: whether from evil to good, or from good to better. For Caelestius also, at Carthage in his little book, confessed the redemption of little ones, and yet was unwilling to confess that sin had passed from Adam into them. But attend to what this man then adds: 'And,' he says, 'to forbid him who has been born to an uncertain life to be reborn to a perpetual and certain one?' That is:

who is so impious as to forbid him who was born to an uncertain life to be reborn to a perpetual and certain one? When we first read these words, we believed that by 'uncertain life' he meant to speak of this temporal one — although it seemed to us that he ought rather to have called it mortal than uncertain, since it is ended by certain death. Yet, so long as it is being lived, since at every moment it is undoubtedly uncertain, we supposed he meant nothing other than that he preferred to call this mortal life uncertain. And accordingly, although he was unwilling openly to confess the eternal death of little ones who depart from this life without the sacrament of baptism, yet as though by a certain reasoning our anxiety about that matter was consoled. For we were saying:

if perpetual life, as he seems to confess, cannot belong to any but those who have been baptized, then surely perpetual death will follow those who die unbaptized — which by no justice of God can befall those by whom no sins have been committed in this life, except on account of original sin. But afterwards there were not lacking brethren who admonished us that Pelagius could have said this for the reason that on this question he is reported to have been accustomed to answer inquirers in such a way as to say: 'As for little ones dying without baptism, where they do not go, I know; where they go, I do not know' — that is, I know they do not go into the kingdom of heaven;

but as for where they do go, he said, or says, that he does not know, for this reason: because he did not dare to say that those go into perpetual death whom he both perceived to have committed no evil here, and did not agree to have drawn original sin. And so these words of his too, transmitted to Rome as a great vindication of himself, are so ambiguous that they can furnish lurking-places for their doctrine, from which the heretical meaning may spring out to lie in ambush, when — no one being present who is able to answer — someone is found weak, as though in a wilderness. But now, in the book of his faith which he sent to Rome along with those very letters to the same Pope Innocent, to whom he had also written a letter, he far more evidently laid himself bare while covering himself, saying:

'We hold one baptism, which we affirm is to be celebrated in infants with the same words of the sacrament as in adults.' He did not even say 'with the same sacrament' — which, indeed, had he said it, would still be ambiguous — but 'with the same words,' he says, 'of the sacrament,' as though for infants the remission of sins were pronounced by the sound of the words, not effected by the reality of the thing. Yet he seemed for the time being to say something that agreed with the catholic faith; but he did not prevail to deceive that See to the very end.

For after the rescripts of the African council — into which province indeed that pestilential doctrine had crept by spreading, though it had not so widely seized it nor so deeply pervaded it — other writings of his too, in the city of Rome, where he had for a very long time led his life and had earlier been engaged in these very discourses and disputes, were brought to light by the care of faithful brethren and lay open. These, in the letters which he composed to be carried throughout the catholic world, Pope Zosimus appended as things to be abhorred, as you can read. There Pelagius, as though expounding the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, argues and says:

'If Adam's sin harmed even those who do not sin, then Christ's righteousness also profits even those who do not believe' — and other things of this kind, all of which, with the Lord's help, have been refuted and dissolved in the books which we wrote on the baptism of little ones. And these things, indeed, in those very expositions of his, he did not dare to object in his own person; but he said this in a place where he was very well known to many, and where what he thought and said could not lie hidden — namely in those books, of the first of which I recalled something above. Not evasively, but most openly, he argues with all the force of disputation he can, that human nature in little ones be believed in no way to have been vitiated by propagation; and, by arrogating to it salvation, he begrudges it the Savior.

Since these things are so, and since it is now established that a pestilential dogma and a heretical error have arisen — which, with the Lord's help, the Church now more openly avoids, these two men, namely Pelagius and Caelestius, being either reduced to a place of repentance or, if they refuse it, altogether condemned, who are either reported or even proved to be the authors of this perversity, or at least, if they are not the authors but learned it from others, are nonetheless its assertors and teachers, through whom it might creep more widely and grow — and since by their words and their writings, and by competent evidence, and by the report rising and increasing out of all these things, they are bandied about:

what remains, except that every catholic, according to the strength which he receives from the Lord, should refute this plague and vigilantly resist it, so that, when out of the necessity of answering — without zeal for contention — one contends for the truth, the untaught may be instructed, and thus what the enemy contrived for ruin may be turned to the profit of the Church, according to that saying of the Apostle: 'There must also be heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you'?

Wherefore, after the many things which, in writing against this error hostile to the grace of God — which He bestows through Jesus Christ our Lord upon small and great alike — we have been able to argue by way of disputation, it is now fitting to sift out this: that, wishing craftily to avoid the odium of heresy, they assert 'that this is a question apart from any peril to the faith' — so that, evidently, if they should be convicted of having gone astray in it, they might appear to have erred not criminally, but as it were civilly. For thus Caelestius spoke at Carthage in the ecclesiastical proceedings: 'Now,' he said, 'concerning the transmission of sin I have already spoken, for I have heard many established within the catholic Church deny it, and others too affirm it; though this is a matter of question, not of heresy.

I have always said that infants need baptism and ought to be baptized. What more does he seek?' Thus he said this, as though he wished to signify that it would then have been a matter to be judged heresy, if he denied that infants ought to be baptized; but now, since he confesses that they are to be baptized, even if he does not state the cause of their baptism which the truth holds — but a cause which does not pertain to the faith — he does not judge himself to be erring, and therefore not to be judged a heretic.

Likewise, in the little book which he gave at Rome, when he had set forth his faith — from the Trinity of one Godhead down to the resurrection of the dead, of what sort it will be (about which no one had questioned him and about which no question was being raised against him), as much as it pleased him to state — when his discourse came to the matter at hand, 'But if,' he says, 'any questions have arisen apart from the faith, on which there is contention among very many, I have not, as though the author of some dogma, laid this down by defined authority; but the things which I have received from the fountain of the prophets and apostles, I offer to the judgment of your apostleship to be approved, so that, if perchance, as befalls men, some error of ignorance has crept in, it may be corrected by your verdict.' Surely you perceive that he did this by prefacing this preliminary statement, so that, if any error should appear in him, he might seem to have erred not in the faith, but in questions which are apart from the faith — where, even if the error is to be corrected, it is nevertheless not corrected as a heresy, and he who has not been corrected is said to err in such a way that he is nonetheless not judged a heretic.

But this opinion greatly deceives him. Those questions, which he judges to be apart from the faith, are far otherwise than those in which, with the faith by which we are Christians kept safe, either what is true is unknown and the definitive verdict is suspended, or it is conjectured otherwise than it is by a human and feeble surmise — as when it is asked what paradise is like, or where it is, where God placed the man whom He formed from the dust, though the Christian faith does not doubt that that paradise exists; or when it is asked whether Elijah or Enoch are now there or somewhere else, though we do not doubt that they live in the bodies in which they were born;

or when it is asked whether the Apostle was caught up into the third heaven in the body or out of the body — although it is a shameless inquiry on the part of those who wish to know what he to whom this was granted testifies that he himself, with the faith assuredly kept safe, does not know; or how many heavens there are, into the third of which he records that he was caught up; or whether the elements of this visible world are four or more; what causes the sun or the moon to fail in those eclipses which astronomers, by a fixed reckoning of the times, are accustomed to foretell; why the men of old lived as long as Holy Scripture testifies, and whether, in proportion to their longer age, they began to beget children at a late puberty;

where Methuselah could have lived, who was not in the ark — who, as the years are reckoned in most codices, both Greek and Latin, is found to have survived the flood; or whether one ought rather to believe the fewer copies, which are very rarely found, in which the number of the years is so recorded that he is shown to have died before the flood. For who does not perceive that in these and questions of this kind — various and innumerable, pertaining either to the most obscure works of God or to the most hidden recesses of the Scriptures, which it is difficult to comprehend and define by any certain method — many things are unknown with the Christian faith kept safe, and error occurs here and there without any crime of heretical dogma?

But in the case of two men — by one of whom we were sold under sin, by the other we are redeemed from sins; by one we were cast down into death, by the other we are set free unto life, since the one lost us in himself by doing his own will and not the will of Him by whom he was made, while the other saved us in himself by not doing his own will but the will of Him by whom he was sent — in the case, then, of these two men the Christian faith properly consists. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Since there is no other name under heaven given among men in which we must be saved, and in Him God has determined faith for all, raising Him from the dead.

And so without this faith — that is, without faith in the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus; without faith, I say, in His resurrection, which God has determined for all, and which assuredly cannot be truly believed without His incarnation and death:

without faith, then, in the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ, Christian truth does not doubt that not even the ancient righteous, in order to be righteous, could have been cleansed from sins and justified by the grace of God — whether among those righteous whom Holy Scripture mentions, or among those whom it indeed does not mention, but who are nevertheless to be believed to have existed, whether before the flood, or from then until the giving of the Law, or in the time of the Law itself, not only among the children of Israel, as were the prophets, but even outside that same people, as was Job. For their hearts too were cleansed by the same faith in the mediator, and love was poured out in them through the Holy Spirit, who breathes where He wills — not following merits, but even making the merits themselves.

For the grace of God will in no way be grace, unless it is gratuitous in every way.

Although, therefore, death reigned from Adam until Moses — because neither could the Law given through Moses conquer it (for a Law was not given which could give life, but one which should show that the dead, for whose making-alive grace was necessary, were laid low not only by the propagation and dominion of sin, but were also convicted by the added transgression of the Law itself; not that anyone should perish who even then understood this within the mercy of God, but that a man, destined through the reign of death to punishment, being made manifest even to himself through the transgression of the Law, might seek the help of God, so that where sin abounded, grace might much more abound, which alone frees from the body of this death) — although, therefore, not even the Law given through Moses could take away the reign of death from any man, yet there were, even in the time of the Law, men of God, not under the Law that terrifies, convicts, and punishes, but under grace that delights, heals, and frees;

there were those who would say: 'Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother nourish me in the womb'; and: 'There is no peace in my bones in the face of my sins'; and: 'Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within my inmost parts'; and: 'Strengthen me with a princely spirit'; and: 'Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.' There were those who would say: 'I believed, therefore have I spoken.' For they too were cleansed by the same faith by which we also are; whence the Apostle also says: 'Having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, for which cause I have also spoken; we also believe, for which cause we also speak.' Out of that same faith it was said:

'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.' Out of that same faith it was said concerning Him: 'And He, as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way; His going forth is from the height of heaven, and His circuit even to the height of heaven; and there is none that can hide himself from His heat.' Out of that same faith it was said to Him: 'Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the rod of righteousness is the rod of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.' By the same spirit of faith these things future were seen by them, by which they are believed by us as accomplished.

For neither were they themselves not partakers of those things, who by faithful love were able to prophesy them to us. And whence is it that the Apostle Peter says: 'Why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But through the grace of the Lord Jesus we believe that we shall be saved, even as they'? — unless because they too were saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, not through the Law of Moses, through which was made not the healing but the knowledge of sin, as the Apostle teaches, saying: 'For by the Law is the knowledge of sin; but now without the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the prophets.' If, then, it has now been manifested, it existed even then, but hidden.

Its concealment the veil of the temple signified, which — to signify its revelation — was rent when Christ died. And so even then this grace of the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, was among the people of God, but as rain in a fleece — which God, not as a debt but as a free gift, sets apart for His inheritance — it was present, lying hidden. But now, as though that fleece has been dried, that is, the Jewish people having been rejected, it is seen lying open among all the nations, as upon the threshing-floor.

Let us not, therefore, like Pelagius and his disciples, divide the ages, saying that 'first the righteous lived from nature, then under the Law, thirdly under grace — from nature, that is, from Adam through so long an age, in which the Law had not yet been given; for then,' they say, 'the Creator was known by way of reason, and how one ought to live was carried written in men's hearts, not by a law of the letter, but of nature. But when morals were corrupted,' they say, 'when nature, now grown discolored, began to be insufficient, the Law was added to it, by which, as the moon, when its former brightness has been worn away by rust, might be restored.'

'But after too great a habit of sinning had prevailed,' as they argue, 'to heal which the Law had too little power, Christ came, and, as though for a most desperate disease, He Himself, the physician, came to the rescue, not through disciples, but through Himself.' By arguing these things they attempt to exclude the ancient righteous from the grace of the mediator, as though the man Christ Jesus had not been the mediator of God and those men, because — the flesh not yet having been taken from the virgin's womb — He was not yet man, at the time when those righteous men existed. But if this were so, the Apostle would by no means say: 'By a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead.'

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive — whereas those ancient righteous, according to the empty talk of these men, being sufficient unto themselves by nature, had no need of the man Christ as mediator, through whom they might be reconciled to God, nor shall they be made alive in Him, since they are shown not to belong to His body and members according to that which, for men's sake, He was made man. But if...

Since through his apostles the Truth speaks—'As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'; for through that one man came death, and through this one man the resurrection of the dead—what Christian would dare to doubt that even those righteous men who, in more recent times of the human race, pleased God, shall for this reason come into the resurrection of eternal life and not of eternal death, because they shall be made alive in Christ; and that they are made alive in Christ because they belong to the body of Christ; and that they belong to the body of Christ because for them too Christ is the Head; and that Christ is their Head too because there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus?

This would not have been theirs, unless they had believed in his resurrection through his grace. And how could this have come to pass, had they not known that he was to come in the flesh, and had they not from this faith lived justly and devoutly? For if the incarnation of Christ did not profit them because it had not yet taken place, then neither does the judgment of Christ over the living and the dead profit us, because it has not yet taken place. But if we shall stand at Christ's right hand through faith in this judgment which is not yet done but is to come, then surely they are members of Christ through faith in his incarnation, which was then not yet done but was to come. For it must not be thought that only the divinity of Christ, which always was, and not also his humanity, which as yet was not, once revealed, profited the ancient righteous.

For that saying of the Lord Jesus—'Abraham longed to see my day, and he saw it and was glad'—if by 'his day' he meant his own time to be understood, then he certainly bore witness of Abraham that he was steeped in faith of his incarnation; for it is according to that incarnation that he has a time, whereas his divinity transcends all time, since through it all times were made. And even if anyone should think this must be taken of the eternal Day, which is bounded by no morrow and preceded by no yesterday—that is, of that very eternity in which he is coeternal with the Father—how could Abraham truly long for this, unless he had known the coming mortality of him whose eternity he sought?

Or if someone confines the sense of these words to this, saying that nothing is to be understood in the Lord's saying 'he sought my day' except 'he sought me, who am the abiding Day, that is, the unfailing Light'—just as when we speak of the life of the Son, of which the Gospel speaks, saying, 'so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself,' where we understand not that he is one thing and his life another, but that the Son himself is that same Life, he who said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life,' and of whom it is said:

'This is the true God and eternal life'—so that Abraham may be supposed to have desired to see this divinity of his, equal to the Father, without any foreknowledge whatever of his incarnation, just as certain philosophers also sought after him who learned nothing of his flesh—yet what then of this: that Abraham commands his servant to place his hand under his thigh and swear by the God of heaven? Is anyone going to interpret this rightly except by supposing that Abraham knew that from that thigh would be propagated the flesh in which the God of heaven was to come?

Of which flesh and blood, when he blessed Abraham himself, Melchizedek also brought forth a testimony most well known to faithful Christians, so that so long afterward it might be said of Christ in the Psalms—a thing not yet done but still to come, yet the same one faith of the fathers, which is ours, sang it: 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.' For to those who find death in Adam, Christ profits by this, that he is mediator unto life; but he is not mediator by that whereby he is equal to the Father. For by that he is as far distant from us as the Father is. And how shall there be a midpoint, where the distance is the very same? Therefore the Apostle did not say, 'one mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus,' but 'the man Christ Jesus.'

Therefore he is mediator in that he is man; inferior to the Father in that he is nearer to us, superior to us in that he is nearer to the Father. And this is said more plainly thus: inferior to the Father, because in the form of a servant; superior to us, because without stain of sin. Wherefore whoever contends that human nature at any age has no need of a physician in the second Adam, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted of being an enemy of God's grace—not in some question in which one may doubt or err with faith unharmed, but in that very rule of faith by which we are Christians. But what sort of thing is it, that by these men that nature of men which existed before the Law is praised as though not yet corrupted by worse morals?

They do not consider that men were then overwhelmed by sins so great, as if intolerable, that—with the exception of one man of God and his wife and three sons and as many daughters-in-law—by the just judgment of God, as the small region of Sodom was afterward destroyed by fire, so the whole world was destroyed by a flood. From that time, therefore, when through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned, surely the whole mass has been made a mass of perdition, the possession of the destroyer. And so no one, no one at all, has been, is, or shall be freed from it, except by the grace of the Redeemer.

And before Abraham, indeed, whether the righteous or their little ones were marked by any bodily and visible sacrament, Scripture does not state. Abraham himself, however, received the sign of circumcision, the seal of the righteousness of faith; and he received it in such a way that thenceforth he was commanded to circumcise even all the little ones of his household, the newest from their mothers' wombs, on the eighth day of their birth, so that even these, who could not yet believe with the heart unto righteousness, might nevertheless receive the seal of the righteousness of faith. And this was commanded under such great terror that God said that soul should perish from his people whose foreskin had not been circumcised on the eighth day.

If the justice of so terrible a penalty be inquired into, will not all the argumentation of these men—however subtle—about free will and the praiseworthy soundness and purity of nature be struck back and, shattered, fly apart? For what evil, I ask, did the infant commit by his own will, that, when another neglects and does not circumcise him, he himself should be condemned with a condemnation so severe that that soul should perish from his people? For it was not the terror of temporal death that was struck into them, since concerning the righteous, when they died, it was rather said, 'and he was gathered to his people,' or 'he was gathered to his fathers,' since henceforth no temptation is to be feared by a man which might separate him from his people, if his people is itself the people of God.

What then does so great a condemnation mean, for nothing committed by one's own will? For it is not, as some suppose according to the Platonists, that this is repaid to the soul of each infant for what it committed by its own will before this life, when before this body it had free choice of living well or ill—since the Apostle Paul most plainly says that those not yet born have done nothing good or evil. Whence then is the infant rightly punished by that perdition, unless because it belongs to the mass of perdition and is justly understood, as born of Adam, to be condemned by the obligation of the ancient debt, unless from thence it be freed not according to debt but according to grace?

And what grace is this but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, whom, among the other sacraments of the ancients, this very circumcision of the foreskin also prophesied? For the eighth day, in the recurring weeks, is the Lord's Day, on which the Lord rose again; and the Rock was Christ. Whence the knife of circumcision was of stone, and the flesh of the foreskin was the body of sin.

The sacraments accordingly being changed after he came who was signified as being to come, yet with the mediator's aid not changed—he who even before he had come in the flesh set free his ancient members by faith in his incarnation—we too, when we were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, were made alive together with Christ, in whom we were circumcised with a circumcision not made by hand, which the circumcision made by hand prefigured, that the body of sin might be done away, with which we are born of Adam. The propagation of a condemned origin condemns us, unless we be cleansed in the likeness of sinful flesh, in which was sent without sin he who nevertheless from sin might condemn sin; for he was made sin for us. Whence the Apostle says:

'We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin he made to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.' God therefore, to whom we are reconciled through him, made him to be sin for us—that is, a sacrifice by which our sins might be remitted—since sacrifices for sins are called sins. And indeed he himself was immolated for our sins, having no fault, alone among men, such as was sought even then in cattle, whereby was signified that one without fault would come to heal our faults.

On whatever day of his birth an infant is baptized in Christ, he is as it were circumcised on the eighth day, since he is circumcised in him who rose again on the third day indeed from when he was crucified, but on the eighth in the weeks. And he is circumcised unto the stripping off of the body of the flesh—that is, that the grace of spiritual regeneration may release the debt which the contagion of carnal generation drew in; for no one is clean from filth—from what filth, I ask, but that of sin?—not even an infant whose life is of one day upon the earth. But thus they argue, saying:

'So then, is marriage evil, and is a man whom marriage begets not the work of God?' As if the good of marriage were the disease of concupiscence, whereby those who know not God love their wives—which the Apostle forbids. And is it not rather conjugal chastity, by which carnal lust is reduced to the ordered good use of procreating children? Or could a man be anything but the work of God—not only he who is begotten of marriage, but even he who is begotten of fornication or of adultery? But in this question, where it is asked not for what thing a creator is necessary, but for what a savior is necessary, one must not look at what good there is in the procreation of nature, but at what evil there is in the sin by which it is certain that nature has been corrupted.

But both are propagated together, both nature and the fault of nature, of which the one is good, the other evil. The former is taken from the bounty of the Creator, the latter is drawn in from the origin of condemnation; of the former the good will of the most high God is the cause, of the latter the evil will of the first man; the former shows God the establisher of the creature, the latter shows God the punisher of disobedience. In short, the same Christ is the maker of man for the sake of that which was to be created, and was made man for the sake of this which was to be healed. Marriage therefore is good in all that is proper to marriage. And these are three: the ordering of begetting, the fidelity of chastity, the sacrament of wedlock. On account of the ordering of begetting it is written: 'I will that the younger marry, bear children, be mothers of households';

on account of the fidelity of chastity: 'the wife has not power over her own body, but the husband; likewise also the husband has not power over his own body, but the wife'; on account of the sacrament of wedlock: 'what God has joined, let not man put asunder.' Concerning these things we remember that we have discoursed sufficiently, so far as with the Lord's help we were able, in other little works of ours which are not unknown to you. On account of all these things, 'marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.' For inasmuch as marriage is good, so far it makes very much good even out of the evil of lust, since not lust but reason makes good use of lust.

But lust is in that which the Apostle marks as the law of the members warring against the law of the mind of the disobedient; whereas reason, well using lust itself, is in the law of marriage. For if no good could be made out of evil, God would not make a man even from an adulterous union.

Just as, therefore, the damnable evil of adultery—when even from it a man is born—is not imputed to God, who certainly in the evil work of men himself does a good work, so whatever is shameful in that disobedience of the members, at which those blushed who after the sin covered those same members with fig leaves, is not imputed to marriage, on whose account conjugal intercourse is not only lawful but even useful and honorable, but is imputed to the sin of disobedience, whose penalty this has followed: that man, disobedient to God, should feel his members also disobedient to himself. Blushing at these, because they were moved not at the choice of his will, but as if by their own choice, at the incitement of lust, he judged them shameful and took care to cover them.