Chapter 24.—The Dilemma Proposed to the Pelagians.

What will be said to such things as these, by those who are not only the forsakers, but also the persecutors of God’s grace? What will they say to such things as these? On what ground is the “possession of Paradise” restored to us? How are we restored to Paradise if we have never been there? Or how have we been there, except because we were there in Adam? And how do we belong to that “judgment” which was spoken against the transgressor, if we do not inherit injury from the transgressor? Finally, he thinks that infants are to be baptized, even before the eighth day; lest “by the contagion of the ancient death, contracted in the first birth,” the souls of the infants should perish. How do they perish if they who are born even of believing men are not held by the devil until they are born again in Christ, and plucked out from the power of darkness, and transferred into His kingdom? And who says that the souls of those who are born will perish unless they are born again? No other than he who so praises the Creator and the creature, the workman and the work, as to restrain and correct the horror of human feeling with which men refuse to kiss infants fresh from the womb, by interposing the veneration of the Creator Himself, saying that in the kiss of infants of that age the recent hands of God were to be considered! Did he, then, in confessing original sin, condemn either nature or marriage? Did he, because he applied to the infant born guilty from Adam, the cleansing of regeneration, therefore deny God as the Creator of those that were born? Because, in his dread that souls of any age whatever should perish, he, with his council of colleagues, decided that even before the eighth day they were to be delivered by the sacrament of baptism, did he therefore accuse marriage, when, indeed, in the case of an infant,—whether born of marriage or of adultery, yet because it was born a man,—he declared that the recent hands of God were worthy even of the kiss of peace? If, then, the holy bishop and most glorious martyr Cyprian could think that original sin in infants must be healed by the medicine of Christ, without denying the praise of the creature, without denying the praise of marriage, why does a novel pestilence, although it does not dare to call such an one as him a Manichean, think that another person’s fault is to be objected against catholics who maintain these things, in order to conceal its own? So the most lauded commentator on the divine declarations, before even the slightest taint of the Manichean plague had touched our lands, without any reproach of the divine work and of marriage, confesses original sin,—not saying that Christ was stained with any spot of sin, nor yet comparing with Him the flesh of sin in others that were born, to whom by means of the likeness of sinful flesh He might afford the aid of cleansing; neither is he deterred by the obscure question of the origin of souls, from confessing that those who are made free by the grace of Christ return into Paradise. Does he say that the condition of death passed upon men from Adam without the contagion of sin? For it is not on account of avoiding the death of the body, but on account of the sin which entered by one man into the world,326    Rom. v. 12. that he says that help is to be afforded by baptism to infants, however fresh they may be from the womb.

24. Quid ad ista dicturi sunt, gratiae Dei non solum desertores, sed etiam persecutores? quid ad ista dicturi sunt? Quo pacto nobis paradisi possessio redditur? Quomodo paradiso restituimur, si nunquam ibi fuimus? Aut quomodo ibi fuimus, nisi quia in Adam fuimus? Et quomodo ad sententiam quae in transgressorem dicta est pertinemus, si noxam de transgressore non trahimus? Postremo baptizandos etiam ante 0626 diem censet octavum, ne per contagium mortis antiquae prima nativitate contractum pereant animae parvulorum: quomodo pereunt, si ex hominibus etiam fidelibus qui nascuntur, non tenentur a diabolo, donec renascantur in Christo, et eruti de potestate tenebrarum in regnum illius transferantur (Coloss. I, 13)? Et quis dicit nascentium, nisi renascantur, animas perituras? Nempe ille qui sic laudat creatorem atque creaturam, opificem atque opus, ut humani sensus horrorem quo dedignantur homines recentes ab utero parvulos osculari, Creatoris ipsius interposita veneratione compescat et corrigat, dicens, in illius aetatis osculo recentes Dei manus esse cogitandas. Numquid ergo confitens originale peccatum, aut naturam damnavit, aut nuptias? Numquid, quoniam nascenti ex Adam reo adhibuit regenerationis purgationem, ideo Deum negavit nascentium conditorem? Numquid, quia metuens animas cujuslibet aetatis perire, etiam ante diem octavum liberandas esse sacramento Baptismi cum collegarum concilio judicavit, ideo nuptias accusavit; quandoquidem in infante sive de conjugio, sive de adulterio, tamen quia homo natus est, recentes Dei manus dignas etiam osculo pacis ostendit? Si ergo potuit sanctus episcopus et martyr gloriosissimus Cyprianus peccatum originale in infantibus medicina Christi censere sanandum, salva laude creaturae, salva laude nuptiarum; cur novitia pestilentia, cum istum non audeat dicere Manichaeum, Catholicis qui ista defendunt, ut obtegat proprium, putat objiciendum crimen alienum? Ecce praedicatissimus tractator divinorum eloquiorum, antequam terras nostras vel tenuissimus odor Manichaeae pestilentiae tetigisset, sine ulla vituperatione divini operis atque nuptiarum confitetur originale peccatum, non dicens Christum ulla peccati macula aspersum, nec tamen ei comparans carnem peccati in nascentibus caeteris, quibus per similitudinem carnis peccati mundationis praestet auxilium: nec originis animarum obscura quaestione terretur, quo minus eos qui Christi gratia liberantur, in paradisum remeare fateatur. Numquid ex Adam dicit in homines mortis conditionem sine peccati contagione transisse? Non enim propter corporis mortem vitandam, sed propter peccatum, quod per unum intravit in mundum, dicit per Baptismum parvulis quamlibet ab utero recentissimis subveniri.