Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 108/118

But I altogether trust that He who through the grace of His only Son deigned to blot out the crimes of the human race will not suffer my crimes to prevail unto the destruction of all, but rather, where sin has abounded, will make grace to overflow — O lord deservedly venerable and truly most blessed holy father. The difficulty of the work, which I suppliantly entreated to be furnished by your beneficence for the instruction of us most ignorant men, I myself, not being ignorant of it, foretold beforehand; but from the abundance of the divine fountain, which the Lord has bestowed upon you, I presumed with a truthful heart.

For although Philastrius and Epiphanius, venerable bishops, are shown to have written some such thing — which without doubt, among other matters, indeed like all things, lies hidden from me — yet I do not think that they observed this care and diligence, so as to add to each several opinion the contrary answers as well, and to subjoin the rites; and then further, that work of both of them, whatever it may be, perhaps does not have that brevity which I desire. In vain also is Greek eloquence assigned to a man who has not learned Latin, since I asked not merely for counsel but also for aid. But why should I remind your reverence about the not only difficulty but also obscurity of interpreters, when you yourself judge this more and more fully?

There is added to the case that certain heresies are said to have emerged even after their death, of which they made no mention. For which reasons I flee to the special patronage of your piety, and with my own voice, yet with universal longing, I appeal to that sacred breast of piety, ever ready for mercy. Setting aside foreign flavours, considering the text of my former letter, do not deny to me who knock late but endure hunger the African bread, which our province is wont to have as its choicest, seasoned even with heavenly manna; for assuredly I too will not cease to knock, until you yourself grant that what the privilege of merits — which is nothing — does not obtain, at least unwearied importunity may deserve. Letter 224.

To the lord most sincerely beloved brother and fellow-deacon Quodvultdeus, Augustine. When this occasion of writing was offered me through the presbyter of Fussala, whom I commend to your charity, I re-read your letter, in which you ask that I write something about the heresies which have been able to arise since the coming of the Lord began to be announced in the flesh. This, moreover, I did, that I might see whether I ought now to undertake the work itself and thence send you something, in which you might consider that it is the more difficult, the more you wish it to be made brief. But not even this could I do, hindered by such cares supervening, which I could by no means dissemble; for they have turned me away even from that which I had in hand. This, moreover, is where I am replying to the books of Julian.

which he published as eight books, after those four to which I replied earlier. For when brother Alypius had received them at Rome, he had not yet copied them all, but, unwilling to let slip the occasion offered, he sent me five of them through it, promising that the other three would soon be sent, and greatly urging that I not delay to reply. By his urging I was compelled to conduct more slackly what I was doing, so that I might be wanting to neither work — to the one by day, to the other by night — as far as I was spared by other occupations that do not cease to come upon me from this side and that. And I was doing a most necessary thing; for I was reviewing my little works, and —

if anything in them should offend me or could offend others, partly by censuring and partly by defending what could and ought to be read, I was at work. And I had already finished two volumes, having reviewed all my books, whose number I did not know, and I learned them to be two hundred and thirty-two: there remained the letters, then the popular discourses, which the Greeks call homilies. And I had already read very many of the letters, but had as yet dictated nothing from them, when these books of Julian also began to occupy me, to whose fourth book I have now already begun to reply.

When therefore I shall have unfolded this and replied to the fifth, if the three do not supervene, I purpose, if the Lord wills, to begin also what you request, doing both at once — this, namely, and that concerning the revision of my little works — in nocturnal and diurnal seasons distributed to each singly. This I therefore intimate to your holiness, so that, as much as you desire to obtain that which you ask, so much the more ardently you may ask of the Lord aid for me, whereby I may serve your praiseworthy zeal and the usefulness of those to whom you judge this will be profitable, O lord most sincerely beloved brother. I commend again the bearer and the business for which he has set out; when you learn before whom it must be transacted, I ask that it not irk you to assist;

for we cannot desert the necessities of men of this kind, who are not our tenant-farmers but — what is greater — our brothers, and in the charity of Christ belong to our care. May you live to God. Letter 225. To the most blessed lord, the ineffably wonderful, incomparably to be honoured, most excellent, fatherly Augustine, Prosper. Unknown indeed to you by face, but already to some extent, if you recall, known to you in mind and speech — for through my holy brother Leontius the deacon I sent letters and received them — now too I dare to write to your blessedness, not only out of zeal for greeting as then, but also out of affection for the faith by which the Church lives.

For since by your most vigilant industry, keeping watch on behalf of all the members of Christ's body, and by the power of truth fighting against the snares of heretical doctrines, I judged that I need in no way fear lest I be burdensome or importunate to you in that which pertains to the salvation of many and thereby to your piety — since I would rather believe myself to be guilty in the future if I did not refer those things which I understand to be very pernicious to the special patron of the faith. Many therefore of the servants of Christ who dwell in the city of Marseilles think that in the writings of your holiness which you composed against the Pelagian heretics there is contrary to the opinion of the Fathers and to ecclesiastical sense whatever you disputed in them concerning the calling of the elect according to God's purpose.

And when for some while they preferred to blame their own slowness rather than to censure what they had not understood, and some of them wished to demand a clearer and more open exposition of your blessedness upon this, it came about by the disposition of God's mercy that, when certain men within Africa had stirred up similar things, you issued the book On Rebuke and Grace, full of divine authority. When this was brought to our notice by unhoped-for opportunity, we thought that all the complaints of those resisting would be lulled to rest, because to all the questions on which your holiness needed to be consulted so full and complete an answer was given there, as though you had studied this specially, that you might set in order the things which among us were in turmoil. But when this book of your blessedness had been reviewed,

just as those who before followed the holy and apostolic authority of your teaching have been made much more understanding and better instructed, so those who were hindered by the obscurity of their own persuasion have withdrawn more averse than they had been. Their so abrupt dissension is first to be feared on account of themselves, lest the spirit of Pelagian impiety delude men so distinguished and so eminent in the study of every virtue; then lest the simpler folk, among whom there is great reverence for these men out of regard for their probity, should reckon it safest for themselves to assert that which they hear these men — whose authority they follow without judgment — assert. For this is their very definition and profession:

that every man indeed sinned when Adam sinned, and that no one is saved by his own works but by the grace of God through regeneration; yet that to all men without exception the propitiation which is in the sacrament of Christ's blood is set forth, so that whoever shall have wished to come to faith and to baptism may be able to be saved. But as to who are going to believe, or who are going to remain in that faith which is thereafter to be aided by grace, they say that God foreknew before the foundation of the world and predestined into His kingdom those whom, freely called, He foresaw would be worthy of election and would depart from this life with a good end.

And that therefore every man is admonished to believe and to work by the divine institutions, so that no one may despair of laying hold of eternal life, since a reward is prepared for voluntary devotion. But this purpose of the calling of God, by which even before the beginning of the world, or in the very creation of the human race, a distinction is said to have been made of those to be chosen and those to be rejected — so that, according to what pleased the Creator, some were created vessels of honour and others vessels of dishonour — both takes away from the fallen the care of rising again and brings to the saints an occasion of lukewarmness, in that in either direction the labour is superfluous, if neither can the rejected by any industry enter in, nor the elect by any negligence fall away. For in whatever manner they conduct themselves, nothing else can befall them —

than what God has defined, and under an uncertain hope the course cannot be steadfast, since, if the election of Him who predestines holds otherwise, the intention of him who strives is empty. And so all industry is removed and the virtues are taken away, if God's ordinance forestalls human wills; and under this name of predestination a certain fatal necessity is introduced, or the Lord the Founder is said to be the Founder of diverse natures, if no one can be other than he has been made.

And that I may set forth more briefly and fully what they think: whatever in this book your holiness set against yourself from the sense of those contradicting, whatever also in the books against Julian you most powerfully vanquished when raised by him under this question — all this is most contentiously clamoured against by these holy men. And when we bring forward against them the writings of your blessedness, furnished with the most valid and innumerable testimonies of the divine Scriptures, and according to the form of your disputations construct something ourselves also,

whereby they may be refuted, they defend their obstinacy by antiquity, and affirm that those things which are brought forward from the epistle of the apostle Paul writing to the Romans, unto the manifestation of the divine grace preceding the merits of the elect, were never so understood by any of the ecclesiastical writers as they are now perceived. And when we demand that they themselves expound those things according to whatever sense they wish, they profess that they have found nothing that pleases them, and require that silence be kept concerning those things whose depth no one has attained.

To this at last their whole obstinacy descends, that they define our faith to be contrary to the edification of the hearers, and thus, even if it be true, it is not to be brought forth, because things are handed down that are perniciously not to be received, and things that cannot be understood are with no danger passed over in silence. Some of these, indeed, do not turn aside from the Pelagian paths to such a degree, that —

when they are compelled to confess that grace of Christ which precedes all human merits — lest, if it be rendered to merits, grace be named in vain — they wish it to pertain to this condition of each individual man, in which the grace of the Creator establishes him as one merting nothing beforehand, because not yet existing, endowed with free will and rational, so that through discernment of good and evil, both unto the knowledge of God and unto obedience to His commandments, he may be able to direct his own will, and to arrive at that grace by which we are reborn in Christ — namely, by the natural faculty, through asking, seeking, knocking, so that he therefore receives, therefore finds, therefore enters, because, having well used the good of nature, by the help of the initial grace he has deserved to arrive at that saving grace.

But the purpose of the calling grace they define altogether in this: that God has ordained to receive no one into His kingdom except through the sacrament of regeneration, and that to this gift of salvation all men universally are called, whether through the natural or through the written law or through the evangelical preaching — so that both those who shall have wished may become sons of God, and those who shall have refused to be faithful may be inexcusable, because the justice of God consists in this, that those who have not believed should perish, and His goodness may appear in this, that He repels no one from life, but indifferently wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Now here they bring forward testimonies by which the exhortation of the divine Scriptures incites the wills of men, who out of free will either do the things that are commanded or neglect them. And they think it follows that, since the transgressor is said not to have obeyed for this reason, that he was unwilling, so also the faithful man is not to be doubted to have been devout for this reason, that he was willing; and that each has as much capacity for good as for evil, and that with equal weight he moves his mind either to vices or to virtues — whom, seeking good things, the grace of God cherishes, and pursuing evil things, a just condemnation receives.

And when among these things there is set against them the multitude of countless infants, who indeed, apart from original sin — under which all men alike are born in the condemnation of the first man — as yet having no wills, no proper actions, are not separated without the judgment of God, so that before the discernment of good and evil, being taken away from the use of this life, some through regeneration are received as heirs among the heavenly kingdom, others without baptism pass over as debtors among perpetual death — they say that such are lost and such are saved as the divine knowledge has foreseen they would be in later years, if they were kept to the active age.

Nor do they consider that they are subjecting the grace of God — which they will to be the companion, not the forerunner, of human merits — even to those wills which, according to their own fancy, they do not deny to have been preceded by it. But to such a degree do they subject the election of God to whatever fabricated merits, that, because things past do not exist, they invent things future which are not going to be, and by a new kind of absurdity among them, things not to be done are foreknown, and things foreknown are not done.

This foreknowledge of God concerning human merits, according to which the calling grace is said to operate, they seem to themselves to establish much more reasonably when one comes to the contemplation of those nations which either in past ages were let go to walk in their own ways, or now too still perish in the impiety of ancient ignorance, and no illumination of either the law or the gospel has flashed upon them.

Yet since, in so far as a door has been opened to the preachers and a way made, the people of the nations who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death have seen a great light, and those who were once not a people are now the people of God, and those on whom He once had no mercy He now has mercy — they say that these were foreseen by the Lord as going to believe, and that to each and every nation the times and the ministries of teachers were so dispensed, that the belief of good wills was to arise;

and that it does not waver, that God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth — since indeed they are inexcusable who both could have been instructed by natural intelligence unto the worship of the one true God, and for this reason did not hear the gospel, because they were not going to receive it. And that our Lord Jesus Christ died for the whole human race, and that absolutely no one is excepted from the redemption of His blood, even if he pass through this whole life with a mind most alien from Him, because the sacrament of the divine mercy pertains to all men — by which the greater number are for this reason not renewed, because they are foreknown as not going to have the will to be renewed.

And so, as far as pertains to God, eternal life is prepared for all, but as far as pertains to the freedom of the will, it is laid hold of by those who have of their own accord believed God and received the aid of grace by the merit of belief. But into this preaching of such grace, those men, by whose contradiction we are offended, though they formerly held better views, have for this very reason especially betaken themselves, because, if they professed that all good merits are preceded by it and are granted by it that they may be able to exist, they would of necessity concede that God, according to the purpose and counsel of His will, by hidden judgment and manifest work, makes one vessel unto honour, another unto dishonour, since no one is justified except through grace, and no one is born except in transgression.

But they shrink from confessing this and are afraid to ascribe the merits of the saints to the divine work, nor do they acquiesce that the predestined number of the elect can be neither increased nor diminished, lest the incitements of those who exhort should have no place among the unbelieving and the negligent, and the enjoining of industry and labour should be superfluous, whose zeal, if election ceases, would be in vain; for thus only, they say, can each be called to correction or to progress, if he knows that by his own diligence he can be good, and that his freedom is for this reason to be aided by God's help, if he choose that which God commands.

And so, since in those who have received the time of free will there are two things which work out human salvation — namely the grace of God and the obedience of man — they will obedience to be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation is to be believed to stand from him who is saved, not from Him who saves, and that the will of man begets for itself the help of the divine grace, not that grace subjects to itself the human will. And since, God's mercy revealing it and your blessedness instructing us, we know this to be most perverse, we are indeed able to be steadfast in not believing it, but we are not equal to the authority of those who hold such views, because they far surpass us in the merits of life, and some of them, having lately attained the honour of the highest priesthood, stand pre-eminent;

nor does anyone easily, except a few intrepid lovers of perfect grace, dare to go against the disputations of men so greatly superior. Whence not only for those who hear them, but also for those very ones who are heard, danger has grown along with their dignities, while reverence for them either restrains many in useless silence or leads them into heedless assent, and it seems most wholesome to these very ones that scarcely anything is reproved by anyone's contradiction. Wherefore, if in these relics of Pelagian depravity a fibre of no slight virulence is nourished, if the beginning of salvation is wrongly placed in man, if the human will is impiously preferred to the divine will — so that one is helped for this reason, because he willed, not for this reason,

because he is helped, he wills; if the man who is originally evil is wrongly believed to begin the reception of good not from the highest Good but from himself; if God is not pleased from any other source than from that which He Himself has bestowed — grant to us in this cause, O most blessed pope, best father, as much as by the Lord's help you can, the diligence of your piety, that the things which in these questions are more obscure and more difficult to grasp you may deign to open up with most lucid expositions. And first, because very many do not think that the Christian faith is violated by this dissension, may you make plain how great a danger there is in their persuasion; then, in what way through this preceding and cooperating grace free will is not impeded;

then, whether the foreknowledge of God so abides according to purpose that those very things which are purposed are to be received as foreknown, or whether these things are varied through kinds of causes and species of persons — so that, because the callings are diverse in those who, going to work nothing, are saved, God's purpose alone seems to exist, but in those who are going to do something of good, the purpose can stand through foreknowledge; or whether rather uniformly — although foreknowledge cannot be divided from purpose by any distinction of time, yet foreknowledge is in a certain order supported upon purpose, and, just as there is nothing of any affairs whatever which the divine knowledge has not preceded, so there is nothing of good which has not flowed into our participation with God as author;

lastly, in what way, through this preaching of God's purpose — by which those become faithful who are preordained to eternal life — none of those who are to be exhorted is impeded, nor do they have an occasion of negligence, if they despair of being predestined. That also, we beg, in what manner it may be resolved — bearing patiently with our foolishness — you may show: that, the earlier opinions on this matter being reviewed, of almost all is found a like and single sentence, whereby they received the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge, so that for this reason God made some vessels of honour, others of dishonour, because He foresaw the end of each one, and, under the very aid of grace, in what will and action he was going to be, He foreknew.

When all these things are unravelled, and many more besides — which, pertaining to this cause with a deeper insight, you can better perceive — are discussed, we believe and hope that not only will our slenderness be strengthened by the support of your disputations, but also that those very men, illustrious in merits and honours, whom the fog of this opinion obscures, will receive the most purified light of grace. For one of them, a man of especial authority and of spiritual studies, holy Hilary, bishop of Arles, let your blessedness know to be, in all other things, an admirer and follower of your teaching, and that concerning this matter which he draws into complaint, he has long since wished to confer his own view with your holiness by letter.

But because it is uncertain whether he is going to do this, or with what end he is going to do it, and the weariness of us all, by the providence of God in this present age, breathes again in the vigour of your charity and knowledge, add erudition to the humble, add rebuke to the proud. It is necessary and useful also to write the things that have been written, lest that be esteemed trivial which is not frequently reproved. For men think that to be sound which does not pain them, nor do they feel a wound drawn over with skin; but let them understand that it will come to the knife, which shall have had a persevering swelling.

May the grace of God and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ crown you at all times, and, as you walk from strength to strength, glorify you unto eternity, most blessed lord bishop, ineffably wonderful, incomparably to be honoured, most excellent patron. Letter 226. TO THE MOST BLESSED LORD AND WITH ALL AFFECTION TO BE LONGED FOR AND MUCH TO BE RECEIVED IN CHRIST, FATHER AUGUSTINE, FROM HILARIUS. If, even when the questions of adversaries cease, the inquiries of the studious are for the most part welcome, so that they may learn even those things

which might be left unknown without danger, then I judge that the diligence of my report will be the more welcome, since, while it points out—according to the pursuits of certain persons—certain things opposed to the truth, it strives, through the counsel of your holiness, to make provision not so much for itself as for those who are troubled and who trouble others, most blessed lord and father, to be longed for with all affection and much to be received in Christ. These, then, are the matters that are being agitated at Marseilles and even in some places in Gaul: that it is a novel thing and useless to preaching that certain men are said to be chosen according to a purpose, so that they can neither seize hold of it nor keep it except by the will to believe having been granted.

They think that all the force of preaching is excluded, if it is said that nothing has remained in men which might be roused by it. They agree that every man perished in Adam, and that no one can be freed from that state by his own free choice; but they assert that this is fitting to the truth and agreeable to preaching: that, when to those who are laid low and can never rise again by their own powers the occasion of obtaining salvation is announced, then by that merit—by which they have willed and believed that they can be healed of their sickness—they may obtain both the increase of faith itself and the full effect of their entire healing. For the rest, they agree that no one can suffice of himself for any work either to begin, much less to complete it;

for they do not think that this ought to be reckoned among any work of their cure—namely, that each sick person, with a terrified and suppliant will, wishes to be healed. For as to what is said, 'Believe and you shall be saved,' they assert that one of these is required and the other offered: so that on account of that which is required, if it has been rendered, that which is offered may thereupon be granted. Whence they hold that faith must consequently be exhibited by him, this being granted to his nature by the will of the Creator; and they think that no nature is so corrupted or extinguished that it neither ought nor is able to wish itself to be healed—on account of which either a man is healed of his own accord, or, if he is unwilling, he is punished together with his sickness. Nor is grace denied, if such a will is said to precede, one that only seeks the physician, but which of itself is not yet able to accomplish anything.

For those testimonies, such as this one, 'As to each one He has apportioned the measure of faith,' and the like, they wish to have this force: that he who has begun to will may be helped, not that it may also be granted that he should will—these gifts being withheld from others, likewise guilty and who could similarly be freed, if that will to believe, which is bestowed on the equally unworthy, were likewise bestowed on them too. But if, they say, it be said that such a will has remained in all, by which one is able either to despise or to obey, then they think that by this shortcut the difference between the rejected and the elect, or the rejected, is done away, in that the merit of each one's own will is added to him.

But when it is said to them, why it is preached to some, or in some places, and not preached, or now preached—seeing that once it was preached to almost none, just as now it is not preached to some nations—they say that this belongs to the divine foreknowledge: that at that time and in that place and to those people the truth was announced or is announced, when and where it was foreknown that it would be believed. And they testify that they prove this not only from the testimonies of other Catholics, but also from an earlier disputation of your holiness, where, however, you taught that same grace with no less clarity of truth, as is that which your holiness said in the question against Porphyry concerning the time of the Christian religion:

'That Christ then willed to appear to men and to have His teaching preached among them, when He knew and where He knew there were those who would believe in Him'; or that passage from the book, in the Epistle to the Romans: 'You will say then to me: Why does He still find fault? for who resists His will?'—to which inquiry, you say, He indeed thus answers,