and perseverance is given, through which we may be able to attain to the vision. But God has always held these His gifts disposed in His eternal and unchangeable will, in which He fore-ordained and prepared both what He would give, and to whom He would give it. For He Himself, by predestining, prepared the gift of grace, who, by giving grace, fulfills the effect of predestination. EPILOGUE. — You have, most beloved brethren, both concerning the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ and concerning grace, the sentence of our faith and confession expressed in few words, in which it is most surely contained that the Only-begotten God was born naturally of God the Father without beginning, and naturally begotten of the Virgin according to the flesh.
For one and the same is God the Word, whom the eternity of the Father begot coeternal with Himself in His first nativity, and whom the virginal womb, conceived in time, brought forth as Son of Man in His second nativity. By whose grace both the beginning of good will unto faith is given to us, and to that will itself help is granted, so that what it wills well it may do well; for God, who Himself created man, by His predestination prepared both the gift of illumination unto believing, and the gift of perseverance unto making progress and abiding, and the gift of glorification unto reigning, for those to whom He willed to give them — and who accomplishes nothing in deed otherwise than as He has it disposed in His everlasting and unchangeable will.
Whoever refuses to receive with the belief of the heart, or to profess with the confession of the mouth, the truth of this predestination, by which the Apostle testifies that we were predestined in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4) — if, before the last day of this present life, he has not cast off the obstinacy of his impiety, by which as a rebel he resists the living and true God — it is manifest that he does not belong to the number of those whom God freely chose and predestined to the kingdom in Christ before the foundation of the world.
Yet for such persons the prayer of the faithful ought not to cease, nor should charity ever grow numb, that God may grant them the grace of His illumination, through which the seed of the divine word may bear fruit in them — that word which sounds in vain to the outward ears, unless God by His spiritual gift opens the hearing of the inner man. LETTER 18. Fulgentius to Reginus the count, replying to the earlier question proposed by him: Whether the flesh of Christ was corruptible or incorruptible. To the later question, because, being overtaken by death, he could not give satisfaction, Ferrandus gave satisfaction in a letter to the same man concerning the seven Rules of Innocence. CHAPTER 1. — On receiving your letter,
most dear son Reginus, and recognizing the solicitude of your heart, I praised the Lord together, who is able to do both: to confer good to be kept, and to keep what is conferred. For both pertain to the healing of our souls, that we may rejoice in the benefits which the ineffable kindness of our Physician does not cease to work for us in our infirmity, so that by spiritual progress health may be increased in us, and infirmity diminished. But the manner of our infirmity consists in a twofold quality: whether, through ignorance, we know something too little in the faith, or whether we have something in our works that does not accord with the rule of truth. Since, therefore, the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul (Wisd.
9:15), therefore both infirmities disturb us. But He who made us, and commanded us to rejoice because He has overcome the world (John 16:33), we hope will perfect us in the faith which works through love. 2. You say, then, that recently in the regions of the East a new inquiry has arisen, some asserting that the body of Christ was incorruptible from the very beginning of His conception, but others confessing the contrary — that it was corruptible before the passion, but incorruptible after the resurrection. You, however, hesitating greatly on both sides, and not knowing how to answer, urge me to advise what we ought to hold. These are the things you ask. But above, by the token of your gratitude, you intimate that you were refreshed by my letters.
Since, therefore, your inquiry held to the path of an upright heart, whereby it first grasped what pertains to faith, then what pertains to works — because the Apostle commends the faith which works through love, that principle of our salvation being obtained, namely that faith without works is dead in itself (James 2:26). CHAPTER 2. — I wish, therefore, most dear one, that you should know that corruption is spoken of not in one way, but in two ways, just as we speak of infirmity, and likewise of death. For the Lord says that there is a death which is the perpetration of a crime, and a death in which the retribution of vengeance is nonetheless understood. Man's infirmity too is spoken of: namely that of him who renders service to sin, and that of him who bears the punishment of sin.
Both belong to the infirmity of the sinner: both the delight in sins, and the affliction on account of sins. So too we speak of corruption in a twofold way, of which one part consists in the sole fault of man, the other is found in punishment. To fault indeed pertains that part of corruption which the Apostle shows where he says: men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith (2 Tim. 3:8). To this part of corruption belongs what he says in another place: evil conversations corrupt good morals (1 Cor. 15:33). This part of corruption first seizes the soul, and through the soul draws the flesh into sin. This part of corruption first invaded the mind of the proud angel, and then the first man, and afterward the whole human race.
Upon the first part of corruption, then, which consists in the concupiscence or perpetration of sin, there followed that part which consists in the retribution of punishment, which lays hold of both the soul and the body of the sinful man. In this retribution itself there are certain things in which the penalty of sin is at once also the sin itself; but there are others in which there is only the punishment of sin. In those, therefore, in which is found the penalty together with the fault, by that working whereby guilt is punished in the sinner — God forsaking, man sinning — it is increased. This is that part of corruption through which sins are so punished in man that they do not cease, but grow:
as is the lust of the heart and of the body, which, though it arises from the penalty of sin, multiplies sin, and captivates by harmful delight the soul that is subjected to punishment. A third punishment, allotted to this second one, the Apostle mentions: For which cause God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting (Rom. 1:28). Not, therefore, only that they should suffer, but that they should do things whereby sins are multiplied, are they handed over by divine condemnation to a reprobate mind. Yet this handing over consists not in an operation of God, but in a forsaking. For some God hands over and does not abandon; but others, in that He hands them over, He abandons. The good He so hands over by fatherly kindness that He does not forsake them by fatherly help.
And through this He hands them over to suffer evils whereby they themselves may be perfected, not to do evils whereby they may become worse. But the wicked the Lord hands over to this end, and abandons them, that, He forsaking them, while they follow not God's will but their own, they may delight in their own baseness, and may not bear their punishment unwillingly, but may follow it, enticed. CHAPTER 3. — This is the corruption of the wicked, which is so the penalty of sin that it is itself also sin. But there is another part of corruption which pollutes neither the soul nor the body of the faithful man, but afflicts it: because it wars not to defile the man, but to humble the sinner.
When this distinction is retained — while we distinguish voluntary corruption from penal corruption, and it is found that of penal corruption itself one part is present in men with sin, the other without sin — and since such corruption of the heart is nothing else but the privation of health, because from this corruption no iniquity is contracted, though infirmity is present: we most easily find which part of corruption Christ assumed in His body. For although He assumed flesh for us, yet He took it free from all sin, both original and actual. Yet that same flesh is known to have been assumed not only infirm, but also truly mortal.
Without doubt, insofar as the assumed mortality was in His body, so far could the infirmity of corruption be in it — namely, that corruption which is far removed from all sin. 6. To such corruption pertain hunger and thirst. For a mortal body is easily corrupted by hungering and thirsting, when through these one arrives even at the departure of death itself. Through this death one comes to corruption, when, the soul departing, the body is so corrupted that it is reduced to putrefaction and dust. This corruption the flesh of Christ did not see, which rose again on the third day. Yet hunger, thirst, weariness of body, and pain He truly felt:
all of which pertain to that part of penal corruption which we so draw from the penal punishment of sin that we contract from it no punishment of sin. The Gospel teaches that Christ hungered, thirsted, and felt weariness (Mark 11:13), whom it is manifest hungered when He came to the fig tree and found no fruit on it. Wearied also from the journey, He sat upon a well (John 4:6). On the cross too He said, I thirst (John 19:28). He also endured pain, as Isaiah says: He was wounded for our iniquities; He was made infirm for our transgressions (Isa. 53:5). That this infirmity in the Lord was not imaginary but true, the Apostle teaches:
For although He was crucified, he says, out of infirmity, yet He lives out of the power of God (2 Cor. 13:4). By 'infirmity' he means nothing other than corruptibility. CHAPTER 4. — It remains, therefore, that we should learn from Sacred Scripture both that Christ was in a certain corruption to which He did not return, and that He was not in that which He did not see. To corruption belongs both the death of the animal body which precedes putrefaction, and the putrefaction which follows death. Accordingly, Christ's body, which is truly dead and was raised on the third day without any putrefaction, must be said to have seen one part of corruption and not seen the other. It was indeed in the corruption of death, but not in the corruption of putrefaction:
since the flesh of Christ so died that no putrefaction or dissolution of the members ensued. Christ, therefore, will not return to corruption, because, rising from the dead, He dies no more, and death will have dominion over Him no longer (Rom. 6:9). Christ, therefore, did not see corruption, because His flesh felt no putrefaction. But this the incorruptibility of that same flesh did not effect, but rather the swiftness of the resurrection. In all these things, in which he shows by apostolic words the most certain quality of our sowing and resurrection, holy Augustine sets it forth, saying:
It is therefore established, and by no means to be doubted, that the body of Christ — which, although it did not feel the corruption of putrefaction in the sepulchre, because it is written, 'You will not give Your holy one to see corruption' (Ps. 16:10), yet could be marred by the nails and the lance — now altogether persists in incorruption; and that what was sown in the dishonor of the passion and of death is now in the glory of eternal life; and that what could be crucified out of infirmity now reigns in power; and that what was an animal body, since it was taken from Adam, is now spiritual, since it is now inseparably joined to the spirit (Letter to Consentius, formerly 146, now 205). 8.
By these words Augustine shows what kind of body Christ has after the resurrection, and what kind it was before the passion. He evidently confirms that the body of Christ now altogether persists in incorruption, now also in the glory of eternal life, now reigns in power, is now spiritual. But a body is not altogether incorruptible which can feel pain through wounds. Wherefore it appears that Christ, before the passion — nay, even up to the passion and death — had a mortal and animal body; and that for us in that same body He felt true hunger, true thirst, and weariness, received the true wounds of the nails and the lance; and from this suffered true pain, not by necessity, but
out of will; and by the acceptance of true death, for us laid down His soul by His own power. It follows that the same Christ, having died out of infirmity but raised by the power of God, is found to have furnished an example to our bodies. For Christ humbled Himself even to the assumption of the whole of our infirmity: that, as the Apostle says, the body of our lowliness may be reformed, being conformed to the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21). 9. Hence, therefore, it appears most manifestly what every Christian ought to feel with firm belief concerning the quality of the animal and mortal body: it is impossible that corruptibility should be denied where the mortality of an animal body is found.
Christ, therefore, in His flesh alone bore our corruption, in which flesh He truly bore our death as well. But in His soul He so preserved perfect incorruptibility that He neither drew sin by propagation nor contracted it by contagion. Whence also the infirmities of our souls, which Christ bore in His own rational soul, He bore without any corruption. For no defect of virtue could be present where, in the assumption of infirmity, the perfection of charity remained untiring — that charity which made the Only-begotten God draw near even unto death for us, and, despising the shame, sustain the reproach of the cross. 10.
Wherefore the sadness, the grief, or whatever infirmities of our souls Christ had, He had indeed truly, but voluntarily. Truly indeed, that He might show in Himself the manifest affection of a rational soul; voluntarily, that He might show that the help of His power would be present to our infirmities; that we might acknowledge that, with Him aiding, we are to be sustained in the infirmities which we suffer by necessity. He therefore took our infirmities by will, so that both in this life He might bring help to those troubled by the necessity of infirmities, and after this life He might mercifully remove from us all necessity of infirmity.
And thus every faithful one, acknowledging Christ to be a partaker of human infirmity, may most surely hope that he himself will be a partaker of divine power, and may not doubt that he is to be strengthened by the power of Him whom he has known to have been troubled for his sake not by necessity but by will; that he will have in Him eternal gladness, in whom he sees his own sadness to be present by will — He who, as He remained tranquil in tribulation, secure in death, so was most strong in infirmity, and most high in humility.