Three other sermons (174, 175, 176) had as their text 1 Tim. i. 15, 16, and developed its teaching, that the universal sin of the world and its helplessness in sin constituted the necessity of the incarnation; and especially that the necessity of Christ’s grace for salvation is just as great for infants as for adults. Much is very forcibly said in these sermons which was afterwards incorporated in Augustine’s treatises. “There was no reason,” he insists, “for the coming of Christ the Lord except to save sinners. Take away diseases, take away wounds, and there is no reason for medicine. If the great Physician came from heaven, a great sick man was lying ill through the whole world. That sick man is the human race” (175, 1). “He who says, ‘I am not a sinner,’ or ‘I was not,’ is ungrateful to the Saviour. No one of men in that mass of mortals which flows down from Adam, no one at all of men is not sick: no one is healed without the grace of Christ. Why do you ask whether infants are sick from Adam? For they, too, are brought to the church; and, if they cannot run thither on their own feet, they run on the feet of others that they may be healed. Mother Church accommodates others’ feet to them so that they may come, others’ heart so that they may believe, others’ tongue so that they may confess; and, since they are sick by another’s sin, so when they are healed they are saved by another’s confession in their behalf. Let, then, no one buzz strange doctrines to you. This the Church has always had, has always held; this she has received from the faith of the elders; this she will perseveringly guard until the end. Since the whole have no need of a physician, but only the sick, what need, then, has the infant of Christ, if he is not sick? If he is well, why does he seek the physician through those who love him? If, when infants are brought, they are said to have no sin of inheritance (peccatum propaginis) at all, and yet come to Christ, why is it not said in the church to those that bring them, ‘Take these innocents hence; the physician is not needed by the well, but by the sick; Christ came not to call the just, but sinners ‘? It never has been said, and it never will be said. Let each one therefore, brethren, speak for him who cannot speak for himself. It is much the custom to intrust the inheritance of orphans to the bishops; how much more the grace of infants! The bishop protects the orphan lest he should be oppressed by strangers, his parents being dead. Let him cry out more for the infant who, he fears, will be slain by his parents. Who comes to Christ has something in him to be healed; and he who has not, has no reason for seeking the physician. Let parents choose one of two things: let them either confess that there is sin to be healed in their infants, or let them cease bringing them to the physician. This is nothing else than to wish to bring a well person to the physician. Why do you bring him? To be baptized. Whom? The infant. To whom do you bring him? To Christ. To Him, of course, who came into the world? Certainly, it is said. Why did He come into the world? To save sinners. Then he whom you bring has in him that which needs saving?” ⁶

So again: “He who says that the age of infancy does not need Jesus’ salvation, says nothing else than that the Lord Christ is not Jesus to faithful infants; i.e., to infants baptized in Christ. For what is Jesus? Jesus means saviour. He is not Jesus to those whom He does not save, who do not need to be saved. Now, if your hearts can bear that Christ is not Jesus to any of the baptized, I do not know how you can be acknowledged to have sound faith. They are infants, but they are made members of Him. They are infants, but they receive His sacraments. They are infants, but they become partakers of His table, so that they may have life.” ⁷ The preveniency of grace is explicitly asserted in these sermons. In one he says, “Zaccheus was seen, and saw; but unless he had been seen, he would not have seen. For ‘whom He predestinated, them also He called.’ In order that we may see, we are seen; that we may love, we are loved. ‘My God, may His pity prevent me!’” ⁸ And in another, at more length: “His calling has prevented you, so that you may have a good will. Cry out, ‘My God, let Thy mercy prevent me’ (Ps. lviii. 11). That you may be, that you may feel, that you may hear, that you may consent, His mercy prevents you. It prevents you in all things; and do you too prevent His judgment in something. In what, do you say? In what? In confessing that you have all these things from God, whatever you have of good; and from yourself whatever you have of evil” (176, 5). “We owe therefore to Him that we are, that we are alive, that we understand: that we are men, that we live well, that we understand aright, we owe to Him. Nothing is ours except the sin that we have. For what have we that we did not receive?” (1 Cor. ix. 7) (176, 6).

The Treatise on “The Merits and Remission of Sins.”

It was not long, however, before the controversy was driven out of the region of sermons into that of regular treatises. The occasion for Augustine’s first appearance in a written document bearing on the controversy, was given by certain questions which were sent to him for answer by “the tribune and notary” Marcellinus, with whom he had cemented his intimacy at Carthage the previous year, when this notable official was presiding, by the emperor’s orders, over the great conference between the Catholics and Donatists.⁹ The mere fact that Marcellinus, still at Carthage where Cœlestius had been brought to trial, appealed to Augustine at Hippo for written answers to important questions connected with the Pelagian heresy, speaks volumes for the prominent position he had already assumed in the controversy. The questions that were sent concerned the connection of death with sin, the transmission of sin, the possibility of a sinless life, and especially infants’ need of baptism.¹⁰ Augustine was immersed in abundant labours when they reached him.¹¹ But he could not resist this appeal, and that the less since the Pelagian controversy had already grown to a place of the first importance in his eyes. The result was his treatise, On the Merits and Remission of Sins and on the Baptism of Infants, which consisted of two books, and was written in 412.

The first book of this work is an argument for original sin, drawn from the universal reign of death in the world (2–8), from the teaching of Rom. v. 12–21 (9–20), and chiefly from the baptism of infants (21–70).¹² It opens by exploding the Pelagian contention that death is of nature and that Adam would have died even had he not sinned, by showing that the penalty threatened to Adam included physical death (Gen. iii. 19), and that it is due to him that we all die (Rom. viii. 10, 11; 1 Cor. xv. 21) (2–8). Then the Pelagian assertion that we are injured in Adam’s sin only by its bad example, which we imitate, not by any propagation from it, is tested by an exposition of Rom. v. 12 sq. (9–20). And then the main subject of the book is reached, and the writer sharply presses the Pelagians with the universal and primitive fact of the baptism of infants, as a proof of original sin (21–70). He tracks out all their subterfuges,—showing the absurdity of the assertion that infants are baptized for the remission of sins that they have themselves committed since birth (22), or in order to obtain a higher stage of salvation (23–28), or because of sin committed in some previous state of existence (31–33). Then turning to the positive side, he shows at length that the Scriptures teach that Christ came to save sinners, that baptism is for the remission of sins, and that all that partake of it are confessedly sinners (34 sq.); then he points out that John ii. 7, 8, on which the Pelagians relied, cannot be held to distinguish between ordinary salvation and a higher form, under the name of “the kingdom of God” (58 sq.); and he closes by showing that the very manner in which baptism was administered, with its exorcism and exsufflation, implied the infant to be a sinner (63), and by suggesting that the peculiar helplessness of infancy, so different not only from the earliest age of Adam, but also from that of many young animals, may possibly be itself penal (64–69).

The second book treats, with similar fulness, the question of the perfection of human righteousness in this life. After an exordium which speaks of the will and its limitations and of the need of God’s assisting grace (1–6), the writer raises four questions. First, he asks whether it may be said to be possible for a man, by God’s grace, to attain a condition of entire sinlessness in this life (7). This he answers in the affirmative. Secondly, he asks whether any one has ever done this, or may ever be expected to do it. This he answers in the negative on the testimony of Scripture (8–25). Thirdly, he asks why not, and replies briefly because men are unwilling, explaining at length what he means by this (26–33). Finally, he inquires whether any man has ever existed, exists now, or will ever exist, entirely without sin. This question differs from the second inasmuch as that inquired after the attainment in this life of a state in which sinning should cease, while this seeks a man who has never been sinful, implying the absence of original as well as of actual sin. After answering this in the negative (34), Augustine discusses anew the question of original sin. Here he first expounds from the positive side (35–38) the condition of man in paradise, the nature of his probation, and of the fall and its effects both on him and his posterity, and the kind of redemption that has been provided in the incarnation. He then proceeds to reply to certain cavils (39 sq.), such as, “Why should children of baptized people need baptism?”—“How can a sin be remitted to the father and held against the child?”—“If physical death comes from Adam, ought we not to be released from it on believing in Christ?” He concludes with an exhortation to hold fast to the exact truth, turning neither to the right nor left,—neither saying that we have no sin, nor surrendering ourselves to our sin (57 sq.).

After these books were completed, Augustine came into possession of Pelagius’ Commentary on Paul’s Epistles, which was written while he was living in Rome (before 410). He found it to contain some arguments that he had not treated,—such arguments, he tells us, as he had not imagined could be propounded by any one.¹³ Unwilling to re-open his finished treatise, he began a long supplementary letter to Marcellinus, which he intended to serve as a third and concluding book to his work. He was some time in completing this letter. He had asked to have the former two books returned to him; and it is a curious indication of his overworked state, that he forgot what he wanted with them.¹⁴ He visited Carthage while the letter was in hand, and saw Marcellinus personally. Even after his return to Hippo, it dragged along, amid many distractions, slowly towards completion.¹⁵ Meanwhile, a long letter was written to Honoratus, in which a section on the grace of the New Testament was incorporated. At length the promised supplement was completed. It was professedly a criticism of Pelagius’ Commentary, and therefore naturally mentioned his name. But Augustine even goes out of his way to speak as highly of his opponent as he can.¹⁶ It is nevertheless apparent that his esteem for the strength of Pelagius’ mind was not very high, and that he had even less patience with the moral quality that led to Pelagius’ odd, oblique way of expressing his opinions. There is even a half sarcasm in the way he speaks of Pelagius’ care and circumspection, which was certainly justified by the event.

The letter opens by stating and criticising in a very acute and telling dialectic, the new arguments of Pelagius. These were such as the following: “If Adam’s sin injured even those who do not sin, Christ’s righteousness ought likewise to profit even those who do not believe” (2–4); “No man can transmit what he has not; and hence, if baptism cleanses from sin, the children of baptized parents ought to be free from sin;” “God remits one’s own sins, and can scarcely, therefore, impute another’s to us; and if the soul is created, it would certainly be unjust to impute Adam’s alien sin to it” (5). The stress of the letter, however, is laid upon two contentions: 1. That whatever else may be ambiguous in the Scriptures, they are perfectly clear that no man can have eternal life except in Christ, who came to call sinners to repentance (7); and 2. That original sin in infants has always been, in the Church, one of the fixed facts, to be used as a basis of argument in order to reach the truth in other matters, and has never itself been called in question before (10–14). At this point, the writer returns to the second and third of the new arguments of Pelagius mentioned above, and discusses them more fully (15–20). He closes with a recapitulation of the three great points that had been raised: viz., that both death and sin are derived from Adam’s sin by all his posterity; that infants need salvation, and hence baptism; and that no man ever attains in this life such a state of holiness that he cannot truly pray, “Forgive us our trespasses.”

The Treatise on “The Spirit and the Letter.”

Augustine was now to learn that one service often entails another. Marcellinus wrote to say that he was puzzled by what had been said in the second book of this work, as to the possibility of man’s attaining to sinlessness in this life, while yet it was asserted that no man ever had attained or ever would attain, it. How, he asked, can that be said to be possible which is, and which will remain, unexampled? In reply, Augustine wrote, during this same year (412), and sent to his noble friend, another work, which he calls On the Spirit and the Letter, from the prominence which he gives in it to the words of 2 Cor. iii. 6.¹⁷ He did not content himself with a simple, direct answer to Marcellinus’ question. He goes at length into a profound disquisition into the roots of the doctrine. Thus he gives us, not a mere explanation of a former contention, but a new treatise on a new subject,—the absolute necessity of the grace of God for any good living.

He begins by explaining to Marcellinus that he has affirmed the possibility while denying the actuality of a sinless life, on the ground that all things are possible to God,—even the passage of a camel through the eye of a needle, which nevertheless has never occurred (1, 2). For, in speaking of man’s perfection, we are speaking really of a work of God,—and one which is none the less His work because it is wrought through the instrumentality of man and in the use of his free will. The Scriptures, indeed, teach that no man lives without sin. But this is only the proclamation of a matter of fact; and although it is thus contrary to fact and Scripture to assert that men may be found that live sinlessly, yet such an assertion would not be fatal heresy. What is unbearable, is that men should assert it to be possible for man, unaided by God, to attain this perfection. This is to speak against the grace of God. It is to put in man’s power what is only possible to the almighty grace of God (3, 4). No doubt, even these men do not, in so many words, exclude the aid of grace in perfecting human life. They affirm God’s help; but they make it consist in His gift to man of a perfectly free will, and in His addition to this of commandments and teachings which make known to him what he is to seek and what to avoid, and so enable him to direct his free will to what is good. What, however, does such a “grace” amount to? (5). Man needs something more than to know the right way. He needs to love it, or he will not walk in it. And all mere teaching, which can do nothing more than bring us knowledge of what we ought to do, is but the letter that killeth. What we need is some inward, Spirit-given aid to the keeping of what by the law we know ought to be kept. Mere knowledge slays; while to lead a holy life is the gift of God,—not only because He has given us will, nor only because He has taught us the right way, but because by the Holy Spirit He sheds love abroad in the hearts of all those whom He has predestinated and will call and justify and glorify (Rom. viii. 29, 30).

To prove this, Augustine states to be the object of the present treatise; and, after investigating the meaning of 2 Cor. iii. 6 and showing that “the letter” there means the law as a system of precepts, which reveals sin rather than takes it away, points out the way rather than gives strength to walk in it and therefore slays the soul by shutting it up under sin,—while “the Spirit” is God’s Holy Ghost who is shed abroad in our hearts to give us strength to walk aright,—he undertakes to prove this position from the teachings of the Epistle to the Romans at large. This contention, it will be seen, cut at the very roots of Pelagianism. If all mere teaching slays the soul, as Paul asserts, then all that what they called “grace” could, when alone, do, was to destroy; and the upshot of “helping” man by simply giving him free will and pointing out the way to him, would be the loss of the whole race. Not that the law is sin: Augustine teaches that it is holy and good and God’s instrument in salvation. Not that free will is done away: it is by free will that men are led into holiness. But the purpose of the law (he teaches) is to make men so feel their lost estate as to seek the help by which alone they may be saved; and will is only then liberated to do good when grace has made it free. “What the law of works enjoins by menace, that the law of faith secures by faith. What the law of works does is to say, ‘Do what I command thee;’ but by the law of faith we say to God, ‘Give me what thou commandest.’” (22).¹⁸

In the midst of this argument, Augustine is led to discuss the differentiating characteristics of the Old and New Testaments. He expounds at length (33–42) the passage in Jer. xxxi. 31–34, showing that, in the prophet’s view, the difference between the two covenants is that in the Old, the law is an external thing written on stones; while in the New, it is written internally on the heart, so that men now wish to do what the law prescribes. This writing on the heart is nothing else, he explains, than the shedding abroad by the Holy Spirit of love in our hearts, so that we love God’s will, and therefore freely do it. Towards the end of the treatise (50–61), he treats in an absorbingly interesting way of the mutual relations of free will, faith, and grace, contending that all co-exist without the voiding of any. It is by free will that we believe; but it is only as grace moves us, that we are able to use our free will for believing; and it is only after we are thus led by grace to believe, that we obtain all other goods. In prosecuting this analysis, Augustine is led to distinguish very sharply between the faculty and use of free will (58), as well as between ability and volition (53). Faith is an act of the man himself; but only as he is given the power from on high to will to believe, will he believe (57, 60).

By this work, Augustine completed, in his treatment of Pelagianism, the circle of that triad of doctrines which he himself looked upon as most endangered by this heresy,¹⁹—original sin, the imperfection of human righteousness, the necessity of grace. In his mind, the last was the kernel of the whole controversy; and this was a subject which he could never approach without some heightened fervour. This accounts for the great attractiveness of the present work,—through the whole fabric of which runs the golden thread of the praise of God’s ineffable grace. In Canon Bright’s opinion, it “perhaps, next to the Confessions, tells us most of the thoughts of that ‘rich, profound, and affectionate mind’ on the soul’s relations to its God.”²⁰

The Letters to Anastasius and Paulinus.

After the publication of these treatises, the controversy certainly did not lull. But it relapsed for nearly three years, again, into less public courses. Meanwhile, Augustine was busy, among other most distracting cares (Ep. 145, 1), still defending the grace of God by letters and sermons. A fair illustration of his state of mind at this time may be obtained from his letter to Anastasius (145), which assuredly must have been written soon after the treatise On the Spirit and the Letter. Throughout this letter, there are adumbrations of the same train of thought that filled that treatise; and there is one passage which may almost be taken as a summary of it. Augustine is weary of the vexatious cares that oppressed his life. He is ready to long for the everlasting rest. Yet he bewails the weakness which allowed the sweetness of external things still to insinuate itself into his heart. Victory over, and emancipation from, this, he asserts, “cannot, without God’s grace, be achieved by the human will, which is by no means to be called free so long as it is subject to enslaving lusts.” Then he proceeds as follows: “The law, therefore, by teaching and commanding what cannot be fulfilled without grace, demonstrates to man his weakness, in order that the weakness, thus proved, may resort to the Saviour, by whose healing the will may be able to do what it found impossible in its weakness. So, then, the law brings us to faith, faith obtains the Spirit in fuller measure, the Spirit sheds love abroad in us, and love fulfils the law. For this reason the law is called a schoolmaster, under whose threatening and severity ‘whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.’ But ‘how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?’ Wherefore, that the letter without the Spirit may not kill, the life-giving Spirit is given to those that believe and call upon Him; but the love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us, so that the words of the same apostle, ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law,’ may be realized. Thus the law is good to him that uses it lawfully; and he uses it lawfully, who, understanding wherefore it was given, betakes himself, under the pressure of its threatening, to liberating grace. Whoever ungratefully despises this grace by which the ungodly is justified, and trusts in his own strength for fulfilling the law, being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish his own righteousness, is not submitting himself to the righteousness of God; and therefore the law is made to him not a help to pardon, but the bond of guilt; not because the law is evil, but because ‘sin,’ as it is written, ‘works death to such persons by that which is good.’ For by the commandment he sins more grievously, who, by the commandment, knows how evil are the sins which he commits.”

Although Augustine states clearly that this letter is written against those “who arrogate too much to the human will, imagining that, the law being given, the will is of its own strength sufficient to fulfil the law, though not assisted by any grace imparted by the Holy Ghost, in addition to instruction in the law,”—he refrains still from mentioning the names of the authors of this teaching, evidently out of a lingering tenderness in his treatment of them. This will help us to explain the courtesy of a note which he sent to Pelagius himself at about this time, in reply to a letter he had received from him some time before, and of which Pelagius afterward (at the Synod of Diospolis) made, to say the least of it, an ungenerous use. This note,²¹ Augustine tells us, was written with “tempered praises” (wherefrom we see his lessening respect for the man), and in such a manner as to admonish Pelagius to think rightly concerning grace,—so far as could be done without raising the dregs of the controversy in a formal note. He sought to accomplish this by praying from the Lord for Pelagius, those good things by which he might be good forever, and might live eternally with Him who is eternal; and by asking his prayers in return, that he, Augustine, too, might be made by the Lord such as Pelagius seemed to suppose he already was. How Augustine could really intend these prayers to be understood as an admonition to Pelagius to look to God for what he was seeking to work out for himself, is fully illustrated by the closing words of this almost contemporary letter to Anastasius. “Pray, therefore, for us,” he writes, “that we may be righteous,—an attainment wholly beyond a man’s reach, unless he know righteousness and be willing to practise it, but one which is immediately realized when he is perfectly willing; but this cannot be in him unless he is healed by the grace of the Spirit, and aided to be able.” The point had already been made in the controversy that so much power was attributed to the human will by the Pelagian doctrine that no one ought to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

If he was anxious to avoid personal controversy with Pelagius himself in the hope that he might even yet be reclaimed, Augustine was equally anxious to teach the truth on all possible occasions. Pelagius had been intimate, when at Rome, with the pious Paulinus, bishop of Nola; and it was understood that there was some tendency at Nola to follow the new teachings. It was, perhaps, as late as 414, when Augustine made reply in a long letter,²² to a request which Paulinus had sent him about 410²³ for an exposition of certain difficult passages of Scripture. Among these passages was Rom. xi. 28; and, in explaining it, Augustine did not withhold a tolerably complete account of his doctrine of predestination, involving the essence of his whole teaching as to grace. “For when he had said,” he remarks, “‘according to the election they are beloved for their father’s sake,’ he added, ‘for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.’ You see that those are certainly meant who belong to the number of the predestinated… . ‘Many indeed are called but few chosen;’ but those who are elect, these are ‘called according to His purpose;’ and it is beyond doubt that in them God’s foreknowledge cannot be deceived. These He foreknew and predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first born among many brethren. But ‘whom He predestinated, them He also called.’ This calling is ‘according to His purpose,’ this calling is ‘without repentance,’” etc., quoting Rom. v. 28–31. Then continuing, he says: “Those are not in this vocation who do not persevere unto the end in the faith that worketh by love, although they walk in it a little while… . But the reason why some belong to it and some do not, can easily be hidden, but cannot be unjust. For is there injustice with God? God forbid! For this belongs to those high judgments which, so to say, terrified the wondering apostle to look upon.”

Controversial Sermons.

Among the most remarkable of the controversial sermons that were preached about this time, especial mention is due to two that were delivered at Carthage in the midsummer of 413. The former of these²⁴ was preached on the festival of John the Baptist’s birth (June 24), and naturally took the forerunner for its subject. The nativity of John suggesting the nativity of Christ, the preacher spoke of the marvel of the incarnation. He who was in the beginning, and was the Word of God, and was Himself God, and who made all things, and in whom was life, even this one “came to us. To whom? To the worthy? Nay, but to the unworthy! For Christ died for the ungodly and the unworthy, though He was worthy. We indeed were unworthy whom He pitied; but He was worthy who pitied us, to whom we say, ‘For Thy pity’s sake, Lord, deliver us!’ Not for the sake of our preceding merits, but ‘for Thy pity’s sake, Lord, deliver us;’ and ‘for Thy name’s sake be propitious to our sins,’ not for our merit’s sake… . For the merit of sins is, of course, not reward, but punishment.” The preacher then dwelt upon the necessity of the incarnation, and the necessity of a mediator between God and “the whole mass of the human race alienated from Him by Adam.” Then, quoting 1 Cor. iv. 7, he asserts that it is not our varying merits but God’s grace alone that makes us differ, and that we are all alike, great and small, old and young, saved by one and the same Saviour. “‘What then,’ some one says,” he continues, “‘even the infant needs a liberator?’ Certainly he needs one. And the witness to it is the mother that faithfully runs to church with the child to be baptized. The witness is Mother Church herself, who receives the child for washing, and either for dismissing him [from this life] delivered, or nurturing him in piety… . Last of all, the tears of his own misery are witness in the child himself… . Recognize the misery, extend the help. Let all put on bowels of mercy. By as much as they cannot speak for themselves, by so much more pityingly let us speak for the little ones.” Then follows a passage calling on the Church to take the grace of infants in their charge as orphans committed to their care, which is in substance repeated from a former sermon.²⁵ The speaker proceeded to quote Matt. i. 21, and apply it. If Jesus came to save from sins, and infants are brought to Him, it is to confess that they, too, are sinners. Then, shall they be withheld from baptism? “Certainly, if the child could speak for himself, he would repel the voice of opposition, and cry out, ‘Give me Christ’s life! In Adam I died: give me Christ’s life; in whose sight I am not clean, even if I am an infant whose life has been but one day in the earth.’” “No way can be found,” adds the preacher, “of coming into the life of this world except by Adam; no way can be found of escaping punishment in the next world except by Christ. Why do you shut up the one door?” Even John the Baptist himself was born in sin; and absolutely no one can be found who was born apart from sin, unless we can find one who has been born apart from Adam. “‘By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin, death; and so it passed through upon all men.’ If these were my words, could this sentiment be expressed more expressly, more clearly, more fully?”

Three days afterwards,²⁶ on the invitation of the Bishop of Carthage, Augustine preached a sermon professedly directed against the Pelagians,²⁷ which took up the threads hinted at in the former discourse, and developed a full polemic with reference to the baptism of infants. He began, formally enough, with the determination of the question in dispute. The Pelagians concede that infants should be baptized. The only question is, For what are they baptized? We say that they would not otherwise have salvation and eternal life; but they say it is not for salvation, not for eternal life, but for the kingdom of God. “The child, they say, although not baptized, by the desert of his innocence, in that he has no sin at all, either actual or original, either from himself or contracted from Adam, necessarily has salvation and eternal life even if not baptized; but is to be baptized for this reason,—that he may enter into the kingdom of God, i.e., into the kingdom of heaven.” He then showed that there is no eternal life outside the kingdom of heaven, no middle place between the right and left hand of the judge at the last day, and that, therefore, to exclude one from the kingdom of God is to consign him to the pains of eternal fire; while, on the other side, no one ascends into heaven unless he has been made a member of Christ, and this can only be by faith,—which, in an infant’s case, is professed by another in his stead. He next treated, at length, some of the puzzling questions with which the Pelagians were wont to try the catholics; and then, breaking off suddenly, he took a volume in his hands. “I ask you,” he said, “to bear with me a little: I will read somewhat. It is St. Cyprian whom I hold in my hand, the ancient bishop of this see. What he thought of the baptism of infants, —nay, what he has shown that the Church always thought,—learn in brief. For it is not enough for them to dispute and argue I know not what impious novelties: they even try to charge us with asserting novelties. It is on this account that I read here St. Cyprian, in order that you may perceive that the orthodox understanding and catholic sense reside in the words which I have been just now speaking to you. He was asked whether an infant ought to be baptized before he was eight days old, seeing that by the ancient law no infant was allowed to be circumcised until he was eight days old. A question arose from this as to the day of baptism,—for concerning the origin of sin there was no question; and therefore from this thing of which there was no question, that question that had arisen was settled.” Whereupon he read to them the passage out of Cyprian’s letter to Fidus, which declares that he, and all the council with him, unanimously thought that infants should be baptized at the earliest possible age, lest they should die in their inherited sin and so pass into eternal punishment.’²⁸ The sermon closed with a tender warning to the teachers of these strange doctrines. He might call them heretics with truth, but he will not; let the Church seek still their salvation, and not mourn them as dead; let them be exhorted as friends, not striven with as enemies. “They disparage us,” he says, “we will bear it; let them not disparage the rule [of faith], let them not disparage the truth; let them not contradict the Church, which labours every day for the remission of infants’ original sin. This thing is settled. The errant disputer may be borne with in other questions that have not been thoroughly canvassed, that are not yet settled by the full authority of the Church,—their error should be borne with: it ought not to extend so far that they endeavour to shake even the very foundations of the Church!” He hints that although the patience hitherto exhibited towards them is “perhaps not blameworthy,” yet patience may cease to be a virtue, and become culpable negligence. In the mean time, however, he begs that the catholics should continue amicable, fraternal, placid, loving, long suffering.

Letter to Hilary of Sicily.

Augustine himself gives us a view of the progress of the controversy at this time, in a letter written in 414.²⁹ The Pelagians had everywhere scattered the seeds of their new error. Some of them, by his ministry and that of his brother workers, had, “by God’s mercy,” been cured of their pest. Yet they still existed in Africa, especially about Carthage, and were everywhere propagating their opinions in subterranean whispers, for fear of the judgment of the Church. Wherever they were not refuted they were seducing others to their following; and they were so spread abroad that he did not know where they would break out next. Nevertheless, he was still unwilling to brand them as heretics, and was more desirous of healing them as sick members of the Church than of cutting them off finally as too diseased for cure. Jerome also tells us that the poison was spreading in both the East and the West, and mentions particularly as seats where it showed itself the islands of Rhodes and Sicily. Of Rhodes we know nothing further; but from Sicily an appeal came to Augustine in 414 from one Hilary,³⁰ setting forth that there were certain Christians about Syracuse who taught strange doctrines, and beseeching Augustine to help him in dealing with them. The doctrines were enumerated as follows: “They say (1) that man can be without sin, (2) and can easily keep the commandments of God if he will; (3) that an unbaptized infant, if he is cut off by death, cannot justly perish, since he is born without sin; (4) that a rich man that remains in his riches cannot enter the kingdom of God, except he sell all that he has; … (5) that we ought not to swear at all;” and (6) apparently, that the Church is to be in this world without spot or blemish. Augustine suspected that these Sicilian disturbances were in some way the work of Cœlestius, and therefore in his answer³¹ informs his correspondent of what had been done at the Synod of Carthage (412) against that heretic.

The long letter that was thus called forth follows the inquiries in the order they were put by Hilary. To the first of these Augustine replies substantially as he had treated the same matter in the second book of the treatise, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins,—that it is opposed to Scripture to hold that man can live sinlessly in this life, but that it is less a heresy than the wholly unbearable opinion that this state of sinlessness can be attained without God’s help. “But when they say that free will suffices to man for fulfilling the precepts of the Lord, even though unaided to good works by God’s grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is to be altogether anathematized and detested with all execration. For those who assert this are inwardly alien from God’s grace, because being ignorant of God’s righteousness, like the Jews of whom the apostle speaks, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to God’s righteousness, since there is no fulfilment of the law except love; and of course the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, not by ourselves, nor by the force of our own will, but by the Holy Ghost who is given to us.” Dealing next with the second point, he drifts into the matter he had more fully developed in his work On the Spirit and the Letter. “Free will avails for God’s works,” he says, “if it be divinely aided, and this comes by humble seeking and doing; but when deserted by divine aid, no matter how excellent may be its knowledge of the law, it will by no means possess solidity of righteousness, but only the inflation of ungodly pride and deadly arrogance. This is taught us by that same Lord’s Prayer; for it would be an empty thing for us to ask God ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ if the matter was so placed in our power that we would avail for fulfilling it without any aid from Him. For this free will is free in proportion as it is sound, but it is sound in proportion as it is subject to divine pity and grace. For it faithfully prays, saying, ‘Direct my ways according to Thy word, and let no iniquity reign over me.’ For how is that free over which iniquity reigns? But see who it is that is invoked by it, in order that it may not reign over it. For it says not, ‘Direct my ways according to free will because no iniquity shall rule over me,’ but ‘Direct my ways according to Thy word, and let no iniquity rule over me.’ It is a prayer, not a promise; it is a confession, not a profession; it is a wish for full freedom, not a boast of personal power. For it is not ‘every one who confides in his own power,’ but ‘every one who calls on the name of God,’ that ‘shall be saved.’ ‘But how shall they call upon Him,’ he says, ‘in whom they have not believed?’ Accordingly, then, they who rightly believe, believe in order to call on Him in whom they have believed, and to avail for doing what they receive in the precepts of the law; since what the law commands, faith prays for.” “God, therefore, commands continence, and gives continence; He commands by the law, He give by grace; He commands by the letter, He gives by the spirit: for the law without grace makes the transgression to abound, and the letter without the Spirit kills. He commands for this reason,—that we who have endeavoured to do what He commands and are worn out in our weakness under the law, may know how to ask for the aid of grace; and, if we have been able to do any good work, that we may not be ungrateful to Him who aids us.” The answer to the third point traverses the ground that was fully covered in the first book of the treatise On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, beginning by opposing the Pelagians to Paul in Rom. v. 12-19: “But when they say that an infant, cut off by death unbaptized, cannot perish since he is born without sin,—it is not this that the apostle says; and I think that it is better to believe the apostle than them.” The fourth and fifth questions were new in this controversy; and it is not certain that they belong properly to it, though the legalistic asceticism of the Pelagian leaders may well have given rise to a demand on all Christians to sell what they had and give to the poor. This one of the points, Augustine treats at length, pointing out that many of the saints of old were rich, and that the Lord and His apostles always so speak that their counsels avail to the right use, not the destruction of wealth. Christians ought so to hold their wealth that they are not held by it and by no means prefer it to Christ. Equal good sense and mildness are shown in his treatment of the question concerning oaths; he points out that they were used by the Lord and His apostles, but advises that they be used as little as possible, lest by the custom of frequent oaths we learn to swear lightly. The question as to the Church, he passes over as having been sufficiently treated in the course of his previous remarks.

The Treatise on “Nature and Grace.”

To the number of those who had been rescued from Pelagianism by his efforts, Augustine was now to have the pleasure of adding two others, in whom he seems to have taken much delight. Timasius and James were two young men of honourable birth and liberal education, who had been moved by the exhortations of Pelagius to give up the hope that they had in this world and to enter upon the service of God in an ascetic life.³² Naturally, they had turned to him for instruction, and had received from him a book to which they had given their study. They met somewhere with some of Augustine’s writings, however, and were deeply affected by what he said as to grace, and now began to see that the teaching of Pelagius opposed the grace of God by which man becomes a Christian. They gave their book, therefore, to Augustine, saying that it was Pelagius’, and asking him for Pelagius’ sake, and for the sake of the truth, to answer it. This was done; the resulting book, On Nature and Grace, was sent to the young men; and they returned a letter of thanks³³ in which they professed their conversion from their error. In this book, too, which was written in 415, Augustine refrained from mentioning Pelagius by name,³⁴ still feeling it better to spare the man while not sparing his errors. But he tells us, that, on reading the book of Pelagius’ to which it was an answer, it became clear to him beyond any doubt that Pelagius’ teaching was distinctly anti-Christian;³⁵ and when speaking of his own book privately to a friend, he allows himself to call it “a considerable book against the heresy of Pelagius, which he had been constrained to write by some brethren whom Pelagius had persuaded to adopt his fatal error, denying the grace of Christ.”³⁶ Thus his attitude towards the persons of the new teachers was becoming ever more and more strained, despite his recognition of the excellent motives that might lie behind their “zeal not according to knowledge.”

The treatise which was thus called out opens with a recognition of the zeal of Pelagius. As it burned most ardently against those who, when reproved for sin, take refuge in censuring their nature, Augustine compares it with the heathen view as expressed in Sallust’s saying, “The human race falsely complains of its own nature.”³⁷ He charges it therefore with not being according to knowledge, and proposes to oppose it by an equal zeal against all attempts to render the cross of Christ of none effect. He then gives a brief but excellent summary of the more important features of the catholic doctrine concerning nature and grace (2-7). Opening the work of Pelagius which had been placed in his hands, he examines his doctrine of sin, its nature and effects. Pelagius, he points out, draws a distinction, sound enough in itself, between what is “possible” and what is “actual,” but applies it unsoundly to sin, when he says that every man has the possibility of being without sin (8-9), and therefore without condemnation. Not so, says Augustine: an infant who dies unbaptized has no possibility of salvation open to him; and the man who has lived and died in a land where it was impossible for him to hear the name of Christ has had no possibility open to him of becoming righteous by nature and free will. If this be not so, Christ is dead in vain, since all men in that case might have accomplished their salvation, even if Christ had never died (10). Pelagius, moreover, he shows, exhibits a tendency to deny the sinful character of all sins which are impossible to avoid, and so treats of sins of ignorance as to imply that he entirely excuses them (13-19). When he argues that no sin, because it is not a substance, can change nature, which is a substance, Augustine replies that this destroys the Saviour’s work,—for how can He save from sins if sins do not corrupt? And, again, if an act cannot injure a substance, how can abstention from food, which is a mere act, kill the body? In the same way sin is not a substance; but God is a substance,—yea, the height of substance and only true sustenance of the reasonable creature; and the consequence of departure from Him is to the soul what refusal of food is to the body (22). To Pelagius’ assertion that sin cannot be punished by more sin, Augustine replies that the apostle thinks differently (Rom. i. 21-31). Then putting his finger on the main point in controversy, he quotes the Scriptures as declaring the present condition of man to be that of spiritual death. “The Truth then designates as dead those whom this man declares to be unable to be damaged or corrupted by sin,—because, forsooth, he has discovered sin to be no substance!” (25). It was by free will that man passed into this state of death; but a dead man needs something else to revive him,—he needs nothing less than a Vivifier. But of vivifying grace, Pelagius knows nothing; and by knowing nothing of a Vivifier, he knows nothing of a Saviour; but rather by making nature of itself able to be sinless, he glorifies the Creator at the expense of the Saviour (39). Next is examined Pelagius’ contention that many saints are enumerated in the Scriptures as having lived sinlessly in this world. While declining to discuss the question of fact as to the Virgin Mary (42), Augustine opposes to the rest the declaration of John in I John i. 8 as final, but still pauses to explain why the Scriptures do not mention the sins of all, and to contend that all who ever were saved, under the Old Testament or under the New, were saved by the sacrificial death of Christ and by faith in Him (40-50). Thus we are brought, as Augustine says, to the core of the question, which concerns, not the fact of sinlessness in any man, but man’s ability to be sinless. This ability Pelagius affirms of all men, and Augustine denies of all “unless they are justified by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (51). Accordingly, the whole discussion concerns grace, which Pelagius does not admit in any true sense, but places only in the nature that God has made (52).

We are next invited to attend to another distinction of Pelagius’, in which he discriminates sharply between the nature that God has made, the crown of which is free will, and the use that man makes of this free will. The endowment of free will is a “capacity;” it is, because given by God in our making, a necessity of nature, and not in man’s power to have or not have. It is the right use of it only, which man has in his power. This analysis Pelagius illustrates at length by appealing to the difference between the possession and use of the various bodily senses. The ability to see, for instance, he says, is a necessity of our nature: we do not make it; we cannot help having it; it is ours only to use it. Augustine criticises this presentation of the matter with great acuteness (although he is not averse to the analysis itself), with a view to showing the inapplicability of the illustrations used. For, he asks, is it not possible for us to blind ourselves, and so no longer have the ability to see? And would not many a man like to control the “use” of his “capacity” to hear when a screechy saw is in the neighbourhood? (55). The falsity of the contention illustrated, he argues, is evident from the fact that Pelagius has ignored the fall, and, even were that not so, has so ignored the need of God’s aid for all good, in any state of being, as to deny it (56). Moreover, it is altogether a fallacy, Augustine argues, to contend that men have the “ability” to make every use we can conceive of our faculties. We cannot wish for unhappiness; God cannot deny Himself (57): and just so, in a corrupt nature, the mere possession of a faculty of choice does not imply the ability to use that faculty for not sinning. “Of a man, indeed, who has his legs strong and sound, it may be said admissibly enough, ‘whether he will or not, he has the capacity of walking;’ but if his legs be broken, however much he may wish to walk, he has not the ‘capacity’ to do so. The nature of which our author speaks is corrupted” (57). What, then, can he mean by saying that, whether we will or not, we have the capacity of not sinning,—a statement so opposite to Paul’s in Rom. vii. 15? Some space is next given to an attempted rebuttal by Pelagius of the testimony of Gal. v. 17, on the ground that the “flesh” there does not refer to the baptized (60-70). Then the passages are examined which Pelagius had quoted against Augustine out of earlier writers,—Lactantius (71), Hilary (72), Ambrose (75), John of Constantinople (76), Xystus,—a blunder of Pelagius’, who quoted from a Pythagorean philosopher, mistaking him for the Roman bishop Sixtus (57), Jerome (78), and Augustine himself (80). All these writers, Augustine shows, admitted the universal sinfulness of man,—and especially he himself had confessed the necessity of grace in the immediate context of the passage quoted by Pelagius. The treatise closes (82 sq.) with a noble panegyric on that love which God sheds abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost, and by which alone we can be made keepers of the law.

Letter to Jerome on the Origin of Souls.

The treatise On Nature and Grace was as yet unfinished when the over-busy³⁸ scriptorium at Hippo was invaded by another young man seeking instruction. This time it was a zealous young presbyter from the remotest parts of Spain,—“from the shore of the ocean,”—Paulus Orosius by name. His pious soul had been afflicted with grievous wounds by the Priscillianist and Origenist heresies that had broken out in his country, and he had come with eager haste to Augustine on hearing that he could get from him the instruction which he needed for confuting them. Augustine seems to have given him his heart at once. But feeling too little informed as to the special heresies which Orosius wished to be prepared to controvert, he persuaded him to go on to Palestine to be taught by Jerome, and gave him introductions which described him as one “who is in the bond of catholic peace a brother, in point of age a son, and in dignity a fellow-presbyter,—a man of quick understanding, ready speech and burning zeal.” His departure to Palestine gave Augustine an opportunity to consult with Jerome on the one point that had been raised in the Pelagian controversy on which he had not been able to see light. The Pelagians had early argued³⁹ that, if souls are created new for men at their birth, it would be unjust in God to impute Adam’s sin to them. And Augustine found himself unable either to prove that souls are transmitted (“traduced,” as the phrase is), or to show that it would not involve God in injustice to create a soul only to make it subject to a sin committed by another. Jerome had already put himself on record as a believer in both original sin and the creation of souls at the time of birth. Augustine feared the logical consequences of this assertion, and yet was unable to refute it. He therefore seized this occasion to send a long treatise on the origin of the soul to his friend, with the request that he would consider the subject afresh, and answer his doubts.⁴⁰

In this treatise he stated that he was fully persuaded that the soul had fallen into sin by no fault of God or of nature, but of its own free will; and asked when could the soul of an infant have contracted the guilt which, unless the grace of Christ should come to its rescue by baptism, would involve it in condemnation, if God (as Jerome held, and as he was willing to hold with him, if this difficulty could be cleared up) makes each soul for each individual at the time of birth? He professed himself embarrassed on such a supposition by the penal sufferings of infants, by the pains they endure in this life, and much more by the danger they are in of eternal damnation, into which they actually go unless saved by baptism. God is good, just, omnipotent: how, then, can we account for the fact that “in Adam all die,” if souls are created afresh for each birth? “If new souls are made for men individually at their birth,” he affirms, “I do not see, on the one hand, that they could have any sin while yet in infancy; nor do I believe, on the other hand, that God condemns any soul which He sees to have no sin.” “And yet, whoever says that those children who depart out of this life without partaking of the sacrament of baptism, shall be made alive in Christ, certainly contradicts the apostolic declaration,” and “he that is not made alive in Christ must necessarily remain under the condemnation of which the apostle says that by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” “Wherefore,” he adds to his correspondent, “if that opinion of yours does not contradict this firmly grounded article of faith, let it be mine also; but if it does, let it no longer be yours.”⁴¹ So far as obtaining light was concerned, Augustine might have spared himself the trouble of this composition. Jerome simply answered⁴² that he had no leisure to reply to the questions submitted to him. But Orosius’ mission to Palestine was big with consequences. Once there, he became the accuser of Pelagius before John of Jerusalem, and the occasion, at least, of the trials of Pelagius in Palestine during the summer and winter of 415, which issued so disastrously and ushered in a new phase of the conflict.

The Treatise on “The Perfection of Man’s Righteousness.”

Meanwhile, however, Augustine was ignorant of what was going on in the East, and had his mind directed again to Sicily. About a year had passed since he had sent thither his long letter to Hilary. Now his conjecture that Cœlestius was in some way at the bottom of the Sicilian outbreak, received confirmation from a paper which certain Catholic brethren brought out of Sicily, and which was handed to Augustine by two exiled Spanish bishops, Eutropius and Paul. This paper bore the title, Definitions Ascribed to Cœlestius, and presented internal evidence, in style and thought, of being correctly so ascribed.⁴³ It consisted of three parts. In the first of these were collected a series of brief and compressed “definitions,” or “ratiocinations” as Augustine calls them, in which the author tries to place the Catholics in a logical dilemma, and to force them to admit that man can live in this world without sin. In the second part, there were adduced certain passages of Scripture in defence of Pelagian doctrine. In the third part, an attempt was made to deal with the texts that had been quoted against the Pelagian contention, not, however, by examining into their meaning, or seeking to explain them in the sense of the new theory, but simply by matching them with others which might be thought to make for it. In answer to this paper, Augustine at once (about the end of 415) wrote a treatise which bears the title of On the Perfection of Man’s Righteousness.

The distribution of the matter in this work follows that of the paper to which it is a reply. First of all (1–16), the “ratiocinations” are taken up one by one and briefly answered. As they all concern sin and have for their object to prove that man cannot be accounted a sinner unless he is able, in his own power, wholly to avoid sin—that is, to prove that a plenary natural ability is the necessary basis of responsibility—Augustine argues per contra that man can entail a sinfulness on himself for which and for the deeds of which he remains responsible, though he be no longer able to avoid sin; he thus allows that, for the race, plenary ability must stand at the root of sinfulness. Next (17–22), he discusses the passages of Scripture which Cœlestius had advanced in defence of his teachings. These include two classes of texts. There were (1) passages in which God commands men to be without sin. These Augustine meets by saying that the point is, whether these commands are to be fulfilled without God’s aid, in the body of this death, while absent from the Lord (17–20). There were also (2) passages in which God declares that His commandments are not grievous. These Augustine meets by explaining that all God’s commandments are fulfilled only by love, which finds nothing grievous; and that this love is shed abroad in our hearts only by the Holy Ghost, without whom we have only fear, to which the commandments are not only grievous but impossible. Lastly, Augustine patiently follows Cœlestius through his odd “oppositions of texts,” carefully explaining, in an orthodox sense, all that he had adduced (23–42). In closing, he takes up Cœlestius’ statement that “it is quite possible for man not to sin even in word, if God so will,” pointing out how he avoids saying “if God give him His aid,” and then proceeds to distinguish carefully between the differing assertions of sinlessness that may be made. To say that any man ever lived, or will live, without needing forgiveness, is to contradict Rom. v. 12, and must imply that he does not need a Saviour, against Matt. ix. 12. 13. To say that, after his sins have been forgiven, any one has ever remained without sin, contradicts 1 John i. 8 and Matt. vi. 12. Yet, if God’s help be allowed, this contention is not so wicked as the other; the great heresy is to deny the necessity of God’s constant grace, for which we pray when we say, “Lead us not into temptation.”

Activity Subsequent to the Palestinian Acquittal.

Tidings were now (416) beginning to reach Africa of what was doing in the East. There was diligently circulated everywhere and finally came into Augustine’s hands, an epistle of Pelagius’ own “filled with vanity.” In it he boasted that fourteen bishops had approved his assertion that “man can live without sin, and easily keep the commandments if he wishes,” and had thus “shut the mouth of opposition in confusion” and “broken up the whole band of wicked conspirators against him.” Soon afterwards a copy of an “apologetical paper,” in which Pelagius used the authority of the Palestinian bishops against his adversaries, not altogether without disingenuousness, was sent by him to Augustine through the hands of a common acquaintance, Charus by name. It was not accompanied, however, by any letter from Pelagius; and Augustine wisely refrained from making public use of it. Towards midsummer Orosius came with more authentic information, and bearing letters from Jerome and Heros and Lazarus.

It was apparently before Orosius came that a controversial sermon was preached, only a fragment of which has come down to us.⁴⁴ So far as we can learn from the extant part, its subject seems to have been the relation of prayer to Pelagianism; and what we have opens with a striking anecdote. “When these two petitions—‘Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors,’ and ‘Lead us not into temptation’—are objected to the Pelagians, what do you think they reply? I was horrified, my brethren, when I heard it. I did not, indeed, hear it with my own ears; but my holy brother and fellow-bishop Urbanus, who used to be presbyter here and now is bishop of Sicca,” when he was in Rome and was arguing with one who held these opinions, pressed him with the weight of the Lord’s Prayer, and “what do you think he replied to him? ‘We ask God,’ he said, ‘not to lead us into temptation lest we should suffer something that is not in our power—lest I should be thrown from my horse, lest I should break my leg, lest a robber should slay me, and the like. For these things,’ he said, ‘are not in my power; but for overcoming the temptations of my sins, I both have ability if I wish to use it, and am not able to receive God’s help.’⁴⁵ You see, brethren,” the good bishop adds, “how malignant this heresy is: you see how it horrifies all of you. Have a care that you be not taken by it.” He then presses the general doctrine of prayer as proving that all good things come from God, whose aid is always necessary to us and is always attainable by prayer; and closes as follows:

“Consider, then, these things, my brethren, when any one comes to you and says to you, ‘What, then, are we to do if we have nothing in our power, unless God gives all things? God will not then crown us, but He will crown Himself.’ You already see that this comes from that vein: it is a vein, but it has poison in it; it is stricken by the serpent; it is not sound. For what Satan is doing to-day is seeking to cast out from the Church by the poison of heretics, just as he once cast out from Paradise by the poison of the serpent. Let no one tell you that this one was acquitted by the bishops: there was an acquittal, but it was his confession, so to speak, his amendment, that was acquitted. For what he said before the bishops seemed catholic; but what he has written in his books, the bishops who pronounced the acquittal were ignorant of. And perchance he was really convinced and amended. For we ought not to despair of the man who perchance preferred to be united to the catholic faith and fled to its grace and aid. Perchance this was what happened. But, in any event, it was not the heresy that was acquitted, but the man who denied the heresy.”⁴⁶

The coming of Orosius must have dispelled any lingering hope that the meaning of the council’s finding was that Pelagius had really recanted. Councils were immediately assembled at Carthage and Mileve, and the documents which Orosius had brought were read before them. We know nothing of their proceedings except what we can gather from the letters⁴⁷ which they sent to Innocent at Rome, seeking his aid in their condemnation of the heresy now so nearly approved in Palestine. To these two official letters, Augustine, in company with four other bishops, added a private letter,⁴⁸ in which care was taken that Innocent should be informed on all the points necessary to his decision. This important letter begins almost abruptly with a characterization of Pelagianism as inimical to the grace of God, and has grace for its subject throughout. It accounts for the action of the Palestinian synod as growing out of a misunderstanding of Pelagius’ words, in which he seemed to acknowledge grace. Those catholic bishops naturally would understand this to mean that grace of which they read in the Scriptures, and which they were accustomed to preach to their people,—the grace by which we are justified from iniquity, and saved from weakness. While Pelagius really meant nothing more than that “grace” by which we are given free will at our creation. “For if these bishops had understood that he meant only that grace which we have in common with the ungodly and with all along with whom we are men, while he denied that by which we are Christians and the sons of God, they not only could not have patiently listened to him,—they could not even have borne him before their eyes.” The letter then proceeds to point out the difference between grace and natural gifts, and between grace and the law, and to trace out Pelagius’ meaning when he speaks of grace and when he contends that man can be sinless without any really inward aid. It suggests that Pelagius be sent for and thoroughly examined by Innocent; or that he should be examined by letter or in his writings; and that he be not cleared until he should unequivocally confess the grace of God in the catholic sense, and anathematize the false teachings in the books attributed to him. The book of Pelagius which was answered in the treatise On Nature and Grace was enclosed with this letter, with the most important passages marked: and it was suggested that more was involved in the matter than the fate of one single man, Pelagius, who, perhaps, was already brought to a better mind; the fate of multitudes already led astray, or yet to be deceived by these false views, was in danger.

At about this same time (417), the tireless bishop sent a short letter⁴⁹ to a Hilary who seems to be ‘Hilary of Norbonne, which is interesting from the attempt made in it to convey a characterization of Pelagianism to one who was as yet ignorant of it. It thus brings out what Augustine conceived to be its essential features. “An effort has been made,” we read, “to raise a certain new heresy, inimical to the grace of Christ, against the Church of Christ. It is not yet openly separated from the Church. It is the heresy of men who dare to attribute so much power to human weakness that they contend that this only belongs to God’s grace,—that we are created with free will and the possibility of not sinning, and that we receive God’s commandments, which are to be fulfilled by us; while, for keeping and fulfilling these commandments, we do not need any divine aid. No doubt, the remission of sins is necessary for us; for we have no power to right what we have done wrong in the past. But for avoiding and overcoming sins in the future, for conquering all temptations with virtue, the human will is sufficient by its natural capacity without any aid of God’s grace. And neither do infants need the grace of the Saviour, so as to be delivered from perdition by it through His baptism, seeing that they have contracted no contagion of damnation from Adam.”⁵⁰ He engages Hilary in the destruction of this heresy, which ought to be “concordantly condemned and anathematized by all who have hope in Christ,” as a “pestiferous impiety,” and excuses himself for not undertaking its full refutation in a brief letter.

A much more important letter was dispatched at about the same time to John of Jerusalem, who had conducted the first Palestinian examination of Pelagius and had borne a prominent part in the synod at Diospolis. With it was sent a copy of Pelagius’ book which had been examined in the treatise On Nature and Grace, as well as a copy of that reply itself; and John was asked to send Augustine an authentic copy of the proceedings at Diospolis. Augustine took this occasion seriously to warn his brother bishop against the wiles of Pelagius, and to beg him, if he loved Pelagius, to let men see that he did not so love him as to be deceived by him. He pointed out that in the book sent with the letter, Pelagius called nothing the grace of God except nature; and that he affirmed, and even vehemently contended, that by free will alone human nature was able to suffice for itself for working righteousness and keeping all God’s commandments. From this any one could see that he opposed the grace of God of which the apostles spoke in Rom. vii. 24, 25, and contradicted, as well, all the prayers and benedictions of the Church by which blessings were sought for men from God’s grace. “If you love Pelagius, then,” he continued, “let him, too, love you as himself,—nay, more than himself; and let him not deceive you. For when you hear him confess the grace of God and the aid of God, you think he means what you mean by it. But let him be openly asked whether he is willing that we should pray God that we sin not; whether he preaches the assisting grace of God without which we would do much evil; whether he believes that even children who have not yet been able to do good or evil are nevertheless, on account of one man by whom sin entered into the world, sinners in him, and in need of being delivered by the grace of Christ.” If he frankly denies such things, Augustine would be pleased to hear of it.

Thus we see the great bishop sitting in his library at Hippo, placing his hands on the two ends of the world. That nothing may be lacking to the picture of his universal activity, we have another letter from him, coming from about this same time, that exhibits his care for the individuals who had placed themselves in some sort under his tutelage. Among the refugees from Rome in the terrible times when Alaric was a second time threatening the city, was a family of noble women, Proba, Juliana and Demetrias,⁵¹—grandmother, mother, and daughter—who, finding an asylum in Africa, gave themselves to God’s service and sought the friendship and counsel of Augustine. In 413 the granddaughter “took the veil” under circumstances that thrilled the Christian world, and brought out letters of congratulation and advice from Augustine and Jerome, and also from Pelagius. This letter of Pelagius seems not to have fallen into Augustine’s way until now (416). He was so disturbed by it that he wrote to Juliana a long letter warning her against its evil counsels.⁵² It was so shrewdly phrased that, at first sight, Augustine was himself almost persuaded that it did somehow acknowledge the grace of God; but when he compared it with others of Pelagius’ writings, he saw that, here too, he was using ambiguous terms in a non-natural sense. The object of his own letter (in which Alypius is conjoined as joint author) is to warn Juliana and her holy daughter against all opinions that opposed the grace of God, and especially against the covert teaching of the letter of Pelagius to Demetrias.⁵³ “In this book,” he says, “were it lawful for such an one to read it, a virgin of Christ would read that her holiness and all her spiritual riches are to spring from no other source than herself; and thus, before she attains to the perfection of blessedness, she would learn—which may God forbid!—to be ungrateful to God.” He quotes the words of Pelagius in which he declares that “earthly riches came from others, but your spiritual riches no one can have conferred on you but yourself; for these, then, you are justly praised, for these you are deservedly to be preferred to others—for they can exist only from yourself and in yourself.” And then, he continues: “Far be it from any virgin to listen to statements like these. Every virgin of Christ understands the innate poverty of the human heart, and therefore declines to be adorned otherwise than by the gifts of her Spouse… . Let her not listen to him who says, ‘No one can confer them on you but yourself, and they cannot exist except from you and in you:’ but to him who says, ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.’ And be not surprised that we speak of these things as yours, and not from you; for we speak of daily bread as ‘ours,’ but yet add, ‘Give it to us,’ lest it should be thought it was from ourselves.” Again, he instructs her that grace is not mere knowledge, any more than mere nature; and that Pelagius, even when using the word “grace,” means no inward or efficient aid, but mere nature or knowledge or forgiveness of past sins: and beseeches her not to forget the God of all grace from whom (Wisdom i. 20, 21) Demetrias had that very virgin continence which was so justly her boast.

With the opening of 417, came the answers from Innocent to the African letters.⁵⁴ They were marred by much boastful language concerning the dignity of his See, which could not but be distasteful to the Africans. But they admirably served their purpose in the satisfactory manner in which, on the one hand, they asserted the necessity of the “daily grace and help of God” for our good living, and, on the other, they determined that the Pelagians had denied this grace, and declared their leaders, Pelagius and Cœlestius, deprived of the communion of the Church until they should “recover their senses from the wiles of the Devil by whom they are held captive according to his will.” Augustine may be pardoned for supposing that a condemnation pronounced by two provincial synods in Africa and heartily concurred in by the Roman bishop, who had already at Jerusalem been recognized as in some sort the fit arbiter of this Western dispute, should settle the matter. If Pelagius had been jubilant before, Augustine found this a suitable time for his rejoicing.

The Treatise on “The Proceedings in Palestine,” and the Letter to Paulinus.

About the same time with Innocent’s letters, the official proceedings of the synod of Diospolis at last reached Africa, and Augustine lost no time in publishing (early in 417) a full account and examination of them, thus providing us with that inestimable boon, a full contemporary history of the chief events connected with the controversy up to this time. He addresses this treatise to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, and opens with an explanation of his delay in discussing Pelagius’ defence of himself in Palestine, as due to his not having earlier received the official copy of the Proceedings of the Council at Diospolis (1–2a). Then he proceeds to discuss at length the doings of the synod, point by point, following the official record step by step (2b–45). He treats at large here eleven items in the indictment, with Pelagius’ answers and the synod’s decisions; and shows that in all of them Pelagius either explained away his heresy, taking advantage of the judges’ ignorance of his books, or else openly repudiated or anathematized it. Augustine points out that when it reached the twelfth item of the indictment (41b–43)— which charged Pelagius with teaching that men cannot be sons of God unless they are sinless, and with condoning sins of ignorance, and with asserting that choice is not free if it depends on God’s help and that pardon is given according to merit—the synod was so indignant, that, without waiting for Pelagius’ answer, it condemned the statement; and Pelagius at once repudiated and anathematized it (43). How could the synod act in such circumstances, he asks, except by acquitting the man who condemned the heresy? After quoting the final judgment of the synod (44), Augustine briefly characterizes it and its effect (45) as being indeed all that could be expected of the judges, but of no moral weight to those better acquainted than they were with Pelagius’ character and writings. In a word, they approved his answers to them, as indeed they ought to have done; but they by no means approved, but both they and he condemned, his heresies as expressed in his writings. To this statement, Augustine appends an account of the origin of Pelagianism and of his relations to it from the beginning, which has the very highest value as history (46–49); and then speaks of the character and doubtful practices of Pelagius (50–58), returning at the end (59–65) to a thorough canvass of the value of the acquittal which he obtained by such doubtful practices at the synod. He closes with an indignant account of the outrages which the Pelagians had perpetrated on Jerome (66).

This valuable treatise is not, however, the only account of the historical origin of Pelagianism that we have from Augustine’s hands. Soon after the death of Innocent (March 12, 417), he found occasion to write a very long letter⁵⁵ to the venerable Paulinus of Nola, in which he summarized both the history of and the arguments against this “worldly philosophy.” He begins by saying that he knows Paulinus has in the past loved Pelagius as a servant of God, but is ignorant in what way he now loves him. For he himself not only has loved him but loves him still, but in different ways. Once he loved him as apparently a brother in the true faith: now he loves him in the longing that God will by His mercy free him from his noxious opinions against God’s grace. He is not merely following report in so speaking of him. No doubt report had for a long time represented this of him, but the less heed had been given to it because report is accustomed to lie. But a book by Pelagius⁵⁶ at last came into his hands which left no room for doubt, since in it it was asserted repeatedly that God’s grace consists of the gift to man of the capacity to will and act, and thus was reduced to what is common to pagans and Christians, to the ungodly and godly, to the faithful and infidels. He then gives a brief account of the measures that had been taken against Pelagius, and passes on to a treatment of the main matters involved in the controversy,—all of which gather around the one magic word of “the grace of God.” He argues first that we are all lost,—in one mass and concretion of perdition,—and that God’s grace alone makes us to differ. It is therefore folly to talk of deserving the beginnings of grace. Nor can a faithful man say that he merits justification by his faith, although it is given to faith; for at once he hears the words, “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” and learns that even the deserving faith is the gift of God. But if, peering into God’s inscrutable judgments, we go farther, and ask why from the mass of Adam, all of which undoubtedly has fallen by one into condemnation, this vessel is made for honor, that for dishonor,—we can only say that we do not know more than the fact, and that God’s reasons are hidden but His acts are just. Certain it is that Paul teaches that all die in Adam; and that God, by a sovereign election, freely chooses out of that sinful mass some to eternal life; and that He knew from the beginning to whom He would give this grace, and so the number of the saints has always been fixed, to whom He gives in due time the Holy Ghost. Others, no doubt, are called; but no others are elect, or “called according to His purpose.” On no other body of doctrines can it be possibly explained that some infants die unbaptized and are lost. Is God unjust to punish innocent children with eternal pains? And are they not innocent if they are not partakers of Adam’s sin? And can they be saved from that, save by the undeserved, and that is the gratuitous, grace of God? The account of the proceedings at the Palestinian synod is then taken up, and Pelagius’ position in his latest writings is quoted and examined. “But why say more?” he adds… . “Ought they not, since they call themselves Christians, to be more careful than the Jews that they do not stumble at the stone of offence, while they subtly defend nature and free will just like philosophers of this world who vehemently strive to be thought, or to think themselves, to attain for themselves a happy life by the force of their own will? Let them take care, then, that they do not make the cross of Christ of none effect by the wisdom of word (1 Cor. i. 17), and thus stumble at the rock of offence. For human nature, even if it had remained in that integrity in which it was created, could by no means have served its own Creator without His aid. Since then, without God’s grace it could not keep the safety it had received, how can it without God’s grace repair what it has lost?” With this profound view of the Divine immanence, and of the necessity of His moving grace in all the acts of all His creatures, as over against the heathen-deistic view of Pelagius, Augustine touched in reality the deepest point in the whole controversy, and illustrated the essential harmony of all truth.⁵⁷

The sharpest period of the whole conflict was now drawing on.⁵⁸ Innocent’s death brought Zosimus to the chair of the Roman See, and the efforts which he made to re-instate Pelagius and Cœlestius now began (September, 417). How little the Africans were likely to yield to his remarkable demands, may be seen from a sermon⁵⁹ which Augustine preached on the 23d of September, while Zosimus’ letter (written on the 21st of September) was on its way to Africa. The preacher took his text from John vi. 54–66. “We hear here,” he said, “the true master, the divine Redeemer, the human Saviour, commending to us our ransom, His blood. He calls His body food, and His blood drink; and, in commending such food and drink, He says, ‘Except you eat My flesh, and drink My blood, ye shall have no life in you.’ What, then, is this eating and drinking, but to live? Eat life, drink life; you shall have life, and life is whole. This will come,—that is, the body and blood of Christ will be life to every one,—if what is taken visibly in the sacrament is in real truth spiritually eaten and spiritually drunk. But that He might teach us that even to believe in Him is of gift, not of merit, He said, ‘No one comes to Me, except the Father who sent Me draw him.’ Draw him, not lead him. This violence is done to the heart, not the flesh. Why do you marvel? Believe, and you come; love, and you are drawn. Think not that this is harsh and injurious violence; it is soft, it is sweet; it is sweetness itself that draws you. Is not the sheep drawn when the succulent herbage is shown to him? And I think that there is no compulsion of the body, but an assembling of the desires. So, too, do you come to Christ; wish not to plan a long journey,—when you believe, then you come. For to Him who is everywhere, one comes by loving, not by taking a voyage. No doubt, if you come not, it is your work; but if you come, it is God’s work. And even after you have come and are walking in the right way, become not proud, lest you perish from it: ‘happy are those that confide in Him,’ not in themselves, but in Him. We are saved by grace, not of ourselves: it is the gift of God. Why do I continually say this to you? It is because there are men who are ungrateful to grace and attribute much to unaided and wounded nature. It is true that man received great powers of free will at his creation; but he lost them by sinning. He has fallen into death; he has been made weak; he has been left half dead in the way, by robbers; the good Samaritan has lifted him up upon his ass and borne him to the inn. Why should we boast? But I am told that it is enough that sins are remitted in baptism. But does the removal of sin take away weakness too? What! will you not see that after pouring the oil and the wine into the wounds of the man left half dead by the robbers, he must still go to the inn where his weakness may be healed? Nay, so long as we are in this life we bear a fragile body; it is only after we are redeemed from corruption that we shall find no sin and receive the crown of righteousness. Grace, that was hidden in the Old Testament, is now manifest to the whole world. Even though the Jew may be ignorant of it, why should Christians be enemies of grace? why presumptuous of themselves? why ungrateful to grace? For, why did Christ come? Was not nature already here,—that very nature by the praise of which you are beguiled? Was not the law here? But the apostle says, ‘If righteousness is of the law, then is Christ dead in vain.’ What the apostle says of the law, that we say to these men about nature: if righteousness is by nature, then Christ is dead in vain. What then was said of the Jews, this we see repeated in these men. They have a zeal for God: I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God: but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to the righteousness of God. My brethren, share my compassion. Where you find such men, wish no concealment; let there be no perverse pity in you: where you find them, wish no concealment at all. Contradict and refute, resist, or persuade them to us. For already two councils have, in this cause, sent letters to the Apostolic See, whence also rescripts have come back. The cause is ended: would that the error might some day end! Therefore we admonish so that they may take notice, we teach so that they may be instructed, we pray so that their way may be changed.”

Here is certainly tenderness to the persons of the teachers of error, readiness to forgive, and readiness to go all proper lengths in recovering them to the truth. But here is also absolute firmness as to the truth itself, and a manifesto as to policy. Certainly, on the lines of the policy here indicated, the Africans fought out the coming campaign. They met in council at the end of this year, or early in the next (418), and formally replied to Zosimus that the cause had been tried, and was finished; and that the sentence that had been already pronounced against Pelagius and Cœlestius should remain in force until they should unequivocally acknowledge that “we are aided by the grace of God through Christ, not only to know, but to do, what is right, and that in each single act; so that without grace we are unable to have, think, speak, or do anything belonging to piety.” As we may see Augustine’s hand in this, so, doubtless, we may recognize it in that remarkable piece of engineering which crushed Zosimus’ plans within the next few months. There is, indeed, no direct proof that it was due to Augustine, or to the Africans under his leading, or to the Africans at all, that the State interfered in the matter. It is even in doubt whether the action of the Empire was put forth as a rescript, or as a self-moved decree. But surely it is difficult to believe that such a coup de théâtre could have been prepared for Zosimus by chance. As it is well known both that Augustine believed in the righteousness of civil penalty for heresy, invoking it on other occasions and defending and using it on this, and that he had influential friends at court with whom he was in correspondence, it seems, on internal grounds, altogether probable that he was the deus ex machinâ who let loose the thunders of ecclesiastical and civil enactment simultaneously on the poor Pope’s devoted head.

The Treatises “On the Grace of Christ” and “On Original Sin.”

The “great African Council” met at Carthage on the 1st of May, 418. After its decrees were issued, Augustine remained at Carthage and watched the effect of the combination of which he was probably one of the moving causes. He had now an opportunity to betake himself once more to his pen. While still at Carthage, at short notice and in the midst of much distraction, he wrote a large work in two books, which have come down to us under the separate titles of On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin, at the instance of another of those ascetic families which formed so marked a feature in those troubled times. Pinianus and Melania, the daughter of Albina, were husband and wife, who, leaving Rome amid the wars with Alaric, had lived together continently in Africa for some time, but now in Palestine had separated, he to become head of a monastery, and she an inmate of a convent. While in Africa, they had lived at Sagaste under the tutelage of Alypius, and in the enjoyment of the friendship and instruction of Augustine. After retiring to Bethlehem, like the other holy ascetics whom he had known in Africa, they kept up their relations with him. Like the others, also, they became acquainted with Pelagius in Palestine, and were well-nigh deceived by him. They wrote to Augustine that they had begged Pelagius to condemn in writing all that had been alleged against him, and that he had replied, in the presence of them all, that “he anathematized the man who either thinks or says that the grace of God whereby Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners is not necessary, not only for every hour and for every moment, but also for every act of our lives,” and had asserted that “those who endeavor to disannul it are worthy of everlasting punishment.”⁶⁰ Moreover, they wrote, Pelagius had read to them, out of his book that he had sent to Rome,⁶¹ his assertion “that infants ought to be baptized with the same formula of sacramental words as adults.”⁶² They expressed their delight at hearing from Pelagius these words, which seemed exactly what they should wish to hear: and yet they felt impelled to consult Augustine about them, before they fully committed themselves regarding them.⁶³ It was in answer to this appeal, that the present work was written. Its two books take up the two points in Pelagius’ asseveration. The theme of the first is, “the assistance of Divine grace towards our justification, by which God co-operates in all things for good to those who love Him and whom He first loved, giving to them that He may receive from them.” While the subject of the second is, “the sin which by one man has entered the world along with death, and so has passed upon all men.”⁶⁴

The first book, On the Grace of Christ, begins by quoting and examining Pelagius’ anathema of all those who deny that grace is necessary for every action (2 sq.). Augustine confesses that this would deceive all who were not fortified by knowledge of Pelagius’ writings. But he asserts that in the light of these writings it is clear that Pelagius means that grace is always necessary, only because we need continually to remember the forgiveness of our sins, the example of Christ, the teaching of the law, and the like. Then he enters (4 sq.) upon an examination of Pelagius’ scheme of human faculties, and quotes at length the account of them as given in his book, In Defence of Free Will. Pelagius distinguishes between the possibilitas (posse), voluntas (velle) and actio (esse), and declares that the first only is from God and receives aid from God, while the others are entirely ours and in our own power. Augustine opposes to this the passage in Phil. ii. 12, 13 (6), and then criticises (7 sq.) Pelagius’ ambiguous acknowledgment that God is to be praised for man’s good works “because the capacity for any action on man’s part is from God,” which reduces all grace to the primeval endowment of nature with “capacity” (possibilitas, posse) and the help afforded it by the law and teaching. Augustine points out the difference between law and grace, and the purpose of the former as a pedagogue to the latter (9 sq.), and then refutes Pelagius’ further definition of grace as consisting in the promise of future glory and the revelation of wisdom, by an appeal to Paul’s thorn in the flesh and his experience under its discipline (11 sq.). Pelagius’ illustrations of his theory of natural faculty from our senses are then sharply tested (16). The criticism on the whole doctrine is then pressed (17 sq.), that it makes God equally sharer in our blame for evil acts as in our praise for good ones, since if God does help and His help is only His gift to us of ability to act in either part, then He has equally helped to the evil deeds as to the good. The assertion that this “capacity of either part” is the fecund root of both good and evil is then criticised (19 sq.), and opposed to Matt. vii. 18, with the result of establishing that we must seek two roots in our dispositions for so diverse results,—covetousness for evil, and love for good,—not a single root in nature for both. Man’s “capacity,” it is argued, is the root of nothing; but it is capable of both good and evil according to the moving cause, which, in the case of evil, is man-originated, while, in the case of good, it is from God (21). Next, Pelagius’ assertion that grace is given according to our merits (23 sq.) is taken up and examined. It is shown, that, despite his anathema, Pelagius holds to this doctrine, and in so extreme a form as explicitly to declare that man comes and cleaves to God by his freedom of will alone, and without God’s aid. He shows that the Scriptures teach just the opposite (24-26); and then points out how Pelagius has confounded the functions of knowledge and love (27 sq.), and how he forgets that we cannot have merits until we love God, while John certainly asserts that God loved us first (1 John iv. 10). The representation that what grace does is to render obedience easier (28-30), and the twin view that prayer is only relatively necessary, are next criticised (32). That Pelagius never acknowledges real grace is then demonstrated by a detailed examination of all that he had written on the subject (31-45). The book closes (46-80) with a full refutation of Pelagius’ appeal to Ambrose, as if he supported him; and an exhibition of Ambrose’s contrary testimony as to grace and its necessity.

The object of the second book—On Original Sin—is to show, that, in spite of Pelagius’ admissions as to the baptism of infants, he yet denies that they inherit original sin and contends that they are born free from corruption. The book opens by pointing out that there is no question as to Cœlestius’ teaching in this matter (2-8). At Carthage he refused to condemn those who say that Adam’s sin injured no one but himself and that infants are born in the same state that Adam was in before the fall; and he openly asserted at Rome that there is no sin ex traduce. As for Pelagius, he is simply more cautious and mendacious than Cœlestius. He deceived the Council at Diospolis, but failed to deceive the Romans (5-13), and, as a matter of fact (14-18), teaches exactly what Cœlestius does. In support of this assertion, Pelagius’ Defence of Free Will is quoted, wherein he asserts that we are born neither good nor bad “but with a capacity for either,” and “as without virtue, so without vice; and that previous to the action of our own proper will, that alone is in man which God has formed” (14). Augustine also quotes Pelagius’ explanation of his anathema against those who say Adam’s sin injured only himself, as meaning that he has injured man by setting a bad “example;” and his even more sinuous explanation of his anathema against those who assert that infants are born in the same condition that Adam was in before he fell, as meaning that they are infants and he was a man! (16-18). With this introduction to them, Augustine next treats of Pelagius’ subterfuges (19-25), and then animadverts on the importance of the issue (26-37), pointing out that Pelagianism is not a mere error but a deadly heresy, and strikes at the very centre of Christianity. A counter argument of the Pelagians is then taken up (38-45), “Does not the doctrine of original sin make marriage an evil thing?” No, says Augustine, marriage is ordained by God and is good; but it is a diseased good, and hence what is born of it is a good nature made by God, but this good nature in a diseased condition,—the result of the Devil’s work. Hence, if it be asked why God’s gift produces anything for the Devil to take possession of, it is to be answered that God gives his gifts liberally (Matt. v. 45), and makes men; but the Devil makes these men sinners (46). Finally, as Ambrose had been appealed to in the former book, so at the end of this it is shown that he openly proclaimed the doctrine of original sin, and here too, before Pelagius, condemned Pelagius (47 sq.).