and be found in him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, which is of God. The perfection, then, of this righteousness—which will not be except in that excellent knowledge of Christ, on account of which he said that all things were loss to him—he confessed that he had not yet received, and therefore that he was not yet perfect. But I follow after, he says, if I may lay hold, in that for which also I have been laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 'I may lay hold, in that for which I have been laid hold of' is like 'I shall know, even as I am known.' Brethren, he says, I do not count myself to have laid hold. But one thing—forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth unto the things that are before—I follow after, according to my intent, toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
The order of the words is: 'but one thing I follow.' Of this one thing it is rightly understood that the Lord admonished Martha also, when He said: 'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful.' Wishing to lay hold of this, as one set upon the way, he said that he was following toward the palm of the supernal calling of God in Christ Jesus. And who would hesitate to believe that, when he shall have laid hold of that which he asserts he is pursuing, he will then possess a righteousness equal to the righteousness of the holy angels — no one of whom, surely, is buffeted by an angel of Satan lest he be exalted by the greatness of revelations? Then, admonishing those who might think themselves already perfect in the fullness of that righteousness, he says: 'As many, therefore, as are perfect, let us be thus minded' — as though he were saying:
'If according to the capacity of mortal man, in the measure of this life, we are perfect, let us understand that this too belongs to that very perfection: namely, to be minded that we are not yet perfect with regard to that angelic righteousness which shall be ours in the manifestation of Christ.' 'And if in anything ye be otherwise minded,' he says, 'this also God shall reveal unto you.' How, save to those who walk and make progress in the way of right faith, until this pilgrimage is ended and we come to the vision face to face? Whence he consequently added: 'Nevertheless, whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same.' Then he concludes, that men may beware of those from whom this passage of his discourse took its beginning:
'Brethren,' he says, 'be followers together of me, and mark them who walk so, as ye have us for an ensample. For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction,' and the rest. These are the very ones of whom, at the outset, he had said: 'Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers,' and what follows. All, therefore, are enemies of the cross of Christ who, wishing to establish their own righteousness which is of the law — that is, of the letter which only commands and does not, by the Spirit, fulfill — have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. 'For if they who are of the law be heirs, faith is made void. If righteousness be by the law, then Christ died in vain; then is the offence of the cross made empty.'
And by this they are enemies of His cross who say that righteousness comes by the law, whose part it is to command, not to help. But the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord in the Holy Spirit, helps our infirmity. Wherefore, he who lives according to the righteousness which is in the law, without the faith of the grace of Christ — as the Apostle records that he himself had lived 'without blame' — must be thought to have no true righteousness: not because the law is not true and holy, but because to wish to obey the commanding letter without the quickening Spirit of God, as it were by the powers of free choice, is not true righteousness. But the righteousness according to which the just man lives by faith, since it is unto man from God through the Spirit of grace, is true righteousness.
Although this righteousness is not undeservedly said to be perfect in some of the just, according to the capacity of this life, yet it is small compared to that great righteousness which the equality of the angels shall attain. He who did not yet possess this could say that he was both perfect, on account of that which was already present, and imperfect, on account of that which was still lacking. But clearly this lesser righteousness constitutes the merit, that greater one becomes the reward. Whence he who does not pursue the former does not attain the latter. Therefore, to deny that there will be a fullness of righteousness after the resurrection of man, and to think that righteousness will be as great in the body of that life as it can be in the body of this death, is a mark of singular madness.
But it is most true that men will not begin there to fulfill the commandments of God which they were unwilling to fulfill here. For there shall indeed be the fullness of the most perfect righteousness — yet not of men following after the commandments and striving to advance toward that fullness, but in the twinkling of an eye, even as the resurrection of the dead shall itself be; since that perfect greatness of righteousness shall be given as a reward to those who here did the commandments — not that it too shall be enjoined as something to be done. But let me so say 'they did the commandments,' that we remember these very commandments to pertain to that prayer in which daily the holy sons of the promise truly say both 'Thy will be done' and 'Forgive us our debts.'
Therefore, when the Pelagians are pressed by these and suchlike testimonies and utterances of the truth — that they should not deny original sin, nor say that the grace of God by which we are justified is given not freely but according to our merits, nor affirm that in mortal man, however holy and rightly acting, there is so great a righteousness that even after the laver of regeneration, until he ends this life, no remission of sins is necessary for him — therefore, when they are pressed lest they say these three things, and by them estrange from the grace of the Saviour the men who believe them, and persuade those puffed up into pride to go headlong into the judgment of the devil: they cast up the mists of other questions, in which their impiety may lurk among simpler or slower men, less instructed in the holy Scriptures.
These are the mists: 'concerning the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the law, the praise of free will, the praise of the saints' — as if any one of us disparaged these things, and did not rather proclaim them all, with due praises, unto the honor of the Creator and Saviour. But neither does the creature wish to be so praised that it should refuse to be healed; and the more marriage is to be praised, the less is to be charged to it the shameful concupiscence of the flesh, which is not of the Father but is of the world. This concupiscence marriage assuredly found in men; it did not make it, since in very many it exists apart from marriage, and marriage itself, had no one sinned, could have existed apart from it.
And the law, holy and just and good, is not itself grace, and nothing is rightly done by it apart from grace, because it was not given as something that could give life, but was placed for the sake of transgression, that it might shut up the convicted under sin, and that the promise, by faith of Jesus Christ, might be given to them that believe. And free choice, being captive, avails only unto sin; toward righteousness, unless divinely freed and helped, it avails not at all. And by this all the saints too — whether from that ancient Abel down to John the Baptist, or from the Apostles themselves down to this time, and thereafter to the end of the age — are to be praised in the Lord, not in themselves; for both the voice of those earlier ones is: 'In the Lord shall my soul be praised,' and the voice of these later ones is:
'By the grace of God I am what I am'; and it pertains to all: 'that he who glorieth, let him glory in the Lord'; and the confession is common to all: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' But since in these five matters which I have set forth — in which they seek their hiding-places and out of which they weave their calumnies — they are exposed and overcome by the divine documents, they have devised, under the detestable name of the Manichees, to frighten off whatever unskilled persons they could, lest these lend their ears to the truth against their most perverse dogmas; because, forsooth, the Manichees, by blaspheming the first three of these five, condemn them, saying that neither the human creature, nor marriage, nor the law was instituted by the supreme and true God.
But they do not accept what the truth declares: that sin took its beginning from free choice, and that from this comes every evil, whether of angel or of man; because, straying too far from God, they have preferred to believe that the nature of evil is always evil and coeternal with God. The holy patriarchs and prophets also they persecute with as many execrations as they can. Behold, hence the new heretics think that, by having the name of the Manichees fastened upon them, they escape the force of the truth; but they do not escape. For truth pursues them, and at one and the same time overthrows both Manichees and Pelagians.
For man, in that he is born, since he is something good insofar as he is man, refutes the Manichee and praises the Creator; but insofar as he draws original sin, he refutes Pelagius and has need of a Saviour. And the very fact that this nature is said to need healing strikes back at both: for it would not need medicine if it were sound — which is against Pelagius — nor could it be healed at all if it were an eternal and immutable evil — which is against the Manichee.
Likewise, the fact that we do not say the concupiscence of the flesh is to be charged to marriage — which we praise as instituted by the Lord — is both against the Pelagians, who set it among things praiseworthy, and against the Manichees, who attribute it to an evil and alien nature; whereas it is an accidental evil of our nature, not to be separated off by any dissociation of God, but to be healed by the mercy of God.
Likewise, our saying that the law, holy and just and good, was placed not for the justifying of the ungodly but for the convicting of the proud, for the sake of transgression, is both against the Manichees, since according to the Apostle it is praised, and against the Pelagians, since according to the Apostle no one is justified by the law; and therefore, for the quickening of those whom the letter kills — that is, those whom the good law, by commanding, makes guilty through transgression — the Spirit of grace freely brings aid. Likewise, our saying that the will, being free in evil, must be freed by the grace of God for the doing of good, is against the Pelagians; while our saying that the evil which was not before arose from that free will, is against the Manichees.
Likewise, that we honor the holy patriarchs and prophets with due praises in God is opposed to the Manichees; but that we say the Lord's propitiation was necessary even to them, however righteous and pleasing to God, is opposed to the Pelagians. Both, therefore, the catholic faith finds to be adversaries, like the other heretics also; both it convicts by the authority of the divine testimonies and by the light of the truth. To the mists of their hiding-places the Pelagians do indeed add, from the origin of the soul, a question not necessary to the matter, in order that, by troubling clear matters with the obscurity of others, they may contrive a place for lurking. For they say: 'that we regard the propagation of souls together with the propagation of sin.' But where and when, in the writings of those who defend the catholic faith against them —
— whether they have heard it in discourses or read it in writings, I know not; for although I find something written by catholics on this matter, the defense of the truth had not yet been undertaken against these men, nor was it then being done that a reply should be made to them. But this I say: that original sin, and that it is remitted in little ones by the laver of regeneration, is so manifest according to the holy Scriptures, so confirmed by the great antiquity and authority of the catholic faith, so well known by the clear celebrity of the Church, that whatever is discussed, by inquiry or affirmation, concerning the origin of the soul of anyone, if it be against this, cannot possibly be true.
Wherefore, whosoever asserts anything obscure, whether about the soul or about any matter, whereby he would destroy that which is most true, most firmly grounded, most well known, be he a son or an enemy of the Church, must either be corrected or guarded against. But let this be the end of this volume, that what follows may have another beginning. BOOK FOUR. After these things which we have treated and to which we have replied, they repeat the same matters concerning which we refuted their letter, but in a different manner.
For first they set them before us, objecting them as things we supposedly hold wrongly; but afterward, expounding what they themselves hold, they rendered the same things in the opposite sense, adding two things which they had not said — namely, 'that they say baptism is necessary for all ages,' and 'that through Adam death, not sins, has passed to us.' These too must be treated in their place. Accordingly, since in the preceding book, which we have just now finished, we said that they hold up five things as obstacles,
— in which their dogmas, hostile to the grace of God and to the catholic faith, may lurk: namely, the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the law, the praise of free will, the praise of the saints — I judge it more convenient to distinguish generically all the things they defend, whose contraries they object against us, and to show which of theirs pertain to which of these five, so that our response may be, by this very distinction, both clearer and briefer. The praise of the creature, as far as pertains to the human race — which is now the question — they pursue with these opinions: 'that God is the maker of those who are born, and that the sons of men are the work of God, and that all sin descends not from nature but from will.'
To this praise of the creature they append: 'that they say baptism is necessary for all ages, in order, namely, that that creature may be adopted among the sons of God — not that it draws anything from its parents that must be expiated by the laver of regeneration.' To this praise they join also 'that they say the Lord Christ was sprinkled with no stain of sin, as far as pertains to His infancy; because they assert that His flesh, most pure from all contagion of sin, was so not by any proper excellence and singular grace, but by the community of the nature' which is in all infants.
To this pertains also that they insert a question 'concerning the origin of the soul, thus contriving to make the souls of all little ones equal to the soul of Christ, which they wish to be likewise sprinkled with no stain of sin.' On this account also they say 'that from Adam nothing evil passed through the rest except death,' which, they say, is not always an evil, since to the martyrs it is the cause of rewards, and it is not the dissolution of bodies — which will be raised in every kind of men — but the diversity of merits, which arises from human liberty, that makes a death be called either good or bad. These things they write in this letter concerning the praise of the creature. But marriage they praise according to the Scriptures, 'because the Lord speaks in the Gospel:
He who made them from the beginning made them male and female. And He said: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth' — although this is written not in that place of the Gospel, but nevertheless in the law. They add also: 'What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder' — which words we acknowledge to be evangelical. In the praise of the law they say: 'that the old law, according to the Apostle just and holy and good, was able to confer everlasting life on those keeping its commandments and living justly by faith — as on the prophets and patriarchs and all the saints.' In the praise of free will they say: 'that free will has not perished, since the Lord speaks through the prophet: If ye be willing and hearken unto me, ye shall eat the good things of the land;
if ye be unwilling and hearken not unto me, the sword shall devour you; and thereby grace assists each one's good purpose, yet does not infuse zeal for virtue into one who is reluctant, because there is no respect of persons with God.' With the praise of the saints they cover themselves, saying 'that baptism perfectly renews men, if indeed the Apostle be witness, who testifies that the Church is made holy and immaculate from among the Gentiles through the laver of water; that the Holy Spirit also aided good minds in ancient times, the prophet saying to God: Thy good Spirit shall lead me into the right way;
that all the prophets and apostles, or the saints both of the New and of the Old Testament, to whom God bears witness, were just — not in comparison with the wicked, but by the rule of virtues; that in the time to come there is a recompense both of good works and of evil; but that no one can there fulfill the commandments which he has here despised, since the Apostle has said: We must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.'
In all these things, whatever they say about the praise of the creature and of marriage they try to refer to this end: that there be no original sin; whatever about the praise of the law and of free will, to this end: that grace should not assist except merit, and so grace is now no longer grace; whatever about the praise of the saints, to this end: that the mortal life in the saints may seem to have no sin, nor is it necessary for them to pray to God for the remission of their debts.
Whosoever, with a catholic mind, shudders at these nefarious and damnable dogmas in this threefold division, let him shun the hiding-places and snares of that fivefold scheme, and so be wary between the two, that he may so decline the Manichee as not to incline toward the Pelagian, and again so sever himself from the Pelagians as not to join himself to the Manichees; or, if he be already held in one of the two, let him not so extricate himself from either that he should rush into the other. For they seem to be contrary to each other, since the Manichees manifest themselves by disparaging those five things, while the Pelagians conceal themselves by praising them.
Wherefore, whosoever, according to the rule of the catholic faith, so glorifies the Creator in men being born, on account of the good creature of flesh and soul — which the Manichee will not have — yet in such wise that, on account of the fault which passed over into them through the sin of the first man, he confesses a Saviour necessary even for little ones — which the Pelagian will not have — he both damns and shuns the two. So he discerns the evil of shameful concupiscence from the goodness of marriage, that, like the Manichees, he neither blames that whence we are born, nor, like the Pelagians, praises that whereby we are put to shame;
So he defends that the law, through Moses, holy and just and good, was given by a holy and just and good God — which the Manichee, against the Apostle, denies — yet in such wise that he says it both shows sin, without however taking it away, and commands righteousness, without however giving it — which again the Pelagian, against the Apostle, denies. So he asserts free will, that he may say the evil both of angel and of man began not from some nature always evil (which is nothing), but from the will itself — which overthrows the Manichean heresy — yet not so that the captive will can, save by the grace of God, breathe again into salutary liberty — which overthrows the Pelagian heresy;
So he praises in God the holy men of God, not only from Christ manifested in the flesh and thereafter, but also of earlier times — whom the Manichees dare to blaspheme — yet in such wise that concerning these very men he believes them themselves, as they confess, rather than the Pelagians who lie. For it is the voice of the saints: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' These things being so, what does it profit the new heretics, the enemies of the cross of Christ and the assailants of divine grace, that they seem sound from the error of the Manichees, and yet die of their own other pestilence?
What does it profit them that, in the praise of the creature, they say 'God is the good maker of those who are born, through whom all things were made, and that the sons of men are His work' — whom the Manichees say are the work of the prince of darkness — when between the two, or in the eyes of both, the creature of God which is in infants perishes? For both are unwilling that it should be freed by the flesh and blood of Christ: the former, because they destroy the very flesh and blood of Christ, as though He took these not at all in man or from man; the latter, because they assert that no evil is in infants, whereby through the sacrament of this flesh and blood they might be freed.
Between them lies, in the little ones, the human creature: good in its constitution, corrupted in its propagation; confessing, by its good things, its most excellent Maker; seeking, by its evil things, its most merciful Redeemer; having the Manichees as disparagers of its good things, having the Pelagians as deniers of its evil things — both as persecutors. And although through infancy it cannot speak, yet by its silent aspect and hidden weakness it accosts the impious vanity of both: saying to those: 'Believe me to be created by Him who creates good things,' and saying to these: 'Suffer me to be healed by Him who created me.' The Manichee says:
'There is nothing of this infant except its good soul to be freed; the rest, pertaining not to the good God but to the prince of darkness, is to be rejected.' The Pelagian says: 'Nay, of this infant there is nothing to be freed, since we have shown the whole to be safe.' Both lie; but the accuser of the flesh alone is already the milder, since the one who praises is convicted of raging against the whole. Yet neither does the Manichee succor the human soul, since he blasphemes God the Author of the whole man; nor does the Pelagian permit the divine medicine to succor human infancy, since he denies original sin. God, therefore, has mercy through the catholic faith, which, by refuting both destructions, succors the infant unto salvation, saying to the Manichees: 'Hear the Apostle crying out:
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you? And believe God to be the good Creator also of bodies, since the work of the prince of darkness cannot be the temple of the Holy Spirit'; and saying to the Pelagians: 'In iniquities was he conceived, and in sins did his mother nourish him in the womb, whom ye behold a little one. Why, defending him as though free from all guilt, do ye not permit him to be freed through indulgence? No one is clean from filth, not even the infant whose life upon the earth is of one day. Suffer the wretched one to receive remission of sins through Him who alone, neither small nor great, could have no sin.'
What, then, does it profit them that they say 'all sin descends not from nature but from will,' and that, by the truth of this opinion, they resist the Manichees who say an evil nature is the cause of sin — when, being unwilling to admit original sin (which itself, without doubt, descends from the will of the first man), they make the little ones guilty and cause them to depart from the body condemned? What does it profit them to 'confess baptism necessary for all ages' — which the Manichees say is superfluous for every age — when these very men say that in little ones it is false, as far as pertains to the remission of sins?
What does it profit them that they defend 'the flesh of Christ' — which the Manichees contend was none at all, or was feigned — against these, saying it was not only 'true, but that it too, and His soul as well, was sprinkled with no stain of sin'? — when they so equate the other infants with His infancy, in no unequal purity, that both His infancy seems not to preserve its own proper holiness by comparison with theirs, and these obtain from His no salvation at all?
In that, indeed, which they say 'that through Adam death, not crimes, has passed to us,' they have no adversaries in the Manichees; for these neither maintain that original sin passed and passes into all men, together with death, from the first man — pure and upright at first in body and spirit, and afterward depraved through free choice — but they say that the flesh was, from the beginning, an evil body from an evil body and by an evil spirit and with an evil spirit created; while the soul is good, a part indeed of God, which, for the merits of its own defilement, comes into man through foods and drinks, in which it was previously bound up, and thus, by intercourse, is bound also by the chain of the flesh.
And by this the Manichees agree with the Pelagians that the crime of the first man did not pass into the human race, neither through the flesh — which they say was never good — nor through the soul — which they allege comes into man's flesh together with the merits of its own defilements, by which it was polluted before the flesh. But how do the Pelagians say 'that death alone has passed to us through Adam'? For if we die on this account, because he died — and he died because he sinned — they are saying that a penalty passes without guilt, and that innocent little ones are punished with unjust punishment, incurring death without deserts of death.
This, concerning the one sole Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the catholic faith knows: who for us deigned to undergo death — that is, the penalty of sin — without sin. For as He alone was made the Son of man, that through Him we might be made the sons of God, so He alone took upon Himself for us, without evil deserts, the penalty, that we through Him, without good deserts, might obtain grace; because, as nothing of good was owed to us, so neither anything of evil to Him. Commending, therefore, His love toward those to whom He was about to give undeserved life, He willed to suffer for them undeserved death.
This singular prerogative of the Mediator the Pelagians endeavor to empty out, so that this may no longer be singular in the Lord, if Adam so suffered a death due to him for his fault, that the little ones drawing no fault from him suffer an undeserved death. For although through death very much good is conferred upon the good — whence some have fittingly disputed even about the good of death — yet even here what is to be proclaimed but the mercy of God, that the penalty of sin is turned to good uses? But these men say these things while they wish to distort men into their own sense out of the words of the Apostle. For where the Apostle says:
'By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so it passed upon all men' — there they wish it to be understood that not sin passed, but death. What, then, is that which follows: 'in whom all have sinned'? For either the Apostle says that all sinned in that one man, of whom he had said 'by one man sin entered into the world,' or in that sin, or certainly in death. For it ought not to disturb us that he did not say 'in which' (in the feminine) but 'in whom all have sinned'; for death, in the Greek tongue, is of the masculine gender. Let them choose, then, whichever they will. For either 'in that man all sinned' is said on this account, because, when he sinned, all were in him;