Chapter 11 [VI.]—The Purpose of the Pelagians in Praising the Innocence of Conjugal Intercourse.
Yet what it is they wish, what they purpose, to what result they are striving to bring the matter, the words that are added by that writer declare, when he asserts that I say, “that therefore they who are born innocent are guilty, and that it is the work of the devil, not of God, that they are born of this diabolical intercourse.” Since, therefore, I neither say that this intercourse of husband and wife is diabolical, especially in the case of believers, which is effected for the sake of generating children who are afterwards to be regenerated; nor that any men are made by the devil, but, in so far as they are men, by God; and nevertheless that even of believing husband and wife are born guilty persons (as if a wild olive were produced from an olive),24 On Marriage and Concupiscence, i. 37. on account of original sin, and on this account they are under the devil unless they are born again in Christ, because the devil is the author of the fault, not of the nature: what, on the other hand, are they labouring to bring about who say that infants inherit no original sin, and therefore are not under the devil, except that that grace of God in infants may be made of no effect, by which He has plucked us out, as the apostle says, from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love?25 1 Cor. i. 13. [VII.] When, indeed, they deny that infants are in the power of darkness even before the help of the Lord the deliverer, they are in such wise praising in them the Creator’s work as to destroy the mercy of the Redeemer. And because I confess this both in grown-up people and in infants, he says that this is without any ambiguity Manicheism, although it is the most ancient catholic dogma by which the new heretical dogma of these men is overturned.
CAPUT VI.
11. Pelagianorum consilium in laudanda conjugalis commixtionis innocentia. Quid tamen isti velint, quid intendant, quo rem perducere moliantur, adjuncta istius verba declarant, ubi ait nos dicere, «propterea eos qui innocentes nascuntur, reos esse; et a diabolo fieri, non a Deo, quia de hac diabolica commixtione nascuntur.» Cum itaque nos nec diabolicam dicamus conjugum commixtionem, maxime fidelium, quae fit causa generandorum qui postea regenerandi sunt, filiorum: nec homines ullos a diabolo fieri, sed a Deo in quantum homines sunt: et tamen etiam de conjugibus fidelibus reos nasci, tanquam ex oliva oleastrum, propter originale peccatum; et propter hoc esse sub diabolo, nisi renascantur in Christo; quoniam diabolus culpae auctor est, non naturae: contra illi parvulos dicentes nullum trahere originale peccatum, et ideo non esse sub diabolo; quid efficere laborant, nisi ut illa Dei gratia evacuetur in parvulis, qua eruit nos, sicut dicit Apostolus, de potestate tenebrarum, et transtulit in regnum filii charitatis suae (Coloss. I, 13)? Quandoquidem parvulos negant esse in potestate tenebrarum, etiam ante Domini liberatoris auxilium; ita in eis laudantes opus Creatoris, ut misericordiam destruant Redemptoris. Quam nos quoniam et in majoribus et in parvulis confitemur, «hoc» dicit «sine aliqua ambiguitate esse Manichaeum:» cum sit antiquissimum catholicum, unde novum istorum dogma evertatur haereticum.