St. Augustine, to St. Sixtus

Letter 194 (A. D. 418)

Introduction

This is the letter which was the occasion of the disagreement, amongst the monks of Adrumetum in North Africa, to settle which St. Augustine composed the two books On Grace and Free Will and On Rebuke and Grace. It is addressed to a Roman priest Sixtus, who was later Pope St. Sixtus III (A. D. 432-440). Sixtus was rumoured to have sided with the Pelagians before supporting the Catholics. St. Augustine urged him to deal with the heretics, silencing some, instructing others, and he provided him with instruction to use. He maintained the absolute gratuity of the election of the predestined to salvation: a copy of the letter was sent to the monastery at Adrumetum by one of its monks Florus, and thus the controversy.

Synopsis of the argument of the letter

We shall give a synopsis of the argument: All merited damnation in Adam; Christ merited the grace and justification of sinners on the Cross; it would be just if all were punished; all deserve reprobation for original sin; God justly reprobates when He does not give His grace, for no one deserves it; God saves whom He will and reprobates likewise; hence no one merits election; election is not because of antecedent merits or foreseen deeds; God elects and reprobates “for the same reason”, i.e., the objects of either are condemned and without merit; God shows his mercy when he saves, his justice when He damns, and the riches of His mercy to the saved when He punishes others; the gratuity of election is illustrated in those infants who die baptised and those who die unbaptised, all of whom were without merit to distinguish them, whether antecedent or foreseen; God not man effects the salvation of the children of promise (the elect); the infallible providence of God provides baptism for one and not for another, not by chance or fate or the obstacle of iniquity but by design; God gives some who hear the Gospel to believe, to others who hear just the same He does not; no one merits the grace which brings them to attain to justice; our prayer is a gift; no one merits justification; no one merits Faith, which is a gift, without which no one does good; love is given by God; our merits are gifts effected through grace; when God rewards, He crowns His gifts, even the merits He has given; eternal life is a grace; punishments are repaid to a man's deserts, original and personal; those who reject the preaching have a sin of rejecting it; those who have not heard have no sin of rejecting it, but they are justly condemned for original sin and their actual sins; that they do not know Christ is a punishment for original sin; the sinner has no justifying excuse for his sins, original and personal; a man is not justified by excuses but by grace.

The translation is that of Sr. Wilfred Parsons SND and is printed in St. Augustine, Letters, Volume IV, Catholic University of America Press.

Text of the letter

Augustine gives greeting in the Lord to his holy brother and fellow priest, Sixtus, his lord most beloved in the Lord of lords.

In the letter which I sent by our very dear brother, the acolyte, Albinus, I promised to send a longer one by our holy brother and fellow priest, Firmus. He had brought us a letter from your Sincerity, showing forth the candor of your faith, which filled us with a joy so great that we can more easily contain than describe it. We had been exceedingly sad when rumor spread abroad the news that you sided with the enemies of Christian grace. But several developments erased this sadness from our hearts: first, the same rumor made it known that you were the first to pronounce anathema on them before a large crowd; second, your letter to the venerable elder, Aurelius, came with the letter sent by the Apostolic See to Africa concerning their condemnation, and although yours was short it gave sufficient evidence of your strong repudiation of their error; and finally, now that your faith speaks more openly and comprehensively against that dogma, stating your views to us and to the Roman Church, to which the blessed Apostle Paul spoke so frequently and variously about the ‘grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord,’ not only has every shadow of sadness fled from our hearts, but such a brilliance of happiness shines there that the former sorrow and fear seem to have intensified the glowing warmth of the joys that were to come.

Therefore, dearest brother, although we do not see you with the eyes of the flesh, nevertheless in spirit, in the faith of Christ, in the grace of Christ, in the members of Christ, we hold you, we embrace you, we kiss you, and we are taking advantage of the return of that most holy and faithful bearer of our mutual communications, whom you wished us to have as the narrator and witness of your deeds, as well as the carrier of your writings, to send you our answer and to hold a somewhat longer conversation with you, encouraging you to follow up by instructing those in whom you have begun, as we hear, to instill an adequate fear. There are some who think it a mark of the liberal mind to defend the impious doctrine which has been most justly condemned; there are some who ‘creep into houses, in secret’, and propagate actively but in secret what they fear to preach openly; there are some who have been forced by great fear into complete silence, but who still keep in their hearts what they dare not utter with their lips, and these can be well known to the brethren from their former defense of this doctrine. Therefore, some are to be restrained by severe measures; some to be investigated with care; some to be treated more gently but instructed more diligently, and, although there may be fear of their doing harm, there should be no backwardness in saving them from harm.

When they think they are being deprived of their free will if they admit that man has no good will of his own without the help of God, they do not understand that they are not thus strengthening human free will but puffing it up so that it is carried off into empty space, not anchored on the Lord as on an immovable rock, for ‘the will is made ready by the Lord.’

And when they affect to believe that God is a respecter of persons, because without any antecedent merits of theirs ‘He hath mercy on whom he will,’ and calls whom He deigns to call and makes righteous whom He will, they overlook the fact that a deserved penalty is meted out to the damned, an undeserved grace to the saved, so that the former cannot complain that he is undeserving nor the latter boast that he is deserving. Where one and the same clay of damnation and offense is involved, there can be no respect had of persons, so that the saved may learn from the lost that the same punishment would have been his lot, also, if grace had not rescued him; if it is grace, it is obviously not awarded for any merit, but bestowed as a pure act of bounty.

But, they object, ‘it is unjust in one and the same case for this one to be saved and that one to be punished.’ That means it is just for both to be punished. Would anyone deny this? Then let us give thanks to the Saviour when we see that we have not received what we recognize as our due from the damnation of our fellow men. If both were saved, then what is justly due to sin would not be apparent; if no one were saved, we would not know the free gift of grace. Therefore, in this very difficult question, let us rather use the words of the Apostle: ‘God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, that he might show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy.’ And the thing formed cannot say to Him: ‘Why hast thou made me thus? Since He has power of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, another unto dishonor.’ For, when the whole lump of clay is justly doomed to destruction, justice awards it the dishonor it deserves, while grace bestows an undeserved honor, not for any privilege of merit, not through any inevitability of fate, not through any chance stroke of fortune, but through ‘the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God,’ which the Apostle does not reveal to us, but marvels at as something hidden, crying out: ‘O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, how unsearchable his ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him and recompense shall be made him? For of him and by him and in him are all things: to him be glory forever!’

But they do not wish the glory of justifying the sinful by His freely given grace to be given to Him, because, not knowing His justice, they seek to establish their own, and even when influenced by the clamorous words of religious and godly men, they admit to receiving some divine help in attaining justice or performing its works, they claim some previous merit of their own, as if they were first willing to give that recompense might be made to them by Him of whom it is said: ‘who hath first given to him and recompense shall be made him?’ Thus they think their merits precede His action of whom they hear, or, rather, refuse to hear that ‘of him and by him and in him are all things.’ From those riches which are the depth of His wisdom and His knowledge come also the riches of His glory toward the vessels of mercy whom He calls to adoption; these riches He also wills to make known even through the vessels of wrath which are fitted for destruction. And what are His ways which are unsearchable, if not those which are praised in the Psalm: ‘All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth’? His mercy, therefore, and His truth are unsearchable, because ‘He hath mercy on whom he will,’ not through justice but the mercy of grace; and ‘whom he will he hardeneth,’ not through injustice but the truth of retribution. Nevertheless, mercy and truth meet so harmoniously, as it is written: ‘Mercy and truth have met each other,’ that mercy does not hinder truth when the one who deserves it is cast down, nor does truth hinder mercy when the one who does not deserve it is saved. What merits of his own has the saved to boast of, when, if he received his just deserts, he would be damned? But, have the just no merits at all? Certainly they have, since they are just; only, there were no previous merits to make them just. They became just when they were justified, but, as the Apostle says, ‘They are justified freely by his grace.’

Although these men are dangerous opponents of this grace, those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merit were anathematized by Pelagius at the ecclesiastical trial in Palestine-otherwise, he could not have come off unscathed. But no other statement is found in their subsequent controversy except that merit regulates grace, of which the Epistle to the Romans speaks in such high terms and which was afterward preached throughout the world, coming down, so to speak, from the head of the world. It is grace that justifies the wicked, that is, he who was formerly wicked thereby becomes just. Therefore, the reception of this grace is not preceded by any merits because the wicked deserve punishment, not grace, and it would not be grace if it were awarded as something due and not freely given.

But, when these men are asked what kind of grace Pelagius thought was given without any antecedent merits, since he anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merit, they answer that grace without any antecedent merit is the human nature in which we have been created, for, before we existed, it was not possible for us to merit existence. Let Christian hearts reject that fallacy. No, a thousand times no! The grace which is praised by the Apostle is not that by which we were created and became men, but that by which, being sinful men, we were made just. That grace is given by Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ did not die for some that they might be created, but for sinful men that they might be made just. It was a man, indeed, who said: ‘Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord.’

They can indeed say that the remission of sins is a grace which is given without any antecedent merit, for what good merits can sinners have? Yet, even that remission of sins is not without some merit, if faith asks and obtains it. There is some merit in faith, that faith which made the publican say: ‘0 Lord be merciful to me, a sinner. And he went down justified’ by the merit of humble faith, because ‘he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.’ It remains, then, that faith itself, from which all justice derives its origin-and that is why these words of the Canticle of Canticles are addressed to the Church: ‘Thou shalt come and shalt pass over from the beginning of faith’-it remains, I repeat, that faith itself is not to be attributed to the human free will which these men extol, nor to any antecedent merits, since any good merits, such as they are, come from faith; but we must confess it as a free gift of God, if we are thinking of true grace without merit, because we read in the same Epistle: ‘God hath divided to every one the measure of faith.’ It is true that good works are performed by man, but faith is imparted to man, and without it no good works are done by any man: ‘For all that is not of faith is sin.’

Therefore, the very act of prayer should not take credit to itself, even if help is granted to him who prays to overcome his covetousness of temporal things and to love eternal goods and God Himself, the source of all goods, for it is faith that prays, faith which is given to him who does not pray, for, if it were not given he could not pray. ‘How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher? Faith then cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.’ Consequently, the ‘minister of Christ,’ the preacher of this grace, ‘because of the grace which is given to him,’ is the one who plants and waters. ‘For neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase,’ ‘who divideth to every one the measure of faith.’ Therefore, in another place he says: ‘Peace be to the brethren and charity with faith,’ and that they may not attribute it to themselves he adds: ‘from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,’ because not all those who hear the word have faith, but those to whom God allots the measure of faith, just as all seeds, which are planted and watered, do not sprout but those to which God gives the increase. The reason why one believes and another does not believe, although both hear the same thing, and, if a miracle is worked in their sight, both see the same thing, is hid in the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God whose judgments are unsearchable, and with whom there is no injustice, when He ‘has mercy on whom He will and whom He will He hardeneth,’ for His judgments are not unjust because their meaning is hidden.

But then, unless the Holy Spirit dwells in the clean house after the remission of sins, does not the unclean spirit return with seven other spirits and will the last state of that man not be worse than the first? And in order that the Holy Spirit may dwell there, does He not breathe where He will, and is not the charity of God, without which no one lives a good life, ‘poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us’? This is the faith which the Apostle defined when he said: ‘For neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by charity.’ And that is obviously the faith of Christians, not of demons. ‘For the devils also believe and tremble,’ but do they love? If they had not believed, they would not have said: ‘Thou art the holy one of God’ or ‘Thou art the Son of God,’ but if they had loved, they would not have said: ‘What have we to do with thee?’

Faith, therefore, draws us to Christ, and if it were not given to us from above as a free gift, He Himself would not have said: ‘No man can come to me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him.’ And shortly after this He said: ‘The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that believe not.’ And the Evangelist adds: ‘For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed and who it was that would betray him.’ And lest anyone should think that His foreknowledge concerned believers in the same way as unbelievers, that is, not in the sense that faith itself was given them from above, but only that their will was foreseen, the Gospel at once added the words: ‘And he said: Therefore did I say to you that no man can come to me unless it be given him by the Father.’ This explains why some of those who heard Him speak of His flesh and His blood were scandalized and went away, while some remained steadfast in their belief, because no man could come to Him unless it were given him by the Father, and consequently also by the Son Himself and by the Holy Spirit. There is no separation in the gifts and works of the inseparable Trinity; when the Son thus honors His Father He does not give us proof of any separation, but He does offer us a great example of humility.

Here, again, if those defenders of free will, nay rather, those deceivers, because they are puffed up, and they are puffed up because they are presumptuous, were to speak, not against us but against the Gospel, what else would they say but what the Apostle proposes as an objection to himself, as if it were said by such men: ‘Thou sayest therefore to me: Why doth he then find fault? for who resisteth his will?’ He put this objection to himself as if from another, in the very words of those who refuse to accept what he had said before: ‘He hath mercy on whom he will and whom he will he hardeneth.’ Let us therefore say with the Apostle to such men-for we cannot find anything better than that to say-’O man, who art thou that repliest against God?’

What we seek to know is how this hardening is deserved, and we find it to be so because the whole clay of sin was damned. God does not harden by imparting malice to it, but by not imparting mercy. Those to whom He does not impart mercy are not worthy, nor do they deserve it; rather, they are worthy and do deserve that He should not impart it. But when we seek to know how mercy is deserved we find no merit because there is none, lest grace be made void if it is not freely given but awarded to merit.

If we say that faith goes before and that the merit of grace is in it, what merit does a man have before faith so as to receive faith? For, what has he that he has not received? And if he has received it, why does he glory as if he had not received it? Just as a man would not have wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God unless, according to the Prophet’s words, he had received ‘the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, of counsel and of. fortitude, of knowledge and of godliness, and of fear of God,’ and just as he would not have power and love and sobriety, except by receiving the Spirit of whom the Apostle speaks: ‘We have not received the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of sobriety,’ so also he would not have faith unless he received the spirit of faith of which the same Apostle says: ‘But having the same spirit of faith, as it is written: I believed for which cause I have spoken, we also believe for which cause we speak also.’ Thus, he shows very plainly that faith is not received because of merit but by the mercy of Him who has mercy on whom He will, when he says of himself: ‘I have obtained mercy to be faithful.’

If we say that prayer produces antecedent merit so that the gift of grace may follow, it is true that prayer, by asking and obtaining whatever it does obtain, shows clearly that it is God’s gift when a man does not think that he has grace of himself, because if it were in his own power, he would assuredly not ask for it. But, lest we should think that even the merit of prayer is antecedent to grace, in which case it would not be a free gift-and then it would not be grace because it would be the reward which was due-our very prayer itself is counted among the gifts of grace. As the Doctor of the Gentiles says: ‘We know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings.’ And what does ‘asketh for us’ mean but that He makes us ask? It is a very sure sign of one in need to ask with groaning, but it would be monstrous for us to think that the Holy Spirit is in need of anything. So, then, the word ‘ask’ is used because He makes us ask, and inspires us with the sentiment of asking and groaning, according to that passage in the Gospel: ‘For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.’ However, this is not accomplished in us without any action on our part, and therefore the help of the Holy Spirit is described by saying that He does what He makes us do.

The Apostle himself makes it quite clear that our spirit is not meant when he says it ‘asketh with unspeakable groanings,’ but the Holy Spirit by whom our infirmity is helped. He begins by saying: ‘The Spirit helpeth our infirmity’; then he goes on: ‘For we know not what we should pray for as we ought,’ and the rest. And indeed he speaks even more plainly of this Spirit in another place: ‘For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba, Father.’ Notice that he does not here say that the Spirit Himself cries in His prayer, but he says: ‘whereby we cry: Abba, Father.’ However, in another passage he says: ‘Because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba. Father.’ Here he does not say ‘whereby we cry,’ but he preferred to represent the Spirit Himself as crying, which has the effect of making us cry, as in the other two passages: ‘The Spirit himself asketh with unspeakable groanings,’ and ‘The Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.’

Therefore, as no one has true wisdom, true understanding; no one is truly eminent in counsel and fortitude; no one has a pious knowledge or a knowledgable piety; no one fears God with a chaste fear unless he has received ‘the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and piety and fear of God;’ and as no one has true power, sincere love, and religious sobriety except through ‘the spirit of power and love and sobriety,’ so also without the spirit of faith no one will rightly believe, without the spirit of prayer no one will profitably pray; not that there are so many spirits, ‘but all these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will,’ because ‘the Spirit breatheth where he will.’ But it must be admitted that His help is given differently before and after His indwelling, for before His indwelling He helps men to believe, but after His indwelling He helps them as believers.

What merit, then, has man before grace which could make it possible for him to receive grace, when nothing but grace produces good merit in us; and what else but His gifts does God crown when He crowns our merits? For, just as in the beginning we obtained the mercy of faith, not because we were faithful but that we might become so, in like manner He will crown us at the end with eternal life, as it says, ‘with mercy and compassion.’ Not in vain, therefore, do we sing to God: ‘His mercy shall prevent me,’ and ‘His mercy shall follow me.’ Consequently, eternal life itself, which will certainly be possessed at the end without end, is in a sense awarded to antecedent merits, yet, because the same merits for which it is awarded are not effected by us through our sufficiency, but are effected in us by grace, even this very grace is so called for no other reason than that it is given freely; not, indeed, that it is not given for merit, but because the merits themselves are given for which it is given. And when we find eternal life itself called grace, we have in the same Apostle Paul a magnificent defender of grace: ‘The wages of sin,’ he says, ‘is death. But the grace of God life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

Notice, please, how concisely and how exactly he has chosen his words; a careful examination of them will throw some light on the obscurity of this question. After he had said: ‘The wages of sin is death,’ anyone would have agreed that he could have made a most consistent and logical conclusion if he had said: ‘But the wages of justice is eternal life.’ And it is true, because eternal life is awarded as if it were the wages which justice deserves, just as death is the wages which sin deserves. Or if he had not said ‘justice’ he might have said ‘faith,’ since ‘the just liveth by faith.’ Hence, the word ‘pay’ is also used in many passages of the holy Scriptures, but neither justice nor faith is ever called pay, because the pay is made to justice or faith. What pay is to the workman, that wages is to the soldier.

But the blessed Apostle was speaking against pride, which is always trying to steal into great souls, when he said of himself on that account that an angel of Satan had been given to him by whom he was buffeted lest he should lift up his head in presumption; and it was in his vigilant warfare against this bane of pride that he said: ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Rightly does he say ‘wages,’ because it is owed, because it is rendered according to a man’s deserts. But after that he did not make the contrary statement: ‘the wages of justice is eternal life’; instead he said: ‘the grace of God, life everlasting,’ so that justice might not be based on human merit in the same way that sin is undoubtedly the cause of evil retribution. And in order that eternal life might not be sought in any other way than through the Mediator, he added: ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord,’ as if he were saying: ‘Having heard that the wages of sin is death, why do you try to exalt yourself, O human justice, who are truly pride under the name justice? Why do you try to exalt yourself and demand eternal life, the opposite of death, as if it were due you as wages? That to which eternal life is owed is true justice, but if it is true justice, it does not originate in you, ‘it is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.’ In order to have it, if you do have it, you must have received it, for ‘what good hast thou that thou hast not received?’ Therefore, O man, if you are to receive eternal life, it is indeed the wages of justice, but for you it is a grace just as justice itself is a grace. It would be paid as something due to you if the justice to which it is due had its origin in you. But now, ‘of his fulness we have received,’ not only the grace by which we now live uprightly and in labors unto the end, but also ‘grace for this grace,’ that afterward we may live in repose forever. Faith has no more salutary doctrines to believe than this because the understanding finds none more true, and we should hearken to the Prophet saying: ‘If you will not believe, you shall not understand.’

The objector says to this: ‘But men who refuse to live uprightly and faithfully will excuse themselves by saying: ‘What wrong have we done by leading a bad life, since we did not receive grace to lead a good life?’ They cannot possibly say with truth that they have done no wrong in living a bad life, for if they do no wrong they lead a good life; but if they lead a bad life the wrong is of their own doing, either the original sin which they inherited or the sin they have added over and above. But, if they are ‘vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction,’ let them impute this to themselves as something owed and paid to them, because they are made of the clay which God deservedly and justly condemned on account of the sin of one man, in whom all have sinned, but if they are ‘vessels of mercy,’ fashioned of the same clay on which God did not will to inflict the punishment due, let them not be puffed up, but give the glory to Him who has shown them an undeserved mercy, and, if they are ‘otherwise minded, God himself will reveal this to them also.’

After all, how will they excuse themselves? No doubt, in the manner briefly mentioned by the Apostle when he raised an objection for himself in their supposed words: ‘Why doth he then find fault? for who resisteth his will?’ This is the same as saying: ‘Why is fault found with us that we offend God by an evil life, since no one can resist His will, and He has hardened us by not giving us His grace?’ If they are not ashamed to offer this excuse, not against us but against the Apostle, why should we tire of saying to them again and again what the Apostle said: ‘O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump,’ justly and deservedly damned, ‘to make one vessel unto honor,’ through the undeserved grace of mercy, ‘another unto dishonor,’ which is due because of His just wrath, and ‘that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy,’ by showing what is bestowed on them, while the vessels of wrath receive the punishment which is equally due to all? Let it be enough at present for the Christian still living by faith and not yet seeing that which is perfect, but knowing it in part, to recognize or believe that God saves no one except by a freely given mercy through our Lord Jesus Christ, and condemns no one except by the most just truth through the same Lord Jesus Christ. Let him who is able search out His reason for saving or not saving this one or that, but let him also beware of the deep abyss of His judgments. ‘Is there injustice with God? God forbid!’ but ‘His judgments are incomprehensible and his ways are unsearchable.’

In earlier ages it could at least be said with justice: ‘They would not understand that they might do well,’ but the men of our time are worse; they have understood and have not obeyed, because, as it is written: ‘A stubborn slave will not be corrected by words, for if he understand he will not obey.’ And what makes him disobey but his own evil will? A heavier punishment is due him by divine justice: ‘And unto whomsoever more is given, of him more shall be required.’ Indeed, the Scripture says they are inexcusable who know the truth and persist in ungodliness. The Apostle says: ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice; because that which is known of God is manifest in them, for God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also and divinity, so that they are inexcusable.’

If, then, he calls those inexcusable who were able to see and understand the invisible things of Him by the things that are made, yet did not obey the truth but persisted in their wickedness and ungodliness-for they did know, but, he says, ‘knowing God they have not glorified him as God or given thanks,’-how much more inexcusable are those ‘who are confident that they are leaders of the blind, who teach others and do not teach themselves, who preach that men should not steal, yet they themselves steal,’ and the other things which the Apostle says of them! That is why he says to them: ‘Wherefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest. For wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thyself; for thou doest the same things which thou judgest.’

The Lord Himself also says in the Gospel: ‘If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.’ Surely He does not mean that they have no sin, when they are full of many great sins, but He wishes us to know that, if He had not come, they would not have had this sin of having heard Him and not having believed in Him. He protests that they lack the excuse which would let them say: ‘We have not heard, therefore we have not believed.’ Human pride, presuming on the strength of free will, thinks it is excused when its sin seems to come from ignorance, not from a deliberate choice.

Referring to this excuse, divine Scripture says those are inexcusable who are proved to sin knowingly. Nevertheless, the just judgment of God does not spare those either who have not heard: ‘For whosoever have sinned without the law, shall perish without the law.’ And although they think they have an excuse, God does not accept this excuse, because He knows that He made man right and gave him a commandment to obey, and that this sin, which passed upon his descendants, came from his having made a bad use of his free will. And we cannot say that those who have not sinned are damned, since that first sin passed upon all from one, in whom all sinned together before they committed any separate sins of their own. Thus, every sinner is inexcusable by reason either of the original guilt or of the added sin of his own will, and this is true whether he knows or not, whether he judges or not, because that ignorance in those who refused to know is assuredly a sin; even in those who were unable to know it is the penalty of sin. Therefore, in either case there is no just excuse, but there is a just condemnation.

The reason why holy Scripture says that those are inexcusable who sin, not in ignorance but knowingly, is because they now have no excuse for their ignorance, and there is no longer any justice on which the self-sufficiency of their will can presume, and these words are to make them see that they are inexcusable even by the verdict of their own pride, which makes them rely heavily on the strength of their own will. But he [St. Paul] to whom the Lord granted the grace of knowing and obeying said: ‘By the law is the knowledge of sin,’ and ‘I did not know sin but by the law, for I had not known concupiscence if the law did not say: Thou shalt not covet.’ He does not mean the man ignorant of the Law which commands but the one in need of the grace which redeems when he says: ‘I am delighted with the law of God according to the inward man,’ and also when he speaks later on not only of this knowledge but also of delight in the Law, saying: ‘Unhappy man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Therefore, man is delivered from the wounds of that murder by the grace of the Saviour alone, and those sold into sin are delivered from the bonds of captivity by the grace of the Redeemer alone.

For this reason, a most just punishment falls on those who try to make excuses for their sins and wickedness, whereas grace alone delivers those who are delivered. If their excuse were valid, it would not be grace but justice that redeemed them. But, since only grace redeems man, it finds nothing just in him whom it redeems, neither will, nor act, nor, least of all, that excuse, for if it were a just excuse the one using it would not truly be redeemed by grace. We know that the grace of Christ does redeem some of those who say: ‘Why doth he then find fault? for who resisteth his will?’ If this excuse is valid, men are no longer redeemed by a freely given grace, but through the validity of their excuse. But, if it is grace that redeems, doubtless this excuse is not valid, for it is truly grace that redeems man if it is not awarded him as something owed in justice. Therefore, in those who say: ‘Why doth he find fault? for who resisteth his will?’ nothing is effected but what is expressed by the Book of Solomon: ‘The folly of a man supplanteth his steps; he fretteth in his mind against God.’

Thus, although God makes ‘vessels of wrath fitted for destruction,’ that He may show His wrath and make known His power, which He exercises even over the wicked, ‘that he may show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy,’ which He makes unto honor, not as something due to their condemned clay, but as granted by the bounty of His grace, nevertheless, in those same vessels of wrath made unto a dishonor due to their clay, that is, in men created for natural goods, but doomed for their sins to punishment, He knows that He is condemning injustice which truth rightly rejects; He does not commit it. Human nature as coming from His will is unquestionably worthy of praise; sin, as coming from man’s will, is an object of reprobation to all. This will of man either transmitted a hereditary taint to the descendants whom he had within him when he sinned, or each one [also] acquired other guilt by living sinfully within himself. But, neither from that sin which is derived from man’s origin, nor from those which each one accumulates as his own, either by not understanding, or by not wishing to understand their evil, or even by increasing them through his instruction in the law by an added act of malice, is anyone redeemed or justified except by ‘the grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord.’ This is effected not only by the remission of sins, but first by the inspiration of faith itself and of the fear of God, when His love has been graciously imparted to us by the operation of prayer, until He heals all our diseases and redeems our life from destruction and crowns us with mercy and compassion.

But, for those who think that God becomes a respecter of persons if, for one and the same reason, His mercy comes upon some while His wrath remains on others, all the force of human reasoning comes to naught in the case of infants. I pass over for the present the fact that infants, however lately come from their mother’s womb, are not alone in being subject to the penalty of which the Apostle says: ‘By the offense of one unto all men to condemnation,’ from which there is no deliverance except through the One alone of whom the same Apostle says: ‘By the justice of one unto all men to justification of life.’ I repeat, I shall pass over this for the present and I shall say of infants only what they themselves concede without any objection, terrified as they are by the authority of the Gospel, or, rather, overawed by the perfect agreement in that belief of Christian peoples, namely, that no infant enters the kingdom of heaven unless it is born again of water and the Holy Spirit. I ask, then, what reason they will offer why one is so treated as to go out of life after baptism while another is given over to the hands of unbelievers or even of believers and dies before it is brought by them to be baptized? Will they attribute it to fate or chance? I do not think they will rush into such madness, if they have even a slight desire of retaining the name of Christian.

Why, then, will no infant enter into the kingdom of heaven without receiving the ‘laver of regeneration’? Surely, it did not choose to be born of unbelieving or careless parents? What is to be said of the innumerable unexpected and sudden deaths by which children of pious Christians are often carried off and prevented from being baptized, while on the other hand children of wicked parents, enemies of Christ, come somehow into Christian hands and do not leave this life without the sacrament of regeneration? What answer will they make to this, those who claim that some human merit precedes in order that grace may be given, lest God be a respecter of persons? What merits have preceded in this case? If you take these same infants, there are no merits of theirs; the same doomed clay is common to both. If you look at their parents, those whose children have died sudden deaths without the baptism of Christ were good; those whose children received the sacraments of the Church through some Christian influence are bad. Yet, the providence of God, by which the hairs of our head are numbered, without whose will not a sparrow falls to the ground, which is neither constrained by fate, nor restrained by chance happenings, nor frustrated by any injustice, does not provide rebirth to a heavenly inheritance for all the children of His sons, yet does provide it for some children of evil men. One child born of faithful wedlock, received with joy by its parents, but suffocated in sleep by mother or nurse, becomes an outcast with no share in its parents’ faith; the other, born in shame and sacrilege, abandoned by the cruel fear of its mother, but rescued by the compassionate charity of strangers and baptized through Christian care, becomes a partaker and sharer in the eternal kingdom. Let them think of these things, let them examine into them, and then let them dare to say that God is a respecter of persons, or that He bestows His grace as a reward for antecedent merits.

Even if they try to seek out some form of deserving, either good or bad, on the part of those of mature age, what will they say of these two cases of infants of whom one could not, by any evil deeds of his own, draw on himself the violent death of suffocation, nor the other, by any good deeds, deserve the care of his baptizer? They are men of excessive vanity and blindness if, after examining these facts, they still refuse to cry out with us: ‘O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!’ They will not thereby frustrate the freely given mercy of God by their obstinate madness. Let them permit the ‘Son of man to seek and to save that which was lost,’ but let them not dare to judge why, in His incomprehensible judgments, His mercy comes upon one, and in one and the same case His wrath remains on the other.

Who are these that reply to God, when He says to Rebecca, who had twin sons of one conception of Isaac our father, ‘when the children were not yet born nor had done any good or evil (that the purpose of God according to election might stand)-the election, namely, of grace not of merit, the election by which He does not find but makes elect-’that it was not of works but of him that calleth, that the elder should serve the younger’? To this sentence the blessed Apostle adds the testimony of a Prophet who came long afterward: ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated,’ to give us to understand plainly by the latter utterance what was hidden in the predestination of God by grace before they were born. For what did He love but the free gift of His mercy in Jacob, who had done nothing good before his birth? And what did He hate but original sin in Esau, who had done nothing evil before his birth? Surely, He would not have loved in the former a goodness which he had not practised, nor would He have hated in the latter a nature which He himself had created good.

It is strange, when they are entangled in such straits, to see into what an abyss they hurl themselves through fear of the nets of truth. ‘The reason,’ say they, ‘why He did not yet hate one of the children and love the other was because He foresaw their future deeds.’ Who would not be surprised that this very subtle reasoning escaped the Apostle? Of course he did not see this, when he did not make this answer, so brief, so plain, and, as they think, so true and absolute, to the hypothetical question made him by an objector. For, when he had set forth the amazing fact how, of children not yet born, not having done any good or evil, it could rightly be said that God loved the one and hated the other, he makes an objection expressing the feeling of his hearer: ‘What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? God forbid!’ this would have been the place for him to say what these men say: ‘God foresaw their future deeds when He said that the elder should serve the younger.’ But the Apostle does not say this; rather, he wishes what he says to redound to the praise of the grace and glory of God, that no one may dare to glory in the merits of his own acts. For, when he had said: ‘God forbid that there should be injustice with God,’ as if we had said to him: ‘How do you prove this when you state that it is not of works but of Him that calleth that the elder shall serve the younger?’ he goes on to say: ‘For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy. So then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God that showeth mercy.’ Where, now, are the merits, where the works, either past or future, as if they had been or were to be performed by the strength of free will? Did the Apostle not make this plain statement in praise of free grace, that is, true grace? ‘Hath not God made foolish the wisdom’ of heretics?

But what was the issue that made the Apostle say this, that made him cite the example of the twins? What point was he trying to make? What did he wish to drive home? Doubtless, this, which the madness of heretics attacks, which the proud do not accept, which they do not wish to understand: who, ‘not knowing the justice of God and seeking to establish their own, have not subjected themselves to the justice of God.’ Clearly, the Apostle was treating of that very grace, and that is why he commended the children of promise. What God promises no one but God performs; and while there is some reason and truth in saying that man promises and God performs, it is a reprobate sentiment of impious pride for a man to say that he performs what God has promised.

Therefore, by commending the children of promise, he showed the first prefiguring of this in Isaac, the son of Abraham. The action of God appears much more plainly in him who was not begotten in the ordinary course of nature, but in a womb that was sterile and worn out by age, that it might be a sign of a divine, not a human activity, among the sons of God whose coming was foretold. ‘In Isaac,’ he says, ‘shall thy seed be called, that is to say, not they that are the children of the flesh are the children of God, but they that are the children of the promise are accounted for the seed. For this is the word of promise: According to this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. And not only she,’ he says, ‘but Rebecca also had conceived at once of Isaac our father.’ What significance was there in his adding ‘at one conception,’ except that Jacob was not to boast of his own merits nor of those of other parents, much less of his own father, as if his will had somehow been changed for the better, saying that he was loved by the Creator because, when his father begot him, he was rewarded for his superior conduct? He says ‘of one conception’; consequently, there was one merit of their father in begetting them, one merit of their mother in conceiving them, because, although their mother carried them shut up in her womb until she brought them forth, and perhaps varied in her will and affection, she certainly did not vary for one but for both whom she carried equally in her womb.

We must, then, look into the meaning of the Apostle and note how, in his zeal for extolling grace, he does not want him of whom it was said ‘Jacob I have loved’ to glory except in the Lord; and, although they were of the same father, the same mother, the same conception, before they had done anything good or evil God loved the one and hated the other, so that Jacob might understand that he was of the same clay of original sin as his brother, with whom he shared a common origin, and thus he sees that he is distinguished from him by grace alone. ‘For when the children were not yet born’, he says, ‘nor had done any good or evil (that the purpose of God according to election might stand), not of works but of him that calleth it was said to her; The elder shall serve the younger.’

In another passage, the same Apostle shows most plainly that the election of grace is effected without any antecedent merits, when he says: ‘Even so, then, at this present time also, there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. But if by grace it is not now by works, otherwise grace is no more grace.’ And applying thereupon the testimony of the Prophet to this grace, he says: ‘Jacob I have loved but Esau I have hated,’ and goes on to say: ‘What shall we say then? is there injustice with God? God forbid!’ But why ‘God forbid’? Was it because He foresaw the future deeds of the twins? God forbid this even more! ‘For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.’ So also in the case of the vessels which are fitted for destruction, a consequence of their doomed clay, let the vessels made of the same clay unto honor recognize what the divine mercy has bestowed on them. For he says: ‘The Scripture saith to Pharao: And therefore have I raised thee that I may show my power in thee and my name may be spoken of throughout all the earth.’ Finally, he concludes both passages with the words: ‘Therefore he has mercy on whom he will and whom he will he hardeneth.’

But let the self-conceit of the proud unbeliever or the excuse of the object of final punishment say: ‘Why then doth he find fault? for who resisteth his will?’ Let him say it and hear in reply what man deserves: ‘O man, who art thou that repliest against God?’ and the remaining words on which I have commented long enough and often enough, to the best of my ability. Let him hear this and not despise it. If he does despise it, let him find himself hardened so that he may despise it; if he does not despise it, let him believe himself helped that he may not despise it; but the hardening is his due, the help is a free gift.

Since we have now shown what blindness it is for anyone to say, in the case of the twin sons of the patriarch Jacob, that God foresaw their future deeds because they lived and grew old, and therefore He loved Jacob but hated Esau, it is even more impossible for anyone to say the same in the case of infants who are destined to die, namely, that God foresees their future deeds, therefore He does not provide that one should receive baptism, but does provide that the other should; for how can anyone speak of future deeds for those who will have none?

‘But,’ they say, ‘in the case of those whom He takes away, God foresees how each one would have lived if he had lived, and therefore He causes one to die without baptism, thus punishing in him, not the evil deeds he did, but those he would have done.’ Now, if evil deeds which have not been committed are punished by divine decree, let these objectors observe how illusory is their promise that infants who die without baptism will not suffer damnation, if the reason why they lack baptism is the evil life they would have lived if they had lived, and if even probable evil deeds are subject to damnation. In the second place, if provision is made for the reception of baptism on the part of those of whom God knows that they would have lived a good life if they had lived, why are not all maintained in a life which they are likely to adorn with their good works? And why do some of those who are baptized live long and wickedly and eventually come to apostasy? Why, since He certainly knew that they were going to sin, did He not expel that very first pair of sinners from paradise before they could commit there an act so unworthy of that holy place-that is, if it is just to punish sins not yet committed? Again, what benefit is it to the one who ‘is taken away lest wickedness should alter his understanding or deceit beguile his soul?’ if it is just to punish acts which he has not committed, but which he might have committed by living longer? Finally, why is provision not made for the one who would have lived a bad life, if he had lived, to receive the laver of regeneration before his imminent death, so that the sins he was going to commit may be forgiven in baptism? Is anyone so irrational as to deny that these sins can be forgiven by baptism if he says that they can be punished without baptism?

In our debate against those who try, even though refuted at every point, to present God as the avenger of uncommitted sins, we run the risk of being thought to imagine such things about them, whereas they are not to be supposed so stupid as either to believe or to try to make others believe them. If I had not heard them say these things, I should not have thought them worthy of rebuttal. Confronted by the authority of divine writings as well as by the rite of baptism, handed down from antiquity and firmly adhered to in the Church, in which it is plainly shown that infants are freed from the power of the Devil both by the exorcism and by the renunciation pronounced for them by the sponsors who carry them, and not finding any way out of their dilemma, these heretics plunge headlong into fatuity because they will not change their opinion.

Doubtless, some imagine they have a clever rebuttal when they say: ‘How does the sin of faithful parents pass to their children when we are sure this sin of the parents was forgiven in their baptism?’ as if carnal birth cannot have what spiritual rebirth alone takes away. Or does it happen in baptism that the weakness of concupiscence in the flesh is immediately healed as its guilt is immediately removed? This is the effect of the grace of rebirth, not a condition of birth. Anyone born of this concupiscence, even of a regenerated parent, will undoubtedly suffer its effects unless he is likewise regenerated. But, however great the difficulty in this question, it does not prevent the workers in the field of Christ from baptizing infants unto the remission of sins whether they are born of unbelievers or of believers, just as it is no obstacle to farmers engaged in grafting wild olives upon olive trees not to know whether the grafts originated from wild olives or from olive trees. If you put this question to a country man-why nothing but a wild olive will grow from the seed of either species, although there is a difference between olive and wild olive- he may not be able to answer the question, but he does not for that give up his work of grafting; otherwise, if he thought that seedlings springing up from the seed of the olive were olives, the sloth due to his mistake would make the whole field run wild with unproductive sterility.

As to that theory they think up when overpowered by the weight of truth, that ‘the Lord is faithful in his words,’ and therefore His Church does not act hypocritically when it baptizes children for the remission of sin, but that what is done is effected through faith-for, certainly, what is pronounced is effected-what Christian would not laugh at them, however subtle this trumped-up doctrine appears, when the very manifest body of truth is weighted against them? They say that infants truly answer by the lips of their sponsors that they believe in the remission of sins, not because their own sins are remitted but because they believe there is remission in the Church or in baptism for those in whom sin is found, but not for those who have no sins. Consequently, they do not want them baptized for the remission of sins, as if such remission took place in them whom they claim to be without sin, but they say that, when they are baptized, even though sinless, by that baptism the effect is a remission of sin in those who are sinners.

It is possible that, with more time, this crafty subtlety could be refuted with more detail and greater penetration. But that cleverness of theirs does not find an answer to the fact that infants are exorcized and breathed upon in baptism. Undoubtedly, this is an illusory practice if the Devil has no power over them, but, if he has power over them, and if the exorcism and breathing are not illusory, where does he get his power if not through the primal sin of all sinners? Hence, if they now blush and shrink from saying that these ceremonies in the Church are spurious, let them confess that even among infants Christ came to seek that which was lost. For, that which was lost by sin alone cannot be sought, cannot be found, but by grace alone. But, thank God, when they argue against the remission of sins, lest anyone should believe that it is effected in children, now at least they admit that children profess their belief in it through the lips of their elders. Therefore, as they hear the Lord saying: ‘Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven,’ and thereupon admit that children should be baptized, let them hear the same Lord saying: ‘He that believeth not shall be condemned,’ since they admit that children are reborn through the ministry of the baptizer, just as they profess their faith through the hearts and lips of their sponsors. Let them, then, dare to say that the innocent are condemned by a just God if they are bound by no fetters of original sin.

If this treatise is a long and burdensome one in the midst of your busy life, grant me your pardon because I was induced by your own letter to write this to you, and the kindness you there expressed made me want to have this conference with you. Indeed, it has been a forcible interruption of my own cares. If you hear that they have thought up other attacks on the Catholic faith, and if you develop any arguments against them, lest they lay waste the weak members of the Lord’s flock, in your faithful and truly pastoral charity share them with us. Thus our own effort is roused from slothful sleep by the restlessness of heretics, forcing us to examine the Scriptures more carefully, lest they use them to harm the flock of Christ. And so, by the manifold grace of the Saviour, God turns to our help what the enemy plots for our destruction, because ‘to them that love God all things work together unto good.’

St. Augustine, Doctor of Grace