2 TO EVERY ONE WHO IS BORN EVEN OF REGEN- "to save sinners; " He must have something CHAP. 58. ADAM'S SIN IS DERIVED FROM HIM in them to remit, who testifies that He shed His blood" for the remission of sins;" He must have good reason for seeking them out, who "came," as He says, "to seek and to save that which was lost; "3 the Son of man must find in them something to destroy, who came for the express purpose, as the Apostle John says, "that He might destroy the works of the devil."4 Now to this salvation of infants He must be enemy, who asserts their innocence, in such a way as to deny them the medicine which is required by the hurt and wounded. CHAP. 57 [XXXIV.]—THE GREAT SIN OF THE FIRST MAN. an But this sin, which changed man for the worse in paradise, because it is far greater than we can form any judgment of, is contracted by every one at his birth, and is remitted only in the regenerate; and this derangement is such as to be derived even from parents who have been regenerated, and in whom the sin is remitted and covered, to the condemnation of the children born of them, unless these, who were bound by their first and carnal birth, are absolved by their second and spiritual birth. Of this wonderful fact the Creator has produced a wonderful example in the cases of the olive and the wild olive trees, in which, from the seed not only of the wild olive, but even of the good olive, nothing but a wild olive springs. Wherefore, although even in persons whose natural birth is followed by regeneration through grace, there exists this carnal concupiscence which contends against the law of the mind, yet, seeing that it is remitted in the remission of sins, it is no longer accounted to them as sin, nor is it in any degree hurtful, unless consent is yielded to its motions for unlawful deeds. Their offspring, however, being begotten not of spiritual concupiscence, but of carnal, like a wild olive of our race from the good olive, derives guilt from them by natural birth to such a degree that it cannot be liberated from that pest except by being born again. How is it, then, that this man affirms that we ascribe holiness to those who are born, and guilt to their parents? when the truth rather shows that even if there has been holiness in the parents, original sin is inherent in their children, which is abolished in them only if they are born again. Now observe what follows, as he goes on to say: "If, before sin, God created a source from which men should be born, but the devil a source from which parents were disturbed, then beyond a doubt holiness must be ascribed to those that are born, and guilt to those that produce. Since, however, this would be a most manifest condemnation of marriage; remove, I pray you, this view from the midst of the churches, and really believe that all things were made by Jesus Christ, and that without Him nothing was made." 5 He so speaks here, as if he would make us say, that there is a something in man's substance which was created by the devil. The devil persuaded evil as a sin; he did not create it as a nature. No doubt he persuaded nature, for man is nature; and therefore by his persuasion he corrupted it. He who wounds a limb does not, of course, create it, but he injures it. Those wounds, indeed, which are inflicted on the body produce lameness in a limb, or difficulty of motion; but they do not affect the virtue whereby a man becomes righteous: that wound, however, which has the name of sin, wounds the very life, which was being righteously lived. This wound was at that fatal moment of the fall inflicted by the devil to a vastly wider and deeper extent than are the sins which are This being the case, let him think what he known amongst men. Whence it came to pass, pleases about this concupiscence of the flesh that our nature having then and there been and about the lust which lords it over the undeteriorated by that great sin of the first man, chaste, has to be mastered by the chaste, and not only was made a sinner, but also generates yet is to be blushed at both by the chaste and the sinners; and yet the very weakness, under which the virtue of a holy life has drooped and died, with it. Let him not hesitate to praise what he unchaste; for I see plainly he is much pleased is not really nature, but corruption; precisely as is ashamed to name; let him call it (as he has a bad state of health is not a bodily substance in fact called it) the vigour of the members, and or nature, but disorder; very often, indeed, if not always, the ailing character of parents is in a certain way implanted, and reappears in the bodies of their children. CHAP. 59 [XXXV.]—THE PELAGIANS CAN HARDLY VENTURE TO PLACE CONCUPISCENCE IN PARADISE let him not be afraid of the horror of chaste bers, and let him not care about the impudence. ears; let him designate it the power of the memLet him say, if his blushes permit him, that if no one had sinned, this vigour must have flourished like a flower in paradise; nor would there have been any need to cover that which would CHAP. 60.- LET NOT THE PELAGIANS INDULGE THEMSELVES IN A CRUEL DEFENCE OF INFANTS. have been so moved that no one should have felt moved disobediently and inordinately, and that ashamed; rather, with a wife provided, it would to such a degree that it is not obedient to the have been ever exercised and never repressed, will of even chaste-minded husbands and wives, lest so great a pleasure should ever be denied to so that it is excited when it is not wanted; and so vast a happiness. Far be it from being thought whenever it is necessary, it never, indeed, follows that such blessedness could in such a spot fail their will, but sometimes too hurriedly, at other to have what it wished, or ever experience, in times too tardily, exerts its own movements. mind or body what it disliked. And so, should Such, then, is the rebellion of this concupiscence the motion of lust precede men's will, then the which the primitive pair received for their own will would immediately follow it. The wife, who disobedience, and transfused by natural descent ought certainly never to be absent in this happy to us. It certainly was not at their bidding, but state of things, would be urged on by it, whether in utter disorder, that it was excited, when they about to conceive or already pregnant; and, covered their members, which at first were either a child would be begotten, or a natural worthy to be gloried in, but had then become a and laudable pleasure would be gratified, for ground of shame. perish all seed rather than disappoint the appetite of so good a concupiscence. Only be sure that the united pair do not apply themselves to that use of each other which is contrary to As I said, however, let him entertain what nature, then (with so modest a reservation) let views he likes of this lust; let him proclaim it them use, as often as they would have delight, as he pleases, praise it as much as he chooses their organs of generation, created for the pur- (and he pleases much, as several of his extracts pose. But what if this very use, which is con- show), that the Pelagians may gratify themselves, trary to nature, should peradventure give them if not with its uses, at all events with its praises, delight; what if the aforesaid laudable lust as many of them as fail to enjoy the limitation should hanker even after such delight; I wonder of continence enjoined in wedlock. Only let whether they should pursue it because it was him spare the infants, so as not to praise their sweet, or loathe it because it was base? If they condition uselessly, and defend them cruelly. should pursue it to gratification, what becomes Let him not declare them to be safe; let him of all thought about honour? If they should suffer them to come, not, indeed, to Pelagius for loathe it, where is the peaceful composure of so eulogy, but to Christ for salvation. For, that good a happiness? But at this point perchance this book may be now brought to a termination, his blushes will awake, and he will say that so since the dissertation of this man is ended, which great is the tranquillity of this happy state, and was written on the short paper you sent me, I so entire the orderliness which may have existed will close with his last words: Really believe in this state of things, that carnal concupiscence that all things were made by Jesus Christ, and never preceded these persons' will only when- that without Him nothing was made."1 Let him ever they themselves wished, would it then arise; grant that Jesus is Jesus even to infants; and as and only then would they entertain the wish, he confesses that all things were made by Him, when there was need for begetting children; and in that He is God the Word, so let him acknowlthe result would be, that no seed would ever be edge that infants, too, are saved by Him in that emitted to no purpose, nor would any embrace He is Jesus'; let him, I say, do this if he would ever ensue which would not be followed by con- be a catholic Christian. For thus it is written ception and birth; the flesh would obey the will, in the Gospel: "And they shall call His name and concupiscence would vie with it in subser- Jesus; for He shall save His people from their viency. Well, if he says all this of the imagined sins "2 - Jesus, because Jesus is in Latin Salvahappy state, he must at least be pretty sure that tor, "Saviour." He shall, indeed, save His peowhat he describes does not now exist among ple; and amongst His people surely there are And even if he will not concede that lust infants. "From their sins" shall He save them; is a corrupt condition, let him at least allow that in infants, too, therefore, are there original sins, through the disobedience of the man and woman on account of which He can be Jesus, that is, in the happy state the very concupiscence of Saviour, even unto them. their flesh was corrupted, so that what would once be excited obediently and orderly is now men. 1 John i. 3. 66 2 Matt. i. 21. 1 EXTRACT FROM AUGUSTIN'S "RETRACTATIONS," BOOK II. CHAP. 56, ON THE FOLLOWING TREATISE, "DE ANIMA ET EJUS ORIGINE." "At that time one Vincentius discovered in the | to be kept separate from the other three works. possession of a certain presbyter called Peter, in Mauritania Cæsariensis, a little work of mine, in a particular passage of which, touching the origin of souls in individual men, I had confessed that I knew not whether they are propagated from the primeval soul of the first man, and from that by parental descent, or whether they are severally assigned to each person without propagation, as the first was to Adam; but that I was, at the same time, quite sure that the soul was not body, but spirit. In opposition to these opinions of mine, he addressed to this Peter two books, which were sent to me from Cæsarea by the monk Renatus. Having read these books, I replied in four others, -one addressed to the monk Renatus, another to the presbyter Peter, and two more to Victor himself. That to Peter, however, though it has all the lengthiness of a book, is yet only a letter, which I did not like 310 In all of them, while discussing many points which were unavoidable, I defended my hesitancy on the point of the origin of the souls which are given to individual men; and I pointed out this man's many errors and presumptuous pravity. At the same time, I treated the young man as gently as I could, not as one who ought to be denounced all out of hand, but as one who ought to be still instructed; and I accepted the account of his conduct which he wrote back to me. In this work of mine, the book addressed to Renatus begins with these words: "Your sincerity towards us;" while that which was written to Peter begins thus: "To his Lordship, my dearly beloved brother and copresbyter Peter." Of the last two books, which are addressed to Vincentius Victor, the former one thus opens: "As to that which I have thought it my duty to write to you." ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER OF THIS TREATISE. THE Occasion of these four books was furnished by a young man named Vincentius Victor, a native of Mauritania Cæsariensis, a convert to the catholic Church from the Rogatian faction (which split off from the Donatist schism, and inhabited that part of Mauritania which lay around Cartenna). This Victor, they say, had previously so high an opinion of the Vincentius who succeeded Rogatus as the head of the before-mentioned faction, that he adopted his name as his own.' Happening to meet with a certain work of Augustin's, in which the writer acknowledged himself to be incapable of saying whether all souls were propagated from Adam's soul simply, or whether every man severally had his soul given to him by God, even as Adam himself had, without propagation, although he declared, for all that, his conviction that the soul was in its nature spirit, not body, Victor was equally offended with both statements: he wondered that so great a man as Augustin did not unhesitatingly teach what one ought to hold concerning the origin of the soul, especially as he thought its propagation probable; and also that he did state with so great assurance the nature of the soul to be incorporeal. He accordingly published two books written to one Peter, a presbyter of Spain, against Augustin on this subject, containing some conceits of the Pelagian heretics, and other things even worse than these.2 A monk called Renatus happened then to be at Cæsarea. It appears that this man had shown to Augustin, who was staying at the same place in the autumn of the year 418, a letter of the Bishop Optatus consulting him about the origin of the soul. This monk, of the order of laymen, but perfectly orthodox in the faith, induced by the circumstance, carefully copied the books of Victor, and forwarded them from Cæsarea to Hippo the next summer; Augustin, however, only received them at the end of autumn of the year 419, as is supposed. As soon as the holy doctor read them, he without delay wrote the first of the four following books to the good monk, and then the second, in the shape of a letter, to the presbyter Peter, and the two last books to Victor himself, but after a considerable interval, as it appears from the following words of the fourth chapter of the second book: "If, indeed, the Lord will that I should write to the young man, as I desire to do." In the Retractations this little work of Augustin is placed immediately after the treatises of the year 419, ¿.. in the fifth place after the Proceedings with Emeritus, which were completed in the month of September in the year 418. It belongs, therefore, to the termination of the year 419 or to the commencement of the year 420, having been written after "the condemnation of the Pelagians by the authority of catholic Councils and of the Apostolic See,”4 but “very soon after," as that happy event had happened in the year of Christ 418. In Book I., written to Renatus, he points out his own opinion about the nature of the soul, and his hesitation as to its origin, which had been unjustly blamed by Victor. He reproves the man's juvenile forwardness, shows him he had fallen into grave and unheard-of errors while venturing to take upon himself the solution of a question which exceeded his abilities, and points out that he adduced only doubtful passages of Scripture, and such as were not applicable to the subject, in his endeavour to prove that souls are not propagated, but that entirely new ones are breathed by God into every man at his separate birth. In Book II., he advises Peter not to incur the imputation of having approved of the books which had been addressed to him by Victor On the Origin of the Soul by any use he might make of them, nor to take as catholic doctrines that person's rash utterances contrary to the Christian faith. Victor's various and very serious errors he points out and briefly confutes, and he concludes with advising Peter himself to try to persuade Victor to correct his errors. In Book III., which was written to Victor himself, he points out the corrections which Victor ought to make in his books if he wished to be deemed a catholic; those opinions also and paradoxes of his, which had been already refuted in the preceding books to Renatus and Peter, the author briefly censures in this third book, and classifies under eleven heads of error. In Book IV., addressed to the same Victor, he first shows that his hesitation on the subject of the origin of souls was undeservedly blamed, and that he was wrongly compared with cattle, because he had refrained from any bold conclusions on the subject. Then again, with regard to his own unhesitating statement, that the soul was spirit, not body, he points out how rashly Victor disapproved of this assertion, especially when he was vainly expending his efforts to prove that the soul was corporeal in its own nature, and that the spirit in man was distinct from the soul itself. 1 See below, Book iii. c. 2. 2 See below, ii. 13, 15. 3 See Augustin's letter 190, ch. 1. 4 See Book ii. 17. 5 See Book i. 34. |