Introduction

The following letter of St. Prosper of Aquitaine, which he sent to Rufinus in A. D. 426 or 427, is the first document of the Semi-Pelagian controversy. St. Prosper was a defender of the teaching of St. Augustine, against the monks of Marseilles in Southern Gaul, who had ill-received his anti-Pelagian works and rejected the limited election of the predestined. St. Prosper argued that as the “invincibly ignorant” – that is, those who cannot hear of the Gospel – are obviously damned and reprobate according to the Bible, it is clear that God has chosen only an elect (chapters 11-15). He argued against the Semi-Pelagians that the preaching of the Faith is not given to nations because they are disposed to receive it – rather both the preaching and the disposition to receive it are gifts of God that are owed to none (chapter 15). Jansenists would later argue in a similar manner against the Molinists:

“Arnauld argued that God obviously did not want all men to be saved, because otherwise, he would not have made membership in his Church a necessary precondition for salvation. The existence of millions of non-Christians was proof of his intentions.” (Alexander Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth-Century France, pp. 69-70)

This letter would shortly be followed in A. D. 428 by one to the seventy-four year old St. Augustine, appealing that he prepare a thorough reply to the issues of which he informed him; he responded with the double tract of A. D. 428 and 429 known as The Predestination of the Saints and The Gift of Perseverance, being the last that he completed before he passed to eternal glory in A. D. 430. After his death, St. Propser became the foremost defender of his teaching against the Semi-Pelagians, to be followed afterwards by St. Fulgentius of Ruspe and then by St. Caesarius of Arles, to whose activity was due the final condemnation of Semi-Pelagianism at the Second Council of Orange in A. D. 529, which was confirmed by Pope Boniface II in A. D. 531.

Synopsis of the Argument

We give here a synopsis of the argument of the letter: all are condemned in the original sin; left to itself, free will can act only for its own perdition; only a certain number are predestined according to God’s election; the statement that God wants all to be saved, is to be understood of all who are saved, that is, of a limited universality; only through the Faith can men be saved; all who are ordained to life believe the Gospel; both faith and charity are gifts of God; only by gratuitous graces is a man moved to believe and to obey and may prepare himself for the sacrament of baptism; the free will is only used justly, and a person freed from sin, through grace; all progress and perseverance in grace is likewise due to the operation of grace; God gratuitously makes a man good, gives him to will and to do what is good and to persevere in it; no one is worthy of God’s gifts, but His grace makes the elect worthy; election is regardless of foreseen merits, as is exhibited by the blessed infants who die after baptism, who have no merits; the gratuity of election is also exhibited by those adult blessed who receive baptism in their last breath and have no merits; the wicked works of the reprobate are not an obstacle to their salvation or the reason for their reprobation, as is exhibited by unbaptised infants; there is a countless multitude of infants, no different in merits from baptised infants, who die without baptism and are lost; the call to the Faith is gratuitous; for many centuries, countless thousands died without receiving any call of the Gospel; at the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel, the Apostles were forbidden to go into certain places, with the result that many died without the call and without baptism; even in St. Prosper’s time, many nations had only just then begun to receive the Gospel, while other nations had still no glimpse of it; the reason that nations have not received the call of the Gospel is not because they were not disposed to receive it, for God can change the hearts of all, and does change the hearts of the elect; the affairs of men are not ruled by fate (the stars) but are decreed by God; St. Augustine is the foremost exponent of grace and the greatest man in the Church in that day, those interested should read his tracts on the matter.

The text of the letter given below is that translation of P. de Letter, S. J., PhD, STD, Professor of Dogmatic Theology at St. Mary’s College, Kurseong, India. It is printed in Defence of St. Augustine in the Ancient Christian Writers series.

St. Prosper of Aquitaine, to Rufinus

To his lord and dear brother in Christ, the rightly revered Rufinus, Prosper sends best wishes.

I received through our mutual friend the tokens of your brotherly concern for me, and I was glad of this new proof of your sincere and painstaking charity. And lest malicious rumors which cannot fail to reach your ears should cause you fear and anxiety, I have taken care to free you from all uneasiness, in so far as this is possible by letter. I am endeavoring to explain exactly the whole situation. Thus you will be able to learn from myself-since you could not hear every rumor our opponents are spreading-whatever is being bruited about concerning us with an evil but futile intention.

But first I must intimate to Your Holiness the nature of the issue that gives rise to these rumors. You will understand better then the calumnies of our opponents and see what light they try to obscure and with what gloom.

1. The Pelagian heresy and the doctrine by which it began its destructive attack on the Catholic faith and endeavored to poison with ungodly tenets the inner life of the Church and the very vitals of the Body of Christ are too well known to need relating. Among these tenets there is one impious assertion, however, which is the evil and tenuous seed of the others, namely, that God’s grace is given in answer to men’s merits. The Pelagians first wished to say that human nature is perfectly sound and able to attain the kingdom of God by its unaided free will, the reason being that nature finds help enough in the very gift of creation. Being naturally endowed with reason and intellect, it can easily choose what is good and avoid what is evil. And since the will is equally free for both good and evil, if men are wicked it is not because they lack the ability to do good but the endeavor to do it. They, then, as I said, pretended that the whole of man’s justice comes from his natural rectitude and ability. But Catholic doctrine rejects that statement. Yet, the very opinion which was condemned by the Catholics, the Pelagians afterwards with heretical cunning proposed under many various hues, and they managed to keep it while yet confessing that God’s grace is necessary for man to begin what is good, to advance and to persevere in it.

2. But the very grace of God revealed to the vessels of mercy the fraud by which the vessels of wrath [cf. Rom. 9:22 f.] manoeuvred to steal into this insincere profession of faith. It was found out and ascertained for the good of the faithful that the Pelagians confessed nothing more than that grace is some sort of teacher of man’s free will and that its only function is to instruct the mind from outside by exhortation, law, teaching, contemplation of created things, miracles, threats; so, everyone can by his own free will find if he seeks, receive if he asks, enter if he knocks. They meant to say that what the call of grace does first is to admonish the freedom of our wills; that grace is nothing else than the law, the prophet, the teacher: these take care in a general way of all men, so that those who wish can believe, and those who believe can obtain justification through the merit of their faith and of their good will; that accordingly God’s grace is given in answer to men’s merits. In this manner, grace is no longer grace, because, if it is rendered for merit and does not itself cause what is good in man, then its name is meaningless.

3. This cunning of the sons of darkness who wished to be taken for sons of light was exposed both by the Oriental bishops, the authority of the Apostolic See, and the African councils. Augustine also, at the time the first and foremost among the bishops of the Lord, refuted them abundantly and effectively in a number of tracts. Among many other divine gifts showered on him by the Spirit of truth, he excelled particularly in the gifts of knowledge and wisdom flowing from his love of God, which enabled him to slay with the unconquerable sword of the word not only the Pelagian heresy, still alive now in some of its offshoots, but also many other previous heresies. Against this doctor, resplendent with the glory of so many palms and so many crowns which he gained for the exaltation of the Church and the glory of Christ, some of ours, to their own great misfortune, speak and murmur in secret; but we came to know their criticisms. When they find ears ready to listen, they defame the writings Augustine published against the Pelagian error. They say he completely sets aside free will and under cover of grace upholds fatalism. He wants us to believe, they add, that there are in the human race two different substances and natures. Thus, they attribute to a man of such outstanding holiness the ungodliness of pagans and Manichees! If what they say is true, why are they so remiss, not to say ungodly, as not to remove from the Church such a pernicious bane and to oppose such insane preaching, or even to counter in some writing or other the author of such teaching? They would, to their own glory and fame, render a service to mankind if they brought Augustine back from his error! Unless perhaps those unassuming people and new censors, out of veneration and mercy for him, spare an old man once upon a time of so high merit, and keep quiet, certain that no one will approve of his writings! Let them be merciful! Or rather let them learn that not only the Church of Rome and of Africa and all sons of the promise the world over agree with the teaching of this doctor both in the faith as a whole and in particular in the doctrine on grace, but also that in the very places where they arouse remonstrances against him there are, by God’s favor, many people who learn from his enlightening tracts how to understand the teaching of the gospel and of the apostles and who rejoice in seeing his writings spread where Christ gains new members of His Body. If we deserve censure, why do they hesitate to accuse us? If we are not blameworthy, why this biting secret detraction?

4. But does not everybody know why they whisper their chagrin in private and on purpose keep silent in public? Desirous of taking pride in their own justice, rather than glorying in God’s grace, [cf. Rom. 3:21-31] they are displeased when we oppose the assertions they make in many a conference against a man of the highest authority. They know full well that whenever they raise a question on the matter, whether in some meeting of prelates or in some gathering of other people, we could put before them hundreds of volumes of Augustine. When these writings will be read and show eager listeners the unconquerable truth of the Christian faith flooding their minds with the fountains of the word of God, who of the faithful and the godly, understanding and believing what are the real causes of their salvation, will admit that bitter teaching based on untruth and ending in smoke? I, for one, hope also for this from the wealth of God’s mercy, that He will not in the end fully deprive of understanding those whom He now allows to be deceived by their own free will and to stray from the path of humility. I hope He only delays halting their advance in error in order that the power of His grace may be proclaimed more gloriously when grace will subject to itself the hearts of its very opponents; they have run into danger because of their very zeal for virtue, into peril because of the integrity of their lives. Virtue indeed is necessary; but they make a miserable use of it when they think it is a gift of nature, or if it comes from grace, then was given as a reward for some previous good work or good desire.

5. Our opponents say this on the strength of some texts of Holy Scripture, but they do not explain these texts in the proper way. To prove a proposition, such texts should be quoted as cannot be understood in another meaning opposed to that proposition, such as do not disagree with the principle for whose proof they are quoted. Now, they say that the following words are addressed to men who should act of their own free will: Come to me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up my yoke upon you and learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light. [Matt, 11:28-30] They say this applies to all men who labor in the uncertainty of this life and are burdened with sins. Those who are willing to follow the meekness and humility of the Saviour and to accept the yoke of His commandments will find rest for their souls in the hope of eternal life; those who refuse to do so are deprived of salvation through their own fault-had they wanted to, they could have attained it.

But let them listen also to the other words our Lord addressed to men who should act of their own free will: Without me you can do nothing. [John 15:5] And: No man can come to me, except the Father who hath sent me draw him. [John 6:44] And: No man can come to me, unless it be given him by my Father. [John 6:66] And: As the Father raiseth up the dead, so the Son also giveth life to whom He will. [John 5:21] And: No one knoweth who the Son is but the Father; and who the Father is but the Son and to whom the Son will reveal Him. [Luke 10:22] Since all these texts are irreformable and cannot be twisted and interpreted in another sense, who can doubt that free will obeys the invitation of God calling only when His grace has aroused in him the desire to believe and to obey? Else it would be sufficient to instruct a man and there would be no need to produce in him a new will, as Scripture says: The will is prepared by the Lord, [Prov. 8:35 (LXX)] and the Apostle: For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will. [Phil. 2:13] According to which good will, if not the one which God produces in them, so as to give them to accomplish what He gave them to will?

6. They also quote the story of the centurion Cornelius as a good example of what free will is able to do. [Acts 10:1-48] Before he had received grace, fearing and praying God, he was, of his own accord, intent on almsgiving, fasting, prayer. [Acts 10:2] That was the reason why Holy Scripture praised him and why he received the gift of baptism. They fail to see that the whole of Cornelius’ preparation for baptism was a gift of God s grace. For when St. Peter was directed, by the vision of all kinds of animals, to baptize Cornelius and also anyone of the Gentiles, [Acts 10:10-12, 28, 43, 47] and when according to Jewish custom he declined unclean and common food, [Acts 10:14] a voice spoke to him thrice, That which God hath cleansed, do thou not call common. [Acts 10:15] This shows clearly enough that it is God’s grace which, in order to purify Cornelius, had initiated all the good works that preceded his baptism. And so the Apostle had not to hesitate to give the sacrament of baptism to a man to whom the Lord had already granted this gift. The beginnings of this new and still unrevealed call of the Gentiles might have looked uncertain, had it not been clear from the signs of their previous good dispositions that God’s grace had been at work in the future converts: For all men have not faith. [2 Thess. 3:2] All do not obey the gospel. [Rom 10:16] Believers are led by the Spirit of God; unbelievers turn away of their own free will. Accordingly, our turning to God is not our doing but God’s gift; as the Apostle says, By grace you are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God. Not of works, that no man may glory. [Eph. 2:8 f.]

7. Let, then, human weakness and all generations of men condemned in the first man acknowledge their true state. When the dead are brought to life, the blind made to see, the ungodly led to justice, let them confess that Jesus Christ is their life, light, justice, and He that glorieth should glory in the Lord, [1 Cor. 1:31] not in himself. When he was ungodly, blind, dead, it was from his Saviour that he gratuitously received justice, light, life. He did not practice justice already and then receive an increase in justice; nor did he walk towards God and get strength to continue his course; nor did he love God and receive an increase in the fervor of charity. When as yet without faith, and hence ungodly, he received the Spirit of faith and was made just. The just man liveth by faith. And: Without faith no one can please God. [Rom. 1:17] And: All that is not of faith is sin. [Heb. 11:6] So, he should understand that the justice of infidels is no justice, because nature without grace is unclean.

8. When man lost his native innocence, he became an exile and a lost man, walking without knowing whereto, straying into ever-deeper error. But he was sought, found, brought back, and led into the way that is truth and life; he was set on fire with the love of God, who loved him first when he did not yet love Him. St. John the Apostle says: Not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us. [1 John 4:10] And again: Let us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us. [1 John 4:9] And still: Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for charity is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is charity. [1 John 4:7 f.] St. Paul agrees to say: In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by charity. [Gal. 5:6] Where does this faith linked with charity come from, if not from Him who gave it, as he shows, when saying: For unto you it is given for Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him; [Phil. 1:29] this could not have been done without a great charity. And again: The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given us. [Rom. 5:5] Without charity, the Apostle testifies, [Cf. 1 Cor. 13:3] neither faith, nor knowledge however great, neither virtues, nor efforts, nor works of any sort profit anything. That means: there may be many praise-worthy and admirable works in a man, but if they are without the marrow of charity, they have the semblance of holiness, not the reality.

9. No man, therefore, is of himself found worthy of the great and unspeakable gift of charity. Whosoever is an elect of God is made worthy of it, as the Apostle says: Giving thanks to the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light; who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. [Col. 1:12 f.] And to Timothy he writes: Labor with the gospel, according to the power of God, who hath delivered us and called us by His holy calling, not according to our own works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the times of the world. [2 Tim 1:8 f.] And to Titus: We ourselves also were some time unwise, incredulous, erring, slaves to diverse desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the goodness and kindness God our Saviour appeared, not by the works of justice which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us. [Tit. 3:3-5]

Accordingly, whomsoever God’s grace justifies, it makes them, not better from good, but good from bad. Later, when they make progress, it will make them better from good, not by taking away their free will but by setting it tree. When free will was unaided by God, it was dead to justice and living for sin. But when the mercy of Christ enlightened it, then it was brought out of the kingdom of the devil and became the kingdom of God. And to continue in this happy state, man’s free will is not sufficient unless he be also given perseverance by Him who gave him that diligence.

10. A proof of this is St. Peter’s faith, which, however ardent, would have given way in his temptations had not the Lord prayed for him; so the Evangelist discloses in these words: And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. But 1 have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren. [Luke 22:31 f.] And: Pray, lest ye enter into temptation. [Luke 22:40] To prove better still that free will can do nothing without grace, to the same Peter who had been told: Confirm thy brethren, and: Pray lest ye enter into temptation, and who had answered: Lord, I am ready to go with thee both into prison and to death, [Luke 22:33] the Lord foretells that before the cock crows, he will disown his Lord thrice. [Luke 22:34] What else does this mean but that he will be wanting in faith? Certainly, our Lord had prayed for Peter, that his might not give way; nor had He prayed in vain, for His action is one with that of the Father to whom He had prayed. Peter, who had made so great promises on his own, is allowed to run into danger, lest one should think he stood of his own free will. And after he is shaken and is giving way, he is looked on and restored by Him without whom no one can be steadfast in virtue or persevering.

11. From this profession of faith in God’s grace some draw back for fear lest, if they accept the doctrine on grace as in Holy Scripture and manifested by the effects of its power, they be compelled to admit also that of all men born in the course of the centuries the number of the predestined, chosen according to the design of God’s call, is fixed and definite with God. But it is as much against holy religion to deny this as it is to gainsay grace itself. For it is no secret, but evident to all who open their eyes, how for so many centuries countless thousands of men were left to their errors and impieties and died without any knowledge of the true God. This is shown, in the Acts of the Apostles, by the words of Barnabas and Paul, who told the Lycaonians: Ye men, why do ye do these things? We also are mortals, men like unto you, preaching to you to be converted from these vain things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all things that are in them, who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless, He left not Himself without testimony, doing them good, from heaven giving rains and fruitful seasons, filing your hearts with food and gladness. [Acts 14:14-16] Certainly, had natural reason or the use they made of God’s gifts been enough for them to attain eternal life, then in our day also the light of reason, the mildness of the climate, the abundance of crops and food would be able to save us, because making a better use of nature than they did, we would serve our Creator in gratitude for His daily gifts.

12. But let such absurd and baneful opinion be far from the minds of Christians redeemed by the blood of the Christ! Human nature cannot be made free apart from the one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: [Cf. 1 Tim 2:5] without Him there is no salvation. [Cf. Acts 4:12] Just as He made us and not we ourselves, [Cf. Ps. 99:3] so also He remakes us and not we ourselves. And lest man may seem by his natural powers to repay the price of his reparation with his works of justice, at least after he has been restored, we see the riches of God’s goodness poured out over the first moments of infants whom God does not choose because of their piety whether before or after their baptism, in whom He finds neither obedience, nor discernment, nor will. I speak of those infants who are baptized at once after their birth and, taken away from this life, are carried up into eternal happiness. And there is another countless multitude of infants of the same nature and condition as the former who die without baptism and of whom we may not doubt that they have no share in the city of God.

13. What, then, about the trite objection from the Scripture text, God will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth? [1 Tim. 2:4] Only they who fail to see its meaning think it goes against us. All those who, from the past ages till today, died without having known God, are they of the number of “all men”? And if it is said, wrongly, that in the case of adults the evil works they did of their own free will were the obstacle to their salvation, as though grace saved the good and not the wicked, what difference in merit could there be between infants that are saved and others that are not? What is it that led the first into the kingdom of God, and what is it that kept the second out of it? Indeed, if you consider their merit, you cannot say that some of them merited to be saved; all of them deserved to be condemned, because all sinned in Adam’s sin. The unimpeachable justice of God would come down on all of them, did not His merciful grace take a certain number unto Himself. As to inquiring into the reason and manner of this discrimination hidden in God’s secret counsel, this is above the ken of human knowledge, and our faith suffers no harm from not knowing it, provided we confess that no one is lost without his fault, and no one saved for his own merit, that the all-powerful goodness of God saves and instructs in the knowledge of the truth all those whom He will have to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. [Cf. 1 Tim. 2:4] Save for His call, His teaching, His salvation, no man comes or learns or is saved. Though the preachers of the gospel are directed to preach to all men without distinction and to sow the seed of the word everywhere, yet Neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. [1 Cor. 3:7]

14. Hence, when the apostles began to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, Holy Scripture reports of one section of those who heard them preach: And the Gentiles hearing were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, and as many as were ordained to life everlasting believed. [Acts 13:48] And elsewhere it says, when many women listened to Paul’s preaching: A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one that worshiped God, did hear: whose heart the Lord opened to attend to those things which were said by Paul. [Acts 16:14] And again, at the very moment that the preachers of the gospel were sent out to all the nations, the apostles were forbidden to go to certain regions by Him who will have all men to he saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, [1 Tim. 2:4] with the result, of course, that many, detained and going astray during this delay of the gospel, died without having known the truth and without having been sanctified in baptism. Let, then, Holy Scripture say what happened: And when they had passed through Phrygia and the country of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. And when they were come into Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not. [Acts 16:6 f.] Is there any wonder that at the very beginning of the preaching of the gospel the apostles could not go except where the Spirit of God wanted them to go, when even now we see that many of the nations only begin to have a share in the Christian grace, while others have not yet got a glimpse of that divine gift?

15. Or should we say that the wills of men obstruct the will of God, that those peoples are of such wild and fierce ways that the reason why they do not hear the gospel is that their ungodly hearts are not ready for its preaching? But who else changed the hearts of believers but He who hath made the hearts of every one of them? [Ps. 32:15] Who softened the hardness of their hearts into willing obedience but He who is able of these stones to raise up children of Abraham? [Matt. 3:9] And who will give the preachers intrepid and unshaken firmness but He who said to Paul: Do not fear, but speak, and hold not thy peace, because I am with thee and no man shall set upon thee, to hurt thee. For I have much people in this city? [Acts 13:48] I think no one will make bold to say that there is any nation in this world or any region on this earth in which the Church should not be established, since God spoke to His Son: Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possessions. [Ps. 2:8] And again: All the ends of the earth shall remember and shall be converted to the Lord, and all the nations of the Gentiles shall adore in His sight. [Ps. 21:28] And our Lord Himself says: This gospel of the kingdom shall he preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the end come. [Matt. 24:14] Whatever nations then have not yet heard the gospel will hear it, and as many of them as were ordained to life everlasting will believe. [Acts 13:48] For none other will have a share in the inheritance of Christ than those who before the creation of the world were elect, predestined, and foreknown, according to the counsel of Him who worketh all things according to the counsel of His will. [Eph. 1:11]

16. Let us, then, praise the works of the Lord and give glory to His mercies; let us not grow impatient at our ignorance of the choice and the number of the vessels of election. Even in former ages, when Scripture said of one people: In Judea God is known: His name is great in Israel, [Ps. 75:2] the future election of the nations was hidden; only later did God make known what He kept secret before. So the Apostle says: which in other generations was not known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body, and co-partners of His promise in Christ Jesus. [Eph. 3:5 f.] And in the Acts of the Apostles he says: The faithful of the circumcision, who came with Peter, were astonished for that the grace of the Holy Ghost was poured out upon the Gentiles. [Acts 10:45] If, then, the Lord hid and delayed His design to call all the nations as long as He pleased and revealed it when He pleased, yet the ignorance of that mystery was no harm to the faithful, why should we think it is harmful to our hope not to know how many and whom God prepares among men as vessels of mercy for the heavenly glory? For it is quite certain that all good men will enter the kingdom of heaven, and do so by the favor of God’s grace, and that none of the wicked will enter, because they deserve to be cast out for their sinfulness.

17. It is really too silly and thoughtless to say, as our opponents do, that God’s grace leaves nothing to free will to do. True, in infants who receive baptism, there is evidently no act nor desire of their wills; true also, many who have the use of their free wills but live estranged from the true God and lead a life of sin, happen to receive grace and to be saved through baptism as it were at their last breath. Yet, if we consider with the eyes of faith that section of the sons of God who reach the age when they can accomplish the works of a God-fearing life, do we not see that their free wills are not suppressed but rather reborn in grace? When unaided and left to itself, free will acted only for its own perdition. It had turned blind through its own fault; it could not recover the light by itself. But now by grace the same free will is turned back to God, not destroyed. It is given new desires, new tastes, new actions; its health is entrusted not to itself but to its Physician. For even now it is not so perfectly healthy as to be proof against what caused its past illness or to be able by its own strength to abstain from what is unwholesome. Accordingly, man who was evil in his free will has been made good in that same free will. Evil he was of himself; he becomes good by God’s gift. God restored him to his original dignity by giving him a new beginning: He not only forgave the guilt which man incurred by willing and doing what is evil; He also gave him to will and to do what is good and to persevere in it. For the Apostle James says: Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights. [James 1:17] And he shows clearly the difference between a free will led by human wisdom and one ruled by God, when he says: But if you have bitter zeal, and there be contentions in your hearts, glory not and be not liars against the truth. For this is not wisdom, descending from above, but earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and contention is, there is inconstancy and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above, first indeed is chaste, then peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, full of mercy and good fruits, without judging, without dissimulation. [James 3:14-17] They who with constancy apply themselves to these virtues follow the light not of their own but of a heavenly wisdom. For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His face come knowledge and understanding. [Prov. 1:16] And their truest glory is to glory not in themselves but in the Lord. [Cf. 2 Cor. 10:17 f.]

18. As for the objections-as inept as they are false, yet constantly repeated-that Augustine teaches fatalism and divides mankind into two different substances and natures, they fail to touch him, as in his books he refutes those very errors at length. They do not disturb us either, for we strongly condemn those opinions and their authors. Let rather the inventors of this silly fiction take care to guard themselves against the shame which such a calumny may draw on them if the persons whom they deceive with their talk take ever so little pains to read the writings of the most outstanding among the defenders of grace. Or, better still, they might spare others a long search: they should bring and ex-plain the books of the holy doctor, or at least show some passages which, if only because of their ambiguous meaning, could be interpreted in their own sense. But they never heard from us anything of the sort; they never read in our writings anything like it; we know and say that no event is ruled by fatalism but that all things are ordained by God’s decree. We also know that the nature of all men was created and is created, not from two different substances or natures, but from one substance, which is the flesh of the first man; that this nature fell miserably through the free will of the first man, in whom all have sinned; [Rom. 5:`12] and that it can in no way be freed from the debt of eternal death unless the grace of Christ reforms it after the image of God by a second creation and keeps the free will, moving, inspiring, and assisting it, and taking the lead till the end.

Your Holiness can see now, at least if my exposition is not too obscure, that there is no ground for some people to raise objections against us, and that all their silly accusations are concocted for the sake of arousing and turning against us the minds of those whom they wish to bring round to another opinion. Trust, therefore, in the power of God’s mercy. This opposition will die down in these regions just as in other parts of the world. The teaching of Augustine, the greatest man in the Church today, may someday be furthered even by those who oppose it today. You, my dear and revered brother, if you wish to be truly informed about these matters, as it is proper you should wish to be, take the trouble of reading Augustine’s own tracts. Concerning the Catholic doctrine on grace, you will draw from them a salutary insight into the teaching of the gospel and of the apostles.

May the grace of God and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you at all times and lead you by the way of truth to life eternal!

St. Augustine, Doctor of Grace