De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

We have thought it worthwhile to place the pure form of truth first before the eyes of all, lest the cloudy darkness of errors obscure its light. There exist nevertheless two errors on this matter,¹ contrary by their extremes. One is that of certain recent Pelagians, who deny that original sin in us is anything other than a defect of nature—namely, the guilt of death and of the other penalties which we incur because of Adam’s fault. The other is that of the Lutherans, at the opposite extreme, who impress this kind of sin so deeply upon our nature that they refuse to allow it to be truly remitted in this life and altogether taken away. Lutherans, I say—not that the former were not also begotten with Luther as their father, but because, since they disagree with the rest on this matter in both respects entirely, we rightly call them Zwinglians after their leader. For that schism of theirs (which I mentioned in the prologue)—namely, of those who listen to no one in matters of faith who exercises divine authority—what can it produce but that Lernaean monster of fifty heads? The former, indeed, must be dealt with by us first, since the dispute with them is very brief; afterward the others, against whom we must argue at much greater length. Zwingli therefore is among the Germans,² who reopened the tomb of Pelagius, so that the pus might breathe from it. For he, in his little book On Baptism, and then more vigorously in his declamation to Urbanus Rhegius, persists in contending that original sin is not a sin but a disease. Nor are there lacking those who wish to be counted under the name of Catholics and nevertheless adhere to the Zwinglian view, if not in words, yet in reality. But the contrary conclusion—namely, that it is a true fault—we have established sufficiently and more than sufficiently by the testimonies of the sacred writers, both throughout the whole preceding discussion and especially in chapters 7 and 9. Wherefore we have determined to make clear here only this: with what slight reasons they persuade themselves away from original fault, so as altogether to reject it. For they gather the first argument³ from the clemency of God, of whom, since he is much more inclined to pardon sins than to avenge them (for he wills all men to be saved, and does not will the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted), it is not credible that he should impute the sin of one man as fault to all mortals. Especially since, speaking properly of offenses, he says through the Prophet: “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,”⁴ but the soul that sins, it shall die. The second argument⁵ they form from the nature of sin, since there is no sin unless it is voluntary. Since therefore none of mortals was present at Adam’s sin, nor consented to it—indeed all his successors disapprove of that sin, bearing with the greatest grief the miseries and hardships they experience from it—how can human sense grasp that those who did not yet exist were all bound by some law in one man, and that the will of one was so reckoned as the will of all that those not yet born were transgressors through it? Add that by the same reasoning the other sins not only of the first parent⁶ but also of other parents would be transmitted to their children; and by a stronger reason the good deeds of parents ought also to flow down to their descendants. For the same principle applies in Adam and in other, even nearer, parents. Indeed Zwingli adds⁷ that sin is joined with fault; but fault is born from the deed of him who committed the crime; therefore no sin belongs to anyone who did not himself commit it.

They add also a new kind of arguing. The sin of Adam is believed to have been remitted to him when he was reconciled with God; how then does it pass to us? Or if it is imputed to us, what is it that was remitted to Adam? For if we all sinned in that one man, truth far more effectively proves that the fault of us all was also pardoned in him. Nor indeed do they wholly approve that example⁸ by which we represented this matter above: of that servant who, held in the highest honor with his lord, ungrateful and treacherous, committed some most atrocious crime against his lord, and so fell from the friendship of the prince, and was deprived of all honor and favor, both he and his offspring. For if his offspring, cut off from honor and despoiled of the riches which he had received from the prince, were thus treated, they say, that would certainly not argue greater harshness in the prince than is right and fair. But if he afflicted all his posterity with punishments for their father's crime, and finally condemned them to death, that prince would truly be held guilty of the greatest cruelty and savagery. Since therefore God, because of the fault of the first parent, has not only deprived us of heavenly honor and inheritance, but has driven us into diseases and very many calamities, and even into death itself, this seems greatly to detract from the riches of his goodness and benignity.

Finally, others add to these⁹ that in all sacred Scripture there is no word of original justice or original fault, but that we invent this fault. By this reasoning, moreover, they are both unjust toward our nature and falsely charge the divine goodness.

Yet all these things¹⁰ and very many of this kind which they heap together into this argument, they would most easily dissolve themselves if they were willing to contemplate considerately human nature as we depicted it in chapter 3, so as to reason from it more perspicaciously about both grace and fault. For if God had created human nature in its purely natural state, no injury would have been done us because he had made us such that we could neither attain divine grace by ourselves nor possess divine glory, since natural powers are not equal to so great a gift. Nor would there be any injury in the fact that sensuality is hostile to reason, blinding it and hurling it headlong into vices; or that we are subject to diseases and other hardships and calamities of this life, and even to death. For all these things would be native to the proper principles of our nature. But it was due to his goodness and benignity, who formed us for himself, that he endowed our nature with grace and justice, by which he raised us above ourselves and restrained the lower powers, which obey the higher. Nor is it to be thought (as some imagine)¹¹ that a pact intervened between God and Adam, so that as soon as he sinned nature would be stripped of those heavenly gifts, and thus did not the consent of the whole human race present itself, and this cause make the whole race sin when he sinned. For that is a fable. For what need had God of Adam’s consent? Nor was he so bound for himself or for us to preserve the gift of original justice that a singular precept should be given about this matter. For Scripture is manifest that there was one commandment, not to eat of the tree of knowledge; and without his consent God could obligate the whole of nature, as its lord by right of creation. Just as the laws of a legitimate prince, which are proclaimed in the present manner to a city, are understood to be established for all its citizens forever. Nevertheless, in punishment of transgression¹² God threatened death, by which the privation of justice is signified. Since therefore Adam was then the whole of nature, there was no cruelty or harshness in God in that, when nature sinned, he stripped it of those gifts beyond nature with which he had adorned it from pure liberality. As if a prince should grant a city a most ample privilege, provided it did not commit a certain crime; but if it should violate this, then indeed the city would remain forever offensive and hateful to him. And therefore in a certain way that sin was voluntary for all men—namely, through the will of the whole of nature. For this reason¹³ other sins, whether of the first parent or of other parents, are not passed on to children, just as neither are virtues; because those are personal, and only personal punishments were decreed for them. But that first sin was the one for which a common punishment was established: namely, that our race should fall back into its bare nature. And for that reason the whole of nature became, in its own way, guilty of that sin alone. Wherefore it in no way detracts from the clemency¹⁴ of the most gentle God that we endure this kind of punishment—namely, diseases, miseries and death—because of that sin. For if he destroyed us by fire or sword, or by any other violent death, he could indeed perhaps be considered cruel. But that he has deprived us of the heavenly benefit of immortality, so that we incur natural death, in no way blackens either his justice or his mercy. But to another argument it is answered that that guilt was remitted to Adam¹⁵ in the respect in which it belonged to his person, yet it remained in the nature to be propagated. Just as one who is now baptized is freed from all fault, even original fault, insofar as it is this person’s; nevertheless nature is left infected, so that those whom a Christian begets are stained with the same corruption. But to that passage, “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,” another can be opposed from the opposite side, where it is said: “I am a jealous God,¹⁶ visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.” Yet their harmony is this: that temporal punishments, such as infamy, deprivation of goods, and other things of that kind, children rightly pay for their fathers, because according to the body they are as it were part of the father. But spiritual punishments, and especially exclusion from the kingdom of heaven, only he who sins undergoes; for according to the soul the son is not part of the father, but “all souls are mine,” says God through Ezekiel. To the matter, then. Since¹⁷ all men share in Adam’s fault, they have been expelled from the heavenly inheritance—expelled, I say, in this way, that by our nature we have no right to it, but what God bestowed on our race in Adam, we lost in him. By these things the error of Zwingli is exposed, since he acknowledges no other kind of fault than what is contracted by one’s own consent. For if our nature did not sin by that will of the first-formed man, why because of that fault have we not only suffered so great a loss of temporal goods, but are even condemned, as Paul says? And indeed so condemned that we have been excluded even from the right to the kingdom. Certainly if it had been only his own, it would have harmed us nothing; but our right would have remained safe, at least in spiritual things. Because the son, as we were just now interpreting, shall not bear the iniquity of the father in goods of this kind. Therefore his example is most inept if he wishes to adapt it wholly to this matter. For he says that just as if someone in war or by some other fault of his is taken into slavery, he makes all his posterity slaves—yet to be a slave is no fault but a punishment—so it happens to us from Adam. But he does not see that God would never have deprived us of his friendship and the right to the kingdom unless we had in some way shared in the fault. Nor do we say that it is a sin that we are mortal and subject to miseries, but that since Adam’s sin was reckoned as the sin of the whole nature, that deflection and disordering of the soul from God, which was actual in him, remains in us restfully by way of habit. And from this we suffer these natural evils. As Paul says: “Death passed from Adam to all, in whom” (that is, because in him) “all sinned,” and therefore incurred wrath and indignation (as the Synod of Trent says, canon 1, according to Paul). Otherwise there would be no need of baptism for the remission of original fault, which was the Pelagian heresy. But Zwingli easily concedes this, saying that original sin is also called original by metonymy, that is, by an abusive signification of the name; and that infants are not to be adjudged to eternal damnation merely because they have not been dipped in water. For which reason another conflict with him remains for us in book two, chapter 10.

But what they add lastly, that these names¹⁸ of original justice and original sin are nowhere read in sacred Scripture, is the quibble of the Arians, who rejected the name Homoousion because it is not in the Gospel. But as they were then convicted, so we now refute these men. For where the matter is clear, the name itself is also virtually present. For since it is in the Gospel, “I and the Father are one,” it is as good as if it had been written “of the same substance,” which is Homoousion. In no dissimilar way must we speak of original justice and original sin. Moreover, since it is established in the Church of Christ that the first man was created in justice—namely, in the rectitude of the virtues and powers, as much as was sufficient to attain the end for which he had been created, as we demonstrated very fully in chapter 5—and that men would have possessed this felicity by perpetual generation to be propagated, as long as the human race persevered in its duty and in the grace of God, from this the name original justice has most aptly arisen. It can be called native, or natural, or congenital. And by a similar reasoning, since it is in Paul that all sinned in Adam, and not merely by imitation—and this was defined against Pelagius by the public consent of the Fathers of the Church—and since he also pronounces us by nature children of wrath, nothing more at all is wanting in Scripture to establish the belief in a sin that may be called natural, or connate, and hereditary, or contracted by origin, which is to say original.