And now, by the audacity of I know not what new disputation, certain men try to make uncertain for us what our forefathers, for the dissolving of certain things which seemed uncertain to some, used to bring forward as most certain. For when this first began to be disputed I do not know; yet this I do know, that even holy Jerome—who to this day is occupied in ecclesiastical letters with the fame and labour of such excellent learning—for the solving of certain questions in his books likewise employs this as a most certain proof without any debate. For in that which he wrote on the prophet Jonah, when he had come to that place where even little children are mentioned as chastised by fasting, he says: 'The greater age begins, and reaches down even to the lesser.'
For no one is without sin, not even if the life of him should be but of one day, and the years of his life be numbered. For if the stars are not clean in the sight of God, how much more the worm and rottenness, and those who are held liable to the sin of the offending Adam! If we could easily question this most learned man, how many treaters of the divine Scriptures in both languages, and writers of Christian disputations, would he recall, who since Christ's Church was established have felt no otherwise, have received no otherwise from their forefathers, have handed down no otherwise to their posterity!
I indeed, although I have read far fewer, do not remember to have heard anything else from any Christians who accept both Testaments—not only among those established in the catholic Church, but even among any established in any heresy or schism; I do not remember to have read anything else among those whom, writing something about these matters, I was able to read, who followed the canonical Scriptures, or believed they followed them, or wished to be believed to follow them. Whence this business has suddenly arisen upon us, I do not know.
For a little while ago my ears were grazed in passing by certain people conversing casually and hurriedly, while we were there at Carthage, saying that 'little children are not baptized in order to receive the remission of sins, but in order that they may be sanctified in Christ.' Disturbed by this novelty, and because it was not opportune for me to say anything against it, and since the men were not of such a kind that I should be anxious about their authority, I readily reckoned this among things past and abolished. And behold, now it is defended with burning zeal; behold, it is even committed to memory by being written down; behold, the matter is brought to such a crisis that we are consulted about it even by the brethren. Behold, we are compelled to dispute against it and to write!
A few years ago there arose at Rome a certain Jovinian, who is said to have persuaded even nuns already advanced in years to marry — not by enticing them, as though he wished to take one of them as his wife, but by arguing that virgins consecrated to holiness have no more merit before God than the married faithful. Yet it never came into his mind as a device to attempt to assert that the sons of men are born without original sin. And surely, if he had established this, women would far more readily have wished to marry, expecting to bear offspring altogether pure.
Indeed, when the brethren had sent this man's writings — for he even dared to write — to Jerome to be refuted, Jerome not only found nothing of the kind in them, but even, in refuting certain of his vain arguments, brought forward among his many proofs, as something most certain, this doctrine concerning man's original sin, about which he plainly believed that not even Jovinian himself entertained any doubt. In pursuing this, these are his words: 'He who says,' he writes, 'that he abides in Christ, ought himself also to walk even as He walked.' Let the adversary choose from the two which he will; we grant him the option. Does he abide in Christ or does he not abide? If he abides, then let him so walk as Christ walked. But if it is rash to promise a likeness to the Lord's virtues, then he does not abide in Christ, because he does not walk as Christ walked.
He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, and as a lamb before its shearer, so He opened not His mouth; to whom the prince of this world came and found nothing in Him; who, though He had done no sin, was made sin for us by God. But we, according to the epistle of James, 'in many things we all offend,' and 'no one is clean from sins, not even if his life were of a single day.' 'For who will boast that he has a chaste heart? or who will be confident that he is clean from sins?' And we are held guilty in the likeness of Adam's transgression. Whence David also says:
'Behold,' he says, 'I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me.' I have not recalled these things because we rely on the opinions of any disputants whatever as though on canonical authority, but in order that it may appear that from the beginning right up to the present time, in which this novelty has arisen, this doctrine concerning original sin has been guarded with such constancy in the faith of the Church, that by those who treated of the Lord's oracles it was brought forward as something most certain, for the refutation of other falsehoods, rather than that anyone attempted to refute it as though it were itself false. Moreover, in the holy canonical books the clearest and fullest authority of this doctrine flourishes. The Apostle cries out:
Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed unto all men, in whom all sinned. Whence it cannot even be plainly said that Adam's sin harmed those who do not themselves sin, since Scripture says: in whom all sinned. Nor are these called others' sins in such a way that they in no way pertain to little children — since indeed in Adam all then sinned, when in his nature, by that implanted power by which he was able to beget them, they all were still that one man — but they are called others' sins because the children were not yet living their own lives, but whatever was in the future propagation, the life of the one man contained.
'In no way,' they say, 'is it conceded that God, who remits proper sins, should impute those of another.' He remits them, indeed, but to those regenerated by the Spirit, not to those generated by the flesh; and He imputes what is now not another's but one's own. For they were another's when those who would carry them, once propagated, did not yet exist; but now, by carnal generation, they already belong to those to whom they have not yet been forgiven by spiritual regeneration. But if baptism, they say, cleanses that ancient transgression, those born of two baptized persons ought to be free from this sin. For they could not transmit to their descendants what they themselves in no way possessed. Behold whence, for the most part, error gains strength: when men are fit for asking about matters which they are not fit to understand.
For to what hearer, or in what words, shall I explain how mortal, corrupt beginnings do not harm those who have been begun with other, immortal beginnings, and yet do harm those whom these same persons — whom they no longer harm — have begotten from those same corrupt beginnings? How shall a man understand this, whose somewhat sluggish mind is hindered even by the prejudice of his own opinion and by the most burdensome bond of obstinacy?
Yet if this cause had been taken up by me against those who would altogether forbid little children to be baptized, or who would contend that they are baptized superfluously, saying that, being born of the faithful, they necessarily attain the merit of their parents, then I should perhaps have to be roused more laboriously and painstakingly to refute that opinion. Then, if among the dull and contentious the difficulty of refuting falsehoods and persuading truths — because of the obscurity of the nature of the matter — resisted me, I should perhaps take refuge in such examples as were at hand and ready to use, and in turn I should ask them: since it moved them how the sin which is cleansed by baptism should remain in those whom the baptized have begotten, let them themselves explain how the foreskin which is removed by circumcision remains in those whom the circumcised have begotten, and how also the chaff which is separated by human labor with such diligence remains in the fruit which is born from the cleansed wheat.
By these and such examples I might perhaps somehow try to persuade men — who believed that the sacraments of cleansing are applied superfluously to the sons of the cleansed — with what right counsel the little children of the baptized are baptized, and how it can come to pass that, for a man having both seeds, that of death in the flesh and that of immortality in the spirit, what harms his son begotten through the flesh does not harm himself, regenerated through the spirit; and that in the one there should be cleansed by remission what in the other must also be cleansed by a like remission — as it were by circumcision, as it were by threshing and winnowing. But now, since indeed we are dealing with those who confess that the sons of the baptized are to be baptized, how much better do we deal with them by saying:
'You who assert that from men cleansed from the stain of sin, sons ought to have been born without sin, why do you not consider that in the same manner it can be said to you that from Christian parents Christian sons ought to have been born? Why then do you judge that they must be made Christians? Was the body of their parents not Christian — those to whom it was said: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Or perhaps the body indeed was born Christian from Christian parents, but did not receive a Christian soul? This, however, is far more astonishing;
for whichever view you hold concerning the soul — since certainly, with the Apostle, you do not believe that it did anything of good or evil before it was born — whether it was drawn by traduction and, like the body, became Christian from Christians, the soul too ought to have been Christian; or whether it was created by Christ, either in a Christian body or on account of a Christian body, it ought either to have been created or sent as Christian. Unless perhaps you will say that Christian men could beget a Christian body, but Christ Himself could not create a Christian soul.
Yield therefore to the truth, and see that, just as it could come to pass — which you yourselves also admit — that from Christians one not Christian, from members of Christ one not a member of Christ, and (that we may meet also all who, though falsely, are yet held by some name of religion whatever it be) from the consecrated one not consecrated, is born; so also it comes to pass that from the cleansed one not cleansed is born. What will you answer, why from Christians one not Christian is born, except that it is not generation but regeneration that makes Christians? Render then to yourselves this account, that in like manner no one is cleansed from sins by being born, but all are cleansed by being born again. And on this account, from men cleansed because born again, let the man who is born be born again, that he too may be cleansed.
For parents were able to transmit to their descendants what they themselves in no way possessed — not only as grain transmits chaff and the circumcised transmits the foreskin, but also, as you yourselves say, the faithful transmit unfaithfulness to their descendants; which is now no longer of those regenerated through the spirit, but is a defect of the mortal seed by which they were generated in the flesh. For surely those little children, whom you judge must be made faithful through the sacrament of the faithful, you do not deny to have been born unfaithful from faithful parents.' But indeed:
'If the soul is not from traduction, but only the flesh, then the flesh alone has the traduction of sin, and it alone deserves punishment' — for this is what they hold — saying that it is unjust that a soul born today, not from the mass of Adam, should carry so ancient a sin that is another's. Attend, I beseech you, how the circumspect man Pelagius — for these words which I have just set down I transcribed from his book — felt in what a difficult question concerning the soul he was engaged. For he does not say 'because the soul is not from traduction,' but 'if the soul is not from traduction,' most rightly doing, on so obscure a matter — concerning which we can find no certain and open testimonies in the Holy Scriptures, or only with the greatest difficulty — to speak hesitantly rather than confidently.
Wherefore I too respond to this proposition not with hasty assertion: 'If the soul is not from traduction, then what justice is this, that a soul newly created and utterly immune from all transgression, wholly free from all contagion of sin, should be compelled to endure in little children the sufferings of the flesh and diverse torments and — what is more horrible — even the assaults of demons? For the flesh suffers none of these things in such a way that it is not rather the soul, which lives and feels, that there pays the penalty. For if this be shown to be just, then it can also be shown by what justice, in the flesh of sin likewise, original sin is undergone, to be cleansed by the sacrament of baptism and the mercy of grace. But if that cannot be shown, neither, I think, can this.
Either, therefore, let us bear both as hidden, and remember that we are but men; or else, if it seem necessary, let us with sober caution labor by disputation at some other time to produce some other work concerning the soul.' Now, however, let us so receive that which the Apostle says: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed unto all men, in whom all sinned — that we may not be judged to strive too foolishly and unhappily against so many and so exceedingly clear testimonies of the divine Scriptures, by which we are taught that, apart from the fellowship of Christ (which comes to be in Him and with Him when we are imbued with His sacraments and incorporated into His members), no one can attain eternal life and salvation. For it was in no other sense that it was said to the Romans:
Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed unto all men — than that in which it was said to the Corinthians: Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. No one indeed doubts that this was there said of the death of the body, since it was of the resurrection of the body that the great question was being handled with the Apostle's earnest attention. And therefore he seems there to have been silent about sin, because there was no question about righteousness; but here, to the Romans, he set down both and most lengthily commended both — sin in Adam, righteousness in Christ, and death in Adam, life in Christ;
all which words of the Apostle's discourse, as far as I could and as seemed sufficient, I examined and set forth in the first, as I have already said, of those two books. Although even there, to the Corinthians, he so concluded at the end that same passage on the resurrection — which he treated at length — that he would not allow us to doubt that the death also of the body befell as the desert of sin. For when he had said: This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality, then, he says, shall come to pass the word that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is thy victory? Where, O death, is thy sting? Then he subjoined:
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. Since therefore, as the Apostle's most plain words declare, death will be swallowed up in victory when this corruptible and mortal shall put on incorruption and immortality — that is, when God shall quicken even our mortal bodies because of His Spirit that dwells in us — it is manifest that of this death of the body also, which is contrary to the resurrection of the body, the sting was sin: the sting, however, by which death was brought about, not which death brought about; for by sin we die, we do not by death sin.
Thus, then, it is said 'the sting of death,' just as 'the tree of life' — not that a man's life should make it, but that by it a man's life should come to be — and just as 'the tree of knowledge,' through which knowledge should come to be for man, not that a man made it by his own knowledge. So therefore also 'the sting of death' is that by which death was brought about, not that which death brought about. For thus we say also 'the cup of death,' that by which someone has died or may die, not that which the dying or the dead man made. The sting of death, then, is sin; by sin the human race was pricked and put to death. Why do we still ask of what death — whether of soul or of body? whether of the first, by which now we all die, or of the second, by which then the impious shall die?
There is no reason for stirring up the question, no room for evasion; the Apostle's words, by which he was treating of it, when interrogated give answer. When this mortal, he says, shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the word that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is thy victory? Where, O death, is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. He was treating of the resurrection of the body, that death will be swallowed up in victory when this mortal shall have put on immortality. Then shall death itself be insulted, which shall be swallowed up in victory by the resurrection of the body. Then shall it be said to it: Where, O death, is thy victory? Where, O death, is thy sting? To the death of the body, therefore, shall this be said.
For this the victorious immortality shall swallow up, when this mortal shall be clothed with immortality. To the death, I say, of the body it shall then be said: 'Where, O death, is thy victory, by which here thou hadst so conquered all, that even the Son of God contended with thee and overcame thee, not by avoiding but by taking thee on? Thou didst conquer in the dying, thou wast conquered in those who rise again. Thy victory, by which thou hadst swallowed up the bodies of the dying, was temporal; our victory, by which thou art swallowed up in the bodies of the rising, shall stand eternal. Where is thy sting?' — that is, sin, by which we were pricked and poisoned, so that thou didst come to be even in our bodies and possessedst them for so long an age. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
We all sinned in one, that we might all die in one; we received the law, not that by amendment we might end sin, but that by transgression we might increase it. For the law entered in secretly, that sin might abound; and the Scripture concluded all things under sin. But thanks be to God, who gave us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that where sin abounded, grace might much more abound, and that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe, and that we might conquer death through the immortal resurrection, and its sting, namely sin, through gratuitous justification.' Let no one, therefore, be deceived about this matter, or deceive others. This manifest meaning of Holy Scripture removes and takes away all ambiguities.
Just as death is drawn from its origin in the body of this death, so also sin has been drawn from its origin in this flesh of sin; for the healing of which — sin both drawn in by propagation and increased by the will — and for the raising up of that very flesh, the Physician came in the likeness of the flesh of sin, who is not needed by the healthy but by the sick, nor did He come to call the righteous, but sinners. Accordingly, that which the Apostle says, when he was admonishing the faithful not to separate themselves from unbelieving spouses: For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving woman is sanctified in the brother;
otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy — is either to be received in the way that we too elsewhere, and Pelagius when he expounded that same epistle to the Corinthians, set forth: namely, that examples had already gone before, both of husbands whom their wives, and of women whom their husbands, had won for Christ, and of little children toward whose being made Christians the Christian will even of one parent had drawn them; or, if — as the Apostle's words rather seem to sound and in a certain way to compel — some sanctification is there to be understood, by which the unbelieving husband or wife was sanctified in the believing spouse, and by which holy children of the faithful were born, whether because whoever, husband or wife, had learned this in the law abstained from intercourse during the woman's menstrual flux
— for Ezekiel places this among those precepts which are not to be understood figuratively — or on account of any other reason, which is not there openly set down, some sprinkling of holiness from the very bond of marriages and of children; yet this must without doubt be held: that whatever that sanctification may be, it does not avail to make Christians and to remit sins, unless by Christian and ecclesiastical instruction and by the sacraments they be made faithful.
For neither are unbelieving spouses, however closely they cleave to holy and righteous spouses, cleansed from that iniquity which compels those separated from the kingdom of God to come into damnation; nor are little children, begotten of any holy and righteous persons whatever, absolved from the guilt of original sin, unless they have been baptized in Christ — on whose behalf we ought to speak the more earnestly, the less they can do for themselves. For this is what that disputation aims at, against whose novelty we must strive with ancient truth: that infants may seem to be baptized altogether superfluously. But this is not said openly, lest so wholesomely established a custom of the Church should be unable to endure its violators.
But if we are commanded to bring aid to orphans, how much more ought we to labor on behalf of these, who will remain more destitute and more wretched than orphans, even under their parents, if the grace of Christ be denied them — which they cannot themselves demand on their own behalf! But as for what they say — that some men, already using the reason of their own will, have lived or do live in this world without any sin — it is to be wished that it might come to pass, to be striven for that it might come to pass, to be supplicated that it might come to pass; yet it is not to be trusted as though it had already come to pass. For as men wish and strive and, with worthy supplication, entreat this, whatever of sins may remain is daily loosed by this, that we truly say in prayer:
Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Whoever says that this prayer was not necessary in this life to anyone whatever — even to a holy man who knows and does the will of God — except to the one Holy of Holies, errs greatly, nor can he please at all that very One whom he praises; but if he thinks himself to be such a one, he deceives himself, and the truth is not in him — for no other reason than that he thinks false what is true.
That Physician, therefore, who is not needed by the healthy but by the sick, knows how by healing to perfect us unto eternal salvation — He who does not even take away in this world that very death (although it was inflicted as the desert of sin) from those to whom He forgives sins, so that, by overcoming even the fear of it, they may undertake the contest for the sincerity of faith; and in certain persons, even His own righteous ones, since they can still be exalted, He does not help toward the perfecting of righteousness, so that — since no living person is justified in His sight — we may always owe the giving of thanks to His own indulgence, and thus from that first cause of all vices, that is, from the swelling of pride, we may be healed by holy humility.
While my arrangement was giving birth to this letter as a short one, a lengthy book has been born — would that it were as perfect as it is at last, somehow, finished! (Page 170, 6, in Knöll's edition.) THREE BOOKS ON THE MERITS AND REMISSION OF SINS AND ON THE BAPTISM OF LITTLE CHILDREN, TO MARCELLINUS. There came also a necessity that compelled me to write against the Pelagian heresy, against which, when there was need, we acted not by writings but by discourses and conversations, as each of us was able or bound to do. When therefore questions of theirs had been sent to me from Carthage, to be resolved by my reply, I first wrote three books, whose title is On the Merits and Remission of Sins.
In these especially there is disputed the matter of the baptism of little children on account of original sin, and of the grace by which we are justified — that is, made righteous — although in this life no one so keeps the commandments of righteousness that it is not necessary for him, praying for his own sins, to say: Forgive us our debts. Against all which things those men, holding the contrary opinions, founded a new heresy.
In these books, moreover, I judged that their names should still be touched upon, hoping that they could thus more easily be corrected; nay, even in the third book — which is a letter, but was kept among the books on account of the two to which I thought it should be joined — I set down the name of Pelagius himself, not without some praise, because his life was proclaimed by many; and I refuted those doctrines of his which in his writings he did not set forth in his own person, but expounded as what was said by others — doctrines which, however, he afterwards, being now a heretic, defended with most obstinate animosity. But Celestius his disciple had already, on account of such assertions, deserved excommunication at Carthage in an episcopal judgment at which I was not present. In the second book, in a certain place:
'This too, I say, He will bestow on certain persons even at the end, that they may not feel death by a sudden change' — reserving room for a more careful inquiry into this matter. For either they will not die, or, passing from this life into death and from death into eternal life by a most swift change, as in the twinkling of an eye, they will not feel death. This work thus begins: 'Although in the midst of the great and surging tides of cares.'