So he found himself deceived by his own liberty forever, and would have lain hidden beneath the ruin of this fall, had not the coming of Christ afterward, of His own grace, raised him up — He who through the purification of a new regeneration cleansed away by the laver of His baptism every past fault, and, confirming his state so that he might proceed more rightly and more steadfastly, yet did not withhold His grace for the future. For although He had redeemed man from past sins, yet knowing that man could sin again, He kept in reserve many remedies for his repair, that He might be able to correct him even after these things. Daily He supplies remedies, upon which, unless relying and trusting we lean, we shall in no wise be able to overcome human errors.
For it must needs be that, by whose aiding we conquer, by the same not aiding we are again conquered. But I could say more, were it not established that you have said it all. Whosoever therefore seems to assent to this opinion, so as to say that we have no need of divine help, professes himself an enemy of the catholic faith and ungrateful for the benefits of God. Nor are such men worthy of our communion, which they have so defiled by proclaiming such things. For thus of their own accord, while they follow those things which they say, they have fled farther from true religion. For since this whole matter consists in our profession, and by daily prayers we do nothing except in the manner by which we may obtain the mercy of God, how can we bear these men boasting such things?
Who, I ask, so blinds their hearts with such error that, if they themselves feel no grace of God because they are neither worthy nor deserving, they do not consider concerning others what the divine grace daily bestows on each one? These men are indeed most worthy of blindness, who have not even reserved this to themselves — to believe that they can be recalled from their errors by divine help. For by denying the help, they have utterly taken it away not from others but from themselves. They must be plucked away farther off and removed far from the bowels of the Church, lest the incurable error, occupying many, grow greater thereafter.
For if they are long left to move about in this impunity, they must needs lead many into this depravity of their mind and deceive the innocent, or rather the imprudent, who now follow the catholic faith; for these will think that those men judge rightly whom they still see enduring within the Church. Let therefore the diseased wound be separated from the sound body, and, the breath of the raging disease being removed, let those things which are pure more cautiously endure, and let the purer flock be cleansed from the contagion of this evil cattle. Let there be the untainted perfection of the whole body, which we have recognized that you follow and hold by this sentence against them, and which together with you we preserve with equal assent.
Yet if these men should nevertheless call forth in themselves some help of God, which hitherto they have denied, and should recognize that His aid is needful to them, so that they might be freed from this fall in which they had collapsed through the crookedness of their heart, and, as it were drawn into the light out of foul darkness — all things being removed and renounced by which their whole sight was befouled and darkened lest it should behold the truth — should condemn these things which hitherto they have held, and at length, applying their mind to right disputations, being somewhat corrected from this fall, should yield and submit themselves to be healed by true counsels — if they should do this, it will be within the power of the bishops in some measure to succor them and to bestow some cure upon such wounds, a cure which the Church is wont not to deny to the lapsed when they have come to their senses, so that, recalled from their precipices, they may be brought back within the fold of the Lord, lest, placed outside and shut out from so great a defense of the faith's fortification, they be exposed to all dangers, to be devoured by the teeth of wolves and harassed, which they cannot withstand by that perversity of doctrine wherewith they had provoked them against themselves.
But it is sufficiently proved that an answer has been given, both by your admonitions and thus by the examples of our law abounding sufficiently, and we have deemed that nothing remains for us to say, since nothing appears to have been omitted or wholly suppressed by you whereby those men, refuted, may be thoroughly recognized to have been convicted. And therefore no testimonies are set forth by us, because both your report is full of them and it is sufficiently established that so many most learned priests have said everything; nor is it fitting to believe that you have passed over anything that could avail for the cause. [And in another hand:] Fare well, brethren. 182. INNOCENT TO SILVANUS THE ELDER, VALENTINUS, AND THE OTHERS WHO TOOK PART IN THE SYNOD OF MILEVIS, HIS DEARLY BELOVED BRETHREN, GREETING IN THE LORD.
Among the other cares of the Roman Church and the occupations of the Apostolic See, by which we handle the consultations of divers persons with faithful and healing deliberation, our brother and fellow bishop Julius unexpectedly presented to me the letters of your beloved which you sent from the Council of Milevis with a care the more forward for the faith, subjoining also the writings of the complaint of the Synod of Carthage, of like tenor. Truly the Church rejoices that her shepherds show such solicitude for the flocks committed to them, that they suffer no one to stray among them; but, if the grass of some sinister delight has led any of the sheep astray, and if they persist in error,
either they wish them to be utterly separated, or, avoiding what was formerly demanded unlawfully, to guard them with the circumspection of their former custody — clearly taking counsel on both sides: lest either by receiving such men the rest be led by a like example, or by spurning them who return, they seem to be thrust into the bites of wolves. A most prudent consultation, and full of catholic faith. For who could either tolerate one who errs, or not receive one who corrects himself? For as I think it hard to grant connivance to those who sin, so I judge it impious to deny the hand to those who are converted. Diligently therefore and fittingly do you consult the honor of the Apostolic See —
of that hidden honor, I say, upon which — besides those things that are external — rests the solicitude of all the churches: what sentence ought to be held concerning anxious matters, following, that is, the form of the ancient rule which you know, together with me, has ever been preserved throughout the whole world. But these things I pass over; for I do not believe this to be hidden from your prudence. Why did you confirm this even by your action, except knowing that throughout all provinces answers ever flow forth from the apostolic font to those who ask?
especially as often as the question of faith is agitated, I think that all our brethren and fellow bishops ought to refer it to none but Peter, that is, to the author of their name and honor, even as now your beloved has referred that which throughout the whole world can profit all the churches in common. For it is needful that they become more cautious, when the inventors of evils see, by the report of a twofold synod, that they have been severed from ecclesiastical communion by the decrees of our sentence. With a twofold good, therefore, will your charity be endowed. For you will both enjoy the grace of the canons preserved, and by your benefit the whole world will profit. For what catholic man would wish further to mingle speech with the adversaries of Christ? Who would even share the very light of life in fellowship?
Doubtless the authors of a new heresy are to be shunned. For what more bitter thing could they devise against the Lord than to make void the divine helps and to take away the cause of daily prayer? This is to say: What need have I of God? Rightly may the psalmist say against them: Behold the men that made not God their helper! Denying therefore the help of God, they say that man can suffice for himself and needs not divine grace — deprived of which he must needs perish, ensnared in the devil's nets, while he strives to fulfill all the commandments of life by liberty alone. O the perverse doctrine of most depraved minds!
Consider at length that liberty itself so deceived the first man, that, while he used its reins too indulgently, he fell in the presumption of transgression, nor could he be rescued from it unless the providence of regeneration — the coming of Christ our Lord — had reformed for him the state of his pristine liberty. Let him hear David saying: Our help is in the name of the Lord; and: Be Thou my helper; forsake me not, neither despise me, O God of my salvation — words he would have said in vain, if that which he sought from the Lord with tearful speech had lain in his own will alone.
Since these things are so, since in all the divine pages we read that nothing but the help of God is to be linked to the free will, and that the will, destitute of heavenly supports, can do nothing — in what manner do Pelagius and Caelestius, obstinately defending, as you assert, this capability for the will alone, now persuade both themselves and — what is more worthy of common sorrow — very many others? Indeed we could use manifold examples to instruct such teaching,
were we not aware that your holiness fully understands all the divine Scriptures — especially since your report is stuffed with so many and such testimonies that by these alone the present dogma can be cut asunder, and there is no need of recondite ones, since to those which you have set forth, readily occurring to us, they can neither dare nor be able to make objection. They try therefore to take away the grace of God, which we must needs seek even after the liberty of our pristine state has been restored to us; for we cannot avoid the other engines of the devil except by the same grace aiding us. But that which your fraternity asserts them to preach — that little children can be endowed with the rewards of eternal life even without the grace of baptism — is utterly foolish.
For unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, they shall not have life in themselves. But those who defend that these little ones have this without regeneration seem to me to wish to make void baptism itself, when they proclaim that these have that which they believe is not to be conferred upon them by baptism. If therefore they wish it to do no good, let them confess that it is necessary neither to be born again nor that the sacred streams of regeneration profit. But that the depraved doctrine of superfluous men may be unbound by a swift reasoning of truth, the Lord proclaims this in the Gospel, saying: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me.
Wherefore Pelagius and Caelestius, that is, the inventors of new words which, as the Apostle said, are wont to furnish nothing of edification but rather most vain questions, we decree by the authority of apostolic vigor to be deprived of ecclesiastical communion, until they come to their senses out of the devil's snares, by which they are held captive according to his will; and that in the meantime they be not received into the Lord's fold, because they themselves, following the byway of a perverse path, chose to desert it. For they must be cut off who trouble us and wish to pervert the Gospel of Christ. At the same time, moreover, we enjoin that whosoever with like obstinacy strive to defend this,
let a like punishment restrain them. For not only those who do, but also those who consent to those who do — since I judge there is not much difference between the mind of one committing and the favor of one consenting. I add further: for the most part he unlearns to err to whom no one consents. These things therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let them remain fixed in the aforesaid sentence: let them be absent from the courts of the Lord, let them be deprived at least of pastoral custody, lest perchance the dire contagions of two sheep creep through the incautious multitude, and the wolf rejoice with rapacious heart within the Lord's fold at so great throngs of sheep laid low, while the wound of two is dissemblingly overlooked by the guardians. It must therefore be provided against, lest by permitting wolves we seem to be hirelings rather than shepherds.
We command indeed, since Christ our Lord signified with His own voice that He wills not the death of the dying, but only that he turn back and live, that if ever, in sound mind, having laid aside the error of a depraved dogma, they should come to their senses and condemn those things by whose transgression they themselves condemned themselves, the accustomed medicine — that is, their reception — be not denied them by the Church; lest, while perchance we forbid them returning, remaining truly outside the fold they be gulped down by the rabid jaws of the awaiting enemy, they whom they have armed against themselves upon the darts of evil disputation. Fare well, brethren. Given on the sixth day before the Kalends of February, in the consulship of Honorius and Constantius, most illustrious men. 183. INNOCENT TO THE BISHOPS AURELIUS, ALYPIUS, AUGUSTINE, EVODIUS, POSSIDIUS, GREETING.
We received with a most grateful mind the letters of your fraternity, full of faith and confirmed with all the vigor of the catholic religion, sent from two councils through our brother and fellow bishop Julius; for their tenor and whole context stands on entire reasoning in the consideration of the daily grace of God and in the correction of those who hold the contrary, so that it can both take away all error from them and, by any example of our law given, present a worthy teacher whom they ought to follow. But of these things we have already, as I think, said enough above, when, replying to your reports, we wrote back what we felt both concerning their perfidy and concerning your judgment.
But repeatedly against them there comes to aid and stands ready that which may be said, nor can there ever be lacking that which may overcome, since so wretched and impious a thing is that which is more fully overcome by the virtue of our faith and by the truth itself. For he who has spurned and despised all hope of life, confounding his own heart with a hostile and damnable disputation, when he believes that there is nothing which he receives from God, nor that anything remains which he might ask for the healing of himself — he who has taken this from himself — what has he left himself further?
If therefore there are any whom so great a perversity has bound in defense of itself, who give and join themselves to this dogma, hoping that it pertains to catholic doctrine — a thing which, shrinking far away, is proved thoroughly adverse — infected and induced by the admonitions and words of those men to fall, then, that they may return to the right byway of the path, let them make haste, lest the error longer besieging their mind, as though fed upon their senses, invade them. For if Pelagius,
in whatever place he has taken his stand, has by this assertion deceived the minds of those who would easily or simply believe the disputant — whether these men are here in the city, which, not knowing, we can neither reveal nor deny, since, even if they are, they lie hidden and would never dare either to defend that man preaching these things or to boast such things in the presence of any of us, and in so great a multitude of the people none could easily be caught or anywhere recognized — or whether they dwell in whatever place of the earth, we believe, by the mercy and grace of our God, that they will easily be corrected upon hearing the condemnation of him who has been found the obstinate and resisting author of this dogma; nor does it matter where these men are, provided that, wherever they can be found, they be healed.
To us, nevertheless, it cannot be persuaded that he has been cleared, although proceedings were brought to us by I know not what laymen, by which he both believed himself heard and absolved. Whether these things be true we doubt, because they came under no prosecution of that council, nor did we receive any letters concerning this matter from those before whom this man rendered the accounts of this affair. But if he could have trusted in his own clearing, we the rather believe that he would have done what could have been much truer — namely, that he should compel those men by his own letters to indicate what they had judged.
But since there are certain things set down in those very proceedings which, being objected, he partly suppressed by evasion, partly, by twisting many words back upon himself, confounded in total obscurity — some things he cleared, more by false arguments than by true reasoning, as far as could seem for the time, denying some, turning others by false interpretation. But would that — which is the more to be desired — that man might now convert himself to the true way of the catholic faith from the error of his byway, so that he might desire and wish to be cleared, considering the daily grace of God and recognizing His help, so that he might be seen and approved by all to have been corrected by manifest reason as truly, not by the evidence of proceedings, but with his heart converted to the catholic faith!
Wherefore we can neither approve nor blame their judgment, since we know not whether the proceedings are true; so that, if they are true, it appears that he rather escaped than cleared himself with entire truth. But if he trusts and knows that what he says is not worthy of our condemnation, or that he has now refuted all that he had said, he ought not to be summoned by us, but rather he himself ought to hasten, that he may be able to be absolved. For if he still thinks in such a manner, when does he, summoned by whatever letters, commit himself to our judgment, since he knows he is to be condemned? But if he were to be summoned, it would better be done by those who seem to be nearer and not separated by a long space of lands. But care will not be lacking, if he furnish the matter for a cure.
For he can condemn the things he had held, and, having given letters of his error, as befits one returning to us, ask pardon, O dearly beloved brethren. The book indeed which was said to be his, transmitted to us by your charity, we have unrolled. In it we have read many things written against the grace of God, many blasphemous things, nothing that would please, nothing that would not be thoroughly displeasing, worthy to be condemned and trampled by anyone — things the like of which no one but he who had written them would take into his mind or think. For in this place we have not deemed it necessary to dispute more at length concerning the law, as though against Pelagius set opposite and resisting, since we converse with you who know the whole matter and rejoice with equal assent alongside us.
For then these examples are better set forth, when we treat with those who are established to be ignorant of these matters. For concerning the possibility of nature, concerning free will, and concerning all the grace of God and daily grace, to whom that is rightly minded is it not most abundant to dispute? Let him therefore anathematize these things which he held, so that those who had collapsed by his discourses and precepts may recognize what the true faith holds after all. For they will more easily be recalled, when they perceive these things condemned by their own author.
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quodsiillepertinaciterinhacuolueritimpietatepersistere, agendumest, quatenusuelhispossitsubueniri, quosnonsuussedhuiusmagiserrorinduxit, neetillishaecmedicinapereat, cuiusistetalemnonadmittitnecpostulatcuram. [Etaliamanu:] Deusuosincolumescustodiat, fratres 10 carissimi. Dat. VI. KlFebr. CLXXXIV. INNOCENTIUSAURELIOETAUGUSTINOEPISCOPIS. AcceptissimimihiGermaniconpresbyteriillorecursusuacuusofficionostroessenondebuit. percarosenimsalutarecarissimosnaturalequodammodonobisuideturetconsequens.
But if he should obstinately wish to persist in this impiety, we must act so that at least those may be succored whom not their own error, but rather his, has led in, lest this medicine perish for them also, of which that man admits and asks no such cure. [And in another hand:] May God keep you unharmed, dearly beloved brethren. Given on the sixth day before the Kalends of February. 184. INNOCENT TO THE BISHOPS AURELIUS AND AUGUSTINE. My most acceptable fellow presbyter Germanus, upon his return, ought not to have been empty of our office. For to greet the most beloved through dear ones seems to us in a certain manner natural and consequent.
We therefore most lovingly desire that your brotherhood rejoice in the Lord, and we pray that you render like vows to God on our behalf, because, as you well know, we accomplish more by common and mutual prayers than by solitary or private ones. 184A. TO HIS DEARLY BELOVED LORDS AND HOLY SONS PETER AND ABRAHAM, AUGUSTINE, GREETING IN THE LORD. Holy indeed is your zeal, whereby you think many things ought to be sought from me, that you may be able, not unarmed, to resist contentious impieties; nor ought justice to spurn it, nor can charity. But one letter, however prolix it be, does not contain a diligent answer to all things. In very many of our little works, however, either to all or nearly all the things which you inquire,
know that I have already answered, as far as I was able. If you read these — since I hear that you have so ordered your life, wherein you serve God, that you have leisure for reading — either all instruction will lie open to you, or I reckon not much will be lacking, especially because there dwells within you an interior Teacher, by whose grace you are such as you are. For what does a man help a man toward learning anything, if we are not taught of the Lord? And in this letter, nevertheless, I will by no means, as the Lord aids, defraud your expectation of at least a brief answer. The Lord says: He that shall believe and be baptized shall be saved; but he that shall not believe shall be condemned. If therefore little children, when they are baptized, it is not said vainly, but truly performed.
that they may be counted among believers, whence also they are named as a new offspring by the mouth of all Christians. Assuredly, if they shall not have believed, they will be condemned; and by this very fact, because they themselves added nothing by living wickedly to original sin, it may deservedly be said of them that in that damnation their punishment is least, yet not none at all. But whoever thinks there will be no diversity of punishments, let him read what is written: 'It shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment than for that city.' Let not therefore, at the prompting of deceivers, a middle place between the kingdom and torment be sought for infants; rather let them pass over from the devil to Christ, that is, from death to life, lest the wrath of God remain upon them; for from this wrath of God nothing frees but the grace of God.
But what is the wrath of God except the punishment and vengeance due from a just God? For God is not disturbed by any commotion, as a changeable mind grows angry; rather, that which is called the wrath of God is nothing else than the just punishment of sin, which it is no wonder passes over into posterity. For carnal concupiscence, by which men are begotten and conceived, did not exist before sin, nor would it have existed at all, had not the reciprocal punishment even of his own flesh's disobedience followed man's disobedience. Although the good of marriage makes good use of this evil, yet not without it can even the marital act take place — that is, the lawful and honourable intercourse for the sake of procreating children;
but it could have taken place without it, if human nature had remained in that state in which it was created, without sinning. For the genital members too, like the rest, could have been moved at the beck of the will to perform their proper work, and not been excited by the heat of lust. For who would deny that those words of God, 'Increase and multiply,' were not a curse of sinners but a blessing upon marriages? Therefore, since Christ was neither begotten nor conceived through this concupiscence — for the virgin's childbearing was of a far different sort — through this concupiscence, I say, whatever of mankind is begotten, conceived, and born, in order not to be punished, must needs be born again.
For even if a child is born of regenerate parents, carnal generation cannot bestow upon it what only spiritual regeneration bestowed upon those parents. Just as from the seed not only of the wild olive but even of the cultivated olive nothing is born but a wild olive, although the olive is not a wild olive. Many things about these matters we have said also in others of our writings, which I would rather you read than compel us to repeat the same things. To unbelievers, however, who are held by no authority of the Christians' books, one must reply with more labour. Nor can their perversity be corrected by the weight of divine Scripture; against them rather that very Scripture, which is by them more openly assailed, must certainly be defended.
But even if the Lord shall have helped you to be capable, yet you accomplish little among those whom you desire to be Christians if you overcome their unbelief by truthful disputations, unless you also beg faith for them by suppliant prayers. For faith itself, as you know, is a gift of God, who apportions to each one a measure of faith; and it is such a gift that it is necessary it precede the understanding. For the prophet is not mistaken when he says: 'Unless you believe, you shall not understand.' And because, unless ................ ......... that they might believe, the apostle prayed not for those already faithful but still for the unbelieving Jews, when he said:
'Brethren, the good will indeed of my heart and my supplication to God is made for them unto salvation' — for them, that is, who had killed Christ, who assuredly would kill even this man too, if the power were granted them. For such the Lord also prayed, when hanging He was mocked, and the blessed Stephen, when he was stoned. Now of these unbelievers, whom we are accustomed to call either Gentiles or, by the term now commonly in use, pagans, since there are two kinds — one of those who prefer the superstitions which they hold
above the Christian religion, and the other of those who are bound by no name of religion at all — against the first kind of these, which the apostle notes when he says, 'The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God,' or certainly where he says: ... I, in certain books which I have entitled 'On the City of God' — of which I judge the notice has already reached you, and the remaining ones of which, if the Lord will, I am striving amid my occupations to complete —
'They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator' — I have composed ten volumes, no small ones, of which the first five refute those who contend that, for the sake of obtaining or retaining this earthly and temporal felicity of human affairs, the worship not of one supreme and true God but of many gods is necessary. But the other five, the latter ones, are against those who, exalting themselves too swollenly and haughtily against saving doctrine, suppose that even through the worship of demons and of many gods they may attain to that blessedness which is hoped for after this life. There too their noble philosophers are refuted by us in three of these five, but the last books.
The remaining volumes, from the eleventh onward — however many they may prove to be, of which I have already completed three, and have the fourth in hand — will contain those things which we hold and believe concerning the City of God, lest we should seem to have wished only to refute what is another's and not also to affirm what is our own in this work. But that book which is the fourth after the ten, and likewise the fourteenth of the whole work, if the Lord will, will have unravelled all the questions which you set before me in your letter.
Furthermore, with the other kind of unbelievers, who either believe there is no divine power at all, or do not believe that human affairs pertain to it, I know not whether any discourse is to be held about some question of piety, although scarcely anyone is found in our times so foolish as to dare say even in his heart: 'There is no God.' Yet there are not lacking those other fools who have said: 'The Lord shall not see' — that is, He does not extend His providence to these earthly things.
Nevertheless, in these books, which I wish your charity to read, while the City of God is being asserted, it will become credible not only that God exists — which scarcely any impiety ever roots out of the nature implanted in us — but also that He exercises care over human affairs, from the very founding of men up to the making blessed of the just with the holy angels and the damning of the impious with the wicked angels, if God so wills and for whom He wills. This letter, then, dearly beloved, is not to be burdened any further.