if you wish to acknowledge the oldness from which little children are renewed by Christian grace, hear faithfully what the man of God Reticius, bishop of Autun, says—who once sat as judge with Melchiades the Roman Bishop, and condemned Donatus the heretic. For when he was speaking of Christian Baptism, he said: 'This, therefore, is the principal indulgence in the Church, as none is unaware, in which we lay down the whole weight of the ancient crime, and blot out the ancient deeds of our ignorance; where we also put off the old man with his inborn wickednesses.' Do you hear of not deeds perpetrated afterward, but even inborn wickednesses of the old man? Was this Reticius a Manichee?
How, then, do you say that it is not deceitfully that little children are renewed in Christian regeneration, you who are unwilling to acknowledge in the old man the evils which the weight of the ancient crime engendered? Then, if that age when aggravated convicts the iniquity of the judge, as you say, is it not so that it is aggravated by the heavy yoke upon the sons of Adam? And yet God is not thereby unjust; and through this it is deservedly aggravated. But there is no evil merit of this age, if there is no original sin. Say why they are breathed upon in exorcism. 56. JULIAN: Not, therefore, by the unity of the sacrament is infancy shown to be guilty, but by the truth of the judgment it is approved to be nothing other than innocent. AUGUSTINE: You think you have found why he is baptized; say why he is breathed upon in exorcism.
Surely the pronouncement of Pelagius, your author, was thought great and unanswerable, where he says: 'If Adam's sin harmed even those who do not sin, then Christ's righteousness also profits even those who do not believe.' What, then, do you say of little children when they are baptized? Do they believe, or do they not believe? If you say, 'They do not believe,' how does not Christ's righteousness profit even them who do not believe, so that they possess the Kingdom of heaven? Or if it does profit them—so that you are compelled to confess it—then in the same way Adam's sin harmed them who as yet had no will to sin, just as Christ's righteousness profits them who as yet have no will to believe. But if you say, 'They believe through others,' then likewise they sinned through another.
And since it is true that they believe through others (for on this account they are throughout the whole Church called the faithful), assuredly they pertain to that word which the Lord spoke: 'But he who has not believed shall be condemned.' They shall therefore be condemned if they do not believe through others, since through themselves they are not able to believe; yet they could in no way be justly condemned, unless they were born under sin, and thereby also under the prince of sin. For this reason, then, they are also exorcised by breathing upon. Take away from them your deceptive vanity; 'suffer the little children to come unto Jesus,' who 'saves his people' (among whom indeed these too are) 'from their sins.' God is able both to remit to the grown their own sins and to impute to little children the sins of another. 57. JULIAN.
Yet the logical sequence of reasoning bids me to dwell upon explaining the condition of little children, since it is a matter that by its own law does not permit things joined together to be divided. For the rest, the loss of the newborn would be more bearable, if His very Majesty were not endangered along with them. Exonerate God, then, and accuse the child; let Him be shown just in what He does—He who cannot be God without justice—and let whatever person you please undergo the punishment. But as it is, apart from the sacrilege, the very things you think are linked together fight vehemently against one another. For you say that, because both idolaters and parricides and little children are steeped in one and the same mysteries, all can be proven guilty of crime;
and you add something far more absurd: that by the Author of this very Sacrament of which we are treating, the sins of another are imputed to the innocent. This is what I said fights against itself, because the nature of things does not admit that at one and the same time God should be so merciful as to pardon each one his own sins upon confession, and so cruel as to charge another's sins upon the innocent. Of these two, once you have granted the one, you have taken away the other: if He grants pardon to the guilty, He does not slander the innocent; if He slanders the innocent, He never spares the guilty. AUGUSTINE. It is rather you who make God unjust, when it seems to you unjust that He should visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons—which He both often testifies in words that He does and shows by deeds.
You, I say, make God unjust, since under whose almighty care, when you see little children pressed down by the heavy yoke of misery, you contend that they have no sin, at once accusing both God and the Church: God indeed, if the undeserving are burdened and afflicted; but the Church, if those who are strangers to the right of the devil's power are exorcised by breathing. Where, moreover, did you dream that we equate the original sins of little children with idolaters and parricides? On the contrary, the remission of sins bestowed in the mysteries is true in sins both greater and lesser, both more and fewer, both single ones; but in no sins at all, such as you say is the case with little children, it is false.
Now original sins are 'another's' in such a way—because in them there is no choice of our own will—that nevertheless, on account of the contagion of origin, they are found to be also 'ours.' What is it, then, that you cry out and say, that God cannot both remit to the grown their own sins and impute to little children the sins of another; and you refuse to consider that only in those reborn in Christ does He remit both, but in those not reborn in Christ He remits neither? For these are the very sacraments of Christian grace, 'hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto little ones.'
O if you were among these little ones, and did not trust as though great in your own strength, you would assuredly understand that the unrighteousness of the first man is imputed to little children who are begotten, unto their undergoing punishment, in the same way as the righteousness of the second Man is imputed to little children who are regenerated, unto their obtaining the Kingdom of heaven; although neither by their own will and deed are they found to have imitated the one in evil or the other in good. Your obscenity. 58. JULIAN. Therefore in your words I have, as you say, under compulsion of fear, passed over nothing. For what could I dread in the monuments of so elegant a genius, unless perhaps this alone: that I endure horror at the assault of your obscenity? AUGUSTINE. If you were buying these insults, I should call you a spendthrift; they lie ready at hand for you free of charge;
why do you not enjoy them, on which you feed your slanderous soul? A council of the malignant—those who believe in original sin. 59. JULIAN. Hear then, briefly, against what you have said: they are not the hearts of the catholic Church that your discourse fits, if they are at variance with piety and reason. And they commit both these faults, since they neither judge rightly of God's equity, nor understand the wisdom and riches of the mysteries which they arraign. This is not the faith handed down and founded of old, except in councils of the malignant—inspired by the devil, brought forth by Manichaeus, celebrated by Marcion, Faustus, Adimantus, and all their satellites, and now belched out by you into Italy, which we grievously bemoan. AUGUSTINE.
With what mouth, with what effrontery do you call a council of the malignant the agreement of so many catholics who were teachers of the Churches before us? As though, forsooth, if in a council of bishops—which you say ought to be convened, not for wholesome ends but boastfully, on account of your questions—there were to sit the bishops whom I mentioned above (to pass over others): Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory, Basil, John of Constantinople, you would easily find any of those now living whom you could equal to them, let alone prefer to them, in the ecclesiastical doctrine handed down of old. Since therefore these very men bring forth against you concerning original sin open and clear pronouncements, both those which I set down a little while ago and very many others;
do you then dare to call a council of the malignant their agreement in the catholic truth? And do you consider what you are contradicting in these men, and not rather whither you may flee, if you are unwilling to consent to them? But since you said that I have belched into Italy what you bemoan, I throw back into your face that very bishop of Italy, praised by your teacher—Ambrose. 'All men,' he says, 'are born under sin, whose very origin is in fault; as you have read, David saying: "Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me."' Therefore Paul's flesh was a 'body of death,' as he himself says: 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'
But Christ's flesh condemned sin, which by being born it did not feel, which by dying it crucified, so that in our flesh there might be justification through grace, where before there had been defilement through fault. This, then, is the faith which I call handed down and founded of old; you refuse it, and do not consider against whom you struggle. Can you possibly say that it was inspired in this man by the devil? Is this man a Manichaean? Is he Marcion, Faustus, Adimantus? By no means—but far unlike them, and far contrary to them. Let Pelagius, at least, say who this man is. He is that very one whose faith, and most pure sense in the Scriptures, not even his enemy has dared to reprehend. What is it, Julian? Where do you see yourself?
That man, whose faith not even his enemy dared to reprehend, held this faith which you so reprehend as to ascribe it to councils of the malignant. Behold, it is not theirs, but Ambrose's; because it is true, because it is sound, because, as I said, it is handed down and founded of old, this is also mine. Therefore I have not belched this into Italy (as you say you bemoan); but rather from this bishop of Italy, as he preached and taught it, I received the laver of regeneration. Since this faith is catholic, and yet is not yours, where then are you? See, I beseech you, and return. It profits you to see, not to envy; we desire you to return, not to perish. The will, assent, contagion. 60. JULIAN.
There is no sin in a man, if there is nothing of his own will or assent; to this the whole race of men, at least those who have even slight sense, without hesitation agrees with me. But you concede that there was nothing of their own will in little children; not I, but reason concludes: therefore there is no sin in them. By no means, then, are they on this account brought to the Church that they may be defamed—nay, that they may defame God—but they are brought that they may praise God, whom they proclaim to be the Author both of natural goods and of spiritual gifts. AUGUSTINE. They are not defamed when they are exorcised by breathing, but they are rescued from the power of darkness; nor do they defame God, but by whom as Creator they were born, of Him as Saviour they stand in need; and therefore, by being reborn, they are transferred from Adam to Christ. But where you said:
'There is no sin in a man, if there is nothing of his own will or assent,' you would speak the truth more fully if you added: 'Or of contagion.' What is born within perseveres. 61. JULIAN. But original sin, if it is drawn in by the generation of the first birth, can indeed condemn the marriage instituted by God, yet cannot be taken away from little children; because what is born within perseveres unto the end of that to which it has adhered from the causes of its beginnings. AUGUSTINE. It neither condemns marriage, because marriage is not its cause; and it is taken away by that Almighty One, who was even able to be born a man without it. All things are said consistently. 62. JULIAN.
We therefore stir up no calumny against you, as though you condemn marriage, or as though you say that the man who is born of it is a work of the devil; nor do we cast this at you faithlessly, nor infer it inexpertly; but we watch carefully and simply what is the effect of your consequent propositions. For bodily marriages are never without commixture. You say that whoever are born of that commixture pertain to the devil; without doubt you pronounce that marriages pertain to the right of the demon. AUGUSTINE. Do we say that marriages could have existed without the commixture of the body in paradise, if no one had sinned? But there would not be there the evil which conjugal chastity now uses well. Now that evil is from the wound which the devil's cunning inflicted.
Hence the offspring of mortals is held guilty; hence he who is born is under the prince of sinners, until he is reborn in Christ, who had no sin at all; by whom alone the bond of death is loosed, because He alone was free among the dead. Cruel mercy. 63. JULIAN. You say that sin is drawn by the condition of nature—you who will have this evil to have befallen from the will of the first man. Here I defer my reply, by which you are to be convicted of lying without shame. But as concerns the present point, I gather, and I believe reasoning wisdom, that you clearly define nature to be, without ambiguity, diabolical. For if it is in it, or through it, that man is possessed by the devil;
then that through which he could claim for himself the image of God is irrefutably the devil's. Nay rather, it is not even the image of God, which by its very rising up is in the kingdom of the devil. AUGUSTINE. You believe, but with opining folly, not with reasoning wisdom. Suffer the little children to be rescued from the power of darkness, that they may be transferred into the kingdom of Christ. For by saying that they have no contagion of the old fault, and thus removing them from the mercy of the Saviour, who 'saves his people from their sins,' whence He was called Jesus, you accomplish nothing except that the wrath of God should remain upon them, of which Job spoke, saying: 'Man born of woman is of brief life and full of wrath, and like the flower of grass he falls, and flees like a shadow, and shall not stay;'
'and yet You have taken account of him, and made him enter into judgment before You. For who shall be clean from filth? Not even one, even if his life upon earth be of a single day.' But of course, merciful man, you pity the image of God, lest you should say that it is born under sin carnally. O how cruel is this vain mercy of yours, which denies to little children the mercy of their Saviour, who came 'to seek that which was lost'! Through those filths, then, without which he says there is no man of God, even if his life upon earth be of a single day, the devil claims for himself the image of God—not through the substance which God created. For the nature is vitiated; it is not the vice itself. But you:
'It is not even the image of God,' you say, 'which by its very rising up is in the kingdom of the devil.' What if another should say to you: It is not the image of God which, though guilty of no sin, nevertheless does not enter into the kingdom of God? Will you not be at a loss what to answer, if you are unwilling to answer emptily? And surely for this reason man is the image of God, because he was made 'to the likeness of God.' Why then was he also 'made like unto vanity, so that his days pass away like a shadow'? For you will not separate little children from this vanity, since their days pass away like a shadow. Finally, will you separate them even from the living? Hear then him who says in the Psalm: 'Behold, You have made my days old, and my substance is as nothing before You;'
'yet truly every living man is altogether vanity.' Since therefore every living man is the image of God, tell whence it comes that also 'every living man is vanity.' But what will you say, you who are unwilling to acknowledge that one of these is from the condition of God, the other has befallen from the condition of sin? Permit, we beseech you, that a living man, who was made to the likeness of God, be rescued from the power of darkness, under which he was 'made like unto vanity'; and let him be rescued now, for the present, from the obligation of guilt; but after this corruptible life, from all vanity as well. A new Callipho. 64. JULIAN. If therefore you read my work, you will cease to wonder why I have returned to your words, which I had set down above.
For I had promised that I would prove from your writings that you had, between the impiety which you had drunk in and the odium of it which you fear, uttered both alike—both what is wont to be asserted by Catholics and what by Manichaeans. And so there is set to your head such an order of words as you have now, with a sycophant's brow, falsely claimed was interpolated. I know that I promised much—namely, that from the adversary's discourses I would prove both that those who deny that men are the work of God are justly condemned, and that this very man who confesses this does nothing else than to confirm that whatever proceeds from the fruitfulness of marriage is the devil's chattel. For by this kind of argument, even by the laws of his own patronage, the opinion of the Manichaeans will be destroyed.
But the whole opening of his book made this public. For he says that men are a divine work, who are born of marriages, that is, of males and females; by which pronouncement he overthrows all that he was going to do, and agrees with us who say that those who dare to deny these things are impious. One part, therefore, is now settled: it remains for me to show that he builds up that which he had lately assailed. Having said which, I reviewed the part of your chapter in which you had said:
'Those who are born of such commixture, we say, draw original sin, and of whatever sort of parents they are born, we do not deny that they are still under the devil, unless they are reborn in Christ, and through His grace, being rescued from the power of darkness, are transferred into the kingdom of Him who willed not to be born from that same commixture of both sexes.' Why then do you think that you can be excused from the error of the Manichaeans on this account—that you have dared to insert an opinion against which you were struggling with all the powers of your genius; when this is no patronage of your error, but a testimony of singular folly, in that you think, after the manner of Callipho, that virtue and vices, righteousness and iniquity, can by your discourse be brought into a covenant? But as to what the Apostle says:
'Who rescued us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love'—read the fourth book of my work, and then you shall come to know what the Teacher of the Gentiles meant. AUGUSTINE. Reply was made to your fourth book in our sixth, and now I rather admonish that those who wish to know how far you there strayed from the truth, and by how great a truth you are convicted, should read those things, both yours and mine. But concerning this little paper, in which certain excerpts from your books have been written out, you are free to impute to me what that man did who sent it to the man by whom it was sent to me. For he put in it what he pleased from your work, and passed over what he pleased; whereof I have already answered you above briefly and sufficiently.
Why do you try to wrap yourself up in your obscurities against the manifest words of the Apostle? He, proclaiming God, says: 'Who rescued us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love'; and you say that this was said by him with little children excepted. If therefore little children are not rescued from the power of darkness, they are not dead; if they are not dead, Christ did not die for them; but you also confess that Christ died even for them; and the same Apostle says: 'One died for all; therefore all were dead.' This conclusion of the Apostle is unanswerable; and hence, because He died also for little children, assuredly little children too were dead.
Moreover, Christ died 'to bring to nought him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.' Suffer then the little children, that they may live, to be rescued from the power of darkness. But what is it that you cast at me the manner, or the error, of Callipho, in that you say I think that virtue and vices, righteousness and iniquity, can by my discourse be brought into a covenant? Far be it from me, indeed, either to hold this in my heart or to persuade it in speech; but I congratulate you on having understood that philosopher so well. For since he thought the good of man to be in the virtue of the mind and in the pleasure of the body, you say that he willed to join together virtues and vices; and hence, as was fitting, you have judged the appetite for bodily pleasure to be a vice;
lust, therefore, which you praise, is a vice. Thus truth crept upon your senses from somewhere, so that, forsaking a little the cause you had undertaken, you said what we say. Marriage is not solely the commixture of both sexes. 65. JULIAN. I therefore reproached—and reproached justly—the cast-down and feeble variation, whereby it had been brought about that you both premised that you do not condemn marriage, and yet said that, on account of the commixture of man and woman (which it is evident comes from the condition and nature of marriage, nay, in which alone—so far as pertains to our dispute—lies the truth of marriage), men are transcribed into the rights of the devil. AUGUSTINE. If in the commixture of man and woman alone lies the truth of marriage;
then the truth of adulteries is the same as that of marriages, because in both there is this commixture of both sexes. But if this is most absurd, then the truth of marriage lies not in the commixture of male and female alone, as you rave, although without it marriages cannot propagate children; but there are other things properly pertaining to marriage, whereby marriages are distinguished from adulteries, such as the fidelity of the conjugal bed, and the care of procreating children in due order, and—what is the greatest difference—the good use of an evil, that is, the good use of the concupiscence of the flesh, which evil the adulterous use ill. The chief of the Traducianist nation. 66. JULIAN.
This commixture you have endeavored to persuade men is so execrable, that you would have it understood that Christ willed to be born of a virgin mother, not on account of the splendor of the sign, but on account of the condemnation of the union of the sexes. What then could ever be said by anyone more wickedly or more shamelessly than this—that you separated, as it were, two kings contending over the possession of humanity, by these signs, and their two kingdoms as well, so that you said whatever marriages had produced was the devil's, but God's alone what a Virgin had brought forth? What else is this than to show the Impregnator of the Virgin to be most needy through the poverty of His portion, and to deny that same One to be the Creator of those who come forth from the marriages of men?
Let the diligent reader, then, hold fast the bond of your own word, and let him know that you, a faithful disciple of the Manichaeans and the chief of the Traducianist nation, have condemned nothing else than the commixture of lawful wedlock. AUGUSTINE. You have not senses exercised to separate good from evil. Both the nature and substance of men and of angels, whether good or evil, subsist with God as Creator; but the vices of natures and substances—which the Manichaeans say are natures and substances, but the truth denies—God, just and almighty, by a judicial ordinance permits to exist; and these are the very evils which cannot exist except from good and in good natures.
Now whatever things are subjected to the devil, God so judging, are in the devil's power in such a way that they cannot be alien from the power of God, under which the devil himself also is placed. Since therefore all angels and all men are under the power of God, empty is your loquacity, whereby you say that God and the devil have divided between themselves which of those they each have under their own power. But upon whom you may vomit forth, out of a raw breast, these insults on which you feed, attend a little while. Lo, here is that Ambrose; concerning the very point you inveigh against, see what he says: 'How,' he says, 'could He alone be righteous, when the whole generation went astray, unless, being born of a Virgin, He was by no means held by the privilege of a generation liable to guilt?'
Hear yet further, hear, and check your insolent tongue by dashing it against His brow: 'For no man's coition,' he says, 'unsealed the secret recesses of the virginal womb; but the Holy Spirit poured immaculate seed into the inviolable womb; for alone among all those born of woman was the holy Lord Jesus holy in all things, who did not feel the defilements of earthly corruption by the newness of an immaculate birth, and drove them away by heavenly majesty.' You perceive, surely, what I say—who has said it? You perceive against whom you speak, whatever you speak against me? For if on this account I am a disciple of Manichaeus, so too is he. But he is not this—he who said these things before us. Therefore neither is he this, whoever says these things;
but he is a manifest heretic, whoever contradicts this ancient catholic dogma. By the Apostle the life of men, not their nature, is condemned. 67. JULIAN. But let us now proceed to the rest. Writing therefore about me, after those words of yours which I wove in above, you add these which follow: 'After this he set down that word of ours where we said: For this shameful concupiscence, which is shamelessly praised by the shameless, would be none, unless man had first sinned; but marriage would exist, even if no one had sinned; for the sowing of children would come about without this disease.' Thus far did he set down my words. For he feared what I added: 'It could come about in the body of that life, without which it now cannot come about in the body of this death.'
And here, in order not to finish my thought, but in a manner to truncate it, he dreaded that testimony of the Apostle where he says: 'Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' For there was no body of this death in paradise before sin, on account of which we said: 'In the body of that life, which was there, the sowing of children could have come about without this disease, without which in the body of this death it cannot come about.' You indeed keep to your custom—consistently, in this work above all, in that, as one who acts against the truth, you say nothing true; but for the numerous sins of your erudition a multitude of corrections scarcely suffices.
Therefore here I will now briefly note that you deceive; and that I—as you will understand, at least after this work—am impatient of falsehood. Claim for yourself, then, the whole possession of this vice, so that from the Gospel you may hear, and not indeed unjustly, that 'you are a liar from the beginning, like your father'—whether him to whose dominion you say you belonged when you were born, or the other, a secondary one, who steeped you in those elegant sacraments which nevertheless cannot be named among the honorable. This whole matter, then, I brought forward in my earlier work, which you feign was passed over; and with how great a truth and light of disputation it was proven, you yourself too will be able to confess, if you read near the very last parts of my first volume.