17.—How Pelagius Deceived His Judges.

Now, is it by making such statements as these, meeting objections which are urged in one sense with explanations which are meant in another, that he designs to prove to us that he did not deceive those who sat in judgment on him? Then he utterly fails in his purpose. In proportion to the craftiness of his explanations, was the stealthiness with which he deceived them. For, just because they were catholic bishops, when they heard the man pouring out anathemas upon those who maintained that “Adam’s sin was injurious to none but himself, and not to the human race,” they understood him to assert nothing but what the catholic Church has been accustomed to declare, on the ground of which it truly baptizes infants for the remission of sins—not, indeed, sins which they have committed by imitation owing to the example of the first sinner, but sins which they have contracted by their very birth, owing to the corruption of their origin. When, again, they heard him anathematizing those who assert that “infants at their birth are in the same state in which Adam was before the transgression,” they supposed him to refer to none others than those persons who “think that infants have derived no sin from Adam, and that they are accordingly in that state that he was in before his sin.” For, of course, no other objection would be brought against him than that on which the question turned. When, therefore, he so explains the objection as to say that infants are not in the same state that Adam was in before he sinned, simply because they have not yet arrived at the same firmness of mind or body, not because of any propagated fault that has passed on to them, he must be answered thus: “When the objections were laid against you for condemnation, the catholic bishops did not understand them in this sense; therefore, when you condemned them, they believed that you were a catholic. That, accordingly, which they supposed you to maintain, deserved to be released from censure; but that which you really maintained was worthy of condemnation. It was not you, then, that were acquitted, who held tenets which ought to be condemned; but that opinion was freed from censure which you ought to have held and maintained. You could only be supposed to be acquitted by having been believed to entertain opinions worthy to be praised; for your judges could not suppose that you were concealing opinions which merited condemnation. Rightly have you been adjudged an accomplice of Cœlestius, in whose opinions you prove yourself to be a sharer. And though you kept your books shut during your trial, you published them to the world after it was over.”

CAPUT XVI.

17. Numquid haec dicendo, verba propter aliud objecta aliter exponendo, id agit, ut se judices non fefellisse demonstret? Prorsus non id efficit: tanto enim fefellit occultius, quanto exponit ista versutius. Episcopi quippe catholici quando audiebant hominem anathematizantem eos qui dicunt, «Adae peccatum ipsi soli obfuisse, non generi humano; nihil aliud eum sapere existimabant, quam id quod catholica Ecclesia praedicare consuevit: unde veraciter parvulos in peccatorum remissionem baptizat, non quae imitando fecerunt, propter primi peccatoris exemplum; sed quae nascendo traxerunt, propter originis vitium. Et quando audiebant anathematizantem eos qui dicunt, infantes qui nascuntur, in eo statu esse, in quo Adam fuit ante praevaricationem;» nihil eum aliud dicere credebant, nisi eos qui parvulos putant nullum ex Adam traxisse peccatum, et secundum hoc in eo statu esse, in quo fuit ille ante peccatum. Etenim hoc illi objiceretur , non aliud, unde quaestio versabatur. Proinde cum hoc iste sic exponit, ut dicat, infantes ideo non in eo statu esse, in quo Adam fuit ante peccatum, quia nondum sunt in eadem firmitate mentis aut corporis, non quod in eos transierit ulla culpa propaginis, respondeatur ei: Quando tibi illa damnanda objiciebantur, non ea catholici episcopi sic intelligebant; ideo cum illa damnares catholicum te esse credebant. Propterea ergo, quod te illi sapere existimabant, absolvendum fuit: quod vero tu sapiebas, 0394 damnandum fuit. Non ergo tu absolutus es, qui damnanda tenuisti: sed illud absolutum est, quod tenere debuisti. Ut autem tu absolutus putareris, creditus es sentire laudanda, cum te judices non intelligerent occultare damnanda. Recte Coelestii socius judicatus es, cujus manifestas te esse participem. Et si in judicio tuos cooperuisti libros, tamen post judicium eos edidisti.