against the opinion of almost all preceding writers I persuaded myself that St. Prosper undertook to contend against the Pelagians or their remnants, and began to attack them by writing only when Augustine had already died. Who does not know that then, when especially in Gaul the enemies of divine grace and the detractors of Augustine were becoming ever more numerous, Prosper and Hilary, having set out for Rome to Pope Celestine, were to declare by firm and certain testimony of how much account St. Augustine's doctrine had always been at the Apostolic See? And that Celestine assented to their wishes, the celebrated letter of the year 430 to the bishops of Gaul declares, in which he not only writes:
'Augustine, a man of holy memory, we have always held in our communion on account of his life and merits, nor did even a rumor of unfavorable suspicion ever besprinkle him, whom we remember to have once been of such great learning that he was reckoned among the best masters even before, by my predecessors.' And to this letter we read appended the past authorities of the Apostolic See concerning the grace of God and the free choice of the will; so that from them the gainsayers might profess what they were to follow and approve, and might understand all those things which the most sacred See of Peter, the blessed apostle, has sanctioned and taught against the enemies of God's grace through the ministry of its prelates. But who was the compiler of these chapters we do not at present inquire.
The author, however, so opposes the more recent dogmatists that he shows more clearly than daylight in this matter that the Pelagian heresy was proscribed and judged by the Apostolic See, and that the African canons obtained only so much force as the Roman prelates granted them when they approved them. And since these words indeed press more grievously upon Quesnel and his other followers and vex them, we at once subjoin the following words: 'It was therefore necessary diligently to inquire what the rulers of the Roman Church judged concerning the heresy which had arisen in their times, and what they held ought to be thought concerning the grace of God against the most harmful defenders of free will;
so that we might also join to them certain sentences of the African councils, which the apostolic prelates everywhere made their own when they approved them.' Moreover, such a necessity of inquiring into and awaiting the judgment of the Apostolic See when heresies are at issue, Hincmar, bishop of the Church of Reims, confessed with full mouth in the ninth century of the Church against Gottschalk. He surely would not have appealed to the aforesaid words, nor have transferred them entire into his letter, if he had not held that opinion as valid. And the aforesaid Hincmar, together with Peter the deacon, Florus the master, Cresconius, Dionysius Exiguus, and Ivo, attributes the same chapters to Celestine, since they are held to be, as it were, a part and appendix of that letter. 5.
Since therefore these and many other things wandered through my mind, I steadfastly judged, against the opinion of all preceding writers, that none of the aforesaid little works was written by Prosper before Augustine departed from the life of men. Certainly the very vigilance of Prosper seemed sufficiently to admonish us of this one point—he who, in order to prepare a defense for Augustine now deceased, came to Rome to consult Pope Celestine concerning his doctrine. But if Prosper had already published or made public the aforesaid little works, he would have pleaded before the pontiff not Augustine's cause, but his own.
For Prosper has nothing, especially in that poem De Ingratis, which was not drawn from Augustine, or which had not been brought into dispute by the Massilians or Pelagians, or which finally does not appear defined in those ten chapters of the Apostolic See. For it is not probable that St. Prosper, in that fourfold poem De Ingratis, either wished to render the adversaries' objections, or dared, before the judgment of the Apostolic See, to cleanse Augustine's doctrine from every stain of suspicion. What then is to be asserted concerning those ten chapters of the Apostolic See? Perhaps St.
普洛斯佩爾能夠事先在心中留下同樣的想法，並將同樣的內容寫下來，早在他勤勉探究羅馬教會執政者對他們時代興起的伯拉糾派異端作了何等判斷之前？這虛構之說去吧！因此，倘若在這類寫作中類比論證有效，我必定會訴諸普洛斯佩爾所出版的《駁協作者》（adversus Collatorem）一書，凡讀過它的人自己都認得它是在奧古斯丁去世之後寫成的。而此書應當被定於與《論忘恩者》一詩幾乎同一時間，這一點已經援引與即將援引的論據何等清楚地顯明了。因此，至為顯赫的杜佩隆樞機（Cardinal du Perron），
Prosper could have imprinted the same things beforehand in his mind, and set forth the same in writing, before he diligently inquired what the rulers of the Roman Church had judged concerning the Pelagian heresy which had arisen in their times? Away with the fabrication! Wherefore, if in this kind of writing an argument from analogy availed, I would surely have recourse to the book against the Collator published by Prosper, which those who read it themselves recognize to have been written after Augustine's death. But that this is to be assigned to nearly one and the same time as the poem De Ingratis, the arguments already adduced and soon to be adduced make how clearly evident. The most eminent Cardinal du Perron, therefore,
who was well acquainted with the practice of the ancient Catholic poets, in much of their pious defense of writing, asserted that they often elsewhere in prose delivered the same things which elsewhere they had committed to verse—which the very case of St. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, of whom he was speaking, makes manifest. And we ourselves judge that this reasoning applies especially to Prosper's poem De Ingratis, since in it he wrote nothing which he did not also deliver in the authorities of the Apostolic See and in his other works composed in prose. And for the supreme authority of the Apostolic See those verses supply the strongest and most certain argument, in which he sings: 'The See of Rome of Peter first cut back the encroaching plague....'
'which See, made by pastoral honor the head to the world, whatever it does not possess by arms, it holds by religion.' And in the book against the Collator, describing the deeds more fully, he enumerates the judgments passed by the Roman pontiffs against the Pelagians, preserving the order of times, and taking his beginning from Pope Innocent, he brings them down even to Celestine, thus subjoining what bears upon our purpose: 'Through this man (namely Celestine), within Gaul, the license of evil-speaking was taken away from those very men who reprehend the writings of Augustine of holy memory, when the action of those consulting had been undertaken, and the piety of the books which displeased the erring had been praised,
what one ought to think concerning their authority, he made manifest by holy utterance, evidently declaring how greatly the novelty of that presumption displeased him, by which certain men dared insolently to rise up against the masters, and by undisciplined calumny to clamor against the preaching of truth.' But Augustine's wicked detractors he chastises in the third part of that poem De Ingratis, refuting the objections of those same Pelagians and Semipelagians, by which, crying out, they complained that every work of free will was taken away, and that neither was punishment due to vices, nor rewards to praiseworthy deeds.
然而，既然已極為清楚地顯明：奧古斯丁的詆毀者是在他死後才叫囂這些話的，我們便無需在這些事上再多耽擱，尤其有佛提烏在其《書庫》（Bibliotheca）第53卷、以及萊林的味增爵（Vincent of Lérins）在其駁斥異端之作的末章，為我們作證支持。
But since it has been made most clearly manifest that Augustine's detractors clamored these things after his death, there is no need for us to linger longer on these matters, especially with Photius supporting us in the Bibliotheca, codex 53, and Vincent of Lérins in his work against heresies, in the last chapter.