But let us revert to the apostle's assertion: " The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." ^ By whom given if not by Him who " ascended up on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men?"-* Forasmuch, however, as there is, owing to the defects that have entered our nature, not to the constitution of our nature, a certain necessary tendency to tin, a man should listen, and in order that the said necessity may cease to exist, learn to say to God, " Bring Thou me out of my necessities; " 5 because in the very offering up of such a prayer there is a struggle against the tempter, who fights against us con- cerning this very necessity; and thus, by the assistance of grace through our Lord Jesus Christ, both the evil necessity will be removed and full liberty be bestowed.
CHAP. 80 [lXVII.] — AUGUSTIN HIMSELF. TWO METHODS WHEREBY SINS, LIKE DISEASES, ARE GUARDED AGAINST.
Let US now turn to our own case. " Bishop Augustin also," says your author, " in his books on Free Will has these words: * Whatever the cause itself of volition is, if it is impossible to resist it, submission to it is not sinful; if, however, it may be resisted, let it not be submitted to, and there will be no sin. Does it, perchance, deceive the unwary man? Let him then beware that he be not deceived. Is the deception, however, so potent that it is not possible to guard against it? If such is the case, then there are no sins. For who sins in a case where precaution is quite impossible? Sin, however, is committed; pre- caution therefore is possible.' " ^ I acknowledge ■ Jerome on Matt. v. 8 {Comm. Book i. c. 5). * Jerome, Against yovinianus, ii. 3.
3 Ro < Eph. iv. 8.
' Augustin, De Libera Arbitrio, iii. 18 (50) 5 Ps. XXV. 17.
it, these are my words; but he, too, should coivlcscend to acknowledge ill that was said previously, seeing that the iliscussion is about the grace of God, which helps us as a medicine through the Mediator; not about the imjxjssi- bility of righteousness. Whatever, then, may be the cause, it can be resisted. Most certainl)' it can. Now it is because of this that we pray for help, saying, " Lead us not into temptation," 7 and we should not ask for hclj) if we sui)posed that resistance were quite impossible. It is pos- sible to guard against sin, but by the help of Him who cannot be deceived.** For this very circumstance has much to do with guarding against sin that we can unfeignedly say, " For- give us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." ^ Now there are two ways whereby, even in bodily maladies, the evil is guarded against, — to pre- vent its occurrence, and, if it happen, to secure a speedy cure. To prevent its occurrence, we may find precaution in the prayer, " Lead us not into temptation; " to secure the prompt remedy, we have the resource in the prayer, " Forgive us our debts." Whether then the danger only threaten, or be inherent, it may be guarded against.
CHAP. 8l. — AUGUSTIN QUOTES HIMSELF ON FREE WILL.
In order, however, that my meaning on this subject may be clear not merely to him, but also to such persons as have not read those treatises of mine on Free Will, which your author has read, and who have not only not read them, but perchance do read him; I must go on to quote out of my books what he has omitted, but which, if he had perceived and quoted -in his book, no controversy would be left between us on this subject. For immediately after those words of mine which he has cjuoted, I expressly added, and (as fully as I could) worked out, the train of thought which might occur to any one's mind, to the following effect: " And yet some actions are disapproved of, even when they are done in ignorance, and are judged deserving of chastise- ment, as we read in the inspired authorities." After taking some examples out of these, I went on to speak also of infirmity as follows: '• Some actions also deserve disapprobation, that are done from necessity; as when a man wishes to act rightly and cannot. For whence arise tliose utterances: ' For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do '? " '° Then, after quoting some other pas- sages of the Holy Scriptures to the same effect, I say: " But all these are the sayings of persons who are coming out of that condemnation of 7 Matt. vi. 13.
8 Augustin gives a similar reply to the objection in his Retracta- tions, i. 9.
9 Matt. vi. 12. '° Rom. vii. 19.
I50 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Chap. 82.
death; for if this is not man's punishment, but his nature, then those are no sins." Then, again, a Uttle afterwards I add: " It remains, therefore, that this just punishment come of man's con- demnation. Nor ought it to be wondered at, that either by ignorance man has not free de- termination of will to choose what he will rightly do, or that by the resistance of carnal habit (which by force of mortal transmission has, in a certain sense, become engrafted into his nature), though seeing what ought rightly to be done, and wishing to do it, he yet is unable to accom- plish it. For this is the most just penalty of sin, that a man should lose what he has been unwill- ing to make good use of, when he might with ease have done so if he would; which, however, amounts to this, that the man who knowingly does not do what is right loses the ability to do it when he wishes. For, in truth, to every soul that sins there accrue these two penal conse- quences — ignorance and difficulty. Out of the ignorance springs the error which disgraces; out of the difficulty arises the pain which afflicts. But to approve of falsehoods as if they were true, so as to err involuntarily, and to be unable, owing to the resistance and pain of carnal bondage, to refrain from deeds of lust, is not the nature of man as he was created, but the punishment of man as under condemnation. When, how- ever, we speak of a free will to do what is right, we of course mean that liberty in which man was created." Some men at once deduce from this what seems to them a just objection from the transfer and transmission of sins of ignorance and difficulty from the first man to his posterity. My answer to such objectors is this: " I tell them, by way of a brief reply, to be silent, and to cease from murmuring against God. Perhaps their complaint might have been a proper one, if no one from among men had stood forth a vanquisher of error and of lust; but when there is e\erywhere present One who calls off from himself, through the creature by so many means, the man who serves the Lord, teaches him when believing, consoles him when hoping, encourages him when loving, helps him when endeavouring, hears him when praying, — it is not reckoned to you as a fault that you are involuntarily ignorant, but that you neglect to search out what you are ignorant of; nor is it imputed to you in censure that you do not bind up the limbs that are wounded, but that you despise him who wishes to heal them." ' In such terms did I exhort them, as well as I could, to live righteously; nor did I make the grace of God of none effect, without which the now obscured and tarnished nature of man can neither be enlightened nor purified. Our whole discussion with them on ' De Libera A rbitrio, iii. 19.
this subject turns upon this, that we frustrate not the grace of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord by a perverted assertion of nature. Li a passage occurring shortly after the last quoted one, I said in reference to nature: " Of nature itself we speak in one sense, when we properly describe it as that human nature in which man was created faultless after his kind; and in an- other sense as that nature in which we are born ignorant and carnally minded, owing to the pen- alty of condemnation, after the manner of the aposde, 'We ourselves likewise were by nature children of wrath, even as others.' "^ CHAP. 82 [lXVIII.] HOW TO EXHORT MEN TO FAITH, REPENTANCE, AND ADVANCEMENT.
If, therefore, we wish " to rouse and kindle cold and sluggish souls by Christian exhortations to lead righteous lives," ^ we must first of all ex- hort them to that faith whereby they may become Christians, and be subjects of His name and authority, without whom they cannot be saved. If, however, they are already Christians but neg- lect to lead holy lives, they must be chastised with alarms and be aroused by the praises of reward, — in such a manner, indeed, that we must not forget to urge them to godly prayers as well as to virtuous actions, and furthermore to instruct them in such wholesome doctrine that they be induced thereby to return thanks for being able to accomplish any step in that holy life which they have entered upon, without difficulty,'* and whenever they do experience such " difficulty," that they then wrestle with God in most faithful and persistent prayer and ready works of mercy to obtain from Him facility. But provided they thus progress, I am not over- anxious as to the where and the when of their perfection in fulness of righteousness; only I solemnly assert, that wheresoever and whenso- ever they become perfect, it cannot be but by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. When, indeed, they have attained to the clear knowledge that they have no sin, let them not say they have sin, lest the truth be not in them; 5 even as the truth is not in those persons who, though they have sin, yet say that they ha\-e it not.
CHAP. 83 [lXIX.] — GOD ENJOINS NO IMPOSSI- BILITY, BECAUSE ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE AND EASY TO LOVE.
But " the precepts of the law are very good," if we use them lawfully."^ Indeed, by the very fact (of which we have the firmest conviction) j 2 Eph. ii. 3.
3 This passage, and others in this and the following chapters, are marked as quotations, apparently cited from Pelagius by Augustin.
* For the " dijjicitlty" which is one of the penal consequences of sin, see last chapter, about its middle.
Chap. S4.]
ON NATURE AND GRACE.
151 " that the just and good God could not possi- bly have enjoined impossibilities," we are admon- i ished both what to do in easy paths and what to I ask for when they are difficult. Now all things are easy for love to effect, to which (and which alone) " Christ's burden is light,"' — or rather, it is itself alone the burden which is light. Ac- cordingly it is said, "And His commandments are not grievous;"^ so that whoever finds them grievous must regard the inspired statement about tlieir " not being grievous " as having been capa- ble of only this meaning, that there may be a state of heart to which they are not burdensome, and he must pray for that disposition which he at present wants, so as to be able to fulfil all that is commanded him. And this is the purport of what is said to Israel in Deuteronomy, if under- stood in a godly, sacred, and spiritual sense, since the apostle, after quoting the passage, "The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart " ^ {an^, as the verse also has it, in thine /lands, ^ for in man's heart are his spiritual hands), adds in explanation, " This is the word of faith which we preach." 5 No man, therefore, who '' returns to the Lord his God," as he is there commanded, " with all his heart and with all his soul," ^ will find God's commandment " grievous." How, indeed, can it be grievous, when it is the precept of love? Either, therefore, a man has not love, and then it is grievous; or he has love, and then it is not grievous. But he possesses love if he does what is there enjoined on Israel, by returning to the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul. " A new command- ment," says He, " do I give unto you, that ye 3 Dent. xxx. 14, quoted Rom. x. 8.
< According to the Septuagiiit, which adds after ev t/) KapSi'a aov the words Kai iv rais x^P"'- ""'"• This was probably Pelagius' read- ing. Compare Qutestioa, in Deuterou. Book v. 54.
love one another;" ^ and " He that lovcth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law; " ^ and again, " Love is the fulfilling of the law."^ In accord- ance with these sayings is that passage, " Had they trodden good paths, they would have found, indeed, the ways of righteousness easy." '° How then is it written, " Because of the words of Thy lips, I have kept the paths of difficulty," " exce])t it be that both statements are true: These paths are paths of difficulty to fear; but to love they are easy?
CHAP. 84 [lXX.] — THE DEGREES OF LOVE ARE ALSO DEGREES OF HOLINESS.
Inchoate love, therefore, is inchoate holiness; advanced love is advanced holiness; great love is great holiness; " perfect love is perfect holi- ness,"— but this "love is out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith un- feigned," '^ "which in this life is then the greatest, when life itself is contemned in comparison with it." '3 I wonder, however, whether it has not a soil in which to grow after it has quitted this mortal life! But in what place and at what time soever it shall reach that state of absolute per- fection, which shall admit of no increase, it is certainly not " shed abroad in our hearts " by any energies either of the nature or the volition that are within us, but " by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us," '■* and which both helps our in- firmity and co-operates with our strength. For it is itself indeed the grace of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, appertaineth eternity, and all goodness, for ever and ever. Amen.
7 John xiii. 34. ^ Rom. xiii. 8. 9 Rom. xiii. 10.
'3 See note at begirining of ch. 82 for the meaning of this mark of quotation. '■^ Rom. V. 5.
I A TREATISE CONCERNING MAN'S PERFECTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS.
i I PREFACE TO THE TREATISE ON MAN'S PERFECTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS.
AuGUSTiN has made no mention of this treatise in his book of Retractations; for the reason, no doubt, that it belonged to the collection of the Epistles, for which he designed a separate statement of Retractations. In all the MSS. this work begins with his usual epistolary salutation: " Augustin, to his holy brethren and fellow-bishops Eutropius and Paulus." And yet, by general consent, this epistle has been received as a treatise, not only in those volumes of his works which contain this work, but also in the writings of those ancient authors who quote it. Amongst these, the most renowned and acquainted with Augustin's writings, PossiDius (/« indiculo, 4) and FULGENTIUS [Ad AIoni/Hum, i. 3) expressly call this work "A Treatise on the Perfection of Alan'' s Righteousness" So far nearly all the MSS. agree, but a few (including the Codd. Audoenensis and Pi-atellensis) add these words to the general title: "In opposition to those who assert that it is possible for a vian to becoine righteous by his own sole strength" In a MS. belonging to the Church of Rheims there occurs this inscription: " A Treatise on what are called the definitions of Ccelestius." Prosper, in his work against the Collator, ch. 43, advises his reader to read, besides some other of Augustin's "boohs," that which he wrote "to the priests Paulus and Eutropius in opposition to the questions of Pelagius and Coelestius."
From this passage of Prosper, however, in which he mentions, but with no regard to accurate order, some of the short treatises of Augustin against the Pelagians, nobody could rightly show that this work On the Perfection of Man's Righteousness was later in time than his work On Marriage and Concupiscence, or than the six books against Julianus, which are mentioned previously in the same passage by Prosper. For, indeed, at the conclu- sion of the present treatise, Augustin hesitates as yet to censure those persons who affirmed that men are living or have lived in this life righteously without any sin at all: their opinion Augustin, in the passage referred to (just as in his treatises On Nature and Grace, n. 3, and On the Spirit and the Letter, nn. 49, 70), does not yet think it necessary stoutly to resist. Nothing had as yet, therefore, been determined on this point; nor were there yet enacted, in opposition to this opinion, the three well-known canons (6-8) of the Council of Carthage, which was held in the year 41S. Afterwards, however, on the authority of these canons, he cautions people against the opinion as a pernicious error, as one may see from many passages in his books Against the two Epistles of the Pelagians, especially Book iv. ch. x. (27), where he says: "Let us now consider that third point of theirs, which each individual member of Christ as well as His entire body regards with horror, where they contend that there are in this life, or have been, righteous persons without any sin whatever." Certainly, in the year 414, in an epistle (157) to Hilary, when answering the questions which were then being agitated in Sicily, he expresses himself in the same tone, and almost in the same language, on sinlessness, as that which he employs at the end of this present treatise, " But those persons," says he (in ch. ii. n. 4 of that epistle), " however much one may tolerate them when they affirm that there either are, or have been, men besides the one Saint of saints who have been wholly free from sin; yet when they allege that man's own free will is sufficient for fulfilling the Lord's commandments, even when unassisted by God's grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit for the performance of good works, the idea is altogether worthy of anathema and of perfect detestation." On comparing these words with the conclusion of this treatise before us, nothing will appear more probable than that the work which supplies the refutation of Coelestius' questions, which were also brought over from Sicily, was written not long after the above-mentioned epistle. This work Possidius, in his index, places immediately after the treatise On Nature and Grace, and before the book On the Proceedings of Pclagins. Augustin, however, does not mention this work in his epistle (169) which he addressed to Evodius about the end of the year 415; but he intimates in it that he had published an answer to the Commonitoritim of Orosius, wherein that author stated that " the bishops Eutropius and Paulus had already given information to Augustin about certain formidable heresies." Some suppose that this statement refers to the letter which they despatched to Augustin along with Coelestius' propositions. However that be, it is not unreasonable to believe that they, not long after Orosius' arrival in Africa (that is, before the midsummer of the year 415), had sent these propositions to him, and that Augustin 155 156 PREFACE.
soon afterwards wrote back to Eutropius and Paulus a refutation of them, his answer to Orosius leaving been previously given.
Furthermore, Coelestius, whose name is inscribed in the propositions, "wrote to his parents from his monastery," as Gennadius informs us in his work on Church writers [De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis), "before he fell in with the teaching of Pelagius, three letters in the shape of short treatises, necessary for all seekers after God." Afterwards he openly professed the Pelagian heresy, and published a short treatise, in which, besides other topics, he acknowledged in the Church of Carthage that even infants had redemption by being baptized into Christ, — an episcopal decision on the question having been obtained in that city about the commencement of the year 412, as we learn from an epistle to Pope Innocent (amongst the Epistles of Augustin [175, n. i and 6]), as well as from the epistle [157, n. 22] which we have referred to above; and from Augustin's work On the Merits of Sins, i. 62, and ii. 59; also from his treatise On Original Sin, 21; and his work Against Jnlianus, iii. 9. Another work by an anonymous writer, but which was commonly attributed to Coelestius, divided into chapters, IS mentioned in the treatise which follows the present one. On the Proceedings of Pelagius; see chapters 29, 30, and 62. There were extant, moreover, in the year 417, several small books or tracts of Coelestius, which Augustin, in his work On the Grace of Christ, 31, 32, and 36, says were produced by Coelestius himself in some ecclesiasti- cal proceedings at Rome under Zosimus. Augustin, at the commencement of the present work On the Perfection of Man^s Rig/tteonsiiess, mentions an undoubted work of Coelestius as having been seen by him, from which he discovered that the definitions or propositions therein examined by Augustin were not unsuited to the tone and temper of Coelestius. This was very probably the book which Jerome quotes in his Epistle to Ctesiphon, written in the year 413 or 414. These are Jerome's words: "One of his followers [that is, Pelagius'], who was already in fact become the master and the leader of all that army, and 'a vessel of wrath," in opposition to the apostle, runs on through thickets, not of syllogistns, as his admirers are apt to boast, but of solecisms, and philosophizes and disputes to the following effect: 'If I do nothing without God's help, and if everything which I shall achieve is owing to His operations solely, then it follows that it is not I who work, but only God's work is to be crowned in me. In vain, therefore, has He conferred on me the power of will, if I am unable to exercise it fully without His incessant help. That volition, indeed, is destroyed which requires the assistance of another. But it is free will which God has given to me; znAfree it can only remain, if I do whatever I wish. The state of the case then is this: I either use once for all the power which has been bestowed on me, so that free will is pre- served; or else, if I require the assistance of another, liberty of decision in me is destroyed.'"
• Rom. ix. 22.
CONTENTS OF THE TREATISE "ON MAN'S PERFECTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS."
PAGE Introductory 159 CHAPTER 1. The First Breviate: Is sin avoidable, or unavoidable? 160 2. The Second Breviate: Is sin necessary, or voluntary? 160 3. The Third Breviate: Is sin natural, or accidental? 160 4. The Fourth Breviate: Is sin an act, or a thing? 160 5. The Fifth Breviate: Does obligation imply ability? 160 6. The Sixth Breviate: Does command imply ability? 161 7. The Seventh Breviate: Must God perform all His desires? 161 8. The Eighth Breviate: Can man oppose God's wish? 161 9. The Ninth Breviate: Has God given man an evil will? 161 10. The Tenth Breviate: Do we accuse God in affirming human sin? 162 11. The Eleventh Breviate: Does law imply the possibility of obedience? 162 12. The Twelfth Breviate: May any will be very easily changed by will? 162 13. The Thirteenth Breviate: Can there be guilt where there is no ability? 163 14. The Fourteenth Breviate: Can that be a good nature which is held in evil?...163 15. The Fifteenth Breviate: Can a just God impute unavoidable sin? 163 16. The Sixteenth Breviate: Is man blameworthy for his sinful nature? 163