Chapter 3

6. But those do not wish the glory to be His, in His justifying of the ungodly by free grace, who, being ignorant of His righteousness, wish to establish their own; or who, now pressed by the voices of the devout and godly crying out against them, confess that they are helped by God to have or to do righteousness in such a way that some merit of their own goes first — as though they wished to give first, so that it might be recompensed to them by Him of whom it is said, “Who has first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” — and supposing that their own merits go before Him of whom they hear, or rather refuse to hear, “For of Him, and through Him, and in Him, are all things.” But from those riches of which the depth of His wisdom and knowledge consists come the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, whom He calls to adoption; and these riches He wills to make known also through the vessels of wrath, which are fitted for destruction. And what are His ways past finding out, but those of which it is sung in the psalm, “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth”? His mercy and truth, then, are past finding out: for He has mercy on whom He will, not by justice, but by the grace of mercy; and He hardens whom He will, not by injustice, but by the truth of retribution. Yet this mercy and this truth so meet together — for it is written, “Mercy and truth have met each other” — that neither does mercy hinder truth, by which the deserving is punished, nor truth hinder mercy, by which the undeserving is set free. What merits of his own, then, will the one who is set free boast of, when, if what his merits deserved were paid to him, he would be nothing but condemned? Have the righteous, then, no merits at all? They have indeed, because they are righteous. But there were no merits by which they were made righteous; for they were made righteous when they were justified; and, as the apostle says, they were “justified freely by His grace.”

7. Since, then, these men are enemies and assailants of this grace, Pelagius nevertheless, at the ecclesiastical trial in Palestine — for otherwise he would not have come away from it unpunished — anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to merits. But in their later disputations too nothing else is found than that that grace is given for merits, of the commendation of which the apostolic letter speaks most of all to the Romans, so that the preaching of it might spread from there, as from the head of the world, through the whole world. For this is the grace by which the ungodly man is justified, that is, he who was before ungodly is made righteous. And therefore no merits precede the receiving of this grace, since to the merits of the ungodly is due not grace but punishment; nor would it be grace if it were not given freely but paid as a debt.

8. But when they are asked what grace Pelagius had in mind as given without any preceding merits, when he anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, they answer that the grace given without any preceding merits is human nature itself, in which we were created; for before we existed, we could not merit anything in order to exist. Let this deceit be cast out of the hearts of Christians. For it is not at all this grace, by which we were created so as to be men, that the apostle commends, but the grace by which we were justified when we were evil men. For this is the grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. For Christ did not die for those who were nothing, that they might be created men, but for the ungodly, that they might be justified: for he was already a man who said, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

9. They may indeed say that the forgiveness of sins is a grace which is given without any preceding merits; for what good merit can sinners have? But even the forgiveness of sins itself is not without some merit, if faith obtains it; for the merit of faith is not nothing. It was by this faith that the man said, “God be merciful to me a sinner”; and he went down justified by the merit of his believing humility, since “he that humbles himself shall be exalted.” It remains, therefore, that faith itself, with which all righteousness takes its beginning — for which reason it is said to the Church in the Song of Songs, “You shall come and pass on from the beginning of faith” — it remains, I say, that we attribute faith itself neither to human will, which these men exalt, nor to any preceding merits, since it is from faith that whatever good merits there are begin; but that we confess it to be the free gift of God, if we are thinking of true grace, that is, grace without merits. For, as we read in the same letter, “God has dealt to every man the measure of faith.” Good works, indeed, are done by a man; but faith is wrought in a man, and without it no man does good works. “For whatever is not of faith is sin.”

10. Wherefore, lest a man exalt even the merit of his prayer — although help is given to him who prays, that he may overcome the desires for temporal things and love the eternal goods and God Himself, the fountain of all good — it is faith that prays, and faith was given to one who did not pray; and unless it had been given, he could not pray. “For how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” Accordingly the minister of Christ, the preacher of this faith, according to the grace that is given to him, plants and waters; “yet neither is he that plants anything, nor he that waters, but God who gives the increase,” who “deals to every man the measure of faith.” Hence it is said elsewhere, “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith”; and lest they should ascribe it to themselves, he added at once, “from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” For faith does not belong to all who hear the word, but to those to whom God deals the measure of faith; just as not everything that is planted and watered springs up, but only that to which God gives the increase. But why one believes and another does not believe, when both hear the same thing — and, if a miracle is done before their eyes, both see the same thing — is the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose judgments are unsearchable, and with whom there is no unrighteousness when He has mercy on whom He will and hardens whom He will. For these things are not unjust because they are hidden.

11. Then again, after the forgiveness of sins, unless the Holy Spirit dwells in the house that has been cleansed, does not the unclean spirit return with seven others, and the last state of that man become worse than the first? And that the Holy Spirit may dwell there, does He not breathe where He will? And is not the love of God, without which no one lives well, shed abroad in our hearts, not by ourselves, but by the Holy Spirit who is given to us? For the apostle defined this faith when he said, “Neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which works by love.” That is the faith of Christians, not of devils; for the devils also believe and tremble — but do they love too? For if they did not believe, they would not say, “You are the Holy One of God,” or, “You are the Son of God”; but if they loved, they would not say, “What have we to do with You?”

12. It is faith, then, that draws us to Christ; and unless it were given us from above as a free gift, He would not Himself have said, “No man can come to me, except the Father who has sent me draw him.” And so He says a little after, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that do not believe.” Then the evangelist adds, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed, and who should betray Him.” And lest anyone should think that those who believe belong to His foreknowledge in the same way as those who do not believe — that is, that faith itself was not given to them from above, but only their will was foreknown — he at once added, “And He said, Therefore I said to you, that no man can come to me, except it were given to him of my Father.” This was why, of those who had heard Him speaking of His flesh and His blood, some were offended and went away, and some remained believing: because no one can come to Him except the one to whom it has been given by the Father — and by that very fact by the Son Himself and by the Holy Spirit. For the gifts and works of the inseparable Trinity are not separated; but the Son, in so honouring the Father, gives no proof of any difference between them, but offers a great example of humility.

13. Here again these defenders of free will — or rather deceivers, because they puff it up, and puffers-up because they presume — who will speak not against us but against the Gospel, what else do they say but what the apostle put to himself as an objection, as though it were being said by such men? “You will say then to me, Why does He yet find fault? For who has resisted His will?” He put this objection to himself as though from another, as if from the lips of those who will not accept what he had said above: “Therefore He has mercy on whom He will, and whom He will He hardens.” Let us then say to such men with the apostle — for we can find nothing better to say than he did — “O man, who are you that replies against God?”

14. For we look for the merit of hardening, and we find it. For by the merit of sin the whole lump has been condemned; and God does not harden by imparting wickedness, but by not imparting mercy. For those to whom it is not imparted are neither worthy of it nor deserve it; rather, that it should not be imparted — this is what they are worthy of, this is what they deserve. But we look for the merit of mercy, and we do not find it, because there is none; lest grace be made void, if it is not given freely but paid for merits.

15. For if we say that faith went before, and that in it lay the merit of grace, what merit had a man before faith, that he should receive faith? “For what has he that he did not receive? And if he received it, why does he glory, as if he had not received it?” For just as a man would not have wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of God, unless, according to the prophetic word, he had received the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God; and just as he would not have power, love and continence unless he had received the Spirit of whom the apostle says, “For you have not received the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of continence”; so he would not have faith unless he had received the Spirit of faith, of whom the same apostle says, “Having the same Spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.” But that he received it not by merit, but by the mercy of Him who has mercy on whom He will, he shows most plainly where he says of himself, “I obtained mercy to be faithful.”

Chapter 4

16. If we say that the merit of prayer goes before, so that the gift of grace may follow — prayer, indeed, by obtaining whatever it obtains, plainly shows that it is a gift of God, so that a man may not think he has from himself what, if it were in his own power, he would certainly not ask for; and yet, lest the merits at least of prayer should be thought to go before, for which grace would be given not freely — and then it would no longer be grace, because it would be paid as a debt — prayer itself too is found among the gifts of grace. “For we know not what we should pray for as we ought,” says the Teacher of the Gentiles, “but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” And what is “makes intercession” but “makes us intercede”? For to intercede with groanings is the surest sign of one who is in need; but it would be wrong to believe that the Holy Spirit is in need of anything. It is said, then, “makes intercession,” because He makes us intercede, and breathes into us the desire to intercede and to groan; as in that saying in the Gospel, “For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” For this too does not happen to us as if we ourselves did nothing. The help of the Holy Spirit, then, is so expressed that He is said to do Himself what He makes us do.

17. For the apostle himself shows clearly enough that we are not to understand our own spirit as that of which it is said, “makes intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered,” but the Holy Spirit, by whom our weakness is helped. For he began in this way: “The Spirit,” he says, “helps our infirmity”; and then he went on, “for we know not what we should pray for as we ought,” and the rest. Of this Spirit he speaks more plainly elsewhere: “For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father.” Notice that here he did not say that the Spirit Himself cries out in praying, but “in whom we cry, Abba, Father.” Yet in another place he says, “Because you are sons of God, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” Here he does not say “in whom we cry,” but preferred to say that the Spirit Himself cries, by whom it is brought about that we cry; as in those other sayings, “The Spirit Himself makes intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered,” and, “It is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”

18. As, then, no one is rightly wise, rightly understands, rightly prevails in counsel and fortitude, no one is knowingly devout or devoutly knowing, no one fears God with a chaste fear, unless he has received the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God; and no one has true power, sincere love, religious continence, except through the Spirit of power, and of love, and of continence; so without the Spirit of faith no one will rightly believe, and without the Spirit of prayer no one will pray to his salvation. Not that there are so many spirits; but “all these works the one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will,” because “the Spirit breathes where He will.” But it must be confessed that He helps in one way when He does not yet dwell in a man, and in another way when He does dwell in him. For when He does not yet dwell in them He helps men to become believers, and when He dwells in them He helps those who are believers already.

Chapter 5

19. What merit, then, has a man before grace, by which merit he may receive grace, when nothing but grace works every good merit of ours in us; and when God, in crowning our merits, crowns nothing but His own gifts? For as from the beginning of faith we obtained mercy, not because we were faithful, but that we might be; so at the end, when there will be eternal life, He will crown us, as it is written, “in compassion and mercy.” Not in vain, therefore, is it sung to God, “His mercy shall go before me,” and, “His mercy shall follow me.” Hence eternal life itself, which will certainly be possessed at the end without end, and is therefore paid to preceding merits — yet because the very merits to which it is paid were not produced by us through our own sufficiency, but wrought in us by grace — is itself also called grace, for no other reason than that it is given freely; not because it is not given to merits, but because the very merits to which it is given were themselves given. And where do we find eternal life too called grace? We have it in the same magnificent defender of grace, the apostle Paul: “The wages of sin,” he says, “is death; but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

20. See, I beg you, with what brevity and with what care he has set down his words; and if they are carefully considered, the obscurity of this question will be a little lightened. For when he had said, “The wages of sin is death,” who would not have judged that he would add, most fittingly and consistently, “but the wages of righteousness is eternal life”? And it is true; for as death is paid as a wage to the merit of sin, so eternal life is paid as a wage to the merit of righteousness. Or if he did not wish to say “of righteousness,” he might have said “of faith,” since “the just shall live by faith.” Hence it is also called a reward in very many places of the holy Scriptures; but righteousness or faith is nowhere called a reward, because the reward is paid to righteousness or to faith. And what a reward is to a workman, wages are to a soldier.

21. But the blessed apostle, fighting most watchfully against pride — which creeps in so stealthily even upon the great that he says of himself that because of it there was given to him an angel of Satan to buffet him, lest he should lift up the head of presumption — fighting, then, against this plague of pride, says, “The wages of sin is death.” Wages rightly, because it is owed, because it is repaid as deserved, because it is paid according to merit. Then, lest righteousness should exalt itself on the ground of good human merit — as there is no doubt that evil human merit is sin — he did not make the answering statement, “the wages of righteousness is eternal life,” but he said, “the grace of God is eternal life.” And lest some other way should be sought apart from the Mediator, he added, “in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As though he said: “Having heard that the wages of sin is death, why are you preparing to exalt yourself — O human pride, not righteousness, but plainly pride under the name of righteousness — why are you preparing to exalt yourself and to demand eternal life, the opposite of death, as wages owed to you? True righteousness is that to which eternal life is owed; but if it is true righteousness, it is not from you; it is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. That you might have it — if indeed you have it — you have surely received it: for what good thing have you that you did not receive? Wherefore, O man, if you are to receive eternal life, it is indeed the wages of righteousness, but to you it is grace, to whom righteousness itself is grace. For it would be paid to you as owed if the righteousness to which it is owed were yours from yourself. But as it is, of His fulness we have received not only the grace by which we now live righteously in our labours until the end, but also grace for this grace, that we may live afterwards in rest without end.” Faith believes nothing more wholesome than this, because the understanding finds nothing truer; and we ought to listen to the prophet when he says, “Unless you believe, you shall not understand.”

Chapter 6

22. “But men who do not wish to live rightly and faithfully,” it is said, “will excuse themselves, saying: What have we done, we who live evilly, since we have not received the grace by which we might live well?” They cannot truthfully say that they do no evil, since they live evilly. For if they do no evil, they live well; but if they live evilly, they live evilly from what is their own, whether from what they have derived from their origin, or from what they have added besides. But if they are vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, which is paid to them as their due, let them impute this to themselves, because they were made from that lump which God deservedly and justly condemned because of the sin of one man, in whom all sinned. But if they are vessels of mercy, to whom, though made from the same lump, He was not willing to pay the punishment due, let them not be puffed up, but glorify Him who showed them the mercy that was not due; and if in anything they are otherwise minded, He will reveal even this to them.

23. Finally, in what way will these men excuse themselves? Surely in the way which the apostle briefly set against himself as from their lips, so that they may say, “Why does He yet find fault? For who has resisted His will?” That is to say: “Why is complaint made of us that we offend God by living evilly, when no one can resist the will of Him who hardened us by not showing us mercy?” If, then, they are not ashamed by this excuse to contradict not us but the apostle, why should we be loath to say to them over and over again what the apostle said: “O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why have You made me thus? Has not the potter power over the clay” — out of the same lump, deservedly and rightly condemned — “to make one vessel unto honour,” not due, by the grace of mercy, “and another unto dishonour,” which is due, by the justice of wrath; “and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy,” showing them in this way what He bestows on them, when the vessels of wrath receive the punishment which was due equally to all? Let it be enough, meanwhile, for a Christian, who still lives by faith and does not yet see what is perfect, but knows in part, to know or to believe that God sets no one free except by free mercy through our Lord Jesus Christ, and condemns no one except by most equitable truth through the same our Lord Jesus Christ. But why He sets free this one rather than that one, or does not set him free, let him search who can so great a depth of His judgments — but let him beware of the precipice. “Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid!” But His judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out.

24. And of those at least of riper years it can deservedly be said: “They would not understand, that they might do well.” Some — which is more grievous — understood and did not obey; because, as it is written, “A hard servant will not be amended by words; for even if he understands, he will not obey.” And from what does he not obey, if not from his own most wicked will? To him a heavier condemnation is due by the divine equity; “for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required.” For Scripture calls those without excuse from whom the truth is not hidden and in whom iniquity persists. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven,” says the apostle, “against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has shown it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”

25. If, then, he calls those without excuse who were able to see His invisible things, understood by the things that are made, and yet did not obey the truth, but remained unrighteous and ungodly — for it was not that they did not know, but “when they knew God,” he says, “they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks” — how much more without excuse are those who, instructed out of His law, are confident that they themselves are guides of the blind, and teaching others do not teach themselves; who preach that one should not steal, and steal; and the rest of what the apostle says of them! For to them he says, “Therefore you are without excuse, O man, whoever you are that judges; for wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you that judge do the same things.”

26. The Lord Himself also says in the Gospel, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” Not that they would have had no sin at all, who were full of other great and many sins; but He means it to be understood that they would not have had this sin, if He had not come — the sin by which, when they had heard Him, they did not believe in Him. He declares that they have not that excuse by which they could say, “We did not hear, and therefore we did not believe.” For human pride, as though presuming on the powers of free will, thinks itself excused when what it sins seems to come from ignorance and not from will.

27. In respect of this excuse, the divine Scripture calls without excuse all whom it convicts of sinning knowingly. Yet the just judgment of God does not spare even those who have not heard: “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law.” And although they seem to excuse themselves, He does not admit that excuse who knows that He made man upright and gave him a commandment of obedience, and that sin, which was to pass on to his descendants too, came from nothing but the free choice of his will, which he used badly. For those are not condemned who have not sinned, since that sin passed from one man into all, in whom, before the sins of each one individually, all sinned in common. And so every sinner is without excuse, either by the guilt of his origin or by the addition of his own will as well, whether he knows or does not know, whether he judges or does not judge; because even ignorance itself, in those who would not understand, is without doubt sin, and in those who could not, the punishment of sin. In both, therefore, there is no just excuse, but just condemnation.

28. But the divine oracles call those without excuse who sin, not in ignorance, but knowingly, in order that, by the judgment of their own pride, by which they trust so much in the powers of their own will, they may see themselves to be without excuse; because they have no longer their excuse from ignorance, and they have not yet the righteousness for which they presumed their will to be sufficient. But he to whom the Lord granted the grace both of knowing and of obeying says, “By the law is the knowledge of sin”; and, “I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known concupiscence, except the law had said, You shall not covet.” And he does not wish to be understood as a man ignorant of the law that commands, but as one in need of the grace that sets free, when he says, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man”; and with this not only knowledge of the law but even delight in it, he afterwards says, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” No one, then, delivers from the wounds of that murderer except the grace of the one Saviour. No one delivers those sold under sin from the chains of their captor except the grace of the Redeemer.

29. And for this reason all who wish to be excused in their wickedness and iniquities are most justly punished, because those who are set free are set free only by grace. For if the excuse there were just, it would then be not grace that sets free, but justice. But since only grace sets free, it finds nothing just in the one whom it sets free — not his will, not his doing, not even his excuse itself; for if this excuse is just, whoever uses it is set free by merit and not by grace. For we know that some even of those who say, “Why does He yet find fault? For who has resisted His will?” are set free by the grace of Christ. If that is a just excuse, then they are set free no longer by free grace, but because of the justice of that excuse. But if it is grace by which they are set free, then assuredly this excuse is not just. For then is it true grace by which a man is set free, if it is not repaid according to the debt of justice. In those, then, who say, “Why does He yet find fault? For who has resisted His will?” nothing else is happening than what we read in the book of Solomon: “The foolishness of a man perverts his ways; and he blames God in his heart.”

30. Although, then, God makes vessels of wrath for destruction, that He may show His wrath and make known His power, with which He makes good use even of evil things; and that He may make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He makes unto honour — an honour not due to the condemned lump, but given by the bounty of His grace — yet in those same vessels of wrath, made unto the dishonour due because of the merit of the lump — that is, in men created indeed for the sake of the good things of nature, but destined to punishment because of their vices — He knows how to condemn the iniquity which truth most rightly disapproves, not how to make it. For as human nature, which no one doubts is to be praised, is ascribed to His will, so guilt, which no one refuses to condemn, is ascribed to the will of man. And that will of man either passed on an inherited vice to his posterity, whom he had in himself when he sinned, or acquired other vices besides, when each one lived in himself a life of ruin. But neither from what is derived by origin, nor from the evils which each one gathers in his own life, whether by not understanding or by not wishing to understand, or which he even heaps higher by the addition of transgression when he has been instructed out of the law, is anyone set free and justified except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord; not only by the forgiveness of sins, but first by the inspiring of faith itself and of the fear of God, the desire and the power of prayer being imparted to his salvation, until He heals all our infirmities, and redeems our life from corruption, and crowns us in compassion and mercy.

Chapter 7

31. But these men, who suppose that God becomes a respecter of persons if in one and the same case His mercy comes upon some while His wrath abides upon others, lose the whole force of human argument in the case of little children. For, to say nothing for the moment of the fact that little children, however lately they have come from their mother’s womb, are not outside that penalty of which the apostle speaks when he says, “By the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation,” from which no one sets free but that One of whom the same apostle says, “By the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” — leaving this aside for the moment, and saying only this about little children, which they themselves too, deterred by the authority of the Gospel, or rather broken by the entirely harmonious agreement in faith of the Christian peoples, concede without any refusal, that no little child, unless he is born again of water and the Spirit, enters the kingdom of heaven — what cause, I ask, will they assign for the fact that one is so governed that he departs from here baptized, while another, handed over to unbelievers, or even to believers, breathes his last before he can be brought by them to be baptized? Will they ascribe this to fate, or to fortune? I do not think that men who wish to keep even the smallest share in the Christian name will break out into such madness.

32. Why then shall no little child enter the kingdom of heaven without having received the washing of regeneration? Did he himself choose the unbelieving or careless parents of whom he was to be born? What shall I say of the innumerable unforeseen and sudden deaths by which even the infants of devout Christians are often cut off and snatched away before baptism, while, on the other hand, the infants of the sacrilegious and of the enemies of Christ, coming somehow into the hands of Christians, depart from this life not without the sacrament of regeneration? What will those say here who contend that some human merits must go before, so that grace may be given, lest God be a respecter of persons? What merits went before here? If you consider the little children themselves, they have none of their own; the lump is common to both. If you look to the parents, those were good whose children perished by sudden death without the baptism of Christ, and those were evil whose children came to the sacraments of the Church through some power of Christians. And yet the providence of God, by whom the hairs of our head are numbered, without whose will not a sparrow falls to the ground, which is neither constrained by fate, nor hindered by chance events, nor corrupted by any unrighteousness, does not provide for all the little ones of its own children, that they may be born again to the heavenly inheritance, and does provide for some little ones even of the ungodly. This infant, born of believing parents in wedlock, welcomed with his parents’ joy, is smothered by the drowsiness of his mother or his nurse, and is made to have no lot or part in the faith of his own family; that infant is born of sacrilegious lust, is exposed through his mother’s cruel fear, is taken up by the merciful kindness of strangers, is baptized through their Christian care, and is made a sharer and partaker of the eternal kingdom. Let them think on these things, let them consider these things, and let them dare to say here that God is either a respecter of persons in His grace or a rewarder of preceding merits.

33. For even if they try to suspect some merits, good or evil, in those of riper years, what will they say of these infants, of whom neither the one could acquire by any evil merits of his own the violence of the one who smothered him, nor the other by any good merits the care of the one who baptized him? They are exceedingly vain and blind if, even after considering these things, they do not yet deign to cry out with us: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” Let them not, then, oppose the free mercy of God with a most obstinate madness. Let them allow the Son of man, at any age, to seek and to save that which was lost; and let them not dare to sit in judgment on His unsearchable judgments, as to why, in one and the same case, His mercy comes upon one and His wrath abides upon another.

Chapter 8

34. For who are these men who reply against God, when He, to Rebecca, who had twins by one conceiving of our father Isaac, when they were not yet born and had done neither good nor evil — that the purpose of God according to election might stand, that is, the election of grace, not of debt, an election by which He Himself makes those whom He chooses, not finds them — says, not of works but of Him that calls, that the elder shall serve the younger? To this judgment the blessed apostle also adds the testimony of a much later prophet: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”; that it might be understood that what was made plain afterwards through the prophet was in the predestination of God by grace before they were born. For what did He love in Jacob before he was born and had done anything good, except the free gift of His own mercy? And what did He hate in Esau before he was born and had done anything evil, except original sin? For neither in the one would He love a righteousness which he had not wrought, nor in the other would He hate a nature which He Himself had made good.

35. But it is wonderful, when they are hemmed in by these straits, over what precipices they throw themselves in their fear of the nets of truth. “He hated one,” they say, “and loved the other of these unborn children because He foresaw their future works.” Who would not marvel that the apostle lacked this most acute perception? For he did not see it, when a question was put to himself as by an opponent, and he did not rather give this answer, so short, so plain, and — as these men think — so true and complete. For when he had put forward an astonishing thing, how it could rightly be said of those not yet born and doing neither good nor evil that God loved the one and hated the other, he expressed the hearer’s feeling by putting the question to himself: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.” Here, then, was the place for him to say what these men think: “For God foresaw their future works when He said that the elder should serve the younger.” But the apostle does not say this; rather, so that no one should dare to glory in the merits of his own works, he wished what he said to serve for the commending of the grace and glory of God. For when he had said, “God forbid that there should be unrighteousness with God,” as though we were asking him, “How do you show this, when you assert that it was said, not of works but of Him that calls, ‘The elder shall serve the younger’?” — “For He says to Moses,” he says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.” Where now are merits, where are works, past or future, as though done or to be done by the powers of free will? Has not the apostle uttered a plain judgment for the commending of free grace, that is, of true grace? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the heretics?

36. And what was in hand, that the apostle should say this, that he should bring forward the example of those twins? What was he labouring to persuade, what did he wish to drive home? Surely that very thing which the madness of these men assails, which the proud do not grasp, which those refuse to know who, “being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.” For it was grace itself that the apostle was busy with, and that is why he was commending the children of the promise. For what God promises, no one does but God. For there is some reason and truth in this, that man should promise and God should do; but that a man should say that he himself does what God has promised, is the reprobate mind of proud ungodliness.

37. In commending the children of the promise, then, he first shows this signified through Isaac, the son of Abraham. For the work of God appears more plainly in one whom the usual order of nature did not beget, from a barren womb worn out with old age; so that in the sons of God who were foretold as to come there might be this sign of a divine work and not a human one. “In Isaac,” he says, “shall your seed be called: that is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. For this is the word of promise: At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac.” Why did he add, “by one conceiving,” unless so that Jacob might not glory, not only in his own merits or in those of other parents, but not even in those of that one father, whose will had perhaps been changed for the better — saying that he was loved by the Creator because his father, when he begot him, was more praiseworthy in better conduct? “By one conceiving,” he says: one merit of the father, then, for the begetting of them, one merit of the mother for the conceiving of them. For even if the mother carried them shut up in her womb until she gave birth, and perhaps changed in her wishes and feelings, she certainly changed not for one but for both, whom she carried alike in her womb.

38. We must attend, then, to the aim of the apostle: how, for the commending of grace, he wishes the one of whom it was said, “Jacob have I loved,” to glory in nothing but the Lord; so that, when of the same father, the same mother, one conceiving, before they had done anything good or evil, God loves the one and hates the other, Jacob may understand that out of that lump of original iniquity — in which he sees his brother, with whom he shared a common case, to have deserved condemnation by justice — he could have been set apart only by grace. “For the children being not yet born,” he says, “neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him that calls, it was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger.”

39. And that the election of grace is not made by any preceding merits of works, the same apostle shows most plainly in another place, where he says, “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.” According to this grace, then, taking up in due course the prophetic testimony as well, “As it is written,” he says, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated”; and at once, “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.” But why “God forbid”? Is it because of the works of both which He foreknew would come? No, God forbid this too: “For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.” And that the vessels made from the same lump unto honour might recognise, in the vessels fitted for destruction — the destruction which is due to the condemned lump — what the divine mercy has bestowed on them, he says, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.” Finally, he concludes of both: “Therefore He has mercy on whom He will, and whom He will He hardens.” He does this, with whom there is no unrighteousness. He has mercy, then, by a free gift; but He hardens by a most just desert.

40. But let either the pride of the arrogant unbeliever or the excuse of the condemned man under punishment still say, “Why does He yet find fault? For who has resisted His will?” Let him say it, and let him hear what befits a man: “O man, who are you that replies against God?” and the rest, of which I have already discussed enough, and often, as far as I was able. Let him hear these things and not despise them. But if he despises them, let him find that he has been hardened even so as to despise them; and if he does not despise them, let him believe that he has been helped even so as not to despise them — but hardened by what was due, helped by grace.

Chapter 9

41. For even if — and we have already shown with what blindness this is said — God foresaw the future works of the two twin sons of the patriarch Isaac, who lived and grew old, and for that reason loved Jacob and hated Esau, yet no one can on that account say of little children who are going to die that God foresees their future works, so that He does not provide for this one to receive baptism, and does provide for that one. For how can those things be called future which will never be?

42. “But God,” they say, “foresees in those whom He takes away from here how each would have lived if he had lived; and therefore the one whom He knew would have lived wickedly He causes to die without baptism, punishing in him evil works, not those which he did, but those which he would have done.” If, then, even evil works which were never committed are punished by God, let them first observe how falsely they promise that little children who die without baptism will not go into condemnation — if they are not baptized for the reason that they would have lived evilly if they had lived; for they will without doubt be condemned for that very evil life, if even evils which would have been done are condemned. Then, if provision is made for the sacrament of baptism to be received by those whom God knew would have lived well if they had lived, why are they not all kept in the life which they would adorn with good works? Why do some even of those who are baptized live long and live most wickedly, and sometimes go as far as apostasy? Why did He not cast out of paradise beforehand the first pair of sinners, whom He certainly knew would sin, so that they might not commit there what was unworthy of so holy a place, if sins not yet committed are justly punished? What, finally, is granted to him who is taken away, “lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul,” if those things too are justly punished which, although he did not do them, he would have done by living? Lastly, why is provision not rather made for the one who is to die, who would have lived evilly if he had lived, to receive the washing of regeneration, so that the sins which he would have committed might be forgiven him in baptism? For who is so senseless as to deny that those sins can be remitted through baptism which he says can be punished without baptism?

Chapter 10

43. But in disputing against those who, when they are convicted at every point, labour to persuade us that God is the avenger even of sins not committed, it is to be feared that we may be thought to be inventing these things against them, and that they will be believed to be by no means so dull as either to think these things or to try to persuade anyone of them; nevertheless, unless I had heard them say these things, I should not think they needed to be refuted. For they are hemmed in on every side both by the authority of the divine Scriptures and by the firm rite of the Church, handed down from antiquity and kept to this day, in the baptism of little children, where it is most plainly shown that infants are set free from the dominion of the devil, both when they are exorcised and when they answer, through those by whom they are carried, that they renounce him; and not finding any way out, they go on into headlong folly, since they will not change their opinion.

44. This indeed they think they say most acutely: “How does sin pass into the children of believers, when we do not doubt that it has been remitted in the parents through baptism?” As if carnal generation could for that reason fail to have what spiritual regeneration alone takes away; or as if the weakness of the concupiscence of the flesh were healed at once in baptism, as its guilt is at once abolished — but by the grace of being born again, not by the condition of being born. Hence whoever is born through this concupiscence, even of one who has been born again, will without doubt be harmed by it, unless he too is born again in the same way. But whatever difficulty there is in this question, it does not hinder the labourers in Christ’s field from baptizing infants for the forgiveness of sins, whether they are born of believers or of unbelievers; just as it does not hinder husbandmen from turning wild olives into olives by the care of grafting, whether they spring from wild olives or from olives. For if this too were put to a countryman for him to answer — what the reason is that, though the olive is one thing and the wild olive another, nothing but a wild olive springs from the seed of either — he does not leave off the work of grafting, even though he cannot solve this question. Otherwise, while he thinks that the shoots sprung from the seed of the olive are nothing but olives, the idleness of his vain opinion would bring it about that that whole field would run wild in bitter barrenness.

45. For as to the thing which they have devised, when they were pressed by the weight of the truth — that the Lord is faithful in His words, and that therefore His Church by no means baptizes little children falsely for the forgiveness of sins, but so that what is done may be done in faith, what is said certainly comes to pass — as to what they have devised, I say, when this most evident mass of truth bore down on them, what Christian would not laugh at it, however very crafty he sees it to be? For they say: “Little children do indeed truthfully answer, through the lips of those who carry them, that they believe in the forgiveness of sins; not that sins are forgiven to themselves, but that they believe that sins are forgiven in the Church, or in baptism, to those in whom sins are found, not to those in whom there are none.” And so they do not wish “that they should be baptized for the forgiveness of sins as though that forgiveness takes place in them, whom they contend to have no sin; but because, although they are without sin, they are nevertheless baptized with that baptism in which forgiveness of sins takes place in all who are sinners.”

46. It may indeed be that this shifty cunning can be refuted more subtly and more sharply at leisure. But, for all this craftiness of theirs, they find no answer to this: that infants are exorcised and breathed upon. For this is without doubt done falsely if the devil does not have dominion over them. But if he does have dominion over them, and they are therefore not falsely exorcised and breathed upon, by what does he have dominion, if not by sin, since he is indeed the prince of sinners? Accordingly, if they are now ashamed and do not dare to say that these things are done falsely in the Church, let them confess that what had been lost is sought even in little children; for it had not been lost except through sin, and it cannot be sought, it cannot be found, except by grace. But thanks be to God that, even while they argue against the forgiveness of sins, so that it may not be believed to take place in little children, they do now confess that little children believe, though through the hearts and lips of those who are older. As, then, they hear the Lord saying, “Except a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” on account of which they concede that they must be baptized, so let them hear the same Lord saying, “He that believes not shall be condemned.” For as they confess that they are born again through the ministry of those who baptize, so they also confess that they believe through the hearts and lips of those who answer for them. Let them dare, then, to say that an innocent one will be condemned by a just God, if he is bound by no chain of original sin.

47. If this discourse is long and burdensome amid your occupations, forgive me; for in order to write these things to you, and, being moved by your letter, the token of your goodwill toward us, to talk with you about them, I too have had to do violence to my own occupations by breaking them off. If you learn of anything else that they devise against the Catholic faith, and whatever you too argue against them with faithful and truly pastoral love, lest they lay waste the weak of the Lord’s flock, make it known to us. For by the restlessness of heretics our diligence is roused, as from the sleep of sloth, to search the Scriptures more watchfully for the means by which they may be met, lest they harm the fold of Christ. So, by the manifold grace of the Saviour, God turns to our help even what the enemy contrives for our ruin; since “all things work together for good to them that love God.” May you ever live in God, remembering us, dearest brother.