To Florus — Book 4

4.1I think an attentive reader may wonder why, although I have divided my little work into a definite number of books, as writers customarily do, I nevertheless settle in one book questions belonging to another. For example, in the third volume I argued that the statement that the Jewish people descended from the one man Abraham (Hebrews 11:12) did not in the slightest shake the apostle’s meaning when he said that sin entered the world through one man (Romans 5:12), a numerical expression that demolished the opinion of original evil. The reader whom I now intend to satisfy may think this should have been placed in the second volume. Let him understand, then, that this faithfulness in replying, by which even things thought to have been passed over are supplied in the following book, causes no disadvantage to the contest. It comes not from confusion caused by haste, but both from the requirements of the subject and from a considered plan. Many great minds offer examples that could justify such a sequence of writing. But it is foolish boasting to call on the resounding names of ancient writers to defend a simple matter, and to make an innocent action look suspicious by defending it.

I therefore ended the second book, which I had devoted to defending the apostle’s statements, when the necessary discussion was complete, so that adding trivial questions would not stretch it to excessive length. But after fulfilling the duty of serious argument, I chose to answer even foolish questions and to take account of the very slowest readers, who can be disturbed even by feeble objections. Accordingly, in the third book I showed how many people could be said to have been born from one. It is also entirely fitting for a following volume to discharge the debt of its predecessor: the books then show a strong agreement with one another, and readers are encouraged to learn the whole work. Even if they consider that some points were postponed in the earlier books, they understand that they were not omitted. Having shown, then, that what we have done accords with the work’s faithfulness and care, let us fight the Manichaeans on behalf of God’s works and laws. From his works we repel the ugliness of natural evil; from his laws, the injustice of deadly judgments. We teach that in the commands of those laws justice has lost none of its goodness, and into the seeds of those works the devil has mixed none of his evil. In short, the laws are worthy of God as ruler, and the works supremely worthy of God as creator.

4.2If you believe these two things, that God’s works are not evil and his judgments are not unjust, the whole doctrine of inherited sin is crushed. Conversely, if the impiety of inherited sin is accepted, these two things, God’s creation and his judgment, through which alone God can be understood, are destroyed.

4.3Let us now weigh the things this slanderer of nature has put together. But to help our reader both understand and distinguish matters entangled in our replies to one another, I will explain the way he fights. He professes to answer writings of mine that he says were sent to him on a short sheet, and he quotes and attacks little pieces of statements attributed to me that are not found in my work.

4.4He therefore says to Valerius: “Notice the arguments by which he thinks he agrees, against us, with the heading set out above. He says, ‘God, who had fashioned Adam from mud, built Eve from a rib and said: She will be called Life, because she is the mother of all the living’ (Genesis 3:20). That is not actually how it is written, but what does that matter to us? Memory commonly goes wrong over words, provided the meaning is retained. Nor was it God who named Eve Life, but her husband. The text says: ‘And Adam called his wife’s name Life, because she is the mother of all the living’” (Genesis 1:31) (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.4.12).

What astonishing learning in this teacher, who allows not even the slightest departure from Scripture’s language! He rebukes my ignorance, yet deigns to pardon the lapse of memory through which I had supposedly said that God called the woman by the name Life. He thus used a small opportunity to try to appear both learned and kind. But just as identifying who named the woman is no remarkable feat of diligence, so his shamelessness is intolerable when he wants to forgive something he cannot blame. For my work does not read as his inventions have it. I first quoted the Law’s testimony, where the Creator of all things is shown saying, “It is not good for the human being to be alone; let us make him a helper like himself” (Genesis 2:18). Then I said: “What does this mean, ‘It is not good for the human being to be alone’? Had God made anything that could rightly be called not good, especially when he had made everything not merely good but very good (compare Genesis 1:31)? How, then, does he say, ‘It is not good for the human being to be alone’? These words do not criticize the creature’s condition; they show that being alone could have been ruinous for the human race unless a succession of descendants had sprung up through the service of the other sex. For even if Adam may be thought capable of becoming immortal had he not sinned, it is nevertheless clear that he could never have become a father unless he had found a wife. Taken from his side while he slept, she heard at her first naming the work for which she had been prepared: ‘She will be called Life, because she is the mother of all the living.’ This statement showed that thereafter no human being could either exist or live without coming into existence through the benefit of conception” (compare Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.4.12).

It is therefore clear that, although the matter is not very weighty, I said nothing that anyone could criticize without extraordinary shamelessness. The stamp of public falsehood has been branded on this most destitute of men. By trying to give away what he does not possess, he offends in two ways at once: he lacks the right to do it, and he courts applause for his generosity.

4.5After criticizing this with such solemnity, he proceeds to the rest and tells his patron to attend to what follows. “God, then,” he says, “the creator of male and female, formed organs suited to reproduction.” But after inserting only this much from the beginning of my statement, he omits a very large number of lines. These chiefly stress that souls are newly created and owe nothing either to flesh or to seed. He then adds my words: “Thus he ordained that bodies should be generated from bodies. Yet his active power intervenes in their production, governing everything that exists by the same power with which he created it. If, then, offspring come only through sex, sex only through a body, and a body only through God, who could doubt that fertility is rightly attributed to God?” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.4.12). After quoting this from my work, he commends it, saying that he too acknowledges these statements to be catholic. Who would not then think that the man had changed? But he does not forget himself. He supposes that a perverse doctrine and his sense of shame are in a similar condition: that the doctrine can recover even from its evident destruction, just as his shamelessness grows harder through constant wear. So he approves my statement and, by voluntarily embracing it, drives the blade of an adverse judgment into his own belief. Yet afterward, as though his strength were unimpaired, he imagines that he still has something with which to fight.

He continues as follows: “After these things, which have been said truthfully and catholically—or rather, which are truthfully written in the divine books, but have not been said catholically by this man, because they were not said with the intention of a catholic heart—the Pelagian and Caelestian heresy now begins to be introduced, which is why he said them. For notice what follows.” Here he adds my words again: “What, then, does the devil recognize as his own in the sexes, by which he can rightly possess their offspring? Their difference? But that exists in the bodies God made. Their union? But it is defended by the privilege of God’s blessing no less than by his institution. For it is God’s voice that says, ‘A man will leave father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). It is God’s voice that says, ‘Increase and multiply, and fill the earth’ (Genesis 1:28). Or perhaps fertility itself? But that is the very reason marriage was instituted” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.4.13).

To this he replied that the devil recognizes neither the difference of the sexes, nor their union, nor their fertility as something of his own by which he can rightly possess their offspring. But after acquitting all these things he found something to assign to the devil. He attacked my decency as fear, saying that amid so many functions of bodies and sexes I had been afraid to name the desire of the flesh. This, then, is what he tells his patron against me: “But amid all these things he was unwilling to name the desire of the flesh, which is not from the Father but from the world (1 John 2:16). The devil is called the ruler of this world. He did not find this desire in the Lord, because the Lord came among human beings as a man without it. Hence the Lord himself says, ‘See, the ruler of this world is coming, and he will find nothing in me’ (John 14:30): nothing, that is, of sin, either inherited at birth or added in the course of life. Among all the natural goods he mentioned, this man was unwilling to name the desire that makes even marriage ashamed, although marriage glories in all those goods. For why is that act of married people withdrawn and hidden even from their children’s eyes, except that their praiseworthy union cannot take place without shameful lust? It was this that made the first people blush when they covered their private parts (Genesis 3:7). Those parts had not previously been shameful, but deserved praise and glory as God’s works” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.4.13).

Most blessed father Florus, in the four books of my first work I pleaded the case for marriage, for sexual union, for bodies, for the sexes, for God’s work, and finally for God’s reputation. Just as his reputation is necessarily praised by the goodness of his works, so it is wounded when they are defamed. Throughout that entire work, truth that cannot be obscured proved that the devil had added nothing either to the body’s formation or to its sensation. Thus it was thoroughly demonstrated that the belief in inherited sin had been drawn from Manichaeus’s mud.

4.6Although this was established there with the fullest possible treatment, it must also be repeated, briefly, in the present discussion. Let us turn, then, to the man himself, whose learning we are contesting. You agree, surely, that I reasoned correctly: if offspring exist only through sex, sex only through a body, and a body only through God, there can be no doubt that fertility belongs among God’s works. The ruler of darkness recognizes nothing of his own in the sexes by which he could keep their offspring as his rightful property. For their difference belonged to sex, their union to the difference of their organs, and the fruit of fertility to God, who had also established those who generate offspring. Accordingly, nothing remained for which the fertility of sexual union should be awarded to the devil.

What comfort or defense, then, do you think the decency of my language gives you because I did not wish to name the desire of the flesh in this passage? Even if I had passed it over in silence throughout the whole work, that would have brought no blame or injury upon the thing itself. It was being defended under more decent names, and indeed in language perfectly clear to the understanding. Suppose, then, that with more reserve than the subject required I had chosen to veil in silence the name of what we cover with clothing. Must all reason and all truth therefore be thrown away? Must understanding, the judge of matters, therefore lie helpless because there is something that cannot always be brought decently before the ears, just as it cannot always be brought before the eyes? Yet what is ugly about naming the desire of the flesh? I have named it when the occasion required, and you mention it frequently, although you insist that you find it untamable.

4.7A little later comes this: “Through what, then, are infants under the devil? They are born from bodies God made, from the union of sexes that God distinguished in forming them, joined in blessing them, and multiplied by implanting fertility; and God made the infants themselves from the material of seed. If you acknowledge that the material of bodies, their reproductive organs, the union of those organs, the power of seeds, and the form and life of everyone born all exist through God, what do you think is left for which you can transfer so many of God’s works to the devil?” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.15). So you call someone else’s argument a heresy as a whole, although you acknowledge that every one of its parts is correct and catholic.

4.8For my conclusion is fortified by such truth that its whole force falls upon you. Unable even to violate it with abuse, you praised it under God’s compulsion; yet you accuse the result to which it leads.

4.9“If, then,” I say, “offspring come only through sex, sex only through a body, and a body only through God, who could doubt that fertility is rightly attributed to God?” This is so certain that it forced even your mouth to praise it. But after paying this passage your tribute, you warn that a heresy is being introduced, although the words I added merely repeated what had come before, with an explanation attached.

4.10For I say: “What, then, does the devil recognize as his own in the sexes, so that, as you say, he rightly possesses their offspring? Their difference? But that exists in the bodies God made. Their union? But it is defended by the privilege of God’s blessing no less than by his institution. Or perhaps fertility itself? But that is the very reason marriage was instituted.” What was new here? What disagreed with the previous conclusion you had approved, so that you thought you should blame it after praising it? Certainly nothing. What follows, then, from such disgusting inconsistency? Clearly, since my argument has not changed while your assessment of my words has altered, your intention is utterly foul and your reasoning weak.

4.11And your praise of catholic statements comes from your fear, not your faith.

4.12Your blame of what you have praised therefore comes from frenzy, not judgment.

4.13You will never be free of that frenzy unless you first reject your obscene doctrine. For you are caught between two crushing rocks: the shame of repentance, which Christians nevertheless never reject, and your lack of an argument. You must either follow or tear apart the sound statements that overwhelm you.

4.14Still, let us see which of my statements you have seized on to attack under the name of error. “But amid all these things,” (John 14:30) you say, “he was unwilling to name the desire of the flesh, which is not from the Father but from the world. The devil is called the ruler of this world. He did not find this desire in the Lord, because the Lord came among human beings as a man without it” (1 John 2:16) (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.14; compare 1 John 2:16; John 14:30). You certainly said I was introducing a heresy, but you add none of my words to prove it (1 John 2:16; John 14:30).

4.15Instead you say I was unwilling to name the desire of the flesh. If I was unwilling to name it, I kept silent; and if I kept silent, I said nothing for you to criticize. Who, then, persuades someone to adopt an error by keeping silent? What new and previously unheard-of monstrosities of accusation! He says a perverse doctrine is being constructed out of my silence!

4.16Let every sensible person weigh this and laugh at hostility to a speech being displayed under the name of silence. You therefore admit that I said nothing you can refute.

4.17Indeed, by harassing my silence, you have brought out something that could never be defended before, and that now cannot even be concealed, since Manichaeus’s letter, passages from which I quoted in the third book, has become public.

4.18“He was unwilling,” (John 14:30) he says, “to name the desire of the flesh, which is not from the Father but from the world. The devil is called the ruler of this world. He did not find this desire in the Lord, because the Lord came among human beings as a man without it” (1 John 2:16) (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.14; compare 1 John 2:16; John 14:30). In the very words of Manichaeus, then, you profess that the desire of the flesh was made not by God but by the world, whose ruler you nevertheless say is the devil (1 John 2:16; John 14:30).

4.19I said that you used language entirely belonging to Manichaeus because, although some of these words occur in the apostle John’s letter, it is certain that this teacher of the Church meant nothing there about the flesh, its sensation, or marital desire like what Manichaeus constructs by appropriating his words. I therefore rightly called them the words of the man whose meaning they served: language should be judged according to the intention behind it. In Saint John these words deserve reverence for their apostolic dignity, because they convey truth; in Manichaeus they appear as obscured traces of those words, not their faithful expression.

4.20For the apostle John was urging the faithful toward the summit of every virtue and stretching their pursuit of holiness to the height of the Lord’s manner of life. To be brief, he embraced under the name of the whole world every attraction of present goods and pleasures: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love is not in him, because everything in the world is the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not from the Father but from the world. The world passes away, and its desire; but whoever does God’s will remains forever” (1 John 2:15–17). If we look only at the surface of the words, he commands hatred of all the elements and declares that the world and everything in it are not from the Father and should not be loved.

4.21He is certainly an apostle, loved by the Lord Jesus with a special affection (compare John 13:23). Yet if neither the Gospel he wrote nor the weight of his letters revealed his intention, these words I have quoted could count in no way against created things: they would have to give way to all the Scriptures that declare the world was made by God. But he himself secured his position in the revered opening of the Gospel he wrote. “The Word,” he says, “was God. Everything was made through him, and without him nothing was made” (John 1:1, 3) (John 13:23). And afterward: “He was the true light, which enlightens every human being coming into this world. He was in this world, and the world was made through him” (John 1:9–10). Again: “The Word became flesh, to dwell among us” (John 1:14). These testimonies leave no obscurity in his meaning. They show that he knows and proclaims God as creator of the whole world and of everything in it, and thoroughly demonstrate that the Manichaeans have no way into his teaching. For someone who proclaims God as creator of all natures can use the names of substances figuratively to signify excessive desire, without damage to the faith.

4.22He therefore commands us not to love the world or the things in it, and says that God’s love cannot be present in lovers of this age. But in saying that love must be withdrawn from the world, he does not mean us to understand that its creator is someone other than the true God. Rather, he wants the faithful to recognize that no desires of the present life should be preferred to virtues. Their minds must not become so occupied with acquiring wealth or pursuing pleasures that they are drawn away from the vigor of Christian philosophy, which is the true philosophy. “For everything in the world is the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not from the Father but from the world. The world passes away, and its desire; but whoever does God’s will remains forever” (1 John 2:16–17). By the name “world,” then, he indicated the conduct of people who suppose there is nothing after this life, and the various displays and luxuries of mortals.

4.23For he had also said in his Gospel: “The world was made through him, and the world did not know him” (John 1:10) (Matthew 10:37). He certainly did not mean that the elements, which lack reason, could appear capable of knowing or denying Christ. He meant the multitude of unbelievers to be designated by the name “world.” In the same way here, too, he says that everything in the world—that is, every sort of person so devoted to pleasures that they measure all the goods of a rational creature by the trappings of power, loads of wealth, or the senses—has swollen with hateful pride. This is not from God, meaning it does not please God, but is from the world: it is conceived through the perversity of the human will. “Therefore,” he says in effect, “it must not corrupt you by making you imitate it. Whoever does God’s will comes to share eternal blessedness and does not fly past with the frailty of present things.”

So the apostle John commanded the world to be hated in the same way that the Lord in the Gospel showed that not only our body but even our soul itself must be hated: “Whoever does not hate father or brother, and even his own soul as well, is not worthy of me” (Luke 14:26; compare Matthew 10:37). Yet the mind of a believer certainly cannot hate itself when, out of the most thoughtful love, it purchases its own happiness even through pains and dangers. What, then, have we established? That the apostle John, following Scripture’s custom, struck with the word “world” not the nature of things but the vices of wills. And he denied that the desire of the flesh is from God in the same way that he denied this of everything in the world. Manichaeus seized on this, as though following its logic, but according to his own faithlessness rather than the apostle’s meaning. He asserts that neither the desire of the flesh, nor flesh itself, nor, finally, the whole world was made by God. Following him, you believe that the desire of the flesh was created not by God but by the devil.

4.24It is therefore established that blessed John gave you no occasion for error, and that you have swallowed what Manichaeus put forward. Now that we have defended the apostle’s reputation, let us briefly come to grips with this point. What do you think Saint John means here when he declares that the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes are not from God? Does he mean the very kind of desire that falls into vice not through its permitted moderation but through its forbidden excess? Or does he mean only the excess, which is found to be voluntary, not natural (compare 1 John 2:16) (1 John 2:16)?

4.25If you say that the name “desire” (1 John 2:16) includes even that measure in which it experiences the lawful pleasure of natural things, so that the desire of the flesh seems condemned in its entirety, then profess that the sense of sight, the world itself, and everything in the world were created by the devil. For all are equally said not to be from God. If you agree to that, you will certainly not become a Manichaean, since you already are one. You will simply show it by your confession, as you long ago showed it by your arguments. But if, frightened at having your error exposed, you say that under the names “desire of the flesh,” “desire of the eyes,” and “world” the apostle did not condemn the things themselves—which are harmless when they remain within permitted limits, and become blameworthy when they run into forbidden territory—then the point I argued in my first work will be clear: neither the kind, nor the form, nor the proper measure of natural desire is blameworthy, but only its excess. Therefore have the decency to leave this apostolic testimony alone from now on. If you pollute it with even a passing mention, you will be shown to have gained no defense at all, while being publicly exposed (compare 1 John 2:16).

4.26I treated this passage in the second book of my earlier work and showed that the desire of the flesh, which stirs the appeal of taste and sight, existed in the human being before guilt did (compare Genesis 3:6) (Genesis 3:6).

4.27Here, however, I must demand to know what dreams revealed to you that the name “desire” should mean the lust of those having intercourse. Without surrendering the resources of truth that a long discussion has disclosed, let us suppose it has not yet become clear that the flesh’s sensations belong to the same author as its form.

4.28Even if we pretend that this is uncertain, the thickest cloud of doubt will immediately envelop you. For this phrase, “desire of the flesh,” contains absolutely no indication of the reproductive organs. I can therefore say that this expression strikes at ears thirsting for different songs; I can say that Saint John rebukes the glutton’s palate; I can say that he blames nostrils dying for perfumes. In short, I can say anything except what you suppose. The choice is open when no specific word imposes a restriction. Either deny, then, that people desire the things I have named, and contradict everyone’s awareness, as you usually do; or, if your shamelessness has not yet hardened enough to resist these facts, admit that a condemnation of sexual pleasure is not found even in the words.

4.29What help, then, can you gain from my unwillingness, amid discussion of the union of the sexes and the fertility of those who join together, to disparage it by the name of desire? Neither you nor Manichaeus has been able to prove that it is devilish. And the very sequence of the preceding argument had already made it clear that this sensation, which affects the bodies of those who unite, goes back to the work of the same one whose institution accounts for bodies, marriages, and seeds.

4.30After my first work, published to the holy Turbantius, there should be no need to discuss the necessary modesty surrounding natural functions. The matter was handled there so fully that no uncertainty about it can arise unless people abandon their minds altogether.

4.31Yet since the defender of inherited sin cannot move even a fingernail’s breadth away from it, and wears out my modesty with his rhetorical elegance over why the act of sexual union itself pleases different people, I choose to settle these points with the brevity appropriate to matters already treated. Both here and in passages below, where I said, “For this reason a man will leave father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24) (Genesis 3:7), and added that the prophet came close to endangering modesty in order to express faithfully what took place, he is delighted, as though he had found plunder. He exults and cries: “An entirely open confession, forced out by the power of truth! Let the reason be given why the prophet came close to endangering modesty when expressing God’s works. Can it really be that human works should cause no shame but be openly gloried in, while divine works are shameful? Can it really be that, when God’s works are spoken of and expressed, the prophet’s love or labor wins no honor, but his modesty is endangered? What could God have done that his spokesman would be ashamed to say? More seriously, should a human being be ashamed of some work that God, not man, has done in man, when all craftsmen labor and strive as much as they can not to be ashamed of their works? Surely what shames us is what shamed those first human beings when they covered their private parts (compare Genesis 3:7). It is the punishment of sin, the wound and trace of sin, the lure and fuel of sin, the law in our members fighting against the law of the mind (compare Romans 7:23). This causes shame, and rightly causes shame. For if this were not so, what could be more ungrateful or irreligious than for us to be ashamed in our members, not of our own fault or punishment, but of God’s works?” (Romans 7:23) (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.9.22).

His delight is certainly clear. He cannot put a bridle on his joy. He has hold of a statement of mine by which he thinks he can show that natural desire is evil and assign it to the devil’s works. He says that this statement was forced from my mouth by the power of truth, and proclaims that it is utterly wicked and profane if we acknowledge that things we say were made by God must be covered out of modesty. But, carried away by his excitement, he could not weigh what he was saying. He asserts that there is nothing shameful in God’s works, but that the activity of the reproductive organs is shameful and therefore cannot be assigned to the Creator’s works. Then suddenly he confesses that it was assigned to our bodies not only honorably but justly, not only by God creating but even by God judging! I showed in the third book of my earlier work that the same thing cannot be both punishment and guilt.

4.32There is therefore no need to labor over this. Still, I commend the disputant’s sharpness: what he says was imposed by God as punishment, he refuses to say was created by God. He pronounces incompatible with God’s works what he wants to be compatible with God’s judgments.

4.33So there is no shame in his works, but the greatest ugliness in his sentences! Guilt certainly deserves punishment. But does the disgrace due to guilt therefore pass into the punishment, so that what the guilty person did can be named without shame, while what God did in judging cannot be spoken of without dishonor?

4.34It is nevertheless clear that my accuser is rolling in the very mud he recoils from. For he has invented the claim that the punishment of lust was justly imposed, and insists that this justice belongs to the divine sentence. Yet he does not deny that the pronouncement of the sentence is God’s work. He says lust, which he admits is shameful, arose from that sentence. He has therefore brought back into God’s work the very shame he had driven away.

4.35As though to crown this with a wickedness all his own, he added that God inflicted a punishment that was a lure and fuel for sin: a law in our members fighting unconquered against the law of our mind (compare Romans 7:23). By this sort of vengeance God would multiply crimes, not punish them. Having been angry at the evil will by which the sin was committed, he would make sinning a necessity thereafter. Let Manichaean frenzy decide what kind of judgment this is. At least it is clear that this judge invented by Augustine only pretends to abhor sin. In reality, he clings to sins with such affection that they could not find a more attentive nurse (Romans 7:23).

4.36What, then, do you mean, most subtle disputant? Is modesty about God’s works sacrilegious, because everything God has made must be done openly, lest our hesitation seem to accuse the craftsman? Then the apostle Paul was wrong when he described God’s works and said, “Our less respectable parts receive greater honor; and God arranged the body, giving more abundant honor to the part that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body” (1 Corinthians 12:23–25).

4.37Then respectable people are also wrong to take care to screen natural functions with modesty. So you yourself should evacuate the remains of your food—which you certainly admit do not belong to lust—under the people’s eyes. Indeed, to lend your doctrine authority by your example, perform in church everything you say happens at the will’s command. Be content to hide only the act of sexual union, from which you long ago abstained by resolution and perhaps now also through old age. Say that it is a great sacrilege for anything whose creator is God to avoid public view. Eat, then, in the marketplace or in the meeting places where your arguments resound. And when clothes become a burden under a scorching sun, cover only that part of your body that the devil has moved, and walk about otherwise naked. For you pronounce it ungrateful and profane to cover anything assigned to God’s works. Since you do none of these things—unless further progress has already brought you to do them—your very conduct confirms one of two conclusions: either everything you do not perform in public view belongs to the devil, or your doctrine has fallen, on the testimony, if not of your heart, at least of your belly.

4.38These are foolish matters, which insult my pen more than they burden it. Yet they follow necessarily from your belief. Still, I again urge the reader to pay attention. You tried to assert that whatever is proved to be God’s work is not shameful. Though you could not establish that, you committed yourself most clearly to this: you would remove shame from lust if it were shown to be God’s work. I proved this so thoroughly in my first work that I do not think even you will doubt it once you read it. Nevertheless, since this invention of yours indicates that those books have not yet reached your hands, I will not shrink from demonstrating the same point here as well.

Who, then, do you think created the irrational animals? At certain seasons they are stirred by the most ardent lust, so that it even sharpens each species’ ferocity: “Then the boar is savage, then the tigress most cruel”; “Above all, the frenzy of mares is remarkable” (Virgil, Georgics 3.248, 266). In spring the grasses swell; in spring an abundance of tender moisture overflows; “And the herds seek mating on their appointed days” (compare Virgil, Georgics 2.324–331). It would take too long to go through them one by one. Every kind of creature—held aloft by flight, submerged by swimming, or scattered by wandering through air, sea, or woods, yet neither raised by reason nor lowered by guilt—is inflamed by the familiar pleasure of bodily union. Did they receive the sexual ardor they experience through God’s work or the devil’s? You will undoubtedly cry out: God’s. So God kindles sex with natural pleasure. Manichaeus, to be sure, denies this more consistently than you do.

For the man from whom you learned to condemn the desire of the flesh considered what he must say. He pursues wherever he can find it the thing he had defined as devilish and removed from God’s works. Thus, through desire he assigned human bodies to the devil as their author, and through human beings he assigned all living creatures to him. But you still remain in Manichaeus’s camp and carry his largest dragon standard, from which you breathe deadly poison into unhappy minds by teaching natural evil and the criminality of marriage. Yet you refuse to hurl the weapons your teacher supplied against all natures. Friendlier to the beasts—though you spare them only to accuse the condition of rational creatures with greater authority—you agree that God made in their bodies what the devil made in ours, although you admit that the same thing exists in human beings more mildly than in animals.

Let the thoughtful reader understand what has been established. You do not deny that God made bodily lust in animals. This feeling is therefore not unworthy of God’s works, since it is found more strongly in substances that have taken nothing of the devil’s evil, not even by the slightest act of will. Desire, then, is defended by the example of animals and by the dignity of its author. What God, the maker of bodies, made, and what a nature free of sin possesses, is neither evil nor devilish. Once this is clear, I ask whether you agree that God made the lust experienced by human bodies. If you agree, the dispute is over: you will be corrected and Manichaeus will remain crushed. But if you say, “It could not have been made by God in human bodies,” I reply that you consider this pleasure and desire of the flesh unworthy of human works, not God’s. There can be no doubt: if you acknowledge something was made by God somewhere, yet say it could not have been made in human beings, you are not taking away the testimony due to desire but seeking an undeserved distinction for the human body.

See, then, how profane your sect’s conclusion is. You call unworthy of mortal flesh what was not unworthy of the Creator’s work. By this reasoning you have not disparaged lust; you have exalted the human being you meant to accuse. Such is the consistency, and such the reward, of someone who declares war on truth: he is always struck by results opposite to his efforts. I will therefore now rise against you with a more consistent use of your own words, as every sensible person recognizes. Can it be that when God’s works are assessed and described, reason receives no hearing and the examples of all natures receive no consideration (compare Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.9.22)? Does human madness rise so high that a man thinks unsuitable for his own flesh what he sees flourishing through God’s work in creatures that share his nature? For the origin and constitution of our bodies are no different from those of these creatures.

4.39Just as we received God’s image through the reason of the mind (compare Genesis 1:26–27), so we experience our kinship with cattle through the affinity of the flesh. Although its form differs, its substance, drawn from the material of the elements, is one. Our flesh will indeed see eternity according to the merits of the rational soul: either miserable in suffering or glorious in rewards (Genesis 1:26–27).

4.40On what grounds, then, would something be unworthy, not of God’s image—for the soul’s substance differs from the flesh’s—but of the perishable servant of God’s image, when it was not unworthy of God himself to create it? God made bodies; God distinguished their sexes; God made the reproductive organs; God implanted the feeling through which these bodies unite; God also gave power to seeds; God works in nature’s hidden places from the material of seeds. But God makes nothing evil and nothing guilty.

4.41God made the lust of human beings just as he made that of animals. In animals he left the impulses unrestrained, but in rational human beings God established a limit. The prudence and decency God gave provide desire with a covering. Therefore God blames neither its proper measure nor its kind, but its excess. That excess arises from the unruliness of free will and accuses not nature’s condition but what the agent deserves.

4.42Now consider what follows from your opinion: whatever is believed good should not be covered out of modesty. But I have shown that this desire naturally implanted in the sexes is not evil, since it belongs to God’s work. Accordingly, you must abandon either your impiety or your modesty. But why do I say this? “If the Ethiopian changes his skin or the leopard its spots” (Jeremiah 13:23), then you too will be washed clean of the Manichaean mysteries.

4.43It follows, then, that you must put aside modesty and, while remaining friends with your teacher, enter an alliance with the Cynics. As Cicero reports in On Duties, the arguments of some Stoics also accompany them. They criticize ordinary decency because we regard as disgraceful in speech things that are not shameful in reality, while we call by their proper names things that are shameful in reality. Committing robbery, perpetrating fraud, and committing adultery are shameful acts, but naming them is not obscene. Working to produce children is honorable in reality but obscene in name. “They argue many other things,” he says, “against modesty along these lines. But let us follow nature and avoid everything that offends the approval of eyes and ears” (Cicero, On Duties, book 1).

So you too, who dislike this natural reasoning, the sister of decency, must either say that working to produce children—a task that requires modesty—is uglier and more profane than robbery, sacrilege, and murder of a parent, all of which are supremely shameful in reality but contain no obscenity in their names; or, if you blush to accuse marriage so far that it outweighs even crimes when compared with them, urge married couples to name that union as confidently and freely as we usually name murder of a parent or robbery. If you then add, to mock Christian ears as you usually do, that bodily union intended for offspring is stained by no injustice but can be judged good within its proper measure, embrace the deed of Crates of Thebes. He was a wealthy and noble man so devoted to the Cynic sect that he left his inherited wealth and moved to Athens with his wife Hipparchia, who followed this philosophy with equal commitment. When he wished to have intercourse with her in public, as Cornelius Nepos relates, she drew her cloak over herself to conceal it and was beaten by her husband. “Plainly,” he said—in keeping with your views—“you are still poorly taught, since you do not dare to do in others’ presence what you know you are right to do” (Cornelius Nepos).

Such conduct is entirely due from your flocks: natural acts should be practiced without any barrier of modesty, because they are proved good by having been created by God for multiplying bodies. Return the favor to the four-footed animals, then. Their examples defend your bodily sensation against the devil’s ownership and Manichaeus’s mouth; you too should imitate their freedom in mating as testimony to the goodness of the act. It is fitting that those who have defended your organs should provide instruction for your conduct.

To establish by repetition what we have done: you said lust should be clothed in no modesty if God had made it. Although I treated this fully in the four books of my earlier work, I have also shown here, through the testimony of all the animals that you still admit were created by God, that sexual lust was created by God. Yet I acknowledge that in human beings it should be screened by modesty. It therefore follows from your doctrine that you should bring back before us the elegance of the Cynics after its long exile and perform natural acts before the city’s eyes, because they were made by God. Do you see how blindly you leaped upon my statement, “In order to express faithfully what took place, the prophet came close to endangering modesty” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.9.22)? Your teacher, whose inventions I quoted in the previous book, criticizes this consistently with his own fables, since he denies that God made any bodies. But you have shamelessly dared to handle it while acknowledging—though out of fear—that God created the bodies whose sensation you attribute to the ruler of darkness. That claim has been crushed with all the power of truth expressed in the evangelist’s faithful words: “Everything was made through God, and without him nothing was made” (John 1:3).

4.44The time urges us to move on to other matters. But since you plainly have nothing to peddle to uneducated ears except modesty about natural functions, I will touch as briefly as possible on what seems to remain. Who denies that the decency with which we cover our genitals varies according to persons, places, occupations, and customs? Thus nakedness that would be quite obscene in public gatherings carries no shame in the baths. The dress of the bedroom is one thing, half-naked and carefree; dress in public is another, more careful and more ample. Again, neglect of precautions often indicates familiarity: the more unknown or honored the person present, the more carefully one dresses. And no one has blamed sailors or many craftsmen for nakedness. To show that such simplicity belongs more to the work than to the person, even the apostle Peter, following everyone’s custom, fished naked in the boat after the Lord’s resurrection (John 21:7). Turn your eyes next to the work of physicians: in their care for health they apply their art to the parts modesty conceals. Nakedness is even becoming to athletes.

Moreover, not only among young people bound together in a wanton companionship, but even among certain whole nations, both sexes go uncovered and unite without choosing a private place. Yet why be surprised if a Scot and the barbarity of neighboring peoples do this, when the philosophy mentioned above judged the same thing acceptable, and the doctrine of the advocates of inherited sin has arrived at the same point? What fixed measure of modesty, what boundary, can be maintained amid so many variations, and amid practices defended partly by necessity and partly by companionship, by which it could be proved that the devil mixed natural ardor into the sexes? Your opinion’s support has plainly been dissolved by occupations, places, customs, arts, and whole nations together. Meanwhile, what I defend through reason itself and the teaching of the apostle Paul remains unconquered: God, the author of all things, created every body, every bodily member, and every bodily sense. But he arranged them so that, as occasions require, modesty should clothe some of our members and natural decency should display others. It would be as indecent to cover these others as to expose the privacy of the genitals at an unsuitable time (compare 1 Corinthians 12:23–25) (1 Corinthians 12:23–25).

4.45Having settled this in the present work as far as a matter already treated required, I come to your statement that this natural desire was not in Christ. For this is how you object to me: “But amid all these things he was unwilling to name the desire of the flesh, which is not from the Father but from the world. The devil is called the ruler of this world. He did not find this desire in the Lord, because the Lord came among human beings as a man without it” (John 14:30) (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.2.5; compare John 14:30). You have therefore pronounced that Christ, whom the catholic faith confesses to be a true human being in every respect, did not have in his flesh the desire spoken of by the apostle John. But John, as his words showed, declares that the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes, together with the whole world, are not from the Father (1 John 2:16). I have explained how this ought to be understood.

4.46But you fasten on the very name “desire” and want the sensation of the eyes to have been as absent from Christ’s body as that of his inner parts.

4.47Here, then, I urge the reader to attend with his whole mind. He will see the Apollinarist heresy revived through you, but with a Manichaean addition. For Apollinaris is said at first to have introduced this account of Christ’s incarnation: only a body seemed to have been assumed from human substance, while the divinity itself took the place of a soul. Christ would thus appear to have taken up a human corpse, not a human being. This began to be overturned by the testimony both of reason and of the Gospel. For if he had assumed flesh alone, everything Christ said in calling himself a man whom the Jews persecuted for speaking the truth would necessarily be accused of falsehood, since a human being cannot exist without soul and body together (compare John 8:40). Or again, he had said in the Gospel: “I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again” (John 10:18) (John 8:40). What soul could be laid down if none had been assumed? After being refuted by the authority of such testimonies and by evident reason, Apollinaris devised another claim from which his heresy, still continuing today, arose. He said that Christ did possess a human soul, but lacked bodily sensations; and he pronounced him incapable of being affected by any sins.

4.48He was not, on this account, someone who avoided offenses through the strength of his judgment, but someone who could not feel the desire for vices because his flesh had the advantage of being separated from our sensations.

4.49As the matter shows, such flattery gravely damages the catholic faith. It is not merely unnecessary but profane. By wishing to show something superior in Christ’s body, lest sharing our flesh should diminish it, Apollinaris deprived him of the full possession of natural sensations. He did not see how far the ruin would extend when truth was damaged even by flattery. For an objection raised by the catholics thundered against him: under such a belief, Christ’s saving mysteries would suffer a greater loss than his members. “If,” (Luke 4:2) they said, “Christ was made from David’s seed (Romans 1:3), made from a woman and made under the Law (Galatians 4:4), in order to give us an example, so that we might follow the footsteps of the one who committed no sin and in whose mouth no deceit was found (1 Peter 2:21–22), yet he did not put on all the properties of our substance—if he bore either flesh without a soul or a human being without the sensations nature gives us—then he is not shown to have fulfilled the model of an example and a law. What was praiseworthy in despising the enticements of the senses if, through nature’s favor, he was incapable of them? What was remarkable in restraining eyes that did not wander because his flesh kept them from doing so? What was great in turning his nostrils away from enticing scents if they did not know how to receive them? What was astonishing in maintaining strict restraint over meals every day if he could not feel their appeal? Finally, what difficulty was there in fasting for forty days if hunger could not trouble him (compare Matthew 4:2; Luke 4:2)? What reverence did the discipline of ears deserve, receiving only honorable words, if they had an inborn deafness to improper ones? And what glory was there in chastity if manhood, rather than willingness, was absent, and what was thought to arise from strength of mind came from weakness of the members?” (Matthew 4:2)

4.50Finally, what prize was there for endurance if the pain of wounds and blows could not reach the soul because the path of sensation was blocked? What, then, did Apollinaris’s flattery achieve? All the beauty of the virtues Christ had embodied was emptied out and withered by undeserved praises of his nature. Stripped of all the splendor of its truth, it exposed the Mediator’s sacred teaching to ridicule. Moreover, he would not merely lose the distinction of his works, being fortunate by birth rather than by virtue: he would also face charges of fraud if he told mortals, “Strive toward the patience of a man who feels nothing, and come through real torments to the virtues of an unreal body that suffers no pain”; or, “Conquer the definite impulses of your own nature and imitate the chastity of someone whom weakness made appear pure.” Certainly nothing more profane or wicked can be imagined than such inventions.

Apollinaris had not actually said all these things. But by making that one pronouncement—that the man Christ lacked the sensations implanted by nature, which fall into vice through excess rather than through use—he received all these replies from the catholics in silence, condemned by his own opinion. For the catholic faith is built by affirming all the things whose denial, or the consequences of whose denial, formed and condemned Apollinaris’s heresy. Judge, then, what verdict should be passed on you. You condemn the union of the sexes like Manichaeus. You separate the nature of Christ’s flesh from the common condition of humanity, according to the Manichaeans. You accuse the desire of the flesh, following the statements of your teacher Manichaeus. You say that sensory desire was not present in Christ’s body, whether according to the Manichaeans or according to the Apollinarists. Yet you want us to call you neither an Apollinarist nor a Manichaean! Still, I yield and grant you a favor; I do not regret being generous. As far as I am concerned, you may avoid appearing a follower of Apollinaris, for he devised the lesser impiety. But you yourself make it impossible for you to be called anything other than a Manichaean.

4.51I showed in the third book of my first work that, if natural sin were believed, one would necessarily and irrefutably have to say that Christ too inherited guilt from Mary’s flesh. You place him under the devil’s power by asserting that the entire substance of human beings belongs to the devil’s jurisdiction.

4.52So, leaving that aside for the present, I demand to know where you have read that Christ was a eunuch by nature.

4.53Although he was born from a virgin as a sign (compare Isaiah 7:14), he did not reject the male sex; rather, he assumed its reality. He was complete in every internal part, complete in body, a true human being, a perfect man, if we believe the apostle Peter’s discourse in Acts (Acts 2:22, 33). He was distinguished by unbroken chastity, guarding both mind and eyes without ever relaxing his heart’s strength. That he accomplished all this by strength of mind, not weakness of flesh, is witnessed by his sleep, food, beard, sweat, labor, cross, and the lance (compare Matthew 8:24; Luke 24:42–43; Isaiah 50:6; Luke 22:44; John 4:6; John 19:18, 34). These testify that the desire of the flesh, mingled with the senses of the whole body, and the reality, soundness, and natural condition of his members were present in him. He did not lack bodily sensations; he ruled them.

This is the ground on which the catholic faith challenges the nations and the Manichaeans: the message of his flesh, like that of his cross, is foolishness to those who perish, but God’s power to those who will be saved (compare 1 Corinthians 1:18). This is how he commended his love toward us (compare Romans 5:8): the Mediator’s devotion assumed everything that Manichaean impiety tears apart. Therefore nothing in my Lord makes me ashamed. I hold fast to the reality of the members he took on for my salvation, so that I may receive the solidity and strength of his example (Isaiah 7:14) (Matthew 8:24) (Luke 24:42–43) (Luke 22:44) (John 4:6) (John 19:18) (John 19:34) (1 Corinthians 1:18) (Romans 5:8).

4.54I proclaim that all his holiness rested on the benefit of his mind, not on an exemption granted to his flesh. In this way nature is defended both by his creation of it and by his assumption of it, and human life is directed by imitation of his virtues. Neither of these two things can be praised without the truth of the other. His sacred work will have as much dignity as his human body has reality; and the defense of his flesh will extend as far as the holiness of his life requires. Conversely, blame of one affects both. As much will be taken from his virtues as is taken from his limbs. If anything is scraped away from the solidity of his substance, all the adornments of his conduct perish; and losses inflicted on the one born return as an insult to the one who suffered. In short, if the substance of his flesh is reduced by removing any natural property, the entire display of virtues vanishes.

I will therefore deny nothing in the members of the Mediator, made from a woman, that is known to be natural (compare Galatians 4:4). And see how different the boundaries of reason and modesty are. The Christian faith is not ashamed to say that Christ had genitals, although we conceal them in ourselves as decently as we can (Galatians 4:4).

4.55Thus nature has prescribed that there are certain things reason, and likewise faith with reverence, may name, though modesty and decency of conduct do not allow them to be exposed to sight. In this way the Teacher of the Nations assigns reality to Christ’s flesh and holiness to his spirit: “Great,” he says, “is the mystery of devotion, which was manifested in flesh, justified in spirit, appeared to angels, was preached among the nations, was believed in this world, and was taken up in glory” (1 Timothy 3:16). Just as he commended this to be believed as true, so he announced that its opponents would arise at the end of the age. For he immediately continues: “In the last times some will depart from the faith, attending to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared, forbidding marriage, requiring abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and by those who have known the truth; for every creature of God is good” (1 Timothy 4:1–4).

The apostle both foresaw and condemned this pollution of the churches that you vomited out by following Manichaeus: this betrayal by those departing from the faith, which consists in preaching natural evil and condemning marital union. He showed not only what would be said, but also what would follow from it.

4.56When he says that abstinence from foods will be taught, an intelligent reader understands that he is not accusing Christian restraint or announcing the possible appearance of people who prescribe the ordeal of fasting (compare 1 Timothy 4:1–4). Rather, he shows that people would arise who said that all the animals God created for mortals’ food were polluted by the devil’s evil because they were born through desire and sexual union. He then expressed the consequence: foods must be renounced if their reproduction is believed devilish. That is why you remove this slander against bodily union from animals, so that your pretense can survive. Yet you say that human beings, made in God’s image, belong to the demon’s jurisdiction because of this very desire in those who beget them (compare Genesis 1:26–27). Both you and Manichaeus therefore have one reason for disparaging substances and transferring them to the devil. But he condemns every animal because of this feeling experienced in a natural act; you condemn not all, but—what is uglier—the better ones. You acquit pigs, dogs, and donkeys to appear to avoid the Manichaeans. But for the very same reason as Manichaeus you condemn all human beings, who were made in God’s image. Placing natural evil nowhere except in God’s image, you declaim against us as accuser of the saints and defender of donkeys (1 Timothy 4:1–4) (Genesis 1:26–27).

4.57Christ, then, no less a true human being than true God, lacked nothing natural. But it was right that the one giving the example of perfection should excel in every pursuit of virtue. His chastity, exalted by uninterrupted integrity and stirred by no lustful appetite, had remained virgin in its holy mind. His greatness of soul mastered every sense and conquered pain. Through his humanity it was to become imitable by all the faithful, and through its sublimity, wonderful.

4.58So here, as in everything, you have spoken most profanely in saying that what belongs to human nature was absent from Christ’s flesh. You drew this, deceived, not from any sound vein of Scripture but solely from Manichaean filth. Yet to display a greater abundance of resources for defending truth, let us grant your dream that the desire of the flesh you speak of was absent from Christ. This was certainly condemned first in Manichaean and afterward in Apollinarist frenzy. But what support could it give your doctrine? It would not immediately follow that something was evil if he had chosen not to assume it. Since good things rise by degrees in worth, one could say that he proceeded through the best without condemning goods placed below him by choosing those above. Just as he did not defame marriage by following virginity, so he would not have condemned the sensation of the reproductive flesh even if he had been unwilling to possess its capacity in his own substance.

4.59To confirm a plain matter by an example: it is better to possess reason than not to possess it. Human beings were made rational, while animals were made irrational. Yet because human nature surpasses four-footed animals, those animals must not therefore be called an evil or the devil’s work. Suppose, then, that when Christ formed his own members, he chose not to mingle with them a sensation of the reproductive organs that he would not use. When he formed the members of Isaac, Jacob, and everyone else, giving them both sex and sensation, was he therefore doing something evil? Or did he call the devil to help when he came to these things, so that the devil might mingle necessary pleasures into the members Christ himself had assembled? As I have shown, with God’s help, both in this work and in the earlier one, you have obtained absolutely nothing, however small, against the divine works through the person of Christ. For it has become clear that the Savior’s body lacked nothing belonging to human nature.

4.60Accordingly, there can be no sin in that nature, since no injustice was found in the one in whom the whole nature is present (compare 1 Peter 2:22) (1 Peter 2:22).

4.61Therefore, whether sexual desire was or was not in Christ’s flesh, it is not shown to be evil or devilish.

4.62I hurry toward other matters, yet astonishment at these things holds me fast. What is this great fury against another person, that even if you do not understand Scripture, you fail to weigh your own words? You always argue in such a way that whatever you throw returns upon you with greater force. You said, of course, that there is no cause of modesty except the desire of the flesh displayed in movements of the reproductive organs.

4.63You also said that it is sacrilege to judge anything believed to have been made by God shameful, apart from this desire of the flesh; and that Christ did not have this desire of the flesh, which gives mortals a reason for modesty. Did you not see what follows? Christ should have joined gatherings naked, without any regard for modesty, so as not to incur the sacrilege you invent by being ashamed, in his flesh that had no desire, of his own and his Father’s works. But if he had no such desire and nevertheless observed modesty, then even on your account it is irrefutably proved that modesty is due to the human body, not to its sexual heat.

4.64You therefore see that you vainly called it a sin to acknowledge that a covering must be applied to these works God made: our Lord instituted this as humanity’s maker and practiced it when he became human. May reverence for the Redeemer grant pardon because, to defend the truth of the mystery and destroy the Manichaeans’ wickedness, I speak boldly of his flesh. Unless faith demanded it, restrained reverence would not touch this subject.

4.65“But he,” you say, “was unwilling to name the desire of the flesh. He is silent because he is ashamed; and with a remarkable shamelessness of shame, if one may say so, he is ashamed to name what he is not ashamed to praise” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.7.17). So you are displeased that we know, according to the apostle, that our less respectable parts must be covered with the decency they require (1 Corinthians 12:23). In this, our judgment follows the Creator’s: what he placed in a private part of the body, we likewise cover with a modest screen.

4.66The varieties of expression whose service I use, and which you not only fail to imitate but even attack, were developed by refinement in Greek and Latin, not in every language. Other languages are called natural because subsequent cultivation has brought them neither richness nor polish; they use entirely simple names for bodily parts. Thus among the Hebrews, in whose language Scripture’s purity is contained, everything is indicated by its own proper word.

4.67The genitals of both sexes are named as freely as feet and knees. Yet even with this authority supporting me, I have not neglected the aids of more modest speech. Neglect of decency without any compulsion from the subject lies open to the most just criticism. Decency should be maintained in words no less than in actions, as far as the subject allows. Natural desire, then, could not be convicted by the reproach of shame and has been defended by its Creator’s dignity. The purpose was not to treat it as some great good, since it is shared by human beings and animals, but as a necessary instrument of the sexes: rescued from the demons’ jurisdiction and placed among the works of the one who made the world and bodies. No one accuses it except Manichaeus and his heir, the advocate of inherited sin. It is therefore evident that the entire fiction of natural sin has vanished, since its whole support depended on accusations against nature.

4.68I therefore had to ask what the devil recognized as his own in the sexes, by which he could rightfully pluck their fruit. He had not assembled the flesh, formed the members, given the reproductive organs, distinguished sex, or ordained marriage. Nor had he honored with fertility or sprinkled with pleasure the union without which marriage cannot exist.

4.69Trying to meet these arguments with a deer’s fear and a fox’s deceit, you deceived the patron to whom you write by telling him that the ruler of darkness dominates God’s works and image because of natural bodily sensation, that is, the desire of the flesh (compare Genesis 1:26–27). Yet the flesh’s sensation must necessarily belong to the same author as the flesh’s nature (Genesis 1:26–27).

4.70It is therefore clear that you did not strive to refute the objections, but to deceive miserably the patron to whom you were writing. You wanted him to think you had brought forward some crude statement that you could rightly bite at, although you had already praised it by conceding the preceding points and the divine institution of bodies.

4.71I admit, however, that you thought very hard about what to say. Your talent and your effort are evident. You certainly weighed most skillfully what should be asserted on behalf of inherited sin. No one else could have written more cleverly for natural evil. Indeed, even you could not have accomplished it so elegantly had your old teacher’s inventions not helped your talent.

4.72For you understood that a charge could never be fastened on infants, who have deserved nothing of their own, without condemning bodies. You therefore needed the help of Manichaeus, who excluded the desire of the flesh from God’s works and assigned both marriage and bodies themselves to the devil as their author.

4.73So the ugliness of the cause you defend has made truth rout you and drive you away. Otherwise, if you wished to come over to the catholics, how much more elegantly and fully you yourself would develop what I assert!

4.74Although I hardly dare pronounce you gifted with a sharp and watchful mind, when I see how sluggish and ugly your judgment is in choosing the cause you have undertaken.

4.75For if, with your faith entirely intact, you were attempting to shake what cannot be defeated merely to show the strength of your learning, in the manner of a school exercise, while intending to award the victory to those you opposed once the playful contest ended, I would approve your literary enthusiasm but rebuke your irreligious example. Instead, you follow with the ugliest stubbornness a doctrine that lacks even the false coloring of plausibility and that you cannot defend by any testimonies of the Law, since these never count against reason. It bristles with impiety and lies prostrate in foolishness, existing nowhere except amid the groins of human desires, pierced through by decency, argument, and sacred law. One of three conclusions therefore follows: either your understanding is leaden, or you suffer the chains of that sorcery we have heard is contained in the Manichaean mysteries, or both at once.

4.76I, however, find nothing to admire in my own talent because I understand that sin cannot exist without will, bodies without God, bodily sensations without bodies, marriage without union, or newborn people without God’s activity. And I hold as certain that what is proved unjust is not divine, and what is divine cannot be proved unjust. It is no less plain than these things that imputing one person’s sins to others who were not even there, much less consenting, is unjust. Enlightened by these suns, I am entirely justified in looking down on the Manichaeans’ caves. They think either that sin can exist without will, or that God does not make human beings, or that bodily sensation belongs to one author and bodies to another. They suppose either that someone weighed down by charges of injustice is God, or that the eternal creator of all can be charged with the crime of injustice, or that even a shadow of justice remains when one person’s acts of will are attached to another person’s birth. Accordingly, I assess the merits of the opposing sides by their causes, not by their talents.

4.77But let us return to the case. You said I had been unwilling to name desire because “it is not from the Father but from the world. The devil is called the ruler of this world. He did not find it in the Lord, because the Lord came among human beings as a man without it” (1 John 2:16) (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.26.41; compare 1 John 2:16; John 14:30). Notice this: you were speaking of a natural thing, and after saying it was from the world, you added that the devil should be believed ruler of the whole world. You were thus acknowledging him as author not of voluntary acts but of natural things—that is, of natures (John 14:30) (1 John 2:16; John 14:30).

4.78After saying this, you added: “Hence the Lord himself also says, ‘See, the ruler of this world is coming, and he finds nothing in me’” (John 14:30). Then you add your own explanation: “Nothing, that is, of sin, either inherited at birth or added in the course of life.” Show, then, that the Lord said in the Gospel that he had no sin inherited at birth.

4.79Why do you deceive unhappy souls by lying that something was indicated when it was not? The Lord says in the Gospel: “See, the ruler of this world is coming, and he finds nothing in me” (John 14:30) (Matthew 4:1–11). The devil certainly encountered no sin in him, because he was defeated in every temptation he brought against him, whether when he hungered or afterward when he preached, through his persecutors (compare Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13). The Savior therefore declares that the devil detected no sin in him. Yet he certainly would have found it if anything were inherited through the flesh’s condition, since Christ too had been made from a woman descended from David’s seed and Adam’s stock (compare Galatians 4:4; Romans 1:3; Luke 3:23–38) (Luke 4:1–13) (Galatians 4:4) (Romans 1:3) (Luke 3:23–38).

4.80The devil would therefore have found a natural crime in him if any such crime existed. He would have held the body liable if he had poisoned it either in the first parent or in the very woman who bore him. It would not matter whether a late and ineffective intention of the will resisted the conditions of its own material. Struggling against nature, it would not cleanse the one born but would provoke the tyrant—all the more since the will could not be free if nature were captive. So if sin lay in the very sensation and condition of the flesh, if human nature itself belonged to the demon’s dominion, Christ would either have been guilty or would not have been human. If, then, a curse is assigned to human nature, the one who became flesh to dwell among us must likewise either be assigned guilt or be deprived of humanity (compare John 1:14) (John 1:14).

4.81Manichaeus did both. Having invented the claim that evil exists naturally in flesh, he said that there was no flesh in Christ, to avoid confessing that there was injustice in him.

4.82But the catholic faith crushed him on both points. It declares that evil does not exist naturally in flesh and that therefore Christ lacked nothing human and possessed nothing unjust. Conscious of his own saving work, he cries: “See, the ruler of this world is coming, and he finds nothing in me” (John 14:30). Certainly nothing he could accuse: he could not defame a nature whose will he had not bent toward sins.

4.83That was the very reason he tempted Christ: following his customary art, he wanted to capture him by persuasion, since he could corrupt no one by creating him (compare Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13) (Matthew 4:1–11) (Luke 4:1–13).

4.84Thus Christ’s incarnation defends the work of his own divinity. He brought to me my nature and his own will, offering that will as a mirror and a rule for me. By declaring that the devil had found no sin in him, he showed that guilt is acquired not from the flesh’s creation but solely from the will (compare John 14:30). Nowhere in Scripture do we read that Christ escaped a sin he knew was inherited at birth. Rather, clear testimony fully teaches that the righteousness of the humanity he assumed rested not on a difference of nature but on voluntary action (John 14:30).

4.85For the apostle Peter says: “Christ died for us, leaving you an example, so that you might follow his footsteps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:21–22). The apostle’s statement certainly agrees with the Lord’s voice. The Lord says in the Gospel, “The ruler of this world is coming, and he finds nothing in me” (John 14:30). The teacher of the Church commends the same point, saying there was no offense in Christ. But by truthful testimony he explains why Christ had no sin: “Because,” he says, “he committed no sin.” He did not say, “Because he received no sin,” but, “Because he committed no sin.”

4.86But if there were a crime in nature, Peter’s statement would have been ignorant. He evidently judged it sufficient testimony to spotless holiness to clear Christ’s actions of crimes, although sin would be believed to dwell in him through natural poison. If Peter had thought anything of natural evil, he would therefore have mentioned this part more carefully and emphatically. He would have written, “Christ left us an example: he neither committed sin nor acquired the sin we inherit at birth.” (1 Peter 2:21–22) Then it could fittingly follow that no deceit was found in his mouth (compare 1 Peter 2:21–22). But if Peter had thought this, he would never have mentioned an example. For whom would he have presented for human beings to imitate if the nature of an alien flesh had set Christ apart, and a difference of substance had impeached the authority of his teaching?

4.87Moreover, the belief in natural sin would not merely destroy the force of imitation; it would expose fraud in the very praise offered to Christ. With what seriousness, with what face, could anyone say that no deceit was found in his mouth? If he had come in a condition of flesh different from ours, he would be proved to have practiced deliberate deceit not only in teaching, which is less serious, but even in being born, which is more serious. What sort of conduct would this be? Human beings would be established in natural evil and the devil’s kingdom, sinning under the deadly necessity of an inborn plague, or naturally serving the law of sin that ruled in their members (compare Romans 7:23). Yet he would force them, even under threat of punishment, to imitate him, and demand his own righteousness from people of a flesh whose evil had terrified him so greatly that, though he wished to display a model of goodness under its appearance, he avoided the reality of its nature. How much more rightly could the sickness of sinners, secure in their claim to be compelled, say to him: “When we are well, we all give sound advice to the sick. If you were in this condition, you would think very, very differently!” (Romans 7:23)

What, then, has your impiety achieved? This necessary consequence: if sin is believed naturally present in our flesh, Christ either assumed that flesh and is liable to its evil, or did not assume it and is bound inescapably by the injustice, not of his birth, which then appears false, but of deliberate deception. All this is so foul with blasphemy that it can scarcely be set out without horror, even while being torn apart. Let the Mediator’s dignity therefore stand by his example and his work, and by our faith. Defending the truth through both his words and his apostle’s, that faith never ceases to proclaim that Christ, a true human being, assumed from Mary’s womb flesh of the same nature as ours. Though a true human being in every respect, he had no sin. To indicate this, it suffices for the apostle Peter to say that he committed no sin, teaching that one who had not committed it could not possess it (compare 1 Peter 2:21–22). No deceit was found in his mouth. He offered a holy example to those sharing his nature, which he himself had made in everyone. Sin is therefore clearly not inborn, since Christ did not have it: without losing the honor of his divinity, he became flesh precisely so that we could imitate him (1 Peter 2:21–22).

4.88Having completed these points as the subject required, I would like to question you at least briefly. With what confidence do you say there was no sin in Christ while praising Jerome’s writings? In that Dialogue he composed under the names Atticus and Critobulus, with a remarkable elegance befitting such a faith, he even relies on the testimony of a fifth Gospel, which he says he translated, to try to show that Christ had not only natural but even voluntary sin, because of which he knew he needed cleansing by John’s baptism (compare Jerome, Dialogue against the Pelagians 3.1). From another testimony of John the evangelist, he also fastens on Christ the disgrace of falsehood (compare Jerome, Dialogue against the Pelagians 2.6; John 7:8–10). In the letter you sent to Alexandria, you boast of this work so much that you say Pelagius, overwhelmed by its masses of Scripture, cannot defend free choice. But that work was answered by the catholic man who had been attacked. I have now mentioned it only to make you recognize that you agree neither with the holy Scriptures nor even with the helpers of your own doctrine (John 7:8–10).

4.89For you abandon the Manichaeans when they disparage pigs and goats, though you accompany them in accusing human nature. With them, too, you overthrow in Christ not the appearance of flesh but the basis of his example. At least in words, you also remove natural sin from Christ, lest you seem to place him too under the devil’s power, something not even Manichaeus himself did. Yet you praise Jerome, who does not fear to blaspheme him by saying that he entered into familiarity even with voluntary crimes. So you roll without turning aside among your friends’ various filth and inventions, and rage in abuse only against the catholics. For they say that God is not the author of evil; that human beings made by him are not naturally evil; that God’s laws are just; that his image can turn away from evil and do good (compare Genesis 1:26–27; Psalm 34:14); and that Christ committed no sin in his members, his commands, or his judgments (compare 1 Peter 2:22). Therefore, although the assertion of truth makes you sick, I believe that thoughtful people are instructed, and even some of those wounded by your lies can be healed (Genesis 1:26–27) (Psalm 34:14) (1 Peter 2:22).

4.90Enough of these matters. Let us now come to the point on which a large part of the case turns. Examined and drained of life by its force, the Manichaeans’ envoy has produced evidence of a reply as faithful as his talent is elegant. After praising and approving the words of mine I quoted above, with nothing new intervening, he approached the part in which the argument I had promised was completed. I had asked through what those whom God made were under the devil. I answered in his name, “Through sin, not through nature,” and replied in my own: “But, as you yourself agree, just as offspring cannot exist without the sexes, so an offense cannot exist without will. Do infants, then, possess a will at the time of conception, when they do not yet possess a soul? Or at the time of their birth, when they do not yet possess the use of reason?”

When he reached this point, he set out only this much of my objection: “But just as offspring cannot exist without the sexes, so an offense cannot exist without will.” And he replied: “Indeed, that is so. For in this way ‘through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). Through that one man’s evil will, all sinned in him, when all were that one man. For that reason, each inherited original sin from him” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.15).

I therefore urge the reader to examine our contest attentively. What did you gain, most learned of two-footed creatures, by failing to complete my statement? Although the part you suppressed contained an explanation of the earlier statement, the whole force nevertheless remains equally in what you put before yourself. I faithfully set out your usual reply, as your own assent made clear. Asking through what infants whom God made were under the devil, I answered in your place, “Through sin, not through nature.” You certainly see that I practiced no deceit here. I said what is on the advocate of inherited sin’s lips, although it is not in his doctrine. To this I replied, “But just as offspring cannot exist without the sexes, so an offense cannot exist without will.”

You broke this apart with shameless deceit. You mentioned my words that, just as offspring cannot exist without the sexes, so an offense cannot exist without will; but you suppressed what followed about the infants’ will. And you answer, “Indeed, that is so. For in this way ‘through one man sin entered the world’ (Romans 5:12): through that one man’s evil will, all sinned in him.” Is this answering? Is this arguing? Is this, finally, even showing a regard for sobriety? Learned people certainly laugh at the cleverness of sophisms, where shared words are used to trick the respondent’s simplicity. Yet those sophisms, though lacking the solidity of truth, are at least colored by an elegant surface. What sort of monstrosity of argument is this, which is neither solid with truth nor polished with sophistry? I certainly said that sin cannot exist without free will. Once that is granted, your doctrine is destroyed, since you think an offense exists in human nature without any will on the part of those held guilty.

4.91With what shamelessness, then, do you both approve my statement and refuse to abandon your doctrine? The statements of the two sides cannot be joined by any agreement, since opposite assertions do not share the truth at the same time. If I agreed that sin was natural, I would necessarily fall away from the force of the statement that sin can exist only in free will. In the same way, you, by agreeing that I spoke rightly in declaring that no sin exists without will, should immediately have rejected the opinion by which you believed sin to be natural.

4.92For it is evident that whatever is natural is not voluntary.

4.93Therefore, if sin is natural, it is not voluntary; if it is voluntary, it is not inborn. These two definitions are as opposed to one another as necessity and will, whose affirmation arises from the denial of the other. Just as “voluntary” means nothing other than “not compelled,” so “compelled” means nothing other than “not voluntary.” These two therefore cannot exist, or as it were live, together. Their nature is such that one lives only when the other is extinguished.

4.94Since this is so unshakable that no argument can overthrow it, choose whichever you prefer and consistently affirm either my statement or yours, so that you impute guilt either to necessity or to will. When I say “whichever you prefer,” I am not advising you as though your opinion were still hidden: you learned through Manichaeus to bring crimes into nature. I give this warning so that the truthfulness of your argument may be put on record.

4.95Let the thoughtful and attentive hearer weigh what you answered me. We are certainly discussing infants, who possess no will of their own minds. The question is through what they are under the devil, when God made them and you agree that they themselves have done nothing evil. You proclaimed that they belong to the demon’s jurisdiction because of sin, not because of nature. My reply rose against this: “But just as offspring cannot exist without the sexes, so an offense cannot exist without will.” (Romans 5:12) You answered, “Indeed, that is so”—that is, an offense cannot exist without will. But after confirming this, with what shamelessness did you add, “Yet through one man sin entered the world, through that one man’s will” (compare Romans 5:12)?

4.96Had you been asked about Adam’s actions, or whether he sinned by his will? That question will indeed soon be put against you. Granted, you enjoy deceiving others; but how ugly it is to deceive yourself! Yet I cannot persuade myself that you suffer such ugliness from conviction rather than fraud. In one and the same line you agree that an offense cannot exist without will, then immediately add that the sin which you said could not subsist without a free movement of mind reigns in all human beings without will.

4.97Again, there is a large difference between the propositions. You said, “There is no offense without will,” and answered, “But there is an offense through one person’s will.” Does the following reply, introduced by a preposition taking the accusative case, agree with the earlier definition, secured by a preposition taking the ablative case? The question was whether a crime could exist without will, and it had been established that it could not. You added that sin entered through one man. Yet the issue was not through what it began, but without what it could not exist.

4.98This detestable theft is plain. It was immediately punished by the retribution that clings to sins: before it could spread to destroy its hearers, it entrapped its own author. No one denies that the first human being incurred a sin. The question is how that sin could be found in newborn people. Define what you think the condition of the first sin was. You say, “There was free will, for sin cannot exist without will.” I approve this. But then you add, “Yet this sin, which cannot exist without will, clings to newborn people without will” (compare Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.15).

4.99Then your concession that sin does not exist without will is false, if, although committed through will, it could nevertheless pass to others without will.

4.100Sin therefore now exists without will when it is found in those from whom you remove an evil will.

4.101See, then, where your subtleties carry you. You try to persuade us that something does not exist through the very means by which it can exist.

4.102That is, sin exists without will through the very fact that it cannot exist without will.

4.103Thus it is to lose its own condition through its own condition, and exist without what it was defined as unable to exist without! This is denying reality. What comparable thing did Anaxagoras do when he said snow was black? You invent the claim that a thing’s nature is denied by its own fruits. Necessity and will are opposites, so that, as I showed above, they destroy one another by mutual conflict. Yet through a new and impossible alliance and a monstrous relationship, you make one arise as the other’s effect. You say necessity grew from the fruits of will, so that will erased itself by multiplying itself and changed its own condition through its activity. To state the matter in its own terms: after will began to be will, it ceased to be will. What could be imagined, I will not say more stupid, but more insane? Since these two, necessity and will, cannot coexist, and since you have confirmed my statement that an offense cannot exist without will, while also agreeing that infants have no will, you are dragged by the throat into admitting that there is no sin in them, since you professed that sin cannot exist without will.

4.104As for your addition, “Through one man sin entered the world,” I have shown here how inappropriately it was placed, just as I explained in the second book how it should be understood. But now that the present argument is complete, I would like to reconsider your exceedingly sharp statement. You say: “‘Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death; and so it passed to all human beings, in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). Through that one man’s evil will, all sinned in him, when all were that one man. For that reason, each inherited original sin from him” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.15). “They sinned then,” you say, “when all were that one man.”

I had already pointed out that you wrote this to Marcellinus (Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.11; 3.14). This testimony convicts you of believing and embracing the propagation of souls, taken particularly from Manichaeus’s very entrails; I quoted his statements in the third book. It is certainly so ugly that, although you imply it, you nevertheless never dare profess it. But let us postpone this for now: it is killed both by the obscenity of its first advocate and by the fear of his successor—that is, you. At present I want to examine the confusion that tosses you about in argument. You say, “Through that one man’s evil will, all sinned in him, when all were that one man.” If all were that one man, how did all sin through his evil will, when all these people whom you say were in him could have sinned by their own wills? Indeed, to turn the argument back, he was unhappier than everyone else, since he alone bears the odium, although according to your doctrine everyone sinned in him.

Infants therefore possessed will not only before they were born but before their great-grandparents were generated. They exercised choice before the seeds of their substance were created. Why, then, do you fear to say that at the time of their own conception they possess free will, by which they do not naturally inherit sin but voluntarily commit it, if you believe that those conceived today possessed sensation, judgment, and an effective will so many ages ago? You did not hesitate to state this in the books issued under Marcellinus’s name, plainly to show the madness that grips God’s enemies. There you say: “These infants sinned in Adam so that they might be created like him” (Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.11). What more false, insane, and filthy words could sound than that they sinned beforehand so that they might be created? That is, by acting they deserved to become beings who could act, and their action was older than their substance. It is enough to point out these inventions, more suited to Bacchic revels and ritual wands than to literature.

From this flowed your reply: “All sinned in him, when all were that one man, from whom each inherited original sin.” There is no need to labor here to show that, since will is a person’s act, will cannot exist before the person whose will it is. What I especially want understood is that even on this opinion there is no original sin. For if everyone who sinned was there, they inherited nothing from an original evil, because they all committed it through their own efforts. The inheritance of sin is therefore destroyed not only by catholic truth but by every argument of its own defender. That is indeed the nature of lies: they do not maintain a consistent pretense. Wasteful of shame and greedy for what belongs to another, they are exposed in everything they seize.

4.105After this reply, he tries to wash away another point on which I had struck him. For after asking about infants’ will, I continued: “But you deny this”—that is, that a sinful will is present in newborn people—“and nevertheless say infants are under the devil. Nor do you conceal why you think they live under his power. You say, ‘Because they are born from the union of the two sexes, they are under the hostile power.’” The testimony of his own words therefore made it plain that he claims infants for the demon because they were born from the union of the two sexes. Through this I showed that he had enslaved marriage to the devil, although God instituted it and it cannot exist without union.

4.106He now puts this before himself, beginning with my question: “So you say,” he writes, “that they are under the devil because they are born from the union of the two sexes?” Let us hear what explanation he gives. “I certainly say,” he replies, “that they are under the devil because of an offense. They are not free of the offense because they were born from that union which cannot perform even what is honorable without shameful lust. Ambrose, of most blessed memory, also said this” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.15). What disastrous perversity in the man! What an unspeakable intention! What shameful falsehood!

4.107Does this man dare to say he does not condemn marriage, to mock uneducated ears with such wickedness, and to claim that he has withdrawn from Manichaeus’s company? By repeated professions he places the union of the sexes, the act of marriage, and the parents’ feeling and sensation within the devil’s kingdom. Adding the help of his own sharpness to these Manichaean inventions, he pronounces the union devilish, located in both the act and the flesh of the married couple. Yet because of it he assigns the innocent to the devil’s kingdom, while acquitting those who perform the act! Always hostile to God in this way, he defends those who, according to him, serve the devil through lust.

4.108But the infants whom he says God makes he assigns to the enemy’s dominion. Thus he accuses not the demon’s work, whose ministers he clears of guilt, but God’s work, which the pleasure conscious of the devil’s gift could not reach. So this accuser of marital activity, yet absolver of lusts, this assailant of innocence and slanderer of divine fairness, did not fear to write: “I certainly say that they are under the devil because they were born from that union.” Seeing the wickedness of this statement laid bare, he tried to defend it by some authority, which he could not produce from Scripture, and added that Bishop Ambrose had thought the same. It is no surprise that he accuses the dead when he also accuses the harmless.

4.109How much more rightly you would say: “Manichaeus said the same thing in his letter to Patricius. He also said it in the letter he wrote to his daughter Menoch, and in many other writings that you have thoroughly absorbed.” Instead, you try to draw the bishop of Milan into your company. Because you cannot obtain a defense, you want to find consolation.

4.110Do disputants’ writings count against God’s law or God’s work?

4.111For the present, it is more than enough for me to prove even from this that you have nowhere read your belief in the sacred writings: in so important a case, you have produced nothing except the bishop’s little sayings, as you call them. If you had been able to find anything more authoritative, you would undoubtedly have left these alone.

4.112But fortunately you first relieved me of the burden of such persons. In the book you composed to Timasius against free choice, holy Pelagius had recalled venerable men, both Ambrose and Cyprian, who had commended free choice in their books. You replied that their authority placed no burden upon you, even saying that if they had thought anything wrongly, they had atoned for it through progress toward a better life (compare Augustine, On Nature and Grace 71). Let your own words be returned to you so that you are ashamed to stir hostility from names alone. Yet the statements of Ambrose and the others whose reputation you strive to stain by associating them with your party can be defended by clear and kindly reasoning.

4.113They may have spoken somewhat simply, or, while examining some other subject, may have had no need to meet questions arising on the side. They frequently praised marriage, thought no bodily feeling had been implanted by the devil, and did not subject God’s works—the members of nature—to the devil’s kingdom. They also explained, as occasions arose, marriage instituted by God and granted his blessing, and free choice. It is therefore humane to judge that they do not stand in fellowship with your wickedness if you find certain things ambiguously or carelessly placed in their writings. Just as the fact that all heresies conceal themselves behind some testimonies of holy Scripture and try to defend themselves by them does not count against Scripture, so I will not allow the reputation of catholic men to be surrendered because of some words poured out less cautiously. They did not intend to condemn marriage, deny free choice, or wound innocence. If they had intended this, they would not have strengthened your doctrine; they would have lost the honor of their office.

4.114I therefore freely infer and pronounce that if any of them survived to the present day and saw the glory of Christian discipline extinguished, free will idle in everyone and trying to impute to necessity whatever it commits voluntarily, and disparagement of God’s works and overthrow of his law whispered into the people’s ears under the name of ineffective grace, he would be stirred against you with all his bitterness. Recognizing also that natural sin cannot be distinguished from Manichaean impiety, he would defend the catholic faith more plainly and more carefully, either correcting you or condemning you.

4.115No one has the right to accept definitions and exclude their consequences. Therefore anyone who says infants belong to the devil’s jurisdiction because they are generated from sexual union undoubtedly condemns that union, in which nature acts, together with nature’s own institution.

4.116Either both are denied together or both are accepted together. Although one can reject both, one cannot choose only one. It is, however, easier for an unlawful union to be burdened with the fault of will while the fruitfulness of its seeds remains defended, than for the sexual act to be vindicated while its fruits are accused. Your wavering between fear and impiety will therefore not establish new rules of argument, allowing you to accept one of two connected things and exclude what belongs to it. “Light-footed deer will graze in the sky” (1 Corinthians 15:20–23) (Virgil, Eclogues 1.59) before a conclusion can be denied after its premise has settled the matter.

The apostle Paul uses this form of argument when he says, “If the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen. If Christ has not risen, your faith is empty” (1 Corinthians 15:16–17). But now Christ has risen; therefore it is certain that a day of resurrection awaits the dead (compare 1 Corinthians 15:20–23). To press this same point upon the reader with a shorter example: suppose there is doubt whether what is just is good. I ask whether you acknowledge that everything just is honorable. Once that is granted, I add another question: do you also pronounce everything honorable good? Once that too is granted, whether you like it or not, I conclude: if everything just is honorable, and everything honorable is good, then everything just is good. Anyone who tries to resist this conclusion after accepting the first premises does not shake reason’s structure but exposes himself to ridicule.

To bring the comparison back to the case: the question is whether sin exists in nature. I asked whether you would concede that no sin exists without will. You agreed, as your own words testify. I added whether you thought an infant possessed will. You denied this too. What follows as the third point, if sin does not exist without will? This is so certain that it cannot be doubted even by the Academics, whose wealth consists in holding nothing certain. So when you deny the third point after the first two premises, although it contains their conclusion, you do not overturn the foundations of reason: you reveal your frenzy.

4.117Suppose, then, that the bishops whose words I am now clearing heard it doubted whether marital union was good. I would ask them whether they acknowledged that bodies were formed by God. Once that was granted, I would add whether they agreed that marriage was ordained by God. With that likewise confirmed, I would ask again whether offspring could exist without union. Once this was denied, what would follow? Clearly, if a body exists only through God, union only through a body, and offspring only through union, then both offspring and union belong to the same author as bodies.

4.118Sensible men, catholic bishops, would undoubtedly agree to this conclusion. They would see that no one other than the true God had made anything in the flesh’s sensations or the offspring of the sexes; that God had made nothing evil; and that evil is nothing other than an evil will sinning without any compulsion from nature. They would surely pronounce that Manichaeans and advocates of inherited sin had been shattered by the shining thunderbolts of catholic reasoning.

4.119Stop accusing men of sound mind and leaders of churches. Let less careful remarks not be brought to judgment: a brief hesitation does not deserve anger, but a stubborn intention does. Let us instead imitate the zeal with which they built up their peoples by exhorting, beseeching, and rebuking. Would they have done any of this if, like you, they had believed sins natural rather than voluntary?

4.120Let us proceed to the rest. Your claim that you assign offenses to the devil, not bodies, has absolutely no force. As I have frequently shown, you are simply denying the facts, with no aim except to avoid the odium of Manichaeus while breathing his poison. Bodies—quite plainly, bodies—are what you assign to the ruler of darkness: you profess their union devilish and accuse their reproductive organs, their movements, and their offspring. Following your earliest instruction, you openly accuse members, not vices. You call devilish the very thing that Manichaeus too resents seeing flourish in the sexes, as I showed from his writings.

To give the reader in brief repetition something he can retain: either show that infants possess will or remove the charge from them. When you fail to do this and instead assert that the devil possesses them because they were generated from bodily union, you show that you assign to the hostile power not sins, which do not exist without will, but bodies themselves. So the lust found in both human beings and animals is natural and instituted by God. But this lust you suffer in the inconsistency of your argument, through which you move among various and opposing doctrines, is conceived no less from stupidity than from impiety. I therefore rightly distinguish Ambrose from your company and do not call him a Manichaean, as you request.

4.121You say Jovinian hurled this insult at him (compare Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.5.15), though I think you are lying here. But let us grant that you may at least be truthful in accusing Jovinian, and that he called Ambrose a Manichaean. That was plainly insane. He could not rightly be called a Manichaean when he preached that nature was good, sins voluntary, marriage instituted by God, and infants made by God. So if Jovinian thought that preferring virginity amounted to accusing marriage, he had no idea what he was saying. Opposition is one thing, ranking another. Praise of a good is a step toward better things; defamation of nature is a road to Manichaeus.

Since Ambrose did not condemn marriage or call marital union either the devil’s work or a necessity for sinning, Jovinian acted wickedly in comparing him with Manichaeus and thinking there was no difference between an accuser and a praiser of marriage. For if Ambrose said that those generated from lawful bodily union instituted by God had lied of their own will after they began to use reason, following the example of upright people, he nevertheless did not intend that union to seem a necessity for lying, but an indication of universality. His statement, “Those born from parents lie,” is like saying, “Every human being who governs his own choice has lied at some time.” (John 7:8–10) For he knew that no one except Christ had existed without the union of parents. Thus this sensible man meant marital activity to indicate not injustice but generality. He declared that Christ had avoided every lie, identifying him by the miracle of the woman who bore him. This thunders powerfully against Jerome, whose follower you are, who specifically tried to fasten a lie on Christ (compare John 7:8–10). Therefore someone who repeatedly praised creatures against your error was not rightly called a Manichaean, if he was called one at all.

4.122Yet although Jovinian is accused of hostility to Ambrose, he is acquitted when compared with you. When will the judgment of sensible people grant you enough credit to place you on the same level as Jovinian? He said there was a necessity for good; you, for evil. He said people were kept from error through the mysteries; you say they are not freed even through grace. He dissolved Mary’s virginity by the condition of childbirth; you transfer Mary herself to the devil by the condition of being born. He equates better things with good things—that is, virginity with marriage. You call marital union diseased and cheapen chastity by comparing it with something utterly foul. You do not insert a difference of degree between them; you change the whole category, preferring virginity not to a good but to an evil. It is the utmost cheapness to be pleasing only in comparison with something utterly disgusting.

Again, what did he do to insult God that resembles what you do? He wanted to weaken the force of God’s judgment on the side of kindness; you, on the side of malice. He says the good and the best will enjoy equal honor before God. You say the good and the impious—that is, the innocent and the devil—will be tormented by one punishment. He wants God to appear supremely merciful; you, supremely unjust. He says people initiated into God’s mysteries cannot sin. You contend that God himself sins: by weakness in the mysteries, by excess in his commands, and by cruelty in his judgments. Since the distance between you and Jovinian is as great as the closeness between you and Manichaeus, Jovinian is proved more tolerable than you to the same degree that Manichaeus is more dreadful than Jovinian.

4.123But let us examine the rest. I think the reader has been instructed more than enough by what we have treated about the strength with which he either attacks anything in my statements or defends his own opinion. It will therefore not be necessary to demonstrate this by repeating all his writings. For he puts before himself scarcely more than isolated, scattered little lines from my book, often praising them and sometimes tickling them with the briefest criticism. Yet what he thinks he should bite at was not said by me in the way he supposes. I therefore direct the reader to my work: he will see that its argument agrees with truth.

This man, who complained that I accused him of attacking nature and seeds, could not endure continuous pretense. After soothing his patron’s hearing with tricks, he puts out his head like a tortoise. He had said that, unless Adam had sinned, people could have generated children as we ordinarily move our joints or trim our nails. Then he added: “But if the seed itself carries no curse, what does this passage in the book of Wisdom mean? ‘You were not ignorant that their race was wicked, that their malice was natural, and that their thought could never be changed; for they were a cursed seed from the beginning’” (Wisdom 12:10–11) (Psalm 58:4–5). He follows the testimony with this argument: “Surely, whoever these words concern, they concern human beings” (compare Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.6.17–2.9.21).

Here is the man who professed to have abandoned Manichaean pursuits! Taking an opportunity from a statement he does not understand, he pronounces the seed cursed, malice natural, and the thought of the unjust incapable of change. It is said that those living beside the Nile’s cataracts have lost their hearing from the roar of the falling waters. Perhaps rumor invented that, spreading larger tales from great things. Still, the example serves to rebuke the deafness of fools who resist the voice of facts like deaf adders, amid the din of mutual intimidation (compare Psalm 58:4–5; LXX Psalm 57:5–6). Augustine cries: “The human race is wicked; its malice is natural; its thought forever unchangeable; its seed cursed from the beginning.” And there are still people who think he has not been stamped all over with Manichaeus’s mark! Let the public followers of that filth be questioned today. If they say anything different, let us be judged liars.

So if malice is natural, how do you pretend not to pronounce nature evil? If the seed is cursed from the beginning, how do you say you accuse the vices of wills, not of seeds? If evildoers’ thought cannot be changed, how do you falsely swear that you acknowledge free choice? Unless the only thing left is for you to say that those Hebrews, Sirach or Philo, who are uncertainly believed to have authored the book called Wisdom, were Manichaeans.

4.124The reader may now be waiting to learn how this testimony should be understood. The very man who appropriated it has shown that it concerns neither inherited sin nor the Manichaean opinion. For he says, “Whoever these words concern, they concern human beings.” (Wisdom 11:23–12:2) Surely, if it spoke of natural sin, it would speak not of some unspecified people but of everyone. The Manichaean opinion defames the nature of all mortals generally. But the statement under examination receives testimony even from its own plagiarist that it was pronounced not against everyone but against some. It is therefore clear that it had no business with inherited sin, since the statement strikes not at all but at a number of people.

Having shown that none of it concerns this profane opinion, let the writer’s soundness be defended by the testimony of his own book. He says to God: “You have mercy on everyone, because you can do everything, and you overlook human sins for the sake of repentance. For you love everything that exists, and you hate none of the things you have made. How could anything continue to exist unless you had willed it? You spare everything because it is yours, Lord, who love souls. For your good spirit is in all things. Therefore you correct those who stray little by little, and warn them about their sins, speaking to them so that they may abandon malice and believe in you, Lord” (Wisdom 11:23–12:2; Latin numbering 11:24–12:2).

4.125Do you see how hostile this grateful praise of God is to your opinion? It says that he creates souls and loves them. You deny this, swearing that innocent souls are under the devil and hated by God, though they possess nothing except what they received from their author.

4.126Your doctrine also does not admit the repentance that the writer affirms God grants, since it contains the claim that evil is natural and wickedness cannot change.

4.127His commendation of God’s warning sinners to abandon malice and believe in him entirely overturns the belief in natural evil. For it is certain that inborn things cannot be abandoned.

4.128Having explained God’s patience and his most gentle ordering of things, by which he does not desire the death of the dying person but rather that he turn back and live (compare Ezekiel 18:32; 33:11), the writer continues to prove what he said by examples. He mentions those whose terribly wicked lives in the land of Canaan had kindled the Almighty’s anger, so that the land would be granted, through the most just punishment, to the victories of the Israelites, now living under God’s law. “Hating those ancient inhabitants of your holy land, because they did hateful deeds before you through spells and unjust sacrifices, and were merciless killers of children, you willed to destroy them through our fathers’ hands, so that the land dearest to you of all lands might receive a worthy settlement of God’s children” (Wisdom 12:3–7) (Ezekiel 18:32).

He testifies why God wished the seven nations to perish, after whose destruction for the most part the promised land was given to the Israelites (compare Deuteronomy 7:1–2). Lest God appear to distinguish persons by partiality within one human nature, he explains why the Canaanites deserved to be killed. “You hated,” he says, “those ancient inhabitants of your holy land.” (Ezekiel 33:11) Why? According to you, he should certainly have added: because they were generated from a devilish union; because the ruler of darkness possessed them; because Adam infected everyone who would come from his stock. But he says none of these things. What reason does he give for the hatred? Only deeds committed through free will. “You hated them,” he says, “because they did deeds hateful to you.” (Deuteronomy 7:1–2)

But so that we would not be ignorant of the deeds, and so that you could not call these acts of the nations reproductive desire, he details the kinds of action themselves. “Through spells,” he says, “and unjust sacrifices; and they were merciless killers of children.” That is, they served sorcery and sacrifices that were unjust because they were offered to idols, after worship of the Creator had been abandoned. To these sacrileges they devoted their own relatives, appeasing demons even by the enormity of murdering their children. See, then, how far he is from speaking of the crime Manichaeus invents, a crime naturally adhering to every mortal. He recalls that their chief offense was that they did not refrain even from destroying their own little children. Those children’s deaths would not bring odium on the killer if both the murderer and the child displeased God because of one and the same sin.

4.129“Yet even these,” he says, “you spared as human beings, and sent wasps ahead of the army—not because you lacked the power to subject the impious to the righteous in battle, but, judging little by little, you gave them room for repentance” (Wisdom 12:8–10) (Genesis 9:20–27). “You pricked even those sacrilegious people,” he says in effect, “with the stings of flies, so that from the trivial instrument of their affliction they might recognize the avenger’s power.” After God’s purpose and the form of punishment made clear the voluntary sins whose rejection was awaited and sought, only then does the writer’s rebuke rise against the stubborn impiety of those punished. He says they had entered into such familiarity with crimes that these seemed in a way inborn. “You were not ignorant,” he says, “that their race had been most wicked, that their malice was natural, and that their thought could never be changed; for they were a cursed seed from the beginning. Nor did you grant pardon for their sins out of fear of anyone” (Wisdom 12:10–11).

He means: “Although you so kindly and patiently granted time for repentance and set up a watchtower of warning, to defend your justice and mercy against every slander and every suspicion of cruelty, they nevertheless despised your warnings after despising your earlier benefits.” They acted as though wishing to prove that they came from the seed of Ham, against whom blessed Noah, after his nakedness was mocked, had hurled curses in fatherly judgment (compare Genesis 9:20–27). Why be surprised, then, that the writer recalled the severe sentence that had struck their ancestor for his insolence, to disgrace descendants who did not cease imitating him? In the Law, imitation by descendants is frequently rebuked using terms of kinship. Thus the Lord says to the Jews in the Gospel, “You are from your father the devil” (John 8:44). Daniel is also read rebuking the filthy elders, though they came from Israel’s stock, in the same way: “Seed of Canaan, not of Judah” (Daniel 13:56; Susanna 56). The prophet Ezekiel likewise reproaches the people of Jerusalem: “Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite” (Ezekiel 16:3, 45).

This is therefore an established usage: defamation of ancestry is added to blame of the will. A person appears to cling excessively to crime when, because of that crime, even his seed suffers insult. The same custom is also observed on the side of good people: when a man appears upright in every way, he is said to flourish with inborn virtues. Thus blessed Job affirms that he drew from the breasts the compassionate feeling with which he helped the needy, or rather that it came with him from his mother’s womb (Job 31:18). No comparison, exaggeration, or ambiguity can therefore count against plain facts. It is certain that mortals are never required to correct natural properties, yet God commands human beings to desist from evil. It is thus proved with the utmost truth that natural sin cannot exist.

4.130Wisdom continues: “Who will accuse you if nations you made perish, when there is no other God besides you, who cares for all? But since you are just, you order all things justly. You consider condemning someone who should not be punished foreign to your power, for your power is the beginning of justice” (Wisdom 12:12–16). This certainly agrees with the common reasoning of sensible people that justice is the greatest mark of God—a justice that Manichaeus and the advocate of inherited sin deny with every effort of their fables.

4.131A little later it continues: “By chastising them you made your children full of good hope, because when you judge you give room for repentance amid sins. For if you delivered the enemies of your servants, who deserved death, with so much affliction by way of warning, giving time and opportunity through which malice could be changed, with what care do you judge your children, to whose fathers you gave oaths and covenants containing good promises? Therefore, when you discipline us, you scourge our enemies many times over, so that we may reflect on your goodness in judging” (Wisdom 12:19–22).

4.132You see, then, what a distinction the surface of the words makes between the natures of the two peoples: it calls the Israelites God’s children and the Canaanites a cursed seed. If the sound of these words referred to generation and birth, one would have to say that the generation of the devout differed from that of the profane.

4.133Yet even according to this nonsense, it would still be clear that the first sin was not inherited, since the seeds of so many nations together would plainly show that its transmission had been interrupted.

4.134But just as the praise spoken of the Jews does not mean that anyone should be believed to shine with inborn holiness, so calling malice natural does not mean that the seeds are being declared defective. The constitution of nature is unshakable, and whatever it possesses it receives from God its author. Without counting against that nature, this variety of words marks either the force of rebuke or the work of praise.

4.135Just as the seed is called cursed here, elsewhere, in a reading of greater authority, it is called blessed. For the prophet Isaiah says of the Israelites: “They will build houses and inhabit them themselves; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit themselves. They will not build for others to inhabit, or plant for others to eat. For the days of my people will be like the days of the tree of life. The works of their lips endure. My chosen ones will not labor in vain or beget children under a curse, because they are seed blessed by God” (Isaiah 65:21–23).

4.136Let little children wrestle with a question arising from these contradictions of words, and, capable of nothing greater than sounds, fight over the cups that amuse them. The catholic faith does not believe God’s law quarrels with itself, nor does it admit any authority that destroys reason. It listens to no opinion or flattery that stains divine fairness. Rather, it not only believes but knows God to be creator of all natures; it imputes sin to nothing other than free will. Through all these things it has no doubt that the inheritance of sin is false.