Dialogue Against the Pelagians

To those who say that I write this work kindled by the torches of envy, I will briefly reply: that I have never spared heretics, and have striven with all my zeal that the enemies of the Church should become my enemies too. Helvidius wrote against the perpetual virginity of holy Mary. Was I moved by envy to answer him, whom I never even saw in the flesh? Jovinian, whose heresy is now being revived, disturbed the Roman faith in my absence, being so tongue-tied and of such fetid speech that he was more deserving of pity than of envy. I answered him too as best I could. Rufinus brought the blasphemies of Origen and the books Περὶ Ἀρχῶν, so far as lay in his power, not upon one city only but upon the whole world; so much so that he published even the first book of Eusebius' Defence of Origen under the name of the martyr Pamphilus, and, as though that had said too little, vomited forth a new volume on his behalf.

Did we envy him because we answered him, and did such rivers of eloquence flow in him that they deterred me from the pursuit of writing and dictating? Palladius, in his servile wickedness, attempted to renew the same heresy, and to fabricate against me a new calumny concerning the Hebrew translation. Do we envy his talent and nobility either? Now too the mystery of iniquity is at work, and each man prattles what he thinks; I alone am the one who is gnawed by the glory of all others; and so wretched am I that I even envy those who do not deserve to be envied. Wherefore, that I might prove to all that I do not hate men but errors, and that I do not seek the infamy of any, but rather grieve at the lot of those who are tripped up by knowledge falsely so called, I have set down the names of Atticus and Critobulus, through whom I might set forth what both our side and that of our adversaries hold.

Rather, all of us who follow the catholic faith wish and desire that the heresy be condemned, and the men amended. Or certainly, if they wish to remain in error, the fault is not ours who have written, but theirs who have preferred a lie to the truth. And briefly we answer our slanderers, who heap their reproaches upon them, that it is the opinion of the Manichaeans to condemn human nature, take away free will, and remove the help of God. And again it is the plainest madness to say that man is what God is. And thus one must walk the royal road, so that we turn neither to the left nor to the right; and let us always believe that the appetite of our own will is governed by the help of God.

But if anyone cries out that he is falsely defamed, and boasts that he holds our views, then he will prove his assent to the true faith when he shall have openly and without deceit condemned the opposite view; lest he hear that word of the Prophet: "And in all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in falsehood". And it is a lesser sin to follow evil which you have thought good, than not to dare to defend what you know for certain to be good. We who cannot bear threats, injury, poverty, how shall we overcome the flames of Babylon? Let not a feigned peace take away what war has preserved. I do not wish to learn perfidy through fear, since Christ has left the true faith to my will.

ATTICUS. Tell me, Critobulus, is it true, as I hear it reported that you have written: that man can be without sin if he wills, and that the commandments of God are easy? CRITOBULUS. It is true, Atticus, but it is not taken by my rivals in the sense in which it was said by me. Atticus: What ambiguity then is there in the saying, that occasion should be given for different understandings? Nor do I ask that you answer both points equally. For you have proposed two things: one, that man can be without sin if he wills; the other, that the commandments of God are easy. Though they were said together, let them be discussed part by part, so that regarding those points in which there seems to be one faith, there be no dispute arising from a difference of opinion.

Critobulus: I said, Atticus, that man can be without sin if he wills, not—as certain slanderers falsely charge—without the grace of God (which it is sacrilege even to think), but simply that he can, if he wills, it being understood, with the grace of God. Atticus: Then is God also the author of the evil deeds in you? Critobulus: By no means, as you suppose. But if I have any good in me, it is accomplished by His suggestion and help. Atticus: I am not asking about nature, but about act. For who doubts that God is the Creator of all things? This is what I would have you answer me: the good you do—is it yours, or God's? Critobulus: It is mine, and God's; in that I work, and He helps. Atticus: And how is this the common opinion, when you take away the grace of God, and assert that whatever we men do is a matter only of our own will?

Critobulus: I wonder, Atticus, why you demand of me the cause and reason of another's error, and ask about what is not written, when it is plain what I have written. I said that man can be without sin, if he wills. Did I add, without the grace of God? Atticus: But from the fact that you did not add it, you seem to deny it. Critobulus: Rather, from the fact that I did not deny it, I am to be considered to have affirmed it. For we are not to think that whatever we do not say, we deny. Atticus: Do you confess, then, that man can be without sin, if he wills, with the grace of God? Critobulus: I not only confess it; I proclaim it freely. Atticus: Does he err, then, who takes away the grace of God? Critobulus: He errs.

Rather he is to be judged impious, since all things are governed by the will of God, and this very fact that we exist and possess the appetite of our own will is the benefit of God the Creator. For that we possess free will, and incline by our own will either to the good part or to the bad—whose grace is this but His, who made us such, after His own image and likeness?

No one, Critobulus, doubts that all things depend on the judgment of Him who is the Creator of all, and that whatever we have is to be reckoned as His benefit. But I ask this: this very thing which you assert to be of the grace of God—do you refer it to the benefit of our creation, or do you think it is present in each of the things we do, so that we use His help in all things? Or, once created with free will by Him, do we act by our own will or strength as we wish? For I know that most of your party so refer everything to the grace of God that they understand His power not in the particulars, but in general—that is, not in each single thing, but in the condition of the will. Critobulus: It is not as you suppose, but I say both: that it is of the grace of God that we were created such, and that in each work we are supported by His help.

Atticus: It is agreed, then, between us, that in good works, after our own will, we rely on the help of God; in evil ones, on the help of the devil. Critobulus: It is agreed, and there is no dispute about this. Atticus: They think wrongly, then, who take away the help of God in each of the things we do, and who strive, by perverse—nay, ridiculous—interpretations, to twist to other senses that which the Psalmist sings: "Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guard the city, he who guards it watches in vain", and other things of this kind.

Critobulus: What need have I to speak against others, when you have my own answer? Atticus: Of what sort is your answer? That they think rightly, or wrongly? Critobulus: And what necessity compels me to give a judgment against others? Atticus: The order of the discussion and the reason of truth. Or do you not know that everything that is said either is or is not, and must be reckoned either among good things or bad? This, then, about which I ask, whether it is said well or badly, must be admitted by you, however unwilling. Critobulus: If in each of the things we do we must use the help of God, then, unless God helps, we shall not be able to prepare a pen for writing, and to grind the prepared ink, and to fit the hand to letters, to keep silent, to speak, to sit, to stand, to walk, to run, to eat, to fast, to weep, to laugh, and other things of this kind? Atticus: According to my view it is plain that we cannot.

Critobulus: In what, then, do we have free will, and in what is God's grace toward us preserved, if we cannot even do this without God?

Atticus: The grace of free will was not given in such a way that God's support in particular acts is taken away. God's help is not taken away, when the grace of free will, once given to the creature, is preserved. For if I can do nothing apart from God, and unless He helps me in each particular thing, then He will neither justly crown me for good works, nor afflict me for evil ones; but in either case He will either receive or condemn His own help. Atticus: Say then simply, why do you take away the grace of God? For whatever you take away in the particulars, you must necessarily deny in general also. Critobulus: I do not deny grace, since I assert that I was so created by God that it was given, by God's grace, to my will, either to do a thing or not to do it.

Atticus: Does God then sleep in our works, once the power of free will has been given, nor is He to be entreated to help us in each of our works, since it belongs to our will and our own free choice either to do a thing if we wish, or not to do it if we do not wish?

Critobulus: As the order of creation is preserved in the rest of creatures, so, once the power of free will has been granted, all things are left to our own will. Atticus: Then, as I said, ought I not to entreat help from God in each thing, which has once been given over to my own judgment? Critobulus: If He cooperates in all things, it is not mine, but His who helps—nay, who cooperates in me—especially since without Him I can do nothing. Atticus: I ask you, have you not read: "It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy"?

From which we understand that indeed the willing and the running are ours; but that our will and our running should be fulfilled belongs to the mercy of God, and thus it comes about that both in our will and in our running free will is preserved, and yet in the consummation of the will and the running everything is left to the power of God. Doubtless now the testimonies of the Scriptures must be repeated to me, showing how in each thing the saints beg the help of God, and desire in each of their works to have Him as helper and protector. Read through the whole Psalter, all the voices of the saints—there will be nothing but supplication to God in all their works.

From which it is clearly shown that either you deny the grace of God, which you take away in particulars; or, if you grant it in particulars—which it is plain you by no means wish to do—you pass over into our position, who so preserve free will for man that we do not deny the help of God in each particular thing.

Critobulus: That conclusion is captious, and descends from the art of the dialecticians. But no one will be able to take from me the power of free will, lest, if God should stand forth as helper in my works, the reward should not be owed to me, but to him who worked in me. Atticus: Enjoy the power of free will, so that you may arm your tongue against God, and prove yourself free in this, if it be lawful for you to blaspheme. But as to what you truly think about this, no one is in doubt, and the delusions of your confession have become clear in the most open light. Now let us return to that from which we began to discourse. Tell me, if it seems good to you, this which you were saying a little before, with God's help, that a man can not sin if he wills—do you say this for all time, or for a time, and a brief one? Critobulus: That is a superfluous question.

For if I should say "for a time, and brief," nonetheless it will be referred to perpetuity. For whatever you grant for a short time, this you will also grant for all time. Atticus: I do not sufficiently understand what you are saying. Critobulus: Are you so obtuse that you do not perceive what is manifest?

Atticus: I am not ashamed to not know what I do not know. And concerning the matter about which the disputation is to be, it ought to be agreed between us both what sense it bears. Critobulus: I assert this: he who can abstain from sin for one day, can also for another; he who for two days, can also for three; he who for three, can also for thirty; and in this order, can also for three hundred, and for three thousand, and for as long as he shall wish to abstain. Atticus: Say then simply that a man can be without sin forever, if he wills. Can we do everything we will? Critobulus: By no means. For I cannot do whatever I will; but this alone I say, that a man can be without sin, if he wills. Atticus: I ask you to answer me. Do you consider me a man, or a beast? Critobulus: If I am in doubt about you, whether you are a man or a beast, I shall confess myself to be the beast.

Atticus: If then, as you say, I am a man, how is it that, though I will, and desire it enough, not to sin, I fall short? Critobulus: Because the will is imperfect. For if you truly willed, you would truly not sin. Atticus: Then you, who accuse me of not truly desiring it, are you without sin, because you truly desire it? Critobulus: As if I were speaking of myself, whom I confess to be a sinner, and not of the few and rare ones, if any there be, who have willed not to sin.

Atticus: Meanwhile, by both your judgment and mine, both I who ask and you who answer, are sinners. Critobulus: But we can be otherwise, if we will. Atticus: I said that I wish not to sin; there is no doubt that you feel the same. How then is it that, though both of us will the same thing, both of us are unable? Critobulus: Because we do not fully will it. Atticus: Give me then, of our forebears, those who fully willed and were able. Critobulus: This indeed is not easy to show. For neither, when I say that a man can be without sin if he wills, do I contend that certain persons have been so; but simply that he can be so if he wills. For it is one thing to be able to be, which in Greek is called τῇ δυνάμει (by possibility); another thing to be, which they themselves call τῇ ἐνεργείᾳ (in actuality). I can be a physician; but meanwhile I am not one. I can be a craftsman; but I have not yet learned it.

Whatever therefore I can be, though I am not yet it, still I shall be it if I will.

Atticus: Arts are one thing, that which comes about through the arts is another. Medicine and craftsmanship, and the other arts, are found in very many; but to be without sin perpetually belongs to divine power alone. Therefore either give an example of those who have been without sin forever, or, if you cannot give one, confess your weakness, and do not set your mouth against heaven, so as to mock the ears of fools by means of "being" and "being able to be." For who will grant to you that a man can do what no man ever has been able to do? Are you not indeed steeped in dialectics? For if a man can do it, then "not being able" is removed. But if he cannot, then "being able" is overthrown. Either grant me that someone has been able to do what you contend can be done; or, if no one has been able to do this, you will be held, unwilling though you be, to admit that no one can do what you boast is possible.

Between Diodorus and Chrysippus, the mightiest of the dialecticians, there is this dispute περὶ δυνατοῦ (concerning the possible). Diodorus says that only that can happen which either is true, or will be true. And whatever will be, that, he says, must necessarily happen. But whatever will not be, that cannot happen. Chrysippus, however, says that even things which are not going to happen, can happen—as, that this pearl may be broken, even if that is never going to happen. Those, then, who say that a man can be without sin if he wills, will not be able to prove this true, unless they show that it is going to happen. But since all future things are uncertain, and especially those which have never happened, it is clear that they call "going to happen" that which is not going to happen; Ecclesiastes confirming this opinion: "Whatever is to be, has already been in a former age."

Critobulus: I beg you to answer me this: did God give commandments that are possible, or impossible? Atticus: I see where your assertion is tending. But this must be discussed in what follows, lest, while we mix questions with questions, we leave the understanding obscure to our hearers. Reserving, therefore, this point, that we confess God gave possible commandments, lest he himself be the author of injustice, if he should require to be done what cannot be done: now fulfill what you had proposed, that a man can be without sin if he wills. For either you will give examples of those who have been able, or, if no one has been able, you will plainly confess that man cannot forever avoid sins. Critobulus: Since you press me to give what I ought not to give, consider this, I beg you: that the Lord said it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And yet he said that it can happen, which has never happened. For a camel has never entered through the eye of a needle. Atticus: I am amazed that a prudent man should have proposed a testimony which tells against himself. For in this it is not said as something that could happen, but an impossibility is compared to an impossibility. For just as a camel cannot enter through the eye of a needle, so also a rich man will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Or if you can show that a rich man enters the kingdom of heaven, it follows that a camel also enters through the eye of a needle.

Nor should you set before me as example Abraham and the others whom we read of as rich men in the Old Testament, who as rich men entered the kingdoms of heaven, since they themselves, using their riches for good works, ceased to be rich; nay rather, since they were rich not for themselves but for others, they ought to be called stewards of God rather than rich men. But we must seek the Evangelical perfection, in which it is commanded: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and come, follow me".

Critobulus: While you do not know it, you are caught in your own snare. Atticus: In what way? Critobulus: From the Lord's own saying you assert that a man can be perfect. For when he says: "If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and come, follow me," he shows that a man, if he should will it, and should do what is commanded, can be perfect. Atticus: You have indeed struck me with a very strong fist, so that a mist has begun to come before my eyes: but nevertheless this very saying, "If you wish to be perfect," is said to one who could not—nay, who did not will—and therefore could not. But do you show me one who both willed and was able, which you have now promised.

Critobulus: What necessity compels me to show who have been perfect, when it is clear that men can be perfect, from the fact that it was said to one by the Savior, and through one to all: "If you wish to be perfect"? Atticus: You are evading; you are stuck fast in the same mire. For either that which can happen has at some time happened; or, if it has never happened, grant that it cannot happen.

Critobulus: Why do I delay further? You must be overcome by the authority of the Scriptures. To pass over other things, will you not be silenced by these two testimonies, in which Job and Zachary, and Elizabeth, are praised? For unless I am mistaken, it is thus written of Job: "There was a certain man in the land of Ausitis, named Job, and that man was truthful and without fault, a true worshiper of God, abstaining himself from every evil thing". And again: "Who is he that convicts the just man of sin, and speaks with his words through ignorance?" In the Gospel also according to Luke: "There was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, a certain priest named Zachary, of the course of Abia, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and justifications of the Lord, without blame".

If he is a true worshiper of God, and unblemished, and without fault; and if those who walked in all the justifications of the Lord are righteous in his sight, I think that they lack sin, and are in need of nothing that pertains to righteousness. Atticus: You have set forth testimonies that are not to be taken absolutely apart from another place of Scripture, but must be resolved within their own books. For Job also, after he was struck with many a plague, is convicted of having spoken against God's judgment, provoking him to a hearing: "And would that so a man might be judged with God, as a son of man is judged with his fellow"! And again: "Who will grant me a hearer, that the Almighty may hear my desire, and that he who judges may himself write a book"?

And again: "For if I shall be just, my mouth will speak wickedness; and if I be without fault, I shall be found perverse; and if purified with snow and washed with clean hands, yet thou hast dyed me enough with filth. My own garment abhors me". And of Zachary it is written that, when the angel promised the birth of a son, he said: "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife has advanced in her days"; on account of which he is at once condemned to silence: "Thou shalt be silent, and shalt not be able to speak, until the day when these things come to pass, because thou hast not believed my words, which shall be fulfilled in their time".

From which it is clear that men are indeed called righteous and unblemished; but that, if negligence creeps in, they can fall, and that man is always placed in the middle, so that he may slip from the summit of virtues down to vices, and may climb up from vices to the heights; and that he is never secure, but always fears shipwreck in the calm; and on this account that man cannot be without sin, as Solomon says: "There is not a righteous man upon earth who does good and does not sin". And in the same book of Kings: "For there is no man who does not sin". And blessed David confesses himself not without sin.

Behold: "Who understands his failings? Cleanse me from my hidden faults, and spare thy servant from those of others". And again: "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight no living man shall be justified". And many other things with which the holy Scriptures are full.

Critobulus: What then will you answer to that example which the Evangelist John sets forth: We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but the begetting of God preserves him, and the wicked one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in wickedness? Atticus: I will pay back like with like, and I will show, according to your own understanding, that the brief Epistle of the Evangelist is contrary to itself. For if whoever is born of God does not commit sin, because His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God, by what consequence does the same man speak in the same place: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us? You do not know the reason, you hesitate and are troubled. Hear the same Evangelist: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, that He may forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all iniquity.

Then, therefore, we are just, when we confess ourselves sinners, and our righteousness consists not in our own merit, but in the mercy of God, as the holy Scripture says: The just man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech. And in another place: Declare your sins, that you may be justified. For God has concluded all things under sin, that He might have mercy on all. And this is the highest righteousness of man, whatever virtue he may have, to think it not his own, but the Lord's, who bestowed it. He, then, who is born of God, does not sin, so long as the seed of God remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

But since in the Lord's field, while the householder sleeps, the enemy oversows tares, and while we know it not, the nocturnal sower interweaves darnel and barren oats with the good wheat: therefore that parable of the Gospel householder is to be dreaded; who purges the threshing-floor, and, the wheat being stored in the barns, leaves the chaff to be scattered by the blowing of the winds and burned with fire. Whence also we read written in Jeremiah: What has the chaff to do with the wheat, says the Lord? But the chaff is separated from the wheat at the consummation of the age. From which it is proved that while we are in this mortal body, we are mixed with the wheat. But if you object, why he said: And he cannot sin, because he is born of God: you shall hear—and where then will be the reward of the will?

For if he does not sin for this reason, because he cannot sin, free will is taken away, and it will by no means be ours, but a good of nature, which does not admit of sins.

Critobulus: I proposed easier things a while ago, that I might exercise you toward greater ones. What can you say to this, which, though you be ingenious, you will be able to overturn by no art? First I will set forth something from the Old Testament, then from the New. The prince of the Old Testament is Moses; of the New, the Lord and Saviour. Moses speaks to the people: Be perfect in the sight of the Lord your God. And the Saviour to the Apostles: Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Either, then, it is possible for those who hear to do what Moses and the Lord commanded; or, if it is impossible, the fault is not of those who cannot obey, but of him who commanded impossible things. Atticus: This passage, among the unskilled, and those who have no meditation or use and knowledge of the holy Scriptures, seems at first glance to flatter your opinion. But, when examined, it is easily resolved.

And when you have compared the testimonies of Scripture with other testimonies, lest the Holy Spirit seem contrary to itself according to the quality of places and times, according to that which is written: Deep calls unto deep at the noise of your waterspouts, then the truth will appear, namely, that Christ commanded possible things when He said: Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect; and yet that the Apostles were not perfect. Critobulus: I do not say what the Apostles did, but what Christ commanded. For the fault is not the commander's, but of those who heard the command, which certainly is recognized as having been able to be fulfilled, from the justice of him who commanded. Atticus: Beautifully put. I do not wish you, then, to tell me that man can be without sin if he wills: but that man can be that which the Apostles were not. Critobulus: Do you think me so foolish, that I would dare to say this?

Atticus: Although you do not say it, yet from your own proposition, by consequence itself and the order of things, you say this unwillingly. For if man can be without sin, which it is plain the Apostles were not, then a man could be above the Apostles: to say nothing of the Patriarchs and Prophets, in whom, under the Law, there was not perfect righteousness, according to that saying of the Apostle: For all have sinned, and need the glory of God; being justified freely by the grace of God, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiator.

Critobulus: This argumentation is twisted, enclosing ecclesiastical simplicity within the thorn-bushes of the philosophers. What has Aristotle to do with Paul? What has Plato to do with Peter? For as the one was the prince of philosophers, so the other was of the Apostles, upon whom the Church of the Lord is founded with a stable mass, which is shaken neither by the onset of a river, nor by any tempest. Atticus: You are playing the rhetorician, and while you object to me philosophy, you cross over to the camp of the Orators.

But hear what that Orator of yours himself says: "Away with commonplaces: these things are born at home for us." Critobulus: There is no eloquence here, no swelling of Orators, whose definition is, to speak in a manner suited to persuade; but we seek pure truth with pure speech: Either the Lord did not command impossible things, so that they are at fault who did not do what was possible; or, if they cannot be done, not those who do not do impossible things, but he who commanded impossible things—which be far from saying—is convicted of injustice. Atticus: I see you are, contrary to your habit, vehemently moved, and therefore I will cease to argue. But I will ask you a little, what you think of that passage of the Apostle, which he writes to the Philippians: Not that I have already received, or am already perfect. But I follow after, if I may lay hold: in which I was also laid hold of by Christ. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended.

But one thing, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the supernal calling of God in Christ Jesus. As many, then, as are perfect, let us be of this mind; and if in any thing you think otherwise, this also God will reveal to you, and the rest, which I do not doubt you know, and which we pass over for the sake of brevity. He says that he has not yet apprehended, and is by no means perfect, but like an archer directs his darts toward a mark and a target, which the Greeks more expressively call σκοπός, lest the arrow, declining to one side or the other, show the archer to be unskilled.

And he asserts that he always forgets the things behind, and always stretches forward to the things before: by which he teaches that things past are to be neglected, and things future desired; so that what he thought perfect today, while stretching toward better and prior things, he may show tomorrow to have been imperfect. And thus, through each successive step, since he is never at a standstill, but always in the course, he teaches that what we thought was perfect is imperfect: and that perfection alone and true righteousness are to be fitted only to the virtues of God. According to the purpose, he says, I press on toward the prize of the supernal calling of God in Christ Jesus. O Apostle Paul, forgive me, confessing my faults as a little man, if I ask boldly.

You say that you have not yet received, and have by no means apprehended, and are not yet perfect, and always forget the things behind, and stretch forward to the things before; if by any means you may attain to the resurrection of the dead, and obtain the prize of the supernal calling. And how do you immediately infer: As many, then, as are perfect, let us be of this mind, or do we think? For the copies differ: and what do we think, or should we think, that we are perfect? That we have apprehended what we have not apprehended, that we have received what we have not received, that we are perfect who are not yet perfect? What then do we think, or rather what ought we to think, we who are not perfect? To confess that we are imperfect, and have not yet apprehended, not yet received. This is man's true wisdom, to know oneself imperfect: and, so to speak, the perfection of all the just in the flesh is an imperfect perfection.

Whence also we read in Proverbs: To understand true righteousness. For unless there were also a false righteousness, the true righteousness of God would never be so called. And in the same passage of the Apostle it follows: And if you think otherwise in anything, this also God will reveal to you. I hear a strange thing. He who a little before had said, Not that I have already received, or am already perfect, and the vessel of election, who by reason of confidence in Christ dwelling in him dared to say: Do you seek a proof of Him who speaks in me, Christ? And yet simply confessed that he was not perfect: now what he denied to himself in particular, he sends into the crowd, and joins himself with the rest, and says: As many, then, as are perfect, let us be of this mind. But for what reason he said this, he explains in what follows.

Let us think this, he says, we who wish to be perfect according to the measure of human frailty, that we have not yet received, not yet apprehended, not yet are perfect. And because we are not yet perfect, and perhaps think otherwise than true and perfect perfection requires: if we think otherwise, and understand otherwise, than the knowledge of God has it; this also God will reveal to us, that we may pray with David, and say: Open my eyes, and I will behold wondrous things out of your Law.

From which it is clear that there are in the holy Scriptures two perfections; and two righteousnesses, and two fears. The first perfection, and comparable truth and perfect righteousness, and the fear which is the beginning of wisdom, is to be fitted to the virtues of God; but the second, which belongs not only to men, but also to every creature, and to our frailty, according to that which is said in the Psalms: No living man shall be justified in your sight: that righteousness, which is called perfect not by comparison, but by the knowledge of God. Job also, and Zacharias, and Elisabeth were called just, according to that righteousness which can sometimes be changed into unrighteousness, and not according to that which can never be changed, of which it is said: I am God, and I change not.

And this is what the Apostle writes in another place: For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excels, namely, that the righteousness of the Law, in comparison with the Evangelical grace, does not seem to be righteousness. For if, he says, that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remains is glorious. And again: We know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. And, We now see through a glass, in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know even as also I am known. And in the Psalms: Your knowledge has become wonderful to me from myself; it has been made strong, and I shall not be able to attain to it.

And again: I thought to know this; it is a labour in my sight, until I go into the sanctuary of God, and understand in their last ends. And in the same place: I have become as a beast before you, and I am always with you. And Jeremiah: Every man has become foolish by his own knowledge. And the same Apostle Paul: The foolishness of God, he says, is wiser than men. And many other things, which for the sake of brevity I omit.

Critobulus: You have indeed spoken cleverly, my Atticus, and with a good memory. But your labor and the manifold repetition of testimonies profits my side. For I do not compare man to God, but to other men, by comparison with whom, whoever gives diligence can be perfect. And for this reason, when it is said that a man can be without sin if he wills it, this is said according to the measure of man, not according to the majesty of God, in comparison with whom no creature can be perfect. Atticus: O Critobulus, in recalling these things you are on my side. For I too hold this, that no creature according to true and consummate righteousness can be perfect. But that one differs from another, and that there are diverse degrees of righteousness among men, no one doubts: and that one is greater, another lesser, and yet according to his own state and measure can be called righteous, who by comparison with others is not righteous.

For example, the apostle Paul, a vessel of election, who labored more than all the apostles, was indeed righteous, writing to Timothy: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will render to me on that day: and not to me only, but to all who love his coming". Righteous also was Timothy, his disciple and imitator, whom he teaches what he ought to do, and what measure of virtues to hold. Do we suppose that there was one and the same righteousness in both, and that he who labored more than all did not have greater merits? "There are many mansions with the Father", because there are also diverse merits. "Star differs from star in glory", and in one body of the Church the members are diverse.

The sun has its own brightness, the moon too tempers the darkness of night: and the five other stars, which are called wandering, traverse the sky with different courses and lights. Innumerable are the other stars, which we behold twinkling in the firmament. In each there are different lights, and yet each is perfect in itself, only in this sense, that in comparison with a greater it lacks perfection. In the body too, whose members are diverse, the eye does one thing, the hand another, the foot another. Whence the Apostle also says: "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you; or again the head to the feet, I do not need your service. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all have all powers? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? Be zealous for the greater gifts. But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills".

In which passage carefully note that he did not say "according as each member desires," but "according as the Spirit himself wills." For the vessel cannot say to its potter, why have you made me thus or thus? Or does not the potter have power over the same clay, to make one vessel unto honor, another unto dishonor? Whence he consequently added, "be zealous for the greater gifts": that in faith and diligence we may deserve to have more than the other gifts, and may be better than those who by comparison with us are placed in the second or third rank. In a great house there are diverse vessels, some of gold, some of silver, of bronze, of iron, and of wood. And yet according to its own measure, while a bronze vessel is perfect, by comparison with a silver one it is called imperfect, and again the silver is inferior by comparison with the gold. And in this way, while they are compared one with another, all are both imperfect and perfect.

In a field of good earth, from one seed there arises fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold: by the very numbers it is indicated that what is born is unequal, and yet each is perfect in its own kind. Elizabeth and Zachary, by which testimony, as by an impenetrable shield, you may teach us how much inferior they are to the holiness of blessed Mary the mother of the Lord, who, with the consciousness of God dwelling in her, freely proclaims: "For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him. He has shown strength with his arm". In which note that she says she is blessed, not by her own merit and virtue, but by the clemency of the God dwelling within her. John himself too, than whom none greater arose among those born of women, is better than his parents.

For he is compared, by the Lord's testimony, not only to men but to angels. And yet he who was greater than all men on earth is declared to have been less than the least in the kingdom of heaven.

What wonder is it, in the comparison of saints, that some are better and some inferior, when the contrary can be understood in the comparison of sinners? It is said to Jerusalem, which was pierced with many wounds of sin: "Sodom is justified by you"—not because Sodom is righteous in itself, which, collapsed into eternal ashes, hears through Ezekiel: "Sodom shall be restored to its former state": but because by comparison with the more wicked Jerusalem this one seems righteous. For the latter slew the Son of God, while the former, on account of abundance of bread and through the greatness of luxury, exceeded the bounds of lust. The publican in the Gospel, who struck his breast, as though it were a treasury of the worst thoughts, and, conscious of his sins, did not dare to lift up his eyes, becomes more righteous by comparison with the proud Pharisee. And Tamar, under the guise of a harlot, deceives Judah, and he who was deceived, by his own sentence, deserves to hear: "Tamar has been more righteous than I".

From all these it is proven, that not only in comparison with the divine Majesty are men by no means perfect, but not even in comparison with angels and with other men who have climbed the heights of virtue; since even you, who are better than another by comparison, whom you have shown to be imperfect, may in turn be surpassed by another going before you: and for this reason you do not have true perfection, which, if it were perfect, would need nothing.

And how, Atticus, does the divine word call us to perfection? Atticus: In this manner which I have said, that each one, according to his own strength, be stretched out as far as he is able, if he may in some way arrive and take hold of the prize of the heavenly calling. Finally, almighty God, to whom the Apostle teaches that the Son will be subjected according to the dispensation of the flesh assumed, so that God may be all in all, clearly shows that all things are by no means yet subjected to him. Whence also the Prophet presumes his subjection at the end, saying: "Shall not my soul be subject to God alone? For from him is my salvation". And because in the body of the Church Christ is the head, with certain members still resisting, the body too seems not to be subject to the head. For if one member suffers, all suffer together, and the whole body is tormented by the pain of one member. What I say will become clearer thus.

As long as we have this treasure in earthen vessels, and are surrounded by fragile flesh, indeed mortal and corruptible flesh, we believe ourselves blessed if in each virtue, and in the parts of the virtues, we are subject to God. But when this mortal thing shall have put on immortality, and this corruptible thing shall have been clothed with incorruption, and death shall have been swallowed up in the victory of Christ, then God will be all in all: so that wisdom may not be in Solomon alone, gentleness of soul in David alone, zeal in Elijah and Phinehas alone, faith in Abraham alone; perfect love in Peter alone, to whom it was said, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"; zeal for preaching in the vessel of election alone, and in the rest either two or three gifts; but that he be wholly in all, and that in the whole choir of the virtues of the saints the number may glory, and God be all in all.

Critobulus: Then no saint, as long as he is in this little body, can have all the virtues? Atticus: None, because now we prophesy in part, and know in part. For all things cannot be in all men, since the son of man is not immortal. Critobulus: And how do we read: "Whoever has had one virtue seems to have all"? Atticus: By participation, not by property. For it is necessary that individuals excel in certain things; and yet where that which you say you have read is written, I do not know. Critobulus: Are you unaware that this is the opinion of the philosophers? Atticus: But not of the apostles. For it is not my concern what Aristotle teaches, but what Paul teaches. Critobulus: I beseech you, does not the apostle James write, that whoever offends in one point is guilty of all? Atticus: The passage itself explains itself. For he did not say—the point from which the argument began—that whoever prefers a rich man to a poor man in honor is guilty of adultery or murder.

In this indeed the Stoics rave, contending that sins are equal. But it is thus: "He who said, You shall not commit adultery, also said, You shall not kill; so that even if you do not kill, but you commit adultery, you have become a transgressor of the law". Light things are compared with light, and grave things with grave. Nor is a fault worthy of the rod to be avenged by the sword, nor a crime worthy of the sword to be restrained by the rod. Critobulus: Granted, that no saint has all the virtues; you will surely grant this, that in that which he can do, if he does it, he is perfect. Do you not hold what I said above? What was that? Atticus: That he is perfect in what he has done, and imperfect in what he was not able to do.

Critobulus: But just as he is perfect in what he has done, because he willed to do it, so also in that in which he is imperfect, because he did not do it, he could have been perfect, if he had willed to do it. Atticus: For who does not wish to do what is perfect? Or who would not desire to flourish in all the virtues? If you require the whole from all, you take away the diversity of things, and the distance of graces, and the variety of the Creator-craftsman, of whom the sacred Prophet sings: "You have made all things in wisdom". Let the morning star be indignant, because it does not have the brightness of the moon. Let the moon complain over its own deficiencies and labor, why it fulfills the sun's yearly circuit each month. Let the sun complain, what it has offended, that it is slower than the moon's course.

Let us too, little men, cry out, what cause there was, that we were made men and not angels: although your master, ὁ ἀρχαῖος the ancient one, from whose source these things proceed, asserts that all rational creatures were founded with equal right, so that, like chariots and teams going out from the starting-gates, in the middle of the course they either fall or fly past, and arrive at their desired goal. Let elephants of such bulk, and griffins, complain in their heaviness, why they walk on four feet, when flies and gnats, and other such living things, have six feet under little wings, and there are some little worms which so swarm with feet that no gaze can comprehend their countless simultaneous movements. Let Marcion say these things, and all the heretics who mock the works of the Creator. Your decree will reach this point, that while they calumniate individual things, they lay hand upon God, asking why God alone is God, why he has envied his creatures, that not all should have the same majesty.

Although you do not say this (for you are not so mad as to openly resist God), yet in other words you say the same thing, joining the property of God to man, so that he should be without sin, which is also what God is. Whence the Apostle, thundering about the diverse graces, says: "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord: and there are diversities of workings; but the same God, who works all in all".

Critobulus: You are excessive on one and the same question, in that you try to persuade that man cannot possess all things at once, as though God either envied or was unable to grant to his image and likeness that it should answer to its Creator in all things. Atticus: Am I excessive, or are you? For you propose loose things, and do not understand that likeness is one thing, equality another: the former a picture, the latter the truth. A real horse flies across the spaces of the fields; a painted one clings to the wall in its chariot. The Arians do not grant to the Son of God what you attribute to every man. Others do not dare to confess a perfect man in Christ, lest they be compelled to admit in him the sins of man: as though the creation were more powerful than the Creator, and he were only the Son of Man to the same degree that he was the Son of God.

Therefore either propose other matters to which I may reply, or cease your pride, and give glory to God. Critobulus: You forget your own reply; and while you link argument to argument, and rage through the widest fields of the Scriptures with the freedom of an unbridled horse, you have been utterly silent about the strongest question, to which you promised you would reply in what followed, feigning forgetfulness so as to escape the necessity of a reply. But I, foolishly, granted for the moment what you asked, thinking that you would voluntarily offer what you had received, and not need to be reminded to repay what you owed. Atticus: Unless I am mistaken, the reply concerning possible commandments was deferred. Propose it then as you wish.

Critobulus: Either God gave possible commandments, or impossible ones. If possible, it is in our power to do them, if we wish. If impossible, we are not at fault in this, if we do not do what we cannot fulfill. And therefore, whether God gave possible commandments, or impossible ones, man can be without sin, if he wills. Atticus: I ask that you listen patiently; for we seek not victory over an adversary, but truth against falsehood. God gave to the human race all the arts as possible, which indeed very many have learned: to say nothing of those which the Greeks call βαναύσους (banausic), which we may say pertain to works of the hands: for example, grammar, rhetoric, the three kinds of philosophy, physics, ethics, logic, also geometry, and astronomy, astrology, arithmetic, music, which themselves are parts of philosophy: also medicine, which is divided into three parts, δόγμα (doctrine), μέθοδον (method), ἐμπειρίαν (experience): also the science of law and of laws.

Which of us, however talented, will be able to comprehend all these, when the most eloquent Orator (Cicero), discussing rhetoric and the science of law, said: "Few can achieve one; no one, both."? You see, then, that God commanded what is possible, and yet that which is possible by nature no one can complete in full. He therefore gave diverse precepts, and various virtues, all of which we cannot possess at once. And so it happens that what in one person is either primary or complete, in another exists only in part: and yet he who does not have all is not thereby guilty, nor is he condemned because of what he lacks; but he is justified by what he possesses. The Apostle defines what sort of man a bishop ought to be, writing to Timothy: A bishop must be irreproachable, the husband of one wife, sober, modest, well-ordered, hospitable, apt to teach, not given to wine, not a striker; but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous, ruling his own house well, having his children in subjection with all chastity.

And again: Not a novice, lest being puffed up he fall into the condemnation of the devil. But he must also have a good testimony from those outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. Writing also to his disciple Titus about what sort of bishops he ought to ordain, he shows in a brief statement: For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee. If any is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riot or unruly.

For a bishop must be blameless, or without accusation (for this is more the sense of ἀνέγκλητος), as a steward of God, not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate, holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort, and to convince the gainsayers. Passing over now the varied precepts for different persons, I will confine myself to the commandments for a bishop.

God certainly wills bishops or presbyters to be such as the vessel of election teaches. The first thing he said, irreproachable, is either found in no one, or rarely. For who is there who does not have, as it were, a mole or a wart on a beautiful body? For if the Apostle himself says of Peter that he did not walk with a straight foot in the truth of the Gospel, and was so reprehensible that even Barnabas was led into the same dissimulation: who will be indignant if this is denied to him, which the prince of the Apostles did not have? Then, that he be the husband of one wife, sober, modest, well-ordered, hospitable—these you may find: but that which follows, διδακτικόν, that he be able to teach: not as the Latin simplicity interprets it, docile—you will find this with difficulty along with the other virtues.

The Apostle also rejects one given to wine and a striker, and one desirous of base gain: and in place of these he wishes one meek, without quarrel, without avarice, and that he rule his own house excellently; and—which is most difficult—that he have children in subjection with all chastity, whether children of the flesh or children of the faith. With all, he says, chastity. For it does not suffice to have one's own chastity, unless it is adorned also by the modesty of children and companions and ministers, as David says: He who walks in the blameless way, he shall minister to me. Let us also consider the ἐπίτασιν (intensification) of chastity, having children in subjection in all chastity; so that they abstain from indecencies not only in deed, but also in speech and in gestures: lest by chance that befall which befell Eli, who indeed rebuked his sons, saying: Do not, my sons, do not: I hear no good report of you.

He rebuked, and was punished, because he ought not merely to have rebuked, but to have cast them off. What will he do who takes pleasure in vices, who does not dare to correct? Who fears his own conscience; and pretends not to know what the whole populace is crying out? And that which follows, ἀνέγκλητον: that he be accused by no one: that he have a good reputation among those who are outside: that he be free even from the curses of adversaries; and that his manner of life please those to whom his doctrine is displeasing: I think this is not easily found, and especially this, that he be able to resist adversaries, and to overthrow and overcome perverse doctrines. He wills that a bishop not be ordained a neophyte, which we see in our own times chosen as the height of justice.

If baptism at once made one just, and full of all justice, the Apostle would by no means reject a neophyte; but baptism tears up old sins, it does not confer new virtues, it releases from prison, and to the one released, if he shall have labored, it promises rewards. Rare, I say, or none, is he who has all the things which a bishop ought to have. And yet if one or two things from the catalogue of virtues are lacking to some bishop, he will not thereby lack the title of just; nor will he be condemned for what he lacks, but crowned for what he possesses. For to have all things, and to lack nothing, belongs to the virtue of him who did no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again: who spoke confidently from the consciousness of his virtues: Behold, the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also gave him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. If, then, in the one person of a bishop you find few of the precepts, either never, or with difficulty; what will you say of every man, who ought to fulfill all the commandments?

Let us consider spiritual things from bodily ones. One is swift of foot, but not strong of hand. That one is slow in gait, but steady in battle. This one has a beautiful face, but a hoarse voice. Another sings with an unlovely voice, but with sweet modulation. We see one man clever, but forgetful: another retentive of memory, but slow of wit. Even in those controversial exercises in which we once played as boys, not all conduct themselves alike either in their introductions, or in their narrations, or in their digressions, or in their arguments, or in abundance of examples and sweetness of conclusions: but they are unlike one another in different parts of their eloquence. I will speak rather of ecclesiastical men. Many discourse well on the Gospels, but are unequal to themselves in the exposition of the Apostle. Others, though they have understood excellently in the New Instrument, are mute on the Psalms and the Old Testament. All this I say, because we cannot all do all things (Virg. Ecl.

7); and rare or none is there among the rich who possesses all things equally in his entire estate. God commanded what is possible, and I confess it. But all these possible things we cannot each have singly: not through weakness of nature, lest you slander God; but through weariness of soul, which cannot always and at once possess all the virtues. And if in this you accuse the Creator, asking why he made you such that you should fail and grow weary, I will say again, the reproach will be greater if you wish to accuse him for not having made you God. But you will say, If I cannot, then I have no sin. You have sin because you have not done what another was able to do.

And again, that man in comparison with whom you are worse, will be a sinner either in another virtue in comparison with you, or in comparison with someone else: and so it happens that whomever you consider first, he is lesser than one who is greater than him in some other respect.

Critobulus: If man cannot be without sin, how does the Apostle Jude write: Now unto him that is able to keep you without sin, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory? By which testimony it is proven that man can be without sin, and have no blemish. Atticus: You do not understand what you have proposed. For it is not that man can be without sin, which is your opinion; but that God, if he wills, can keep man without sin, and preserve him unblemished by his mercy. This too I say, that all things are possible to God. But to man not whatever he wishes is possible; and especially not this, which you will read no creature has. Critobulus: I do not say that man is without sin, which perhaps seems possible to you; but that he can be, if he wills. For to be is one thing, to be able is another. "To be" seeks an example: "to be able" shows the truth of the power.

Atticus: You trifle, and do not remember that proverb: "Do not do what is already done"; and you wallow in the same mire, indeed, you are washing a brick. To which you will hear nothing else but this, which is plain to all: that you wish to establish a thing which neither is, nor has been, and perhaps never will be. And to use the very word, and to show the folly of an ἀσύστατον (inconsistent) argument, you say that it can be, what I say cannot be. For this, which you have proposed, that man can be without sin if he wills, is either true or false. If true, show who has been such: if false, whatever is false can never come to pass. But let these things, as though refuted, be silent, and murmur only in your little cabinets, dreading the public face.

Let us pass to other things, in which continuous discourse must be used, only so far as you have the power of refuting and questioning, if you should wish anything. Critobulus: I will listen patiently, though I will not say gladly; and I will marvel the more at the ingenuity whose falsity I am amazed at. Atticus: Whether the things I am about to say are false or true, you will judge once you have heard them. Critobulus: Speak as you wish; I have resolved that if I am unable to answer, it is better to be silent than to acquiesce in a lie. Atticus: What does it matter whether I overcome you silent or speaking, and, after the fable of Proteus, catch you awake or asleep? Critobulus: When you have said what you wish, you will hear what you would by no means wish. For truth can labor, but cannot be conquered. Atticus: It pleases me to examine your sentences a little, so that your followers may understand what a divine genius they admire in you.

You say that no one can be without sin except one who has knowledge of the law, by which you exclude a great part of Christians from righteousness, and you, who are a preacher of impeccancy, pronounce that almost all are sinners. For how many of the Christians have knowledge of the law, which among many teachers of the Church you would find rarely or with difficulty? But you are of such generosity that you win favor for yourself among your Amazons, so that in another place you wrote that even women ought to have knowledge of the law, though the Apostle teaches that women must be silent in the Church, and if they are ignorant of anything, they should consult their husbands at home. Nor is it enough for you to have given your troop knowledge of the Scriptures, unless you also delight in their voice and songs.

For you join and place in a title, "That women too ought to sing psalms to God." For who does not know that women should sing psalms in their own chambers, and without the presence of men and the gathering of crowds? But you grant what is not lawful, so that what they ought modestly to do, and without any witness, they proclaim by the authority of a teacher.

You add further that a servant of God ought to bring forth nothing bitter from his mouth, but always what is sweet and pleasant; and, as though the servant of God were one person and the teacher and priest of the Church another, forgetting the earlier statement, you set down in another title that the priest or teacher ought to observe the deeds of all, and confidently rebuke sinners, lest he render an account for them, and their blood be required from his hands. Not content to have said this once, you repeat and drive home the same point, that the priest or teacher ought to flatter no one, but boldly rebuke all, lest he ruin both himself and those who hear him. Is there such discord in one work that you do not know what you said before?

For if the servant of God ought to bring nothing bitter from his mouth, but always what is sweet and pleasant: then either the priest and teacher are not among the servants of God who ought confidently to rebuke sinners, flatter no one, but boldly reprove all; or, if the priest and teacher hold not only the place of a servant of God but the foremost place among his servants, you have reserved blandishments and sweetness for the servants of God in vain, since this is properly the mark of heretics and of those who wish to deceive their hearers, as the Apostle says: "For such do not serve Christ our Lord, but their own belly. And by sweet speeches and blessings they seduce the hearts of the innocent". Flattery is always insidious, cunning, and beguiling. And well is the flatterer defined among the philosophers as "a beguiling enemy." Truth is bitter, of wrinkled brow and sad, and offends those it corrects.

Whence also the Apostle says: "Am I then become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" And the Comic poet: "Compliance breeds friends, truth breeds hatred." Wherefore also we eat the Passover with bitter herbs, and the vessel of election teaches that the Passover must be celebrated in truth and sincerity; let truth be sincerity in us, and bitterness will follow at once.

But that which you set down in another place, that "all are ruled by their own will," who among Christians can bear to hear? For if not one, nor a few, nor many, but all are ruled by their own will, where will the help of God be? And how do you explain that saying: "By the Lord are the steps of a man directed"; and, "The way of man is not in himself"; and, "No one can receive anything unless it has been given him from above." And in another place, "What have you that you have not received? And if you have received, why do you glory as if you had not received?", the Lord Savior saying: "I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me, the Father". And in another place: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but as thou wilt".

And in the Lord's Prayer: "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". By what rashness of statement do you take away all the help of God? And what you vainly try to add in another place, "not without the grace of God," how you wish it to be understood is clear from this passage, since you do not refer his grace to individual acts, but to the power of the condition and the law and of free will.

But that which you set down in the following chapter: that on the day of judgment the unjust and sinners are not to be spared, but are to be burned in eternal fires—who can bear this, and that you should forbid the mercy of God, and judge before the day of judgment concerning the sentence of the judge, so that, if he should wish to spare the unjust and sinners, he could not, by your prescription? For you say: "It is written in the hundred and third psalm: Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and the wicked, so that they be no more. And in Isaiah: The wicked and sinners shall be burned together, and they that forsake God shall be consumed." And do you not understand that God's threat sometimes sounds forth clemency? For he does not say that they will be burned with eternal fires, but that they will fail from the earth, and that the wicked will cease to be.

For it is one thing for them to desist from sin and iniquity, and another for them to perish forever, and be consumed with eternal fires. Finally, Isaiah, from whom you cite testimony, says, "The sinners and the wicked shall be burned together": he does not add, "forever." "And they that forsake God shall be consumed." This properly speaks of heretics, who, forsaking the right path of faith, shall be consumed, if they refuse to return to the Lord whom they have forsaken. Which sentence is also prepared for you, if you neglect to turn to better things. Then, how rash it is to join the unjust and sinners to the impious, who are thus defined by us: every impious person is unjust and a sinner, but it does not reciprocate, so that we could say every sinner and unjust person is also impious. For impiety properly pertains to those who have no knowledge of God, or who, having known him, have changed by transgression.

But sin and iniquity, according to the quality of the vices, after the wounds of sin and iniquity, receive healing. Whence it is written: "Many are the scourges of the sinner": and not everlasting destruction. And through all scourges and torments Israel is corrected. "For whom the Lord loves he chastens: and he scourges every son whom he receives". It is one thing to strike with the affection of a teacher and parent; another to rage against adversaries with cruel spirit. For which reason, in the first Psalm it is sung: "Because the wicked shall not rise again in judgment." For they are already prejudged unto perdition. "Nor sinners in the council of the just". For it is one thing to lose the glory of rising again, another to perish forever. "The hour is coming," he says, "in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment".

Whence also the Apostle, in the same sense, because in the same Spirit, speaks to the Romans: "For as many as have sinned without law shall perish without law. And as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law". Without the law is the impious man, who shall perish forever. In the law is the sinner believing in God, who shall be judged by the law, and shall not perish. If sinners and the unjust are burned with eternal fires, do you not fear your own sentence, you who say that you yourself are unjust and a sinner? And you argue that man cannot be without sin, but can be. Therefore let only that one be saved who never was, nor is, but is to be, or perhaps is not even to be: and let all perish whom we read to have been in the past. You yourself, who puff yourself up with Catonian pride toward us, and swell with the shoulders of Milo, by what rashness, sinner, do you assume the name of teacher?

Or if you are righteous, and by humility feign to be a sinner, we shall marvel and rejoice that you alone, with your associates, possess what none of the Patriarchs, none of the Prophets, none of the Apostles ever had. But if Origen says that all rational creatures are not to be destroyed, and grants repentance even to the devil, what is that to us, who say that both the devil and his satellites and all the impious and transgressors perish forever, and that Christians, if they have been overtaken in sin, are to be saved after punishments?

Moreover you join two chapters which disagree with each other, which, if true, you will not be able to open your mouth: "One cannot know the wisdom and understanding of the Scriptures, unless one has learned it." And again: "The unlearned man ought not to usurp knowledge of the law". For either you must produce the teacher from whom you learned, so that you might be permitted to usurp the knowledge of the law; or, if such a teacher is one who did not learn from another, and taught you what he himself did not know, it remains that you do not act rightly, who, unlearned, usurp knowledge of the Scriptures, and became a teacher before you began to be a disciple. Unless perhaps, with your usual humility, you boast that your teacher is the Lord, who teaches all knowledge, and with Moses in the cloud and darkness you hear the words of God face to face, and from there you come forth to us with horned brow.

Nor is this enough, but suddenly you change into a Stoic, and thunder at us with the eyebrow of Zeno, that a Christian must be of such patience that, if anyone should wish to take away his goods, he should lose them gladly. Is it not enough for us to lose patiently what we have, unless we also give thanks to the one using violence and robbing us, and follow him with all blessings? The Gospel teaches that to him who wishes to contend with us at law, and by suits and quarrels to take away our tunic, even our cloak should be yielded: it does not command that we give thanks, and gladly lose what is ours. I say this, not because there is anything of wickedness in this sentence, but because everywhere you pass over moderate things ὑπερβολικῶς (hyperbolically) and pursue great things.

Whence you add, "The glory of garments and ornaments is contrary to God." What enmities, I ask, are there against God, if I should have a cleaner tunic, if the bishop, presbyter, and deacon, and the rest of the ecclesiastical order should proceed in white vesture in the administration of the sacrifices? Beware, clergy; beware, monks; widows and virgins, you are in peril, unless the crowd sees you dirty and ragged. I say nothing of men of the world, against whom war is openly declared, and enmities against God, if they should use precious and gleaming garments.

Let us hear the rest too: "Enemies ought to be loved as neighbors"; and immediately, overcome by a most grievous lethargy, you set down and say: "An enemy is never to be trusted", which is plainly contrary to itself, even without my saying so. But you will say or: you say that both are contained in the words of Scripture, not noticing in what sense they are said in their own places. I am commanded to love my enemies, and to pray for my persecutors. Is it commanded that I love them as though they were neighbors and kinsmen and friends, so that there be no distance between rival and kinsman? If I love my enemies as neighbors, what more shall I show to my friends? Or if you had said the one, you ought to have kept silent about the other, lest you seem to say contrary things in the same place: "An enemy is never to be trusted".

But how the enemy is to be loved, the law also teaches: "If your adversary's beast of burden falls, it must be helped up"; and the Apostle: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink. For in doing this you will heap coals of fire upon his head"; not unto malediction and condemnation, as many suppose, but unto correction and repentance, so that, overcome by kindnesses, refined by the fervor of charity, he may cease to be an enemy.

You add furthermore, that the kingdom of heaven is promised also in the Old Testament: and you cite testimonies from the apocrypha, though it is quite plain that the kingdom of heaven was first preached in the Gospel through John the Baptist, and the Lord Savior, and the Apostles. Read the Gospels. John the Baptist cries out in the desert: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And of the Savior it is written: From that time he began to preach and to say: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And again: Jesus went about the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the kingdom of God. And he commands the Apostles: Go and preach, saying, that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But you call these men Manichaeans, because, preferring the Gospel to the Law, we say that in the latter there is shadow, in the former truth, and you do not perceive that your folly is coupled with impudence.

It is one thing to condemn the Law, which Manichaeus does; another to prefer the Gospel to the Law, which is apostolic doctrine. For in the former the servants speak, in the latter the present Lord himself speaks; there it is promised, here it is fulfilled; there are the beginnings, here the perfection; in the former the foundations of works are laid, here the summit of faith and grace is set upon them. This we have set down, that the doctrine of this excellent teacher might be shown forth.

The hundredth heading is, That man can be without sin, and can easily keep the commandments of God, if he will, concerning which enough has been said. And though he confesses himself to be an imitator, nay a fulfiller, of the work of the blessed Martyr Cyprian writing to Quirinus, he does not perceive that he has said contrary things in that same work. Cyprian, in the fifty-fourth heading of the third book, sets down that no one is without stain and without sin, and immediately joins testimonies, in which it is written in Job: For who is clean from filthiness? Not even if his life be but one day upon the earth. And in Psalm fifty: Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me. And in the Epistle of John: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

You, on the contrary, assert, That man can be without sin: and, that you may seem to have spoken truly in this, you immediately add, And can easily keep the commandments of God, if he will—which either few, or none, have fulfilled. For if they are easy, they ought to be kept by many. But if, as we may grant you, some rare person can fulfil them, it is manifest that what is rare is difficult.

And that you may increase this, and show the greatness of your virtue, so that you may be believed to be belching forth from the good treasure of conscience, you set in a heading: That one ought not to sin even lightly. And lest anyone should think you had said "lightly" of a deed only, you add what this "lightly" means: Evil ought not even to be thought, nor do you recall that saying: Who understands his faults? Cleanse me, O Lord, from my hidden sins, and spare thy servant from those of others; whereas the Church confesses that even the things we commit through ignorance, and sin by thought alone, are faults: so much so that she bids victims to be offered for error, and the High Priest, who intercedes for the whole people, first offers victims for himself—one who certainly would never bid others to offer, unless he himself were just, nor again would he offer for himself, if he lacked the sin of ignorance.

Doubtless now I must traverse the widest fields of the Scriptures, to teach that error and ignorance are sin.

Critobulus: I beg you, have you not read: Whosoever looks at a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart? Therefore not only the glance itself and the incitements of vices are reckoned as sin; but those things to which we grant assent. For either we can avoid an evil thought, and consequently we can be without sin; or if we cannot avoid it, that which cannot be guarded against is not reckoned as sin. Atticus: You argue cleverly indeed, but you do not perceive that your argument works against the sacred Scriptures. For the utterances of the Scriptures hold that even ignorance has sin: whence also Job offers sacrifices for his sons, lest perhaps they had sinned in thought through ignorance.

And he who cuts wood, if by the axe and the iron flying from the wood a man be killed, is bidden to go to the city of refuge, and to stay there until the death of the high priest—that is, until he be redeemed by the blood of the Savior, either in the house of baptism, or in penance, which imitates the grace of baptism through the ineffable clemency of the Savior, who does not wish anyone to perish, nor is delighted by the deaths of sinners, but that they may be converted and live. Critobulus: I ask, what sort of justice is this, that I should be held in the sin of error, of which my conscience has no guilt? I do not know that I have sinned, and do I pay the penalty of a thing I do not know? And what more would I do, if I had sinned willingly? Atticus: Do you ask of me the causes of God's sentence and disposition?

The book of Wisdom answers your foolish question: Seek not the things that are too high for you, and search not into things too strong for you. And elsewhere: Be not overly wise, and reason not more than is fitting. And in the same place: In wisdom and simplicity of heart seek God. And lest perhaps you contradict this volume, hear the Apostle, sounding forth the Gospel trumpet: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? These are the questions of which he writes also in another place: But avoid foolish and untaught questions, knowing that they beget strife. And Ecclesiastes says, I said, I shall become wise, and it was made far from me. It is a deep depth, who shall find it out?

You ask of me why the potter made one vessel unto honor, another unto contumely, and you are unwilling to acquiesce to Paul, answering on behalf of his Lord: O man, who are you, that you should answer God?

Hear then briefly the testimonies of the Scriptures, that your foolish, nay impious, question may fall silent forever. God speaks in Genesis: I will not add further to curse the earth because of the works of man, for the mind of man is diligently set upon evil from his youth. Abraham and Sara, having heard the promise of a son Isaac, laugh in their heart, and the silent thought does not escape the knowledge of God. They are rebuked for the laughter, and the very thought is reprimanded, as it were a part of unbelief. Nevertheless it is not from the fact that they laughed that they are condemned as dissenters, but from the fact that they afterwards believed, they received the palm of righteousness. Lot does not know what he did in the lying with his daughters, and, made drunk by them, he has no crime upon his conscience, and yet the error is a fault.

Blame the holy man Jacob, why he loved the beautiful Rachel, for whom he even served a long time, and was saddened at his first lying with Leah; and yield at last to human frailty, which even loves beautiful bodies, and abhors the deformed. Jacob mourns the death of his son Joseph, and for a long time receives no consolation from his sons, and answers: Mourning and groaning, I shall go down to the grave: and he proves himself a man, since, though just, he is ignorant of what has become of his just son Joseph. In Exodus it is written: If someone strikes another, and he dies, let him die the death. But if he did not do it willingly, but God delivered him into his hands, I will appoint you a place to which he who has killed may flee. In which it is to be noted, that God delivered the man into his hands, and yet he who killed through ignorance is condemned to exile.

In Leviticus the law is set forth: If a soul shall sin in the sight of the Lord unwillingly, in any of the commandments of the Lord which ought not to be done, and shall do one of them, whether it be the high priest, or the whole assembly, and the rest of the people, and afterward learns his sin, that he has sinned through ignorance, he shall offer a gift, a he-goat from the goats, a male without blemish: and he shall lay his hands upon its head, and shall kill it in the place where the holocausts are slain before the Lord, because it is for sin.

And immediately after: If he has touched anything unclean which it is not lawful to touch, and has done so through ignorance, and afterward learns of it, or if he has promised something and forgotten it, he shall declare his sin, wherein he perceives that he has sinned, and shall offer to the Lord for the things in which he has sinned, an ewe or a she-goat for his sin which he has committed, and the priest shall pray for him concerning the sin, and the sin shall be forgiven him. But if his hand has not the means to offer a sheep for his sins in which he has sinned, he shall offer to the Lord two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, one for sin, and one for a holocaust: and he shall bring them to the priest, and the priest shall offer that which is for sin first, and in this he shall be reconciled for the sin which he has committed, and it shall be forgiven him.

And other things similar to these, which for the sake of brevity I omit, lest I make it tedious to your stomach. In what follows, Moses also relates that at the consecration of Aaron and his sons he offered a calf for sin, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon it, that is, upon the head of the calf which was for sin, and he slew it, and took of its blood, and put it upon the horns of the altar round about with his finger, and cleansed the altar. Likewise he did with the ram, and with its blood he touched his right ear, and his right hand, and the extremity of his right foot.

And after many other things, which it would be very long to relate, the seven days having been enumerated, we read thus: And it came to pass on the eighth day, that Moses called Aaron, and his sons, and all the elders of Israel, and said to Aaron: Take a calf of the herd for sin, and a ram for a holocaust without blemish, and offer them in the sight of the Lord: and speak to the elders of Israel, saying, Take a he-goat of the goats for sin, and a calf without blemish, a yearling, for a holocaust. And Moses said to Aaron: Approach to the altar, and make an offering for your sin, and the rest. And again Aaron lifted up his hands over the people, and blessed them. And he came down, when he had made the offering for sin and the holocaust and the peace offering. A woman bears children by the law of nature and is unclean, for forty days if she has borne a male; if a female, for eighty days.

Blame the Creator, why he calls anything unclean which he himself created. And not only is she herself unclean, but everything that she has touched. And when, he says, the days of her purification have been completed for a son or a daughter, she shall offer a yearling lamb without blemish, and a young pigeon, and a turtledove for sin, at the door of the tabernacle of testimony to the priest, who shall offer them in the sight of the Lord, and the priest shall make expiation for her. Of the leper too it is said, that on the day of his purification a victim for sin be offered for him, and two turtledoves and two young pigeons: one for sin, the other for a holocaust. And he who suffers a flux of seed is freed by the same order of sacrifice for sin and holocaust. And at the end it is added: Make the children of Israel fearful of their uncleannesses, and they shall not die for their sin, if they have defiled the tabernacle of the covenant.

To Aaron himself also it is commanded, that he should not at all times enter into the Holy of Holies, lest perhaps he die. And when, it says, he wishes to enter, let him offer a calf for sin, and a ram for a holocaust, and let him take two he-goats from the whole people; let him offer one of them for his own sin, and one for the sin of the people, and the ram for a holocaust. The other of the goats takes upon itself all the sins of the people, as a type of the Lord the Savior, and is carried out into the wilderness: and thus God is appeased toward the whole multitude. At the end it is said: If a man eats of the sanctified things through ignorance, iniquity and trespass is imputed to him, and he shall be guilty of the vow. Whence also the Apostle warns that the Eucharist of the Lord must be received with caution, lest we take it to our condemnation and judgment.

If ignorance is condemned in the Law, how much more is conscious guilt condemned in the Gospel!

Let us pass on to Numbers, and, in order to refute the impudence of the contentious, let us gather up the chief points. The Nazarite, venerable for his holy hair, is defiled by another's sudden death, and all the days of his consecration previously observed become void: and afterward two turtledoves and two young pigeons are offered for him, one for sin, and the other for a holocaust. Also on the day of his completion a lamb is offered as a holocaust and a ewe-lamb for sin.

And after many things it is written: And now let the strength of the Lord be magnified, as thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy, taking away iniquity and wickedness, and cleansing, will by no means clear the guilty: for which the Seventy have translated, and cleansing he will not cleanse the guilty, namely, that even after pardon, he is guilty in his own conscience. And when, it says, the people has been ignorant, and has done one of those things which it ought not to have done, after a long series of ceremonies it is added and said: Offer a goat of the she-goats for sin, and the priest shall make atonement for the whole assembly of the children of Israel, and the Lord shall be propitious to them, because it is ignorance: and they shall offer their oblation as a sacrifice to the Lord for their sin in his sight, because they knew it not.

And there it is added: If one soul shall sin through ignorance, he shall offer a she-goat of a year old for the sin of ignorance before the Lord, and the priest shall pray for her because she was ignorant, for the sin of ignorance before the Lord, and shall pray for her, and it shall be forgiven her. On the calends of each month a goat of the she-goats is offered for sin to the Lord. Also at the Passover, for eight days, from the fourteenth day of the first month until the twenty-first day, there is a sacrifice for sin. At Pentecost a goat is offered for sin, and on the calends of the seventh month, when the sound of trumpets resounds, the same rite of the goat for sin is kept. Also on the tenth day of that same seventh month, when there is a fast until evening, a goat of the she-goats is offered for sin, besides that goat which, before the holocaust, is slain for sin according to the law.

Also in the days of the Feast of Tabernacles, when the tabernacles were set up, from the fifteenth day of that same seventh month until the twenty-second day, among the other victims a goat was always offered for sin, so that this saying of blessed David might be fulfilled: Against thee only have I sinned, and done evil before thee, that thou mayest be justified in thy words, and mayest overcome when thou art judged. Six cities are chosen as places of exile for those who sinned not willingly, but through ignorance, or by the throwing of a stone, or the push of a hand, or in jest, or in wantonness, without enmities, more through misfortune than intention, and yet who are not without guilt, since they are banished forever, and before the appointed day, neither by supplication nor by ransom can their return be obtained or purchased.

In Deuteronomy, which book is an enumeration of past things, it is clearly shown that we are preserved not by our works and righteousness, but by the mercy of God, the Lord saying through Moses: Say not in thy heart, when the Lord thy God shall have overthrown them before thy face: The Lord has brought me in to possess this land because of my righteousness, whereas the Lord will destroy them before thy face because of the impiety of these nations: not for thy righteousness, and the uprightness of thy heart, shalt thou go in to possess their land: but because of their impiety the Lord thy God will destroy them before thy face, that he may fulfill the word which he spoke to thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And thou shalt know that the Lord thy God does not give thee this excellent land to possess for thy righteousness, for thou art a stiff-necked people.

But as to what he said: thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God, in what sense he said it is proved by what follows. When, he says, thou shalt have entered the land which the Lord thy God will give thee, thou shalt not learn to do the abominations of those nations, nor shall there be found in thee one who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire. Thou shalt not give heed to divinations or all auguries and sorceries and enchantments, so as to consult magicians and diviners and the dead. For an abomination to the Lord is everyone who does these things. And because of these abominations the Lord thy God will destroy them before thy face: thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. Finally he adds: Because these nations, whom thou shalt possess, listen to diviners and soothsayers. But to thee the Lord thy God has not given it so.

And immediately he adds: The Lord thy God will raise up to thee a prophet of thy own, from among thy brethren, like unto me: him shalt thou hear. From this it is shown that "perfect" here means not one who has all the virtues, but one who follows the one perfect God. And he narrates likewise concerning the situation of exiles who sinned through ignorance, to what places they should flee, and adds: When thou shalt build a new house, thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof round about, lest thou be guilty of blood, if anyone should fall from it. And again: If there be among you a man who is not clean from a nocturnal flux, he shall go out of the camp, and shall not enter into the midst of the camp, and when evening has come, he shall wash himself with water, and after sunset he shall enter into the midst of them.

Concerning Joshua the son of Nun I shall set down only two testimonies. Achan sinned, and the whole people was implicated. And the Lord said to Joshua: The children of Israel shall not be able to stand before their enemies; but they shall turn their backs to their adversaries, because a curse has been made among them. And I will not add to be with you, unless the curse be removed from your midst. And when the sacrilege was sought out, and the lot had found the hidden culprit, Achan is put to death together with his sons and his daughters, oxen, asses, and cattle; his tent, and whatever he could have possessed, are destroyed by fire. Grant that he himself sinned: what did the children do? What did the oxen do? What did the asses do? What did the cattle do? Bring against God the charge: why, because one man sinned, was a part of the people slaughtered? Why was he himself stoned, and why did the avenging flame consume everything that he could have possessed?

Let us say another thing also: There was not, it says, a city which the Lord did not deliver to the children of Israel, except the Hivite who dwelt in Gabaon: they took all by fighting, because it was done by the Lord, that he might harden their heart, and that they might fight against Israel, that they might be slain: and that no mercy should be shown them, and that they might perish, as the Lord commanded Moses. If it was done by the will of the Lord, that they should not receive peace, nor accept Israel; let us say, according to the Apostle: Why then does he find fault? For who can resist his will?

Concerning Samuel and Kings. Jonathan tasted a honeycomb with his rod, and his eyes being enlightened, he is endangered, having done it unknowingly. For Scripture testifies there that he was ignorant that it had been commanded by his father, that no one should taste, until the Lord's victory should be accomplished. But the Lord was so angered, that the lot found out the hidden thing, and he himself confessed, saying: I tasted a little honey with the tip of the rod which is in my hand, and behold I die. And afterward he was delivered by the intercession and prayers of the people, who said to Saul: Shall Jonathan die, who has wrought this great salvation in Israel? Far be it. As the Lord lives: if a hair of his head shall fall to the ground, for he has wrought with God this day: and the people delivered Jonathan, and he did not die.

Samuel is angry with Saul, and does not wish to go with the king: afterward he is overcome by entreaties, so as to show the changeableness of the human mind in opposite directions. He goes to Bethlehem, and thinks each of the sons of Jesse to be the very one whom the Lord sought. And when he had seen Eliab, he said: Behold, before the Lord is his anointed. And the Lord said to him: Do not look upon his countenance, nor upon the stature of his body, for I have rejected him. For man sees otherwise, God otherwise. For man sees the face, God sees the heart. And in this manner, through all he errs, through all he is corrected, so that the weakness of the human mind is made evident. Ishbosheth, Saul's son, is killed by treachery by Rechab and Baanah, sons of Rimmon the Beerothite.

And when they had reported to David, and displayed the head of the adversary, they were slain by David, who said: Wicked men have slain a righteous man in his house and on his bed. Certainly Ishbosheth was not righteous, and yet he is called righteous in this, that he was slain without fault. Uzzah the Levite, when the Ark of the Lord was being carried to Jerusalem, and the oxen, being unruly, had turned the cart aside, put forth his hand to steady the tilting Ark. And immediately it follows: The wrath of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his ignorance, and he died beside the Ark of God. And David, being grieved that the Lord had struck Uzzah, feared the Lord that day, and said: How shall the Ark of the Lord come in to me?

David, righteous and a prophet and anointed as king, whom the Lord chose according to his own heart, that he might do all his will, when he sees the Lord's ignorance punished by wrath, is terrified and grieved, and does not ask the Lord the reason why he struck the ignorant one, but trembles at a similar sentence. David commanded Joab, the commander of the army, to number the people; and immediately Scripture records: And David's heart smote him, and he said to the Lord: I have sinned greatly, in that I have done this. When he ordered it to be done, he certainly did not know what he was saying; and yet he blames himself, and for this fault seventy thousand men are slain by the sword of the Angel. Solomon, having completed the ceremonies of the temple, stretched out both palms to the Lord, and said: When thy people shall sin against thee—for there is no man that does not sin.

Another, a prophet of Shiloh, did not know that Jeroboam's wife was coming to him; and the Lord said: Behold, the wife of Jeroboam is coming in, to seek words from thee concerning her son who is sick; thus and thus shalt thou speak to her. Elisha was sitting on the mountain; a woman came to him, whose son had died, and, embracing his feet, cried out. And when Gehazi repelled her, the man of God said to him: Let her alone, for her soul is in bitterness, and the Lord has hidden it from me, and has not told me.

In the book of Days we read: There were the sons of Sobal the father of Cariathjarim, who prophesied by half. And again: But the sons of Salma the father of Bethlehem and of Netophathi, the crown of the house of Joab, and those who prophesied, of the half of Zurai, and so forth. Likewise those who prophesied were indeed holy, and yet did not merit to receive perfect prophecy: by no means concerning the future according to tropology, but prophesying for the present according to history. The prophet Habakkuk inscribes his Canticle with this title: The prayer of Habakkuk the prophet for his ignorances. For he had spoken boldly to the Lord, and had said: How long, Lord, shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear? Shall I cry out to thee suffering violence, and thou wilt not save? Why hast thou shown me iniquity and labor, to see plunder and injustice?

Judgment is made against me, and a mightier contradiction: for this reason the law is torn apart, and judgment does not reach to its end: because the wicked man prevails against the just; therefore perverse judgment goes forth. For which, reproving himself because he had spoken through ignorance, he writes a Canticle of repentance. If ignorance were not a sin, he writes a book of repentance superfluously, and vainly wished to mourn that which is not sin. In Ezekiel, in the last part, where through the building of the Temple situated on the mountain, the mysteries of the Church that were to come many ages afterward are narrated, on the first and seventh day of the first month, victims are offered for the sin of all, in which they sinned through error or ignorance. Also for the seven days of the Passover, a goat is always slain for sin. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the same order for the sins of sacrifices is celebrated.

And after very many other things, which it is not the time to repeat, it is written: And there was a place there toward the west, and he said to me: This is the place where the priests must cook the victim for sin and for ignorance. Jeremiah speaks to God: I know, Lord, that man's way is not his own: nor is it for a man to walk and direct his own steps. Therefore the heart of man is perverse and inscrutable, and who shall know it? In Proverbs we read: There is a way that seems right to men, and its ends come into the depths of hell. Behold, here too ignorance is manifestly condemned, since man thinks one thing, and under the appearance of truth slides down into hell. Many, he says, are the thoughts in the heart of man: yet not his will, which is uncertain and wavering and mutable, but the counsel of God prevails. Who, he says, shall boast that he has a pure heart?

And who shall trust that he is clean from sin? For the bread of falsehood is sweet to a man, and afterward his mouth shall be filled with gravel. By the Lord the steps of man are directed, but how shall a mortal be able to know his own ways? Every man seems just to himself, but God corrects the hearts of all. An evil son makes himself just, and does not wash away his end. An evil son has haughty eyes, and is lifted up by his eyelids. For there is a just man who perishes in his justice. Whence it is said to him: Be not overly just, nor seek superfluous things as though by wisdom, lest perhaps thou be stupefied. For whatever man labors to seek out, he shall not find. If a wise man says he understands, he shall not be able to discover it. For the heart of the sons of men is filled with malice.

CRITOBULUS. You have indeed said many things from the sacred Scriptures from memory and copiously, and have striven, as it were, to cover the clear light of truth with certain clouds, but what has this to do with the matter? For by all these testimonies you seem to accuse the nature of men, and thereby to cast reproach upon God, if he created such men that they cannot be free from the sin of forgetfulness and ignorance. From which it is clear that man can, if he wishes, not sin. For he did that which he could not avoid. But where the possibility is removed, the fault too is removed, for no one is condemned for that which he was not able to do. ATTICUS. I have often said that you do not understand my efforts, nor consider what you are arguing; but what God has commanded. For forgetfulness, error, and ignorance, sacrifices are offered as though for sin: whether this be, according to you, wrongly done, or, according to me, rightly done, God commanded it.

It is mine to observe what he commanded; yours to censure God's commands. Critobulus: Since you do violence to clear truth, and drag me toward blasphemy, I will grant you this as a precept in the old Law, of which it is written: Old things have passed away: behold, all things are made new. Can you also prove this concerning the Gospel, that someone be punished for what he does not know, and pay the penalty before he is guilty in conscience? While we are ignorant, Manichaeus suddenly rises up against us, who says that the Law is abolished, and that only the books of the New Testament are to be read. Critobulus: What have you heard from me, that you suppose this? For the Law given to the fathers was, for its time, just and holy, and with the coming of the perfection of the Gospel, the lesser things ceased. Atticus: Therefore is nothing to be observed of what the Law prescribes? Critobulus: Some things are to be observed, some to be passed over.

Atticus: Since I see that you are most learned, tell me what of the old Testament I ought to observe, and what to leave aside. Critobulus: We ought to observe the commandments which pertain to life and the correction of morals, of which it is said: The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes. But those things which pertain to the ceremonies of the Law and the rites of sacrifices are to be left aside. Atticus: Forgive me, since you boast of knowledge of the Law and of all the Scriptures, you do not notice what I wish to say. Critobulus: I understand what you say, not what you leave unsaid. Atticus: Do I seem to you to be silent, who have wished to teach you by so many examples that man sins through ignorance: and that, as in the Law sacrifices were offered for sin, so also in the Gospel a sacrifice of penitents ought to be offered?

Critobulus: Give a testimony of the new Instrument, where error and ignorance and the impossibility of a commandment are held to be a crime. Atticus: It is not necessary to bring forward many. The vessel of election speaks plainly: For I consent to the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and holding me captive under the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. You have brought forward a testimony which favors my case. Having been freed, then, from the body of this death through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we ought by no means to sin any further. Atticus: We have indeed been freed by the baptism of the Savior.

But explain this to me, why he said: I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and holding me captive under the law of sin which is in my members. What is this law reigning in the members of man, and warring against the law of his mind? Answer plainly. Are you silent? Hear the same Apostle proclaiming most openly: For that which I work, I do not understand. For I do not do what I will: but what I hate, that I do. But if I do what I do not will, I consent to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I find not. For I do not do the good that I will: but the evil that I will not, that I do.

But if I do what I will not, it is no longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells in me. Critobulus: I am amazed that you, a prudent man, understand the Apostle thus; that you suppose he says these things of his own person, and not of others. For he who freely proclaims the consciousness of Christ speaking in him: Do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ? And in another place: I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness: could this man say of himself, I find not how to accomplish the good? And, Not the good that I will, do I do: but the evil that I will not, that I do? What was that good which he willed to do, and could not? And what was that evil which he did not will, and yet could not avoid?

Therefore he does not say this of his own person: but of the person of the human race, which lies subject to vices on account of the frailty of the flesh.

Atticus: You take away little from me, in order to give me the whole. For I understand that one man, though he be the Apostle, is subject to sin; you assert that the whole human race is. But if it is true of the genus, we hold the species too. For the Apostle also is a man; and if he is a man, he speaks either of others, or of himself as man: Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And: For there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, that which is good. For the corruptible body weighs down the soul, the earthly dwelling depresses the mind that cares for many things. Critobulus: You speak as though I took this of the person of the human race, and not of the person of a sinner. And who will grant you this, that the Apostle speaks this of the person of a sinner?

For if you take this of the person of a sinner, he ought to have said: Wretched sinner that I am, and not, wretched man that I am. For man belongs to nature, sinner to will. Unless perhaps also that which is written: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, refers to sinners, and not to all men. And again: Nevertheless man walked about in an image; and further: Man is likened to vanity, his days pass away like a shadow. If you are not moved by this testimony of Paul, hear another of the same which you cannot contradict: I am conscious of nothing to myself, and so forth. Strange indeed: nor do I judge myself: I am conscious of nothing to myself, and yet in this I am not justified. He who said this was indeed conscious of no sin in himself. But because he had read, Who understands sins? And: There are ways which seem right to a man, but their end looks toward the depths of hell.

And again: Every man seems just to himself, but God directs the hearts of men; for this reason he tempered his statement, lest perhaps he had sinned through ignorance, especially since Scripture testifies: There is a just man who perishes in his justice. And elsewhere: Thou shalt follow justly that which is just, lest by an opinion of truth we depart from justice, remembering Saul and Agag.

Critobulus: Lest I seem to be contending, and pulling the rope in the opposite direction without measure, grant me at least this, that in the Scriptures very many are called just. Atticus: Not only very many, but innumerable. Critobulus: If the just are innumerable, and this cannot be denied, what have I said wrongly, that a man can be without sin, if he wills? This is to say in other words that a just man can be without sin, in that he is just. Atticus: I grant that they are just, but I do not at all agree that they are wholly without sin. For that a man can be without vice, which in Greek is called κακία, I affirm; but that he is ἀναμάρτητος, that is, without sin, I deny; for this belongs to God alone, and every creature is subject to sin, and needs the mercy of God, as Scripture says: The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord.

And lest I seem to be searching out certain blemishes, as it were, in holy men, in which they have slipped through error, I shall bring forward a few points which pertain not to individuals but to all in common. In the thirty-first psalm it is written: I said, I will confess against myself my injustice to the Lord, and thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my heart. And immediately it follows: For this, that is, for wickedness or iniquity (for both can be understood) shall every saint pray to thee in an acceptable time. If he is a saint, how does he pray on account of iniquity? If he has iniquity, on what ground is he called a saint? It is according to that manner which is also written elsewhere: The just man shall fall seven times, and shall rise again. And, The just man is his own accuser at the beginning of his speech. And elsewhere: Sinners are estranged from the womb, they have gone astray from the belly, they have spoken false things.

Either as soon as they are born, they lie under sin after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is the figure of him that was to come; or else, as soon as Christ was born of the virginal womb, of whom it is written, Every one that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord; all heretics have gone astray, not understanding the mystery of his nativity. And what is said, He that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, can be referred more to the special nativity of the Saviour than to that of all men. For Christ alone opened the closed gates of the virgin's womb, which nevertheless remained ever closed. This is the closed eastern gate, through which the High Priest alone enters and goes out, and which is nonetheless always closed. There is also that which is written in the book of Job: Shall man be clean in comparison of God, or shall a man be found irreprehensible in his works?

If he trust not in his servants, and in his angels he found wickedness; how much more in them that dwell in houses of clay! Of which clay we too are made. But if you should assert that this is said in the person of Eliphaz the Themanite, understand that it is not said by him, but by him who, under the person of an angel, speaks to him in vision and revelation the sentences of God. But let it be granted that Eliphaz speaks what the angel clearly speaks, is it not properly said in the person of Job: The life of man upon earth is a trial? And: If I have sinned, what can I do? And: Why hast thou forgotten, and made no oblivion of my iniquity, and the cleansing of my sin? For how can a man be just before God upon earth? And again: If I would be just, he will not hear me; but I shall be in need of his judgment. And again: Since I am wicked, why do I labor in vain?

If I be washed with snow-water, and my hands shine ever so clean, yet thou wilt plunge me in filth. If I sin, thou wilt watch me. But thou wilt not make me innocent of iniquity. And: If I have acted wickedly, woe is me. And: If I be just, I shall not be able to lift up my head. For I am full of ignominy. And again: For who shall be clean from filth? Not even one, even if his life be but of one day upon the earth, and his months are numbered. But if you say that the pronoun "who" is taken not for what is impossible, but sometimes for what is difficult, I shall answer you: And where is that which you rashly asserted, that the commandments of God are easy, and can be easily fulfilled? As Scripture says: A man laboureth in sorrow for himself, and does violence to his own perdition, so that, the flesh being oppressed and subdued and dying, the spirit may live in him.

I pass over that ridiculous exposition of your Demosthenes, who says that Job did not say, Who shall be clean from sin, but who shall be clean from filth; by which he tries to prove that the filth of swaddling clothes in infancy is meant, not the vices of sins. Or if he does not understand it this way, let you say what he means. For he is so involved a speaker, and so overwhelmed with an excess of verbal squalor, that he offers to the reader suspicion rather than understanding. At the end he adds: But what shall I answer to these things? I will put my hand upon my mouth: I have spoken once, and I will not add a second time. Behold our Job, a man immaculate and just, and without complaint, and abstaining from all evil—with what an end of justice is he crowned, that he should need the mercy of God? This is what we read in Proverbs: Who shall boast that he hath a chaste heart?

Or who shall trust that he is clean from sin? Do here too as before, saying that "who" is said not for what is impossible, but for what is difficult. Take away then the sentence, and erase from your book, that the commandments of God are easy.

But if you should oppose that saying of the Apostle John, His commandments are not heavy, and from the Gospel: My yoke is sweet, and my burden light; you are most easily refuted; for it is certain that he called the commandments of the Gospel light in comparison with the Jewish superstition, in which various kinds of ceremonies were required, which, according to the letter, and the judgment of the Apostle Peter, no one could fulfill. Whence also it is written in the Acts of the Apostles: Now therefore why tempt you God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear: but we believe that we shall be saved, through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in like manner as they also. The Apostle James writes: If thou judgest the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.

He judges the law who says that something was not justly commanded, and that ignorance has no sin; and that victims are offered in vain for an error, of which one has no consciousness of sin. For in the law reason is not sought, but authority. The same writes in the same Epistle: The wrath of man does not work the justice of God; and which of us can be free from wrath, of which it is written: Wrath destroys even the wise? And significantly he put not the wrath of God, but the wrath of man. For the wrath of God is just; but the wrath of man proceeds from a disturbed mind. Whence also it is said in the Psalm: Be angry, and sin not; and what sense this verse has, the Apostle teaches: Let not the sun go down upon your anger; so that it is altogether sin even to be angry lightly; but justice is to soften wrath with swift repentance. Whence for an idle word we shall render account on the day of judgment.

And in the same Gospel we read: Whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of judgment. Although in many ancient manuscripts, "without cause" is not added, so that we should not be angry even with cause. What man will be able to say that wrath, which is without justice, is forever free from fault? And again: Boast not for tomorrow, for thou knowest not what the day to come may bring forth. Whence it is written: Call no man blessed before death. For as long as we live, we are in the contest, and as long as we are in the contest, there is no certain victory, which indeed is reserved even for the Apostle, most valiantly fighting, in the age to come. The Lord and Savior speaks under the person of the man he assumed: For I am the most foolish of all men, and the prudence of men is not in me. And in the sixty-eighth Psalm: God, thou knowest my foolishness: but the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

In Ecclesiastes also it is written: In much wisdom is much knowledge: and he that addeth knowledge, addeth also sorrow: understanding that he lacks perfection, and, from what he knows, how much he does not know. And I have hated life, he says, because the work that I work under the sun is evil. For all is vanity, and vexation of spirit. No man knows what shall be, for who shall tell him how it shall be? There are just men to whom happens as though they had done the works of the wicked. And there are wicked men, to whom happens as though they had done the works of the just. This is said because certain judgment belongs to God alone, and those whom we think just are often found to be sinners, and, conversely, those whom we think sinners are just in the knowledge of God. However much a man may labor to search it out, he will not find it.

And if the wise man should say he knows it, he will not be able to find it. For there is one event to all, and the hearts of the sons of men are full of malice, and of uncertain condition, which in Greek is called περιφέρεια. Dying flies, or, as it is in the Hebrew, dead flies, spoil and corrupt the sweetness of the ointment. What mortal is not caught by some error? Whom do not the poisons of heresies and false doctrines stain? The time, he says, is that judgment should begin at the house of God. And if first at us, what shall be the end of them that believe not the gospel? And if the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Certainly he is just who on the day of judgment is scarcely saved. But he would be saved easily, if he had no stain in himself.

Therefore he is just in that he flourishes with many virtues, and is scarcely saved in that in some respects he needs the mercy of God.

There are four disturbances, by which the human race is vexed, two of the present, and two of the future: two of good things, and two of evil things. Sorrow, which in Greek is called λύπη, and joy, which they call χαρά or ἡδονή (though ἡδονή is by many called pleasure): the one of evil, the other of good. And we exceed measure, if we rejoice over things which we ought not—riches, power, honors; the misfortune or deaths of enemies: or, on the contrary, if we are tormented with grief over present evils, adversities, exiles, poverty, sickness, and the deaths of relatives, which the Apostle forbids to be done; and again if we desire those things which we think good, inheritances, honors, prosperity of all things, and bodily health, and other things whose presence we enjoy with gladness: and fear those things which we think adverse; from which to be perfectly free, according to the Stoics, namely Zeno and Chrysippus, is possible: but according to the Peripatetics it is both difficult and impossible; to which opinion the whole authority of holy Scripture agrees.

Whence also Josephus, the writer of the history of the Maccabees, said that the disturbances of the mind can be broken and ruled, not eradicated, and the five books of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations are full of these discussions. For, according to the Apostle, the frailty of the body and the spiritual forces of wickedness in high places fight against us. Manifest, says he, are the works of the flesh and the works of the spirit, and these are contrary to one another, so that we do not do the things we wish. If we do not do what we wish, but do what we do not wish, that is what we work: how then do you say, That a man can be without sin, if he wills? Behold, the Apostle, and all believers, cannot fulfill what they wish. Charity covers a multitude of sins, not so much of past sins as of present ones, lest, while the charity of God remains in us, we sin further.

Wherefore it is said of the sinful woman: Many sins are forgiven her, because she has loved much. From which we understand that it is not only in our own power to do what we wish, but also in the clemency of God, if he assists our will.

God is called light, and there is no darkness at all in him. When he says that no darkness is found in the light of God, he shows that all other lights are stained by some defilement. Finally, the Apostles too are called the light of the world. But it is not written that in the light of the Apostles there is no darkness. And of John it is written: This man came for testimony, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to bear witness of the light. That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world. Whence also it is written of him: Who alone has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light. And indeed we read that Angels are immortal, that Thrones and Dominations and the other Powers are immortal. But God alone is immortal, because he is not so by grace, as the others are, but by nature.

For which reason the same Apostle writes that God alone is wise, although Solomon too, and many other Saints, are called wise, and it is said, according to the Hebrew, to the prince of Tyre: Are you wiser than Daniel? How then is he alone called light, alone immortal, and alone wise, when many are immortal, and lights, and wise; so also the perfection of man, coming not from nature but from grace, shows that those who seem to be perfect are imperfect. But what is written: And the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin, is to be understood both in the confession of baptism and in the mercy of repentance. But it is one thing to be cleansed by God, another to be without fault of oneself. For if, according to Job: The moon does not shine, and the stars are not clean in his sight, how much more man, who is rottenness, and the son of man, who is a worm!

For every mouth is stopped, and the whole world is answerable to God: because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before him. And there is no distinction of persons. For all have sinned, and lack the glory of God: being justified freely by his grace. But when he writes: We reckon that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law, since God is one, who justifies the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith: he plainly shows that righteousness lies not in the merit of man, but in the grace of God, who without the works of the law receives the faith of believers. Whence it follows: Sin shall not have dominion over you. Why? Because you are not under the law, but under grace. For it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. Whence also the Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness, attained righteousness, but righteousness which is by faith.

But Israel, following the law of righteousness, did not attain to the law of righteousness, because it was not by faith, but as it were by works. For they stumbled at the stone of stumbling. For the end of the law is Christ, unto righteousness to everyone that believes.

Almost all the Epistles of the Apostle have this beginning: Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, and are closed with a similar ending. To the Corinthians also it is written: So that you may lack no gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also will confirm you unto the end without crime, in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Although therefore we lack no gift, yet we wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will then confirm us in all things, and show us without crime, when the day of our Lord Jesus Christ and the end of the world shall have come, so that all flesh may not glory in his sight. Paul planted, Apollos watered, but the Lord gave the increase: therefore neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything; but he who gives the increase, God. For we are his tillage, his building. According to the grace of God, as a wise architect he lays the foundation.

Do not, he says, deceive yourselves. If any man among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. The Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain. And again: For I know nothing by myself, yet I am not hereby justified, for he who judges me is the Lord. It is also said to you, who say that you are without sin: What have you that you did not receive? But if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it? Now you are full, now you are rich. And that we may know that all things depend not upon us but upon the judgment of God: I will come to you shortly, he says, if the Lord wills. For he who says, I will come to you, shows that he wills it, declares that he desires it, promises his arrival.

But that he may speak more cautiously, he adds, if the Lord wills. For if anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know as he ought to know.

The vessel of election, cast down by humility, or rather by consciousness of his own frailty, says: I am the least of the Apostles, who am not worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God: but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God which is with me. He says that he labored more than all the Apostles, and immediately refers his labor to the help of God: Not I, he says, but the grace of God which is with me; as also in another place he speaks: And such trust have we through Jesus Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, as though it were of our own; but our sufficiency is from God, who also has made us worthy ministers of the New Testament.

For a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through the faith of Jesus Christ. Whence he infers: And we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified. For if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. In the law there is a curse; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the Law, to do them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For if a law had been given which could give life, righteousness would truly be by the law. But Scripture has shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. The law therefore was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

Whence he adds, and in one verse comprehends everything, saying: You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen from grace.

I run through all these things, that I may show that the law has been fulfilled by no one, and all the commandments that are contained in the law have been fulfilled through the law. For it is God who works in us both to will and to do. The Apostle labors, and, walking blamelessly according to the righteousness which is in the law, counts all things as refuse for Christ, that he may be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, from God. Whence he writes to the Thessalonians: But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you, and keep you from evil. Therefore we are preserved not by the power of free will, but by the mercy of God.

And lest you think that the truth of faith can be overturned by vain arguments, which raise questions for hearers, the same Apostle writes to Timothy: O Timothy, keep the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words and contradictions of falsely-named knowledge, which some professing have erred concerning the faith. For the goodness and mercy of our Savior saved us, not by the works of righteousness which we did, but according to his own mercy, that being justified by his grace, we might be heirs according to the hope of eternal life. These things I have briefly gathered, as it were from the vast and most beautiful meadow of Apostolic teaching, so that the impudence of a hard forehead may be crushed.

Let us pass over to the Gospels, and fill up the little sparks of the Apostles with the brightest lamp of Christ. Whoever, he says, is angry with his brother without cause, shall be liable to judgment. But whoever shall say RACA (which is interpreted as vain and brainless) shall be liable to the council: doubtless that of the Saints and the angelic senate. But whoever shall say, Fool, shall be liable to the fire of gehenna. Which of us can fail to be subject to this fault, since we must give account even for an idle word on the day of judgment? If anger and injurious speech, and sometimes even a joke, are consigned to judgment, and to the council, and to the fires of gehenna, what will the pursuit of base things deserve, and avarice, which is the root of all evils?

If, he says, you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go first, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. It is within my power that I have nothing against my brother. But whether he has something against me or not lies in his own will. What then shall I do, if he refuses to be reconciled? Shall I beseech him? Bend my knees? But he will scorn to listen. Or shall I drag him by force, unwilling, into the bond of friendship?

And what greater enmity is there than to force friendships by necessity? For he did not say: Ask him to be reconciled to you; but, Be reconciled first to your brother, and so you shall offer your gift at the altar. Not that God has commanded impossible things; but he has ascended to such a height of patience that he seems, because of its extreme difficulty, to have commanded things almost impossible: so as to destroy your assertion, in which you write that the commandments of God are easy. We are commanded to cut off the hand, the eye, and the foot that cause offense. Granted that this is said tropologically, of our closest friends, our kinsmen, and those joined to us by brotherly and conjugal love; do we think it easy to cut off so great a love suddenly, on account of certain offenses?

And as for what is said: Let your speech be, Yes, yes; No, no; whatever is more than this is of evil: perhaps someone may be found in your school who has never lied, nor heard that saying of the Prophet and Apostle, I said in my excess, Every man is a liar, and does not know it is written elsewhere: The mouth that lies slays the soul. To one who strikes us on the cheek we are commanded to offer the other also. To one taking away our tunic, even the cloak must be conceded. To one compelling us to go a thousand paces, two thousand must our necks be offered. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wishes to borrow of you. If I have two small coins, and another asks for them, either I shall give them to him, and I myself must beg, or if I do not give them, I shall be found a transgressor of the law.

And what is said: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and slander you: perhaps this is found in your assembly; among us it is a rare bird. Those who simply confess their sins deserve mercy from the Savior through humility: and what follows, Take heed that you do not do your righteousness, that is, your almsgiving, before men, to be seen by them: I do not know who could fulfill it. For the distribution of a scrap of bread and a pair of small coins a herald is hired, and as we extend our hand, we look this way and that, and if no one sees us, the hand becomes more closed. Grant that one in a thousand may be found who does not do this.

Answer, I ask you, where are the easy commandments? "Be not solicitous," he says, "about tomorrow. For the morrow shall be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own evil". Do you take no thought for tomorrow, and, like birds, are content with what is present? Whose letters made of papyrus fly across the rivers of Ethiopia, so that among apes and peacocks, news of the pleasure of Pelagius may spread, and, what is truly astonishing, even of him who had not yet given his name to Pelagius (as is established from Marius Mercator, Commonitorium 3, and Gennadius), namely Julian, who sent papyrus letters far away, so that gifts might come back from them.

Let gifts be sent to Solomon from Ophir. Do you wish to hear the easiness of God's precepts? Listen to what is said: "How narrow and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it"! He did not say, who walk along it—for that is most difficult—but who find it. For few find it, and far fewer still enter by it. "The Son," he says, "of man hath not where to lay his head", he who says in Isaiah, "Receive him that is weary, and this is my rest". If he has not where to lay his head, nor a place to rest, saying in another place, "Upon whom shall I rest but upon him that is humble, and quiet, and that trembleth at my words": where then is the easiness of the commandments? Many take that which is written, "I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance", simply, according to that sense: "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick".

Others, however, interpret it more strictly. "I came not to call the just", for no one is perfectly just, but in some part a sinner; but sinners, of whom the world is full, David saying: "Save me, O Lord, for the holy man ceaseth," and, "They are become corrupt, and abominable in their ways. They are all gone aside, they are become unprofitable together, there is none that doth good, no not one". "Do not," he says, "possess gold, nor silver, nor money in your purses, no scrip for your journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff". These, you will say, are Apostolic precepts. And certainly the Apostle Peter is recorded to have had sandals, the Angel saying to him: "Gird thyself, and put on thy sandals".

As for the two coats, to say nothing of the rest, I think that both I and you possess them, if indeed we do not have more. This I say, and again and again, and point by point I will press it home, so that you may blush at your own opinion, that the commandments of God are easy.

"Brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father the son, and the children shall rise up against their parents, and shall put them to death. And you shall be," he says, "hated by all men for my name's sake". And because he had commanded easy things, and knew they could easily be fulfilled, therefore, in order to show the easiness of the matter, he joined to it, saying: "He that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved". "I came not," he says, "to send peace upon earth, but the sword. I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law". And lest by running through everything he should make too long a statement, he gathered it all up in one saying: "A man's enemies shall be they of his own household".

And when he had said: "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me", because of the easiness of the precepts, he added: "And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me". The cross of Christ is easy; to go naked after Christ is child's play, is a jest. And where are the rewards which are sought only after difficulty has been overcome? The tares are not gathered in the present age, lest the wheat also be uprooted along with them. The Lord's fan is reserved for the future judgment, when the just shall shine as the sun, and the angels shall go forth, and shall separate the wicked from the midst of the just. Peter sinks, and deserves to hear: "O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt"? If in him faith was little, I do not know in whom it could be great.

"From the heart," he says, "proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man". Let him come forward who can testify that these things are not in his heart, and I will confess that full righteousness exists in this mortal body. "He that will save his life," he says, "shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall save it". Again I say: are these easy commandments? "Woe to the world because of scandals, for it must needs be that scandals come". And therefore it is written elsewhere: "In many things we offend, or err, all of us". He set down not a few sins, but many, and not those of certain people, but of all: "For all seek the things that are their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ's". One alone is called good, God, and the goodness of the teacher, as being merely human, is refuted.

The most learned man in the Law says he has done everything, and for this reason is loved by the Lord; and yet he does not have full righteousness, because he was unwilling to distribute his substance to the poor. Whence difficulty is compared to difficulty, indeed the impossible to the impossible, since neither can a camel enter through the eye of a needle, nor can the rich enter into the kingdom of heaven. Which of us does not wash the outside of the cup and the dish, while having the inside no less defiled with filth? Who can escape the likeness of whited sepulchres, lest Jesus say also to us: "Outwardly indeed you appear to men just, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity"? Although we may be free from other vices, to be without the stain of hypocrisy belongs to few, or to none.

"Father," he says, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt". The Son of God, who spoke, and things were made, commanded, and all things were created, according to this that he is called the Son of man, tempers his statement: "Father, if it be possible; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt": and my dear Critobulus speaks with raised eyebrow, "Man can be without sin if he wills." The Apostles hear: "Could you not watch one hour with me"? He did not say, you would not, but, you could not. The Apostles cannot watch one hour, overcome by sleep, sorrow, and the frailty of the flesh, and can you overcome all sins together for a long time? Mark the Evangelist writes of the Lord: "And he could not do any miracle there, only that he laid his hands upon a few sick people, and healed them, and he wondered because of their unbelief".

The Lord is said not to have been able to do even one miracle in Nazareth, and is held back by the astonishment at another's unbelief: and you are able to do everything you wish. Then in what follows it is written: "He went into the parts of Tyre and Sidon, and entering into a house, he would have no man know it, and he could not be hid". Truly indeed he desired to be hidden, and why could he not do what he desired? Consider the reality of the man he assumed, and you will be free of every scandal. If the Son of God is recorded as having, in the flesh and on account of the flesh, been unable to do something, shall we, who are wholly flesh, and who daily struggle against the works of the spirit, do all we wish, against the Apostle's judgment?

The Apostle Peter wishes to make three tabernacles on the mountain, one for the Lord, another for Moses, a third for Elias, not knowing what he says, being struck with fear: and shall we belch forth the pride of Pythagorean philosophy? Concerning the day and hour of the final consummation he answered that even the Angels of heaven, and the Son, do not know, and shall we promise full knowledge? The infirmity of the flesh rejoiced in having God as its inhabitant, and yet it could not exceed the measure of its own frailty, so that not "in appearance" (τῇ δοκήσει), according to the ancient heretics, but truly the Son of God, might be believed to be the Son of man. Leaving the Apostles for a little while, he fell upon the ground on his face, and prayed, saying: "Father, if it be possible". Why, I ask, did he express his statement ambiguously, he who had said elsewhere, "The things that are impossible with men, are possible with God"?

But being about to suffer as a man, he speaks in the words of a man. He says: If it be possible, let one hour pass by. You say, it is possible at every time to avoid sins.

In certain copies, and especially in the Greek codices, according to Mark, at the end of his Gospel it is written: "Afterwards, when the eleven were at table, Jesus appeared to them, and he upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen". And they answered for themselves, saying: "This age of iniquity and unbelief is a substance which does not allow the true power of God to be grasped, on account of unclean spirits: therefore now reveal thy justice". And if you contradict this, you certainly will not dare to deny that: "The whole world is seated in wickedness": and that Satan dared to tempt his own Lord, and departed defeated and confounded, until a time, that is, of the Passion.

He is tempted, and the successor of Jovinian dares to say: "Those who have received baptism with full faith cannot be tempted; indeed, in other words: A baptized man, if he does not wish, cannot sin any further at all." Zacharias the just hears from the Angel: "Because thou hast not believed my words, thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be able to speak, until the day wherein these things shall come to pass". The father of the lunatic speaks of the Apostles: "I besought thy disciples to cast him out, that is, the demon, and they could not". And the disciples themselves ask the Savior: "Why could not we cast him out?" And they hear, "Because of your unbelief." Why, I ask? Because being able to do all things was reserved to the Lord. A thought entered into the Apostles, which of them should be the greater, and they are corrected by the teaching of the Savior, while the least is acknowledged as the greater, and humility is exchanged for exaltation.

He is not received by the city of the Samaritans, because his face was set as of one going to Jerusalem. James and John, truly sons of thunder, and burning with the fervor of zeal like Phinees and Elias, desire to bring down fire from heaven, and are reproved by the Lord: who surely would not have been reproved, had they wished such a thing without error. The crowds went with him, that is, with the Lord, who turning said: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple". And, "Whosoever doth not carry his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple". And here I will proclaim, rashly: Can man, if he wills, avoid all sins; are then his commandments easy? Let those who deserve to hear from the Lord Savior: "You are they who justify yourselves before men, but God knoweth your hearts, for that which is high to men is abomination before God".

"It is impossible," he says, "that scandals should not come". I think that sin is the scandal that comes through scandal. For unless I am mistaken, σκῶλον and σκάνδαλον among the Greeks take their name from stumbling and falling. Therefore "in many things we all offend". Suppose I have not fallen, still I have stumbled, and not in one thing, but in several. I think that to have stumbled in something is sin. The Apostles said to the Lord: "Increase our faith." He answered them: "If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed", which surely is the least of all seeds; and my dear Critobulus swells with faith into mountains for us.

And he told them a parable, he says, to the effect that one ought always to pray and never to lose heart. In vain do we always pray, if it lies in our own will's power to do what we wish. The Apostles said: And who then can be saved? They hear from the Lord: The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. Therefore certain things which are impossible with men are shown, precisely from the fact that they are possible with God, to be indeed possible. Let it then be possible with God to grant to man, if He wills, sinlessness, not by man's own merit, but by His own clemency, and yet by no means possible among men through the power of free will, since it is received by the nod of the Giver.

It had not sufficed for the Apostles once to have inquired concerning rank, which of them should be greatest, but even at the very moment of necessity and Passion it is written of them: A dispute arose among them, which of them should be regarded as the greatest. A truly excellent time, with the cross imminent, to dispute about rank! Simon, he says, Simon, behold Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not. And certainly, according to you, it lay within the Apostle's own power, had he wished, that his faith should not fail—a failing of faith by which, assuredly, sin creeps in. In certain copies, both Greek and Latin, it is found, as Luke writes: An angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him—doubtless meaning the Lord the Saviour. And being in an agony, he prayed the longer, and his sweat became as it were drops of blood falling down upon the ground.

The Saviour in His Passion is strengthened by an angel; and my Critobulus needs no help of God, possessing the power of free will! And he prayed so intensely that drops of blood burst forth from that part of him which was wholly about to be poured out in the Passion. Why, he says, do you sleep? Rise and pray, that you enter not into temptation. He ought, according to you, to have said: Why do you sleep? Rise and resist, for you have free will, and once power has been granted you by the Lord, you need no other's help. For if you do this, you will not enter into temptation.

I can, he says, do nothing of myself, but as I hear, so I judge. The Arians raise this as a calumny, but the Church answers that these things are spoken from the person of the man who was assumed. You, on the contrary, say: I can be without sin, if I wish. He can do nothing of himself, so as to point out the truth of his manhood. You can avoid all sins, so that, while still established in the body, you show yourself to be ἀντίθεος a god opposed to God. He refuses to his brothers and kinsmen to go up to the feast of Tabernacles; and—indeed it must not be unknown to us that in very many Greek and Latin manuscripts nothing at all is found written either about the coming angel, or about the sweat of blood. Today the copies lacking these verses are far rarer, and only three are cited by Mill.

Afterward it is written: But when his brothers had gone up, then he also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. He said he would not go, and did what he had earlier denied. Porphyry barks, accusing him of inconsistency and change, not knowing that all scandals are to be referred to the flesh. Moses, he says, gave you the law, and no one of you keeps the law—a law surely possible—and yet what was possible no one had fulfilled; nor is this the fault of the one commanding, but the frailty of the one hearing, that the whole world may become subject to God. In the Gospel according to John, in many Greek and Latin manuscripts, is found the account of the woman taken in adultery, who was accused before the Lord. The scribes and Pharisees accused her and pressed the matter vehemently, desiring to stone her according to the law.

But Jesus, bending down, wrote with his finger on the ground—namely, the sins of those who were accusing, and of all mortals, according to what is written in the Prophet: But those who forsake you shall be written in the earth. At length, lifting up his head, he said to them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. This phrase "without sin" is written in Greek ἀναμάρτητος.

Whoever, then, says that "without sin" is one thing, and ἀναμάρτητος another, either let him express the Greek term by some new word, or, if it has been rendered by the Latins, as the truth of the interpretation holds, it is plain that ἀναμάρτητος means nothing else but "without sin." And because all the accusers fled (for the most merciful Judge had given room for their shame to withdraw), and again writing on the ground, and looking down at the earth, they gradually began to depart and to avert their eyes from him; and he alone remained with the woman, to whom Jesus said: Where are those who accused you? Has no one condemned you? She said: No one, Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither will I condemn you. Go, and from now on sin no more. The Lord commanded that she sin no more, just as He likewise commanded other things in the Law. But whether she did so or not, Scripture does not say. All, he says, who came before me are thieves and robbers. If all, none is excepted.

Those who came, he says—not those who were sent—of whom the Prophet says: They came of themselves, and I did not send them. By which word the power belongs to Christ alone, who came unto his own, and his own received him not. While I was, he says, in the world with them, I kept them in your name; those whom you gave me, I have guarded, and none of them has perished, except the son of perdition. He did not say, I gave them the power of free will, that they might save themselves by their own labor, but, I have guarded them, I have kept them. Finally he adds, I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from evil. In the Acts of the Apostles it is written that a dissension arose between Paul and Barnabas concerning John, who was surnamed Mark, so that they parted from one another; and Barnabas took Mark, and Paul took Silas, into the ministry of the Gospel.

Paul was the stricter, Barnabas the more indulgent; each abounds in his own judgment. And yet this dissension has something of human frailty in it. In the same book we read: They passed through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, being forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia—a curse under which I think that, even to this day, heretics who act against the Holy Spirit are found in great numbers in that very province. And when they had come, he says, into Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them. Note that the Spirit of Jesus is the Holy Spirit, who elsewhere, on account of the unity of substance, is called the Spirit of the Father. They wish to speak in Asia, and are forbidden by the Holy Spirit. They attempt to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus does not allow them.

This would be quite unreasonable, if He had once for all given them the power of free will to act or not to act.

There follows: The times, he says, of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands men everywhere to repent. Significantly he showed the past times under the Law to be times of ignorance. Again he says: I will come to you, God willing. Why did he insert the will of God, if he possessed power over his own will? The Apostle James says: If anyone keep the whole law, but offend in one point, he has become guilty of all. Which of us has never at some time sinned? But if he has sinned (which cannot be denied), then by one sin he is guilty of all sins, and is saved not by his own strength, but by the mercy of God. If any man offend not in word, he is a perfect man. If you have ever sinned in speech, where then is the perfection you claim for yourself, especially since it follows: But the tongue no man can tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

I beg you to answer me: if the tongue is an unruly evil, and full of deadly poison, and no one can tame the tongue of mortals, and you are guilty of so great a crime, where then is your perpetual flight from sin?

Whence come wars and whence come quarrels among you? Is it not from the desires that war in your members? Either you do not have human members, or, if man cannot exist without members, you confess that desire and lust war in your very limbs. David, who had confidently said: Prove me, O Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart, for your mercy is before my eyes, and I have delighted in your truth. And again: But I have walked in my innocence; and, My foot has stood in the right way—although the mercy of God tempered the truth of judgment, yet because he dared to say this, he is left for a little while to his own frailty, and, as you say, to the liberty of his will, and, having fallen through adultery into homicide, he afterward says: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy. And according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my iniquity.

Nor do I say this to accuse the holy man, of whom it is written that he did all the will of God; but that these vices were compensated by many other good deeds, and that he was saved by the mercy of God, whose judgment is in the balances, and to whom Asaph speaks: You will feed us with the bread of tears, and give us to drink tears in a full measure. For the Lord is not unjust, that He should condemn sins alone and take no account of good works. Whence also in another place the same David sings: I said in my abundance, I shall not be moved forever. Lord, in your will you gave strength to my beauty. You turned away your face from me, and I was troubled. For I said, I will confess my injustice against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the wickedness of my sin. And to the just man it is commanded: Reveal your way to the Lord, and hope in him, and he will do it.

And he will bring forth your justice as the light, and your judgment as the noonday. For the salvation of the just is from the Lord, because there is no healing in their flesh, before the face of his wrath. And daily, according to the Apostle who said, For there dwells no good thing in my flesh, they groan, saying, My loins are filled with illusions, and there is no health in my flesh. For he has made our days short, and our substance is as nothing before him. Every man living is entire vanity—whether living in the body, or living in virtues, all is nevertheless vanity. For he wavers in an uncertain state, and while he fears not, he suffers a tempest in clear weather. For when he was in honor, he did not understand; he is compared to senseless beasts, and made like unto them. For nothing, he says, will he save them—doubtless meaning the just, who are saved not by their own merit, but by the clemency of God.

And my sins are not hidden from you. This is spoken in the person of Christ. If he who committed no sin, nor was guile found in his mouth, grieved for us, and bore our sins, how much more ought we to confess our own vices? My soul, he says, refused to be comforted, considering the sins I had committed. I remembered God, and was glad, thinking that I would be preserved by his clemency. In the night I meditated with my heart, and I searched my spirit. And I said, now have I begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High. This is the voice of the just man, who, after the musing of his sleeplessness and the anguish of conscience, says at last: Now have I begun—either to do penance, or to enter into the light of knowledge—and this very change from good to better is not of my own strength, but of the right hand and power of God.

Mercy shall be built up forever. For there is no time in which mercy is not built up in each one of the saints, and in those who pass from sins to virtues. From the arrow that flies by day, from the business that walks about in the darkness, which of us shall be able to be freed? For behold, sinners have bent the bow, that they may shoot in the dark at the upright of heart. They do not wish to wound the wicked, but the upright of heart. The arrow flies by day, through heretics in the understanding of the sacred Scriptures. The business walks about in darkness and by night, through the philosophers, who by obscurity of speech desire to wrap up the truth. Planted in the house of the Lord, they shall flourish in the courts of our God. Those planted in the house of the Lord are the just, confirmed in the Church.

But these shall flourish, not for the present, but in the future, in the courts of the Lord, where possession is certain and secure. The Lord is merciful and compassionate, longsuffering and of great mercy. The Lord is sweet to all, and his mercy is over all his works. Do you hear such great mercies, and dare to trust in your own virtue? Let all your works confess to you, O Lord. If both men and all things are among the works of God, then let all men confess their own sins. We read in Samuel what was said of Solomon: He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And again: If he shall act unjustly, I will correct him with the rod of men, but my mercy I will not take away from him.

When David had given thanks to God, at the end he added: And this is the law of man: O Lord God, always look upon your clemency, and sustain the weakness of the flesh with divine help. What have I to do with you, he says, sons of Zeruiah? Let Shimei curse. The Lord commanded him to curse David. And who shall answer him, why have you done this? For the will of God is not to be discussed, but to be endured with thanksgiving. And in another place: The Lord commanded that the good counsel of Ahithophel be scattered, that he might bring evil upon Absalom, whose counsel certainly was as it were the counsel of God. And by what reason was the power of free will overturned by a greater power?

Jeroboam, who made Israel sin, is rebuked for having abandoned the commandment of the Lord, and it is said to him: I gave you the kingdom of the house of David, and you were not as my servant David, who kept my commandments, and walked after me with his whole heart, and did what was pleasing in my sight. Therefore the commandments of God are indeed possible, which we know David to have fulfilled, and yet the saints grow weary in the perpetuity of righteousness.

We read of many kings of the stock of David, that they were preserved not by their own merit, but by the virtues of their father David, who did what was pleasing in the sight of God. And we come to Asa king of Judah, of whom it is written: Asa did what was right in the sight of the Lord, as David his father did. And when the history had dwelt long upon his many praises, at the end it added, But he did not take away the high places. Yet his heart was perfect with God all the days of his life. Behold, he is also called just, since his heart was perfect with God, and yet in this he erred, that he did not take away the high places, which we read that Hezekiah and Josiah did take away.

Elijah, in whose spirit and power John the Baptist came, at whose imprecation fire came down from heaven, and the waters of the Jordan were divided, feared Jezebel, and fled, and weary sat in the wilderness under a tree, and in the anguish of his steps, asked for death, saying: It is enough, O Lord, take away my soul, for I am not better than my fathers. Who can deny this man to be just? And yet, I will not say to fear a woman, but a man, comes from a disturbance of the soul, which cannot be without fault, David saying: The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man may do to me. Of Jehoshaphat king of Judah it is written: And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat, who walked in the earlier ways of David his father. From which it is understood that he had the earlier righteousnesses of David, and did not have the later sins.

He did not hope, it says, in Baalim, but in the God of his father, and walked in his precepts, and not according to the sins of Israel. And the Lord confirmed the kingdom in his hand, and all Judah gave gifts to Jehoshaphat, and infinite money and riches came to him, and great glory. And when his heart took courage because of the ways of the Lord, he also took away the high places and the groves out of Judah. This man was joined by kinship to Ahab, a most impious king. And when after the battle he was returning to Jerusalem, Jehu the son of Hanani the seer met him, and said to him: You give help to the impious, and you join in friendship with those who hate the Lord. And therefore you indeed deserved the wrath of the Lord, but good works have been found in you, in that you took away the groves from the land of Judah, and prepared your heart to seek the Lord.

And lest we think that his past righteousnesses were blotted out by this sin and prophetic rebuke, afterward it is written of Ahaziah of his stock, that Jehu found him hiding in Samaria, and having brought him, killed him: And they buried him, it says, because he was the son of Jehoshaphat, who had sought the Lord with his whole heart. Of Hezekiah it is written: He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that David his father had done. He took away the high places, and broke the statues, and burned the grove, and broke the bronze serpent which Moses had made. And again, He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, and after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah who were before him. He clung to the Lord, and did not depart from him, and kept his commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses, and the Lord was with him, and in all things in which he went forth, he acted wisely.

And when Sennacherib king of the Assyrians had taken all the cities of Judah, Hezekiah sent to him at Lachish, saying: I have sinned, withdraw from me, whatever you shall command, I will give. And the king of the Assyrians imposed upon Hezekiah three hundred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold: and Hezekiah gave all the money that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king's house. At that time he cut down the doors of the temple of the Lord, and the shields which he had overlaid with gold, and gave all to the king of the Assyrians.

And though such things are said of him, he did not fear, under compulsion of necessity, to offer to the Assyrian king what had been consecrated to the Lord, and it is said to him: I will protect this city for my own sake, and for the sake of David my servant; not for your sake, though you did the former things, when a hundred eighty-five thousand of the army of the Assyrians were struck down, an angel smiting them.

This too must be attended to more diligently, which Scripture records: Hezekiah fell sick unto death, and Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, saying: Give charge to your household, for you shall die. He turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying: I beseech you, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you, in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in your sight. And Hezekiah wept with great weeping. Surely Hezekiah was just, and of a perfect heart. He was about to go to the Lord; he ought not to have wept. Do you seek the reason for the tears? If you consider the man, you will not wonder at the causes of grief. For no one goes fearless to the judgment of the Lord, having the conscience of sins. And when he had wept, the word of the Lord came to Isaiah the prophet, saying: Return, and say to Hezekiah my leader.

He is called the leader of God, to whom death had been announced; because he was cast down in humility: Thus, it says, says the Lord God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, and seen your tears. Time of life is added to him, and he is freed from the hands of the Assyrians; and yet he asks for a sign, that he may believe what God has promised to be true, which is at least a token of small faith. The king of Babylon also sent messengers and legates to congratulate him on the restoration of his bodily health: and he showed them all the treasures of spices, and of gold and silver, and the furnishing of vessels. There was, it says, nothing that Hezekiah did not show them in the house of the Lord, and in all his dominion. From which we understand that even the vessels of the temple were shown to the legates.

Whence also the wrath of the Lord is stirred up, and afterward he learns by the prophecy of Isaiah: Of your sons there shall be eunuchs, and all the vessels of the temple shall be carried to Babylon. For which reason it is also written in the book of Chronicles: Hezekiah fell because of the pride of his heart. Surely no one but an impious man will deny Hezekiah to be just. You may say, he sinned in certain things, and therefore ceased to be just: but Scripture does not say this. For it is not because he sinned in small things that he lost the name of righteousness, but because he did many good things that he possesses the title of just. I say all this, that it may be proved by the testimonies of the sacred Scriptures, that sinners are not just because they never sinned at any time, but that they remain just because they flourish with many virtues.

Of Josiah it is written: He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way of David his father. He did not turn aside either to the right hand or to the left; and yet though he was just, in a time of necessity and distress, he sent to Huldah the prophetess, wife of Shallum, son of Tikvah; son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. And she, it says, dwelt in Jerusalem in the second quarter: no doubt signifying that part of the city which was enclosed by the inner wall. And she answered: thus says the Lord God of Israel, go and tell the man who sent you to me. In which there is a hidden reproof both of the king and of the priests and of all the men, that no holy man could be found who was able to foretell the future.

Finally Josiah is slain by Pharaoh king of Egypt, because he would not hear the words of the Lord from the mouth of Jeremiah the prophet, or as it is written in Chronicles: Josiah would not turn back, but prepared war against him, and did not agree to the words of Necho from the mouth of God. And it is added: And he died and was buried in the mausoleum of his fathers, and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned him, and especially Jeremiah, whose lamentations over Josiah all the singing men and singing women repeat to this present day, and it has obtained as it were a law in Israel: Behold, it is said to be written in the Lamentations.

I think that not agreeing to the words of God through anyone whatsoever is a sin. Jeremiah speaks of this very thing, though many understand it according to the anagogical sense, of the Lord Savior: The breath of our face, Christ the Lord, was taken for our sins. To whom we said, under your shadow we shall live among the nations. Moses, to whom the Lord spoke face to face, and whose soul was saved, stumbled at the waters of contradiction, nor did he deserve to enter the promised land with his brother Aaron. Of these the Psalmist also sings: Their judges, joined to the rock, were swallowed up; they shall hear my words, for they were pleasant. And the sense is: The judges of the people of the Jews, Moses and Aaron, were devoured by the sin of the people near Jerusalem. The rock, from which streams of water flowed, and surely they themselves were just, and obeyed the words of God, which are of themselves most sweet.

Then follows concerning the corpses of the dead in the wilderness: They were scattered upon the earth like a thick clod of soil. Our bones have been scattered beside hell. In Hosea God speaks: I will betroth thee to me in justice and judgment. And immediately he adds: And in mercy and compassion, and in faith, that she may recognize by the reward of the giver, that he himself is the Lord. In the same book it is written: I am God and not man, holy in the midst of thee, and I will not enter into the city, namely the assembly-place of vices. He alone does not enter this city, which Cain built in the name of his son Enoch, all of which the mouths of priests daily celebrate, ὁ μόνος ἀναμάρτητος, which in our tongue is said: he who alone is without sin. Which praise, according to your opinion, is reckoned to God in vain, if it is shared with others. For we, according to Amos, have turned justice into wormwood, and the fruits of judgment into bitterness.

The sailors and passengers speak, in the book of Jonah: We beg thee, Lord, destroy us not because of this man, and bring not upon us innocent blood. For as it hath pleased thee, so has it been done, Lord. They do not know the reasons, what the Prophet, a fugitive servant, deserves, and yet they justify God, and confess innocent blood, whose works they do not know. And at the last, As it pleased thee, Lord, so it has been done. They do not seek the justice of God's sentence: but they confess the truth of the just judge. Micah testifies with tearful voice: The holy man has perished from the earth, and there is no upright man among men, all lie in wait for blood, each hunts his brother to death. The evil of their hands they call good. And again: He who is best among them is like a briar, and he who is upright, like a thorn from the hedge.

This is the justice of men, that, according to the words of the same prophet, one must trust neither friend, nor spouse, nor children, because a man's enemies are those of his own household. Which sentence the word of the Lord also confirmed. Whence counsel is given through the same prophet: I will show thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of thee: namely, to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk carefully with thy God. Did he say, have equality with God, and not this, which is the greatest thing, to walk carefully with thy God? So that you may never be secure, that you may guard your heart with every watchfulness, that you may consider that you walk in the midst of snares, and enter beneath the battlements of walls, that you may daily meditate upon this: Beside the path they have laid a stumbling-block for me. For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

He who is cautious and fearful can for a time avoid sins; he who is secure about his own righteousness resists God, and, deprived of his help, lies open to the ambushes of enemies. Let my bones rot, says Habakkuk, and let worms swarm beneath me, provided only that I rest in the day of tribulation, that I may go up unto my strong people. Here he begs for tribulations and distresses and affliction of soul, that in the future he may be joined to the number of the men now reigning with Christ. From this it is clear that for these there is a battle and a struggle, and that in the future there is victory. Jesus son of Josedech, which is interpreted "the just one of the Lord", the high priest, is described as clothed in filthy garments, he who committed no sin, and yet bore our sins, at whose right hand stood Satan, to oppose him.

And it is said to him after the battle and the victory: Take away the filthy garment from him: And, Behold, I have taken away thy iniquity from thee—and the heir of Jovinian speaks: "I am entirely without any sin, I have no filthy garments, I am ruled by my own judgment, I am greater than the Apostle. He does what he does not wish, and what he wishes he does not do; I do what I wish, and what I do not wish, I do not do; the kingdoms of heaven are prepared for me—nay rather, I myself have prepared them for myself by my own virtues." In this Adam is held liable, and others who think themselves guilty by likeness to Adam's transgression—I alone, with my company, am not held. Others, shut up in cells, not seeing women, because they are wretched and do not hear my words, are tormented by desires: I, even if I am surrounded by throngs of women, have no concupiscence.

For of me it is said: The holy stones roll upon the earth; and therefore I feel nothing, because by the power of free will I carry about the trophy of Christ. Let us hear God crying out through Isaiah: My people, they who call you blessed, lead you astray, and trip up the path of your feet. Who more trips up the people of God: he who, relying on the power of free will, despises the help of the Creator, and is secure in his own will, or he who fears judgment at every single sentence of the Lord's precepts? To such men God speaks: Woe to you who are wise in your own eyes, and prudent in your own judgment. Isaiah, according to the Hebrew, weeps and says: Woe is me, because I kept silent, because having unclean lips, and dwelling in the midst of a people having unclean lips, I have seen the Lord of Sabaoth with my own eyes.

By the merit of his virtues he enjoyed the sight of God, and yet by the consciousness of sins he confessed his lips unclean. Not because he had spoken anything contrary to the Lord's will, but because he had kept silent, terrified either by fear or shame, and had not, with prophetic freedom, rebuked the sinning people. When we rebuke sinners, we who flatter the rich, and show favoritism to the persons of sinners for the sake of shameful gain—do we not perhaps speak with total confidence only to those whose wealth we need? That we may not do such things, that we may abstain from every kind of sin, surely to have kept silent about the truth is indeed a sin. Although in the Septuagint it is not written, "because I kept silent," but "because I was pierced with compunction," namely by the consciousness of sins, so that this prophetic word might be fulfilled: I have been engaged in misery, while a thorn is fixed in me.

That man is pierced by the thorn of sin: you flourish in the flowers of virtues! The moon, he says, shall blush, and the sun shall be confounded, when the Lord shall visit upon the host of heaven on high—that is, what is written in another place: The stars also are not pure in his sight: and, Against his angels he found something perverse. The moon blushes, the sun is confounded, and the heaven is covered with sackcloth, and shall we, fearless and rejoicing, as if we lacked every fault, meet the majesty of the judge, when the mountains—that is, those raised up in pride—shall melt away, and all the host of heaven, whether stars or angelic dignities: and the heavens shall be folded up like a scroll, and all their host shall fall like leaves.

How, he says, is my sword drunk in heaven, and now it shall come down upon Idumea. The sword of God is made drunk in the heavens, and shall your holiness alone be secure? It shall come down upon Idumea, which is interpreted either "bloody" or "earthly," so that by prophetic authority we may learn that all the earth stands in need of judgment. Whence it follows: The victim of the Lord is in Bosra, which is interpreted "flesh"; and its slaughter is great in the land of Edom, that is, in blood, according to what the Apostle sets forth: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God. Woe to him who contends with his maker, woe to him who says to his father, why hast thou begotten me? And to his mother, why hast thou borne me? This pertains to those who say, why was I made such, that I cannot forever be without sin. Why was such a vessel formed, that I should not remain adamantine, but at every touch be earthen and fragile.

All we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord hath laid upon him the sins of us all. For he looked, and diligently examined, and found no one who judged justly, who in all things did his own will. And therefore his arm brought forth salvation, and his own righteousness saved all things, that the whole world might be subjected to God, and preserved by his mercy. For we were unclean, not a few, but all. All our works in the law are reckoned as a menstruous cloth. To Jerusalem, in Ezekiel, God speaks: Thou wast perfect through my comeliness; and the meaning is, not in thy own works, not in thy own conscience, and the boasting of thy heart; but in my comeliness, with which my clemency had freely endowed thee. Then in what follows he speaks to her, when she is saved not by her own merit, but by his mercy.

I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will raise up for thee an everlasting covenant, and thou shalt remember thy ways, and be confounded. And again: I will establish my covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord, that thou mayest remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy confusion, when I shall be pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God. Behold, it is openly shown by the divine word what he said in another place: And in cleansing thee, he shall not make thee innocent—because even the just, after sin restored to their former state, dare not open their mouth, but say with the Apostle: I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. Then also in another place, through the same prophet, God speaks to those who have obtained his mercy.

And you shall remember your ways, and all your wicked deeds, with which you were defiled, and it shall displease you in your own sight, in all the evils that you have done, and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have done well by you for my name's sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your most wicked deeds. Let us blush and say what those who have already obtained the rewards say: let us who are sinners upon earth, and set in a fragile and mortal body, say what we see the saints in heaven say, even though endowed with incorruption and immortality. And you say, he says, the way of the Lord is not right, though your own ways are wicked. This is the arrogance of the Pharisees, to refer sins of one's own will to an injury of the Creator, and to slander his justice.

The priests of the mystical temple, which is interpreted "Church," the sons of Sadoch, do not go out to the people in their ministerial garments, lest they be defiled by sanctification through human intercourse. And do you, in the midst of the crowd, one of the people, believe yourself to be clean?

Running briefly through the prophet Jeremiah, let us gather more the sense than the wording. Go about, he says, in the outskirts of Jerusalem, and seek in her streets if you can find anywhere a man who lives according to justice and faith, and I will be merciful for his sake. For although they say, "The Lord liveth," they swear fraudulently, and this itself is a lie. He rejects the sacrifices of sinners: he denies food to those who offer victims, saying he did not command their fathers, when he led them out of the land of Egypt, to offer sacrifices of this kind. For he commanded it not by choice, but by comparison with idols, preferring victims to be offered to himself rather than to demons. All have departed from him, there is no one who speaks good things, and does penance for his sins. They follow their own wills, like a horse ready for battle. They bend their tongue like a bow: they lie in everything, and there is no truth in them.

He also warns against the snares of friends, and to trust no neighbor. For each one lies in wait for his friends, and brother is deceived by brother, and this is done not from an evil of nature, but by their own will: because they have taught their tongue to lie, and are inclined to injustice. If the Ethiopian, he says, shall change his skin, and the leopard his spots, then you also shall be able to do good, having learned evil. Therefore the Ethiopian's skin and the leopard's spots are a matter of habit, not of nature, which is taught and learned: yet the fault of ingrained evil cannot be removed, except by him for whom all things are possible.

Whence he speaks to him who alone is the true physician: Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, O Lord, and I shall be saved: thou art my glory and my hope. For if I look to my condition and my unhappiness, I can say nothing else but this: Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child is born to thee: let that man be as the cities which God overthrew. For why did I not perish at once in the womb, that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb an everlasting sepulchre? Why did I come forth out of the womb, to see labours and miseries, and that my days should be consumed in sorrows? So little sure of his own condition is he, and so little does he trust in his own strength, that he prefers death to life.

For he knew his own wound, and the power of him whom nothing can be hidden from, who speaks through the Prophet: I am a God at hand, and not afar off. For he who fills heaven and earth, no one can escape his knowledge, nor hide the secrets of the heart from him. He who searches the reins, sees within. And that we may know that everything good we do is of God, he says: I will plant them, that they may in no wise be rooted up, and I will give them a mind and understanding, that they may know me. If thought and understanding are given by God, and the intellect of the Lord springs from the root of him who is to be known, where then is the proud boasting of free will alone? We wish to know our condition; let us hear the history. Joachim king of Judah, and all his companions and his princes, having heard the words of Urias, sought to kill him.

When he learned this, terrified with fear he fled into Egypt. Why did he fear death, who had declared the sentence of the Lord, and who knew the will of the Lord as one sent to proclaim it? Do we disdain the help of God in each thing, and neglect to do all things at his nod, when we read that holy men have even needed the protection of men? Jeremias is in peril, and it is expressly said that the hand of Ahicam the son of Saphan came to his aid, lest he be delivered into the power of the mob and be overwhelmed with stones.

The ceremonies of the law being abolished, and the harsh burden of the old precepts, the grace of the Gospel is promised, and the Lord promises a law, so that all shall know him, from the least even to the greatest, saying: I will forgive their sins, and their iniquities I will remember no more. But what righteousness the holy men had under the old law, he shows in the following words: The children of Israel, and the children of Judah, have wrought iniquity continually in my sight; from their youth even unto this present day, and the city of Jerusalem, from the beginning of its founding even unto the day of its overthrow, has provoked me to wrath. Mark what he says: he joins the end to the beginning; the whole intervening time is in sin.

Jeremias, sanctified in the womb before he was born, a virgin, a prophet of the Old Testament, trembles before Sedecias, and beseeches him tearfully, saying: Now therefore, my lord the king, hear, I pray thee, my petition, and let my supplication prevail before thee, that thou send me not back into the house of Jonathan the scribe, lest I die there. O Prophet, why dost thou fear an impious king? Why dost thou dread him whom thou knowest is soon to perish? Dost thou shrink from prison, for whom paradise is prepared? He will answer me: I am a man, set in mortal and corruptible flesh; I feel pain, I shudder at torments, which even my Lord for my salvation is about to feel. God has mercy on the human race, and does not wish that which he made to perish.

Fear not, Jacob, saith the Lord: for I am with thee, and I will destroy all the nations among which I have scattered thee; but thee I will not suffer to perish utterly, but I will chastise thee in judgment, and so I will have mercy on thee, that I will not leave thee wholly unpunished.

Whence we too say that holy men are righteous, and pleasing to God even after their sins, not by their own merit alone, but by his clemency, to whom all creation is subject, and which needs his mercy. Let the heretics hear this, who are puffed up with pride and say: We have made ourselves horns. Let them hear that which was said of Moab: We have heard of the pride of Moab, he is exceeding proud. His haughtiness, and his arrogance, and his boasting, and the pride of his heart I know, saith the Lord, for his strength is not according to his pride. And it is said of such men: But their enemies (doubtless the flock of the Lord) affirm, saying, We have not sinned, when they have sinned against the beauty of righteousness and against the expectation of the fathers. Do you wish to know when all sins shall be ended?

Hear the same prophet: In that time, saith the Lord, iniquity shall be sought in Israel, and there shall be none, and sin in Judah, and it shall not be found. Why, I ask? It follows: Because I will be merciful to them. But where there is propitiation, sin has gone before. Take away, then, ability, and I will grant that all things, by the gift of God, subsist. It is good to wait with silence for the salvation of the Lord (Thren. Iii, 26); it is good to put one's mouth in the dust, to give the cheek to him that strikes, to be filled with reproaches, to have hope in the Lord. For if he has cast off, he will also have mercy according to the multitude of his mercies; for he has not humbled from his heart, nor cast off the children of men. In vain does man murmur for his sins. Let us search our ways, and let us seek and return unto the Lord.

Let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto the Lord in heaven, and let us say to him: We have done wickedly, and have provoked thee to wrath; therefore thou art inexorable.

The prophet Daniel speaks to Nabuchodonosor, that the Most High rules over the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever he will, and sets over it the lowest and most despised. Ask by what reason he sets the last and most despised as king, and does what he will; and examine whether his will is just, of whom it is written: Who raises up the lowly from the earth, and lifts the poor out of the dunghill, that he may set him with princes, with the princes of his people. Or does he perhaps, according to your view, without judgment and justice seek glory and popular favor, that he may raise up the lowly to a kingdom and exchange the mighty for humility? Hear the Prophet saying: All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing before him.

For he has done whatsoever he willed in heaven and in earth, and there is none who can resist his will, or say, Why hast thou done this?—whose works are all in truth, and his ways are justice, and he can humble the proud. Antiochus Epiphanes, a most cruel king, overthrew the altar, and caused righteousness itself to be trampled underfoot, because it had been permitted by the Lord; and the reasons are given, on account of very many sins (II Macch. V). Therefore he did not do only what he himself willed, but what the Lord permitted on account of the sins of the people. Then it follows that he did this not by his own strength, but by the command of him who ordered that it be done.

But that which he says in his prayer: We have sinned, we have done wickedly, we have done unjustly, and have departed from thy commandments and thy judgments, and other such things, you are wont to say that David, and Daniel, and all the prophets spoke not for themselves, who were holy, but in the person of the people. Against this opinion he himself will answer, and say: While I was yet speaking, and praying, and confessing my sins, and the sins of the people of Israel. You see, then, that he besought the Lord both for his own sins and for the sins of the people, and poured out his supplications in the sight of the Lord his God. Do you wish again to know when sin and iniquity shall be ended?

Although there is a diversity of interpretation among authors, hear the same Prophet: Seventy weeks are determined upon your people and upon your holy city, that transgressions may be finished, and sin may come to an end, that iniquity may be abolished, and everlasting righteousness may be brought in. As long, then, as that end has not yet come, and this corruptible and mortal thing is changed into incorruption and immortality, it is necessary that we lie under sin, not by the fault of nature and of condition, as you falsely charge, but by the frailty and mutability of the human will, which changes from moment to moment; for God alone is unchangeable. You ask where Abel, where Enoch, where Jesus the son of Nave, where Elisha, and the rest of the saints have sinned. There is no need to seek a knot in a bulrush: would that I could even keep silent about manifest sins. If you wish to hear the truth from me, I do not know.

I am conscious to myself of nothing, says he, yet in this I am not justified. Man sees the face, God the heart. In his sight and conscience no one is justified. Whence Paul too speaks with confidence: All have sinned, and are in need of the glory of God; and: God has shut up all things under sin, that he might have mercy upon all, and other such things which we have often repeated.

Critobulus. I have been delighted by the abundance of your words, of which it is written: In much speaking thou shalt not escape sin: but what has this to do with the case? Surely you will confess that those who have attained the baptism of Christ have no sin. And if they are without sin, they are righteous. And once they have been made righteous, if they act with care, they can preserve their righteousness forever, and thereby avoid all sin. Atticus. Are you not ashamed to follow the exploded and condemned opinion of Jovinian? For he too relies on these testimonies and your arguments; indeed, you follow his inventions, wishing to teach in the East what long ago was condemned at Rome, and long since in Africa. Read, then, what was answered to him, and consider it answered to you. For in setting forth dogmas and questions, it is not the person but the cause that must be examined.

And yet know this: that baptism grants pardon for past sins, but does not preserve future righteousness, which is guarded by labor and industry and diligence, and always, above all, by the clemency of God: so that it is ours to ask, his to grant what is asked; ours to begin, his to complete; ours to offer what we can, his to fulfill what we cannot. For except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, he watches in vain that keeps it. Whence the Apostle also commands: So run, that ye may obtain. All indeed run, but one receives the prize. And it is written in the psalm: O Lord, thou hast crowned us as with a shield of thy good will.

For our victory, and the crown of victory, is prepared by his protection and shield: and here we run, that in the future we may obtain; there he shall receive the crown who has stood forth victorious in this age; and to us, after baptism, it is said: Behold, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest something worse befall thee. And: Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. And in another place: The Lord is with you, as long as you are with him; if you forsake him, he also will forsake you. In whose shrine and sanctuary do you think the purity of Christ remains, and the serenity of the temple is saddened by no cloud? We cannot always keep the same countenance—which the philosophers falsely boast of Socrates—how much less the soul? Many are the faces of men, and so too the hearts are diverse.

If it were possible that the waters of baptism should always hold us submerged, voluntary sins would not touch us from above: the Holy Spirit would keep guard. But the enemy assails, and does not withdraw though vanquished, but is always lying in wait, that he may shoot in secret at the upright in heart.

In the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which indeed is written in the Chaldean and Syrian tongue but with Hebrew letters, which the Nazarenes use to this day, according to the Apostles, or as most suppose, according to Matthew, which is kept in the library of Caesarea, the history relates: Behold, the mother of the Lord and his brothers said to him: John the Baptist baptizes for the remission of sins: let us go and be baptized by him. But he said to them: What sin have I committed, that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless perhaps this very thing that I have said is ignorance. And in the same volume: If your brother, he says, has sinned in word, and has made satisfaction to you, receive him seven times in a day. Simon, his disciple, said to him: Seven times in a day? The Lord answered and said to him: Yes, I say to you, until seventy times seven.

For indeed among the Prophets too, even after they were anointed with the Holy Spirit, the utterance of sin was found. Ignatius, an apostolic man and martyr, writes boldly: “The Lord chose Apostles, who were sinners beyond all other men.” Of whose swift conversion the Psalmist sings: Their infirmities were multiplied, afterward they hastened. If you do not make use of these testimonies as authority, use them at least as evidence of antiquity, of what all churchmen have thought. Suppose someone baptized, and immediately, or within those very days, snatched away by death, and I will grant you—what I ought not to grant—that he thought or spoke nothing in which he might slip into error and ignorance. Will he therefore be without sin because he will seem not to have overcome sin, but to have fled it, and not rather because, freed by God’s mercy from the prison of sins, he passed on to the Lord?

This too we say, that God can do whatever he wills; but that man, of himself and by his own will, cannot be without sin, as you assert. But if he can, then you join grace to him in vain now, since one who is powerful has no need of it. But if he cannot without God’s grace, then you have foolishly said that he can what he cannot. For whatever depends on the will of another does not belong to him whom you contend to be capable, but to him without whom it is plain that he is not capable.

I ask, what is this perversity, nay, this contention devoid of reason? Will you not grant me even this, that one who has come up from the waters of baptism is without sin? Atticus: Either I am unable to explain my meaning in words, or, while I explain it, you are rather slow to understand. Critobulus: In what way? Atticus: Recall both what you have said, and what I am saying. You have laid down that man is without sin, if he wills it. I answer that this is impossible in man, not because immediately after baptism man does not lack sin, but because that time in which he is without sin is attributed in no way to human possibility, but to the grace of God. Take away, then, the “can,” and I will grant the “is.” For how can he, who of himself cannot? Or what is that sinlessness which ends immediately with the death of this body? Or certainly, if it is prolonged beyond life, it lies under the risk of transgression and ignorance.

Critobulus: You entangle me by dialectical art, and you do not speak with Christian simplicity, contriving certain knots between “to be” and “to be able to be.” Atticus: Do I play with verbal tricks, when this has come forth from your own workshop? For you say that man is not without sin, but is able to be, whereas on the contrary I grant what you denied, that man is without sin through the grace of God, and yet cannot be so of himself. Critobulus: Then commandments are given in vain, if we cannot fulfill them. Atticus: God has commanded things possible, no one doubts this. But because men do not do the things that are possible, therefore the whole world is subject to God, and needs his mercy. Or certainly, if you can show one who has fulfilled all things, then you will be able to demonstrate that there is a man who does not need God’s mercy. For everything that can happen consists in three times: past, present, or future.

This claim of yours, that man can be without sin if he wills it, show it to have happened in the past, or at least to be happening now: of the future we shall see afterward. But if you can show no one who either is or has been entirely without any sin, it remains that the dispute should concern the future alone. Meanwhile, in two times, past and present, you stand defeated. If someone should afterward arise greater than the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, who lacks sin, then, if you are able, I will let myself be persuaded concerning the future by the future.

Critobulus: Speak as you wish, argue as you please, you will never wrest from me free will, which God once granted, nor will you be able to take away what God has given me, the power to do so if I will. For example, let us use only one testimony: I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all my wills. That David was holy is not in doubt, and yet he who was chosen to do all the wills of God is reproached for having done certain things. Surely it was possible for him to do this, since he was chosen for this purpose, that he should do all the wills of God. Nor is God at fault, who foretold that he would do all the wills of his precepts; but rather the one who did not do what was foretold.

For it was not said that he had found a man who would forever do all the wills of his command; but only one who would do all the wills. This too we say, that man is able not to sin, if he wills, for a time, for a place, according to bodily weakness; as long as the mind is intent, as long as the string on the lyre is loosened by no fault. But if he relaxes a little, just as one who draws a boat against the current of a river, if he loosens his hands, is at once carried backward, and is led by the flowing waters where he does not wish; so the human condition, if it relaxes a little, learns its own frailty, and knows that it cannot do many things.

Do you think that the apostle Paul, at the time when he wrote, “The cloak, or coat, which I left at Troas with Carpus, bring when you come, and the books, and especially the parchments”, was thinking of heavenly mysteries, and not of those things which are needed for the common use of life or the body? Give me a man who does not hunger, does not thirst, nor feel cold, does not suffer pain, does not have fever, is not tormented by colic and difficulty of urination; and I will grant you that man can think of nothing but virtues. The Apostle is struck by a minister, and against the High Priest who had ordered him struck, he directs a sentence: God shall strike you, you whitened wall. Where is that patience of the Savior, who, like a lamb led to the slaughter, opened not his mouth, but spoke gently to the one who struck him: If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why do you strike me?

We do not detract from the Apostle, but we proclaim the glory of the Lord, who, having suffered in the flesh, overcomes the injury and frailty of the flesh; not to mention what he recalls: Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord will repay him in that day, the just judge.

Critobulus: You compel me to say what I have long desired, and yet I do not utter the words that would burst forth. Atticus: Who then forbids you to say what you feel? For either what you are about to say is good, and you ought not to cheat us of the good; or it is bad, and therefore you have kept silent not for our sake, but out of shame. Critobulus: I will say, I will at last say what I feel. All your disputation slides toward this, that you accuse nature, and refer the blame to God, who made man such as he is. Atticus: Was this the thing you wished, yet did not wish, to say? Say it, say it, I beg you, that all may enjoy your wisdom. You blame God for having made man man; let the Angels also blame him for being Angels. Let every creature complain, why it is what it was made, and not what it could have been made.

Doubtless I am now to be entertained with childish little declamations, and to proceed from the gnat and the ant even up to the Cherubim and Seraphim, asking why each was not made in a better condition. And when I come to the lofty Powers, I shall complain and say, why God alone is so much God, and has not made all things gods. For either he will be guilty, according to you, of impossibility, or of envy. Blame him too, why he allows the devil to be in this world, and take away the crown, once you have taken away the contest. Critobulus: I am not so mad as to complain why the devil exists, by whose envy death entered into the world: but this I grieve, that churchmen, and those who arrogate to themselves the title of teachers, take away free will; and once it is taken away, the sect of the Manichaeans is built up.

Atticus: Do I take away free will, who in my whole disputation have done nothing else but preserve the omnipotence of God together with free will? Critobulus: How do you preserve free will, you who say that man can do nothing unless God always helps him? Atticus: If he is at fault who joins God’s help to free will, then he ought to be praised who takes away God’s aid. Critobulus: I do not take away God’s aid, since it is through his grace that we can do whatever we can do; but I set bounds to each within its own limits: so that it may be of God’s grace that he gave the power of free will, and of our own will to do this or not to do it: and that a reward may be kept for those who do it, and a penalty for those who do not.

Atticus: You seem to me forgetful, and as though nothing had been said above, you return along the same lines of disputation. For it has been concluded by a long discussion that the Lord, by His own grace, by which He granted to us free will, helps and sustains us in each and every work. Critobulus: What then does He crown in us, and praise, which He Himself has wrought? Atticus: Our will, which offered all that it could, and the labor, which strove to accomplish, and the humility, which always looked to the help of God. Critobulus: Therefore, if we have not done what He commanded, either God wished to help us, or He did not wish to. If He wished it and helped, and yet we did not do what we wished, it is not we, but He who has been overcome. But if He did not wish to help, the fault is not that of him who wished to do it, but of Him who could have helped, and did not wish to do it.

Do you not see that your dilemma has fallen into a vast abyss of blasphemies: so that on either side, either God is powerless, or envious, and He deserves not so much praise, because He is the author and helper of good things, as blame, because He did not restrain evils. Let Him then be blamed, why He allowed the devil to be, why He suffered, and to this day suffers, some evil to happen daily in the world. This is what Marcion asks, and all the dogs of heretics who tear at the Old Testament, and who are accustomed to weave together a syllogism of this sort. Either God knew that man, placed in paradise, would transgress His command, or He did not know. If He knew, the fault is not in him who could not avoid the foreknowledge of God, but in Him who made him such that he could not avoid the knowledge of God. If He did not know, to whom you take away foreknowledge, you also take away divinity.

For by this same argument he will be at fault who chose Saul to be a most impious king thereafter. And the Savior too will be held guilty either of ignorance or of injustice, for having said in the Gospel: “Did I not choose you twelve as Apostles, and one of you is a devil?” Ask him why he chose Judas as betrayer? Why he entrusted the purse to him, whom he did not fail to know was a thief. Do you wish to hear the reason? God judges things present, not things future. Nor does He condemn from foreknowledge one whom He knows will be such, who will afterward displease Himself; but it is a mark of such great goodness, and of ineffable clemency, that He chooses him whom, for the present, He beholds to be good, even while knowing he will be evil, giving him the power of conversion and repentance, according to that sense of the Apostle: “Do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?

But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you store up for yourself wrath on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works”. For Adam did not sin because God knew this would happen; but God foreknew, as God, what he was going to do of his own will. Accuse God then of lying, why He said through Jonah: “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”. But He will answer you through Jeremiah: “I will speak in sum against a nation and a kingdom, to root it up and to pull it down and to destroy it. If that nation shall repent of its evil, for which I have spoken against it, I also will repent of the evil that I thought to do to it.

And I will speak in sum concerning a nation and a kingdom, to build it up and to plant it, if it shall do evil in my sight, so that it does not hear my voice, I will repent of the good which I said I would do to it”. Jonah too once grew indignant, because he had been made a liar by God's command; but he is convicted of unjust grief, preferring to speak the truth along with the destruction of an innumerable people, rather than to lie along with the salvation of so many.

An example is set before him: “You grieve over the ivy, or gourd, on which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which was born in one night and perished in one night, and shall I not spare Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know how to distinguish between their right hand and their left?” If, in the age of little children and simple folk, whom certainly you will not be able to prove to have been sinners, there was so great a multitude of people, what shall we say of the varying ages of both sexes, which, according to Philo, and the most prudent of philosophers, roll on from infancy to decrepit old age in a sevenfold order, while the increases of the ages so succeed one another that, when we pass from one to another, we are scarcely able to perceive it?

The whole of your argumentation tends to this, that what the Greeks call autexousion, self-determination, and we call free will, you grant in name, but take away in reality. For you make God the author of sins, while you assert that man can do nothing by himself, but only with the help of God, to whom everything we do is to be imputed. But we say that, whether man has done good or evil, it is to be imputed to him by the power of free will, who did what he willed; and not to Him who once granted free will. Atticus: However much you may twist and turn, you are caught in the snares of truth; for in this way, even if He Himself does not help, yet according to you He will be the author of evils, because He could have prevented it, and did not prevent it. For it is an old saying, that he is a murderer who, when he could free a man from death, does not free him.

Critobulus: Now indeed I raise my hand, I yield, you have won: if indeed it is to win, to wish to overturn truth, not with facts, but with words, that is, not with truth, but with falsehood. For I can answer you with that saying of the Apostle: “And even if unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge”. For when you speak, compelled by the twists of arguments, you seem to me to agree, but when you have fallen silent, it slips away again from the mind, so that it clearly appears that your disputation descends not from the fountains of truth and Christian simplicity, but from the trifles and art of the philosophers. Atticus: Do you wish then that I again use the testimonies of the Scriptures? And how your disciples boast, that no one is able to answer your argumentation and problems? Critobulus: I not only wish it, but I desire it.

Teach me from the holy Scriptures, where, the power of free will being taken away, a man does what by himself he either does not wish, or is not able to do.

Atticus: Not in the way you propose, but as truth and reason demand, must the words of the Scriptures be used. Jacob speaks in his prayer: “If the Lord God shall be with me, and shall keep me in the way in which I go, and shall give me bread to eat, and clothing to cover me, and shall bring me back safely to my father's house, the Lord shall be my God, and this stone which I have set up as a pillar shall be the house of God, and of all things whatsoever You shall give me, I will offer to You a tenth”. Did he say, if you keep my free will safe, and if by my own labor I obtain food and clothing, and return to my father's house? He gives everything to the will of the Lord, that he may deserve to receive what he prays for. As Jacob returns from Mesopotamia, a host of Angels meets him, and the camp is called the camp of God.

Afterward he wrestles with an Angel in the form of a man, and is strengthened by the Lord: from Jacob the supplanter, he received the name most upright of God. For he did not dare to return to his most cruel brother unless strengthened by the Lord's protection. It is written in what follows: “The sun rose for him, after he had passed Phanuel”, which is interpreted “the face of God.” Whence Moses also says: “I have seen the Lord face to face, and my soul has been saved,” not by the property of nature, but by the condescension of Him who has mercy. Thus the sun of justice rises for us, when we are strengthened by the face of God. Joseph is shut up in prison in Egypt, and there it is related that the keeper of the prison committed everything to his power and trust. And the reason is given: because the Lord was with him, and whatsoever he did, the Lord made it prosper in his hands.

Whence also dreams are suggested to the eunuchs, and Pharaoh sees an inextricable dream, so that through this occasion Joseph might be freed, his father and brothers might be fed, and Egypt saved in the time of famine. There follows: “And God said to Israel in a vision of the night: I am the God of your fathers, do not fear to go down into Egypt; for I will make you into a great nation there, and I will go down with you into Egypt, and I will bring you up from there: and Joseph shall put his hands upon your eyes”. Where here is the power of free will? Is it not entirely the help of the God of his fathers that he dares to go to his son, and to entrust himself to a nation that does not know him?

The people are freed from Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, not that of Moses and Aaron, but of Him who freed the people by the miracles of signs, and at the last struck the firstborn of Egypt, so that those who before stubbornly held them back, urgently compelled them to leave. Solomon says: “Be confident in the Lord with all your heart, and do not be exalted in your own wisdom: in all your ways acknowledge Him, that He may make your paths straight”. Understand what he says: One must trust neither in our own wisdom, nor in any virtues, but only in the Lord, by whom the steps of man are directed. Finally, it is commanded that we show Him our ways, and make them known, which are made right not by our own labor, but by His help and mercy.

Whence it is written: “Make your way straight in my sight,” or, as other copies have it: “Make my way straight in your sight”: so that what is right for you may also seem right to me. The same Solomon says: “Roll your works upon the Lord, and your thoughts shall be established”. For then our thought is established, when everything we do, we roll, as it were upon a stable and most solid rock, by the help of the Lord, and attribute it all to Him.

The Apostle Paul, when he had swiftly narrated the benefits of God, added at the end: “And who is sufficient for these things?” Whence also in another place he says: “And such trust we have through Christ towards God, not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who has also made us fit ministers of the new Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life”. Do we still dare to be proud of free will, and to abuse the benefits of God to the reproach of the giver? When the same vessel of election writes most openly: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the abundance of the power may be of God, and not of us”. Whence also in another place, rebuking the impudence of heretics, he says: “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord. For it is not he who commends himself that is approved, but he whom God commends”.

And again: “For in nothing was I behind those who are super-apostles, though I am nothing”. Peter speaks to the Lord, troubled by the greatness of the signs: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man”. And the Lord says to His disciples: “I am the vine, and you are the branches; he who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit: for without me you can do nothing”. Just as the shoots and branches of vines wither at once when they have been cut off from the stock, so all the strength of men fades and perishes, if it is deserted by the help of God. “No one,” He says, “can come to me, unless the Father, who sent me, draw him”. When He says, no one can come to me, He breaks the proud liberty of free will: because even if he should wish to go to Christ, unless what follows takes place—unless my heavenly Father draw him—he would desire it in vain, and strive to no purpose.

At the same time, this also must be noted, that he who is drawn does not run of his own accord, but is either drawn back and slow, or led unwillingly.

He who by his own strength and labor cannot come to Jesus, how can he avoid all sins at once? And avoid them in perpetuity, and assume for himself the name of God's power? For if he is ἀναμάρτητος (without sin), and I am ἀναμάρτητος, what distance will there be between me and God? I will set forth one more testimony, lest I cause weariness to you and to the hearers. From Ahasuerus, whom the Seventy interpreters call Artaxerxes, sleep is taken away from his eyes, so that, reviewing the Commentaries of his faithful ministers, he might find Mardochai, by whose information he had been freed from a plot; so that Esther might become more commendable (Esther vi), and the whole people of the Jews might avoid the death impending over them.

Surely the most powerful king, who possessed the whole East from India even to the North and Ethiopia, after most lavish banquets and foods sought from the whole world, desired to sleep, and to rest in slumber, and to fulfill his free will of sleeping, had not the Lord, the provider of all good things, hindered the order of nature, so that, contrary to nature, the tyrant's cruelty might be overcome. It would be long, were I willing to bring forward all the examples of the sacred Scriptures. The whole discourse of the Saints is a prayer to God: the whole prayer and supplication wrests forth the clemency of the Creator, so that we, who cannot be saved by our own strength and effort, may be preserved by his mercy. But where there is mercy and grace, free will ceases in part, which consists only in this, that we will and desire, and give assent to what pleases us.

Now it is in the Lord's power that what we desire, what we labor and strive for, we may be able to fulfill by his help and aid.

Critobulus: I had said simply, that not in each of our individual works, but in the grace of our condition and of the law, the help of God is felt, lest free will be broken. But there are many of our number who say that everything we do happens by the aid of God. Atticus: Whoever says this will cease to be one of yours. Either you too say these things, so that you may begin to be one of ours, or, if you do not say them, you will be a stranger along with those who do not say what is ours. Critobulus: I will be yours, if you say what is mine—nay rather, you will be mine, if you do not say what is contrary. You confess that bodies can be healthy, and you deny health to the soul, which is stronger. For as disease and wound are in the body, so is sin in the soul.

You then, who confess that a man is sometimes healthy in that part which is flesh, why do you not say he is also healthy in that part which is spirit? Atticus: I will follow your proposition. Today you will never escape, wherever you are called. Critobulus: I am ready to listen. Atticus: And I am ready to speak to deaf ears.

I will therefore reply to the proposal. Being composed of soul and body, we possess the nature of each substance. As the body is called healthy if it is troubled by no illness, so the soul is without fault if it is shaken by no disturbance. And yet, although the body be healthy and whole and vigorous, and strong in the integrity of all its senses, it suffers pain from infirmities either frequent or rare, and even when most sound, it sometimes suffers the annoyance of phlegm; so the soul, sustaining the assaults of thoughts and disturbances, in order to overcome shipwrecks, does not sail without danger, and, considering its own frailty, is always anxious about death, according to that which is written: What man is he that shall live, and not see death? Which is intent upon all mortals, not by the dissolution of nature, but by the death of sin, according to that prophetic word: The soul that sins, it shall die.

Otherwise we would know that Enoch and Elijah have not yet seen this common death, by which even brute animals are dissolved. Give me a body that has never been sick, or that after sickness is secure in perpetual health: and I will give you a soul that has never sinned, nor is going to sin thereafter after virtues, especially since vices are neighbors to virtues; and if you decline but a little, either you must err, or fall headlong. For how far apart are stubbornness and perseverance, thrift and frugality, liberality and profusion, prudence and cunning, courage and rashness, caution and timidity? Some of which are referred to good things, others to bad. This indeed is found also in bodies. If you take care to temper the bile, phlegm increases. If you hasten to dry up the humors, the blood grows hot, is corrupted by bile, and a sallow color spreads over the face.

Surely, though we apply all the diligence of physicians, and live on restricted foods, and lack the kindling-matter of diseases and indigestion, yet from certain hidden causes known only to God, we either shiver with cold, or burn with fever, or cry out with colic, and implore the help of the true physician, the Savior, and say with the Apostles: Master, save us, we perish.

Critobulus: Granted, that no one could avoid all sin in childhood, adolescence, and youth: can you deny that very many just and holy men, after vices, turned with their whole mind to virtues, and through these lacked sin? Atticus: This is what I said to you in the beginning, that it is placed in our power, either to sin or not to sin, and to extend the hand either to good or to evil, so that free will may be preserved: but this according to the measure and time and condition of human frailty; while perpetuity of sinlessness is reserved to God alone, and to him who, the Word made flesh, did not endure the detriments and sins of the flesh. Nor, because I can for a short time, will you force me to be able perpetually. I can fast, keep vigil, walk, read, sing psalms, sit, sleep—can I do so forever?

Critobulus: And why in the sacred Scriptures are we called to perfect justice, as in that saying: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; and: Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord; and God speaking to Abraham: I am your God, be pleasing in my sight, and be without spot or blemish, and I will establish my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly? For if that which Scripture attests cannot come to be, it was in vain commanded that it should come to be. Atticus: You grind the same question with various testimonies of the Scriptures into theatrical illusions, which bring forth one and the same man, changed by a variety of masks, into Mars and Venus: so that he who had first come forth stiff and fierce, is afterward dissolved into the softness of women.

For this which you now object to as if it were new—Blessed are the pure in heart, and, blessed are the undefiled in the way, and, Be without spot, and other such things—has been refuted by the Apostle's answer: And we know in part, and we prophesy in part; and, Now we see through a glass in a dark manner: but when that which is perfect is come, that which was in part shall be done away. And so the pure heart, which afterward is to see God, and the blessedness of an undefiled life, and to live undefiled with Abraham, we possess now in shadow and image.

Though someone be a Patriarch, though a Prophet, though an Apostle, it is said to them in the Lord Savior: If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Finally, even Abraham, to whom it was said: Be without reproach, and without spot, fell prostrate upon the ground, conscious of his own frailty. And when God had said to him: Sarai your wife shall no longer be called Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name, and I will give you a son from her, and I will bless her, and she shall become nations, and kings of peoples shall come from her, it is immediately added: Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his mind: Shall a son be born to a man of a hundred years, and shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bring forth? And Abraham said to God: O that Ishmael might live in your sight. God answered him: Yes.

Behold, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac, and so forth. Surely he had heard from God: I am your God, be pleasing in my sight, and be without spot—why then did he not believe what God promised, but laughed in his heart, thinking he was hiding it from God, not daring to laugh openly? Finally, explaining the causes of his unbelief, he says in his heart: How can it be, that a man of a hundred years should beget a son from a wife of ninety? Let Ishmael, he says, live in your sight, whom you have already given. I do not seek difficult things; I am content with the benefit I have received. Rebuking him with a hidden reply, God says: Yes. And the meaning is: What you think will not happen, shall happen. Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and before she conceives, before he is born, I will impose a name on the boy.

For from your error, by which you laughed silently, your son shall receive the name Isaac, "laughter." But if you think that God is seen in this age by those who are pure in heart, why did Moses, who had earlier said: I have seen the Lord face to face, and my soul has been saved, afterward beg to see him knowingly? He, because he had said he had seen him, hears from the Lord: You cannot see my face. For man shall not see my face, and live. Whence also the Apostle calls God alone invisible, who also dwells in unapproachable light, and whom no man has seen, nor can see. And John the evangelist testifies with a sacred voice, saying: No one has ever seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him (i.e. He who sees and declares, does not declare him as great as he who was seen is, nor as much as he who declares knows, but as much as mortal sense can receive.

But as for what you think is meant by "blessed is he who is undefiled in the way, and walks in his law," understand the former saying by the sense that follows. You have learned above by many testimonies that no one could fulfill the law. But if the Apostle, in comparison with the grace of Christ, reckoned as dung what he had previously considered gain in the law, so that he might gain Christ, how much more ought we to know that the grace of Christ and of the Gospel succeeded for this reason, because in the law no one could be justified? But if under the law no one is justified, how is he perfectly undefiled in the way, who is still walking, and hastens to come to the goal? Surely he who is in the race, and treads the way, is less than he who has arrived at the finish.

If then he is undefiled and perfect who still walks in the way, and treads in the law, what more will he have who has reached the end of the way and of the law? Whence also the Apostle speaks of the Lord, that at the end of the world, and at the consummation of virtues, he will present to himself the holy Church, not having spot or wrinkle—which you think is already perfect in this mortal and corruptible flesh, and you deserve to hear along with the Corinthians: Now you are perfect already, now you have become rich, you reign without us; and would that you did reign, that we also might reign with you: whereas true perfection, without any stain, is reserved for the heavens, when the Bridegroom will say to the Bride: You are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you.

According to which is also to be understood that saying: That you may be blameless and simple, as the sons of God, without blemish: for he did not say "you are," but "may you be," deferring it to the future, not attesting that it is in the present, so that here be the labor and the striving, there the rewards of labor and virtue. Finally John writes: Most beloved, we are the sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. Although, therefore, we are sons of God, yet the likeness of God, and true contemplation, is then promised to us, when he shall appear in his glory.

From this swelling of pride there also bursts forth that boldness of praying, by which, writing to a widow how the saints ought to pray, you pronounce: "For he, you say, rightly lifts up his hands to God, he pours forth prayers with a good conscience, who can say: For thou knowest, Lord, how holy, how innocent, how pure from all fraud and injury and rapine are the hands which I spread out to thee: how just, how immaculate the lips, and free from all lying, with which I pour out prayers to thee that thou mayest have mercy on me." Is this a Christian's prayer, or that of a proud Pharisee? Who also spoke in the Gospel: God, I give thee thanks that I am not as other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, and as this publican: I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. He gives thanks to God because by God's own mercy he is not like other men, detesting sins, not assuming righteousness for himself.

You say: "Lord, thou knowest how holy, how innocent, how pure from all fraud, injury, and rapine are the hands which I spread out to thee." He says he fasts twice in the week, to afflict flesh growing wanton with vices, and gives tithes of all his substance. For the redemption of a man's soul is his own riches. You glory with the devil, who says: I will ascend above the stars, I will set my throne in heaven, and I will be like the Most High. David speaks: My loins are filled with illusions; and, My scars have festered because of my foolishness; and, Enter not into judgment with thy servant; and, No living man shall be justified in thy sight. You boast that you are holy and innocent and pure, and spread out clean hands to God. Nor is it enough for you to glory in all works, unless you say you are clean from every sin of speech and mouth, adding how just, how immaculate the lips, and free from all lying.

He sings: Every man is a liar, and apostolic authority itself confirms this very thing, that God may be true, and every man a liar: yet you possess lips immaculate and just and free from all lying. Isaiah laments: Woe is me wretched, for I am pierced with compunction, because, though I am a man, and have unclean lips, I dwell also in the midst of a people having unclean lips: and afterward the Seraph brings a burning coal, taken with tongs, to purge the prophet's lips, not, as you speak, of one boasting, but of one confessing his own faults. According to that which is said in the psalm: What shall be given to thee, or what shall be added to thee, for thy deceitful tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals that lay waste.

And after such swelling, and the boastfulness and confidence of holiness in one praying, as though a fool trying to persuade fools, you attempt at the end to say: With which I pour out prayers to thee, that thou mayest have mercy on me. If you are holy, if innocent, if cleansed from all filth, if you have sinned neither in word nor deed, as James says, He who does not sin in word, is a perfect man; and, No one can tame his tongue, how do you beg for mercy—namely, that you may lament and pour out prayers—since you are holy and pure and innocent, with immaculate lips, and free from all lying, like unto the power of God? Thus Christ prayed on the cross: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Far from my salvation are the words of my sins; and again, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do; who, giving thanks for us, had said: I confess to thee, Lord, Father of heaven and earth.

Thus he taught his Apostles, that daily in the sacrifice of that body believers might dare to say: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. They desire that the name of God, which is holy in itself, be hallowed in themselves; you say: "Thou knowest, Lord, how holy, and how innocent, and how pure my hands are." They add: Thy kingdom come: awaiting the hope of the kingdom in time to come, that with Christ reigning, sin may in no wise reign in their mortal body; and they join: Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth, that human frailty may imitate the Angels, and the will of the Lord be fulfilled on earth. You say: "A man can, if he wills, be without all sin." The Apostles beg for daily bread—or, bread above all substances—to come, that they may be worthy of the receiving of Christ's body. And you, through excessive holiness and secure righteousness, boldly claim for yourselves heavenly gifts.

There follows: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Rising from the font of baptism, and reborn in the Lord the Savior, having fulfilled that which is written of them: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered, immediately at the first communion of Christ's body they say: And forgive us our debts, which had already been forgiven them in the confession of Christ; and you, arrogant and proud, glory in the purity of holy hands and the cleanness of speech. Although a man's conversion may be perfect, and after vices and sins there be a full possession of virtues, can they be so utterly without fault as those who come fresh from the font of Christ? And yet they are bidden to say: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors: not by a lie of humility, as you interpret it, but from the dread of human frailty fearing its own conscience.

They say: Lead us not into temptation; you, with Jovinian, say that those who have attained baptism with full faith cannot be tempted further, nor sin. At the end they add: But deliver us from evil. What do they beg from the Lord, which they have in the power of free will? O man, now you have been made clean in the washing, and it is said of you: Who is this that comes up made white, leaning upon her kinsman?—that though washed, she is not able to keep her purity, unless sustained by the Lord God. How do you desire to be delivered by God's mercy, you who a little before were delivered from sins? Unless for the reason we have said, that when we have done all things, we confess ourselves unprofitable servants.

Your prayer, then, surpasses the pride of the Pharisee, and is condemned by comparison with the publican; who, standing afar off, dared not so much as lift up his eyes to God, but struck his breast, saying: God, be merciful to me a sinner. Whence is uttered the Lord's sentence: I say to you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. The Apostles are humbled, that they may be exalted. Your disciples are lifted up, that they may fall.

Flattering that same widow, you are not ashamed to say that piety, which is nowhere found on earth, and truth, which is everywhere a stranger, dwell chiefly with her, nor do you recall that sentence: My people, they that call thee blessed deceive thee, and undermine the paths of thy feet; and you praise her with words, and say, "O too fortunate, O blessed, if righteousness, which is now believed to be nowhere but in heaven, should be found with thee alone on earth!" Is this teaching, or killing? Lifting from the earth, or hurling down from heaven—attributing to a mere woman what the Angels dare not claim for themselves? But if piety, truth, and righteousness are not found on earth save in one woman, where will your just men be, whom you boasted to be on earth without sin?

These two chapters of prayer and praise you are wont to swear to your disciples are not your own, when the splendor of your style plainly shines in them, and there is such a charm of Ciceronian eloquence that, though walking with the pace of a tortoise, what you teach in secret and put out for sale, you do not dare to profess openly. O happy you, whose books no one transcribes except your disciples, so that whatever seems displeasing you may claim is not yours, but another's. And who will be of such genius as to imitate the elegance of your speech?

Critobulus: I cannot delay further: all patience is overcome by the iniquity of your words. I ask you, what has an infant sinned? Neither can consciousness of guilt be imputed to it, nor ignorance, since, according to the prophet Jonah, they know not their right hand from their left (Jonah, last chapter). They cannot sin, and yet they can perish: their knees totter, their cries do not form words, their stammering tongue is laughed at, and torments of eternal misery are prepared for the wretched. Ah! You have begun to be too eloquent, not to say fluent, now that your disciples have turned into masters. Antonius, that outstanding orator, in whose praises Tully thunders, said he had seen many deserted, but eloquent, no one yet. Do not, then, play with me the flowers of orators—not your own—by which the ears of the unlearned and of boys are usually deceived, but simply tell me what you think. This I say: grant me at least that those are without sin who cannot sin.

Atticus: I will grant it, if they have been baptized in Christ; but you will not thereby immediately hold me to assent to your statement, that you said a man can be without sin if he wills: for these can neither be able nor willing; but they are without any sin through the grace of God, which they received in baptism. Critobulus: You force me to come to that odious point, and say to you: What then have they sinned?—so that at once you may hurl the stones of the crowds at me, and, since you cannot by strength, you may kill by will. Atticus: He kills a heretic, who suffers him to be a heretic. But our correction is a vivifying: that, dying to heresy, you may live to the catholic faith. Critobulus: If you know us to be heretics, why do you not accuse us? Atticus: Because the Apostle teaches me to avoid a heretic after one and a second admonition, not to accuse him, knowing that he is perverse and condemned by his own judgment.

Otherwise it would be most foolish for me to depend, concerning my own faith, upon another's judgment. For what if someone else should call you catholic—should I at once give my assent? Whoever defends you, and says that you, believing perverse things, think rightly, does this not to free you from infamy, but to infame himself by treachery. The multitude of your associates will demonstrate you to be not catholic, but heretical. But these things are trodden underfoot by ecclesiastical discretion, lest a sadder image be shown, as it were, to weeping little ones. May the fear of God grant us this, that we despise all other fears. Therefore either defend what you believe, or abandon what you cannot defend. Whomever you bring forward in your defense, you will name not a patron, but an accomplice.

Critobulus: Tell me, I pray, and free me from every question, why little children are baptized? Atticus: That in baptism their sins may be forgiven them. Critobulus: What indeed did they deserve of sin? Is anyone loosed who is not bound? Atticus: Do you ask me? The evangelical trumpet will answer you, the Teacher of the Gentiles, the golden vessel shining forth in the whole world: Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin, after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is the figure of him that was to come. But if you object that it is said there are some who did not sin, understand that they did not commit that sin which Adam sinned in transgressing the command of God in paradise. But all men, either as debtors of the ancient propagator Adam, or in their own name, are held liable. He who is a little one is loosed in baptism from the parent's bond.

He who is of that age which is able to understand, is freed by the blood of Christ both from another's sin and his own. And lest you think I understand this in a heretical sense, the blessed martyr Cyprian, whose rival in gathering testimonies of Scripture you boast yourself to be, in the letter which he writes to bishop Fidus concerning the baptizing of infants, records these things: « Moreover, if even to the most grievous offenders, and to those who have sinned much against God before, when they have afterwards believed, remission of sins is given, and no one is forbidden from baptism and grace, how much more ought not an infant to be forbidden, who, being newly born, has sinned in nothing, except that, being born carnally according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death by his first birth? Who comes the more easily to receiving remission of sins for this very reason, that the sins remitted to him are not his own but another's.

And therefore, dearest brother, this was our judgment in council, that no one ought by us to be forbidden from baptism and the grace of God, who is merciful and kind and gracious to all. Which, since it is to be observed and maintained with regard to all, is to be observed all the more, I think, with regard to infants themselves and the newly born, who merit more from our assistance toward the divine mercy for this very reason, that at the very first outset of their birth, weeping and crying, they do nothing else but entreat. »

Some time ago the holy and eloquent bishop Augustine wrote to Marcellinus—who afterward, under the suspicion of Heraclian's tyranny, was slain innocent by heretics—two books on the Baptizing of Infants against your heresy, by which you wish to assert that infants are baptized not for the remission of sins, but for the kingdom of heaven, according to that which is written in the Gospel: Unless one be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. A third also to the same Marcellinus against those who say the same thing as you, that a man can be without sin if he wills, apart from the grace of God. And a fourth recently to Hilary against your teaching, which fashions many perverse things. He is also said to be forging others specially against your name, which have not yet come into our hands. Wherefore I judge that I ought to desist from this labor, lest it be said to me that saying of Horace: Do not carry wood into the forest.

For either we should be saying the same things superfluously; or if we wished to say new things, the better ones have already been taken up by the most illustrious genius. This one thing I will say, that the discourse may at last be ended: either you ought to hand down a new creed, so that after the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit you baptize infants into the kingdom of heaven; or, if you hold one and the same baptism for little ones and for the great, then infants too must be baptized for the remission of sins, in the likeness of the transgression of Adam. But if the remission of others' sins seems to you unjust, of which he who could not sin has no need, go over to your beloved (Origen), who says that past and ancient sins in the heavens are loosed in baptism, so that, as you are led by his authority in other matters, you may follow his error in this part also.