Adam's sin injured those who have not sinned, then also Christ's righteousness profits those who do not believe." He says other things, too, of "^the same purport; but they have all been refuted and answered by me with the Lord's help in the books which I wrote, On the Baptism of Infants? But he had not the courage to make those objectionable statements in his own person in the fore-mentioned so-called exposition. This particular one, however, having been enunciated in a place where he was so well known, his words and their meaning could not be disguised. In those books, from the first of which I have already before quoted,-* he treats this point without any suppression of his views. With all the energy of which he is capable, he most plainly asserts that human nature in infants cannot in any wise be supposed to be corrupted by propagation; and by claiming salvation for them as their due, he does despite to the Saviour.
CHAP. 25 [xxn.] — THE CONDEMNATION OF PELA- GIUS AND CCELESTIUS.
These things, then, being as I have stated them, it is now evident that there has arisen a deadly heresy, which, with the Lord's help, the Church by this time guards against more directly — now that those two men, Pelagius and Cojlestius, have been either offered repentance, or on their refusal been wholly condemned. They are reported, or perhaps actually proved, to be the authors of this perversion; at all events, if not the authors (as having learnt it from others), they are yet its boasted abettors and teachers, through whose agency the heresy has advanced and grown to a wider extent. This boast, too, is made even in their own statements and writings, and in unmistakeable signs of reality, as well as in the fame which arises and grows out of all these circumstances. What, therefore, remains to be done? Must not every catholic, with all the energies wherewith the Lord endows him, confute this pestilential doctrine, and oppose it with all vigilance; so that whenever we contend for the truth, compelled to answer, but not fond of the contest, the untaught may be instructed, and that thus the Church may be benefited by that which the enemy devised for her destruction; in accordance with that word of the apostle's, "There must be heresies, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you "? s CHAP. 26 [XXIII.] THE PELAGIANS MAINTAIN THAT RAISING QUESTIONS ABOUT ORIGINAL SIN DOES NOT ENDANGER THE FAITH.
Therefore, after the full discussion with which we have been able to rebut in writing this error of theirs, which is so inimical to the grace of God bestowed on small and great through our Lord Jesus Christ, it is now our duty to examine and explode that assertion of theirs, which in their desire to avoid the odious imputation of heresy they astutely advance, to the effect that " calling this subject into question produces no danger to the faith," — in order that they may appear, forsooth, if they are convicted of having deviated from it, to have erred not criminally, but only, as it were, courteously.*^ This, accordingly, is the language which Coelestius used in the ecclesiastical process at Carthage:? " As touching the transmission of sin," he said, " I have already said that I have heard many persons of acknowledged position in the catholic Church deny it, and on the other hand many affirm it; it may fairly, indeed, be deemed a matter for inquiry, but not a heresy. I have always maintained that ' See above, ch. 19.
2 See above, ch. 1, and On the Grace of Christ, ch. 35. ^ 3 See especially Bookiii. chs. 2, 5, 6 [in.]. ■♦ In ch. i.; -11.].
* This is far from a clear translation of the terse original: Non crimi/ialiter, sed i/uasi civiliter errasse videantur. 1 See above, ch. 3 [iv.j [Book II.
infants require baptism, and ought to be bap- ' tized. What else does he want? " He said this, as if he wanted to intimate that only then could ] he be deemed chargeable with heresy, if he were to assert that they ought not to be baptized. As the case stood, however, inasmuch as he acknowledged that they ought to be baptized, he thought that he had not erred [criminally], and therefore ought not to be adjudged a heretic, even though he maintained the reason of their baptism to be other than the truth holds, or the faith claims as its own. On the same principle, \ in the book which he sent to Rome, he first | explained his belief, so far as it suited his pleas- [ ure, from the Trinity of the One Godhead down to the kind of resurrection of the dead that is to be; on all which points, however, no one had ever questioned him, or been questioned by him. And when his discourse reached the question which was under consideration, he said: "If, indeed, any questions have arisen beyond the compass of the faith, on which there might be [ perhaps dissension on the part of a great many persons, in no case have I pretended to pronounce a decision on any dogma, as if I possessed a definitive authority in the matter myself; but w^hatever I have derived from the fountain of the prophets and the apostles, I have presented for approbation to the judgment of your apostolic office; so that if any error has crept in among us, human as we are, through our ignorance, it may be corrected by your sentence." ' You of course clearly see that in this action of his he used all this deprecatory preamble in order that, if he had been discovered to have erred at all, he might seem to have erred not on a matter of faith, but on questionable points outside the faith; wherein, however necessary it may be to correct the error, it is not corrected as a heresy; wherein also the person who undergoes the correction is declared indeed to be in error, but for all that is not adjudged a heretic.
CHAP. 27 [XXIII.] — ON QUESTIONS OUTSIDE THE FAITH WHAT THEY ARE, AND INSTANCES OF THE SAME, But he is greatly mistaken in this opinion. The questions which he supposes to be outside the faith are of a very different character from those in which, without any detriment to the faith whereby we are Christians, there exists either an ignorance of the real fact, and a consequent suspension of any fixed opinion, or else a conjectural view of the case, w^hich, owing to the infirmity of human thought, issues in conceptions at variance with truth: as when a question arises about the description and locality of ' See above, ch. 6.
that Paradise where God placed man w^hom He formed out of the ground, without any disturbance, however, of the Christian belief that there undoubtedly is such a Paradise; or as when it is asked where Elijah is at the present moment, and where Enoch — whether in this Paradise or in some other place, although we doubt not of their existing still in the same bodies in which they were born; or as when one inquires whether it was in the body or out of the bod}' that the apostle was caught up to the third heaven, — an inquiry, however, which betokens great lack of modesty on the part of those who would fain know what he who is the subject of the mystery itself expressly declares his ignorance of,^ without impairing his own belief of the fact; or as when the question is started, how many are those heavens, to the "third" of which he tells us that he was caught up; or whether the elements of this visible world are four or more; w'hat it is which causes those eclipses of the sun or the moon which astronomers are in the habit of foretelling for certain appointed seasons; why, again, men of ancient times lived to the age which Holy Scripture assigns to them; and whether the period of their puberty, when they begat their first son, was postponed to an older age, proportioned to their longer life; or where jNIethuselah could possibly have lived, since he was not in the Ark, inasmuch as (according to the chronological notes of most copies of the Scripture, both Greek and Latin) he is found to have survived the deluge; or whether we must follow the order of the fewer copies — and they happen to be extremely few — which so arrange the years as to show that he died before the deluge. Now who does not feel, amidst the various and innumerable questions of this sort, which relate either to God's most hidden operations or to most obscure passages of the Scriptures, and which it is difficult to embrace and define in any certain way, that ignorance may on many points be compatible with sound Christian faith, and that occasionally erroneous opinion may be entertained without any room for the imputation of heretical doctrine?
CHAP. 28 [XXIV.] THE HERESY OF PELAGIUS AND CCELESTIUS AIMS AT THE VERY FOUNDATIONS OF OUR FAITH.
This is, however, in the matter of the two men by one of whom we are sold under sin,^ by the other redeemed from sins — by the one have been precipitated into death, by the other are liberated unto life; the former of whom has ruined us in himself, by doing his own will instead of His who created him; the latter has saved us in Himself, by not doing His own will.
2 2 Cor. xii. 2.
3 Rom. vii. 14.
Chap. 29.]
but the will of Him who sent Him: ' and it is in what concerns these two men that the Christian faith properly consists. For " there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; " - since " there is none other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved;" ^ and "in Him hath God defined unto all men their faith, in that He hath raised Him from the dead."'* Now without this faith, that is to say, without a belief in the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; without foith, I say, in His resurrection, by which God has given assurance to all men, and which no man could of course truly believe, were it not for His incarnation and death; without faith, therefore, in the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ, the Christian verity unhesitatingly declares that the ancient saints could not possibly have been cleansed from sin, so as to hav^e become holy, and justified by the grace of God. And this is true both of the saints who are mentioned in Holy Scripture, and of those also who are not indeed mentioned therein, but must yet be supposed to have existed, — either before the deluge, or in the interval between that event and the giving of the law, or in the period of the law itself, — not merely among the children of Israel, as the prophets, but even outside that nation, as for instance Job. For it was by the self-same faith in the one Mediator that the hearts of these, too, were cleansed, and there also was " shed abroad in them the love of God by the Holy Ghost," 5 " who bloweth where He listeth," ^ not following men's merits, but even producing these very merits Himself. For the grace of God will in no wise exist unless it be wholly free.
CHAP. 29. THE RIGHTEOUS MEN WHO LIVED IN THE TIME OF THE LAW WERE FOR ALL THAT NOT UNDER THE LAW, BUT UNDER GRACE. THE GRACE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT HIDDEN UNDER THE OLD.
Death indeed reigned from Adam until Moses,^ because it was not possible even for the law given through Moses to overcome it: it was not given, in fact, as something able to give life; ^ but as something that ought to show those that were dead and for whom grace was needed to give them life, that they were not only prostrated under the propagation and domination of sin, but also convicted by the additional guilt of breaking the law itself: not in order that any one might perish who in the mercy of God understood this even in that early age; but that, destined though he was to punishment, owing to the dominion of death, and manifested, too, as 3 Acts iv. 12, 6 John iii. 8.
guilty through his own violation of the law, he might seek God's help, and so where sin abounded, grace might much more abound,'' even the grace which alone delivers from the body of this death. ■° [xxv.] Yet, notwithstanding this, although not even the law which Moses gave was able to liberate any man from the dominion of death, there were even then, too, at the time of the law, men of God who were not living under the terror and conviction and punishment of the law, but under the delight and healing and liberation of grace. Some there were who said, " I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me; " " and, "There is no rest in my bones, by reason of my sins; " '^ and, " Create in me a clean heart, O God j and renew a right spirit in my inward parts; " '^ and, " Stablish me with Thy directing Spirit; " '^ and, " Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." '5 There were some, again, who said: " I believed, therefore have I spoken." '^ For they too were cleansed with the self-same faith with which we ourselves are. Whence the apostle also says: " We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believe, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak." '7 Out of very faith was it said, " Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son; and they shall call His name Emmanuel," '* " which is, being interpreted, God with us." '9 Out of very faith too was it said concerning Him: " As a bridegroom He cometh out of His jhamber; as a giant did He exult to run His course. His going forth is from the extremity of heaven, and His circuit runs to the other end of heaven; and no one is hidden from His heat."^° Out of very faith, again, was it said to Him: " Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of glad--ness above Thy fellows." ^' By the self-same Spirit of faith were all these things foreseen by them as to happen, whereby they are believed by us as having happened. They, indeed, who were able in faithful love to foretell these things to us were not themselves partakers of them. The Apostle Peter.says, " Why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they." ^^ Now on what principle does he make this statement, if it be not because even they were sa\-ed through the grace of the Lord Jesus »5 Ps. li. II.
«3 Ps. li. ID.
•* Ps. cxvi. 10.
'9 Matt. i. 23.
** Acts XV. 10, II.
[Book II.
Christ, and not the law of Moses, from which comes not the cure, but only the knowledge of sin? ' Now, however, the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.^ If, therefore, it is now manifested, it even then existed, but it was hidden. This concealment was symbolized by the veil of the temple. When Christ was dying, this veil was rent asunder,^ to signify the full revelation of Him. Even of old, therefore, there existed amongst the people of God this grace of the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; but like the rain in the fleece which God sets apart for His inheritance,4 not of debt, but of His own will, it was latendy present, but is now patently visible amongst all nations as its " floor," the fleece being dry, — in other words, the Jewish people having become reprobate.5 CHAP. 30 [XXVI.] — PELAGIUS AND CCELESTIUS DENY THAT THE ANCIENT SAINTS WERE SAVED BY CHRIST.
We must not therefore divide the times, as Pelagius and his disciples do, who say that men first lived righteously by nature, then under the law, thirdly under grace, — by nature meaning all the long time from Adam before the giving of the law. " For then," say they, " the Creator was known by the guidance of reason; and the rule of living rightly was carried written in the hearts of men, not in the law of the letter, but of nature. But men's manners became corrj^pt; and then," they say, "when nature now tarnished began to be insufficient, the law was added to it, whereby as by a moon the original lustre was restored to nature after its blush was impaired. But after the habit of sinning had too much prevailed among men, and the law was unequal to the task of curing it, Christ came; and the Physician Himself, through His own self, and not through His disciples, brought relief to the malady at its most desperate development."
CHAP. 31. — CHRIST'S INCARNATION WAS OF AVAIL TO THE FATHERS, EVEN THOUGH IT HAD NOT YET HAPPENED.
By disputation of this sort, they attempt to exclude the ancient saints from the grace of the Mediator, as if the man Christ Jesus were not the Mediator between God and those meii; on the ground that, not having yet taken flesh of the Virgin's womb. He was not yet man at the time when those righteous men lived. If this, however, were true, in vain would the apostle say: " By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." ^ ' Rom. iii. 20. * Ps. Ixviii. 9.
For inasmuch as those ancient saints, according to the vain conceits of these men, found their nature self-sufficient, and required not the man Christ to be their Mediator to reconcile them to God, so neither shall they be made alive in Him, to whose body they are shown not to belong as members, according to the statement that it was on man's account that He became man. If, however, as the Truth says through His aposdes, even as all die in Adam, even so shall all be made alive in Christ; forasmuch as the resurrection of the dead comes through the one man, even as death comes through the other man; what Christian man can be bold enough to doubt that even those righteous men who pleased God in the more remote periods of the human race are destined to attain to the resurrection of eternal life, and not eternal death, because they shall be made alive in Christ? that they are made alive in Christ, because they belong to the body of Christ? that they belong to the body of Christ, because Christ is the head even to them? 7 and that Christ is the head even to them, because there is but one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus? But this He could not have been to them, unless through His grace they had believed in His resurrection. And how could they have done this, if they had been ignorant that He was to come in the flesh, and if they had not by this faith lived justly and piously?
Now, if the incarnation of Christ could he of no concern to them, on the ground that it had not yet come about, it must follow that Christ's judgment can be of no concern to us, because it has not yet taken place. But if we shall stand at the right hand of Christ through our faith in His judgment, which has not yet transpired, but is to come to pass, it follows that those ancient saints are members of Christ through their faith in His resurrection, which had not in their day happened, but which was one day to come to pass.
CHAP. 32 [xxvii.] — HE SHOWS BY THE EXAMPLE OF ABRAH.AM TH.A.T THE ANCIENT SAINTS BE- LIEVED IN THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST.
For it must not be supposed that those saints of old only profited by Christ's divinity, which was ever existent, and not also by the revelation of His humanity, which had not yet come to pass. What the Lord Jesus says, "Abraham desired to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad," ^ meaning by the phrase his day to understand his time, affords of course a clear testimony that Abraham was fully imbued with belief in His incarnation. It is in respect of this that He has a '' time; " for His divinity exceeds all time, for it was by It that all times were created. If, however, any one supposes that the phrase in question must be understood of that eternal 7 I Cor. xi. 3.
* John viii. 56.
Chap. 35.]
" day " which is hmited by no morrow, and preceded by no yesterday, — in a word, of the very eternity in which He is co-eternal with the Father, — how would Abraham really desire this, unless he was aware that there was to be a future mortality belonging to Him whose eternity he wished for? Or, perhaps, some one would confine the meaning of the phrase so far as to say, that nothing else is meant in the Lord's saying, "He desired to see my day," than "He desired to see me," who am the never-ending Day, or the unfailing Light, as when we mention the life of the Son, concerning which it is said in the Gospel: " So hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself." ' Here the life is nothing less than Himself. So we understand the Son Himself to be the life, when He said, " I am the way, the truth, and the life; " ^ of whom also it was said, " He is the true God, and eternal hfe." ^ Supposing, then, that Abraham desired to see this equal divinity of the Son's with the Father, without any precognition of His coming in the flesh — as certain philosophers sought Him, who knew nothing of His flesh — can that other act of Abraham, when he orders his servant to place his hand under his thigh, and to swear by the God of heaven,-* be rightly understood by any one otherwise than as showing that Abraham well knew that the flesh in which the God of heaven was to come was the offspring of that very thigh? s CHAP. 2,^ [xvm.] — HOW CHRIST IS OUR MEDI- ATOR.
Of this flesh and blood Melchizedek also, when he blessed Abram himself,^ gave the testimony which is very well known to Christian believers, so that long afterwards it was said to Christ in the Psalms: " Thou art a Priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek." 7 This was not then an accomplished fact, but was still future; yet that faith of the fathers, which is the self-same faith as our own, used to chant it. Now, to all who find death in Adam, Christ is of this avail, that He is the Mediator for life. He is, however, not a Mediator, because He is equal with the Father; for in this respect He is Himself as far distant from us as the Father; and how can there ^ John xiv. 6.
3 I John V. 20.
' John. V. 26.
* Gen. xxiv. 2, 3.
5 The word "thigh," '^jT, occurs in the phrase, "to come out from the thigh of any one," in the sense of being begotten by any one, or descended /roin him, in several passages: see Gen. xlvi. 26; Ex. i. 5; Judg. viii. 30. In the last of these passages, the A. V. phrase, " of his body begotten," is OT 'Xi'', the offspring of his thigh. Abraham was the first to use this form of adjuration; after him his grandson Jacob, Gen. xlvii. 29. The comment of Augustin in the text, which he repeats elsewhere (see his Sermon 75), occurs also in other Fathers, e.g. Jerome, Theodoret, Ambrose (/V Abrahamo, I. cap. ult.). Prosper (Priedicat. i. 7), and Gregory the Great, who says: " He orders him to put his hand under his thigh, since through that member would descend the flesh of Him who was Abraham's son according to the flesh, and his Lord owmg to His divinity."
'' Gen. xiv. 18-20. ^ Ps. ex. 4.
be any medium where the distance is the very same? Therefore the apostle does not say, " There is one Mediator between God and men, even Jesus Christ;" but his words are, "The MAN Christ Jesus," ** He is the Mediator, then, in that He is man, — inferior to the Father, by so much as He is nearer to ourselves, and superior to us, by so much as He is nearer to the Father. This is more openly expressed thus: " He is inferior to the Father, because in the form of a servant; " 9 superior to us, because without spot of sin.
CHAP. 34 [XXDC.] — NO MAN EVER SAVED SAVE BY CHRIST.
Now, whoever maintains that human nature at any period required not the second Adam for its physician, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted as an enemy to the grace of God; not in a question where doubt or error might be compatible with sound' ness of behef, but in that very rule of foith which makes us Christians. How happens it, then, that the human nature, which first existed, is praised by these men as being so far less tainted with evil manners? How is it that they overlook the fact that men were even then sunk in so many intolerable sins, that, with the exception of one man of God and his wife, and three sons and their wives, the whole world was in God's just judgment destroyed by the flood, even as the little land of Sodom was afterwards with fire? '° From the moment, then, when " by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all sinned," " the entire mass of our nature was ruined beyond doubt, and fell into the possession of its destroyer. And from him no one — no, not one — has been delivered, or is being delivered, or ever will be delivered, except by the grace of the Redeemer.
CHAP. 35 [XXX.] — WHY THE CIRCLTMCISION OF INFANTS WAS ENJOINED UNDER PAIN OF SO GREAT A PUNISHMENT.
The Scripture does not inform us whether before Abraham's time righteous men or their children were marked by any bodily or visible sign.'- Abraham himself, indeed, received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith. '3 And he received it with this accompanying injunction: All the male infimts of his household were from that very time to be circumcised, while fresh from their mother's womb, on the eighth day from their birth; '•♦ so that even they who were not yet able with the heart to believe unto righteousness, should nevertheless receive the seal of the righteousness of faith.
9 Phil. ii. 7. '2 Sacramento.
'° See Gen. vii. and xix. '3 Rom. iv. II.
2^0 [Book II.
And this command was imposed with so fearful a sanction, that God said: " That soul shall be cut oft" from his people, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised on the eighth day." ' If inquiry be made into the justice of so terrible a penalty, will not the entire argument of these men about free will, and the laudable soundness and purity of nature, however cleverly maintained, fall to pieces, struck down and fractured to atoms? For, pray tell me, what evil has an infant committed of his own will, that, for the negligence of another in not circumcising him, he himself must be condemned, and with so severe a condemnation, that that soul must be cut off from his people? It was not of any temporal death that this fear was inflicted, since of righteous persons, when they died, it used rather to be said, " And he was gathered unto his people;"^ or, "He was gathered to his fathers: " ^ for no attempt to separate a man from his people is long formidable to him, when his own people is itself the people of God.
CHAP. 36 [XXXI.] — THE PL.\TONISTS' OPINION ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL PREVIOUS TO THE BODY REJECTED.
What, then, is the purport of so severe a condemnation, when no wilful sin has been committed? For it is not as certain Platonists have thought, because every such infant is thus requited in his soul for what it did of its own wilfulness previous to the present life, as having possessed previous to its present bodily state a free choice of living either well or ill; since the Apostle Paul says most plainly, that before they were born they did neither good nor evil.+ On what account, therefore, is an infant rightly punished with such ruin, if it be not because he belongs to the mass of perdition, and is properly regarded as born of Adam, condemned under the bond of the ancient debt unless he has been released from the bond, not according to debt, but according to grace? And what grace but God's, through our Lord Jesus Christ? Now there was a forecast of His coming undoubtedly contained not only in other sacred institutions 5 of the ancient Jews, but also in their circumcision of the foreskin. For the eighth day, in the recurrence of weeks, became the Lord's day, on which the Lord arose from the dead; and Christ was the rock^ whence was formed the stony blade for the circumcision; 7 and the flesh of the foreskin was the body of sin.
CHAP. 37 [XXXII.] — IN WHAT SENSE CHRIST IS CALLED " SIN."
There was a change of the sacramental ordinances made after the coming of Him whose advent they prefigured; but there was no change in the Mediator's help, who, even previous to His coming in the flesh, all along delivered the ancient members of His body by their faith in His incarnation; and in respect of ourselves too, though we were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, we are quickened ^ together in Christ, in whom we are circumcised with the circumcision not made with the hand^^ but such as was prefigured by the old manual circumcision, that the body of sin might be done away 9 which was born with us from Adam. The propagation of a condemned origin condemns us, unless we are cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh, in which He was sent without sin, who nevertheless concerning sin condemned sin, \ having been made sin for us.'° Accordingly the apostle says: " We beseech you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled unto God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." " God, therefore, to whom we are reconciled, has made Him to be sin for us, — that is to say, a sacrifice by which our sins may be remitted; for by sins are designated the sacrifices for sins. And indeed He was sacrificed for our sins, the only one among men who had no sins, even as in those early times one was sought for among the flocks to prefigure the Faultless One who was to come to heal our offences. On whatever day, therefore, an infant may be baptized after his birth, he is as if circumcised on the eighth day; inasmuch as he is circumcised in Him who rose again the third day indeed after He was crucified, but the eighth according to the weeks. ■ He is circumcised for the putting off of the body of sin; in other words, that the grace of spiritual regeneration may do away with the debt which the contagion of carnal generation contracted. " For no one is pure from uncleanness" (what uncleanness, pray, but that of sin?), "not even the infant, whose Hfe is but that of a single day upon the earth." '^ CHAP. 38 [XXXIII.] — ORIGINAL SIN DOES NOT RENDER MARRIAGE EVIL.