Papal Letters 1 part 23/50

Now in what manner an interior quality of appetite is able to alter nature is confirmed by the authority of the divine reading. Thus, in short, that flock of sheep entrusted to Jacob as he pastured them, when a variety of rods was placed beneath at the troughs, conceived while drinking, enticed by an affective delight, that which it had not in its nature, and transfused into its offspring something ingrained in its senses which it had not taken up in its creation. This, being indeed then done figuratively, signified also in the ecclesiastical flocks that this would come to pass; and God, foreseeing the calumnies of the Pelagians that would be roused against His faithful, prepared the understanding of a more certain proof.

The divine testimonies teach it, and the ecclesiastical sacraments themselves, and from the Lord Saviour Himself the tradition of the Catholic teachers: that the beginnings of human generation are stained. Hence it is that the prophet cries out: Who shall glory that he has a chaste heart, or that he is clean from sins? Not even the infant whose life upon earth is of a single day. Hence it is that Scripture likewise says: Who can make clean that which is conceived of unclean seed? Is it not Thou, who alone art? And elsewhere, because the seed, it says, was accursed. Moreover David the prophet also testifies: In iniquities was I conceived, and in sins did my mother bring me forth. And if he says this, who could assert himself begotten otherwise? The blessed apostle Paul too asserts:

And we also were once by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest. Of this wrath He says in the Gospel: He that believeth and is baptized hath eternal life; but he that believeth not is already judged, and the wrath of God abideth upon him — that wrath assuredly of which it was said: With death shalt thou die. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself proclaims with heavenly voice: Whoso eateth not the flesh of the Son of Man and drinketh His blood shall not have life in himself. Here we surely see none excepted, nor has anyone dared to say that a little child without this saving sacrament can be brought to eternal life; and without that life, that it will remain in perpetual death is beyond doubt.

Why then is the infant shut up under this lot, if it has no sin at all? And rather — which God forbid — God will seem unjust, if punishment is inflicted there where there is no fault. Since therefore he is held bound by no guilt of his own acts, nothing remains save that he is polluted by the faulty nativity alone; and if he has not been cleansed by participation in the Christian mystery, he cannot attain to eternal life. Hence it is that infants are exorcised and catechized, so that — because upon the work of God, whereby they are well established in their Author, there acceded the work of diabolical malignity — being snatched from the power of darkness, as the apostle teaches, they may be transferred to the lot of the sons of God and to lawful purgation.

But unless the first generation, which God established good, had come into fault through transgression and been made reprobate, a second generation to be substituted would not have been needed. On which account the blessed apostle Paul says: As by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so it passed unto all men, in whom all have sinned; and a little later: Therefore, as by the offence of one unto all men to condemnation, so also by the righteousness of one unto all men to the justification of life. Now just as He says all unto condemnation — namely those who are begotten of Adam their parent — so unto the justification of life He affirms none but those who are reborn in the mystery of Christ.

By countless such instruments the deadly doctrine of the Pelagian heresy has been both refuted by our forefathers and can now be convicted by their abundant erudition; nor ought these things to trouble simple souls, for whom it will suffice to have believed, according to the ecclesiastical form, the things they do not understand — or, if anyone desires to know, it will be fitting to inquire. But as to what he asserts concerning little children, that for original sin alone, without holy baptism, they cannot be condemned, it is a proposition impious enough and profane enough.

For although no Christian is ignorant that infants fresh from their mothers' wombs are baptized for the remission of sins — which indeed the Catholic Church celebrates not deceitfully but truthfully, lest, which God forbid, it should seem to lie in the heavenly sacraments — accordingly, since they have no sins of their own, it is established that for them the original sin alone is entirely remitted; and thus, since by even this alone being remitted they obtain eternal life through baptism, it follows that by this alone not being remitted they cannot attain to eternal life. Whence also the Lord, as we said above, declares that which surely does not befit any but the baptized: Whoso eateth not the flesh of the Son of Man and drinketh His blood shall not have life in himself.

And to be without perpetual life, what is it but to be established in everlasting death? Although the 'kingdom of heaven' is the same as 'eternal life,' yet, that the providence of God might cut off all the wickednesses of the Pelagians, it was said not only: He that is not reborn of water and the Holy Spirit shall not enter the kingdom of heaven, but it was equally said: Whoso eateth not the flesh of the Son of Man and drinketh His blood shall not have life in himself. Now no one doubts that this was said of eternal life, since many who do not eat this sacrament are seen to have present life.

There is nothing therefore in what they say — that infants not reborn are only unable to go into the kingdom of heaven, but are not punished with perpetual damnation — since without baptism they can neither eat nor drink the body and blood of Christ, and without this they cannot have life in themselves, and without life they will be nothing other than dead. Let them say, then, whether those established in perpetual death are not to be reckoned as damned. Let them therefore remove from the midst some I-know-not-what third place, which they devise for the deceiving of little children; and, since we read of none but a right hand and a left, let them not make those without baptism remain in the region on the left, but let them permit the baptized to be transferred by sacred regeneration to the saving right hand.

In the third chapter he carries about those ravings of the Pelagians, now known and refuted throughout the whole world, by which they say that man, through free will — which he has corrupted, defiled, and ruined — is made blessed with nature lending its aid; whereas from the blessedness of paradise, where his substance had been established good, he could by no means have been expelled except by the loss of his own good, and was therefore made mortal because by transgression he had assuredly passed from good to evil, and from the divine participation had betaken himself to diabolical crimes; therefore, fittingly given over to his own deceiver, to whom he had willingly assented; therefore shut out from the love of his own felicity, and by heavenly voice condemned to thorns and thistles and manifold miseries;

which punishment of just judgment, so grave and harsh, would by no means have been inflicted on one persevering in good, and would be proved not fittingly imposed except upon evil. Behold, without the divine aid — which, placed in that blessedness, he is nowhere read to have sought — not only could natural good not profit man, not only did it not make him blessed, but when he trusted in this alone and did not return to its Bestower, he both lost his blessedness and took the beginning of all evils. But that by free will they should attain blessedness — that free will by whose evil use he fell back into perpetual servitude, as it is written: He that committeth sin is the servant of sin;

for by whom a man is overcome, to him is he also assigned as a servant — is not this that natural presumption which descends to the laws of a detestable captivity, which holy Scripture thus recalls: A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming forth from their mother's womb until the day of their burial into the mother of all? From which captivity our Lord Jesus Christ alone redeemed the human race by the transaction of His Passion and, by changing our nativity, rescued us; He alone assuredly came to seek and to save that which had perished, so that the liberty which had been cast down by rash pride might be restored, repaired through grace; and by a mutual exchange of human will, just as by following the devil it had merited everlasting captivity,

so, being reformed by following the Author of liberty, it might return to the reward it had lost. Hence it is that the Lord Himself says: When the Son shall have set you free, then shall ye be truly free; and the blessed apostle Paul carries it out: When ye were servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness (that is, 'strangers to righteousness'); but being now freed from sin, ye are made servants of righteousness; and again the same one says: the liberty wherewith Christ hath freed you. Does not the very vessel of election affirm and say: It is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish, for the good will — lest even in an evil will God should be thought to work both the willing and the accomplishing?

But that is the peculiar and long-worn poison of the Pelagians, whereby they think that the grace of God can be conferred according to the merits of men — which be it far from Christian minds, since the aforesaid apostle testifies: It is grace which is given freely; otherwise, if of works, grace is now no longer grace, because a wage is rendered, not bestowed freely (whence grace received its name). And who would dare to say that he, a Christian, has any good thing without grace, when the teacher of the nations cries out, briefly comprising all gifts in himself: By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace in me was not void — to show that he did not himself go before the gift of grace, but rather followed after it?

And to show himself a fellow-worker of grace by following after, he says: but I laboured more abundantly than they all; and again, fearing lest he should seem to presume of himself, he added: yet not I, but the grace of God with me. He did not say 'I and the grace of God with me,' but set the preceding grace before, and subjoined himself after. But what can be had without grace, since faith itself is through grace, as the same apostle teaches us: I obtained mercy, that I might be faithful? Nor is the divine mercy anything other than grace. Let us hear also how he instructs the Church: By grace, he says, ye are saved through faith — to declare that the beginning of salvation and of faith took its start from grace, as, following on, he links:

and this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should be exalted. The same man elsewhere, generally and absolutely, declares, saying: For what hast thou that thou didst not receive? And if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it? Who could suffice to recount one by one the passages by which it evidently appears that the choice of natural liberty does not earn grace, but rather receives, through grace, to be mercifully absolved from the servitude which it had merited by sinning?

By the redemption of this sacrament, prepared by eternal providence before the beginning of the world, whether before the law was yet promulgated or under legal observance, by figurative signs and sacrifices the ancient origin of all holy men and holy women was cleansed, and to all the just the remedies of eternal salvation came from afar through the Spirit of grace, from this mystery to be adored; the fullness of which, made manifest in Christ to the nations, purges and renews the world and truly makes them partakers of perpetual blessedness.

Wherefore we exceedingly accuse our brothers and fellow-bishops, especially those governing the Lord's Church throughout the provinces of Picenum, who not only did not deter the depraved discourse of a most inept old man and an abject person, but even nourished it by their consent. Who could hear, who could bear that pontiffs suffered some worthless carcass — I know not what — to dare to deprive of communion a presbyter not acquiescing to him? How was such a man either received by anyone or patiently heard, who moreover gave laws readily accepted, that the servants of God should be mingled with consecrated maidens in a most disgraceful congregation?

For since spiritual souls, even when such consorting is absent, are assailed by imaginary allurements, how should they not be more vehemently incited by the sight of the opposite sex, which entices even the unwilling? A yet greater crime grows up: that under the gaze and presence of priests, a dying fly — as it is written — corrupting the oil of sweetness, should strive to rend Jerome and Augustine of blessed memory, the lights of ecclesiastical teachers. But why do we wonder that the prelates of the churches neglect these things, who — as we have heard from many — manifestly do all things against the canons and everywhere confound all things against apostolic discipline:

ordaining without the rules being kept, and unlawfully permitting not only monks but even ministers of the Church who migrate to foreign parts with women to return again, and to be advanced by other bishops into the clerical service? Since these things one by one are not to be tolerated, who could endure that so many and such crimes be perpetrated, by which — offering not undeservedly a spectacle to Gentiles and Jews and heretics — they seem to tend, which God forbid, to the very destruction of religion? And to those doing such things worthily will be fitted that sentence of the apostle who says: For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you. Let it suffice, then, that thus far these things have been committed; and, that God may be appeased, let divine things be more anxiously cared for than human.

Let the champion of the aforesaid pestilence find no place at all, nor find any approach whatever to the Church, nor anywhere a participation in Catholic communion — he who prefers to pursue the fellowship of heretics by a wicked profession; and let those with whom he shall be proved to have previously mingled harmful association, unless they come to their senses and depart from his society, being removed from ecclesiastical service, be struck with due retribution, so that an example of caution may be furnished to the rest. Let no one approach him, nor let him ever be permitted to speak the blasphemies long since condemned. With the dwellings of men and women kept separate, as befits a holy purpose, let circumspect devotion be exercised.

Contrary to the ordinances of the canons let no one be permitted to ecclesiastical office; and the rulers of each several province shall not be ignorant that they will find no pardon even for past errors, if henceforth they dissemble in avoiding those that have been laid bare. Nor for the rest will any occasion of excuse be left, if, after the present injunctions — which we have determined to dispatch through the deacon Romulus, whose diligence for the Catholic faith and whose vigilance for religion we most gratefully approve — any bishop be found either a despiser or negligent concerning all these things.

For just as it pertains to the governance of the apostolic see to minister to all the churches the solicitude due and fitting, so it is necessary that it should not dissemble the power divinely handed over to it against the contumacious and the slothful. Given on the Kalends of November, in the consulship of the most distinguished Albinus. (95) OF GELASIUS, BISHOP OF THE CITY OF ROME, TO THE DARDANIANS. We have greatly wondered that your Charity desires to know, as though it were a new and, as it were, a difficult question, and still as though something unheard of, that which the communicators of the Eutychian pestilence — having nothing to answer in defence of the obstinacy of their perdition, and now convicted by frequent reasoning — mutter in wretched contentiousness; not because what they chatter is of any moment, but because they utterly find nothing to say.

Wherein we wonder the more that those who are instructed in Catholic sentiments still cling to it, than that those who have fallen from the truth and are deviant from the ancient tradition of the Church should hold forth the profane novelties of words and the follies of a fleeting perversity — by which, as your Charity reported, they boast that Acacius is therefore not to be reckoned justly condemned, because he does not appear to have been deposed by a special synod; and moreover they heap up the madness of their vanity by childishly adding, 'especially the pontiff of the royal city.'

Wherefore, spurning the folly of these empty complaints, it behooves you to run through matters from the blessed apostles themselves and to consider prudently that our Catholic and learned fathers, the pontiffs, in each and every heresy stirred up at any time whatever, willed that whatever they had once sanctioned in an assembly gathered on behalf of the faith, of truth, of Catholic and apostolic communion, according to the path of the Scriptures and the preaching of the elders, should thereafter stand unshaken and firm; nor did they permit that in the same cause the things that had been laid down should be reconsidered anew by any recent presumption whatever — most wisely perceiving that, if it were allowed to anyone to repeat decrees wholesomely made, no ecclesiastical constitution against each and every error would persist stable, and by the same recurring frenzies every entire definition would be thrown into turmoil.

For if, even with the limits once set of the synodal rules laid down, the crushed pestilences do not cease, their contests resumed, to raise themselves against the foundation of truth and to strike whatever simple hearts, what would happen if it were repeatedly lawful for the faithless to enter into a council — since, however manifest that truth may be, there is never lacking something which pernicious falsehood may bring forth, though deficient in reason or authority, yet, by intention alone, not yielding?

Which things our forefathers, discerning by divine inspiration, necessarily forestalled: that against each and every heresy, what a synod convened had decreed on behalf of the faith, communion, and Catholic and apostolic truth, they would not allow to be mutilated thereafter by new reconsiderations, lest occasion be furnished to the depraved of assailing what had been medicinally established. But, the author of any madness whatever, and likewise the error, being condemned, they judged it sufficient that whoever should at any time become a communicator of this error should be bound by the principal sentence of its condemnation, since manifestly anyone could be recognized either by his own profession or by his communion.

And, to say nothing of the earlier matters, which a diligent inquirer can easily trace out: a synod condemned Sabellius, nor was it necessary, in order that his followers might afterward be condemned, that individual synods be celebrated one by one; but according to the tenor of the ancient constitution, all who had been partakers either of that depravity or of that communion, the universal Church judged to be repudiated. Thus, on account of the blasphemies of Arius, the form of faith and of Catholic communion, brought forth by the Nicene assembly, concludes, without reconsideration, all Arians, or whoever shall have fallen into this pestilence, whether by sentiment or by communion.

Thus a synod, held once, condemning Eunomius, Macedonius, Nestorius, did not permit recourse further to new councils, but the Church, by the synodal limit handed over to it, repudiated all who by any manner whatever fell back into these fellowships; nor is it ever manifest that the Church rightly yielded, under compulsion of any necessity, to profane by new audacities the things that had been wholesomely established.

Therefore, in the tempest also of the Arian persecution, very many Catholic priests, breathing again from their exiles when peace was restored, thus nonetheless composed with their Catholic brethren the disturbed churches, in such a way that they did not, however, change whatever the Nicene synod had defined concerning faith and Catholic and apostolic communion, nor strike anyone with a new condemnation for his lapse, but by the tenor of that decree they judged them to be condemned, unless they came to their senses.

These things being fittingly weighed, as has been said, from the paternal tradition, we are confident that no one now truly Christian is ignorant that the constitution of each and every synod which the assent of the universal Church has approved, no see ought to carry out more than the others save the first — which both confirms each synod by its own authority and guards it by a continued moderation, in accordance, namely, with its own primacy, which the blessed apostle Peter, received by the voice of the Lord, the Church nonetheless following after, both has always held and retains.

When the Apostolic See had learned by sure evidence that Acacius had strayed from Catholic and apostolic communion, it long refused to believe this, seeing that it had known him to have often stood forth as the executor of its own necessary provisions against heretics; and so for nearly three years it did not cease to admonish him by letters sent to him, as the writings dispatched frequently through various persons bear witness. And when he proposed to give no answer for a long time in an <un>due silence, an episcopal legation also was sent directly, and nonetheless a document was dispatched to forewarn him to be mindful beforehand of his own deeds, and that he ought to look back upon those things for which he had at first toiled in behalf of the Catholic faith; and it protested, at once by coaxing and by threatening alike, that he should not cut himself off from the body of Catholic unity.

And at the same time, since John, the bishop of the second see, was pressing him with grave charges, the Apostolic See exhorted him that he ought either to come to the hearing of the first see or to send a representative; for although a synod was not to be repeated, yet it was fitting that the bishop of any city should not evade the judgment of the first see, before which the bishop of the second see had appeared, who could not be heard except by the first see.

especially since he who, in the prejudiced minds of the Greeks, had been excluded by no synod, could neither by any means plead his cause even among them nor ought to have done so, because the one who was superior could not be examined by bishops inferior to himself except by the first see, as has been said, nor, if reason so demanded, be condemned; and since already, with all the Eastern bishops together with Acacius himself falling back into the communion of Peter, a Catholic bishop of the second see was by no means to be judged by men of an external communion.

But Acacius not only disdained to comply with the demands, but even, having by flatteries, bribes, and perjuries deceived the very legation of the Apostolic See—by which he promised it that, along with the emperor, the whole cause concerning all matters would be reserved intact for the apostolic prelate—he brought it back defiled with the communion of Peter; so far did he despise the power of the Apostolic See that he not only did not yield to its authority, but rather strove through his legates to draw it away into fellowship with an external communion; and it became a necessity for the Apostolic See to deprive of honor and communion alike those very priests whom it had sent, lest it should seem infected with such contagion, and so that it might sufficiently show that it did not hate Acacius' person in particular, but rejected the covenants of the lost, which it would fittingly abhor even in its own pontiffs as things to be detested. Yet Acacius nonetheless indicated in his own letters both that he had most readily fallen back into the communion of Peter of Alexandria—whom, at the sought authority of the Apostolic See, he himself too as executor had condemned—without consulting that same Apostolic See, and that in his own words he conveyed the accusation of John and the praises of Peter.

Concerning which, if he was indeed confident, he ought rather to have come or to have sent, so that he might both refute John, present, concerning the lies which he alleged, and reasonably set forth the praises of Peter which he had composed. But since he did this by no means, he showed plainly enough that he could neither convict John nor had confidence that Peter had been lawfully received so as to teach it thoroughly; and he showed that his sole purpose lay in tearing the Catholics to pieces and praising the heretics, and he demonstrated that he was rather a partner of those whom he praised than an associate of the Catholics whom he strove to besmirch; and he brought judgment upon himself, when, defiled by communion with a condemned man, he was made a sharer of his condemnation.

Thus the Apostolic See, as far as pertained to necessary diligence, omitted nothing; and Acacius appeared condemned by his own judgment according to the form of the Council of Chalcedon, by which the error to which he had communicated was struck down—as it is written of the heretical man; and justly did the Apostolic See, which remembered that it had indeed condemned Peter of Alexandria and had not also absolved him, lest through Acacius' former communion it should fall into the college of Peter also, with whom Acacius had communicated, fittingly remove Acacius himself from its own communion. Wherefore, whether Acacius communicated with error or with prevarication, what need was there to learn it by new inquiry, since he had already himself confessed it in his own letters, and, as it is written:

'By thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned'—should he not be held both guilty by the bonds of his own words and rightly to be punished by law? Why, in a new case which no synod had preceded, did he disdain to confute John—whom he was assailing with his own letters, a bishop of the second see, such as he was—before the judgment of the first see of the blessed apostle Peter, and, so that he might plead his cause either by himself or through whatever lawful person he wished, did he scorn either to come or to send, deeming it unworthy that a bishop of any city should come to the judgment of the first see, to which he saw that a pontiff of the second see had come—as Anatolius, bishop of the city of Constantinople, is shown to have done for his own person by sending legations?

Behold, in this matter too he has not the voice of one who complains; behold, I say, he was summoned to a lawful examination, where he ought either to have confuted the accused or to have defended his own side with just allegations. If he shunned the examination of the Apostolic See in investigating the case of John, a Catholic pontiff, how was the Apostolic See going to follow the judgment of Acacius concerning the reception of Peter, a heretic condemned by its own sentence and not absolved by its own authority?

Or was it fitting for the Apostolic See to await the judgment of the parish of the church of Heraclea—that is, of the pontiff of Constantinople or of any others whatsoever who were to be assembled with him or on his account—when the bishop of Constantinople was declining the hearing of the apostolic, that is, the first see? For even if he were indeed supported by metropolitan right, even if he held a place among the sees, yet he had no right to refuse the cognizance of the first see, to which, upon the appeal of the bishop of the second see according to the canons, he was being summoned to the cause. Did he not by this very fact show sufficiently that he confessed himself guilty, who, though required to be present at a lawful judgment, scorned to attend?