Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 5 part 93/118

But when we had departed thence, we proceeded all the way to Mauretania Caesariensis, whither ecclesiastical necessity drew us. Through all those lands, when the diverse things that thrust themselves upon our senses snatched our attention hither and thither, there was at hand no insistence of a reminder to write back to you, nor did any opportunity of a bearer present itself. Then, returning, I found among our people other letters of your sincerity, already exasperated by complaints, and another book against the new heretics, filled with the testimonies of the holy pages; and when these had been read and run through—together with those you had first sent—since a most opportune occasion of our dearest brother Albinus, acolyte of the Roman church, presented itself, a reply had to be made.

I therefore, dearest son, when you write to me or send me your writings for my consideration—far be it that I should receive them negligently, or despise them with proud vanity—especially since my joy over you is the greater the more unexpectedly and unforeseen it comes: for I confess I did not know that you had advanced so far. And what ought to be more longed-for by us than that those abound who may everywhere refute the errors assailing the catholic faith and laying snares for the unlearned and weak brethren, and may keenly and faithfully defend the church of Christ against profane novelties of words—since indeed, as it is written, «the multitude of the wise is the health of the world»?

I therefore examined your heart in your writings, as far as I could, and found it to be embraced and exhorted—that with most persevering diligence you stretch yourself toward the things that are before, the Lord helping your strength, who gave you those strengths that He might nourish them. But they have approached truth but little in the question about the baptism of little ones, whom, going astray, we strive to call back into the way—since they confess that an infant, however lately poured forth from its mother's womb, nevertheless believes through those by whom it is offered to be baptized. For when they say, as you write, that infants do not thus believe unto the remission of sins, as though those sins were remitted to them whom they think to have no sin, but that because they too receive the same laver by which it comes to pass, in whomsoever it comes to pass, that there is remission of sins—

—they believe this to come to pass in others, which does not come to pass in them. When therefore they say, «they do not believe thus, but believe thus,» assuredly they do not doubt that they believe. Let them therefore hear the Lord: «He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who is unbelieving toward the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon him.» Wherefore infants, because through others they are made believers, by whom they are offered to be baptized, through those same are surely unbelievers, if they are in the care of such as, believing that it profits them nothing, do not believe that they ought to be offered; and by this, if through believers they believe and have eternal life, assuredly through unbelievers they are unbelievers and shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides upon them. For it is not said, «comes upon them,»

—but «abides upon them,» because from origin it was already in them, nor is it taken away from them at all except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Concerning this wrath it is read also in the book of Job: «Man born of woman, short of life and full of wrath.» Whence then the wrath of God upon the innocence of a little one, save from the lot and filth of original sin? Concerning which it is likewise written in the same book that not even an infant is clean from it, whose life upon earth is of one day. Therefore in these men it has effected nothing that is disputed most insistently against them, and that the catholic voices resound about their ears from this side and that—since indeed, wishing to argue against the sacraments of the church, they have nevertheless confessed that little ones believe.

Let them not therefore promise them life, even if they should not have been baptized; for of what other life is it said, «He who is unbelieving toward the Son shall not see life»? Nor let them confess these to be so alien from the kingdom of heaven that they yet defend them from damnation; for what is signified by the wrath, which the Lord testifies abides upon the unbeliever, save damnation? Much progress indeed has been made, and the case is finished without scrupulous conflict. For if they grant that little ones believe, then beyond doubt, just as that sentence holds them: «He who is not born again of water and the Spirit shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,» so also this one, which is of the same Lord: «He who shall have believed and been baptized shall be saved; but he who shall not have believed shall be condemned.»

Since therefore, when little ones are baptized, these men confess them to be believers, let them not doubt that non-believers are condemned, and let them now dare to say, if they can, that by a just God there are condemned those who draw nothing evil to themselves from origin and have no contagion of sin. But that which you mentioned in your letter—that they object to us Enoch and Elijah, who did not die, but were translated with their bodies out of this human manner of living—how it helps them toward the matter at hand, I do not understand.

For to pass over the fact that these same men too are afterwards said to be destined to die -- as most interpreters explain John's Apocalypse concerning those two prophets, whose names are left unspoken when it speaks of them, namely that these two holy men will then appear with the very bodies in which they now live, so that they also, like the other martyrs, may die for the truth of Christ -- to pass over this, then, and to defer that question: however the matter may stand, how does it help these people, I ask you? For from this they do not show that men do not die in the body on account of sin. For if God, who to so many of His faithful grants remission of their very sins, has willed to grant to certain persons also this penalty of sin, who are we to answer God as to why He treats one man thus and another otherwise?

We say, therefore, what the Apostle most plainly declares: The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised up Christ from the dead dwells in you, He who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwells in you. Yet we do not say this in such a way as to deny that God is able, in whomever He wills, to do it now without death -- which we believe without doubt He will do for very many after death. Nor even so will that be false which is written: that through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and thus it passed unto all men.

For this was said because, unless death had entered through sin, there would be no death at all. For even when we say, 'All are sent into hell on account of their sins,' do we thereby say what is false, seeing that not all men are sent into hell? That statement is indeed true, not because every man is sent, but because none is sent save by the deserts of his sins. Of like kind, on the contrary, is also that sentence: Through the justification of one, unto all men unto justification of life; for not all men belong to the justification of Christ, but this was said because no one is justified save through Christ.

That other question, therefore, not without reason moves us more: why the penalty of sin remains when the sin itself does not remain; that is, if the death even of the body is the penalty of sin, this rather is some question -- why an infant dies, when it has been baptized -- than why Elijah did not die, when he was justified. For in the former case, sin being ended, it stirs the question why the penalty of sin has followed; but in the latter, sin being ended, it ought not to stir any question if the penalty of sin does not follow. That question, then, concerning the death of the baptized -- why, when sin has been abolished, some penalty of sin nevertheless follows -- we have, as far as we could, with the Lord's help resolved in the books On the Baptism of Little Ones, which I know are very well known to you. How much less ought this to move us, where it is said:

'Why did the righteous Elijah not die, if death is the penalty of sin?' as though it were being asked: 'Why did the sinner Elijah not die, if death is the penalty of sin?' Unless perhaps they raise one thing out of another and say: 'Enoch and Elijah were so utterly without sin that they did not even suffer death, which is the penalty of sin; how then does no one here live without sin?' -- as though it were not more probable to answer them: 'For this reason, those whom God, their sins being ended, willed to live, were not permitted to live here, because here no one can live without sin.' But these and suchlike things could have been said against these men only if from some source they conclusively proved that they will never die.

But since they cannot teach this, it is rather to be believed that Enoch and Elijah will die at the end of the world; and since it is the better belief that they will come to death, there is no reason why they should wish to cast these men at us as being of no advantage whatever to their cause. As for those, however, of whom the Apostle spoke when he was speaking of the resurrection of the dead: And we who are alive, who remain, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord -- these indeed present some matter of inquiry, but on their own account and not on account of these men. For even if they too are not to die, I do not at all see how they help these people, since such things can be said of them as have been said of those two.

But in truth, so far as the words of the blessed Apostle are concerned, he seems to assert that some, at the end of the age when the Lord comes and the resurrection of the dead is to take place, will not die, but being found alive will suddenly be changed into that immortality which is given also to the rest of the saints, and together with them be caught up, as he says, in the clouds; nor has anything else appeared to me, as often as I have wished to reflect on these words. But I should rather wish to hear the more learned on this point, lest to those who think that some, without death preceding, will be made alive and pass over to perpetual life, the Apostle be found to say: Foolish one, that which you sow is not made alive unless it first die.

For also that which is read in most manuscripts, 'we shall all rise again' -- whence could this come to pass, unless we all die? For the resurrection, unless death has preceded, is none at all. And what some manuscripts have, 'we shall all sleep,' compels this to be understood much more easily and plainly. And if anything else of the kind is found in the sacred writings, it seems to impel toward this: that no man be reckoned to attain immortality unless death has preceded. Accordingly, where the Apostle said: And we who are alive, who remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep before. For the Lord Himself, at a command, at the voice of an archangel and at the trumpet of God, shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first;

then we who are alive, who remain, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord -- I should wish, as I have said, to hear the more learned concerning these things; and if only these words can be so expounded that in them it may be understood that all men who live or shall live after us are to die, I should wish to correct the fact that on this point I once thought otherwise. For we ought not to be unteachable teachers; and surely a man is better corrected while he is small than broken while he is hard. Let our own or others' weakness be so exercised and instructed by the things we have written, that yet no canonical authority, as it were, be established in them.

But if in these words of the Apostle no other sense can be found, and it becomes clear that he wished this to be understood which the very words seem to proclaim -- that is, that at the end of the age and at the coming of the Lord there will be those who will not be stripped of the body, but will be clothed over with immortality, so that the mortal may be swallowed up by life -- then this sentence will without doubt agree with what we confess in the rule of faith: that the Lord will come to judge the living and the dead. So that we do not here understand the living as the righteous and the dead as the unrighteous -- although both righteous and unrighteous are to be judged -- but the living as those whom His coming shall find not yet gone forth, and the dead as those whom it shall find already gone forth from their bodies.

If this be established as so, those words will have to be shaken out and examined -- how we shall take 'that which you sow is not made alive unless it die,' and 'we shall all rise again' or 'we shall all sleep' -- so that they may not be opposed to this sentence, whereby some are believed to be destined to live forever even with their bodies, without tasting death. But whichever of these two is found to be the truer and more perspicacious understanding, what does it pertain to the cause of these men?

Whether all are smitten with the death that is owed, or some are spared from this condition -- since it nevertheless stands firm that not only death of the soul but also of the body would not have followed had sin not gone before, and that it is of the more marvelous power of grace for the righteous to be brought back to life from death unto eternal blessedness, than not to come into the experience of death at all? Let these things, said on account of those about whom you wrote to me, be enough, although I do not think they now say that, even had Adam not sinned, he would have died at least in the body. But as for what pertains to the question of the resurrection, on account of those

who are believed not to be destined to die but to pass over from this mortality to immortality without death intervening, a more diligent inquiry must be applied; and if you have heard or read, or have even yourself been able to think out, anything on this point resolved and defined by reasonable and finished discussion -- or if you shall yet be able to hear or read or think it out -- I beg you not to be reluctant to send it to me. For I, which must be confessed to your charity, love to learn more than to teach. For of this we are admonished also by the Apostle James, who says: But let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak. So that we may learn, the sweetness of truth ought to invite us; but that we may teach, the necessity of charity ought to compel us.

Where it is rather to be wished that this necessity, by which one man teaches another something, may pass away, so that we may all be taught of God. Even though we are so already, when we learn the things that pertain to true piety, even when a man seems to teach them; for neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Since therefore, if God did not give the increase, the apostles, planters and waterers, would be nothing, how much more should I, or you, or any men of this age, when we seem to ourselves to be teachers! CXCIV. TO HIS MOST BELOVED LORD IN THE LORD OF LORDS, THE HOLY BROTHER AND FELLOW-PRESBYTER SIXTUS, AUGUSTINE SENDS GREETING IN THE LORD.

In the letter which I sent through our dearest brother Albinus the acolyte, I promised that I would send a longer one through our holy brother and fellow-presbyter Firmus, who brought us your letters full of the sincerity of your faith. These conferred upon us as much joy as we are more able to have than to express. For, as must be confessed to your charity, we were exceedingly sad when rumor bruited it abroad that you favored the enemies of Christian grace. But that this sadness might be wiped from our hearts, rumor was not silent, first, that you yourself before others had pronounced anathema against them in a very crowded assembly of the people:

then, when with the letters of the Apostolic See concerning their condemnation sent to Africa, your letters also followed to the venerable old man Aurelius, which, though brief, sufficiently indicated your vigor against their error: but now, when more openly and more fully, in your letters, faith itself was speaking with us of what you thought about that dogma and against it -- the faith of the Roman Church, to which especially the blessed Apostle Paul spoke much and in manifold ways concerning the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

not only did all that cloud of sadness flee from our hearts, but so great a light of gladness shone forth there, that that grief and fear seemed to have wrought nothing in us except the ampler ardor of the joys that were to follow. And so, dearest brother, although we do not see you with the eyes of the flesh, yet in mind, in the faith of Christ, in the grace of Christ, in the members of Christ, we hold you, we embrace you,

we kiss you; and now that the most holy and most faithful bearer of our mutual conversations is returning from us to you -- he whom you wished to be with us not only the conveyer of your writings but also the narrator and witness of your deeds -- we discharge our reply and converse with you somewhat longer, admonishing you to press on in teaching those whom in terrifying you have, as far as we have learned, sufficiently pressed. For there are certain men who think that impieties most justly condemned are still to be defended more freely; and there are those who more covertly penetrate homes and, what they now fear to cry aloud in the open, do not cease to sow in secret; and there are those, moreover, who have altogether kept silent, pressed down by great fear.

but they still retain in their heart what they no longer dare to utter with their mouth -- men who nevertheless can be very well known to the brethren from their former defense of that very dogma. Accordingly, some are to be more severely restrained, others to be more vigilantly tracked, others indeed to be handled more gently but taught no less diligently, so that if they are not feared, lest they be lost, they may yet not be neglected, lest they perish. For as to their thinking that free choice is taken away from them, if they should consent that a man does not have even a good will itself without the help of God, they do not understand that they do not strengthen human choice but inflate it, so that it is borne through empty things and is not placed in the Lord as upon a stable rock; for the will is prepared by the Lord. But as to their supposing that they believe God to be a respecter of persons: if they believe

that without any preceding merits He has mercy on whom He wills, and calls whom He deigns, and makes religious whom He wills, they would pay too little heed to this: that the due penalty is rendered to the condemned, and undue grace to the delivered; so that neither may the former complain that he is unworthy, nor the latter boast that he is worthy; and that rather there is no respect of persons where one and the same mass involves both in damnation and offense, so that the delivered may learn from the not-delivered that the same punishment would befit him too, unless grace came to his aid; but if grace, then assuredly rendered by no merits, but bestowed by gratuitous goodness. 'But it is unjust,' they say, 'that in one and the same evil cause this man be delivered and that one punished.' Then surely it is just that both be punished. Who would deny this?

Let us therefore also give thanks to the Savior, while we perceive that there is not rendered to us what we recognize to have been due to us also in the damnation of our fellows. For if both were delivered, it would lie hidden what is owed to sin through justice; if none, what grace would bestow. In order, then, that in this most difficult question we may rather use the words of the Apostle: God, willing to show His wrath and to demonstrate His power, brought forth in much patience vessels of wrath, which have been fitted for destruction; and in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, to whom the thing formed cannot say: Why hast Thou made me thus?

since He has power out of the same mass to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor -- where, because this whole mass is deservedly condemned, justice renders the due dishonor, grace bestows the undue honor, by the prerogative not of merit, not by the necessity of fate, not by the rashness of fortune, but by the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, which the Apostle does not open, but, marveling at it as shut, cries out: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? or who has been His counselor? or who has first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him? For of Him and through Him and in Him are all things: to Him be glory forever and ever!

But they are unwilling that glory be to Him in the justifying of the ungodly by gratuitous grace -- they who, ignorant of His righteousness, wish to establish their own; or, now pressed by the voices of the religious and pious who cry out against them, confess that they are helped by God to have or to do righteousness in such a way that something of their own merit goes before -- as though wishing first to give, that it may be recompensed to them by Him of whom it was said: Who has first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him? -- and supposing that their own merits go before, unto Him of whom they hear, or rather refuse to hear: For of Him and through Him and in Him are all things. But of what riches the depth of His wisdom and knowledge is, of these are the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, whom He calls unto adoption.

which riches He wills to make known also through vessels of wrath, which have been fitted for destruction. And what are the untraceable ways, save those of which it is sung in the psalm: All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth? His mercy and truth, therefore, are untraceable, since on whom He wills He has mercy, not by justice but by the mercy of grace, and whom He wills He hardens, not by iniquity but by the truth of vengeance. Yet this mercy and truth so meet each other -- because it is written: Mercy and truth are met together -- that neither does mercy hinder the truth by which the worthy is smitten, nor truth the mercy by which the unworthy is delivered. What merits of his own, then, is he who is delivered going to boast of,

since, if what was worthy of his merits were rendered to him, he would be nothing but condemned? Are there then no merits of the righteous? There are plainly, because they are righteous; but that they should become righteous, there were no merits: for they were made righteous when they were justified; but, as the Apostle says, being justified freely by His grace. Since therefore these men are enemies and hostile to this grace -- Pelagius nevertheless, in the ecclesiastical judgment in Palestine (for otherwise he would not have come away from there unpunished), anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits. But nothing else is found even in their later disputations than that that grace is given by merits -- the grace concerning whose commendation the apostolic epistle to the Romans especially speaks.

so that from there the preaching of it, as from the head of the world, might spread throughout the whole world: for it is that grace by which the ungodly is justified, that is, is made righteous, who before had been ungodly. And therefore no merits precede the receiving of this grace, because to the merits of the ungodly not grace but punishment is owed; nor would this be grace, if it were not given gratuitously, but rendered as a due. But when it is asked of these men what grace Pelagius thought was given without any preceding merits, when he anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, they answer that the grace given without any preceding merits is human nature itself, in which we were created; for neither, before we existed, could we merit anything, that we might exist.

Let this deceit be cast out of Christian hearts! Not at all, not at all does the Apostle commend that grace by which we were created that we might be men, but that by which we were justified, when we were evil men. For this is the grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. For indeed Christ died not for no one, that men might be created, but for the ungodly, that they might be justified: for he was already a man who said: Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. They can indeed say that the remission of sins is grace, which is given without any preceding merits; for what good merit can sinners have? But not even the remission of sins itself is without some merit,

if faith obtains it. For the merit of faith is not nothing; by which faith that man said: Lord, be merciful to me a sinner, and went down justified by the merit of faithful humility, since he who humbles himself shall be exalted. It remains, therefore, that faith itself, from which all righteousness takes its beginning -- on account of which it is said to the Church in the Song of Songs: You shall come and pass over from the beginning of faith -- it remains, I say, that faith itself we should not ascribe to human choice, which these men extol, nor to any preceding merits, since from thence begin whatever good merits there are, but should confess it to be the gratuitous gift of God,

if we conceive of true grace, that is, grace without merits, because, as is read in the same epistle, God has apportioned to each one the measure of faith. Good works indeed are done by man, but faith is wrought in man, without which those works are done by no man; for everything that is not of faith is sin. Wherefore, lest it exalt even the merit of prayer itself -- even though, for conquering the desires of temporal things and loving eternal goods and God Himself, the fount of all goods, help is given to the one praying -- faith prays, which was given to the one not praying, which unless it had been given, one could not pray. For how shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe Him whom they have not heard? how shall they hear without a preacher?

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Accordingly, the minister of Christ, the preacher of this faith, according to the grace that is given to him, is a planter and a waterer; yet neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase, who apportions to each one the measure of faith. Whence also elsewhere it is said: Peace to the brethren and love with faith; which, lest they should ascribe to themselves, he immediately subjoined: From God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ; because faith is not of all who hear the word, but of those to whom God apportions the measure of faith, just as not all things sprout which are planted and watered, but those to which God gives the increase. But why one man believes, and another does not believe, when both hear the same thing, and,

if a miracle be done in their sight, both see the same thing, yet one believes and the other does not -- this is the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of Him whose judgments are unsearchable and with whom there is no iniquity, while on whom He wills He has mercy, and whom He wills He hardens; nor are these things unjust because they are hidden. Then, after the remission of sins, unless the Holy Spirit inhabit the cleansed house, does not the unclean spirit return with seven others, and the last state of that man become worse than the first? But that the Holy Spirit may inhabit -- does He not breathe where He wills? -- and the love of God, without which no one lives well, is poured out in our hearts not by ourselves but through the Holy Spirit who is given to us?