except the gratuitous gift of His own mercy? And what did He hate in Esau, before he was born and had done anything evil, except original sin? For neither did He love in the one the righteousness which that one had not done, nor did He hate in the other the nature which He Himself had made good. But it is a marvel, when they are hemmed in by these straits, into what abysses they hurl themselves headlong, fearing the nets of truth. 'For this reason,' they say, 'He hated the one and loved the other of those not yet born, because He foresaw their future works.' Who would not marvel that so acute a perception was lacking to the apostle? For indeed he did not see this, when, upon a question set against him as though from an adversary, he did not rather answer that which was so brief, so plain, so — as these think — true and absolute.
For when he had propounded a stupendous matter — how it could rightly be said, concerning those not yet born nor doing anything good or evil, that God had loved the one and hated the other — he himself, expressing the emotion of the hearer by a question set against himself, says: 'What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? By no means!' Here, then, was the place, that he might say what these men hold: 'For God foresaw the future works, when He said that the elder should serve the younger.' But the apostle does not say this; rather, lest anyone should dare to glory in the merits of his own works, he willed that what he says should avail for commending the grace and glory of God. For when he had said, 'Far be it that there should be injustice with God,' as though we said to him:
'Whence do you show this, when you assert that it was said not of works but of Him who calls: The elder shall serve the younger?' — 'For He says to Moses,' he says: 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I have been compassionate. Therefore it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.' Where now are the merits, where the works, whether past or future, as though fulfilled or to be fulfilled by the powers of free will? Did not the apostle plainly bring forth a sentence commending gratuitous grace, that is, true grace? Did not God make foolish the wisdom of the heretics? But what was being transacted, that the apostle should say this, that he should recall the example of those twins? What was he striving to persuade? What did he long to impress?
Surely this, which their madness assails, which the proud do not grasp, which they are unwilling to comprehend — who, being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, are not subject to the righteousness of God. For the apostle was dealing amply with grace itself, and therefore he recalled the sons of the promise. For what God promises, none but God accomplishes; for it has some measure of reason and truth that man should promise and God accomplish; but for a man to say that he himself accomplishes what God has promised is the reprobate sense of proud impiety. Commending, therefore, the sons of the promise, he shows this first signified through Isaac, the son of Abraham. For the work of God appears more evidently in him,
whom the accustomed order of nature did not beget from barren viscera and from bodies worn out with old age, that in the sons of God, who were foretold as to come, this might be a sign of the divine and not the human work: 'In Isaac,' he says, 'shall your seed be called' — that is, not those who are children of the flesh, these are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as seed. For this is the word of promise: 'At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.' 'And not only so,' he says, 'but also Rebecca, having by a single intercourse Isaac our father.' To what did it pertain, that he should add 'by a single intercourse,'
except that Jacob might glory not only in his own merits, nor in those of his parents rather than of others, nor even in the perhaps-changed-for-the-better will of that one same father — saying that he was for this reason loved by the Creator, because his father, when he sowed him, was more praiseworthy in better morals? 'By a single intercourse,' he says: one merit then of the father in sowing them, one merit of the mother in conceiving them; for even if the mother carried them enclosed in her viscera until she bore them, and perhaps varied her wills and affections, she varied them not for one but surely for both, whom she equally carried in her womb. The intention, therefore, of the apostle is to be regarded — how, for the sake of commending grace, he wishes him of whom it was said, 'Jacob I loved,'
glory in nothing but the Lord — so that, since from the same father, the same mother, one intercourse, before they had done anything good or evil, God loves the one and hates the other, Jacob may understand that from that lump of original iniquity, where he sees the brother, with whom he had a common cause, to have deserved to be condemned by justice, he himself could be distinguished only through grace. 'For when they were not yet born,' he says, 'nor had done anything good or evil, that God's purpose according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls, it was said to her: The elder shall serve the younger.' And that the election of grace comes about with no preceding merits of works, the same apostle shows most openly in another place: 'So then,'
he says, 'even at this present time a remnant according to the election of grace has been saved. But if by grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.' According to this grace, therefore, consistently taking up also the prophetic testimony, he says: 'As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,' and immediately: 'What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? By no means!' But why 'by no means'? Is it on account of the works which He foresaw of both? Nay, this too far be it: 'For He says to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I have been compassionate. Therefore it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.' And so that, in the vessels which are made perfect for perdition,
which is owed to the condemned lump, the vessels made out of the same lump unto honor may recognize what the divine mercy has bestowed upon them: 'For the Scripture says,' he says, 'to Pharaoh: For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name might be glorified in all the earth.' Finally he concludes as to both: 'Therefore on whom He wills He has mercy, and whom He wills He hardens.' This He does with whom there will be no injustice. He has mercy, then, by a gratuitous gift, but He hardens by most just merit. But let the elation of the proud unbeliever, or the excuse of the damnable punished one, still say: 'Why then does He still find fault? For who resists His will?' Let him say it, and hear what befits man: 'O man, who are you that answer back to God?'
and the rest, concerning which I have already, as much as I could, discoursed sufficiently and often. Let him hear these things and not despise them. But if he despises them, let him find himself hardened even so as to despise; and if he does not despise them, let him believe himself helped even so as not to despise — but hardened deservedly, helped freely. For, granted that God foresaw the future works of the two twins from the patriarch Isaac (a thing which we have already shown is said with how great blindness), because they lived and grew old, and therefore loved Jacob but hated Esau — not even for that reason can anyone say concerning even little ones who are about to die, that God does not provide for this one to receive baptism but provides for that one, because He foresees their future works;
for how are those called future which will never be? 'But God,' they say, 'in those whom He takes hence, foresees how each would have lived, if he lived; therefore him whom He knew was going to live wickedly He causes to die even without baptism, thus punishing in him evil works — not those which he did, but those which he was going to do.' If, then, by divine agency even works not committed are punished as evil, let them first attend to how falsely they promise that little ones will not go into damnation who die without baptism. For if they are not baptized for this reason, that they would have lived badly had they lived, then on account of that very bad life they will beyond doubt be damned, if even the evils which were going to be are damned.
Then, if the sacrament of baptism to be received is provided for those whom God knows would have lived well had they lived, why are not all such kept in life, in which they would adorn it with good works? Why do even some of those who are baptized, living long, live most wickedly and sometimes even come to the point of apostasy? Why did He not cast the very first wedded pair of sinners — whom surely He had known would sin — out of paradise beforehand, lest they commit there what would be unworthy of so holy a place, if sins even not yet committed are justly punished? What, finally, is bestowed on him who is snatched away, 'lest malice change his understanding and lest deceit beguile his soul,' if even those things are justly punished?
Although he did not do it, was he nevertheless going to do it had he gone on living? In short, why is it not rather in the interest of the one about to die — who would have lived wickedly had he lived — that he receive the laver of regeneration, so that in baptism the sins he was going to commit might be remitted to him? For who is so senseless as to deny that those things can be forgiven through baptism which he says can be punished without baptism? But in disputing against those who, though refuted at every turn, still labour to make out that God is an avenger even of sins not committed, we must beware lest we be thought to be inventing these things against them, and lest they, on the other hand, be believed to be in no way so dull-witted as either to hold such views or to try to persuade anyone of them.
And yet, had I not heard them say these things, I would not have thought them worth refuting. For they are hemmed in on every side, both by the authority of the divine readings and by the ancient, handed-down and firmly retained rite of the Church in the baptism of little ones, wherein it is most plainly shown that infants — both when they are exorcised and when, through those who carry them, they answer that they renounce him — are being set free from the dominion of the devil; and finding no way out, they press on into headlong folly, since they are unwilling to change their opinion. This indeed they seem to themselves to say most acutely:
'How does that sin pass into the children of the faithful, which we do not doubt has been remitted in the parents through baptism?' — as if carnal generation could on that account fail to have what only spiritual regeneration takes away. Or is it truly the case that in baptism the infirmity of the concupiscence of the flesh is at once healed, just as its guilt is at once abolished? Rather it is by the grace of being reborn, not by the condition of being born. Hence whoever is born through this concupiscence even from one reborn will without doubt be harmed, though born, unless he too be likewise reborn. But whatever difficulty there is in this question, it does not thereby hinder the labourers in Christ's field from baptizing infants for the remission of sins,
whether they be born of unbelievers or of believers — just as it does not hinder farmers from turning their care of grafting toward wild olive shoots, whether these spring from wild olives or from cultivated olives. For if this too were put to the countryman, that he should answer what is the cause that, although the olive is one thing and the wild olive another, yet nothing but a wild olive is born from the seed of either — he does not on that account leave off the work of grafting, even if he cannot resolve that question. Otherwise, while he supposes that the little shoots sprung from the seed of the olive are nothing but olives, by the sloth of an empty conceit he brings it about that the whole field runs wild with bitter barrenness.
Now as for that which they devised when they were pressed by the weight of truth — that, because the Lord is faithful in his words, and therefore his Church in no way falsely baptizes little ones for the remission of sins, but, in order that what is done may be done by faith, assuredly that comes to pass which is said — that, then, which they devised when this most manifest mass of truth bore down upon them, what Christian would not laugh at, however versatile he might perceive it to be? For they say that infants do indeed answer truly, through the mouths of those who carry them, that they believe in the remission of sins, yet not because sins are remitted to them, but because they believe that sins are remitted in the Church or in baptism — in those in whom they are found, not in those in whom there are none.
And on this account they are unwilling that infants be so baptized for the remission of sins as though the remission itself takes place in those whom they contend have no sin; but rather, they say, that although these are without sin, they are nevertheless baptized in that baptism whereby the remission of sins takes place in whatever sinners there are. It can indeed be brought about that this slippery, chameleon-like cunning be refuted at leisure more subtly and more sharply. Yet even so, according to this cleverness of theirs, they cannot find what to answer to this: that infants are exorcised and breathed upon. For this is without doubt done falsely, if the devil does not have dominion over them; but if he does have dominion, and therefore they are not falsely exorcised and breathed upon, by what does he hold dominion except through sin — he who is assuredly the prince of sinners?
Accordingly, if they now blush and dare not say that these things are done deceitfully in the Church, let them confess that what had perished is being sought even in little ones. For it had not perished except on account of sin — that which, unless through grace, cannot be sought, cannot be found. But thanks be to God that at least, when they argue against the remission of sins, lest it be believed to take place in little ones, they now nevertheless confess that little ones believe through the hearts and mouths of their elders. Therefore, just as they hear the Lord saying, 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,' on account of which they grant that these are to be baptized, so let them hear the same Lord saying, 'He who does not believe
shall be condemned' — since, just as they confess that infants are reborn through the ministry of those who baptize, so likewise they confess that they believe through the hearts and mouths of those who answer for them. Let them then dare to say that by a just God an innocent one will be condemned, if he is bound by no bond of original sin. If this discourse is lengthy and burdensome to your occupations, grant pardon; for in order to write these things to you, and, provoked by your letters, tokens of your goodwill toward us, to converse with you about these matters, I too did violence to myself by interrupting my own occupations. If you should learn of any other things that they devise against the catholic faith, and whatever you, likewise with faithful and truly pastoral love, discuss against them, lest they ravage the weak of the Lord's flock, make it known to us.
For by the restlessness of heretics — so that we may search the Scriptures more vigilantly, in order that they may be met with, lest they harm Christ's sheepfold — our diligence is roused as though from the sleep of sloth. Thus, through the manifold grace of the Saviour, even that which the enemy contrives for our destruction, God turns into a help, since to those who love him all things work together for good. 195. TO THE HOLY AND MOST BLESSED LORD POPE AUGUSTINE, JEROME. At all times indeed I have venerated your Blessedness with the honour that befits it, and I have loved the Lord and Saviour dwelling in you; but now,
if it can be, we add something to the heap and fill up the full measure, so that we do not suffer even one hour to pass without mention of your name — you who, standing firm against the winds that blow against you, by the ardour of faith, chose rather, as far as lay in you, to be delivered alone out of Sodom than to abide with those who perish. Your prudence knows what I mean. Distinguished by your virtue, you are celebrated throughout the world; the catholics venerate and receive you as the restorer of the ancient faith, and — what is a sign of greater glory — all the heretics detest you, and pursue me with equal hatred, so that those whom they cannot slay with swords, they slay in their wish. May the mercy of Christ the Lord keep you safe and mindful of me, O venerable lord and most blessed pope. 196.
TO THE MOST BLESSED LORD, BROTHER AND FELLOW-BISHOP ASELLICUS, AUGUSTINE, GREETING IN THE LORD. The letter of your Holiness, which you sent to the venerable elder Donatianus concerning the dispute about avoiding Judaism, he himself deigned to send to me, and by his request rather urgently commanded that I answer it. Fearing to slight him, I answer, as I am able, with the Lord's help — reckoning it welcome to your Charity too, that by writing to you at his bidding (whom for his merits we both venerate) I have not refused to obey. That Christians, especially those coming from among the Gentiles, ought not to Judaize, the apostle Paul teaches, where he says: 'I said to Peter before them all:
'If you, though you are a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how do you compel the Gentiles to Judaize?' And following on he added: 'We are Jews by nature, and not sinners from among the Gentiles; yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ, we too have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law; because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.'
Now not only those works of the law which are in the ancient sacraments and, now that the New Testament has been revealed, are not observed by Christians — such as the circumcision of the foreskin, the fleshly rest of the sabbath, abstinence from certain foods, the immolation of animals in sacrifices, the new moon, the unleavened bread, and other things of this kind — but even that which is said in the law, 'You shall not covet' (which without doubt none disputes ought to be said even to Christians), does not justify a man except through the faith of Jesus Christ and the grace of God through Christ our Lord. For the same apostle himself says: 'What then shall we say? Is the law sin? God forbid! But I did not know sin except through the law; for I would not have known concupiscence, unless the law had said,
'You shall not covet,' I would not have known concupiscence. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. And I was alive once without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment which was unto life, this I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. So then the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Was then that which is good made death to me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through that which is good, that sin through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.'
'For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do, I know not; for I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do. Now if I do what I will not, I consent to the law that it is good.' We see therefore in these apostolic words that the law is not only not sin, but is even holy, and the commandment holy and just and good, by which it was said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin deceives through the good, and by it slays those who, being carnal, think they can by their own strength fulfil the spiritual law. And through this they become not only sinners, which they would be even had they not received the law, but also transgressors, which they would not be
had they not received the law. For thus he says in another place: 'Where there is no law, neither is there transgression.' 'The law therefore entered in,' as he elsewhere testifies, 'that the offence might abound; but where the offence abounded, grace did much more abound.' This then is the usefulness of the law: that it shows a man to himself, so that he may know his own infirmity and see how, through the prohibition, carnal concupiscence is rather increased than healed. For those things are more ardently desired which are forbidden, while the carnal man is constrained to observe what is spiritually commanded. But that he may be spiritual — one who fulfils the spiritual law — this comes about not by the law itself but by grace, that is, not by command but by benefit, not by the commanding letter but by the aiding Spirit.
Now a man begins, according to grace, to be renewed in the inner man, so that with his mind he does what he loves, and does not consent to the flesh acting out what he hates — that is, not so that he does not covet at all, but so that he does not go after his concupiscences. And this indeed is so great a thing that, if it came about in every way, and although — while we are in the body of this death — the desires of sin are present, we nevertheless gave assent to none of them, there would then be nothing on account of which we should say to our Father who is in heaven, 'Forgive us our debts.' And yet not even so should we already be such as we shall be when this mortal shall have put on immortality; for then we shall not only obey no desire of sin, but there shall be no such desires which we are bidden not to obey. Now therefore, where it is said:
'It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me' — this is said of the concupiscence of the flesh, which works its own motions in us even when we do not obey them, so long as sin does not reign in our mortal body to obey its desires, nor do we yield our members as weapons of iniquity unto sin. Persevering and making progress in this righteousness, not yet consummated, we shall one day come to its consummation, where the concupiscence of sin is not to be restrained and bridled, but is not at all. For this is what the law set forth in saying, 'You shall not covet' — not that we should be able to attain it here, but that by making progress we should tend toward it. But this comes about not by the law, which commands it, but by faith, which obtains it; not by the letter
which commands, but by the Spirit, by which it is given — not therefore by the merits of the man who works, but by the grace of the Saviour who bestows. The usefulness of the law, therefore, is this: that it may convince a man of his own infirmity and compel him to implore the medicine of grace which is in Christ. 'For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe him whom they have not heard?' Whence a little later he says: 'So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.'
Since these things are so, those who rejoice carnally that they are Israelites and glory in the law apart from the grace of Christ — these are they of whom the same apostle says that, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, they have not been subject to the righteousness of God. For he called it God's righteousness, which comes to man from God; but their own, by which they think it enough for themselves to do the commandments without the help and gift of him who gave the law. And like to these are they who, though they profess to be Christians, so oppose the very grace of Christ that they suppose they fulfil the divine commandments by human strength.
And thus these too, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own, are not subject to the righteousness of God; and, not indeed in name, yet in error, they Judaize. This kind of men had found for itself as leaders Pelagius and Caelestius, the fiercest champions of this impiety, who by the recent judgement of God, through his diligent and faithful servants, have even been deprived of catholic communion, and on account of their impenitent heart still persist in their damnation. Whoever seeks to be a stranger to that carnal and animal, and therefore not undeservedly reprehensible and damnable, Judaism, ought not only to make those ancient observances foreign to himself which, now that the New Testament has been revealed — after those things came
which were signified through them to be about to come — without doubt ceased to be necessary, so that no one is judged in food and in drink, or in respect of a feast-day, or of a new moon, or of sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come. But even those things which were so commanded in the law as to avail for shaping the morals of the faithful — that is, that, denying impiety and worldly desires, we should live temperately and justly and piously in this world (whence too is that which the apostle chose out of the law as most especially to be commended: 'You shall not covet'), and whatever concerning the loving of God and neighbour is commanded in the law without any figures of sacraments, on which two commandments the Lord Christ himself says that the whole law and the prophets hang —
such things he so receives, so embraces, so does not doubt are to be observed, that whatever he makes progress in through them he ascribes not to himself but to the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Yet nevertheless, when anyone has in this way become a true and genuine Christian, whether he is also to be called a Jew or an Israelite is deservedly asked. And this indeed, if it be understood to be so not in flesh but in spirit, he ought not to impose the name itself upon himself in the usage of common speech, but to retain it by spiritual understanding, lest, because of the ambiguity of the word which daily speech does not distinguish, he seem to profess that which is hostile to the Christian name. This question, that is, whether
he who is a Christian can also be understood as a Jew or an Israelite — the same blessed apostle opens up and resolves for us where he says: 'Circumcision indeed profits, if you keep the law; but if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision is become uncircumcision. If therefore the uncircumcision keep the righteous requirements of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? And shall not that which by nature is uncircumcision, if it fulfil the law, judge you, who by the letter and circumcision are a transgressor of the law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God.'
Since therefore we hear Christ's apostle commending to us the Jew who is one in secret, not by circumcision of the flesh but of the heart, and in the spirit and not in the letter — who is this but a Christian? And so in this way we are Jews not carnally but spiritually, just as we are the seed of Abraham not according to the flesh, like those who glory with carnal pride in the very name, but according to the spirit of faith, which they are not. For we know that we were promised, when God said to him: 'A father of many nations have I appointed you.' And how much the apostle says on this matter, we know. 'We say,' he says, 'that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How then was it reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or when he was in uncircumcision?'