BOOK ONE. I knew you indeed by the widespread report that proclaimed your fame, and by most frequent and truthful tidings I had learned how full you were of the grace of God, most blessed and venerable Pope Boniface. But after my brother Alypius saw you also in bodily presence, and being received by you most kindly and sincerely shared mutual conversations at love's prompting, living with you and, though but for a short time, being joined to you in great affection, he poured both himself and me into your heart, and carried you back to me in his own—so much greater has the knowledge of your holiness become in me, in proportion as the friendship has grown more assured. For you do not disdain, you who are not high-minded although you preside on high, to be the friend of the lowly and to repay the love that is bestowed.
For what else is friendship, which takes its very name from nowhere but from love, and is faithful nowhere but in Christ, in whom alone it can also be everlasting and blessed? Wherefore, having received it through that brother by whom I came to know you more intimately, I have with greater confidence dared to write something to your Blessedness concerning those matters which at this time stir up the episcopal care—if any such care is in us—to a fresher vigilance for the Lord's flock. For those new heretics, the enemies of the grace of God which is given to small and great through Jesus Christ our Lord, although they are now shown up more evidently by a more open reproof and are the more to be guarded against, nevertheless do not cease by their writings to tempt the hearts of the less cautious or the less learned.
To these men an answer must certainly be given, lest they confirm themselves or their followers in that wicked error—even if we did not fear that they might deceive any of the catholics by their plausible speech.
But since they do not cease to rage against the sheepfolds of the Lord's flock, and to seek out from every side an entrance for plundering the sheep redeemed at so great a price, and since the pastoral watchtower is common to all of us who discharge the office of the episcopate—although you yourself stand pre-eminent in it upon a loftier summit—I do what I can for my small share of the ministry, as far as the Lord deigns to grant me, your prayers helping, so that against their pestilent and treacherous writings I may hold out writings that heal and fortify, by which the madness with which they rave may either itself be cured, or be repelled from injuring others.
Now these things, which I am answering in reply to two of their letters—the one, namely, which Julian is said to have sent to Rome (in order, I believe, that through it he might either find or make there such followers as he could), and the other, which eighteen supposed bishops, partakers of his error, dared to write to Thessalonica, not to just anyone, but to test with their craftiness the bishop of that place himself and, if it could be done, to draw him over to their party—these things, then, which I answer to those two letters of theirs by this disputation, I have determined to direct above all to your holiness, not so much to be learned as to be examined, and, where perchance something may displease, to be corrected.
For my brother told me that you yourself deigned to give those letters to him, letters which could not have come into your hands except by the most watchful diligence of our brethren, your sons. And I give thanks to your most sincere goodwill toward us, that you did not wish to hide from me those letters of the enemies of God's grace, in which you found my name expressed slanderously and openly. But I hope in the Lord our God that not without reward—which is in heaven—do they tear me with their railing tooth, against whom I set myself for the sake of the little ones, lest they be abandoned as lost to their deceitful flatterer Pelagius, but be offered to Christ their truthful Savior to be set free. And so now let us answer Julian's letter.
'Those Manicheans,' he says, 'with whom we now hold no communion'—that is, all those with whom we disagree—'say that by the sin of the first man, that is, of Adam, free choice perished, and no one any longer has the power of living well, but all are compelled by the necessity of their flesh into sin.' He calls catholics 'Manicheans,' after the manner of that Jovinian who a few years before, a novel heretic, was destroying the virginity of holy Mary and was making the marriage of the faithful equal to sacred virginity. Nor did he lay this charge against catholics for any other reason than that he wished them to be seen as accusers or condemners of marriage.
But in defending free choice they rush headlong, so that one should trust in it rather than in the Lord's help for the doing of righteousness, and so that each should glory in himself and not in the Lord. Yet which of us says that free choice perished from the human race through the sin of the first man? Liberty indeed perished through sin, but that liberty which was in paradise—of possessing full righteousness together with immortality. On which account human nature stands in need of divine grace, since the Lord says: 'If the Son shall make you free, then shall you be free indeed'—free, that is, to live well and justly.
For free choice has so far from perished in the sinner, that it is precisely through it that all sin most of all who sin with delight and love of sin, and to whom that pleases which delights them. Whence the Apostle also says: 'When you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.' Behold, they are shown to have been unable to serve sin except by another liberty. They are therefore not free from righteousness except by the choice of the will; but they are not made free from sin except by the grace of the Savior. On which account that admirable teacher distinguished the very words: 'For when you were servants of sin,' he says, 'you were free from righteousness. What fruit therefore had you then in those things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death.'
'But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end everlasting life.' He said they were 'free' from righteousness, not 'freed'; but from sin not 'free,' lest they should attribute this to themselves, but most watchfully he preferred to say 'freed,' referring this to that saying of the Lord: 'If the Son shall make you free, then shall you be free indeed.' Since therefore the sons of men do not live well unless they are made sons of God, how is it that this man wishes to attribute to free choice the power of living well, when this power is not given except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, the Gospel saying: 'But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God'?
But lest perchance they should say that they were helped to this end—that they might have the power of becoming sons of God—but that, in order to be worthy of receiving this power, they first received him by free choice, aided by no grace (for this is precisely the intention by which they strive to destroy grace, that they may contend it is given according to our merits)—lest, therefore, they should perchance so divide this evangelical sentence as to place merit in what is said, 'But as many as received him,' and then place grace, not freely given, but rendered to this merit, in what follows, 'to them he gave power to become the sons of God'—if it be asked of them what 'they received him' means, will they say anything else than 'they believed in him'?
Therefore, that they may know that this too pertains to grace, let them read what the Apostle says: 'In nothing be terrified by the adversaries, which is to them a cause of perdition, but of your salvation, and this from God; for to you it is given for Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him'—surely he said that both were given—likewise what he says: 'Peace be to the brethren, and charity with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Let them read also that which the Lord himself says: 'No man can come to me, except the Father who sent me draw him.'
And lest anyone should think that 'to come to me' meant anything other than 'to believe in me,' a little after, when he was speaking of his body and blood, and very many were scandalized at his words, he said: 'The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that do not believe.' Then the Evangelist added: 'For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who he was that would betray him. And he said: Therefore did I say to you, that no man can come to me, unless it be given him by my Father.' He repeated, that is, the sentence in which he had said: 'No man can come to me, except the Father who sent me draw him.' And he made manifest that he had said this on account of those who believe and those who do not believe, explaining what he had said:
'except the Father who sent me DRAW him,' repeating the same thing in other words in that which he says: 'unless it be given him by my Father.' For that man is drawn to Christ to whom it is given to believe in Christ. Therefore power is given, that they may become sons of God who believe in him, since this very thing is given, that they should believe in him. And unless this power be given by God, there can be no power from free choice, because that will not be free in good which the Liberator has not set free; but in evil the will has free choice, into which either a hidden or a manifest deceiver has instilled the delight of wickedness, or the will has persuaded itself of it.
Therefore it is not the case, as certain men say that we say, and as this man moreover dares to write, that 'all are compelled into sin' as though unwilling 'by the necessity of their flesh'; but if they are already of such an age as to use the choice of their own mind, both they are held in sin by their own will and are hurled from sin into sin by their own will. For neither does even he who persuades and deceives work anything in them, except that they commit sin by their will, whether through ignorance of the truth, or through delight in iniquity, or through both evils, of blindness and of infirmity. But this will, which is free in evils because it delights in evils, is for that very reason not free in good things, because it has not been set free.
Nor can a man will anything good unless he is helped by him who cannot will evil—that is, by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord; for 'whatsoever is not of faith is sin.' And by this the good will, which withdraws itself from sin, is faithful, because 'the just man lives by faith'; and it pertains to faith to believe in Christ, and no one can believe in him, that is, come to him, unless it be given him. No one, therefore, can have a righteous will unless, with no merits preceding, he has received the true—that is, the freely given—grace from above. This is what these men, puffed up and proud, refuse to accept—defenders of free choice not by purifying it but by exalting it, indeed casters-down of it—who for no other reason are indignant with us when we say these things,
because they disdain to glory in the Lord. Yet Pelagius feared the episcopal judgment in Palestine and, when it was objected against him that he said 'the grace of God is given according to our merits,' he denied that he said it, and by pronouncing an anathema he condemned those who did say it. And yet he is not found to defend anything else in the books which he afterward wrote, thinking that he had committed a fraud upon the men who judged him by lying, or somehow by cloaking his own meaning in ambiguous words. But now let us see what follows. 'They say also,' he says, 'that these marriages which are now contracted were not instituted by God—which is read in the book of Augustine, against whom I have now replied in four little books.'
'The sayings of this Augustine our enemies have taken up in hatred of the truth.' To these most slanderous words of his I see that a brief answer must be given, since he repeats them later, where he himself wishes to insinuate what they say as though against these positions of ours. There we must contend with him, as far as the matter shall seem to require, with the Lord's help. Now, therefore, I answer that marriage was instituted by God, both then, when it was said: 'For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh,' and now, because it is written: 'A woman is joined to a man by the Lord.' For nothing else is done even now than that a man cleaves to his wife and they become two in one flesh.
For concerning those very marriages which are now contracted, the Lord was consulted by the Jews, whether it were lawful to put away a wife for any cause whatever, and having recalled that testimony of the law, he added: 'What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.' This testimony of the law the Apostle Paul also employed, when he admonished husbands that they should be loved by their wives. Far be it, then, that this man should have read anything in my book against these divine testimonies; but either by not understanding, or rather by slandering, he tries to twist what he reads into another meaning. And the book of mine, against which he records that he has replied in four little books, I wrote after the condemnation of Pelagius and Caelestius.
I thought this ought to be said, because he says that 'my sayings were taken up by his enemies in hatred of the truth,' lest anyone should think that it was on account of this book of mine that the new heretics, enemies of Christ's grace, were condemned. In that book, moreover, there is rather a defense than a censure of marriage. 'They say also,' he says, 'that the motion of the genitals and the intercourse of spouses were devised by the devil, and that for this reason those who are born are innocent yet guilty, and are made by the devil, not by God, because they are born of this diabolical intercourse. But this, without any ambiguity, is Manichean.'
Nay rather, just as we say that marriage was instituted by God for the ordained begetting of children, so we say that the sowing for the begetting of children could not, even in paradise—if children were to be begotten—have taken place without the motion of the genitals and without the intercourse of spouses. But whether such a motion and intercourse of theirs would have been, if no one had sinned, as it now is with shameful lust—this is a question about which we shall dispute more carefully afterward, if God be not unwilling. Yet what these men want, what they aim at, whither they strive to lead the matter, this man's own added words declare, where he says that we say: 'For this reason those who are born innocent are guilty and are made by the devil, not by God, because they are born of this diabolical intercourse.'
Whereas we neither call the intercourse of spouses diabolical—especially of the faithful, which takes place for the sake of begetting children who are afterward to be regenerated—nor say that any men are made by the devil, but by God, insofar as they are men, and yet that even from faithful spouses the guilty are born.
—as a wild olive from an olive tree—on account of original sin, and on account of this being under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ, since the devil is the author of the fault, not of the nature. Against this, they, saying that little children contract no original sin and therefore are not under the devil, what do they labor to accomplish, except that the grace of God should be made void in the little ones—that grace by which, as the Apostle says, 'he has rescued us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love'? For since they deny that little children are in the power of darkness even before the aid of the Lord the Liberator, they so praise in them the work of the Creator as to destroy the mercy of the Redeemer.
Since we confess this both in the grown and in the little ones, he says that 'this without any ambiguity is Manichean,' although it is the most ancient catholic doctrine, by which the new heretical dogma of these men is overthrown. 'They say,' he says, 'that the saints in the Old Testament were not without sins—that is, that not even by amendment were they freed from crimes, but were caught by death still in their guilt.' Nay rather, we say that whether before the law, or in the time of the Old Testament, they were freed from sins, not by their own virtue, because 'cursed is everyone who places his hope in man'—and in this curse, without doubt, are those whom the divine psalm too marks out:
'those who trust in their own strength'—nor by the Old Testament, which begets unto bondage, although by the grace of a certain dispensation it was divinely given; nor by the very law, holy and just and good, where it is written: 'Thou shalt not covet,' since it was not given as something that could give life, but 'it was set for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made'; but that they were freed through the blood of the Redeemer himself, who is the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
But these enemies of the grace of God, which is given to small and great through Christ our Lord, say that the ancient men of God were of perfect righteousness, for this reason: lest they should be believed to have had need of Christ's incarnation, passion, and resurrection, by faith in which they were saved. 'They say also,' he says, 'that the Apostle Paul, or all the apostles, were always defiled by immoderate lust.' Who, even a profane man, would dare to say this? But no doubt this man slanders us in this way because they contend that what the Apostle said—'I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing;'
'for to will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good I find not,' and other such things—was not said by him of his own self, but that he introduced the person of some other, whoever it was, who suffered those things. On which account that very passage in his epistle must be carefully considered and scrutinized, lest in some obscurity of it the error of these men lie hidden. Although, therefore, the Apostle disputes on this at greater length in a great and long-continued conflict, defending grace against those who gloried in the law, yet we touch upon a few things pertaining to the matter. Whence he says: 'Because by the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.'
'But now the righteousness of God without the law is made manifest, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ unto all who believe. For there is no distinction; for all have sinned and need the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.' And again: 'Where is thy glorying? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we account a man to be justified by faith without the works of the law.' And again: 'For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that he should be heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is made of no effect. For the law worketh wrath;'
'for where there is no law, neither is there transgression.' And in another place: 'But the law entered in, that sin might abound; and where sin abounded, grace did more abound.' Likewise in another place: 'For sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the law, but under grace.' And again in another place: 'Know you not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law), that the law hath dominion over a man as long as it liveth? For the woman that is under a husband is bound by the law to the living husband; but if her husband die, she is loosed from the law of her husband.' And a little after: 'Therefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that you may belong to another, who is risen again from the dead, that we may bring forth fruit to God.'
'For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death; but now we are loosed from the law of death, in which we were held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.' By these and suchlike attestations that teacher of the nations shows plainly enough that the law could not take away, but rather increased, the sin which grace takes away, since the law knows how to command, to which infirmity succumbs, while grace knows how to help, by which charity is poured in. For lest anyone on account of these testimonies should disparage the law and contend that it is evil, the Apostle saw what might occur to those who misunderstand, and set for himself the same question:
'What shall we say, then?' he says. 'Is the law sin? God forbid. But I did not know sin except through the law.' This he had already said above: 'By the law is the knowledge of sin'; therefore not the removal, but the knowledge. But here he now begins, on account of which we undertook to consider these things, to introduce his own person and to speak as though of himself. Here the Pelagians do not want the Apostle himself to be understood, but that he transfigured another into himself—that is, a man still placed under the law, not yet freed through grace. Here indeed they must already concede that no one is justified in the law, as the same Apostle says elsewhere, but that the law avails unto the knowledge of sin and unto the transgression of the law itself, so that, sin being known and increased, grace may be sought through faith.
But they do not fear that these things should be understood of the Apostle, which he could also say of his own past deeds; rather they fear those that follow. For here he says: 'I had not known concupiscence, unless the law had said: Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion, wrought in me by the commandment all concupiscence; for without the law sin was dead. And I lived some time without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was unto life, the same was found to be unto death to me. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Was then that which is good made death to me? God forbid!'
'But sin, that it may appear sin, wrought death in me by that which is good, that sin, or the sinner, might become beyond measure through the commandment.' All these things, as I said, the Apostle may be seen to have recalled concerning his own past life—so that what he says, 'But I lived some time without the law,' he may have wished to be understood of his earliest age, from infancy, before the years of reason; while what he added, 'but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died,' he might show himself now capable of the precept, but not effectual, and therefore a transgressor of the law. Nor let it disturb anyone that he wrote to the Philippians that, according to the righteousness which is in the law, he had been without blame.
For he could inwardly, in his depraved affections, be a transgressor of the law, and yet fulfill the conspicuous works of the law, whether through fear of men or of God himself—but through dread of punishment, not through love and delight of righteousness. For it is one thing to do good by the will to do good, but another to be so inclined by the will to do evil that one would even do it, if this could be permitted with impunity. For thus assuredly he sins within, in the very will itself, who does not refrain from sin by will, but by fear. Knowing that he had been such in these his inner parts before the grace of God which is given through Christ our Lord, the Apostle confesses this most openly elsewhere. For writing to the Ephesians he says:
'And you,' he says, 'when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the children of unbelief; among whom also we all in time past had our conversation in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the affections, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, by whose grace we are saved.' Again to Titus:
'For we ourselves also,' he says, 'were sometime foolish and unbelieving, erring, serving divers desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.' Such was Saul when he says that, according to the righteousness which is in the law, he had been without blame. For that it was not after this abominable life that, in order to be without blame, he had made progress in the law and changed his ways, he plainly shows in what follows, since indeed he does not say that he was changed from these evils except through the grace of the Savior; for adding this very thing here too, as to the Ephesians, he says:
'But when the kindness and humanity of God our Savior appeared, not by the works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by the laver of regeneration and renovation of the Holy Spirit, whom he hath poured forth upon us most abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that, being justified by his grace, we may be made heirs according to the hope of life everlasting.' Now, that which he says in this place of the epistle to the Romans: 'sin, that it may appear sin, wrought death in me by that which is good,' agrees with what came before, where he said: 'But I did not know sin except through the law; for I had not known concupiscence unless the law had said: Thou shalt not covet,' and above: 'By the law is the knowledge of sin'; for this he said here too:
'that it may appear sin'—so that what he had said, 'for without the law sin was dead,' we should understand only in the sense that, as if it were not, 'it lies hidden, does not appear, is utterly unknown,' as though it were buried in some darkness of ignorance. And what he says, 'But I lived some time without the law,' what does he say but 'I seemed to myself to live'? And what he added, 'but when the commandment came, sin revived,' what else is this than 'it stood forth and appeared'? Yet he did not say 'it lived,' but 'it revived.' For it had once lived in paradise, when what was committed against the given precept was quite apparent.
But when sin is drawn from those being born, it lies hidden, as though dead, until, resisting righteousness, its evil is felt through prohibition, when one thing is commanded and approved while another delights and holds dominion. Then sin in a certain way comes back to life in the awareness of the newborn man, sin which once had already lived in the awareness of the man first created. But what follows is not so easily understood in reference to Paul. 'For we know,' he says, 'that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal.' He does not say 'I was,' but 'I am.' Was the apostle then carnal when he wrote these words? Or does he say this with respect to the body? For he was still in the body of this death, which was not yet made into that of which he says elsewhere: the natural body is sown, the spiritual body rises.