But just as the Arians, while they flee the Sabellians, fell into something worse—because they dared to distinguish in the Trinity not persons but natures—so the Pelagians, while they perversely try to avoid the plague of the Manichaeans, are convicted of holding, concerning the fruit of marriage, views more pernicious than the Manichaeans themselves, by believing that little children do not need Christ the physician. 'You define,' he says, 'that a man, if he be born of fornication, is not guilty; if of marriage, is not innocent. For to this you have come: that you said the natural good could subsist from adulteries, and the original evil be drawn even from marriage.' Wholly in vain does he try, before an understanding reader, to pervert what is right.
Far be it from us to say that a man, if he be born of fornication, is not guilty; rather we say that a man, whether he be born of marriage or of fornication, is something good on account of God, the author of nature, and draws something evil on account of original sin. What therefore we say—that the natural good can subsist even from adulteries, but the original evil be drawn even from marriage—does not come to that to which he tries to lead it, namely, that one born of adulteries is not guilty, nor one born of marriage innocent; but that from either, by generation, one is made guilty on account of the original fault, and each is to be absolved by regeneration on account of the good of nature. 'One of these,' he says, 'is true, the other false.' To this I reply with the same brevity:
nay rather, both are true, neither is false. 'It is true,' he says, 'that the man who is born thence cannot excuse the fault of adulteries, because what the adulterers did belongs to a vice of the will, but what they begot pertains to the praise of fruitfulness—for if anyone should sow stolen wheat, the harvest is not born liable to blame. And so,' he says, 'I blame the thief, but I praise the crop. I pronounce him innocent who is born of the generosity of seeds, since the Apostle says: God gives it a body as he wills, and to each seed its own body; but I condemn the wretch who sinned out of the perversity of his purpose.' To this he adds and says:
'But if evil is drawn from marriage, they can be accused, they cannot be excused, and you place their work and fruit under the right of the devil, since every cause of evil is void of good. But the man,' he says, 'who is born of marriage is charged not to crimes but to seeds. And the cause of the seeds lies in the condition of the bodies; and whoever uses those bodies badly wounds his own merit of good, not the kind. Clearly therefore,' he says, 'it is plain that a good thing is not the cause of evil. If then,' he says, 'the original evil is drawn even from marriage, the meeting of marriage is the cause of evil, and that must necessarily be evil through which and from which an evil fruit has appeared, since the Lord says in the Gospel: A tree is known by its fruits.'
'How,' he says, 'are you to be listened to, who say that marriage is good, of which you define that nothing else but evil comes forth? It is established therefore that marriages are guilty, if original sin is derived from them, and that they cannot be defended unless their fruit be proved innocent. But they are defended and pronounced good; therefore their fruit is approved as harmless.' To answer this I first wish the reader to attend that these people are doing nothing else than to make the Savior not necessary for little children, who they deny have any sins at all from which they may be saved.
This great perversity, so hostile to the grace of God which was given through Jesus Christ our Lord, who came to seek and to save that which was perishing, strives to insinuate itself into the hearts of those who understand too little by the praise of the divine works—that is, by the praise of human nature, praise of the seed, praise of marriage, praise of the union of both sexes, praise of fruitfulness—all of which are good. For I will not say: by the praise of lust, since he too is ashamed to name it, so that he may seem to praise something else, not lust itself. And by this means, not distinguishing the evils which have befallen nature from the goodness of nature itself, he does not show it healthy—for that is false—but does not allow it, sick, to be healed.
And therefore that which we said—'that the good which is born thence, that is, man, cannot excuse the fault of adulteries'—he concedes to be true; and this, about which there is no dispute between us, he even builds up and confirms, as best he can, by the likeness of a thief sowing stolen wheat, from which a good harvest is indeed born. But that other thing which we said—'the good of marriage cannot be accused because of the original evil that is drawn from it'—he is unwilling to agree that it is true, because if he agreed, he would be not a Pelagian heretic but a Catholic.
'Utterly,' he says, 'if evil is drawn from marriage, they can be accused, they cannot be excused, and you place their work and fruit under the right of the devil, since every cause of evil is void of good.' And to this he weaves on the rest, to prove that a good thing cannot be the cause of evil, and therefore that marriage, since it is good, is not the cause of evil, and by this means that from marriage there can in no way be born a sinner who has need of a Savior—as though we said that marriage were the cause of sin. Although the man who is born of it is not born without sin, marriage was instituted as the cause of begetting, not of sinning. For which reason there is that blessing of marriage from the Lord: Increase and multiply and fill the earth.
But the sin which is thence drawn by those being born does not pertain to marriage, but to the evil which befell human beings, by whose union marriages exist. For the evil of shameful lust both can exist without marriage, and marriages could have existed without it; but it pertains to the condition of the body—not of that life, but of this death—that now marriages cannot exist without it, although it itself can exist without them.
For assuredly the shameful concupiscence of the flesh exists without marriage, when it commits adulteries and all defilements and unclean acts, far contrary to the chastity of marriage; or when it commits none of these—because a man permits it by no consent—and yet it rises and is stirred and stirs, and for the most part in sleep reaches the very likeness of the act itself and the end of its own motion. This evil, therefore, is not, even in marriage itself, the evil of marriage; but they have it ready in the body of this death, even against their will, without which they cannot fulfill what they will.
Therefore it comes to marriages not from their institution, which is blessed, but from that whereby through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and thus it passed into all men, in whom all sinned. What then is it that he says: 'A tree is known by its fruits'—because we read that the Lord said this in the Gospel? Was the Lord surely speaking of this, and not rather of the two wills of men, the good namely and the evil, calling the one a good tree, the other an evil tree, because from a good will good works are born and evil from an evil will, and good works cannot come from an evil will nor evil from a good?
But if we should set down marriage as a good tree according to that Gospel likeness which he has cited, then assuredly we shall have to set down fornication, on the contrary, as an evil tree. Wherefore, if man is thus called the fruit of marriage as a good thing from a good tree, then without doubt man ought not to be born of fornication; for an evil tree does not bear good fruits. Further, if he should say that in that place adultery is not to be put in the place of the tree, but rather human nature, of which man is born, then here too the tree will not be marriage, but human nature, of which man is born.
That Gospel likeness therefore avails nothing for this question, because marriage is not the cause of the sin which is drawn from the one being born and expiated in the one being reborn; rather, the voluntary sin of the first man is the cause of original sin. 'You say again,' he says, 'For just as sin, whether from this side or that, is drawn by little children, is the work of the devil, so man, whether from this side or that he is born, is the work of God.' And I did say this, and most truly said it; and if he were not a Pelagian, but a Catholic, he too would say nothing else in the Catholic Church. What then is it that he asks of us: through what is sin found in a little child? Whether through the will, or through marriage, or through the parents? For thus he speaks, and as it were.
To all these he answers, and by purging, as it were, all these things from sin, he wishes nothing to remain whence sin may be found in a little child. Attend then to his very own words: 'Through what therefore,' he says, 'is sin found in a little child? Through the will? There was none in him. Through marriage? But this pertains to the work of the parents, whom you had premised not to have sinned in this act—but, as far as appears from what follows, you had not truly conceded this. Are they themselves then to be execrated,' he says, 'who made the cause for the evil? But these alone indicate the work of persons. The parents therefore who by their meeting made the cause for sin are rightly damnable.'
'Therefore it can no longer be doubted,' he says, 'if we follow your opinion, that spouses are consigned to eternal punishment, by whose labor it came about that the devil should attain to exercising dominion over men. And where is that which a little before you had said—that man is the work of God? For if through origin there is evil in men, and through evil the right of the devil over men, you say that the devil is the author of men, from whom is the origin of those being born;'
'but if you believe that man is made by God and that spouses are innocent, see how it cannot stand that original sin be drawn from them.' To all these the Apostle answers, who neither charges the will of the little child—which is not yet in him properly capable of sinning—nor marriage, insofar as it is marriage, which has from God not only its institution but also its blessing, nor the parents, insofar as they are parents joined together lawfully and legitimately with one another for the procreation of children; but 'through one man,' he says, 'sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and thus it passed into all men, in whom all sinned.'
If these people would receive this with Catholic ears and minds, they would not hold minds rebellious against the faith and grace of Christ, nor would they vainly try to twist these Apostolic words—so clear and so manifest—to their own peculiar and heretical sense, asserting that it was said for this reason: that Adam sinned first, in whom thereafter whoever willed to sin found an example of sinning—so that sin, forsooth, passed not by generation from that one into all men, but by imitation of that one. Whereas assuredly, if the Apostle had wished imitation to be understood here, he would have said that sin entered into this world and passed through all men not through one man, but rather through the devil.
For concerning the devil it is written: But they imitate him who are on his side. Yet for this reason he said 'through one man,' from whom the generation of men indeed began, that through generation he might teach original sin to have passed through all. And what else do also the following Apostolic words indicate? For when he had said this, he added: For until the law sin was in the world—that is, because not even the law could take away sin. But sin, he says, was not imputed, when there was no law. It existed therefore, but was not imputed, because that was not shown which might be imputed. For as he says elsewhere: Through the law is the knowledge of sin. But death reigned, he says, from Adam until Moses—this is what he had said above:
until the law—not that from Moses onward there was no sin, but because not even the law given through Moses could take away the reign of death, which does not reign except through sin. And its reign is this: that it hurl mortal man also into the second death, which is everlasting. But in whom did it reign? Even in those, he says, who had not sinned after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is the figure of him that was to come. Of what one to come, if not of Christ? And what sort of figure, if not by way of contrast? Which elsewhere too he briefly states: As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive: as in the former that, so in the latter this. It is indeed a figure, but this figure is not in every respect conformable.
Whence the Apostle, following on, added: But not as the offense, so also the gift; for if by the offense of one many died, much more the grace of God and the gift, by the grace of one man Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many. What is 'much more it abounded,' except that all who are freed through Christ die temporally on account of Adam, but on account of Christ himself shall live without end? And not, he says, as through one man sinning, so also is the gift. For the judgment indeed was from one unto condemnation, but the grace is from many offenses unto justification. From one, therefore, what, if not the offense? Because it follows: but the grace is from many offenses.
Let these people say how it is 'from one offense unto condemnation,' unless because even one original sin, which passed into all men, suffices for condemnation. But grace is 'from many offenses unto justification,' because it looses not only that one sin which is originally drawn, but also the rest which are added in each single man by the motion of his own will; for if by the offense of one, death reigned through one, much more they who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness shall reign in life through one, Jesus Christ. And so, as through the offense of one unto all men to condemnation, so also through the justification of one unto all men to justification of life.
Let them still remain in the vanity of their mind and say that the one man transmitted not a propagation but furnished an example of sin. How then is it 'through the offense of one unto all men to condemnation,' and not rather through the many offenses of each one, unless because, even if that one alone exists, it is sufficient to lead to condemnation even with no others added—just as it leads little children who die, who are born of Adam, unless they be reborn in Christ? What then does this man ask of us, which he is unwilling to hear from the Apostle: through what is sin found in a little child—whether through the will, or through marriage, or through the parents? Behold, let him hear through what; let him hear and be silent—through what sin is found in a little child:
'Through the offense of one,' says the Apostle, 'unto all men to condemnation.' But he said 'all' unto condemnation through Adam, and 'all' unto justification through Christ, although Christ certainly does not transfer to life all those who die in Adam. But he said 'all' and 'all,' because as without Adam none goes to death, so without Christ none goes to life; just as we say of a teacher of letters, if he is the only one in the city: 'This man here teaches all letters'—not because all learn, but because none learns except from him. And finally, those whom he had called 'all,' he afterwards called 'many,' signifying nevertheless those same ones both as 'all' and as 'many':
For as, he says, through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many shall be made righteous. Let him still ask through what sin is found in a little child. Let the holy pages answer him: Through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and thus it passed into all men, in whom all sinned. By the offense of one many died. The judgment from one unto condemnation. By the offense of one death reigned through one. Through the offense of one unto all men to condemnation. Through the disobedience of one many were made sinners. Behold through what the offense is found in a little child!
Now let him believe original sin; let him allow little children to come to Christ, that they may be saved. What is it that he says: 'He who is born does not sin, he who begot does not sin, he who created does not sin: through what cracks, amid so many defenses of innocence, do you feign that sin has entered?' Why does he seek a hidden crack, when he has a most open door? 'Through one man,' says the Apostle; 'through the offense of one,' says the Apostle; 'through the disobedience of one man,' says the Apostle. What does he seek further? What does he seek more openly? What does he seek more insistently? 'If sin,' he says, 'is from the will, the will is evil which makes sin; if from nature, the nature is evil.' I quickly answer: sin is from the will.
Perhaps he asks whether original sin also is. I reply: assuredly original sin too, because this also was sown from the will of the first man, that it should both be in him and pass into all. But as to what he added, following on—'if from nature, the nature is evil'—I ask of him that, if he can, he answer: just as it is manifest that from an evil will, as from an evil tree, all its evil works, its fruits, come to be, so let him say whence sprang that evil will itself, that is, that evil tree of the evil fruits. If from an angel, what was the angel himself but a good work of God? If from a man, what was the man himself but a good work of God?
Nay rather, since the evil will of the angel arose from the angel, and man's from man, what were these two, before those evils arose in them, but a good work of God and a good and praiseworthy nature? Behold then, from good arises evil, nor was there at all anything whence it could arise except from good—I mean the evil will itself, which no evil preceded, not the evil works, which are only from an evil will as from an evil tree. Nor yet could the evil will arise from good because the good was made by the good God, but because it was made from nothing, not from God. What then is it that he says: 'If nature is the work of God, through the work of God the work of the devil is not permitted to pass'?
Is not the work of the devil, when it first arose in the angel who was made the devil, arisen in a work of God? Wherefore, if evil, which was nowhere at all, could arise in the work of God, why could evil, which already existed somewhere, not pass through the work of God—especially since the Apostle uses this very word, saying: and thus it passed into all men? Are men not the work of God? Sin therefore passed through men, that is, the work of the devil through the work of God; and, to say the same thing in another way, because the work of the devil, that is, sin arisen through the devil himself, who is a making or work of God, passed through another work of God, that is, man—the work of God's work through the work of God.
And therefore God alone is unchangeable and of most mighty goodness, because both before there was any evil he made all good works, and out of the evils which arose in the good things made by him he works well through all things. 'In one man,' he says, 'the intention is rightly blamed and the origin is praised, because there are two things which are applied to contraries; but in a little child there is one thing, nature only, because there is no will. That one thing therefore,' he says, 'will be ascribed either to God or to the demon. If nature,' he says, 'is through God, there cannot be original evil in it; if from the devil, there will be nothing through which man may be claimed for the divine work. Perfectly therefore is he a Manichaean who defends original evil.' Let him rather hear, against these things, what is true.
In one and the same man the intention is rightly blamed while the nature is praised, because there are two things which are applied to contrary ends; but even in an infant there is not one thing only, namely the nature in which man was created by a good God, for it has also the fault which passed through one man into all men, as the Apostle rightly understands, not as Pelagius or Caelestius or any disciple of theirs foolishly imagines. Of these two things, then, which we have said are in the infant, the one is ascribed to God, the other to the devil. And that both are subjected to the power of the devil on account of one of them, that is, on account of the fault, is for this reason not incongruous, because it comes to pass not by the power of the devil himself, but of God.
But the fault is subjected to a fault, the nature to a nature, because in the devil also both are present, so that, when the beloved and the elect are rescued from the power of darkness, to which they are justly subject, it may appear what is bestowed upon those justified and made good by God, who works good well out of evils. But as for what this man thought he was saying, as it were, piously: 'if nature is from God, there cannot be original evil in it,' does it not seem more pious for another to say: 'if nature is from God, no evil at all can arise in it'? And yet this too is false; for this is what the Manichees wished to assert, and they strove to fill, not the creature of God made from nothing, but the very nature of God itself, with all evils.
For evil did not arise except in a good, yet not in the supreme and unchangeable good, which is the nature of God, but in a good made from nothing by the wisdom of God. There is therefore that by which man may be vindicated as a divine work, since man would not exist unless he were created by the divine work. But evil would not be in infants unless there had been sinning by the will of the first man, and unless, the origin being corrupted, original sin were drawn down. Therefore it is not, as this man says, 'He is thoroughly a Manichee who defends original evil,' but rather he is thoroughly a Pelagian who does not believe in original evil.
For it was not from the time when the pestilential doctrine of the Manichees began to exist that infants to be baptized began in the Church of God to be exorcized and breathed upon, so that by these very mysteries it might be shown that they are not transferred into the kingdom of Christ except when rescued from the power of darkness; nor is it read in the books of the Manichees that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost, or that through one man sin entered into this world, and the rest that pertains to the same sentence which we have recalled above, or that God repays the sins of the fathers upon the sons, or what is written in the Psalm: 'I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother nourish me in the womb,' or:
'Man is become like unto vanity; his days pass away like a shadow,' or: 'Behold, thou hast made my days old, and my substance is as nothing before thee; nevertheless all is vanity, every living man,' or what the Apostle says: 'Every creature is subject to vanity,' or in the book of Ecclesiastes: 'Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. What advantage hath a man in all his labour which he laboureth under the sun?' or in the book of Ecclesiasticus: 'A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb until the day of their burial into the mother of all,' or what the Apostle says: 'In Adam all die,' or what holy Job says, where he speaks of his sins:
'For man born of woman is of short life and full of wrath; like a flower of the field he falls; he flees also like a shadow and shall not stand. And hast thou not taken account even of this one, and made this one enter into judgment before thee? For who shall be clean from filth? Not even one, even if his life upon the earth be but of a single day.' What filth he meant—since he wished sins to be understood—the very passage indicates, where it is quite plain what he is speaking of. Whence comes also that saying in the prophet Zechariah, where the filthy garment is taken away from the priest and it is said to him: 'Behold, I have taken away thy sins.'
I think that all these things and other things of this kind, which show that every man is born under sin and under a curse, are not read in the darkness of the Manichees, but in the light of the Catholics. But what shall I say of those very expounders of the divine Scriptures who flourished in the Catholic Church—how they did not attempt to twist these passages into other meanings, because they were steadfast in the most ancient and most robust faith, and were not moved by novel error? If I should wish to gather them and to use their testimonies, it would be both too long, and, concerning the canonical authorities from which we ought not to be turned away, I should perhaps seem to have presumed less than I ought.
Nevertheless, to pass over the most blessed Ambrose—to whom Pelagius, as I have already recalled, bore so great a testimony of integrity in faith (yet this Ambrose defended nothing else in infants, that they might have Christ as their necessary physician, except original sin)—shall Cyprian, of most glorious crown, be said by anyone not only to have been, but even to have been able to be, a Manichee, seeing that he suffered before that plague appeared in the Roman world? And yet in his book on the baptism of infants he so defended original sin that on that account he says the infant ought to be baptized even before the eighth day, if there be need, lest its soul perish.
He wishes it to be understood that the infant comes the more easily to the pardon of baptism, the more it is not his own but others' sins that are remitted to him. These men let this fellow dare to call Manichees, and let him besmirch with this wicked charge the most ancient tradition of the Church, by which, as I have said, infants are exorcized and breathed upon, that being rescued from the power of darkness—that is, of the devil and his angels—they may be transferred into the kingdom of Christ. But we are more ready, together with these men and with the Church of Christ, established in the antiquity of this faith, to endure any curses and insults whatsoever, than to be praised together with the Pelagians by the preaching of whatever eloquence. 'Again thou sayest,' says he, 'and declarest:
There would be no concupiscence unless man had first sinned, but marriage would exist even if no one had sinned.' I did not say: there would be no concupiscence, for there is also a spiritual concupiscence to be gloried in, by which wisdom is coveted; but I said: 'there would be no shameful concupiscence.' Let my words be reread, which he himself has quoted, that it may appear with how great fraud they are cited by him. But by whatever name he wish to call it, I said that it would not exist unless man had first sinned—that concupiscence at which they blushed in paradise, who covered their shameful parts—which no one denies, since the sin of disobedience had gone before, followed accordingly. But whoever wishes to understand what they felt, ought to consider what they covered.