To Turbantius — fragments in Against Julian — Book 3
Julian of Eclanum (c. 386–c. 455) was bishop of Eclanum in southern Italy until 418, when he was deposed and exiled for refusing to condemn Pelagius. The most learned Pelagian controversialist, he pursued Augustine across a decade of pamphlet war.
None of Julian's works survives directly; what remains is preserved in the long quotations of Augustine, who answered him book by book. Reconstructed from those hostile pages, Julian emerges as a formidable defender of free will, marriage, and the goodness of creation.
This volume gathers the surviving arguments: the six books To Florus with the earlier fragments and letter material, each with its source locator.
© 2026 SaneApps. This translation is free to share and adapt, even commercially, as long as you credit SaneApps. Draft translation, prepared with AI assistance and not yet independently reviewed. Verify against the original before citing.
We could not plead our case before those judges, because no one deliberates well about doubtful matters…§§3.1.2–3.5.11
3.1.2We could not plead our case before those judges, because no one deliberates well about doubtful matters unless they come with a heart free from hatred, anger, and friendship. Those who judged our case were not like that: they began to hate it before they knew it.
If anyone says that human beings have free will or that God creates those who are born, they are called a Pelagian and a Caelestian.
3.1.3The emperor’s reply was in our favor.
3.1.4One man has come forward who wants people to think that the whole battle depends on him.
We are called new heretics because we maintain that every evil defined as sin consists in the will alone, not in nature.
3.1.5The side that substitutes terror in a discussion is suffering from a lack of reasons. It wins no agreement from the wise, but forces blind agreement from the fearful.
3.2.7He has spoken against himself. To defend himself, he said that the new heretics call him and his party condemners of marriage and of God’s work. Then he took that back by saying that God and the devil possess a newborn human being in half shares—or rather, that the devil possesses the whole person, with God completely excluded, as it were, from his entire possession, the human being.
3.3.8The grace of baptism need not be changed according to the circumstances, since it distributes its own gifts according to the capacity of those who come to it. So Christ, who is the redeemer of his own work, continually increases his gifts to his image with generous kindness. Those whom he made good by creating them, he makes better by renewing and adopting them.
3.4.10The care of the body has been entrusted to the soul in such a way that both share in the fruit of the action: either the joys of practiced virtue, or the penalties for recklessness, together with the suffering of the flesh that the soul failed to govern well here.
At the beginning of life, human nature is rich with the gift of innocence.
3.5.11There is no sin in infants, because sin cannot exist without the will, which is absent in them.
I will not let him escape, but will question him closely and briefly: does he think an action is guilty in…§§3.6.13–3.10.20
3.6.13I will not let him escape, but will question him closely and briefly: does he think an action is guilty in infants, or their nature?
If an action, show what they have done. If their nature, show who made it.
3.7.14Human nature is worthy of praise.
They are guilty for the very fact that they exist.
Fruitfulness is to be condemned.
3.7.15Every union of bodies is evil.
Children are born from a union of bodies.
Therefore the children who come from an evil act are evil.
3.7.16The purpose of the sexes is bodily union.
If bodily union is always evil, then the condition of bodies formed as different sexes is also shameful.
Since you will not be able to deny this…
3.8.17God cannot be the author of an evil thing.
Therefore all bodies are credited to an evil author.
3.9.18The good God, through whom everything was made, himself formed the parts of our body.
He who made bodies also distinguished the sexes. He made them different in form in order to join them in action; the difference between their organs supplied the reason for their union.
Therefore the union of bodies comes from the same source as bodies themselves.
Once you have conceded this, however unwillingly, it follows that so many good things—bodies, sexes, unions—cannot have evil fruits.
3.9.19Human beings are made by God for the purpose of being held by the devil under a lawful claim.
3.10.20Perhaps he will say that we must establish from the testimony of Scripture, rather than from syllogisms, that children born from bodily union are to be counted as God’s work.
To state faithfully how these works take place, the prophet came close to risking modesty, because he said: “The two will be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Sexual desire was restored by God’s gift to Abraham and Sarah when old age had worn them out and their…§§3.11.21–3.16.30
3.11.21Sexual desire was restored by God’s gift to Abraham and Sarah when old age had worn them out and their bodies were as good as dead.
Let him say, if he can, that something he sees God sometimes bestow as a gift belongs to the devil’s work.
3.11.23Isaac was conceived without sexual desire or a man’s seed.
3.12.24Even if the devil created human beings, they would be evil through no fault of their own. So they would no longer be evil at all: no one can be anything other than what they were born to be, and it is not just to demand more from someone than they can do.
3.13.26Its general kind lies in the fire of life; its particular form in the movement of the sexual organs; its proper measure in marital intercourse; its excess in the lack of restraint involved in sexual immorality.
3.13.27Sexual desire’s origin is therefore rightly defined as lying in the fire of life. Once this has been established, bodily desire must be attributed to the one through whom bodily life came into being.
So this appetite is not blameworthy in its general kind, its particular form, or its proper measure, but in its excess. Its kind and form belong to the Creator’s work; its measure to the choice of honorable conduct; its excess to the fault of the will.
3.14.28Sexual desire is interrupted by bodily weakness.
In married people it is exercised honorably; in those who abstain it is restrained by virtue.
The fourth thing—the excess of that pleasure—is committed by the sexually unrestrained. Since it arises from recklessness, not from nature, it is rightly condemned.
3.15.29Marital chastity is indignant that some have committed what is forbidden, and marvels that others have renounced even what is permitted. Assigned the territory at the furthest boundary, it condemns the savagery of those who rush beyond it and reveres the radiance of those who shine above it. With modest hands it both tends those burning with desire and praises those who do not need such a remedy.
3.16.30On careful examination, marriage cannot win approval if it is praised only by comparison with evil.
The event was prophetic of what has now been shown in the region of Africa: neither the husband nor the…§§3.17.31–3.20.39
3.17.31The event was prophetic of what has now been shown in the region of Africa: neither the husband nor the chastity of the beautiful and holy woman who represented the church was safe, and she was kept unharmed there by God’s action.
We must pray to this God, most blessed brother Turbantius, dearest fellow priest, that in this time too, by equally mighty acts, he will not delay in rescuing the catholic church—the mature, fruitful, chaste, and beautiful bride of his Son—from violation by the Manichaeans who carry on their raids in Africa or from Africa.
3.17.33But from this digression, into which the force of grief carried me, I return to what I had begun.
He who made the first human being from dust forms everyone from seed.
The defense of natural sin is strangled in these snares.
3.18.34Married people conceived without bodily warmth.
God did not make the human being; or he made the human being for the devil; or the devil made the human being.
Isaac too was formed from that same pleasure of sexual desire.
The hand of divine providence is at work even in the sexual organs of sinners.
3.18.35“And how will God judge the world? For if God’s truth has abounded through my lie to his glory, why am I still judged as a sinner?” (Romans 3:6–7)
By these words the apostle shows that God would have lost the authority to judge if he had not kept within proper bounds in commanding.
The apostle said this to restrain those who maintained that the sins of mortals increase God’s praise, and that he therefore commanded impossible things in order to provide himself with an occasion for mercy. This judgment of the apostle shows that human beings are rightly judged because they failed to do what was possible. They would be judged unjustly if they had failed to do things they were commanded to do but could not do.
3.19.36Complete ignorance should be understood to be called righteousness, because God said to Abimelech, who was about to lie with Sarah without knowing that she was another man’s wife: “I too knew that you did this with a clean heart” (Genesis 20:6). Thus the condition of those who are born is not harmed by the will of those who conceive them. Even if that will were evil, it would not come within the children’s knowledge in any way.
Infants are born neither righteous nor unrighteous; their own actions will make them so. Infancy is simply rich with the gift of innocence.
A human being is therefore born full of innocence, but capable of virtue, and will deserve praise or blame according to the purpose subsequently chosen.
3.19.37[Through Abraham’s prayer, sexual desire was restored to the women, for it is written:] “God had closed every womb in Abimelech’s household because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife” (Genesis 20:18).
3.20.39Why would God look for righteous people in Sodom (Genesis 18:23–32), if nature made them the way they were?
The apostle praised sexual desire by calling the use of a woman natural, when he said that some men…§§3.20.40–3.23.53
3.20.40The apostle praised sexual desire by calling the use of a woman natural, when he said that some men “abandoned the natural use of the woman and burned in their desire for one another” (Romans 1:27).
3.20.41The people of Sodom also sinned in their use of the created goods of bread and wine.
3.21.42I will give a brief reminder, so that what has been argued throughout the book may remain in the reader’s heart.
Whoever keeps natural desire within its proper measure uses a good thing well. Whoever does not keep within its measure uses a good thing badly. Whoever, out of love for holy virginity, has renounced even that proper measure does better by not using a good thing. Confident of their health and strength, they have rejected remedies so that they may engage in glorious contests.
3.21.47He is like the drug seller who promised an animal that would eat itself.
Marriage is both a great good and a great evil.
3.21.48He follows Epicurus’s paths and cuts every rein by which desires are restrained.
3.22.51Where is the original evil?
Why is a human being whom God made under the devil?
What does the devil recognize there as his own, if he created neither what was made nor that from which it was made?
Among so many good things, where does the evil in infants come from?
3.23.52A human being is not guilty if born from sexual immorality, but is not innocent if born from marriage.
He charges all parents’ sins to all their children.
3.23.53When adulterers conceive a child, a human being is born from the power of the seed, not from the shamefulness of the wrongdoing.
The most false part of his position is the statement: “The goodness of marriage cannot be accused on account of the original evil derived from it.”
If evil is derived from it, it can be accused and cannot be excused.
Every cause of evil is without good.
A thing does not escape punishment when other things incur guilt by sharing in it. If original evil is…§§3.24.54–3.26.61
3.24.54A thing does not escape punishment when other things incur guilt by sharing in it.
If original evil is derived from marriage too, the marital union is a cause of evil.
3.24.55Through what is sin found in infants?
Parents who, through their union, supplied the cause of sin are rightly liable to condemnation. By their work they brought it about that the devil gained the power to rule over human beings.
The origin of those who are born comes from the devil, because the origin of sin, without which no human being is born, is said to come from the devil.
3.24.56Where is the crack among so many defenses of innocence through which sin could enter?
The devil’s work is not allowed to pass through God’s work.
If nature comes from God, original evil cannot be in it.
3.25.57Marriage was instituted differently before Adam’s sin: it could exist without sexual desire, without bodily movement, and without the need for the sexes.
3.25.58He declares that the infants who have filled the world, for whom Christ died, are the devil’s work, born from a disease, and guilty from their beginning.
3.26.59If, before sin, God created that from which human beings would be born, while the devil supplied what would stir their parents, holiness is certainly to be ascribed to those born, and guilt to those who conceive them.
3.26.60Infants belong to the good of fruitfulness, which God’s blessing established before the disease of desire, not to the disease of desire itself, if that arose afterward when people sinned. Therefore holiness must be ascribed to those born, and guilt to those who conceive them.
3.26.61The apostle was portraying a Jewish person living under the law when he said: “I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18); “It is not I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:17); “Evil lies close beside me” (Romans 7:21); and “I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:23).
In agreement with the holy Scriptures and the surest reason, we defend the absence of evil in nature in…§§3.26.64–3.26.65
3.26.64In agreement with the holy Scriptures and the surest reason, we defend the absence of evil in nature in order to encourage people to strive for virtue. We insist that no height of virtue is so difficult that, with God’s help, a faithful mind cannot reach it. We therefore say that there is no necessity of evil in the flesh, so that everyone, created in a praiseworthy way, may be ashamed to live shamefully. In this way, praise of their inborn nobility brings a sense of shame to bear against disgraceful laziness.
There is no doubt that the overthrow of holiness, the pollution of chastity, and the ruin of morals fit his teachings—indeed, are inherent in them. He will not deny it: he turns the filth of bad conduct into an accusation against nature in order to remove sinners’ fear, and consoles their obscenities by insulting the apostles and all the saints. For he recalls that the apostle Paul, that golden vessel, often said: “I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil that I hate” (Romans 7:15, 19), and similar things.
3.26.65The whole purpose of his thinking is to swear allegiance to vices so as to wage war on virtues, and to strive with every trick and every fury for the destruction of God’s city. He frightens those resisting shameful conduct by making them despair of attaining chastity. He falsely claims that obscene desire has such strength that reason cannot govern and restrain it, and that even the army of the apostles did not resist it.