Chapter 6.—Shall God’s Nature Be Mutable, Sinful, Impious, Even Eternally Damned.

All this, however, I am saying to a catholic: advising with him rather than teaching him. For I do not suppose that these things are new to you; or that they have been long heard of by you, but not believed. This epistle of mine, you will, I am sure, so read as to recognise in its statement your own faith also, which is by the gracious gift of the Lord the common property of us all in the catholic Church. Since, then (as I was saying), I am now speaking to a catholic, whence I pray you tell me, do you suppose that the soul, I will not say your soul or my own soul, but the soul of the first man, was given to him? If you admit that it came from nothing, made, however, and inbreathed into him by God, then your belief tallies with my own. If, on the contrary, you suppose that it came out of some other created thing, which served as the material, as it were, for the divine Artificer to make the soul out of, just as the dust was the material of which Adam was formed, or the rib whence Eve was made, or the waters whence the fishes and the fowls were created, or the ground out of which the terrestrial animals were formed: then this opinion is not catholic, nor is it true. But further, if you think, which may God forbid, that the divine Creator made, or is still making, human souls neither out of nothing, nor out of some other created thing, but out of His own self, that is, out of His own nature, then you have learnt this of your new instructor; but I cannot congratulate you, or flatter you, on the discovery. You have wandered along with him very far from the catholic faith. Better would it be, though it would be untrue, yet it would be better, I say, and more tolerable, that you should believe the soul to have been made out of some other created substance which God had already formed, than out of God’s own uncreated substance, so that what is mutable, and sinful, and impious, and if persistent to the end in the impiety will have to suffer eternal damnation, should not with horrible blasphemy be referred to the nature of God! Away, brother, I beseech you, away with this, I will not call it faith, but execrably impious error. May God avert from you, a man of gravity and a presbyter, the misery of being seduced by a youthful layman; and, while supposing that your opinion is the catholic faith, of being lost from the number of the faithful. For I must not deal with you as I might with him; nor does this tremendous error, when yours, deserve the same indulgence as being that of this young man, although you may have derived it from him. He has but just now found his way to the catholic fold to get healing and safety;61    See below in ch. 14 [x.].you have a rank among the very shepherds of that fold. But we would not that a sheep which comes to the Lord’s flock for shelter from error, should be healed of his sores in such a way, as first to infect and destroy the shepherd by his contagious presence.

6. Si haec cum catholico loquor, magis commonens quam docens. Neque enim esse tibi arbitror nova, vel audita quidem et antea, non tamen credita: sed, ut existimo, sic legis epistolam meam, ut hic agnoscas etiam fidem tuam, quae nobis in catholica Ecclesia, Domino donante, communis est. Si ergo haec, ut dicere coeperam, cum catholico loquor; unde obsecro credis esse animam, non uniuscujusque nostrum dico, sed primam primo illi homini datam? Si ex nihilo, et factam tamen insufflatamque a Deo: id credis quod ego. Si autem ex aliqua alia creatura, quae unde anima fieret, tanquam materies subjacebat artifici Deo; sicut pulvis unde fieret Adam, vel costa ejus unde Eva, vel sicut aquae unde pisces et volucres, vel sicut 0498 terra unde animalia quaeque terrestria: non est catholicum, non est verum. Quod si neque ex nihilo, neque ex alia quacumque creatura, sed ex semetipso Deum, hoc est, ex natura sua fecisse, vel facere animas, quod absit, existimas: hoc quidem ab isto didicisti; sed non tibi gratulor, neque blandior; longe cum illo a fide catholica exorbitasti. Tolerabilius enim; quod quidem falsum est; tamen, ut dixi, tolerabilius, ex aliqua alia creatura, quam quidem jam fecerat Deus, quam ex Dei natura animam conditam crederes, ut quod est mutabilis, quod peccat, quod fit impia, quod etiam si impia perduraverit in fine, sine fine damnabitur, non ad Dei naturam cum horrenda blasphemia referretur. Abjice, frater, abjice, obsecro, istam, non plane fidem, sed exsecrandae impietatis errorem, ne homo gravis seductus a juvene, et a laico presbyter, cum istam catholicam fidem esse arbitraris, de numero fidelium, quod a te avertat Dominus, eximaris. Non enim sic tecum agendum est, ut cum illo; aut ea venia tuus iste tam horrendus, qua juvenis illius, licet ab illo ad te transierit, error est dignus. Ille ovili catholico sanandus nuper accessit, tu in catholicis pastoribus deputaris. Nolumus ita curetur quae venit ab errore ad dominicum gregem, ut prius pestifera contagione disperdat ovis ulcerosa pastorem.