16. [XV.]—Pelagius’ Fraudulent and Crafty Excuses.

For what is the significance to the matter with which we now have to do of his answers to his followers, when he tells them that “the reason why he condemned the points which were objected against him, is because he himself maintains that primal sin was injurious not only to the first man, but to the whole human race, not by transmission, but by example;” in other words, not because those who have been propagated from him have derived any fault from him, but because all who afterwards have sinned, have imitated him who committed the first sin? Or when he says that “the reason why infants are not in the same state in which Adam was before the transgression, is because they are not yet able to receive the commandment, whereas he was able; and because they do not yet make use of that choice of a rational will which he certainly made use of, since otherwise no commandment would have been given to him”? How does such an exposition as this of the points alleged against him justify him in thinking that he rightly condemned the propositions, “Adam’s sin injured only himself, and not the whole race of man;” and “infants at their birth are in the self-same state in which Adam was before he sinned;” and that by the said condemnation he is not guilty of deceit in holding such opinions as are found in his subsequent writings, how that “infants are born without any evil or fault, and that there is nothing in them but what God has formed,”—no wound, in short, inflicted by an enemy?

CAPUT XV.

16. Quid enim ad rem, de qua nunc agimus, pertinet, quod discipulis suis respondet, «ideo se illa objecta damnasse, quia et ipse dicit, non tantum primo homini, sed etiam humano generi primum illud obfuisse peccatum, non propagine, sed exemplo;» id est, non quod ex illo traxerint aliquod vitium, qui ex illo propagati sunt, sed quod eum primum peccantem imitati sunt omnes, qui postea peccaverunt? aut quia dicit, «ideo infantes non in eo statu esse, in quo fuit Adam ante praevaricationem, quia isti praeceptum capere nondum possunt, ille autem potuit; nondumque utuntur rationalis voluntatis arbitrio, quo ille nisi uteretur, non ei praeceptum daretur?» Quid hoc ad rem pertinet, quia verba sibi objecta sic exponendo, recte se putat damnasse quod dicitur, «peccatum Adae ipsi soli obfuisse, et non generi humano; et infantes qui nascuntur, in eo statu esse, in quo Adam fuit ante peccatum:» et tamen his damnatis non mendaciter tenere, quod in ejus postea conscriptis opusculis invenitur, «sine ullo malo, sine ullo vitio parvulos nasci, et hoc solum in eis esse, quod Deus condidit,» non vulnus quod inimicus inflixit?