but why, such being the case, the justified ever die; and he refers his correspondent to his book On the Baptism of 'Infants^ for a resolution of this greater difficulty.
It was probably at the very end of 418 that Augustin wrote a letter of some length'' to Asellicus, in reply to one which he had written on " avoiding the deception of Judaism," to the primate of the Bizacene province, and which that ecclesiastic had sent to Augustin for answering. He discusses in this the law of the Old Testament. He opens by pointing out that the apostle forbids Christians to Judaize (Gal. ii. 14-16), and explains that it is not merely the ceremonial I Epistle 193. - Compnre On DuUitius Eight Questions, 3.
3 That is, O71 the Merits ami Rciiiission of Sins, etc., ii. 30 sq ■* Epistle 196.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. li law tliat we may not depend upon, " but also what is said in the law, ' Thou shalt not covet ' (which no one, of course, doubts is to be said to Christians too), does not justify man, except by faith in Jesus Christ and the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He then expounds the use of the law: "This, then, is the usefulness of the law: that it shows man to himself, so that lie may know his weakness, and see how, by the prohibition, carnal concupiscence is rather increased than healed...The use of the law is, thus, to convince man of his weakness, and force him to implore the medicine of grace that is in Christ." "Since these things are so," he adds, " those who rejoice that they are Israelites after the flesh, and glory in the law apart from the grace of Christ, these are those concerning whom the apostle said that ' being ignorant of God's righteousness, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to God's righteousness; ' since he calls ' God's righteousness ' that which is from God to man; and ' their own,' what they think that the commandments suffice for them to do without the help and gift of Him who gave the law. But they are like those who, while they profess to be Christians, so oppose the grace of Christ, that they suppose that they fulfil the divine commands by human powers, and, ' wishing to establish their own,' are ' not subject to the righteousness of God,' and so, not indeed in name, but yet in error, Judaize. This sort of men found heads for themselves in Pelagius and Coelestius, the most acute asserters of this impiety, who by God's recent judgment, through his diligent and faithful servants, have been deprived even of catholic communion, and, on account of an impenitent heart, persist still in their condemnation."
At the beginning of 419, a considerable work was published by Augustin on one of the more remote corollaries which the Pelagians drew from his teachings. It had come to his ears, that they asserted that his doctrine condemned marriage: " if only sinful offspring come from marriage," they asked, " is not marriage itself made a sinful thing? " The book which Augustin composed in answer to this query, he dedicated to, and sent along with an explanatory letter to, the Comes Valerius, a trusted servant of the Emperor Honorius, and one of the most steady opponents at court of the Pelagian heresy. Augustin explains ' why he has desired to address the book to him: first, because Valerius was a striking example of those continent husbands of which that age furnishes us with many instances, and, therefore, the discussion would have especial interest for him; secondly, because of his eminence as an opponent of Pelagianism • and, thirdly, because Augustin had learned that he had read a Pelagian document in which Augustin was charged with condemning marriage by defending original sin.- The book in question is the first book of the treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence. It is, naturally, tinged, or rather stained, with the prevalent ascetic notions of the day. Its doctrine is that marriage is good, and God is the maker of the offspring that comes from it, although now there can be no begetting and hence no birth without sin. Sin made concupiscence, and now concupiscence perpetuates sinners. The specific object of the work, as it states it itself, is " to distinguish between the evil of carnal concupiscence, from which man, who is born therefrom, contracts original sin, and the good of marriage" (I. i). After a brief introduction, in which he explains why he writes, and why he addresses his book to Valerius (1-2), Augustin points out that conjugal chastity, like its higher sister-grace of continence, is God's gift. Thus copulation, but only for the propagation of children, has divine allowance (3-5). Lust, or "shameful concupiscence," however, he teaches, is not of the essence, but only an accident, of marriage. It did not exist in Eden, although true marriage existed there; but arose from, and therefore only after, sin (6-7). Its addition to marriage does not destroy the good of marriage: it only conditions the character of the offspring (8). Hence it is that the apostle allows marriage, but forbids the "disease of desire" (i Thess. iv. 3-5); and hence the Old-Testament saints were even permitted more than one wife, because, by multiplying wives, it was not lust, but offspring, that was increased (9-10). Nevertheless, fecundity is not to be thought the only good of marriage: true ' On Marriage and Concupiscence, i. 2, * Compare the Benedictine Preface to The Unfinished Work.
Hi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
marriage can exist without offspring, and even without cohabitation (11-13), and cohabitation is now, under the New Testament, no longer a duty as it was under the Old Testament (14-15), but the apostle praises continence above it. We must, then, distinguish between the goods of marriage, and seek the best (16-19). But thus it follows that it is not due to any inherent and necessary evil in marriage, but only to the presence, now, of concupiscence in all cohabitation, that children are born under sin, even the children of the regenerate, just as from the seed of olives only oleasters grow(20-24). And yet again, concupiscence is not itseU sin in the regenerate; it is remitted as guilt in baptism: but it is the daughter of sin, and it is the mother of sin, and in the unregenerate it is itself sin, as to yield to it is even to the regenerate (25-39).
Finally, as so often, the testimony of Ambrose is appealed to, and it is shown that he too teaches that all born from cohabitation are born guilty (40). In this book, Augustin certainly seems to teach that the bond of connection by which Adam's sin is conveyed to his offspring is not mere descent, or heredity, or mere inclusion in him, in a realistic sense, as partakers of the same numerical nature, but concupiscence. Without concupiscence in the act of generation, the offspring would not be a partaker of Adam's sin. This he had taught also previously, as, e.g., in the treatise On Original Sin, from which a few words may be profitably quoted as succinctly summing up the teaching of this book on the subject: " It is, then, manifest, that that must not be laid to the account of marriage, in the absence of which even marriage would still have existed...Such, however, is the present condition of mortal men, that the connubial intercourse and lust are at the same time in action...Hence it follows that infants, although incapable of sinning, are yet not born without the contagion of sin,...not, indeed, because of what is lawful, but on account of that which is unseemly: for, from what is lawful, nature is born; from what is unseemly, sin " (42).
Towards the end of the same year (419), Augustin was led to take up again the vexed question of the origin of the soul, — both in a new letter to Optatus,' and by the zeal of the same monk, Renatus, who had formerly brought Optatus' inquiries to his notice, — in an elaborate treatise entitled On the Soul and its Origin, by way of reply to a rash adventure of a young man named Vincentius Victor, who blamed him for his uncertainty on such a subject, and attempted to determine all the puzzles of the question, though, as Augustin insists, on assumptions that were partly Pelagian and pardy worse. Optatus had written in the hope that Augustin had heard by this time from Jerome, in reply to the treatise he had sent him on this subject. Augustin, in answering his letter, expresses his sorrow that he has not yet been worthy of an answer from Jerome, although five years had passed away since he wrote, but his continued hope that such an answer will in due time come. For himself, he confesses that he has not yet been able to see how the soul can contract sin from Adam and yet not itself be contracted from Adam; and he regrets that Optatus, although holding that God creates each soul for its birth, has not sent him the proofs on which he depends for that opinion, nor met its obvious difficulties.
He rebukes Optatus for confounding the question of whether God makes the soul, with the entirely different one of how he makes it, whether ex propagine or sive propagine. No one doubts that God makes the soul, as no one doubts that He makes the body. But when we consider how he makes it, sobriety and vigilance become necessary lest we should unguardedly fall into the Pelagian heresy. Augustin defends his attitude of uncertainty, and enumerates the points as to which he has no doubt: viz., that the soul is spirit, not body; that it is rational or intellectual; that it is not of the nature of God, but is so far a mortal creature that it is capable of deterioration and of alienation from the life of God, and so far immortal that after this life it lives on in bliss or punishment forever; that it was not incarnated because of, or according to, preceding deserts acquired in a previous existence, yet that it is under the curse of sin which it derives from Adam, and therefore in all cases alike needs redemption in Christ.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 1 The whole subject of the nature and origin of the soul, however, is most fully discussed in the four books which are gathered together under the common title of On the Soul and its Origin. Vincentius Victor was a young layman who had recently been converted from the Rogatian heresy; on being shown by his friend Peter, a presbyter, a small work of Augustin's on the origin of the soul, he expressed surprise that so great a man could profess ignorance on a matter so intimate to his very being, and, receiving encouragement, wrote a book for Peter in which he attacked and tried to solve all the difficulties of the subject. Peter received the work with transports of delighted admiration; but Renatus, happening that way, looked upon it with distrust, and, finding that Augustin was spoken of in it with scant courtesy, felt it his duty to send him a copy of it, which he did in the summer of 419. It was probably not until late in the following autumn that Augustin found time to take up the matter; but then he wrote to Renatus, to Peter, and two books to Victor himself, and it is these four books together which constitute the treatise that has come down to us. The first book is a letter to Renatus, and is introduced by an expression of thanks to him for sending Victor's book, and of kindly feeling towards and appreciation for the high qualities of Victor himself (1-3). Then Victor's errors are pointed out, — as to the nature of the soul (4-9), including certain far-reaching corollaries that flow from these (10-15), ^^ ^^'^^' ^^' '^^ ^o the origin of the soul (16-30); and the letter closes with some remarks on the danger of arguing from the silence of Scripture (31), on the self-contradictions of Victor (34), and on the errors that must be avoided in any theory of the origin of the soul that hopes to be acceptable, — to wit, that souls become sinful by an alien original sin, that unbaptized infants need no salvation, that souls sinned in a previous state, and that they are condemned for sins which they have not committed but would have committed had they lived longer. The second book is a letter to Peter, warning him of the responsibility that rests on him as Victor's trusted friend and a clergyman, to correct Victor's errors, and reproving him for the uninstructed dehght he had taken in Victor's crudities. It opens by asking Peter what was the occasion of the great joy which Victor's book brought him? could it be that he learned from it, for the first time, the old and primary truths it contained? (2-3); or was it due to the new errors that it proclaimed, — seven of which he enumerates? (4-16). Then, after animadverting on the dilemma in which Victor stood, of either being forced to withdraw his violent assertion of creationism, or else of making God unjust in His dealings with new souls (17), he speaks of Victor's unjustifiable dogmatism in the matter (18-21), and closes with severely solemn words to Peter on his responsibility in the premises (22-23). ^" the third and fourth books, which are addressed to Victor, the polemic, of course, reaches its height. The third book is entirely taken up with pointing out to Victor, as a father to a son, the errors into which he has fallen, and which, in accordance with his professions of readiness for amendment, he ought to correct. Eleven are enumerated: i. That the soul was made by God out of Himself (3-7); 2. That God will continuously create souls forever (8); 3. That the soul has desert of good before birth (9); 4. (contradictingly). That the soul has desert of evil before birth (10); 5. That the soul deserved to be sinful before any sin (n); 6. That unbaptized infants are saved (12); 7. That what God predestinates may not occur (13); 8. That Wisd. iv. i is spoken of infants (14); 9. That some of the mansions with the Father are outside of God's kingdom (15-17); 10.
That the sacrifice of Christ's blood maybe offered for the unbaptized (18); 11. That the unbaptized may attain at the resurrection even to the kingdom of heaven (19). The book closes by reminding Victor of his professions of readiness to correct his errors, and warning him against the obstinacy that makes the heretic (20-23). The fourth book deals with the more personal elements of the controversy, and discusses the points in which Victor had expressed dissent from Augustin. It opens with a statement of the two grounds of complaint that Victor had urged against Augustin; viz., that he refused to express a confident opinion as to the origin of the soul, and that he affirmed that the soul was not corporeal, but spirit (1-2). These two complaints are then taken up at lenjth (2-1,'; and 17-37). To the first, Augustin replies that man's knowledge is at best Umited, llv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY..
and often most limited about the things nearest to him; we do not know the constitution of our bodies; and, above most others, this subject of the origin of the soul is one on which no one but God is a competent witness. ^Vho remembers his birth? Who remembers what was before birth? But this is just one of the subjects on which God has not spolcen unambiguously in the Scriptures. Would it not be better, then, for Victor to imitate Augustin's cautious ignorance, than that Augustin should imitate Victor's rash assertion of errors? That the soul is not corporeal, Augustin argues (18-35) ^^om the Scriptures and from the phenomena of dreams; and then shows, in opposition to Victor's trichotomy, that the Scriptures teach the identity of " soul " and "spirit" (36-37). The book closes with a renewed enumeration of Victor's eleven errors (38), and a final admonition to his rashness (39). It is pleasant to know that Augustin found in this case, also, that righteousness is the fruit of the faithful wounds of a friend. Victor accepted the rebuke, and professed his better instruction at the hands of his modest but resistless antagonist.
The controversy now entered upon a new stage. Among the evicted bishops of Italy who refused to sign Zosimus' Epistola Tractoria, Julian of Eclanum was easily the first, and at this point he appears as the champion of Pelagianism. It was a sad fate that arrayed tliis beloved son of his old friend against Augustin, just when there seemed to be reason to hope that the controversy was at an end, and the victory won, and the plaudits of the world were greeting him as the saviour of the Church.' But the now fast-aging bishop was to find, that, in this " very confident young man," he had yet to meet the most persistent and most dangerous advocate of the new doctrines that had arisen. Julian had sent, at an earlier period, two letters to Zosimus, one of which has come down to us as a *' Confession of Faith," and the other of which attempted to approach Augustinian forms of speech as much as possible; the object of both being to gain standing ground in the Church for the Italian Pelagians. Now he appears as a Pelagian controversialist; and in opposition to the book On Marriage and Concupiscence, which Augustin had sent Valerius, he published an extended work in four thick books addressed to Turbantius. Extracts from the, first of these books were sent by some one to Valerius, and were placed by him in the hands of Alypius, who was then in Italy, for transmission to Augustin. Meanwhile, a letter had been sent to Rome by Julian,^ designed to strengthen the cause of Pelagianism there; and a similar one, in the names of the eighteen Pelagianizing Italian bishops, was addressed to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica, and representative of the Roman see in that portion of the Eastern Empire which was regarded as ecclesiastically a part of the West, the design of which was to obtain the powerful support of this important magnate, perhaps, also, a refuge from persecution within his jurisdiction.
These two letters came into the hands of the new Pope, Boniface, who gave them also to Alypius for transmission to Augustin. Thus provided, Alypius returned to Africa. The tactics of all these writings of Julian were essentially the same; he attempted not so much to defend Pelagianism, as to attack Augustinianism, and thus literally to carry the war into Africa. He insisted that the corruption of nature which Augustin taught was nothing else than Manicheism; that the sovereignty of grace, as taught by him, was only the attribution of " acceptance of persons," and partiality, to God; and that his doctrine of predestination was mere fatalism. He accused the anti-Pelagians of denying the goodness of the nature that God had created, of the marriage that He had ordained, of the law that He had given, of the free will that Pie had implanted in man, as well as the perfection of His saints.^ He insisted that this teaching also did dishonour to baptism itself which it professed so to honour, inasmuch as it asserted the continuance of concupiscence after baptism, — and thus taught that baptism does not take away sins, but only shaves them off as one shaves his beard, and leaves the roots whence the sins may grow anew, and need cutting down again. He complained bitterly of the way in which Pelagianism had been condemned,— that bishops had been compelled to sign a definition of dogma, not in council ' Compare Epistle 195.
2 Julian afterwards repudiate 1 this letter, perhaps because of some falsifications at had suffered; it see;ns n have been certain!/ his.
^ Compare Against Two Letters 0/ the Pelagians, iii. 24; and ace above, p. x.\.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Iv assembled, but sitting at liome; and he demanded a rehearing of the whole case before a lawful council, lest the doctrine of the Alanichees should be forced upon the acceptance of the world.
Augustin felt a strong desire to see the whole work of Julian against his book On Marriage and Concupiscence before he undertook a reply to the excerpts sent him by Valerius; but he did not feel justified in delaying obedience to that officer's request, and so wrote at once two treatises, one an answer to these excerpts, for the benefit of Valerius, constituting the second book of his On Marriage and Concupiscence; and the other, a far more elaborate examination of the letters sent by Boniface, which bears the title, Againsi Two Letters of the Pelagians. The purpose of the second book of On Marriage and Concupisceiice, Augustin himself states, in its introductory sentences, to be " to reply to the taunts of his adversaries with all the truthfulness and scriptural authority he could command." He begins (2) by identifying the source of the extracts forwarded to him by Valerius, with Julian's work against his first book, and then remarks upon the garbled form in which he is quoted in them (3-6), and passes on to state and refute Julian's charge that the catholics had turned Manicheans (7-9). At this point, the refutation of Julian begins in good earnest, and the method that he proposes to use is stated; viz., to adduce the adverse statements, and refute them one by one (10). Beginning at the beginning, he quotes first the title of the paper sent him, which declares that it is directed against " those who condemn matrimony, and ascribe its fruit to the Devil " (11), which certainly, says Augustin, does not describe him or the catholics. The next twenty chapters (10-30), accordingly, following Julian's order, labour to prove that marriage is good, and ordained by God, but that its good includes fecundity indeed, but not concupiscence, which arose from sin, and contracts sin. It is next argued, that the doctrine of original sin does not imply an evil origin for man (31-51); and in the course of this argument, the following propositions are especially defended: that God makes offspring for good and bad alike, just as He sends the rain and sunshine on just and unjust (31-34); that God makes everything to be found in marriage except its fiaiv, concupiscence (35-40); that marriage is not the cause of original sin, but only the channel through which it is transmitted (41-47); and that to assert that evil cannot arise from what is good leaves us in the clutches of that very Manicheism which is so unjustly charged against the catholics — for, if evil be not eternal, what else was there from which it could arise but something good? (48-51). In concluding, Augustin recapitulates, and argues especially, that shameful concupiscence is of sin, and the author of sin, and was not in paradise (52-54); that children are made by God, and only marred by the Devil (55); that Julian, in admitting that Christ died for infants, admits that they need salvation (56); that what the Devil makes in children is not a substance, but an injury to a substance (57-58); and that to suppose that concupiscence existed in any form in paradise introduces incongruities in our conception of life in that abode of primeval bliss (59-60).
The long and important treatise. Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, consists of four books, the first of which replies to the letter sent to Rome, and the other tliree to that sent to Thessalonica. After a short introduction, in which he thanks Boniface for his kindness, and gives reasons why heretical writings should be answered (1-3), Augustin begins at once to rebut the calumnies which the letter before him brings against the catholics (4-2S). These are seven in number: i. That the catholics destroy free will; to which Augustin replies that none are " forced into sin by the necessity of their flesh," but all sin by free will, though no man can have a rightous will save by God's grace, and that it is really the Pelagians that destroy free will by exaggerating it (4-8); 2. That Augustin declares that such marriage as now exists is not of God (9); 3. That sexual desire and intercourse are made a device of the Devil, which is sheer i\Ianicheism (lo-ii); 4. That the Old-Testament saints are said to have died in sin (12); 5. That Paul and the other apostles are asserted to have been polluted by lust all their days; Augustin's answer to which includes a running commentary on Rom. vii. 7 sq., in which (correcting his older exegesis) he shows that Paul is giving here a transcript of his own experience as a typical Christian (13-24); 6. That Christ is said not to have been free from sin (25); 7. 'I'hat baptism Ivi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
does not give complete remission of sins, but leaves roots from which they may again grow; to which Augustin replies that baptism does remit all sins, but leaves concupiscence, which, although not sin, is the source of sin (26-28). Next, the positive part of Julian's letter is taken up, and his profession of faith against the catholics examined (29-41). The seven affirmations that Julian makes here are designed as the obverse of the seven charges against the catholics. He believed: i. That free will is in all by nature, and could not perish by Adam's sin (29); 2. That marriage, as now existent, was ordained by God (30); 3. That sexual impulse and virility are from God (31-35); 4. That men are God's work, and no one is forced to do good or evil unwillingly, but are assisted by grace to good, and incited by the Devil to evil (36-38); 5. That the saints of the Old Testament were perfected in righteousness here, and so passed into eternal hfe (39); 6. That the grace of Christ (ambiguously meant) is necessary for all, and all children — even those of baptized parents — are to be baptized (40); 7. And that baptism gives full cleansing from all sins; to which Augustin pointedly asks, "What does it do for infants, then?" (41 ). The book concludes with an answer to Julian's conclusion, in which he demands a general council, and charges the catholics with Manicheism.
The second, third, and fourth books deal with the letter to Rufus in a somewhat similar way, the second and third books being occupied with the calumnies brought against the catholics, and the fourth with the claims made by the Pelagians. The second begins by repellmg the charge of Manicheism brought against the catholics (1-4), to which the pointed remark is added, that the Pelagians cannot hope to escape condemnation because they are willing to condemn another heresy; and then defends (with less success) the Roman clergy against the charge of prevarication in their deahng with the Pelagians (5-8), in the course of which all that can be said in defence of Zosimus' wavering policy is said well and strongly. Next the charges against catholic teaching are taken up and answered (9-16), especially the two important accusations that they maintain fate under the name of grace (9-12), and that they make God an " accepter of persons " (13-16). Augustin's replies to these charges are in every way admirable. The charge of "fate " rests solely on the catholic denial that grace is given according to preceding merits; but the Pelagians do not escape the same charge when they acknowledge that the " fates " of baptized and unbaptized infants do differ. It is, in truth, not a question of " fate," but of gratuitous bounty; and "it is not the catholics that assert fate under the name of grace, but the Pelagians that choose to call divine grace by the name of ' fate ' " (12). As to "acceptance of persons,"