To Florus — Book 2

2.1We would be treated fairly if we were allowed to defend the cause of truth before educated judges—or, since that is denied us for now, if at least we were not battered by the uproar of the ignorant.

2.2And since we suffer the loss of raising a trophy for the churches’ salvation—a trophy that discerning judges would have awarded our just cause with remarkable support—at least the crowd’s approval should have no further power to insult us. Of the two groups I have mentioned, one would then help us and the other do us no harm, if the first possessed authority or the second a sense of shame. But affairs are deeply confused, and fools are very numerous. The church is being robbed of reason’s steering gear so that popular doctrine can sail on with its horn held high.

2.3Thus, when the wise are allowed little while the worthless are allowed whatever they please, the judgment of virtue has been expelled from the churches by the decree of rioters. What counts against us among the common people is our refusal to swell the ranks of error. I mean the crowd that weighs the worth of an opinion by its success and judges it truer the more people it sees approving it.

2.4Cicero says against Epicurus that there is clear evidence his teachings lack subtlety: people of every sort everywhere declare that they like them (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.7). These people, perversely as in everything else, treat that as evidence of wisdom.

2.5For lustful souls positively delight in slandering every holy person who has ever lived anywhere, so that the examples of distinguished deeds will not rebuke them.

2.6They positively delight in—and are deeply attached to—pleading nature’s weakness, saying that the flesh is subject to sins from birth, and placing the achievement of reform outside the human will. They call the crimes of deliberate conduct the functions of bodily parts. They say that the catholic faith consists in confessing a free will, but one through which a person is compelled to do evil and cannot will the good.

2.7They call the teaching of those who assert that a just God created humanity free to act well empty and heretical human talk: the teaching that each person has the power to turn away from evil and shine through the pursuit of virtue. For this would drive the sting of anxiety and fear into those who attribute their shameful acts to the necessities of the flesh.

2.8Finally, in churches that enjoy great honor and large congregations, they preach that sin has such power that, before the limbs are formed and before the soul begins or arrives, it flies over the seed as it is deposited, invades the mother’s hidden chamber, and makes the unborn guilty. Guilt, older than birth itself, waits for the substance to exist. Then this law of sin, dwelling in the limbs, compels the captive human being to serve crimes—a person who, even in shameful conduct, deserves pity more than punishment. For what we call the faults of an evil will is called an inherited affliction in the church by men, women, and eminent bishops (allusion to Romans 7:23) (Romans 7:23).

2.9These, then, are the whores of the Manichaeans, pandering to people’s ears with their utterly filthy doctrines.

2.10This nettle has stirred up our enemies of both sexes. Formerly its sting, produced by the vice of evil habit, was nevertheless treated with the ointments, so to speak, of wholesome exhortation.

2.11But now it has begun to be offered as medicine, and pleasure has gained the support of authority. With almost the whole world’s consent, shamelessness runs riot: the queen of minds, ruling through the bodily organs, the conqueror of decency, the undefeated captor of every soul. The more honorable our defense of truth, the harder it has therefore become. For the few who heal through speech have little power against reckless crowds hostile to their own remedies. What then? Should we sound the retreat at the sight of them, avenge the insults we have suffered by keeping silent, and laugh at others’ shipwrecks from the safe harbor of our conscience? But first, the goodwill we owe the human race opposes such hatred. So do our hope and faith in God. Besides repeatedly restoring the seemingly hopeless wreckage of the times, God has rewarded with eternal recompense the steadfastness he wished us to exercise until death, even when no result followed in the present.

2.12Rejoicing, then, in this comfort of faith, let us press on with the work we have begun and fulfill our promise to argue the case. We do not doubt that this itself is a very great part of our reward: we stand in the citadel of a doctrine which, though attacked by the envy of so many and the error of still more, has risen so far above uncertain fortunes that it enjoys an invincible reputation, holding victory in its possession.

2.13For if, as the preceding discussion has shown and the following discussion will show, everything belonging to reason, learning, justice, devotion, and the testimony of sacred Scripture supports the doctrine we defend, all our enemies’ efforts achieve nothing except to prove them utterly shameless before every learned person, utterly defiant before the holy, and utterly irreverent toward God.

2.14The advocates of inherited sin have nothing to set against the force of the reasoning that crushes them. Their other writings bear witness to this, and so do the little books we are answering. Addressed to a military man who, as he himself can acknowledge, is occupied more with other business than with literature, they beg for the help of unrestrained power against us. In their own support they keep recommending the decisions of little crowds, whether of country people or theatergoers, although no history records the deliberation by which those decisions were issued.

2.15Yet we certainly cannot deny what I have said: filthy crowds greatly enjoy blaming nature for the offenses of the will and defending moral wantonness by slandering human seed. The result is that no one tries to correct what he expects something else within him to be committing.

2.16But the feeble protection offered by blind opinion increases sins; it does not diminish them. This itch of miserable people who willingly make themselves sick will carry no weight against reason itself. Yet they claim that certain scriptural passages, especially the words of the apostle Paul, establish natural sin. I postponed explaining those passages until the second book, and now it is time to fulfill that promise. First, to equip the reader better, I will briefly distinguish what has been done from what remains. We have shown that nothing can be proved from holy Scripture which justice cannot uphold. If God’s law contains justice in its perfect form, then its adversary, injustice, can gain no strength through that law. Consequently, authority cannot defend what reason disproves. Next we proved that God is known to us by his virtues. We must therefore confess his justice just as we confess his almighty power. If his justice is allowed to collapse, his whole majesty will begin to totter. God is just in such a way that, if he were proved unjust, he would be proved not to be God. We concluded that we worship God in the Trinity as perfectly just, and it became irrefutably clear that he cannot charge infants with someone else’s sin.

2.17Just as we discussed the definition of justice, we also discussed the nature of sin. Sin proved to be nothing other than an evil will that was free to refrain from what it wrongly desired.

2.18Thus the clearest evidence taught us conclusively that there is no sin in newborn children, since the exercise of the will cannot be found in them.

2.19Clear reasoning also showed that those who say sins are natural deny free will. Indeed, the Carthaginian denied it, not in his own words—lest they carry too little weight—but with a testimony from the Gospel (John 8:36), as though that gave his denial greater authority. By explaining this testimony, we restored it to the Gospel’s dignity. We also freed the apostle Paul’s testimony from the slanderer’s snares and, with the prophet as witness, showed that our God, the potter of good vessels, is the creator of everyone (Romans 9:21; Isaiah 45:8–13) (Romans 9:21) (Isaiah 45:8–13).

2.20These are the principal points established in the first book. Any one of them alone is amply sufficient for the victory of truth. Although the further work is more than necessary, it remains for us to discuss the Teacher of the Gentiles’ statement that sin entered the world through one man (Romans 5:12). We will use the definitions already given whenever necessary and prove that reason has said nothing false. It is an act of injustice to charge some people’s births with other people’s deliberate deeds. Through testimonies from the law, in this book or the next, we will also show that this very injustice displeases God and is forbidden by him, although no one should have doubted it. These points necessarily establish both that we are entirely right to maintain that no one is born with sin and that God cannot judge newborn children guilty. Free will is therefore as intact as each person’s nature is innocent before the exercise of that person’s own will.

2.21The Manichaeans, however, rebel against both devotion and reason. They suppose that sin exists before the time of willing, which the nature of things does not allow; that the one they argue to be unjust is God; and that holy Scripture deserves slander, since they claim its written records establish a crime on the part of the deity. But none of these three things can be demonstrated by reason: neither sin without will, nor injustice in God, nor perversity in the law. Only they themselves are shown to be foolish, shameless, and impious.

2.22Above all, then, let the discerning reader hold firmly to this: all sacred Scripture contains only what catholics understand to honor God, as the light of its many statements makes clear. If a difficult expression raises a question, it is certain that the passage’s author did not intend anything unjust. It must be understood in accordance with what clear reason and the brilliance of other, unambiguous passages have disclosed. Let us now set down the words of our opponent. In that part of his argument where he had brought his God to the point of being a potter of sinners—the argument we opposed in the preceding book—he briefly said that sin entered the world through one man, without dwelling on the passage’s explanation (Romans 5:12). After many words against the excerpts he says were sent to him, however, he reached a passage of mine which he set before himself as though to attack it. Yet he offered nothing that answered the attack made on him. Instead, he took refuge in the apostle’s statement that sin entered the world through one man, and tried to explain the passage’s whole sequence in accordance with his own doctrine. For this reason I have passed over other matters and hurried to this part. Since I promised to resolve this question in the second book, I wanted both to keep that promise and to show what his argument actually was. Otherwise I might be thought dishonest for suppressing his explanation and supplying the one we acknowledge as catholic (see Against Julian, Unfinished Work 1.113).

2.23In my first work, then, I examined his statement: ‘For just as sin, whether infants derive it from this source or that, is the devil’s work, so a human being, whether born from this source or that, is God’s work’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 1.1). I quote it here as it stands in my own work, from which this man had stolen a very large portion.

2.24There I replied: ‘With due respect to your teaching authority, you are evading the issue. But understand that the truth has taken away your freedom to wander. Look: we too agree that sin is the work of an evil will, or the devil’s work. But through what is this sin found in an infant? Through the will? Yet there has been no will in the infant. Through the body’s form? But God gave that. Through the soul’s arrival? But the soul, newly created by God, owes nothing to bodily seed. Through marriage? But marriage belongs to the parents’ activity, and you previously said that they did not sin in this act. If that concession was insincere, as your subsequent argument indicates, marriage itself must be cursed for causing the evil. Yet marriage has no substance of its own: its name designates people’s activity. The parents, then, whose union caused sin, rightly deserve condemnation. There can therefore no longer be any doubt that married people are consigned to eternal punishment, since their activity enabled the devil to gain dominion over human beings. If you concede this, you lose everything you previously seemed to maintain: namely, your statement that a human being is God’s work. For the offspring’s origin lies in the union of bodies. Therefore, if evil comes into human beings through their origin, and the devil’s right over human beings comes through evil, it necessarily follows that the devil is the maker of human beings, since the origin of those born comes from him’ (quoted in Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.44–49). After this I repeated his words: ‘For just as sin, whether derived from this source or that, is the devil’s work, so a human being, whether born from this source or that, is God’s work.’ At once I challenged him as follows: ‘When I think of that frightened statement of yours that marriage is not evil, I cannot consider these other remarks without laughing. If you believe that human beings are made by God and that married people are innocent, see how impossible it is to maintain that original sin is derived from them. Certainly the one born does not sin, the one who fathered the child does not sin, and the one who created the child does not sin. Through what cracks, amid so many defenses of innocence, do you imagine sin has entered?’

2.25He therefore set this continuous passage from my earlier work before himself in his second book, although with alterations (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.44–49). For he passed over, by design I suppose, my mention of the body’s formation and the soul’s arrival. Reason, the authority of sacred law, and the catholic church all establish that a new soul is created by God in each person.

2.26He then assembled the rest, although varying some expressions. Against these objections of mine he devised nothing that could strike back at me. Confessing through his lack of an argument that my conclusion was true, he says that the apostle must answer all these points for him—the apostle who declares that sin entered this world through one man (Romans 5:12). At this point, what educated person could think him sound in the head? He did not understand that he should either pass over objections against which he could find nothing, or think up some answer to them and attach the apostle’s words in support of it.

2.27I asked, then, in strict logical sequence, as all learning will acknowledge with me, through what sin—the work of an evil will, which is also called the devil’s work—could be found in an infant. Through the will? Even our present opponent admits that no such will has existed in the infant. Through marriage? No one doubts that marriage belongs to the parents’ activity, and he had previously stated that they did not sin in this union (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). If our debater regretted this concession, as the course of his work indicated, he should admit that the parents are guilty, since their union prepares a kingdom for the devil over God’s image. I added, by the necessary steps of argument, that original sin makes the devil the creator of bodies. For if evil comes into human beings through their origin, and the devil’s right over human beings comes through evil, the devil is the maker of human beings, since the origin of those born comes from him. Realizing that these arguments would imprison the advocates of inherited sin in the Manichaeans’ cave, I turned the key to give the captives a way out. I warned him that, if he truly believed human beings were made by God and sincerely confessed married people innocent, he should understand that original sin cannot be derived from them. ‘Certainly,’ I said, ‘the one born does not sin, the one who fathered the child does not sin, and the one who created the child does not sin. Through what cracks, amid so many defenses of innocence, do you imagine sin has entered?’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.47). What, I ask, could have been framed more reverently, truthfully, clearly, briefly, and firmly than my drawing a fourth proposition—the decisive conclusion—from the three premises my opponent had conceded? Sometimes one or two premises necessarily establish a third. By what rule, then, should I be forbidden to infer the fourth proposition that follows from three admitted premises? And this is only in the second argument. In the first, five or more points are conceded to me, after which a valid and undefeated conclusion follows.

2.28Let us now turn to him. You had granted me that sin is an act of the will. I could immediately have said, as a consequence: ‘But infants have no will that sins; therefore infants have no sin.’ Yet to press you with more witnesses I asked, step by step, through what this sin could be found in an infant. Could it perhaps be through the will? Then, with your acquiescence, I adopted the premise that the infant had had no consciousness of willing. I added the question whether the infant had acquired the outlines of its limbs through the first fault. But you had conceded that God shapes them and that they are therefore good. Third, I asked whether you thought guilt was brought in through the soul’s arrival. Yet it was established that this soul was new and owed nothing to the seed. Next I asked whether, since nothing in these things remained for you to accuse, you called marriage—that is, the union of bodies—the devil’s work. But, again with your agreement, I showed that this belongs to the parents’ activity. Once everything mentioned above had been acquitted, your doctrine of transmission enslaved to the devil the married people who had caused the sin. After all this I drove home the consequence approaching you: you believe the devil is the creator of bodies, since you assigned to him the work of sexual union without which bodies could not originate. This argument showed the disease oppressing you. The second showed both how pitiable you are with such views and how invincible the catholics remain, supported even by your fear. You conceded that God makes human beings, that married people are innocent, and that infants perform no acts on their own. From these three premises it was irrefutably inferred that, when the one born does not sin, the one who fathered the child does not sin, and the one who created the child does not sin, no crack remains through which sin can be shown to have entered. If you dislike the conclusion, then deny your concession. Say that either the one who fathered the child sinned, or the one who created the child, or the child who was born. Of these alternatives, one is insane, another Manichaean, and the third goes beyond the Manichaeans: insane if you say infants commit offenses; Manichaean if you accuse married people; beyond the Manichaeans if you consider God the author of sin. But if all these things are so far from the truth that you still fear to confess them openly, with what shamelessness, most senseless of men, do you persist in denying the conclusion we have drawn?

2.29The case here concerns four persons: God the maker; the two parents, from whom the material is supplied to the maker; and the infant who is born. You say sin dwells in this company. I ask who commits it. God? You say no. The father? Again you say no. The mother? The same answer. The infant? No. And you still do not think it has been proved that something none of these four commits cannot exist among these four?

2.30What, then, will you try to persuade us of by rereading Scripture or naming people who agree with you, when you still cannot define your own view? What good does it do you to prove that Adam sinned, something I do not deny at all? Adam died so many centuries ago. Our question is through what sin is found in an infant—the sin by which God’s image is transferred to the devil’s ownership.

2.31If it comes through the parents’ union, openly condemn the marriage your argument condemns, and spare us the work of proving you a Manichaean. But if you do not dare say this, and, defiant of reason, bow to those having intercourse, you produce unheard-of monstrosities of argument. You say that lust is diabolical and, although located in the feelings of those coupling, provides the parents’ pleasure but the newborn children’s guilt. You certainly expose your own madness and shamefulness. But please do not presume so far as to think we are not free to defend newborn children’s innocence while honoring God, when you are permitted—and pleased—to accuse God while clearing the lustful people’s own bodies of what you call lust’s guilt.

2.32For when you declare that the prince of darkness planted sexual desire in humanity, and that it is the devil’s shrub producing the human race from itself as its own fruit, you clearly betray yourself: you call the devil, rather than God, the creator of human beings. By this utterly impious doctrine both the business of marriage—that is, genital union—and all flesh are condemned.

2.33But after this blasphemy you add that, while you profess the pleasure of married people who beget children to be diabolical, and the movement of the genitals diabolical, nevertheless neither the moving organs themselves nor the married people experiencing pleasure are guilty. Instead, for all these things you accuse new human beings: the deity’s fresh handiwork in newborn children. You abandon none of the Manichaeans’ impiety, but display such monstrous madness of a deranged mind that it would more properly be judged a condition to nurse than to cut away—except that the ruin of many people, your obstinacy, and your proliferation of writings testify to your deliberate will and zeal in this matter.

2.34Read the fourth book of my work on this subject too. You will understand how much, under the guise of accusation, you flatter the devil whom you call your father, and lust, your mother.

2.35But let us now examine the words of the apostle, whom you said answers everything I set out above. You write: ‘The apostle answers all these points for him. He accuses neither the infant’s will, which does not yet exist in the infant as a personal will capable of sin; nor marriage, insofar as it is marriage, which has not only its institution but also its blessing from God; nor the parents, insofar as they are parents, lawfully and legitimately joined to one another to produce children. Instead he says: “Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned” (Romans 5:12). If these people received this with catholic ears and minds, they would not have hearts rebelling against Christ’s faith and grace. Nor would they vainly try to twist these completely clear and evident apostolic words into their own peculiar, heretical meaning. They claim that this was said because Adam sinned first, and thereafter anyone who wished to sin found in him an example of sinning. Thus, they say, sin passed from that one man into all human beings, not by generation but by imitation of that one man. Yet surely, if the apostle had meant imitation here, he would have said that sin entered this world and passed through all human beings through the devil, rather than through one man. For Scripture says of the devil: “Those who belong to his party imitate him” (Wisdom 2:24; Latin numbering 2:25). But he said “through one man,” from whom the generation of human beings certainly began, precisely to teach that original sin passed through all people by generation’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45).

2.36Any educated reader of our works understands that you abuse your supporters’ ignorance and hide behind ambiguous words. The remaining crowd, of whom the prophet says to God, ‘You have regarded human beings as the fish of the sea’ (Habakkuk 1:14), are deceived as they follow one another’s lead. Ignorant of the distinctions that would save them, they think everything they see joined in words can also be joined in reality. Only a very learned and attentive person can judge what follows, what conflicts, and what the invincible and venerable law of argument requires one to infer from given concessions.

2.37That is the chief reason why, grieving over the churches’ ruin, we appeal to examination by men distinguished for their wisdom: to reveal not merely what is said, but what is said consistently. If the dispute were heard before such a council, you would certainly not be allowed to assert what you had denied or deny what you had affirmed. But in your book, which no discipline of shame restrains, you boldly heap together what catholics say and what Manichaeans say. You are content with this one impression: that people say you have answered. You think it pointless even to consider what weight or consistency your argument possesses.

2.38In fact, you grant what I asked without hesitation. Seeing what follows from these concessions, you acknowledge that you are powerless against the case we have built. You say the apostle Paul opposes everything we have said, yet introduce him as conceding the same points you had conceded. For you say: ‘The apostle does not accuse the infant’s will, which does not yet exist in the infant as a personal will capable of sin’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). Once this is granted, it is already proved that there cannot be any sin in the infant. For sin, even according to your own definition, has no other nature than the will to commit what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain.

2.39If, then, the apostle does not accuse the infant of a personal will, understanding that such a will could not yet have existed, he certainly declares that no sign of guilt appears in the infant. This is especially true when the judge is justice, which imputes no sin except one from which abstention is possible. But, not content to grant this alone, you add: ‘Nor does the apostle accuse marriage, insofar as it is marriage, which has not only its institution but also its blessing from God’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). This by itself could equally suffice to overthrow natural sin. For if the apostle knows, as he does know, that marriage is not to be accused, and if the pleasurable union of the sexes, instituted and blessed by God, belongs to marriage as its means and instrument of union, then no possession by the devil can sprout from marriage. Nor is its fruit guilty, especially before that justice which imputes no sin except one from which abstention is possible.

2.40Let us consider the third point, too, so that your generosity may be seen in your readiness to agree. ‘Nor does the apostle accuse the parents, insofar as they are parents, lawfully and legitimately joined to one another to produce children’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). Weigh what you have said: the apostle does not accuse the parents insofar as they are parents. He therefore declares that, insofar as they are parents, they cannot bear fruit for the devil, and that nothing coming from them insofar as they are parents belongs to the devil. Children, however, belong to parents precisely insofar as they are parents. Children are therefore proved neither guilty, nor under the devil’s kingdom, nor liable to accusation by the devil. To make our point clear by repetition: the union of the sexes contributes to offspring insofar as the married people become parents. If, however, they choose to behave more wantonly with one another, or stray into unlawful adulterous intercourse, that cannot concern their children, who are born from the power of seed, not from the obscenity of vices.

2.41Therefore what passes from those who beget to those born is not their shameful conduct but their seed. God instituted the power of seed and, as you are compelled to confess, blessed it.

2.42Children, then, are not guilty even when their parents sin in begetting them. For parents are connected to their children only insofar as they are parents; correspondingly, children are connected to their parents only insofar as they are children. It is established that offspring share in their progenitors’ nature, not their fault. If you declare that the apostle confirms what reason demonstrates, then we rightly defend, under his instruction, the position that parents’ sins cannot belong to their children. The apostle, radiant with the Holy Spirit; we, instructed by reason’s light; and you, crushed by the weight of the truth you attack, all jointly and truly confess that parents, insofar as they are parents, are not guilty. They are connected to their children only insofar as they are parents. Consequently, children insofar as they are children—that is, before performing any act through their own will—cannot be guilty.

2.43Let the ingenious minds of Manichaean reasoning now go and attempt everything they can. Let them endure the toil of thought for as long as they please. Reverently, not arrogantly, I promise that this structure can never be shaken.

2.44With what effrontery, then, do you add: ‘But through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12)? You interpret this to mean that the apostle says sin was transmitted from that man to his descendants by generation (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). Above, you had conceded that the Teacher of the Gentiles does not accuse marriage, which God blessed; that no will to sin exists in the newborn child; and that parents, insofar as they are parents, are lawfully and legitimately united to produce children. Immediately you add, as though you had said the earlier things in your sleep, that guilt is transmitted to descendants by generation. If they beget only insofar as they are parents, and insofar as they are parents are lawfully and legitimately united, and this union is not disapproved by the apostle because God not only instituted but also blessed it, with what mouth, by what rule, with what effrontery do you maintain that this generation is the cause of guilt, a root of crimes, and the devil’s slave?

2.45So it does not deserve accusation by the apostle, yet is possessed by the devil! It is instituted by God, yet is a fountain of crimes! Finally, it is blessed by God, as you confess, yet accused by you of being the devil’s shrub!

2.46All literary learning testifies that you have achieved nothing against me. The conflict between your statements shows how you struggle against the apostle and rage against God. But now that we have shown that things separated by their very nature cannot be joined, let us question the apostle too. Otherwise the barbarity proved to exist in your statements might be thought to exist in his understanding.

2.47I hear Paul declaring: ‘Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin; and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). You maintain that this was said with reference to generation, not to an example of sin. You call us heretics for referring it to examples, and imagine that this argument helps you: ‘Surely,’ you say, ‘if the apostle had meant imitation, he would have said that sin entered through the devil and passed through all human beings, rather than “through one man.” For Scripture says of the devil: “Those who belong to his party imitate him” (Wisdom 2:24; Latin numbering 2:25). But he said “through one man,” from whom the generation of human beings certainly began, precisely to teach that original sin passed through all people by generation’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). But I see that the apostle said nothing intended to slander human generation, condemn natural innocence, or accuse God’s work of crime.

2.48In fact, you tried to infer by argument what the words themselves had not indicated. You add that, if he had been speaking about imitation, he ought to have mentioned the devil; but because he meant generation, he preferred to say ‘a human being’ (Psalm 37:1;) rather than ‘a demon.’ I therefore ask what gave you occasion for this opinion. What? Do you deny that people sin by imitating human beings? Although so plain a matter needs no scriptural testimony, listen to David: ‘Do not compete with evildoers or envy those who practice injustice’ (Psalm 37:1; LXX/Vulgate 36:1) (Leviticus 18:3); ‘Do not envy the one who prospers in his way’ (Psalm 37:7; LXX/Vulgate 36:7) (Deuteronomy 18:9). Moreover, all the Old Testament Scriptures warn Israel not to imitate the practices of an impious nation (compare Leviticus 18:3; Deuteronomy 18:9). What necessity, then, required the apostle, if he meant imitation, to name the devil rather than a human being, when he knew that people sin by imitating both human beings and the devil? Either prove that no one can sin by imitating human beings and that this is found nowhere in the law, and then maintain that room has been made for your conjecture; or else, since it is evident that nothing has strengthened sins more than the imitation of vices, acknowledge that you inferred with great ignorance that the apostle would certainly have spoken of the devil if he had meant imitation (Psalm 37:7;) (Leviticus 18:3; Deuteronomy 18:9).

2.49It is clear, then, that imitation of evil human beings is not merely a consistent expression but a necessary one. For the moment, it is evident that this argument of yours lies defeated. You add that Scripture says of the devil, ‘Those who belong to his party imitate him’ (Wisdom 2:24; Latin numbering 2:25). I too agree that the author of that book, whoever he is, said this wisely. But the statement that some sin by imitating the devil does not help you unless you show that people cannot sin by imitating human beings.

2.50Both expressions are customary. Sometimes a person envies because he has imitated the devil; sometimes, by copying a human being, he is stained with envy or the filth of shameful conduct. The word ‘imitation’ can therefore apply to either person, whether one is speaking of a human being or of the devil. Your insistence that Adam could not have been indicated in connection with imitation is ridiculously foolish.

2.51The discussion hurries toward what remains, but we must press this point further, dividing it as briefly as possible to help the reader both understand and remember it. In almost every area we find homonyms, which we call words with more than one meaning.

2.52To keep our discussion on the matter at hand: generation properly concerns the sexes, while imitation always concerns minds. This disposition of a mind that imitates what it freely chooses either incriminates a person or advances him, according to the different circumstances. Thus, in good conduct, a person is said to imitate God, angels, and apostles. God: ‘Be perfect, as your Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48) (Psalm 32:9;). Angels: ‘Your will be done on earth as in heaven’ (Matthew 6:10). Apostles: ‘Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 11:1). In evil conduct, however, a person imitates the devil, as Scripture says: ‘Those who belong to his party imitate him’ (Wisdom 2:24; Latin numbering 2:25). People imitate human beings: ‘Do not be gloomy like the hypocrites, disfiguring their faces’ (Matthew 6:16). They imitate animals, as in the command: ‘Do not become like a horse or mule, which have no understanding’ (Psalm 32:9; LXX/Vulgate 31:9). These words, whether encouraging or warning, show the disposition to imitate. If it were impossible, we certainly would not be told to guard against it.

2.53Just as the word ‘imitation’ plainly applies in common to different things, so ‘generation,’ in its true and proper sense, indicates a substance that begets. It applies to deliberate activities only figuratively, not properly. Yet because this usage is now established, what it indicates is recognized, without allowing it to prejudice the words’ proper meanings. Thus the devil is said to beget sinners, according to the Lord’s words in the Gospel: ‘You are from your father the devil’ (John 8:44). With these words he called the devil the father of criminals who were shown to imitate his malice. Yet the meaning is perfectly clear: the name ‘father’ assigns neither a sex to the devil nor an airy substance to those human beings. Let our intended conclusion now become plain. Suppose a human being were never properly said to imitate another human being, and the apostle had said that everyone sinned through Adam. I would freely insist that scriptural usage must vindicate the apostle. Just as the Lord had called the devil a father, though he could not beget by substance, so the apostle would have described a human being as imitable, to avoid the belief that he taught anything against clear reason.

2.54But as things stand, even if I gather the Gospel’s figurative expressions, they do not support them. Much less did the apostle Paul provide any occasion for error: he said nothing improper if he declared that the first sinful man was an example to later sinners (compare Romans 5:12) (Romans 5:12).

2.55Your argument, then, was exceedingly stupid: that if the apostle Paul had wanted sin’s passage to be understood as imitation, he would have named the devil rather than Adam. For it is clear that the evil of either a human being or the devil could pass on only through imitation. But now that your construction has been torn apart, not so much by my hands as by those of reason itself, attend to what we bring forward (compare Romans 5:12) (Romans 5:12).

2.56The apostle showed that he was not saying sin passed on by generation when, naming a human being, he added ‘one.’ One is the beginning of number. Explaining through whom he said sin had entered, he not only named him but also counted him: ‘Through one man sin entered this world’ (Romans 5:12). This one person is sufficient to supply an example for imitation but insufficient to accomplish generation. Sin passed on, but through one. Clearly, then, what is accused here is imitation, not generation, which cannot take place except through two. Either show that generation occurred through Adam alone, without a woman—that would hardly be inconsistent with the refinement of your mind—or else, since you see that generation cannot exist without two, agree at last that the work of two was not accused by the number one. ‘Through one man,’ he says, ‘sin entered the world.’ In saying ‘through one,’ he did not mean us to understand ‘through two.’ Why, I ask, was number brought into these teachings, so that the apostle took such care to name not merely a human being but one human being? We see here the careful language of a lofty purpose: through the Holy Spirit’s revelation it anticipated and disarmed the errors of our times. When the subject required him to recount sin’s beginnings, he said sin passed on through a number that could not fit procreation, so that no one would think he had said anything to slander marriage instituted by God or blessed fertility. Certainly the first two human beings had both sinned, and both can rightly be called models of sin for their descendants. Why, then, did the apostle not say that sin passed on through two, which would have agreed better with the historical account? Nothing could have been wiser than his action. He saw that if he named the two who had provided the beginning and example of transgression, and affirmed that sin passed through them, there would be an opening for error: someone might think that by naming two he had condemned their union and fertility. Very wisely, therefore, he preferred to name one. Insufficient to indicate generation, one was more than enough to signify an example: accusing him would condemn imitation, while counting him would not accuse fertility. To sum up our argument briefly: the fertility instituted in the first human beings cannot operate except through two; but the apostle declares that sin entered through one.

2.57It is irrefutably established that the apostle shows this sin to have been conveyed to descendants through conduct, not through seed. Consider, then, the great falsehood that flowed from your mouth: ‘But the apostle said “through one man,” from whom the generation of human beings certainly began, precisely to teach that original sin passed through all people by generation’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). In fact, the apostle said ‘through one man’ precisely so that no one would think original sin had passed through all people (Romans 5:12). Your foolishness makes it hard for me to hold back laughter: you say generation began from one human being, although both the distinction between the sexes and the reading of divine Scripture testify that generation could not occur unless two human beings—a man and a woman—had first existed.

2.58Or perhaps, since your doctrine cannot stand otherwise, you will reply that Adam conceived and gave birth by himself. No one doubts that the apostle did not mean that. But you will show what you wanted to happen to your own sex.

2.59Let us leave that aside and crush, by reason’s strength, the argument it seems you could offer at this point. You may say that Scripture describes this union by saying that the two become one flesh, and that in this sense the apostle said ‘through one man’ to indicate the joined bodies of those who beget (Romans 5:12). I will answer that this too counts against your impiety. For it does not say, ‘The two human beings will become one human being,’ but, ‘The two will become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). The language of union teaches that this pleasure of those coupling, this desire which affects their sensation and stirs their organs—which, as that wise man understood, strives to make one flesh—was instituted by God and implanted in their bodies before sin.

2.60Consequently the devil can claim nothing for himself either from its delight or from the modesty connected with it.

2.61Yet if the apostle had meant anything of the kind here, he would have said sin entered ‘through one flesh,’ (Romans 5:12) not ‘through one man.’ In generation, only the substance of flesh is shared with the offspring: a soul is not derived from a soul, but flesh from flesh. The term ‘human being,’ however, properly includes both mind and body. Thus, by naming one human being, the apostle neither indicated the work of fertility—in which he knew nothing was imparted except the substance of flesh—nor intended two to be understood. He stressed one to teach that sin passed by imitation, not generation (compare Romans 5:12).

2.62Although the truth has already played its part here, I nevertheless urge the reader to pay attention. In this contest I have surrendered a great deal of what I was entitled to claim. Following where my opponent’s rashness challenged me, I have defended the teachings of sound faith to this extent: even if the Teacher of the Gentiles had used the words the advocate of inherited sin supposed him to have used, it would still be clear that he meant nothing about natural sin. Naming a human being, but one, he would certainly have blamed examples of guilt, not its generation.

2.63But the apostle’s words plainly do not have the sequence our enemy imagined. His argument runs like this: ‘If the apostle had meant imitation,’ he says, ‘he would have said that sin entered through the devil and passed through all human beings, rather than “through one man” (Romans 5:12). For Scripture says of the devil: “Those who belong to his party imitate him” (Wisdom 2:24; Latin numbering 2:25). But he said “through one man,” from whom the generation of human beings certainly began, precisely to teach that original sin passed through all people by generation’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). His falsehood, then, lies in affirming that blessed Paul declared that sin entered the world through one man and so passed into all human beings. This, I repeat, is not found in the Teacher of the Gentiles’ words. Paul did not say sin passed on, but death. The sequence is: ‘Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). The church’s exalted teacher weighed what he should say: ‘Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so it passed into all human beings.’ He had already named both death and sin. Why, in speaking of what passed on, did he need to separate death from association with sin? Why expressly show that sin entered this world through one man, and death through sin, but that what passed into all human beings was not sin but death—death imposed by the severity of judgment, avenging transgression, pursuing not bodily seed but moral faults? Surely because he took care to commend and safeguard his meaning, so that no one would suppose he had given any support to your doctrine.

2.64Consider, then, the distance between you and Paul. He says ‘through one man’ (Romans 5:12); you say ‘through two,’ that is, through generation. He declares that both sin and death were in the first man, but that only death passed to his descendants. You, on the contrary, maintain that both sin and destruction spread to everyone.

2.65You therefore hide shamelessly in the shadow of his name, although your statements are greatly different and opposed. He accuses human beings’ work; you accuse God’s work. He accuses sinners’ deliberate conduct; you accuse newborn children’s innocence and life. He accuses human will; you accuse nature.

2.66According to the apostle, then, sin entered this world through one man, and death through sin, because the world saw that man guilty and destined for condemnation to everlasting death (Romans 5:12). Death passed into all human beings because the same form of judgment encompasses transgressors in later ages too. Yet this death is not permitted to rage against any holy or innocent people: it invades those whom it finds imitating the transgression (compare Augustine, Proceedings of Pelagius 23.57).

2.67Although this transgression did not become natural, it was nevertheless a model of sin. Thus, although it does not burden those who are born, it accuses those who imitate it.

2.68The death imposed by judgment passed on because all sinned—but they sinned by free will (Romans 5:12). In keeping with scriptural usage, the word ‘all’ here indicates a multitude, not absolutely everyone.

2.69But let us proceed to what remains, so that the unfolding of the apostle’s sacred discourse may show which doctrine he agrees with, as has already largely become clear. You write: ‘What else do the apostle’s following words indicate? After saying this he added: “Until the law, sin was in the world” (Romans 5:13)—that is, because not even the law could remove sin. “But sin was not reckoned when there was no law” (Romans 5:13). It therefore existed but was not reckoned, because it was not disclosed so that it could be reckoned. As he says elsewhere: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). “But death reigned,” he says, “from Adam until Moses”—the same as his earlier “until the law.” Not until Moses as though sin ceased thereafter, but because not even the law given through Moses could remove death’s reign, which certainly reigns only through sin. Its reign consists in hurling a mortal human being into the second death also, which is everlasting (Revelation 20:14; Revelation 21:8). “But it reigned.” Over whom? “Even over those,” he says, “who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of the one to come” (Romans 5:14). Of which coming one, if not Christ? And what sort of figure, if not one by contrast? As he also says elsewhere: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). As the one thing is in the first, so the other is in the second: that is the figure. But this figure does not correspond in every respect. Therefore the apostle went on to add here: “But the gift is not like the offense. For if through the one man’s offense many died, much more did God’s grace and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to many” (Romans 5:15). What does “abound much more” mean? Because everyone who is freed through Christ dies a temporal death on account of Adam, but will live without end on account of Christ himself’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). You have asserted that the apostle’s subsequent words indicate nothing other than original sin. But we have proved that he did not indicate it even at the beginning, since he specified that sin passed through one, not through two.

2.70Nevertheless, we must consider whether he now at least intimates what he previously passed over. ‘Until the law,’ he says, ‘sin was in the world’ (Romans 5:13). You say the apostle intended this sin to be understood as natural. I therefore ask: if it existed until the law, why did it cease to exist after the law? I do not agree to understand ‘until the law’ as until its end rather than until its appearance. The expression’s proper meaning supports me: in saying it existed until the law, he shows it does not exist after the law. Anything removed in the course of time was not natural. Therefore what the law’s discipline broke, and in breaking largely extinguished, evidently arose through imitation, not generation.

2.71But lest I seem too unyielding with you here, let us agree that ‘until the law’ can be understood as ‘until Christ’ (Romans 5:13). You therefore concede that this sin which you call original does not exist after Christ. How, then, do you say that the devil’s work, the shrub of the hostile power and the law of sin, remains, flourishes, and lives in the apostles’ limbs and in all the baptized, even down to today, so many centuries after Christ’s coming?

2.72Let us also examine what follows. ‘But sin was not reckoned,’ the apostle says, ‘when there was no law’ (Romans 5:13). You then add: ‘It therefore existed but was not reckoned, as he says elsewhere: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin”’ (Romans 3:20; Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). If, then, knowledge of sin came through the law, and the sin of inherited transmission was not imputed before the law, show that it was imputed under the law. If through the law came knowledge of sin, and before the law there was ignorance of sin, there can be no doubt that a chief reason for promulgating the law was to expose, and enable people to avoid, what had previously been hidden.

2.73Let this, then, be the decisive issue: show that original sin was imputed to anyone under the law; show that it was revealed there; and I will agree that the apostle was speaking of this sin.

2.74Or else, since this cannot be found in the law, agree, most shameless man, that the apostle is speaking of the sin acquired by imitation, committed by will, exposed by reason, disclosed by law, and punished by justice.

2.75But the original sin you invent cannot even be transmitted through one person, since generation is accomplished through two.

2.76Nor could it ever have existed if it can at some time cease to exist, because natural properties persist from the beginning of a substance to its end.

2.77Nor was it revealed by the law, nor could it have been. No lawgiver would ever reach such madness as to command anyone, ‘Do not be born this way or that.’ And where it would be inappropriate to give a warning so that something may be corrected, it cannot be just to impose punishment.

2.78And what exists until the law is shown not to exist after the law—shown, at any rate, not to exist after Christ (compare Romans 5:13) (Romans 5:13).

2.79Consequently, even according to your argument, it ceased to exist long ago; according to the testimony of truth, it never existed.

2.80To impress our argument on the reader’s memory: you once defined sin, quite excellently, as nothing other than the will to commit what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain.

2.81This definition also opened the way to understanding God’s justice. We could judge that the fairness of divine judgment could never stand unless God imputed as sin only an act from which he knew the person punished for it had been free to abstain.

2.82The Teacher of the Gentiles armed reason with the special force of authority by declaring that guilt passed into this world through one man (Romans 5:12). By this expression he excluded the activities of marriage, which cannot occur without the participation of two. We emphasized that he named one precisely so that no one would dare understand two.

2.83Indeed, I am far more consistent in maintaining that the one whom the apostle names is one, to show that the fault lay in imitation, not generation. The advocate of inherited sin, by contrast, uses the name of the one said to be sin’s gateway to attach a matter of will to seed—something the nature of things does not permit (compare Romans 5:12) (Romans 5:12).

2.84Afterward we came to the law. The apostle wrote that undisclosed sin prevailed until its time (Romans 5:13). You tried to extend that time until the law’s end, without understanding that your argument was futile. For we would compel you either to prove that this sin—which you falsely claim Paul discussed, and which you assert reigned until the Old Testament was abolished—was or could have been imputed under the law; or else to agree that it does not reign after Christ. At least then the apostle’s statement, though violently twisted, would agree with your views. But you can deliver none of this. The purity of our faith therefore stands on solid ground, in agreement with reason’s principles, justice’s dignity, and all the apostle’s teachings.

2.85But let us examine the rest. After saying, ‘This figure does not correspond in every respect,’ you add: ‘Therefore the apostle went on to add here: “But the gift is not like the offense. For if through the one man’s offense many died, much more did God’s grace and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to more people”’ (Romans 5:15). You explain this statement as follows: ‘What does “abound much more” mean, except that everyone freed through Christ dies a temporal death on account of Adam, but will live without end on account of Christ himself?’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). The apostle, whose meaning we are disputing, certainly declared that the Savior’s grace works more effectively and abundantly to confer salvation than Adam’s sin works against it. He thus showed that Christ helped far more powerfully, and helped more people—his grace, to use the apostle’s own expression, ‘abounded to more people’—than were harmed by the first man’s transgression, which you say bound sin into human seed.

2.86Prove, then, that what the apostle understood fits your doctrines.

2.87For if Adam, as you say, through natural sin begot everyone for condemnation and poured so much poison from his own body into his offspring that he disrupted every ordinance God had placed in human nature (compare Romans 5:18)— (Romans 5:18)

2.88—so that marriage, which God had created, could not exist without the devil’s gift, to which you assign sexual desire; or rather, so that the marriages God had ordained flew away with the honor of his institution, and Adam forced and proved the marriages whose order remained to be the devil’s work, not God’s, with their genital movement, the partners’ modesty, the heat and agitation of their limbs, the delight of their senses, and the guilt of their newborn children—

2.89—and finally overthrew the very freedom of the will by the impact of one sin, so that afterward no one had the power to reject former crimes by choosing virtue, but everyone was swept in a single torrent of ruined humanity toward condemnation—

2.90—if, I say, the first man’s wickedness inflicted all this on God’s image, Christ’s grace is plainly very weak in its gifts, since it has found nothing to remedy so many massive evils. Or if it has found a remedy, state it. Let us now compare each point individually. If Adam overturned the institutions of nature itself, beyond the acts of his will, Christ should above all have repaired what Adam had shattered, following the very tracks along which Adam had destroyed it.

2.91That is, no sexual desire should be felt in the marriages of baptized people, nor should their genitals move in the same way as those of the other nations.

2.92After the gift of grace, the modesty of those coupling should disappear; no semblance of repose should spread through their limbs; their senses should not undergo the burden of sweetness. Finally, free will should be restored to the baptized, so that, with nature corrected and the law of sin expelled, you would acknowledge that mortals can as readily shine with the brilliance of virtues as be repulsive with the filth of vices. Indeed, those initiated into the sacraments should not be mortal at all.

2.93For if the medicine combats the wound, and death is said to have arisen through sin, removing sin should accomplish the removal of death.

2.94But none of these things we have mentioned is known to happen to baptized people’s bodies. And truth, clearer than the sun, has shown that full healing could not—or rather should not—take place except by these methods of treatment. You must therefore confess either that the things we listed earlier did not arise through sin and so were not wounds of nature, thus preserving a coherent account of grace, which plainly has not displaced them from their order; or else you must deny that Christ’s mysteries contain any medicine at all, since they have not been able to heal even one of the many diseases you describe.

2.95So far I have argued as though the apostle regarded the power of the gifts and the wounds as equal, although opposite in effect. But the sound faith we defend undoubtedly rises still higher when we consider that Paul not only did not rank the sickness of sins above the remedies of grace: he judged the benefits more abundant than the losses (compare Romans 5:15) (Romans 5:15).

2.96Let the discerning reader consider what this further argument has established. The apostle said that Christ’s gift abounded to the salvation of more people than Adam’s fault had harmed (Romans 5:15).

2.97You say that this fault brought upon nature the disasters listed above. Not even one of them, however, is known to be healed in those who come to Christ’s sacraments. Consequently, you assert that the first man’s wickedness had far more power to harm than Christ’s grace possesses to heal. This conclusion shows that the disagreement between you and the apostle Paul is as great as that between catholics and Manichaeans.

2.98I could very properly despise your trifling explanation of this passage and pass it over unanswered, as lying too low on the ground, if I did not fear that this might be credited to evasion rather than confidence. You speak as follows: ‘What does “abound much more” mean (Romans 5:15), except that everyone freed through Christ dies a temporal death on account of Adam, but will live without end on account of Christ himself?’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). If you considered what follows consistently from this statement, you would confess that your entire fortress—that is, inherited transmission—had fallen. For you say Christ’s grace abounded much more because through it eternal life is conferred, whereas through Adam’s sin temporal decay must be undergone. If, then, Adam brought nothing but bodily death, in contrast with which Christ conferred the more generous benefit of life without end, it appears that what passed to descendants was not Adam’s sin but death.

2.99It will follow entirely consistently that everlasting death—that is, eternal punishment—was not transmitted to us, and consequently that sin transmitted by descent cannot exist. To make briefly clear the position we must hold: the apostle ranks Christ’s gifts above the first man’s sin. Do you say that through this sin of yours—the sin of inherited transmission—one death passed on, or two? If one, and bodily death, as you have confessed here, then Christ’s grace clearly excels the first man’s sin, and no one is born a sinner. For if, as you said above, sin’s kingdom consists in a person being hurled into the second death, or everlasting punishment, and you say that through Adam only bodily death was brought on, then neither sin nor eternal death is transmitted through Adam to his descendants (compare Romans 5:15; Revelation 20:14) (Romans 5:15) (Revelation 20:14) (Romans 5:15; Revelation 20:14).

2.100But if you say that through Adam’s sin wickedness became natural and two deaths arose, one eternal and the other temporal, while through Christ’s grace only one—the everlasting death—is removed for the present from the person, not from nature, and temporal death remains, then the apostle is convicted of falsehood. For he said that grace helped much more than sin harmed (Romans 5:15). But the apostle cannot be accused. You, therefore, are rightly rejected.

2.101The apostle said that Christ’s grace abounded more than Adam’s fault (Romans 5:15). Thus he accuses neither nature, nor generation, nor fertility, but will, the choice of evil, and corrupt conduct.

2.102Consequently, if truth still has any place in human affairs, and the whole world has not been utterly deafened by the uproar of injustice, it will acknowledge that reason, argument, the apostle’s faith, and his own statement as witness have fully demonstrated this: the distance between advocates of inherited sin and catholics is as great as that between Paul and Mani, between wisdom and foolishness, between reason and insanity, between consistent statements and the fluctuation you endure with extraordinary disgrace. Almost in the same lines, you deny what you said and affirm what you denied.

2.103‘And the gift,’ he says, ‘is not as it was through one who sinned. For the judgment was from one to condemnation, but grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). You attach this explanation to the apostle’s words: ‘“From one”—from one what,’ you ask, ‘if not offense? For what follows is “But grace is from many offenses.” Let these people say how judgment comes from one offense to condemnation, unless even the single original sin that passed into all human beings is sufficient for condemnation. Grace, however, is from many offenses to justification because it releases not only that single sin inherited at birth, but also the other sins each person adds by the movement of his own will. “For if through one man’s offense death reigned through one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through one man’s offense it came upon all human beings to condemnation, so through one man’s righteousness it came upon all human beings to justification of life”’ (Romans 5:17–18; Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). After these apostolic words, as though you had achieved something, you insult us: ‘Let them persist in the vanity of their minds (Ephesians 4:17) and say that one man did not transmit sin by descent but supplied an example of it. How, then, does it come “through one man’s offense upon all human beings to condemnation,” rather than through each person’s many offenses, unless that one sin alone is sufficient to bring condemnation even when no other sins are added? It does so to dying infants born from Adam, unless they are reborn in Christ. Why, then, does this man ask us what he refuses to hear from the apostle: through what sin is found in an infant—whether through will, marriage, or parents? Let him hear through what. Let him hear and be silent: through what sin is found in an infant. The apostle says, “Through one man’s offense upon all human beings to condemnation”’ (Romans 5:18; Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). We know that you fear nothing more than questioning that probes your mind and doctrine. That is why you use every resource to obtain from the powers of this world a refusal of examination. You understand that you must act by force when reason’s help deserts you.

2.104But your opinion will not carry such weight among the wise that, although you are ‘the source and cause of these evils’ (Virgil, Aeneid 11.361), you can withdraw from the middle of the contest by putting the apostle in the way. You suppose that he should take the blows for you, although he is precisely the teacher and leader who arms us against you. To understand, then, what you can consistently say: if you and I agreed that the apostle confirmed the Manichaeans’ doctrine of natural sin, you could confidently place him in the path of someone aiming at your head. As it is, however, the Teacher of the Gentiles’ dignity remains inviolable for me. I will not permit your interpretation to injure his words, which, according to the rule of reason set out above, I maintain are opposed to a foolish, filthy, and impious doctrine. I prove that he said nothing in favor of natural sin. With what shamelessness, then, do you insist that he answer me in your place, when he is not being questioned because his wisdom is not doubted? Or how do you shout that I refuse to hear from the apostle what I detest in you precisely through the sound understanding the apostle has handed down to us?

2.105Let us bring out the force of your arguments. After Paul said that the Savior’s grace abounded much more in healing than the first man’s transgression in harming, he continues: ‘And the gift is not as it was through one who sinned. For the judgment was from one to condemnation, but grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). You contend that this one offense sufficient for condemnation is original sin, passing into all human beings. You say that grace is called ‘from many offenses to justification’ because it releases not only that one sin inherited at birth but also the other sins each person adds by the movement of his own will (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). A little later, to confirm this, you argue that, if the apostle had described this one offense sufficient for condemnation as acquired by imitation, he should have added that all people go to condemnation not through one offense, but through the many each has committed voluntarily. Since the apostle’s language must be disentangled here from the Manichaeans’ nets, I urge the reader to pay attention. You say that, according to our understanding—that the first fault supplied a model to sinners—the apostle ought to have said that death reigned through many sins, just as he said grace produces justification from many offenses. But with this argument you struggle entirely against yourself. I prove that, according to your doctrine, the apostle speaks inconsistently in saying, ‘But grace is from many offenses to justification,’ after saying, ‘The judgment was from one sin to condemnation.’ Let us leave our own territory and spend some time in yours. Suppose freedom of will was overthrown by the first sin, and thereafter remained so crippled throughout the human race that it can do nothing but evil; that it has no power to choose the other side—to turn from evil and do good (possible allusion to Psalm 34:14; compare Psalm 37:27 and 1 Peter 3:11)—but, oppressed by the necessity of wickedness, is compelled to obey a craving for crimes. Suppose that, with every law of justice broken, things once voluntary became natural; that the law of sin dwells in the limbs (Romans 7:23), having gained tyranny over God’s image and work through marriage’s modesty and pleasure; that the devil’s shrub is planted in the inner body before the soul arrives, and grows with natural growth, puts out leaves, and becomes heavy with deadly fruit. If, I say, the first man’s single fault produced all these things as you claim, it is more consistent to say that the mortal race goes into condemnation from one offense than that grace frees it from many offenses. One should more properly understand this grace as freeing those it frees from one offense. For no other sins are added by the movement of a personal will if all evil is worked by the first parent’s fault that infects the seed, with freedom of will broken and honorable desire excluded.

2.106Consequently, if natural sin is the author of so many evils, Christ’s grace certainly does not produce justification by forgiving many offenses. It carries out its work of kindness by pardoning one sin. When it promises to do so, it will make its promises good if it heals the things said to have been introduced through sin’s wound. But if, even after the remedies it has brought, the same succession of diabolical diseases persists, we owe thanks for its good intention and forgiveness for its presumption: it lacked the power to cure the inborn plagues, not the will (compare Romans 5:16) (Romans 5:16).

2.107What, then, has this argument established? That your understanding does not agree with the apostle. The apostle says that many offenses are forgiven by grace’s generosity. Your doctrine, however, asserts that one natural sin, which you call the law of sin, fashions desires for wickedness in all human beings. Plainly, then, you accuse nature, which is God’s work, while he accuses the will. He ought not to have spoken otherwise than he did: condemnation can result from one sin. For that first man supplied an example of wrongdoing through one sin, and just as one transgression was enough to condemn him, so one fault can suffice to make others guilty. Hence Ecclesiastes says, ‘Whoever sins in one thing destroys much good’ (Ecclesiastes 9:18); and James: ‘If you keep the whole law but stumble in one point, you have become guilty of all’ (James 2:10).

2.108The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, however, was not given so as to provide separate remedies of forgiveness for separate sins, as for separate wounds, and to pardon different sins through different baptisms. Rather, by the power of its supremely effective medicine, applied to crimes—that is, the works of an evil will—it gives comprehensive help, wiping away different kinds of guilt by the power of a single consecration.

2.109Wisely, therefore, when speaking of Adam, he named one sin, which he intended to be understood as a model of transgression. He mentioned one, I repeat, and not many, because he knew that only one sin of Adam is recorded in the law’s history. But he praised grace for sending those it initiates out into justification from many offenses, to prevent any suspicion of a meager benefit. If he had said, ‘Grace is from one offense to justification,’ it might have seemed to abolish individual sins rather than all sins. Thus, by first mentioning one sin he remained faithful to the history; by adding, ‘Grace is from many offenses to justification,’ he commended the sacrament’s generosity and abundance (Romans 5:16).

2.110This explanation agrees with reason and destroys your position. This very point compels you to admit that, in all the preceding words, the apostle did not speak of the sin of Manichaean inherited transmission, since in mentioning grace he showed that many sins are forgiven (compare Romans 5:16) (Romans 5:16).

2.111For by commending these sins as many, and all forgiven through grace, he showed that the one sin he mentioned earlier also belonged to their kind. You agree that these many sins are those each human being commits by the movement of his own will. Therefore that one sin too belongs to the same kind.

2.112It should therefore be understood as acquired by each person through the movement of his own will. What is accused will then be not the fertility of seed, but the perversity of deliberate conduct. If, however, he had intended that one sin to be understood as original, he certainly would not afterward have spoken of many sins which, as he testifies, are forgiven through grace.

2.113Although what we have already accomplished more than suffices to defend the truth, I nevertheless urge the reader to attend to what we add. It will appear irrefutably that in these passages the apostle Paul discussed not human nature but human conduct. Setting the power of Christ’s grace and of the first sin opposite each other, and comparing the effects of both, he worked to show that Christ’s mystery helped more than the first man’s sin harmed. We have shown that this cannot hold under the interpretation of inherited transmission. Among the many points he listed, then, he intended this especially to praise grace: ‘The judgment was from one offense to condemnation, but grace is from many offenses to justification of life’ (Romans 5:16). The defender of natural evil explained this as follows: ‘It says “from one offense to condemnation” because that one sin inherited at birth is sufficient to lead to condemnation, as it leads infants born from Adam unless they are reborn in Christ, even if there are no other sins. “But grace is from many offenses to justification,” because it forgives not only the sin inherited at birth but also the other sins each person adds by the movement of his own will’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). See: you have professed, though with Manichaean impiety, that natural sin exists, but that it is one sin, on account of which you say newborn children must be condemned.

2.114Prove, then, that what the apostle Paul attributed to Christ’s grace is fulfilled in them: namely, that it produces justification from many offenses, bestowing righteousness through a single, once-for-all remission of many sins. Either show that infants are liable for many crimes, so as to persuade us that the feature in which the apostle placed his praise of Christ’s generosity applies to them too, and that they have been freed from many sins; or confess that Paul discussed neither infants nor human nature in these passages, since he testified that grace’s generosity forgives things which, even with your agreement, cannot be found in newborn children (compare Romans 5:16) (Romans 5:16).

2.115‘Grace,’ he says, ‘is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). You say infants are liable for no more than one sin. You therefore see praise of grace limping in their case, because it finds no multitude of sins whose forgiveness can earn it praise. Consequently, the apostle Paul’s words, ‘But grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16), are exposed as utterly false in infants’ condition. Where will you try to jump from here? No doubt you will say—for your previous argument has disclosed this intention—that the apostle’s statement, ‘But grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16), is fulfilled in adults, who are proved liable for many offenses through the movement of their own will; but that in infants justification comes not from many offenses but from one.

2.116But with this explanation—which will not enable you either to distort the meaning or to escape—you have lost not only your tricks but also the manufactured hostility you were inflaming against us. You used to claim that we gravely offended against the faith by saying this: Christ’s grace must indeed be administered uniformly, and its words and institutions must not be unsettled. It confers the gifts of adoption, sanctification, and advancement equally on all whom it initiates. Yet it does not find everyone who approaches it in the same state of guilt. Those who have sinned by their own will—without whose activity no sin can exist—it frees from guilt and makes good out of evil. But it does not accuse the innocent, blessed in the unstained freshness of their first age, of any act of an evil will, since it knows they have had no experience of such a will.

2.117Instead, it makes the good better. It raises everyone it receives to the same summit of sanctification, but does not find everyone in the same swamp of vices. It finds some in the condition of the innocent, others engaged in wrongdoing. This is what we say, protected by sound faith, reason’s support, and reverent understanding. Through it Christ’s grace is rightly praised and no guilt is attributed to God. Yet you say the sacrament’s authority totters. With a sharpness blunter than any pestle, you assert that grace loses its authority unless the crime of slander is attributed to it, unless it overturns the institutions of justice, unless it charges those without knowledge with the guilt of another’s conscience. Finally, you say it accomplishes nothing unless it is proclaimed to operate uniformly in everyone.

2.118It is clear, then, that your own explanation has made all this disappear—the whole device by which you deceived minds sullied with foolishness.

2.119For the apostle declares, ‘But grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). You say this cannot hold for infants but is fulfilled only in adults, because by the movement of their own will they have added other sins to that one. You therefore undoubtedly confess that grace operates differently according to the differences among those who approach it. In those who exercise their own will, it finds material for glory, since it leads those it adopts from many crimes into justification. But in infants, according to you, in a leaner, narrower, poorer fashion—with no great power, no adequate medicine, no intact honor, and no secure modesty—it promises to remove that one sin which it should not even have imputed, and tries to send those it frees from that one sin into justification.

2.120You have therefore confessed that grace operates one way in older people and another in younger ones. Do not imagine any room remains for your answer if you add that the difference is indeed great, but concerns the remission of sins, so that it still finds a sin to forgive, even if only one. This argument advances nothing. It does not matter under what heading you acknowledge different effects of one grace, provided you acknowledge that its effects can differ.

2.121I am content with what you have been compelled to grant me: what the apostle praised in grace’s generosity cannot apply equally to every age. Even if you adduce something to establish that grace also effects forgiveness at the earliest age of newborn children, you have not altered this: the feature for which the apostle declared Christ’s grace praiseworthy is not fulfilled in infants. For when he ranked the sacrament’s medicine above the sin of the first man, whom he taught was a model for those who followed, he said: ‘The judgment was from one offense to condemnation, but grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). Therefore the feature by which he ranked grace higher—its producing justification from many offenses—does not hold for infants even according to you. Despite your resistance, you have been brought to acknowledge that grace does not act identically in different ages.

2.122Once you accepted this, it became clear that there was no necessity to stir up slander against human nature merely to avoid saying that baptism’s grace has different effects according to people’s ages. With this pretext for persuasion removed, if you have any strength, intelligence, or power, struggle to prove natural sin, which you see destroyed by reason, authority, and justice. What consideration deceived you into calling the union of bodies instituted by God—and sexual pleasure, which brings about that union—the devil’s work and shrub? This pleasure flourishes in human beings and animals alike, and points as its author to the very one it indicates as the bodies’ creator.

2.123What reason led you first to wound innocence with another’s crime, and then to try to mix a matter of deliberate conduct into human seed?

2.124Why deprive baptism of the truth of its own operation? Why attribute an obvious crime of injustice to God, who is wholly just and cannot be God without justice?

2.125So obvious, I repeat, that God himself has condemned by his law’s authority this very form of injustice which you falsely claim belongs to his judgments.

2.126What necessity, then, was there for so many blasphemies, if even the necessity you embraced did not exist? Although it had no real weight, it at least seemed like a plank you were holding amid so great a shipwreck. Now, though late, your defeated arms have let it go. To make the matter clear by repetition: all sorts of fools thought you should be tolerated as a Manichaean lest Christ’s grace seem not to have one effect in everyone. Yet without any compulsion from us, the progress of your own explanation has now led you to this: you say that the apostle’s statement, ‘But grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16), can be fulfilled in older people but cannot be fulfilled in infants. In infants there is something else, smaller, thinner, poorer—something which, although you invent it, you confess the apostle never said.

2.127Thus, even according to you, grace has an equal effect in adoption throughout every age; but in the remission of sins the reckoning is not the same for everyone. Yet so far I have acted far too sparingly and patiently.

2.128In the preceding argument I was content to prove that even you, who stirred up a great uproar against us on this point, say that remission of sins does not follow one identical pattern in everyone. Even if you could persuade us of this one natural sin, it would still be clear that we must say those who approach grace are not always in one condition, and that the apostle’s phrase ‘from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16) is fulfilled only in adulthood, not in earliest infancy as well.

2.129Now, however, I maintain consistently that the apostle had no notion of Manichaean inherited transmission. He showed that it would gravely insult the mysteries if they were in every respect comparable to sins—that is, if grace did not help more effectively than the example of sin had harmed. The Teacher of the Gentiles therefore located the Christian faith’s highest dignity in his affirmation that it surpasses offenses. That is why he took care to rank the medicine’s effect above the old diseases (compare Romans 5:15) (Romans 5:15).

2.130He thus showed grace to be praiseworthy if what he said applied to it fully: ‘The judgment was from one to condemnation, but grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16) (Acts 9:15). By what license, then, will you rob Christ’s grace of the praise with which the apostle wished it proclaimed? Will you cast down the title of dignity through which alone the chosen vessel wished its honor to be recognized (allusion to Acts 9:15)?

2.131He said, ‘Grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). He ranked the abundance of the medicine above sin’s effectiveness. This meaning agrees with the catholics’ doctrine. They understand that remission of sins takes place in those in whom many sins can be found—sins acquired by the movement of their own will. But where this movement of a personal will does not exist, that is, in infants, there are no sins at all, not merely no multitude of sins.

2.132The apostle therefore strengthens our doctrine where he ranks grace above sin (compare Romans 5:15) (Romans 5:15).

2.133Now show where he made grace equal to sin. Since your faith cannot admit remedies ranked above wounds, let it at least admit remedies squeezed down so that they do not exceed the comparison. Even if you found that written somewhere, Paul would still clearly reject such a view. To bring the apostle’s whole meaning to light briefly, he says: ‘Grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). Even according to you infants do not have many offenses; according to the apostle they have none.

2.134It is clear, then, that here the Teacher of the Gentiles was discussing not newborn children, but those who already exercise the movement of their own will.

2.135What the apostle added—‘As through one man’s offense it came upon all to condemnation, so through one man’s righteousness it came upon all human beings to justification’ (Romans 5:18)—gives us as much support as it brings crashing destruction on your doctrine. By placing ‘all’ on opposite sides, in statements that cannot be combined, he sends us back to scriptural usage, so that we understand that ‘all’ is commonly said for ‘many.’ For on the surface of the words there is a great incongruity. Who are the ‘all’ who come to justification if all have gone to condemnation? Or who are the ‘all’ who go to punishment if all are swept into glory? Making one side universal excludes the other.

2.136To see how strongly we are protected here too, understand the scope of the wounder from the scope of the healer. If Christ saved absolutely everyone, let it also be imagined that Adam harmed absolutely everyone (compare Romans 5:18) (Romans 5:18).

2.137If Christ changed the functions of the genitals, let it be believed that Adam corrupted them. If Christ corrected something in bodily sensations, let it be supposed that Adam’s fault disturbed them. If Christ made medicine pass through descent, let it be said that Adam transmitted the offense through generation.

2.138But if all these things remain in the order they receive from nature, while the will is attracted to faith by exhortations, signs, examples, and the promise of rewards or punishments, without necessity being imposed; if the will is healed through teachings, mysteries, and gifts—not crushed, but awaited, free, and invited—then it is clear that each person’s will, not birth, was stained by imitation of sin, even if the whole world with one breath roars or rages in opposition.

2.139Yet I have argued far too gently. Even if Christ were shown, from the time he came, to have blocked the road to death for all human beings and given everyone everlasting life—so that from the very day ‘the Word became flesh’ (John 1:14) absolutely no one fell into sin or feared punishment for sin—the first wickedness would still not have the same character as this later generosity. For God can and commonly does help the undeserving, earning praise for mercy; but he cannot punish those who have not sinned without overthrowing justice.

2.140Consider, then, what the whole argument has established. If Christ’s grace and Adam’s fault were judged equal in their opposite effects—equal at least in the number of their operations, though differing in kind—it would have to be shown that grace benefited as many as the fault harmed, so that the balance and weight of the scale in which they were weighed remained fair. The medicine should therefore have helped in precisely the places and parts where the disease had settled. If the ancient crime had done anything to genital movements, the sensations of those coupling, the shamefulness of bodily parts, or the misery of newborn children, grace should have brought remedies by changing those things. Otherwise, it would be striking evidence of a feeble and useless medical art that it failed even to find the disease’s location, and, while the natural functions lay sick and ruined, applied ineffective soothing treatments to people’s wills.

2.141But amid these points, truth has shown that even if medicine, poured out universally, benefited bodily movements and mortal people, including those who had earned it by no effort or intention, guilt would not therefore harm newborn children who could have contributed no assent to it. Consequently, even if grace and sin were rated equally, it was clear that even then such a weighing would not extend so far as to prove anyone born guilty.

2.142Now, however, the apostle not only did not rank grace below the fault; he ranked it above, saying that benefits abounded to far more people than losses had crept into (Romans 5:15). Under the theory of inherited transmission, by contrast, sins clearly did far more harm than grace did good. It has therefore been irrefutably proved that the apostle Paul meant nothing about inherited transmission; rather, his statement destroyed its advocates together with their Manichaean teachers.

2.143But since I have spent rather long on this, let us proceed to what remains.

2.144You write: ‘He said “all” come through Adam to condemnation and “all” through Jesus Christ to justification of life. Certainly Christ does not transfer to life all those who die in Adam. He said “all” in both places because, just as no one comes to death without Adam, so no one comes to life without Christ. It is like what we say about a teacher of letters if he is the only one in a town: “This man teaches everyone here their letters.” Not everyone learns, but no one learns except from him. Those he had called “all” he afterward called “many,” yet signified the same people by “all” and “many”: “For just as through one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so through one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Let him still ask through what sin is found in an infant. The holy pages answer him: “Through one man sin entered the world”’ (Romans 5:12; Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46–47). We indeed confess that the apostle’s pages are holy, for this reason alone: in agreement with reason, devotion, and faith, they teach us to believe in God’s inviolable justice, to defend his works as good and honorable, and to maintain the moderation, wisdom, and justice of his commands.

2.145Consequently, they teach us to deny that anyone can be condemned for another’s sin, and to deny that any sin passes to descendants as a condition of nature. They teach us to believe and assert that a human being born through the fertility God instituted is addressed by the just laws of free will: to avoid everything evil and practice everything good. Such a person should not suppose, as you do, that a love and necessity of crimes clings to the causes of his substance—to the seed itself. Nor should he accept that so foolish, insane, and impious a statement, insulting nature, reason, and God, is contained in the apostle’s book merely because he said sin entered this world through one man and death passed into all human beings (Romans 5:12). For he did not allow this to remain obscure for long, but added that those he had called ‘all’ should be understood as ‘many,’ who sinned through imitation, not generation (Romans 5:19).

2.146He untangled the whole argument by saying: ‘For just as through one man’ (Romans 3:20)s disobedience many were made sinners, so through one man’s obedience many will be made righteous’ (Romans 5:19). Thus, just as no one earns virtue’s rewards unless, after Christ’s incarnation, he strives toward them by imitating Christ’s holiness, so no one is held as a transgressor in Adam unless he has sinned in imitation of the first man, transgressing the law through which knowledge of sin came (allusion to Romans 3:20).

2.147Christ’s grace also reaches the innocent, whom Adam’s fault does not reach. That is why he carefully emphasized: ‘Much more did God’s grace and the gift of the one man Jesus Christ abound to more people’ (Romans 5:15). The earlier comparison of equals thus indicates imitation in opposite pursuits among people old enough to use reason; this preference for grace’s generosity, however, establishes that the innocent are consecrated and advanced. Since this is so, recognize that the apostle opposes you, not me; understand that he bears arms against you. Even if everything else were lacking, this one point would powerfully overthrow your doctrine and that of your teacher Faustus, by whom you received your first coloring, so to speak: he says that through one man’s disobedience many, not all, were made sinners, and through one man’s obedience not all but many were made righteous (Romans 5:19). To make the reader understand carefully how this statement opposes you: the apostle declares that not all were made sinners through Adam. You say that absolutely all belong to the devil’s jurisdiction through Adam by natural sin. There can be no doubt of the great conflict between you and the apostle.

2.148For while you and the Manichaean say, ‘All are sinners by nature,’ the apostle says, ‘Many, not all, are sinners’ (Romans 5:19). He removes from seed the accusation armed against conduct, and destroys original sin. Let us press this same point. The apostle directs us to understand that many are sinners through Adam’s disobedience and many righteous through Christ’s obedience, showing that those who are righteous are distinct from those who are criminal. With what shamelessness do you struggle to argue that these words prove natural sin? When you say all are born guilty through Adam and therefore belong to the devil, but that some are afterward freed from this through Christ, you do not mean what the apostle means: he says not all but many were made sinners through Adam.

2.149If he had meant anything like what you mean, he certainly ought to have said: ‘Through one man’ (Romans 5:19)s disobedience all were made sinners, but through Christ’s obedience some of these returned to righteousness.’ That is exactly how he should have spoken if he intended your invention to be understood. Yet with such a statement he could not also have asserted that Christ’s grace helped much more than Adam’s wickedness harmed. Even if, then, we had no idea at all what manner of conduct was meant by saying many were made sinners through one man’s disobedience, it would still remain firmly established that this does not concern original sin, since the apostle emphasized that it applies to many, not all (compare Romans 5:19).

2.150Your ignorance or shamelessness is therefore exposed: either you do not care to explain what is said, or you cannot. The light of truth itself—which Christ called himself (John 14:6)—has shown that nothing in the apostle Paul’s words agrees with the Manichaeans’ madness, that is, yours. Let us now devote ourselves to explanation. Just as we have shown how Paul cannot be understood, let it also become clear how he should and can be understood.

2.151Writing to the Romans at the time when the Gentiles had begun to be brought in, and churches were therefore being filled with Jews and Gentiles alike, he calms the disturbances of both peoples. He insists that the Gentiles cannot wash away their impiety—their exchanging God’s glory for a likeness of the image of a human being, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles (Romans 1:23)—by pleading ignorance of the law. Through their inborn power of reason they could know God from what he had made: God disclosed through his works, though hidden in the depth of his substance, even if they did not know the observance of Jewish ceremonies (Romans 1:20). Each person’s own feeling suggested the rule of the law insofar as it concerns upright living: namely, to inflict on a neighbor nothing of the kind he would be unwilling to suffer himself (compare Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31; Tobit 4:15). He thus proves that the Gentiles’ impiety can quite rightly be condemned, even if not through the law, then through the justice that established the law. By its judgment, those who sinned without the law will also perish without the law (Romans 2:12). The Jews, however, had even more at stake. They were especially swollen with contempt for the Gentiles, claiming honor for themselves from the law’s purifications. They therefore supposed that Christ’s sin-forgiving grace had not benefited them as it benefited the Gentiles, since they had avoided those sins through the law’s instruction. He shatters this claim with powerful arguments, maintaining that they received all the more through forgiveness precisely because, after the law’s warning, they sinned without any ignorance. By this he proves that they were guilty and could have been severely condemned at justice’s examination, where those who sinned under the law will be judged through the law (Romans 2:12): ‘For it is not hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but doers of the law who will be justified’ (Romans 2:13) (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31; Tobit 4:15). Arguing with this purpose throughout the book, he both restrains the Jews’ pride and removes the Gentiles’ excuse for their folly, to teach that Christ’s medicine benefited both peoples equally.

2.152Christ both forgave the will’s crimes, from which they had been free to abstain, and granted the glory of blessed eternity to those corrected by imitation of him, the model and rule of virtues. Although Paul addresses both nations as the course and demands of his book require, in these disputed passages he is engaged entirely with the Israelites. They dared to despise those coming from uncircumcised stock so thoroughly that they asserted these people could not enter their fellowship even through the support of faith. Against this arrogance he recounts the Jewish people’s beginnings and shows, at the very root of circumcision, that the foreskin is not so important that leaving it makes people unjust or removing it makes them just.

2.153‘For the promise to Abraham that he would be heir of the world came not through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If those who are of the law are heirs, faith is emptied and the promise destroyed. For the law produces wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there transgression. Therefore it comes from faith, so that according to grace the promise may be secure for all the offspring—not only those who are of the law, but also those who are of Abraham’s faith. He is the father of us all, as it is written: “I have made you the father of many nations,” (Genesis 17:5) before the God whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls the things that do not exist as though they exist. Beyond hope, he believed in hope, so that he might become the father of many nations, according to what was said: “So shall your offspring be.” (Genesis 15:5–6) Without becoming weak in faith, he considered his own body, already dead, since he was nearly a hundred years old, and Sarah’s dead womb. Yet he did not hesitate in distrust over God’s promise, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and knowing most fully that God is also able to do whatever he has promised. For this reason it was also reckoned to him as righteousness’ (Romans 4:13–22; embedded quotations from Genesis 17:5 and Genesis 15:5–6).

2.154How thoroughly this passage opposes your opinion was discussed in my first work; whatever needs to be recalled from it will be examined. For now, observe that the promise made to Abraham as a reward for his faith, saying that he would be established as the father of many nations, showed two things. He should not be maintained to be the progenitor of only one people, since he was foretold as the father of many nations. Nor did he receive the reward of belief so exclusively that others who believe in the same way should be thought excluded from sharing the reward. ‘But it was not written only for his sake,’ Paul says, ‘that it was reckoned to him, but also for ours, to whom it will be reckoned as we believe in the one who raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead, who was handed over because of our offenses and rose because of our justification’ (Romans 4:23–25).

2.155Since, then, while still uncircumcised, Abraham was declared a witness to faith and obtained the enlargement of his offspring as faith’s reward, by what rule, Paul asks, do you, a Jew, think Gentiles do not belong to the fellowship of righteousness when they reproduce Abraham’s faith by believing the same things about God’s powers?

2.156Why, he asks, do you think the nations cannot be brought into Abraham’s family without the law’s consecrations, when it is established that the promise made to Abraham preceded the law and was granted not for washings but for conduct (compare Romans 4:13–15) (Romans 4:13–15)?

2.157‘For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is emptied and the promise destroyed’ (Romans 4:14). Unless this statement is understood, it introduces a very great difficulty. Undoubtedly by ‘those who are of the law’ he means those whom he had earlier called ‘of the circumcision.’ He knew they claimed so much for themselves that they thought no one besides themselves could be admitted to the dignity of Abraham’s offspring. Yet his argument had established that not only the circumcised, but also those of the uncircumcised who chose to follow the footsteps of Abraham’s faith, should rightly be reckoned Abraham’s children.

2.158Earlier, then, he had worked to make us understand that the Gentiles could not be excluded from the fellowship of righteousness, but through the same faith are counted in Abraham’s family with the children of circumcision. Now he has added that none of the circumcised belongs to the promise given to Abraham. Unless properly understood, this is a complete contradiction. Therefore, when he says, ‘For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is emptied and the promise destroyed’ (Romans 4:14), he did not declare that no Jew can be believed to become an heir of the ancient promise through faith. Rather, a word is missing, whose place understanding supplies: those of the law are not the only heirs. It is as though he had said, ‘For if those who are of the law alone are heirs, faith is emptied.’ The uncircumcised would indeed seem excluded if the inheritance of blessing reached none beyond the circumcised. We must therefore understand scriptural usage: what is not said is not automatically denied. Understanding must supply what the words leave out.

2.159The apostle accordingly formed his argument in this way: if none were heirs of the blessing except those who are of the law, then just as the uncircumcised would clearly be excluded, it would follow that no one who was of the law could be deprived of the blessing. In other words, if circumcision had such power that faith was powerless without it, then just as the Gentiles were clearly rejected, it would be proved that no Jew could ever have gone to destruction (compare Romans 4:14) (Romans 4:14).

2.160But since you confess that transgressors under the law are not heirs of the blessing, because for such people the law produces wrath (Romans 4:15), it is clear that the promise concerns faith, not circumcision. The promise would be destroyed if no one were righteous apart from the law. For the law, introduced four hundred and thirty years after the promise (Galatians 3:17), would show Abraham himself, Isaac, Jacob, and all the holy people in between excluded from a blessing which could not have been conferred on anyone without the law.

2.161This is plainly false. Sinners under the law deserved punishment, and before the law righteousness and faith were not deprived of their reward’s fruits. Clearly, then, the glory of that promise belongs not to flesh cut with a blade, but to minds distinguished by uprightness. What follows is a thunderbolt against inherited transmission: ‘For the law,’ he says, ‘produces wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there transgression’ (Romans 4:15). Persuade us, then, that a law was given to those conceived in the womb, that a law can be given to newborn children, so that it may convict them of transgression. We, however, believe with the apostle—whom we defend as having meant nothing contrary to reason—that there is no transgression at an age when law could not exist, because ‘where there is no law, neither is there transgression.’ This law produces wrath not through its own fault but through the wickedness of those who prefer sins to virtues.

2.162The apostle therefore established that it was not written only for Abraham’s sake that faith was reckoned to him as righteousness (Romans 4:23), but also for ours. It is undoubtedly reckoned to us when we believe in God, who raised Jesus Christ from the dead: ‘Who was handed over,’ he says, ‘because of our offenses and rose because of our justification’ (Romans 4:24–25).

2.163How forcefully he impresses upon us that, before God the just judge, one person’s sins do not harm others! Praising Christ’s death, he carefully declares that Christ underwent death because of our offenses—which were both many and ours—not because of one offense belonging to another, a man long dead (Romans 4:25).

2.164The one who says ‘many offenses,’ then, has no notion of the Manichaeans’ one offense—the offense of inherited transmission.

2.165‘Therefore, justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access to this grace in which we stand, and we glory in the hope of God’s glory’ (Romans 5:1–2). You who see that justification has been conferred on you through the forgiveness of sins, he says, hold firmly to harmony, and with united minds praise the Mediator’s gifts. By his gift we have been granted entrance into this grace. Those whom justice held guilty—because it was will, not nature, that made us guilty—he restored to freedom and snatched from retribution. He granted that we who expected eternal punishments should now glory in the hope of God’s glory.

2.166To express more fully the power and assurance of this teaching, he goes on to describe what Christian philosophy confers on believers: ‘And not only that, but we also glory in afflictions, knowing that tribulation produces endurance, endurance proven character, proven character hope; and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (Romans 5:3–5). That is: these benefits have not merely enabled us to rejoice someday in the abundance of gifts. Even now, placed amid the burning heat of distress, we are cheerful in the possession of virtue itself. We laugh at the fury of persecutors, judging the wicked’s cruelty a training in endurance rather than a disruption of joy. Thus we do not merely refrain from sin because of rewards; we regard refraining from sin as itself a reward.

2.167Then, when we see the promises of the Testaments being fulfilled, we count absolutely all the good and evil things of present life among trifles. We judge the trustworthiness of God’s promise from the greatness of his love toward us. The disappointment of eternal benefits will not refute our hope, because we hold God’s love as a guarantor of future blessedness. It ‘has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (Romans 5:5): that is, through the Holy Spirit’s gifts God has proved his love for the human race.

2.168He will therefore faithfully supply everything he has promised to the faithful.

2.169For the one who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all—through whom he consecrated us by the Holy Spirit’s operation—undoubtedly gave us everything with him (Romans 8:32). ‘For why, when we were still weak, did Christ at the appointed time die for the ungodly?’ (Romans 5:6).

2.170‘For scarcely does anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps someone would dare to die for a good person. But God commends his love toward us because, if Christ died for us while we were still sinners, much more, now justified in his blood, shall we be saved through him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, once reconciled, shall we be saved in his life. And not only this, but we also glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation’ (Romans 5:7–11). He has revealed the great compassion with which Christ did everything: he deigned to die for people who deserved nothing good.

2.171For they had trampled reason and law through their love of crimes, following their own desires, which conscience itself—a force of the greatest power—rebuked. Yet the prophets too were known to have shone repeatedly in their contempt for death for the sake of justice. Many others had run toward destruction with fearless minds for great causes radiant with the splendor of their inherent worth. Lest examples like these obscure the uniqueness of Christ’s virtue, the apostle added something to show that Christ’s love and courage stand at an unmatched height. I too agree that some people, though rarely and scarcely, have chosen to die for just and good causes. But the worthiness of their affairs—that is, the nobility of the causes for which they fought—softened the pain of their dangers. Christ, however, had nothing to love in the activities of the ungodly, and did not disdain to expend himself for those made ugly by their own will. Plainly he excels everyone’s virtues: even if he can have a few companions in endurance, he can have none in the cause for which he endured. Let us therefore despair of nothing from his generosity. If he died for us while we were still sinners, much more, now justified in his blood, shall we be saved through him from wrath (Romans 5:8–9).

2.172After the reconciliation with God that we have obtained through the Mediator’s works, we should therefore grasp everlasting joys in our minds and hope not only for salvation but also for glory.

2.173‘Therefore, just as through one man sin entered this world, and death through sin, and so death passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). To tame the Jews’ pride—they thought they needed forgiveness of sins less than the Gentiles did, claiming holiness for their race through the law’s privilege—he attacks the disease of human conduct and traces the multitude of sinners backward. The authority of antiquity itself would thus reveal how great a dominion wickedness had seized in this world. He would show how many long-established crimes Christ’s grace had removed: crimes passed from the indecency of predecessors to descendants through the hands of mutual imitation. For this reason he recalls the first man, not as the one with whom sin began—it is established that the woman sinned first—but as the one who, through the privilege of his sex, had assumed leadership in wrongdoing. Through him, then, sin entered, and through sin death—undoubtedly the death foretold for sinners, namely eternal death. ‘And so,’ he says, ‘death passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned.’ He has made perfectly clear how this death passed to descendants: by imitation, not generation.

2.174For after saying, ‘It passed into all human beings,’ he immediately added, ‘in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). This phrase, ‘in whom all sinned,’ indicates nothing other than ‘because all sinned,’ in accordance with David’s words: ‘In what does a young man correct his way?’ (Psalm 119:9;) That is, ‘How does he correct his way?’ ‘By keeping your words’ (Psalm 119:9; LXX/Vulgate 118:9). He is thus said to be corrected ‘in’ that through which he is corrected. Likewise, the apostle said death passed on ‘in’ the fact that all sinned by their own will. The phrase ‘in whom’ should not be taken to indicate either Adam or sin; it should be understood as expressing the fact that all sinned.

2.175Countless scriptural examples testify that ‘all’ is used for ‘many.’ For example: ‘All have turned aside; together they have become useless.’ A little later he says, ‘They devour my people as a meal of bread’ (Psalm 14:3–4; LXX/Vulgate 13:3–4), showing that this people was distinct from all those whom he had declared evildoers. The Gospel reports: ‘And all the people cried out, “Crucify! Crucify!” (Matthew 27:22–23)’ (Luke 23:21; Mark 15:13; compare Matthew 27:22–23). Yet the universality of this expression certainly includes neither the apostles, nor Nicodemus, nor the holy women. This same apostle shortly afterward calls ‘many’ those whom he now calls ‘all’ (Romans 5:19) (Psalm 14:3–4;).

2.176Let our result be plain: by ‘all,’ the apostle meant very many, whom he says are subject to death because they sinned by their own will. He therefore accuses voluntary crime, not original crime. In fact, if the words’ reliability and proper meaning are weighed, they indicate nothing else. For if he believed sin passed to descendants by generation—that is, was hurled from Adam at people who had not been there—he would speak utterly falsely in declaring that all sinned (compare Romans 5:12) (Romans 5:12).

2.177What one person does and directs toward others cannot truthfully be described as something they all did. Either it passed to them and they themselves did not sin; or they themselves sinned—a phrase expressing the activity of doing something—and it passed to them only through imitation.

2.178The argument you thought you could oppose to us, whether in the book I am now answering or in those you wrote to Marcellinus, is this: sin passed on at the time when all human beings, to use your own words, ‘were that one man’ (Augustine, Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.11). Truth crushes this without difficulty and exposes it to the ridicule of every discerning person. Such an argument reveals nothing except your impiety: the impiety by which you believe in a transmission of souls, long ago condemned in the irreverence of Tertullian and Mani, just as there is a transmission of bodies. This is so abominable that when we charged you with it in the letter we sent to the East, you tried to repel it by denial in the books you recently sent to Boniface. You say: ‘They say, however, that we confess a transmission of souls. In whose books they have read this I do not know’ (Augustine, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.26), thereby swearing that you say nothing of the kind. But to expose your falsehood by comparing your own words: how do you say that transmission of souls—a truly impious opinion—is not held in your understanding, when you profess that all human beings were that one man? If you do not believe a part of the soul is bound into the seed, with what mouth do you write that all human beings were Adam alone, when a human being certainly cannot exist except as soul and body together?

2.179Moreover, even if you refer this only to flesh, the stupidity of your understanding still cannot be excused. You say, ‘All were that one man,’ although at the time Adam sinned there were already two human beings, not one: himself and his wife. From their substance, not their fault, the human race sprouted according to God’s institution.

2.180Finally, the holiness of their son Abel, celebrated throughout Scripture, testifies that his parents’ sin did him no harm (Genesis 4:4; Matthew 23:35; Hebrews 11:4; 1 John 3:12) (Genesis 4:4) (Matthew 23:35) (Hebrews 11:4) (1 John 3:12).

2.181On the opposite side, Cain—envious and a murderer of his brother, born from the same nature but developing through a different will—is ravaged by trembling that tears his soul apart (Genesis 4:8–14, following the Greek/Old Latin description of his trembling). Thus the apostle said that sin entered this world through one man, and death through sin, and that death so passed into all human beings who sinned (Romans 5:12). This statement agrees with catholic doctrine and lends you no help (Genesis 4:8–14).

2.182For it is arranged in words that indicate an earlier example and the following activity of someone who imitates it.

2.183If, however, he had intended to show generation infected by sin or subject to it, he would have said that sin entered not through one human being, but through two.

2.184Nor would he have said, ‘Death passed on in that all sinned’ (Romans 5:12), but, ‘In that they flowed from the diabolical pleasure and flesh of the first man and first woman.’ Had he declared this, the apostle would not have established your doctrine but overthrown all his own statements. He therefore accuses sinners’ will and sin’s example. Consequently, both reason and Paul fight against you.

2.185‘For until the law, sin was in this world; but sin was not imputed when there was no law. Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of the one to come’ (Romans 5:13–14). Through different terms he distinguishes kinds of sin, showing that sin is one thing and transgression another. At least in this passage, he intends every transgression to be regarded as sin, but not every sin as transgression. The term ‘transgression’ increases the odium of sin, so that those who crossed a command appear more guilty than those who sinned without the law’s warning by disregarding their inborn reason. Therefore, before the law given through Moses and committed to writing—whose enactment prescribed a pattern of conduct that people living under it were not permitted to ignore—the apostle accuses mortals stained with various forms of corrupt activity of sin, not transgression: those living in the interval between Adam and Moses.

2.186Those to whom a law was not given should thus be understood not to have transgressed commands. Yet they are convicted as guilty because, neglecting the reason to which each person’s own feelings bear witness, they violated the rights of human society or of decency. They are therefore said to have sinned by imitating one another, but not by transgressing a law not yet given. Until the law, then, there was sin, not transgression; after the law, not only sin but also transgression. Eternal death reigned, which God had promised to assign to Adam if he sinned (Genesis 2:17). Thus that death owed to sin, that punitive death, reigned before the law over those who sinned: for example, the Sodomites, those destroyed at the time of the flood, and people of various ages destroyed because of wickedness—voluntary wickedness, however (Genesis 6:5–7; Genesis 7:21–23; Genesis 19:24–25). It also reigned after the law over those it found guilty of transgression (Genesis 6:5–7) (Genesis 7:21–23) (Genesis 19:24–25).

2.187For under the judgment of justice, which imputes no sin except one from which a person is free to abstain, those who sinned without the law will be judged without the law, and those who sinned under the law will be judged through the law (Romans 2:12). The apostle’s words, ‘But death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’ (Genesis 2:16–17)s transgression’ (Romans 5:14), make his meaning shine through. He defines Jews who sin under the law as having transgressed like Adam. For the first man too had received a law, though delivered to his ears rather than in books: to abstain from tasting the tree, which tested obedience. By eating from it against the command, he incurred the crime of transgression (Genesis 2:16–17; Genesis 3:6). Thus the people who sinned after the law was given through Moses’ ministry are proved to have sinned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, because, like him, they sinned by transgressing a law. But in the age between the two laws—the first given but not written, the second both promulgated and committed to writing—those who sinned are not shown to be free from sin. Rather, they are said to have erred without the likeness of Adam’s transgression, because they had not received a law (Genesis 3:6).

2.188Adam is called a figure of the one to come, that is, Christ (Romans 5:14), but a figure by contrast: as the former is understood as a model of sin, so the latter is a model of righteousness. Yet Christ’s incarnation was not the first model of righteousness but the greatest. Even before the Word became flesh, virtues shone in the prophets and many other holy people through their faith in God (John 1:14). When the fullness of time arrived, however, the exact standard of righteousness shone out in Christ (Galatians 4:4). The one foretold as ‘Father of the age to come’ stood forth as the rewarder both of the saints who preceded him and of those who followed (Isaiah 9:6).

2.189Likewise, on the opposite side, Adam is called a model of sin—not the first, but the greatest (compare Romans 5:14) (Romans 5:14).

2.190I say ‘greatest’ not because I deny that the devil was more guilty, but because, when a basis for instruction was being sought, it was more fitting for the apostle to mention a human being, to whom successive generations of humanity especially looked, than a being of airy substance. Within humanity itself, however, it was established that the first woman sinned first (Genesis 3:6; compare 1 Timothy 2:14). But because fathers’ authority is more effective and greater in all things, he called the man the model of sin—not the one with whom the offense began, but the one who, through the power of the male sex, is shown to have been more readily imitated. You see how the coherence of the interpretation testifies that truth is within it (Genesis 3:6) (1 Timothy 2:14).

2.191Now consider how greatly your explanation conflicts with the rest of the passage and with these words in particular: the apostle declares that death reigned even over those ‘who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of the one to come’ (Romans 5:14). If he were dealing with natural sin, about which, as you suppose, he had said ‘in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12), who would these people be whom he immediately declares not to be found liable—not merely for Adam’s transgression, but not even for the likeness of his fault?

2.192‘Death reigned,’ he says, ‘even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression’ (Romans 5:14). You see that he made a clear distinction between those who went wrong like Adam and those who went wrong differently.

2.193This division cannot fit natural sin, which, if it existed, would bind absolutely everyone equally. No one, then, would lack this evil, and no one could truthfully be described as not having sinned in the likeness of that sin in whose reality everyone had sinned.

2.194But the apostle concludes and declares that some sinned as Adam did, while others were not even touched by the likeness of the ancient transgression. It is therefore perfectly clear that these are crimes of conduct, not of seed. To repeat our results briefly: the apostle says sin entered through one man (Romans 5:12). Reason shows that this fits imitation, not generation, which is the work of two.

2.195He continued: ‘And so death passed into all human beings’ (Romans 5:12).

2.196He made a distinction so that no one would think sin had passed on. Death, which had gone before, was shown under justice’s judgment to follow grounds for punishment which it found in each sinner’s pursuit of an evil will. He therefore showed that nature must not be accused, but deliberate conduct.

2.197He added that death reigned in that all sinned (Romans 5:12). This expression describes not the ruin of someone being born but the works of someone acting. He thus proved that he accuses perversity and does not wound innocence.

2.198After this he added that sin reigned until the law, showing that sin’s reign fell when the law was given (Romans 5:13).

2.199But generation, which began with Adam, remains after the law too. If it were the fountain of sins and the devil’s shrub, as you argue, this crime would certainly flourish not only until the law but after the law and after Christ. Therefore the sin of which the apostle declares that it existed until the law and could not remain after the law is proved to belong to action, not birth (Romans 5:13).

2.200‘But sin,’ he says, ‘is not imputed when there is no law’ (Romans 5:13). By this statement, as by all his sayings, he has killed the theory of inherited transmission.

2.201For if sin transmitted by descent was not imputed before the law, and did not exist after the law, it never possessed any poison capable of harming the human race. Natural sin was not imputed before the law; it was not imputed under the law either, since nowhere in the law is it ever shown to have been revealed or imputed. Plainly, then, the apostle accuses sin committed by free will before the law, and transgression likewise committed by free will after the law (compare Romans 5:13) (Romans 5:13).

2.202It is therefore established that he said nothing about sin transmitted by descent. Although these points were ample to prove that the apostle meant nothing about natural sin, which cannot exist and is invented by the Manichaeans, he nevertheless added the further distinction: absolutely everyone was not stained by Adam’s transgression, since even among those in whom destruction reigned because of wickedness, many could be found who were shown to have had no share in Adam’s transgression (compare Romans 5:14) (Romans 5:14).

2.203See, then, whether even you should still doubt what we say: that the innocent, God’s fresh handiwork before the exercise of their own will, did not sin in Adam. For even among the wicked, the apostle testifies that there are many who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression (Romans 5:14).

2.204But let us examine the rest. ‘But grace is not like the offense. For if in one man’s offense many died, much more did God’s grace and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to more people’ (Romans 5:15). He says that the evil of the offense is surpassed by the abundance of grace, and ranks the number of those saved above those whom he declares to have perished through transgression.

2.205If you uphold the truth of the apostle’s words and do not think he lied shamelessly, explain how this statement would not bring on him the disgrace of public falsehood if he were speaking about natural sin. If original sin existed, making absolutely all human nature belong to the devil’s jurisdiction, where would there be room even to make the numbers on the two sides equal—those saved and those perishing? In the Gospel, when the Lord showed how few are blessed, he said: ‘How narrow and constricted is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it (Matthew 7:14)! How broad and spacious is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter through it!’ (Matthew 7:13–14).

2.206Surely your expressions ‘many’ and ‘few’ concern an unspecified quantity, since it is through mutual comparison that a number is found great or small. Comparing those to be saved with the multitude who perish, the Lord called them few. Here the apostle, comparing those whom Christ’s grace saves with those who had sinned as Adam did, declares them far more numerous (compare Matthew 7:13–14; Romans 5:15) (Matthew 7:13–14) (Romans 5:15) (Matthew 7:13–14; Romans 5:15).

2.207Maintain, then, that this fits the Manichaeans’ sin—that is, sin transmitted by descent.

2.208If natural sin transferred to the devil’s kingdom everyone whom human fertility produced, and some are thought to have been freed from it through Christ in the world’s final age, what truth or authority belongs to that teacher who, against such clear evidence from the whole world, says righteousness abounded to more people than guilt? Why believe him when he discusses obscure doctrines, if he lies about things so obvious? But to think this is sacrilege, and it was your doctrine that forced it to be said. Let the apostle’s honor therefore crush the Manichaeans’ worthlessness (compare Romans 5:15) (Romans 5:15).

2.209The apostle does not lie. Therefore Christ’s grace abounded to more people than Adam’s fault. Those who sinned under the law are said to have sinned in imitation of that fault; and until Christ, only the Jews sinned under the law. Compare, then, the Jewish nation alone—and only its adults—placed under the law and therefore sinning in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, since he sinned after receiving a law, with the thousands saved by grace’s generosity from the multitude of Gentile nations called through the preaching of the Gospel. Then you will understand that the apostle Paul truly declared that God’s grace and Jesus Christ’s gift reached more people than did participation in the ancient transgression (compare Romans 5:14–15) (Romans 5:14–15).

2.210Having explained grace’s generosity in the abundance of people saved, he compares the gift and sin. With great learning he praises the gift for healing many wounds by one power: ‘And the gift,’ he says, ‘is not as it was through one sin’ (Romans 5:16).

2.211‘For the judgment was from one offense to condemnation, but grace is from many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16). That is, serious sins, even singly, can suffice for the accusation and condemnation of the guilty.

2.212Grace, however, is not conferred in the same way, repeatedly applied to each sin individually. Instead, poured in once, it wipes away many different crimes in a single concentrated action of its power. That is why he says, ‘From many offenses to justification’ (Romans 5:16): it leads human beings freed from many offenses to the glory of justification bestowed on them. Therefore he does not here mean Adam’s single sin, as you suppose. He uses the numbers one and many solely to praise grace: grace need not be repeated as often as each mortal person has sinned, as though individual baptisms could heal only individual sins.

2.213Rather, he took care to express this: although individual sins had mortally wounded their guilty doers, this grace, with its unique power administered once, saved people pierced by countless wounds.

2.214‘For if through one man’s offense death reigned through one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ’ (Romans 5:17). He consistently confirms what he began. He has set down two statements, intending what he added at the end to apply to both. He declares that death reigns through one who was a model of sin, and in whose likeness those who sin under the law transgress. He also declares that those who have obtained abundant grace reign in life through one—a grace which benefits those who imitate virtue. No question about the ‘one’ therefore remains. The added statement that those who receive abundant grace reign in life also resolves the first statement: no one is driven to death unless he has embraced the sinner’s example.

2.215The life in which the holy will reign is shown to be eternal. Therefore the death that follows voluntary wickedness should also be understood as eternal. ‘Therefore, as through one man’s offense it came upon all human beings to condemnation, so through one man’s righteousness it came upon all human beings to justification of life. For just as through one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so through one man’s obedience many will be made righteous’ (Romans 5:18–19). Every difficulty is resolved. It is shameless to stir up a false accusation about universality; it is utterly foolish to hunt for a knot in a smooth rush. The apostle declares that not all but many learned sins through the first man’s disobedience, and that many, not all, obtained righteousness through the other’s obedience. Human origin is not under discussion here. Conduct is displayed in opposing pursuits. Disobedience and obedience show the activity of deliberate conduct, not of generation. Surely, if the apostle thought as you do, where could he more fittingly have declared that all go to condemnation by birth but few to life by believing, than here, where the argument’s conclusion was to be completed? He ought to have said: ‘Just as through one man’s disobedience all were made sinners’—or rather, not ‘through disobedience,’ but ‘Just as through the first man’s generation all were born sinners, so through one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.’

2.216Had he put it that way, the statement would have been shown as impious as it was foolish. The comparison itself would be utterly stupid, because the persons were presented on different terms and unlike things were compared: nature and will. On the evil side he would place the necessity of seed, but on the good side only freedom of effort—or rather, no freedom any longer, since the power to choose good and avoid evil would not be available if guilt were natural. The apostle, then, the church’s wise and learned teacher, says that sin arose and passed on through disobedience, and that righteousness multiplies (compare Romans 5:19) (Romans 5:19).

2.217Consequently, he destroys the theory of natural sin and teaches that the causes of substance and of will are different. Lest this understanding be attributed more to our ingenuity than to apostolic teaching, let us hear what he added to this passage: ‘But the law came in,’ he says, ‘so that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded beyond it, so that, just as sin reigned into death, grace might reign through righteousness into eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 5:20–21). Maintain, then, how your sin—the sin of inherited transmission—began to abound after the law, and what increase it received after Moses’ ministry.

2.218You certainly contend that in these passages the apostle discussed natural sin. Earlier, he said it existed until the law, so that we would understand it ceased after the law. Now, however, he says of the same sin that it began to grow and abound after the law. We have shown that both statements fit the catholic understanding we follow. But with what shamelessness are they claimed for your doctrine, so that one and the same sin is said earlier to have ceased when the law was given, and now to have grown? How, then, did natural sin abound after the law? Did the genitals begin to move more fiercely, so that increased and novel movements seem to have added power to your sin? Or was a law given to newborn children, admonishing those begotten from sexual desire—which you call diabolical and the root and fruit of sin—to amend what they had been made, and correct the activity they had undergone when their parents begot them? Were they finally to compel what had happened not to have happened, and by refusing to hear this incur the crime of disobedience? No fool, much less the law God gave, could charge them with that (compare Romans 5:13; Romans 5:20) (Romans 5:13) (Romans 5:20) (Romans 5:13; Romans 5:20).

2.219What, then, was added after the law to natural sin, which is shown in the law not to have been prohibited or condemned, nor even lightly censured or faintly disclosed?

2.220Certainly even you are not so senseless as to say that sin transmitted by descent became greater after circumcision. How, then, did it abound after the law when it is neither accused nor revealed in the law? But see how well this agrees with the sound understanding that places sin solely in the wrongdoer’s will. The apostle says sin existed until the law, so that after the law it should be understood as transgression (Romans 5:13): it crosses commands that have been promulgated. In this way sin abounded when the law came in, because transgression added odium to its guilt. The act of an evil will, which before the law was sin, after the law also began to be transgression. Yet God did not give the law with the purpose of making mortals worse through its enactment. For the law is neither sin nor the cause of sin, but ‘the commandment is holy, just, and good’ (Romans 7:12). Wrongdoers’ perversity, however, wounded itself with the blade that should have healed it, and opposed God’s purpose, so that it found danger where it should have found healing. The apostle says that the outcome of events injured the apparent purpose of God’s decision to give the law. Human amendment did not result as the lawgiver intended; rather, the opposite occurred in very many people. He says sinners’ efforts went so far that the law seemed given for no other reason than to make the wicked more wicked and add transgression to sin.

2.221In this sense, then, the offense is rightly said to have abounded: each person’s will committed it both before and after the law, but before the law the will was sinful, while after the law it was also transgressive. Something grows and abounds when it gains increase within its own kind, just as after Moses the additional weight of transgression was added to the sin of free will. For it belonged to the same kind, though at a different time: an evil will which sinned both before and after the law, not through irresistible compulsion, but through blameworthy effort. Since this is so, nothing in the apostle’s words can fit your position. The coming of the law is not shown to have made inherited sin more abundant or greater. Nor can something plainly unrelated to newborn children’s will rightly be said to abound through sins of will. Therefore what the law could neither prohibit nor punish did not abound after the law. ‘But where sin abounded, grace abounded beyond it, so that, just as sin reigned into death, grace might reign through righteousness into eternal life’ (Romans 5:20–21).

2.222As he proceeds, the apostle explains himself more clearly. He teaches that, when human salvation was being lost, God, moved by the abundance of his compassion, brought a medicine more effective than usual to a desperate situation. Those whom he had not corrected by commands he would bind to himself by benefits, requiring devotion for the future while not imputing past deeds. People should then strive to preserve the righteousness they had obtained by the direct path of belief. The abundance of preceding sins therefore called for the help of such abundant mercy: unless the forgiver’s generosity had been so great, no other discipline could have helped diseases so serious. But in commending this divine benefit, the apostle saw room for an objection from people who might say: ‘If we rightly assess the worth of causes by their effects, and the abundance of sins obtained an outpouring of God’s mercy, we should persist in sins so that grace’s abundance does not fail.’ Anticipating such an opinion, he says: ‘What, then, shall we say? Shall we remain in sin so that grace may abound? Far from it! For we who died to sin, how shall we still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ rose in the Father’s glory, we too might walk in newness of life’ (Romans 6:1–4).

2.223He says that we died to sin at the time when, to receive the gift of forgiveness, we professed our renunciation of the world and all sins. Remembering the gift, we should therefore live in a way that shows we have been buried with Christ and visibly bear his resurrection in holiness. Just as, after rising from the dead, he undergoes no bodily weakness or scourging, so we too should strive to be invulnerable to all sins and vices. ‘For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also share his resurrection, knowing that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so that we no longer serve sin. For the one who has died has been justified from sin’ (Romans 6:5–7). He binds believers with clear reasoning. If you wish, he says, to share his resurrection, imitate the power of his death too, so that, dead to vices, you may live in virtue. You will share that happiness if you bear the image of his death by dying to sins. Our old self should be shown nailed to his cross, to destroy the body of sin through the courage of suffering. By ‘body of sin,’ according to his customary usage, Paul means vices, not the substance of flesh. For he continues: ‘So that the body of sin might be destroyed, so that we no longer serve sin. For the one who has died has been justified from sin.’

2.224He was, of course, speaking to living people and telling them that righteousness had been conferred on them through the mysteries. How, then, does he say someone is justified whom he calls dead, unless he is showing beyond ambiguity that here he calls renunciation ‘death’? He adopts the name of death to show that believers should cease from sins as dead people cease from activities.

2.225‘For if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall live with Christ, knowing that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death will no longer rule over him. For the death he died to sin, he died once, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you too reckon yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 6:8–11). Just as Christ, he says, died to sin once—that is, died because of our sins once—and dies no more, but lives in God’s glory, so you too, reckoning yourselves dead to sin, should live and serve virtues alone.

2.226Where here is nature accused? Where are the beginnings of human substance blamed? Where is the movement of the one begetting a child condemned? It is clearer than light that the Teacher of the Gentiles addresses only the will, so that it renounces hidden disgrace (2 Corinthians 4:2) and advances to a better life through corrected actions. But now let our explanation take a shorter course and stop continually interpreting the apostle’s words in these passages. Let us hear him discuss his own meaning. At the end of his argument it will become clear whose doctrine and faith he agrees with. We say, of course, that the apostle spoke of the sin of human will, present in each person who sins. You speak of the sin which, believing Faustus, you think was transmitted through generation and received by everyone without willing it. Let our disputes, then, cease, if you please. To proceed modestly, let us set aside the apostle’s dignity. On that ground alone we could insist that, even if his words agreed with you in every respect, he nevertheless could have intended nothing so disgraceful, given the splendor of his office: the fault would lie in ambiguous expressions, not perverse meanings. Let us grant him only this in the present matter: as a man whose mind was not disordered, he should be believed to have understood his own writings better than you do. ‘Therefore,’ he says, ‘do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey it’ (Romans 6:12). I could already say here that the exhortation proves he is treating sins of will. For if evils were natural, they could be defended on grounds of justice or, at least, lamented out of pity; but in no way could people be admonished to avoid them. Greater than any natural evil, if such an evil could exist, would be the evil of the madness possessing anyone who demanded devotion in avoiding natural things. But the apostle enacted nothing that could justly be criticized. He therefore indicates a sin of will when he insists that it must be avoided.

2.227‘Do not present your members as weapons of injustice to sin, but present yourselves to God as people alive from the dead, and your members as weapons of righteousness to God. For sin does not rule over you: you are not under law but under grace’ (Romans 6:13–14). You should, he says, serve God more faithfully because you do so more freely. Sin ruled over you when punishment for guilt hung over you. But after you received the benefits of God’s grace and breathed freely with the weight of your guilt laid down, a free person’s sense of honor should prompt you to show gratitude to your healer.

2.228But this gave occasion for the same question he had explained above: someone might object that people freed from the law, which threatened wrath, could safely sin under the kindness of God’s grace. He therefore immediately added: ‘What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Far from it! Or do you not know that when you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one you obey, whether of sin or of obedience to righteousness?’ (Romans 6:15–16). Do we now believe him about the kind of sin he has been discussing? When you present yourselves, he says, as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of that one, whether of sin or righteousness. Where, then, does the apostle indicate here that sin which is imagined to have flown over the very seed before the time of willing, before the activity of obedience, before the age of knowledge and conscience? Such a thing certainly can be found only in Manichaean books.

2.229The apostle, however—if he can obtain any credibility from people in this age—shows that he calls none slaves of sin except those who are known to have obeyed sin by their own will. By changing that will, they began to serve righteousness. He therefore placed obedience in the middle and attributed to it their effort to obey vices earlier and virtues afterward (compare Romans 6:16–18) (Romans 6:16–18).

2.230‘But thanks be to God,’ he says, ‘that you were slaves of sin, but obeyed from the heart the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted. Freed from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness’ (Romans 6:17–18).

2.231A change of obedience made from the heart, he says, freed you from sin and made you cling to holiness.

2.232‘What I say is human, because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members to serve impurity and lawlessness for lawlessness, so now present your members to serve righteousness for sanctification’ (Romans 6:19). What a teacher, filled with God’s Spirit! Truly a golden vessel, and a trumpet sounding not broken shrieks but clear notes! He gains authority for his words through the humanity of his exhortation.

2.233To avoid seeming to command anything arduous and inaccessible to a human being, he took an expression from ordinary speech and called it ‘human’: that is, easy to handle, something made gentler by comparing the cases. I do not demand of you, he says, an intensity matching these exalted realities; nor, great as virtue’s riches are, do I establish correspondingly novel commands by which you must obtain them. I impose nothing harsh, prescribe nothing barely bearable. If I commanded such a thing in proportion to righteousness’s splendor, you might complain of the flesh’s weakness and plead that you could not bear constant toil. So now I address you with this moderation: apply to virtues the same effort you previously applied to crimes. Although it insults honorable things to pursue them with merely the same determination spent on disgraceful things, it nevertheless suffices for your present training if you pursue righteousness with at least the intensity with which you pursued lawlessness and impurity.

2.234Let us therefore believe the Teacher of the Gentiles and bear witness to his truthfulness. Truly, as he said, what he commanded is human: that correcting the will should amend the will’s vices.

2.235But just as this is human, the other position, if he had held it, would have been not merely inhuman and savage, but unjust—and not merely unjust, but insane. If he knew sin was inborn, he would be reproaching people of his own age with the faults of an ancient birth, commanding abstention from things he believed innate, and prescribing with threats that I must lay down things I had begun to possess before my soul entered my body and my body entered this world.

2.236Those whom he strove to amend would more rightly admonish him to weigh how much he commanded and recognize that the first step of sound counsel is to observe moderation in commands. Teaching is stripped of authority when fairness does not defend it; it is full of authority when justice’s balance commends it. It is therefore established that the apostle, the churches’ revered teacher, giving an account of his teaching through good judgment, fairness, and humanity, meant nothing about natural sin. Rather, he insisted, as was the case, that we had been slaves of vices only through our will, and that through the same will, if corrected, we can serve righteousness. But since I have been occupied this far in explaining this passage, to show that the Manichaeans can find no defense in the apostle Paul’s words, and since the sequence of his discourse has disclosed the truth he follows throughout the entire body of his statements, let this be the end of the second book. Here, however, we must warn that nothing remains for the advocates of inherited sin except shamelessness. They confessed that they had no defense in reason and claimed all their comfort from the apostolic words we have explained. Now that it is clear these prescribe nothing disgraceful, nothing at odds with holiness and reason, their position has plainly fallen. Reason, together with many scriptural authorities, and the catholics’ reverence for God have overthrown it; and the supposed meaning of this passage no longer protects it (compare Romans 6:17–19) (Romans 6:17–19).