Letters 186.24–187.5

And now let us say what follows: 'What if God, wishing to show his wrath and make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy?' See, a reason has been given to man, as much as was owed to man (if indeed even this is grasped by one who argues for the freedom of his choice while in the servitude of such great weakness); see, the causes have been stated. Who then are you to answer back to God, if God, wishing to show his wrath and make known his power, in that the supremely good can make good use even of the evil (evil, that is, not by divine making but by a nature that, created good by God the Creator, has been vitiated by the iniquity of the will), endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction (not because the sins of angels or of men were necessary to him, who needs not even the righteousness of any creature), but that he might make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, so that they might not exalt themselves in good works as if by their own powers, but might humbly understand that, unless God's grace, not owed but free, came to their aid, what they saw paid to others in the same mass would have had to be paid to their own deserts?

Certain, then, and predetermined in God's foreknowledge is the number and multitude of the saints, for whom, loving God (which he has given them through the Holy Spirit poured into their hearts), all things work together for good, for those who are called according to purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers; and those whom he predestined he also called (here we must understand 'according to purpose', for there are others called but not chosen, and therefore not called according to purpose); and those whom he called (that is, according to purpose) he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. These are the children of the promise; these are the elect, who are saved by the election of grace, of which it is said, 'But if by grace, it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.' These are the vessels of mercy, in whom God makes known the riches of his glory even through the vessels of wrath. Through the Holy Spirit they become one heart and one soul, which blesses the Lord and does not forget all his benefits: who forgives all its iniquities, who heals all its diseases, who redeems its life from corruption, who crowns it with compassion and mercy; for it depends not on the one who wills or runs, but on God who shows mercy.

But the rest of humanity, who do not belong to this fellowship (though God's goodness made both their soul and body and whatever their nature has apart from the vice that the boldness of a proud will inflicted on it), were created by a foreknowing God for this purpose: that in them he might show what the free choice of a deserter can do without his grace, and that in their just and deserved punishments the vessels of mercy, which have been separated from that lump not by the merits of their own works but by the free grace of God, might learn what had been conferred on them, so that every mouth may be stopped and 'he who boasts may boast in the Lord'.

Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said, 'The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost' (he did not say 'what would be lost' but 'what was lost', showing what, if not that the nature of the whole human race perished by the sin of the first man?), whoever, then, teaches otherwise and does not agree with the teaching that accords with godliness, but defends human nature as sound and free against the grace of the Saviour and against the blood of the Redeemer, and yet aspires to be reckoned by the Christian name, what will he say about the distinguishing of little children, why one is taken up into the life of the second man while another is left in the death of the first? If he says that merits of free choice went before, the apostle has answered with what we said above about those not yet born and doing nothing good or evil. But if he says what is still defended in the books that Pelagius is said to have published very recently (although he appears already to have anathematized, at the episcopal trial in Palestine, those who say that Adam's sin harmed only himself and not the human race), if, then, he says that both were born without fault and drew nothing from the condemnation of the first man, then certainly, since he does not dare deny that one who has been reborn in Christ is adopted into the kingdom of heaven, let him answer what will become of one who, through no fault of his own, has been overtaken by this temporal death unbaptized. We do not think he will say that God will condemn to eternal death an innocent who has no original sin, before the years in which he could have a sin of his own. He is therefore forced to answer what Pelagius, in order to be pronounced in some way Catholic, was already compelled at the church trial to anathematize: that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life. For if this is denied, what will remain but eternal death?

And so he will argue against the saying of the Lord, who says: 'Your fathers ate manna in the desert and died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that if anyone eats of it, he will not die' (for he was not speaking of this death, which even those who eat of that bread must suffer); and a little later: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you', certainly the life that will be after this death. He will argue too against the authority of the apostolic see, where, when this very matter was dealt with, this testimony of the Gospel was brought forward, so that it may not be believed that unbaptized little ones can have life; and against the words of Pelagius himself, expressed before the bishops by whom he was heard, when he anathematized those who said that unbaptized infants have eternal life.

We have mentioned this because some people even among you, or rather in your own city (if what we have heard is true), insist on this error with such obstinacy that they say it would be easier for them to desert and despise even Pelagius, who anathematized those holding these views, than to depart from what seems to them the truth of this opinion. But if they yield to the apostolic see, or rather to the very Master and Lord of the apostles, who says that they will not have life in themselves unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood (which they certainly cannot do unless baptized), they will surely at some point admit that unbaptized little ones cannot have life, and therefore are punished with eternal death, however much more bearably than all those who also commit sins of their own.

Since this is so, let them dare to argue, and try to persuade whom they can, that a just God, with whom there is no injustice, will condemn to everlasting death little ones innocent of sins of their own, if they are not bound and held fast by that sin from Adam either. But if this is utterly absurd and wholly foreign to God's justice, and yet no one who remembers that he is a Christian of the Catholic faith denies or doubts that little ones who have not received the grace of rebirth in Christ, without eating his flesh and drinking his blood, do not have life in themselves and are therefore liable to the punishment of everlasting death, then surely it remains that, since they themselves have done nothing good or evil, the punishment of their death is just because they die in him in whom all sinned; and so they are made alive only in him from whom neither original sin could be contracted nor any sin of his own committed.

He has called us not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles, since he himself gathered whom he willed even from the children of that Jerusalem which killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her, though she herself was unwilling: before his incarnation, such as the prophets themselves, and after the Word became flesh, such as the apostles and the thousands of people who laid the price of their possessions at the apostles' feet. For all these are children of the Jerusalem that was unwilling for them to be gathered, who were nevertheless gathered by his will; of them he says: 'If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.' Of them it had been foretold: 'Though the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved.' The word of God cannot fail, nor has he rejected his people whom he foreknew; and this remnant has been saved by the election of grace. 'But if by grace' (as must often be said), 'it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.' These are not our words but the apostle's. What he cried out to Jerusalem, unwilling for her children to be gathered, we cry out against those who are unwilling for children who are willing to be gathered to the Church, and who are not corrected even after the judgment pronounced on Pelagius himself in Palestine, from which he would have come out condemned had he not himself condemned the statements against the grace of God that were brought against him, which he could not obscure.

For besides the things that he dared to defend, in whatever way he could, by some reasoning or other, certain charges were brought against him which, had he not anathematized them without any evasion, would have made him anathema himself. For it was charged that he says: that Adam was made mortal and would have died whether he sinned or not; that his sin harmed himself alone and not the human race; that newborn infants are in the state in which Adam was before the transgression; that neither does the whole human race die through the death or transgression of Adam, nor does the whole human race rise through the resurrection of Christ; that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life; that baptized rich people, unless they renounce everything, are not credited with any good they may seem to do, and cannot have the kingdom of God; that God's grace and help are not given for individual acts but consist in free choice or in the law and teaching; that God's grace is given according to our merits; that people cannot be called children of God unless they have been made wholly without sin; that there is no free choice if it needs God's help, since each has it in his own will either to do something or not to do it; that our victory is not from God's help but from free choice; and that pardon is given to penitents not according to the grace and mercy of God but according to the merit and labour of those who through repentance have become worthy of mercy.

All these Pelagius anathematized, as the proceedings themselves sufficiently attest, in such a way that he offered no argument in defence of any of them. It follows that whoever follows the authority of that episcopal judgment and Pelagius's own confession must hold what the Catholic Church has always held: that Adam would not have died had he not sinned; that his sin harmed not himself alone but also the human race; that newborn infants are not in the state in which Adam was before the transgression, so that what the apostle briefly says applies to them too: 'Through one man came death, and through one man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.' Hence unbaptized infants can have neither the kingdom of heaven nor eternal life. Let him confess also that baptized rich people, even if they do not give up their riches, if they are such as the apostle describes to Timothy, saying, 'Command the rich of this world not to be haughty, nor to hope in uncertain riches but in the living God, who provides us richly with everything to enjoy; let them be rich in good works, give readily, share, store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of true life', cannot be deprived of the kingdom of God. Let him confess that the grace and help of God is given even for individual acts, and is not given according to our merits, so that it may be true grace, that is, given freely by the mercy of him who said: 'I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I have been compassionate.' Let him confess that those can be called children of God who say daily, 'Forgive us our debts', which they would certainly not say truthfully if they were wholly without sin. Let him confess that there is free choice, even if it needs divine help. Let him confess that when we fight against temptations and unlawful desires, although we have our own will there too, our victory comes not from it but from God's help; for otherwise what the apostle says will not be true: 'It depends not on the one who wills or runs, but on God who shows mercy.' Let him confess that pardon is given to penitents according to the grace and mercy of God, not according to their merit, since the apostle called even repentance itself a gift of God, where he says of certain people: 'In case God may grant them repentance.' All these let him confess simply, without any evasions, whoever agrees with Catholic authority and with the words of Pelagius himself recorded in the church proceedings. For it must not be believed that the contrary propositions have been truly anathematized unless these, to which they are contrary, are held with a faithful heart and brought out in open confession.

Nor in those more recent books, which the same Pelagius is said to have published after that judgment, does it appear clearly enough what he thinks on this matter, although he seems to agree with the help of divine grace. For sometimes he weighs the power of the will in an even balance, with equal weights, so as to define that it has as much power for not sinning as for sinning. If that is so, no room is left for the help of grace, without which we say the choice of the will has no power for not sinning. But at other times he confesses that we are protected by the daily help of God's grace, although, he says, we have a free choice that is strong and firm for not sinning; whereas he ought rather to have confessed it weak and infirm, until all the diseases of our soul are healed. For the one who said, 'Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak; heal me, Lord, for my bones are troubled', was not praying about bodily weakness; for to show that he was asking on behalf of his soul he went on to add: 'And my soul is greatly troubled.'

He seems, then, to think that the help of grace is granted as something extra, that is, that even if it is not granted, we still have a free choice strong and firm for not sinning. And lest we be thought to suspect this of him rashly (and perhaps someone might say that he means free choice is strong and firm for not sinning although without God's grace it cannot accomplish and fulfil this, just as we call healthy eyes strong for seeing, though they can by no means do so if the help of light is lacking), in another place he shows more plainly what he says or thinks, where he says that God's grace is given to people so that what they are commanded to do by free choice they may more easily fulfil by grace. Certainly when he says 'more easily', what does he mean to be understood except that, even if grace is lacking, what is commanded can be fulfilled by free choice, whether easily or with difficulty?

Where then is 'What is man, unless you are mindful of him?' Where, finally, are those testimonies which the bishop of the church of Jerusalem, as we read in the same proceedings, recalls that he quoted to Pelagius himself, when it was reported to him that Pelagius said a man could be without sin without the grace of God? These were the three very weighty testimonies he cited against such ungodly presumption: what the apostle says, 'I laboured more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me'; and 'It depends not on the one who wills or runs, but on God who shows mercy'; and 'Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.' How then is what God commands fulfilled, even with difficulty, without his divine help, when it is said that if the Lord does not build, the builder has laboured in vain, and it is not written, 'It depends indeed on the one who wills and runs, but more easily on God who shows mercy', but it is written, 'It depends not on the one who wills or runs, but on God who shows mercy'? Not because there is no human will and running, but because they can do nothing unless God has mercy. And the apostle did not say 'and I', but said, 'yet not I, but the grace of God with me', not because he himself did no good, but because he would do none unless grace helped. And yet that weighing of the capacity of free choice for good and evil alike in an even balance leaves no room even for this 'ease' which he at least seems to have confessed by saying, 'They may more easily fulfil it by grace.' For if good is fulfilled more easily by grace, but evil is done most easily without grace, then certainly this capacity is not weighed in an even balance.

But why say more? We must not only be careful to avoid these men, but also not grow slack in teaching or admonishing them, if they will bear it. Yet without doubt we do more for them if we pray that they may be corrected, so that with such great talents they may not perish or destroy others by damnable presumption; because they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge: not knowing the righteousness of God, that is, the righteousness that is from God, and wishing to establish their own, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For these, since they are called Christians, this must be watched even more than for the Jews, of whom the apostle said it, lest they stumble on the stone of stumbling by cleverly defending nature and free choice, like the philosophers of this world, who strove hard to be thought, or to think themselves, to produce the happy life by the power of their own will. Let these men beware, then, lest by wisdom of words they make void the cross of Christ, and this be for them a stumbling on the stone of stumbling. For human nature, even if it had remained in the integrity in which it was created, could by no means have preserved itself without its Creator's help. Since, then, without God's grace it could not keep the health it had received, how can it without God's grace restore the health it has lost?

We should not, however, fail to pray for them on the ground that, if they are not corrected, it must be imputed to their own will, since they refuse to believe that the grace of the Saviour is necessary to them even for the very thing they think consists in the powers of the will alone. For those too, whom these men closely resemble in this matter, of whom the apostle said that not knowing the righteousness of God and wishing to establish their own they did not submit to the righteousness of God, certainly did not believe through the fault of their own will. They were not forced against their will to be unbelievers; by refusing to believe they did not escape the guilt of unbelief. And yet, since the will is not sufficient for itself to be moved to believe what is true unless God assists by grace (as the Lord himself said when speaking of those who did not believe, 'No one comes to me unless it is given him by the Father'), for this reason the apostle too, though he preached the gospel to them earnestly, saw that it was not enough unless he also prayed for them that they might believe. For he says: 'Brothers, my heart's good will and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation'; and then he added what we have quoted: 'For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge', and so on. Let us pray for them, then, holy brother.

For you see with us in what an evil error they are held. Your letters are fragrant with the most sincere aroma of Christ, in which you appear as a most genuine lover and confessor of his grace. But we thought we should speak with you at length on this matter, first because it is most delightful (for what should be more delightful to the weak than the grace by which they are healed, or to the sluggish than the grace by which they are roused, or to the willing than the grace by which they are helped?); and secondly, so that, if by God's help our discussion could achieve anything, it might support not your faith but the assertion of the faith against such people, just as we too are helped in this capacity by the letters of Your Brotherliness.

For what is richer and fuller of most truthful confession than that passage in one of your letters, where you humbly lamented that our nature did not remain as it was created but was vitiated through that father of the human race, saying: 'Poor and sorrowful as I am, still caked with the squalor of the earthly image, and resembling the first Adam more than the second in the senses of the flesh and earthly acts, how shall I dare to paint myself for you, when I am proved to deny the heavenly image by earthly corruption? Shame hems me in on both sides: I blush to paint what I am; I do not dare to paint what I am not. I hate what I am, and I am not what I love. But what will it profit wretched me to hate iniquity and love virtue, when I rather do what I hate and, sluggish, do not labour to do rather what I love? At odds with myself I am torn by civil war, while the spirit fights against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit, and the law of the body, by the law of sin, attacks the law of the mind. Unhappy that I am, who have not digested even by the wood of the cross the poisoned taste of the enemy tree! For that ancestral venom through Adam still lasts in me, with which the transgressing father infected the whole of his race', and the many other things you weave together about this misery, groaning as you await the redemption of your body and knowing that you are saved not yet in reality but in hope.

But perhaps you too transferred to yourself another's case when you said this, and do not suffer any troublesome and hateful vexations from the flesh lusting against the spirit, though you do not consent to it. Nevertheless, both you and whoever suffers these things and awaits the grace of Christ, through which he may be delivered from the body of this death, were there, not yet visibly in yourselves but hidden in that man, when the forbidden food was touched and the perdition was conceived that would spread far and wide through all, had not one come by another path, through a virgin, who was not lost, to seek and to save what was lost. And as for praying and begging with groans for help to make progress and to live rightly, which of your letters does not burn with it? What part of your discourse, and how much of it, is not sprinkled with groaning piety for what we say in the Lord's Prayer: 'Lead us not into temptation'? Let us therefore comfort and exhort one another in all these things and, as far as the Lord grants, help one another. What we have heard, and about whom, which grieves us greatly and which we are unwilling readily to believe, Your Holiness will hear from our common friend; when he returns safely, by God's mercy, we hope to be made entirely certain about everything.

I confess, my dearest brother Dardanus, more illustrious to me in the love of Christ than in the dignity of this world, that I have answered your letter later than I ought. I would rather you did not ask the reasons, lest you find me more tiresome in excusing myself at length than you found me in writing back late; for I would rather you readily pardoned my offence than sat in judgment on my defence. Whatever the reasons were, believe that there could have been no contempt of you on my part. Indeed, I would have replied very quickly if I had despised you. Nor, because I have at long last replied, have I therefore at long last produced something worthy of you as reader and fit to bear your name at its head; but I preferred to reply somehow now rather than let this summer too pass with me still in debt for this duty. Nor was it your rank that held me back and made me hesitate, since your kindness is more welcome than your rank is daunting. But the more I love you, the harder I find it to know how to satisfy so great an eagerness of your devout love.

Add to this that, besides the flame of mutual love, by which we love even those we have never seen, as long as we believe they have what we love (and in this you certainly anticipated me and made me fear that your opinion of me and your expectation may be deceived), besides this, then, you set out in your letter questions of such a kind that, if anyone at all had put them, they would have made no small task even for my leisure, which I lack. But since they are put by you, for whom, probing to the depths, a surface solution of them is by no means enough, and put to one extremely busy and hemmed in and bound by the weight of other cares, it is for your prudence and kindness to consider how much I need you to be indulgent, both because I did not answer for so long and if even now I do not answer in keeping with the greatness of your purpose.

You ask, then, how the mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, is now believed to be in heaven, when, hanging on the tree and about to die, he said to the believing thief, 'Today you will be with me in paradise.' And from this, you say, paradise is perhaps to be understood as situated in some part of heaven; or, since God is everywhere, that man too, who is in God, is spread out everywhere; wishing evidently to conclude from this that he who is everywhere could also be in paradise.

Here I ask, or rather I recognize, how you understand the man Christ: certainly not as certain heretics do, as the Word of God and flesh, that is, without a human soul, so that the Word took the place of a soul to the flesh; or as the Word of God and a soul and flesh but without a human mind, so that the Word of God took the place of a human mind to the soul. You certainly do not understand the man Christ in that way, but as you stated above, where you said that you accept Christ as almighty God on such a principle of belief that you would not believe him God unless you had also believed him perfect man. Clearly, when you say 'perfect man', you want the whole human nature to be understood there; and he is not perfect man if either the soul is lacking to the flesh or the human mind to the soul itself.

If, then, we think that 'Today you will be with me in paradise' was said according to the man whom God the Word took up, paradise is not to be thought from these words to be in heaven; for on that very day the man Christ Jesus was not going to be in heaven, but in hell according to his soul and in the tomb according to his flesh. As for the flesh, that it was laid in the tomb on that day the Gospel makes perfectly plain; and that his soul descended into hell the apostolic teaching proclaims, since blessed Peter cites in this matter a testimony from the Psalms, where he shows that it was foretold of him: 'For you will not leave my soul in hell, nor let your Holy One see corruption.' The first was said of the soul, because it was not left there, since it returned so quickly; the second of the body, because by its swift resurrection it could not decay in the tomb. But no one understands paradise to be in the tomb. And if anyone were so absurd as to try to hold this because that tomb was in a garden, he would surely be recalled from this opinion by the fact that the man to whom it was said, 'Today you will be with me in paradise', was on no day with Christ in that tomb. Nor would the burial of a flesh that feels neither joy nor pain in death be offered to his faith as a great gift, when he was thinking of a rest where there is feeling.