On the Proceedings of Pelagius 32–50

But what follows troubles me again. When it had been objected to him from the fifth chapter of Caelestius's book that they affirm that every man can have all virtues and graces, and that they abolish the diversity of graces which the apostle teaches, Pelagius answered: “It was said by us, but they have criticized it maliciously and ignorantly. For we do not abolish the diversity of graces, but we say that God gives all graces to one who is worthy to receive them, as he gave them to the apostle Paul.” To this the synod said: “You too have thought consistently and in the church's sense about the gift of graces contained in the holy apostle.” Here someone will say: “What, then, troubles you? Will you deny that all virtues and graces were in the apostle?” For my part, if all those are meant which the apostle himself listed in one place, and which I think the bishops also had in mind in approving this and declaring it said in the church's sense, I do not doubt that the apostle Paul had them. For he says: “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then powers, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, kinds of tongues.” What then? Shall we say that the apostle Paul did not have all these? Who would dare say that? For by the very fact that he was an apostle, he certainly had the apostleship. But he also had prophecy. Is it not his prophecy: “For the Spirit says expressly that in the last times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, to doctrines of demons,” and so on? He was also the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth, and he worked powers and healings; for he shook off the biting viper from his hand unharmed, and a paralytic, restored to health at once at his word, stood up. What he means by “helps” is obscure, since the meaning of this word extends widely; yet who would say that this grace too was lacking to him, through whose labor, as is well known, the salvation of men was so greatly helped? And what is more outstanding than his governing, since through him the Lord then governed so many churches, and through his letters governs them now? As for kinds of tongues, which of them could he have lacked, when he himself says, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you”? Since, then, we must believe that the apostle Paul lacked none of all these, the judges approved Pelagius's answer saying that all graces were given to him. But there are also other graces, which are not mentioned here. For although the apostle Paul was a very excellent member of Christ's body, he did not receive more and greater graces than the head of the whole body himself, whether in the flesh or in the human soul, the creature that the Word of God took up into the unity of his person, so that he might be our head and we his body. And indeed, if all things could be in each individual, the likeness given for this matter from the members of our body would seem pointless. For some things are common to all the members, like health, like life; but others are proper to individual members, so that the ear does not perceive colors nor the eye sounds. That is why it is said: “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smell be?” This is not said as though it were impossible for God to give the ears the sense of sight and the eyes that of hearing. Yet it is certain what he does in the body of Christ, which is the church, and what diversity the apostle signified in the churches, as through different members, so that there should be gifts proper to individuals. It is now clear, therefore, both why those who objected this did not want the difference of graces abolished, and why the bishops could approve Pelagius's answer on account of the apostle Paul, in whom we recognize all the gifts that he listed in one place.

What, then, is it about this heading that I said had made me anxious? This: that Pelagius said that God gives all graces to one who is worthy to receive them, as he gave them to the apostle Paul. I would not be at all anxious about this answer of his, were it not for what concerns this case, which must be given the greatest care: namely, that the grace of God should not be attacked while we keep silent and pretend not to see so great an evil. Since, then, he does not say that God gives to whom he wills, but says that God gives all graces to one who is worthy to receive them, I could not help being suspicious when I read it. For the very name of grace, and the meaning of that name, is taken away if it is not given freely but received by one who is worthy of it. Will someone perhaps say that I do the apostle an injury because I do not say he was worthy of grace? On the contrary, I would do him an injury, and bring punishment on myself, if I did not believe what he himself says. Did he not define grace in such a way as to show that it is called grace because it is given freely? He himself said: “But if it is by grace, it is no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.” Hence he also says: “Now to one who works, the wage is not reckoned as grace but as debt.” Whoever is worthy, then, is owed it; and if it is owed, it is not grace, for grace is given, a debt is paid. Grace, therefore, is given to the unworthy, so that the debt may be paid to the worthy; and he who gave to the unworthy what they did not have himself brings it about that they have whatever he will pay to the worthy.

Here he may say: “I said that the apostle was worthy to be given those great graces not from works but from faith; for it was not works, which he did not have as good works before, but his faith that merited this.” What then? Do we think that faith does not work? On the contrary, it truly works, the faith that works through love. But however much the works of unbelievers are praised, we know that the same apostle's sentence is true and unassailable: “Whatever is not from faith is sin.” He often says that righteousness is reckoned to us not from works but from faith, though faith rather works through love, so that no one should think that faith itself is reached by the merits of works, since it is itself the beginning from which good works begin; for, as has been said, what is not from it is sin. Hence it is also said to the church in the Song of Songs: “You will come and pass on from the beginning of faith.” Therefore, although faith obtains the grace of doing good, we certainly did not merit by any faith to have faith itself; but in giving it to us, that in it we might follow the Lord, his mercy went before us. Or did we give it to ourselves, and did we make ourselves faithful? Here too I will cry out with full voice: “He made us, and not we ourselves”; unless the apostolic teaching commends something else when it says: “For I say, through the grace of God that has been given me, to all who are among you, not to think more highly than one ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, as God has assigned to each a measure of faith.” From here also comes this: “What do you have that you did not receive?” For we have received this too, from which everything good that we have in our actions begins.

What, then, of what the same apostle says: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will pay me on that day,” if these things are not paid to the worthy but given to the unworthy? Whoever says this does not consider enough that the crown could not have been paid to the worthy if grace had not been given to the unworthy. For he says, “I have fought the good fight”; but the same man says, “Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He says, “I have finished the course”; but the same man says, “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” He says, “I have kept the faith”; but the same man says, “For I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard my deposit until that day,” that is, what I have entrusted to him; for some copies do not have “deposit” but, what is plainer, “what I have entrusted.” And what do we entrust to God but the things we pray him to keep, among which is our faith itself? For what else did the Lord entrust to the apostle Peter by praying, when he said to him, “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail,” but that God should keep his faith, so that it would not fail by yielding to temptation? Therefore, O blessed Paul, great preacher of grace, I will say it and not fear (for who will be less angry with me for saying these things than you, who have said what was to be said and taught what was to be taught?): I will say it, I say, and not fear: your crown is indeed paid to your merits, but your merits are the gifts of God.

The reward that is owed is paid, then, to the worthy apostle; but grace gave the apostleship itself, which was not owed, to the unworthy man. Shall I regret having said this? Far from it; I shall be defended from this ill will by his testimony, and no one will call me bold unless he has dared to call him a liar. He himself cries out, he himself testifies, he himself, in order to commend God's gifts in himself and to glory not in himself but in the Lord, not only says that he had no good merits to become an apostle, but even speaks of his evil merits, to show and proclaim the grace of God. “I am not fit,” he says, “to be called an apostle.” What else is this but “I am not worthy”? For so most Latin copies have it. This is precisely what we are asking about; for all those graces are contained in this gift of the apostleship. It was not fitting or proper for an apostle not to have prophecy, or not to be a teacher, or not to be distinguished by powers and gifts of healing, or not to give help, or not to govern churches, or not to excel in kinds of tongues: the one name of apostleship embraces all these. Let us consult him, then; let us rather hear him. Let us say to him: “Holy apostle Paul, the monk Pelagius says that you were worthy to receive all the graces of your apostleship. What do you yourself say?” “I am not worthy,” he says, “to be called an apostle.” Shall I then, to do honor to Paul, dare to believe Pelagius about Paul rather than Paul? I will not; for if I did, I would burden myself more than I honored him. Let us hear also why he is not worthy to be called an apostle: “Because I persecuted the church of God,” he says. If we followed human sense, who would not judge that he should be condemned by Christ rather than called? Who loves the preacher so much that he does not detest the persecutor? Most rightly and truly, then, he says, “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Doing so much evil, then, how did you merit so much good? Let all nations hear him answer: “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” Is grace commended in any other way than because it is given to the unworthy? “And his grace toward me,” he says, “was not in vain.” He enjoins this on others too, so as to show also the choice of the will, when he says: “We urge and entreat you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” And how does he prove that his grace in him was not in vain, except by what follows: “But I labored more than all of them”? So he did not labor to receive grace, but received it in order to labor; and thus, unworthy, he received grace freely, by which he might become worthy to receive the rewards that are owed. Nor did he dare to claim even the labor for himself. For when he had said, “I labored more than all of them,” he at once added: “Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” O great teacher, confessor, and preacher of grace! What is this: “I labored more, yet not I”? Where the will lifted itself up a little, there at once godliness kept watch and humility trembled, because weakness recognized itself.

Rightly, as the proceedings show, the holy John, bishop of the church of Jerusalem, also used this testimony, as he himself related when asked by our fellow bishops who presided with him at that trial what had been done before him prior to the trial. He said that when certain people were then whispering and saying that Pelagius said that this could be accomplished without the grace of God (that is, what he had said above, that a man can be without sin), “I reproved him for this,” he said, “and added that even the apostle Paul, laboring much, but not according to his own power but according to the grace of God, said: ‘I labored more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me’; and again: ‘It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy’; and this: ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain’; and we cited,” he said, “many other similar passages from the holy Scriptures. But when they did not accept what we said from the holy Scriptures, but went on whispering, Pelagius said: ‘I too believe so: let him be anathema who says that a man can come to progress in all virtues without the help of God.’”

Bishop John related this in the hearing of Pelagius, who could certainly have said respectfully: “Your Holiness is mistaken; you do not remember rightly. I did not say ‘I too believe so’ to those testimonies you cited from the Scriptures, since I do not understand them to mean that the grace of God so labors with a man that his not sinning is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.”

For there are certain expositions of Paul's letter to the Romans, said to be Pelagius's own, in which he asserts that the words “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy” were not said in Paul's own person, but that Paul used the voice of one questioning and refuting when he said this, as though this ought certainly not to be said. Since, then, Bishop John plainly recognized this sentence as the apostle's, and cited it so that Pelagius should not think anyone avoids sin without the grace of God, and said that Pelagius had answered, “I too believe so,” and since Pelagius, hearing this in person, did not answer, “I do not believe so,” he must either disown that perverse exposition, in which he wanted it understood that the apostle did not hold this but rather refuted it, or not hesitate to correct and amend it. As for whatever Bishop John said about our absent brothers, whether our fellow bishops Heros and Lazarus, or the presbyter Orosius, or others whose names are not given there, I believe he understands that it does not count to their prejudice. For if they had been present, they could perhaps (far be it from me to say they could convict him of lying) have reminded him of what he had perhaps forgotten, or of where the Latin interpreter had misled him, if not from a wish to lie, then certainly through some difficulty with a foreign language imperfectly understood; especially since the matter was not being conducted with an official record, which has usefully been instituted so that the wicked may not lie and the good may not forget anything. But if anyone raises some question against our brothers on this account and summons them to an episcopal trial, they will defend themselves as best they can. What need is there for us to labor over it here, when not even the judges themselves wished to pronounce anything about it after our fellow bishop's account?

Since, then, Pelagius, being present, silently acknowledged that he had said he believed so in response to those testimonies of Scripture, how is it that, recalling a little earlier that testimony of the apostle and finding that he had said, “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God; but by the grace of God I am what I am,” he did not see that he ought not to have said, when the abundance of graces received by the same apostle was in question, that he was worthy to receive them, since the apostle himself not only said, but proved by giving the reason, that he was unworthy, and by this very fact commended grace as truly grace? But if perhaps he could not think of or remember what holy John had related a while before, he should have looked at his own very recent answer and noticed what he had anathematized a little before among the things objected to him from Caelestius. For among them is the charge that Caelestius said “that the grace of God is given according to our merits.” If, then, Pelagius truly anathematized this, what does he mean by saying that all graces were given to the apostle according to merit? Or is it one thing to be worthy to receive, and another to receive according to merit? And can he show by some subtlety of argument that someone is worthy but does not merit? Yet Caelestius, or whoever else it was whose preceding views he all anathematized, does not allow him to spread a fog over this word and hide in it. For he presses and says: “And grace itself has been placed in my will, whether I am worthy or unworthy.” If, then, this was rightly and truly condemned by Pelagius, where it is said that the grace of God is given according to merits and to the worthy, with what heart did he think, or with what mouth did he utter, what he said: “We say that God gives all graces to one who is worthy to receive them”? Who, if he considers these things carefully, would not become anxious about his answer or defense?

“Why, then,” someone says, “did the judges approve this?” I confess that I myself am now in doubt about it. But no doubt either the brief phrase easily escaped their hearing and attention, or, thinking that it could in some way be rightly understood, since they seemed to have clear confessions from him on this matter, they thought no controversy should be raised with him over what was almost a single word. That might perhaps have happened to us too, had we sat with them at that trial. For if in place of the word “worthy” the word “predestined” or something of that kind had been put, no scruple would touch or torment the mind. And yet, if one who is justified through the election of grace, with no preceding good merits, is said to be called worthy by destination, as he is called elect, it is hard to judge whether this could be said with certainty, or at least with the least offense to understanding. For my part, I would easily pass over this word, were it not that the book I answered, in which he says there is no grace of God at all except our nature with free choice, created grace, makes me anxious about Pelagius's own meaning, in case he took care to insert this word not from carelessness of speech but from diligence in his dogma. The last points that remain disturbed the judges so much that they judged them worthy of condemnation even before Pelagius answered.

For it was objected that in the sixth chapter of Caelestius's book it is stated: “that men cannot be called sons of God unless they have become entirely without sin”; according to which even the apostle Paul would not be a son of God, since he said, “Not that I have already received, or am already perfect.” In the seventh chapter: “that forgetfulness and ignorance are not subject to sin, since they happen not according to the will but according to necessity”; though David says, “Remember not the sins of my youth and of my ignorance,” and though in the law sacrifices are offered for ignorance as for sin. In the tenth chapter: “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.” In the twelfth chapter: “that our victory is not from God's help but from free choice”; which he was said to infer in these words: “The victory is ours, since we took up arms by our own will; just as, on the other hand, it is ours when we are overcome, since we scorned to arm ourselves by our own will.” And he put forward the testimony of the apostle Peter, “that we are partakers of the divine nature,” and he is said to form a syllogism: “that if the soul cannot be without sin, then God too is subject to sin, since part of him, that is, the soul, is liable to sin.” In the thirteenth chapter he says: “that pardon is given to penitents not according to the grace and mercy of God but according to the merit and labor of those who through repentance have become worthy of mercy.”

When these had been read, the synod said: “What does the monk Pelagius, here present, say to these headings that have been read? For the holy synod and the holy catholic church of God reject this.” Pelagius answered: “I say again that these, even according to their own testimony, are not mine, and, as I said, I am not bound to answer for them. What I have confessed to be mine I affirm to be right; but what I have said is not mine I reject according to the judgment of the holy church, saying anathema to everyone who opposes and contradicts the teachings of the holy catholic church. For I believe in the Trinity of one substance, and all things according to the teaching of the holy catholic church; and if anyone thinks anything foreign to this, let him be anathema.”

The synod said: “Now, since we are satisfied by the statements of the monk Pelagius, here present, who agrees with godly teachings and rejects and anathematizes what is contrary to the church's faith, we confess that he is in the communion of the church and catholic.”

If these are the proceedings in which Pelagius's friends rejoice that he was cleared, then we, since he took care to prove sufficiently his friendship toward us too by producing our private letters and having them read at this trial (the proceedings contain them), do indeed desire and wish his salvation in Christ; but we ought not to rejoice rashly over this clearing of his, which is believed rather than clearly demonstrated. In saying this I do not accuse the judges of carelessness or connivance or (what is most certainly far from them) of complicity in ungodly doctrines. Their judgment is deservedly approved and praised; yet Pelagius does not seem to me to have been cleared among those to whom he is more fully and certainly known. For they, judging as it were an unknown man, especially in the absence of those who had submitted the document against him, could not examine the man very carefully; yet the heresy itself, if those who fought for its perversity follow their judgment, they destroyed completely. But those who know well what Pelagius used to teach, whether those who resisted his arguments or those who rejoice that they have been freed from that very error, how can they not hold him suspect, when they read, not a simple confession of his condemning past errors, but a defense as if he had never held any other view than what was approved in his answers at this trial?

For, to speak especially of myself, I first came to know the name of Pelagius, when he was absent and living in Rome, with great praise of him. Afterwards report began to bring us word that he argued against the grace of God. Though this grieved me, and I was told it by people I believed, I still wanted to learn something of the kind from him or from some book of his, so that if I began to refute him he could not deny it. After he came to Africa, he was received on our shore, that is, at Hippo, in my absence; there, as I learned from our people, nothing of this kind at all was heard from him, because he also left sooner than expected. Later I saw his face at Carthage once or twice, as far as I remember, when I was very busy with preparations for the conference we were about to hold with the Donatist heretics; and he hurried from there overseas. Meanwhile these doctrines were seething in the mouths of those who were said to be his disciples, so that Caelestius came before a church court and received a sentence worthy of his perversity. We thought it more wholesome to deal with them by refuting and exposing the errors themselves without naming the persons, so that the men might be corrected by fear of a church judgment rather than punished by the judgment itself. So we did not cease to argue against those evils, both in books and in sermons to the people.

But when that book was given me by the servants of God Timasius and James, good and honorable men, in which Pelagius most plainly, putting to himself as if from an opponent the question about the grace of God, over which he was already suffering great ill will, seemed to resolve it only by calling nature created with free choice the grace of God, sometimes, and faintly and not openly, joining to it either the help of the law or even the forgiveness of sins: then indeed it became clear to me beyond any doubt how hostile to Christian salvation the poison of that perversity was. Even so I did not put Pelagius's name into my work refuting that book, thinking I would do more good if, keeping our friendship, I still spared his modesty, though I ought no longer to spare his writings. That is why I am now vexed that at this trial he said in one place: “I anathematize those who hold such views or have ever held them.” It would have been enough to say “who hold such views,” for us to believe that he had been corrected. But when he added “or have ever held them,” first, how unjustly he dared to condemn the undeserving who are free from that error, which they had learned either from others or from him as teacher! Then, which of those who know that he not only once held these things but also taught them would not with reason suspect that he anathematized those who hold them insincerely, since he did not hesitate in the same way to anathematize those who once held them, among whom they will remember him as their teacher? Look, to say nothing of others: with what eyes, with what face will he look at Timasius and James, his friends and once his disciples, to whom I wrote the book in which I answered his? How they wrote back to me, I did not think should be passed over in silence; I have appended a copy of their letter below.

To the truly most blessed lord and deservedly venerable father, Bishop Augustine, Timasius and James send greeting in the Lord. The grace of God ministered through your word has so refreshed and restored us that we may say in all sincerity: “He sent his word and healed them,” most blessed lord and deservedly venerable father. We find that Your Holiness has sifted the text of that little book with such care that we are astonished that answers are given to every single point, whether in the things a Christian ought to refute, detest, and shun, or in those in which he is not found to have erred much, though by some cunning or other he thought that the grace of God should be suppressed even in them. But there is one thing that affects us in so great a benefit: that this so splendid gift of God's grace has shone forth late, since it has happened that some are absent to whose blindness this illumination of so evident a truth was owed. Yet we do not doubt that the same grace will reach them, even if later, by the favor of God, “who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” As for us, although long ago, taught by the spirit of love that is in you, we cast off subjection to that error, we give thanks even now for this, that we have learned to open to others what we believed before, since the fuller discourse of Your Holiness has laid open a way of ease. And in another hand: May the mercy of our God glorify your blessedness for ever, safe and mindful of us.

If, then, he too confessed that he had once been in this error, as a man taken by surprise, but that he now anathematizes those who hold these things, anyone who did not congratulate him, now that he holds to the way of truth, would himself lose the heart of love. But as it is, it is not enough that he did not confess he had been freed from that plague; he even anathematized those who have been freed, who love him so much that they want him too to be freed. Among them are these men, who showed their good will toward him in this letter they gave me; for they were thinking especially of him when they said they were affected by the lateness with which I wrote that book. “It has happened,” they say, “that some are absent to whose blindness this illumination of so evident a truth was owed; yet we do not doubt,” they say, “that the same grace will reach them, even if later, by the favor of God.” For they too thought that the name or names should still be kept silent, so that, while friendship lived, the friends' error might rather die.

But now, if Pelagius thinks of God, if he is not ungrateful for the mercy of him who brought him before the bishops' judgment precisely so that he would not afterwards dare to defend these anathematized things, and would now recognize that they are to be detested and cast away, he will receive our letter, in which we name him and open the sore to be healed, more gratefully than that earlier one, in which, fearing to cause pain, we increased the swelling, as we now regret. But if he is angry with me, let him consider how unjustly he is angry, and, to overcome his anger, let him at last ask for the grace of God, which he confessed at this trial to be necessary for each of our acts, so that with its help he may win a true victory. For what good to him are the great praises of him in the bishops' letters, which he thought should be mentioned, or even read and put in evidence, on his behalf? As if all who heard his vehement and in a way burning exhortations to a good life could easily have known that he held these perverse views!