Letters 191.1–194.8

Since the letter of Your Kindness, sent through our holy brother the presbyter Firmus, reached Hippo in my absence, and I could read it only after I returned, when its bearer had already left, this is the first opportunity of replying that has presented itself, and a most welcome one, through our dearest son the acolyte Albinus. That we were not together then, though you wrote to us together, is why you are receiving separate letters from each of us, not one letter from both. For the bearer of this letter left me to pass through the territory of my venerable brother and fellow bishop Alypius, who would write a separate reply to Your Holiness; and he took to him your letter itself, which I had already read. With what great joy it filled us, how can a man try to say what cannot be expressed? Nor do I think you yourself know well enough; but believe us, how much good you did by sending us such a letter. For as you are witness of your own mind, so are we of ours, of how it was affected by the most luminous sincerity of that letter. For if we copied with exultant eagerness your very short letter on this same matter, sent to the most blessed old man Aurelius by the acolyte Leo, in which you set out to us what you think about that most pernicious teaching, and on the other side about the grace of God, which he bestows on small and great, and to which that teaching is utterly hostile, and read it with great zeal to whomever we could, with how much exultation do you think we have read this longer letter of yours, or with what care we have offered it, and still offer it, to whomever we can, to be read! For what could be read or heard with more pleasure than so pure a defence of God's grace against its enemies from the mouth of one who was previously boasted of as an important patron of those same enemies? Or for what should we give God more abundant thanks than that his grace is so defended by those to whom it is given against those to whom it is not given, or to whom what is given is not welcome, because, by the hidden and just judgment of God, it is not given them to welcome it?

Therefore, venerable lord and holy brother, to be received in the love of Christ, although you do excellently in writing on this matter to the brothers among whom those men are wont to boast of your friendship, yet this greater care remains for you: not only that those who dare to babble more freely that error, most hostile to the Christian name, should be punished with salutary severity, but also that those should be most carefully guarded against with pastoral vigilance, for the sake of the Lord's weaker and simpler sheep, who do not cease to whisper it, more guardedly and timidly but still, 'making their way into houses', as the apostle says, and doing the other things that follow, with practised ungodliness. Nor should those be neglected who out of fear suppress what they think into deep silence, yet do not cease to hold the same perversity. For some of them could have become known to you before that pestilence was condemned by the most manifest judgment of the apostolic see as well; and you now see them suddenly silent, and whether they are healed cannot be known unless they not only stop speaking those false teachings, but also defend the true teachings contrary to them with the same zeal they used for the others. They should certainly be treated more gently; for what need is there to frighten those whom their very silence shows to be frightened enough? Yet they should not be passed over by the care of medicine as if healthy, because their wound is hidden. For even if they are not to be frightened, they are to be taught, and, as I think, can be the more easily, while fear of severity helps the teacher of truth in them; so that, with the Lord's help, once his grace is understood and loved, they may by speaking also fight down what they no longer dare to speak.

Although I was far away when the letter of Your Holiness, sent to me through the cleric Projectus, reached Hippo, yet after I came and read it and recognized that I had become a debtor for a reply, I was waiting for a time to pay it; and see, suddenly a most welcome opportunity has arisen through our very dear brother, the acolyte Albinus, who is about to leave us. Rejoicing, then, in your well-being, which I greatly desire, I pay Your Holiness the greeting I owe. But I always owe love, which alone, even when paid, always keeps one a debtor. For it is paid when it is spent; but it is owed even when it has been paid, because there is no time when it is no longer to be spent. Nor is it lost when it is paid, but rather multiplied by being paid; for it is paid by having, not by lacking. And since it cannot be paid unless it is had, and it cannot be had unless it is paid, indeed when it is paid by a person it grows in that person, and the more of it is paid, the greater the amount acquired. How then can it be denied to friends, when it is owed even to enemies? But to enemies it is spent with caution, to friends it is repaid with confidence. Yet it strives as much as it can to receive back what it spends even from those to whom it returns good for evil. For we wish the enemy whom we truly love to become a friend, since we do not love him unless we wish him good, which certainly will not be unless he loses the evil of enmity.

Love, then, is not spent like money. For apart from the fact that money is diminished by spending and love increased, they also differ in this: that to whomever we have given money, we shall be the kinder to him if we do not seek to get it back; but no one can be a true spender of love unless he is a kind exactor of it. For when money is received, it goes to the one to whom it is given but leaves the one by whom it is given; whereas love not only grows in the one who demands it from the one he loves, even if he does not receive it, but also the one from whom he receives it begins to have it at the moment he repays it. Accordingly, my lord brother, I gladly pay you mutual love and joyfully receive it; what I receive I still ask back, what I pay I still owe. For we ought to listen docilely to the one Master in whose school we are fellow pupils, as he commands through his apostle, saying: 'Owe no one anything, except to love one another.'

The letter of Your Affection which you sent first, and which I received at Carthage, gave me such joy that I received most gladly even your later one, in which you were angry that I had not replied to you. For your very indignation was not the beginning of a quarrel but a sign of love. That I did not reply from Carthage was not for lack of opportunity of bearers; but other more urgent matters kept us extremely busy and occupied until we left. And when we left, we went on as far as Mauretania Caesariensis, where church business took us. Through all those lands, while various things pressing on our senses snatched our attention this way and that, there was no insistent reminder to make me reply to you, nor did any opportunity of a bearer occur. Then on returning I found among our people another letter from Your Sincerity, already sharpened by complaint, and another book against the new heretics, filled with testimonies from the holy pages. Having read these, and having also gone through what you had sent first, I had to reply, since the most convenient opportunity was offered by our very dear brother Albinus, acolyte of the Roman Church.

Far be it from me, then, my dearest son, to receive you carelessly when you write to me or send me your writings to consider, or to despise you with proud vanity, especially since my joy about you is the greater the more unexpected and unforeseen it came; for I confess I did not know you had made such progress. And what should be more desired by us than that there should be an abundance of those who everywhere refute the errors attacking the Catholic faith and lying in wait … for the weak and untaught brothers, and who defend the Church of Christ keenly and faithfully against profane novelties of words, since, as it is written, 'a multitude of the wise is the health of the world'? So I have looked into your heart in your writings, as far as I could, and found it to be embraced and encouraged to stretch forward to what lies ahead with most persevering diligence, the Lord helping your powers, who gave them to you so that he might nourish them.

Those whom we are trying to call back from their straying into the way have come not a little nearer the truth in the question of the baptism of little children, when they confess that an infant, however recently poured forth from its mother's womb, nevertheless believes through those by whom it is presented for baptism. For when they say, as you write, that infants do not believe in the remission of sins in the sense that sins are remitted to them too, since they think they have no sin, but that, since they too receive the same washing by which remission of sins takes place in whomever it takes place, they believe that this takes place in others, though it does not take place in them: when they say, then, 'They do not believe in this way, but they do believe in that way', they certainly do not doubt that they believe. Let them hear the Lord, then: 'Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; but whoever does not believe the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.' Therefore infants, since they become believers through others by whom they are presented for baptism, are certainly unbelievers through others if they are with people who do not believe they should be presented, because they believe it does them no good. And so, if through believers they believe and have eternal life, surely through unbelievers they are unbelievers and will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on them. For it is not said 'comes upon them' but 'remains on them', because it was already in them from their origin and is not taken away from them at all except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Of this wrath we read also in the book of Job: 'Man born of woman is short of life and full of wrath.' Whence, then, the wrath of God upon the innocence of a little child, except from the lot and stain of original sin? Of which it is likewise written in the same book that not even an infant whose life on earth is one day is clean of it.

So it has not been for nothing in their case that they have been argued against so persistently and that Catholic voices have rung round their ears on every side, since, wishing to argue against the sacraments of the Church, they have nevertheless confessed that little children believe. Let them not, then, promise them life even if they have not been baptized; for of what other life is it said, 'Whoever does not believe the Son will not see life'? Nor let them confess them strangers to the kingdom of heaven while still defending them from condemnation; for what is signified by the wrath which the Lord testifies remains on the unbeliever, if not condemnation? A great advance has been made indeed, and the case is ended without painstaking conflict. For if they grant that little children believe, then beyond doubt, just as they are bound by that sentence, 'Whoever is not reborn of water and the Spirit will not enter the kingdom of heaven', so also by this one of the same Lord: 'Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.' Since, then, they confess that little children are believers when they are baptized, let them not doubt that unbelievers are condemned, and let them now dare to say, if they can, that those who draw no evil from their origin and have no contagion of sin are condemned by a just God.

As for what you mention in your letter, that they object to us Enoch and Elijah, that they did not die but were taken from this human life with their bodies, I do not understand how it helps them on the point at issue. To pass over the fact that they too are said to be going to die later, as many expound the Apocalypse of John concerning those two prophets of whom it speaks without naming them, namely that these two saints will then appear with the bodies in which they now live, so that they too may die for the truth of Christ like the other martyrs: to pass over this, then, leaving this question aside, however it stands, how does it help them, I ask you? For they do not show from this that human beings do not die in the body because of sin. For if God, who forgives so many of his faithful their very sins, willed to remit to some even this punishment of sin, who are we to answer back to God why one is treated one way and another another?

We say, then, what the apostle says most plainly: 'The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.' Yet we do not say this so as to deny that God can now do without death, in whomever he wills, what we believe without doubt he will do in so many after death. Nor will it therefore be false that 'through one man sin entered this world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men.' For this was said because, unless death had entered through sin, there would be no death. For when we say, 'All are sent into hell for their sins', do we say something false because not all human beings are sent into hell? That is true not because every human being is sent there but because no one is sent there except for the deserts of sins. Of the same kind, conversely, is that saying, 'Through the justification of one it comes upon all men to justification of life'; for not all human beings belong to the justification of Christ, but it was said because no one is justified except through Christ.

So it is the other question that more reasonably troubles us: why the punishment of sin remains when the sin does not remain. That is, if death even of the body is the punishment of sin, it is rather a question why an infant dies after being baptized than why Elijah did not die after being justified. For in the former case, when the sin is ended, it is puzzling why the punishment of sin has followed; but in the latter, when the sin is ended, it should not be puzzling if the punishment of sin does not follow. If, then, we have solved as far as we could, with the Lord's help, that question about the death of the baptized, why, after the abolition of sin, some punishment of sin still follows, in the books on the baptism of little children, which I know are very well known to you, how much less should this question trouble us, when it is said, 'Why did the righteous Elijah not die, if death is the punishment of sin?', as if it were said, 'Why did the sinner Elijah not die, if death is the punishment of sin?'

Unless perhaps they raise one question from another and say: 'If Enoch and Elijah were so far without sin that they did not even suffer death, which is the punishment of sin, how is it that no one lives here without sin?' As if it could not be answered them more plausibly: Those whom God willed to live with their sins ended were for that reason not allowed to live here, since here no one can live without sin. But these and similar things could have been said against them if they could prove from somewhere for certain that those two will never die. But since they cannot show this, it is better believed that Enoch and Elijah will die at the end of the world; and since it is better believed that they will come to death, there is no reason why they should object them to us, since they will not help their cause in any respect.

But those of whom the apostle spoke, when he was speaking of the resurrection of the dead, 'And we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord', do raise some question, but on their own account, not because of these men. For even if they too are not going to die, I do not see at all how they help these men, since things can be said of them like those said of those two. But in truth, as far as the words of the blessed apostle go, he seems to assert that some at the end of the world, when the Lord comes and the resurrection of the dead is to take place, will not die, but, found alive, will be suddenly changed into that immortality which is given to the other saints too, and caught up together with them, as he says, in the clouds; nor has anything else seemed right to me whenever I have wished to think about these words.

But I should prefer to hear more learned men on this, lest the apostle be found saying even to those who think that some will pass to eternal life made alive without death preceding: 'Fool, what you sow is not made alive unless it first dies.' For also what we read in most manuscripts, 'We shall all rise', how could it come about unless we all die? For there is no resurrection unless death has gone before. And what some manuscripts have, 'We shall all sleep', compels this understanding much more easily and plainly. And if anything else of the kind is found in the holy writings, it seems to drive to the conclusion that no human being is to be thought to attain immortality unless death has preceded. Therefore, where the apostle said, 'And we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, at the command, at the voice of the archangel and at the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord', I should like, as I said, to hear more learned men on these words; and if they can be so expounded that it can be understood in them that all human beings who live, or will live after us, will die, I should like to correct what I once thought otherwise about this. For we ought not to be teachers unwilling to be taught; and certainly it is better for a little man to be corrected than for a hard one to be broken. Let our weakness, or that of others, be so exercised and instructed by what we have written that no quasi-canonical authority is established in it.

But if no other sense can be found in these words of the apostle, and it becomes clear that he meant to be understood what the words themselves seem to cry out, namely that there will be at the end of the world and at the Lord's coming those who will not be stripped of the body but clothed over with immortality, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life, then beyond doubt there will fit this view what we confess in the rule of faith, that the Lord will come to judge the living and the dead; so that we do not understand here by the living the righteous and by the dead the unrighteous, although both righteous and unrighteous are to be judged, but by the living those whom his coming will find not yet gone out of their bodies, and by the dead those whom it will find already gone out. If this is established, those words will have to be examined, how we are to take 'What you sow is not made alive unless it dies', and 'We shall all rise', or 'We shall all sleep', so that they do not contradict this view, by which some are believed to be going to live for ever even with their bodies without tasting death.

But whichever of these understandings is found truer and clearer, what has it to do with these men's cause? Whether all are struck by the death owed, or some are spared from this condition, it is nevertheless established that death not only of the soul but also of the body would not have followed if sin had not preceded, and that it is by a more wonderful power of grace that the righteous come to life again from death to eternal blessedness than if they did not come to the experience of death at all. Let this be enough said about those of whom you wrote to me, although I do not think they now say that Adam would have died even in body if he had not sinned.

For the rest, as regards the question of the resurrection, a more careful enquiry must be made because of those who are believed not to be going to die but to pass from this mortality to immortality without death in between; and if you have heard or read anything settled and definite on this by reasoned and complete argument, or have been able to work it out yourself, or can still hear, read or work it out, I ask you not to be reluctant to send it to me. For, as I must confess to Your Charity, I love learning more than teaching. For we are admonished to this also by the apostle James, who says: 'Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak.' The sweetness of truth, then, should invite us to learn; the necessity of love should compel us to teach. Here it is rather to be wished that this necessity by which one human being teaches another may pass away, so that we may all be taught by God; although we are so even now, when we learn what belongs to true piety, even when a human being seems to teach it, since 'neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth'. Since, then, if God did not give the growth, the apostles, as planters and waterers, would be nothing, how much more I, or you, or any people of this time, when we think ourselves teachers!

In the letter I sent through our very dear brother the acolyte Albinus, I promised to send a longer one through our holy brother and fellow presbyter Firmus, who brought us the letter of Your Sincerity, full of the sincerity of your faith, which gave us more joy than we can express. For, as I must confess to Your Charity, we were very sad when report spread that you favoured the enemies of Christian grace. But so that this sadness might be wiped from our hearts, first the same report did not keep silent that you had been the first to pronounce anathema on them before a very large congregation; then, when the letter of the apostolic see about their condemnation had been sent to Africa, your letter too followed to the venerable old man Aurelius, which, though short, showed clearly enough your vigour against their error. But now, when in your letter the very faith of the Roman Church spoke with us more openly and fully about what you think of that teaching and on the other side (the Church to which above all the blessed apostle Paul spoke much and in many ways about the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord), not only has every cloud of sadness fled from our hearts, but so great a light of joy has shone there that that grief and fear seem to have done nothing in us but make the joys that followed burn more brightly.

So, dearest brother, although we do not see you with the eyes of the flesh, yet in spirit, in the faith of Christ, in the grace of Christ, in the members of Christ, we hold you, embrace you, kiss you; and as the most holy and faithful bearer of our mutual conversations returns from us to you, whom you wished to be with us not only the carrier of your writings but also the narrator and witness of events, we pay our reply and talk with you somewhat at greater length, urging you to press on with teaching those whom, as far as we have learned, you have pressed enough with fear. For there are some who think the most justly condemned impieties should still be defended more freely; and there are those who make their way more secretly into houses and do not cease to sow in secret what they now fear to shout in the open; and there are those who, held down by great fear, have fallen completely silent, but still retain in their hearts what they no longer dare to utter with their lips, and who may nevertheless be very well known to the brothers from their earlier defence of that teaching. Accordingly, some are to be restrained more severely, some to be tracked down more vigilantly, and some to be treated indeed more gently, but taught not less diligently, so that, if they are not feared as likely to destroy others, they may still not be neglected so as to perish.

For as to their thinking that free choice is taken away from them if they agree that a human being does not have even a good will without God's help, they do not understand that they are not strengthening human choice but inflating it, so that it is carried through empty space instead of being set on the Lord as on a firm rock; for 'the will is prepared by the Lord'.

And as to their thinking that they would believe God to be a respecter of persons if they believed that without any preceding merits he has mercy on whom he wills, calls whom he deigns, and makes devout whom he wills: they pay too little attention to the fact that the punishment owed is paid to the condemned and the grace not owed is given to the one set free, so that the former may not complain that he is unworthy, nor the latter boast that he is worthy; and that there is rather no respect of persons at all where one and the same mass of condemnation and offence involves all, so that the one set free may learn from the one not set free that punishment would have befitted him too, had grace not come to his aid; and if grace, then certainly not paid to any merits but given by free goodness.

'But it is unjust', they say, 'that in one and the same evil case this one should be set free and that one punished.' Then of course it is just that both should be punished. Who would deny it? Let us therefore give thanks to the Saviour, when we see that what we recognize was owed to us too, in the condemnation of those like us, has not been paid to us. For if both were set free, what is owed to sin by justice would be hidden; if neither, what grace bestows. So, in this most difficult question, let us rather use the words of the apostle: '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.' To him the thing formed cannot say, 'Why have you made me thus?', since he has power to make from the same lump one vessel for honour and another for dishonour. There, since that whole lump has been deservedly condemned, justice pays the dishonour owed, and grace gives the honour not owed, not by any privilege of merit, not by the necessity of fate, not by the rashness of fortune, but by the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, which the apostle does not open but marvels at, closed as it is, crying out: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Or who has first given to him, that it should be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory for ever and ever!'

But they do not want the glory to be his for justifying the ungodly by free grace, who, ignorant of his righteousness, wish to establish their own; or, pressed by the voices of devout and godly people crying out, confess that they are helped by God to have or to do righteousness in such a way that some merit of their own comes first, as though wishing to give first so that it may be repaid them by him of whom it is said, 'Who has first given to him, that it should be repaid him?', and thinking that their merits go before him of whom they hear, or rather refuse to hear, 'For from him and through him and in him are all things.' But from the riches of whose depth of wisdom and knowledge come the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he calls into adoption; and these riches he wishes to make known also through the vessels of wrath, which are made for destruction. And what are the inscrutable ways, if not those of which the psalm sings, 'All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth'? His mercy and truth, then, are inscrutable, since he has mercy on whom he wills, not by justice but by the mercy of grace, and hardens whom he wills, not by injustice but by the truth of retribution. Yet this mercy and truth so meet each other, for it is written, 'Mercy and truth have met each other', that neither does mercy hinder the truth by which the worthy is punished, nor does truth hinder the mercy by which the unworthy is set free. What merits of his own, then, will the one set free boast of, when, if what his merits deserved were paid him, he would be nothing but condemned? Are there, then, no merits of the righteous? There certainly are, because they are righteous. But there were no merits to make them righteous; for they were made righteous when they were justified, but, as the apostle says, 'justified freely by his grace'.

Although these men are enemies and opponents of this grace, Pelagius nevertheless, at the church trial in Palestine (for he would not otherwise have come out of it unpunished), anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits. But in their later arguments too nothing else is found than that grace is given for merits, the grace of whose commendation the apostolic letter speaks above all to the Romans, so that its proclamation might spread from there, as from the capital of the world, through the whole world. For it is the grace by which the ungodly is justified, that is, he who was ungodly before becomes righteous. And therefore no merits precede the receiving of this grace, because to the merits of the ungodly not grace but punishment is owed; nor would this be grace if it were not given freely but paid as owed.

But when they are asked what grace Pelagius thought is given without any preceding merits, when he anathematized those who say that God's grace is given according to our merits, they answer that the grace given without any preceding merits is human nature itself, in which we were created; for before we existed we could not merit anything in order to exist. Let this deceit be cast out of Christian hearts! No, the apostle certainly does not commend that grace by which we were created so as to be human beings, but that by which we were justified when we were evil human beings. For this is the grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. For Christ did not die for non-existent beings so that human beings might be created, but for the ungodly so that they might be justified. He who said, 'Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord', was already a human being.