Then, since "his soul was pleasing to God, He hastened to lead him out of the midst of iniquity," so that He delayed not even a little, in order to fulfill what He had predestined in him — but rather chose to act against His own predestination, as though in haste, lest what had pleased Him in the unbaptized should be destroyed in baptism, as though the infant about to die would there perish, whither one must run with him lest he perish. Who then would believe, say, write, or recite that these words written in the book of Wisdom were spoken of little ones who die without baptism, if he pondered, as he ought, the matter? Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "there are certain mansions outside the kingdom of God, which the Lord said were in His Father's house," if you wish to be a Catholic.
For He did not say, as you yourself put down this testimony: "There are many mansions with my Father" — for if He had so said, they would not have to be understood as anywhere but in His Father's house — but He plainly said: "In my Father's house are many mansions." Who then would dare to separate some parts of the house of God from the kingdom of God, so that, whereas the kings of the earth are found to reign not only in their own house nor only in their own homeland, but far and wide even beyond the sea, the King who made heaven and earth should be said not to reign in His whole house? But perhaps you will say that all things indeed belong to the kingdom of God, because He reigns in the heavens, reigns on earth, in the abysses, in paradise, in hell — for where does He not reign, whose supreme power is everywhere?
— but that the kingdom of heaven is one thing, to which it is not lawful to approach save for those washed by the laver of regeneration, on account of the Lord's true and fixed sentence, while the kingdom of the earth, or of the other parts of creation, is another thing, where there can be certain mansions of the house of God, although belonging to the kingdom of God, yet not to the kingdom of heaven, where the kingdom of God is more excellent and more blessed;
so that it comes to pass that neither are any parts and mansions of the house of God wickedly separated from the kingdom of God, and yet not all are prepared for dwellers in the kingdom of heaven, and that in those which are not in the kingdom of heaven, those may happily dwell to whom God has willed to give them even though unbaptized, so that they may be in the kingdom of God, although in the kingdom of heaven, because they are not baptized, they cannot be. Those who say this seem indeed to themselves to be saying something, because they attend carelessly to the Scriptures and do not understand in what sense the kingdom of God is spoken of, whence we pray saying: "Thy kingdom come." The kingdom of God is that where His faithful household shall reign wholly with Him, blessedly and everlastingly;
for according to the power which He has over all things, even now He assuredly reigns. What then is it that we pray, that it may come, except that we may deserve to reign with Him? But under His power will also be those who shall burn in the punishment of eternal fire. Shall we for this reason say that they too will be in the kingdom of God? For it is one thing to be honored with the gifts of the kingdom of God, another to be restrained by the laws of the kingdom of God. But that it may appear to you most manifestly that the kingdom of heaven is not to be distributed to the baptized while other parts of the kingdom of God are given to those whom it has seemed to you to be unbaptized, hear the Lord Himself, who did not say: "If anyone is not born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven," but:
"He cannot," He says, "enter into the kingdom of God." For His words on this matter to Nicodemus are these: "Amen, amen I say to you: unless one be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Behold, He did not here say "the kingdom of heaven," but "of God." And when Nicodemus had answered and said: "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" the Lord, repeating the same sentence more plainly and openly, said: "Amen, amen I say to you: unless one be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Behold, neither here did He say "the kingdom of heaven," but "the kingdom of God." For what He had said, "unless one be born again," He explained what it was, saying:
"unless one be born again of water and the Spirit"; and what He had said, "he cannot see," this He explained by saying, "he cannot enter." But that which He had said, "the kingdom of God," He did not repeat under any other name. Nor is it now needful to inquire and discuss whether the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are to be understood with some difference, or whether it is one thing called by two names; it suffices that he cannot enter into the kingdom of God who has not been washed by the laver of regeneration. But how far from the truth it is to separate certain mansions established in the house of God from the kingdom of God, I think you now understand.
And therefore, as to what you supposed — that in certain mansions, which the Lord said were many in His Father's house, some would dwell who are even not born again of water and the Spirit — I admonish you, if you permit, not to defer to amend it, that you may hold the Catholic faith. Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "the sacrifice of Christians is to be offered for those who have departed the body unbaptized," if you wish to be a Catholic, since neither do you show that the sacrifice which you mentioned from the books of the Maccabees was offered by the Jews for those who had departed the body uncircumcised. And in this opinion of yours, so novel and brought forth against the authority and discipline of the whole Church, you have even used a most insolent word, saying:
"For these, to be sure, I judge that constant offerings and the sacrifices of the holy priests are perpetually to be offered" — so that you, a layman, neither by learning submitted yourself to the priests of God, nor even by joint inquiry mingled with them, but by pronouncing judgment set yourself above them. Rid yourself of these things, my son; it is not thus that one walks in the way which Christ, humble, taught that He Himself is; no one enters through His narrow gate with this swelling. Do not believe, nor say, nor teach that "some of those who have departed from this life without the baptism of Christ do not go for the time into the kingdom of heaven, but into paradise, and afterward, however, in the resurrection of the dead attain even to the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven," if you wish to be a Catholic.
For not even the Pelagian heresy, which opines that little ones do not contract original sin, has dared to grant this to them. But you, although as a Catholic you confess that they are born with sin, yet by I know not what more perverse novelty of opinion assert that, without the baptism of salvation, they are both absolved from this sin with which they are born and introduced into the kingdom of heaven, nor do you consider how much worse you think in this cause than Pelagius. For he, dreading the Lord's sentence, by which the unbaptized are not permitted to enter into the kingdom of heaven, although he believes them free from all sin, yet does not dare to send those little ones thither; but you so despise what has been said:
"If anyone is not born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," that — apart from the error by which you dare to separate paradise from the kingdom of God — to certain little ones (whom, being born guilty, you believe as a Catholic to have died without baptism) you do not hesitate to promise both the absolution of that guilt and, over and above, the kingdom of heaven; as though, against Pelagius, in establishing original sin, you could then be a true Catholic, if against the Lord, in destroying His sentence concerning baptism, you were a new heretic. We, most beloved, do not wish you to be a conqueror of heretics in such a way that error should conquer error, and — what is worse — the greater the lesser. For you say:
"Or if perhaps anyone should resist the notion that paradise was conferred for a time upon the soul of the thief or of Dinocrates — for that there yet remains for them in the resurrection the reward of the kingdom of heaven, although that principal sentence stands in the way, because he who is not born again of water and the Holy Spirit shall not enter into the kingdom — yet let him hold, in this part too, my assent as one who does not begrudge it, provided he both amplify the effect and the affection of the divine mercy and foreknowledge." These are your words.
Where you confess that you agree with him who says that paradise was thus conferred for a time upon certain unbaptized persons, so that there remains for them in the resurrection the reward of the kingdom of heaven, contrary to the principal sentence by which it is established that he shall not enter into that kingdom who is not born again of water and the Holy Spirit. Fearing to violate this principal sentence, Pelagius did not believe that those would enter into the kingdom of heaven without baptism whom he did not believe to be guilty; but you both confess that the little ones are guilty of original sin, and yet absolve them without the laver of regeneration, and send them into paradise, and afterward permit them even to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
These things and the like — if perchance, being more attentive and more at leisure, you can find others too in your books — amend now without any delay, if you bear a Catholic mind; that is, if you truly spoke by way of preface when you said that "you are not so credulous of yourself as to think that the things you have said can be proved, and that you always strive not even to defend your own opinion, if it be detected as unprovable, and that it is at your heart, when your judgment has been condemned as your own, rather to follow the better and the truer things." Now prove, most dear one, that you did not say these things deceitfully, so that the Catholic Church may rejoice over your disposition, not only ingenious but also cautious, pious, modest, and may not blaze up over a contentious heretical obstinacy of madness.
Now it is time that you show with how great sincerity of heart you spoke, after these good words of yours which I have recalled, that which you immediately subjoined: "For as it belongs," you say, "to a most excellent purpose and praiseworthy counsel to be easily led over to the truer things, so it belongs to a reprobate and obstinate judgment to be unwilling to be bent the more quickly to the path of reason." Be, therefore, of a most excellent purpose and praiseworthy counsel, and easy to be led over to the truer things; and be not of a reprobate and obstinate judgment, so as to be unwilling to be bent the more quickly to the path of reason. For if you uttered these things liberally, if you did not sound them on your lips only, but felt them within and genuinely in your heart, then in so great a good as your correction you have hated even delays.
For it would have been too little for you to say that it belongs to a reprobate and obstinate judgment to be unwilling to be bent to the path of reason, had you not added "the more quickly," that hereby you might show how detestable is he who never does this good, since indeed he who does it more slowly seems to you to be blamed with such severity as deservedly to be called of a reprobate and obstinate judgment. Hear therefore your own self, and use above all and most of all the fruits of your own eloquence, that you may the more quickly bend yourself to the path of reason by gravity of mind, whence you had turned yourself aside less learnedly and less advisedly by the slipperiness of your age. It is too long a task to treat and discuss all the things which I wish to be amended in your books, or rather in yourself, and at least to render you a brief account of each thing to be corrected.
Nor for that reason, however, should you despise yourself and think that your talent and eloquence are to be esteemed of little worth. Nor have I found the memory of the holy Scriptures in you to be small; but your erudition is less than befitted so great a natural gift and labor. And so I wish you neither to grow vain by attributing to yourself more than you ought, nor again to grow cold by casting yourself down and despairing. Would that I could read your writings with you, and by conversing rather than by writing show what things should be amended! This business would be more easily accomplished by conversation between us than by letters; which, if it had to be written, would require many volumes.
24:217
uerumistacapitalia, quaecertoetiamnumeroconprehendereuolui, instanterammoneo, necorrigeredifferaseteaprorsusafideetpraedicationetuafaciasaliena, utquantatibifacultasestdisputandimuneredeiutarisutiliteradaedificationem, nonaddestructionemsanaesalubrisquedoctrinae. Suntautemista, dequibus, utpotui, iamdisserui; sedbreuiterearepetendopercurram. unumest, quod \'animamnonexnihilo, seddeseipsodeumfecisse\' dixisti; alterum \'perinfinitumtempusatqueitasemperdeumanimasdare, sicutsemperestipsequidat\'; tertium \'animammeritumaliquodperdidissepercarnem, quodhabueritantecarnem\';
But these capital matters, which I have wished to comprise even within a fixed number, I urgently admonish you not to defer to correct, and to make them altogether foreign to your faith and preaching, so that with what great faculty of disputation you have, you may use the gift of God usefully unto edification, not unto the destruction of sound and wholesome doctrine. Now these are the matters of which, as I could, I have already discoursed; but I will run through them by briefly repeating. The first is that you said "the soul was made by God not out of nothing, but out of Himself"; the second, that "through infinite time and thus God gives souls always, just as He who gives is Himself always"; the third, that "the soul lost some desert through the flesh which it had before the flesh";
the fourth, that "the soul restores its former state through the flesh and is reborn through that same flesh by which it had deserved to be defiled"; the fifth, that "the soul deserved to become a sinner before any sin"; the sixth, that "infants who, before they are baptized, are prevented by death can attain to the pardon of original sins"; the seventh, that "those whom the Lord has predestined to baptism can be snatched from His predestination and die before that which the Almighty has predestined has been fulfilled in them"; the eighth, that "concerning infants who, before they are reborn in Christ, are forestalled by death, it is written: 'He was caught away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding,' and the rest that are read to that effect in the book of Wisdom";
the ninth, that "there are certain mansions outside the kingdom of God among those which the Lord said were in His Father's house"; the tenth is that "the sacrifice of Christians is to be offered for those who have departed the body unbaptized"; the eleventh, that "some of those who have departed from this life without the baptism of Christ do not for the time go into the kingdom, but into paradise, and afterward, however, in the resurrection of the dead attain even to the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven." These eleven points meanwhile, so manifestly perverse and adverse to the Catholic faith, now delay no longer to root out and cast away from your mind, your word, your pen, if you wish that we may rejoice not only that you have crossed over to the Catholic altars, but that you are truly a Catholic.
For if these things are stubbornly defended one by one, they can make as many heresies as there are opinions reckoned to be. Wherefore consider how horrible it is that all should be in one man, which would be damnable if each were single in single persons. But if you fight for them with no contention, nay rather if you assail them with faithful words and writings, you will be a more praiseworthy censor upon yourself than if you reprehended any other by right reason, and a more admirable amender of them than if you had never held those things.
May the Lord be present to your mind, and pour into your spirit by His Spirit so great a facility of humility, a light of truth, a sweetness of charity, a peace of piety, that you may prefer to be the conqueror of your own soul in true things rather than of any gainsayer in false ones. But far be it that you should think that by holding these opinions you have departed from the Catholic faith, although they be adverse to the Catholic faith, if before God, whose eye is deceived in no one's heart, you truly come to your senses and acknowledge that you said "you are not credulous of yourself, that the things you said can be proved, and that you always strive not even to defend your own opinion, if it be detected as unprovable, because it is at your heart, when your own judgment has been condemned, rather to follow the better and the truer things."
For such a mind, even in things spoken through ignorance that are not Catholic, is itself Catholic by the very premeditation and preparation for correction. But let this be the limit of this volume, where the reader may rest a little while, so that his attention may be renewed for the things that follow by a fresh beginning. THE FOURTH BOOK. TO VINCENTIUS VICTOR. Receive now also concerning myself the things I desire to say to you, if I can — that is, if He shall grant it, in whose hand are both we and our discourses.
For you reproved me, twice over expressing even my name; and although at the beginning of your book you called yourself quite conscious of your inexperience and destitute of the support of learning, while me, where you named me, you called most learned and most skilled, yet in those matters in which you seemed to yourself to know something which I either confess that I do not know, or, though I do not know it, presume that I do know, with the liberty that was fitting, you did not hesitate to reprove not only an old man and a bishop, you a youth and a layman, but even a man in your own judgment most learned and most skilled.
But I, for my part, do not know myself to be most learned and most skilled — nay rather, I most certainly know that I am not, and I do not doubt that it can happen that something may fall to the knowledge of some inexperienced and unlearned person which some learned and skilled person is ignorant of. And in this I plainly praise you, that you preferred the truth — if not the truth which you perceived, at least the one you supposed — to a man; rashly indeed, because you reckoned that you knew what you do not know, but freely, because, not standing in awe of the person, you chose to disclose what you feel. Whence you ought to understand how much greater ought to be our care to recall the Lord's sheep from their errors, if even for the sheep it is shameful to conceal the vices of the shepherds, if they have come to know any, from those same shepherds.
Oh, if only you had reproved those things of mine which are worthy of just reproof! For I ought not to deny that, just as in my very morals, so there are many things in my so many little works which can be blamed by right judgment and with no rashness. And if you yourself had reproved some of these, there perhaps I would have shown you what manner of man I would wish you to be in the things wherein you have not reproved amiss, and, as the elder and superior to you, my junior and subject, I would have exhibited the more wholesomely, the more humbly, an example of correction. But you reproved in me those things which humility does not permit me to correct, and which truth compels me partly to confess, partly to defend. And these are they:
one, that concerning the origin of the souls which after the first man have been given or are given to men, I did not dare to define anything, because I confess that I do not know; the other, that I said I know the soul to be a spirit, not a body. But in this second point you reproved two things: one, that I did not believe it to be a body; the other, that I believed it to be a spirit. For to you it seems that the soul is both a body and is not a spirit. Hear therefore my defense against your reproof, and from this occasion, whereby I clear myself to you, learn in your own self what things you should cleanse away. Recall the words of your book, where you first named me:
"I know," you say, "that very many, and easily the most skilled men, being consulted upon this matter, have kept silence, or have uttered nothing very explicit, since they withdrew a definition from their own disputations by an incomplete exposition — as I lately read set down in the letters, in your presence, of Augustine, a most learned man and a renowned and praised bishop — more modestly indeed, as I think, and more bashfully searching out the secrets of this matter, they swallowed within themselves the judgment of their own treatise, and professed that they could not thereupon determine anything. But to me, believe me, it seems more than enough absurd and incongruous to reason that man himself should be void of the knowledge of himself, or that he who is believed to have attained the knowledge of all things should be held unknown to his own self.
"But how does man differ from the beast, if he knows not how to inquire and discourse concerning his own quality and nature, so that deservedly there applies to him that which is written: 'Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he was likened to the beasts that have no sense, and was made comparable to them'? For since the good God has made nothing without reason, and has brought forth man himself as a rational animal, capable of understanding, endowed with reason and quick with sense, who by prudent ordering distributes all things void of reason, what can be said so incongruously as that He should have defrauded him of the knowledge of himself alone?"
And whereas the wisdom of the world, which reaches out even to the knowledge of truth by an investigation that is indeed superfluous—since it cannot know Him through whom it is granted that true things be known—has nevertheless attempted to inquire into the nature of the soul, touching on some things near to, indeed akin to, the truth: how unseemly and shameful it is that any religious man should either know nothing of this very matter or should have utterly forbidden himself to know it! This most eloquent and brilliant chastisement of yours upon our ignorance so summons you to know all things pertaining to the nature of man, that, if you were to be ignorant of any of them, you would be likened to the beasts—not by my judgment, but by your own. For although you seem to attain it more strikingly by what you have said:
'Man, being in honour, understood not'—since in that honour in which you are not, we of the Church are; yet even you are in that honour of nature, whereby you are set above the beasts, to which, according to your own judgment, you would have to be compared, if you were ignorant of anything that is agreed to pertain to your nature. For you did not level this reproach only against those who are ignorant of what I am ignorant of, that is, the origin of the human soul—of which indeed I am not wholly ignorant; for I know that God breathed into the face of the first man, and man was made into a living soul; yet unless I had read this, I could not know it of myself—but you said: 'Wherein does a man differ from a beast, if he knows not how to inquire and discourse concerning his own quality and nature?'
You seem to have meant this as though a man ought so to inquire and discourse concerning the whole of his quality and nature that nothing about himself should lie hidden from him. And if that is so, then I shall now compare you to the beasts, if you do not answer me the number of your own hairs. But if you grant that, however much we may advance in this life, there are certain things pertaining to our nature that we do not know, I ask how much and to what extent you grant this—lest perchance this too be among them, that we do not in every way know the origin of our soul; although, as far as pertains to the salvation of faith, we know, with all ambiguities set aside, that the soul is given by God and is not of that nature of which God is.
Or do you perhaps think that a man's nature is to be unknown to him precisely to the extent that you do not know it, and to be known precisely to the extent that you have been able to know it—so that, if anyone knows a little less than you, you compare him to the beasts because you have been able to be more knowing than he; and thus, if anyone knows a little more than you, by that same justice he will compare you to the beasts? Tell me, then, to what extent you grant that we may not know our nature, so that our distance from the beasts may be preserved; and yet consider whether he who knows that he is ignorant of some part of it may not be further removed from the beasts than he who thinks he knows what he does not know. Certainly the whole nature of man is spirit, soul, and body; whoever, therefore, wishes to estrange the body from human nature is a fool.
Yet the physicians who are called anatomists, by dissecting through the limbs, through the veins, through the nerves, through the bones, through the marrows, through the inner vital parts—even living men, so long as they could stay alive under the hands of those probing them—have made their examination in order to know the nature of the body; and yet they did not compare us to the beasts because we are ignorant of these things. Unless perhaps you are going to say that those are to be compared to the beasts who are ignorant of the nature of the soul, not those who are ignorant of the body's. Then you ought not to have prefaced your remark thus. For you did not say, 'Wherein does a man differ from a beast, if he knows not concerning the quality and nature of his soul,' but you said, 'if he knows not how to inquire and discourse concerning his own quality and nature.'
Assuredly our quality and our nature are reckoned together with the body, although each single thing may be discoursed of separately concerning those elements of which we consist. Truly, if I wished to unfold how many things I could most knowingly dispute concerning the nature of man, I should fill many volumes; yet I confess that I am ignorant of many things. But you—to what do you wish to assign what we disputed in the earlier book concerning man's breathing? Is it to the nature of the soul?
Is it because the soul itself does this in man—or does it pertain to the body, which is moved by the soul so as to do it; or to this air, by whose reciprocation it is declared to be done; or rather to all three: namely to the soul, which moves the body; and to the body, which by its motion receives and returns the breath; and to that breeze poured round on every side, which by entering nourishes and by going out relieves? And yet you, a lettered and eloquent man, were assuredly ignorant of this, when you believed and said and wrote, and read aloud in an assembly of a summoned crowd, that out of our nature we inflate a wineskin and that in our nature we have nothing less—though you could most easily know whence we do this, not by scrutinizing the divine and human pages, but by attending to yourself, whenever you wished.
How, then, shall I entrust it to you, that you should teach me concerning the origin of souls, which I confess I do not know, when you were ignorant of the source by which you do without ceasing that which you do with your nostrils and mouth? And may the Lord grant that, being admonished by me, you should yield rather than resist a truth so ready at hand and so utterly plain, and that you should not so interrogate your lungs about inflating a wineskin as to prefer to have them inflated against me rather than to acquiesce in them as they teach you and render you a true answer, not by speaking and disputing, but by breathing in and breathing out. Accordingly, were you to correct and rebuke my ignorance concerning the origin of souls, I should not take it ill; rather, I should over and above give you great thanks—
if only you would not merely strike it from me with harsh insults, but also shake it out with true words. For if you could teach me what I do not know, I ought most patiently to endure you as you struck me not only with words but even with blows. For I confess to your charity that, as far as pertains to this question, of two things I greatly desire to know—if I can—either something concerning the origin of souls which I do not know, or whether it pertains to us to know this while we live here. For what if it is among those matters of which it is said to us: 'Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy strength; but the things that the Lord hath commanded thee, think thou upon them always'?
But I desire to know this either from God Himself, who knows what He creates, or even from someone learned who knows what he says—not from a man ignorant of what he pants forth. No one recalls his own infancy; and do you think that a man, save by God's teaching, can come to know whence he began to live in his mother's womb, especially if his own human nature still lies so hidden from him that he is ignorant not only of what it holds within, but even of what accedes to it from without? So then, most beloved, will you teach me, or anyone, whence men being born are animated, you who were still up to now ignorant whence those living are so nourished that, if that nourishment be but a little withdrawn, they straightway die?