THE SECOND BOOK.

HE UNDERTAKES TO EXAMINE THE SECOND LETTER OF THE PELAGIANS, FILLED, LIKE THE FIRST, WITH CALUMNIES AGAINST THE CATHOLICS--A LETTER THAT WAS SENT BY THEM TO THESSALONICA IN THE NAME OF EIGHTEEN BISHOPS; AND, FIRST OF ALL, HE SHOWS, BY THE COMPARISON OF THE SAME HERETICAL WRITINGS WITH ONE ANOTHER, THAT THE CATHOLICS ARE BY NO MEANS FALLING INTO THE ERRORS OF THE MANICHEANS IN DETESTING THE DOGMAS OF THE PELAGIANS. HE REPELS THE CALUMNY OF COLLUSION INCURRED BY THE ROMAN CLERGY IN THE LATTER CONDEMNATION OF PELAGIUS AND CELESTIUS BY ZOSIMUS, SHOWING THAT THE PELAGIAN DOGMAS WERE NEVER APPROVED AT ROME, ALTHOUGH FOR SOME TIME, BY THE CLEMENCY OF ZOSIMUS, CELESTIUS WAS MERCIFULLY DEALT WITH, WITH A VIEW TO LEADING HIM TO THE CORRECTION OF HIS ERRORS. HE SHOWS THAT, UNDER THE NAME OF GRACE, CATHOLICS NEITHER ASSERT A DOCTRINE OF FATE, NOR ATTRIBUTE ACCEPTANCE OF PERSONS TO GOD; ALTHOUGH THEY TRULY SAY THAT GOD'S GRACE IS NOT GIVEN IN RESPECT OF HUMAN MERITS, AND THAT THE FIRST DESIRE OF GOOD IS INSPIRED BY GOD; SO THAT A MAN MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO BEGINNING OF A CHANGE FROM BAD TO GOOD, UNLESS THE UNBOUGHT AND GRATUITOUS MERCY OF GOD EFFECTS THAT BEGINNING IN HIM.

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CHAP. 1.-Introduction; the Pelagians impeach Catholics under the
name of Manichæans.

ET me now consider a second letter, not of Julian's alone, but common to him with several bishops, which they sent to Thessalonica; and let me answer it, with God's help, as I best can. And lest this work of mine become longer than the necessity of the subject itself requires, what need is there to refute those things which do not contain the insidious poison of their doctrine, but seem only to plead for the acquiescence of the Eastern bishops for their assistance? or, on behalf of the Catholic faith, against the profanity, as they say, of the Manichæans, with no other view than that a horrible heresy being presented to them, whose adversaries they profess themselves to be, they may lie hid as the enemies of grace in their praise of nature? For who at any time has stirred any question of these matters against them? or what Catholic is

CHAP. 2.]

MANICHEAN ERROR CONDEMNED.

271

displeased because they condemn those whom the apostle foretold as departing from the faith, having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, abstaining from meats that they think unclean, not considering that all things were created by God? Who at any time constrained them to deny that every creature of God is good, and there is no substance which the supreme God has not made, except God Himself, who was not made by any? It is not such things as these, which it is plain are Catholic truths, that are rebuked and condemned in them; because not alone the Catholic faith holds in detestation the Manichæan impiety as exceedingly foolish and mischievous, but also all heretics who are not Manichæans. Whence even these Pelagians do well to utter an anathema against the Manichæans, and to speak against their errors. But they do two evil things, for which they themselves must also be anathematized-one, that they impeach Catholics under the name of Manichæans, the other, that they themselves also are introducing the heresy of a new error. For it is not because they are not labouring under the disease of the Manichæans that they are therefore sound in the faith. The kind of pestilence is not always one and the same as in the bodies, so also in the minds. As, therefore, the physician of the body would not have pronounced a man free from peril of death whom he might have declared free from dropsy, if he had seen him to be sick of some other mortal disease; so truth is not acknowledged in their case because they are not Manichæans, if they are raving in some other kind of perversity. Wherefore what we anathematize with them is one thing, what we anathematize in them is another. For we hold in abhorrence with them what is rightly offensive to them also; just as, nevertheless, we hold in abhorrence in them that for which they themselves are rightly offensive. CHAP. 2. [11.]—The heresies of the Manichæans and Pelagians are mutually opposed, and are alike reprobated by the Catholic Church.

The Manichæans say that the good God is not the Creator of all nature; the Pelagians say that God is not the Purifier, the Saviour, the Deliverer of all ages of men. The Catholic Church condemns both; as well maintaining God's creation 11 Tim. iv. ff.

1

against the Manichæans, that no nature may be denied to be appointed by Him, as maintaining against the Pelagians that in all ages human nature must be sought after as ruined. The Manichæans rebuke the lust of the flesh, not as an accidental vice, but as a nature bad from eternity; the Pelagians approve it moreover as no vice or fault, but as being a natural good. The Catholic faith condemns both, saying to the Manichæans, "It is not nature, but it is vice; saying to the Pelagians, "It is not of the Father, but it is of the world," in order that both may allow it as an evil state of health to be cured the former by ceasing to believe it, as it were, incurable, the latter by ceasing to proclaim it as laudable. The Manichæans deny that to a good man the beginning of evil was of free choice; the Pelagians say that even a bad man has free-will sufficiently to do a good commandment. The Catholic Church condemns both, saying to the former, "God made man upright," and saying to the latter, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."2 The Manichæans say that the soul, as a particle of God, has sin by the commixture of an evil nature; the Pelagians say that the soul is upright, not being indeed a particle, but a creature of God, and has not even in this corruptible life any sin. The Catholic Church condemns both, saying to the Manichæans, "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree evil and its fruit evil," 3 which would not be said to man who cannot make his own nature, unless because sin is not nature, but vice; saying to the Pelagians, "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."4 In these diseases, opposed as they are to one another, the Manichæans and the Pelagians are at issue, with dissimilar will but with similar untruth, separated by different opinions, but close together by a perverse mind.

CHAP. 3.-How far the Manichæans and Pelagians are joined in error; how far they are separated.

Still, indeed, they alike resent the grace of Christ, they alike make His baptism of no account, they alike dishonour His flesh; but, moreover, they do these things in different

1 Eccles. vii. 30.

2 John viii. 36

3 Matt. xii. 33

41 John i. 8.

CHAP. 4.] MANICHÆANS AND PELAGIANS BOTH IN ERROR. 273

For the Manichæans assert

ways and for different reasons. that divine assistance is given to the merits of a good nature, but the Pelagians, to the merits of a good will. The former say, God owes this to the labours of His members; the latter say, God owes this to the virtues of His servants: In both cases, therefore, the reward is not imputed according to grace, but according to debt. The Manichæans contend, with a profane heart, that the washing of regeneration—that is, the water itself—is superfluous, and is of no advantage. But the Pelagians assert that what is said in holy baptism for the putting away of sins is of no avail to infants, as they have no sin; and thus in the baptism of infants, as far as pertains to the remission of sins, the Manichæans destroy the visible element, and the Pelagians destroy also the visible sacrament. The Manichæans, by blaspheming the birth of the Virgin, dishonour Christ's flesh; the Pelagians do as much by making the flesh of those to be redeemed equal to the flesh of the Redeemer, because Christ was born, not certainly in sinful flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, because the flesh of the rest of mankind is born sinful. The Manichæans, therefore, who absolutely abominate all flesh, take away the manifest truth from the flesh of Christ; but the Pelagians, who maintain that no flesh is born sinful, take away from Christ's flesh its special and proper dignity..

CHAP. 4.-The two contrary errors..

Let the Pelagians, then, cease to object to the Catholics that which they are not, but let them rather hasten to amend what they themselves are; and let them not wish to be considered deserving of approval because they are opposed to the hateful error of the Manichæans, but let them acknowledge themselves to be deservedly hateful because they do not put away their own error. For two errors may be opposed to one another, although both are to be reprobated because both are alike opposed to the truth. For if the Pelagians are to be loved because they hate the Manichæans, the Manichæans should also be loved because they hate the Pelagians. But be it far from our Catholic mother to choose some to love on the ground that they hate others, when by the warning and

help of the Lord she ought to avoid both, and should desire to heal both.

CHAP. 5. [IIL.]—The calumny of the Pelagians against the clergy of the

Roman Church.

Moreover, they accuse the Roman clergy, writing, "That, driven by the fear of a command, they have not blushed to be guilty of the crime of prevarication;1 that, contrary to their previous judgment, wherein by their proceedings they had assented to the Catholic dogma, they subsequently pronounced that the nature of men is evil." Nay, but the Pelagians had conceived, with a false hope, that the new and execrable dogma of Pelagius or Cœlestius could be made acceptable to the catholic intelligences of certain Romans, when those crafty spirits however perverted by a wicked error, yet not contemptible, since they appeared rather to be deserving of considerate correction than of easy condemnation-were treated with somewhat more of lenity than the stricter discipline of the Church required. For while so many and such important ecclesiastical documents were passing and repassing between the Apostolical See and the African bishops,-and, moreover, when the proceedings in this matter in that see were completed, with Cœlestius present and making answer,—what sort of a letter, what decree, is found of Pope Zosimus, of venerable memory, wherein he prescribed that it must be believed that man is born without any taint of original sin? Absolutely he never said this-never wrote it at all. But since Cœlestius had written this in his pamphlet, among those matters merely on which he confessed that he was still in doubt and desired to be instructed, the desire of amendment in a man of the shrewdest intellect, who, if he could be put right, would assuredly be of advantage to many, and not the falsehood of the doctrine, was approved. And therefore his pamphlet was called catholic, because this also is the part of a catholic disposition,-if by chance in any matters a man thinks differently from what the truth demands, not with the greatest accuracy to define those matters, but, if detected and demonstrated, to reject them. For it was not to heretics, but to catholics, that the apostle was speaking when he said, "Let 1 "Prævaricationis."