On the Proceedings of Pelagius 1–17

Now that the church's proceedings have come into our hands, holy Pope Aurelius, in which Pelagius was pronounced catholic by fourteen bishops of the province of Palestine, my hesitation has come to an end: I had hesitated to discuss his defense more fully and more confidently. I had indeed already read that defense in a short paper which he himself had sent me; but since I had received no letter of his along with it, I was afraid that something might be found in my words different from what would be read in the episcopal proceedings. And then, if Pelagius should deny that he had sent me that paper, since he could not easily be convicted by a single witness, I might instead be accused by those who favored his denial either of forgery or, to put it more mildly, of rash credulity. Now, therefore, since I am treating what the proceedings attest, the doubt whether he really pleaded his case in this way has been removed, as far as I could see; and Your Holiness and everyone who reads this will judge more easily and more surely both his defense and this work of ours.

First, then, I give inexpressible thanks to the Lord God, our ruler and guardian, that my opinion of our holy brothers and fellow bishops who sat as judges in that case has not deceived me. For they rightly approved his answers, not concerning themselves with how he had put the things objected to him in his writings, but with what he answered about them in the present examination. An unsound faith is one thing; an incautious expression is another. So, among the charges read to Pelagius from the document submitted by our holy brothers and fellow bishops from Gaul, Heros and Lazarus (who could not be present because of the serious illness of one of them, as we later learned on better evidence), the first is that he writes in one of his books “that no one can be without sin unless he has knowledge of the law.” When this had been read, the synod said: “Did you publish this, Pelagius?” And he answered: “I did say it, but not as they understand it. I did not say that one who has knowledge of the law cannot sin, but that he is helped by knowledge of the law not to sin, as it is written: ‘He gave them the law as a help.’” On hearing this the synod said: “What Pelagius has said is not foreign to the church.” Certainly what he answered is not foreign; but what was produced from his book sounds different. The bishops, however, being Greeks and hearing those words through an interpreter, did not trouble to examine this; they looked only at what the man under examination said he had meant, not at the words in which the same statement was said to be written in his book.

But it is one thing for a man to be helped by knowledge of the law not to sin, and another that no one can be without sin unless he has knowledge of the law. For we see, for example, that threshing floors are threshed even without threshing sledges, though these help if they are there; that boys can go to school without attendants, though the attendants' help is not useless for this; that many recover from illness without doctors, though the help of doctors is plain; that people live on other foods without bread, though no one denies that bread is a very great help; and many other things that easily occur to anyone who thinks, though we say nothing of them. From these we are surely taught that there are two kinds of help. Some are such that without them the thing they help toward cannot be done: no one sails without a ship, no one speaks without a voice, no one walks without feet, no one sees without light, and many things of this kind; to this kind belongs also the truth that no one lives rightly without the grace of God. Other helps are such that, even if they are missing, what we seek them for can be done in another way, like those I mentioned: the threshing sledge for threshing grain, the attendant for taking a boy to school, medicine made by human skill for regaining health, and the like. We must therefore ask to which of these two kinds knowledge of the law belongs, that is, how it helps us not to sin. If it helps in such a way that without it this cannot be accomplished, then Pelagius not only answered truly at the trial but also wrote truly in his book. But if it helps in such a way that it does help if it is present, yet what it helps toward can be done in another way even when it is absent, then he answered truly at the trial (and this rightly pleased the bishops) that a man is helped not to sin by knowledge of the law; but he did not write truly in his book that no one is without sin unless he has knowledge of the law. The judges left this unexamined, since they did not know Latin and were content with the confession of the man pleading his case, especially as no one stood there on the other side to force the interpreter to open up the words of his book by explaining them and to show why the brothers had been disturbed, not without reason. For very few are learned in the law; but the whole multitude of Christ's members spread everywhere, unskilled in a law so deep and manifold, is commended by the devotion of simple faith, by the firmest hope in God, and by sincere love; and endowed with these gifts, it trusts that by the grace of God it can be cleansed from sins through Jesus Christ our Lord.

To this Pelagius might perhaps reply that by knowledge of the law he meant the knowledge without which a man cannot be free from sins, which is handed on through the teaching of the faith to new converts and little ones in Christ, and in which those to be baptized are instructed so that they may know the creed. That is not, indeed, what is usually meant when someone is said to have knowledge of the law, but rather the knowledge by which men are called experts in the law. Still, suppose he called these words, few in number but great in weight, which by the custom of all churches are faithfully taught to those to be baptized, “knowledge of the law,” and asserted that he had said of this knowledge that no one is without sin unless he has knowledge of the law, which must be handed on to believers before they come to the forgiveness of sins itself. Even so, a countless multitude of baptized infants would surround him, not arguing but crying, and they would cry out, not in words but by the very truth of their innocence: “What is it, what is it that you have written, that no one can be without sin unless he has knowledge of the law? Look, we are a great flock of lambs without sin, and yet we have no knowledge of the law!” Surely these would compel him to be silent, even with their tongues silent; or perhaps even to confess either that he has now been corrected from that perversity, or at least that he had held before what he has now said in the church's examination, but had not chosen careful words for his view, so that his faith should be approved and his book corrected. For, as it is written, “There is one who slips with the tongue and not with the heart.” If he said this, or says it now, who would not very readily forgive words written somewhat incautiously and carelessly, since he does not defend the view those words contain, but states his own, which the truth approves? We must believe that the devout judges also had this in mind, if indeed they were able to understand well enough what is in his Latin book, supposing it was carefully interpreted, just as they judged that his answer, given in Greek and therefore easily understood, was not foreign to the church. But let us now look at the rest.

For the episcopal synod went on and said: “Let another heading also be read.” And it was read that Pelagius had written in the same book of his “that all are governed by their own will.” When this was read, Pelagius answered: “This too I said on account of free choice, of which God is the helper when it chooses good things; but a man who sins is himself at fault, as having free choice.” On hearing this the bishops said: “Neither is this foreign to the church's teaching.” For who would condemn free choice or deny it, when the help of God is proclaimed along with it? Therefore the view of the man answering rightly pleased the bishops; and yet what is written in his book, “that all are governed by their own will,” should without doubt have disturbed the brothers who knew what these people are accustomed to argue against the grace of God. For it is said that all are governed by their own will as though God governed no one, and as though it were written in vain: “Save your people and bless your inheritance, and govern them and lift them up for ever,” so that they should not be left, if they are governed by their own will without God, like sheep without a shepherd, which God forbid. For without doubt it is more to be led than to be governed: one who is governed does something himself, and is governed so that he may act rightly; but one who is led can hardly be understood to do anything himself. And yet the Savior's grace gives so much to our wills that the apostle does not hesitate to say: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Nor can the free will in us do anything better than entrust itself to be led by him who cannot do wrong; and when it has done this, let it not doubt that it was helped to do so by him to whom it is said in the psalm: “My God, his mercy will go before me.”

Indeed, in the book in which Pelagius wrote those headings, he placed under this proposition, in which he said that all are governed by their own will and each is left to his own desire, some testimony from the Scriptures. From it, it is clear enough that a man ought not to entrust himself to his own governing. For he cites on this very point from the Wisdom of Solomon: “I too am a mortal man, like all, of the earthly race of him who was first formed,” and so on to the end of that chapter, where we read: “So there is one entrance into life for all, and a like departure. Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called, and the spirit of wisdom came into me.” Is it not clearer than daylight how this man, having considered the misery of human frailty, did not dare to entrust himself to his own governing, but prayed, and understanding was given him (of which the apostle says, “But we have the mind of the Lord”), and he called, and the spirit of wisdom came into him? For it is by this Spirit, not by the powers of their own will, that those who are sons of God are governed and led.

So too with what he cited from the psalm in the same book of headings, as if to prove that all are governed by their own will: “He loved cursing, and it will come to him; he did not want blessing, and it will be far from him.” Who does not know that this is a fault not of nature as God created it, but of the human will, which has withdrawn from God? And yet, if he had not loved cursing and had wanted blessing, and in this very thing denied that his will was helped by divine grace, he would be left, ungrateful and ungodly, to govern himself, so that, cast headlong without God as his ruler, he might learn by his punishment that he could not be governed by himself. So also in the testimony he added under the same heading in the same book: “He has set before you water and fire; stretch out your hand to whichever you wish. Before man are good and evil, life and death; whatever pleases him will be given him.” It is plain that if he puts his hand to the fire, and evil and death please him, the man's will does this; but if he loves good and life, not only does the will do this, but it is helped by God. For the eye is sufficient for itself not to see, that is, for darkness; but for seeing it is not sufficient with its own light unless the help of clear light is given it from outside. But far be it that those who are called according to his purpose, whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, should be left to their own desire to perish. That is what happens to the vessels of wrath, which are made for destruction, in whose very destruction God makes known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of his mercy. For this reason, after saying, “My God, his mercy will go before me,” he at once added: “My God will show me among my enemies.” To them, then, happens what is written: “God gave them up to the desires of their heart”; but it does not happen to the predestined, whom the Spirit of God governs, since their voice is not in vain: “Do not give me up, Lord, from my desire to the sinner.” Indeed, prayer is made even against those desires themselves, in the words: “Take from me the lusts of the belly, and let not the desire of intercourse lay hold of me.” God grants this to those whom he governs as his subjects, not to those who think themselves fit to govern themselves and, with the stiff neck of their own will's self-confidence, disdain to have him as their ruler.

This being so, how could the children of God, who know this and rejoice that they are governed and led by the Spirit of God, fail to be disturbed when they heard or read that Pelagius had written that all are governed by their own will and each is left to his own desire? And yet, since, when questioned by the bishops, he perceived what evil those words sounded, and answered that he had said this on account of free choice, adding at once, “of which God is the helper when it chooses good things; but a man who sins is himself at fault, as having free choice,” the devout judges approved this view too. They did not wish to consider or inquire how incautiously, or in what sense, those words had been put in his book, thinking it enough that he had so confessed free choice that God is its helper when it chooses good things, while one who sins is himself at fault, his own will being sufficient for him for this. And for this reason God governs those whose helper he is when they choose good things; and therefore they govern well whatever they govern, since they themselves are governed by the Good.

Next was read what Pelagius had written in his book: “that on the day of judgment the unrighteous and sinners are not to be spared, but are to be burned in eternal fires.” This had disturbed the brothers, so that they thought it should be objected, because it was said as though all sinners were to be punished with eternal punishment, not excepting those who have Christ as their foundation, even though they build on it wood, hay, and straw, of whom the apostle says: “If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” But when Pelagius answered that he had said this according to the gospel, where it is said of sinners: “These will go into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life,” a sentence of the gospel and of the Lord could in no way displease Christian judges. They did not know what in the words produced from Pelagius's book had disturbed the brothers who were used to hearing his arguments or his disciples'. For since those who had submitted the document against Pelagius to the holy bishop Eulogius were absent, no one pressed him to distinguish by some exception the sinners to be saved through fire from the sinners to be punished with eternal punishment; and so, had the judges understood why this was objected, he would rightly have been blamed if he refused to make the distinction.

As for what Pelagius added, “and if anyone believes otherwise, he is an Origenist,” the judges took it as referring to what the church most rightly detests in Origen: that even those whom the Lord says are to be punished with eternal punishment, and the devil himself and his angels, will after a time, however long, be purified and freed from their punishments and will join the saints reigning with God in the fellowship of blessedness. So the synod said that this was not foreign to the church, not according to Pelagius but rather according to the gospel: that such unrighteous and sinners as the gospel judges worthy of such punishment will be burned in eternal fires, and that whoever says that the punishment the Lord called eternal can ever come to an end holds a detestable opinion along with Origen. But about those sinners whom the apostle says will be saved as through fire when their work is burned up, they judged nothing, since nothing concerning them was plainly objected to Pelagius. Therefore one who says that the unrighteous and sinners whom the truth condemns to eternal punishment can some day be freed from it is not inappropriately called an Origenist by Pelagius. But again, let him who thinks that no sinner is worthy of mercy in God's judgment give him whatever name he likes, provided he understands that this error too is not received by the church's truth; for “judgment will be without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.”

How this judgment will take place is hard to grasp from the holy Scriptures, for what will happen in one way is signified in many ways. Sometimes the Lord says of those he does not receive into his kingdom that he will shut the door, and when they cry out and say, “Open to us; in your name we ate and drank,” and the rest that they are written to say, he will answer: “I do not know you, you who work iniquity.” Sometimes he mentions that he will order those who did not want him to reign to be brought to him and slain before him. Sometimes he says that he will come with his angels in his majesty, that all nations may be gathered before him, and he will divide them and set some at his right hand, whose good works he recounts and brings them into eternal life, and others at his left, whom he charges with barrenness of good works and condemns to eternal fire. Sometimes he orders the wicked and lazy servant who neglected to invest his money, or the man found at the banquet without a wedding garment, to be bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness. Sometimes, having received the five wise virgins, he shuts the door against the other five, the foolish ones. These things, and anything else that does not occur to me at present, are said of the future judgment, which is of course to be exercised not on one or on five, but on many. For if there were only one who was ordered to be cast from the banquet into darkness because he had no wedding garment, it would not follow at once, “For many are called, but few are chosen,” since, with one cast out and condemned, many appear to have remained in the house. But to discuss all these now as fully as would be enough would take very long. This much, however, I can say briefly, without prejudice (as is commonly said in money accounts) to a better discussion: that some single mode of judgment, which is unsearchable to us, is signified in many ways through the holy Scriptures, with the difference of merits in rewards and punishments preserved. What is enough for the case now in hand is this: if Pelagius had said that absolutely all sinners are to be punished with eternal fire and eternal punishment, whoever approved that verdict would first have pronounced sentence on himself; for who will boast that he is clean from sins? But since he said neither “all” nor “some,” but put it indefinitely, and answered that he had said it according to the gospel, the statement, being true, was confirmed by the bishops' judgment; but it is not yet clear whether Pelagius holds something else, and even after this episcopal judgment the question is not shamelessly asked.

It was also objected to Pelagius that he had written in his book that evil does not even come into one's thought. He answered: “We did not put it so, but we said that a Christian ought to strive not to think evil.” The bishops approved this, as was right. For who doubts that evil ought not to be thought? And in fact in his book, on evil, it reads more cautiously: “it is not even to be thought,” which is usually understood to mean that evil ought not even to be thought. Whoever denies this, what else does he say than that evil ought to be thought? If that were true, it would not be said in praise of love: “It does not think evil.” Yet it is not so improperly asserted that evil comes into the thought of the righteous and holy, because we usually call it thought even when something comes to mind, though consent does not follow. But the thought that incurs guilt and is rightly forbidden does not lack consent. It may be, then, that those who thought this should be objected in this form, as if Pelagius had said that evil does not even come into one's thought, that is, that what is evil does not come to the mind of the righteous and holy, were reading a faulty copy. That view would certainly be most absurd; for when we reprove evils, we cannot express them in words unless we have thought them. But, as we have said, the blameworthy thought of evil is the one that draws consent after it.

When the judges had approved this answer of Pelagius too, another statement was read, which he had written in his little book: “that the kingdom of heaven was promised even in the Old Testament.” To this Pelagius said: “This can also be proved from the Scriptures; but heretics deny it, to the injury of the Old Testament. I, however, following the authority of the Scriptures, said it because it is written in the prophet Daniel: ‘And the saints will receive the kingdom of the Most High.’” When his answer had been received, the synod said: “Neither is this foreign to the church's faith.”

Were our brothers, then, disturbed by these words without cause, so as to object this too among the rest? Certainly not. The name “Old Testament” is used in two ways: in one according to the authority of the divine Scriptures, in the other according to the most common custom of speech. For the apostle Paul says to the Galatians: “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. These things are an allegory: for these are the two testaments, one bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar. Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is joined to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.” Since, then, the Old Testament belongs to slavery (hence it was also said, “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac”), while the kingdom of heaven belongs to freedom, how can the kingdom of heaven belong to the Old Testament? But since, as I said, we are also accustomed to speak in such a way as to call by the name “Old Testament” all the Scriptures of the law and the prophets, which were ministered before the Lord's incarnation and are held by canonical authority, who that is even moderately instructed in the church's writings does not know that the kingdom of heaven could be promised in those Scriptures, just as that new testament to which the kingdom of heaven belongs was also promised there? For in those writings it is certainly written most plainly: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete for the house of Israel and the house of Jacob a new testament, not according to the testament that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.” This was done on Mount Sinai. But at that time the prophet Daniel, who had said, “The saints will receive the kingdom of the Most High,” did not yet exist. For by these words he was prophesying the reward not of the old but of the new testament, just as the same prophets also foretold the coming of Christ himself, by whose blood the new testament was dedicated, of which testament the apostles were made ministers, as the most blessed Paul says: “Who has also made us fit ministers of a new testament, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” But in the testament that is properly called old and was given on Mount Sinai, nothing is found promised in plain terms except earthly happiness. Hence the land into which the people were brought after being led through the desert is called the land of promise; in it peace and kingdom, victories won over enemies, abundance of children and of the fruits of the earth, and anything of this kind: these are the promises of the Old Testament. Although spiritual things belonging to the New Testament are prefigured by them, yet whoever takes up the law of God for the sake of those earthly things is himself an heir of the Old Testament. For what is promised and given according to the Old Testament is what is desired according to the old man; but what is prefigured there as belonging to the New Testament seeks new men. So great an apostle knew what he was saying when he said that the two testaments were distinguished, in an allegorical meaning, in the slave woman and the free, assigning children of the flesh to the old and children of the promise to the new. “It is not the children of the flesh,” he says, “who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” The children of the flesh, then, belong to the earthly Jerusalem, which is in slavery with her children; but the children of the promise to the Jerusalem above, our free mother, eternal in the heavens. From this it is seen who belong to the earthly kingdom and who to the kingdom of heaven. Those who even at that time understood this distinction by the grace of God and were made children of the promise were counted in God's hidden counsel as heirs of the New Testament, even though they ministered fittingly to the old people the Old Testament given by God according to the ordering of the times.

How, then, could the children of the promise, children of the free Jerusalem eternal in the heavens, fail to be rightly disturbed, when this apostolic and catholic distinction seemed to be taken away by Pelagius's words, and Hagar was in a way believed to be made equal to Sarah? He, then, does injury to the Scripture of the Old Testament with heretical impiety who, with the brazenness of sacrilegious impiety, denies that it is from the good, supreme, and true God, as Marcion does, as Manichaeus does, and any other plague that holds this view. Therefore, to sum up my view of this matter as briefly as I can: just as injury is done to the Old Testament if it is denied to be from the good and supreme God, so injury is done to the New if it is made equal to the Old. But when Pelagius had answered why he said that the kingdom of heaven is promised even in the Old Testament, citing the testimony of the prophet Daniel, who most plainly prophesied that the saints would receive the kingdom of the Most High, it was rightly judged that this was not foreign to the catholic faith: not according to the distinction by which the earthly promises made on Mount Sinai are shown to belong properly to the Old Testament, yet not improperly according to the custom of speech by which all the canonical Scriptures ministered before the Lord's incarnation are counted under the name of the Old Testament. For the kingdom of the Most High is nothing other than the kingdom of God. Or will anyone dare to contend that the kingdom of God is one thing and the kingdom of heaven another?

After this it was objected that Pelagius had said in the same book of his that a man can be without sin if he wishes; and that, writing to a widow, he had said flatteringly: “May godliness, which finds a place nowhere, find a place with you; may righteousness, a stranger everywhere, find a home in you; may truth, which no one now knows, become your familiar friend; and may the law of God, which is despised by almost all men, be honored by you alone.” And again to her: “O happy and blessed are you, if righteousness, which must be believed to exist only in heaven, is found on earth with you alone!” And in another book to her, after the prayer of our Lord and Savior, teaching how the saints ought to pray, he says: “He lifts up his hands worthily to God, he pours out prayer with a good conscience, who can say: ‘You know, Lord, how holy and innocent and clean from all harm, iniquity, and plunder are the hands I stretch out to you; how righteous and clean and free from every lie are the lips with which I offer you my supplication, that you may have mercy on me.’” To this Pelagius answered: “We did say that a man can be without sin and keep God's commandments if he wishes, for God has given him this possibility. But we did not say that anyone is found who has never sinned from infancy to old age, but that, having turned from his sins, he can be without sin by his own effort and the grace of God, and yet is not thereby unchangeable for the future. The rest that they have added is neither in our books, nor have we ever said such things.” When they had heard this, the synod said: “Since you deny having written such things, do you anathematize those who hold them?” Pelagius answered: “I anathematize them as fools, not as heretics, since it is not a dogma.” Then the bishops gave judgment, saying: “Now, since Pelagius has with his own voice anathematized this inserted foolish talk, rightly answering that a man with the help and grace of God can be without sin, let him answer the other headings also.”

Could the judges here, or should they, condemn things unknown and uncertain, when no one was present on the other side to prove that Pelagius had written the blameworthy things said to have been written to the widow? In such a case it would certainly not be enough to bring a book and read these things from his writings, unless witnesses were also produced, if he denied that the writings were his even when they were read aloud. Yet in these matters too the judges did what they could: they asked Pelagius whether he anathematized those who hold such views as he denied having written or said. When he answered that he anathematized them as fools, what more should the judges have asked on this matter in the absence of the accusers?