unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you—that life, assuredly, which is to be after this death—and against the authority of the apostolic see, where, when this very matter was being treated, this evangelical testimony was adduced, lest infants unbaptized be believed able to have life; and against Pelagius's own words expressed before the bishops by whom he was heard, where he anathematized those who say that unbaptized infants have eternal life. We have mentioned this for the reason that certain persons even among you, or rather in your city,
if indeed what we have heard is true, strive with such obstinacy for this error that they say it is easier for them even to forsake and despise Pelagius himself, who anathematized those who hold these views, than to depart from the truth—as it seems to them—of this opinion. But if they yield to the apostolic see, or rather to the very Master and Lord of the apostles, who says that they will not have life in themselves unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood—which they certainly cannot do unless baptized—then surely at some point they will confess that unbaptized infants cannot have life, and by this that however more tolerably than all others who even commit their own sins, they are nonetheless punished with eternal death. Since these things are so,
let them dare to dispute, and let them strive to persuade whomever they can, that a just God, with whom there is no iniquity, will condemn to perpetual death infants who are innocent of their own sins, if they are not also bound and held fast by that sin from Adam. But if this is most absurd and utterly foreign to the justice of God—and yet no one who remembers that he is a Christian of the catholic faith denies or doubts that infants, without having received the grace of regeneration in Christ, without the food of His flesh and the drink of His blood, have not life in themselves, and by this are liable to the punishment of eternal death—then it surely remains that, because they themselves have done nothing good or evil, therefore the punishment of their death is just
because they die in him in whom all have sinned, whence they are made alive only in Him, from whom sin could neither be drawn as original nor perpetrated as one's own. He Himself has called us not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles, since even the children of that Jerusalem which killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her—though she was unwilling—He Himself gathered whom He would, both before His incarnation, as the prophets themselves, and after the Word was made flesh, as the apostles and the thousands of men who also laid the price of their possessions before the feet of the apostles. For all these are children of the Jerusalem that was unwilling that they should be gathered, who nevertheless were gathered because He willed it, of whom He says:
If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. Concerning these it had been foretold: If the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved. The word of God cannot fail, nor has He cast off His people whom He foreknew; and yet these remnants were made saved through the election of grace. But if by grace—which must often be said—then it is no longer of works: otherwise grace is no longer grace. These, assuredly, are not our words, but the Apostle's.
What, therefore, He cried out concerning Jerusalem, unwilling to have her children gathered, this we cry out against those who are unwilling that the willing children of the Church be gathered, and who are not corrected even after the judgment which was passed concerning Pelagius himself in Palestine—from which he would have come forth condemned, had he not himself condemned the sayings against the grace of God alleged against him, which he could not obscure. For besides those things which, in whatever way he could, he dared by some reasoning to defend, certain things were alleged which, unless he had anathematized them with all evasion removed, he himself would have been made anathema. For it was alleged that he said that Adam was made mortal, who would have died whether he sinned or did not sin; and that his sin harmed himself alone and not the human race;
and that infants newly born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression; and that neither through the death or transgression of Adam does the whole race of men die, nor through the resurrection of Christ does the whole race of men rise again; and that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life; and that baptized rich men, unless they renounce all things, if they should seem to do any good, it is not reckoned to them, nor can they have the kingdom of God; and that the grace of God and His help is not given for individual acts, but consists in free choice or in the law and doctrine; and that the grace of God is given according to our merits; and that the sons of God cannot be called such unless they have been made altogether without sin;
and that there is no free choice if it needs God's help, since in his own will each one has either to do something or not to do it; and that our victory is not from God's help but from free choice; and that pardon is not granted to the penitent according to the grace and mercy of God, but according to their own merit and labour, since they have become worthy of mercy through penance. All these things Pelagius so anathematized—as the very acts sufficiently testify—that he brought no disputation for defending them in any way. Whence it follows that whoever follows the authority of that episcopal judgment and Pelagius's own confession, ought to hold these things which the catholic Church has always held:
that Adam, had he not sinned, would not have died; and that his sin harmed not himself alone but also the human race; and that infants newly born are not in that state in which Adam was before the transgression—so that to them too applies what the Apostle briefly says: Through one man came death, and through one man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Whence it comes that unbaptized infants can have not only not the kingdom of heaven but not even eternal life. Let him also confess that baptized rich men, if they do not divest themselves of their riches, and are such as the Apostle describes to Timothy, saying:
Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded nor to trust in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who gives us all things richly to enjoy: let them be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to share, laying up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on true life—that they cannot be deprived of the kingdom of God. Let him confess that the grace of God and His help is given even for individual acts, and that it is given not according to our merits, so that it may be true grace, that is, freely given through the mercy of Him who said: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I shall be merciful. Let him confess that they can be called sons of God who daily say:
Forgive us our debts—which surely they would not say truthfully if they were altogether without sin—can be called sons of God. Let him confess that there is free choice, even if it needs divine help. Let him confess that, when we contend against temptations and unlawful desires, although we there have also our own will, yet our victory comes not from it but from the help of God; for otherwise what the Apostle says will not be true: It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. Let him confess that pardon is granted to the penitent according to the grace and mercy of God, not according to their merit, since indeed the Apostle called penance itself a gift of God, when he says of certain persons: Lest perhaps God grant them repentance.
Let him confess all these things plainly, without any ambiguities, if anyone consents to the catholic authority and to Pelagius's own words expressed in the ecclesiastical acts. For those things which are contrary to these are not to be believed truly anathematized, unless these, to which they are contrary, are held with a faithful heart and brought forth in open confession. Nor in those more recent books which the same Pelagius is said to have published after that judgment does it appear sufficiently clearly what he thinks on this matter—although he seems to consent to the help of divine grace. For sometimes he so weighs the power of the will in an even balance, with equal weights, that he defines it to be as strong for not sinning as for sinning.
But if this is so, no place is reserved for the help of grace, without which we say that the choice of the will has no power for not sinning. But sometimes he confesses that we are fortified by the daily help of God's grace, although we have a strong and firm free choice for not sinning—which surely he ought rather to have confessed weak and infirm, until all the languors of our soul are healed. For he was not praying on account of the infirmity of the body who said: Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled; and, that he might show he was asking on behalf of the soul, he added following: And my soul is greatly troubled.
He seems therefore to think that the help of grace is granted as though out of superabundance—that is, that even if it be not granted, we nonetheless have a strong and firm free choice for not sinning. And lest we be thought to suspect this of him rashly, and perhaps someone should say that he means a free choice strong and firm for not sinning, yet such that he cannot effect and fulfil it without God's grace—as we call healthy eyes strong for seeing, which nevertheless they can by no means do if the aid of light be lacking—in another place he shows more openly what he would say or think, where he says that the grace of God is for this reason given to men, that what they are commanded to do by free choice they may more easily fulfil through grace.
Surely, when he says 'more easily,' what else is to be understood except that, even if grace be lacking, what is commanded can be fulfilled through free choice, whether easily or even with difficulty? Where then is: What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Where, finally, are those testimonies which the bishop of the Jerusalem church—as is read in those same acts—records that he himself spoke to Pelagius, when it had been reported to him that Pelagius said a man could be without sin without the grace of God? For these are the three exceedingly great testimonies spoken by him against this kind of impious presumption, that the Apostle says: I laboured more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me; and: It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy; and:
Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. How then is what God commands fulfilled without His divine help, even with difficulty, when—if the Lord does not build—the builder is said to have laboured in vain, and it is not written that it belongs indeed to him that wills and runs, but is more easily of God that shows mercy, but rather it is written: It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy—not because there is no willing and running of man, but because man can do nothing unless God have mercy; nor did the Apostle say 'and I,' but he said: Not I, but the grace of God with me—not because he himself did nothing good, but because he would do nothing if that grace did not help him?
And yet that even weighing, in an equal balance, of the possibility of free choice both toward good and toward evil, leaves no place even for this facility which he at least seems to have confessed by saying: 'They may more easily fulfil through grace.' For if good is more easily fulfilled through grace, but evil is done most easily without grace, then assuredly that possibility is not weighed in an equal balance. But why more? Not only ought we to be cautious to avoid such men, but also we ought not to grow slothful in teaching and admonishing them, if they will allow it. Yet we render them more, without doubt, if we pray that they may be corrected, lest with such great talents they either perish or destroy others by a damnable presumption, because they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge;
for being ignorant of God's righteousness—that is, the righteousness which is from God—and wishing to establish their own, they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. To these, assuredly, since they are called Christians, it must be observed more than to the Jews, of whom the Apostle said this, that they should not stumble at the stone of stumbling, as though by cleverly defending nature and free choice like the philosophers of this world, who strove vehemently that they might be thought, or might think, to accomplish for themselves the blessed life by the virtue of their own will. Let these men therefore beware, lest through the wisdom of word they make void the cross of Christ, and lest this be for them to stumble at the stone of stumbling. For human nature, even if it remained
in that integrity in which it was created, would in no way preserve itself without the help of its Creator. Since therefore without the grace of God it could not guard the salvation which it received, how without the grace of God can it repair the salvation which it lost? But we ought not therefore not to pray for these men, on the ground that, if they are not corrected, it is to be imputed to their own will, who are unwilling to believe that even for this very thing—which they think consists in the strength of the will alone—the grace of the Saviour is necessary to them. For those too, to whom these men are in this cause altogether most similar, of whom the Apostle said this, that being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own they did not submit to the righteousness of God, assuredly did not believe by the fault of their own will.
For they were not compelled against their will to be unbelievers, but by refusing to believe they were not free from the crime of unbelief. And yet, because the will, in order to be moved to believe true things, does not suffice of itself unless God assist it through grace—as the Lord Himself says, when He was speaking of unbelievers: No one comes to Me, unless it be given him by the Father—for this reason the Apostle also, although he preached the gospel to them urgently, nonetheless perceived it to be too little unless he also prayed for them that they might believe; for he says: Brethren, the good will indeed of my heart, and my prayer to God, is made for them unto salvation; and then he added those words which we quoted: For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, and the rest.
Let us therefore pray for them, holy brother. For you discern with us by what an evil error they are held. For your letters breathe with the most sincere fragrance of Christ, where you appear a most genuine lover and confessor of grace itself. But that we thought this matter must be discussed with you at length was, first, because it is most delightful that we did so; for what ought to be more delightful than either grace to the sick, by which they are healed, or grace to the slothful, by which they are roused, or grace to the willing, by which they are helped? Then, that if by our disputation, with God's help, we might avail anything, not your faith but the assertion of your faith against such men might be supported—just as we too are helped in this ability by the letters of your brotherliness.
For what is richer and fuller of most truthful confession than that passage in a certain letter of yours, where you humbly lamented that our nature did not remain as it was created but was corrupted through that father of the human race, saying: 'Poor and grieving am I, who am still congealed with the squalor of the earthly image, and refer more of the fleshly senses and earthly deeds to the first Adam than to the second—how shall I dare to portray myself to you, since I am proved to disown the heavenly image by earthly corruption? Shame hedges me in on both sides. I blush to portray what I am; I dare not portray what I am not: I hate what I am, and I am not what I love. But what will it profit wretched me to hate iniquity and love virtue, when I rather do
what I hate, and, slothful, do not labour rather to do what I love? I myself, at variance with myself, am torn apart by an inward war, while the spirit fights against the flesh, the flesh against the spirit, and the law of the body assails the law of the mind with the law of sin. Unhappy am I, who have not even digested by the wood of the cross the poisoned taste of the enemy tree! For that paternal venom through Adam endures in me, with which the transgressing father infected the whole of his race'—and the rest which you weave much concerning this misery, groaning as you await the redemption of your body, and knowing yourself to be saved not yet in reality but in hope.
But perhaps you too transfigured another person into yourself when you said these things, and do not suffer any importunate and hateful vexations from the flesh lusting against the spirit, although you do not consent to it. Yet nevertheless both you, and whoever suffers these things and awaits the grace of Christ by which he may be freed from the body of this death, was there latently—not yet indeed evidently in himself, but in that one man—when the forbidden food was touched and destruction was conceived, destined to go far and wide through all men, had not He come by another path through the Virgin, He who had not perished, to seek and to save that which had perished. But concerning praying and imploring with groans for the help of making progress and living rightly, in what does your letter not glow?
What is there of your discourse, and how much of it, where there is not scattered, with mournful piety, what we say in the Lord's Prayer: Lead us not into temptation? Let us therefore in turn both console one another in all these things and exhort one another, and, as much as the Lord grants, help one another. But what things, and concerning whom, we have heard—things which we greatly grieve over and are unwilling easily to believe—your holiness will hear from a common friend, by whose return in God's mercy, with safety, we hope that we can be made most certain about everything. CLXXXVII. THE BOOK ON THE PRESENCE OF GOD. I confess, most beloved brother Dardanus—more illustrious to me in the love of Christ than in the dignity of this world—that I have replied to your letter more slowly than I ought.
I would not wish you to inquire into the causes of this, lest you bear me more troublesomely as I excuse myself at length, than you endured me writing back too slowly, since I would rather that you easily pardon my offence than judge concerning my defence. Whatever those causes may have been, believe that no contempt of you could have been possible in me; nay rather, I would have written back most swiftly had I despised you. Nor now, because I have at length at some time written back, have I therefore at least at length contrived something worthy of you as reader, and which I might deservedly inscribe with your name: but I chose rather to write back somehow at last than to endure it and to let this summer pass with me a debtor of this duty. Nor did your dignity hold me and make me hesitate, since your humanity is more welcome than that dignity is intimidating.
But from that very thing whence I love you the more, thence I find it more difficult to discover how I may satisfy so great an avidity of your religious love. To this was added that, besides the flame of mutual charity—by which it comes that we love even those whom we have never seen, so long as we believe them to have that which we love—wherein you have certainly forestalled me and made me fear to be deceived in myself concerning your opinion and expectation of me: besides this, then, you have proposed to me in your letter such questions that, if they had been proposed by anyone whatsoever, they would become no small business even to my leisure, which fails me;
but when they are proposed by you—to whom, as you probe the depths, the mere surface of their solution is by no means enough—and are proposed to one most occupied and hemmed in and bound by the masses of other cares, it belongs to your prudence and benevolence to consider how calm you ought to have me, whether because I have not answered for a long time, or if even now I shall not answer according to the greatness of your intention. You ask, therefore, in what manner the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, is now believed to be in heaven, since, hanging on the tree and about to die, He said to the believing thief: Today you shall be with Me in paradise. And hence perhaps you say it is to be understood that paradise is composed as it were in some part of heaven, or, because God is everywhere,
that man too, who is in God, is diffused everywhere—wishing from this doubtless to understand that He who is everywhere could be also in paradise. Here I ask, or rather recognize, in what manner you understand the man Christ. Not, assuredly, as certain heretics do, as the Word of God and flesh—that is, without a human soul, so that the Word was to the flesh in place of a soul—or the Word of God and a soul and flesh, but without a human mind, so that the Word of God was to the soul in place of a human mind. Not thus, assuredly, do you understand the man Christ, but as you expressed above, where you said that you receive Christ the almighty God on this principle of belief, that you would not believe Him God unless you had believed Him also perfect man. Assuredly,
when you say 'perfect man,' you wish the whole human nature to be understood there; but a man is not perfect if either the soul be lacking to the flesh, or a human mind be lacking to the soul itself. If, therefore, according to the man whom the Word, God, took up, we suppose it to have been said: Today you shall be with Me in paradise, paradise is not to be reckoned to be in heaven from these words: for on that very day the man Christ Jesus was not going to be in heaven, but in hell according to His soul, and in the sepulchre according to His flesh. And concerning the flesh, that on that day it was laid in the sepulchre, the Gospel is most manifest;
but that His soul descended into hell, apostolic doctrine proclaims, since indeed blessed Peter adduces a testimony from the Psalms concerning this matter, where he shows it to have been foretold concerning Him: For You will not leave My soul in hell, nor will You give Your Holy One to see corruption. That was said of the soul, because it was not left there, whence it so quickly returned; that of the body, which could not be corrupted in the sepulchre by a swift resurrection. But in the sepulchre no one understands paradise; and if anyone were so absurd as to attempt to think this, on the ground that that sepulchre was in a garden, he would certainly be recalled from this opinion by this, that he to whom it was said:
Today you shall be with Me in paradise, was on no day with Christ in that sepulchre. Nor would there be offered to his faith, as a great gift, the burial of a flesh feeling no joy or sorrow in death, when He was thinking of that rest where there is perception. It remains, therefore, that if it was said according to the man: Today you shall be with Me in paradise, paradise is to be understood to be in hell, where Christ was going to be on that day according to His human soul. But whether that bosom of Abraham, where that impious rich man, while he was in the torments of hell, saw the poor man resting, is to be judged by the name of paradise, or to be thought to pertain to the lower regions, I could not easily say. For concerning that rich man we read it said:
The rich man also died and was buried, and: When he was in torments among the dead. But in the poor man's death or rest the lower regions are not named, but: It came to pass, He says, that the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. Then to the burning rich man Abraham says: Between us and you a great chasm is fixed—as it were between the lower regions and the seats of the blessed: for the name of the lower regions is not easily found placed anywhere in the Scriptures in a good sense. Whence it is also wont to be asked, if only penal things are rightly understood by 'hell,' in what manner we may piously believe the soul of the Lord Christ to have been in hell. But it is well answered that He descended for this reason, that He might succour those whom it behoved.
Whence blessed Peter says that He loosed the pains of hell, by which it was impossible for Him to be held. Moreover, if both regions, of those grieving and of those resting—that is, both where that rich man was tormented and where that poor man rejoiced—are to be believed to be in hell, who would dare to say that the Lord of laws came only to the penal parts of hell, and was not among those who rest in Abraham's bosom? If He was there, that itself is to be understood as the paradise which He deigned to promise to the thief's soul on that day. And if these things are so, the name of paradise is general, wherever there is a happy life.
For not because it was called paradise where Adam was before sin, is Scripture therefore prohibited from calling the Church also a paradise with the fruit of its apples. But the sense is far more ready, and free from all these ambiguities, if Christ be taken to have said: Today you shall be with Me in paradise, not according to that which He was as man, but according to that which He was as God. For the man Christ was, on that day, according to the flesh in the sepulchre, according to the soul in hell: but that same Christ as God is everywhere always. For He is the light that shines even in the darkness, although the darkness comprehends it not;
He is the virtue and wisdom of God, of whom it is written that it reaches from end to end mightily and disposes all things sweetly, and reaches everywhere by reason of its purity, and nothing defiled falls into it. Wherever paradise may be, then, whoever of the blessed is there, is there with Him who is everywhere. For since Christ is God and man—God indeed, whence He says: I and the Father are one; but man, whence He says: The Father is greater than I—and the same is the only-begotten Son of God from the Father, and the Son of Man from the seed of David according to the flesh, both are to be observed in Him, when He speaks or when what is written of Him speaks, and it is to be discerned what is said according to what.
For just as one man is a rational soul and flesh, so the one Christ is the Word and man. Accordingly, in respect of the Word, Christ is Creator, for all things were made through him; but in respect of the man, Christ was created, for he was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and was made in the likeness of men. Likewise, because in a man there are two things, soul and flesh, according to his soul he was sorrowful even unto death, and according to his flesh he suffered death. Yet neither, when we call Christ the Son of God, do we separate the man, nor, when we call the same Christ the Son of man, do we separate the God. For according to his manhood he was on earth, not in heaven, where he now is, when he said: