BOOK ONE. TO RENATUS. Your sincerity toward us, dearest brother Renatus, and your fraternal benevolence and the affection of mutual love we indeed held as proven even before; but now your friendly diligence has made it more proven to us, in that you sent me, this past summer, two books of a certain man whom I did not know at all—yet not therefore to be despised—Vincentius Victor (for so I found his name prefixed there), although, because I was absent, they were delivered to me at the end of autumn.
For how could you, my dearest one, be able or bound not to bring to my notice a matter which, when the letters of any man whatsoever had come into your hands—even though written to another—yet where my name was mentioned and read, in such a way that my words, which I had published in certain little works, were contradicted? This therefore you did, which as my most sincere and beloved friend you were bound to do. But on this account I am a little pained, that I am still less known to your holiness than I would wish, since you supposed that I would take it as though you had done me an injury by making known what another did. But how far this is from my mind—see, that I do not even complain of having suffered an injury from that man.
For when he thought certain things otherwise than I, ought he by any means to have kept silent? Whence it ought to be pleasing to me that he did not keep silent in such a way but that we can even read it. Someone might say that he ought rather to have written to me than to another about me; but because I was unknown to him, he did not dare to thrust himself upon me in the refutation of my sayings. Nor did he think I needed to be consulted where it seemed to him a matter least to be doubted, but rather that he held a fully known and certain opinion. He complied, however, with his friend, by whom he says he was compelled to write. And if in disputing he expressed something that redounded to my reproach, I would not believe he did it with the will of one reviling, but from the necessity of one who thinks differently.
For where the mind of an unknown man toward me is uncertain, I judge it better to think the better things than to blame what has not been examined. For perhaps he acted out of love for me, knowing that what he wrote could reach me, since he does not want me to err in those matters in which he rather thinks that he himself does not err. And therefore I ought even to have gratitude for the benevolence of one whose opinion I am nonetheless obliged to disapprove. And on account of this, in those things which he does not rightly understand, he seems to me still to be gently corrected, not harshly detested—especially because, as I hear, he has recently been made a Catholic, for which he is to be congratulated.
For he has been rid of the division and error of the Donatists, or rather the Rogatists, by which he was formerly held—provided, however, that he understands the Catholic truth as he ought, so that we may truly rejoice at his conversion. For he has eloquence, by which he can explain what he thinks. Hence one must deal with him, and it must be wished for him, that he think rightly, lest he make delightful things that are useless, and that whatever he has said eloquently may seem to have been said truly; although even in his very eloquence he has much to be amended and to be restrained from excessive overflowing, which in him displeased you also as a serious man, as your writings indicate. But this is either easily corrected, or, without detriment to the faith, is loved by gentle minds and tolerated by grave ones.
For we already have certain men who are foamy in speech but sound in faith. Therefore one must not despair even of this in him, that, although it is tolerable, if it persists it can nevertheless be purged and tempered and either brought or recalled to a whole and solid measure. Especially because he is reported to be a young man, so that what he lacks in experience diligence may supply, and what the crudeness of talkativeness belches forth, the maturity of age may boil down. That is troublesome and dangerous, or rather pernicious, if, when eloquence is praised, folly is persuaded, and in a precious cup a pestilential draught is drunk.
For, that I may now begin to demonstrate what things in his disputation are chiefly to be avoided: he says that 'the soul was indeed made by God and is not a part of God nor of his nature,' which is altogether true. But since he is unwilling to confess that it was made out of nothing, and mentions no other creature out of which it was made, and thus assigns God as its author in such a way that it is neither out of things not previously existing—that is, out of nothing—nor out of any thing that is not what God is,
but so that it is believed that God 'made it out of himself,' he does not perceive that he rolls back into that from which he thinks he has turned aside—namely, that the soul is nothing other than the nature of God, and thus consequently that something is made even out of the nature of God by the same God, for whom, in making, the material out of which he makes is himself who makes; and thereby that the nature of God is both mutable and, being changed for the worse, that the nature of the same God is condemned by that same God. You see, according to your faithful understanding, how this is not to be supposed, and how it is to be shut out from a Catholic heart and fled far away. For thus indeed the soul is either made from a breath, or is made itself the breath of God, in such a way that it is not out of him, but was created by him out of nothing.
For it is not to be thought of God as it is of a man, who, when he blows, cannot make a breath out of nothing, but returns the breath which he draws from this air; so as to think that certain airs were already poured around God, of which he would draw some tiny particle by breathing in and pour it back by breathing out, when he breathed into the face of man and in that way made him a soul. And even if it were so, then not out of himself, but out of some underlying breathable thing, could that be which he breathed. But far be it that we should deny that the Almighty could make the breath of life out of nothing, whereby man became a living soul.
And let us not be thrust into those straits, so as to suppose either that something already existed, which he himself was not, out of which he might make the breath, or to believe that, because we see it made mutable, he made it out of himself. For what is out of himself must necessarily be of the same nature as he himself is, and thereby also immutable; but the soul, as all confess, is mutable: therefore it is not out of himself, because it is not immutable as he is. But if it is made out of no other thing, it is made out of nothing, without doubt, yet by himself. But in that he 'contends it to be not a spirit, but a body,' what else does he wish to bring about than that we consist not of soul and body, but of two or even three bodies?
For when he says that 'we consist of spirit, soul, and body' and asserts that 'all these three are bodies,' assuredly he thinks that we are composed of three bodies. In which opinion, how great an absurdity attends him, I think must be demonstrated to him rather than to you. Yet this is a tolerable error of a man who has not yet learned that there is something which, though it be not a body, can nevertheless bear a certain likeness of a body. But who would bear that which, in the second book, when he tried to solve the most difficult question about original sin—how far it pertains to body and soul, if the soul is not derived from the parents, but breathed in new by God—striving therefore to unravel this so troublesome and so profound a question:
'Deservedly,' he says, 'through the flesh it recovers the former condition which it seemed for a little while to have lost through the flesh, so that through it it may begin to be reborn, through which it had deserved to be defiled.' You surely discern that a man who dared to undertake what exceeds his powers has fallen into so monstrous a precipice as to say that the soul deserved to be defiled through the flesh, when he can in no way say whence it derived this merit before the flesh. For if merit of sin begins from the flesh, let him say, if he can, whence before its own sin it deserved to be defiled by the flesh. For this merit, by which it was sent into sinful flesh, that it might be defiled by it, assuredly it had either from itself, or—what is much more abhorrent from the truth—from God.
For it could not have merit from the flesh before the flesh, by which merit it should be sent, to be defiled, into the flesh. If therefore it had this merit from itself, how did it have it, seeing that before the flesh it did no evil? But if it is said to have had this merit from God, who would hear this, who would bear it, who would permit it to be said with impunity? For it is not here asked what it deserved, that it should be judged worthy of condemnation after the flesh, but what it deserved before the flesh, that it should be so condemned as to be sent, to be defiled, into the flesh. Let him explain this, if he can, who dared to say that the soul deserved to be defiled through the flesh. Likewise in another place, when he proposed, as if to be unraveled, the same question in which he had entangled himself, he says, as though from the person of adversaries:
'Why,' they say, 'did God punish the soul with so unjust a chastisement, as to be willing to relegate it into the body of sin, so that it begins to be sinful by association with the flesh, which could not be sinful?' In the, as it were, rocky whirlpool of this question he certainly ought to have guarded against shipwreck, and not to have committed himself to a place from which he could extricate himself not by passing through, but perhaps by returning—that is, by repenting. For he strives to free himself by the foreknowledge of God, but in vain. For the foreknowledge of God foreknows those sinners whom he is going to heal; it does not make them. For if he frees from sin those souls which, innocent and clean, he himself entangled in sin, he heals the wound which he inflicted on us, not which he found in us.
But may God avert it, and may it be altogether far from us, that we should say that, when by the washing of regeneration God cleanses the souls of little ones, he then corrects his own evils which he himself did to them, when he mingled them, having no sin, with sinful flesh, by whose original sin they were contaminated. Yet this man, accusing them, says that they deserved to be defiled through the flesh, and cannot say whence they deserved so great an evil before the flesh. Thinking therefore in vain that he can dissolve this question by the foreknowledge of God, he still entangles himself and says: 'The soul, if it deserved to be sinful, which could not be sinful, nevertheless did not remain in sin, because, prefigured in Christ, it ought not to be in sin, as it could not be.'
What is it that he says, 'it could not be sinful' or 'it could not be in sin,' except, I believe, if it did not come into the flesh? For it could not be sinful by original sin, or in any way be in original sin, except through the flesh, if it is not derived from the parent. We see therefore that the soul is freed from sin by grace, but we do not see whence it deserved to cling to sin. What then is it that he says: 'if it deserved to be sinful, it did not however remain in sin'? For if I should ask of him why it did not remain in sin, he will most rightly answer: 'because the grace of Christ freed the soul.' As therefore he says whence the soul of the little one was freed, being sinful, so let him also say whence it deserved to be sinful.
But what does he say, to whom that which he had said before has happened? For, in order to propose this question to himself, he says: 'Other reproaches are heaped up by the querulous murmurings of those who bark against us, and, shaken as if by some whirlwind, we are again and again dashed among monstrous rocks'—if I were to say this of him, perhaps he would be angry; the words are his own—: with these premised, he proposed the question in which he might display the very rocks upon which, dashed, he was shipwrecked. For to this he was led, and upon such dreadful crags carried, driven, and fixed, that he can in no way extricate himself except by amending what he said, being unable to show by what merit the soul was made sinful—which he did not fear to say deserved, before all its own sin, to be made sinful.
Who deserves so monstrous a punishment without sin, that, conceived in another's iniquity, before it comes forth from its mother's womb, it is already not without sin? But from this penalty grace freely frees the souls of little ones who are regenerated in Christ, by no preceding merits of theirs; otherwise grace is now no longer grace. Accordingly, let this very intelligent man, to whom our hesitation—though not learned, yet cautious—in so great a depth is displeasing, say, if he can, by what merit the soul came into this penalty, from which penalty grace frees it without merit; let him say, that he may defend by some reason, if he shall be able, what he said. For I would not demand this, unless he himself had said that the soul deserved to be sinful.
Let him say whether its merit was good or evil. If good, by what good merit did it come into evil? If evil, whence any evil merit before all sin? Likewise I say: if good, then grace does not free the soul gratuitously, but according to debt, since a good merit preceded, and thus grace will now no longer be grace; but if evil, I ask what it is. Is it that it came into the flesh, into which it would not have come, unless he in whom there is no iniquity had himself sent it? Never therefore, except by hurling himself into worse things, will he manage to establish this his opinion, by which he said that the soul deserved to be sinful.
And concerning those little ones indeed, whose original sin is washed away in baptism, he found something, of whatever sort, to say, since the foreknowledge of God could in no way have harmed those predestined to eternal life by their adhering for a little while to another's sin. Which might be tolerably said, if this man did not entangle himself in his own words, saying that the soul deserved to be sinful. From which he does not at all free himself, unless it repents him to have said this.
But concerning those little ones who are overtaken by death before they are baptized in Christ, when he wished to respond, he dared 'to promise them not only paradise, but even the kingdom of heaven,' not finding by what way he might get out, lest he be compelled to say that God condemns innocent souls to eternal death—souls which, by no preceding merit, he grafts into sinful flesh. But somehow perceiving what an evil thing he had said, that the souls of little ones are redeemed into eternal life and the kingdom of heaven without any grace of Christ, and that original sin can be dissolved in them without the baptism of Christ, in which the remission of sins takes place—seeing therefore into what depth of a shipwrecking whirlpool he had cast himself:
'Indeed,' he says, 'for them I judge that assiduous oblations and the sacrifices of the holy priests are to be continually offered.' Behold another thing from which he will never get out, unless it repents him to have said it. For who would offer the body of Christ except for those who are members of Christ? And since it was said by him: 'Unless one be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,' and in another place: 'He who loses his soul for my sake shall find it,' no one becomes a member of Christ except either by baptism in Christ or by death for Christ.
Whence also that thief, not a follower of the Lord before the cross, but a confessor on the cross—concerning whom sometimes a prejudgment is seized upon, or an attempt is made, against the sacrament of baptism—is reckoned by holy Cyprian among the martyrs who are baptized in their own blood, which happens to very many who are not baptized when persecution is raging. For with so great a weight was it weighed, and it availed so much with him who knows how to weigh these things, that he confessed the crucified Lord, as much as if he had been crucified for the Lord. For then his faith flowered from the wood, when the faith of the disciples withered—unless it were that, by the resurrection of him at the terror of whose death it had withered, it should grow green again. For they despaired of the dying one; he hoped in the one dying with him.
they fled from the author of life, he begged the sharer of his penalty; they grieved as at the death of a man, he believed that he would reign after death; they deserted the surety of salvation, he honored the companion of the cross. In him was found the measure of a martyr, who then believed in Christ, when those who were to be martyrs failed. And this indeed was clear to the eyes of the Lord, who conferred so great a felicity at once upon one not baptized, as though washed by the blood of martyrdom. But which of us also would not consider with what faith, with what hope, with what love he could have undertaken death for the living Christ, who sought life in the dying one?
To this is added, that it is said not incredibly that the thief who then believed beside the crucified Lord was, as it were, sprinkled with a most sacred baptism by that water which gushed forth from the wound of his side—to say nothing of the fact that no one of us knows, no one proves, that he had not been baptized before he was condemned. But let each one take these things as he will, provided only that concerning baptism it be not laid down, contrary to the precept of the Savior, by the example of this thief, and that no one promise to unbaptized little ones, between damnation and the kingdom of heaven, as it were a middle place of any rest or felicity whatsoever, and anywhere.
For this even the Pelagian heresy promised them, since it neither fears damnation for the little ones, whom it thinks to have no original sin, nor hopes for them the kingdom of heaven, if they do not attain to the sacrament of baptism. But this man, although he confesses that little ones are bound by original sin, yet dared to promise them, even unbaptized, the kingdom of heaven—which not even those dared, who assert that they are altogether without any sin. Behold with what snares of presumption he entangles himself, unless it repents him to have written such things!
But concerning Dinocrates, the brother of holy Perpetua, neither is that scripture itself canonical, nor did she—or whoever wrote it—so write as to say that that boy, who died at seven years of age, had died without baptism, on whose behalf she is believed to have been heard when martyrdom was imminent, so that he might be transferred from punishments to rest. For boys of that age can already both lie and speak the truth, both confess and deny. And therefore, when they are baptized, they already both recite the creed and themselves answer for themselves to the questions asked.
Who therefore knows whether that boy, after baptism, at the time of persecution, was alienated from Christ by his impious father through idolatry, on account of which he went to death in condemnation, and did not come forth from there except by being granted to the prayers of his sister, who was about to die for Christ? But even if this be conceded to this man—which by no reasoning is conceded while the Catholic faith and the ecclesiastical rule are kept safe.
As for the claim that the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ should be offered on behalf of unbaptized persons of whatever age, as though through such piety on the part of their own kin they might be helped to attain the kingdom of heaven — what answer will he give concerning so many thousands of infants who are born of the ungodly and never come into the hands of the godly through any pity, whether divine or human, and who depart from this life in that most tender age without the laver of regeneration? Let him say, if he can, whence these souls came to deserve to become so sinful that they are not, at the very least, set free from sin even afterward. For if I ask why they deserve to be condemned when they are not baptized, the correct answer is given me: 'because of original sin'; and likewise if I ask whence they contracted original sin.
He will answer: 'from the sinful flesh, of course.' If then I ask whence they deserved to be condemned to sinful flesh, seeing that they had done no evil before the flesh — let him here find what to answer, and how they came to be condemned to undergo the contagion of others' sins in such a way that neither does baptism regenerate the ill-begotten nor do sacrifices expiate the defiled — for in that place also these little ones were born of such parents, or are even now still being born, so that no such aid can come to their rescue — here surely all argumentation fails. For we are not asking whence souls deserved to be condemned after their partnership with sinful flesh, but by what.
...we ask whence souls deserved to be condemned to enter into partnership with sinful flesh, when they had no sin before their partnership with sinful flesh. It cannot be said: 'the briefly shared contagion of another's sin did them no harm, since in God's foreknowledge a redemption had been prepared for them.' For we are now speaking of those to whom, departing from the body before baptism, no redemption comes. It cannot be said: 'those whom baptism does not wash, frequent sacrifices offered on their behalf will cleanse, since God, foreknowing this, willed that they should for a little while cleave to others' sins without any destruction of eternal condemnation and with hope of eternal happiness.'
For we are now speaking of those whose birth among the ungodly and from the ungodly can find no such safeguards. And even if such could be applied, they would without doubt be of no benefit to the unbaptized — just as those sacrifices which he mentioned from the Book of Maccabees, offered for the dead sinners, would have profited them nothing had they not been circumcised.
Let him therefore find, if he can, what to say when he is asked what a soul — free of all sin, whether original or its own — deserved, that it should be so condemned to undergo another's original sin that it cannot be delivered from it; and let him see which of two things he chooses: whether to say that even those souls of dying infants, who depart hence without the laver of regeneration and on whose behalf no sacrifice of the Lord's body is offered, are absolved from the bond of original sin — though the Apostle teaches that from one man all go into condemnation, those namely upon whom grace does not come to their rescue that through the one they might be delivered into redemption — or to say that souls having no sin whatever, whether their own or original, and in every way innocent, simple, and pure, are punished with eternal condemnation by the just God, when He Himself inserts them, not to be delivered, into sinful flesh.
For my part I affirm that neither of these two things is to be said, nor that third thing — that souls sinned somewhere else before the flesh, so as to deserve condemnation into the flesh; for the Apostle most plainly defined that those not yet born in the flesh had done nothing good or evil, whence it is established that little ones, in that they need remission of sins, have contracted nothing but original sin — nor that fourth thing, that those souls of infants destined to die without baptism are by the just God banished into sinful flesh and condemned, because He foreknew that, had they reached the age at which they would use free will, they would have lived wickedly.
For this indeed not even he, placed in such straits, dared to say; nay rather, against this very vanity he has already spoken clearly and briefly enough, where he says that 'God would have been unjust had He willed to judge a man not yet born, apart from any completed works of his own will.' For this is what he answered when he was treating the question against those who say: 'why did God make a man whom, being foreknowing, He knew would not turn out good?' For He would not judge the unborn if He had refused to create him for this reason, that He foreknew he would not be good. And indeed, as it also seemed right to him, God ought to judge a man on his completed works, not on things foreknown and never permitted to come about.
For if sins which a man would have committed had he lived are, though not committed, condemned in one who is dead, then no benefit has been conferred upon him who was taken away lest wickedness alter his understanding — since he will be judged according to the wickedness that would have been in him, not according to the innocence that is found in him. And there could be no security concerning any dead baptized person, since even after baptism men can not only sin in whatever manner but even apostatize. What then?
If, then, one who was baptized and taken away hence would have become an apostate had he lived, shall we suppose that no benefit was conferred on him in that he was taken away lest wickedness alter his understanding, and shall we judge, on account of God's foreknowledge, that he must be judged not as a faithful member of Christ but as an apostate? For how much better, if sins not yet done, not yet even thought of, but foreknown and future are punished, that those two should have been cast out of paradise before sin, lest sin be committed in a place so holy and blessed! And what of this — that foreknowledge itself is utterly emptied out if what is foreknown will not come to be? For how is it rightly said that a future thing is foreknown, when it will not be future?
How then are sins punished which are nonexistent — that is, which were neither committed before the flesh, this present life not yet beginning, nor after the flesh, death forestalling them? Accordingly, in this interval from when the soul was sent into the flesh until it should be released from the flesh, since it is the soul of a little one and has not lived the age of free will, it finds no ground for its condemnation, baptism not having been received, except original sin. That the soul is justly condemned for this sin we do not deny, since the just law has appointed punishment for sin; but we ask why it has been condemned to undergo this sin, if it is not derived from that one sin which was committed in the first father of the human race.
Wherefore, if God does not condemn the innocent nor make guilty those whom He perceives to be innocent; and if He does not deliver souls, whether from original or from their own sins, except in the Church of Christ through the baptism of Christ; and if souls had absolutely no sin at all before the flesh; and if sins before they are committed — and much more those which have never been committed — cannot be condemned by a just law: let him say none of these four things, and, if he can, let him explain by what desert the souls of infants, which depart without baptism and are sent into condemnation, were sent into sinful flesh, though they had committed no sin, so as to find there the sin on account of which they are deservedly condemned.
Furthermore, if — avoiding these four things which sound doctrine condemns, that is, not daring to say either that souls existing without any sin are made sinful by God, or that in them original sin is loosed without the sacrament of Christ, or that they sinned somewhere before they were sent into the flesh, or that sins they never had are condemned in them — if, unwilling to say these things, since assuredly they are not to be said, he should say that little ones do not contract original sin nor have any ground for condemnation if they depart hence without receiving the sacrament of regeneration, he will fall, deserving of condemnation, into the Pelagian heresy, which is beyond doubt damnable.