De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

We have come then¹ to the first place of the controversies which that Martin Luther, the contriver of new things, created for us, and which his offspring afterward persist in defending. For hence, driven by I know not what wind—never before raised in the Church—into the other extreme, different from the Pelagians, they thrust original fault upon our soul in such a way that it can by no grace be blotted out in this age. This place in Luther’s assertions addressed to Leo, article 2, reads thus: “To deny that sin remains in a child after baptism is to trample Paul and Christ underfoot at the same time.” And article 3: “The tinder of sin,” he says, “even if no actual sin is present, keeps the soul from entering heaven as long as it is in the body.” Nay, a little below he calls that same tinder actual sin. And his disciples in the Augsburg Confession, article 2, call the vice of origin truly sin, condemning and bringing eternal death. And in Melanchthon’s Commonplaces: “Scripture,” he says, “makes no distinction between actual and original sin. For even original sin is a certain actual depraved concupiscence.” And so it is their invention that concupiscence is not only materially sin, but formally, and in act, that the lust itself and the assault of the flesh, before the consent of the will, is sin, even in the baptized. And they say that this same concupiscence is prohibited by that commandment of the Decalogue, “You shall not covet.” And therefore Luther, in the same article 2, regards it as a disgrace that we do not truly call sin the lust of spouses who, however great in holiness, use their right with a legitimate and most just intention of begetting. But good God, in that most famous dogma of reformation which they themselves call a didagma,² with what explanation do they establish this place! For they say that although a man deliberately covets nothing iniquitous, that volatile concupiscence nevertheless, from which he restrains himself in all meekness, holiness and piety, is sin before God. And below: “Not only is homicide, adultery and theft sin, but also because of concupiscence, although the will does not consent to it, the man himself in the sight of God is a homicide and an adulterer.” But it is worthwhile to consider how they weave their web. For from the fact that concupiscence of the flesh is sin to them, they infer that all our works, however much done in grace, are defiled by concupiscence³ in the respect in which they are ours, and therefore that they are all sins. Nor do we by them fulfill the commandments of God, since concupiscence holds us back so that we do not work fully from love of him above all things. On this matter the place of speaking has been established for us in book 3. And therefore although in the conferences at Ratisbon, convicted by most manifest testimonies, they defend this error about original sin somewhat more remissly—so much so that in the second and most recent conference this article was omitted as if either confessed or sufficiently discussed—nevertheless because they persist in the errors about works which they derived especially from that source, and besides because Bucer, in his little book On the Reconciliation of the Churches, seems recently to have restored the same article with the rest, it will not be superfluous to add our vote to the things which have been said by our men, especially by the most learned man of Ross. Especially since, as long as their books survive, there is reason to fear from them.

The state of the controversy,⁴ which is the first of all between us and the Lutherans, is therefore constituted thus. We (as catholic truth has it) believe that after baptism legitimately received nothing of original contagion remains in the reborn that has the true nature of fault. But they, on the contrary, think that that concupiscence of the flesh, in the part in which it struggles against reason in holy men, in whatever kind of vices, is true fault and worthy of damnation and eternal death—even then when actual sin has not yet been perpetrated by the consent of the will—except that by the mercy of God that fault is not imputed to those who are in grace.

This ignorance⁵ would never have clouded their eyes with its mist had they not been such unjust enemies of philosophy, which nevertheless often and greatly serves faith as a handmaid. For concupiscence of the flesh⁶ (as we began to say in the third chapter) is natural to us, since—even if no fault or grace had preceded—it would exist in man from the principles of nature, insofar as he is endowed with senses; except that God created it subject to reason by the bridle of original justice. Therefore when on account of sin that justice was taken away, the word “concupiscence” signifies nothing other than nature deprived of that gift—besides that it is now an effect of sin, as removing that justice which prohibited the rebellion of the same concupiscence; and yet if man were created in pure natural state, it would be mere nature. There is Anselm’s example⁷ in On the Conception of the Virgin, concerning a ship: it is of its nature to be carried by the winds; and therefore if it is held by a fixed anchor, then he who breaks the anchor is said to set the ship in motion. Since therefore the things that are in us by nature are neither worthy of praise nor of blame, who, even if blind, would say that that concupiscence is sin? Unless perhaps materially before baptism, as was explained above. Truly, by whatever reason you say it, you will be consequently compelled to confess that sight, hearing and the other senses, which after Adam’s sin are instruments for us of sinning, are themselves sins. Nay, even gold, honors, a woman’s beauty, and whatever allures us, allures us to evil. Take the Gospel parable⁸ where the human race is likened to him who fell among robbers, by whom, despoiled and wounded, he was left half-dead. Was being despoiled and wounded a sin to him? Who would grant it? In like manner in us, besides the fact that we share in the fault from which we have been washed by the laver of regeneration, to have nature stripped and so wounded that concupiscence, like a certain sickness, struggles with reason, is certainly no fault as long as it does not overthrow reason, but is a punishment which we pay for a past fault—like bodily diseases, and finally death, and other calamities of that kind which have yielded to fault. To call these sins would be the part of a wholly stupid man.

The Lutherans’ diversion.— But when Luther imputed this kind of fault to the concupiscence of the flesh alone, his disciples afterward, when they could not defend that it has the nature of fault, invented that under the name of concupiscence is understood not only that of the flesh but also that which is in the soul. So they have it in the conference of Worms. Yet not even by this diversion can they elude the argument. For if they speak of the concupiscence of the soul which is the act of the will consenting to the flesh, that is certainly not original but truly actual fault, about which we dispute nothing. But if they understand the impotence and inclination of the soul (as they seem to), by which, as it is born to be the act of the body, it is drawn, enticed by the senses, the argument still has the same force. For all this (like the concupiscence of the flesh) means nature deprived of original justice, not fault.

The second argument from the testimonies of Scripture.— But besides, let them turn themselves in every direction, they will never extricate themselves from this: that they are most unjust toward the most efficacious sacrament of baptism, unless they profess that there all the nature and merit of fault is washed away. For (these are the express words of Jerome⁹ to Oceanus) all crimes are forgiven us in baptism. “Nor after the judge’s pardon,” he says, “is severity to be feared,” since the Apostle says:¹⁰ “And these things indeed” (namely, sinners) “you were, but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” All sins therefore have been forgiven well and faithfully. Thus Jerome. Note in Paul: “sanctified and justified in the name of Jesus Christ.” Hence Jerome wisely gathers “well and faithfully.” Because in the name of Jesus Christ, who is truly the Savior, nothing of fiction lies hidden, but there is the highest truth both of faith in his promises and of fact in his deeds. This Jesus Christ himself, the truth, brings forth more clearly than Jerome, where he says: “Father, sanctify them in the truth;¹¹ your word is truth.” And: “If the Son has freed you,¹² you will be truly free.” And Paul: “Be renewed¹³ in justice and the sanctity of truth.” What therefore could be pronounced more clearly to show that when we enter the grace of God, every stain of sin is altogether wiped away in truth, than that the Father so truly sanctifies us, while his word is truth? Jerome there adduces to this same judgment from the ancients also Micah, where he says: “He will return¹⁴ and have mercy on us, he will cast down our iniquities and cast all our sins into the depth of the sea.” And Ezekiel:¹⁵ “I will take you from the nations, and I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be cleansed from all your uncleannesses, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit.” In the word “all,” says Jerome, nothing is left. But if there were no other evangelical testimony of the most full remission which is made in baptism than that “Unless a man is born again¹⁶ of water and the Holy Spirit,” the matter would be abundantly proved. For he who is reborn puts off entirely the old life and puts on the new. This the Apostle represents in the analogy of the death and resurrection of Christ, where he says: “We who are dead to sin,¹⁷ how shall we still live in it? Do you not know, brothers” (with these men he seems to me to speak with prophetic mouth) “that as many of us as were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized in his death? For we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.” Behold, we truly die to sin in baptism, are buried, and rise in new life, as truly as Christ accomplished this in his body. Chrysostom,¹⁸ explaining this passage clearly to this judgment in Homily 24 on John, says: “When in the water of baptism they immerse the head as in a tomb, the old man is buried; when they come out, the new man rises.” And Origen, on Joshua, Homily 5, says that through the baptism of regeneration our souls are purged.

Where we have cast off all the reproaches of sins and in their place assumed the testimony of a good conscience toward God. And to Titus¹⁹ the same Apostle says: “According to his mercy he saved us, through the laver of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us abundantly”—that is, as much as suffices that we may truly be saved, and therefore sons and heirs, according to the hope of eternal life. Hence John:²⁰ “See what charity God has given us, that we should be called and be the sons of God.” “Called,” he says, “and be,” to express against these men that nothing of fault is in the baptized—otherwise, if there were truly fault, though not imputed, as they say, we would not truly be sons, but would be reckoned such by God. To the same thing belongs what the Apostle says: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh.”²¹ But let us weigh Luther’s interpretation²² in the same article 2. For he says that Paul does not have “There is nothing of sin,” but “There is nothing of condemnation,” as if that concupiscence of the just were truly sin and of itself worthy of condemnation, but is not imputed to them because of faith, and because they do not walk according to the flesh. And his Bucer,²³ when he thinks to put the last hand to composing controversies, says the same and worse in the article of original sin. For he says that although in the regenerate there is nothing of condemnation in this sense, that they are not guilty, the guilt having already been dissolved in baptism, this nevertheless is on account of the merit of Christ not imputing sin—yet not that for this one evil of depraved nature alone, even if no iniquity of action or consent of ours were added, we do not deserve condemnation. And a little later: “The saints themselves also,” he says, “insofar as concupiscence resists the good will, are enemies of God.” Consider, pious reader, whether these words are worthy to be set under the title On the Composition of Controversies, and do not rather stir up what seemed already asleep and dead. Certainly the words of Paul²⁴ need no exposition. For by saying that there is no condemnation in those who do not walk according to the flesh, he most manifestly taught that there is nothing in the regenerate worthy of condemnation except to walk according to the flesh—as if he said: the troubles of the flesh are in no way damnable, but to walk, that is, to work freely according to the flesh. And so Augustine²⁵ expounds the same authority against the two letters of the Pelagians, book 1, chapter 10: “There is no condemnation,” he says, “to those who are in Christ Jesus, since no one is condemned except he who consents to the concupiscence of the flesh for evil.” Most distorted therefore is Luther’s exposition.

In sum: since baptism is for the remission of sins (as Peter says in the Acts of the Apostles²⁶), with what brazen face does a Christian say that any fault remains after baptism?²⁷ But let us hear Luther’s fabricated distinction, by which he thinks to answer all these so clear testimonies in the same second article. “It is one thing,” he says, “that all sins be remitted, and another that all be taken away. Baptism remits all, but takes away none utterly.” Consider, pious reader, whether this is not to wear away the sacraments of Christ and (what he himself hurls at us) to trample Christ himself underfoot—namely, that to remit sins is not to take them away utterly. For what else is that which the Evangelist says in his canonical letter: “You know that he appeared to take away sins”? And the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb²⁸ of God, who takes away²⁹ the sins of the world”? What of the fact that, with Jerome as interpreter in the place above, the Prophets sang beforehand of our justifier, and the Apostles agree? “He will cast down and cast away your iniquities. You shall be cleansed from all your iniquities.” And: “I have blotted out your iniquities as a cloud.”³⁰ And: “Washed, sanctified, justified.”³¹ And: “In whom there is nothing of condemnation.”³² And: “Reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God”?³³ What, I say, do all these things, which are the effects of baptism, sound of, but that sin is utterly wiped away and fully taken away by baptism?³⁴ For sin is nothing other than an offense against God; whence it plainly follows that to remit it by him is nothing other than to pardon, abolish, and therefore altogether take it away. Unless you most absurdly abuse the name of remission here in the signification of the philosophers, to whom to remit a quality is to diminish it with some particle remaining—although in the present matter “to remit” has the same force as “to forgive,” that is, no longer to know the fault, as if it had never been. Wherefore God is said to forget and no longer remember the offenses which he remits. But if we are not ashamed to hear Augustine, whom they everywhere call the judge,³⁵ on this matter, let us listen to him in book 1 of the Retractions, chapter 7: “The laver of regeneration purges from the guilt of all sins which human birth has drawn and iniquity has contracted.” Thus he.³⁶ Therefore as nothing of fault remains of actual sin remitted in baptism, so neither of original sin. And in book 2 on the Merits of Sins, chapter 25: “But this law of sin,” he says (namely, the tinder of concupiscence), “does not so remain in the members of those who have been reborn of water and the Spirit as if its remission had not been made, where the remission of sins is altogether full and perfect, all enmities by which we were separated from God having been slain; but it remains in the oldness of the flesh as if overcome and slain, unless by illicit consents it in some way revives.” And at the end of the same chapter he says more clearly: “But if finally the departure from this life follows immediately after baptism, there will be nothing at all to hold man liable, all things that held him having been loosed.” Is it not sufficiently proved that original sin is taken away when it is remitted, if nothing remains but what is overcome and slain? But our Protestants owe more to sin than to faith.³⁷ For in order to defend their faith alone as justifying, they say that dead faith is in no way faith (although this too is perverse, as we shall show in book 2, chapter 7, from James’s words), and yet original sin, although they hear that we are dead to sin and buried, and that it is wiped away, deleted, cast out and slain, they nevertheless so always hold to it with their teeth that they are unwilling for it to be taken away. What if Augustine asserts that it is torn out by the roots?³⁸ For he introduces the Pelagians, in book 1 against their two letters to Boniface, chapter 13, slandering Christians because they denied that baptism tears out all sins by the roots, but granted only that it shaves off sins, the roots remaining, whence they might sprout again. He represses their slander with these words: “Who would affirm this but an unbeliever? For we say that baptism gives indulgence of all sins and takes away crimes, not shaves them off; nor are the roots of sins held in the evil flesh, like the hairs of those who shave their heads, whence the sins that have been cut back may grow again.” What could Augustine bring forward more effectively against these men than that not even the root of sin remains in the baptized? But yet, as if pointing them out with his finger, he adds: “But concerning that concupiscence of the flesh³⁹ I believe they are deceived, or deceive others, with which it is necessary that even the baptized—and this if he profits most diligently and is led by the Spirit of God—struggle with a pious mind. But this, even if it is called sin, is certainly not called so because it is sin, but because it was made by sin. As a writing is called someone’s hand because his hand made it. But sins are those things which are done, said and thought illicitly according to the concupiscence of the flesh or ignorance.” Thus Augustine, pronouncing most clearly against these men that after the guilt of original sin has been remitted in the sacrament, concupiscence neither is in any way nor is called sin, except by metonymy, of which more fully in the following chapter.

For now by this second argument we only try to demonstrate from the testimonies of sacred Scripture and of the saints how unjust these men are toward the sacrament of remission, asserting that the concupiscence left by it is properly sin.⁴⁰

But that we may add a third argument, let us suppose a baptized child before the use of reason, in whom, you say, true fault still exists, worthy of eternal damnation, but is not afterward imputed. This, I say, I ask of you: is it not imputed by the grace of baptism alone, or is some other application of mercy afterward needed so that it not be imputed afterward? If you grant the first, as the matter stands, then baptism so fully remitted it that nothing of fault remained which would need a new act of mercy afterward so as not to be imputed. But if you grant the second from your own head,⁴¹ then through baptism the price of Christ’s redemption was not fully applied for the redemption of sins, which is heretical. Likewise, against what they say, that for adults a new act of faith is continually needed after baptism, by which they may assiduously ask pardon for that original fault persisting in the baptized: first, if this is so, how was baptism efficacious? Since it was not sufficient to pardon that fault. Add that since children cannot have such an act of faith, they will then have no remedy against that fault. But if baptism suffices for them without another act of faith, why will it not also suffice for adults, as far as pertains to the same original fault?⁴²

Yet that argument which appeared to me the strongest I shall finally subjoin. For they say, as we reported a little before, that original sin indeed remains but is not imputed. And I shall add also other words of Luther in the same article 2.⁴³ “This is,” he says, “the grace of the new testament: that because we have been reborn by baptism, the favor of God receives and sustains us, not imputing to death what remains of sin in us, although it is truly sin and could be imputed.” They say the same of works done in grace, as we shall see in book 2, chapter 19. There is nevertheless (unless I am mistaken) a manifest contradiction: that true fault remains after baptism, and yet is not imputed by God as fault. For either God hates it or he does not. If not, what nature of fault can it have? Unless you implously say that any fault exists that is not hated by God—contrary to the divine utterance of David,⁴⁴ who repeatedly inculcates that God hates the wicked, the wicked way, and iniquity. But if he hates it, how does he not impute it as fault? Nay, how is it true that sin has been remitted in baptism? For no one at all remits fault unless he tears hatred from his heart utterly. For this reason God is said to forget the sins which he remits. Certainly I do not see by what shield they can guard against this dilemma. Unless, fleeing from it, they spit out that readiest spittle of theirs against us—namely, calling any reasoning whatsoever a sophism.⁴⁵ Meanwhile I omit that the authors of so great an error are driven to that impiety: that God in this life can in no way so remit all our sins as to take them away utterly. This they themselves concede, because that concupiscence of the flesh, which they judge to be truly sin, is so natural to mortals that it cannot be altogether extinguished in this age—nor, as they think, by privilege. Yet the theologians consentiently attribute this to the immaculate Virgin: namely, that she never felt the strife of the flesh. Therefore, to make an end to this chapter, the holy Synod of Trent most prudently judged in chapter 5 of session 5⁴⁶ that if anyone denies that the guilt of original sin is remitted through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ which is conferred in baptism, or asserts that it is not wholly taken away, that which has the true and proper nature of sin, but says that it is only shaved off or not imputed: let him be anathema.