Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 82/118

They say, indeed, that the remission of sins is necessary for us, because we cannot make undone the things wrongly done by us in the past; but that, for guarding against future sins and conquering them and overcoming all temptations by virtue, the human will suffices by its natural capacity, without any further help of the grace of God. And they say that little children do not need the grace of the Saviour, by which through His baptism they are delivered from perdition, on the ground that they have contracted no contagion of condemnation from Adam. How hostile these things are to the grace of God—which has been granted to the human race through Christ our Lord by the law—and in what manner they strive to overturn the foundations of the whole Christian faith, your Venerableness perceives along with us.

Nor ought we to keep silent before you, so that by pastoral care you may guard against men of this sort—whom indeed we would rather and more desire to be healed within the Church than to be cut off from it. For even as we were writing this, we had learned that in the Church of Carthage a decree of an episcopal council had been established against them, to be forwarded by a letter to the holy and venerable pope Innocent; and we of the council of Numidia had likewise already written to the same apostolic see. For all of us who have hope in Christ ought to resist this pestilent impiety and, with one accord, to condemn and anathematize it—an impiety which contradicts even our prayers, granting indeed that we may say:

'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' And it grants this in such a way as to assert that a man, in this corruptible body which weighs down the soul, can by his own strength attain to such great righteousness that not even for him is it necessary to say: 'Forgive us our debts.' But that which follows—'Lead us not into temptation'—they do not understand thus, as though God is to be prayed to that He may help us to overcome the temptations of sins, but rather that no human mishap befalling us bodily may afflict us; since to conquer the temptations of sins, they hold, is already so placed within our power by the capacity of nature, that we should think it vain to obtain it by praying.

We cannot in one brief letter gather together all, or even most, of the proofs of so great an impiety, especially since, as I was writing this, the bearers about to sail did not allow me to linger longer. But I think I have not been burdensome to your holy sensibilities, in that concerning so great an evil—to be shunned with all vigilance, the Lord helping—I could not keep silent. CLXXIX. To the most blessed lord, deservedly venerable brother and fellow-bishop John, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord. That I have not deserved a writing from your Holiness, I dare not at all take amiss; for I believe rather that a bearer was lacking, than I suspect that I have been despised by your Reverence, most blessed lord and deservedly venerable brother.

But now, since I have quickly learned that Lucas, the servant of God, through whom I have directed these things, is about to return, I will give abundant thanks to the Lord and to your kindness, if you shall have deigned to visit me with a letter. As for our brother Pelagius, your son, whom I hear you greatly love, I suggest that you show him this love: that the men who have known him and diligently heard him may not suppose that your Holiness is deceived by him. For certain young men among his disciples, most honourably born and educated in the liberal arts, at his exhortation abandoned the hope which they had in the world and gave themselves to the service of God.

Yet when in these men there appeared certain things contrary to sound doctrine—which is contained in the Gospel of the Saviour and declared in the apostolic discourses, that is, when they were found disputing against the grace of God, on account of which we are Christians and in which by the Spirit from faith we await the hope of righteousness—and when at our admonitions they began to be corrected, they gave me a book which they said was by this same Pelagius, asking that I should rather reply to it. And after I saw that I ought to do this, so that in that way the wicked error itself might be more perfectly removed from their hearts, I read it and replied. In this book he calls the grace of God nothing but the nature by which we were created with free will.

But that grace which sacred Scripture commends with innumerable testimonies—teaching that by it we are justified, that is, made righteous, and that in every good work, whether in the doing or in the perfecting, we are aided by the mercy of God (which the prayers of the saints most plainly show, wherein those things are asked from the Lord which are commanded by the Lord)—this grace, then, he not only passes over in silence but speaks many things contrary to it. For he affirms, and vehemently contends, that through free will alone human nature can suffice of itself to work righteousness and to keep all the commandments of God. Hence who would not see, when he has read that same book, in what manner the grace of God is assailed—concerning which the Apostle says: 'Wretched man that I am!'

'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' And should no place be left for divine help—on account of which, when we pray, we ought to say: 'Lead us not into temptation'—then it would seem that the Lord too said to the apostle Peter without cause: 'I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,' if all this is fulfilled in us by no aid of God but by the power of the will. By these perverse and impious disputations, therefore, not only are our prayers contradicted—by which we ask from the Lord

whatever we read and hold that the saints have asked for—but even our benedictions are opposed, when over the people we say, wishing for them and asking from the Lord that He would make them abound in love toward one another and toward all, and grant them according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might by His Spirit, and fill them with all joy and peace in believing, and that they may abound in hope and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Why do we ask these things for them—things which we know the Apostle asked from the Lord for his peoples—if our nature, once created with free will, can by its own will furnish all these for itself? Why also does that same Apostle likewise say:

'For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God,' if we are led by the spirit of our own nature, so that we become sons of God? Why does he likewise say: 'The Spirit helps our weakness,' if our nature was so created that it needs not to be aided by the Spirit unto the works of righteousness? Why is it written: 'God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that you may be able to endure,' if we were already so constituted that by the powers of free will we can overcome all temptations by enduring them? Why should I do more before your Holiness, since indeed I feel that I am burdensome, especially because you hear my letters through an interpreter?

If you love Pelagius, let him also love you—nay rather, let him love himself, and not deceive you. For when you hear him confess the grace of God and the help of God, you suppose that he means by it what you also mean, who are wise according to the catholic rule, since you do not know what he has written in his book. On this account I have sent both his book itself and mine, in which I replied to him; that from it your Venerableness may perceive what he calls the grace or help of God, when it is objected to him that he contradicts the grace and help of God.

Accordingly, by teaching and exhorting him, and by praying for his salvation—which ought to be in Christ—show him that he should confess that grace of God which the holy ones of God are proved to have confessed, when they asked from the Lord those very things which He commanded them to do; since they would neither be commanded, save that our will might be shown, nor would they ask, save that the weakness of the will might be aided by Him who had commanded. Let him be plainly asked whether it pleases him that the Lord must be prayed to, that we may not sin. If this displeases him, let the Apostle be read in his ears, saying: 'Now we pray to God that you do no evil.' But if it pleases him, let him plainly proclaim the grace by which we are aided, lest he himself do much evil.

For by this grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, all are delivered who are delivered whosoever they be, since no one can be delivered in any other way apart from it. On this account it is written: 'As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'—not because no one will be condemned, but because no one will be delivered otherwise; because, just as none are sons of man except through Adam, so none are sons of God except through Christ. All, therefore, can become sons of man only through Adam, and all of them sons of God only through Christ.

Let him therefore also plainly express here what he thinks: whether it pleases him that even the little children, who cannot yet will or refuse righteousness, are nevertheless—on account of the one man through whom sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed upon all men, in whom all sinned—delivered through the grace of Christ; whether he believes that even for them the blood of Christ was shed on account of original sin, that blood which assuredly was shed for the remission of sins. About these things especially we wish to know from him what he believes, what he holds, what he certainly confesses and proclaims. But in the other matters charged against him, even if he is convicted of erring, nevertheless, until he is corrected, he is more tolerably borne with.

I ask that you also deign to transmit to us the ecclesiastical proceedings by which he is reported to have been acquitted. This I ask out of the desire of many bishops, whom, together with me, the uncertain report about this matter disturbs; but for this reason I alone have written it, because I did not wish to let slip the opportunity of the hastening bearer, whom I heard could quickly return to us. In place of those proceedings he has now sent us, not indeed any part of the proceedings, but a certain defence, as it were, written by himself, by which he said he had replied to the objections of the Gauls. In it, to omit other things, when he replied to that which was objected against him—that he had said a man can be without sin and keep the commandments of God, if he wills—'We said,' he says,

'for God gave him this possibility; we did not say that anyone is found who, from infancy to old age, has never sinned, but that one converted from sins, by his own labour and aided by the grace of God, can be without sin—nor on that account will he be incapable of change hereafter.' In this reply of Pelagius your Reverence discerns that he has confessed this: that the former life of a man, which is from infancy, is not without sin, but that he can be converted to a life which is without sin, by his own labour and aided by the grace of God. Why then, in this book to which I replied, does he say that Abel so lived here that he sinned not at all? For his words on this matter are these:

'This,' he says, 'can rightly be said of those of whose good or evil deeds Scripture makes no mention; but of those whose righteousness it does record, it would without doubt also have recorded their sins, if it had perceived them to have sinned in any respect. But grant,' he says, 'that at other times, because of the multitude of the throng, it forbore to weave together the sins of all; at the very beginning of the world, where there were only four human beings—what,' he says, 'shall we say, why it did not choose to record the transgressions of all? Was it on account of a huge multitude, which did not yet exist? Or because it mentioned only those who had committed sins, but of the one who had committed none it could not make mention?

Assuredly,' he says, 'at the first time only four human beings are reported to have existed—Adam and Eve, from whom Cain and Abel were born. Eve sinned: Scripture disclosed this; Adam too transgressed: the same Scripture did not keep silent; but that Cain also sinned that same Scripture likewise testified—of whom it indicates not only the sins but even the quality of the sins. But if Abel too had sinned,' he says, 'this also Scripture would without doubt have said; if it did not say so, then neither did he sin.'

These words I have culled from his book, which your Holiness will also be able to find in the volume itself, that you may understand in what manner you ought to believe him when he denies the rest also—unless perhaps he should say that Abel himself did indeed sin nothing, but that for this reason he was not without sin and therefore cannot be compared to the Lord (who alone in mortal flesh was without sin), because in Abel there was the original sin which he had contracted from Adam, though he himself had not committed it in his own person—would that he might at least say this, so that meanwhile we might hold his certain opinion concerning the baptism of little children!—or if perhaps, because he said 'from infancy to old age,' he should therefore say that Abel did not sin because he is not shown to have grown old. His words do not indicate this;

he said that the former life, from the beginning, was sinful, but that the latter could be without sin. For he said that he did not say that anyone is found who, from infancy to old age, has not sinned, but that one converted from sins, by his own labour and aided by the grace of God, can be without sin. For when he says 'converted from sins,' he shows that the former life is passed in sins. Let him therefore confess that Abel sinned, whose first life was in the world, which he confesses is not free from sins; and let him look back to his own book, where it is established that he said what he says in this defence: 'We did not say.'

But if he should deny that even this book, or this passage in the book, is his own, I for my part have suitable witnesses—honourable and faithful men, and without doubt lovers of his—by whose attestation I can clear myself: that they themselves gave me that same book, and that this is read there, and that they said it was Pelagius's; so that at least this may suffice for me, lest he say that it was either composed or falsified by me. Now let each one choose among them whom he will believe. It is not for me to dispute longer about this matter. We ask that you at least transmit to him himself, if he should deny that he holds those views charged against him as hostile to the grace of Christ.

For his defence is so open that, if it has by no ambiguity of words deceived your holy prudence (you who do not know his other writings), we shall rejoice with great joy, caring little whether he never held those perverse and impious views, or whether he has at some time corrected himself from them. CLXXX. To the lord deservedly most dear, and to be honoured in the members of Christ, brother Oceanus, Augustine sends greeting. I have received at once two letters of your love, in one of which you make mention of a third and recall that you had sent it previously; which I do not recollect having received—nay, I seem to recollect well that I did not receive it. Yet for those which I did receive, I give abundant thanks to your kindness toward us.

So as not to reply to them at once, I was snatched away by one storm of diverse occupations after another. Hence now, having caught a drop of leisure time, I preferred to reply something, rather than to keep a long silence toward your most sincere charity and to become more troublesome by taciturnity than by talkativeness. As to what holy Jerome thinks concerning the origin of souls, I already knew, and I had already read these very words which you set down in your letter from his book. But it is not this that makes the question troublesome—that which moves certain persons: how God justly bestows souls even upon adulterous conceptions, since to those who live well and are converted to God by faith and piety not even their own, still less their parents', sins can be a hindrance.

But it is rightly asked: if it is true that new souls are made individually out of nothing for individuals being born, in what manner so innumerable souls of little children—which it is certain will depart from their bodies without baptism before the years of reason, before they can savour or grasp anything just or unjust—are justly given over into damnation by Him with whom assuredly there is no iniquity. There is no need to say more on this matter, since you know what I wish, or rather what I do not wish, to say. I judge that what I have said is enough for a wise man. Yet if you have read anything hence by which this question might be solved, or have heard it from his mouth, or the Lord has granted it to you yourself while pondering, so that you might know it—impart it to me, I beseech you, that I may render more abundant thanks.

But as to that concerning the dutiful and useful lie, which by the example of the Lord—who says that not even the Son knows the day and hour of the ending of this world—you thought should be resolved: when I read it, I was indeed delighted by the effort of your talent, yet in no way does it seem to me that a figurative expression can rightly be called a lie. For it is not a lie when we call a day 'glad' because it makes glad, or a lupine 'sad' because with its bitter taste it saddens the face of the one tasting it, just as we say God 'knows' when He makes the man knowing; for this saying to Abraham you yourself have recalled. These are by no means lies, as you yourself also very easily observe.

Accordingly, when the blessed Hilary opened up an obscure question by this kind of figurative expression—so that we might understand that he said in that matter that the Son was 'unknowing' in the sense in which He makes others unknowing by concealing—he did not excuse a lie, but showed that it is not a lie: not only in these more usual tropes, but also in that which is called metaphor, which is known to all by the custom of speaking. For that vines 'gem,' that crops 'billow,' that young men 'flower'—will anyone contend that this is a lie, because in these things he sees neither waves nor stones nor grasses or trees, where these words are properly spoken? Furthermore, by your own talent and learning you most easily perceive how much that differs from this which the Apostle says:

'When I saw that they were not walking uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter before them all: If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of the Gentiles and not as a Jew, how do you compel the Gentiles to Judaize?' There is here no figurative obscurity; the words are the proper words of open speech. This assuredly the teacher of the Gentiles said to those whom he was travailing in birth until Christ should be formed in them, and to whom he had foretold under divine attestation: 'Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not.' He said either what was true or what was false; if false—which God forbid—you perceive what would follow, and, shuddering at both, he warns us of the sign of truth and, in the apostle Peter, of a marvellous example of humility.

But why longer on this—the things which I and the aforesaid venerable brother Jerome have sufficiently treated in letters between us concerning this question? And in that most recent work, which he has just now published under the name of Critobulus against Pelagius, he has held concerning this matter—concerning the deeds and words of the apostles—the same opinion which we too, following most blessed Cyprian, have held. Rather, concerning the origin of souls—not on account of adulterous births but on account of the damnation (which God forbid) of the innocent, which, I think, is not foolishly asked—if you have learned anything from so great and so worthy a man that could rightly be answered to those who are in doubt, I beg you not to refuse to share it with us.

For you have appeared to me in your letters so learned and so agreeable that it is worth the trouble to converse with you by letters. I do not indeed know what book of that same man of God—which the presbyter Orosius brought and gave to your love to be copied, wherein he is praised for having disputed excellently concerning the resurrection of the flesh—I ask that you now not delay to send to us. For this reason indeed we did not ask for it quickly, because we intended both to copy and to emend it, for which twofold task we now think ample time has been granted. Live to God, mindful of us. CLXXXI. Innocent to Aurelius and to all the holy bishops who were present in the council of the Carthaginian Church, most beloved brethren in the Lord, greeting.

In the examining of divine matters — which ought to be handled by priests with all diligence, and above all by a true, just, and catholic council — you who, keeping the examples of ancient tradition and mindful of ecclesiastical discipline, have confirmed by true reason the vigor of our religion no less now in taking counsel than before when you gave your ruling, have judged that the matter should be referred to our judgment. For you know what is owed to the Apostolic See — since all of us set in this place desire to follow that same Apostle from whom the episcopate itself and the whole authority of this name arose.

Following him, we have learned to condemn evils no less than to approve things worthy of praise. And so indeed you judge, guarding by your priestly office the ordinances of the fathers, that these ought not to be trodden underfoot — those things which they decreed not by human but by divine sentence: namely, that whatever might be transacted even in far-off and remote provinces should not be held concluded until it should come to the knowledge of this See, so that by its full authority whatever ruling had been just might be confirmed, and from thence the other churches might draw — just as all waters proceed from their native spring and, flowing through the diverse regions of the whole world, run pure and uncorrupted from the source of a clean head — what to command, whom to wash clean, and whom, as those defiled with filth that cannot be cleansed, the water worthy of clean bodies should shun.

I rejoice therefore, dearly beloved brethren, that through our brother and fellow bishop Julius you have sent letters to us, and that together with them you show the care you bear for the churches over which you preside, and manifest your solicitude for the good of all; and you demand that throughout all the churches of the whole world one thing be decreed for the profit of all, so that the Church, established by her rules and fortified by the decretals of a just ruling — which may guard against those men — may lie open to no attack; those men who, equipped, nay rather undone, by the perverse cleverness of words, disputing under the guise of the catholic faith and breathing forth as it were a pestilent poison to corrupt the hearts of right-thinking men toward the worse part, seek to overthrow the whole discipline of true doctrine.

It must therefore be healed the more swiftly, lest the disease, to be abhorred, creep further into men's minds — even as a physician, when he sees that there is some sickness of this earthly body, counts it a great proof of his skill if by his intervention someone despaired of quickly escapes; or when he beholds a festering wound, applies poultices or the rest by which the wound that had arisen may be closed over, and if, remaining, it cannot be healed, then, lest it corrupt the rest of the body with its rot, cuts away with the knife what was doing harm, so as to keep the remainder whole and preserve it untouched. That therefore must be cut off which, upon a body too pure and healthy, has crept in as a wound, lest, when it is wiped away too tardily, the dregs of this evil, no longer to be drained, settle almost in the very vitals.

Are we then after this to reckon anything right in the minds of those men who think they owe to themselves the fact that they are good, and do not consider Him whose grace they daily obtain? But these men, being such as they are, obtain no grace of God, who trust that they can attain by themselves as much as those scarcely merit who ask of Him and receive. For what can be so unjust, so barbarous, so ignorant of all religion, so hostile to Christian minds, as for you to deny that you owe to Him whatever you obtain in your daily grace — to Him to whom you yourself confess that you owe your very birth? Will you then be more excellent in providing for yourself than He can be in you, He who made you that you might exist!

And when you think that you owe the fact that you live, how is it that you do not think you owe to Him the fact that you live in such a way, by daily obtaining His grace? And you who deny that we need divine help, as though we were made perfect entirely from our own capability — how do we not invoke help upon ourselves, since even of ourselves we are able to be such men? For of him who denies the help of God I would ask what he means to say: that we do not merit it? or that God cannot supply it? or that there is nothing for which each man ought to ask this? That God can do this, the very works testify. That we need daily help we cannot deny;

for this — whether we live well and are stirred to live better and more holily, or, thinking depraved things, are turned away from good things that we may return to the right way — of His aid we have the greater need. Is anything to be seen so deadly, so headlong toward a fall, so exposed to all dangers, as if, thinking that this alone can suffice us — namely the free will that we received when we were born — we should thereafter seek nothing further from the Lord? That is, forgetful of our Author, we abjure His power in order to show ourselves free, as though He no longer had anything He could give — He who at your birth made you free — not knowing that unless grace, implored with great prayers, descend upon us,

we can in no wise strive to overcome the errors of earthly frailty and of the worldly body, seeing that it is not free will but the help of God alone that can make us a match to resist? For if he cries out that he has need of divine help, who would not fittingly ask it if free will availed anyone more — inasmuch as a blessed man, and one already chosen by the Lord, though he lacked nothing, yet thus besought God, asking: Be Thou my helper; forsake me not, neither despise me, O God of my salvation — do we ask free will for ourselves, while he asks God as his helper? Do we say that the fact of our being born can suffice us, while he entreats God that he be not forsaken? Not so, I pray. We learn plainly what we ought to pray, when a man so greatly blessed,

as we said above, a man, longs that he be not despised, then we plainly learn what we should pray. For those men must needs impugn these things who affirm the contrary. For then David, ignorant of prayer and unknowing of his own nature, would stand accused — he who, though he knew how much lay in his own nature, yet with prostrate prayers longs for God as his helper and constant helper; nor does a constant helper suffice him, but he longs that God may not at any time despise him, and throughout the whole body of the Psalter he both proclaims and cries this aloud.

If therefore he confessed this to be so great to know that he said it continually, so necessary that he taught it, in what manner do Pelagius and Caelestius, setting aside all the answer of the Psalms and rejecting such teaching, trust that they will persuade certain persons that we neither ought to seek nor need the help of God, when all the saints testify that without it they can do nothing? For that first man, having once endured free will, while he used his own goods too rashly, falling, was plunged into the depths of transgression, having nothing whereby he might thereafter be able to rise.