反亞流神學文集 第 10 章

BOOK ONE. CHAPTER I.—1. I give thanks to God, holy brethren, John the presbyter and Venerius the deacon, by whose help you are such men that, for the grace by which we are saved, you contend with great spirit and fervour. But I have been grieved that certain of our brethren under the Christian name strive to oppose the Catholic faith: namely, transferring the gifts of God's grace to the virtue or merit of human free will; as though without God's help our effort could obey the divine precept; and as though that alone were God's part, that He command us the things to be done, and Himself not work in us what He commands; and as though, if God bestow any good upon a man, He should seem not to give but to repay.

These men so far think that the gifts of the divine goodness depend upon the quality of human acts, that they even assert that infants are so foreknown and predestined by God, that nothing of the free bestowal of heavenly grace is found in those who are chosen; and that no gratuitous mercy anticipates anyone by its condescension, but that the eternal retribution of punishment and of reward consists solely in the future action of each one's own will. 2. That absurdity also, I greatly marvel and grieve, has crept in upon certain men, whereby they do not hesitate to be so far enemies of the grace of God, asserting that infants are baptized on the merit of future works, that on the contrary they say that even to those infants who die without baptism, provision is made by the divine kindness;

so that without the grace of the sacred washing they are snatched away to punishment—those, namely, in whom they contend that God foreknew their future evils, if they had lived here somewhat longer, and in His goodness snatched them away from the course of the present life beforehand: as if anyone could, without the benefit of holy redemption, either be withdrawn from perpetual punishments, or attain to the gifts of eternal life. While therefore they obstinately contradict, they pierce themselves through with deadly depravity.

To these men it seems that of Esau and Jacob—twin brothers, namely, born of one seed and one intercourse—the merits are to be so distinguished, that, asserting Esau to have been condemned from the foreknowledge of his future works, they contend that Jacob too could have been saved not by the gratuitous gift of the divine goodness, but only by the foreknowledge of his future works: so that God may thus be recognized as just in both, and it may not be believed that anything was bestowed on either of them by gratuitous compassion.

Whereas in this question especially, which is turned upon infants, in which not the proper malice of anyone's actual sins, but the guilt of the sinful origin itself is signified, everyone who does not wish to fall away from the truth of the apostolic faith, who desires, God enlightening him, to keep with inviolate belief and confession the rectitude of Catholic doctrine, ought—every ambiguity of hesitation being removed—truly to believe and confess: that God is one, and true, and good, that is, the supreme and ineffable Trinity of one nature and essence; that He founded the whole nature of the first man as good and entire, without natural evil, and without any vice;

and that He neither created for the flesh the necessity of dying, nor implanted in the soul the stain of any sin; and therefore that human nature has from God the good of creation, but from the voluntary transgression of the first man draws original sin in those being born, and that from the wicked transgression of one, and from a most just condemnation, there flowed upon all at once both the blemish of iniquity and the punishment of death. For man, made to the image of God, received rectitude both of will and of work. CHAPTER II.—3. And so man was so created that he could both sin and not sin by his own will;

and therefore the fall of his voluntary transgression was justly punished in him, because he was constrained to sinning by no natural necessity of flesh or soul. Who, although, as the Apostle teaches (1 Tim. II, 14), he was not himself seduced, yet consenting with a depraved will to the woman who had been seduced into transgression, so improvidently inflicted upon himself a deadly wound, that in that one man—whose soul is dead through sin, and whose body is dead because of sin—all should be originally made subject to sin and to death, as many as were to be born from that first sinful man by the intercourse of male and female.

After therefore the begetter of all men sinned by his own will, and experienced the truth of the divine precept which he had heard, In whatsoever day ye shall eat of it, ye shall die the death (Gen. II, 17), and the justice of the avenging God, by one taste of the forbidden tree, because he forsook justice, he fell into punishment, and of his own accord dying spiritually in soul, he also received unwillingly the punishment of bodily death. 4. The voluntary death of the soul, therefore, brought forth the penal death of the body; and the first man, because the death of crime possessed him, the death of vengeance also immediately followed.

Hence it came to pass that his entire offspring—not only in those who could sin by their own will, but even in infants not yet using their own will—guilt bound fast; and, sin prevailing, death claimed for itself through all men both a penal passage and a reign. Wherefore the Apostle also says: By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned (Rom. V, 12). Likewise he says: Death reigned from Adam unto Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of the transgression of Adam (Ibid., 14).

Man therefore, in sinning, subjected all his offspring to his sin, when by transgressing he lost true liberty: For by whom a man is overcome, to the same is he also bound as a slave (2 Pet. II, 19); and, Everyone that committeth sin is the servant of sin (John VIII, 34). 5. From this servitude, by which infants being born are held bound fast, one only, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, was begotten free; who, although He was born a true man, yet not with the intervening concupiscence of the flesh, nor from the intercourse of male and female, but born of the Holy Spirit, so received true flesh from the flesh of His mother, that God, being true, took not the guilt of human origin, but the nature;

and He received sins in His body not to commit them, but bore them to blot them out. For the authority of the apostolic preaching truly teaches that He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (1 Pet. II, 22); and, He Himself bore our sins in His body upon the tree, that, being separated from sins, we may live with justice (Ibid., 24). His mother alone, as she was a virgin before conception, so remained an inviolate virgin after childbirth: because she neither felt lust when she conceived God made man wondrously in her womb, nor any corruption while she brought forth, in the true flesh of our race, the Redeemer of the human race.

For the true God, receiving true flesh from the Virgin, took from her the perfection of a human body, yet took not from her the grace of her virginity. For it was not fitting that God, the Creator of human flesh, should grant the integrity of virginity in its condition, and that the same God, the assumer of human flesh, about to redeem what He had made, should take away virginity from the flesh of which He was being born. He is the second man from heaven (1 Cor. XV, 47), who is not said to be from heaven because He willed to bring down thence with Himself the substance of His body; but because He could have in Himself nothing of the form of a servant of earthly desire, which the God who created heaven and earth took up into the unity of His person. CHAPTER III.—6.

He did not therefore bring down a heavenly body to earth, but God raised up in Himself to heaven the true nature of an earthly body. Receiving this truth of an earthly body from the earthly body of His mother, He bore our sins in His flesh, since He had no fault either of origin or of work. For Isaiah says that He Himself bore our sins (Isa. LIII, 11). Therefore, that in men also, where sin abounded, grace might superabound, not only was that sin washed away by which the earthly man defiled the whole of his propagation; but by this grace also there is remitted to every believer whatever is found added to that original sin by the voluntary motions or works of men.

This indeed the blessed Apostle teaches, saying: For the judgment was from one unto condemnation, but grace was from many offences unto justification (Rom. V, 16). This is the grace of God which frees us through Jesus Christ our Lord, and the liberator Himself, intimating to us the work of His grace, speaks thus: If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed; and in another place: For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke XIX, 10). 7. This grace of God, by which we are saved, is given to no preceding good merit, yet is denied only to preceding evil merit. For the first man transmitted to all men the merits of his sin, whose flesh is conceived from the law of sin.

For this reason, although in little children there is no sin arising from their own will, there nonetheless dwells in the children of wrath, carnally begotten, the parental stain, which indeed does not disturb the well-ordered arrangement of the divine creation, yet by the blemish of the paternal transgression inflicts upon the newborn a hideous foulness. From that condemned mass, therefore, no one is distinguished by any foreknowledge of works to come, but is set apart by the resources and the work of the merciful potter. Thus the vessels of mercy, which from the same mass are made freely unto honour, are separated from the vessels of wrath, made unto dishonour, by the gift of a gratuitous justification. And to display

the grace which freely justifies sinners, the apostolic preaching calls them not vessels of righteousness, but vessels of mercy, as blessed Paul says: 'But if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, that he might show the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared unto glory' (Rom. 9:22-23). This mercy finds no one worthy, but finds all unworthy, and of these very ones makes worthy whom it wills. CHAPTER IV. — 8. Prevented by this mercy, Jacob was chosen before he was born, not according to the merit of any past or future human work of anyone, but according to the purpose of the God who predestines.

For the Apostle says that, while they were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calls, it was said to Rebecca: 'The elder shall serve the younger' (ibid., 11 and following). Therefore, that the younger brother should be preferred by God to the elder, there was neither any past merit of anyone nor of a future work, since from one lawful and righteous union the guilt of those conceived remained equal. Grace, then, wrought this out of the divine goodness: grace which was never so given as to find any good merits in a man, but so as to bestow those very merits upon those who did not have them.

For if, grace ceasing, the distinction of choosing the one and reprobating the other had been made in those little ones merely by the foreknowledge of human works, the Apostle would never have said: 'that it was said to him not of works, but of him that calls, that the elder shall serve the younger.' For without doubt the Apostle would have said 'of works,' if he had known there at least any good merits of future human works. But since he knew that in both of them there were present the merits of damnation alone, he attributed the cause of election to the purpose of the divine goodness alone.

Wherefore, of these two brothers—whom, conceived from one union of our father Isaac, the one first received in seed, the other first poured forth into the light of birth—the divine mercy alone set apart from the mass of damnation the one whom it willed: him whom the predestination of freely given gifts favoured, not the foreknowledge of merits to come. For thus the purpose of God according to election stood, so that the election should be gratuitous out of God's purpose. For the will of God is the cause of election, not election the cause of the will. And thus God was freely merciful toward the chosen one, in such a way that he was not unjust toward the rejected one. For the one he freely took up, the other he justly forsook. Indeed, 'all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth' (Ps. 24:10). 9.

The goodness, therefore, of the God who freely shows mercy, and the severity of him who justly judges, brought it about that neither should both receive the gratuitous gift of mercy, nor should both together be allotted destruction, although the cause of both was one in origin. For this reason also, through the prophet, before it was said, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,' the prophetic word made mention not of any past or future work, but only of their kinship of race; thus Malachi speaking: 'Was not Esau Jacob's brother? and Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated, says the Lord' (Mal. 1:2)?

Why then is here intimated not any diversity of works, but only the brotherhood of those being born, when rather both the good works of him who is loved and the evil works of him who is hated ought to have been recalled, so that neither in him who is loved might there be thought a respect of persons, nor in him who is reprobated an unjust condemnation? For brotherhood signifies in itself no diversity of works by which it might distinguish the one from the other by a comparison of merits.

For no other reason, therefore, without any mention of works, did God show that of two twin brothers he had loved the one and hated the other, except that we might recognize that, through the fellowship of conception and birth by which the brotherhood of both was established, each was bound by equal merit in that mass of damnation, from which merciful goodness so freely set apart the one, that just severity did not there unjustly abandon the other. But unjust would be the cause of the condemnation of any little child, if the mortal offspring had contracted no contagion of sin from the paternal root.

But the Scripture, divinely inspired, testifies that not only can no one of men be clean from defilement, even if his life upon the earth be but of one day (Job 14:4, according to the LXX); but that even the lawful and nuptial conception of the human race itself is not free from the guilt of iniquity. 10. Assuredly, let no one here think that any calumny is in any way to be raised against the truth. For we, following the doctrine of the holy Fathers, with God's help, say that the stain of original sin is in the conception of little children, not in the lawful marriage-bed, whose good we know to have been divinely instituted from the beginning of the human race.

For this reason also the apostolic teaching, without hesitation, commends marriage as honourable in all and the bed undefiled (Heb. 13:4). Therefore, although married persons, laudably endowed by God, possess offspring clean in faith and love, yet they bring forth children stained by the sin of the first man. Out of good marriage, then, it is so far a good thing that a man is born, that it is not evil even if he be born of adultery or fornication. For God has bestowed upon human nature the gift of fecundity; but the evil of lust is not the creature of God, but the penalty of sin. Accordingly, a man is not born clean out of the cleanness of marriage, because he is sown with lust intervening.

This lust indeed the honourableness of marriage by no means loves, but the necessity of mortal propagation tolerates it within marriage. It itself defiles those conceived, even though it cannot draw and hurl faithful parents into the effect of unlawful intercourse. For this reason holy David, born of a lawful and faithful union, not without grievous sorrow thus laments the stain of carnal generation: 'For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in offences (al. sins) did my mother nourish me in the womb' (Ps. 51:5). CHAPTER V. — 11. Since these things are so, it cannot be that anyone who is conceived in iniquities should be born without the bond of iniquity.

That Jacob might be absolved from this, Esau being reprobated, there were no merits of man, but the grace of the divine goodness. Both indeed were circumcised in the body with a visible circumcision, which was in earlier time divinely bestowed upon our fathers 'for a seal of the righteousness of faith' (Rom. 4:11). But the circumcision of the heart, which is in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God (Rom. 2:29), Jacob alone received, freely justified by God; Esau, however, although he too was circumcised in the flesh, was nevertheless not exempted by the gift of divine love and election from the mass of perdition. In him indeed the circumcision was carnal;

but it profited him nothing, because spiritual circumcision by no means delivered him from the prudence of the flesh, which is enmity against God (Rom. 8:7). In Esau, therefore, before the ages, God hated the wickedness of the earthly man that would abide, and justly appointed him to punishment. But in his brother he foreknew no good works that were to come from the man, in order to choose and love him; rather, before the ages he prepared for him the grace of justification, through which he might bestow on him not only the beginning of a good will, but also the effect of good work. Nor did he find good merits in him, but he set him free by the gratuitous benefit of mercy. For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.'

'Therefore it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy' (Rom. 9:15-16; Exod. 33:19). CHAPTER VI. — 12. Freely, therefore, God bestows his grace upon the one born, because he had freely prepared it for the one to be born. For whatever good the good have in will or work, God bestows, who also keeps guard over what he has bestowed. But upon the wicked and impious God could neither at any time prepare nor give evil works, by which they should damnably serve sin; nor did he implant in them evil wills, by which they should culpably will unjust things; but he prepared for them the punishment of eternal fire, that they might feel avenging justice in eternal burning. The evil will of men, therefore, is not from God;

and therefore the just judge punishes it in men, because the good Creator does not recognize in it the order of his own creation; and (al. but) the perseverance of iniquity and the obstinacy of a proud neck, since it is not had from the bounty of God, is on that account condemned by God the avenger. But to those whom God makes heirs of his kingdom, he freely prepares a good will, freely gives it, and to them also supplies perseverance. For freely he prepared the merits of gifts, mercifully to be bestowed, by which he might justly requite the gifts of merits. 13. Moreover, there is no doubt that a figure of two peoples went before in those two brothers: namely, of the one to be saved, and of the other to be damned.

Yet salvation was not so rendered to this people for works, as condemnation was requited to the other for works; but the one received the saving gift of grace which it did not merit, the other received according to merit the destruction of just condemnation. In the one, merits of damnation were found; to the other, merits of glorification were conferred by gratuitous justification. The one had in himself that whereby he might displease; the other, however, received from him whom he was to please that whereby he might please God. In all, therefore, who are handed over to the fire of hell, just severity finds an evil merit which it may punish—in some drawn from the origin, in some also added by the fault of their own will.

For with the exception of little children, in whom there cannot yet be a free choice of will for choosing righteousness and fleeing sin, because in their tender age reason lies dormant and drowsy, all the rest who can use reason, when the guilt of their own will is added, either do not come to the faith, or depart from the faith. But that anyone should be made righteous from being impious, a friend of God from being an enemy, absolved from being guilty—whatever age of body he may be passing through, from the very rising of his birth to decrepit old age—no one is found worthy of justification, but the unworthy is justified by gratuitous goodness;

nor is anyone snatched from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of God's love, save whom the Lord shall have deigned to prevent with the gratuitous gift of glory—he who freely saves and justly condemns. The merciful and just Lord justly punishes a depraved will which he does not mercifully correct, because he finds in it a depravity which he himself did not make. But a good will he himself freely prepares, freely gives, himself assists, himself brings to completion. CHAPTER VII. — 14. Let us therefore hold most certainly that all men, by themselves, can attain not only no perfection, but not even the beginning of righteousness;

but that all who become good are prevented by divine justification, and that, once a good will has been received, they may not fall away, progress and perseverance are granted them by the help of God; and that grace is given by no past or future merits of men, but by the gift and aid of grace itself all the good merits of men are both begun and perfected. But the wicked, who in their iniquity are left to the just judgment of God, even if they be said to lack the sin of original guilt through the reception of the sacrament, are yet, by the merit of subsequent, that is, of their own sins, rolled down to the torment of eternal fire.

For God, merciful and just, justly punishes the sins of human origin and will, whether in little children or in grown men, which he does not mercifully wash away: because he himself is the good and true God, who made man, but did not create sin in man; who in all men never finds good merits and works for which he might save them, but himself changes both their wills and their works in them, when he justifies them by gratuitous compassion. He, by the sure and unchangeable firmness of his foreknowledge, foreknew in the vessels of mercy nothing but the gift of his own grace, which he knew was to be bestowed by himself both in the merits of gifts and in the gifts of merits.

For he both gives to the human will a gratuitous goodness, and assists the good will in its works. He also foreknew in the vessels of wrath those works of human malice which without doubt were to follow in effect. 15. According, therefore, to the right faith and to manifest truth, as regards a little child who is taken from this life without the benefit of the second birth: just as it must be confessed that God foreknew the future death of the child, which was truly to come, so it is absurdly said that God foreknew the future sins of the child, which were not to come. For God, the founder of all things, would not have foreknown as to be done the things that were not to be done.

For we know that God's foreknowledge is so true and unchangeable that the things which he foreknows as future truly are future; nor does he foreknow anything as to be done which is not done according to his foreknowledge. But only the mutability of the creature receives future things in itself, which by no means falls into the unchangeableness of the Creator. Therefore to God nothing is past or future, to whom all things which he foreknows as to be done are so present, that after they have been done they cannot be past to him (al. to God): since just as he knows past things, so also he knows future things. For whatsoever things are changed with time and pass away (al. or), in his knowledge they abide without any transit or mutability of time.

But that God has the foreknowledge of things not that are not to be, but that are to be done, the book of the prophet Daniel testifies in these words: 'O God, who art the knower of hidden things, who knowest all things before they come to pass' (Dan. 13:42). God therefore knows in his prior knowledge of another that which is future, so that it may come to pass in deed. CHAPTER VIII. — 16. Absurdly, then, is it said that he foreknew that a little child, if he lived, would be impious, whom assuredly he foreknew would be no more than he lived: whom indeed he foreknew would not come to the age at which he might live impiously, because he truly knew that he was to be taken from the world in infant age.

And in whom no sinful age was foreknown, how could it come about that the iniquity of an age which was not to be should be foreknown, when the age of a reborn little child can be altogether without the act of sin, but the act of human sin cannot exist in any age whatever? For the works, whether good or evil, of a future age are not absurdly said to be foreknown; but the foreknowledge of any human work is absurdly asserted in an age in which the future man himself is shown not to exist. And as we rightly say that God foreknew only the beginnings of things to be conceived, so only the actual sins of men who are to live. Of those works, therefore, is God rightly said to be foreknowing, whose effect in consummation is not denied to follow. 17.

But whoever thinks God foreknowing of future works which nevertheless were not to be future, it remains for him to reckon—which be far from us—that there is some falsehood in the foreknowledge of God, which he assuredly does not deny to be true. For it is false that anything should be future which will not be present. But the knowledge of God can have nothing false in itself, because falsehood cannot be present in truth. The foreknowledge of truth, therefore, which does not receive falsehood in itself, just as it foreknows as to be done that which is to be done, so foreknows as not to be done that which is not to be done. God therefore foreknew no sins in a little child, which before the child died he did not commit. For if he had foreknown them as to be done, they would assuredly be done.

For he would not know as future the things which he did not foreknow as to be done. Accordingly, it must be confessed that, just as the little child died, so God foreknew that he would die. For God's foreknowledge is by no means deceived, because just as he foreknew that the world was to be made, and so made it as he foreknew it was to be made: as also in the world itself, the individual things which have been made, or are being made, or are to be made, so were they always to be made in God's foreknowledge just as they have followed in deed, or also are to follow. God, therefore, did not foreknow that anything was to be done by any man which the man was not going to do; just as nothing of the things which men have done, or do, or will at some time do, escaped his foreknowledge.

For the true God is rightly said to foreknow in the works of men those things which are begun in respect of things and persons and times. But where neither thing, nor person, nor time is shown, there is assuredly no work which may be asserted to be divinely foreknown. Now it does not accord with truth that anything should be said to be future in the foreknowledge of God which is so far proved to be nothing, that from being future it is by no means shown to become or to have been present: since indeed that very thing cannot at all have the name of 'future' which is not at some time to be reckoned by the appellation of 'present.' CHAPTER IX. — 18. From a little child, therefore, who did nothing, God foreknew that nothing was to be done.

But why he did not take away from him original sin, this indeed we cannot know; yet that he did this justly we ought by no means to doubt. For although the closed depth of the incomprehensible counsel of God is hidden from us—not only created out of nothing, but also bearing the stain of sin (which, in the sons of God living amid mortality, grace as it were repeatedly wipes away, so frequently does infirmity beget)—yet this is manifest to us, that in God there is no iniquity. For of him it is written: 'God is faithful, in whom there is no iniquity; the Lord God is just and holy' (Deut. 32:4); and in another place: 'The judgments of God are true, justified in themselves' (Ps. 19:9).

To the hidden profundity of these judgments (since 'the judgments of God are a great deep,' Ps. 36:6) we believe also the negligence of parents or of any men to pertain: just as also, for the little child who comes to baptism, we do not doubt that the care of the parents is to be referred to the gifts of divine grace. And if indeed the parents have not been endowed with piety and good conversation, God, who uses well even the evil wills of men, works the benefit of his grace in the little child through the solicitude of evil parents; but if the parents are good, not only does the good will of the parents profit the little child, but there accrues also to the parents themselves the merit of a future reward.

For God, who works both to will and to accomplish according to good will, himself bestows the grace of good will upon parents who believe in him, that they may bear pious solicitude for the little child, until he attains to the life-giving remedy of holy regeneration. Yet neither their running, nor even the pious solicitude of their good will, can suffice, unless God deigns to prevent him with the gratuitous gift of his compassion. Indeed the good will, which is inspired by the Lord in parents for the regeneration of the little child, urges them to run, so that the little child may attain to the ablution of the saving water.

Nevertheless the effect of that regeneration is not of any man that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy, who both stirs up the will of the parents and gives help to those who will. 19. That the little child, therefore, may be redeemed by the work of regeneration, the Redeemer works mercifully; he who both prepares the occasions, and supplies the wills, and grants the persons, and concedes the places. And he works this not in little children alone, but also in the grown. Finally, we read in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter

8:26) that an angel suddenly warned Philip, stationed in Samaria, to go down into the way that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza, where, to a eunuch passing by—who was not in any way seeking the benefit of regeneration—he not only preached the mystery of the Christian faith, but even delivered to him the sacrament of baptism. Behold how the Holy Spirit, preventing the eunuch by his grace, granted him the person of a truthful preacher. He also gave to Philip the opportunity of preaching, when he mercifully stirred up the eunuch's mind to read Isaiah. He also granted the place, who led them by gratuitous goodness to the pool.

He himself perfected in the eunuch the work of saving grace, by whose illumination that same eunuch believed Christ to be the Son of God, and, coming to the pool, asked for the effect of sacred washing, and departed not only baptized, but also filled with the Holy Spirit. 20. And who admonished Cornelius the centurion, sending an angel to summon the apostle Peter (Acts 10:5), but he who freely poured into the same centurion the gift of his fear and of good work? For that God might have remembrance of his prayers and his alms, he first remembered Cornelius himself—not in any good work of his, but in his own good pleasure—that he might pour into him the gift of his fear, whereby he might inspire in him both the zeal for almsgiving and the affection of holy prayer.

He therefore bestowed on him the grace of pleasing, who found in him that which pleased before himself. For he is the God of whom the Apostle says: 'Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, in the blood of the eternal testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, make you fit in every good thing, that you may do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight' (Heb. 13:20-21). And it was so far a matter of divine grace that Cornelius was admonished to summon Peter to himself, that even to Peter himself the Holy Spirit, when those whom Cornelius had sent came to him, not only commanded that he should go with them, but even, taking away the dread of all doubt, confirmed that they had been sent by him.

Finally, it was thus said to Peter by the Holy Spirit: 'Behold, three men seek you. Arise therefore, go down, and go with them, doubting nothing, for I have sent them' (Acts 10:19). We also read that the apostles, wishing to go into Bithynia and Asia, were forbidden by the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:7). And after the Lord had cast down Saul by his voice (Acts 9:4), he himself visited and sent Ananias to baptize him (ibid., 11). Paul also, writing to the Corinthians, plainly affirms that the holy solicitude by which Titus his disciple busied himself on their behalf was divinely inspired. For thus he says: 'But thanks be to God, who put the same solicitude for you into the heart of Titus' (2 Cor. 8:16). CHAPTER X. — 21.

Since, therefore, by the attestation of the holy Scriptures it is manifest that God—whose will no one resists, whose disposition no one changes, whose judgments no one comprehends—according to the abounding riches of his grace, which he has in goodness above all whom, making them out of the condemned mass vessels of mercy, he sets apart unto honour and glory, procures or denies also to men using reason persons suitable for salvation, holding in some, namely, justice, and bestowing on others mercy; why should we not, in the case of infants to be baptized, most certainly believe and freely proclaim that the diligence of parents pertains to the grace of the Redeemer, but their negligence to the justice of the judging God?

Not because the negligence of a good work is from God, from whom there could never be any cause of an evil work: but because a good will, which is bestowed by God, the more it advances in love, so much the greater solicitude does it bear for the salvation of any soul. But an evil will, which by its own desert either does not receive the grace of love or loses it, does not lay aside the torpor of its negligence, and while it is left in its own darkness, is more and more blinded. 22. When God therefore works mercifully in men, there are also provided the helps of persons and occasions, and the very means of the work is then found for baptizing the little child, when the Lord has determined in him the work of holy washing to be fulfilled.

For God, who cleanses the little child—who neither wills nor runs, who is ignorant of faith and unaware of his own salvation and benefit, in whom there can be no petition of regeneration, no confession of faith—by the gratuitous power of the sacrament; he himself, for the redemption of the little child, stirs up the minds of the parents, or the wills of any of the faithful, so that it may profit even to them who work out their salvation with fear and trembling, unto the reward of a good recompense, through whose pious care the infant is led to salvation. For if he shall not lose his reward who has given a cup of cold water to one of the least of Christ's disciples in his name (Matt.

10:42)—by which in man only the flesh is fed—how shall he not have a reward, who by pious solicitude runs and busies himself that the flesh and soul of the infant may be saved? CHAPTER XI. — 23. Wherefore this good will also must be believed to be divinely given to pious parents, whereby they do not neglect that the fruit of their flesh, which they know to have been carnally brought forth polluted with the contagion of original sin, should be cleansed by spiritual regeneration; and whereby they do not so much desire to have an heir temporally, as they desire and vigilantly endeavour that he be made a co-heir with themselves of Christ; and that the son whom they have of mortal seed, destined mortally to pass away, being reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, they may have as a perpetual brother under God the Father.

Nevertheless this laudable will God without doubt bestows on those parents into whom, through the Holy Spirit, he has poured the grace of holy love. They themselves also attain to eternal life, not because they beget in the body of this death sons who are to die, but because, living in the fear of God, they do not neglect to hasten with them to the benefit of the second birth, and, until it be completed in them by work, they travail with Christian love for those whom they have brought forth by human fecundity. Those also, once baptized, they do not allow to dissolve through disgraceful deeds and crimes; but they strive, according to the Apostle's precept, to nourish and bring them up 'in the discipline and correction of the Lord' (Eph. 6:4);

wishing them rather to be pleasing to God than to be rich or renowned in the world. 24. So manifest indeed is it that the grace of baptism ought to be brought promptly to children by their parents, that not only do good and careful believers habitually do this, but even those who do not belong to the number of the sons of God: those, namely, who, though they are reckoned by the name of the faithful, are convicted by their works of denying the faith, since they do the things that cannot accord with faith. For, to say nothing of others, do we not see certain low women hastening anxiously to carry to the grace of baptism their sons conceived not from wedlock but from fornication, and taking pains that none of those born of them carnally should be deprived of spiritual birth?

Thus, together with those whom for the most part they conceive and bear against their will, they run willingly and trembling to the Church; and while they neglect the sin of their fornication and so remain in their iniquities, they nevertheless long that their sons be loosed from the bonds of original sin. So God, being good, causes the pious will of good parents to profit unto the effect of grace, not only for the little ones but even for the parents themselves; while the anxiety of wicked parents He causes to profit toward the advantages of the children, upon whom He confers grace to serve as a soldier. For even those who by their evil works make void in themselves the benefit of baptism are not ignorant of what the grace of baptism confers:

and though in their flesh they yield to deadly lust, yet in the fruit of their flesh they rather yield to the acknowledged truth. 25. But if any Christian parents of little ones (which meanwhile, since it is far removed from religion, is hard to believe), forgetful of Christian charity and of their own salvation no less than of their children's, take no care for the regenerating of their little ones, let them hear the sentence upon this crime not from us but from the Apostle, and would that they might tremble as he says: 'But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel' (1 Tim. 5:8). But just as no one has it from God that he should deny the faith, so also no one is permitted to impute the negligence of any good work to the divine will.

But just as it belongs to the work of divine grace that parents bear pious solicitude for the regeneration of their children, so too it belongs to the divine judgment that God abandons evil wills, when parents so love the bodily welfare of their children that they neglect the wholeness of the souls within them; and they take care that the mortal should live, yet do not fear if their children perish under the guilt of everlasting damnation: wherein they contract the greatest fault, and become spiritually most cruel murderers of their own kin. For by the very torpor of their negligence they serve the profits of the devil, and, pleasing the most wicked enemy, they provoke the good King by their evil works. Therefore let us praise God, whose whole way is mercy and truth (Ps. 24[25]:10),

and as we ought humbly to praise Him when He grants grace, so no one can justly accuse Him when He denies it. For such is His goodness and justice, that by His unmerited compassion He can redeem whomsoever He will: 'for who resisteth His will?' (Rom. 9:19); yet He neither wills at any time, nor is able, unjustly to condemn anyone; because righteous is the Lord our God, and there is no iniquity in Him (Ps. 91[92]:16), and our iniquity commends the righteousness of God, nor is God unjust who inflicts wrath (Rom. 3:5). CHAP. 12. — 26.

Whoever, therefore, wishes to consider the wondrous and incomprehensible power of divine grace, let him rather consider, with a humble and pious heart, how it is that very often parents who are pious, faithful, tireless, and solicitous run swiftly with their little ones to baptism, and yet the little ones die without baptism in the very hands of the hastening parents. Let us therefore consider two little ones who have died without baptism: one whom the harmful carelessness of the parents neglected, the other for whom indeed the pious solicitude of the parents was not lacking, but who, snatched away by the swiftness of death, could not be profited;

who, that is, in the hands of those carrying him, by whom he was being borne to baptism, before he reached the benefit of the future life, met the setting of the present life, and lacked life before he lacked the stain; and was snatched to punishment before he could be led to grace. If of these two it is said that the negligence of the parents harmed him, let it be said why to the other the effect of salvation was denied, one whom neither the will of the parents nor their running could profit. Or is it also said that this one was provided for by God, so that he who was foreseen to become impious should be thought to have been aided by the benefit of a lamentable death? Who would say this? Or who does not see that such a death did not snatch the little one away to damnation, but to salvation?

for whom the damnation was assuredly not lightened, but the redemption was denied; nor was it provided that he should be tormented less, but he was snatched away lest he be delivered. Was not here also the pious will and running of the parents from God, but for this reason did not profit, because it was not from God that the little one should be baptized? He who, by a deep and just judgment, poured into them indeed a religious affection for their child, but did not will to bestow upon the little one the remedy of life. For into holy David also (2 Sam. 18:5) He Himself poured the gift of charity, so that he commanded his son Absalom to be spared, lest he die in his impiety; but it was not from God that the impious Absalom should be preserved for future repentance. The pious will of the holy man therefore displayed what it owed;

but the divine justice wrought what it knew ought to be. 27. If anyone also consider this with a pious mind, will he not, just as he is soothed by the sweetness of divine mercy, so be terrified by the depth of divine judgment? For sometimes a little one is even born to the faithful, and to them, as we have already said, who are solicitous with pious faith and charity for the redemption of their child, he dies before he is washed with sacred baptism.

But another, born of unbelievers, whose salvation the parents do not even lukewarmly desire but do not desire at all, that same little one, nevertheless, by the order of the heavenly dispensation, is either violently taken away from his parents, or perhaps stolen, and is led to holy baptism by the pious charity of some believers, and as soon as he has been baptized, departs from this life. If the original cause of these little ones be regarded, both are equally children of wrath, since both are held bound together by the one bond of original sin. But where the cause of the two is utterly equal, the merits surely cannot be pronounced unequal. There is therefore no diversity of cause in the infants that would make one chosen and the other rejected.

But if the will of the parents be considered: those who are Christians solicitously willed that their son be baptized, and most urgently ran; yet their son, forestalled by death before he was baptized, was assigned to eternal fires. But he who was born of unbelievers, led against the will of his parents to the grace of baptism, was made an heir of God and a joint-heir of Christ. What did God foresee to be future in these, that to the one the love of the parents could confer nothing, while to the other the cruelty of enemies profited much? Who can penetrate this depth of the judgments of God? Yet who does not here acknowledge both the mercy of gratuitous goodness and the justice of divine severity?

For where in the two little ones there are neither any merits in their acts, nor any dissimilar cause in their origin, it is indeed manifest to us that both were bound by the bonds of original sin, but hidden why both were not absolved. CHAP. 13. — 28. Let us therefore know that it is unsearchable to us why, with one left behind, God freely snatches the other from that mass of perdition. Yet most certainly we ought to know that the Lord, compassionate and merciful, patient and of great mercy, and true, so bestows mercy on the one whom He delivers, that in Him whom He condemns He in no way passes over justice and truth. The absolved therefore has received grace, which let him ever praise;

but the condemned finds justice, in which he has nothing to accuse, so that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world made subject to God (Rom. 3:19), when the one acknowledges in his goods the grace of God going before, while the other in his damnation finds not a false foreknowledge of future works which he was not going to do, but the true fault of the first parent. 29. Someone will say: Why did God not bestow gratuitous mercy on both, since one guilt bound them both? To whom, saving the incomprehensible height of the judgments of God, we answer: For this reason neither were both delivered nor both condemned;

because God, who can neither ever will evil nor be silent at it, commanded that from the one the debt be exacted by just severity, but ordered that to the other it be remitted by gratuitous goodness. For in two who are equally impious, of whom one is absolved and the other condemned, in the one absolved is recognized the gratuitous benignity of God, which can, without any merits of works, freely release every sin; but in him who is condemned appears the justice of God, to whom no sin can ever be pleasing. Therefore neither can the merciful absolution be culpable, nor the punishment unjust. Goodness, which is overcome by no malice, absolves the guilty; equity, which delights in no iniquities, punishes the guilty.

God therefore, when He saves men, bestows grace upon His own good works; and when He punishes sinners for their iniquities, He repays justice to human evil works: in the former restoring what they were made, but in the latter judging what they have done. For all have sinned and lack the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). Because even those who have not sinned by their own proper works draw original sin from the transgression of the first man. 30. But let us not esteem the secret of the divine will, by which He justifies one impious man and condemns another, to be unjust for the reason that it seems hidden to us; but rather let no one doubt that it is divine and just, for the reason that no man is able to investigate it.

Accordingly, simply showing forth the humility of our heart, let us sing mercy and judgment to the Lord with the prophet (Ps. 100[101]:1): tempering the intention of our scrutiny so far, that we do not wish to discuss what we are not able to comprehend. For holy Scripture admonishes us, saying: 'Seek not things too high for thee, and search not things too mighty for thee; but the things that the Lord hath commanded thee, think on them always, and in many of His works be not curious' (Ecclus. 3:22). For in truth the labor of superfluous scrutiny is expended in vain, where no abundance of discovery avails; and noxious curiosity slips forthwith into guilt, when human weakness does not measure its own limit.

Rather, in this most profound secret of the divine will, let us know that nothing else befits our salvation, than that with David each one of us should humbly say: 'Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me; it is strong, and I cannot attain to it' (Ps. 138[139]:6). With blessed Paul also let us join the effect of a religious cry, who says: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?' (Rom. 11:33-34). In which place blessed Paul fittingly, before he spoke of the incomprehensible judgments of God, set forth first the height of His wisdom and knowledge.

By which words indeed he stopped every voice of human rashness, complaining and to some degree striving against the just judgment of God. For it is certain that it pertains to the person and office of a judge, both that in examining a cause he should not neglect knowledge, and that in judging he should not forsake the right path of wisdom; lest at any time he be convicted, ignorant, of rashly bearing judgment against a truth unknown, or be caught suppressing a truth known through foolish perversity. God therefore is neither unknowing, so as to judge rashly; nor unwise, so as to condemn anyone unjustly; concerning whom the prophetic authority cries out: 'The Lord is just, and hath loved justice; His countenance hath beheld equity' (Ps. 10[11]:8). CHAP. 14. — 31.

Accordingly, in all His works God is worthy of eternal praise: because to all whom He calls according to His purpose and justifies, He freely remits their iniquity; but in all whom He appoints, He retains an irreprehensible equity. But the cause of the elder and of the little ones who, without baptism, complete the course of the present life in unbelief, is one, as far as concerns the communion of original sin; and from this both will go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels, because in them the handwriting, by which the wickedness of the deceiver has subjected them to himself, the grace of the Saviour has not blotted out.

But in this the cause of the elder is the worse, that, having received the faculty of using reason, they reject or neglect the saving remedy of regeneration, without which they will not only be unable to obtain the kingdom, but will even lie subject to graver punishments. For such men, despising the benignity of God, according to their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up to themselves wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works (Rom. 2:5-6): so that they burn in the eternal fires not only for original sin, in which even little ones dying without baptism, who have done nothing good or evil, are to burn;

but also on account of their own evil will they are tormented so much the worse, the more they add of their own iniquity. In that original sin indeed eternal death embraces both; but on these the penalty is heaped up on account of the malice of their wills and acts. For it is worse not to seek the benefit of redemption by an impious will, than to be unable to come to it wholly through the impediment of tender age; and he is more heavily pressed who adds his own burden to that taken from the first parents, than he who bears only another's. 32. But that those who are stripped of the burdens either of original or even of their own sins are anticipated by the grace of God, no Christian ought to doubt.

In the bounty of which grace certain men, having taken up a lesser consideration of things, err not lightly, thinking that it is given equally to all men: so that they even greatly diminish the benefits of that very grace, as they themselves do, while they do not believe that it is the work of that very grace in man, that grace should be received by man: which is given from God for no other purpose, than that it may first work good will in man; and that it may be so great in each one who receives, as God pours by His gratuitous compassion into the heart of the receiver. CHAP. 15. — 33. It is therefore fitting, dearest brethren, that in each and every opinion in which we are doubtful through the cloud of some obscurity, we cleave to the definitions of the holy Fathers;

whom the mercy of God, going before, freely illuminated that they might believe, and following, instructed spiritually that they might teach. For these, holding throughout the truth of apostolic preaching, most certainly knew, and left it to be known in their books and epistles, that the grace of God is not given generally to all men. For the grace of God is a gratuitous gift. Wherefore the Apostle says, that each one has his proper gift from God: one indeed thus, another thus (1 Cor. 7:7). This grace, which God freely gives to the vessels of mercy, begins from the illumination of the heart; and it does not find man's will good, but makes it so; and that it may be chosen, it first chooses;

nor is it received or loved, unless it itself work this in the heart of man. Therefore both the reception and the desire of grace is the work of grace itself. This grace no man will be able to desire, or to ask for, nor even to know, unless he first receive it from Him who bestows it by no preceding works or good wills, to this end, that it itself may prepare the will in which it may ever abide, itself give, itself illuminate, itself arouse, itself preserve, itself consummate. CHAP. 16. — 34. Therefore, that the grace of God may be known and loved, desired and sought, it is first given to man not knowing, not loving, not desiring, nor asking. It therefore itself makes itself to be known, loved, desired, asked for.

For when the Lord, as He speaks through the prophet Ezekiel, takes away the stony heart from men and gives them a heart of flesh (Ezek. 11:19), He surely changes man's will through the illumination of His grace. This is a change not of human free will, but of the right hand of the Most High (Ps. 76[77]:11); through which the sons of men, heavy of heart, who love vanity and seek after lying (Ps. 4:3), do not themselves bring good will to loving and seeking the truth, but receive from the Lord the gift of good will. For it is written, that the will is prepared by the Lord (Prov. 8:35, according to the LXX).

For from that true Light, which enlightens every man coming into this world, good will is given, that man may believe in God and faithfully love God, by whom that very will is continually governed and ruled, so that neither may the faith of man fail, nor may his charity grow cold. Whence the Saviour says to Peter: 'I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not' (Luke 22:32). And faith itself is that of the saints, which works through charity. Therefore just as no one can have the beginning of good will unless he has been illuminated by the prevenient mercy of God, because the will is prepared by the Lord, and again it is written: 'My God, His mercy shall go before me' (Ps. 58[59]:11):

so likewise no one will be able to retain that same good will unto the end, unless he has been continually preserved by the same following mercy. For blessed David says to God: 'Thy mercy shall follow me all the days of my life' (Ps. 22[23]:6). Mercy therefore, which freely goes before the evil man, that he may be changed for the better, itself also rules by following him whom it makes good, that he be not changed for the worse. 35. Every good, therefore, of will and of work can then be in man, if it be given by the bounty of prevenient grace, and be preserved by the aid of the same subsequent grace. Which goes before the evil, that he may begin to have, God bestowing, the good will which before he did not have, because he could not have it by himself:

and it follows the good, that he may persevere and advance in the good will, which he could not have from himself, but received by grace. It goes before therefore by directing the crooked heart of man, because it is written: 'The Lord directeth the hearts' (Prov. 21:2). And it follows by keeping guard over the one corrected, because likewise it is written: 'My just help is from the Lord, who saveth the upright of heart' (Ps. 7:11). Grace therefore works in both: namely, both in the one erring, that being corrected he may live, and in the one corrected, that being depraved he may not fall away. CHAP. 17. — 36. But that this grace is not given to all, and that to those to whom it is given it is not given equally to all, whoever piously seeks knows by the attestation of the holy oracles.

For what good can there be first in man, by which he may tend toward eternal life, than a good will? Concerning which, however, it is said in Proverbs: 'The will is prepared by the Lord' (Prov. 8:35, according to the LXX). The Lord therefore, who prepares good will in us, Himself gives us the beginning of good will. That God also works in us not only that we may will, but even that we may do what we rightly will, the Apostle teaches, saying: 'With fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in us both to will and to accomplish, according to good will' (Phil. 2:12-13). That the beginning of this good will consists in faith, the book of the Canticle of Canticles (chap. 4:8, according to