Book I, Chapter 35

Chapter Xxxv

Against Pelagius: that grace is given freely by God and is not obtained by preceding merits.

Moreover, since the magnificent divine gifts are contained under the providence of God, it seems necessary that whoever wishes to treat of God's providence should not be silent about the divine gifts. For all things besides God (indeed even God himself) are reckoned among the divine gifts ‖D1, as the third chapter of this book, and 4, 29, 27, and those that follow make plain. This is why the Apostle says that he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. This, then, being known, it must be shown further that God gives all his gifts freely. For he is neither covetous nor in need of anything, as the third and fifth parts of the first Corollary teach. Giving in this way is also more magnificent and more generous, better and more perfect, than giving in another way, or rather selling, for the sake of some advantage that will accrue to the giver from the gift. This manner of giving, therefore, is to be assigned to God without hesitation, by the first Supposition and the third part of the first Corollary of this book, just as the twenty-ninth part of the same Corollary refutes the Pelagians. Wherefore any gift of God whatever can, not unfittingly, be called the grace of God, that is, grace freely given. This grace, moreover, is common to all creatures, irrational and rational, to the thankful and the thankless alike 1. And not without a most welcome thanksgiving must it be noted further that there is a certain grace, a certain species of the grace already mentioned, freely given and very welcome to all 2, which is not only given freely by God but also makes the one to whom it is given pleasing to God, dear, a friend, and a son in the present, and a sharer of glory in the future. Of this grace, then, with grace herself guiding me throughout, I must discourse a little against the Pelagians, who are ungrateful and enemies of grace.

The pestilential Pelagians say, to be sure, that this supreme grace of God is by no means given freely by God but is obtained by preceding merits. But these Pelagians, by what has been set out here and by the twenty-ninth part of the first Corollary of this book, are driven into the deep and beaten down 3. Moreover, if God gives merits, or any helps whatever, to someone predestined to the Kingdom, he does not give them for any advantage to God arising from what went before, but so that the predestined man may attain the Kingdom through them, because he wills reasonably; and this can be shown by the twenty-second chapter of this book. And if he wills him to have merits so that through them he may attain the Kingdom, he naturally wills first that he have the Kingdom; for this is in a way the final cause of why he wills him to merit, namely, that by this he may gain the Kingdom for himself; and he freely accepts him for the Kingdom before he wills or accepts his merits. Since, therefore, he first, out of his own magnificent generosity, freely accepts him for reigning, and since it is not fitting that he should ascend to so great a kingdom without merit, he wills that he merit it, and gives him help and grace for meriting. Thus the grace that makes him acceptable 4 and the grace freely given, according to the distinction written in 25, naturally precede all the merits of anyone whatever.

This could be proved by a likeness. If a father wishes his son to trade so as to buy a field, he naturally wills first that he have the field before he trades; for the field is the final cause of the trading, and so he gives him the money freely, not because he has traded, but so that he may trade and thus acquire the field. All this is also confirmed by the well-known Philosophical dictum from Physics 2, 89, and On the Soul 3, 49, and Ethics 3, 8 5: in things to be done, what is first in intention is last in execution. Likewise the will is borne to the end per se and first, so much so that it does not deliberate about the end itself, but it is borne to the means only for the sake of the end, and therefore it deliberates carefully about them. Hence it wills the end before the means. B1 Hence the Philosopher, Ethics 2, 8: "We deliberate, however, not about ends but about what leads to ends: for the doctor does not deliberate whether he will heal, nor the orator whether he will persuade, nor the statesman whether he will make peace; nor does any of them deliberate about the end, but, having set some end, they consider how and by what means it will be attained."

Again, God knows well and wills that whoever has good merits with perseverance will reign; and no one can have good merits with perseverance unless God himself wills it, works it, gives it, and preserves it, by the ninth chapter of this book. God therefore wills anyone to reign earlier in time and in nature than the point at which he is bound to have good merits for himself 6; and so before he has good merits. Not on account of merits, then, as on account of a prior cause, does he show him favor and accept him for the Kingdom, but wholly freely; and for this reason he gives him grace for meriting.

But I myself, foolish, void of the knowledge of God, and vain, was led astray by the contrary error when I was devoted to philosophical writings. For sometimes I heard theologians treat this matter, and the Pelagian side seemed to me the truer. In the Schools of the philosophers I used rarely to hear anything about grace, except perhaps with the word used in another sense; but all day long I heard that we are masters of our free acts, that it is in our power to act well or badly, to have virtues or vices, along with many similar things. And if sometimes in church I heard a reading from the Apostle extolling grace C1 and pressing down free choice, such as that in Romans 9, "It is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy," and many like it, it displeased me, ungrateful as I was to grace. With the Manichaeans, too, I believed that the Apostle, being a man, could have strayed in something from the path of truth. Afterwards, however, when I had not yet become a hearer of Theology, visited by the aforesaid argument as by a ray of grace, under a kind of thin image of the truth I seemed to myself to see from afar the grace of God preceding all good merits in time and in nature, that is, the gracious will of God, who first, in both ways, wills the one who merits to be saved, and first, naturally, works that man's merit in him, before the man himself does, as the first Mover is first in all motions. D1 For this I give thanks to him who freely gave me this grace.

Augustine also confesses that he was at times deceived by this error of Pelagius, so much so that the text of the Apostle commending grace seemed to him not to agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets but even to oppose them; and a similar reasoning led him from this error to knowledge of the truth. For he says in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 4: "When I too, like Pelagius, was in error, thinking that the faith by which we believe in God is not a gift of God but comes from us, in us, and that through it we obtain the gifts of God, I did not think that faith is anticipated by the grace of God; struck chiefly by this testimony of the Apostle, I was convinced: 'What do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?'" And in Confessions 7, last chapter, after he had confessed how he had been puffed up through books, secular wisdom and knowledge, and afterwards was visited by divine grace, he says thus: "Most eagerly I seized the venerable pen of your Spirit, and the Apostle Paul above the rest; and those ‖E1 questions perished in which at one time he seemed to me to contradict himself, and the text of his discourse not to agree with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets; and there appeared to me one face of chaste utterances, and I found that whatever true thing I read there is said here with the commendation of your grace, so that he who sees may not glory as if he had not received."

Their footsteps too I follow in this whole matter as far as I can, and especially because the one of them, Paul, seems to me as much the Logician as the Philosopher of the Apostles, and the other, Augustine, of the Doctors. Many modern philosophers also, I fear, cherish this false folly under the appearance of true wisdom. For to many it seems very plausibly colored, agreeable to experience and consonant with reason (for falsehoods are sometimes more probable than truths); but if they are willing to philosophize truly, they can refute it philosophically, I do not say by the reasons set down here or to be set down, but perhaps by other, stronger ones, which, with the grace of God going before them, they will be able to find.

Further, with the grace of God as guide, the argument proceeds in this way. No one can have merits, nor persevere in them, unless God gives and preserves them, as has just been shown; and if he wished to give a wicked man good merits and to preserve them, as he does for the good man, that man would merit and would persevere just as the good man does, as the tenth chapter clearly proves. Not on account of merits, therefore, but freely does he choose this man and not that one. Likewise, if God gave grace on account of prior good merits, why then does he give those merits? Not on account of other prior merits, lest the process perhaps go on to infinity; freely, therefore, he gives those, and so he gives grace too. For grace, by the force of its name, seems among all gifts to be given most freely.

Nor can it be said that he gives good merits to this man because he foreknows that he will make good use of them: everyone would do so if God wished him to use them well, as is plain from the tenth; and he could not do otherwise, as the ninth chapter proves. Indeed, how could anyone use good merits badly, or not well, when good merit is itself a good use or act? Likewise, if God gave someone grace on account of merits, then, because he will merit, God would will him to reign, and because he will merit, God would will him to have merits. His meriting, therefore, would be the cause of the divine willing, moving the divine will, and the divine will itself would be acted upon by his meriting, against the twentieth; and that he will merit would be the cause why God wills him to merit, which is false; for the contrary is true. It is because God wills him to merit that he will merit, as 14 showed. Moreover, God, so far as he is concerned, would then be in potency and in pure indifference 7 as to willing this man to have grace or to lack it, and would be acted upon, actualized, and determined by the merit of this man, good or bad, which conflicts with his supreme perfection and actuality, as is plain from the twentieth of this book.

Likewise, if God did not give grace most freely, but on account of some inferior cause, contingent and free, he would not foreknow with certainty that he would give it, as the eighteenth chapter of this book shows: for it is by precisely the same cause by which God first foreknows that he will give grace that he knows, at the time of giving, that he is giving it. For on account of whatever cause he then gives grace, he has always foreknown and willed to give grace on account of that cause; otherwise he would have a changeable will, against the twenty-third. Likewise, if God gave grace for merits, he would will and do this because it would be just that it be so, whereas it is the other way round and not so, as the twenty-first teaches. Likewise, the bestowal of grace, and the merit preceding it, would then not be contained under divine providence, since by the tenth chapter providence itself is efficacious, but would be left to chance and fortune, against the twenty-seventh and what follows. Likewise, by the first Supposition God is so good that nothing greater can be conceived, and the good is communicative of itself, and the greater, the more so; God therefore is so liberally communicative and giving that nothing more liberal in communicating or giving can be thought; but it is more liberal to give wholly freely, with absolutely no preceding merit; thus, therefore, God gives, especially since he has no need of our goods; and what will he give that is more liberal or more welcome than grace? God therefore gives grace freely. The signification of the name "grace" also seems to signify this, namely that it is freely given; and the Apostle, founding himself on this in Romans 11, proves by a demonstration leading to the impossible, that is, to the denial of the thing itself by itself, that grace is not from works: "If," D1 he says, "by grace, not from works; otherwise," that is, if the opposite is granted, "grace is no longer grace." And earlier, in 4: "But to him who works, the wage is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt." Likewise, some virtuous men, such as the liberal and the magnificent, give purely liberally and wholly freely, according to the requirement of their virtue, without any preceding or even subsequent merit, as Ethics 4 teaches; therefore God too, since he is more virtuous, more liberal, and more magnificent than any man, infinitely so (indeed even if those virtuous men do this for friends, or only for those who are not enemies), will do this not only for friends and non-enemies, if there are any such intermediates, but for enemies also. For according to Augustine, Enchiridion 56: "It is a lesser good to be kindly disposed, E1 or even beneficent, toward one who has done you no harm; but that is much greater, and the mark of a most magnificent goodness, that you love your enemy too, and wish and do him good." Hence the Apostle, Romans 5: "God commends," that is, shows to be commended, E2 "his charity in us, since while we were still sinners Christ died for us; and when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son."

Likewise, it seems more fitting that goods be dispensed according to the will of one who is wiser and better than according to the will of one who is less wise and good; but God is infinitely wiser and better than any man; so it seems more fitting that all things be dispensed according to the divine will than causally, a priori, according to the merits of the human will. Hence Ephesians 1: "Who works all things according to the counsel of his will." Likewise, no one doubts that God could confer his grace freely, and that this would be more merciful and more fitting; who, then, has so far known the mind of the Lord, or been his counselor, as to dare to deny that God does so, when he ought rather to affirm it, he who does so notoriously even in infants, as the thirty-first of this book alleges? And if anyone says, "It is not just that it be so; why does he not do so?", let him know from the twenty-first of this book that nothing in such matters is just except because it is willed by God, and not the reverse: for it is not because it is just that it is willed by God. Likewise, if someone has merited his grace, he is more worthy of it than if he had not merited it; for "the laborer is worthy of his wage," Luke 10, and Romans 4: "To him who works, the wage is imputed not according to grace but according to debt." Any man, then, who has a grace that he merited is more worthy of it than Christ is of the grace of union, or of any other grace freely given him in the beginning (for he did not merit this one or that one). Whoever concedes this will show that he is not a member of Christ but rather of Antichrist, since he exalts himself above the Head. B1 Hence Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints 19: "The most brilliant light of predestination and grace is the Savior himself, Christ Jesus, who, that this might be so, obtained it by no preceding merits. Let that fountain of grace, then, open itself to us in our Head 8, from which it pours itself out to each according to measure through all his members; by that grace any man becomes a Christian from the beginning of his faith, by which grace that man [Christ] was made Christ from his own beginning." And he continues in chapter 20: "Whoever finds preceding merits in our Head, in that singular generation, let him seek preceding merits in us, his members, in our multiplied regeneration." He says many similar things in the Enchiridion 27, and in On the Gift of Perseverance, next to last chapter and last; in the last chapter he says thus: "He who made this man just with no preceding merit, himself makes the unjust just, with no preceding merit of theirs, that the one may be the head, and they his members."

Likewise, the position contrary to this takes away from God the greatest portion of thanksgivings and praises, of fear and honor; it also uproots a man's hope from God and founds it in himself. For who will give thanks equally, and praise, and fear God and love him, if God repays his merits with the due reward, as compared with one whom he goes before freely, though an enemy, conferring all good things? Why, too, would a man not hope in himself, since he suffices for himself? But how pernicious all these things are, and how contrary to Christian doctrine, who is ignorant? The series of both Testaments also bears witness to this most abundantly; from it I shall now adduce a few testimonies. C1 Deuteronomy 9: "For not on account of your righteousnesses will you go in to possess the land." Job 31: "If my heart has rejoiced in secret, and I have kissed my hand with my mouth, which is the greatest iniquity and a denial against God most high." On this blessed Gregory says, Moralia 22, 9: "By the hand, indeed, work is signified, but by the mouth, speech. C2 He therefore kisses his own hand with his mouth who praises what he does and attributes to himself the power of his working. But holy men know that it is not by their own power but by prevenient grace that they have been changed to better vows or works." And because whoever attributes to himself what he does is convicted of denying the grace of his Author, he at once adds, "which is the greatest iniquity," etc., "because he denies him, by despising whose grace he arrogates to himself the strength of good work." D1 Psalm 55 [56]: "For nothing will you save them"; and "for nothing they held the desirable land," Psalm 105 [106]; and above, 67 [68]: "A free rain you will set apart for your inheritance," etc. On this Augustine, in the exposition set out above, adds: "Much more fittingly is grace itself understood as the free rain, because it is given freely, with no preceding merits of works. For if grace, not from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. For I am not worthy, he says, to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God; but by the grace of God I am what I am; this is the free rain. For of his own will he begot us by the word of truth; this is the free rain." Moreover also Isaiah 52: "Freely (gloss, that is, of your own accord) 9 you were sold, and without silver you will be redeemed"; Gloss, that is, by no merit of yours, but by the gratuitous kindness of God. D2 And Hosea, last chapter: "I will heal their contritions, I will love them spontaneously"; gloss, that is, by mercy alone, because he himself loved us first. This is shown more clearly in the New Testament too, in the time of grace. For the author of all grace himself says plainly, through John, of the grace of God: E1 "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him"; and, "No one can come to me unless it is given him by my Father," John 6. And below, 15: "Without me you can do nothing"; and above, 3: "The Spirit breathes where he wills"; E2 and below, 5: "The Son gives life to whom he wills"; and Mark 3: "He called to himself those whom he wished, and they came to him"; and James 1: "Of his own will he begot us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of his creature," and very many like these.

The Apostle Paul himself also bears witness, the vessel of gratuitous election, E3 in whom the effect of grace freely given appeared most evidently. He was not persisting in good works, nay not even desisting from evils, but was still breathing threats and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, thirsting for the blood of Christians like a man of Belial, and persecuting the Lord himself, when suddenly a light from Heaven shone around him, and with that light the grace of Jesus Christ also went before him, A1 as is plain from Acts 9. This man, then, being in a way specially a son of grace, and not ungrateful, honors grace, his mother, in almost all his Epistles more devoutly, extols and proclaims her, and above all defends her; and in the Epistle to the Romans, arguing at length and acutely as it were through the whole letter, he does this chiefly. Hence in chapter 3 he writes thus: "Let every mouth be stopped and let the whole world be made subject to God"; Gloss: ascribing everything to him, nothing to their own merits; "because by the works of the law no flesh is justified," "and they are justified freely by his grace." A2 And to the Ephesians 2: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone boast." And to Titus 3: "The kindness and humanity of God our Savior appeared, not from works of righteousness A3 that we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us." The same he says in Romans 9 and 11, and he does not merely say it but proves it, by authorities of the Old Testament and likewise by reason. For in chapter 9 he alleges that passage of Exodus 33, which the Lord said to Moses: "I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will be merciful 10 to whom it pleases me." Hence the Apostle concludes: "Therefore it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy." Yet if grace and mercy were from works, it would rather be said, "I will have mercy and be merciful to him who shall have deserved it"; and, "It is of him who wills and runs," that is, of him who works with merit, that God have mercy and bestow grace. B1 And in 11 he proves the same by one authority, 3 Kings [1 Kings] 19, which says that God left for himself seven thousand men who had not bent their knee before Baal. Hence he concludes: "So then, at this present time also a remnant has been saved, according to the election of grace"; and immediately after he proves the same by a demonstration leading to the impossible, that is, to the denial of the thing itself by itself, namely: "If grace is from works, it is no longer grace," as was alleged above.

In this opinion, too, all Catholic Doctors are unanimously agreed, among them Augustine. Just as the Apostle was at first unbelieving, blasphemous, and an enemy of the grace of Jesus Christ, so Augustine, after being anticipated by the same grace, was likewise converted, and, in a way singularly imitating the Apostle, became a praiser of grace, its magnificent and strenuous champion. Likewise, one decisive argument can be brought for this side. The contrary side, which holds that grace is given according to our merits, is the Pelagian heresy. Not only did the Catholic Fathers condemn it in the episcopal judgment in Palestine, but Pelagius himself, a heretic, fearing there to be condemned, likewise condemned it, as is plain from Augustine, On Heresies 88, and On the Predestination of the Saints 2, and On Grace and Free Choice 11, and from Isidore, Ethics 8, 19, and it is recited in the Canon, 24th question, last, "Quid autem" 11. Augustine also destroys this heresy fully and carefully, in various books against the Pelagians in general, and against some of them in particular, such as against Julian and Caelestius, in other special books, as those know well who know the books of Augustine. For this opinion also, and against the Pelagian heresy, C1 Lombard adduces, in Sentences 2, distinction 24 and in many following distinctions, many effective testimonies of the truth, which likewise clearly prove operating and cooperating grace.

Against these, however, Pelagius objects by asking thus: "If grace is given freely, since all men are equal of themselves, why is it given to this one and not to that one?" I too ask of him who asks thus: why does God, out of infinite souls, and any other things equally possible and equally good in every respect, if they were created, create these and not those? Let this man also ask, as Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints 19, asks in the person of such men: "I am a man as Christ is a man; why am I not what he is? For it is by the grace of God that he is such and so great; why is grace different where nature is common? Surely there is no respect of persons with God." And, as if answering, Augustine asks: "Who, I do not say a Christian, but a madman, would say this?" The same Augustine, in the twenty-sixth homily on that text of John 6, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him," answers one who asks so, as if not answering: "Great," he says, "is the commendation of grace; no one comes unless drawn. Whom he draws and whom he does not draw, why he draws this one and does not draw that one, do not wish to judge, if you do not wish to err." Yet to this inquirer the twenty-first of this book gives an answer.

Moreover, the Pelagians, ungrateful to grace, do not cease to oppose it; but, like false writers 12 in error, not understanding the Scriptures nor the truth of God, as blessed Augustine recounts in On Grace and Free Choice 11, they collect and propose such testimonies from holy Scripture to bolster their error: "Turn to me, and I will turn to you"; and in the second book of Paralipomenon [2 Chronicles]: "The Lord is with you ‖E1 if you are with him; and if you seek him, you will find him"; from which they strive to argue that grace is given according to our merits. But in vain, since elsewhere it is written thus: "God of hosts, convert us"; "God, you, converting, will give us life"; and, "After you converted me, I did penance," Jeremiah 31; and Lamentations, last chapter: "Convert us, Lord, to you, and we will be converted; renew our days as from the beginning."

Behold how the Lord renews us who have fallen, to grace, just as through it he makes us new in the beginning. In such precepts, however, as "Turn to me," etc., according to Augustine in the same work, chapters 11 and 12, the free choice of the will is made manifest. And below, 23: "When they are commanded to work, free choice is forestalled, but therefore with fear and trembling, lest anyone attribute to himself what he does well." Indeed, if Pelagius has even half an eye, he could see that God, by the very fact that he thus ‖A1 commands, goes before the will 13, stirring it to act, yet not so that it does this without him, but with him, as the preceding chapters have taught. Wherefore he also says, "Without me you can do nothing," A2 John 15. And the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 15: "I have labored more abundantly than all, yet not I, but the grace of God with me." Augustine also recounts a like false writing in On the Predestination of the Saints 13, in these words: "When it is said," they say, "'If you believe, you will be saved,' one of these is demanded, the other offered; what is demanded is in the power of man, what is offered is in the power of God." And by asking he objects thus against them: "Why is not both in the power of God, both what he commands and what is offered?" And he immediately proves that it is so: "For he is asked to give what he commands; believers ask that their faith be increased; they ask for non-believers that faith be given them. Both in its increases, therefore, and in its beginnings, faith is a gift of God, although it too, when it is said, 'If you believe, you will be saved,' with the reward of salvation set before us, is demanded of us. For this and like things are therefore commanded us, and shown to be gifts of God, that it may be understood that we do them, and that God does it so that we do them," B1 as he says most plainly through the Prophet Ezekiel: "I will make it that you do." Attend, and you will see God promising that he will make those do what he commands to be done. Hence Ezekiel 36: "Not for your sake will I act, house of Israel, but for my holy name I will bring you into your land, I will pour clean water upon you and you shall be cleansed, and from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new Spirit in the midst of you; I will take away the stony heart and give you a heart of flesh, and I will make it that you walk in my precepts and keep my judgments and do them."

And "Turn to me and I will turn to you" can be understood, not unfittingly, in this way: Turn to me through operating grace and the free choice of the will, and I will turn to you through cooperating grace, by preserving the former grace or bestowing a fuller one, according to what is written in Apocalypse, last chapter, C1 "Let the holy one be made holy still." Hence Anselm too, On Concord 10: "It is said," he says, "to the converted, 'Turn,' either that they may be turned the more, or that they may keep what they have been converted to."

Moreover, some advocates of Pelagius also do not cease to bark, alleging many words, manifest indeed, of the Epistle, as they say, of blessed Jerome to Demetrias, On the Training of a Virgin, against the help of grace and for the sufficiency of free choice for any virtuous works whatever. But these, as it seems, neglecting in this matter the writings of their elders, cherish the Pelagian writing more fondly than the Augustinian, the heretical more than the Catholic.

For it is clear to those who read, and do not neglect, the Epistles of blessed Jerome that there are two Epistles entitled "Jerome to Demetrias" 14. One of them, namely 94, having such a beginning, "Among all subjects," is without doubt his own, and in it nothing is contained about the excellence of free choice. But the other, namely 93, beginning in this way, "If, relying on the highest talent and equal [?] knowledge" 15, which openly extols free choice and concedes grace, but an ambiguous, silly, and deceitful grace, is by no means to be believed to be of Jerome, the Catholic Doctor. For it savors neither of his style, nor of his procedure, nor of his meaning, but of others far removed, as it is easy for readers to see; and it agrees much, in sentence and in style, with the great Epistle of Pelagius directed to Bishop Paulinus, with his book for free choice, which comprises four books, and with many other works of his. Wherefore it is probably to be judged Pelagius's own. Does not Pelagius himself also, in the statement of his faith, which he sent to Rome to Pope Innocent, write thus? "Let them read the Epistle which we wrote in the East to the holy Virgin of Christ, Demetrias, and they will find that we praise the nature of man in such a way that we always add the help of God's grace." And what is that Epistle, if not the one mentioned above? D1 Wherefore Augustine too, in the first book against Pelagius and Caelestius, on 16

…Christ, and On Original Sin, chapters 23, 28, 29, 30 and 31, he asserts that this Epistle is Pelagius's, reciting, examining and plainly condemning certain parts of it.17 He also, together with Alypius, in Letter 71 to Juliana,18 E1 says: "Who wrote the book to the holy Demetrias?" and he recites certain parts of the aforesaid Epistle, examining them as he goes. Moreover Guido, Prior of the Charterhouse, in his letter sent to Lazarus, Prior of Durbon, and the brothers, on behalf of the Epistles of blessed Jerome, says plainly that the aforesaid Epistle is not Jerome's but Pelagius's. And the venerable Bede, in book 1 on the Song of Songs E2 (which is directed especially against Julian), on the grace of God, 12,19 recites and condemns many parts of this Epistle and affirms that it is by Julian, the son and pupil of Pelagius.20 Whence he also speaks thus in the book which he wrote to Demetrias, virgin of Christ, on the training of a virgin: he sets out the same things, and how he thinks about the power of free choice. Some of us read this book with zeal and rashly suppose it to be by the holy and catholic Doctor Jerome. They fail to see that the sweetness of its soothing eloquence and the perversity of its seductive heresy plainly prove that this little work is not his. Nay rather, Jerome himself attacked and struck down Pelagius's faith, or rather faithlessness, with divine utterances in the dialogue of Atticus and Critobulus, which he published while Pelagius was alive, when Julian, still a little child, was being nursed by him like a little basilisk in the serpent's den.21 Some, however, who look at only a few things, readily declare that nothing of the kind is to be found in the first book of Bede on the Song. But these are surely mistaken, supposing that the first expository book of Bede on the Song is simply the first book, and it is not so. For in the first book he does not expound the text of the Song; before he comes to the exposition of the Song, throughout that whole first book he examines and tears apart the errors and heresies of Julian's books. For this reason, in many codices this first book is not found at all. Yet whoever has seen the beginning of his last book on the Song will plainly see him saying that he wrote the first of those books against Julian, and this book is also found more often in codices that are not defective. In some codices this book has an opening of this kind: "I thought the reader should first be warned, that the little works of Julian, etc."; in others this: "About to write, with God's grace helping, on the Song of Songs, first to warn, etc.," as above. Nor should anyone suppose that Bede, in saying that this Epistle is Julian's, contradicts Augustine, who says it is Pelagius's: for these do not conflict. It often happens that many joined together send one Epistle, or perhaps both dictated it together, and Pelagius, being the elder and the master, sent it in his own name, and Julian afterwards wished to claim it for himself. Yet all these witnesses agree in attesting that this Epistle is not blessed Jerome's, but that of Pelagius or of some other Pelagian, a heretic and a profane man.

Corollary

Against Cassian, who takes a middle course in saying that God gives his grace freely to some without preceding merit, but to others not unless they first merit to receive it; therefore also that no slave of mortal sin can be freed by his own powers alone.

From these things, then, it is evident that Cassian, wishing to mediate between the Catholics (who affirm universally that in all cases God gives the first grace freely) and Pelagius (who supposes that God gives grace to anyone for preceding merit and to no one simply, purely freely), is gravely raving when he says that God gives grace freely, purely as a gift, to some, but to others for preceding merit; wherefore also [it follows] that no slave of mortal sin can be freed by his own powers alone.

All this corollary follows plainly from what has been premised.22 Saint Prosper, too, refutes the aforesaid error of Cassian with discernment and repels it at length, through nearly the whole of the little book entitled Of Saint Prosper, for the Preachers of the Grace of God, against the Book of Cassian the Priest, which is headed On the Protection of God.23 The errors of this Cassian on this matter are written in the Conferences of the Fathers. The other part of the corollary is especially established by this: every slave of mortal sin is out of favor with God, and cannot be brought into favor without grace, nor can he acquire this grace by his own powers alone through prior things.24 "Unhappy man, then, who will free him from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ," Romans 7. The authorities of all the Catholic Doctors who treat this matter also attest this unanimously.