On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants

Although I am in the midst of great surges of cares and wearinesses, which hold me back from dealing with sinners who forsake the law of God (though even these very troubles I may well lay to the account of the merits of our own sins as well), yet I did not wish, and, to tell you the truth, I was not able, to remain any longer in debt to your zeal, dearest Marcellinus, by which you are all the more dear and delightful to me. For I was so compelled, whether by charity itself, by which in the one unchangeable God we who are to be changed for the better are one, or by the fear that I should offend God in you, who gave you such a desire, so that in serving it I serve him who gave it; so, I say, it compelled me, so it led and drew me to resolve, as far as my slender strength allows, the questions you laid upon me in writing, that this matter for a while prevailed in my mind over others, until I could accomplish something by which it would be plain that I had served your good will, and that of those who care about these things, if not sufficiently, at least obediently.

There are those who say that Adam was so created that he would have died even without the merit of sin, not as a penalty for guilt but by the necessity of nature. They try, of course, to refer what was said in the law, “On the day you eat, you shall die the death,” not to the death of the body but to the death of the soul, which comes about in sin. By this death the Lord signified the unbelieving as dead, of whom he says: “Let the dead bury their dead.” What then will they answer when we read that God said this to the first man, even after the sin, as he rebuked and condemned him: “Earth you are, and into earth you shall go”? For it was not in respect of the soul but, as is plain, in respect of the body that he was earth, and by the death of that same body that he was to go into the earth. For although in respect of the body he was earth, and bore the natural body in which he was created, yet, if he had not sinned, he was to have been changed into a spiritual body and to have passed into that incorruption which is promised to the faithful and the saints, without the punishment of death. That we have a longing for this, we not only feel in ourselves but also recognize from the apostle's admonition, where he says: “For in this we groan, longing to be clothed over with our dwelling which is from heaven, if indeed, being clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this dwelling groan, being burdened, in that we do not wish to be stripped but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” Accordingly, if Adam had not sinned, he was not to have been stripped of the body but clothed over with immortality and incorruption, so that what is mortal might be swallowed up by life, that is, that he might pass from the natural to the spiritual.

Nor was there reason to fear that, if he had lived here longer in a natural body, he would be weighed down by old age and, growing old little by little, would come to death. For if God granted to the clothes and shoes of the Israelites that they were not worn out through so many years, what wonder if the same power were granted to an obedient man, so that, having a natural, that is a mortal, body, he should have in it a certain state in which he would be full of years without decay, and at the time God willed would come from mortality to immortality without death in between? For just as this very flesh which we now have is not for that reason invulnerable, because it is not necessary that it be wounded, so that flesh was not for that reason not mortal, because it was not necessary that it die. Such a condition, I think, was granted, while still in a natural and mortal body, even to those who were taken hence without death. For Enoch and Elijah did not wither with old age through so long a span; yet I do not believe that they have already been changed into that spiritual quality of body such as is promised in the resurrection, which went before first in the Lord; unless perhaps these men do not even need the foods that refresh by their own consumption, but since they were taken up live in such a way that they have a fullness like that of those forty days in which Elijah lived on a cup of water and a cake of bread without other food; or, if they also need such sustenance, perhaps they are fed in paradise as Adam was before he deserved to go out from there because of sin. For he had, as far as I judge, both from the fruits of the trees refreshment against decline and from the tree of life stability against aging.

But besides what God said in punishment, “Earth you are, and into earth you shall go,” which I do not know how it can be understood except of the death of the body, there are other testimonies too by which it appears most evidently that the human race deserved, because of sin, the death not only of the spirit but also of the body. The apostle says to the Romans: “But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. If then the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.” I think that so clear and open a statement needs not an expositor but only a reader. The body, he says, is dead, not because of earthly frailty, because it was made from the dust of the earth, but because of sin. What more do we seek? And most watchfully he does not say “mortal” but “dead.”

For before it was changed into that incorruption which is promised in the resurrection of the saints, it could be mortal although not going to die, just as this body of ours can be, so to speak, liable to sickness although not going to be sick. For whose flesh is there that cannot be sick, even if by some chance it dies before it falls sick? So that body too was already mortal. That mortality a change into eternal incorruption would have taken away, if righteousness, that is obedience, had remained in man; but what was mortal was not made dead except because of sin. But since that future change in the resurrection will have not only no death, which came about because of sin, but not even the mortality which the natural body had before sin, he does not say, “He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your dead bodies,” although he had said above that the body was dead, but: “He will also give life,” he says, “to your mortal bodies,” so that they will be not only no longer dead but not even mortal, when the natural rises as spiritual, and this mortal puts on immortality, and what is mortal is swallowed up by life.

It would be surprising if anything clearer than this plain statement were sought. Unless perhaps we must listen to what is said against this clarity, so that we should understand the “dead body” here in the sense in which it was said: “Put to death your members which are on earth.” But in this sense the body is put to death because of righteousness, not because of sin; for we put to death our members which are on earth in order to do righteousness. Or if they think that “because of sin” was added so that we should understand not that sin was committed but that sin should not be committed, as if he said, “The body indeed is dead in order that sin may not be committed,” what then does it mean that, when he had added “but the spirit is life,” he added “because of righteousness”? For it would have sufficed to add the life of the spirit in such a way that here too “in order that sin may not be committed” was understood, so that we should understand both on account of one thing, both that the body is dead and that the spirit is life in order that sin may not be committed. For so, even if he only wished to say “because of righteousness,” that is, in order that righteousness may be done, both could be referred to this: both that the body is dead and that the spirit is life in order that righteousness may be done. But in fact he said both that the body is dead because of sin and that the spirit is life because of righteousness, assigning different merits to different things: to the death of the body the merit of sin, to the life of the spirit the merit of righteousness. Therefore if, as cannot be doubted, the spirit is life because of righteousness, that is, by the merit of righteousness, surely what else ought or can we understand by “the body is dead because of sin” than “by the merit of sin,” if we do not try to pervert and twist the most open sense of Scripture at our own pleasure? The light of the following words is added to this as well. For when, defining the grace of the present time, he said that the body is indeed dead because of sin, because in it, not yet renewed by the resurrection, the merit of sin remains, that is, the necessity of death, but that the spirit is life because of righteousness, because, although we are still burdened with the body of this death, yet, the renewal having already begun in the inner man, we breathe again in the righteousness of faith; nevertheless, lest human ignorance should hope for nothing concerning the resurrection of the body, he says that that very body which he had called dead in the present age because of the merit of sin will in the future be given life because of the merit of righteousness; and not only so that from dead it becomes living, but also that from mortal it becomes immortal.

Although, then, I fear that a manifest matter may be obscured rather than explained, yet attend to the light of the apostle's statement. “But if Christ,” he says, “is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” This was said so that people should not think that they have either no benefit or little from the grace of Christ because they must of necessity die in the body. For they ought to note that the body still bears the merit of sin, being bound by the condition of death, but that the spirit has already begun to live because of the righteousness of faith, the spirit which had itself been extinguished in man by a kind of death of unbelief. Do not think, then, he says, that little gift has been conferred on you by the fact that Christ is in you, since in a body dead because of sin your spirit now lives because of righteousness; nor for that reason despair of the life of the body too. “For 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 dwelling in you.” Why is the smoke of contention still poured over so great a light? The apostle cries out: the body indeed is dead in you because of sin, but your mortal bodies also will be given life because of righteousness, because of which the spirit is already life now, and all this will be accomplished through the grace of Christ, that is, through his Spirit dwelling in you; and still there is outcry against it! He also says how it comes about that life turns death into itself by putting it to death. “Therefore, brothers,” he says, “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.” What else is this than: if you live according to death, the whole will die; but if by living according to life you put death to death, the whole will live?

Again, what he says, “Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead”: how can it be understood except of the death of the body, since, when he said this, he was speaking of the resurrection of the body and urging it with most earnest and keen purpose? What then is it that he says here to the Corinthians, “Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive,” if not what he says also to the Romans, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death”? This death they wish to be understood as not of the body but of the soul; as if something different were said to the Corinthians, “through a man came death,” where they are not at all allowed to take it as the death of the soul, because the subject was the resurrection of the body, which is the opposite of the death of the body. That is also why only death is mentioned there as having come through a man, and not sin as well: because the subject was not righteousness, which is the opposite of sin, but the resurrection of the body, which is the opposite of the death of the body.

As for this testimony of the apostle, in which he says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death,” you told me in your letter that they try to twist it into some new opinion, but you did not say what it is they think these words mean. As far as I have learned from others, they hold this: that the death mentioned there is not of the body, which they will not allow that Adam deserved by sinning, but of the soul, which comes about in the sin itself; and that sin itself passed from the first man to other men not by propagation but by imitation. For this is why they refuse to believe that in infants too original sin is loosed through baptism, since they contend that there is none at all in those being born. But if the apostle had wished to mention the sin which entered into this world not by propagation but by imitation, he would have named as its source not Adam but the devil, of whom it is written, “The devil sins from the beginning,” and of whom we also read in the book of Wisdom: “But through the envy of the devil death entered into the world.” For since this death came to men from the devil in this way, not because they were propagated from him but because they imitated him, it at once adds: “And they imitate him who are of his party.” Accordingly, when the apostle mentioned the sin and death which passed from one to all by propagation, he set as its source the one from whom the propagation of the human race took its beginning.

Indeed all who through disobedience transgress God's commandment imitate Adam; but it is one thing to be an example to those who sin by will, another to be the origin of those who are born with sin. For Christ too is imitated by his saints in pursuing righteousness; hence the same apostle says, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ.” But besides this imitation, his grace also works our enlightenment and justification inwardly, by that work of which the same preacher of his says: “Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” For by this grace he grafts into his body even baptized infants, who certainly are not yet able to imitate anyone. Just as, then, he in whom all are made alive, besides offering himself as an example of righteousness to those who imitate him, also gives to the faithful the most hidden grace of his Spirit, which he secretly pours even into infants; so also he in whom all die, besides being an example for imitation to those who transgress the Lord's commandment by will, also by the hidden infection of his carnal concupiscence infected in himself all who were to come from his stock. From this, and from nowhere else, the apostle says: “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned.” If I said this, these men would resist and cry out that I was not speaking rightly nor thinking rightly. For in these words they would understand no other meaning from any man who said them than the one they refuse to understand in the apostle. But because they are the words of one to whose authority and teaching they submit, they charge us with slowness of understanding, while they try to twist what has been said plainly into I know not what else. “Through one man,” he says, “sin entered into the world, and through sin death”: this belongs to propagation, not imitation, for otherwise he would say “through the devil.” And what no one doubts, he means that first man who was called Adam. “And so,” he says, “it passed to all men.”

Then what follows, “in whom all sinned”: how circumspectly, how properly, how unambiguously it is said! For if you understand the sin which entered into the world through one man, in which sin all sinned, it is certainly plain that the personal sins of each are one thing, in which only those sin whose sins they are, and this one sin another, in which all sinned when all were that one man. But if it is understood not of the sin but of the one man himself, in which one man all sinned, what is clearer even than this clarity? We read, of course, that those who believe in Christ are justified in him, because of the hidden communication and inspiration of spiritual grace, by which whoever cleaves to the Lord is one spirit, although his saints also imitate him. Let someone read me anything like this about those who imitated his saints, whether anyone is said to have been justified in Paul or in Peter or in any of those whose authority stands high among the people of God; except that we are said to be blessed in Abraham, as it was said to him, “In you all nations will be blessed,” because of Christ, who is called his seed according to the flesh. This is said more plainly when the same thing is said thus: “In your seed all nations will be blessed.” But I do not know whether anyone will find it said in the divine oracles that anyone sinned or sins in the devil, although all the wicked and ungodly imitate him. Yet, since the apostle said of the first man, “in whom all sinned,” there is still dispute about the propagation of sin, and some cloud or other of imitation is set against it.

Note also what follows. For when he had said, “in whom all sinned,” he went on to add: “For until the law sin was in the world”; that is, because not even the law could take away sin, the law which came in so that sin might abound, whether the natural law, under which each person, once using reason, begins to add his own sins to original sin, or that law which was written by Moses and given to the people. “For if a law had been given which could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law. But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise might be given from faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe.” “But sin was not reckoned when there was no law.” What is “was not reckoned” except that it was not known and was not thought to be sin? For it was not held by the Lord God himself as though it did not exist, since it is written: “Whoever have sinned without the law will perish without the law.”

“But death reigned,” he says, “from Adam until Moses,” that is, from the first man even to the law itself, which was promulgated by God, because not even the law could take away the reign of death. For he wants the reign of death to be understood as when the guilt of sin so dominates men that it does not let them come to eternal life, which is the true life, but drags them even to the second death, which is eternal as a penalty. This reign of death in any man is destroyed only by the grace of the Savior, which was at work in the saints of old, all who, before Christ came in the flesh, nevertheless belonged to his helping grace, not to the letter of the law, which could only command, not help. For what is now revealed in the New Testament was hidden in the Old, by a most just ordering of the times. Therefore death reigned from Adam until Moses in all who were not helped by the grace of Christ, so that the reign of death might be destroyed in them; therefore even in those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression, that is, who had not yet sinned by their own personal will as he did, but drew original sin from him, “who is a type of the one to come,” because in him was established the type of condemnation for the posterity to come, who would be created by descent from him, so that from one all would be born into condemnation, from which nothing frees but the grace of the Savior. I know indeed that most Latin manuscripts read thus: “Death reigned from Adam until Moses over those who sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression”; and those who read it so refer this too to the same meaning, taking it that those sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression who sinned in him, so that they were created like him: as men from a man, so sinners from a sinner, dying from one who would die, and condemned from one condemned. But the Greek manuscripts, from which the translation into Latin was made, all or nearly all have what I set down first.

“But not as the offense,” he says, “so also the gift; for if through the offense of one many died, much more has the grace of God and the gift in the grace of one man Jesus Christ abounded to many”: not “to many more,” that is, to many more men, for no more are justified than are condemned, but “much more has it abounded.” For Adam from his one offense begot guilty men; but Christ by his grace loosed and forgave even the offenses of their own will which men added to the original sin in which they were born, which he says more clearly in what follows.

But look more carefully at what he says, that through the offense of one many died. For why through the offense of that one, and not rather through their own offenses, if imitation and not propagation is to be understood in this place? But note what follows: “And not as through one who sinned, so is the gift; for the judgment was from one to condemnation, but the grace from many offenses to justification.” Now let them say where that imitation has a place in these words. “From one,” he says, “to condemnation”: from one what, if not offense? For he explains this when he adds: “but the grace from many offenses to justification.” Why then is judgment from one offense to condemnation, but grace from many offenses to justification? If there is no original offense, does not the judgment lead men to condemnation from many offenses, just as grace leads to justification? For grace does not forgive many offenses without the judgment also condemning many offenses. If they are led to condemnation from one offense because all the offenses which are condemned were committed in imitation of that one man, there is the same reason why they should be understood to be led to justification also from one offense, since all the offenses which are forgiven to the justified were committed in imitation of that one man. But this, of course, the apostle did not understand when he said: “The judgment was from one offense to condemnation, but the grace from many offenses to justification”! Rather let us understand the apostle and see that it was said, “the judgment from one offense to condemnation,” because it would suffice for condemnation even if there were nothing in men but original sin. For although the condemnation of those who have joined their own sins to the original offense is heavier, and heavier for each one the more gravely he has sinned, yet even that alone which is drawn from origin not only separates from the kingdom of God, which they themselves also confess that infants who die without receiving the grace of Christ cannot enter, but also makes them strangers to salvation and eternal life, which can be nothing other than the kingdom of God, into which fellowship with Christ alone brings us.

And for this reason from Adam, in whom we all sinned, we have not drawn all our sins, but only the original one; but from Christ, in whom we are all justified, we obtain the forgiveness not only of that original sin but also of the others which we ourselves have added. That is why “not as through one who sinned, so is the gift.” “For the judgment” from one offense, if it is not forgiven, that is, from the original one, can already lead “to condemnation,” “but the grace” leads “from many offenses” forgiven, that is, not only from that original one but also from all the others, “to justification.”

“For if through the offense of one death reigned through one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” Why did death reign through one through the offense of one, unless because they were held by the bond of death in that one in whom all sinned, even if they did not add sins of their own? Otherwise death did not reign through one through the offense of one, but through the many offenses of many, through each one who sins. For if the others died through the offense of another man because, following him who went before them in offending, they imitated him, then he too, and much more, died through the offense of another, since the devil went before him in offending in such a way that he even persuaded him to the offense. But Adam persuaded none of his imitators, and many who are called his imitators either have not heard, or do not believe at all, that he existed and committed any such thing. How much more rightly, then, as I have already said, would the apostle have set the devil as the source, from whom alone he would say that sin and death passed through all, if in this place he had wished to teach not propagation but imitation! For much more reasonably is Adam called an imitator of the devil, whom he had as the persuader to sin, if anyone can imitate even one who persuaded him to nothing of the kind, or whom he does not know at all. And what is “those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness,” except that the grace of forgiveness is given not only for that sin in which all sinned but also for those which they added, and such righteousness is given to these men that, whereas Adam consented to the one who persuaded him to sin, these do not yield even to one who compels them? And what is “much more will they reign in life,” since the reign of death drags many more into eternal punishments, unless we understand that in both cases those same people are meant who pass from Adam to Christ, that is, from death to life, because they will reign without end in eternal life more than death reigned in them for a time and with an end?

“Therefore, as through the offense of one to all men unto condemnation, so also through the justification of one to all men unto justification of life.” This offense of one, if we attend to imitation, will be none other than the devil's. But since it is plain that it is said of Adam, not of the devil, it remains that not imitation but the propagation of sin is to be understood. For in what he says of Christ, “through the justification,” he expressed more than if he had said “through the righteousness of one.” For he means that justification by which Christ justifies the ungodly, which he has not set forth for imitation; he alone can do it. For the apostle could rightly say, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ,” but he would never say, “Be justified by me, as I also was justified by Christ”; since there can be, and are, and have been many righteous men worth imitating, but no one is righteous and justifying except Christ. Hence it is said: “To him who believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.” Whoever, then, dares to say “I justify you” must consequently also say “Believe in me,” which none of the saints could rightly say, [except the Holy One of the holy ones]: “Believe in God, and believe in me”; so that, because he justifies the ungodly, to him who believes in him who justifies the ungodly faith is reckoned as righteousness.

For if imitation alone makes sinners through Adam, why does not imitation alone make men righteous through Christ also? “For as through the offense of one,” he says, “to all men unto condemnation, so also through the justification of one to all men unto justification of life.” Accordingly, the “one” and the “one” should have been set down by these men not as Adam and Christ but as Adam and Abel. For although many sinners went before us in the time of this life, and those who sinned at a later time imitated them, yet these men want only Adam to be meant, in whom all sinned by imitation, because he was the first of men to sin. And therefore Abel should have been named, in whom alone men are likewise justified by imitation, since he was the first of men to live righteously. Or if, because of a certain point of time belonging to the beginning of the New Testament, Christ has been set as the head of the righteous for imitation, Judas his betrayer should have been set as head of sinners. But if Christ is the one in whom all are justified because not imitation of him alone makes men righteous, but grace regenerating through the Spirit, then Adam too is the one in whom all sinned because not imitation of him alone makes men sinners, but punishment generating through the flesh. That is also why “all” and “all” is said. For those who are generated through Adam are not all the same people who are regenerated through Christ; but this was rightly said because, just as no one's carnal generation is except through Adam, so no one's spiritual generation is except through Christ. For if some could be generated in the flesh not through Adam, and some regenerated in the Spirit not through Christ, “all” would not be said clearly either here or there. But these same “all” he afterwards calls “many”; for those who are few can in some respect be “all.” But the carnal generation has many, and the spiritual has many, although the spiritual has not so many as the carnal. Nevertheless, as the one has all men, so the other has all righteous men; because as no one is a man apart from the one, so no one is a righteous man apart from the other, and in both there are many. “For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one man many will be made righteous.”

“But the law came in, so that the offense might abound.” This men added to the original sin by their own will now, not through Adam; but this too is loosed and healed through Christ, because “where sin abounded, grace superabounded, so that, as sin reigned unto death,” even that which men did not draw from Adam but added by their own will, “so also grace might reign through righteousness unto eternal life.” Yet there is no righteousness apart from Christ, as there are some sins apart from Adam. That is why, when he had said, “as sin reigned unto death,” he did not add here “through one” or “through Adam,” because above he had spoken also of that sin which abounded when the law came in, and this certainly is not of origin but of one's own will. But when he had said, “so also grace might reign through righteousness unto eternal life,” he added, “through Jesus Christ our Lord,” because by the flesh that generates only that is drawn which is original sin, but by the Spirit that regenerates there is forgiveness not only of original but also of voluntary sins.

It can therefore rightly be said that infants who leave the body without baptism will be in the mildest condemnation of all. But he greatly deceives and is deceived who proclaims that they will not be in condemnation, since the apostle says, “The judgment was from one offense to condemnation,” and a little later, “Through the offense of one to all men unto condemnation.” When, then, Adam sinned by not obeying God, his body, although it was natural and mortal, lost the grace by which it obeyed his soul in every part; then there arose that bestial motion, shameful to men, at which he blushed in his nakedness; then too, by a kind of disease contracted from a sudden and pestilent corruption, it came about in them that, having lost the stability of age in which they were created, they went through the changes of the ages to death. Although, then, they lived many years afterwards, yet they began to die on the day on which they received the law of death, by which they would grow old into decrepitude. For whatever runs gradually to an end by continual change, an end that does not perfect but consumes, does not stand still even for a moment of time, but slips away without pause. So was fulfilled what God had said: “On the day you eat, you shall die the death.” From this disobedience of the flesh, then, from this law of sin and death, whoever is generated carnally needs to be regenerated spiritually, not only so that he may be brought to the kingdom of God but also so that he may be freed from the condemnation of sin. So at one and the same time men are born in the flesh liable to the sin and death of the first man, and at one and the same time they are reborn in baptism joined to the righteousness and eternal life of the second man; so too it is written in Ecclesiasticus: “From a woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die.” Whether it is said “from a woman” or “from Adam,” both belong to the first man, since, as we know, the woman is from the man and both are one flesh. Hence also what is written: “And the two will be in one flesh. Therefore they are no longer two,” says the Lord, “but one flesh.”

Therefore those who say that infants are baptized so that what is forgiven them is what they contracted as their own in this life, not what they derived from Adam, need no great effort to refute. For when they reflect a little by themselves, without the zeal for disputing, how absurd and unworthy of discussion their claim is, they will at once change their view. But if they will not, we need not despair of human senses so far as to fear that they will persuade anyone of this. For they were driven to say this, unless I am mistaken, by the prejudgment of some other opinion of theirs. And so, since they were compelled to admit that sins are forgiven to the baptized, and would not admit that the sin which they admitted is forgiven to infants was derived from Adam, they were forced to accuse infancy itself; as though the accuser of infancy became the safer for this, that the accused could not answer him. But let us leave these men aside, as I have said; for no discourse or proofs are needed to prove the innocence of infants as regards the life which, newly born, they lead in themselves, if human sense, aided by no supports of any disputation, does not recognize it.

But those seem to raise something worthy of consideration and discussion who say that infants just brought forth from their mothers' wombs receive baptism not for the forgiveness of sin, but so that, having a spiritual procreation, they may be created in Christ and become partakers of the kingdom of heaven, in the same way sons and heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. Yet when they are asked whether those not baptized and not made joint heirs of Christ and partakers of the kingdom of heaven have at least the benefit of eternal salvation in the resurrection of the dead, they struggle hard and find no way out. For what Christian would bear it when it is said that anyone can come to eternal salvation if he is not reborn in Christ, which he willed to be done through baptism, at the time when such a sacrament was to be instituted for those to be regenerated into the hope of eternal salvation? Hence the apostle says: “Not from works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration.” Yet he says that this salvation is in hope while we live here, where he says: “For in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what anyone sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Who, then, would dare to affirm that infants can be saved for eternity without this regeneration, as though Christ had not died for them? “For Christ died for the ungodly.” But these, who, as is plain, have committed nothing ungodly in their own lives, if they are not held by any bond of ungodliness by origin either, how did he die for them who died for the ungodly? If they are wounded by no sickness of original sin, how is it that they are carried to Christ the physician, that is, to receive the sacrament of eternal salvation, by the devout fear of those who care for them, and it is not said to them in the church: “Take these innocent ones away from here; the healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners”? Never has it been said, never is it said, never at all will such a fabrication be said in the church of Christ.

And let no one think that infants ought to be brought to baptism because, just as they are not sinners, so neither are they righteous. How then do some recall that the merit of this age was praised by the Lord when he says, “Let the little children come to me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven”? For if this was said not because of the likeness of humility, since humility makes men little children, but because of the praiseworthy life of children, then surely they are righteous too. For it could not rightly be said otherwise, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven,” since it can belong only to the righteous. But perhaps it is not fittingly said that the Lord praised the life of little children when he said that of such is the kingdom of heaven, since the true understanding is that he set up the likeness of humility in that small age. Yet perhaps what I said is to be held, that infants ought to be baptized because, just as they are not sinners, so neither are they righteous. But when he had said, “I did not come to call the righteous,” as if someone answered him, “Whom then did you come to call?”, he at once added: “but sinners to repentance.” And therefore, just as if they are righteous, so also if they are not sinners, he did not come to call them who said, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” And so they seem to rush not only in vain but even wrongfully to the baptism of him who does not call them; which God forbid we should think. He calls them therefore, the physician, who is not needed by the healthy but by the sick, and who did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And therefore, since they are not yet held liable for any sins of their own life, the sickness of origin is healed in them by the grace of him who saves through the washing of regeneration.

Someone will say: How then are they too called to repentance? Can such little ones repent of anything? The answer to him is: if they are not to be called penitents because they do not yet have the sense of repenting, neither are they to be called faithful, because likewise they do not yet have the sense of believing. But if they are rightly called faithful because in a certain way they profess the faith through the words of those who carry them, why should they not first also be held to be penitents, when through the words of the same people who carry them they are shown to renounce the devil and this world? All this is done in hope, by the power of the sacrament and of the divine grace which the Lord has given to the church. For the rest, who does not know that if a baptized infant, on coming to the years of reason, does not believe and does not abstain from unlawful desires, what he received as a little one will profit him nothing? Yet if, having received baptism, he departs from this life, the guilt to which he was liable by origin being loosed, he will be perfected in that light of truth which, remaining unchangeably for ever, enlightens the justified by the presence of the Creator. For sins alone separate between men and God, and they are loosed by the grace of him through whom as mediator we are reconciled, when he justifies the ungodly.

These men, however, are alarmed by the Lord's statement, “Unless one is born anew, he will not see the kingdom of God,” which, when he explained it, he said: “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven”; and for this reason they try to attribute salvation and eternal life to unbaptized infants by the merit of innocence, but, because they are not baptized, to make them strangers to the kingdom of heaven, by a certain new and astonishing presumption: as though the salvation of eternal life could be eternal apart from the inheritance of Christ, apart from the kingdom of heaven. For they have, you see, somewhere to flee and hide, because the Lord did not say, “If one is not reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not have life,” but said, “he will not enter the kingdom of God.” For if he had said the former, no doubt could arise from this. Let the doubt be taken away, then; let us hear the Lord, not the suspicions and conjectures of mortals; let us hear the Lord, I say, speaking not indeed of the sacrament of the holy washing, but of the sacrament of his holy table, which no one rightly approaches unless baptized: “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you.” What more do we seek? What can be answered to this, unless obstinacy strains its combative sinews against the steadfastness of plain truth?

Or will anyone dare to say even this, that this statement does not apply to infants, and that they can have life in themselves without partaking of this body and blood, because he does not say “he who does not eat,” as he said of baptism, “he who is not reborn,” but says “unless you eat,” as though addressing those who could hear and understand, which infants certainly cannot? But whoever says this does not notice that, unless this statement binds all, so that without the body and blood of the Son of Man they cannot have life, it is in vain that even those of older age are concerned about it. For if you attend not to the intention but to the words of the speaker, it can seem to have been said only to those to whom the Lord was then speaking, because he does not say “he who does not eat” but “unless you eat.” And where is what he says in the same place about this very matter: “The bread which I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world”? For according to this we understand that that sacrament applies to us too, who did not yet exist when he said these things, because we cannot say that we do not belong to the world, for whose life Christ gave his flesh. And who would doubt that by the word “world” he meant men, who come into this world by being born? For, as he says elsewhere: “The children of this world beget and are begotten.” And for this reason the flesh which was given for the life of the world was given also for the life of infants; and if they do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man, neither will they have life.

Hence also this: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe the Son will not have life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” In which of these classes, then, shall we place infants? Among those who believe in the Son, or among those who do not believe the Son? In neither, someone will say, because, since they cannot yet believe, neither are they to be reckoned unbelievers. The rule of the church does not indicate this, for it adds baptized infants to the number of the faithful. Further, if those who are baptized, by the power and celebration of so great a sacrament, are counted in the number of believers, although they do not do with their own heart and mouth what belongs to believing and confessing, surely those who have lacked the sacrament are to be held among those who do not believe the Son; and therefore, if they leave the body empty of this grace, what was said will follow them: “They will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on them.” And whence is this, since it is plain that they have no sins of their own, if they are not liable to original sin either?

And it is well that he does not say, “The wrath of God will come upon him,” but “remains on him.” For from this wrath, under which all are under sin, of which the apostle says, “For we too were once by nature children of wrath, like the rest,” nothing frees but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Why this grace comes to one and does not come to another, the reason can be hidden; unjust it cannot be. “Is there injustice with God? By no means.” But first our necks must be bowed to the authority of the holy Scriptures, so that each may come through faith to understanding. For not in vain was it said, “Your judgments are like a great deep.” As though terrified at the height of this deep, the apostle exclaims: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” For he had first set down a statement of wonderful profundity, saying: “For God has shut up all in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all.” As though struck with awe at its profundity, he says: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory for ages of ages. Amen.” Very small, then, is the understanding we have for examining the justice of God's judgments, for examining the grace that is free, not unjust though no merits precede it, which does not so much disturb us when it is given to the unworthy as when it is denied to others equally unworthy.

For those too to whom it seems unjust that infants who leave the body without the grace of Christ should be deprived not only of the kingdom of God, which they themselves admit none can enter unless reborn through baptism, but also of eternal life and salvation, and who ask how it is just that one is loosed from original ungodliness and another is not, when the condition of both is the same, let them answer according to their own view how it is likewise just that baptism, by which he may enter the kingdom of God, is granted to this one and not granted to that one, when the case of both is equal. For if it disturbs them why, of these two, when both are equally sinners by origin, one is loosed from this bond, to whom baptism is granted, and the other is not loosed, to whom such grace is not granted, why does it not equally disturb them that of two who are innocent by origin, one has received baptism, by which he can enter the kingdom of God, and the other has not, so that he cannot approach the kingdom of God? Surely in both cases we return to that exclamation: “O the depth of the riches!” Next, of baptized infants themselves let someone tell me why one is snatched away, lest wickedness change his understanding, and another lives on to become ungodly? Would not both, if both were snatched away, enter the kingdom of heaven? And yet there is no injustice with God. What then? Whom does it not disturb, whom does it not compel to cry out at so great a depth, that some infants are troubled by an unclean spirit, others suffer nothing of the kind, and others are even sanctified in their mothers' wombs, like Jeremiah, although all, if there is original sin, are equally guilty, and if there is not, are equally innocent? Whence this great diversity, unless because his judgments are unsearchable and his ways past tracing out?

Or perhaps we should hold that opinion, already exploded and rejected, that souls, having first sinned in a heavenly dwelling, come step by step and little by little into bodies suited to their merits, and are afflicted more or less with bodily plagues according to the life they led before? Although holy Scripture most openly contradicts this opinion, for in commending grace it says, “When they were not yet born, nor had done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to election might stand, not from works but from him who calls, it was said that the elder will serve the younger,” yet not even those who hold this view escape the straits of this question; but, hemmed in and stuck fast in them, they are likewise forced to cry out “O the depth!” For how does it come about that a man from early boyhood more modest, more gifted, more temperate, in great part a conqueror of his lusts, who hates avarice, detests luxury, and rises more advanced and more fitted for the other virtues, is nevertheless in a place where Christian grace cannot be preached to him (“For how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”), while another, slow of mind, given to lusts, covered with crimes and misdeeds, is so guided that he hears, believes, is baptized, is snatched away, or, if he is kept here, lives in a praiseworthy way? Where did these two contract such different merits, I do not say that this one believes and that one does not believe, which belongs to one's own will, but that this one hears what he may believe and that one does not hear (for this is not in man's power); where, I say, did they contract such different merits? If they led some life in heaven, so that for their deeds they were driven or slipped down to earth and held in bodily receptacles fitted to their former life, surely he must be believed to have lived better before this mortal body who did not deserve to be much weighed down by it, so that he had both a good mind and was pressed by milder desires, which he could easily overcome; and yet he did not deserve to have preached to him that grace by which alone he could be freed from the ruin of the second death; while the other, for worse merits, as they think, entangled in a heavier body and therefore dull of heart, though he was overcome by the enticements of the flesh with most burning desire, and by a most wicked life added worse earthly sins to the former sins for which he had deserved to come here, yet either heard on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” or joined himself to some apostle, by whose preaching he was changed and saved through the washing of regeneration, so that where sin abounded grace might superabound. I do not see at all what answer can be made to this by those who, wishing to defend the justice of God by human conjectures and not knowing the depth of grace, have woven improbable fables.

For many things could be said about the wonderful callings of men, whether those we read of or those we have experienced, by which the opinion of those would be overturned who believe that the souls of men led certain lives of their own before these bodies, by which they came to these bodies, to experience here different goods or evils according to the difference of their merits. But concern to finish this work does not allow me to dwell longer on these things. One thing, however, which I found wonderful among many, I will not pass over in silence. According to those who think that souls are weighed down more or less by earthly bodies in consequence of the merits of a former life led in heavenly places before this body, who would not affirm that those sinned more wickedly and monstrously before this life who deserved so to lose the light of the mind that they were born with a sense close to that of cattle; I do not mean very slow of mind (for this is said of others), but so witless that, with their hair in curls, they even display the delights of folly to raise a laugh among people of sense; the common people call them “morons,” a name derived from Greek? Yet there was one of these who was such a Christian that, although he bore all injuries to himself with a wonderfully foolish patience, he could not bear injury to the name of Christ, or in himself to the religion with which he was imbued, so that he would not stop pelting with stones the blasphemers, sensible men, as you see, from whom he used to hear these things so that he would be provoked; nor in that cause did he spare even his masters. Such people, then, I think, are predestined and created so that those who are able may understand that the grace of God and the Spirit, which blows where it wills, for this reason does not pass over any kind of mind among the children of mercy, and likewise passes over every kind of mind among the children of Gehenna, so that he who boasts may boast in the Lord. But those who affirm that souls receive different earthly bodies according to the merits of a higher life, by which some are weighed down more and others less, and that human minds vary according to the same merits, so that some are sharper and others duller, and that divine grace too is dispensed to free men according to the merits of that higher life, what will they be able to answer about this man? How will they ascribe to him both a most foul former life, so that he was born a fool because of it, and one so well deserving that because of it he was preferred in the grace of Christ to many of the sharpest minds?

Let us therefore yield and consent to the authority of holy Scripture, which knows neither how to be deceived nor how to deceive; and just as we do not believe that those not yet born did anything good or bad by which their merits could be distinguished, so let us not doubt at all that all are under sin, which entered into the world through one man and passed through all men, from which nothing frees but the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ; whose healing coming is not needed by the healthy but by the sick, because he did not come to call the righteous but sinners; into whose kingdom no one will enter unless he has been reborn of water and the Spirit; nor will anyone possess salvation and eternal life apart from his kingdom, since he who does not eat his flesh, and he who does not believe the Son, will not have life, but the wrath of God remains on him. From this sin, from this sickness, from this wrath of God, of which they are by nature children who, even if by reason of age they have no sin of their own, yet draw original sin, nothing frees except the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; no one except the physician who came not for the healthy but for the sick; no one except the Savior, of whom it was said to the human race, “To you is born this day a Savior”; no one except the Redeemer, by whose blood our debt is blotted out. For who would dare to say that Christ is not the Savior nor the Redeemer of infants? But from what does he save them, if there is no sickness of original sin in them? From what does he redeem them, if they have not been sold under sin through their origin from the first man? Let no eternal salvation, then, be promised to infants by our own judgment apart from the baptism of Christ, since the divine Scripture, which is to be preferred to all human minds, does not promise it.

The Punic Christians do excellently in calling baptism itself nothing other than “salvation,” and the sacrament of the body of Christ nothing other than “life.” Whence does this come, unless, as I think, from an ancient and apostolic tradition, by which the churches of Christ hold it as ingrained that apart from baptism and participation in the Lord's table no man can come not only to the kingdom of God but not even to salvation and eternal life? For Scripture too bears witness to this, according to what we said above. For what else do those hold who call baptism by the name of salvation than what was said, “He saved us through the washing of regeneration,” and what Peter says, “So baptism in a like figure saves you too”? And what else do those hold who call the sacrament of the Lord's table “life” than what was said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven”; and “The bread which I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world”; and “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you”? If then, as so many and such great divine testimonies agree, neither salvation nor eternal life is to be hoped for by anyone without baptism and the body and blood of the Lord, it is in vain promised to infants without them. Further, if nothing but sins separates a man from salvation and eternal life, then through these sacraments nothing but the guilt of sin is loosed in infants; of which guilt it is written that no one is clean, not even if his life is of one day. Hence also that in the Psalms: “For I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb”; for either it is said in the person of man in general, or, if David says this properly of himself, he was certainly born not of sexual immorality but of lawful wedlock. Let us not doubt, then, that the blood was shed also for infants to be baptized, the blood which, before it was shed, was so given and commended in the sacrament that it was said, “This is my blood, which will be shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.” For those deny that they are set free who will not confess that they are under sin. For from what are they set free, if they are held bound by no slavery of sin?

“I have come,” he says, “as a light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me may not remain in darkness.” By this saying what does he show except that everyone who does not believe in him is in darkness, and that by believing he brings it about that he does not remain in darkness? What do we understand by this darkness except sins? But whatever else this darkness may be understood to be, certainly he who does not believe in Christ will remain in it; and it is certainly penal, not like the darkness of night, necessary for the rest of living creatures. Accordingly, infants, if they do not pass into the number of believers through the sacrament which was divinely instituted for this purpose, will certainly remain in this darkness.

Some, however, believe that they are enlightened as soon as they are born, understanding in this way what is written: “He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world.” If this is so, it is much to be wondered at how those enlightened by the only Son, who was in the beginning the Word, God with God, are not admitted to the kingdom of God, nor are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. For even those who hold this view confess that this is not granted them except through baptism. Then, being already enlightened, if they are not yet fit to obtain the kingdom of God, they ought at least to receive gladly the baptism itself by which they are made fit for it; yet we see them struggling against it with loud wailing, and we disregard that ignorance at that age, so that we complete in them the sacraments which we know will profit them, even when they struggle against them. And why does the apostle also say, “Do not be children in your minds,” if their minds have already been enlightened by that true light which is the Word of God?

So what is set down in the gospel, “He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world,” was said because no man is enlightened except by that light of truth which is God, lest anyone should think that he is enlightened by the one from whom he hears something so as to learn it, I do not say if he happens to have some great man as his teacher, but not even if he has an angel. For the word of truth is applied from outside by the ministry of the bodily voice; yet “neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth.” For a man hears either a man or an angel speaking; but in order that he may perceive and know that what is said is true, his mind is sprinkled within by that light which remains eternal, which also shines in darkness. But just as this sun is not comprehended by the blind, although it in a way clothes them with its rays, so that light is not comprehended by the darkness of folly.

But why, when he had said, “which enlightens every man,” did he add, “coming into this world”? From this arose the opinion that he enlightens the minds of newborn infants at their very first bodily emergence from the mother's womb. Although in the Greek it is so placed that it can be understood also of the light itself coming into this world, yet, if it must be taken of man coming into this world, I think either that it was said simply, as many things are found in the Scriptures which could be removed without lessening the sense at all; or, if we must believe that it was added for the sake of some distinction, perhaps this was said to distinguish spiritual enlightenment from this bodily kind, which enlightens the eyes of the flesh whether through the lights of heaven or through fires of any kind; so that he called the inner man “coming into this world,” because the outer man is bodily, like this world; as though he said, “enlightens every man coming into the body,” according to what is written: “I received a good soul and came into an undefiled body.” Either, then, it was said thus, if it was said for the sake of some distinction, “enlightens every man coming into this world,” as though it had been said, “enlightens every inner man,” because the inner man, when he truly becomes wise, is enlightened only by that which is the true light; or, if he wished to call “enlightenment” reason itself, by which the human soul is called rational, a reason which, though still as it were quiet and asleep, yet lies hidden in infants implanted and in a way sown within them, as the creation of an inner eye, we need not resist the view that it takes place when the soul is created, and it is not absurd to understand this as happening when man comes into the world. Yet even this eye, although already created, must remain in darkness if it does not believe in him who said, “I have come as a light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me may not remain in darkness.” That this is done in infants through the sacrament, mother church does not doubt, for she lends them a mother's heart and mouth so that they may be imbued with the sacred mysteries, because they cannot yet believe with their own heart unto righteousness nor confess with their own mouth unto salvation. Nor for that reason does any of the faithful hesitate to call them faithful, a name which certainly comes from believing, although it is not they themselves but others who have answered for them in the sacraments.

It will become too long if we argue in the same way about each testimony. So I think it more convenient to gather many together in a heap, as many as may occur to me or as will seem sufficient, from which it may appear that the Lord Jesus Christ came in the flesh, and, taking the form of a servant, became obedient to the death of the cross, for no other reason than that by this dispensation of most merciful grace he might give life to, save, free, redeem, and enlighten all those for whom, set as members in his body, he is the head for taking possession of the kingdom of heaven, who had previously been set in the death, sicknesses, slavery, captivity, and darkness of sins, under the power of the devil, the prince of sinners; and that so he might become the mediator between God and men, through whom, after the enmities of our ungodliness had been ended by the peace of his grace, we might be reconciled to God for eternal life, snatched from the eternal death which hung over such as we were. For when this has appeared more abundantly, it will follow that those who do not need life, salvation, liberation, redemption, and enlightenment cannot belong to this dispensation of Christ, which was accomplished through his humility. And since baptism belongs to it, by which they are buried with Christ so that his members, that is, his faithful, may be incorporated into him, surely baptism is not necessary either for those who have no need of that benefit of forgiveness and reconciliation which comes about through the mediator. Further, since they grant that infants are to be baptized, being unable to go against the authority of the whole church, which was without doubt handed down through the Lord and the apostles, they must grant that infants need those benefits of the mediator, so that, washed through the sacrament and the charity of the faithful, and so incorporated into the body of Christ, which is the church, they may be reconciled to God, so that in him they may become alive, saved, freed, redeemed, enlightened. From what, except from the death, vices, guilt, subjection, and darkness of sins? And since at that age they have committed none of these through their own life, original sin remains.

This reasoning will be stronger when I have gathered the many testimonies I promised. We have already set down above: “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Likewise, when he had gone in to Zacchaeus, he said: “Today salvation has come to this house, since he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” This is said also of the lost sheep, sought and found when the ninety-nine were left, and this of the coin which was lost out of ten. Hence it was necessary, as he says, “that repentance and forgiveness of sins be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Mark too, at the end of his gospel, testifies that the Lord said: “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” And who does not know that for infants to believe is to be baptized, and not to believe is not to be baptized? From the Gospel of John, although we have already set down some things, note these too. John the Baptist said of him: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world”; and he himself says of himself: “Those who are of my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” Since, then, infants begin to be of his sheep only through baptism, surely, if they do not receive it, they will perish; for they will not have the eternal life which he will give to his sheep. Likewise in another place: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”

See with how great an attestation the apostles who received this teaching declare it. Peter in his first epistle says: “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to the multitude of his mercy has regenerated us into the hope of eternal life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, into an inheritance immortal and undefiled, flourishing, kept in heaven for you, who walk in the truth of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” And a little later he says: “That you may be found to the praise and honor of Jesus Christ, whom you did not know, in whom now, not seeing him, you believe; whom when you see, you will exult with joy unspeakable and honored, receiving the covenant of faith, the salvation of your souls.” Likewise in another place he says: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for adoption, that you may declare the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” And again he says: “Christ suffered for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” Likewise, when he had recalled that eight persons were saved in Noah's ark, he says: “So baptism in a like figure saves you too.” From this salvation and light, then, infants are strangers, and they will remain in perdition and darkness unless they have been joined by adoption to the people of God, holding fast to Christ, who suffered, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring them to God.

From the epistle of John also these passages have occurred to me, which seemed necessary for this question. “But if we walk in the light,” he says, “as he also is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son will cleanse us from every offense.” Likewise in another place he says: “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God. He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. He who does not believe God makes him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony which he has testified concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life.” Not only the kingdom of heaven, then, but not even life will infants have, if they do not have the Son, whom they cannot have except through his baptism. Likewise in another place he says: “For this the Son of God was manifested, to undo the works of the devil.” Infants, then, will not belong to the grace of the manifestation of the Son of God if he does not undo the works of the devil in them.

Now attend to the testimonies of the apostle Paul on this matter, so many more in number as he wrote more epistles, and as he took more care to commend the grace of God against those who boasted of works and, being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own righteousness, were not subject to the righteousness of God. In the epistle to the Romans he says: “The righteousness of God is upon all who believe; for there is no distinction. For all have sinned and lack the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of former sins in the forbearance of God, to show his righteousness at this time, that he may be righteous and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus.” Likewise in another place he says: “To him who works the reward is not reckoned according to grace but according to debt; but to him who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, faith is reckoned as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness without works: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin.” Likewise a little later he says: “But it was not written for his sake only, that it was reckoned to him, but also for our sake, to whom it will be reckoned, who believe in him who raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our offenses and rose again for our justification.” And a little later he says: “For if Christ, when we were still weak, at the proper time died for the ungodly.” And elsewhere he says: “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I do, I do not know; for I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, I consent to the law, that it is good. But now it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find. For I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I do not will, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me. I find, then, the law, when I will to do good, that evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and making me captive in the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Let those who can say that a man is born otherwise than in the body of this death, so that they may also be able to say that he does not need the grace of God through Jesus Christ, by which he may be freed from the body of this death. Likewise a little later: “For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Let those who dare say that Christ would have had to be born in the likeness of sinful flesh if we had not been born in sinful flesh.

Likewise to the Corinthians: “For I handed on to you first of all,” he says, “what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” Likewise to the same Corinthians in the second letter: “For the love of Christ compels us, judging this, that one died for all; therefore all died; and he died for all, so that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. So from now on we know no one according to the flesh; and if we knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him so. If then anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, they have become new. And all things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. How so? Because God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning their offenses to them, and placing in us the word of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were exhorting through us; we beseech you for Christ's sake to be reconciled to God. Him who had not known sin he made sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God in him. And working together with him we also ask that you not receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: At an acceptable time I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” If infants do not belong to this reconciliation and salvation, who seeks them for the baptism of Christ? But if they do belong, they are among the dead for whom he died, and they cannot be reconciled and saved by him unless he forgives and does not reckon their offenses.

Likewise to the Galatians: “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, to deliver us from the present evil age.” And in another place: “The law was set forth because of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? By no means! For if a law had been given which could give life, righteousness would indeed be from the law. But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, so that the promise might be given from faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe.”

To the Ephesians also: “And you, when you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of unbelief, among whom we too all once lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the affections, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest; but God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved.” And a little later he says: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God, not from works, lest anyone be lifted up. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them.” And a little later he says: “You who were at that time without Christ, alienated from the fellowship of Israel and strangers to the covenants and the promise, having no hope and without God in this world; but now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one and broke down the middle wall of partition, the enmities, making void in his flesh the law of commandments with its decrees, that he might create the two in himself into one new man, making peace, and might change both in one body to God through the cross, slaying the enmities in himself. And coming he preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near, because through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Likewise elsewhere: “As the truth is in Jesus, that you put off, according to your former way of life, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of deceit; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who is created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth.” And elsewhere: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

To the Colossians too he speaks thus: “Giving thanks to the Father, who makes us fit for a share in the lot of the saints in light, who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption in the forgiveness of sins.” And in another place he says: “And you have been filled in him, who is the head of every principality and power, in whom also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made by hand, in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you also rose with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead; and you, when you were dead in offenses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive with him, forgiving us all offenses, blotting out the handwriting of decrees that was against us, which was contrary to us, taking it out of the way and fixing it to the cross; stripping himself of the flesh, he made an example of the principalities and powers, confidently triumphing over them in himself.”

And to Timothy: “It is a human saying,” he says, “and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. But for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Christ Jesus might show all long-suffering, for an example to those who are to believe in him for eternal life.” Likewise he says: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a redemption for all.” In the second letter to the same also: “Do not then be ashamed,” he says, “of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but labor with me for the gospel according to the power of God, who saves us and calls us with his holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before eternal ages, but has now been manifested through the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has made death void and has brought to light life and incorruption through the gospel.”

To Titus also: “Awaiting,” he says, “that blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, to redeem us from all iniquity and cleanse for himself a people abounding, zealous for good works.” And in another place: “But when the kindness and love for mankind of God our Savior shone forth, not from works of righteousness which we did, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out most richly upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, that, justified by his grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

The epistle to the Hebrews too, although it is uncertain to some, yet, since I have read that certain people who hold views contrary to this opinion of ours on the baptism of infants have wished to bring it in as a witness for some of their opinions, and since I am more moved by the authority of the Eastern churches, which have it too among the canonical books, we must note how many testimonies it contains in our favor. At its very beginning we read: “In many parts and in many ways God spoke of old to the fathers in the prophets; last of all, in these days, he has spoken to us in the Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages; who, since he is the brightness of his glory and the image of his substance, and bears all things by the word of his power, having made purification of sins, sits at the right hand of the majesty on high.” And after a little: “For if the word spoken through angels was made firm, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” And in another place: “Since therefore the children shared in blood and flesh, he himself likewise partook of the same, that through death he might make void him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were all their life subject to slavery.” And a little later he says: “Hence he had to be made like his brothers in all things, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the things that pertain to God, to make propitiation for the offenses of the people.” And elsewhere he says: “Let us hold fast our confession; for we do not have a priest who cannot suffer with our weaknesses; for he was tried in all things according to likeness, without sin.” And in another place he says: “He has a priesthood that cannot pass away. Hence he is also able to save completely those who come to God through him, always living to intercede for them. For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, righteous, without malice, undefiled, separated from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who does not have daily need, as the high priests do, to offer sacrifice first for his own sins, then for the people's; for this he did once for all, offering himself.” And in another place: “For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by hand, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, to appear now before the face of God for us; not that he should offer himself often, as the high priest enters the sanctuary once a year with blood not his own; otherwise he would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once, at the end of the ages, he has been manifested for the forgiveness of sins through his sacrifice. And as it is appointed for men to die once only, and after this the judgment, so Christ too was offered once to bear the sins of many; the second time he will appear without sins to those who await him for salvation.”

The Apocalypse of John also testifies that these praises are offered to Christ in a new song: “Worthy are you to take the book and open its seals, because you were slain and redeemed us for God by your blood from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.”

Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles the apostle Peter said that the Lord Jesus is the author of life, rebuking the Jews for having killed him, speaking thus: “But you burdened and denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked that a murderer be allowed to live and be granted to you; for you killed the author of life.” And in another place: “This is the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the head of the corner. For there is no other name under heaven given to men in which we must be saved.” And elsewhere: “The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. Him God exalted by his glory as prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins in him.” Likewise in another place: “To him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his hand.” Likewise in the same book the apostle Paul says: “Let it be known to you, then, brothers, that through him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you; from all the things from which you could not be justified in the law of Moses, in him everyone who believes is justified.”

Whose pride against the truth of God is not crushed by so great a mound of testimonies? Many others indeed could be found, but the concern to finish this work must not be carelessly regarded either. From the books of the Old Testament too I thought it superfluous to bring many attestations of the divine oracles in support of this view, since what is hidden there under the veil, as it were, of earthly promises is revealed in the preaching of the New Testament. And the Lord himself briefly showed and defined the usefulness of the old books when he said that what was written of him in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms had to be fulfilled, and that this was it: that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And Peter says, as I recalled a little earlier, that to him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his hand.

Yet it is more convenient to bring out a few testimonies from the Old Testament itself too, which will serve either as a supplement or rather as a crowning addition. The Lord himself, speaking through the prophet in a psalm, says: “For the saints who are in his land he has made wonderful all my wills in them”: not their merits, but my wills. For what of theirs, except what follows? “Their weaknesses were multiplied,” beyond the weakness they had. For this the law too came in, that the offense might abound. But what does he add? “Afterwards they made haste.” When their weaknesses were multiplied, that is, when the offense abounded, they sought the physician more eagerly, so that where sin abounded grace might superabound. Then: “I will not gather their assemblies from bloods,” he says, since by the many bloods of sacrifices, when formerly they were gathered into the tabernacle or the temple, they were convicted as sinners rather than cleansed. No longer, then, he says, will I gather their assemblies from bloods; for one blood has been given for many, by which they might be truly cleansed. Then follows: “Nor will I remember their names with my lips,” as of those cleansed, as of those renewed. For their names were formerly children of the flesh, children of the world, children of wrath, children of the devil, unclean, sinners, ungodly; but afterwards children of God: a new name for the new man singing a new song through the new covenant. Let men not be ungrateful to the grace of God, the small with the great, from the least to the greatest. It is the voice of the whole church: “I have gone astray like a lost sheep”; it is the voice of all the members of Christ: “All we like sheep have gone astray, and he was handed over for our sins.” See how often that whole passage of prophecy in Isaiah, by which, when it was expounded to him by Philip, the eunuch of Queen Candace believed in him, commends this very thing and drives it home again and again, as if to some proud or contentious people. “A man,” he says, “under a blow, and one who knows how to bear weaknesses; for which reason his face was turned away; it was insulted and not esteemed. He bears our weaknesses and is in pains for us. And we thought him to be in pains and under a blow and in punishment. But he was wounded for our sins and weakened for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him; by his bruise we have been healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord handed him over for our sins. And he, because he was ill-treated, did not open his mouth; like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before him who shears it he was without voice; so he did not open his mouth. In humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who will tell his generation? For his life will be taken from the earth. By the iniquities of my people he was led to death. I will therefore give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death, because he did no iniquity nor deceit with his mouth. The Lord wills to cleanse him from the blow. If you give your soul for your offenses, you will see a seed of very long life. And the Lord wills to take away his soul from pains, to show him light and to form him with understanding, to justify the righteous one who serves many well, and he himself will bear their sins. Therefore he will inherit many and will divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was handed over to death and he was reckoned among the wicked; and he bore the sins of many and was handed over for their iniquities.” Note also that passage of the same prophet which he himself, when performing the office of reader in the synagogue, read aloud as fulfilled in himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the humble; he has sent me that those who are in distress of heart may be refreshed, to preach release to captives and sight to the blind.” Let us all, then, acknowledge, and let none be excepted of us who wish to cleave to his body, to enter through him into his sheepfold, to attain the everlasting life and salvation which he promised to his own; let us all, I say, acknowledge him who did no sin and bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that, separated from sins, we might live with righteousness; by whose scars we have been healed, when we were weak like straying cattle.

Since these things are so, sound faith and sound doctrine have never thought that any of those who have come to Christ through baptism is excepted from the grace of the forgiveness of sins, nor that anyone can have eternal salvation apart from his kingdom. For this salvation is ready to be revealed in the last time, that is, in the resurrection of the dead who belong not to eternal death, which is called the second death, but to eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised to his saints and faithful; and all will be made partakers of this life only in Christ, just as in Adam all die. For just as absolutely all who belong to the generation of the will of the flesh die only in Adam, in whom all sinned, so of these, absolutely all who belong to the regeneration of the will of the Spirit are made alive only in Christ, in whom all are justified; because as through one all are brought to condemnation, so through one all are brought to justification. Nor is there any middle place for anyone, so that he who is not with Christ can be anywhere but with the devil. Hence the Lord himself, wishing to remove from the hearts of those who believe wrongly that middle state, whatever it is, which some try to assign to unbaptized infants, so that, as it were by the merit of innocence, they would be in eternal life, but, because they are not baptized, would not be with Christ in his kingdom, pronounced a decisive sentence to stop these mouths, where he says: “He who is not with me is against me.” Take, then, any infant: if he is already with Christ, why is he baptized? But if, as the truth has it, he is baptized so that he may be with Christ, then surely the unbaptized is not with Christ; and because he is not with Christ, he is against Christ; for we neither ought nor are able to weaken or change so manifest a sentence of his. From what, then, is he against Christ, if not from sin? For it is not from body and soul, both of which are God's creation. Further, if from sin, what sin at that age except the original and ancient one? For there is one flesh of sin, in which all are born to damnation, and one flesh in the likeness of the flesh of sin, through which all are freed from damnation. Nor was “all” said in the sense that all those who are born in the flesh of sin are understood to be cleansed, the same persons, through the flesh like the flesh of sin (for not all have faith); but that all who belong to the generation of carnal marriage are born only in the flesh of sin, and all who belong to the generation of spiritual marriage are cleansed only through the flesh like the flesh of sin; that is, the former through Adam to condemnation, the latter through Christ to justification. It is as if we should say, for example: there is one midwife in this city who delivers all, and here there is one teacher of letters who teaches all; there “all” can be understood only of those who are born, and here only of those who learn; yet not all who are born learn letters, but it is clear to anyone that there it is rightly said, “She delivers all,” since apart from her hands no one is born, and here it is rightly said, “He teaches all,” since apart from his teaching no one learns.

When all the divine testimonies are considered which I have recalled, whether arguing about each one singly or heaping many together, or any similar ones I have not recalled, nothing is found except what the whole church holds, which must keep watch against all profane novelties: that every man is separated from God except one who is reconciled to God through Christ the mediator; that no one can be separated except by sins shutting him out; that he is therefore not reconciled except by the forgiveness of sins, through the one grace of the most merciful Savior, through the one victim of the most true priest; and so that all the children of the woman who believed the serpent, so that she was corrupted by lust, are not freed from the body of this death except through the son of the virgin who believed the angel, so that she conceived without lust.

The good of marriage, then, is not the heat of concupiscence, but a certain lawful and honorable manner of using that heat, suited to propagating offspring, not to satisfying lust. That will, not that pleasure, is what belongs to marriage. What therefore moves disobediently in the members of the body of this death, and tries to draw the whole mind, cast down, to itself, and neither rises when the mind does not will it nor subsides when the mind wills it: this is the evil of sin, with which every man is born. But when it is restrained from unlawful corruptions and permitted only for the orderly propagation of the replenishment of the human race, this is the good of marriage, through which man is born in an ordered society. But no one is reborn in the body of Christ unless he is first born in the body of sin. Just as to use a good thing badly is evil, so to use an evil thing well is good. These two, then, good and evil, and the other two, good use and bad use, joined together, make four differences. He uses a good thing well who dedicates continence to God; he uses a good thing badly who dedicates continence to an idol; he uses an evil thing badly who lets concupiscence loose in adultery; he uses an evil thing well who restrains concupiscence in marriage. As, then, it is better to use a good thing well than to use an evil thing well, since both are good, so “he who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not give her does better.” On this question I have discussed much more fully and much more adequately, as far as the Lord granted, according to the smallness of my strength, in two books, one On the Good of Marriage, the other On Holy Virginity. Let those, then, not defend the evil of concupiscence by means of the good of marriage, who extol the flesh and blood of the transgressor against the flesh and blood of the Redeemer; let them not be lifted up in the pride of another's error, those from whose little age the Lord has given us an example of humility. He alone was born without sin, whom a virgin conceived without a man's embrace, not by the concupiscence of the flesh but by the obedience of the mind; she alone could bear the medicine for our wound, who brought forth the shoot of holy offspring not from the wound of sin.

Now let us examine more carefully, as far as the Lord helps, that very passage of the gospel where he says: “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of God.” If these men were not moved by this statement, they would judge that infants should not be baptized at all. But because, they say, he did not say, “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not have salvation or eternal life,” but only said, “he will not enter the kingdom of God,” infants are to be baptized for this, that they may also be with Christ in the kingdom of God, where they will not be if they have not been baptized; although, if infants die even without baptism, they will have salvation and eternal life, since they are bound by no bond of sin. In saying this, first, these men never explain by what justice the image of God, having no sin, is separated from the kingdom of God. Next, let us see whether the Lord Jesus, the one and only good teacher, in this very gospel reading did not signify and show that it is only through the forgiveness of sins that the baptized come to the kingdom of God; although for those who understand rightly what was said should have sufficed: “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” and “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” For why should he be born anew unless he needs to be renewed? From what renewed, unless from oldness? From what oldness, unless that in which our old man was crucified together with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed? Or why does the image of God not enter the kingdom of God unless the obstacle of sin prevents it? Yet, as we proposed, let us look attentively and carefully, as far as we can, at the whole context of that gospel reading which bears on the matter in hand.

“There was a man,” it says, “of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He came to him by night and said to him: Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus says to him: How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born? Jesus answered: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew. The Spirit blows where he wills, and you hear his voice; but you do not know where he comes from or where he goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said to him: How can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him: You are a teacher in Israel, and you do not know these things? Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify to what we have seen, and you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you have not believed, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be exposed; but he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they have been done in God.” Up to this point that whole connected discourse bears on the matter we are investigating; after this the narrator turns to something else.

When, then, Nicodemus did not understand what was being said, he asked the Lord how these things could be. Let us see what the Lord answers to this. For surely, if he deigns to answer the question “How can these things be?”, he is going to say how spiritual regeneration can come about for men who come from carnal generation. So, having briefly noted the inexperience of one who set himself above others in the office of teacher, and having rebuked the unbelief of all such people for not receiving the testimony of the truth, he added that he had told them earthly things and they had not believed, asking, or wondering, how they would believe heavenly things. Yet he goes on and answers, so that others may believe even if they do not believe, the question he was asked, how these things can be: “No one,” he says, “has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” Thus, he says, spiritual generation will come about, so that men will be heavenly from earthly, which they will not be able to attain unless they are made my members, so that he himself who descended may ascend, because no one ascends except he who descended. Unless, then, all who are to be changed and raised up run together into the unity of Christ, so that Christ who descended himself ascends, reckoning his body, that is his church, as nothing other than himself (because it is more truly understood of Christ and the church, “The two will be in one flesh,” of which he himself said, “Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh”), they will not be able to ascend at all, because “no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” For although he became the Son of Man on earth, yet he did not think his divinity, by which, remaining in heaven, he descended to earth, unworthy of the name of Son of Man, just as he thought his flesh worthy of the name of Son of God; lest two Christs, as it were, be understood, one God and the other man, but one and the same God and man: God, because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God”; man, because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And so, by the distinction between divinity and weakness, the Son of God remained in heaven, the Son of Man walked on earth; but by the unity of person, by which both substances are one Christ, both the Son of God walked on earth and the same Son of Man remained in heaven. Faith in more credible things thus arises from believing more incredible ones. For if the divine substance, far more distant and higher by an incomparable difference, could for our sake so take up human substance that it became one person, and so the Son of Man, who was on earth by the weakness of the flesh, was himself in heaven by the divinity in which the flesh shared, how much more credibly do other men, his saints and faithful, become one Christ with the man Christ, so that, while all ascend through this grace and fellowship of his, the one Christ himself, who descended from heaven, ascends into heaven! So too the apostle says: “As in one body we have many members, but all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ.” He did not say “so also are Christ's,” that is, the body of Christ or the members of Christ, but “so also is Christ,” calling head and body one Christ.

Great and wonderful is this condescension! And since it cannot come about except through the forgiveness of sins, he goes on and says: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” We know what happened then in the desert: many were dying from the bites of serpents. Then the people, confessing their sins, besought the Lord through Moses to take this poison away from them. And so Moses, by the Lord's command, lifted up a bronze serpent in the desert and admonished the people that whoever was bitten by a serpent should look at it lifted up; those who did this were at once healed. What is the lifted-up serpent but the death of Christ, by that mode of signifying in which what is produced is signified by what produces it? For death came from the serpent, who persuaded man to the sin by which he deserved to die. The Lord, however, did not transfer sin into his flesh like the serpent's poison, but he did transfer death, so that in the likeness of the flesh of sin there might be punishment without guilt, whereby in the flesh of sin both guilt and punishment might be loosed. As, then, whoever then looked at the lifted-up serpent was both healed from the poison and freed from death, so now whoever is conformed to the likeness of Christ's death through faith and his baptism is freed both from sin through justification and from death through resurrection. For this is what he says: “that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” What need is there, then, for an infant to be conformed to the death of Christ through baptism, if he has not been poisoned at all by the serpent's bite?

Next, if, as he says in what follows, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life,” an infant would perish and would not have eternal life if he did not believe in the only-begotten Son of God through the sacrament of baptism; while meanwhile he came in such a way “not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him”; especially since he goes on and says: “He who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe has already been judged, because he does not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” Where, then, do we place baptized infants except among the faithful, as the authority of the whole church everywhere proclaims? Therefore among those who have believed (for this is acquired for them by the power of the sacrament and the response of those who present them); and for this reason those who have not been baptized among those who have not believed. Further, if those who have been baptized are not judged, these, because they lack baptism, are judged. And as to what he adds, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light”: whence has the light come into the world, unless he speaks of his own coming? Without the sacrament of his coming, how are infants said to be in the light? Or how do those not also have this in their love of darkness who, just as they do not believe themselves, so do not think their infants should be baptized, even when they fear bodily death for them? He says that the works of him who comes to the light have been done in God, because he understands that his justification belongs not to his own merits but to the grace of God. “For it is God,” says the apostle, “who works in us both to will and to work, for his good will.” In this way, then, the spiritual regeneration of all who come to Christ from carnal generation takes place. He himself disclosed this, he himself showed it, when he was asked how these things could be; he left no one free to use human argument in this matter. Let infants not be estranged from the grace of the forgiveness of sins; there is no other way of passing over to Christ; no one can otherwise be reconciled to God and come to God except through Christ.

What shall I say of the very form of the sacrament? I wish one of these men who hold contrary views would bring me an infant to be baptized. What does my exorcism do in him, if he is not held in the household of the devil? He himself, certainly, would have had to answer me on behalf of the infant he carried, because the infant could not answer for himself. How, then, would he say that the child renounces the devil, of whom there was nothing in him? How that he turns to God, from whom he had not turned away? That he believes, among other things, in the forgiveness of sins, when none would be ascribed to him? For my part, if I thought he held views contrary to these, I would not even allow him to come in with the infant to the sacraments; and how he would present himself in this to men with what face, and to God with what mind, I do not know, nor do I wish to say anything harsher. Some of them, then, have seen that nothing more execrable and detestable can be said or thought than that a false or deceitful form of baptism is given to infants, in which the forgiveness of sins would seem to be spoken of and done, and yet none would take place. Accordingly, as regards the baptism of infants, that it is necessary for them, they grant that they too need redemption, as is contained in a very short little book by one of them, who nevertheless would not there express more openly the forgiveness of any sin. But, as you yourself told me in your letter, they now admit, as you say, that in infants too forgiveness of sins takes place through baptism. No wonder; for redemption could not be understood in any other way. Yet, they say, it is not from their origin, but in their own life, after they were born, that they began to have sin.

So you see how far apart they now are from those against whom I have long and much argued in this work, one of whom I have even read a book containing the views which I have refuted as best I could. Between these, then, as I had begun to say, who maintain that infants are altogether pure and free from all sin, both original and personal, and those who think that once born they have contracted sins of their own, from which they believe they must be cleansed through baptism, you see how great the difference is. Accordingly, the latter, by looking at the Scriptures, at the authority of the whole church, and at the form of the sacrament itself, have seen rightly that forgiveness of sins takes place in infants through baptism; but that whatever is in them is original, they either will not say or cannot see. The former, however, have seen rightly in human nature itself, which is ready at hand for all to consider (which was easy), that that age could not have contracted any sin in its own life; but, so as not to confess original sin, they say that there is no sin at all in infants. In the things, then, which each of them says truly, let them first agree among themselves, and it will follow that they disagree with us in no part. For if the former grant the latter that forgiveness of sins takes place in baptized infants, and the latter grant the former that infants, as nature itself cries out in silent infants, have not yet contracted any sin of their own life, let both grant us that nothing remains except original sin, to be loosed in infants through baptism.

Or are we to inquire about this too, dispute about it, and spend time on it, to prove and teach how infants, who for this reason are called innocent by all, have committed no evil by their own will, without which there can be no sin of one's own life? Does not so great a weakness of mind and body, such ignorance of things, so complete an incapacity for a commandment, no sense or motion of either natural or written law, no use of reason in either direction, proclaim and declare this by a silence far more eloquent than our speech? Let the evidence itself have some force to persuade of itself; for nowhere do I so fail to find what to say as where the matter spoken of is plainer than anything that is said.

Yet I should like whoever holds this view to say what sin he has seen or thought of in an infant fresh from the womb, for whose redemption he now admits baptism is necessary; what evil it has committed in this its own life through its own mind or body. If perhaps it is that he cries and is a nuisance to his elders, it would be strange if this were to be counted to iniquity rather than to misfortune. Or is it that he is not stopped from crying by any reason of his own or any prohibition of anyone? But this belongs to the ignorance in which he lies most deeply, by which, too, when after a little time he has the strength, he will strike his mother in anger, and often her very breasts, which he demands when hungry. These things are not only tolerated but even loved in little ones; and with what affection but a carnal one, by which laughter and jest also delight us, seasoned as it were by the very absurdity of even clever men? If a jest were felt in the sense in which it is said, they would be laughed at not as witty but as fools. We see fools themselves, whom the common people call morons, brought in for the entertainment of sensible men, and valued as slaves at a higher price than the sensible: so strong is the carnal affection even of those who are least foolish in delighting in another's misfortune. For although another's folly is pleasant to a man, he himself would not have wished to be such; and if a father, who gladly expects and provokes such things from his little son when he prattles, foreknew that he would be such when grown, he would not doubt at all that he was more pitiably to be mourned than if dead. But while there is hope of growth, and the light of intelligence is believed to be coming with the coming of age, it happens that the insults of little ones even against their parents are not only not injurious but even pleasing and delightful. No prudent person would approve that they are not only not prevented from sayings or deeds of this kind when they can now be prevented, but are even incited to them by the eagerness for laughter and the vanity of their elders. For generally that age, once it recognizes father and mother, dares not speak ill of either of them unless permitted or ordered by one of them or by both. But these things belong to those little ones who are already bursting into words and can already express the motions of their mind by some signs of the tongue. Let us look rather at that most profound ignorance of the newly born, from which, advancing towards knowledge and speech, they have come by progress to this passing, stammering folly.

Let us consider, I say, that darkness of a mind that is certainly rational, in which they are altogether ignorant even of God, whose sacraments they resist even when they are baptized; I ask whence and when they were plunged into it. Is it really so, that they contracted it here, and in this their own life forgot God through excessive negligence, whereas they lived wisely and devoutly in their mothers' wombs? Let those say this who dare, let those hear it who wish, let those believe it who can; but I think that all whose mind is not clouded by obstinacy in defending their own opinion cannot hold these things. Or is ignorance no evil at all, and therefore not to be cleansed either? And what does that voice mean: “Do not remember the offenses of my youth and of my ignorance”? For although the sins committed by those who know are more damnable, yet, if there were no sins of ignorance, we would not read what I have recalled: “Do not remember the offenses of my youth and my ignorance.” Into that thickest darkness of ignorance, then, where the soul of an infant fresh from the womb, certainly the soul of a man, certainly a rational soul, lies not only untaught but even unteachable, why, or when, or whence was it thrust? If it is of man's nature to begin so, and this nature is not already flawed, why was Adam not created so? Why was he capable of a commandment, and able to give names to his wife and to all the animals? For of her too he said, “She shall be called woman”; and “Whatever Adam called a living soul, that is its name.” But this one, not knowing where he is, what he is, by whom created, from whom begotten, already guilty of offense, not yet capable of a commandment, wrapped and weighed down in so deep a fog of ignorance that he cannot be roused as from sleep so as at least to recognize these things when shown them, but a time must be awaited in which he may digest this strange drunkenness, as it were, not in one night, as even the heaviest usually is, but gradually through some months and years; and until this happens, we tolerate in little ones so many things which we punish in adults that they cannot be counted at all: if little ones, already born in this life, have contracted this so great evil of ignorance and weakness, where, when, how, by committing some great impiety, were they suddenly wrapped in such darkness?

Someone will say: If these are the beginnings not of a pure but of a flawed nature, because Adam was not created so, why did Christ, far more excellent and certainly born of a virgin without any sin, nevertheless appear begotten in this weakness and this age? To this proposition we answer that Adam was not created so because, with no sin of a parent preceding, he was not created in the flesh of sin; we are so because, his sin preceding, we were born in the flesh of sin; Christ was so because, in order to condemn sin concerning sin, he was born in the likeness of the flesh of sin. For the question about Adam is not what concerns the size of the body, since he was not made a little one but with the full bulk of his limbs (for it can be said that cattle too were created so, and yet it was not by their sin that their young were born small; what this means we do not now inquire); but the question is about a certain strength of his mind and use of reason, by which Adam, being teachable, could grasp the command of God and the law of the commandment, and could easily keep it if he willed. But now man is born in such a way that he cannot do this at all, because of a dreadful ignorance and weakness, not of the flesh but of the mind, since we all admit that in the infant a rational soul lives, not of another substance but of the same substance as was in the first man. And yet even this great weakness of the flesh shows, as I think, something or other penal. For it is a question whether, if those first men had not sinned, they would have had such children as could use neither tongue nor hands nor feet. For perhaps because of the capacity of the womb it would have been necessary that little ones be born; although, since a rib is a small part of the body, God did not for that reason make for the man a little wife, whom he built into a woman. Hence the omnipotence of the Creator could also have made her children grown as soon as they were born.

But, to leave this aside, he could certainly have done what he granted to many cattle too, whose young, although they are little and do not advance in mind as their bodies grow, since they do not have a rational soul, yet even when very small both run and recognize their mothers, and are not brought to suck the udders by another's care and help, but know them themselves, though placed in a hidden part of the mother's body, with wonderful ease. A human child, on the contrary, when born has neither feet fit for walking nor even hands able to scratch; and unless by the work of the nurse the nipple of the breast is put to their unmoving lips, they do not perceive where it is, and, with the breasts lying beside them, they can cry when hungry rather than suck. So this complete weakness of body is consistent with the weakness of mind. Nor would the flesh of Christ have been in the likeness of the flesh of sin, unless this were the flesh of sin, by whose weight the rational soul is so burdened, whether it too is derived from the parents, or created there, or breathed in from above, which I put off inquiring into now.

In infants, certainly, by the grace of God through the baptism of him who came in the likeness of the flesh of sin, this is accomplished: that the flesh of sin is made void. It is made void, however, not so that the concupiscence mixed and inborn in the living flesh itself is suddenly consumed and ceases to be, but so that what was present in him when born does no harm to him when dead. For if after baptism he lives and is able to reach the age capable of a commandment, there he has something to fight with and to overcome with God's help, if he has not received his grace in vain, if he does not wish to be reprobate. For not even to adults is this granted in baptism (except perhaps by an ineffable miracle of the almighty Creator), that the law of sin which is in the members, warring against the law of the mind, is completely extinguished and ceases to be; but that whatever evil a man has done, said, or thought, when his mind was subject to that concupiscence and served it, is wholly abolished and held as though it had not been done; while concupiscence itself, the bond of guilt being loosed by which the devil held the soul through it, and the barrier being destroyed by which it separated man from his Creator, remains in the struggle in which we chastise our body and bring it into subjection, whether it is to be relaxed for lawful and necessary uses or restrained by continence. But since human life has been foreknown and foretold by the divine Spirit, who knows all the past, present, and future things of the human race far better than we, to be such that “no living person will be justified in the sight of God,” it happens that, through ignorance or weakness, not exerting all the strength of the will against it, we yield to it even in some unlawful things, the more and the oftener the worse we are, the less and the more rarely the better we are. But since on this question, in which it is asked whether a man can be, or whether there is, has been, or will be, a man without sin in this life, except him who said, “Behold, the prince of the world comes and will find nothing in me,” we must discuss somewhat more carefully, let this be the limit of this volume, so that we may take up that question from another beginning.

On the baptism of infants, dearest Marcellinus, that it is given them not only for attaining the kingdom of God but also for attaining salvation and eternal life, which no one can have without the kingdom of God and without fellowship with Christ the Savior, into which he redeemed us by his blood, we have argued sufficiently, I think, in the former book. In this one I have undertaken to discuss and unravel, with as much diligence and ability as he himself gives, whether anyone lives, or has lived, or will live in this world without any sin at all, except the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a redemption for all. If into this discussion the question of the sin or the baptism of infants should now and then insert itself by some necessity or occasion, it will not be surprising, nor to be avoided, that in those places we answer, as we are able, everything that demands our reply.

The solution of this question about a human life without any stealthy approach or surprise of sin is most necessary because of our daily prayers too. For there are some who presume so much on the free choice of the human will that they think we need not even be helped by God not to sin, once free choice of will has been granted to our nature. From this it follows that we ought not even to pray that we may not enter into temptation, that is, that we may not be overcome by temptation, whether when it deceives us and takes us unawares, or when it presses and harries us in our weakness. How harmful this is, how ruinous and contrary to our salvation which is in Christ, and how violently opposed to the very religion in which we have been instructed and to the piety with which we worship God, that we should not ask the Lord to receive such a benefit, and should think that in the Lord's Prayer itself, “Do not bring us into temptation,” is set down in vain, we cannot explain in words.

They seem to themselves to speak shrewdly, as though anyone of us did not know this, that if we do not will it, we do not sin, and that God would not command man what was impossible for the human will. But this they see less clearly: that to overcome some things, whether things wrongly desired or things wrongly feared, there is sometimes need of the great and entire strength of the will, which he foresaw we would not apply perfectly in all things, who willed it to be truly said through the prophet: “No living person will be justified in your sight.” So the Lord, foreknowing that we would be such, deigned to give certain healthful remedies, and to make them effective, against the guilt and bonds of sins even after baptism, namely works of mercy, when he says: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” For who would depart from this life with any hope of attaining eternal salvation, while that sentence stands, that whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all, unless there followed soon after: “So speak and so act as those who are beginning to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to him who does not show mercy; but mercy exults over judgment”?

Concupiscence, then, as the law of sin remaining in the members of the body of this death, is born with infants; in baptized infants it is loosed from guilt, is left for the contest, and pursues with no damnation those who die before the contest; unbaptized infants it binds as guilty and, as children of wrath, drags to condemnation, even if they die as infants. But in baptized adults, already using reason, in whom whatever the mind has consented to that concupiscence for sinning belongs to their own will, when all sins have been blotted out and the guilt too has been loosed by which it held them bound by origin, it remains for the contest for the time being, doing no harm at all to those who do not consent to it for unlawful things, until death is swallowed up in victory and, in perfect peace, nothing exists to be conquered. But those who consent to it for unlawful things it holds guilty, and, unless they are healed by the medicine of repentance and by works of mercy through the heavenly priest interceding for us, it leads them to the second death and damnation. For this reason the Lord too, in teaching us to pray, admonished us among other things to say: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; and do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” For evil remains in our flesh, not by nature, in which man was created by God, but by the flaw into which he fell by his will, where, having lost his strength, he is not healed with the same ease of will with which he was wounded. Of this evil the apostle says: “I know that good does not dwell in my flesh.” And he commanded us not to obey this evil, when he says: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires.” If, then, we have consented to these desires of the concupiscence of the flesh by an unlawful inclination of the will, to heal this we say, “Forgive us our debts,” applying a remedy from the work of mercy in what we add, “as we also forgive our debtors.” But so that we may not consent to it, we pray for help, saying, “and do not bring us into temptation” (or, as some manuscripts have it, “do not lead us into temptation”); not that God himself tempts anyone with such temptation (for God is not a tempter to evil, and he himself tempts no one), but so that, if perhaps we begin to be tempted by our own concupiscence, we may not be abandoned by his help, so that in it we may be able to conquer and not be drawn away, enticed. Then we add what will be accomplished at the end, when what is mortal will be swallowed up by life: “but deliver us from evil.” For then there will be no such concupiscence to fight against and to be commanded not to consent to. So all this, set in three benefits, can be briefly asked thus: pardon us the things in which we have been drawn away by concupiscence; help us not to be drawn away by concupiscence; take concupiscence away from us.

For we are not helped by God to sin; but we cannot do what is just, or fulfil the command of righteousness in every part, unless we are helped by God. For just as the eye of the body is not helped by light to turn away from that same light when closed or averted, but is helped by it to see, and cannot do this at all unless the light helps it, so God, who is the light of the inner man, helps the gaze of our mind, so that we may do some good not according to our own righteousness but according to his. But if we turn away from him, that is ours; and then we are wise according to the flesh, then we consent to the concupiscence of the flesh for unlawful things. God, then, helps those who are turned toward him and forsakes those who are turned away. But he also helps us to be turned, which that light certainly does not do for the eyes of the body. When, then, he commands us, saying, “Turn to me, and I will turn to you,” and we say to him, “Turn us, O God of our healings,” and “O God of hosts, turn us,” what else do we say than “Give what you command”? When he commands, saying, “Understand, then, you who are senseless among the people,” and we say to him, “Give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments,” what else do we say than “Give what you command”? When he commands, saying, “Do not go after your desires,” and we say, “We know that no one can be continent unless God gives it,” what else do we say than “Give what you command”? When he commands, saying, “Do righteousness,” and likewise says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” from whom ought we to ask the food and drink of righteousness, if not from him who promises its fullness to those who hunger and thirst for it?

Let us therefore drive from our ears and minds those who say that, once free choice of will has been received, we ought not even to pray that God may help us not to sin. Not even that Pharisee was blinded by such darkness, who, although he erred in thinking that nothing was to be added to his righteousness and supposed himself filled with its fullness, yet gave thanks to God that he was not like other men, unjust, robbers, adulterers, like that tax collector, that he fasted twice in the week, that he gave tithes of all that he possessed. He no longer asked that anything be added to his righteousness, but yet, by giving thanks to God for what he had, he confessed that he had received everything from him. And yet he was disapproved, both because, as though filled, he no longer asked to receive any of the food of righteousness, and because he was eager to prefer himself, as if insulting him, to the tax collector who hungered and thirsted for it. What then will become of those who, even if they admit that they do not have righteousness, or do not have it in full, yet presume that it is to be had from themselves, not to be prayed for from their Creator, where his storehouse and his fountain are? Yet it does not follow that this matter is to be handled by prayers alone, so that the efficacy of our will too is not brought in for living well. For God is called our helper, and no one can be helped except one who also makes some effort of his own accord; for God does not work our salvation in us as in senseless stones, or as in those in whose nature he did not establish reason and will. But why he helps one and does not help another, helps one so much and another so much, this one in that way and that one in this way, rests with him, the reason of an equity so secret and the excellence of his power.

As for those who say that there can be a man without sin in this life, they are not to be opposed at once with incautious rashness. For if we deny that there can be, we shall detract both from the free choice of man, who seeks this by willing it, and from the power or mercy of God, who brings it about by helping. But it is one question whether there can be, another whether there is; another, if there is not although there can be, why there is not; another whether there not only is anyone who has never had any sin at all, but also whether there could ever be or can be. In this fourfold set of questions, if I am asked whether a man can be without sin in this life, I will confess that he can, by the grace of God and his free choice, not doubting that free choice itself also belongs to the grace of God, that is, to God's gifts, not only that it exists but also that it is good, that is, that it turns to doing the Lord's commandments; and so the grace of God not only shows what is to be done but also helps so that what it has shown can be done. For what do we have that we have not received? Hence Jeremiah too says: “I know, O Lord, that man's way is not in himself, nor is it for a man to walk and direct his steps.” Hence too in the Psalms, when someone had said to God, “You have commanded your commandments to be kept exceedingly,” he did not at once presume on himself, but wished that he might do it: “Oh that my ways may be directed to keep your ordinances! Then I shall not be put to shame, when I look on all your commandments.” But who wishes for what he has in his power in such a way that he needs no help to do it? And from whom he wishes it, since not from fortune or fate or anyone else besides God, he shows sufficiently in what follows: “Direct my paths according to your word, and let no iniquity rule over me.” From slavery to this accursed mistress those are freed to whom, receiving him, the Lord Jesus gave power to become children of God. From this horrible domination those were to be freed to whom he says: “If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free.” By these and innumerable other testimonies of this kind I cannot doubt that God has not commanded anything impossible for man, and that nothing is impossible for God in aiding and helping so that what he commands may be done. And for this reason a man can, if he wills, be without sin, helped by God.

But if it is asked, as I had put in second place, whether there is such a man, I do not believe there is. For I rather believe the Scripture which says: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no living person will be justified in your sight.” And therefore there is need of the mercy of God, which exults over judgment, and which will not be for him who does not show mercy. And the prophet, when he said, “I said, I will declare my offense against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the ungodliness of my heart,” at once added, “For this every holy one will pray to you at a fitting time”: not, then, every sinner, but every holy one; for it is the voice of the holy: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Hence in the Apocalypse of the same apostle, those hundred and forty-four thousand saints who did not defile themselves with women (for they remained virgins), in whose mouth no lie was found, because they are blameless, are surely blameless for this reason, that they truly blamed themselves; and no lie was found in their mouth for this reason, that, if they had said that they had no sin, they would have deceived themselves and the truth would not be in them; and certainly there would be a lie where the truth was not; since the righteous man, when he is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech, certainly does not lie.

And for this reason those are much deceived, through not considering the Scriptures enough, by what is written, “He who is born of God does not sin and cannot sin, because his seed remains in him,” and by anything else said in that way. For they do not notice that people become children of God in so far as they begin to be in newness of spirit and to be renewed in the inner man according to the image of him who created them. For not from the hour in which anyone is baptized is all his old weakness consumed; but renewal begins from the forgiveness of all sins, and in so far as each one who is already wise is wise in spiritual things; but the other things have been done in hope, until they are done in reality as well, up to the renewal of the body itself into the better state of immortality and incorruption with which we shall be clothed in the resurrection of the dead. For the Lord calls this too a regeneration, not indeed such as takes place through baptism, but one in which what is now begun in the spirit will be perfected in the body too: “In the regeneration,” he says, “when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his majesty, you too will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” For in baptism, although the forgiveness of sins is entire and full, yet if the change of the man into eternal newness also took place at once entire and full (I do not say in the body too, which it is certainly plain still tends to the old corruption and to death, to be renewed afterwards at the end, when there will truly be entire newness; but, the body excepted, if in the mind itself, which is the inner man, a perfect newness took place in baptism), the apostle would not say: “Even though our outer man is being corrupted, yet the inner is being renewed day by day.” For surely he who is still being renewed day by day is not yet wholly renewed; and in so far as he is not yet renewed, so far he is still in oldness. Accordingly, in so far as they are still in oldness, although already baptized, in that respect they are still children of this world; but in so far as they are in newness, that is, by the full and perfect forgiveness of sins, and by whatever measure they are spiritually wise and live in a manner fitting to it, they are children of God. For inwardly we put off the old man and put on the new, since there we lay aside lying and speak the truth, and the other things by which the apostle explains what it is to put off the old man and to put on the new, who is created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth. And he exhorts those already baptized and faithful to do this; and they would not need to be admonished if this had already been done perfectly in baptism. And yet it has been done, as we also have been saved; for he saved us through the washing of regeneration. But in another place he says how this has been done: “And not only so, but we ourselves too, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, awaiting adoption, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for what anyone sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

The full adoption of children, then, will take place in the redemption of our body too. So we now have the firstfruits of the Spirit, by which we have already been made children of God in reality itself; but in other respects, just as we are saved in hope and renewed in hope, so also children of God in hope; but in reality itself, because not yet saved, therefore not yet fully renewed, and not yet children of God either, but children of this world. We advance, then, in renewal and righteous life by that by which we are children of God, and by this we cannot sin at all, until the whole is transformed into this, including that by which we are still children of this world; for by this we can still sin. So it comes about both that he who is born of God does not sin, and that, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. What we are as children of the flesh and of this world will therefore be consumed, and what we are as children of God, reborn of the Spirit, will be perfected. Hence the same John says: “Beloved, we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be.” What is this “we are” and “we shall be,” except that we are in hope and shall be in reality? For he goes on to say: “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Now, then, we have already begun to be like him, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, and we are still unlike him through the remnants of oldness. Accordingly, in so far as we are like him, so far we are children of God by the regenerating Spirit; but in so far as we are unlike him, so far we are children of the flesh and of this world. On the one side, then, we cannot sin; on the other, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, until the whole passes into adoption, and the sinner is no more, and you seek his place and do not find it.

In vain, therefore, do some also argue thus: If a sinner begot a sinner, so that the guilt of original sin is loosed in his infant when he receives baptism, a righteous man too should have begotten a righteous child. As though anyone begot carnally by virtue of being righteous, and not rather by virtue of what moves in his members with concupiscence, and of the law of sin being turned by the law of the mind to the use of propagation. He begets, then, by virtue of what he still draws that is old among the children of this world, not by virtue of what he has advanced into newness among the children of God; for “the children of this world beget and are begotten.” Hence what is born is also such, because “what is born of the flesh is flesh.” But only the children of God are righteous. In so far as they are children of God, they do not beget by the flesh, because they themselves too were born of the Spirit, not of the flesh. But those of them who beget, beget by the flesh by virtue of this, that they have not yet changed all the remnants of oldness into perfect newness. Hence whatever son is born from this old and weak part must himself also be old and weak; and therefore he too must be renewed by the Spirit into another generation through the forgiveness of sin. If this does not take place in him, a righteous father will profit him nothing; for the father is righteous by the Spirit, by which he did not beget him. But if it does take place, even an unrighteous father will do him no harm; for the one by spiritual grace has made the passage into the hope of eternal newness, while the other with a carnal mind has remained wholly in oldness.

The testimony, then, by which it was said, “He who is born of God does not sin,” is not contrary to the testimony by which it is said to those already born of God: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” For as long as a man, although wholly renewed in hope, and already in part in reality, by spiritual regeneration, still carries a body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, we must distinguish, even in one man, what belongs where and from what each thing is said. For, as I think, the Scripture of God does not easily bear so great a testimony of righteousness to anyone as to three of his servants, Noah, Daniel, and Job, who, the prophet Ezekiel says, alone could be delivered from a certain impending wrath of God; in those three men prefiguring three kinds of men to be delivered: in Noah, as I think, righteous leaders of peoples, because of his governing of the ark as of the church; in Daniel, righteous continent people; in Job, righteous married people; and perhaps there is some other interpretation, which there is no need to inquire into now. Yet how preeminent these men were in righteousness is sufficiently plain from this prophetic testimony and from other divine testimonies. Nor for that reason would any sober person say that drunkenness is not a sin, which nevertheless stole upon so great a man; for Noah, as we read, was once drunk, though far be it from us to say that he was a drunkard.

Daniel, after the prayer which he poured out to God, says of himself: “When I was praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my people to the Lord my God.” For this reason, unless I am mistaken, it is said through the Ezekiel mentioned above to a certain most proud man: “Are you wiser than Daniel?” Nor can one say here what some argue against the Lord's Prayer: that, although the holy and already perfect apostles, having no sin at all, prayed it, they said, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” not for themselves but for the imperfect and those still sinners, so that by saying “our,” they say, they showed that both those who still had sins and they themselves, who were already free from sin in every respect, were in one body. This certainly cannot be said of Daniel, who, I believe, foreseeing as a prophet that this presumption would one day arise, although he had often said “we have sinned” in his prayer, explained to us why he said it, not in such a way that we should hear from him, “When I was praying and confessing the sins of my people to the Lord my God,” nor again with the distinction blurred, so that it would be uncertain, because of the fellowship of one body, if he said, “When I was confessing our sins to the Lord my God”; but altogether so distinctly, as though taking pains over the distinction itself and commending it most emphatically: “my sins,” he says, “and the sins of my people.” Who contradicts this evidence, except one who takes more pleasure in defending what he thinks than in finding out what ought to be thought?

But let us see what Job himself says after so great a testimony of God to his righteousness. “In truth,” he says, “I know that it is so. For how will a man be righteous before the Lord? For if he wishes to contend with him, he will not be able to obey him.” And a little later he says: “Who will oppose his judgment? Even if I am righteous, my mouth will speak ungodly things.” Again, a little later he says: “I know that he does not let me go unpunished. Since I am ungodly, why have I not died? Even if I am purified with snow and cleansed with clean hands, you have dipped me enough in filth.” Likewise in another of his discourses he says: “For you have written bitter things against me, and clothed me with the sins of my youth, and put my foot in restraint; you have watched all my works and looked into the soles of my feet, which grow old like a wineskin or like a garment eaten by the moth. For man born of woman is of short time and full of wrath; and like a flower when it has bloomed, it falls; he departs like a shadow and does not remain. Have you not made the care of this one too come into your judgment? For who will be clean from filth? No one, not even if his life is of one day.” And a little later he says: “You have numbered my necessities, and nothing of my sins has escaped you; you have sealed up my sins in a bag, and noted whatever I committed unwillingly.” See, Job too confesses his sins and says that he knows in truth that no one is righteous before the Lord. And he knows this in truth because, if we say that we have no sin, the truth itself is not in us. Accordingly, God bears him so great a testimony of righteousness according to the measure of human conduct; but he himself, measuring himself by that rule of righteousness which he beholds, as far as he can, in God, knows in truth that it is so, and adds: “For how will a man be righteous before the Lord? For if he wishes to contend with him, he will not be able to obey him”; that is: if, when about to be judged, he wishes to show that nothing can be found in him to condemn, he will not be able to obey him; for he loses even that obedience by which he could obey him when he commands that sins be confessed. Hence he rebukes some, saying: “Why do you wish to contend with me in judgment?” Guarding against this, the other says: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no living person will be justified in your sight.” Therefore Job too says: “Who will oppose his judgment? Even if I am righteous, my mouth will speak ungodly things”; for this is: if I call myself righteous against his judgment, where that perfect rule of righteousness convicts me as unrighteous, surely my mouth will speak ungodly things, because it will speak against the truth of God.

Showing also the very frailty, or rather the condemnation, of carnal generation from the transgression of original sin, when he was dealing with his sins, as if giving their causes, he said that man born of woman is of short time and full of wrath. What wrath, if not that by which all are by nature, that is by origin, children of wrath, as the apostle says, since they are children of the concupiscence of the flesh and of this world? He then shows that the death of man too belongs to this wrath. For when he had said, “He is of short time and full of wrath,” he added also, “And like a flower when it has bloomed, it falls; he departs like a shadow and does not remain.” And when he adds, “Have you not made the care of this one too come into your judgment? For who will be clean from filth? No one, not even if his life is of one day,” he says this, of course: you have made the care of a man of short life come into your judgment. For however short his life may be, even if it were of one day, he could not be clean from filth, and therefore he will most justly come into your judgment. And what he said, “You have numbered all my necessities, and nothing of my sins has escaped you; you have sealed up my sins in a bag, and noted whatever I committed unwillingly,” does it not show clearly enough that those sins too are justly imputed which are committed not by the enticement of pleasure but for the sake of avoiding some trouble or pain or death? For these too are said to be committed by a kind of necessity, although all things ought to be overcome by love and delight in righteousness. What he said, “and noted whatever I committed unwillingly,” can also be seen to belong to that saying: “For I do not do what I will, but what I hate, that I do.”

What of the fact that the Lord himself, who had borne him testimony, although Scripture too, that is, the Spirit of God, had said that in all that befell him he did not sin with his lips before the Lord, yet afterwards, when he spoke to him, spoke rebuking him, as Job himself testifies, saying: “Why am I still judged, being admonished and hearing the rebukes of the Lord?” But no one is justly rebuked except one in whom there is something worthy of rebuke. And what kind of rebuke is it, which is understood as coming from the person of the Lord Christ? He lists for him the divine works of his power, rebuking him with this meaning, so that he appears to say: Can you do these great things that I can? And to what end, except that Job should understand (we believe this too was divinely inspired in him, that he foreknew that Christ would come to his passion), should understand, then, with what equanimity he ought to bear what he suffered, if Christ, in whom, when he had become man for our sake, there was no sin at all, and in whom as God there is so great a power, nevertheless did not refuse the obedience of the passion? Understanding this with a purer intention of heart, Job added to his answer: “By the hearing of the ear I heard you before, and now, behold, my eye sees you. Therefore I have blamed myself and wasted away, and have reckoned myself earth and ashes.” Why was he so displeased with himself in this great understanding? For the work of God, by which he was a man, could not rightly displease him, since it is even said to God himself, “Do not despise the works of your hands.” But surely, in view of that righteousness by which he had known himself righteous, he blamed himself and wasted away and reckoned himself earth and ashes, beholding with his mind the righteousness of Christ, in whom there could be no sin, not only in his divinity but not in his soul or in his flesh either; in view of which righteousness, which is from God, the apostle Paul too reckoned as not only loss but even dung his own blamelessness according to the righteousness which is from the law.

That splendid testimony of God, then, by which Job was praised, is not contrary to the testimony by which it was said, “No living person will be justified in your sight,” because it does not prove that there was nothing at all in him which could either be truly blamed by himself or rightly blamed by the Lord God, although he was, without falsehood, called righteous, a true worshipper of God, and abstaining from every evil work. For these are God's words about him: “Have you noticed my servant Job? For there is no man like him on earth, blameless, righteous, a worshipper of God, abstaining from every evil work.” By the first words he is praised by comparison with the men who are on earth; accordingly he excelled all who could then be righteous on earth. He did not, then, have no sin at all because he surpassed others in progress in righteousness. Then is added “blameless,” one of whose life no one could justly complain; “righteous,” one who had advanced so far in uprightness of conduct that no one could equal him; “a true worshipper of God,” since he was a truthful and humble confessor of his own sins as well; “abstaining from every evil work”: it would be surprising if also from every evil word and thought. How great Job was we do not know; but we know that he was righteous, we know that he was great also in enduring dreadful trials of tribulation; we know that he suffered all those things not because of sins but to demonstrate his righteousness. Yet these words by which he is praised by the Lord could also be said of him who delights in the law of God according to the inner man, but sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind, especially since he says: “I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I hate, that I do. But if I do the evil that I hate, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.” See, this man too, according to the inner man, is a stranger to every evil work, because he himself does not do it, but the evil that dwells in his flesh; and yet, since even that by which he delights in the law of God he has only from the grace of God, still needing deliverance he cries: “Wretched man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

There are, then, righteous people on earth; there are great, brave, prudent, continent, patient, devout, merciful people, bearing with equanimity all temporal evils for the sake of righteousness; but if it is true (and it is true) that “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,” and that “no living person will be justified in your sight,” they are not without sin; nor is any of them so arrogantly mad as not to think that he needs the Lord's Prayer for his sins, whatever they may be.

As for Zechariah and Elizabeth, who are often put to us in disputes on this question, what shall we say, except that Scripture evidently testifies that Zechariah was of eminent righteousness among the chief priests who were concerned with offering the sacrifices of the Old Testament? But we read in the epistle written to the Hebrews (a testimony I have already set down in the former book) that Christ alone is the high priest who does not have the need, like those who were called high priests, to offer sacrifice daily first for his own sins, then for the people's. “For it was fitting,” he says, “that we should have such a high priest, righteous, without malice, undefiled, separated from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who does not have daily need, as the high priests do, to offer sacrifice first for his own sins.” In this number of priests was Zechariah, in it Phinehas, in it Aaron himself, with whom this order began, and any others who lived praiseworthily and righteously in that priesthood; who nevertheless had the need to offer sacrifice first for their own sins, Christ alone being he, whose coming they prefigured, who as the undefilable priest did not have this need.

What praiseworthy thing is said of Zechariah and Elizabeth that is not included in what the apostle professed of himself before he had believed in Christ? For he said that according to the righteousness which is in the law he had been blameless. And this is read of them too: “And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” Because, then, whatever righteousness was in them was not feigned before men, it was said, “before God.” And what is written of Zechariah and his wife, “in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord,” the apostle said briefly: “in the law.” For there was not one law for them and another for him before the gospel, but one and the same, which we read was given through Moses to their fathers, according to which Zechariah too was a priest and sacrificed in his turn. And yet the apostle, who was then endowed with a like righteousness, goes on and says: “What things were gains to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet I also think all things to be loss because of the surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, for whom I have considered all things not only detriment but even dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God in faith, to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, if in any way I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.” So far, then, are we from believing, because of those words, that Zechariah and Elizabeth had a perfect righteousness without any sin, that we do not think even the apostle himself was perfect at the summit of that same rule, not only in that righteousness of the law, which he had like theirs and reckons among losses and dung in comparison with the most surpassing righteousness which is in the faith of Christ, but also in the gospel itself, where he earned the headship of so great an apostleship: which I would not dare to say if I did not consider it a sin not to believe him. For where he goes on and adds, “Not that I have already received or am already perfect, but I press on, if I may lay hold of that for which I also have been laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not think that I myself have laid hold of it; but one thing: forgetting what is behind and stretching out to what is ahead, I press on according to my purpose to the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus,” he himself confesses that he has not yet received, is not yet perfect in the fullness of the righteousness which he loved to attain in Christ, but still presses on according to his purpose, and, forgetting what is past, stretches out to what is ahead; so that we may know that what he says applies to him too: “Even though our outer man is being corrupted, yet the inner is being renewed day by day”; although he was already a perfect traveler, even if not yet one who had arrived by completing the journey. Finally, he wishes to sweep along with him in this race companions such as these, to whom he at once adds and says: “As many of us, then, as are perfect, let us think this; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal this too to you; nevertheless, to what we have attained, in that let us walk.” This walking is done not with the feet of the body but with the affections of the mind and the conduct of life, so that those can be perfect possessors of righteousness who, advancing on the right road of faith by their renewal day by day, have already become perfect travelers on the way of that same righteousness.

So, then, all those who in this life have been proclaimed by the testimonies of the divine Scriptures for their good will and acts of righteousness, and all who have been such after them, though not proclaimed and praised by the same testimonies, or who are such even now, or will be such hereafter: all are great, all are righteous, all are truly praiseworthy, but they are not without some sin; since from the testimonies of the Scriptures, by which we believe in their praises, we also believe this, that no living person is justified in the sight of God, and that therefore he is asked not to enter into judgment with his servants; and that the Lord's Prayer, which he handed down to his disciples, is necessary not only for all the faithful collectively but also for each individually.

“But,” they say, “the Lord says: Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect; which he would not command if he knew that what he commands cannot be done.” The question now is not whether it can be done, if they take this perfection to mean that someone is without any sin while he leads this life (for we have already answered above that it can be done); but whether anyone does it: this is what we are now asking. And that there is no one who wills it as much as the matter demands was foreknown beforehand, as so many testimonies of the Scriptures which I recalled above declare. And yet, when someone's perfection is spoken of, we must see in what respect it is spoken of. For a little while ago I set down a testimony from the apostle, where he admits that he is not yet perfect in receiving the righteousness he longs for, and yet at once says, “As many of us, then, as are perfect, let us think this”; he would not say both unless he were perfect in one respect and not in another. For example, someone may already be a perfect hearer of wisdom (which those were not yet to whom he said, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able, and even now you are not able”; for to them he also says, “We speak wisdom among the perfect,” certainly wishing perfect hearers to be understood); it can be, then, as I said, that someone is already a perfect hearer of wisdom who is not yet a perfect teacher of it; he can be perfect as one who knows righteousness, not yet perfect as one who does it; he can be perfect in loving his enemies, who is not yet perfect in bearing with them. And of one who is perfect in loving all men, since he has attained even to the love of enemies, it is asked whether he is already perfect in that very love as well, that is, whether he loves those whom he loves as much as that unchangeable rule of truth prescribes that they be loved. When, then, anyone's perfection is read of in the Scriptures, we must look carefully at what respect it is spoken of, since no one is understood to be altogether without sin because he is said to be perfect in some respect. Although even in this it can be so said, not because there is no longer any way in which he may advance, but because he has advanced for the most part, that he is held worthy of this name; as in the teaching of the law someone can be called perfect even if something still escapes him; as the apostle called perfect those to whom he nevertheless says, “And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal this too to you; nevertheless, to what we have attained, in that let us walk.”

Nor is it to be denied that God commands that we ought to be so perfect in doing righteousness as to have no sin at all. For it will not be sin, if there is any, which God does not command not to be. “Why then,” they say, “does he command what he knows no man will do?” In this way one can also ask why he commanded those first men, who were only two, what he knew they would not do. For it must not be said that he commanded it so that one of us might do it if they did not; for this, that they should not take food from that tree, God commanded to them alone, because, just as he knew what righteousness they were not going to do, so he also knew what righteousness he himself was going to do concerning them. In this way, then, he commands all men not to commit any sin, although he foreknows that no one will fulfil this, so that on all who have despised his commands ungodly and damnably, he himself may do in their damnation what is just; and on all who, advancing obediently and devoutly in his commands yet not fulfilling all that he has commanded, forgive others their sins as they wish to be forgiven, he himself may do in their cleansing what is good. For how is one who forgives forgiven through the mercy of God, if it is not sin? Or how is it not forbidden through the justice of God, if it is sin?

“But look,” they say, “the apostle says: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; there remains for me the crown of righteousness. He would not say this if he had any sin.” On the contrary, let them answer how he could say these things, when there still remained for him so great a conflict, so troublesome and great a fight, that of his passion itself, which he had said was already hanging over him. Or was little still lacking to finishing his course, when that was lacking in which the enemy would be fiercer and more cruel? But if he rejoiced, sure and secure, in such words because he had already been made sure and secure of victory in so great a coming fight by him who had revealed to him that that passion was imminent, then he said these things not in the fullest reality but in the firmest hope, and indicated what he confidently expected to come as though it had been done. If, then, to these words he had also added this, saying, “I now have no sin,” we would understand that he said this too not of the completion of a thing done but of a thing to come. For it belonged to the finishing of his course to have no sin, which these men think was already completed in him when he said these things, just as it belonged to the finishing of his course also to overcome the adversary in the fight of his passion, which even they must admit was still to be completed in him when he said these things. All this, then, we say was at that time still to be perfected, when, already trusting in God's promise, he spoke of it all as though it had been accomplished. For it belonged to the finishing of his course also that he forgave sins to his debtors and so prayed that they might be forgiven him; by which promise of the Lord he was most certain that at that end, which, though still to come, he spoke of in faith as already fulfilled, he would have no sin. For, to pass over other things, I wonder whether, when he spoke those words by which he seemed to these men to have had no sin, that thorn of the flesh had already been taken from him, concerning whose removal he had asked the Lord three times, and had received the answer: “My grace is sufficient for you; power is made perfect in weakness.” For the perfecting of so great a man it was necessary that the angel of Satan should not be taken away from him, by whom he was buffeted so that he should not be lifted up by the greatness of the revelations; and does anyone dare either to think or to say that anyone placed under the burden of this life is clean from all sin whatsoever?

Granted that there are men so excellent in righteousness that God speaks to them from the pillar of cloud, such as Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among those who call on his name, whose great praises for piety and innocence are proclaimed by truthful Scripture from his earliest boyhood, from the time when his mother, fulfilling her vow, placed him in the temple of God and dedicated him as a servant to the Lord; yet even of such men it is written: “You were merciful to them, and taking vengeance on all their affections.” For on the children of damnation he takes vengeance in anger, but on the children of grace he takes vengeance with mercy, since whom he loves he corrects, and he scourges every son whom he receives. But no vengeance, no correction, no scourge of God is due except to sin, except in the case of him who was prepared for scourges, so that he was tried in all things according to likeness, without sin, so that he might be the holy priest of the holy, interceding even for the holy, each of whom says, not falsely, even of himself: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” Hence even those who argue against these things, although they are chaste in life and praiseworthy in conduct, and do not hesitate to do what the Lord commanded that rich man who asked his counsel for obtaining eternal life, when he had answered that he had already fulfilled all the commandments of the law: that if he wished to be perfect, he should sell all that he had and give to the poor and transfer his treasure to heaven; yet none of them dares to say that he is without sin. And this, as we believe, they say without a deceitful mind; but if they lie, by that very fact they begin either to increase or to have sin.

Let us now look at what I put in the third place. Since a man can be without sin in this life, with divine grace helping the human will, why is he not? I could answer most easily and most truly: because men do not will it. But if I am asked why they do not will it, we go on at length; yet I will say this too briefly, without prejudice to a more careful inquiry. Men do not will to do what is just either because it is hidden whether it is just or because it does not delight them. For we will anything the more strongly, the more surely we know how good it is and the more ardently we delight in it. Ignorance, then, and weakness are flaws which hinder the will from being moved to do a good work or to abstain from an evil one. But that what was hidden may become known, and what did not delight may become sweet, belongs to the grace of God, by which he helps the wills of men; and that they are not helped by it, the cause likewise is in themselves, not in God, whether they are predestined to be damned because of the iniquity of pride, or, if they are children of mercy, to be judged and instructed against their very pride. Hence Jeremiah, when he had said, “I know, O Lord, that man's way is not in himself, nor is it for a man to walk and direct his steps,” at once added, “Correct me, O Lord, but in judgment and not in your fury”; as if he said: I know that it belongs to my correction that I am helped less by you, so that my steps are not perfectly directed; yet do not deal with me in this as in fury, by which you have determined to condemn the wicked, but as in judgment, by which you teach your own not to be proud. Hence it is said elsewhere: “And your judgments will help me.”

You should therefore refer the cause of no human fault to God. For the cause of all human vices is pride. To convict and remove it, such a medicine came from heaven: to man lifted up through pride God came down humble through mercy, commending clear and manifest grace in that very man whom he took up with so great a love above his fellows. For neither did that man himself, so joined to the Word of God that by that union one Son of God and the same one Son of Man came to be, bring it about by preceding merits of his own will. For it was necessary that he be one; but there would be two and three and more, if this could come about not by God's own gift but by man's free choice. This, then, is especially commended; this, as far as I dare judge, is especially taught and learned in the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ. That is why each of us now knows and now does not know how to undertake, do, and complete a good work, now delights and now does not delight in it: so that he may know that it is not of his own ability but of God's gift, either that he knows or that he delights; and so may be healed of the vanity of self-exaltation, and may know how truly it was said, not of this earth but spiritually: “The Lord will give sweetness, and our land will give its fruit.” And a good work delights the more, the more God is loved, the highest and unchangeable good and author of all goods of whatever kind. And that God may be loved, his love has been poured out in our hearts, not through ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

But men labor to find in our will some good that is ours, which is not ours from God, and how it can be found I do not know. For apart from what the apostle says, when he was speaking of the goods of men, “For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”, reason itself too, which can be applied to these matters by such as we are, hems in hard any of us who inquires, lest we so defend grace that we seem to take away free choice, or again so assert free choice that we are judged ungrateful to the grace of God with proud ungodliness.

For some have wished to defend that saying of the apostle which I recalled by saying that whatever good will a man has is to be attributed to God for this reason: that it could not be in him if the man himself did not exist; and since he has it only from God that he is something and that he is a man, why should not whatever good will is in him also be attributed to God as its author, since it would not exist unless there were someone in whom it existed? But in this way it can also be said that bad will too is to be attributed to God as author, because it too could not be in a man unless there were a man in whom it was. And God is the author of man's existence; so too, his bad will, which could not exist at all unless it had a man in which to exist, would have to be referred to God as author. Which it is wicked to say.

Therefore, unless we hold that not only the choice of the will, which is freely turned this way and that and is among those natural goods which even a bad man can use badly, but also the good will, which is already among those goods whose use cannot be bad, can be ours only from God, I do not know how we are to defend what was said: “For what do you have that you did not receive?” For if we have from God a certain free will which can still be either good or bad, but the good will is from ourselves, then what is from us is better than what is from him. And if this is most absurd to say, we must confess that we obtain even good will from God. Although it would be surprising if the will could stand in some middle position so as to be neither good nor bad. For either we love righteousness, and it is good, and if we love it more, it is more good, if less, less good; or, if we do not love it at all, it is not good. And who would hesitate to say that a will which in no way loves righteousness is not only bad but even the worst will? If, then, the will is either good or bad, and we certainly do not have bad will from God, it remains that we have good will from God; otherwise I do not know in what other gift of his we ought to rejoice when we are justified by him. And hence, I think, it is written, “The will is prepared by the Lord,” and in the Psalms, “By the Lord a man's steps are directed, and he will will his way,” and what the apostle says: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will.”

Therefore, since our turning away from God is our own (and this is bad will), while our turning to God we cannot do unless he rouses and helps us (and this is good will), what do we have that we have not received? And if we have received it, why do we boast as if we had not received it? And for this reason, so that he who boasts may boast in the Lord, that God wills to give this to some is of his mercy, not of their merit; that he does not will it for others is of his truth. For a just penalty is due to sinners, since the Lord God loves mercy and truth, and “mercy and truth have met each other,” and “all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.” And who could set out how often the divine Scripture mentions these two together? Sometimes even with the names changed, so that “grace” is put for mercy, whence it is said, “And we saw his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth”; sometimes “judgment” for truth, as in: “Mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord.”

But why he wills to turn these and to punish those for their turning away: although no one can justly blame the merciful one in bestowing a benefit, and no one can justly blame the truthful one in exercising vengeance, just as no one could justly blame the householder in the gospel who paid some workers the agreed wage and bestowed on others even what was not agreed, yet the counsel of a more hidden justice rests with him. As for us, so far as it is granted, let us be wise and understand, if we can, that the good Lord God sometimes does not give even his saints either sure knowledge of some just work or victorious delight in it, so that they may know that it is not from themselves but from him that they have the light by which their darkness is enlightened, and the sweetness by which their land gives its fruit.

And when we pray to him for his help to do and to perfect righteousness, what else do we pray for than that he may open what was hidden and make sweet what did not delight? For that this too is to be prayed for from him we learned by his grace, when previously it was hidden; by his grace we loved it, when previously it did not delight; so that he who boasts may boast not in himself but in the Lord. For being lifted up into pride belongs to men's own will, not to the work of God; for God neither compels nor helps them to it. There comes first, then, in man's will a certain appetite for his own power, so that he becomes disobedient through pride. If this appetite had not existed, nothing would have been troublesome; and when man did not will this, he would have not willed it without difficulty; but as a just and due penalty there followed such a flaw that it became troublesome to obey righteousness. Unless this flaw is overcome with the help of grace, no one is turned to righteousness; unless it is healed by the working of grace, no one enjoys the peace of righteousness. And by whose grace is it overcome and healed, if not his to whom it is said: “Turn us, O God of our healings, and turn away your anger from us”? And if he does this, he does it by mercy, so that it is said, “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor repaid us according to our iniquities”; and to those for whom he does not do it, he does not do it by judgment. And who will say to him, “What have you done?”, to whom mercy and judgment are sung by the devout mind of the saints? For this reason he heals even his saints and faithful more slowly in some flaws, so that in these the good delights them less than suffices for fulfilling righteousness in every part, whether when it is hidden or even when it is manifest; so that, as regards the most perfect rule of his truth, no living person is justified in his sight. Nor in this does he will us to be damnable, but humble, commending his grace to us, lest, having attained ease in all things, we should think ours what is his; which error is greatly contrary to religion and piety. Yet let us not therefore think that we must remain in those same flaws, but let us strive watchfully, above all against the very pride for which we are humbled in them, and pray to him ardently, understanding at the same time that both our so striving and our so praying we have by his gift; so that in all things, not looking to ourselves but having our hearts lifted up, we may give thanks to the Lord our God, and, when we boast, may boast in him.

There remains now the fourth question, and when it has been explained, as far as the Lord helps, this so lengthy discourse may at last come to an end: whether anyone who has never had nor will ever have any sin at all not only exists among those born of men, but also could ever have existed or can exist. It is most certain that no such person exists, or has existed, or will exist, except the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. On this we have already said much concerning the baptism of infants, for if they have no sin, then there not only are innumerable men without sin, but there also have been and will be. Further, if what we treated in the second place has truly been established, that no one is without sin, then surely infants are not without sin either. From which it follows that, even if there could have been someone in this life so perfected in virtue that he came to such fullness of righteousness that he had no sin at all, yet it is not to be doubted that he was previously a sinner, from which he was turned into this newness of life. For in that second place one thing was being asked, and another is proposed in this fourth. For in that one the question was whether anyone in this life would come, through the grace of God and the effort of the will, to the perfect life which is wholly without any sin; but in this fourth the question is whether there was, or could have been, or can be, among the children of men anyone who came to most perfect righteousness not from sin, but was never bound by any sin at all. Therefore, if what we have said at such length about infants is true, there is no such person among the children of men, nor was, nor will be, except the one mediator, in whom propitiation and justification have been set for us, through which, the enmities of sins being ended, we may be reconciled to God. It is not beside the point, then, as far as seems sufficient for the present case, to go back over a few things from the very beginning of the human race, by which the reader's mind may be instructed against certain things which could disturb it.

After those first human beings, one man, Adam, and from him Eve his wife, having received God's command, refused to keep obedience, a just and due penalty followed them. For so the Lord had threatened, that on the day they ate the forbidden food they would die the death. Accordingly, since they had received the power of using for food every tree that was in paradise, in which God had also planted the tree of life, and he had forbidden them only that one which he called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which name the consequence of experience was signified, what good they would feel if the prohibition were kept and what evil if it were transgressed, they are surely rightly understood to have abstained from the forbidden food before the malicious persuasion of the devil, and to have used what was granted, and so both the other trees and especially the tree of life. For what is more absurd than to believe that they took nourishment from the other trees, but not from that one too, which had likewise been permitted, and which by a special usefulness did not let their bodies, although natural, be changed through the decay of the ages and grow old into death; conferring this benefit on the human body from its own bodily substance, and showing by a mystical meaning what is conferred on the rational soul through wisdom, of which it bore the figure, so that, made alive by its nourishment, the soul would in no way be turned to the decay and death of wickedness? For rightly is it said of wisdom: “She is a tree of life to those who embrace her.” As this tree in the bodily paradise, so wisdom in the spiritual paradise; this one giving vigor to the senses of the outer man, that one to those of the inner, a life-giving vigor without any change for the worse through time. They served God, then, with the piety of obedience strongly commended to them, by which alone God is worshipped. How great this is in itself, and how it alone suffices to guard the rational creature under the Creator, could not have been more excellently made known than by their being forbidden a tree that was not evil. For far be it that the creator of good things, who made all things, and behold, very good, should plant anything evil in the fertility even of that bodily paradise. But in order that it might be shown to man, for whom service under such a Lord was most useful, how great the good of obedience alone was, which alone he had required of his servant, whom it profited to obey not for the sake of the Lord's dominion but rather for the servant's own benefit, they were forbidden that tree, from which, if they had used it without being forbidden, they would have suffered no evil at all; so that what they suffered when they used it after the prohibition might show sufficiently that it was not the tree, harmful by poisonous food, that brought this on them, but only violated obedience.

Before they violated it, then, they pleased God and God pleased them, and, although they bore a natural body, they felt nothing in it moving disobediently against them. For the order of righteousness brought it about that, since their soul had received the body as a servant from the Lord, just as the soul obeyed that same Lord of its own, so its body obeyed it and rendered a service fitting to that life without any resistance. Hence they were both naked and not ashamed. For the rational soul is now ashamed, with a natural modesty, that in the flesh, over whose service it received the right of authority, it cannot, by some weakness or other, bring it about that the members are not moved against its will and are moved at its will. For this reason in any chaste person they are rightly called shameful, because they are roused against the mind, their mistress, as if they were in their own power, as they please; and the bridle of virtue has only this right over them, that it does not let them come to unclean and unlawful corruptions. This disobedience of the flesh, then, which is in the very motion, even if it is not allowed to have its effect, was not in those first human beings then, when they were naked and not ashamed. For the rational soul, mistress of the flesh, had not yet become disobedient to its Lord, so that by a reciprocal penalty it should experience its servant the flesh disobedient, with a certain feeling of confusion and trouble of its own; a feeling which it certainly did not inflict on God by its disobedience. For it is not shameful or troublesome to God if we do not obey him, whose supreme power over us we can in no way diminish; but it is shameful to us that the flesh does not serve our command, because this comes about through the weakness which we deserved by sinning, and it is called the sin dwelling in our members. But this sin is such that it is the penalty of sin. Finally, after that transgression took place and the disobedient soul was turned away from the law of its Lord, its servant, that is, its body, began to have a law of disobedience against it, and those human beings were ashamed of their nakedness, having noticed in themselves a motion which they had not felt before; and this noticing was called the opening of the eyes; for they were not wandering among those trees with their eyes shut. So too it is written of Hagar: “Her eyes were opened and she saw a well.” Then those human beings covered their shameful parts, which God had made members for them, but they themselves made shameful.

From this law of sin is born the flesh of sin, to be expiated through the sacrament of him who came in the likeness of the flesh of sin, so that the body of sin might be made void, which he also calls the body of this death, from which nothing frees the wretched man but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. For this law, the beginning of death, passed from them to their descendants in the same way as the toil with which all men toil on the earth, and as childbirth with pains for women. For these they deserved by God's sentence when they were convicted of sin, and we see them fulfilled not in them alone but also in their successors, more in some, less in others, yet in all. Since, then, the first righteousness of those first human beings was to obey God and not to have in their members this law of concupiscence against the law of their mind, now, after their sin, our flesh of sin having been born from them, it is counted a great thing by those who obey God not to obey the desires of that same concupiscence and to crucify in themselves the flesh with its passions and desires, so that they may belong to Jesus Christ, who figured this in his cross, to whom by his grace he gave power to become children of God. For he did not give it to all men, but to as many as received him, so that those who had been born to the world by the flesh might be reborn to God by the Spirit. For so it was said of them: “But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of flesh, not of blood, not of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.”

Then he went on to add: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”; as though saying: This indeed is a great thing that has been done in them, that those who had first been born of the flesh to the world, although created by God himself, should be born to God from God; but far more wonderful is what has been done: that, whereas it was of their nature to be born of the flesh, but of grace to be born of God, in order to bestow this grace he who was born of God by nature deigned also to be born of the flesh by mercy; for this is: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Through this, he says, it came about that we, born of the flesh as flesh, might afterwards by being born of the Spirit be spirit and dwell in God, because God too, born of God, afterwards by being born of the flesh became flesh and dwelt among us. For the Word who became flesh was in the beginning and was God with God. Yet his very sharing in our lower things, so that ours might be in his higher things, kept a certain middle course even in the birth of the flesh: we were born in the flesh of sin, he in the likeness of the flesh of sin; we not only of flesh and blood but also of the will of a man and the will of the flesh, he only of flesh and blood, not of the will of a man nor of the will of the flesh, but born of God. And therefore we go to death because of sin, he to death for our sake without sin. And just as his lower things, by which he came down to us, were not in every way made equal to our lower things, in which he found us here, so also our higher things, by which we ascend to him, will not be made equal to his higher things, in which we are to find him there. For we shall have been made children of God by his grace; he was always Son of God by nature; we, having once turned, shall cleave to God as unequal; he, never turned away, remains equal to God; we partakers of eternal life, he eternal life. He alone, then, even when made man, remaining God, never had any sin, nor did he take the flesh of sin, although from the maternal flesh of sin. For whatever of flesh he took from there, he surely either cleansed it to take it or cleansed it by taking it. Therefore he created the virgin mother whom he would choose, not conceiving by the law of the flesh of sin, that is, not by the motion of carnal concupiscence, but by devout faith meriting that the holy offspring be formed in her; he chose her from whom he would be created. How much more, then, must the flesh of sin be baptized to escape judgment, if flesh without sin was baptized to give an example for imitation!

What we answered above against those who say, “If a sinner begot a sinner, a righteous man too should have begotten a righteous child,” we answer also to those who say that one born of a baptized man ought to have been held as already baptized. “For why,” they say, “could he not be baptized in the loins of his father, if, according to the epistle written to the Hebrews, Levi could be tithed in the loins of Abraham?” Let those who say this note that Levi was not afterwards exempt from tithing because he had already been tithed in the loins of Abraham, but because he was so ordained to the honor of the priesthood that he should receive tithes, not pay them; otherwise his other brothers, who paid tithes to him, would not have been tithed either, since they too had already been tithed by Melchizedek in the loins of Abraham.

But let no one say that Abraham's sons could rightly be tithed, although they had already been tithed in the loins of their father, because tithing was a thing that had to be done often for each person, as the Israelites every year, indeed from all their produce, used to pay frequent tithes to the Levites all their lives; whereas baptism is a sacrament given once, and if anyone had already received it when he was in his father, he must be reckoned as nothing but baptized, since he was begotten of one who had been baptized. Whoever says this, not to argue at length, should look at circumcision, which was done once and yet was done to each individually. As, then, at the time of that sacrament one born of a circumcised man had to be circumcised, so now one born of a baptized man must be baptized.

“But the apostle says,” they say, “Your children would be unclean, but now they are holy; and therefore the children of believers ought not to be baptized at all.” I am surprised that this is said by those who deny that sin is drawn from Adam by origin. For if they take this statement of the apostle so as to believe that children are born sanctified from believers, why do even they not doubt that these must be baptized? Why, in short, will they not confess that some sin is drawn by origin from a sinful parent, if some holiness is drawn from a holy one? And it is not against our assertion, even if holy children are propagated from believers, that we say that, if they are not baptized, they go into damnation, children from whom even they shut off the kingdom of heaven, although they say that they have no sin, either personal or original. Or if it seems unworthy to them that the holy should be damned, how will it be worthy that the holy should be separated from the kingdom of God? Let them rather consider how some sin is not drawn from sinful parents, if some holiness is drawn from holy ones, and uncleanness from unclean ones. For he who said, “Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy,” said both. Let them also explain how it is just that those born holy from believers and those born unclean from unbelievers are equally not allowed to enter the kingdom of God if they have not been baptized. What good, then, is this holiness to them? For if they admitted that those born unclean of unbelievers are damned, while the holy children of believers cannot indeed enter the kingdom of God unless they are baptized, yet are not damned because they are holy, there would be some sort of distinction; but as it is, they say that those born holy of the holy and those born unclean of the unclean are equally not damned, because they have no sin, and equally separated from the kingdom of God, because they have no baptism. Who would believe that such minds do not see this absurdity?

But consider a little how this which the apostle said when dealing with another matter, “Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy,” is not contrary to our view, or rather to the view of the apostle himself, who said, “From one, all to condemnation,” and “From one, all to justification of life.” Sanctification is not of one kind only; for I think that catechumens too are sanctified in a certain way of their own by the sign of Christ and the prayer of the laying on of hands; and what they receive, although it is not the body of Christ, is nevertheless holy, and holier than the foods by which we are nourished, since it is a sacrament. Yet the same apostle said that even the foods which we use from the necessity of sustaining this life are sanctified by the word of God and prayer, the prayer with which we pray when about to refresh our poor bodies. Just as, then, this sanctification of foods does not bring it about that what has entered the mouth does not go into the belly and is not discharged into the privy through the corruption by which all earthly things are dissolved (which is why the Lord also exhorts us to another food, which is not corrupted), so the sanctification of a catechumen, if he has not been baptized, does not avail him for entering the kingdom of heaven or for the forgiveness of sins. And for this reason that sanctification too, of whatever kind it may be, which the apostle said is in the children of believers, has nothing at all to do with this question of baptism and of the origin or forgiveness of sin. For he says in that very place that unbelieving spouses are sanctified in believing spouses, speaking thus: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.” No one, I think, understands so unbelievingly, whatever he understands in these words, as to think on this account that even a husband who is not a Christian, because his wife was a Christian, need no longer be baptized, has already come to the forgiveness of sins, and will enter the kingdom of heaven, because he was said to be sanctified in his wife.

Whoever is still troubled as to why those are baptized who are born of the baptized, let him take this briefly. Just as the generation of the flesh of sin through the one Adam draws to condemnation all who are generated in that way, so the regeneration of the Spirit of grace through the one Jesus Christ leads to the justification of eternal life all who, predestined, are regenerated in that way. And the sacrament of baptism is surely the sacrament of regeneration. Therefore, just as a man who has not lived cannot die, and one who has not died cannot rise again, so one who has not been born cannot be reborn. From which it follows that no one could be reborn in his parent without having been born. But if he has been born, he must be reborn, because “unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It is necessary, then, that even an infant be imbued with the sacrament of regeneration, lest without it he depart this life to his harm; and this is done only for the forgiveness of sins. Christ too showed this in that very place, when, asked how these things could be, he recalled what Moses did in lifting up the serpent. Since, then, through the sacrament of baptism infants are conformed to the death of Christ, we must confess that they are freed from the serpent's bite, if we do not wish to stray from the rule of the Christian faith. Yet they received this bite not in their own personal life, but in him on whom it was first inflicted.

Nor let this deceive anyone, that his own sins do no harm to a parent after his conversion; “how much more,” they say, “can they do no harm to his son!” But those who think this do not notice that, just as his own sins do no harm to the parent because he has been reborn of the Spirit, so, to one who has been born of him, unless he is reborn in the same way, what has been drawn from the parent will do harm; because renewed parents, too, beget carnally not from the firstfruits of newness but from the remnants of oldness, and the children, propagated wholly old in the flesh of sin from the remaining oldness of their parents, escape the damnation due to the old man by the sacrament of spiritual regeneration and renewal. For this above all, because of the questions which have been raised on this matter or may still be raised, we must note and remember: that in baptism only a full and perfect forgiveness of all sins takes place, but the quality of the man himself is not wholly changed at once; rather, the spiritual firstfruits, in those who advance well, as newness grows day by day, change into themselves what is carnally old, until the whole is so renewed that even the natural weakness of the body comes to spiritual strength and incorruption.

This law of sin, which the apostle also calls sin when he says, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires,” does not remain in the members of those who have been reborn of water and the Spirit as though its forgiveness had not taken place, where an entirely full and perfect forgiveness of sins takes place, all the enmities by which we were separated from God being slain; but it remains in the oldness of the flesh as something overcome and destroyed, unless by unlawful consents it in some way comes to life again and is recalled to its own reign and dominion. From this oldness of the flesh, in which this law of sin is, or the sin now forgiven, the life of the Spirit, in whose newness the baptized are reborn by God's grace, is so far distinguished that it was not enough for the apostle to say that such people are not in sin, unless he also said that they are not in the flesh itself, even before they depart from this mortal life. “For those who are in the flesh,” he says, “cannot please God; but you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Yet just as those who turn its members to good works use well that very flesh, although corruptible, in which flesh they are not, because they neither think nor live according to it; just as, finally, those use well even death, which is the penalty of the first sin, who spend it bravely and patiently for their brothers, for the faith, for any true and holy righteousness; so also believing married people use well even that law of sin, which, already forgiven, remains in the oldness of the flesh: by virtue of being in the newness of Christ they do not allow lust to master them, and by virtue of still drawing the oldness of Adam they beget mortally children to be regenerated immortally, with that propagation of sin by which those who have been reborn are not held liable, and from which those who are born are loosed by being reborn. As long, then, as the law of concupiscence remains in the members, while it remains its guilt is loosed; but it is loosed for him who has received the sacrament of regeneration and has already begun to be renewed. But what is born from that remaining oldness of concupiscence needs to be reborn in order to be healed; because believing parents, both born carnally and reborn spiritually, begot children carnally; and the children, before they were born, how could they be reborn?

Do not be surprised that I said that, while the law of sin remains as concupiscence, its guilt is loosed through the grace of the sacrament. For just as wicked deeds, words, and thoughts, as regards the motions of mind and body themselves, have already passed and do not exist, yet, though they are past and no longer exist, their guilt remains unless it is loosed by the forgiveness of sins; so, on the contrary, in this law of concupiscence, not yet past but still remaining, its guilt is loosed and will not exist, when the full forgiveness of sins takes place in baptism. Finally, if departure from this life follows at once, there will be nothing at all to hold the man liable, all that held him having been loosed. Just as, then, it is not surprising that the guilt of past deeds, thoughts, and words remains before the forgiveness of sins, so, on the contrary, it ought not to be surprising that the guilt of remaining concupiscence passes away after the forgiveness of sins.

Since this is so, since through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men, until the end of this carnal generation and corruptible age, whose children beget and are begotten, there being no man, set in this life, of whom it can truly be said that he has no sin at all, except the one mediator, who reconciles us to our Creator through the forgiveness of sins, this same Lord of ours has denied this remedy of his, in no period of the human race before the last judgment still to come, to those whom by most certain foreknowledge and most just beneficence he predestined to reign with him in eternal life. For before the birth of his flesh, the weakness of his passion, and the power of his resurrection, he formed those who existed then for the inheritance of eternal salvation by faith in these things as future; by faith in them as present he formed those who were there when they took place and saw what had been foretold fulfilled; and by faith in them as past he does not cease to form those who came afterwards, and ourselves, and those who are yet to come. There is one faith, then, which saves all who are saved by being reborn from carnal generation into spiritual, a faith ending in him who came to be judged and to die for us, the judge of the living and the dead. But the sacraments of this one faith have been varied through various times, according to what was fitting to signify.

He is therefore the same Savior of infants and of adults, of whom the angels said, “To you is born this day a Savior,” and of whom it was said to the virgin Mary: “You shall call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins”; where it is plainly shown that he was named by this name by which he was called, Jesus, because of the salvation which he grants us; for Jesus in Latin is Savior. Who is there, then, who would dare to say that the Lord Christ is Jesus only for adults and not also for infants? He came in the likeness of the flesh of sin to make void the body of sin, in which, most weak, with infant members fit or suited for no use, the rational soul is weighed down by a wretched ignorance. This ignorance I would in no way believe was in that infant in whom the Word became flesh to dwell among us; nor would I suspect in Christ as a little one that weakness of mind itself which we see in little ones. For through this weakness, when they are disturbed by irrational motions, they are restrained by no reason, no command, but sometimes by pain or the fear of pain, so that you may see plainly that they are children of that disobedience which moves in the members warring against the law of the mind and does not subside when reason wills; indeed, it too is often checked by bodily pain, as by being beaten, or is repressed by fear or some such motion of the mind, yet not by the command of the will. But because there was in him the likeness of the flesh of sin, he willed to undergo the changes of the ages, beginning from infancy itself, so that that flesh too might seem able to have come to death by growing old, had he not been killed as a young man. Yet this death is rendered in the flesh of sin as a debt of disobedience, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin it was undertaken by the will of obedience. For when he was about to go to it and suffer it, he said: “Behold, the prince of this world comes and will find nothing in me; but that all may know that I do the will of my Father, rise, let us go hence.” Having said this, he went on to the death he did not owe, having become obedient unto death.

Therefore those who say, “If it came about by the sin of the first man that we die, it should come about by the coming of Christ that we who believe in him do not die,” and add as if a reason, “For the transgression of the transgressor did not harm us more than the incarnation or redemption of the Savior benefited us,” why do they not rather attend to, listen to, and believe without dispute what the apostle said without ambiguity: “For through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive”? For he was speaking of nothing other than the resurrection of the body. He said, then, that the death of the body of all came about through one man, and promised that the resurrection of the body of all to eternal life would come about through the one Christ. How, then, did the one harm us more by sinning than the other benefited us by redeeming, since through the sin of the one we die temporally, but through the redemption of the other we rise again not to a temporal but to an everlasting life? Our body, then, is dead because of sin, but the body of Christ alone died without sin, so that, blood without guilt being shed, the handwritings of all guilts might be blotted out, by which those who believe in him were formerly held as debtors by the devil. Therefore: “This is my blood, which will be shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

He could also have granted believers this, that they should not experience the death of this body; but if he had done so, a certain happiness would have been added to the flesh, but the fortitude of faith would have been diminished. For men so fear this death that they would call Christians happy for no other reason than that they could not die at all; and for that reason no one would hasten to the grace of Christ for the sake of that life which will be blessed after this death, through the virtue even of despising death itself, but people would believe in Christ more softly, to be rid of the trouble of death. He bestowed more grace, then; he gave more to his faithful without doubt. For what great thing would it be, seeing that those who believed did not die, to believe that one would not die? How much greater, how much braver, how much more praiseworthy to believe in such a way that, though going to die, one hopes to live without end! Finally, this will be granted to some at the end, that they will not feel this death, by a sudden change, but will be caught up together with those who rise again in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so will live always with the Lord. And rightly so for them, since there will no longer be descendants who would believe for this reason, not by hoping for what they do not see, but by loving what they see. That faith is nerveless and weak, and should not be called faith at all, since faith has been defined thus: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hence also in the same epistle to the Hebrews, where this is written, when he had then listed certain people who pleased God by faith, he says: “All these died according to faith, not having received the promises, but seeing them from afar and greeting them and confessing that they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” And a little later he concluded this same praise of faith thus: “And all these,” he says, “having obtained testimony through faith, did not receive the promises of God; for they foresaw better things for us, that they should not be made perfect without us.” This would not be the praise of faith, nor, as I have said, would it be faith at all, if men in believing pursued visible rewards, that is, if the reward of immortality were paid to believers in this world.

Hence the Lord himself willed to die, so that, as is written of him, “through death he might make void him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death were all their life subject to slavery.” By this testimony it is also sufficiently shown that this death of the body happened with the devil as its prince and author, that is, from the sin which he persuaded; for otherwise he would not most truly be said to have the power of death. Hence he who died without any sin, either original or personal, said what I recalled a little earlier: “Behold, the prince of the world will come” (that is, the devil, who has the power of death) “and will find nothing in me” (that is, of sin, because of which he made men die). And as though it were said to him, “Why then do you die?”, he says, “But that all may know that I do the will of my Father, rise, let us go hence”; that is, so that I may die having no cause of death from sin under the author of sin, but from the righteousness of obedience, having become obedient unto death. By that testimony, then, this too has been shown: that believers' overcoming the fear of death belongs to the contest of faith itself, which would surely have been lacking if immortality had followed at once for those who believe.

Although, then, the Lord performed many visible miracles, from which faith itself might sprout as from certain milky beginnings and grow from that tenderness into its own strength (for it is the stronger the less it now seeks such things), yet he willed that what we hope for as promised should be awaited invisibly, so that the righteous might live by faith; so much so that not even he himself, who rose again on the third day, willed to remain among men, but, having shown in his own flesh the example of the resurrection to those whom he deigned to have as witnesses of this, he ascended into heaven, withdrawing himself from their eyes too, and granting nothing of the kind to the flesh of any of them as he had shown in his own flesh, so that they too might live by faith, and might now for the present await invisibly, through patience, the reward of that righteousness by which one lives by faith, a reward which will afterwards be visible. To this understanding I believe must also be referred what he says of the Holy Spirit: “He cannot come unless I go away.” For this was to say: you will not be able to live righteously by faith, which you will have from my gift, that is, from the Holy Spirit, unless I take away from your eyes what you now behold, so that your heart may advance spiritually by believing invisible things. This righteousness by faith he commends again, speaking of the Holy Spirit thus: “He will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they did not believe in me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will no longer see me.” What is this righteousness by which they would not see him, if not that the righteous should live by faith, and that, looking not at what is seen but at what is not seen, we might by the Spirit, from faith, await the hope of righteousness?

But those who say, “If this death of the body had happened because of sin, we would certainly not die after the forgiveness of sins which the Redeemer grants us,” do not understand how God, though he looses the guilt of things so that they do no harm after this life, yet allows those things to remain for the contest of faith, so that by them those who are advancing in the contest of righteousness may be instructed and exercised. For another who did not understand this could also say: “If God said to man because of sin, In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, and the earth shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you, why does this toil remain even after the forgiveness of sins, and why does even the land of believers bring forth these hard and rough things? Likewise, if it was said to the woman because of sin, In groaning you shall give birth, why do believing women suffer the same pains in giving birth even after the forgiveness of sins?” And yet it is certain that those first human beings heard and deserved these things from God because of the sin they had committed; and no one resists these words of the divine book, which I have set down about the toil of man and the childbearing of woman, except one who, wholly estranged from the catholic faith, opposes those Scriptures.

But since such people are not lacking either, just as we answer them when this question is put, saying that these things are punishments of sins before forgiveness, but contests and exercises of the righteous after forgiveness, so we ought also to answer those who are similarly troubled about the death of the body, so that we both confess that it happened because of sin and do not disdain that it has been left to us for the contest after the forgiveness of sins, so that the great fear of it may be overcome by those who advance. For if it were a small virtue of faith, which works through love, to overcome the fear of death, the glory of the martyrs would not be so great, nor would the Lord say: “Greater love than this no one has, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John says this in his epistle thus: “As he laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” Surely, then, the special patience in undergoing or despising death for righteousness would not be praised, if the trouble of death were not great and very hard. Whoever overcomes its fear by faith gains great glory for that faith and a just reward. Hence it is not to be wondered at both that the death of the body would not have befallen man had not sin gone before, of which such a penalty too followed, and that after the forgiveness of sins it befalls the faithful, so that the fortitude of righteousness may be exercised in overcoming the fear of it.

For the flesh which was made first was not the flesh of sin, in which man refused to keep righteousness amid the delights of paradise. Hence God decreed that, after his sin, the flesh of sin that was propagated should strive through toils and troubles to regain righteousness. For this reason too Adam, sent out of paradise, dwelt over against Eden, that is, over against the seat of delights, to signify that the flesh of sin was to be instructed in toils, which are the opposite of delights, since it did not keep obedience amid delights before it was the flesh of sin. Just as, then, those first human beings, by living righteously afterwards (for which reason they are rightly believed to have been freed from the final punishment by the Lord's blood), did not however deserve in that life to be called back to paradise, so also the flesh of sin, even if, his sins forgiven, a man has lived righteously in it, does not immediately deserve not to suffer the death which it drew from the propagation of sin.

Something like this is suggested to us about the patriarch David in the book of Kingdoms. When the prophet was sent to him and threatened him with evils that would come upon him from the wrath of God because of the sin he had committed, he obtained pardon by confessing his sin, the prophet answering that that shameful crime had been forgiven him; and yet what God had threatened followed, so that he was humbled by his son. Why is it not said here too: “If God had threatened this because of that sin, why, when the sin was forgiven, did he fulfil what he had threatened?” Unless because, if it were said, it would be most rightly answered that that forgiveness of sin was granted so that the man might not be hindered from receiving eternal life, but the effect of that threat followed so that the man's piety might be exercised and proved in that humiliation. So too God both inflicted the death of the body on man because of sin and did not take it away after the forgiveness of sins, for the exercise of righteousness.

Let us hold fast, then, to the unswerving confession of faith. There is one alone who was born without sin in the likeness of the flesh of sin, lived without sin among the sins of others, and died without sin because of our sins. Let us not swerve to the right or to the left; for to swerve to the right is to deceive oneself by saying that one is without sin, and to the left, to give oneself up to sins as if with impunity, through some perverse and depraved sense of security. “For the ways that are on the right the Lord knows,” he who alone is without sin and can blot out our sins; “but those on the left are perverse,” friendships with sins. Those young men of twenty years too, who entered the land of promise, and of whom it is said that they swerved neither to the right nor to the left, prefigured such a new people. For the age of twenty years is not to be compared with the innocence of infants; but, unless I am mistaken, this number foreshadows and echoes something mystical. For the Old Testament stands out in the five books of Moses, while the New shines with the authority of the four Gospels. These numbers multiplied by each other come to twenty; for four fives or five fours are twenty. Such a people, as I said before, instructed in the kingdom of heaven through the two testaments, old and new, swerving neither to the right by proud presumption of righteousness nor to the left by secure love of sin, will enter the land of that promise, where we shall no longer wish sins to be forgiven us nor fear that they will be punished in us, freed by that Redeemer who, not sold under sin, redeemed Israel from all its iniquities, whether committed by anyone's own life or drawn by origin.

For those have yielded not a little to the authority and truth of the divine Scriptures who, although they did not wish to state openly in their writings that forgiveness of sins is necessary for infants, yet confessed that they need redemption. For by another word, itself taken from Christian teaching, they said nothing else at all. Nor should those who read the divine writings faithfully, hear them faithfully, and hold them faithfully doubt that from that flesh which first by the will of sin became the flesh of sin, and thereafter by succession passes into all by the transcription of iniquity and death, the flesh of sin has been propagated, with the single exception of the likeness of the flesh of sin, which yet would not exist if there were not the flesh of sin.

But concerning the soul, whether it too, propagated in the same way, is bound by guilt which is to be forgiven it (for we cannot say that only the flesh of the infant, and not the soul too, needs the help of the Savior and Redeemer, and that the soul is a stranger to the thanksgiving in the Psalms, where we read and say, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his rewards, who is merciful to all your iniquities, who heals all your sicknesses, who redeems your life from corruption”); or whether, even if not propagated, by the very fact that it is mixed with the flesh of sin to be weighed down, it already needs the forgiveness of that sin and its own redemption, God judging by his supreme foreknowledge which infants do not deserve to be absolved from that guilt, even those not yet born, who have done nothing good or bad anywhere by a life of their own; and how God, even if he does not create souls by transmission, is yet not the author of that guilt, because of which the redemption of the sacrament is necessary for the soul of an infant: this is a great question and requires another discussion, yet one tempered, as I think, with such restraint that a cautious inquiry is praised rather than a hasty assertion blamed. For where a most obscure matter is discussed without the help of sure and clear proofs from divine authorities, human presumption ought to restrain itself, doing nothing by leaning to one side. For although I do not know how any of these views can be demonstrated and explained, yet I believe this: that here too the authority of the divine oracles would be most clear, if man could not be ignorant of it without loss of the promised salvation. You have a work labored over according to my strength (would that it were as useful as it is long!), whose length I would perhaps defend, if I did not fear to make it longer by defending it.

On the questions you had put to me, asking me to write something to you against those who say that Adam would have died even if he had not sinned, and that nothing of his sin passed to his descendants by propagation, chiefly because of the baptism of infants, which the whole church practices with most devout and motherly care; and whether in this life there are, have been, or will be children of men having no sin at all, I had already finished two long books. In them I seemed to myself, not indeed to have met all the objections of all minds in this matter (whether that can be done by me or by anyone I do not know; indeed I have no doubt that it cannot be done), but yet to have done something by which the defenders of the faith handed down by our forefathers on these matters might not stand altogether unarmed against the novelties of those who think otherwise. But after a very few days I read certain writings of Pelagius, a holy man, as I hear, and a Christian of no small progress, which contained very brief expositions of the epistles of the apostle Paul; and there I found, when he came to the place where the apostle says that through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so passed to all men, a certain argument of those who deny that infants bear original sin, which, I confess, I did not refute in those long volumes of mine, because it had not entered my mind at all that anyone could think or say such things. Therefore, since I did not wish to add anything to that work, which I had already brought to a definite end, I thought I should insert in this letter both the argument itself, in the same words in which I read it, and what seems to me to be said against it.

The argument, then, is set out thus: “But those,” he says, “who are against the transmission of sin try to attack it thus: If the sin of Adam, they say, harmed even those who do not sin, then the righteousness of Christ also benefits even those who do not believe; for he says that people are saved through one in like manner, indeed even more, than they previously perished through one.” To this argument, as I said, I made no reply in those two books which I wrote to you, nor did I set myself to refute it at all. Now, then, note first how, when they say, “If the sin of Adam harms even those who do not sin, then the righteousness of Christ also benefits even those who do not believe,” they judge it most absurd and most false, of course, that the righteousness of Christ should benefit even those who do not believe. From this they think it follows that the sin of the first man could not harm infants who do not sin, just as the righteousness of Christ cannot benefit any who do not believe. Let them say, then, what the righteousness of Christ benefits baptized infants; let them say whatever they please. For surely, if they remember that they are Christians, they do not doubt that it benefits them somewhat. Whatever benefit it is, then, it cannot, as they themselves assert, benefit those who do not believe. Hence they are compelled to reckon baptized infants among the number of believers and to agree with the authority of the holy church everywhere, which does not judge them unworthy of the name of faithful, since the righteousness of Christ, even according to these men, could benefit them only if they believe. Just as, then, the Spirit of righteousness in those through whom they are reborn transfers to them by their response the faith which they could not yet have by their own will, so the flesh of sin of those through whom they are born transfers to them the harm which they have not yet contracted by their own life. And just as the Spirit of life regenerates them in Christ as faithful, so the body of death had generated them in Adam as sinners; for the one is carnal generation, the other spiritual; the one makes children of the flesh, the other of the Spirit; the one children of death, the other children of the resurrection; the one children of this world, the other children of God; the one children of wrath, the other children of mercy; and for this reason the one makes them bound by original sin, the other freed from every bond of sin.

Finally, where we cannot attain something even with the keenest understanding, let us be compelled to consent to divine authority. It is good that they themselves remind us that the righteousness of Christ can benefit only believers, and that they confess that it benefits infants somewhat. Hence, as we have said, they must without any evasion place the baptized among the number of believers. Consequently, then, if they are not baptized, they will be among those who do not believe, and for this reason they will not have life, but the wrath of God remains on them, since “he who does not believe the Son will not have life, but the wrath of God remains on him”; and they have been judged, since “he who does not believe has already been judged”; and they will be condemned, since “he who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned.” Let these men see now by what justice they try or attempt to assert that men who are without sin, if there is no original sin in them as there is no personal sin, belong not to eternal life but to the wrath of God, and are judged and condemned by God.

To the other things which Pelagius suggests are said by those who argue against original sin, I have answered sufficiently and clearly enough, I think, in those two books of my long work. And if to some this seems either too little or obscure, let them pardon me and settle it with those who perhaps find fault with it not because it is too little but because it is too much; and let those who still do not understand what I think has been said clearly, considering the nature of the questions, not slander me for negligence or for the poverty of my ability, but rather pray to God to receive understanding.

Yet we must note, not carelessly, that this man, good and praiseworthy, as those who know him say, did not put forward this argument against the propagation of sin in his own person, but reported what is said by those who do not approve of it; and not only this which I have just set out and answered, but also the other things to which I recall having already answered in those books. For when he had said, “If the sin of Adam, they say, harmed even those who do not sin, then the righteousness of Christ also benefits even those who do not believe” (which, you see from my answer, not only does not overthrow what we say but even reminds us what to say), he went on to add: “Then they say: If baptism cleanses that ancient offense, those who are born of two baptized parents ought to be free of this sin; for they could not transmit to their descendants what they themselves did not have at all. There is also this,” he says: “that if the soul is not from transmission, but only the flesh, then the flesh alone has the transmission of sin and it alone deserves punishment”; saying that it is unjust that a soul born today, not from the lump of Adam, should bear another's sin so ancient. “They also say,” he says, “that in no way can it be granted that God, who forgives one's own sins, imputes another's.”

Do you see, I ask, how Pelagius put all this into his writings not in his own person but in that of others, knowing so well that this was some novelty or other, now beginning to sound out against the ancient opinion ingrained in the church, that he himself was either ashamed or afraid to profess it? And perhaps he himself does not hold that a man is born without sin, for whom he admits baptism is necessary, in which forgiveness of sins takes place; that a man without sin is condemned, who, unbaptized, must be reckoned among those who do not believe, since certainly the gospel Scripture cannot deceive, in which we read most plainly, “He who does not believe will be condemned”; finally, that the image of God without sin is not admitted to the kingdom of God, since “unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” and so either is cast down without sin into eternal death, or, what is more absurd, has eternal life outside the kingdom of God; since the Lord, foretelling what he will say to his own at the end, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world,” also made plain what that kingdom is of which he spoke, concluding thus: “So those will go into eternal burning, but the righteous into eternal life.” These and other things which follow from this error, being very perverse and repugnant to Christian truth, I believe that man, so excellently Christian, does not hold at all. But it may be that he is still perhaps so moved by the arguments of those who hold against the transmission of sin that he waits to hear or learn what is said against them; and therefore he did not wish to keep silent about what those say who hold against the transmission of sin, so that the question might be raised for discussion, and he removed it from his own person, so that he might not be judged to hold this himself.

As for me, even if I were unable to refute their arguments, I see nevertheless that we must hold fast to what is most plain in the Scriptures, so that by it obscure things may be revealed, or, if the mind is not yet fit either to discern them when shown or to track them out when hidden, they may be believed without any hesitation. And what is plainer than so many great testimonies of the divine oracles, by which it most clearly appears that no man can come to eternal life and salvation apart from fellowship with Christ, and that no one can be unjustly condemned, that is, separated from that life and salvation, by divine judgment? From which it follows that, since nothing else is done when infants are baptized than that they are incorporated into the church, that is, joined to the body and members of Christ, it is manifest that, unless this is conferred on them, they belong to damnation. But they could not be damned if they certainly had no sin. And since that age could not contract any sin in its own life, it remains to understand, or, if we cannot yet do this, at least to believe, that infants draw original sin.

And therefore, if the apostle's words, in which he says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men,” have anything ambiguous and can be led and transferred to another meaning, is this too ambiguous: “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”? Is this too: “You shall call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins”? Is this too, that “the healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” that is, that Jesus is not necessary for those who have no sin, but for those who are to be saved from sin? Is this too, that unless men eat his flesh, that is, are made partakers of his body, they will not have life? By these and other testimonies of this kind, which I now pass over, most clear with divine light and most certain with divine authority, does not the truth proclaim without any ambiguity that unbaptized infants not only cannot enter the kingdom of God, but cannot have eternal life apart from the body of Christ, into which they are imbued with the sacrament of baptism in order to be incorporated? Does not the truth testify without any doubt that they are carried to Jesus, that is, to Christ the Savior and physician, in the devout hands of those who carry them, for no other reason than that through the medicine of his sacraments they may be healed of the plague of sin? Why, then, do we hesitate to understand even the apostle's words, about which we were perhaps in doubt, in such a way that they agree with these testimonies about which we cannot doubt?

Although in that whole passage, where the apostle speaks of the condemnation of many through the sin of one and the justification of many through the righteousness of one, nothing seems to me ambiguous except his saying that Adam is a type of the one to come. For this indeed not only fits this view, by which it is understood that his future descendants were generated with sin from the same type, but these words can also be drawn to other and other meanings. For we too have sometimes said one thing about it and will perhaps say another, which yet is not contrary to this meaning; and Pelagius himself explained it in more than one way. But the other things that are said there, if they are carefully noted and treated, as I tried in some fashion in the first of those two books, even if they produce a somewhat obscure discourse through the necessity of the subject itself, will yet be unable to have any other sense than that by which it came about that from ancient times the whole church has held that faithful infants obtain the forgiveness of original sin through the baptism of Christ.

Hence, not without reason, the blessed Cyprian sufficiently shows how the church has kept this as believed and understood from the beginning. When he asserted that infants fresh from the mother's womb are already fit to receive the baptism of Christ, since he had been consulted whether this ought to be done before the eighth day, he tried as far as he could to show them to be complete, lest anyone should think, from the very number of days (infants were formerly circumcised on the eighth), that they were still to be completed. But although he gave them a great defense, he nevertheless confessed that they are not free from original sin; because, if he denied this, he would take away the very reason for baptism, for the receiving of which he was defending them. You can read that letter of the martyr I mentioned, On Baptizing Infants, if you wish; for it cannot be lacking at Carthage. But I have thought fit to transfer a few things from it into this letter of mine too, as far as seemed sufficient for the present question; note them carefully. “As regards the case of infants,” he says, “who you said ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after they are born, and that the law of ancient circumcision must be considered, so that you thought one who is born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, it seemed quite otherwise in our council. For no one agreed to what you thought should be done; but rather we all judged that the mercy and grace of God is to be denied to no human being who is born. For since the Lord says in his gospel, The Son of Man did not come to destroy the souls of men but to save them, as far as it lies with us, if it can be done, no soul is to be lost.” Do you notice what he says, how he holds that it is destructive and deadly not only to the flesh but also to the soul of an infant to depart from this life without that saving sacrament? Hence, even if he said nothing else, it was for us to understand that a soul cannot perish without sin. But see what, a little later, while defending the innocence of infants, he nevertheless most openly confesses about them: “But if anything,” he says, “could hinder men from obtaining grace, rather graver sins could hinder adults, the advanced, and the elder. Further, if even to the gravest offenders, who have sinned much against God before, when they afterwards believe, forgiveness of sins is given, and no one is kept from baptism and grace, how much more ought an infant not to be kept from it, who, newly born, has not sinned, except that, born carnally according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death by his first birth; who comes the more easily to receive the forgiveness of sins for this very reason, that not his own but another's sins are forgiven him.”

You see with what confidence, from the ancient and undoubted rule of faith, so great a man says these things. He brought forward these most certain proofs so that what was uncertain, on which the man to whom he writes had consulted him and on which he mentions that a decree of the council had been made, namely that an infant might be baptized even before the eighth day from the day he was born, since no one doubted to baptize him if he was brought, might be proved by these foundations. For it was not then being decreed or confirmed by the council as something new, or as something assailed by anyone's contradiction, that infants are held bound by original sin; but since the consultation there turned on and was disputed about this, whether because of the law of carnal circumcision they ought to be baptized even before the eighth day, no one agreed with him who denied it, because it was no longer a matter for consultation or dispute, but was held firm and certain that the soul would perish from eternal salvation if it ended this life without obtaining that sacrament, even though infants fresh from the womb were bound only by the guilt of original sin; for which reason the forgiveness of sins, although much easier for them, since the sins are another's, was nevertheless necessary. By these certainties that uncertain question about the eighth day was resolved, and it was judged in the council that one may come to the aid of a newborn human being on any day, lest he perish for ever; while an account was also given of carnal circumcision itself, that it was a shadow of the future; not so that we should understand that baptism too ought to be given on the eighth day from a person's birth, but that we are spiritually circumcised in the resurrection of Christ, who rose from the dead on the third day after his passion indeed, but on the eighth in the days of the weeks by which the times roll on, that is, on the first day after the sabbath.

And now, by the audacity of some new disputation or other, certain people are trying to make uncertain for us what our forefathers put forward as most certain for resolving certain things which seemed uncertain to some. When this first began to be disputed I do not know; but this I do know, that even the holy Jerome, who today is engaged in ecclesiastical letters with such a reputation for excellent learning and labor, uses this too as a most certain proof, without any dispute, to solve certain questions in his books. For in what he wrote on the prophet Jonah, when he came to the place where even little children are mentioned as chastened by fasting, he says: “The older age begins, it reaches even to the younger. For no one is without sin, not even if his life is of one day, and the years of his life are numbered. For if the stars are not clean in the sight of God, how much more the worm and corruption, and those who are held liable by the sin of offending Adam!” If we could easily question this most learned man, how many commentators on the divine Scriptures in both languages, and writers of Christian treatises, would he name who, since the church of Christ was founded, have held nothing else, received nothing else from their forefathers, and handed down nothing else to their descendants! For my part, although I have read far fewer, I do not remember having heard anything else from Christians who accept both testaments, not only those in the catholic church but also those in any heresy or schism; I do not remember having read anything else among those whom I could read writing anything on these matters, who followed the canonical Scriptures, or believed they followed them, or wished to be believed to follow them. Whence this business has suddenly arisen for us I do not know. For a little while ago, when we were there at Carthage, my ears were brushed in passing by some people conversing casually, saying that infants are baptized not to receive forgiveness of sins but to be sanctified in Christ. Disturbed by this novelty, yet since it was not the right moment to say anything against it, and they were not the kind of men whose authority troubled me, I easily set it down among things past and done with. And behold, it is now defended with blazing zeal; behold, it is even committed to memory in writing; behold, the matter is brought to such a crisis that we are even consulted about it by the brothers; behold, we are compelled to argue and write against it!

A few years ago there arose at Rome a certain Jovinian, who is said to have persuaded even nuns already advanced in age to marry, not by enticing them, as though he wished to take one of them as his wife, but by arguing that virgins dedicated to holiness have no more merit before God than married believers. Yet this fabrication never came into his mind, to try to assert that the children of men are born without original sin. And certainly, if he had maintained this, women would have been much more inclined to marry, expecting to bear offspring wholly clean. When the brothers sent his writings (for he even dared to write) to Jerome for refutation, he not only found nothing of the kind in them, but even, to refute certain of Jovinian's empty claims, brought forward among his many proofs this, as most certain, about the original sin of man, on which he believed that not even Jovinian doubted. These are his words in doing so: “He who says,” he says, “that he abides in Christ ought himself to walk as he walked. Let our opponent choose of the two which he wishes; we give him the option. Does he abide in Christ or not? If he abides, then let him walk as Christ did. But if it is rash to promise the likeness of the Lord's virtues, he does not abide in Christ, because he does not walk as Christ. He did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth; when he was reviled, he did not revile in return, and as a lamb before the shearer so he did not open his mouth; to him came the prince of this world and found nothing in him; though he had done no sin, God made him sin for us. But we, according to the epistle of James, all sin in many things, and no one is clean from sins, not even if his life is of one day. For who will boast that he has a chaste heart? Or who will be confident that he is clean from sins? And we are held guilty in the likeness of the transgression of Adam. Hence David too says: Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in offenses my mother conceived me.”

I have not mentioned these things because we rely on the opinions of any disputants as on canonical authority, but so that it may appear that from the beginning up to the present time, when this novelty arose, this doctrine of original sin has been guarded in the faith of the church with such constancy that it was put forward as most certain by those who treated the Lord's words in order to refute other falsehoods, rather than that anyone tried to refute it as false. For the rest, in the holy canonical books the clearest and fullest authority of this doctrine flourishes. The apostle cries out: “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned.” Hence it cannot even be said clearly that the sin of Adam harmed even those who do not sin, since Scripture says, “in whom all sinned.” Nor are these sins called another's in the sense that they do not belong to infants at all (since in Adam all then sinned, when, in that power implanted in his nature by which he could beget them, they were all still that one man); but they are called another's because they were not yet living lives of their own, but the life of one man contained whatever was in the future offspring.

“In no way,” they say, “can it be granted that God, who forgives one's own sins, imputes another's.” He forgives, but to those regenerated by the Spirit, not to those generated by the flesh; and he imputes sins no longer another's, but their own. For they were another's when those who were to carry them by propagation did not yet exist; but now by carnal generation they are theirs, to whom they have not yet been forgiven by spiritual regeneration.

“But if baptism,” they say, “cleanses that ancient offense, those who are born of two baptized parents ought to be free of this sin. For they could not transmit to their descendants what they themselves did not have at all.” See where error usually gathers strength from: when men are capable of asking about things which they are not capable of understanding. For to what hearer, or in what words, can I explain how mortal and flawed beginnings do not harm those who have been started on other, immortal beginnings, and yet harm those whom these same people, whom they no longer harm, have begotten from the same flawed beginnings? How is a man to understand this whose rather slow mind is also hindered by the prejudgment of his own opinion and by the heaviest chain of obstinacy? Yet if I had undertaken this case against those who forbade infants to be baptized at all, or contended that they are baptized needlessly, saying that those born of believers necessarily obtain their parents' merit, then I ought perhaps to be roused more laboriously and painstakingly to refute this opinion; then, if among the dull and contentious the difficulty of refuting falsehood and persuading of truth, because of the obscurity of the nature of things, stood against me, I might perhaps take refuge in these examples which are in common use and ready to hand, and in turn ask them, since they are troubled how sin which is cleansed through baptism remains in those whom the baptized beget, to explain how the foreskin, which is removed by circumcision, remains in those whom the circumcised beget, and how the chaff, which is separated by human labor with such care, remains in the grain that grows from wheat that has been winnowed.

With these and similar examples I might perhaps try in some fashion to persuade men who believed that the sacraments of cleansing are applied needlessly to the children of the cleansed, with what right counsel the infants of the baptized are baptized, and how it can be that, in a man having both seeds, that of death in the flesh and that of immortality in the Spirit, what harms his son, generated through the flesh, does not harm him, regenerated through the Spirit; and that what has been cleansed in him by forgiveness is also to be cleansed in the son by a like forgiveness, as by circumcision, as by threshing and winnowing. But now, since we are dealing with those who confess that the children of the baptized are to be baptized, how much better we do to argue thus and say: You who assert that children ought to have been born without sin from men cleansed from the stain of sin, why do you not notice that in the same way it can be said to you that from Christian parents Christian children ought to have been born? Why then do you judge that they ought to be made Christians? Was there not a Christian body in their parents, to whom it was said, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” Or perhaps a Christian body was born of Christian parents, but did not receive a Christian soul? This is much more astonishing. For whichever you hold about the soul, since surely with the apostle you do not believe that it did anything good or bad before it was born, either it was drawn by transmission, and, like the body, from Christians the soul too ought to have been Christian; or, created by Christ, whether in a Christian body or for a Christian body, it ought to have been created or sent as Christian. Unless perhaps you will say that Christian men could beget a Christian body and that Christ himself could not create a Christian soul. Yield, therefore, to the truth, and see that, just as it could come about, as you too confess, that a non-Christian is born of Christians, a non-member of Christ of members of Christ, and (to meet also all who, though falsely, are held by some name of religion) one not consecrated of the consecrated, so also it comes about that one not cleansed is born of the cleansed. What will you answer as to why a non-Christian is born of Christians, except that it is not generation but regeneration that makes Christians? Give yourselves this reason, then, that similarly no one is cleansed from sins by being born, but all by being reborn. And for this reason, from men cleansed because reborn, the man who is born must be reborn so that he too may be cleansed. For parents could transmit to their descendants what they themselves did not have at all, not only as grain transmits chaff and the circumcised man the foreskin, but also, as you too say, believers transmit unbelief to their descendants; which belongs no longer to them as regenerated by the Spirit, but is the flaw of the mortal seed by which they were generated in the flesh. For certainly those infants whom you judge must be made faithful through the sacrament of the faithful, you do not deny were born unfaithful of faithful parents.

“But if the soul is not from transmission, but only the flesh, then the flesh alone has the transmission of sin and it alone deserves punishment” (for this is what they hold), saying that it is unjust that a soul born today, not from the lump of Adam, should bear another's sin so ancient. Note, I beg you, how the circumspect Pelagius (for I have copied these words just quoted from his book) perceived in how difficult a question about the soul he is involved. For he does not say, “because the soul is not from transmission,” but “if the soul is not from transmission,” acting most rightly in speaking hesitantly rather than confidently about so obscure a matter, on which we can find no sure and open testimonies in the holy Scriptures, or can find them only with the greatest difficulty. Therefore I too answer this proposition without hasty assertion: if the soul is not from transmission, what justice is this, that a soul newly created and altogether immune from every offense, entirely free from every contagion of sin, should be compelled to endure in infants the sufferings of the flesh and various torments, and, what is more horrible, even the assaults of demons? For the flesh suffers none of these in such a way that it is not rather the soul, which lives and feels, that pays the penalty. If this is shown to be just, it can also be shown by what justice the soul in the flesh of sin incurs original sin, to be cleansed by the sacrament of baptism and the compassion of grace. But if the former cannot be shown, neither, I think, can the latter. Either, then, let us bear both as hidden and remember that we are men, or let us undertake at another time another work on the soul, if it seems necessary, disputing with sober caution.

For now, however, let us so take what the apostle says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned,” that we may not be judged to oppose, most foolishly and unhappily, so many and such great and most plain testimonies of the divine Scriptures, by which we are taught that no one can obtain eternal life and salvation apart from fellowship with Christ, which comes about in him and with him when we are imbued with his sacraments and incorporated into his members. For it was said to the Romans, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men,” in no other sense than that in which it was said to the Corinthians, “Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” For no one doubts that this was said there of the death of the body, since the question under discussion, with the apostle's great earnestness, was the resurrection of the body. And that is why he seems to have been silent about sin there, because the question was not about righteousness; but here, to the Romans, he set down both, and commended both at great length: sin in Adam, righteousness in Christ, and death in Adam, life in Christ; all of which words of the apostle's discourse I examined and opened up, as far as I could and as seemed sufficient, in the first of those two books, as I have already said.

And yet there too, to the Corinthians, he so concluded at the end that passage on the resurrection, treated at length, as not to let us doubt that the death of the body too came about by the merit of sin. For when he had said, “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. And when this corruptible has put on incorruption and this mortal immortality, then,” he says, “will come about the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”, he then added: “Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” Since, then, as the apostle's most plain words declare, death will be swallowed up in victory when this corruptible and mortal puts on incorruption and immortality, that is, when God gives life also to our mortal bodies because of his Spirit dwelling in us, it is manifest that the sting of this death of the body too, which is the opposite of the resurrection of the body, was sin; the sting, however, by which death was brought about, not the sting which death brought about; for we die by sin, we do not sin by death. So “sting of death” is said in the way in which “tree of life” is said, not a tree which man's life made, but one by which man's life would come about; and as “tree of knowledge,” by which man's knowledge would come about, not one which man made by his knowledge. So also, then, “sting of death,” by which death was brought about, not which death brought about. For so too we say “cup of death,” by which someone has died or could die, not one which a dying or dead man has prepared. The sting of death, then, is sin; pierced by sin, the human race was put to death. Why do we still ask of which death, whether of the soul or of the body? Whether the first, by which we all now die, or the second, by which the ungodly will die then? There is no cause for tossing the question about, no room for evasion; the apostle's words, by which he was treating this, answer when questioned. “When this mortal,” he says, “has put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” He was dealing with the resurrection of the body, that death will be swallowed up in victory when this mortal has put on immortality. Then death itself will be mocked, which will be swallowed up in victory by the resurrection of the body. Then it will be said to it: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” This, then, will be said to the death of the body. For victorious immortality will swallow this up, when this mortal is clothed with immortality. To the death of the body, I say, it will then be said: Where, O death, is your victory, by which you had so conquered all here that even the Son of God fought with you and overcame you, not by avoiding you but by taking you on? You conquered in the dying, you are conquered in those who rise. Your victory, by which you had swallowed up the bodies of the dying, was temporal; our victory, by which you have been swallowed up in the bodies of those who rise, will stand eternal. Where is your sting, that is, the sin by which we were pierced and poisoned, so that you came to be even in our bodies and possessed them for so long an age? “Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” We all sinned in one, so that we all died in one; we received the law, not so that we might end sin by amendment, but so that we might increase it by transgression. For “the law came in, so that sin might abound,” and “Scripture has shut up all things under sin.” But thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that where sin abounded grace might superabound, and that the promise might be given from faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe, and that we might conquer death by immortal resurrection, and its sting, sin, by free justification.

Let no one, then, be deceived or deceive on this matter. This manifest sense of holy Scripture removes and takes away all evasions. Just as death is drawn from origin in this body of death, so sin too has been drawn from origin in this flesh of sin; and to heal it, both what was drawn by propagation and what was increased by will, and to raise that flesh itself, the physician came in the likeness of the flesh of sin, the physician not needed by the healthy but by the sick, who came to call not the righteous but sinners. Accordingly, what the apostle says, when he admonished believers not to separate from unbelieving spouses, “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy,” is either to be taken as both we elsewhere, and Pelagius when he treated that same epistle to the Corinthians, explained it: that examples had already gone before, both of husbands whom their wives, and of wives whom their husbands, had won for Christ, and of little ones whom the Christian will even of one parent had prevailed to make Christians; or, if, as the apostle's words seem rather to sound and in a way to compel, some sanctification is to be understood there, by which the unbelieving husband or wife was sanctified in the believing spouse and by which the children of believers were born holy, whether because any husband or wife who had learned it in the law refrained from intercourse during the woman's menstrual blood (for Ezekiel places this among those precepts which are not to be taken figuratively), or because of any other sprinkling of holiness, not plainly set down there, from the very bond of marriages and children; nevertheless this must be held without doubt: whatever that sanctification may be, it does not avail to make Christians and to forgive sins unless they are made faithful by Christian and ecclesiastical instruction and sacraments. For neither are unbelieving spouses, however holy and righteous the spouses they cling to, cleansed from the iniquity which compels those separated from the kingdom of God to come into damnation; nor are infants, of whatever holy and righteous parents they are begotten, absolved from the guilt of original sin unless they have been baptized in Christ; and we ought to speak for them the more earnestly, the less they can speak for themselves.

For that disputation, against whose novelty we must strive with the ancient truth, aims at this: that infants should seem to be baptized quite needlessly. But this is not said openly, lest a custom of the church so healthfully established should not bear its violators. But if we are commanded to bring help to orphans, how much more ought we to labor for these, who will remain more destitute and more wretched than orphans, even under their parents, if the grace of Christ is denied them, which they cannot ask for themselves!

As for what they say, that some men already using the reason of their own will have lived or live in this world without any sin: it is to be wished that this may come about, it is to be striven for that it may come about, it is to be prayed for that it may come about, yet it is not to be trusted as though it had come about. For in those who wish, strive, and pray with fitting supplication for this, whatever remains of sins is loosed daily through what we truthfully say in prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” Whoever says that this prayer was not necessary in this life for anyone, even a holy man who knows and does the will of God, except the one Holy of holies, greatly errs and cannot at all please the very one whom he praises; and if he thinks himself such, he deceives himself and the truth is not in him, for no other reason than that he thinks what is false. The physician, then, who is not needed by the healthy but by the sick, knows how to perfect us by his healing for eternal salvation; he who does not in this world take away death itself, although it was inflicted by the merit of sin, from those whose sins he forgives, so that even in overcoming the fear of it they may undertake the contest for the sincerity of faith; and who in some things does not help even his righteous ones to perfect righteousness, since they can still be lifted up, so that, while no living person is justified in his sight, we may always owe thanksgiving to his indulgence, and so be healed by holy humility from that first cause of all vices, that is, from the swelling of pride. While my plan was bringing forth this letter as a short one, a long book has been born; would that it were as perfect as it is at last finished!