Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.17–4.27

As to their refusing, by the praise of the saints, to let us hunger and thirst for righteousness with the disposition of that tax collector, and wanting us instead to belch, as if sated and full, with the vanity of that Pharisee: what does it profit them that, against the Manichees, who destroy baptism, they say that men are perfectly renewed by baptism, and cite for this the testimony of the apostle, who testifies that the church from the Gentiles is made holy and spotless through the washing of water, when with a proud and perverse mind they put forth their disputations against the prayers of the church itself? For they say this so that it may be believed that the church, after holy baptism, in which the forgiveness of all sins takes place, no longer has sin; whereas against them, from the rising of the sun to its setting, it cries to God with all its members: "Forgive us our debts." What of the fact that, if they are asked about themselves in this matter, they cannot find what to answer? For if they say they have no sin, John answers them that they deceive themselves and the truth is not in them; but if they confess their sins, since they wish to be members of the body of Christ, how will that body, that is, the church, be perfectly, as they think, without spot or wrinkle already at this time, when its members confess, not falsely, that they have sins? Therefore both are true: in baptism all sins are forgiven, and through that very washing of water in the word the church is presented to Christ without spot or wrinkle; for unless it were baptized, it would say fruitlessly "Forgive us our debts", until it is brought to glory, where more perfectly there will be no spot or wrinkle in it.

And it must be confessed that the Holy Spirit, even in ancient times, not only helped good minds, which these men too grant, but also made them good, which they do not grant. That all the prophets and apostles or saints, both those of the gospel and the ancient ones, to whom God bears witness, were righteous not in comparison with criminals but by the rule of virtues, there is also no doubt. This is opposed to the Manichees, who blaspheme the patriarchs and prophets; but what is opposed also to the Pelagians is that all of them, asked about themselves while they lived in this body, would answer with one most harmonious voice: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." And in the time to come it is not to be denied that there is a reward both of good works and of evil, and that no one is commanded to fulfill there the commandments which he despised here; but the fullness of complete righteousness, where there can be no sin, for which the saints hunger and thirst here, is hoped for here in the commandment and received there in the reward, alms and prayers obtaining that whatever of the commandments has been less fulfilled here may go unpunished through the forgiveness of sins.

Since this is so, let the Pelagians stop pretending, by their most insidious praises of these five things, that is, the praise of the creature, the praise of marriage, the praise of the law, the praise of free choice, and the praise of the saints, that they wish to rescue people from the snares of the Manichees, so that they may entangle them in their own nets: that is, so that they may deny original sin and begrudge little children the help of Christ the physician; and say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, and so grace is no longer grace; and say that the saints in this life did not have sin, and so the prayer be made void which he taught the saints who had no sin, and through whom every sin is forgiven to the saints when they pray. To these three evils they seduce incautious and unlearned people by the fraudulent praise of those five goods. On all these I think I have sufficiently answered their most cruel, most impious, and most proud vanity.

But since they say that their enemies have taken up our words in hatred of the truth, and that throughout the whole West a dogma no less foolish than impious has been taken up, and they complain that a signature was extorted from simple bishops, sitting in their own places without the gathering of a synod, to confirm it, when rather the church of Christ, both Western and Eastern, has shuddered at their profane novelties of words, I think it belongs to my care not only to bring the holy canonical Scriptures as witnesses against them, which we have already done sufficiently, but also to bring forward some proofs from the writings of the saints who treated those Scriptures before us with most widespread fame and great glory: not that the authority of any disputant is made equal by us to the canonical books, as though there were nothing at all which one Catholic may think better or more truly than another Catholic likewise; but so that those who think these men are saying something may be reminded how, on these matters, before the new empty talk of these men, the Catholic bishops followed the divine oracles; and may know that the right Catholic faith, founded from ancient times, is being defended by us against the recent presumption and ruin of the Pelagian heretics.

The most blessed Cyprian, most glorious also with the crown of martyrdom, most well known not only to the African and Western churches but also to the Eastern, through his fame proclaiming him and his writings spreading far and wide, even Pelagius, the heresiarch of these men, mentions with certainly due honor, where, writing a book of Testimonies, he asserts that he is imitating him, saying that he is doing for Romanus what Cyprian did for Quirinus. Let us see, then, what Cyprian thought about original sin, which entered into the world through one man. In his letter On Works and Alms he speaks thus: "When the Lord at his coming had healed those wounds which Adam had borne and cured the ancient poisons of the serpent, he gave a law to the healed man and commanded him to sin no more, lest something worse befall him if he sinned. We were confined and shut into a narrow place by the requirement of innocence. Nor would the weakness and feebleness of human frailty have anything to do, unless the divine goodness, coming to our help again by showing works of righteousness and mercy, had opened a certain way of guarding salvation, so that by alms we may wash away whatever stains we afterward contract." By this testimony this witness refutes two falsehoods of theirs: one, by which they say that the human race contracts no faults from Adam which need to be cured and healed through Christ; the other, by which they say that the saints have no sin after baptism. Again in the same letter he says: "Let each one set before his eyes the devil with his servants, that is, with the people of perdition and death, leaping forth into the midst and challenging the people of Christ, in the presence of Christ himself as judge, to a trial of comparison, saying: 'For these whom you see with me I received no blows, I endured no scourges, I bore no cross, I shed no blood, I did not redeem my household with the price of passion and blood; but neither do I promise them a heavenly kingdom, nor do I call them back again to paradise with immortality restored.'" Let the Pelagians answer: when were we in the immortality of paradise, and how were we expelled from there, so that we are called back there by the grace of Christ? And when they cannot find what to answer here in favor of their perversity, let them pay attention to how Cyprian understood what the apostle says, "in whom all sinned"; and let the Pelagians, new heretics, not dare to bring against any Catholic the slander of the Manichees, old heretics, lest they be convicted of doing so wicked a wrong to the ancient martyr Cyprian too.

For he says this also in the letter entitled On Mortality, thus: "The kingdom of God, dearest brothers, has begun to be near; the reward of life and the joy of eternal salvation and perpetual gladness and the possession of paradise, lately lost, are now coming as the world passes away." This again in the same: "Let us embrace," he says, "the day which assigns each of us to his own dwelling, which, rescuing us from here and releasing us from the snares of the world, restores us to paradise and the kingdom." Likewise in the letter On Patience: "Let the sentence of God be considered," he says, "which at the very beginning of the world and of the human race Adam, forgetful of the command and transgressor of the law given, received. Then we shall know how patient we ought to be in this world, we who are so born that we toil here with afflictions and conflicts. 'Because you listened,' he says, 'to the voice of your wife and ate from that tree, of which alone I had commanded you not to eat, cursed will be the ground in all your works. In sorrow and groaning you will eat from it all the days of your life; it will bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the fodder of the field. In the sweat of your face you will eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken; for you are earth, and to earth you will go.' By the bond of this sentence we are all bound and tied, until, death being accomplished, we depart from this world." And likewise in the same: "For since," he says, "in that first transgression of the command, strength of body departed together with immortality, and weakness came with death, and strength cannot be regained unless immortality too has been regained, we must always wrestle and contend in this frailty and weakness of the body. And this wrestling and contest cannot be sustained except by the strength of patience."

In the letter, moreover, which he wrote with sixty-six of his fellow bishops to Bishop Fidus, by whom he had been consulted, because of the law of circumcision, whether it was lawful to baptize an infant before the eighth day, this case is treated in such a way as if the Catholic Church, by divine foresight, were already refuting the Pelagian heretics who were to come so long after. For the one who had consulted was not in doubt on this point, whether those who are born contract original sin, to be washed away by being reborn (far be it that the Christian faith should ever have doubted this); but he was in doubt whether the washing of regeneration, by which he did not doubt that original sin was to be loosed, should be given before the eighth day. Answering this consultation, the most blessed Cyprian says: "But as to the case of infants, who you said ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after they are born, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be considered, so that you did not think one who is born should be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, it seemed far otherwise to our whole council. For in what you thought should be done, no one agreed; but we all judged rather that the grace of the merciful God should be denied to no human being who is born. For since the Lord says in his gospel, 'The Son of Man did not come to destroy souls but to save them', as far as lies in us, if it can be, no soul is to be lost." And a little later: "Nor ought any of us," he says, "to shudder at what the Lord has deigned to make. For although the infant is still newly born, yet it is not such that anyone ought to shudder at kissing it in giving grace and in making peace, since in kissing an infant each of us ought, for his own religion, to think of the very hands of God still fresh, which in a man just formed and newly born we in a manner kiss, when we kiss what God has made." Likewise a little later: "Moreover, if anything could hinder men from obtaining grace," he says, "graver sins could rather hinder adults and those advanced and older in years. But further, if even to the gravest offenders, who have sinned much before against God, when they afterward believe, forgiveness of sins is granted, and no one is kept from baptism and grace, how much more ought an infant not to be kept from it, who, newly born, has not sinned at all, except that, born carnally according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death by his first birth; who comes the more easily to receive forgiveness of sins for this very reason, that not his own but another's sins are forgiven him!"

What will those who are not only deserters but also persecutors of the grace of God say to this? What will they say to this? In what way is the possession of paradise given back to us? How are we restored to paradise, if we were never there? Or how were we there, except that we were in Adam? And how do we come under the sentence pronounced against the transgressor, if we do not contract guilt from the transgressor? Finally, he judges that infants are to be baptized even before the eighth day, lest, through the contagion of the ancient death contracted by their first birth, the souls of little children should perish. How do they perish, if those who are born, even of believers, are not held by the devil until they are reborn in Christ and, rescued from the power of darkness, are transferred into his kingdom? And who says that the souls of those who are born will perish unless they are reborn? Surely he who so praises the Creator and the creature, the maker and the work, that he checks and corrects the recoil of human feeling, by which men disdain to kiss little children fresh from the womb, by interposing reverence for the Creator himself, saying that in the kiss of that age one should think of the fresh hands of God. Did he, then, by confessing original sin, condemn either nature or marriage? Did he, because he applied the cleansing of regeneration to the one born guilty from Adam, therefore deny that God is the maker of those who are born? Did he, because, fearing that souls of any age might perish, he judged with the council of his colleagues that they are to be set free by the sacrament of baptism even before the eighth day, therefore accuse marriage, when in the infant, whether born of marriage or of adultery, yet because a human being is born, he showed the fresh hands of God worthy even of the kiss of peace? If, then, the holy bishop and most glorious martyr Cyprian could judge that original sin in infants is to be healed by the medicine of Christ, with the praise of the creature kept safe and the praise of marriage kept safe, why does this novel pestilence, though it does not dare to call him a Manichee, think it must charge Catholics who defend these things with another's crime, in order to cover its own? See, a most celebrated interpreter of the divine oracles, before even the faintest odor of the Manichaean pestilence had touched our lands, without any censure of the divine work or of marriage, confesses original sin: not saying that Christ was sprinkled with any stain of sin, yet not comparing to him the flesh of sin in the others who are born, to whom through the likeness of the flesh of sin he gives the help of cleansing; nor is he frightened by the obscure question of the origin of souls from confessing that those who are set free by the grace of Christ return to paradise. Does he say that the condition of death passed from Adam to men without the contagion of sin? For he says that little children, however fresh from the womb, are helped through baptism not in order to avoid the death of the body, but because of sin, which entered into the world through one man.

Now how Cyprian proclaims the grace of God against these men appears plainly where he discusses the Lord's Prayer. For he says: "We say, 'Hallowed be your name', not that we wish for God that he be hallowed by our prayers, but that we ask of God that his name be hallowed in us. For by whom is God hallowed, who himself hallows? But because he himself said, 'Be holy, for I too am holy', we ask and beg this: that we who have been hallowed in baptism may persevere in what we have begun to be." And in another place in the same letter he says: "We add also and say, 'Your will be done in heaven and on earth', not that God may do what he wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills. For who resists God, so that he does not do what he wills? But because we are resisted by the devil, so that our mind and action may not obey God in all things, we pray and ask that the will of God be done in us. And for it to be done in us there is need of God's will, that is, of his help and protection; because no one is strong by his own powers, but he is safe by the indulgence and mercy of God." Likewise elsewhere: "We ask," he says, "that the will of God be done in heaven and on earth, and both belong to the completion of our safety and salvation. For since we possess the body from earth and the spirit from heaven, we ourselves are earth and heaven, and in both, that is, in body and spirit, we pray that God's will be done. For there is a struggle between flesh and spirit, and a daily conflict as they disagree with each other, so that we do not do the very things we will, while the spirit seeks heavenly and divine things, the flesh desires earthly and worldly things. And therefore we ask that between these two, by the help and aid of God, concord may come about, so that, while the will of God is carried out both in the spirit and in the flesh, the soul which has been reborn through him may be preserved. This the apostle Paul openly and plainly declares in his own words: 'The flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do the very things you will.'" And a little later: "It can also be understood in this way, dearest brothers," he says: "since the Lord commands and teaches us to love even our enemies and to pray also for those who persecute us, we ask also for those who are still earth and have not yet begun to be heavenly, that concerning them too the will of God may be done, which Christ accomplished by preserving and restoring man." And likewise elsewhere: "We ask that this bread be given to us daily," he says, "lest we who are in Christ and receive the Eucharist daily as the food of salvation, if some graver offense intervenes and we are kept from communion and, not communicating, are barred from the heavenly bread, be separated from the body of Christ." And some way further on in the same: "But when we ask," he says, "that we may not come into temptation, we are reminded of our weakness, while we ask thus, so that no one may insolently exalt himself, no one proudly and arrogantly take anything to himself, no one count as his own the glory either of confession or of suffering; since the Lord himself, teaching humility, said, 'Watch and pray, that you may not come into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak'; so that, when a humble and submissive confession goes before and all is given to God, whatever is asked suppliantly with fear and honor of God may be granted by his goodness." Likewise in To Quirinus, the work in which Pelagius wants to seem his imitator, he says in the third book: "We must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours." Adding the divine testimonies to this heading, among others he put that apostolic one by which the mouths of these men above all must be shut: "For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?" Likewise in the letter On Patience: "For this virtue," he says, "we have in common with God; from there patience begins, from there its splendor and dignity take their source; the origin and greatness of patience proceed from God as its author."

Does this holy and so memorable instructor of the churches in the word of truth deny that there is free choice in human beings, because he attributes to God all that we live rightly? Does he find fault with the law of God, because he indicates that man is not justified by it, since he declares that what it commands must be obtained from the Lord God by prayers? Does he assert fate under the name of grace, although he says that we must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours? Does he, like these men, believe the Holy Spirit to be a helper of virtue in such a way as if virtue itself, which is helped by him, arose from us, when, asserting that nothing is ours, he recalls that the apostle said for this reason, "For what do you have that you did not receive?"; and says that the most excellent virtue, that is, patience, does not begin from us and then is helped by the Spirit of God, but takes its source from him, its origin from him? Finally, he confesses that neither a good purpose nor zeal for virtue nor good minds begin to exist in human beings without the grace of God, when he says that we must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours. What is so placed in free choice as what the law says: that an idol is not to be worshiped, adultery not committed, murder not perpetrated? But these and similar things are crimes, and if anyone commits them he is removed from the communion of the body of Christ. And yet, if the most blessed Cyprian thought that our will suffices for not committing these, he would not so understand what we say in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread", as to declare that we ask this lest, some graver offense intervening, while we are kept from communion and, not communicating, are barred from the heavenly bread, we be separated from the body of Christ. Let the new heretics answer, surely: what good merits go before in men who are enemies of the Christian name? For not only do they not have good merit, but they have even the worst merit. And yet Cyprian understands what we say in the prayer, "Your will be done in heaven and on earth", in such a way that we pray even for them, who for this reason are understood as "earth". We pray, then, not only for the unwilling but also for those who resist and attack. What, then, do we ask but that from unwilling they become willing, from resisting consenting, from attacking loving? From whom but from him of whom it is written, "The will is prepared by the Lord"? Let those who disdain it learn to be Catholics: if they do not do something evil, and if they do something good, to glory not in themselves but in the Lord.

Let us now look at that third point, which every member of Christ and his whole body shudders at in these men no less: that they contend that there are or have been righteous men in this life who have no sin at all. By this presumption they most openly contradict the Lord's Prayer, in which all the members of Christ cry, with truthful heart and daily voices, "Forgive us our debts." Let us see, then, what Cyprian, most glorious in the Lord, thought on this point too, what he not only said but also committed to writing and memory for the instruction of churches, not of the Manichees certainly, but of Catholics. In the letter On Works and Alms he says: "Let us acknowledge, then, dearest brothers, the wholesome gift of divine indulgence, and for cleansing and purging our sins, we who cannot be without some wound of conscience, let us heal our wounds with spiritual remedies. Nor let anyone so flatter himself about a pure and spotless heart that, relying on his innocence, he thinks no medicine need be applied to his wounds, since it is written, 'Who will boast that he has a chaste heart, or who will boast that he is clean from sins?' And again John sets it down in his letter and says: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' But if no one can be without sin, and whoever says he is blameless is either proud or foolish, how necessary, how kind is the divine clemency, which, knowing that some wounds are not lacking afterward even to the healed, has given saving remedies for curing and healing wounds anew!" Again in the same: "And since daily," he says, "there cannot fail to be sin in the sight of God, daily sacrifices were not lacking by which sins could be wiped away." Likewise in the letter On Mortality: "We have," he says, "a conflict with avarice, with unchastity, with anger, with ambition; with carnal vices, with worldly enticements, there is a constant and troublesome struggle. The mind of man, besieged and surrounded on every side by the assault of the devil, scarcely meets each, scarcely resists. If avarice is thrown down, lust rises up; if lust is suppressed, ambition takes its place; if ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, drunkenness entices, envy breaks concord, jealousy cuts off friendship; you are driven to curse, which the divine law forbids; you are compelled to swear, which is not lawful. So many persecutions does the soul suffer daily, by so many dangers is the heart pressed: and does it please us to stand long here among the swords of the devil, when we ought rather to long and wish to hasten to Christ with the help of a speedier death?" Likewise in the same: "The blessed apostle Paul," he says, "sets it down in his letter and says, 'To me to live is Christ and to die is gain', counting it the greatest gain to be no longer held by the snares of the world, no longer to be liable to any sins and vices of the flesh." Likewise in On the Lord's Prayer, explaining what we ask when we say "Hallowed be your name", he says among other things: "For we need daily hallowing, so that we who sin daily may purge our offenses by constant hallowing." Again in the same, when explaining our saying "Forgive us our debts": "How necessarily," he says, "how providently and wholesomely are we reminded that we are sinners, who are compelled to pray for our sins, so that, while pardon is sought from God, the soul may remember its own conscience! Lest anyone please himself as if innocent and perish the more by exalting himself, he is instructed and taught that he sins daily, when he is commanded to pray daily for his sins. So finally John too warns in his letter, saying: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, he who forgives us our sins is faithful and just.'" Rightly, too, in To Quirinus he set out on this matter his most complete statement, to which he added the divine testimonies, that no one is without filth and without sin. There he also put those testimonies by which original sin is confirmed, which these men try to turn into I know not what other new and perverse senses: whether what holy Job says, that no one is without filth, not even one whose life on earth is one day, or what is read in the psalm, "In wickedness I was conceived, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb." To these testimonies, on account of those also who are saints already of a more mature age, since not even they are without filth and sin, he added also that saying of the most blessed John which he often recalls in many other places too, "If we say that we have no sin", and the rest of that same saying, which is not kept silent by any Catholics against these men, who deceive themselves and the truth is not in them.