Letters 131 to 144: The Correspondence with Augustine on the Origin of the Soul

The soul is incorporeal.—That the soul is also incorporeal, although it can be difficult to persuade the slower-witted of it, I confess I am myself persuaded. But lest I make a controversy over a word either superfluously or deservedly suffer one, since When the thing itself is agreed upon, there is no need to contend about the name: if every substance or essence is a body, or whatever more fitting term is given to that which in some manner exists in itself, then the soul is a body. Likewise, if it is pleasing to call only that nature incorporeal which is supremely unchangeable and everywhere whole, then the soul is a body; since it is not itself anything of that sort. Further, if nothing is a body except what stands or moves through spatial extent by some length, breadth, and height, in such a way that it occupies a greater place by its greater part, and a lesser by its lesser, and is less in a part than in the whole, then the soul is not a body.

For throughout the whole body which it animates, it extends not by local diffusion, but by a certain vital tension. For through all its parts it is wholly present at once, neither smaller in the smaller parts, nor greater in the greater, but more intense in some places, more relaxed in others, and whole in all, and whole in each. For it is not otherwise that what it senses even in a part of the body not whole, it yet senses wholly. For when by a tiny point something is touched in the living flesh, although that place is not only not the whole of the body, but scarcely seems to be in the body at all, yet it does not escape the whole soul: nor does that which is felt run through the whole body, but is felt only there where it occurs.

Whence, then, does it presently reach the whole, that which does not occur in the whole, unless because it is wholly present even there where it occurs, and yet in being wholly there does not forsake the rest? For those other parts also live while it is present, where nothing of that sort has occurred. But if it should occur, and both at once, both together would not escape the whole soul equally. Accordingly, it could not be wholly present at once both in all and in each single part of its body, if it were diffused through them as we see bodies diffused through spatial extents, occupying smaller places with their smaller parts, and larger with their larger. Wherefore, if the soul is to be called a body, it is certainly not a body such as is earthly, nor such as is watery, or aerial, or ethereal.

For all such things are greater in greater places, and smaller in smaller, and none of them is wholly present in any part of itself: but as are the parts of places, so are they occupied by the parts of bodies. Whence it is understood that the soul, whether it is to be called body or incorporeal, has a certain proper nature of its own, created of a substance more excellent than all these elements of the worldly mass, which truly cannot be conceived in any phantasm of corporeal images, which we perceive through the senses of the flesh, but is understood by the mind, and felt by life. Nor do I say these things in order to teach you what is known to you: but in order to disclose what I hold most firmly concerning the soul, lest anyone, when I come to those points which I am inquiring about, should think that I hold nothing of knowledge or faith concerning the soul.

The soul, fallen by its own fault, is freed only by God's mercy.—I am also certain that the soul has fallen into sin by no fault of God, by no necessity of God or even of its own, but by its own will, and cannot be freed from the body of this death, either by the power of its own will, as though this were sufficient for it, or by the death of the body itself, but by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord: and that there is no soul at all in the human race for whom the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, is not necessary for liberation. But whatever soul, without the grace of the mediator and his sacrament, departs from the body at any age of the body, shall receive punishment in the future, and at the last judgment shall receive its body back for punishment.

But if, after the human generation which took place from Adam, souls are regenerated in Christ so as to belong to his fellowship, they shall have rest after the death of the body, and shall receive back the body unto glory. These are the things which I hold most firmly concerning the soul.

Whence comes the soul's guilt.—Now hear, I beg, what I ask, and do not scorn me, so that he who deigned to be scorned for us may not scorn you. I ask where the soul contracts the guilt by which it is drawn into condemnation, even that of an infant overtaken by death, if the grace of Christ has not come to its aid through the sacrament by which even little ones are baptized. For you are not of those who have of late begun to chatter certain novelties, saying that no guilt is drawn from Adam which is dissolved in the infant through baptism. Had I known that this was your opinion—nay rather, since I know that this is not your opinion—I would by no means seek this from you, nor think it needed to be sought.

But since we hold your view on this matter to be in accord with the catholic and most well-founded faith, because also in refuting the empty talk of Jovinian, you brought forward the testimony from the book of Job, 'No one is clean in thy sight, not even the infant whose life is of one day upon the earth': and then you added, 'And we are held guilty in the likeness of the transgression of Adam': and your book on the prophet Jonah declares this quite plainly and clearly, where you said that little children are rightly compelled to fast on account of original sin itself: not unfittingly do I ask of you where the soul contracts this guilt, whence it is necessary that even at that age it be freed through the sacrament of Christian grace.

7. Indeed some years ago, when I was writing certain books on free will, which have gone out into the hands of many and are now held by very many, I thought that the four opinions concerning the incarnation of the soul—whether all others are propagated from that one which was first given to man, or whether new ones are made even now for each individual, or whether, already existing somewhere, they are either sent by God, or fall of their own accord into bodies—should be so treated that whichever of them was true would not hinder my purpose, by which I was then contending with all the strength I could against those who try to introduce a nature of evil endowed with its own principle, set up against God, that is, against the Manichaeans. For concerning the Priscillianists I had as yet heard nothing, who fable blasphemies not much unlike theirs.

Therefore I did not add a fifth opinion, which you mentioned among the others in your letter, lest you should pass over any, where, in answer to a questioner, you wrote back to the man of pious memory, and most dear to us in the charity of Christ, Marcellinus, that the soul is not a part of God. First, because the question there is not about its incarnation, but about its nature, when this is asked. Then, because those against whom I was arguing hold this view, and it was chiefly this that I was aiming at, that I might separate the blameless and inviolable nature of the Creator from the vices and stain of the creature, since they contend that the very substance of the good God, in the part by which it was captured, is corrupted and oppressed by the substance of evil, to which they attribute its own principle and princes, and brought to the necessity of sinning.

This error of heretical opinion excepted, then, I desire to know which of the remaining four opinions ought to be chosen. For whichever is to be chosen, far be it that it should assail this faith, of which we are certain, that the liberation of every soul, even of a little infant, from the bond of sin is necessary, and that there is none except through Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

8. Accordingly, not to make this too long, you certainly hold this, that God even now makes individual souls for individuals being born. Lest it be objected to this view that God completed all creatures on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh day, you adduce the testimony from the Gospel, 'My Father worketh even until now': for thus you wrote to Marcellinus: in which letter you also deigned most kindly to make mention of me, saying that I was here in Africa, one who could more easily explain this opinion to him.

But if I could have done so, he would not be inquiring this of you, placed so far away—if indeed he wrote this to you from Africa. For I do not know when he wrote it; I only know that he well knew of my hesitation on this matter: whence he wished to act without consulting me. Although even if he had consulted me, I would rather have exhorted him, and given thanks that he could confer upon us all what you could, unless you preferred to write back briefly rather than to answer fully.

I believe you would not have taken pains needlessly as to where I was, since you thought you knew perfectly well what he had asked. Behold, I wish that opinion to be mine also, but I do not yet affirm that it is. You have sent to me disciples, that I might teach them what I myself have not yet learned. Teach, then, what I may teach. For many demand of me that I teach, and to them, as regarding many other things, I confess that I am ignorant of this also. And perhaps, although they are ashamed to say it to my face, yet they say among themselves, Thou art a Master in Israel, and knowest not these things? Which indeed the Lord said to him who was one of them, who delighted to be called Rabbi. Whence also he had come by night to the true Master, because perhaps he who had been accustomed to teach was ashamed to learn. But as for me, I would rather delight to hear a master than to be heard as one.

For I recall what he said to those whom he chose above the rest: But be not ye called Rabbi by men: for one is your Master, even Christ. Nor did another teach Moses, even through Jethro; nor did another teach Cornelius, even through the earlier Peter; nor did another teach Peter, even through the later Paul. For by whomsoever the truth is spoken, it is spoken by the gift of Him who is Truth itself. But if we are still ignorant of these things, and have been unable to discover them either by praying, or by reading, or by thinking and reasoning, that we may prove not only with what great charity we teach the unlearned, but also with what great humility we learn even from the learned?

Teach me, then, I beg, what I may teach, teach what I may hold, and tell me, if souls are made individually for individuals being born even today, where do they sin in infants, that they should need, in the sacrament of Christ, remission of sin, sinning in Adam, from whom the flesh of sin has been propagated: or if they do not sin, by what justice of the Creator are they thus bound by another’s sin, since they are inserted from that point into mortal members thence propagated, so that, unless help is brought through the Church, damnation follows them; since it is not in their power that the grace of baptism can come to their aid.

So many thousands, therefore, of souls, which go out from bodies in the deaths of infants without the indulgence of the Christian sacrament, by what equity are they damned, if, newly created, with no preceding sin of their own, but by the will of the Creator, each one has attached itself severally to each one being born, to which souls, to be ensouled, He who assuredly knew that each of them, through no fault of its own, was to go out of the body without the baptism of Christ, created and gave them?

Since, therefore, we can neither say of God that He either compels souls to become sinners, or punishes the innocent; nor is it lawful for us to deny that those which go out of bodies without the sacrament of Christ, even of infants, are dragged into nothing but damnation: I beseech you, how is this opinion defended, by which it is believed that souls are not all made from that one of the first man, but as that one was made for one, so each is made for each? As for the other things that are said against this opinion, I think I can easily refute them, as is that argument by which some seem to press it upon themselves, how God finished all His works on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh, if He still creates new souls?

To whom, if we should say what you set down from the Gospel in the aforementioned letter, My Father worketh hitherto: they answer, it is said that He worketh by administering things already established, not by instituting new natures, lest the Scripture of Genesis be contradicted, where it is most plainly read that God finished all His works. For also as to what is written, that He rested, this is surely to be understood of the creating of creatures by us, not of their governing; because then He made those things which were not, from the making of which He rested: because He had finished all things which, before they were, He saw were to be made, so that thereafter He might create and make, not those things which were not, but out of those which already were, whatever He might make. Thus it is shown that both are true: both that it is said, He rested from His works: and that it is said, He worketh hitherto: since the Gospel cannot be contrary to Genesis.

But to those who say these things in order that it may not now be believed that God makes new souls as He made that one, which was not, but that He creates them out of that one which already was, or sends them from some fountain or treasury which He then made, it is easily answered, that even in those six days God created many things out of those natures which He had already created, as birds and fishes out of the waters; and out of the earth, trees, grass, animals: but it is manifest that He then made those things which did not exist. For there was no bird, no fish, no tree, no animal: and it is well understood that He rested from those creatures which were not, and were created, that is, that He ceased, and that no longer were things created which did not exist.

But now, as to what is said, that He sends souls not already existing in some fountain, nor sprinkles them from Himself as it were His own particles, nor draws them originally from that one, nor binds them in fleshly chains for sins committed before the flesh, but creates new ones singly for each one being born, He is not said to do anything which He had not done before. For already on the sixth day He had made man in His own image, which surely is understood to have been done according to the rational soul. This He does now also, not instituting what was not, but multiplying what was. Whence also this is true, that He rested from instituting things which were not. And this is true, that not only by governing what He made, but also by creating in greater number, up to now, something not indeed which He had not yet, but which He had already created, He worketh hitherto.

Thus, then, or in some other way, we escape from that objection made against us concerning the rest of God from His works, lest on that account we should fail to believe that new souls are even now being made, not from that one, but as that one was made. 13. As for what is said, Why does He make souls for those whom He knows are going to die soon? We can answer, that by this either the sins of the parents are proved, or they are chastised. We can also rightly leave these matters to that ordering of His, whom we know gives a most orderly and most well-arranged course to all things that pass temporally, where there are also the risings and settings of living creatures; but we cannot perceive these things, which if we could perceive, we would be soothed by ineffable delight. For it was not said in vain through the Prophet, who had learned these things by divine inspiration, concerning God, Who brings forth the age in due measure.

Whence music, that is, the knowledge or sense of modulating well, has been granted by God's bounty even to mortals having rational souls, as a reminder of a great matter. Whence if a man skilled in making a song knows what pauses to give to which notes, so that what is sung, with the sounds departing and succeeding one another, may run and pass most beautifully; how much more does God, whose wisdom, through which He made all things, is far to be preferred to all arts, permit no interval of time in natures being born and dying—which, as it were syllables and words, belong to the small parts of this age—to pass by, whether too briefly or too lengthily, in this as it were wondrous song of things gliding by, beyond what the foreknown and predetermined modulation requires?

Since I would say this even of a leaf of a tree, and of the number of our hairs; how much more of the rising and setting of man, whose temporal life is not extended shorter or longer than God, the disposer of times, knows to be in harmony with the governance of the universe? 14. As for what they also say, that everything which began to be in time cannot be immortal: because all things that rise fall, and things that grow old grow feeble, so that in this way they compel belief that the human soul is immortal for the reason that it was created before all times—this does not move our faith. For, to say nothing else, the immortality of Christ's flesh began to be in time, which nevertheless now does not die, and death shall no longer have dominion over it.

15. As for what you set down in the book against Rufinus, that some cavil against this opinion, on the ground that it seems unworthy of God to give souls to adulterous conceptions, whence they try to establish that souls can justly be led, as it were to the prisons of this world, on account of the merits of a life lived before the flesh—this does not move me, as I turn over in my mind the many considerations by which this cavil can be refuted. And as for what you yourself answered, that the fault is not in the seed of wheat which is said to have been taken by theft, but in him who stole the grain; nor should the earth for that reason have failed to cherish the seeds in its bosom, because the sower cast them with an unclean hand—this is a most elegant comparison.

And even before I read it, that objection about adulterous offspring caused me no difficulty in this question, since I consider in general that God does many good things even out of our evils and our sins. Now the creation of any living creature whatsoever, if it has a devout and prudent considerer, stirs up ineffable praise to the Creator; how much more the creation, not of just any creature, but of man? But if the cause of creating is sought, none is answered more readily and better than that every creature of God is good. And what is more fitting than that a good God should make good things, which no one can make except God? 16. These things and others that I can, I say as I am able, against those who try to undermine this opinion, according to which souls are believed to be made one by one for individual persons, as that one was.

But when it comes to the punishments of little children, believe me, I am reduced to great straits, and I find absolutely nothing to answer: I speak not only of those punishments which that damnation entails after this life, to which they must necessarily be dragged, if they depart from the body without the sacrament of Christian grace, but of those very ones which, in this life, are set before our grieving eyes; which if I wished to enumerate, time would fail before examples would. They languish with illnesses, they are tormented with pains, they are afflicted with hunger and thirst, they are weakened in limbs, deprived of senses, vexed by unclean spirits. It must certainly be shown how they justly suffer these things without any evil cause of their own. For it is not lawful to say either that these things happen with God unaware, or that He cannot resist those doing them, or that He unjustly does or permits these things.

Can we not, just as we rightly say that irrational animals are given for the uses of more excellent natures, even though vicious ones, as we see most plainly in the Gospel, where pigs were granted to demons for the desired use—can we not rightly say this of man as well? For he is an animal, but a rational one, though mortal. The soul is rational in those limbs which pay the penalty of such great afflictions: God is good, God is just, God is omnipotent; to doubt this at all is utterly the mark of a madman. Let, then, a just cause be assigned for such great evils, which happen in little children. Indeed, when adults suffer these things, we are accustomed to say either that, as in Job, merits are being tested, or, as in Herod, sins are being punished. And concerning certain examples, which God has willed to be manifest, we are permitted to conjecture other things that are obscure to man, but this in the case of adults.

But concerning little children, explain what we should answer, if in them no sins are to be punished by such great punishments. For certainly at that age no righteousness is to be examined. 17. But what shall I say of the diversity—nay, the absurdity—of natural talents; which indeed lies hidden in little children, but, being derived from the very natural beginnings, appears in grown persons, some of whom are so slow and forgetful that they have not been able to learn even the first elements of letters: while some indeed are of such stupidity that they do not differ much from cattle; whom people commonly call 'morons.' Perhaps it will be answered that bodies cause this. But is it not the case, according to this opinion which we wish to defend, that the soul chooses a body for itself, and in choosing, being deceived, erred?

Or, when it was compelled to enter a body by the necessity of birth, with crowds of souls occupying other bodies beforehand, did it find nothing else, and, as in some spectacle occupying a place, so occupy flesh not such as it wished, but such as it was able? Can we say or ought we to think such things and the like? Teach, therefore, what we ought to think, what we ought to say, so that the account of new souls, made individually for individual bodies, may be established for us. 18. For my part, I spoke not of natural talents, but at least of the punishments of little children, which they suffer in this life, in those books on free will.

What sort of statement that is, and why it does not suffice for me in this question which we now have in hand, I will explain, and I will insert into this letter the passage itself excerpted from the third book; for it runs thus: 'But concerning the torments of the body by which little children are afflicted, who through their age have no sins, if the souls by which they are animated did not exist before the men themselves began to exist, a greater and, as it were, compassionate complaint is usually raised, when it is said, What evil have they done, that they should suffer these things? As though there could be merit of innocence before anyone is able to do any harm.

But when God works some good in the correction of adults, when they are scourged by the sufferings and deaths of their little ones who are dear to them, why should these things not happen, since when they have passed, they will be as though they had not happened, for those in whom they happened: while for those on whose account they happened, either they will be better, if, corrected by temporal hardships, they have chosen to live more rightly; or they will have no excuse in the punishment of the future judgment, if they have refused to turn, by the anguishes of this life, their desire toward eternal life? But who knows what God reserves, in the secret of His judgments, of good compensation for the little ones themselves, by whose torments the hardness of adults is broken, or faith is exercised, or mercy is proved? Since, although they have done nothing rightly, yet neither have they, in sinning, suffered these things.

For it is not without reason that the Church commends to the honor of Martyrs even those infants who were slain when our Lord Jesus Christ was being sought for death by Herod.'19. These things I said at that time, when I wished to fortify this very opinion which is now under discussion. For as I mentioned a little before, whichever of those four opinions about the incarnation of the soul was true, I was striving to show the substance of the Creator blameless, and utterly removed from association with our sins. And therefore, whichever of them could be refuted and rejected by truth, did not pertain to the concern of my intention at that time: since, once all had been examined with more careful disputation, whichever of them rightly prevailed over the others, I would become most secure, since I was demonstrating that what I was arguing remained unconquered according to all of them as well.

But now I wish, if I can, to choose by right reason one out of all of them: and therefore, looking more closely at the defense of this very opinion which we are now discussing, in these words of mine which I have recalled from that book, I do not see it as strong and firm. 20. For, as it were, its bulwark is that which I said there, 'But who knows what God reserves, in the secret of His judgments, of good compensation for the little ones themselves, by whose torments the hardness of adults is broken, or faith is exercised, or mercy is proved?' But I see that this is said, not without reason, of those who suffer something of this sort even unknowingly for the name of Christ and true religion, or who have already been imbued with the sacrament of Christ, because without partaking of the one Mediator they cannot be freed from damnation, so that this compensation can be granted to them even for those evils which they endured here in various afflictions.

But now, since this question cannot be resolved unless an answer is also given concerning those little children who, after the most grievous torments, expire without the sacrament of Christian fellowship—what compensation is to be thought of regarding them, for whom, moreover, damnation has been prepared? For concerning the baptism of little children, in the same book, I did indeed answer, not sufficiently, but as much as seemed enough for that work, that it profits even those who are unaware and do not yet have their own faith: yet I did not then think anything should be said about the damnation of those little children who depart from this life without it, because that was not what was then under discussion.

But that we may set aside and disregard those things which are suffered for a brief time, and which, once past, are not called back, can we likewise disregard the fact that through one man came death, and through one man the resurrection of the dead? For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. For by this apostolic, divine, and clear declaration, it is quite evidently shown that no one goes into death except through Adam, and no one goes into eternal life except through Christ. This indeed is the meaning of all and all, because just as all men belong to Adam through the first, that is, the carnal generation, so all men come to the second, that is, the spiritual generation, whoever attain to Christ. Therefore it was said, all here and all there, because just as all who die, die only in Adam, so all who shall be made alive, shall be made alive only in Christ.

And by this, Whoever shall say to us that anyone can be made alive in the resurrection of the dead except in Christ, is to be detested as opposed to the common faith. Likewise Whoever shall say that even little ones, who depart from this life without participation in his sacrament, shall be made alive in Christ, this man surely comes against the apostolic preaching, and condemns the whole Church, where for this reason there is haste and running to baptize infants, because it is doubtlessly believed that they cannot otherwise be made alive in Christ at all.

But whoever is not made alive in Christ, it remains that he stays under that condemnation of which the Apostle speaks: Through the offense of one, unto all men to condemnation: to which offense infants are born liable, as the whole Church believes, and as you yourself, disputing against Jovinian, and expounding the Prophet Jonah, as I mentioned a little before, defined with most truthful faith—I believe also in other places of your works, which either I have not read, or do not presently recall. I therefore seek the cause of this damnation in infants; because I see no sin belonging to that age, if souls are made new, one for each; nor do I believe that God condemns any soul which He sees to have no sin.

22. Or perhaps it must be said that in the infant the flesh alone is the cause of sin, but that a new soul is made for him, which, living according to God's precepts, with the help of the grace of Christ, may obtain for that flesh itself, once subdued and subjugated, the merit of incorruption. But because in the infant the soul cannot yet accomplish this, unless it has received the sacrament of Christ, through this grace is acquired for its flesh what could not yet be acquired through its own conduct. But if the infant's soul departs without that sacrament, it indeed will be in eternal life, since no sin could separate it therefrom: but shall its flesh not rise again in Christ, the sacrament not having been received before its death?

23. This opinion I have never heard, never read.

But I have plainly heard and believed, and therefore have spoken, that the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs shall hear his voice: and those who have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life. This is that of which it is said, 'and by one man the resurrection of the dead': this is that by which in Christ all shall be made alive. But those who have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment. What then must be understood here concerning those infants who, before they could do either good or evil, were stripped of the body without baptism? Nothing here is said of such. But if their flesh shall not rise for this reason, that they did neither good nor evil; then neither shall the flesh rise of those who, having received the grace of baptism, died at that age in which they could do nothing good or evil.

But if these shall rise among the saints, that is, among those who have done good; among whom shall those others rise, unless among those who have done evil, lest we believe that any human souls will not receive back their bodies, whether unto the resurrection of life or unto the resurrection of judgment? This opinion, before it is refuted, already displeases by its very novelty. Then who could bear it, if those who run to baptism with their little ones should believe that they run for the sake of their flesh, not for the sake of their souls? Blessed Cyprian indeed, not establishing any new decree, but preserving the most firmly established faith of the Church, in order to correct those who thought that an infant ought not to be baptized before the eighth day of birth, said that it was not the flesh but the soul that must not be lost; and determined, along with certain fellow bishops, that a newborn could rightly be baptized.

24. But against some opinion of Cyprian, where perhaps he did not see what should have been seen, let each hold what he pleases; only let no one hold anything against the most manifest apostolic faith, which proclaims that all are led into condemnation from the offense of one; from which condemnation none is freed except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom alone all are made alive, whoever are made alive. Let no one hold anything against the foundational custom of the Church, whereby, if it were only for the sake of infants' bodies that people ran to baptism, even the dead would be offered for baptism.

25. Since these things are so, the cause must be sought and rendered, why souls, which are newly created for each one being born, are condemned, if infants die apart from the sacrament of Christ. For that they are condemned, if they so depart from the body, both holy Scripture and the holy Church bear witness.

Wherefore, if that opinion about the creation of new souls does not oppose this most firmly grounded faith, let it be mine also; if it does oppose it, let it not be yours either.

26. I do not wish it to be said to me that in support of this opinion should be taken what is written, 'Who formed the spirit of man within him,' and 'Who fashioned their hearts individually.' Something most strong and most unconquerable must be sought, which does not compel us to believe God to be the condemner of any souls without any fault. For 'to create' is of equal or perhaps greater force than 'to form,' and yet it is written, 'Create in me a clean heart, O God.' Nor can it therefore be thought that the soul in this passage desires to be made before it was anything at all: just as it is now created by the renewal of righteousness while already existing, so it is now formed by the shaping of doctrine while already existing.

Nor does that which is written in Ecclesiastes, 'Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it,' confirm this opinion which we wish to be ours. For this rather supports those who think that all souls come from one. For just as the dust, they say, returns to the earth as it was; and yet the flesh, of which this is said, does not return to the man from whom it was propagated, but to the earth from which the first man was made: so likewise the spirit, propagated from the spirit of that one man, does not return to him, but to the Lord by whom it was given. But because this testimony sounds so much in their favor that it does not seem altogether contrary to the opinion which I wish to be defended, I have thought it right only to caution your prudence, lest you try to extricate me from these straits by such testimonies.

For although no one can make by wishing that what is not true become true: yet if it could be done, I would wish this opinion to be true: just as I hope that, if it is true, it may be defended by you most clearly and most invincibly.

27. This difficulty, moreover, also follows those who suppose that souls already existing elsewhere, and prepared from the beginning of the divine works, are sent by God into bodies. For of these too the same question is asked: If souls come without fault, obedient to being sent, why in infants, if they finish this life unbaptized, are they punished? The difficulty is exactly the same in either opinion. Those seem to themselves to escape this question more easily, who assert that souls, according to the merits of a prior life, are each bound to their respective bodies.

For they think this is what it means to die in Adam, namely, to pay penalties in the flesh which was propagated from Adam: from which guilt, they say, the grace of Christ frees the little along with the great. This indeed is rightly, truly, and excellently said, that the grace of Christ frees the little along with the great from the guilt of sins. But that souls sin in some prior, higher life, and are thence cast down into fleshly prisons, I do not believe, I do not agree, I do not consent. First, because I do not know by what circuits these men say this happens: that after I know not how many cycles of ages, they must return again to this corruptible burden of flesh, and to penalties to be paid: I know not what could be conceived more horrible than this opinion.

Then again, what just man has ever died, concerning whom, if these men speak truly, we ought not to be anxious lest, sinning in the bosom of Abraham, he be cast down into the flames of that rich man? For why should sin not be possible after this body also, if it was possible before it? Finally, it is a far different thing to have sinned in Adam. Whence the Apostle says: 'In whom all sinned': and it is another thing to be thrust, as it were into a prison, outside of Adam, I know not where Adam was propagated. But that opinion, that all souls come from one, I do not wish to discuss, unless it be necessary. And would that this opinion, of which we now treat, if it is true, may be so defended by you, that this should no longer be necessary.

28. Although I desire, ask, and with burning wishes long for and seek that through you the Lord may take away my ignorance of this matter: yet if, which God forbid, I shall by no means deserve it, I shall ask patience for myself from the Lord our God: in whom if we believe, then even if He does not open certain things to us though we knock, we ought in no way to murmur against Him. I remember it was said even to the Apostles themselves: 'I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.' Among these things, as far as concerns me, I may reckon this also. Nor should I be indignant that I am unworthy to know this, lest by this very indignation I be convicted of being even more unworthy. For there are many other things likewise which I do not know, which I cannot recount or enumerate.

And I would tolerably remain ignorant of this too, were it not that I fear lest some of these opinions creep in upon unwary minds against that which we hold with most firm faith. But before I know which of them is rather to be chosen, I profess that I do not rashly hold this: that whichever opinion is true is not contrary to that most robust and firmly grounded faith, by which the Church of Christ believes that not even the tiniest infants recently born can be freed from condemnation, except through the grace of the name of Christ, which He has commended in His sacraments.

What I wrote to you, brother Jerome, honored by me in Christ, inquiring concerning the human soul, whether, for each one being born, new souls are being made even now, one for each, and where they contract the bond of sin, which we do not doubt must be loosed through the sacrament of the grace of Christ even in infants recently born—since this, once begun, was proceeding into no small volume, I did not wish to burden it with any other question: but what presses more urgently is much less to be neglected. Accordingly I ask, and I beseech you through God, to explain to me what I judge will be profitable to many: or if you already have this explained, either by yourself or by someone else, send it to us, how is to be understood what is written in the epistle of the Apostle James: For whosoever shall keep the whole Law, and yet offend in one point, is become guilty of all.

Which matter is of such a kind and such importance, that I much regret not having written to you about it long ago.

For this question concerns the conduct of the present life, how we may arrive at eternal life, not the searching out of the past life, which oblivion has utterly submerged, as is that matter concerning the soul which I thought should be inquired into. And it is said that something apt was elegantly spoken, which fits this matter well enough. When a certain man had fallen into a well, where there was so much water that it rather received him, lest he should die, than choked him, lest he should speak: another came up, and seeing him, marveling, said, How did you fall in here? But he said: I beg you, consider how you may free me from here, not ask how I fell in here.

So since we confess, and hold by Catholic faith, that even the soul of a little infant must be freed by the grace of Christ from the guilt of sin as though from a pit, it is enough for it that we know the manner in which it is to be made safe, even if we never know how it came into that evil. But I thought this ought to be inquired into, lest perchance we hold too incautiously some one of those opinions about the incarnation of the soul which altogether denies that the infant’s soul is to be freed, denying that it is in this evil. This, then, being held most firmly, that the soul of the infant must be freed from the guilt of sin, and can be freed in no other way except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord: if we can also know the cause and origin of this very evil, we resist more readily and more skillfully those who are not vain talkers in disputation, but litigants.

But if we cannot, the office of mercy ought not therefore to grow sluggish, because the beginning of the misery lies hidden. And against those who seem to themselves to know what they do not know, we are the safer in this, that we are not ignorant of our own ignorance. For it is one thing not to know what it is evil not to know; another thing, what either cannot be known, or need not be known, or is indifferent to the life which we seek. But this which I now inquire concerning the letter of the Apostle James is concerned with this very action in which we live, and by which we strive always to please God.

How then, I beg you, is this to be understood: Whosoever shall have kept the whole Law, but shall offend in one point, is become guilty of all? Is it so that he who has committed theft—nay rather, he who has said to a rich man, Sit here, but to a poor man, Stand there—is also guilty of homicide, and adultery, and sacrilege? But if he is not, how is it that he who offends in one point is made guilty of all? Or does that saying about the rich man and the poor man not pertain to those sins, of which if a man offend in one, he becomes guilty of all? But it must be recalled whence that sentence came, and what preceding matters gave birth to it, and to what things it hangs connected. My brethren, he says, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, in respect of persons.

For if there come into your assembly a man having a gold ring, in fine apparel; and there come in also a poor man in vile clothing, and you have regard to him that wears the fine clothing, and say to him, Sit here in a good place; but to the poor man you say, Stand there, or sit under my footstool, do you not judge among yourselves, and are become judges of unjust thoughts? Hear, my dearest brethren, has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which God has promised to them that love him? But you have dishonored the poor man—namely, on account of him to whom it was said, Stand there, when to him having the gold ring it was said, Sit here in a good place. And then he continues, treating the same sentence more broadly, and explaining it: Do not the rich, he says, oppress you by their power, and drag you before the judgment seats?

Do they not themselves blaspheme the good name that is invoked upon you? If indeed you fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, you do well. But if you have respect to persons, you commit sin, being convicted by the Law as transgressors. See how he calls those transgressors of the law who say to the rich man, Sit here, and to the poor man, Stand there. Whence, lest they should think it a contemptible sin to transgress the Law in this one matter, he added what follows: Whosoever shall have kept the whole Law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all. For he who said, You shall not commit adultery, said also, You shall not kill. But if you do not kill, yet commit adultery, you have become a transgressor of the Law; because of what he had said, Convicted by the Law as transgressors.

This being so, it seems to follow (unless it can be shown that it must be understood otherwise) that he who has said to the rich man, Sit here, and to the poor man, Stand there, in showing the former honor rather than the latter, must be judged an idolater, a blasphemer, an adulterer, a murderer, and—not to enumerate all, which would take long—guilty of all crimes. For offending in one point, he has become guilty of all.

But indeed, he who has one virtue has all, and he who lacks one lacks all. If this is true, that sentence is confirmed. But I wish it to be explained, not confirmed—a saying which is by itself firmer among us than all the authorities of the philosophers. And indeed that saying about virtues and vices, if it is said truly, does not entail that all sins are therefore equal. For that principle of the inseparability of the virtues—unless perhaps I am mistaken, yet if I remember rightly, though I scarcely remember—was held by all the philosophers who said that the same virtues are necessary for the conduct of life. But this matter of the equality of sins the Stoics alone have dared to dispute, against the whole sense of the human race—and their vanity you refuted most clearly from the holy Scriptures in that Jovinian, who was a Stoic in this opinion, but an Epicurean in hunting after and defending pleasures.

In that most delightful and most excellent disputation of yours it appeared clearly enough that it was not the view held by our authorities—or rather by the very Truth that spoke through them—that all sins are equal. But how it can come about that, even if this is true of the virtues, we are not therefore compelled to confess an equality of all sins, I will try, as far as I can, with the Lord's help, to make clear. If I accomplish this, you will approve; but where I fall short of the reason, you will supply it.

The chain of the virtues.—Certainly they persuade us of this, that he who has one virtue has them all, and that all are lacking to him who lacks one; because prudence can be neither cowardly, nor unjust, nor intemperate—for if it were any of these, it would not be prudence. Further, if prudence exists only when it is also brave, and just, and temperate, then assuredly, wherever it is, it has the others with it. So too fortitude cannot be imprudent, or intemperate, or unjust. So too temperance must needs be prudent, brave, and just. So too justice does not exist unless it is prudent, brave, and temperate. Thus where any one of them truly exists, the others likewise exist.

But where the others are lacking, that one is not truly present, even if in some way it may seem to bear a resemblance.

Manifest vices, and cloaked vices.—For there are, as you know, certain vices contrary to the virtues by an open distinction, as imprudence to prudence. But there are also certain vices which are contrary only because they are vices, yet bear a deceptive likeness in appearance, as to that same prudence not imprudence, but craftiness. For now I call craftiness that which is more commonly understood and called so among the malicious; not as our Scripture is accustomed to speak, which often puts craftiness in a good sense. Whence, Be crafty as serpents; and that, That He might give craftiness even to the innocent. And yet even among them, the most eloquent of the Roman tongue said: Nor were guile or craftiness lacking to them for taking precaution—putting craftiness in a good sense, though this is very rare among them, and very frequent among us. Likewise in the domain of temperance, prodigality is openly contrary. But that which is commonly called stinginess is indeed a vice, yet resembles frugality, not by nature, but by a most deceptive appearance.

Likewise injustice is contrary to justice by manifest dissimilarity. But the lust of avenging oneself is wont, as it were, to imitate justice, yet it is a vice. Cowardice is plainly contrary to fortitude; but hardness differs by nature, though it deceives by resemblance. Constancy is a certain part of virtue; from this inconstancy is far removed, and undoubtedly stands opposed to it: but obstinacy affects to be called constancy, and is not, because the one is virtue, the other vice.

Therefore, that it may not be necessary to recall these same matters again, let us set forth an example, from which the rest may be understood. Catiline, as those who could know him have written, was able to bear cold, thirst, hunger, and was patient of want of food, of cold, of sleeplessness beyond what anyone would believe; and by this he seemed to himself and to his own to be endowed with great fortitude. But this fortitude was not prudent, for he chose evil things instead of good. It was not temperate, for he was defiled by most shameful corruptions. It was not just, for he had conspired against his fatherland. And therefore it was not fortitude, but hardness, which imposed on itself the name of fortitude, so as to deceive the foolish. For if it had been fortitude, it would have been a virtue, not a vice. But if it had been a virtue, it would never have been abandoned by the other virtues as by inseparable companions.

Wherefore, when the question is asked also concerning vices, whether they too are all alike present where one is present, or all absent where one is absent, it is laborious to show this, because two vices are commonly opposed to one virtue: that which is openly contrary, and that which is shaded over by a semblance of likeness. Whence in the case of Catiline, it seemed easier to see that what he had was not fortitude, since he did not have the other virtues along with it. But that it was cowardice, where there was an exercise of enduring and bearing the gravest hardships beyond what anyone would believe, can hardly be made persuasive. But perhaps to those looking more keenly, that very hardness itself appears to be cowardice, because he had neglected the labor of good pursuits, by which true fortitude is acquired.

Yet since there are the bold who are not timid, and again the timid who lack boldness, though both are vices—since he who is brave by true virtue neither rashly dares nor inconsiderately fears—we are compelled to admit that there are more vices than virtues.

Whence sometimes one vice is removed by another vice, as the love of money by the love of praise. Sometimes one gives way, that several may succeed, as when one who has been a drunkard, if he drinks but little, learns both stinginess and ambition. Thus vices too can give way to succeeding vices, not to virtues, and therefore they are more numerous. But virtue, wherever it once enters, since it brings the others with it, assuredly all vices whatsoever were present will give way. For not all were present at once, but sometimes an equal number, sometimes more succeeded fewer, or fewer succeeded more.

Whether these things are so must be inquired into more carefully. For that is not a divine pronouncement which says: Whoever has one virtue has them all; and no one has any virtue in whom one is lacking: but this has seemed so to men, indeed to very talented, studious men, but men nonetheless. I truly do not know how to put it. I do not say that a man from whom virtue is named, but even a woman who keeps faith of the marriage-bed to her husband, if she does this because of God's precept and promise, and is first of all faithful to Him, does not have chastity, or that chastity is no virtue or a small one. So too a husband who keeps the same for his wife. And yet there are very many such, of whom I would not say that any is without some sin, and certainly that sin, whatever it may be, comes from some fault.

Hence conjugal chastity in religious men and women, though it is without doubt a virtue—for it is not either nothing or a fault—does not, however, carry with it all the virtues. For if all virtues were there, there would be no fault; if no fault, then no sin at all. But who is without some sin? Who then is without some fault, that is, some kindling or as it were root of sin, since he who reclined upon the Lord's breast cries out: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us? Nor need this be argued at length with you, but I say it on account of others who may perhaps read this. For you yourself, in that same splendid work against Jovinian, carefully proved this very point from the holy Scriptures: where also, from this very epistle whose words we are now seeking to understand, you set down what is written: For in many things we all offend.

For he does not say, you offend, but we all offend, when the Apostle of Christ was speaking, and when in this passage he says: But whoever shall keep the whole Law, yet offend in one point, is become guilty of all.

There he says that we offend not in one point but in many, and not some, but all.

Far be it, however, that any believer should think that so many thousands of the servants of Christ, who truly say that they have sin, lest they deceive themselves and the truth not be in them, have no virtue at all, since wisdom is a great virtue. Wisdom herself said to man, Behold, piety is wisdom. Far be it, then, that we should say that so many and so great faithful and pious men do not have the piety of God, which the Greeks call either εὐσέβεια, or, more expressly and fully, θεοσέβεια. But what is piety, except the worship of God? And whence is he worshipped except by charity? Charity, then, out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith, is a great and true virtue, because it itself is the end of the commandment.

Rightly is it said to be strong as death, either because no one conquers it, as none conquers death; or because in this life, up to the point of death, is the measure of charity, as the Lord says: Greater love than this hath no man, than that he lay down his life for his friends; or rather, because just as death tears the soul away from the senses of the flesh, so charity tears it away from carnal desires. To this, knowledge is subservient, when it is useful: for without it, knowledge puffs up. But what charity has filled by building up, there this emptiness which puffs up will find nothing. He showed useful knowledge by defining it: where, having said, Behold, piety is wisdom, he immediately added: But to abstain from evils, this is knowledge. Why then do we not say that he who has this virtue has them all, since the fullness of the Law is charity?

Or is it rather that the more it is in a man, the more he is endowed with virtue; and the less it is, the less virtue is in him, since it is itself virtue: and the less virtue there is, the greater the fault? Where, then, it shall be full and perfect, nothing of fault will remain.

Accordingly it seems to me that the Stoics are mistaken, because they refuse to allow that a man who is making progress in wisdom has wisdom at all, but only when he has become entirely perfect in it: not that they deny his advancement, but unless, emerging as if from some depth, he suddenly flashes forth into the free air of wisdom, he is wise in no part at all. For just as it makes no difference to a man being drowned whether the water above him is many furlongs deep, or one span, or one finger's breadth: so they say that those who strive toward wisdom make some progress, as if rising from the bottom of a whirlpool toward the air: but unless, by advancing as it were by emerging, they escape entirely from folly as from an overwhelming water, they do not have virtue, nor are they wise. But when they have escaped, they at once have it entirely, and nothing of folly remains from which any sin whatever could arise.

This similitude, where folly is set down as water, and wisdom as air, so that the mind, emerging as if from suffocation by folly into wisdom, suddenly breathes again: does not seem to me sufficiently in accord with the authority of our Scriptures: but rather that comparison whereby fault or folly is likened to darkness, and virtue and wisdom to light, insofar as these bodily similitudes can be led toward things intelligible. Not, therefore, as one rising from waters into air, where, once he has passed beyond their surface, he at once breathes in as much as suffices, but as one proceeding from darkness into light, is illuminated by gradual advancing.

Until this happens most fully, we nevertheless say of him, as one coming out of some most hidden cave, that he is touched by the nearness of the light, the more so, the nearer he comes to the exit: so that what shines in him is indeed from the light toward which he advances; but what is still dark in him is from the darkness out of which he is emerging. And so no living person shall be justified in the sight of God, and yet the just man lives by faith. And the saints have put on righteousness, one more, another less. And no one here lives without sin, and this one more, another less. But he is best who has least.

But why, as though forgetting to whom I speak, have I made myself like a teacher, when I proposed to learn something from you? But because, concerning the equality of sins—whence the question arose in the matter I was treating—I had determined to set forth my opinion for your examination, I shall now at last bring it to a conclusion. For even if it is true that he who has one virtue has them all, and he who lacks one has none, even so sins are not equal, because where there is no virtue at all, nothing indeed is right, yet it is not on that account the case that the crooked is not more crooked than the crooked, nor the distorted more distorted than the distorted.

But if, as I think is truer and more in accord with the sacred writings, the intentions of the soul are like the members of the body, not as regarded by their location, but as perceived by their affections, and one part is illuminated more, another less, and another entirely lacks light and is overshadowed by a dark obstacle, then surely, just as anyone touched by the illumination of pious charity is affected more in one act, less in another, in some not at all, so it can be said that he has one virtue and lacks another, has one more and another less. For we can rightly say that charity is greater in this man than in that; and that this man has some charity, that man none, so far as concerns that charity which is piety; and even in one and the same man, that he has greater chastity than patience, and greater today than yesterday, if he is making progress, and does not yet have continence, and has no small measure of mercy.

And that I may embrace generally and briefly what notion I hold of virtue, as far as concerns right living: Virtue is charity, by which that which ought to be loved is loved. This is greater in some, less in others, and in others none at all, but the most full charity, such that it could no longer be increased, exists in no one so long as a man lives here: while it can still be increased, that which is less than it ought to be is assuredly from fault. Because of this fault there is no just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Because of this fault no living person shall be justified in the sight of God.

Because of this fault, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Because of this also, however much progress we have made, it is necessary for us to say, Forgive us our debts, even though all things said, done, and thought have already been forgiven in baptism. He, then, who sees rightly, sees where and when and in whom that perfection is to be hoped for, to which nothing further could be added? But if there were no precepts, there would certainly be nowhere for a man to examine himself more surely and see whence he should turn away, toward what he should strive, for what he should give thanks, for what he should pray. Great, then, is the usefulness of the precepts, provided that so much only be granted to free will, that the grace of God may be the more honored.

Solution of the question.—But if these things are so, how does it come about that he becomes guilty of all, if he offend in one point, who has kept the whole Law? Is it perhaps because the fulness of the Law is charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, in which precepts of charity the whole Law and the Prophets hang, that he rightly becomes guilty of all who acts against that on which all things hang? For no one sins except by acting against it, because: Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to one's neighbor. But the fulness of the Law is charity.

But no one loves his neighbor except by loving God, and he bestows on his neighbor as much as he can, whom he loves as himself, so that he too may love God, whom if he himself does not love, he loves neither himself nor his neighbor. And on this account, he who has kept the whole Law, if he offend in one point, becomes guilty of all, because he acts against charity, on which the whole Law hangs. Therefore he becomes guilty of all, by acting against that in which all things hang.

17. Why then are not sins said to be equal? Is it perhaps because he acts more against charity who sins more gravely, less he who sins more lightly?

And by this very fact, that he commits it, he becomes indeed guilty of all, but he who sins more gravely, or in more things, is more guilty; while he who sins more lightly, or in fewer things, is less guilty: with a guilt, that is, so much the greater, the more he has sinned, and so much the less, the less he has sinned: yet even if he has offended in one point, he is guilty of all, because he acts against that in which all things hang? And if these things are true, in this way that saying too is resolved, which even a man of apostolic grace has said: 'For in many things we all offend.' For we all offend, but one more gravely, another more lightly. The more gravely or lightly each one has sinned, the greater he is in the committing of sin, the less in loving God and neighbor. And again, the less he is in the perpetration of sin, the greater he is in the love of God and neighbor.

So much the fuller of iniquity, therefore, as he is emptier of charity. And then we are perfect in charity, when nothing remains from weakness.

18. Nor indeed, as far as I judge, ought it to be thought a light sin, the acceptance of persons, to hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, if we refer that distinction of sitting and standing to ecclesiastical honors. For who could bear that a rich man be chosen to a seat of honor in the Church, a poorer man being despised though more learned and more holy? But if he speaks of everyday assemblies, who sins in this matter, if indeed he does sin, except when within himself he so judges that the richer a man seems to him, the better he seems to be? For this he seems to have signified when he says: 'Do you not judge among yourselves, and are become judges of unjust thoughts?'19.

The law of liberty, then, is the law of charity, of which he says: 'If, however, you fulfil the royal law according to the Scriptures, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, you do well. But if you have respect to persons, you commit sin, being convicted by the Law as transgressors.' And after that most difficult sentence to understand, of which I have said enough, what I thought should be said, recalling the same law of liberty, he says: 'So speak, and so do, as men that are to be judged by the law of liberty.' And since he knows what he had said a little before: 'For in many things we all offend,' he suggests the Lord's remedy, as a daily one for daily wounds, though lighter ones. 'For judgment,' he says, 'without mercy to him that hath not done mercy.' Whence also the Lord says: 'Forgive, and you shall be forgiven: give, and it shall be given to you.

But mercy exalteth itself above judgment'; it is not said, mercy conquers judgment, for it is not opposed to judgment, but 'exalteth itself above it': because more are gathered up through mercy, but those who have shown mercy. For blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them. 20. And this indeed is just, that it be forgiven them because they have forgiven, and that it be given to them because they have given. For in God there is both mercy in judging, and judgment in showing mercy, on account of which it is said to Him, 'I will sing of mercy and judgment to Thee, O Lord.' For whoever, as though excessively just, awaits judgment without mercy, as if secure, provokes a most just wrath, fearing which that man said: 'Enter not into judgment with Thy servant.' Whence it is said to the stubborn people: 'What will ye contend with me in judgment?' For when the just king shall sit upon the throne, who shall boast that he has a chaste heart?

Or who shall boast that he is clean from sin? What hope then is there, unless mercy exalteth itself above judgment? But toward those who have shown mercy, truly saying, 'Forgive us, as we also forgive'; and giving without murmuring: for God loveth a cheerful giver. Finally, holy James speaks from this passage of works of mercy, so as to console those whom that saying had greatly terrified, when he warns how even the daily sins, without which one does not live here, are expiated by daily remedies, lest man, who if he offend in one point becomes guilty of all, by offending in many things, because in many things we all offend, should come to the tribunal of so great a judge burdened by a great heap of his own guilt, gathered little by little, and not find that mercy which he himself did not show; but rather, by forgiving and giving, deserve to have his own sins forgiven, and the promises fulfilled to him.

21. I have said many things by which I might perhaps bring tedium upon you, who nevertheless do not need to learn these things which you approve, since you are accustomed to teach them. But if there is anything in them, as far as concerns the matter itself—for as to the style in which they are expressed, I am not overly concerned—if then there is anything in them that offends your learning, I beg that you will admonish me by writing back, and not think it burdensome to correct me. For unhappy is he who does not both duly honor such great and holy labors of your studies, and give thanks for them to the Lord our God, by whose gift you are such as you are.

Whence, since I ought more willingly to learn from anyone what I uselessly do not know, than readily to teach anyone what I know; how much more justly do I demand from you this debt of charity, whose teaching, in the name and with the help of the Lord, has so aided the ecclesiastical letters in the Latin tongue as they never could before? But especially this sentence: 'Whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all': if your charity knows that it can be expounded in some other, better way, I beseech you, through the Lord, that you deign to share this with us.

Not rashly, as you falsely suppose, but lovingly and zealously have you done, in sending me an old question made new, which before your letter had deceived very many in the East, so that through feigned humility they might learn pride, and might say with the devil, I will ascend into heaven: I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, and I will be like the Most High. For what greater temerity can there be than to claim for oneself, I will not say a likeness, but an equality with God, and in a brief sentence to embrace the poisons of all the Heretics, which have flowed from the fountain of the Philosophers, and especially of Pythagoras and Zeno, prince of the Stoics? For those things which the Greeks call πάθη, we can call perturbations: namely, sorrow and joy, hope and fear: of which two are present, two future, they assert can be uprooted from minds, and that no fiber or root of vices remains at all in man, through meditation and constant exercise of the virtues.

Against whom the Peripatetics also, who descend from the fountain of Aristotle, argue most forcefully; and the New Academics, whom Tully follows; and they overturn, I will not say things which are nothing, but shadows and wishes of theirs. For this is to take man out of man, and to constitute man as existing without a body: and to wish rather than to teach, as the Apostle says: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And because the brevity of a letter cannot comprehend everything, I will briefly describe to you the things to be avoided. Whence also that Virgilian saying:

Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, nor do they
look up to the breezes, being shut up in darkness and a blind prison.

For who can either not exult with joy, or be contracted with grief, or be lifted up with hope, or be terrified with fear? Wherefore also the most weighty poet Flaccus wrote in a Satire: For no one is born without vices: he is best who is pressed by the fewest.

Beautifully does one of our own say: The philosophers, patriarchs of the Heretics, have stained the purity of the Church with perverse doctrine; so that they do not know that saying about human frailty: Why is earth and ashes proud? especially since the same Apostle says: I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and leading me captive. And again: For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. If he does what he does not will, how can that stand which is said, that man can be without sin, if he wills? By what reasoning can there be what he wills, when the Apostle asserts that he cannot fulfill what he desires? And when we ask them who those are whom they think without sin, they wish to elude the truth by a new subterfuge: saying that they do not mean those who are, or have been, but those who can be.

Excellent teachers, who say a thing can be, which they show never to have been, while Scripture says: Whatsoever shall be, hath already been in time past. Nor is it now necessary for me to go through each of the Saints individually, and, as it were, to point out certain moles and blemishes on a most beautiful body: which very many of our own do simply, since with a few little sentences of the Scriptures the arguments of the Heretics, and through them of the Philosophers, can be refuted. For what does the vessel of election say? God hath concluded all under sin, that He might have mercy on all. And in another place, For all have sinned, and do need the glory of God. Ecclesiastes too, through whom Wisdom herself sang, freely protests, and says: For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not. And again: If Thy people shall sin against Thee, for there is no man that sinneth not. And: Who shall boast that he hath a clean heart?

And: None is clean from filth, no not the infant whose life is but one day upon the earth. Whence David also says: For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me. And in another Psalm: In Thy sight shall no man living be justified. Which testimony, under the pretext of piety, they evade by a new argument. For they say that in comparison with God no one is perfect, as if Scripture had said this. For it does not say, No man living shall be justified in comparison with Thee, but, In Thy sight shall no man living be justified. For when it says, in Thy sight, it means this, that even those who seem holy to men, are by no means holy in God's knowledge and understanding. For man sees the face, but God the heart.

But if, God beholding and contemplating all things, whom the secrets of the heart do not deceive, no one is just: it is clearly shown that the heretics do not exalt man to the heights, but rather derogate from the power of God: and many other things, which if I wished to gather from the holy Scriptures, I would exceed the bounds not merely of a letter, but even of a volume.

They assert nothing new, those who, applauding themselves in perfidy of this sort, deceive indeed the simple and unlearned; but Churchmen who meditate day and night on the law of God they cannot deceive. Let them be ashamed, then, of the founder and of their associates who say that a man can be without sin if he wishes, which the Greeks call ἀναμάρτητον. And because the ears of the Churches throughout the East could not bear this, they pretend that they indeed say without sin, but dare not say ἀναμάρτητον; as though without sin were one thing and ἀναμάρτητον another, and as though the Latin speech had not expressed in two words the Greek term which is compounded among them into one. If you say without sin, and yet deny that you say ἀναμάρτητον, then condemn those who preach ἀναμάρτητον. But you do not do so.

For you know what you teach your disciples inwardly, professing one thing with your mouth and concealing another in your conscience; and to us, as strangers and unlearned, you speak in parables, but to your own you confess the mysteries; and you boast that you do this according to Scripture, because it is written: Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables; and to the disciples in the house he says: To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. But as I had begun to say, I will briefly set forth the names of your founder and your associates, that you may perceive with what company you glory in being associated. Manichaeus says that his elect, whom he places among the apses of Plato in the heavens, are wholly without sin, and that they could not sin even if they wished. For they have ascended to such heights of virtue that they mock the works of the flesh.

Priscillian in Spain, a part of Manichaeus (whose disciples love you exceedingly for the sake of his baseness), rashly claiming for himself the word of perfection and of knowledge, shuts himself up alone with lone little women, and chants to them amid intercourse and embraces this verse:

Then the almighty father, the sky, descends with fruitful rains into the lap of his joyful spouse; and, mingled in her great body, the great one nourishes all offspring.

These indeed share a part of the Gnostic heresy, coming from the impiety of Basilides. Whence you also assert that those who lack knowledge of the law cannot avoid sin. Why do I speak of Priscillian, who was condemned both by the sword of the age and by the authority of the whole world, since he rather signifies, by their opinion, one incapable of sin; nor did Pelagius himself wish that the perfect be incapable of sin, but that they be able to lack sin: which, since he contended could be accomplished by the strength of free will alone, he erred grievously in the faith. They say the same of ἀναμαρτησία, which the same Jerome renders almost as not-sinning, or not to sin, while they on the contrary translate it as impeccability, or not being able to sin. That we may not linger too long in explaining these matters, we contend, with one or two examples, that Jerome's interpretation and meaning are to be defended.

For indeed, when Christ the Lord wished to repel the querulous accusers of the adulterous woman, he says, Let him among us who is ἀναμάρτητος be first, in which passage it is plainly established that the word ἀναμάρτητον does not signify impeccable, but only without sin, just as the Vulgate translator renders it, and as it must altogether be translated. In the same way Herodotus, book 5, chapter 39, relates of Anaxandrides, who was unwilling to send away his wife gynaika, woman ἴσχουσαν ἀναμάρτητον, that is, a wife who had not sinned; nor did he certainly understand impeccable, or one who could not have sinned. Was condemned? Evagrius of Pontus the Iberite, who writes to virgins, writes to monks, writes to her whose very name of blackness attests the darkness of his perfidy, produced a book and sentences περὶ ἀπαθείας, which we may call impassibility or unperturbedness; as though the mind were never moved by any fault of disturbance: and, to speak simply, is either a stone or a god.

His books, in Greek throughout the East, and, through the interpretation of his disciple Rufinus, in Latin, are read by very many in the West. He also wrote a book, as it were concerning monks, and enumerates in it many who never existed, and describes as Origenists those who did exist: and it is not doubtful that they were condemned by the bishops—namely, Ammonius, and Eusebius, and Euthymius, and Evagrius himself, and Or too, and Isidore, and many others whom it would be tedious to enumerate: and, according to that saying of Lucretius:

And just as physicians, when they try to give foul wormwood to children, first touch the rims of the cup all around with the sweet and golden liquid of honey
(LUCRETIUS, book 4, On the Nature of Things).

So he placed one John at the very beginning of his book, one who was without doubt catholic and holy, so that, by taking occasion from him, he might introduce into the Church the others, whom he had set down as heretics. But who could explain in fitting words that rashness of his—nay, his madness—in that he entitled the book of Xystus the Pythagorean, a man without Christ and a pagan, under the changed name of Sixtus the Martyr, bishop of the Roman Church? In which, according to the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, who equate man with God and say that he is of his substance, many things are said about perfection: So that those who do not know the volume of the philosopher might drink under the name of a martyr from the golden cup of Babylon. Furthermore, in that very volume there is no mention of the Prophets, none of the Patriarchs, none of the Apostles, none of Christ: so that he contends that a bishop and martyr existed without faith in Christ.

Whence you too appropriate very many testimonies against the Church. He had done the same thing also under the name of the holy martyr Pamphilus, entitling the first book of the six books of the defense of Origen, by Eusebius of Caesarea—whom no one is unaware was an Arian—under the name of the martyr Pamphilus, in order, of course, to pour into Latin ears those notorious four volumes of Origen's Περὶ Ἀρχῶν. Do you wish to know yet another leader of your error? Your doctrine is a little offshoot of Origen. For in that Psalm where it is written (to say nothing of the rest), Moreover, even until night my reins have instructed me, he asserts that the holy man—of whose number, that is, you are also one—when he has arrived at the summit of virtues, does not even suffer in the night those things that are common to men, nor is titillated by any thought of vices.

And do not blush at the company of such men, by refusing their names, you who are joined to their blasphemies. Jovinian's second question is the very discipline of your intellect. Whatever was answered to him, believe that it has been answered to you. Nor can it be that the outcome should be different for those whose opinion is one and the same.

Since these things are so, what do the wretched little women want, burdened with sins, who are carried about by every wind of doctrine, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth; and the rest of the companions of these little women, itching in their ears, and not knowing what they hear or what they say, who take up the most ancient filth as though it were a new mixture; who, according to Ezekiel, daub the wall without proper mortar, and when the rain of truth comes, are scattered? Simon Magus founded a heresy, aided by the help of Helena the harlot. Nicolas of Antioch, the inventor of every uncleanness, led choruses of women. Marcion sent ahead to Rome a woman to prepare souls for him to be deceived. Apelles had Philumena as the companion of his teachings. Montanus, the preacher of an unclean spirit, first corrupted many Churches with gold through Prisca and Maximilla, noble and wealthy women; then polluted them with heresy. I will pass over ancient matters, and come to more recent ones.

Arius, to deceive the world, first deceived the sister of the emperor. Donatus throughout Africa, in order to pollute all the unhappy with his stinking waters, was aided by the wealth of Lucilla. In Spain, Agape led Elpidius—a woman leading a man—blind leading blind, into the pit, and left as his successor him who had Priscillian, most devoted to Zoroaster the magician, and a bishop out of a magician, to whom was joined Galla, not by race but in name, leaving her sister running hither and thither as heir of another and neighboring heresy. Now too the mystery of iniquity is at work. Both sexes, each in turn, trip one another up, so that we are compelled to take up that prophetic word: The partridge cried out, she has gathered what she did not bring forth, making her riches without judgment. In the midst of her days she will leave them, and her end will be foolish.

But as for that saying which they afterward fitted to this opinion, to deceive people (not without the grace of God)—though at first reading it deceives, yet when examined and most diligently sifted, it cannot deceive. For they so posit the grace of God that we should not, in each single work, strive and be governed by his aid; but they refer everything to free will, and to the precepts of the law, setting up that saying of Isaiah: For God has set the law as a help, so that thanks should be referred to God for this, that he has made us such as can, by our own judgment, choose good and avoid evil. And they do not understand, when saying these things, that through their mouth the devil hisses an intolerable blasphemy.

For if the grace of God consists only in this, that he made us of our own will, and we are content with free will, and no longer need his help—lest, if we should need it, free will be broken—then we ought no longer to pray at all, nor bend his mercy with prayers, that we may receive daily what, once received, is in our own power. Men of this sort do away with prayer, and boast that through free will they are made, not men of their own will, but of God's power, needing no one's help. Let fasting also be done away with, and all continence. For what need is there for me to labor, that I may obtain through effort what has once been made mine own possession?

What I say is not my own argument: one of his disciples—nay, now their master and leader of the whole army, and, against the Apostle, a vessel of perdition—running through thickets of solecisms, and not (as they boast) of syllogisms, philosophizes and argues thus: If I do nothing without the help of God, and everything that I do is his, then it is not I who labor, but the help of God will be crowned in me, and he gave the power of free will in vain, which I cannot fulfill unless he himself always helps me. For the will is destroyed, which needs another's help. But God gave free will, which will not be free otherwise, unless I do what I wish. And on this account he says: Either I make use, once for all, of the power given to me, so that free will may be preserved; or, if I need another's help, the liberty of my will will be destroyed in me.

He who says these things—what blasphemy does he not exceed? What poisons of heretics does he not surpass? They assert that, through the liberty of free will, they no longer have any necessary need of God; and they do not know it is written: What do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it? He gives great thanks to God, who through the liberty of free will is rebellious against God—a liberty which we ourselves gladly embrace, but only on this condition, that we always give thanks to the Giver; and that we know we are nothing, except what he has bestowed, if he himself preserves it in us, as the Apostle says: It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. To will and to run is mine; but thisminewill not be mine without the help of God, always given.

For the same Apostle says: It is God who works in us both to will and to accomplish. And the Savior in the Gospel: My Father works until now, and I work. He is always the bestower, and always the giver. It is not enough for me that he has given once, unless he gives always. I ask, that I may receive; and when I have received, I ask again. I am greedy for the benefits of God to receive; nor does he fail in giving, nor am I satisfied in receiving. The more I drink, the more I thirst. For I have read that it is sung by the Psalmist: Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. Everything good that we have is a taste of the Lord. When I think I have reached the summit of virtues, then I shall have but the beginning. For the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, which is driven out and destroyed by love. This alone is perfection for men, if they know that they are imperfect.

And you, he says, when you have done all things, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we ought to have done. If he who has done all things is unprofitable, what is to be said of him who could not fulfill them? Whence the Apostle also says that he has received in part and comprehended in part, and is not yet perfect, and forgets what is behind, and reaches forward to what is ahead. He who always forgets what is behind, and desires what is ahead, shows that he is not content with present things. But as for their tossing back and forth the charge that we destroy free will, let them hear in turn that it is they who destroy the liberty of will, who abuse it wickedly against the benefit of the Giver. Who destroys free will? He who always gives thanks to God, and refers whatever flows in his own little stream back to the fountain? Or he who says: Depart from me, for I am clean; I have no need of you.

For you gave me once the liberty of free will, that I might do what I wish; why do you thrust yourself in again, so that I can do nothing unless you fulfill your gifts in me? You fraudulently put forward the grace of God, in order to reduce it to the condition of man, and not to seek the help of God in each single work; lest, forsooth, you should seem to lose free will; and while you scorn the assistance of God, you seek the help of men.

Hear, I beg you, hear the sacrilegious man. “If,” says he, “I wish to bend a finger, move a hand, sit, stand, walk, run about, spit, wipe away the discharge of the nostrils with two little fingers, relieve the bowels, pass water, will the help of God always be necessary to me?” Hear, ungrateful, nay sacrilegious man, the Apostle preaching: Whether you eat, or drink, or do anything else, do all in the name of God. And that saying of James: Go to now, you that say, Today or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and spend a year there, and buy and sell and make gain, whereas you know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is a vapour which appears for a little while, and afterward vanishes away; for that you should say, If the Lord will, and if we shall live, we will do this or that. But now you rejoice in your boastings; all such rejoicing is evil.

Do you think it a wrong done to you, and the freedom of the will destroyed, if you always have recourse to God as author, if you depend upon His will, and say: My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He shall pluck my feet out of the net? Whence then do you dare with rash tongue to declare that each man is governed by his own will? If he is governed by his own will, where is the help of God? If he does not need Christ as his guide, how does Jeremiah write: His way is not in man; and: The steps of a man are directed by the Lord? You say that God’s commandments are easy, and yet you cannot produce a single one who has fulfilled them all. Answer me: are they easy, or difficult? If easy, produce someone who has fulfilled them, and explain why David sings in the Psalm: Who makes labour into a precept. And again: Because of the words of Thy lips I have kept hard ways.

And the Lord in the Gospel: Enter by the narrow gate. And: Love your enemies. And: Pray for them that persecute you. But if they are difficult, why have you dared to say that God’s commandments are easy, which no one has fulfilled? Do you not see that your own statements contradict one another? For either they are easy, and there is an infinite multitude of men who have fulfilled them; or they are difficult, and you have rashly called that easy which is difficult.

You are also accustomed to say this: that either the commandments are possible, and rightly given by God; or impossible, and then the fault lies not with those who received the commandments, but with him who gave impossible ones. Has God commanded me to be what God is: that there should be nothing between me and the Lord Creator: that I should be greater than the height of the angels, that I should have what the angels do not have? Of Him it is written as something proper to Himself: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. If this is common to me also with Christ, what did He have that was His own? Otherwise your own opinion is destroyed by itself. You assert that man can be without sin, if he wills; and after a most heavy slumber you try in vain, in order to deceive untutored souls, to add: “not without the grace of God.” For if a man can once be without sin by himself, why is the grace of God necessary?

But if without His grace he can do nothing, what need was there to say that he can do what he cannot do? He can, you say, be without sin, he can be perfect, if he wills. For what Christian does not wish to be without sin, or who refuses perfection, if it suffices for him to will, and the ability follows at once, if the willing has gone before? There is no Christian who does not wish to be without sin: therefore all will be without sin, because assuredly all desire to be without sin. And in this you will be caught ungrateful, that because you can produce no one, or scarcely anyone, who is without sin, you must confess that all could be without sin. God gave possible commandments, you say. And who denies this?

But how this statement is to be understood, the vessel of election most plainly teaches; for he says: What was impossible for the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh because of sin. And again: By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. And lest you should think this was said only of the law of Moses, and not of all the commandments which are contained under the one name of the law, the same Apostle writes, saying: For I consent to the law of God according to the inner man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to 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. But why he said this, he shows in another passage.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I work, I understand not. For I do not that which I will, but that which I hate, that I do. But if I do that which I would not, I consent to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that work it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good I find not. For the good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that which I would not, it is no more I that work it, but sin that dwells in me.

You will cry out against this, and say that we follow the dogma of the Manichaeans and of those who wage war against the Church about diverse natures, asserting that there is an evil nature which can by no means be changed. And do not impute this to me, but to the Apostle, who knew that God is one thing, man another, the frailty of the flesh one thing, the strength of the spirit another. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that we do not the things which we would. You will never hear from me that nature is evil. But let us learn, from the teaching of him who wrote it, how the frailty of the flesh is to be explained. Ask him why he said: For I do not that which I will, but that which I hate, that evil I do.

What necessity constrains his will, what force worthy of hatred commands him to do, so that he is compelled to do not what he wills, but what he hates and does not will? He will answer you: O man, who are you that reply against God? Does the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? Or has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? Bring a heavier charge against God, why, while Esau and Jacob were yet in the womb, He said: Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. Accuse Him of injustice, why Achan the son of Charmi stole some of the spoil of Jericho, and so many thousands of men perished on account of his fault. Why the sons of Eli sinned, and almost the whole people was destroyed, and the ark was taken. David sinned in numbering the people, and why so many thousands of men were slain throughout all Israel.

And to crown all (a point your comrade Porphyry is wont to object to us), for what reason a merciful and compassionate God suffered, from Adam even to Moses, and from Moses even to the coming of Christ, all the nations to perish in ignorance of the Law and the commandments of God. For neither Britain, that fruitful province of tyrants, nor the Scottish peoples, nor all the barbarous nations round about even to the Ocean, had known Moses and the Prophets. What need was there for Him to come in the last time, and not before the innumerable multitude of men perished? This question the blessed Apostle, writing to the Romans, most prudently discusses, professing ignorance of these things, and yielding them to the knowledge of God. Deign, therefore, you too, to be ignorant of what you inquire into. Grant to God His own power; He does not at all need you as His defender.

I, wretched man that I am, who await your insults, who always read this: By grace you are saved; and: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered—to speak of my own frailty, I know that I will many things which ought to be done, and yet I am not able to fulfil them; for the strength of the Spirit leads to life, but the frailty of the flesh leads to death. And I hear the Lord admonishing: Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

In vain do you blaspheme and pour into the ears of the ignorant the charge that we condemn free will. Let him be condemned who condemns it. Yet we do not differ from the brute animals in this, that we were created with free will; but this very free will, as we have said, relies upon the help of God, and needs His aid in every single act—which you do not wish; but this is what you wish, that he who once has free will should not need God as a helper. Free will gives free choice, but man does not immediately act by free will alone; rather by the help of the Lord, who needs the help of no one. You yourself, who boast of a perfect righteousness in men, equal to God’s, and yet confess yourself to be a sinner, answer me: do you wish, or do you not wish, to be without sin? If you wish it, why, according to your own opinion, do you not fulfil what you desire?

But if you do not wish it, you show yourself a despiser of the commandments of God. If you are a despiser, then certainly a sinner also. If a sinner, hear Scripture speaking to you: But to the sinner God has said: Why do you declare My statutes, and take My covenant in your mouth? For you have hated instruction, and have cast My words behind you. While you refuse to do the words of God, you cast them behind your back. And you, a new apostle, decree for the whole world what is to be done and what is not to be done. But it is not as you say; something else lurks in your mind. For when you call yourself a sinner, and say that man can be without sin if he wills, you wish it to be understood that you yourself indeed are holy, and free from all sin, but that out of humility you take upon yourself the name of sinner, so as rather to praise others and disparage yourself.

That argument of yours too—who could bear it? You say in these words: “It is one thing to be, another to be able to be. Being is not placed in our power, but the ability to be is spoken of generally: because, although someone may not have been, yet he who wishes to be can be.” I ask you, what sort of argument is this—to be able to be, what has never been? To be able to become, what you yourself testify no one has made? To attribute to anyone, whom you do not know whether he will exist, and to grant to I know not whom what you cannot prove to have existed in the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles? Listen to the simplicity, or rusticity, or ignorance—as it seems to you—of the Church. Speak what you believe: proclaim publicly what you say in secret to your disciples. You who say you have freedom of will, why do you not speak freely what you feel?

Your bedchambers hear one thing in secret, the platforms of the people another. For the uneducated crowd cannot bear the burdens of your mysteries, nor take solid food, being content with the milk of infancy. I have not yet written, and you threaten me with the thunderbolts of your written replies, as though, terrified by this fear, I would not dare to open my mouth—and you do not notice that we write for this very reason, that you may be compelled to answer, and at last openly to say what, according to time, persons, and places, you either speak or keep silent. I do not wish it to be free for you to deny what you have once written. It would be a victory for the Church if you would openly say what you think.

For either you will answer the same thing that we say, and you will in no way be adversaries but friends; or if you say things contrary to our doctrine, we shall conquer in this, that all will know from the Church what you think. To have revealed your opinions is to have been overcome. The blasphemy is evident at first glance. That which is blasphemous by its own confession does not need to be proved. You threaten us with an answer which no one can avoid except one who writes nothing at all. How do you know what we are going to say, that you prepare a reply? Perhaps we shall say what is yours, and you will sharpen the pen of your wit in vain. The Eunomians, Arians, Macedonians, separated by names, are united in impiety—they give us no trouble. For they say what they think. This is the only heresy which is publicly ashamed to say what it does not fear to teach in secret. The madness of the disciples proclaims the silences of the masters.

What they have heard in the bedchambers, they preach on the rooftops: so that if what they say pleases the hearers, it is credited to the glory of the masters; if it displeases, the fault is the disciple’s, not the master’s. Thus has your heresy grown, and you have deceived very many—especially those who cling to women, and know that they cannot sin: because you always teach, always deny, and deserve to hear that prophetic word: “Give them, O Lord, glory in the womb and in travail.” What will you give them? A barren womb, and dry breasts. My spirit boils, and I cannot restrain my words. The narrowness of a letter does not allow the magnitude of a lengthy work. In this little work no name is properly touched. We have spoken against the master of a perverse doctrine. If he becomes angry and writes back, he will betray himself, as it were, by his own testimony, being about to receive greater wounds in the real contest.

It is many years now that, from my youth up to this age, I have written various little works, and I have always had the zeal to speak to my hearers what I had learned publicly in the Church, not to follow the arguments of the Philosophers, but to acquiesce in the simplicity of the Apostles, knowing that it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject.” And: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men.” Since this is so, I challenge my adversaries to examine all my past writings thoroughly, and if they find any fault in my poor talent, let them bring it forward publicly. For either they will be good, and I will refute their calumny; or they will be reprehensible, and I will confess my error—preferring to amend rather than to persist in a depraved opinion.

And you too, therefore, excellent teacher, either defend what you have said, and support the sharpness of your opinions with subsequent argument, lest at some point, when it pleases you, you deny what you have said; or if indeed you have erred, as a man, confess it freely, and restore harmony among those who are at discord with each other. Let it come to your mind that the tunic of the Savior was not even torn by the soldiers. You see the quarrels of the brothers among themselves, and you laugh and rejoice that some are called by your name, others by that of Christ. Imitate Jonah, and say: “If this storm is because of me, take me up, and cast me into the sea”. He was cast down by humility into the depths, that he might rise again gloriously as a type of the Lord. You are lifted up to the stars through pride, so that Jesus may say of you: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven.”

As for the fact that many are called just in the Holy Scriptures, such as Zachariah and Elizabeth, Job, Jehoshaphat, and Josiah, and many others whose names are woven into sacred Scripture—though I intend to speak more fully of this (if the Lord grants the grace) in the promised work—yet for the present letter let it suffice to have briefly touched on this, that they are called just, not because they lack every fault, but because they are commended for the greater part of their virtues. Indeed, Zachariah is condemned by silence, and Job is reproved in speech, and Jehoshaphat and Josiah, who are without doubt called just, are recorded as having done things which displeased the Lord. Of these, one brought help to an impious man, and was rebuked by the Prophet; the other, against the command of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah, went to meet Necho, king of Egypt, and was slain—and yet both are called just.

Of the rest it is not the time now to write; for you have asked of me not a book, but a letter, which must be dictated at leisure, and all their barkings must be destroyed with Christ’s help—which we must assert by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures, in which God speaks daily to believers. And I beg and admonish, through you, the assembly of that holy and illustrious house, that they should not take upon themselves, on account of one man, or at most three insignificant men, the dregs of such great heresies, or (to say the least) the infamy of them: lest where at first virtue and holiness were praised, there the shamefulness of diabolical presumption and of the filthiest fellowship should now hold sway.

And let those who supply resources to men of this kind know that they are gathering a multitude of heretics, and making and nourishing enemies of Christ; and that it is in vain that they pretend one thing with the tongue, when they are proved to feel another with the hand.

Letter CXXXIV. Jerome to Augustine. To the truly holy lord, and to me in every affection venerable, Pope Augustine, Jerome sends greeting in Christ. 1. I have received the honorable man, my brother, the son of your worthiness, the Presbyter Orosius, both for his own merit and at your bidding. But a most difficult time has fallen, when it was better for me to be silent than to speak; so that our studies ceased, and, as with Appius, a canine eloquence was exercised. And so I have not been able to reply in time to your two little books, dedicated to my name, most learned and shining with every splendor of eloquence. Not that I think anything in them is to be reproved; but because, according to the Apostle, each abounds in his own sense: one indeed in this way, another in that. Certainly whatever could be said, and drawn with lofty genius from the fountains of the Holy Scriptures, has been set forth and discussed by you.

But I beg your reverence to allow me for a little while to praise your genius. For we discuss matters among ourselves for the sake of learning. But rivals, and especially heretics, if they see different opinions between us, will calumniate that this arises from rancor of spirit. But it is my resolve to love you, to look up to you, to cherish, to admire you, and to defend your sayings as if they were my own. Indeed, in the Dialogue which I have recently published, I have remembered your beatitude as was fitting; and let us give still greater effort, that this most pernicious heresy may be removed from the Churches, which always feigns repentance, that it may have the opportunity of teaching in the Churches: lest, if it should betray itself in open light, it perish when cast out.

Your holy and venerable daughters Eustochium and Paula (the younger) walk worthily both by their birth and by your exhortation; and they especially greet your beatitude: as does all the brotherhood which strives with us to serve the Lord Savior. We sent the holy Presbyter Firmus last year, on account of their affairs, to Ravenna, and thence to Africa and Sicily: whom we think is now residing in the regions of Africa. I beg that you greet, with my respects, the holy men attached to your side. I have also sent my letters to the holy Presbyter Firmus, which, if they reach you, do not think it burdensome to forward to him. May Christ the Lord keep you safe and mindful of me, lord truly holy and most blessed Pope.

We suffer a great scarcity of notaries skilled in the Latin tongue in this province; and therefore we are not able to obey your commands, especially in the edition of the Seventy, which is marked with asterisks and obeli. For we have lost much of our former labor through someone’s fraud.

Our fellow-presbyter Jerome has rightly believed in your most pious affection in coming to us. We sympathize with the member of our flock, and what we have judged should be done, or have been able to do, we have carried out swiftly. Let your brotherhood, dearest brother, hasten to deliver the letter to the aforesaid person as quickly as possible.

Letter CXXXV. Innocent to Aurelius. The Apostle testifies that contention has never produced any good in the Church; and therefore he commands that rebukes of heretics be made rather promptly than drawn out in prolonged debate. When this rule is carelessly overlooked, the evil which ought to be avoided is not avoided, but is increased. Nevertheless, since your grief and groaning so shake our inmost being that reason is not for treating and deliberating: first I address your steadfastness in the faith. You have often told many that whoever, for the sake of truth, is struck by injury, or, as you say, by danger, should await beatitude; and we remind you to be well mindful of your own preachings. And so, roused by such a scene of evils, we hastened to invoke the authority of the Apostolic See to suppress every wickedness; but we have found no one named against whom we might rise up, nor anyone charged by any account of a crime. What we can do, therefore, is to grieve with you.

But if you set forth an open and manifest accusation against certain men, I will either appoint competent judges, or, if anything more urgent and more pressing can be done by us, I will not delay, dearest son. Nevertheless I have written to my brother Bishop John, that he act more circumspectly: lest anything of this kind should happen again concerning the Church entrusted to him, which he ought to foresee and repel, lest it happen, or lest it happen again—which would afterward be most troublesome to himself as well.

Letter CXXXVI. Innocent to John of Jerusalem. Plunderings, slaughters, burnings, every crime of the utmost cruelty, the most noble holy virgins Eustochium and Paula have lamented that the Devil perpetrated in the places of their church: for they have retained the name of a man, but the cause is his. And although it is not ambiguous by whom it was committed, still it was fitting for your brotherhood to keep watch and to provide more carefully for that flock, lest anything of this sort should arise—since your negligence provokes the perils of others as well, in admitting into the Lord’s flock, and we have heard that such lambs, through fire, arms, and persecutions, naked, weak, after the slaughter and death of their own, scarcely survive. Does nothing move the piety of your priesthood at so great a power of the devil admitted against you and yours? Against you, I say—for indeed it condemns the gravity of a Priest that such a wickedness should have been completed in the church. Where were your provisions?

Where, indeed, if these mishaps had occurred, were your aids, or consolations, when they say they still fear more than they lament having suffered? I would judge more severely, had they spoken with me more openly about this matter. Behold, brother, the snares of the ancient enemy, and keep vigilant with the spirit of a good ruler, so that these things, which have been reported to us more by rumor than by manifest accusation, may either be corrected or repelled; lest ecclesiastical law compel him who has not defended the case to answer for it, when causes are undermined.

I have learned, both by your letters and by the report of many, that you wage the wars of Christ against the enemies of the Catholic faith, and that the winds are contrary, and that those who ought to be defenders of the age are instead, to mutual ruin, fautors of ruin: yet know that in this province Catiline has been driven, not by any human aid, but properly by the sentence of Christ, not only from the city, but also from the borders of Palestine; and we grieve very much that many companions of the conspiracy have remained with Lentulus, who linger at Joppa. But it seemed better to us to change our place than the truth of the faith; and to lose the pleasantness of our buildings and dwelling, than to be stained by communion with those to whom, at present, we would have had either to yield, or certainly to fight daily, not with the tongue, but with swords.

But how much we have suffered, and how the exalted hand of Christ has raged for us against the enemy, I think you have learned by the common report of all. I beg you, therefore, to complete the work you have undertaken; and do not allow, while you are present, that the Church of Christ should lack a defender. Certainly each one knows what would suffice for you, according to his ability, since one must fight not with bodily strength, but with charity of soul, which can never be overcome. The holy brothers who are with our littleness greet you most heartily. I think also that the holy brother Alentius the Deacon faithfully reports everything to your worthiness. May Christ our Lord Almighty keep you safe and mindful of me, lord truly holy and revered brother.

I know not by what temptation of the devil it has come to pass that both your labor, and the diligence of the holy priest Innocentius, and my own desire, seem for the present to have had no effect at all. Thanks be to God that I have learned of you as safe, and fervent with the warmth of faith, amid the very temptations of the devil. This is my joy, when I hear that my sons are striving in Christ; and may He himself, in whom we believe, confirm in us that zeal, that for his faith we may willingly pour out our blood. I grieve that a noble house has been utterly overthrown, and yet I could not learn what the matter was. For the bearer of the letters said he did not know. Wherefore we can grieve for our common friends, and beseech the mercy of Christ, who alone is powerful and Lord: although in part we deserve God's displeasure, for we have cherished the enemies of the Lord.

But you will do best if, laying aside all things, you seek the East and especially the holy places: for here all is quiet. And although they have not lost the poisons of their breast, yet they dare not open the mouth of impiety: but they are like deaf asps, stopping their ears. Greet the holy brethren. But our house, as regards worldly wealth, utterly overthrown by the persecutions of heretics, is by Christ's favor full of spiritual riches. For it is better to eat bread than to lose the faith.

Before now, Cyprian, most zealous of priests, I knew you only by letters, as one of that number concerning whom Moses heard: Choose priests, whom you yourself know to be priests, and one who had won the title of blessed man, who meditates on the Law of God day and night.

But now, since we have also come to know one another in the outward man, and after the greeting and the sweet embraces by which friendship is knit together, in order that you might prove true what you had heard, you at once ask of me that I expound for you that most difficult Psalm, which among the Greeks and Latins is entitled the eighty-ninth—not with an elaborate style of words and popular applause, which is wont to deceive and flatter the ears of the unlearned, but with plain speech and the truth of ecclesiastical eloquence: so that our interpretation may not need another interpreter, a thing which is wont to happen to many very eloquent men, that there is greater difficulty of understanding in their explanations than in the things which they attempt to explain. I shall undertake a most difficult task, and, supported by the help of your holy prayers, I shall call to mind that verse: The Lord will give a word to them that preach the gospel with great power.

And first it must be known that the title of this Psalm, according to the Hebrew, is A Prayer of Moses, the man of God; according to the Septuagint, A Prayer of Moses, man of God. But let holy Scripture teach us what difference there is between man (homo) and man (vir). The man of fifty speaks to Elijah: Man of God, the king calls you. To whom he answered, If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men. To Timothy also the Apostle writes: But you, O man of God, flee these things. Further, concerning the vir of God, the same Apostle instructs us: But I would have you know that the head of every man (viri) is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man (vir); and the head of Christ is God.

This is the man (vir) who ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, and daily praying says: But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as from the Spirit of the Lord. And in another place: Until we all attain unto a perfect man (virum), unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Whether, therefore, the appellation vir or homo befits the holy man, even him who saw God face to face and whose soul was saved, by whose mouth we have learned the creation of the world—of those things at least which are visible—the condition of man, and the truth of all the history that has gone before; who not only left us five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but also eleven Psalms, from the eighty-ninth, whose beginning is: Lord, you have become a refuge for us, up to the ninety-ninth, which is entitled, A Psalm of confession.

But as to the fact that in many manuscripts the ninety-eighth Psalm has the title, A Psalm of David, this is not found in the Hebrew; holy Scripture having this custom, that all Psalms which have no title of their own are attributed to those whose names are contained in the preceding Psalms.

Now there are four Psalms which bear the titleprayer: the sixteenth, which is entitled A Prayer of David, and begins: Hear, O Lord, my justice. And the eighty-fifth: Incline, O Lord. And the eighty-ninth, which is now in hand: Lord, you have become a refuge for us. And the hundred and first, which has the title, A Prayer of the poor man, when he was anxious, and poured out his supplication before the Lord. David, and the poor man—who, though he was rich, became poor for our sake—is referred to Christ, who sat upon the colt of an ass, according to Zechariah, poor and meek.

But Moses, through whom the Lord gave the Law, by whose mouth we have heard God speaking: Let us make man to our image and likeness; and immediately it is added: And God made man to his own image, to the image of God he made him; male and female he made them—from the beginning of the creation of man even to death and resurrection, unfolds all things: of what sort man was created, how long a time he lives, what he does in the world, what fruit of life he has, for what he labors, whither he strives to go. And since he who writes these things is himself a man, under his own person he bears witness concerning the condition of all mankind.

There are some, however, who refer this Psalm, or Prayer, to the people of Israel: how in the wilderness they offended God and fell, and were not found worthy to enter the land of promise; and how, in place of the fathers, the children entered in, and again they await God appeased, which is to be fulfilled in the coming of Christ.

What prayer (oratio) means in the Scriptures.—Oratio, according to the grammarians, is all speech of those who speak, whose etymology they express thus: oratio is oris ratio (the reason of the mouth). But in the holy Scriptures we scarcely read oratio in this sense; rather, that which pertains to prayers and supplications. The Hebrews say that in one volume of Psalms five books are contained: from the first up to the fortieth; and from the forty-first up to the seventy-first; and from the seventy-second up to the eighty-eighth; and from the eighty-ninth, which is the beginning of the fourth book, and which we are now discussing, up to the hundred and fifth. At the end of all of these a double Amen is placed, which the Seventy translate, So be it, so be it: and from the hundred and sixth to the end. In the manner of the twelve Prophets, who, although they each published their own books, are contained under the name of one volume.

But that which I almost passed over, asserting that among the eleven Psalms of Moses is also the ninety-eighth, in which it is written: Exalt the Lord our God, and adore the footstool of his feet, for it is holy: Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among those who call upon his name—this seems to contradict our opinion; how can it be of Moses, who names Samuel, whom we know to have lived many ages later? The solution of this question is easy: that it is the name of Samuel that is prophesied, who was of such merit that he is set alongside Moses in Jeremiah: If Moses and Samuel should stand; after the manner of that example, when the man of God speaks in Samaria: Altar, altar, thus says the Lord: behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah shall be his name. Let us also know that those err who think all the Psalms to be David's, and not of those whose names they are inscribed with.

Whence they also wish this Psalm, under the name of Moses, to have been composed by David, on the ground that the Lawgiver describes with a sacred mouth the common offense and calamity of the human race, and thereafter the expectation of salvation.

Lord, you have become a dwelling-place for us, in generation and generation. The Seventy: Lord, you have become a refuge for us, in every generation and generation. In place of habitation and refuge, the Hebrew has MAON, which sounds more like habitation than refuge. Now, being about to relate sad things, and to lament the human race, he begins from the praises of God, so that whatever adversity afterward befalls man may be seen to have come to pass not through the harshness of the Creator, but through the fault of him who was created. He who endures a storm seeks refuge either of a rock or of a roof. He whom an enemy pursues flees to the walls of cities. The weary traveler, wearied both by sun and dust, seeks the solace of shade. If a most savage beast thirsts for a man's blood, he desires and strives, as best he can, to avoid the present danger.

So too man, from the beginning of his creation, makes use of God as his helper: and since it is of his grace that he was created, and of his mercy that he subsists and lives, he can do no good work apart from him who granted free will in such a way as not to withhold his grace in each single work. Lest freedom of will should redound to the injury of the Creator, and to contumacy against him who therefore was created free, that he might know that without God he is nothing. Now, as to what is said, in generation and generation, it signifies all times, both before the Law and under the Law, and in the grace of the Gospel. Whence also the Apostle says: By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God.

And all his Epistles, at the beginning of the salutation, do not have peace first, and then grace: but before grace, and then peace, so that, our sins being forgiven us, we may attain the peace of the Lord.

Before the mountains were born, and the earth and the world were brought forth in travail, from age to age you are God. The Seventy: Before the mountains were established, and the earth and the world were fashioned, from age even to age you are God. Certain persons pervert this passage by a false punctuation, especially those who wish that souls existed before man was formed in the number of the sixth day. For they read and punctuate thus: Lord, you have become a refuge for us, from generation to generation, before the mountains were established, and the earth and the world were fashioned—so that afterward, indeed, this should follow: from age even to age you are God. For thus they expound it: If the Lord, before the mountains were established, and the earth and the world of the lands were fashioned, was the refuge of men; then souls existed in the heavens before the bodies of men were formed.

But we, as we have proposed, ought to punctuate the reading thus: Before the mountains were established and the earth and the world of the lands were fashioned, from age even to age you are God; so that it does not mean that he was our refuge before the founding of the world, when as yet we were not; but that God, from eternity even to eternity, is always God. For instead of what the Latin translator has put, from age to age, and what in Hebrew is said, OLAM, we shall more correctly interpret, from the everlasting even to the everlasting. Something similar is read also in Proverbs, in the person of Wisdom, who is Christ: The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways for his works; he founded me before the ages, in the beginning, before he made the earth and the depths, before the fountains of waters came forth, before the mountains were established, before all the hills he begot me.

Now no word of creation should trouble us, since in the Hebrew it is not creation that is said, which is BARA, but possession. For thus it is written: Adonai kanani bereshith darko, which in our tongue is expressed: The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways. Now between possession and creation there is much difference. Possession signifies that the Son was always in the Father, and the Father in the Son. But creation signifies the beginning of the existence of one who previously was not. According to the laws of tropology, it is possible that what is said, Before the mountains were established and the earth and the world of the lands were fashioned, signifies that before sublime doctrines were established in our soul, and the earth of our body was fashioned or made firm by God, and the world of the lands, which in Hebrew is called THEBEL—in Greek it is called more significantly οἰκουμένη, which we may render as the inhabited world—was established or made firm, God was always a refuge to us.

Now the soul is inhabited, not deserted, which deserves to have God as its guest, the Savior saying: I and the Father will come, and will make our abode with him. But that which the Hebrew has, and all the other translators: Before the mountains were born, and the earth was in travail, plainly draws us toward tropology. For mountains and earth do not admit of birth and travail, but of establishment. From which it is clearly shown that holy men also, and lofty virtues, are ever brought forth by the mercy of God.

Thou shalt turn man even unto contrition, and shalt say, Return, ye children of Adam. The Seventy: Turn not man away unto humiliation, and thou hast said: Be converted, ye children of men. According to the Hebrew, what is said means this: O God, who didst form man, and from his beginning art his refuge and dwelling place, thou wilt turn him even unto contrition: thou hast made him and fashioned him, that he should be broken down into death, and that thy vessel should be shattered at the last time of its life; since this condition hangs over him, that having arisen he should perish, and although he may have lived a long time, yet he is dissolved at the final end; daily thou sayest to him through the Prophets: Return, ye children of Adam, who by your own fault offended God, and from being immortal have become mortal.

For you would not hear the command of him who charged: Of every tree that is in paradise thou shalt eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat. For in whatsoever day thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death. Further, that which the Seventy translated: Turn not man away unto humiliation, and thou hast said: Be converted, ye children of men, has this sense: I beseech thee, that thou humble not with perpetual sin the man whom thou hast formed in thy image and likeness, and whom thou hast deigned to honor so greatly that thou wouldst call him son instead of servant; let not the ancient sentence prevail over him: Thou art earth, and unto earth thou shalt go. For thou hast promised us—and this the Syrian too and the Arabian—that this ought nonetheless to move someone, from the very acceptance and signification of that word among the ancients.

For a certain kind of begetting was also called creation, and well known is that line of Virgil's Aeneid.

Here four youths begotten of Sulmo, and Cicero, book of the Republic: The fatherland is a parent older than he who, as they say, begot one—not to mention that the words κτίσειν and κτήσεως are easily interchanged among the Greeks. What follows is in Hebrew, יהוה קניני ראשית דרכו.

Repentance, saying: I will not the death of the sinner: only that he be converted and live: Thou hast said, by the utterance of all thy Saints: Be converted, or return, ye children of men, to the most merciful Father, who runs to meet those who come, and offers the sign which by their own fault they had lost, and bestows the ancient robe of incorruption.

For a thousand years in thy sight are as yesterday, which is past, or as it were gone by, and as a watch in the night. Thou who through the Prophets ever callest us to repentance, saying: Return, ye children of men, we ask (as I have already said above) that thou do not cause man to be held in everlasting humiliation. For we do not think it long, that which thou promisest, salvation to be given to us after much time. For compared to eternity, the length of all time is short. For in thy sight a thousand years are reckoned as one day. And straightway he corrects himself. I have spoken wrongly in saying one day, and that in the space of one day a length of a thousand years is reckoned by thee, when I ought rather to have said that the space of one watch has the likeness of a length of a thousand years. The night is divided into four watches, each reckoned at the space of three hours.

Whence also the Lord came to the sailing Apostles in the fourth watch. As therefore one watch of the night passes quickly, especially to those wearied by the toil of keeping watch: so also the spaces of a thousand years are reckoned before thee, who ever art, and shalt be, and hast been, as a very brief time. And as to what he adds: As yesterday, which is past, let us understand it according to that saying of the Apostle which he writes to the Hebrews: Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the same also forever. Therefore I think, from this passage, and from the Epistle which is inscribed with the name of the Apostle Peter, that a thousand years were accustomed to be called as one day: namely, because the world was made in six days, it is believed to subsist for only six thousand years: and afterward comes the seventh number, and the eighth, in which the true sabbath-keeping is practiced, and the purity of circumcision is restored.

Whence also by the eight beatitudes the rewards of good works are promised. Now Peter writes in this manner: Let this one thing not escape you, beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some men count delay.

When thou strikest them, they shall be a dream, in the morning like grass passing away. In the morning it flourished and passed away, toward evening it shall be cut down and dried up. The Seventy: Those things which are accounted as nothing, such shall their years be: In the morning let it pass like grass, in the morning let it flourish and pass away, in the evening let it fall, wither, and dry up. According to the Hebrew, the sense here is this: It has contributed much to our conversion and salvation, that all the life of mortals has been contracted, as it were, into a dream, by so swift a death: which is dried up and perishes in the likeness of flowers and hay, at almost the same time. When thou strikest them, he says, that is, men; and that saying being fulfilled: Fool, this night they shall require thy soul of thee: and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be? All the condition of man shall be compared to a dream.

For as in the morning green grass, blooming with its flowers, delights the eyes of those beholding it, and gradually withering, loses its beauty, and is turned into hay to be trodden underfoot: so all the appearance of man springs in infancy, flowers in youth, thrives in men of mature age: and suddenly, while he knows it not, his head turns gray, his face is wrinkled, his skin, once stretched taut, contracts; and at the final end, which is here called evening, that is, old age, he can scarcely move: so that it is not recognized who he formerly was, but he is changed almost into another. What shall we say of the times of infancy right up to extreme and decrepit old age, when even sickness and the sorrow of want bring it about that a woman's face, once most beautiful, passes into such foulness that love is changed into hatred? Concerning this condition of mortals Isaiah too speaks: All flesh is grass, and all its glory as the flower of grass.

The grass has withered, the flower has fallen. According to the Seventy also it must be explained similarly. Whatsoever seems long in this age, before thee, O God, is short. For the days and years by which human life is contracted, if compared to eternity, shall be reckoned as nothing. For as grass in the morning has grown up, flowered, and dries up, and toward evening hardens and perishes: so shall be all the beauty of men.

For we are consumed in thy fury, and in thy indignation we are troubled. The Seventy: For we have failed in thy wrath, and in thy fury we are troubled. For what we have rendered we are troubled, Symmachus and Aquila translated we have hastened. Now it signifies the brevity of human life. And what he adds, in thy wrath and in thy fury, shows the perpetuity of God's sentence, under which all men lie, namely that: Thou art earth, and unto earth thou shalt go. Beautifully, however, not as it is in the Seventy, we are troubled, but according to the Hebrew, it is said we have hastened; so that, although the age of man seems long, yet in comparison with eternity it is short. Which the illustrious Poet also attests, saying:

But meanwhile it flies, irretrievable time flies.

And again: Rhoebus, long (if any thing be long for mortals) have we lived.

Thou hast set our iniquities before thee: our negligences in the light of thy countenance. The Seventy: Thou hast set our iniquities in thy sight, our age in the illumination of thy countenance. Where we, according to the Hebrew and Symmachus, have put our negligences, for which the Seventy translated our age, in the Hebrew is written ALOMENU, which the fifth Edition interprets youth; Aquila, παροράσεις, and we can render into our own tongue, errors, or ignorances. Whence he said in another place: Remember not the sins of my youth, and my ignorances. And again: Who understands his faults? And: Cleanse me, O Lord, from my hidden faults: and spare thy servant from those of others. For those vices are of others to us which we commit often by will, sometimes by ignorance and error: and yet, though there be no will in the crime, the error is a fault.

But I wonder why the Seventy chose to say age instead of adolescence, negligences, and errors or ignorances: unless perhaps because in this age and in the time of this life vices are committed. And what he adds: in the illumination, or in the light of thy countenance, has this sense. Nothing of our sins has escaped thee: our secrets too thy eye has beheld: according to that which is written: Darkness shall not be hidden from thee. And, God who searches hearts and reins. And again: As his darkness, so also his light. For man sees the face, but God sees the heart.

For all our days have passed away, and in thy fury we have consumed our years, like a word being spoken. The Seventy: For our days have failed: and in thy wrath we have failed. Our years have meditated like a spider. The brevity of human life, which has thus far been subject to the sentence of God, and which in the preceding verse he compared to a dream, saying: When thou strikest them, they shall be a dream, he now compares to the word of those speaking: that as a word which is turned over in the mouth, while it is uttered, is cut off, and ceases to be; so also all our life passes away and ceases: and this in the wrath and fury of God, to which we deservedly lie subject, the sentence of God, as we said above, living in us. But what the wrath and fury of God is, we have said rather often, not that God takes vengeance in anger, but that to those suffering the punishments he seems to be angry.

For what descends upon us out of disturbance of mind, in him proceeds from the truth of judgment. Instead of the word of one speaking, the Seventy have they have meditated. They rendered it of a spider. For as the word of one speaking flies past: so also the work of the spider is woven in vain. Concerning which, with reference to the persons of heretics, it is written in Isaiah: They weave the web of a spider; which can catch small and light creatures, such as flies, gnats, and other such things; but is broken by the stronger. In the likeness of the light and simple in the Church, who are deceived by their errors, since they cannot hold fast men robust in the truth of the faith.

The days of our years are in themselves seventy years: but if in the strong, eighty years; and what is more, labor and sorrow. The Septuagint: The days of our years are in themselves seventy years. But if in the mighty ones eighty years: and more than these is labor and sorrow. For what we have rendered in ipsis, in the Hebrew is found BAEM; Symmachus translated more significantly ὁλόκληροι, which we may render, more according to sense than word, as entire or whole. Whatever, then, we live, and in which the life of mortals is delightful, is comprised within a span of seventy years. But if there be much, and as Symmachus interpreted, contrary to expectation, the years are eighty; whatever is beyond is spent in sicknesses and infirmity, which is the companion of old age, with the eyes growing dim, the teeth—once hardest—now aching or falling out first, which the divine word describes more fully in Ecclesiastes: The evil days will come, and the years in which we shall say, We have no pleasure in them.

When the sun and the moon and the stars shall be darkened; and the clouds return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the men of strength shall be bowed down: and the grinders shall cease, because they are few: and those who look through the windows shall be darkened; and the doors shall be shut in the street: with the weakness of the sound of the grinding, and one shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song shall be brought low; and indeed they shall look from on high; and there shall be terrors in the way: and the almond tree shall flourish, and the locust shall be made fat, and the caper shall be scattered.

Because man goeth into the house of his eternity; and they that mourn shall go about in the street, until the silver cord be loosed, and the golden ornament be broken, and the pitcher be shattered at the fountain, and the wheel be hindered in the cistern, and the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit return to the Lord who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith Ecclesiastes, and all is vanity. All of which things comprise the miseries of human life and especially of old age: and what meaning they hold, we have discussed in its own place. There are those who, interpreting this passage allegorically, refer it to the mystery of the sabbath and of circumcision: that first we rest in the Law, and afterward the sacraments of the true circumcision in the Gospel hold us fast, adding also that saying: Give a portion to seven, and also to eight. And the seventy thousand and eighty thousand multitudes of men, by whom the temple was built under Solomon.

But what has this to do with the present passage, for which a simple and plain explanation suffices, which ought to seek not the glory of learning in a multiplication of words, but the understanding of the reader?

Because we have passed swiftly and flown away. The Septuagint: Because gentleness has come upon us, and we shall be chastised. For which in the Greek is written παιδευθησόμεθα, a word that is ambiguous, and signifies both chastisement and instruction and teaching. For whom the Lord loves, He chastises, or instructs, and scourges every son whom He receives. Which passage Symmachus translated thus: For we are cut off suddenly, and fly away. The Fifth Edition renders it thus: Because we have passed swiftly and are dissolved. And the sense is this. After seventy years, and, at most, eighty, in which the life of man is passed, when the soul has been separated from the body, we fly away like the wind; or else because above He compares man to the green grass and the beauty of flowers, and toward evening to dryness: now, instead of the dryness of evening, He sets the cutting-down of flowers. And when, He says, all that we live has passed by, we are dissolved by sudden death.

But what the Seventy said, Because gentleness shall come upon us, and we shall be chastised, has this sense. After seventy years and eighty, when the Lord's gentleness shall come, and the day of death shall press upon us, we shall not be judged according to merit, but according to clemency: and what is thought to be chastisement, is instruction and teaching. And we wonder greatly why the Seventy, Theodotion, and the Sixth Edition wished to translate the Hebrew word AIS as gentleness, when Aquila, Symmachus, and the Fifth Edition rendered it as haste and suddenness and swiftness.

Who knows the strength of thy wrath, and, according to thy fear, thy indignation? The Septuagint: Who knows the power of thy wrath, and, for fear of thee, to number thy anger? Between the Hebrew and the Septuagint there is a different division. For the Seventy join the numbering to the fear and fury of the Lord. But the Hebrew fits it to the following verse, so that it continues: That our days may be numbered, so show us: and we shall come with a wise heart. Which, we think, should be briefly explained thus. Who can know how long thy wrath, from which fear is born to the human race, will last, unless thou, who art God, teach us? Therefore I beseech thee to make known to us the time of our life, that we may prepare ourselves for thy judgment with a wise heart. But when he says: Who knows the strength or power of thy wrath; and, according to thy fear, thy indignation?

He shows that it is difficult to know the secret and the reasoning of God's wrath, fear, and indignation: whence the Prophet also tearfully entreats: O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath; neither chastise me in thy fury. For he does not chastise in order to kill and destroy, but in order to correct and amend. Wherefore also in Hosea, to the people of the Jews, with whom he was greatly angered, he says that he will by no means be angry, nor visit their daughters-in-law, when they have committed adultery. And through Ezekiel he speaks to Jerusalem: I will no longer be angry with thee, and my zeal has departed from thee. And in the words of Chronicles it likewise sounds, when Israel goes forth against the enemy to battle with a peaceable heart.

That our days may be numbered, so show us, and we shall come with a wise heart. The Septuagint: Make known thy right hand, and them that are instructed in heart in wisdom. Which Aquila, Symmachus, and the Fifth Edition rendered thus: Show us our days, that we may come with a wise heart. And the error is plain, why the Seventy said right hand instead of days: for JAMENU is a compound word, signifying our days. Which, if written in the singular number, the last letter, which is called NUN, expresses right hand; as in the name Benjamin, which is interpreted son of the right hand. But if it has MEM, it signifies day or days. The sense, moreover, is this: Show us the number of the years and days in which thou hast decreed that we should live in this world, that we may prepare ourselves for thy coming; and, holding in contempt the error of mortals, may hasten to go to thee, and desire thy presence, and hasten to thee with a wise heart.

For nothing so deceives the human race as the fact that, being ignorant of the span of their life, they promise themselves a longer possession of this age. Whence also that was excellently said: No man is so old and of such decrepit age that he does not still suppose he will live one year more. To this sense also belongs that which is said: Remember thy death, and thou shalt not sin. For he who remembers daily that he is going to die despises present things, and hastens toward the things to come. This is what David prays in another place, saying: Take me not away in the midst of my days, before I go and am no more. Which is explained thus: Do not make me die at a time when I still thought I would live, so that I might be able to correct my sins by penance. For if thou do this, I shall cease to be found in my sins.

Not that he denies the hope of resurrection; but that he denies he can stand before Him, with whom all who persevere in vice are counted as nothing. Where we have translated instructed in heart in wisdom, others have translated fettered, deceived by the ambiguity of the word. For if you say πεπεδημένους, it signifies fettered.

Return, O Lord, how long? And be entreatable toward thy servants. The Septuagint likewise. Because we do penance, and knowing the brevity of our life, we desire to come to thee with a wise heart: and thou, Lord, return to us. For by our sins thou hadst withdrawn far off, and had left us, that we might walk according to our own will and thoughts. But what he adds, how long, has that meaning which we read in the twelfth Psalm: How long, O Lord, wilt thou forget me unto the end? For he who is placed in distress thinks God's help to be slow in coming: and therefore prays the more earnestly that he may quickly feel the Lord as a helper; and by no means as an angry judge, but as one appeased.

Fill us with thy morning mercy, and we shall praise and rejoice all our days. The Septuagint: We have been filled in the morning with thy mercy, and we have exulted and been delighted all our days. In almost every place the Septuagint have this custom, that what is shown among the Hebrews as future, they render as though it were already done and past. Here, then, they do not, as they would have it, say that they have already been filled with the Lord's morning mercy, and have rejoiced: otherwise, if this had already happened, how could they afterward entreat, and say, Look upon thy servants and upon thy works? But all that they ask, they entreat for this reason: that they may deserve his morning mercy, which, once they have obtained it, they may praise God and rejoice for all the days of their life. They seem to me, moreover, to entreat, in hope of resurrection, the rewards of eternal life, saying: Fill us with thy morning mercy.

Which indeed the title of the twenty-first Psalm also expresses, which, properly pertaining to the mystery of the Lord and to his resurrection, is inscribed: For the morning assumption.

Give us joy for the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. The Septuagint: We have rejoiced for the days wherein thou hast humbled us, the years wherein we have seen evils. And Lazarus, who had received evil things in his life, rests in the bosom of Abraham with everlasting joy. But he does not call evils those things that are contrary to good, but sets the word in place of affliction and distress. With which evils Sarah also afflicted her handmaid Agar; and of which it is written in the Gospel: Sufficient for the day is its own evil. The more, therefore, in this age we shall have been afflicted with persecutions, poverty, the power of enemies, or the torments of diseases, the greater rewards we shall obtain in the future after the resurrection. But he does not say beautifully, we have endured evils, but we have seen. For who is the man that lives, and does not see death?

Which is to be referred not so much to the dissolution of the body as to the multitude of sins, according to which it is said: The soul that sins, it shall die.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory upon their children. The Septuagint: Look upon thy servants, and upon thy works, and guide their children. Therefore in his servants the Lord himself works his own work. Nor is he who prays content with his own salvation alone, but seeks the glory of the children, that is, of the servants of God. And by children we ought to understand not so much those who are begotten of their stock, as disciples; of whom Paul also spoke: My little children, of whom I travail again in birth. Whence also the Apostle John, according to the merits of his children, and the progress of the works of each, writes to the little ones, writes to the young men, writes to the fathers.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and make the work of our hands stable over us: and confirm the work of our hands. The Septuagint: And let the splendor of the Lord our God be upon us; and direct the works of our hands upon us: and direct the work of our hands. Where are those who, applauding themselves for the power of free will, think they have thereby obtained the grace of God, if they have the power of doing, or not doing, good or evil things?

Behold, the blessed Moses here, after the resurrection which he had asked for, saying: Fill us with thy morning mercy, and we shall praise and rejoice all our days, is by no means content merely to have risen, and to have obtained the rewards of eternal life; but he asks that the beauty of the Lord his God may be upon those who shall have risen, and may shine in the souls and hearts of the saints: and that he himself may direct the works of their hands, and make them to be perpetual: and that he himself may confirm whatever good is seen in the saints. For as the humility of the one who entreats deserves rewards: so the pride of one who despises will be deserted by the help of God.

To the holy and most blessed lord Pope Augustine, Jerome.

At every time indeed I have venerated your beatitude with the honor that is fitting; and I have loved the Lord Saviour dwelling in you: but now, if it can be done, we add something to the sum, and fill it up fully, so that we suffer not even one hour to pass without mention of your name, you who stood firm against the blowing winds with the ardor of faith. You preferred, as far as it was in you, to be delivered alone out of Sodom, rather than to dwell with those who were perishing. Your prudence knows what I mean. Well done in virtue; you are celebrated throughout the world. Catholics venerate and look up to you as the restorer of the ancient faith; and—which is a sign of greater glory—all heretics detest you, and pursue me with equal hatred, so that those whom they cannot slay with swords they may kill by their wishing. May the clemency of Christ the Lord keep you safe and mindful of me, venerable lord and most blessed Pope.

To the holy and most blessed lord Pope Augustine, Jerome.

Many limp on both feet, and are not even bent by broken necks, having still the affection of their former error, though they do not have the same liberty of preaching it. The holy brethren who are with our littleness, especially your holy and venerable daughters, greet you in supplication. I beg your crown to greet in my name your brothers, my lord Alypius and my lord Evodius. Jerusalem, having been taken, is held by Nebuchadnezzar, and will not hear the counsels of Jeremiah; rather she desires Egypt, that she may die in Tahpanhes, and there perish in everlasting servitude.

To the truly holy lords, worthy of veneration with every affection and right, the Bishops Alypius and Augustine, Jerome sends greeting in Christ.

The holy Presbyter Innocentius, the bearer of this letter, last year, as though he were by no means to return to Africa, did not take my writings to your worthiness. Yet we give thanks to God, that it so fell out that you overcame our silence by your letters. For every occasion is most welcome to me by which I may write to your reverence; calling God to witness that, if it could be done, having taken on the wings of a dove, I would be enfolded in your embraces: always indeed on account of the merit of your virtues; but now especially, because through your cooperation and authorship the Celestian heresy has been slain, which has so infected the hearts of many that, although they feel themselves to be overcome and condemned, yet they do not lay aside the poisons of their minds; and the only thing they can do, they hate us, through whom they think they have lost the liberty of teaching their heresy.

As to what you ask, whether I have written in reply against the books of Annianus, the pseudo-deacon of Celeda, who is fed most abundantly, so as to supply frivolous words for another's blasphemy, know that I received those very books, sent in leaflets by our holy brother the Presbyter Eusebius, not long ago; and from that time, whether from the illnesses pressing upon me, or from the falling asleep of your holy and venerable daughter Eustochium, I have grieved so much that I almost thought them fit to be despised. For he sticks fast in the same mire, and, except for tinkling and begged-for words, says nothing else. Nevertheless we have accomplished much; for while he strives to answer my letter, he betrays himself more openly, and lays bare his blasphemies to all. For whatever he denies having said in that wretched Synod of Diospolis, he confesses in this work; nor is it a great thing to answer the most inept trifles.

But if the Lord grants life, and we shall have a supply of scribes, we will answer in a few brief nocturnal labors: not that we may refute a dead heresy, but that we may confute his ignorance and blasphemy by our words. And your holiness would do this better; lest we be compelled to praise our own words against a heretic. The holy children, common to us both, Albina, Pinianus, and Melania greet you very much. I have given these letters to the holy Presbyter Innocentius to carry from holy Bethlehem. Your granddaughter Paula begs most wretchedly that you be mindful of her, and greets you much. May the clemency of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you safe and mindful of me, truly holy lords and fathers venerable with every affection.

To the most blessed lord, and sincerely dearest and most longed-for brother and fellow-bishop Optatus, Augustine sends greeting in the Lord.

Through the religious Presbyter Saturninus I received the letter of your veneration, demanding with great zeal from me that which I do not yet possess. But you have opened to me the reason why you did this, namely that you believe that an answer has already been given to me concerning this matter, for which I sought counsel. Would that it were so! Far be it that I should defraud you, whose most eager expectation I know, of a share in this gift; but if you believe anything, dearest brother, behold nearly five years have now rolled by since I sent to the East a Book, not of my presumption, but of my consultation, and I have not yet deserved a reply by which this question might be unraveled for me—the question on which you desire me to bring you a definite opinion. I would have sent you both, if I had both.

But this which I have, without the other which I do not yet have, it does not seem right for me to send or publish to anyone, lest he who is perhaps going to reply to me, as I desire, should justly be angered that my question, elaborated with most laborious disputation, should be spread abroad through the hands and knowledge of men without his own reply (which is not yet to be despaired of), and should judge that I have acted more boastfully than usefully, as though I were able to seek what he was not able to unravel, when perhaps he can, and while he is doing it, it must be waited for. For I know rather that he is occupied with other things, which are by no means to be deferred, and are to be reckoned of greater weight. That your Holiness also may know this, attend for a little while to what he wrote to me in another year, when the bearer through whom I had written was returning.

For I have transferred this into this letter from his epistle. There fell, he says, a most difficult time, when it was better for me to be silent than to speak; so that our studies ceased, lest, according to Appius, a canine eloquence should be exercised. And so I was not able to answer in time your two little books, which you dedicated in my name, most learned and shining with every splendor of eloquence. Not that I think there is anything in them to be reprehended: but because, according to the Apostle, let each abound in his own sense: one indeed thus, another thus. Certainly whatever could be said, and drawn with lofty genius from the fountains of the holy Scriptures, has been set forth and discussed by you. But I beg your reverence, suffer me for a little while to praise your genius. For we discuss between ourselves for the sake of learning. But rivals, and especially heretics, if they see different opinions between us, will slanderously charge that this proceeds from rancor of soul.

But it is my resolve to love you, to look up to you, to cherish, to admire you, and to defend your sayings as though they were my own. Certainly also in the Dialogue which I recently published, I recalled your beatitude as was fitting: and let us rather give our effort to this, that the most pernicious heresy be removed from the Church, which always feigns penitence, that it may have the faculty of teaching in the churches, lest, if it betray itself in open light, it die cast out.

2. You see indeed, venerable brother, these words of my dearest friend, given in reply to my inquiry, that he has not denied that answer, but excused it on account of the time, because he was compelled to bestow his care upon other more pressing matters.

You see also how benevolent a mind he bears toward me, and what he warns, namely that what we do between us, for the sake of learning, with charity and sincerity of friendship safe, may not be slanderously charged by rivals, and especially heretics, as proceeding from rancor of soul. Accordingly, if men shall read both our works, both where I inquired, and where he himself shall have answered the things inquired, since it is also fitting that, if the same question shall have been sufficiently explained according to his opinion, I should give thanks for being instructed, it will be no small fruit, when this shall come to the knowledge of very many, that our lesser ones may not only know what they ought to think about this matter, which has been discussed between us with careful disputation, but may also learn by our example, God being merciful and propitious, how, among dearest brothers, there may not be lacking mutual disputation for the grace of inquiry, in such a way that love yet remains inviolate.

3. But if my writing, where a most obscure matter is only read as inquired, without his rewriting, where perhaps the discovery will appear, should go forth and spread further, and reach even those who, comparing themselves, as the Apostle says, among themselves, do not understand, with what mind this is done by us—since they themselves do not know how to do it with such a mind—they will expound my will toward the honoring of a dearest friend, for his immense merits, not as they see it, since indeed they do not see it, but as it pleases them, and as their own hatred dictates they will suspect: which indeed, as far as it is in us, we ought to guard against. But if perhaps, what we do not wish to become known through us, should become known, even against our will, to those to whom we do not wish it, what will remain, except to bear the will of the Lord with an equal mind?

For I ought not to write to anyone that which I would always wish to remain hidden. For if (which God forbid) by some chance or necessity he should never reply, without doubt our consultation, which we sent to him, will at some time be made manifest. Nor will it be useless to readers, because even if they do not find what they seek, they will certainly find how things are to be inquired into, and not rashly asserted when they are unknown, and while they take care, with studious charity, not with discordant contention, to consult also, themselves, those whom they are able, concerning the things they shall have read there; until either they find what they wish, or by the very inquiry they exercise the edge of the mind, so that they know that no further inquiry is to be made.

Now, however, as long as the reply of the friend already consulted is not yet to be despaired of, I think I have persuaded your charity that our consultation ought not to be published, as far as it is in us; although you yourself have not asked for it alone, but joined also with it the response of him whom I consulted, fittingly to the matter: Although they feel themselves to be overcome and condemned, yet they do not lay aside the poisons of their minds, and the only thing they can do, they hate us, through whom they think they have lost the liberty of teaching heresy, you should have desired to be sent to you, which indeed I would do, if I had it.

But if, to use the words of your holiness, which you set down in your letter, the lucid demonstration of my wisdom, which the Author of light (as you write) has bestowed upon me in the past life of mine, you do not mean this consultation and inquiry of mine itself, but you think that the discovery of that thing which I sought has already come to me, and you rather demand that I send that; I would do it, if it were so, as you think. For I confess I have not yet found how the soul draws sin from Adam, (which it is not right to doubt) and yet is not itself drawn from Adam, which is a matter to be inquired into by me more diligently, rather than asserted more rashly.

Your letter mentions I know not how many old men, and men instructed by learned priests, whom you were not able to recall to the understanding, and the most truthful assertion, of your modest self; yet you do not express what your most truthful assertion is, to which you were not able to recall these old men, and men instructed by learned priests. For if these old men held, or hold, what they had received from learned priests, how had a rustic and less instructed crowd of clerics caused you trouble in these matters, in which it had been instructed by learned priests? But if these old men, or the crowd of clerics, were deviating by their own perversity from what they had received from learned priests, they ought rather to have been corrected by their authority, and restrained from most contentious tumult.

But again, when you say that you, a new and untrained teacher, feared to corrupt the traditions of so many and such great bishops, and were afraid of converting men to the better part on account of injury to the dead, what do you give us to understand, except that those whom you wished to correct, unwilling to abandon the traditions of learned and great bishops now deceased, refused to yield to a new and untrained teacher? In this matter I am silent for the time concerning them; but I vehemently desire to know your assertion, which you say is most full of truth; I mean not the opinion itself, but its assertion.

For you have sufficiently brought to our notice that those are disapproved by you who affirm that all the souls of men are propagated and derived by the succession of generations from that one soul which was given to the first-formed man; but by what reasoning, or by what testimonies of the divine Scriptures you have shown this to be false, we do not know, because your letter does not contain it. Then, what you yourself hold concerning that which you disapprove does not clearly appear to me as I read your letter, both that which you formerly directed to the brethren of Caesarea, and that which you have most recently sent to me, except that I see you believe, as you write, that God made men, and makes them, and has made them, and that there is nothing in heaven or on earth which has not stood, and does not stand, established by Him as its author. This indeed is so true that no one ought to doubt it.

But you still need to explain from what source God makes souls, which you deny to be made from propagation—whether from some other source? And if so, what that source is—whether altogether from nothing? For as for that view of Origen and Priscillian, or of any others who hold some such opinion—that souls are thrust into earthly and mortal bodies according to the merits of a prior life—far be it from you to hold this; for the Apostolic authority utterly contradicts this opinion, saying that Esau and Jacob, before they were born, had done nothing either good or evil. Therefore your view on this matter is known to us not fully but only in part; but the proof of it, that is, how it may be shown to be true what you hold, is entirely hidden from us.

For this reason I had asked in my former letter that you would deign to send me the little book of Faith which you mention having written, and to which you complain some presbyter subscribed falsely: this I ask again now, and also what testimonies of the divine Scriptures you were able to bring forward to resolve this question. For you say in your letter to the Caesareans that it pleased you that even secular judges should recognize every proof of the truth, and that when they, at the common request, were sitting and examining everything with regard to the faith, the Divinity, as you write, bestowed by an infusion of its mercy this gift, that they might bring forth a stronger affirmation and assertion according to their own perceptions than your own moderate efforts toward them had been achieving, even with the authority of weighty testimonies. These weighty authorities of testimonies, then, I desire with great eagerness to know.

For you seem to have followed only this one line of argument, by which to refute your opponents, namely that they denied that our souls are the work of God. If they hold this, their opinion is rightly judged worthy of condemnation. For if they said this even of bodies themselves, they would doubtless have to be corrected or condemned. For what Christian would deny that the bodies of each and every one born are the work of God? And yet we do not therefore deny that they are begotten by parents, because we confess that they are formed by divine action. When, therefore, it is likewise said that certain incorporeal seeds, as it were, of their own kind, belonging to our souls also, are both drawn from parents, and yet that souls are made from them by the working of God, to refute this, not human conjecture but divine Scripture must be brought forward as witness.

For from the holy books of canonical authority there could be an abundance of testimonies available to us, by which it is proved that God makes souls; but by such testimonies those are refuted who deny that each and every soul in men being born is the work of God—not those who confess this, and yet maintain that souls, like bodies, are indeed formed by God's working, but from the propagation of parents. To refute these, you must seek sure divine testimonies, or if you have already found them, you should send them to us, who have not yet found them, though we seek as diligently as we can, in mutual charity.

Your brief and final inquiry, indeed, in the letter which you sent to the brethren of Caesarea, runs thus: I beg, you say, that you would instruct me, your son and disciple, who have but recently and lately, by God's help, come to these mysteries, with the instruction which you owe and which is fitting, and by which it befits prudent priests to answer: whether that opinion is rather to be held which says that the soul is from traducianism, and that through a certain hidden origin and secret order the remaining souls flow down into the whole race of men from the transfusion of Adam the first-formed; or rather that definition which all your brethren and the priests established here hold and affirm is to be chosen, and that belief retained, which testifies and believes that God has been, is, and will be the author of all things and of all men.

You wish, then, that of these two positions which you have proposed in your inquiry, one or the other be chosen and answered to you—which ought to be done by those who know, if these two were mutually contrary, so that, one being chosen, the other should consequently be rejected. But now, if someone does not choose one of the two, but answers that both are true—that is, that the remaining souls flow into the whole race of men from the transfusion of Adam the first-formed, and nevertheless believes and says that God has been, is, and will be the author of all things and of all men—what do you think should be said against this? Are we perhaps going to say: If souls are propagated from parents, God is not the author of all things, because He does not make souls?

For if we say this, one will answer: therefore, since bodies are propagated from parents, God is not the author of all things, if for this reason He must be said not to make bodies. But who would deny that God is the author of all human bodies, yet say that He is the author only of that body which He first formed from earth, or certainly also of that spouse's body, since He Himself formed her too from his side, but not also of the bodies of others, since we cannot deny that the rest of human bodies have flowed from those two?

And therefore, if those against whom you have a conflict in this question so assert the propagation of souls from that one soul, that they now deny that God makes and forms them, press on to refute, convict, and correct them, as far as you are able with the Lord's help. But if they affirm that certain beginnings are drawn from that one soul, and thereafter from parents, and yet that each soul in each man is created and formed by God the author of all things, inquire, especially from the Scriptures, what answer should be given them that is not ambiguous and cannot be otherwise understood; or if you have already found it, as I requested above, send it also to us.

But if this is still hidden from you, as it is from me, still press with all your strength to refute those who say that souls are not from divine creation—which you said in your first letter they had murmured among more secret fables, and that afterward, on account of this foolish and impious opinion, they withdrew from your fellowship and from the service of the Church—and against them defend and maintain in every way what you set down in the same letter, that God made souls, and makes them, and will make them, and that there is nothing in heaven or on earth which has not stood, or does not stand, established by Him as its author. For this is most truly and most rightly believed, said, defended, and proved concerning absolutely every kind of creature.

For God has been, is, and will be the author of all things and of all men, which you set down at the end of your Consultation to our Bishops of the Province of Caesarea, and to some degree exhorted them to choose this rather, by the example of all the brethren and fellow-priests who are with you, and who hold it. But it is one question whether God is the author and maker of all souls and bodies, which is the truth, or whether something arises in nature which He does not make, which opinion is altogether erroneous; and it is another question whether God makes human souls from propagation, or without propagation—though it is not lawful to doubt that they are made by Him in either case. In this question I want you to be sober and watchful, lest, in destroying the propagation of souls, you unwarily fall into the Pelagian heresy.

For if, in the case of human bodies, whose propagation is known to all, we nevertheless say, and say truly, that God is the creator not only of that first man, or of the first married pair, but of all who are propagated from them, I think it is easily understood that those who defend the propagation of souls do not wish, by this, to have us understand that God does not make souls, since He also makes bodies, which we cannot deny are made from propagation; but that other proofs must be sought, by which those who hold that souls are propagated may be refuted, if truth declares that they are in error—concerning which matter it would be better, if it could be done, to question those on whose account, because of injury to the departed, as you write in the letter which you sent me later, you feared to turn men to the better opinion.

For you said that these departed were such great and so learned bishops, that you, a new and untrained teacher, feared to want to corrupt their traditions. If, then, I could know by what testimonies such great and so learned men asserted this opinion concerning the propagation of souls—which nevertheless, in your letter sent to the Caesareans, without any regard to their authority, you called a new invention and an unheard-of dogma—though indeed, even if it is an error, we know that it is not new, but old and ancient.

But when certain causes not undeservedly compel us to doubt in some question, we ought not on that account also to doubt whether we ought to doubt. For concerning doubtful matters one must doubt without doubting that one should doubt. See how the Apostle himself does not doubt to doubt about himself, whether he was caught up into the third heaven in the body or out of the body: whether one or the other, I do not know, God knows. Why then should it not be lawful for me, as long as I do not know, to doubt whether my soul came into this life from propagation, or without propagation, since I do not doubt that in either case it was made by the highest and true God?

Why should it not be permitted me to say: I know that my soul subsists by the work of God, and is altogether the work of God, whether from propagation, like the body, or apart from propagation, like that soul which was given to the first man, I do not know, God knows? Do you wish me to affirm one of these? I would, if I knew. But if you yourself know, behold you have me more desirous to learn what I do not know, than to teach what I know. But if you do not know, as I do not, pray as I do, that either through some servant of His, or through Himself, that Master may teach us, who said to His disciples: Be not willing to be called Rabbi by men, for one is your Master, Christ.

If, however, He knows that it is expedient for us to know even such things—He who knows not only what to teach, but also what it is expedient for us to learn; for I confess to your charity my own desire; I do indeed desire to know this also, which you ask; but I would much more desire to know, if it could be, when He who is desired by all nations shall be presented, and when the kingdom of the Saints shall be, than whence I began to come into this earth. And yet, when His disciples, our Apostles, asked this of Him who knows all things, they received this answer: It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which God has put in His own power. What if He also knows that it is not ours to know this, He who indeed knows what is useful for us to know?

And indeed I know through Him this much, that it is not ours to know the times which the Father has put in His own power; but whether it is ours to know the origin of souls, which I do not yet know—that is, whether it pertains to us to know it—this too I do not know. For if I at least knew this, that it is not ours to know it, I would not only cease to affirm, as long as I do not know, but would even cease to inquire. But now, although it is so obscure and profound, that I fear more the rashness of teaching there than I have desire of learning, still I wish to know this too, if I can. And although it is much more necessary, what that holy man said: Make known to me, Lord, my end (for he did not say, my beginning), so far as this question is concerned, let it remain hidden from me.

But indeed, even as regards my own beginning, I am not ungrateful to my teacher, in that I know that the human soul is a spirit, not a body, and that it is rational, or intellectual, and that it is not the nature of God, but rather a creature, mortal in some respect, insofar as it can be changed for the worse, and can be estranged from the life of God, by participation in which it is blessed; and in some respect immortal, since it cannot lose that sense by which, after this life, it fares either well or ill. I know also that it did not deserve, on account of acts performed before the flesh, to be enclosed within the flesh; but neither is it, for that reason, in man without the stain of sin, even if its life upon earth were but of one day, as it is written.

And by this I know that no one, in the line of generation from Adam, is born without sin; whence it is also necessary for little ones to be reborn through the grace of regeneration in Christ. These many things, and not small ones, concerning the beginning or origin of our souls—among which there are many matters pertaining to that knowledge which are established by faith—I both rejoice to have learned, and affirm that I know. Wherefore, if I do not know, regarding the origin of souls, whether God makes them for men by propagation, or without propagation—though I do not doubt that they are made by Him, in whichever way—I do indeed choose rather to know this too than to be ignorant of it; but as long as I cannot, I prefer to be in doubt about it, rather than to dare to affirm as certain something which might perhaps be contrary to that matter about which I ought not to doubt.

You therefore, my good brother, since you ask me, and wish that I should determine one of these things: whether the other souls come from that one man, just as bodies do by propagation, or whether without propagation, as that one soul came from the Creator, each single soul is made for each single man (for we do not deny that it is made by Him, whether in this way or that)—suffer me also, in turn, to ask how it is that the soul draws original sin from that source from which it is not originally drawn? For we do not likewise deny that all souls draw original sin from Adam, lest we fall headlong into the detestable Pelagian heresy. If this, which I ask, you also do not know, bear patiently with me that both matters remain unknown—both what you ask, and what I ask. But if you already know what I ask, when you have taught me this also, then I will answer, without any further fear, that also which you wish me to answer.

I ask, then, that you not be angry, because I was not able to establish what you seek, but I was able to show what it is you are seeking, which, when you have found it, you need not hesitate to establish what you were seeking. And this indeed I thought should be written to your holiness, who already think, as though certain, that the propagation of souls is to be rejected. But if I had had to write back to those who assert this, perhaps I would show how they are ignorant of that which they think they know, and how much they ought to fear, lest they dare to assert this. As to the reply of my friend, which I have inserted into this letter, lest it perhaps trouble you, because he mentioned two books sent by me, to which he replied that he had had no free time to respond—there is one on this question, not both; in the other, however, I inquired into another matter, upon his consultation and treatment.

But as to what he admonishes and exhorts, that we should give greater effort that a most pernicious heresy be removed from the Churches, he means that very Pelagian heresy, which I admonish you, brother, as much as I am able, most carefully to avoid, when, concerning the origin of souls, whether you are thinking about it or already disputing it, lest it steal upon you to believe that any soul whatsoever, except that of the one Mediator, does not draw from Adam original sin, bound by generation, to be loosed by regeneration.