Chapter 29.—God’s True Grace Could Be Defended Even If There Were No Original Sin, as Pelagius Maintains.

But God’s grace, that is, true grace without merits, is maintained, even if infants, when baptized, according to the view of the Pelagians, are not plucked out of the power of darkness, because they are held guilty of no sin, as the Pelagians think, but are only transferred into the Lord’s kingdom: for even thus, without any good merits, the kingdom is given to those to whom it is given; and without any evil merits it is not given to them to whom it is not given. And this we are in the habit of saying in opposition to the same Pelagians, when they object to us that we attribute God’s grace to fate, when we say that it is given not in respect to our merits. For they themselves rather attribute God’s grace to fate in the case of infants, if they say that when there is no merit it is fate.60    See above, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book ii. chs. 11, 12. Certainly, even according to the Pelagians themselves, no merits can be found in infants to cause that some of them should be admitted into the kingdom, and others should be alienated from the kingdom. But now, just as in order to show that God’s grace is not given according to our merits, I preferred to maintain this truth in accordance with both opinions,—both in accordance with our own, to wit, who say that infants are bound by original sin, and according to that of the Pelagians, who deny that there is original sin, and yet I cannot on that account doubt that infants have what He can pardon them who saves His people from their sins: so in the third book on Free Will, according to both views, I have withstood the Manicheans, whether ignorance and difficulty be punishments or elements of nature without which no man is born; and yet I hold one of these views. There, moreover, it is sufficiently evidently declared by me, that that is not the nature of man as he was ordained, but his punishment as condemned.

29. Defenditur autem sine meritis Dei gratia, id est vera gratia, etiamsi parvuli baptizati, sicut Pelagiani sentiunt, non eruuntur de potestate tenebrarum, quia nulli peccato, sicut putant Pelagiani, tenentur obnoxii, sed tantum in regnum Domini transferuntur: etiam sic enim sine ullis bonis meritis datur eis regnum quibus datur, et sine ullis malis meritis non datur eis quibus non datur. Quod adversus eosdem Pelagianos dicere solemus, quando nobis objiciunt, quod fato tribuamus Dei gratiam, dicendo eam non secundum merita nostra dari. Ipsi enim potius Dei gratiam fato in parvulis tribuunt, qui dicunt fatum esse, ubi meritum non est . Nulla quippe merita, etiam secundum ipsos Pelagianos, possunt in parvulis inveniri, cur alii eorum mittantur in regnum, alii vero alienentur a regno. Sicut autem nunc, ut ostenderem gratiam Dei non secundum merita nostra dari, secundum utrumque sensum hoc defendere malui; et secundum nostrum scilicet, qui obstrictos originali peccato parvulos dicimus, et secundum Pelagianorum, qui originale negant esse peccatum; nec tamen ideo mihi est ambigendum, habere parvulos quod eis dimittat qui salvum facit populum suum a peccatis eorum (Matth. I, 21): ita in tertio libro de Libero Arbitrio secundum utrumque sensum restiti Manichaeis, sive supplicia, sive primordia naturae sint ignorantia et difficultas, sine quibus nullus hominum nascitur; et tamen unum horum teneo, ibi quoque a me satis evidenter expressum: quod non sit ista natura instituti hominis, sed poena damnati (Capp. 20 et 23).