Anti-Arian Works 6 part 19/24

they ask and pray that faith may be given to the unbelieving, that idolaters may be freed from the errors of their unbelief, that to the Jews, the veil of their heart being taken away, the light of truth may appear, that heretics may come to their senses by the perception of the catholic faith, that schismatics may receive the spirit of revived charity, that to the lapsed the remedies of penance may be conferred, and finally that, catechumens being led to the sacraments of regeneration, the hall of heavenly mercy may be opened. That these things are not asked of the Lord perfunctorily nor in vain, the effect of the very things shows, since He deigns to draw many from every kind of error, whom, rescuing them from the power of darkness, He transfers into the kingdom of the Son of His love, and

out of vessels of wrath makes vessels of mercy. This is felt to be so entirely the work of God, that for the enlightenment or correction of such persons, thanksgiving and confession of praise is ever rendered to God who effects it.' Again, after a little: 'By these ecclesiastical rules, therefore (he says [Celestine, chapter 12]), and by documents drawn from divine authority, we have been so confirmed, the Lord helping, that we profess God to be the author of all good affections and works, and of all endeavours and all virtues, by which from the beginning of faith one strives toward God; and WE DO NOT DOUBT that the merits of every man are anticipated by His grace, through whom it comes to pass that we begin both to will and to do something good.

By which help and gift of God, assuredly, FREE CHOICE IS NOT TAKEN AWAY, BUT SET FREE, so that from dark it may become bright, from crooked straight, from feeble sound, from imprudent it may be provident.' Now the same master (the same, chapter 13) ends this very letter, and so concludes it, saying: 'Because, for confessing the grace of God, from whose work and gracious favour absolutely nothing is to be withdrawn, we believe it sufficiently suffices, whatever, according to the aforesaid rules, the writings of the Apostolic See have taught us; so that we by no means deem that catholic which shall have appeared to be contrary to the aforestated sentences.'

These things, most holy ones, we have thought necessary to suggest not as to those who are ignorant, but for the refuting of the madness of those who shun them as new dogmas and as things utterly (or: almost) unheard of by the churches; we have judged it useful to insert them into this little book of our smallness. 28. Imbued with the teachings of all these holy Fathers, we anathematize Pelagius and Celestius, together also with Julian of Eclanum, and those who think things like theirs; especially the books of Faustus, a bishop of Gaul, who was advanced from the monastery of Lérins, which there is no doubt were written against the doctrine of predestination.

In these he comes not only against the teaching of all these holy Fathers, but even against the tradition of the Apostle himself, subjoining to human labour the help of grace, and, emptying out altogether the whole grace of Christ, he impiously professes that the ancient saints were saved not by that grace by which we too are saved — according to what the most blessed apostle Peter teaches (Acts 15:11) — but by the possibility of nature. Peter, by the mercy of God a deacon, subscribed; John, by the mercy of God a monk, subscribed; Leontius, by the mercy of God a monk, subscribed; John, a reader, by the mercy of God, subscribed. LETTER XVII, or ON THE BOOKS.

OF FULGENTIUS AND FIFTEEN OTHER AFRICAN BISHOPS, to Peter the deacon and the others who were sent from the East to Rome in the cause of the faith, concerning the Incarnation and Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. To the most beloved and, in the faith and grace of Christ, most heartily to be embraced holy brethren, PETER the deacon, JOHN, LEONTIUS, and the other JOHN, and the rest of the brethren whom you have indicated by letter to have been directed to Rome together with you in the cause of the faith: DATIANUS, FORTUNATUS, BOETHIUS, VICTOR, SCHOLASTICUS, ORONTIUS, VINDICIANUS, VICTOR, JANUARIUS, VICTORIANUS, PHOTINUS, QUODVULTDEUS, FULGENTIUS, FELIX, and JANUARIUS, greeting in the Lord. CHAPTER I. Right faith is in this life the salvation of men. — 1.

Our blessed brother John, a deacon directed by your society, presented to us the letters which you sent; and having reviewed them, we came to know at once your zeal and your faith and your salvation — nay rather, in the recognition of your faith your salvation became known to us. For what is the true salvation of men in this life, except right faith in God, which works through charity, by which the apostolic authority testifies that we are saved by divine grace, saying: 'By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: for it is the gift of God, not of works, that no man may be exalted' (Ephesians 2:8).

And because charity ought perpetually to cleave to right faith — charity which, by the zeal and efficacy of good works, covers a multitude of sins — therefore the Doctor of the Gentiles in faith and truth, lest the arrogance of any human swelling should dare to claim anything for itself, after the commendation of faith, through which we have been freely saved, assigning also the grace of good works to the gifts of the divine benignity, subsequently added: 'For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them' (ibid., 10). We rejoice, by the very effect of the matter, that you walk in these, God directing you. For not slothful in carefulness, and fervent in spirit (Romans

12:11), by which the more praiseworthy devotion you serve the Lord, the more does charity from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned, urge us to search out more fully the secrets of your counsel, that the communion of faith may be more fully recognized. Since, therefore, the word of God is not bound (2 Timothy 2:9), which is living and effectual (Hebrews

4:12), therefore we too, by the holy authority of the canonical volumes, and also by the teaching and instruction of the sayings of the Fathers, will demonstrate to your charity by a written statement those things which we perceive and hold concerning the incarnation and dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and concerning grace (which is so freely bestowed on the unworthy, that it works in us both the beginning and the progress of the good will), trusting in the Lord, by whom faith is both infused, that we may believe with the heart unto righteousness, and the word is given, that we may confess with the mouth unto salvation (Romans

10:10) — which will likewise govern both our understanding and our style, so that such a response may be rendered to your questioning, in which we may both speak concerning the incarnation of the Lord those things which the truth of our redemption contains, and concerning the grace of God speak those things which the supernal Majesty has itself freely infused into us. CHAPTER II. Two natures in Christ, and one person. The Word did not take flesh already conceived. — 2. You say, therefore, that, according to the tradition of the holy Fathers, you confess our Lord Jesus Christ in two natures united and unconfused, that is, of divinity and of humanity, in one person or subsistence.

Whence you consequently assert that you also believe the blessed Mary to be, properly and according to truth, the Mother of God: namely because she truly and properly bore God the Word incarnate and made man, and essentially or naturally united to flesh. Let it suffice to have set down these things from the tenor of your letter: for from these depend the other things which the profession of your discourse comprehends concerning the incarnation of the Lord. 3.

If anyone, therefore, in our Lord Jesus Christ, refuses, or hesitates, to believe and to preach either two natures or one person, or if anyone refuses to confess the same to be God and man, that is, the Word incarnate, truly born of the Virgin Mary for our salvation, he is detected and shown to be as much a stranger from the catholic faith as he ungratefully resists the sacrament of human redemption. For this is that great sacrament of piety, commended by the apostolic mouth to all the faithful, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, was preached to the gentiles, was believed in this world, was taken up in glory (1 Timothy 3:16):

namely because the Word, which was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God (that is, the Only-begotten Son of God, and the power and wisdom of God, through whom and in whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made) — the same Only-begotten God, when He was in the form of God (that is, when, equal in all things to His Begetter, He possessed with Him the unity of the natural essence, and in that nature which He everlastingly has from the Father, was that which the Father naturally is, that is,

the true God, the highest and unchangeable, and not another God apart from the Father, but, while the personal distinction remained, was by nature one God with the Father — neither less, that is, nor later than the Father, nor of a different power, nor of another essence (for He thought it not robbery to be equal to God [Philippians 2:6-7]) — nevertheless emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, that is, being made in the likeness of men, the same being found in habit as a man (ibid.), in whom there could be no supposition of robbery, because from the substance of the Father, by an ineffable and everlasting nativity, the begotten fullness of natural equality remains in Him. He emptied Himself, therefore, taking the form of a servant.

For in this He willed by nature to be God-man, and the Lord of all things took upon Himself the servile nature without the loss of His own dominion, in that He was mercifully emptied and received the form of a servant. And how well the holy Apostle, made by God a fit minister of the New Testament, as he himself testifies (2 Corinthians 3:6), lest any of us, hearing of the Son of God emptied, should conceive by a harmful thought the equality of the paternal form to be lost or diminished in the Only-begotten God, and, following the oblique windings of the serpentine deception, should not hold the path of right faith — he reserved (perhaps: unlocked), the ambiguities being removed, the explanation of that emptying, when he subsequently added, 'taking the form of a servant.'

That emptying, therefore, of the Only-begotten God was the receiving of the servile form, not the loss or diminution of the deity: for the divine nature can in no way be either diminished or increased, because, remaining unchangeable, it has this always — to be that which it is. For if that true and highest God, who for our sake became poor, though He was rich, that by His poverty we might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9), being emptied, should lose His fullness — which is impious to say — or should feel any mutability in that reception of the servile form, the blessed evangelist John would not have said concerning the Word incarnate: 'And we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth' (John 1:14).

The Word, therefore, made flesh, in human truth began to be flesh, but in divine truth did not cease to be the Word; and the mystery of human assumption and redemption was efficaciously accomplished by the wondrous benignity of the Redeemer God, precisely because the divine Majesty could never be receptive either of mutability or of diminution. 4. The Word of God, therefore, and the same Word who is God, receiving human flesh from the flesh of His mother, so indeed took the form of a servant, that, remaining in the form of God, the eternal and unchangeable God, through the unity of the person in which He took the form of a servant, deigned Himself to become that which He made.

For being made in the likeness of men, He was found in habit as a man, and having unchangeably from the nature of the Father the deity in all things, He deigned to be created without being created, and willed to be made from a woman, not made by the Father but begotten; and so the Word was made flesh, that there might be one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is over all things God blessed for ever, one and true Son of God and of man, one and the same, from the Father without beginning ever-begotten God, from the mother true man temporally conceived and born according to the flesh. Which flesh the Only-begotten God did not receive already conceived, but in it God Himself was conceived with the highest humility.

For the same God was created in the Virgin and from the Virgin according to the flesh, who had created for Himself, out of her and in whom He would be created, a mother. CHAPTER III. The Word was made flesh not only in the Virgin, but also from the Virgin. — 5. But if God the Word were so made flesh in the Virgin that He were not made flesh from her, then beyond doubt the same God would not have the substance of His flesh from the flesh of His mother, but His passage would be merely through the Virgin; and thus neither would the sacrament of the Mediator profit us unto salvation, nor would Christ the Son of God unite in Himself, without confusion, the full truth of the human and divine substance.

Therefore the divine goodness employed this remedy in a medicinal way, that the Only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, should be made man not only in a woman, but also from a woman. This we are commanded without doubt to believe and confess by the divine oracles. For that God was made man in her, the prophet did not pass over in silence, saying: 'The mother Sion shall say: A man, even a man, was made in her, and the Most High Himself hath founded her' (Ps. 86:5). Isaiah too, full of the Holy Spirit, thus foretold the coming sacrament of the Incarnation of the Son of God: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bear a son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us' (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23).

Since therefore He whom the Virgin conceived and bore in her womb is called 'God with us,' God assuredly is acknowledged to have been conceived in the womb of the Virgin. In the Gospel too it is said of Mary: 'She was found with child of the Holy Spirit' (Matt. 1:18). Joseph also, whom Mary had as a husband not for intercourse and the corruption of the flesh, but for a witness and guardian of her sacred virginity and most chaste fruitfulness, was thus admonished by the angelic oracle: 'Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit' (Matt. 1:20). That He was made from her also is shown by the heavenly words; for the Apostle says:

'But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law' (Gal. 4:4). Writing also to the Romans, that he might show himself to lay a true and firm foundation of the faith, he placed at the opening of his epistle such a preface: 'Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was made unto Him of the seed of David according to the flesh' (Rom. 1:1-3). To Timothy also, his beloved son in the faith, being anxious chiefly for this faith, he commends the memory of it with affection, saying: 'Remember that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead, of the seed of David according to my Gospel' (2 Tim. 2:8).

To the blessed Virgin herself also, who was to be the mother of her own Creator, nay rather of all things, the angel Gabriel is found to have used this address: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God' (Luke 1:35). 6. To this pertains the mystery of our salvation, that our father Abraham commanded the steward of his house to put his hand under his thigh, and to swear by the God of heaven (Gen. 24:2). Which he must be believed to have done from no other than a prophetic spirit, at that time namely when the Vessel of election intimates that all things happened in a figure (1 Cor. 10:11).

Holy Abraham therefore, the father of nations, did that thing not because he believed that there was already some natural fellowship between his flesh and the God of heaven, but that he might show that from that flesh the God of heaven would be born a man, who would draw the truth of His descent from the seed of Abraham himself. There is therefore one Christ, the Son of God, in the nature of divinity and of flesh, in whom the singleness of the person does not confound the human and divine nature, and the unconfused union of the natures does not cause a twofold person to be present. For the truth of our reconciliation and salvation abides for this reason, that both the Only-begotten God was made true man for us, and the same man who was conceived and born is no other than the Only-begotten God. 7.

The blessed Mary therefore both conceived and bore for Him God the Word, according to that whereby He was made flesh: into whose womb the Word, God, did not bring flesh in which He might be conceived; nor did God Himself, who was to be conceived but only to be born, take from her the matter of flesh already conceived or formed; but from that same Virgin and in that same Virgin He received the nature of human flesh, according to which the eternal God should be temporally conceived and born. For that very reception of flesh was the virginal conception.

For neither could that spiritual nature of the Word of God, begotten of God the Father without beginning, be conceived temporally in the womb of that holy Mother and Virgin without flesh, just as neither could the flesh, sown by the intercourse of no man, be born in any way in the inmost part of the virginal womb without the union of the Word of God. This flesh, therefore, the nature of the conceiving Virgin then furnished from herself, when God, to be conceived, came into her. There is therefore no interval of time to be reckoned between the beginning of the conceived flesh and the coming of the Majesty to be conceived.

For there was one conception of divinity and of flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and there is one Christ, the Son of God, conceived in both natures, that thence He might begin to abolish the stain of the corrupted stock, whence it was seen to exist in each one that is born. CHAPTER IV. To blot out the sin of origin, the Son of God, immaculate, united to Himself an immaculate human nature. — 8. For because all men, being born of the intercourse of male and female, have the very beginning of their conception sprinkled with the contagion of original sin—since the sin which the first man, though good by nature, admitted when seduced by diabolical malice, passed also upon his posterity, together with its penalty, that is, with death (which in truth holy David declares, saying:

'For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bring me forth' [Ps. 51:5])—it was therefore altogether necessary that the merciful and just Lord, being about to blot out the traces of human iniquity, should in the very conception deign, being immaculate, to unite to Himself an immaculate human nature, there where the devil was accustomed, through the inflicted stain of original sin, to claim it for his own portion and dominion. Of human nature, therefore, whose truth and fullness God the Only-begotten willed to assume, He took upon Himself also its conception and its nativity.

Far be it that any Catholic should believe or say that the Only-begotten God, being about to redeem us by His own blood in that flesh whereby the same God was made man, spurned the beginnings of human conception, since in that same flesh God Himself, remaining immortal, was to suffer the extremes of human mortality. For just as, dying in the flesh, the true and living God did not lose His unchangeable and inamissible natural state; so the same immense and eternal God, when He was conceived with a little flesh, did not by nature lack His immensity; and when He was temporally born in the flesh, He did not lose His natural eternity, in which He is, of the Father and in the Father, the everlasting God:

because that Life willed the death which He received in the flesh to be His own, and that Eternity had its own conception in a mother. 9. The Word therefore, God, that is, the Only-begotten Son of God, who is in all things (as He Himself testifies) the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:11), so did not refuse to be conceived initially in the flesh according to human nature, just as, dying in that same flesh, God paid the final debt of human nature. For in no way would human nature become sufficient and fit to take away the sin of the world, unless it passed into the union of the Word of God, not by natural confusion, but only by personal unity: for the Word, when He was made flesh, made by a wondrous union His own the nature which He received from us.

Yet in that union, deifying and altogether wondrous, the divinity of the Word was not changed into flesh, and the true humanity of the Word entirely retained the natural truth of our race. The Virgin therefore (which must often be recalled) both conceived and bore that very God the Word, according to that whereby He was made flesh in her, and that Only-begotten God, namely the power and wisdom of God, the brightness of the eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God, and the image of His goodness (Wis. 7:26).

the splendor of glory and the figure of His substance, whom, without any beginning, out of His own nature, everlasting and unchangeable, the unchangeable and everlasting divinity of the Father begot; the same, in human nature, whole and full, God and man, the virginal womb conceived initially and bore. CHAPTER V. God and man in Christ signify not two persons, but two natures without confusion. — 10. But when we call the Lord Christ God and man, we show forth not a personal duality, but a most true union of both natures without any confusion made. For the same is God who is man, and the same is man who is God:

because human nature was so wondrously united to God the Word, that He Himself was true God and true man, while the true humanity of the incarnate Word did not have another person. For a human substance, not a person, was joined to God. And so God with His flesh is one Christ, Son of God and son of man, the same Word and flesh together, nay the same Word-made-flesh, because the same is God and man. CHAPTER VI. God is not in Christ as in the patriarchs and prophets. The flesh of Mary was the flesh of sin. — 11. But God the Word did not so take flesh that He did not become flesh, since the evangelist says: 'The Word was made flesh' (John 1:14).

Nor did the supreme and immense God assume the nature of flesh in such a way as, as in one of the patriarchs or prophets, that in that man indeed God should be, but the same God should not be man. Far be it that Christian conscience should hold this, or that any of the faithful should suffer himself to be profaned by so great an impiety. For when the Word was made flesh, the divinity so deigned wondrously to unite humanity to itself, that, the truth of both natures being preserved, in one and the same Christ, God and man, that humanity of His became, for the life of the world, a divine victim. For God, 'not restraining His mercies in His anger' (Ps. 77:9), for this became man,

that whatever He had created whole in man, the same God might restore whole in Himself when assumed. 12. This therefore was possessed by that conception and birth of God and man according to the flesh—wondrous indeed, yet true—whereby the Virgin ineffably conceived and bore the God of heaven, and the Virgin-mother remained inviolate; she namely 'full of grace and blessed among women' (Luke 1:28), truly so named by the angel;

because, by the help of prevenient grace, and by the working of the Holy Spirit coming upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowing her, being about to conceive God the Son of God, she neither at all endured the intercourse of man, nor willed it, but, retaining the virginity both of mind and of body, she received from Him whom she was to conceive and bear the gift of incorrupt fruitfulness and fruitful integrity. Thus the holy Virgin conceived God the Word, according to that whereby He was made flesh, the maker of angels and of men, and the same Virgin no less bore the Redeemer of men. For neither did the holy Virgin Mary conceive God without the assumption of flesh, nor flesh without the union of God, because that conception of the Virgin was common to God and to flesh. 13.

This is the grace whereby it came to pass that God, who came to take away sins, since in Him there is no sin, was conceived and born as man in the likeness of the flesh of sin, from the flesh of sin. For the flesh of Mary, which had been conceived in iniquities by human solemnity, was assuredly the flesh of sin, which begot the Son of God in the likeness of the flesh of sin. For the Apostle testifies: 'Because God sent His Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin' (Rom. 8:3): Him namely who, 'though He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men' (Phil. 2:6-7).

But the Son of God was for this reason sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin, and the same was made in the likeness of men, that He might both be like unto men in the truth of the flesh which He Himself had created, and that God, created in the flesh without sin, might take away our unlikeness, which He discerned to be present in our flesh not from His work, but from our sin. Therefore in the likeness of the flesh of sin the Son of God appeared when sent, because in His true human flesh there was not the iniquity of man, but mortality.

But when the likeness of the flesh of sin is said to be in the Son of God, or rather when the Son of God is said to be in the likeness of the flesh of sin, it must be believed that the Only-begotten God did not draw from the mortal flesh of the Virgin the filth of sin, but received the whole truth of nature, so that the birth of Truth might arise from the earth, which blessed David intimates in prophetic speech, saying: 'Truth is sprung out of the earth' (Ps. 85:11). Truly therefore Mary conceived God the Word, whom she bore in the flesh of sin, which God received. CHAPTER VII. The blessed Virgin merited to conceive God and man not by human merits, but by the condescension of God. — 14.