Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.1–1.18

I had indeed known of you through your most widespread fame, and had learned from very frequent and very truthful reports how full you are of the grace of God, most blessed and venerable Pope Boniface. But after my brother Alypius also saw you in bodily presence, and, received by you most kindly and most sincerely, exchanged conversations with you at the prompting of love, and, living with you, though only for a short time, and joined to you with great affection, poured out both himself and me into your mind and brought you back to me in his own, the knowledge of your holiness has become so much the greater in me as the friendship has become more certain. For you do not disdain, you who do not mind high things, although you preside more highly, to be a friend of the lowly and to repay the love spent on you. For what else is friendship, which took its name from nowhere but from love, and which is faithful nowhere but in Christ, in whom alone it can also be everlasting and happy? Therefore, having received through that brother, through whom I have come to know you more intimately, greater confidence, I have ventured to write something to your Blessedness about those matters which at this time stir up the episcopal care, if there is any in me, to watchfulness for the Lord's flock with a fresher goad.

For the new heretics, enemies of the grace of God which is given to small and great through Jesus Christ our Lord, although they are now shown more clearly to be avoided by a more open condemnation, still do not rest from assailing with their writings the hearts of the less cautious or the less learned. They would certainly have to be answered, so that they might not confirm themselves or their followers in that abominable error, even if we did not fear that they might deceive any Catholic by plausible speech. But since they do not cease to roar around the folds of the Lord's flock and to search out entrances from every side for plundering the sheep redeemed at so great a price, and since the pastoral watchtower is common to all of us who discharge the office of bishop (although you stand out in it on a loftier summit), I do what I can for my small part of the charge, as far as the Lord deigns to grant me with the help of your prayers, so as to set healing and protecting writings against their pestilent and insidious writings, by which the madness with which they rage may either itself be healed or be kept from harming others.

Now these answers which I give to two letters of theirs (namely to one which Julian is said to have sent to Rome, I suppose in order to find or make through it whatever followers he could, and to another which eighteen so-called bishops who share his error dared to write to Thessalonica, not to just anyone, but to the bishop of that very place, to tempt him with their cunning and to draw him over to their side if it could be done), these answers, I say, which in this disputation I give to those two letters of theirs, I have decided to direct above all to your Holiness, not so much to be learned as to be examined and, where perhaps something displeases you, to be corrected. For my brother told me that you yourself deigned to give him these letters, which could not have come into your hands except through the most watchful diligence of our brothers, your sons. And I give thanks for your most sincere goodwill toward me, in that you did not wish those letters of the enemies of the grace of God to be hidden from me, in which you found my name set down slanderously and plainly. But I hope in the Lord our God that it is not without the reward which is in heaven that they tear me with the tooth of reviling, those to whom I oppose myself on behalf of little children, so that they may not be abandoned, lost, to the deceitful flatterer Pelagius, but be offered to the truthful Savior Christ to be set free.

So now let us answer Julian's letter. "Those Manichees," he says, "with whom we are not now in communion, that is, all those with whom we disagree, say that by the sin of the first man, that is, of Adam, free choice perished, and that no one any longer has the power of living well, but that all are compelled into sin by the necessity of their flesh." He calls Catholics Manichees, in the manner of that Jovinian who a few years ago, as a new heretic, destroyed the virginity of holy Mary and made the marriages of the faithful equal to consecrated virginity. And he made this charge against Catholics for no other reason than that he wished them to appear as accusers or condemners of marriage.

But by defending free choice they cast it headlong, so that confidence may be placed in it rather than in the Lord's help for doing righteousness, and so that each may glory in himself and not in the Lord. But which of us says that by the sin of the first man free choice perished from the human race? Freedom indeed perished through sin, but that freedom which existed in paradise, of having full righteousness with immortality. For this reason human nature needs divine grace, as the Lord says: "If the Son sets you free, then you will be free indeed", free, of course, to live well and righteously. For free choice has so far from perished in the sinner that it is through it that all sin, above all those who sin with delight and love of sin and are pleased by what pleases them. Hence the apostle too says: "When you were slaves of sin, you were free of righteousness." See, they are shown to have been quite unable to serve even sin except by another freedom. So they are not free from righteousness except by the choice of the will, but they are not made free from sin except by the grace of the Savior. For this reason the admirable teacher distinguished even the words themselves: "For when you were slaves of sin," he says, "you were free of righteousness. What fruit then did you have in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and made slaves of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life." He called them "free" of righteousness, not "set free"; but from sin he did not say "free", lest they attribute this to themselves, but most watchfully preferred to say "set free", referring this to that saying of the Lord: "If the Son sets you free, then you will be free indeed." Since, then, the sons of men do not live well unless they have been made sons of God, why is it that this man wishes to attribute to free choice the power of living well, when this power is not given except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, as the gospel says: "But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God"?

But lest perhaps they say that they were helped to this end, that they might have power to become sons of God, but that, in order to deserve to receive this, they first received him by free choice, helped by no grace (for this is indeed the aim by which they strive to destroy grace, contending that it is given according to our merits), lest, then, they divide this gospel saying so as to place merit in the words "But as many as received him", and then grace not given freely but paid back to this merit in what follows, "he gave them power to become sons of God": if they are asked what "received him" means, will they say anything other than "believed in him"? So, that they may know that this too belongs to grace, let them read what the apostle says: "In nothing be terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a cause of perdition, but of your salvation, and that from God; for to you it has been given for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him" (he plainly said that both were given); and likewise what he says: "Peace to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Let them read also what the Lord himself says: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." And lest anyone think that "come to me" means something other than "believe in me", a little later, when he was speaking of his body and blood and very many were scandalized at his word, he said: "The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe." Then the evangelist added: "For Jesus knew from the beginning who were believers and who would betray him. And he said: That is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father." He repeated, that is, the saying in which he had said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." And he made plain that he had said this on account of believers and unbelievers, explaining what he had said, "unless the Father who sent me draws him", by repeating the very same thing in other words when he said, "unless it has been given him by my Father." For he is drawn to Christ to whom it is given to believe in Christ. The power, then, to become sons of God is given to those who believe in him, when this very thing is given, that they believe in him. And unless this power is given by God, there can be none from free choice, because it will not be free for good if the Liberator has not set it free; but it has free choice for evil, if a deceiver, hidden or open, has implanted in it the delight of wickedness, or it has persuaded itself.

So it is not the case, as some say that we say and as this man dares moreover to write, that all are compelled into sin as if unwilling by the necessity of their flesh; but if they are already of an age to use the choice of their own mind, they are both held in sin by their own will and cast headlong by their own will from sin into sin. For even he who persuades and deceives does not act in them except so that they commit sin by will, either through ignorance of the truth or through delight in iniquity, or through both evils, blindness and weakness. But this will, which is free in evil things because it delights in evil things, is therefore not free in good things, because it has not been set free. Nor can a man will anything good unless he is helped by him who cannot will evil, that is, by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord; for "whatever is not from faith is sin." And therefore the good will which withdraws itself from sin is a believing will, because "the righteous lives by faith"; and to believe in Christ belongs to faith, and no one can believe in him, that is, come to him, unless it has been given him. No one, therefore, can have a righteous will unless, with no merits preceding, he has received true grace, that is, free grace from above.

This these proud and haughty men do not want, not defenders of free choice by cleansing it but those who cast it headlong by exalting it, who are indignant with us for saying these things for no other reason than that they disdain to glory in the Lord. Pelagius, however, feared the Palestinian episcopal judgment and, when it was charged against him that he said that the grace of God is given according to our merits, he denied that he said so and condemned with anathema those who did say it. Yet in the books which he wrote afterward he is found to defend nothing else, thinking that he had deceived his human judges by lying, or by covering his meaning somehow with ambiguous words.

But now let us see what follows. "They say also," he says, "that these marriages which are now contracted were not instituted by God; this is read in the book of Augustine, to which I have just replied in four books. The enemies of our cause have taken up the sayings of this Augustine in hatred of the truth." To these most slanderous words of his I see that I must reply briefly, because he repeats them later, where he himself wishes to suggest what they say, as it were, against these views of ours. There, as far as the matter seems to require, I must contend with him with the Lord's help. For now, then, I answer that marriage was instituted by God both then, when it was said, "Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and will cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh", and now, because it is written: "By the Lord a woman is joined to a man." For nothing else happens even now than that a man cleaves to his wife and the two are in one flesh. For it was about these very marriages which take place now that the Lord was consulted by the Jews, whether it was lawful to put away a wife for any cause, and, having quoted this testimony of the law, he added: "What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate." The apostle Paul also used this testimony of the law when he admonished husbands to love their wives. Far be it, then, that this man has read anything in my book against these divine testimonies; but either by not understanding or rather by slandering he tries to twist what he read into another sense. As for my book, to which he mentions that he replied in four books, I wrote it after the condemnation of Pelagius and Caelestius. I thought this should be said because he says that my words were taken up by his enemies in hatred of the truth, so that no one may suppose that it was because of this book of mine that the enemies of the grace of Christ were condemned as new heretics. And in that book there is a defense of marriage rather than a censure of it.

"They say also," he says, "that the movement of the genitals and the union of spouses were devised by the devil, and that for this reason those who are born innocent are guilty and are made by the devil, not by God, because they are born from this diabolical union. This is Manichaean beyond any ambiguity." On the contrary, as we say that marriage was instituted by God for the orderly begetting of children, so we say that the sowing of children to be begotten could not have taken place without the movement of the genitals and without the union of spouses, even in paradise, if children had been begotten there. But whether such movement and union would have been as it now is, with shameful lust, if no one had sinned, that is a question about which we shall dispute more carefully later, if God wills.

Yet what these men want, what they aim at, where they are trying to bring the matter, his following words make plain, where he says that we say: "for this reason those who are born innocent are guilty and are made by the devil, not by God, because they are born from this diabolical union." Since, then, we neither call the union of spouses diabolical, especially of believing spouses, which comes about for the sake of begetting children who are afterward to be regenerated, nor say that any human beings are made by the devil, but by God, in so far as they are human beings; and yet we say that even from believing spouses guilty ones are born, like a wild olive from an olive, because of original sin, and for this reason are under the devil unless they are reborn in Christ, since the devil is the author of guilt, not of nature; while they, on the other hand, saying that little children contract no original sin and therefore are not under the devil, what are they laboring to bring about, except that that grace of God should be made void in little children by which he "rescued us", as the apostle says, "from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love"? For they deny that little children are in the power of darkness even before the help of the Lord the Liberator, praising the work of the Creator in them in such a way as to destroy the mercy of the Redeemer. And because we confess this mercy both in adults and in little children, he says that this is Manichaean beyond any ambiguity, when it is most ancient Catholic teaching, by which this new heretical dogma of theirs is overthrown.

"They say," he says, "that the saints in the Old Testament were not without sins, that is, that they were not free from crimes even through amendment, but were overtaken by death in their guilt." On the contrary, we say that, whether before the law or in the time of the Old Testament, they were set free from sins, not by their own strength, for "cursed is everyone who places his hope in man" (and without doubt those whom the divine psalm marks out, "who trust in their own strength", are under this curse); nor by the Old Testament, which "bears children for slavery", although it was given by God for the sake of a definite dispensation; nor by the law itself, holy and just and good, in which is written "You shall not covet", since the law was not given "which could give life" but "was added because of transgression, until the offspring should come to whom the promise was made"; but that they were set free by the blood of the Redeemer himself, who is the "one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus". But these enemies of the grace of God, which is given to small and great through Jesus Christ our Lord, say that the ancient men of God were of perfect righteousness for this reason: so that they may not be believed to have needed the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ, by faith in whom they were saved.

"They say also," he says, "that the apostle Paul, or all the apostles, were always polluted by immoderate lust." Who, even a profane person, would dare to say this? But no doubt he slanders in this way because they contend that what the apostle said, "I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find", and other such things, he did not say of himself, but brought in the person of someone else, who suffered these things. For this reason the passage itself in his letter must be carefully considered and examined, lest the error of these men lurk in some obscurity of it. Although, then, the apostle argues more broadly here, defending grace in a great and long conflict against those who gloried in the law, we touch on a few points relevant to the matter. So he says: "For no flesh will be justified by the law before him; for through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested without the law, witnessed by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; for all have sinned and lack the glory of God, justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." And again: "Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law." And again: "For the promise to Abraham or to his offspring, that he would be heir of the world, was not through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is emptied and the promise made void. For the law works wrath; for where there is no law, there is no transgression either." And in another place: "But the law came in, that the offense might abound; but where the offense abounded, grace superabounded." Likewise in another place: "For sin will not have dominion over you; for you are not under law but under grace." And likewise in another place: "Or do you not know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long as he lives? For the woman under a husband is bound by the law to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband." And a little later: "Therefore, my brothers, you too have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, who rose from the dead, that we may bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which are through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death; but now we have been released from the law of death in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the letter." By these and similar testimonies that teacher of the Gentiles shows clearly enough that the law could not take away sin but rather increased it, which grace takes away, since the law knows how to command, to which weakness succumbs, grace how to help, by which love is poured in. For lest anyone, because of these testimonies, find fault with the law and contend that it is evil, the apostle saw what might occur to those who understand badly, and put the same question to himself: "What then shall we say?" he says. "Is the law sin? Far from it. But I did not know sin except through the law." He had already said this above: "Through the law comes knowledge of sin"; not, then, the removal, but the knowledge.

From here, however, he now begins (and this is why we have undertaken to consider these things) to introduce his own person and to speak as if about himself. Here the Pelagians do not want the apostle himself to be understood, but hold that he transferred to himself another, that is, a man still placed under the law, not yet set free by grace. Here indeed they ought already to grant that no one is justified in the law, as the same apostle says elsewhere, but that the law serves for the knowledge of sin and for the transgression of the law itself, so that, sin being known and increased, grace may be sought through faith. They are not afraid, however, that these things should be understood of the apostle, since he could say them also of his past; but they fear the things that follow. For here he says: "I would not have known concupiscence if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, taking occasion through the commandment, worked in me all concupiscence; for without the law sin is dead. I, however, was alive once without the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was for life, was found to be for death to me. For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. So the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Did what is good, then, become death to me? Far from it! But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death for me through what is good, so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment." All these things, as I said, the apostle may be seen to have recalled from his past life, so that by the words "I, however, was alive once without the law" he meant his earliest age from infancy before the years of reason to be understood, and by adding "But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died" he would show himself as then capable of receiving the command, but not of carrying it out, and therefore a transgressor of the law.

Nor should it trouble us that he wrote to the Philippians that "as to the righteousness which is in the law" he was "without complaint". For he could have been inwardly, in depraved affections, a transgressor of the law, and yet fulfill the visible works of the law, either from fear of men or of God himself, but from dread of punishment, not from love of and delight in righteousness. For it is one thing to do good by the will to do good, and another to be so inclined by the will to do evil that one would even do it if it could be permitted with impunity. For in this way a man certainly sins inwardly in the will itself who refrains from sin not by will but by fear. Knowing that he had been such in his inner self before the grace of God, which is given through Jesus Christ our Lord, the apostle confesses this most openly elsewhere. For writing to the Ephesians he says: "And you, when you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit who now works in the sons of unbelief, among whom we all also once lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the affections, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest; but God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved." Again to Titus: "For we too," he says, "were once foolish and unbelieving, going astray, serving various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, abominable, hating one another." Such was Saul when he says that he was without complaint as to the righteousness which is in the law. For that he had not advanced in the law after this abominable life, so as to be without complaint, and changed his ways, he shows plainly in what follows, since he does not say that he was changed from these evils except by the grace of the Savior; for, adding this very thing here too, as to the Ephesians, he says: "But when the kindness and humanity of God our Savior shone forth, not from works of righteousness which we did, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out most richly upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

And what he says in this place of the letter to the Romans, "But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death for me through what is good", agrees with what he said above: "But I did not know sin except through the law; for I would not have known concupiscence if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet'", and further above: "Through the law comes knowledge of sin." For he said this here too: "that it might appear sin", so that we should understand his earlier words, "For without the law sin is dead", only in this sense: that it lies hidden as if it did not exist, does not appear, is wholly unknown, as though buried in some darkness of ignorance. And when he says, "I, however, was alive once without the law", what does he say but "I seemed to myself to be alive"? And when he adds, "But when the commandment came, sin revived", what else is this than "it stood out and appeared"? Yet he did not say "lived" but "revived". For it had once lived in paradise, when what was committed against the command given was plainly apparent; but when it is contracted by those who are born, it lies hidden as if dead, until its evil, resisting righteousness, is felt through its prohibition, when one thing is commanded and approved, another delights and dominates. Then sin in a manner revives in the knowledge of the man who is born, which had once already lived in the knowledge of the man first made.

But what follows is not so easily understood of Paul. "For we know," he says, "that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal." He does not say "I was", but "I am". Was the apostle, then, carnal when he wrote this? Or does he say it with respect to the body? For he was still in the body of this death, what he says elsewhere not yet having come about: "It is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body." For then a man will be spiritual wholly, that is, in both parts of which he consists, when the body too is spiritual. Nor is it absurd that in that life even the flesh should be spiritual, if in this life, in those who still mind carnal things, even the spirit itself could be carnal. So he said "But I am carnal" for this reason, that the apostle did not yet have a spiritual body, just as he could say "But I am mortal", which would certainly be understood to have been said only with respect to the body, which had not yet been clothed with immortality. Likewise what he added, "sold under sin": lest anyone suppose that he had not yet been redeemed by the blood of Christ, this too can be understood according to what he says: "And we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body." For if he says he is sold under sin in this respect, that his body has not yet been redeemed from corruption, or that he was once sold in the first transgression of the command, so as to have a corruptible body which weighs down the soul, what prevents the apostle from being understood here to speak of himself, since he speaks in such a way that it can be understood of himself as well, even if in his own person he wishes not himself alone to be understood, but all who know that they are in conflict, with spiritual love, against the affection of the flesh, without consenting to it?

Or are we perhaps afraid of what follows: "For what I work, I do not know; for I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do", lest anyone from these words suspect that the holy apostle consents to the concupiscence of the flesh for evil works? But we must consider what he adds: "But if I do what I do not will, I consent to the law that it is good." For he says that he consents to the law rather than to the concupiscence of the flesh (for this he calls by the name of sin). So he said that he does and works, not with the affection of consenting and fulfilling, but by the very movement of desiring. From this, then, he says, "I consent to the law that it is good": I consent, because I do not will what it does not will. Then he says: "But now it is no longer I who work it, but the sin that dwells in me." What is "but now" except "now at last under grace", which has freed the delight of the will from consent to cupidity? For "it is not I who work it" is best understood only as meaning that he does not consent to present his members to sin as weapons of iniquity. For if he both desires and consents and acts, how is it not he himself who works it, even if he grieves that he works it and groans deeply at being overcome?