do not despair of anyone, because he who today does not acknowledge the truth in some matter can tomorrow, by God's revealing, come to know it. For it lies within God's power, when He wills, that this be possible (Wisd. 12:18). Let us therefore pray for them, that God may work in them. Let us show them good will, from which we ourselves can have a reward, knowing that whoever is of the number of the predestinated shall not perish in the sight of God, and that in all things the will of the Almighty shall be fulfilled, so that through grace they may be saved, and, by the Lord's enlightening, may attain the knowledge of the truth. Above all things, be zealous to put before the aforesaid brethren, to be read, the books of holy Augustine which he wrote to Prosper and Hilary. Of which the blessed
Hormisdas of blessed memory, the glorious bishop of the apostolic see, in the letter which he wrote back to our holy brother and fellow-priest Possessor, who had consulted him, inserted with great proclamation of catholic praise. Whose words are these: 'Concerning free will, however, and the grace of God, what the Roman—that is, the catholic—Church follows and observes, although it can be abundantly recognized in the various books of the blessed Augustine, and especially those to Prosper and Hilary, nevertheless there are also contained express chapters in the ecclesiastical archives.' These things, therefore, most beloved brethren, we have wished to answer briefly to you who inquire, by a common rescript. Moreover, one of us,
insofar as the Lord deigns to bestow upon His servants the grace of right speech, has replied with sufficient disputation, in three books dedicated in your name, to all those things which you have intimated that the aforesaid brethren either think or say against grace and predestination; and who, against the two books of Faustus of Gaul, has issued seven books: which, when you have reviewed them, you will forthwith recognize how the discussion has exposed the said Faustus's fabrications as contrary to the truth and utterly hostile to catholic faith; how manifest reason has convicted them, divine authority has suppressed them, and the wholly concordant attestation of the preceding Fathers has confuted them.
But we hope in the Lord, that He will so bestow the succor of His grace as both to grant to those who think rightly an increase of holy knowledge, and to give to those who believe otherwise than they ought the succor of the truth to be acknowledged. For He Himself makes partakers of His grace those whom He has predestinated unto life, so that in all their good deeds they may subject the choice of the human will to the grace of God, and may recognize that from Him descends to them every best gift and every perfect gift; and may know also that help is ever to be awaited from Him, who gives to His predestinated both grace and perseverance, that they may receive grace for grace, and the gift of everlasting life. EPISTLE XVI, OR THE BOOK OF PETER.
OF PETER THE DEACON AND OF THE OTHERS WHO WERE SENT FROM THE EAST BY THE GREEKS TO ROME IN THE CAUSE OF THE FAITH. On the Incarnation and Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Fulgentius and the other bishops of Africa. To the most holy lords, to be named with all veneration, DATIANUS, FORTUNATUS, ALBANUS, ORONTIUS, BOETHIUS, FULGENTIUS, JANUARIUS and the rest of the bishops adorned in the confession of Christ, the lowly PETER the deacon, JOHN, LEONTIUS, another JOHN, and the rest of the brethren directed to Rome in the cause of the faith. CHAPTER I. The consensus of the Churches in the faith, the confirmation of the faithful.—1. It is useful and most necessary, and we believe it will especially profit the holy Churches of God, that those things which concerning the Incarnation and the dispensation divinely wrought among us all the holy
Churches of the East defend against the heretics (who with depraved and iniquitous arguments cease not to disturb the ancient faith of the Church), should be suggested to your Holiness, and that we should suppliantly obtain the consent of your Beatitude concerning them. For we believe that your holy and glorious confession dissents in nothing, especially since we by no means doubt that the holy Church of God is everywhere quickened by one Spirit. For with no small, but rather with great, joy will all the Easterners be filled, if they shall know that your Holiness consents in all its dogmas—nay, rather in the catholic dogmas.
Wherefore we suppliantly beg and beseech your Beatitude, that, discussing with diligent examination those things which are contained below (as befits the truest and undaunted preachers of Christ), you would command to make your opinion plain to us in writing: so that if, God granting, our exposition shall have been approved before you (as we do not distrust) as agreeing with the catholic faith and with the apostolic traditions, we may very easily, fortified by the authority of such great men and most approved priests, be able to stop up the mouths of those who speak iniquity, and, persevering in the faith of the holy Fathers, may render thanks to God, who has glorified you by the confession of His holiness, most holy lords and most worthy of God.
Now we ask that you more diligently examine the things that follow. CHAP. II. In Christ two natures, without confusion, united into one person.—3. Therefore, according to the tradition of the holy Fathers, we confess our Lord Jesus Christ in two natures united and unconfused—that is, of divinity and of humanity—in one person or subsistence. Neither acquiescing in those who, preaching one incarnate nature of God the Word, flee from the faith of the venerable Council of Chalcedon, nor admitting those who, deceitfully proclaiming two natures, by no means confess one incarnate nature of God the Word, esteeming this contrary to the profession of two natures:
as though the phrase 'one incarnate nature of God the Word' signified something other than two natures ineffably united; the blessed Cyril, bishop of the city of Alexandria, thus writing in his second letter to Successus, bishop of Diocaesarea: 'For if, saying one nature of God the Word, we had kept silence, not adding 'incarnate,' but as it were casting away the dispensation, their argument would perhaps not be improbable, feigning to ask, where is the perfection in the humanity? Or how does our substance subsist? But since both the perfection which is in the humanity, and the manifestation of our essence, has been brought in through that which is said, 'incarnate,' let them now cease to prop up for themselves a reed staff.' CHAP.
III. The blessed Virgin is properly the Mother of God.—4. And the blessed Virgin Mary we believe to be—not on account of the dignity of that man who was born of her (whom some impiously fear not to preach as God by grace and not by nature), but properly and according to truth—Theotokos, that is, the Bearer of God, in that she truly and properly bore God the Word incarnate and made man, and essentially or naturally united to the flesh. 5. Therefore we also in every way confess the essential or natural union of the natures that was effected, not as those who contend that God the Word operated in Christ as in a prophet. Whom the blessed Gregory Nazianzen refuted, writing to Cledonius, saying:
'If anyone says that God the Word operated, as in a prophet, according to grace, and does not confess a union essentially effected, let him be void of the better operation, and rather let him be full of the worse.' Nor as those who attempt to establish a union of the natures according to illumination, or affection, or attachment, whether personal or subsistential, or according to authority, or power, or equality of honor. Whom the blessed Cyril, mentioned a little above, anathematizes, saying (Anathema 3) against Nestorius: 'If anyone in the one Christ divides the substances after the union, connecting them only
by a society according to dignity, authority, or power, and not rather by a conjunction which is according to natural union, let him be anathema.' For God the Word—not by an empty name, not by a particle of Himself, but by nature God, as great as the Father also is, equal in all things to the Father, save only in this, that the One is Father, the Other Son—uniting Himself to human nature, was made man. 6. Hence also Christ our Lord is preached by the holy Fathers as composed by a union out of divinity and humanity.
Which Paul of Samosata, refusing to confess, was condemned by the Council of Antioch—Malchion, presbyter of that same Antiochene Church, a man in all things most learned, having then been chosen by all the priests who had convened against that same Paul; who, taking up the highest contest of disputation from the said council, thus among other things refuted that same heretic, saying: 'Out of simple things is surely made a composite, as in Christ Jesus, who out of God the Word and a human body, which is of the seed of David, was made one, in no way further by any division, but by unity of subsistence.
But you, it seems to me, according to this are unwilling to confess a composition, so that the Son of God be not in Him by substance, but by wisdom according to participation. For you said this, that wisdom suffers loss, and therefore cannot be composite, and you do not consider that the divine Wisdom, just as before it had emptied itself it remained undiminished, so also in this emptying which it mercifully underwent, it stood undiminished and unchangeable. And this also you say, that wisdom dwelt in Him as we too dwell in houses, so as one in another; but neither are we part of the house, nor is the house part of us.'
Likewise also the blessed Athanasius, in the treatise whose title is 'That Christ is One,' refuting the vanity of the heretics, after he had disproved their superfluous inquiries concerning the divinity of the Son of God, thus proceeds: 'So,' he says, 'also concerning the Incarnation they inquire: How, they say, is God incarnated? How is He embodied? How does the Incapable put Himself together into a little body? How is the Uncreated united to the created, the Uncircumscribed to the circumscribed? Or how is that great, and immense, and indivisible One in a small space? If, however, that magnitude has been contracted into a small place, either that small thing has been made great, or a part, and not all, the divinity, was united to the flesh—which it is impious to believe.'
'And they have fallen away from this, in that they say: In what way, and in what manner? And with what opinion and perfidy these men too have imagined an indwelling instead of an incarnation, and instead of a union and composition a human inoperation, and instead of one substance of our Lord Jesus Christ, two subsistences and two persons, and instead of the holy and ineffable Trinity, unbecomingly and impiously dogmatizing a quaternity.' 7. Again the blessed Gregory says in the sermon On the Son: 'But by one heading of mine, that you ascribe the higher things to the divinity, and to that nature which is proved to be superior to sufferings and to body, but attribute the lower things to the Composite, who for your sake emptied Himself and was incarnate.'
'Hence, therefore, we most rightly believe that God the Word, full and perfect, suffered, even after assuming flesh, no increase or diminution, but rather by His own union conferred ineffable glory upon the assumed nature. CHAP. IV. No quaternity was made in the Deity through the mystery of the Incarnation.—8. For this reason the Trinity, even after the mystery of the Incarnation, remained a Trinity, because the same God the Word, even with His own flesh, is one of the Trinity: not that His flesh is of the substance of the Trinity, but because it is the flesh of God the Word, who is one of the Trinity. For it is He altogether, and no other, who ascended into heaven, who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven (John 3:13).
Wherefore we also confess that God the Word suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and was buried in the flesh, according to the blessed Cyril, who says (Anathema XIII): 'If anyone does not confess that God the Word suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, and became the firstborn from the dead, inasmuch as He is Life and the Giver of life as God, let him be anathema.' 9. In like manner we also call the man Christ the Word, according to that saying of blessed John: 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life' (1 John 1:1). For the Word, according to the nature of His deity, could not have been handled by human hands, unless He became man.
Beyond all doubt He is also that child whom the blessed Virgin bore, whom she wrapped in swaddling clothes, whom she laid in a manger, whom she circumcised on the eighth day, whom Simeon, a just man, embraced in his own arms, whom the evangelists report to have been subject to His parents, and whom they testify to have advanced in age and wisdom (Luke 2:52) — He who is God by nature, through whom were made all things visible and invisible, the Only-begotten and the Firstborn, in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:16-17), according to the apostle Paul. And this very thing the prophet Isaiah also testifies with clear words, saying:
'For unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given, whose government is upon his shoulder; and he shall be called the Angel of great counsel, Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, Ruler, Father of the age to come, Prince of peace' (Isaiah 9:6). 10. And therefore we believe that in no way should assent be given to those who assert that the mighty God was united to that child, and yet do not believe that the mighty God is Himself that child — especially since it was no other than He alone whose throne endures, He who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was baptized in the Jordan by John, that He might sanctify the waters, unto the age of ages, as the Psalmist testifies, saying: 'Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom;'
thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows' (Psalm 44[45]:7-8). But how could God be anointed, whose throne is for ever and ever, unless He became man? CHAPTER V. God became man; man did not become God. — 11. According, therefore, to this saying of the prophet, God became Christ; but Christ did not become God, as the heretics say, who dare to assert Christ to be God by advancement and not by nature. For God was anointed, because He Himself became man; for it is not one who is God and another who is man, but the same is God, the same is man. For He who is the natural Son of the Virgin is the same who is the natural Son of God.
Therefore we also believe and confess two nativities of God the Word: that is, one before the ages from the Father (or: in the Father), according to His divinity; the other in the last days, from the holy Virgin, according to the flesh — execrating those who deny the nativity of the Word of God according to the flesh, and who likewise shrink from confessing the miracles and the sufferings of one and the same Son of God, which the whole Church of God confesses. 12. Moreover, we also accept the four councils according to this sense of our exposition: that of Nicaea, of three hundred and eighteen bishops;
the Council of Constantinople, of one hundred and fifty, who condemned the impious Pneumatomachi; and also the first Council of Ephesus, over which the most blessed prelates Celestine of Rome and Cyril of Alexandria presided; and the holy and venerable council which was celebrated at Chalcedon. 13. We also embrace the letters of the blessed Leo, anathematizing all who hold opinions contrary to the doctrines of the Church, together with all the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and of his disciple Nestorius, and all who think things like theirs along with the same Nestorius; and likewise all the writings that oppose the twelve chapters of the blessed Cyril, which he published against that same Nestorius;
to these we add Eutyches and Dioscorus with their associates, and all whom the Apostolic See has justly and according to rule condemned. CHAPTER VI. What kind of man was created; and what kind he became, together with his posterity, through sin. Through sin the whole man was made worse. Without grace, only human things are conceived. What it is to believe. — 14. After these things it is fitting also to declare to your Beatitude how we think concerning the grace of Christ, by which He rescued us from the power of Satan, according to what has been handed down to us; because in this matter also your authority is exceedingly necessary to us. 15.
We believe, therefore, that Adam was made good and without any warfare of the flesh by God the Creator of all things, and endowed with great liberty, so that he had it in his own power both to do good and, if he willed, could commit evil. And death and immortality lay, in a certain manner, in the liberty of his choice. For he was capable of either thing, so that if he kept the commandment he would become immortal without the experience of death; but if he despised it, death would immediately follow.
And so, corrupted by the cunning of the serpent, of his own accord he became a transgressor of the divine law, and therefore, according to what had been foretold to him, by the just judgment of God he is condemned to the penalty of death, and the whole man, that is, according to both body and soul, was changed for the worse; and having lost his own liberty, he is delivered into the servitude of sin. 16. From this there is no one of men who is not born bound by the chain of this sin, except Him who, to loose this chain of sin, was born by a new manner of generation, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. For what else could be, or can be, born of a slave, except a slave? For Adam did not beget sons while he was free, but after he had become a slave of sin.
Therefore, just as every man is from him, so also every man is through him a slave of sin. Hence the Apostle says: 'By one, unto condemnation upon all men' (Romans 5:18). And again: 'By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned' (ibid., 12). Those, therefore, are wholly deceived who say that only death, and not also sin, passed into the human race, since the Apostle testifies that both sin and death were brought into the world through him. 17. From this condemnation, then, and from death, no one at all is set free except by the grace of the Redeemer:
He who, being Lord, inasmuch as He is God, in order to free us from perpetual servitude and from the power of the devil, and to lead us back to true liberty, was made a servant, taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:7). Hence it is that He says to the Jews: 'Then shall you truly be free, if the Son shall make you free' (John 8:36). For they thought themselves truly free, who with the most empty intention were serving human occupations. Therefore, that false liberty might become true liberty — that is, that human liberty might become Christian liberty — that same liberty stood in need of a liberator, by whom, through His grace, being turned away from human occupations, it might be able to think upon and desire those things which pertain to eternal life. 18.
Without this grace, therefore, human nature can indeed think and desire human things, but it cannot think, or will, or desire divine things — of which the first and chief foundation, and, so to speak, the ground, or the origin of all good things, is to believe in the Lord of glory crucified (1 Corinthians 2:8); which assuredly is not from the liberty of natural choice, because flesh and blood does not reveal this, but the heavenly Father reveals it to whom He wills (Matthew 16:17), drawing him to true liberty, NOT BY VIOLENT NECESSITY, but by infusing sweetness through the Holy Spirit, so that, straightway believing, we may say that Jesus is Lord — which no one can say by the liberty of natural choice, except in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). 19.
In vain, therefore, do those chatter who say: 'To will to believe is mine, but it is God's grace to help'; since the Apostle testifies that even the very believing — which is to give consent to the truth — is given to us by God, saying: 'For unto you it is given by Christ, not only that you should believe in him, but also that you should suffer for him' (Philippians 1:29). CHAPTER VII. God makes some believe by His goodness, deserts others by His just but hidden judgment. — 20. But they say: If God makes the unwilling to will to believe, and there is no one who can (as you say) naturally believe, or will anything good that pertains to eternal life, why then does He not make all to will, since there is no respect of persons with God, especially since it is written of Him:
'Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth' (1 Timothy 2:4)? For either He wills it and cannot, or divine Scripture lies. But if to hold either of these is impious, it remains that He does not stir up the human will, but awaits it from man, so that there may be a fair reward for the willing, and a just condemnation for the unwilling. 21. If these things are so, as the heretics boast, then the unsearchable and incomprehensible judgments of God ARE COMPREHENDED by them. For if, as they wish, He condemns the unwilling but saves the willing, there is absolutely nothing further to be sought. And, as far as they are concerned, divine Scripture is deceived, which testifies that the judgments of God are incomprehensible (Romans 11:33).
But we, believing and demonstrating the judgments of God to be incomprehensible, say that out of one mass of perdition some are saved by the goodness and grace of God, and others are left behind by His just and hidden judgment. 22. Otherwise let them say, if these can who deem this contrary to divine justice and goodness, why He who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth wrought so many mighty works in Chorazin and Bethsaida, and willed to work none of these in Tyre and Sidon, where, if they had been wrought (as He Himself testifies), they would perhaps have done penance in ashes and sackcloth (Matthew 11:21)? Or why did He forbid the Apostle to announce the word of salvation in Asia and Bithynia (Acts 16:6-7)? 23.
But if these things cannot be comprehended, let them return to themselves, and, finding themselves to be men, let them cease to ask why He saves some by a gratuitous gift, and leaves others behind by His just and hidden judgment — He who has power out of the same mass to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour; and let them cry out together with us, or rather with the Apostle: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him? For of him, and by him, and in him are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen' (Romans 11:33-36).
Manifestly, therefore, it is NOT US, BUT THE APOSTLE, that he altogether resists who says: 'Unless I first shall have willed, grace does not come to me.' Which is nothing else at all than to say that one must first give to God, that it may be recompensed to him. CHAPTER VIII. Every movement of the good will is from God. — 24. But we, following the same Apostle, say that all the origin of good thoughts, and their consent, and the will, is from God and through God and in God — He who looses and corrects the perverse wills of men, entangled in earthly deeds, by the inward infusion and inworking of the Holy Spirit, as it is written: 'The scroll is prepared by the Lord.' 25.
Hence also the blessed Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in the prayer of the sacred altar, which the whole East frequently uses, among other things says: 'Grant, O Lord, strength and protection: we beseech thee, make the evil good, preserve the good in goodness; for thou canst do all things, and there is none that can gainsay thee; for when thou willest, thou savest, and none resists thy will.' Behold how briefly, and how strictly, that eminent doctor once put an end to this controversy, teaching by this prayer that evil men are made good, not by themselves, but by God; and that they persevere in that very goodness, not by their own strength, but by the help of divine grace. 26. Likewise the blessed Innocent, prelate of the Apostolic See, in a letter (5th, in the chapter of
Celestine, chapter 8) to the Council of Milevis, says: 'All the endeavours and all the works and merits of the saints are to be referred to the glory and praise of God: because no one is pleasing to Him from any other source than from that which He Himself has bestowed.' And this the African councils, more diligently and more clearly, in their letter to Pope Zosimus, unfolding it, explain the opinion of the same Pope by repeating it, saying: 'But as to that which you set down in the letters which you caused to be sent to all the provinces, saying, 'We, however, by the prompting of God (for all good things are to be referred to their Author, from whom they arise), have referred all matters to the conscience of our brethren and fellow-bishops':
we so take it as said, that you were, as it were cutting away in swift passage those who exalt the liberty of choice against the help of God, with the drawn sword of truth. For what did you do by so free a choice, as that you referred all things to the conscience of our lowliness? And yet you saw faithfully and wisely that it was done by the prompting of God, and you said it truthfully and confidently — for this very reason, assuredly, because the will is prepared by the Lord (Proverbs 8:35, according to the Septuagint), and, that they may do something good, He Himself by His paternal inspirations touches the hearts of His children: for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Romans
8:14), so that we neither feel our own choice to be lacking, and in each single movement of the good human will we do not doubt that His grace rather goes before; that God so works in the hearts of men and in that very free choice, that a holy thought, a pious purpose, and every movement of the good will is from God, because through Him we can do some good, without whom we can do nothing.' 27. In agreement with these things, the most blessed Celestine, in a letter (chapter 2) given to the Gauls, says: 'For when the presidents of the holy peoples discharge the office of the legation committed to them before the divine clemency, they plead the cause of the human race, and with the whole Church groaning together with them,