Pope Gelasius I, Against the Pelagian Heresy.1

He demonstrates that man does not live without sin, and [explains] the apostle’s saying that “the unbelieving husband is sanctified through the believing wife” (1 Cor. 7), etc., and declares the mystery of the resurrection.2

Chapter I: That the Pelagian Heresy Has Been Justly Condemned by Our Forebears Through Both Divine and Human Laws; That Its Root Error Is a False Conception of the First Father of the Human Race; and That the Author Will Sufficiently Refute One Particular Article, So That the Reader May Discern by Inspection How to Avoid the Rest

Of the Pelagian sensibilities and sacrilegious blasphemies — condemned among our forebears by just inquiry, through both divine and human laws3 — there is a more than ample subject-matter, since their perversity is manifold and pernicious, and the more harmful the more subtle in the color of plausibility,4 inasmuch as concerning the very first father of the human race they have, by a depraved and disastrous fabrication, woven a doctrine not rightly conceived, [resting it] on the falsehoods of consequent matters.5 For it is necessary that one who has deviated from the integral path at the beginning, wandering everywhere as he proceeds, errs more the more strongly he supposes himself to run; and in refuting these matters, as is fitting, a prolix discussion must be employed: since indeed it is the manner of perfect medicine first to understand or lay open the origin of diseases, and, having uncovered them, to apply a fitting remedy. All these things, if the Lord shall grant life and means, in so far as we shall be able by the heavenly dew refreshed, we shall undertake to explain elsewhere.6

For now, however, this one article, which is reported to disturb certain persons, we have judged it sufficient for the present to expound; so that, by inspecting it appropriately, they may consider, with the Lord our God assisting, what they ought already to be guarding against in the rest.7

Chapter II: That No One in This Life Lives Wholly Without Sin Either by His Own Powers or, So Far as Is Attested, by Divine Grace; That Even the First Humans in Their Integrity Could Not Stand Without Asking God’s Help; That Christ and the Church Were Figured in the First Man; and That from Job, the Psalms, Solomon, and Daniel the Old Testament Itself Confesses the Universality of Sin

Certain persons therefore reckon that anyone in this life can subsist in such perfection as to be utterly unstirred by any affections of human frailty, nor agitated by bodily allurements: which if anyone supposes himself to attain by his own powers and by the resolve of his own will, he deceives himself, and the truth is not in him.8 For if even the first humans, while they were trusting in their own felicity and receiving so great a grace of God in vain — by not praying (which they are nowhere recorded to have done), nor giving thanks for what they had received, nor humbly imploring that those same things might endure undefiled — could not remain whole: how much more, after the ruin of the prevarication, into which they fell mortally by the evil confidence of self, by no means seeking the Creator, can they not even stand by their own powers, sick or otherwise — they without whom they had not been able to persist whole.9

But if anyone should assert this — not by the possibility of human capacity, but by divine grace — to be possible to be conferred in [this] life on any saints whatsoever, he indeed does well (for by God’s gift all things are possible) to opine such things confidently, and to hope faithfully. But whether any such ones have existed who have approached this perfection in the present life: just as it is nowhere evidently asserted, so we ought not easily either to affirm or to oppose; and it is more sober to recognize, from the very voices of the holy prophets and apostles, the extent to which we ought to measure the progress of this life. To these, indeed, in this world, so far as concerns the institution of the holy life, nothing is more excellent — either to have been or to be — is manifest: who, even though by a more copious gift of God they were assailed by very rare or by the least passions of the human condition, and by a more abundant grace of God easily overcame the vices of mortality, nevertheless do not so far testify themselves to have been free of them — that the property of being utterly without any sin should belong to none save the immaculate Lamb, lest it appear not to be assigned to him alone, if any other holy person whatsoever should be believed to have been free of sin.10

Let us therefore be content with the profession of the saints; and let us hear what they themselves rather pronounce concerning themselves, than let us pursue what either is rashly to be thought, or to be ventilated by our opinions without certain authority.11 Why, however, since God almighty, after the mystery of human reparation, could have conferred even this on man, that he should be immune from absolutely all vices, has he preferred his faithful to be saved, and to await the firmness of perfect beatitude — that what we desire by hoping, we may obtain in reality; and has now decreed to perfect virtue in infirmity, rather than that, with infirmities removed, no agitation of weakness should be allowed to assail the human condition?12 The extent to which the Lord ministers, as is fitting, will be discussed by the testimonies of the Scriptures, against whose tenor nothing is to be rashly professed; over which sensibilities one ought to be instructed.

It is established that in the very first man Christ and the Church were figured, the blessed apostle Paul teaching us, when he was speaking of the covenant of holy marriage: This is a great mystery, he says, but I speak in Christ, and in the Church (Eph. 5).13 Therefore from that point onward, as each of the saints came forth, he was reckoned in the figuration of this mystery; and this mystery all the saints from Abel onward enacted by their sacrifices and actions. In Christ therefore and in the Church, in which generally the remission of sins is established beforehand, all the faithful and holy lived to God, and up to the times of the Law given through Moses they were purged by certain sacrifices in the power of this mystery.14 Wherefore if all needed to be unceasingly expiated by mystical immolations, there is no doubt that they were assailed by the vices of the human condition, from which it was necessary that they be unceasingly absolved through those remedies of the future Sacrament.15

Now in the time of the Law, the venerable reading testifies that no one of the saints did not offer a sacrifice for sin: insofar as even pontiffs were so conducting cases with God on behalf of the people then faithful that they themselves also immolated victims for their own offenses; and everywhere the prophets all proclaim, asking pardon for their sins.16 Whence holy Job says: No one is clean from filth, not even an infant whose life is of one day upon the earth (Job 14);17 and the same elsewhere: The stars are not clean in your sight (Job 15). Of the prophet David also there is recognized to have been brought forth a definite definition concerning the universality of the saints, which says: Enter not into judgment with your servant: for in your sight no living being shall be justified (Ps. 142[143]); where indeed it is observed that he discerned absolutely no human being [as exempt], just as the same one declares this very thing more plainly when speaking and more manifestly: I said: I will pronounce my injustice against myself to the Lord; and you have remitted the impiety of the sin of my heart. For this every saint shall pray to you in opportune time (Ps. 31[32]). Who indeed not only was a saint under the Law, but was to be of more eminent purpose afterward in the future grace of God. Whence the fact that he says in opportune time, he subjoined not without knowledge of things to come.18

The wisest Solomon also in his prayer [says]: There is no man who has not sinned (3 Kings [1 Kings] 8); and again the same: Who shall boast that he has a chaste heart, or that he is clean from sin (Ecclesiastes 7)? But lest the saints of those times perchance be exempted from this passibility, since they used wives granted by God — although even blessed Elijah is recorded to have been similar to us in passibility, as the consequent passages will declare — and the holy prophet Daniel is reported to have prayed not only on behalf of the people, but also for his own sins, as he himself says: While I was praying, and confessing my sins and the sins of my people to the Lord my God (Dan. 9): let us at length come to the blessed apostles.19

And let blessed James himself speak — who, although all the apostles were certainly just, is read to have specifically and by name attained the prerogative of “the just man”:20 Blessed is the man who endures temptation, because, when he has been proven, he shall receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him (Jas. 1). And again a little after: Each one is tempted, drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence. Then concupiscence, when it has conceived, brings forth sin; but sin, when it has been consummated, generates death. Likewise the same: For in many things we all offend (Jas. 3). And the same following on adds: And Elijah was a man of like passions with us (Jas. 5).21

Let blessed Peter the apostle speak: Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims to abstain from carnal desires, which war against the soul (1 Pet. 2); and again: Be not amazed at the burning which is upon you for your trial, as though some new thing happened to you (1 Pet. 4). Likewise afterward: Be sober and watch, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour; whom resist, strong in the faith (1 Pet. 5): knowing that the same passions are inflicted upon your brotherhood which is in the world;22 from which brotherhood the apostles themselves often announce themselves brothers of all the faithful, and are not proven to have separated their own person.23

Let blessed John the apostle and evangelist speak — that one who reclined on the breast of the Saviour: If we shall say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, [and] the truth is not in us; but if we shall confess our sins, he is faithful and just, who will remit our sins, and will cleanse us from all iniquity (1 John 1).24 Likewise: If we shall say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us (Ibid.). Let the same speak: These things I write to you, that you sin not. But if anyone shall have sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, the just one, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins, not only ours, but [for those] of the whole world (1 John 2). Likewise the same: All that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father, but is from the world; and the world passes away, and its concupiscence: but he who shall do the will of the Lord remains forever (Ibid.).

Let the least of the apostles come, but the Vessel of God’s election; let the teacher of the Gentiles, Paul, come — preacher of singular divine grace, and copious expositor of the heavenly mystery,25 he who heard ineffable words when, not knowing whether in the body or out of the body, he was lifted into the third heaven: who so abounded in grace that, while he was the last of all, he labored more than all, and who not only insinuates to the faithful what he felt about this matter, but also pronounces concerning himself, and as a doctor of truth freely announces it.26

And since it would be long to revolve all the things which pertain to this cause that have been said, let a few of the many be set forth, by which it may be most sufficiently demonstrated to us that we should rather be infirm with Paul (so that Christ may dwell in us), than appear strong with anyone thinking otherwise than Paul, and (which God forbid!) seem not to need Christ’s remedies.27 He says, then: For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, the good; for to will is present with me, but to perform the good I do not find: for the good which I will I do not, but I do that which I will not — not I work it, but the sin that dwells in me (Rom. 7). Likewise: For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man: but I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and bringing me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members. Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Ibid.).28 Why, then, does he call himself a wretched man? Why does he rejoice to be delivered through Christ’s grace from the body of death, if he was not assailed by any affections of human misery, if he was not infested by any [things], from whose incursions he might be liberated? Likewise the same: The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: for these are mutually opposed to each other, so that you do not the things which you would. For what the spirit wills, it does not perfect, lest it should be proud of the perfection (Gal. 5); and the same: The flesh does not perfect what it wills, so that he might admonish the human condition.

Chapter III: That the Apostle Speaks of Himself in His Own Person, Not in Another’s; That the Lord’s Prayer Itself Proves the Regenerate Still Have Sins to Be Remitted and Remain Susceptible to Temptation; and That the Phantasms of Sleepers and the Concupiscence of the Waking Are to Be Distinguished in Their Culpability and Expiated by Prayer, Almsgiving, and the Other Good Works

Yet, lest the faithful proposal be utterly submerged; and lest perchance — as certain persons are accustomed to think with their vain opinions — anyone should suppose that the blessed apostle Paul pronounces these things under the persona of some other person whom I know not, rather than confess them concerning himself; although nothing such can be shown here at all,29 nevertheless, when he says: Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ — let the persona be proven removed of both Gentile and Jew. Let us hear him in another place, as if marking himself out by his own hand and indicating himself specifically: I myself in mind serve the law of God (Rom. 7);30 and likewise of himself: I chastise my body, and bring it into servitude, lest perchance, while I preach to others, I myself become reprobate (1 Cor. 9). Who therefore would not perceive what difference it could have made that he should have refrained his members by chastising, lest he become reprobate, if he were not assailed by any such stimuli — [a thing] which he could not have done by neglecting and by not subduing his body by chastisement, [if] he could be reprobate?31

Wherefore, since these things have been shown to have been professed by the apostles concerning themselves — who, even if they had not at all set forth these things, would without doubt nevertheless all both necessarily preach the Lord’s prayer and bring it forth with truthful heart, by which praying daily they would ask that their debts be remitted to them, and would have prayed not to be led into temptation, and would be taught suppliantly to have implored to be delivered from evil32 — wherefore also the blessed apostle John, as has been said above, is understood to have published, saying: If we shall say that we have no sin, we make him a liar (1 John 1) — Christ, namely, who founded this form of praying for his disciples, in which both the relaxation of the daily debt should occur, and they should implore not to fall into temptation, or that they might ask to be delivered from evil — if there were absolutely nothing that either weighed down the debt by no means relaxed, or temptation could be brought in for sin, or no evil at all from which they might be delivered.33

But thus a stealing illusion of sleepers moves certain persons, as if it should not be reckoned a graver thing than the concupiscence of the waking. For although bodily insolence is more frequently to be restrained either by the chastisement of fasting or by frugality of foods consumed, lest material be furnished to human senses to be deceived by the imagination of fantastical pleasure, or this is to be implored by great prayers from divine compassion, that minds put to sleep may be rendered immune from such alluring visions:34 yet whether these things happen to those acting incontinently or to those living continently, certainly, if there is any [culpability], the guilt of those not knowing is less than [the guilt] of those openly and manifestly desiring [it] by the appetite of carnal work. Finally, although it is no small gift of God to be afflicted (if it can be) by no such things, or by very rare ambushes, we nowhere read that the phantasms of dreams are called into culpability — but plainly we know it to have been brought forth by the very voice of the Lord that whoever shall have looked upon a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5), where consequently it is not in doubt that culpability lies beneath.35 Therefore it is to be expiated by both continual supplication and by almsgiving and by the other good works.

For it is not without mystery that it is said that all things can be cleansed through almsgiving, when the Lord, while he was speaking figuratively concerning internal and external purifications, says: Yet what remains, give alms, and behold all things are clean to you (Luke 11). But also that [saying], that charity covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4), so that namely whatever is drawn in by insincerity of body and mind, may be wiped out by the work of rational piety.36 Concerning the blessed apostles, however, as we have already said above, we ought to know only what they themselves have uttered in their own voices about their conduct. But what has been left unsaid by them, no license is left us to scrutinize.37

Chapter IV: That After the Reparation of the Human Race and the Renewal of Nature Which Is Effected Through the Sacrament of Baptism, the Vices Are Not Removed but Continue to Assail Even Those Established in Continence; That Through Faith We Have Received the Hope of Redemption While Awaiting the Redemption of the Body; and That God Has Now Decreed to Perfect Virtue in Infirmity, Reserving the Tranquil Sanctification of the Future Beatitude

But let us now investigate more diligently why, after the reparation of the human race and the renewal of nature which is effected through the sacrament of baptism,38 these vices have not only not been removed, but do not cease to assail even those constituted in the resolve of great continence — whether less or more, according as each one shall have advanced by the grace of God dispensing — why have those things been left against which a religious mind must struggle. And although already, saved by faith, we have received the hope of redemption, nevertheless, as the Apostle says, the redemption of our body is still awaited; and although by the heavenly mysteries, with us already reborn, the pledge of adoption is innate, the adoption thereafter to be perfected is sustained.39 So that, namely, with the same vices failing — against which we are liberated from this necessity by continual battle in this time — we may, by the desired affections of those very things, attain what we have received by faith, what by hope set forth we sustain — to such an extent that, with this pestilence of incursions utterly stripped away, we may live in tranquil sanctification always. This is promised to be fulfilled in that future beatitude, when, as the Apostle says, this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality (1 Cor. 15), and the animal body shall have taken on spiritual dignity.40

Chapter V: That Pride Is the Beginning of All Sin and Greater Than Every Other Sin, Since It Is Dangerous Even in Good Works; That God Created All Things Good and Established Them in Their Proper Measures; That the Rational Creature, Presuming on Its Own Dignity, Departed from Participation in the Creator and Fell into Defect; and That the Reprobate Angels, by Refusing to Refer Their Goodness to the Author, Forfeited the Stability of Eternal Beatitude

Therefore there is no doubt that pride is above every sin; namely concerning which it is written: The beginning of every sin is pride (Sirach 10).41 This is so great an evil that, while individual evil deeds are reckoned to be condemned by this very fact that they are evil, pride alone is taught to be dangerous even in good works:42 this is what does not allow even the rational animal placed on earth to subsist, and has cast down even the angelic nature, [though] hostile.43

For when God almighty, who made all things very good, established each thing instituted by its own modes and fitting orders, and granted to each its proper measures by which to remain or to advance:44 there crept into the rational creature this affection — that, on account of the very thing by which it was more decorously made to subsist, it brought to pass that it should trust itself more concerning its own dignity than (as its measure required) concerning the very Bestower of dignity; and so by seeking the firmness of its own height otherwise than its fitting measure required, it caused [itself], beyond the natural order, by desiring to break out into the height of a more excellent merit, to do so — which excess, just as it brought a guilt upon the one who exceeded, so it offended the justice of the Creator, against whose order it tended; and while [the creature] desists from that tenor by which alone it would advance to the perpetual fellowship of the highest good, consequently — [the creature] who could not arrive at his stable participation — defect entered, as befitted the uses of the rational creature.45

That [piece of] reality indicates that the angels were not created at [the level of] the progress of meriting eternal stability, since if they had been made such that they did nothing further, no part of them could have had any defect:46 for it cannot be said that there was a different nature in them, lest that angel who fell by his own will should be excused, if this had been imposed on him not by the determination of his own perversity but [by] necessity inherent in his condition.47 Whence therefore the blessed and sublime angels, by the office of pious devotion concerning the things they had received, and by fittingly preferring not themselves but rather the Author himself, have merited to advance and be promoted to his perpetuity:48 thence those who are reprobate, [being] consequently ungrateful concerning the things received, and dissimulating the obedience due, and attempting to prefer themselves rather than him who had founded the substance of so great dignity, and seduced by delight in their own creation, ceasing from the honor of the Creator, by how much they were arrogantly exalted, by so much, by not following the rectitude of eternity through irreverence, were drawn back from his indignation and from his participation alike, and receding from that which is everlasting, were brought back into that which always falls short:49 which, with our God assisting, we trust will be more fully expounded elsewhere.50

Chapter VI: That the Same Pride Which Toppled the Angelic Creature Overthrew the First Humans in Paradise; That the Just God in His Equity Consigned Fallen Humanity to Death While in His Ineffable Mercy Preparing the Restoration; That Christ, the Second Adam, Took Up the Very Nature That the First Had Ruined; That the Devil Was Justly Stripped of His Rights Through Christ’s Innocent Death; And That Through Faith and the Brief Sacrament Thousands of Humans Acquire Participation in Christ and Become a New Creature

For the present occasion, however, so far as suffices: this is that cause, this is that evil, by which even without bodily fault — by a kind of spiritual fornication — the moved angel fell from the divine grace by which he was illuminated and from participation: and made degenerate in this way, and excluded from the heavenly seat on account of this his discoloration, by envy he overthrew, inflamed, the image of the second condition of God.51 By the same motions by which he, having badly trusted himself in falling from the heights to the lowest, attacking [the human] dwelling in security, hence that felicity of paradise could not stand for the first humans; hence that integrity of the first condition, while it so trusted in itself, as if not to need him who had made it, neither gave thanks for the things it had received (which it is nowhere recorded to have done), nor asked for help concerning the things it had taken up to be conserved, nor even, when assailed by the tempter’s approach, ran devotedly to him and took counsel; and trusting itself to its own will amid prosperous things, easily, without the protection of the Creator, lay open to the deceiver’s snares, and being drawn into prevarication consequently of what was unlawful, found the condition of fixed death, and deservedly was made subject to the fitting punishment.52 Since neither was [the creature] devoted to retaining the goods, nor had it taken precaution against the previously foretold evil, while through the ambit of greater power — namely [the human] presuming himself to become God — he ran into the pits of hostile persuasion; and [the creature] which, if it had remained in its order grateful to the Maker, could have apprehended the perpetual commerce of the highest Deity, fittingly without owed [debt] illuminated by the copious promise of the office of the highest Divinity, could not arrive at Divinity.53

Thus therefore, without that affection of the principal and highest Reason, which inviolate persists in retaining the good things and refuting the contrary ones — to whose likeness, namely, the rational animal had been instituted, that, imitating it by its own measure with fitting actions, and preserving its reverence, and following its grace, that it should truly remain as that one’s likeness and image, and could obtain — and might be made worthy of fellowship of the divine Reason as of its parent and author, and through these things nonetheless, as a participant of eternity, to subsist eternally — while [the creature] trusted in its own dignity which had been created, and supposed itself to subsist in that which had been made, and reverenced not the Maker with subjected devotion, both withdrew from his participation and did not stand in itself without him in whom it had its means of subsisting.54 And so going beyond the order of legitimate rationality, into the abyss of irrationality through the verisimilitude of reasoning by which it believed itself to become God, [the creature] was led away; and by the privation of him who is eternal life, it fell back into that [life] which, without the fount of life, could not retain perpetual life.55

Although therefore for these transgressions [the creature] was deserving of due punishment, the just judge God nevertheless so corrected this creature by the equity of the proposed law, that what disdained to follow the divine path among happy things, divided itself by the balance of merits.56 So that, however, since [the creature] had also been deceived by the incursion of a more powerful creature — namely the one which was raging that the earthly substance could advance from where the spiritual itself had fallen, and was desiring as it were to take consolation from the ruin of another creature, as if it should pretend itself to be blamed not only from another’s transgression, but should refer its own lapse to the workmanship of the Creator, whose work could as it were not even subsist by another work — [God] would consult by ineffable surrounding piety, and would show by this reason both creatures rightly constituted, since both the degenerate angels are confuted by the beatitude of the holy angels.57

Which [redemption proceeded] by the same modes as those [angels did], that is, by the office of due piety, and by praising their Creator with the due proclamation, by the augmentations of his condescension, and the progress of fitting reverence, [they] achieved the participation of the good Parent, and the perpetual stability of eternal glory: so these too, if they had striven by the same tenor, could have come to similar beatitude — had they not, slothful from the praise of their maker and not following the fitting reverence, drawn back from the affection of his participation, [whereby] their own [nature] could not take up the increases and perfection of dignity. While, detained by the brightness of their own institution, they presumed to need nothing further, and to be able to suffice for themselves: by which, trusting to obtain themselves whatever they could have acquired through the Creator’s grace alone — which, in their condition of mutability, they could not in any way have — let man too be convicted from himself by manifest evidence; insofar as he was rightly made, that he who through divine grace can rise after his ruin, may be far more taught to have been able, if he were following the same grace with a devout mind, to remain whole. And by however much that grace prevails, the more let it be known thence that, both whole he could not stand without it, and he prevails to return to the same wholeness after his lapse.58

The good Maker God, therefore, who eternally and supremely always has being, since he is good, and therefore never bears the further appetite of growing — since there is nothing above what is eternally good and always supreme; nor by any inclination can it be diminished from this very thing, that it consents [to be] supreme good and eternal — whence also he was constituted in the form of God not by rapine; he had this surely by nature, just as that spirit who, since he had absolutely neither the eternal nor the supreme, preferred to occupy by rapine rather than to obtain perpetual dignity through the Author’s grace, from whom he had taken up the substance of angelic brightness; just as the blessed angels, abiding in divine grace, have obtained the firmness of eternal beatitude: but the perverse spirit could not even obtain that which he was seen incompetently to invade, and exceeding the tenor of his own condition, in this also could not remain in what he had been made.59 Therefore the good Author, that he might affirm that he had founded a good work, if [the work] persisted in its own condition — pitying the offense of his inferior creature, since the spiritual substance, which had proceeded both from his own and from another’s, had itself become a deceiver and persevering in its own iniquity was wholly unworthy to be obtained — clemently took up both the nature and the cause of the earthly condition and of the substance deceived by fraud; and so, that we may now briefly explain, proposing to repair the lapsed [creature] by fitting dispensation, that in himself this same nature, which through disobedience had returned to death, should return to life — he alone knowing in himself no sin (or rather, knowing not sin),60 in the substance which after sin was to be restored — he had taken up [it] with powerful kindness, that he might impute the unowed death which without sin he by no means owed, on behalf of those who through sin had become debtors of death; and at the same time the devil, the deceiver of man, who held the consenting [human] subject to himself by divine sentence by right, [was now to be] returning nothing to him through justice [as] no longer owed.

And when [the devil] had killed him [Christ] in whom without sin he [the devil] had no license, justly in mutual vicissitude [the devil] is also subjugated to him [Christ], addicted [to him]; and [the devil], who was boasting himself master and god of the human substance, as of his captive, would be subjected by mutual [exchange] to him both [as] the just one and [as] the true God.61 For it pertained to immense equity that the devil should be conquered not by abrupt divine power, but by the very justice of man also, whom he was boasting to have prostrated. By which [things], it was not enough for the supreme Restorer that he alone, in that nature which he had taken up, should bear forth this triumph from the enemy of the human race. For what would be afforded to our whole creature, if Christ alone existed as the conqueror of the devil?

He has therefore conferred upon his faithful, condescending, by immense piety, fellowship. He has conferred [it], by his grace and by faith bestowed, that thousands of humans should acquire participation in him through the brief means of the ineffable sacrament,62 and made similar in their Saviour to the renewed nature, they too should be made conquerors of their deceiver, with their lot changed. And so against the persistent proud spirit, this is provided as the cure for those to be saved: that by fitting modes they should advance to the integrity of their condition, and to celestial dignity; insofar as the affect of fatal exaltation (which had not only prostrated the human, but also, as has been said, the angelic nature itself before) [Christ] would, by [his assumed] humanity necessarily, medicinally turn aside [it] for repairing the integrity, since after the lapse he had to lack that evil, by which the whole [creature] could not have remained whole. But it was fitting that the rational human creature itself, which had lost what it had lost by its own will, should also receive its own will back according to the grace of God, and that what was being healed without merit should be granted that this too should follow from merit. For this reason the singular Saviour preferred rather to perfect virtue in infirmity, than that the human substance should again become either self-confident without infirmity, or careless of the Author, secure without infirmity.63

Hence it is therefore that blessed Paul, who both intimated more copiously than the rest the ruin of the human condition and the restoration, also cries out concerning himself: Lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there has been given to me a sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan, who buffets me; on account of which I have asked the Lord three times that he might depart from me, and he said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee; for virtue is perfected in infirmity. Gladly therefore shall I glory in my infirmities, that the virtue of Christ may dwell in me (2 Cor. 12); and again the same: For the creature has been subjected to vanity (Rom. 8); still indeed to vanity, inasmuch as it is still implicated in worldly senses, and is depressed by the corruptible condition; that creature certainly concerning which the same says elsewhere: If anyone therefore is a new creature in Christ, the old things have passed away; behold, all things are made new (2 Cor. 5); and concerning which the same says elsewhere: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ in good works (Eph. 2). And again the same concerning the same: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature (Gal. 6).64

This is therefore that creature which, living spiritually, unwilling sustains the affections of mortal infestation; against which fighting unceasingly, [it] would prefer not to have those whom it conquers, than that it should perpetually engage with the hostile enemy. Unwilling, therefore, [it] does not lie subject to vain desires — to the extent that they will perish without doubt. Whence the Apostle says: The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and you do not the things which you would (Gal. 5); but, he says, on account of him who has subjected [it] in hope (Rom. 8) — so that no one in this life, namely, by arrogating to himself again the plenary felicity, [should imagine himself] as if assailed by no incursions from which he might be liberated.65 Likewise the same: The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: for these are mutually opposed to each other, so that you do not the things which you would. For what the spirit wills, it does not perfect, lest it should be proud of the perfection (Gal. 5); and the same: The flesh does not perfect what it wills — that he might thus admonish the human condition.

By which [things, the apostle] ministered to the ecclesiastical with spiritual increases; where without controversy [he placed] himself also among them — although endowed with greater grace, whence he says having the firstfruits of the Spirit, as if [he were one of] the foremost of the grace of God, in one and the same condition with himself constituted the whole Church in the general condition. But also we ourselves, he says, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves: he opened up whose that groaning was, of which he had spoken above, [namely, his own]; and what he was groaning, he set forth evidently — awaiting adoption: certainly he had already received the pledge of adoption from the sacrament of regeneration. What is, then, this adoption which is sustained after the beginnings of adoptions? What redemption of our body is proposed as to come? Therefore have you not received what you say you await? I have received, he says, but I am renewed by the mysteries and initiated into the heavenly things, surviving and at the same time consisting in this still mortal condition; [the things] which are operating competently in me as their own, that I may avail to their plenitude and perfection — and there may be the consummated victory of those fighting here, where it is to be said: Death is swallowed up in victory: where, O death, is your sting? Now, however, we are saved by hope; but the hope which is seen is not hope; for what anyone sees, why does he hope? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (1 Cor. 15; Rom. 8).66 With sufficiently clear light, [the apostle] disclosed what the status of the faithful in this life is — what they should hold by faith, what they should sustain in hope, what they should desire with their whole charity. All of which without hesitation comes to pass on this account, as a certain master of the Church67 has wisely taught, saying: For to the great profit of the faithful the material of contests has been preserved — that sanctity may not grow proud while infirmity is pulsated — by which our condition, namely, admonished by even its own fragility after the ruin, may not trust in itself, but may unceasingly run back to that mercy of his to be reformed; whose grace, by not seeking, [our condition] could not even in paradise stand firm in unblemished felicity, and may learn that, lapsed thence without such protection, by what [grace] it is instructed to return after troubles to perpetual joys; and that by much more it could have endured intact by this support, by which it is not only restored to the institution of its own creation, but is also prepared for a heavenly habitation.68

Chapter VII: That the Apostle John’s Statement That Whoever Is Born of God Does Not Sin (1 John 3) Is Not Contrary to the Doctrine That Even the Regenerate Are Subject to Sin in This Life; That John Himself, Born of God, Wrote That If We Say We Have No Sin We Deceive Ourselves; And That Those Born of God Do Not Sin in the Sense That Their Confessed Sins Are Removed by God’s Faithful and Just Absolution and Do Not Remain Obstinately in Them

Now let it not be reckoned at all contrary to this disputation that blessed John, the apostle and evangelist, asserted in his Epistle: For whoever is born of God does not sin (1 John 3); so that from this, namely, those who are regenerated should be believed not to sin: which indeed, if that great man had brought forth in that sense — as some not judging rightly suppose — universally, anyone whatsoever once reborn would already be unable to sin.69 Then [whoever pretends this] is convicted of feeling against this same apostle, if anyone pretends [him] to have defined this; for the same indeed says elsewhere: If we shall say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1); and again: If we shall say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us: and certainly so great and such an apostle was saying this — whose meritorious one, if anyone strives to esteem himself, let him himself see, and let him take care lest he fall into the abyss of deadly precipitation.70

Certainly, indeed, he himself who said these things had been born of God; and yet he taught and preached, saying: If we shall say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves; and the rest, which has been comprehended above. But how he who is born of God cannot sin, let that man full of God himself rather expound: If we shall say, he says, that we have not sinned, we make him a liar; but if we shall confess our sins, [he is] faithful and just, who shall remit our sins, and shall cleanse us from all iniquity (Ibid.). He has disclosed how he who is born of God cannot sin: namely, that each of the faithful, after he is born of God, just as he ought not to pronounce that he does not have sin, so the sin removed by confident relaxation, [the sin] which by admitting he has contracted, cannot inhere [in him] — just as he himself also subsequently added: These things I write to you, that you sin not; but if anyone shall have sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, the just one, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins, not only of ours, but of [those of] the whole world (1 John 2).71 Which, briefly indicated, the prudent reader will be able to find by copious testimonies through the whole body of the Scriptures and to demonstrate more manifestly.

Thus is the antidote of our salvation tempered: that with all wantonness laid aside, he who glories may glory not in himself, but in the Lord (2 Cor. 10).72

Chapter VIII: That the Apostle’s Statement That the Unbelieving Spouse Is Sanctified Through the Believing (1 Cor. 7) Is Not to Be Read as Diminishing the Necessity of Baptism; That the Believing Spouse, Whose Body Is a Temple of God Purged by Regeneration and Divinely Sanctified Through the Mystery, Is a Channel of Real but Partial Sanctification to the Unbeliever Through Prayer, Conjugal Affection, and the Exhortation to Faith; That the Children of Such Marriages Receive a Real but Partial Sanctification Through the Believing Parent; And That Full Sanctification Is Conferred When the Little Ones, Even Unknowing, Are Reborn in the Font of Baptism

It is also to be observed by the diligent that we have perceived some moved by what the Apostle says (1 Cor. 7) when he was speaking with spouses and the faithful: namely, that the unbelieving man or woman is sanctified through the faithful consortium of either sex.73 And in the first place, not inconveniently does what is said concerning the conjugal covenant occur to us: They shall be two in one flesh (Gen. 2). Through which it can consequently be understood that, since the body of any believing spouse is a temple of God, both purged by regeneration and divinely sanctified through the purification of the mystery,74 according to a certain mode, through the conjugal unity of flesh, sanctification reaches even the body of the unbelieving spouse — and far does this society stand from that consortium in which both spouses are surrendered to idols and polluted by the habitation of the unclean spirit. While in that [legitimate] kind of marriages, by the law and covenant of marriage, the divine blessing approaches even to the other (perhaps unknowing or even unwilling) through the unity of the flesh united to itself.75

But in that [pagan] [union], the principal fornication, by which the soul is alienated from God, and the contagion of the perverse spirit, makes both spouses contaminated by detestable defilement — as much as it makes them outsiders76 from that faith which purifies hearts of the highest Deity. Then not irrationally (so far as I judge) does this also concur — that by the prayer of any believing spouse, mercy of however great a kind is bestowed even on the unbeliever, or at least that [mercy] which pertains to temporal salvation: in which mercy [the unbeliever] acquires not a little of divine piety; and through this, according to a certain mode, is declared to be made a participant of divine dignation. For if the foods which are described as unclean by the sacred law are testified by the Apostle to be sanctified by the word of God — whence also is that [saying]: What God has cleansed, you should not call common (Acts 10) —77 it will not be absurd nor inconvenient that, through the continual prayer of the believing spouse — which it is certain is offered for [the other] from the affection of the marriage — the unbelieving spouse may consequently obtain something of sanctification, [namely,] the divine mercy which the supplication of the believing spouse implores; and may differ by far (as has been said) from that union in which both spouses are alike outsiders to the purity of true Divinity, and have voluntarily withdrawn, but rather, both invoking unclean spirits, are alike replenished with uncleanness.

For if, by the comparison of light or graver sins, he who is involved in lesser guilt is called justified [in comparison] with the one who is entangled in greater vices — as it is said to Jerusalem, which then was burning with the enormity of crimes and prevarications: You have justified your sister Sodom (Ezek. 16) —78 how much more is justification or sanctification, although not full and perfect, fittingly received according to a certain mode where not only is less sinned with the believing spouse, but the remedy of the highest Deity is sought from him by the sinning spouse — than where both spouses sin together! For according to a certain mode, the very words of the Apostle attest that this sanctification through the believing spouse comes also to the unbelieving spouse; since indeed [the Apostle] does not now confirm that the unbelieving spouse has received a legitimate sanctification, [merely] because through the believing spouse he acquires something of sanctification.79 Then he subjoined under what condition [the unbeliever] should be reckoned: For if the unbeliever depart, let him depart (1 Cor. 7) — not now indicating that he is to be received as a believer, because through these things which have been said something of the believing spouse comes to him — whether consortium, or the prayer of divine sanctification and grace — but unless he himself also become a believer, he must without doubt be judged for an unbeliever.

There is also that mode of imparting sanctification to the unbelieving spouse through the now believing spouse, if [the believer] insinuates to him the exhortation of conversion to God and the diligence of the highest Deity, and inculcates his majesty and virtue, and through the affection of the marriage informs and inclines him more easily to faith — building up what hope there is for those who believe in the one God, both in the course of this life and what rest there shall be after its transition. When through the trust of the marriage the believing spouse frequently insinuates these things by holy words, striking the heart [of the other] with assiduous voice, [the believer] administers to him, and to his mind, and to his body the effect of divine sanctification — just as blessed Peter the apostle says: Likewise, let wives be subject to their husbands, that if any do not believe the word, they may be won by the conversation of the wife without a word, considering your chaste conversation in fear (1 Pet. 3); [and] if through conjugal familiarity [the unbeliever] takes up [these things], and does not receive in vain and refuse the grace of God ministered to him through the affection of the marriage, sanctification through the believing spouse comes to the unbelieving spouse, while by these modes he is drawn from unbelief into the consortium of sanctification.80

Otherwise, if he does not take up the grace offered to him through conjugal affection — which, forgetful both of so great divine condescension and of singular human affection, he reckons must be denied — and on this account strives also to abjure the very affection of the spouse, and to depart from the law of that pious consortium: license to depart is justly permitted to him; because he is not worthy of that marriage of which he himself has judged himself unworthy. And the believing spouse should patiently bear having lost that marriage which fornicates from God, while the same believing spouse, by adhering to him,81 retains the principal chastity of God. Thus [the believing spouse] is freed both from an adulterer, and from him who refuses to truly be made one flesh with the now believing spouse, and should not reckon that to have been legitimate which has been despised contrary to the divine law of marriage; but rather should freely accept that he who is separated from God in soul has also been divided from him in body.

According to this mode, then, what is consequently asserted is also to be understood concerning the children of such [marriages] — where the Apostle [says]: that unless this sanctification came among such marriages, their children would be unclean, but now they are holy. They are holy, namely, according to a certain mode, in comparison with those who are born from both parents enslaved to and contaminated by the diabolical uncleanness. For these, from the part by which they have come forth from the holy flesh of the believing parent — both temple of God, and bearing the one God in his heart — have drawn no small thing of divine blessing; in which blessing holiness is contained, and being touched by whose dignation, they are deservedly called holy.82

Through this they take up a certain sanctification — that they may come, as is fitting, to obtain it [in full]; already they perceive its rudiments through the believing parent, and recognize the odor of holy adoption; by the prayers of the Christian parent, by which divine mercy is implored for them without ambiguity, sanctification is now imparted; and most often by the zeal of the believing parent, the little ones are either brought to venerable places, or even, with them unknowing, are reborn in the font of baptism — and full sanctification is conferred.83 Or where they have already become capable of reason, the exhortation and insinuation of the pious parent is brought to bear.

All these things are manifestly the instruments of sanctification, by which they may come to its firmness;84 or if they despise these things, they despoil themselves of sanctification, and evidently empty the grace of God which is brought to them through the affection of their parents. And so, cut off from the holy or from the schools of holiness, they are returned into the profane consortia of the unsanctified. Concerning whom no less can it be said, just as it was commanded concerning their unbelieving parents: If the unbeliever wishes to depart, let him depart (1 Cor. 7).

Are these kinds of sanctity or sanctification announced to children begotten of two pagan parents? Behold what difference there is between offspring procreated from that or this marriage; behold how these — being relatives and close [to a believer] — are sanctified, and therefore not undeservedly are brought forth holy; for whom divine mercy is consequently implored by [the parent’s] prayers, and who are imbued with holy upbringing and initiated by the affection of sacred religion. If they shall arrive at its firmness, they obtain through the sacrament the fullness of sanctification of that [religion], of which they had already taken up the rudiments through the believing parent even before the sacrament85 — through which rudiments those who were being prepared by holy institution are not incongruously called already holy.

But surely [the apostle] does not say that the unbelieving spouse is sanctified through the believing in such a way that he has no further need of sanctification through his own believing — but rather, that through that familiarity with the believing spouse, he has been made near and proximate to the sanctification to be received? For if he were now said to be sanctified to the point that he no longer needed sanctification, [the apostle] would not in what follows say: If the unbeliever wishes to depart, let him depart. Thus also their children are called holy because, through the affection of the holy parent, they are near to the sanctity to be apprehended — not because they themselves do not need their own sanctification, which (as no Christian doubts) is neither received nor possessed without the mystery of sacred regeneration.86 Just as their unbelieving parent is called sanctified through the believing in such a way that, if nevertheless he himself does not take up the legitimate effect of the sanctification offered to him through the believing spouse, he is called an unbeliever.

Therefore, just as [the apostle] later calls the one whom he had called sanctified through the believing spouse an unbeliever, because that person did not personally believe — so also the children who through the believing parent are sanctified in the same mode as the spouse and are called holy — unless they themselves personally believe, they consequently exist as unbelievers.87 It sufficiently appears that this sanctification of the spouse is called such according to a certain mode, [the spouse] who is afterward asserted to be an unbeliever; so therefore it is also to be understood concerning the children.

Chapter IX: That Scripture Often Speaks by Anticipation, Calling Things Already What They Are Yet to Become; That It Sometimes Names a Thing No Longer to Be by What It Was, As Judas Was Called Apostle and Disciple Even After His Prevarication; And That Universal Statements in Scripture Often Apply Not to All Generally but by the Common Figure of the Whole from a Part — As When God Promised Abraham That All Nations Would Be Blessed in His Seed, Though Not All Have Believed, or When Paul Said Every Tongue Would Confess to God

Surely then — something to be repeated often — is the offspring of profane parents covered by any portion of holiness of any kind by [their] parent, or by any disciplines of this sort, by prayers, by exhortations, [does it] take up any participation, or knowledge, or hearing, or instruction of holiness, while it stands under the dominion of unclean spirits, and delivered over to diabolical prevarications and contagions? In this mode it is always unclean, just as the parents [are unclean], as long as it stands in the same perversity. But often [Scripture speaks] also by anticipation — which is more frequently found in the text of holy Scripture: what is to come is already said to be, as we read in the Gospel.88

For Jesus was about to die for the people, and not only for the people, but also that he might gather into one the sons of God, who were dispersed.89 He is certainly already calling sons of God those who would [yet] be, through the diffused calling of grace through the world, [renewed] in the saving mysteries, [and adopted] into sons of God.90 Or when it is said: Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed (John 20) — they are already called blessed who at that point would yet be blessed, when they would believe what they had not seen. Just as also frequently, things to be done are reported as already done — as: They have pierced my hands and my feet (Ps. 21[22]).91 Likewise, [something] is determined as if by professing, which by some intervening cause is not to be done — as the blessed Apostle, on account of the devotion of the preaching enjoined upon him, professes himself to be going to Spain, which nevertheless by a certain dispensation of the Deity, what was about to happen did not come to pass.92 Another [mode is] when something is called to be what has now ceased to be that very thing, or what is yet to cease being that which it is said to be — as the apostle Judas, who by his prevarication lost what he was called; just as the same was called also a disciple, although he was not Christ’s disciple, but rather the devil’s, just as it is said of him: One of you is the devil (John 6) — because he was a worker of the devil. Yet he was called a disciple even when he was not truly so, and was about to cease being so called.93

There is also that mode, in which something is often said as if generally and absolutely, although manifestly it does not pertain to all generally — as when it is said to Abraham: In thy seed shall all the nations be blessed (Gen. 22). All nations indeed shall be blessed; nor shall there be any nation under heaven to which the Gospel shall not be preached, and then the end shall come.94 But those nations themselves shall not all be blessed in their entirety, because not of all is the faith. Or as: Every tongue shall confess to God (Phil. 2); to which speech that sense is attached, when often the whole is named from a part — just as also then “a man of Judah” would name the whole nation without doubt. Thus also those faithful can be seen to be called holy, because many — or very many — of them, through the things which have been said, being imbued with the heavenly mysteries, will be made holy, and deservedly are now called what they are to be; or from the portion by which through the religious parent they were participants of holiness, they are called holy as if they were already so wholly; or because of such children many will be heirs of full sanctification.95 Now these too have been called from what they were to be; and although perhaps very many of them were now to come about, yet from the part of the holy, the whole are generally called holy.

Chapter X: That Concerning the Quality of the Resurrection and the Species of the Body to Come, the Apostle Has Taught Through the Comparison of the Grain Not Vivified Before It Has Died; That the Body Sown in Corruption, Dishonor, Weakness, and Animal Nature Is Raised in Incorruption, Glory, Power, and Spiritual Dignity; That to Each of the Seeds Its Own Body Is Returned and Therefore the Property of Each Body — Including the Distinction of Sex — Is Preserved in the Resurrection; And That What Eye Has Not Seen Nor Ear Heard Is Not to Be Scrutinized by Reckless Curiosity, but Sober Consideration Should Bound Itself by the Apostle’s Words

Concerning the quality of the resurrection, however — or concerning the species which shall be after the resurrection — let us hear the Apostle preaching, where he says: But someone will say, How shall the dead rise? But with what kind of body shall they come? (1 Cor. 15). And rebuking the diffidence of human mind — naming as deservedly foolish [the diffidence] which would judge anything impossible to God — the illustrious doctor competently introduces a magnificent comparison, drawn from things visible and from human practice, saying: Foolish [man] (you who esteem these things impossible to God, or doubt them to be done), what you sow is not vivified unless it first die (Ibid.). Which comparison he conveniently fitted to the resurrection of the body to come after death.96 Then [he] subjoined what follows: And what you sow, you do not sow the body that shall come to be, but a bare grain — as of wheat or of others. But God gives it a body as he wills (Ibid.). To the quality and species which is to be after the resurrection, he took care to apply a kind of comparison, saying: as he wills. What more do you ask? As God shall will, so will he give to each a body raised by ineffable power. But perhaps you suppose this means rather that not to each is to be reformed his own proper body, since it is asserted to be repaired as God shall will.

Diligently, then, attend to the sense of the one treating these things more fully, if you try to know what kind of body God will return to each as he wills, and weigh as it were the words of the Apostle now answering you in advance. You wish to know why he is to give to humans raised a body as God wills. Recognize prudently: and to each of the seeds its own body (Ibid.) — which surely the man full of God did not attach without cause, but to expel future doubts of humans of this kind. Hear, I say, what he wisely added, and from the comparison recognize the very thing to which it is compared: and to each, he says, of the seeds its own body. If in the comparison [there is] a proper body, then in the reality of which there is a comparison, it is certain that a proper body must be returned. For without controversy he compared these seeds to humans, of whose death and resurrection he was speaking.97 Thus, conferring [comparison upon comparison] individually, so far as it pertains to the bodies to be vivified after death, by the singular and marvelous comparison of a grain not vivified before it has died, he explained [the matter]. Thereafter, what kind of body each is to come in after the resurrection — that is, whether in this condition which he bore in dying, or in one far better — by the same comparison he disclosed, [a comparison] which he subsequently expounded: And you who sow, sow a bare grain — as of wheat or of any of the others; and God gives it a body as he wills (1 Cor. 15).

In this form, then, that God gives the body more decorously than [the one in which] it had perished, [the apostle] has evidently expressed; just as is said in what follows: It is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual body (Ibid.).98 Behold how it is not sown of the dying man what the body is to be afterward. Behold, as God wills, the body is understood to be reformed for those who will rise after death, with the inestimable will of his mercy: what had been sown in corruption, he restores in incorruptible nobility; what had been thrust down in the ignobility of the earthly condition, he raises in heavenly glory; what had been resolved in the weakness of mortality, he reintegrates clothed in the dignity of immortality; finally, what had been animal in death, he restores and reforms as a spiritual body — all of which look toward the state of improvement and exaltation.

But that part of the comparison which remains, attached specifically to the property of the body to be returned to each, is established as pertinent — by which it is consequently said: And to each of the seeds its own body. Where it sufficiently appears that in whatever splendor of the rising the property of the body shall remain. Nor is it idle that the blessed Apostle, when [he was speaking] only of the human race — which alone is to be raised, nor is any other substance to be adorned with this gift, and so that it would have sufficed for one race of humans to apply, by the grace of comparison, one species of seed (through which he might lead [the conclusion] both that [the body] is not vivified before it dies, and that [it] rises a more honorable body than that which was sown) — would also assert that the proper body of [each] sex must be renewed.99 [This] he could not have shown in one species of seed, so far as concerns the comparison — lest by this it should be supposed to have signified only one species of bodies of those to be raised — with [the question of] the distinction of properties not addressed. He cautiously and conveniently led [his comparison] forward by various distinct kinds of seeds, that the property of bodies — as has been said — which one species was unable to distinguish, the diversity of seeds might indicate; he supplied a faculty for the full comparison, by which it could be most conveniently said for the designation of the specialness of bodies: and to each of the seeds its own body (1 Cor. 15) — [so] that what one species of any grain, with sex distinguished, could not for any [reader] estimate for expressing the property of bodies (as has often been said), the diversity of seeds might minister understanding.

Therefore in this comparison there is a triple proposition, disputation, and definition. So far as it pertains to understanding the bodily resurrection, a competent and sufficient comparison is drawn from the simile of the grain not vivified before it has died. So far as it concerns [the fact] that “not that body is sown which is to be, but God gives it a body as he wills” (Ibid.) — in the continuation of the same reading the cause is necessarily disclosed — when the corruptible body, having been sown, is asserted to be returned incorruptible, and the rest, which prove to adhere to this sense.100 But so far as concerns the property of bodies to be taught, it is most fully declared: blessed Apostle, by no means content with the comparison of one seed (through which he could not show the property of bodies, since one species of seed, as has been recalled above, did not have it), strove from the diversity of seeds to show to each of the rising — who are surely compared to seeds — that his proper body must be returned.

And so men shall rise vivified after death — those who have been compared to seeds dying first and afterward to be vivified; and not in this [body] in which they die, that is, as it were [in which] they are sown, do they rise. But God gives them a body as he wills (Ibid.) — that from corruptible [it may be] incorruptible, from mortal immortal, from non-spiritual spiritual: that what had been disfigured by the condition of death may be returned immortal and adorned in integrity; and they are about to receive a proper body, as each of the seeds, without doubt. Which, since [the proper body] could not in one seed be compared to the diversity of sex, has been gathered from the diversity of seeds — that from the diversity of seeds the property of bodies might be signified. If then each one resurrected will take his proper body, it follows without doubt that to each sex its proper body is reformed; because, as has been said, to each of the seeds its proper body (1 Cor. 15) is restored as attributed. And if to each of the seeds its proper body is restored — through which seeds in both sexes the entire genus of humans is designated — it follows that the entire human genus, which in both sexes is designated by these seeds, is to take up its proper body.101

This [is what] is permitted us to measure from the words of the Apostle by sober consideration; beyond which we must beware lest we break out by reckless curiosity — on which account we are also admonished: Seek not things higher than thee, and search not things stronger than thee (Sirach 3); and: Not minding high things, but consenting to the humble (Rom. 12). Lastly, attending to that which is firmed by apostolic preaching as well: What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who fear him (1 Cor. 2).102 Whoever is not content with the intelligence or with the comparison of the recalled sense of the Apostle, certainly is constrained without doubt — willing or unwilling — to that [point], that what eye has not seen nor ear heard nor entered into the heart of man, he should venture to compose by his own meditation, as if any members of the human body had been created culpable, or [merely] decorous, or reprehensible — when God made all things very good (Gen. 1), and each species in its own genus is supported by fitting decorum, except that these things which are called by us indecent, the excess of primordial concupiscence has discolored.103 [These members] were so instituted that, serving at the nod of the human mind, they would discharge their offices solely from the choice of the rational soul, for the cause of procreating offspring. Apart from this cause, [they would offer] nothing of rebellion against the rule of the mind — neither preceding the will [more] insolently, nor when the will desired [it], [bringing forth] anything of rebellion.

But after the soul did not stand subject to its highest [authority], pride was punished by the law of nature now contumacious in itself — so that to this also (that is, to the dominion of the soul) services consequently were rebellious; and what the disobedient appetite of the human mind had contradicted by the presumption of the forbidden, [that appetite] indicated in that part of the body where, without doubt, the propagation of the degenerate, discolored, and proudly-rooted generation had to be vitiated. Which surely if these had not here been disfigured by this exorbitance, they could have continued in propagating the human race honestly as moderately, in the body without doubt earthly — how much more must it be believed that in the spiritual body these things can subsist ineffably more decently, especially when nothing of genital office shall be enacted in that perpetual brightness!104 But only to this extent shall their species and form not be lacking — that no other form than the human (to which the resurrection is promised) shall be judged to be raised; nor [shall there be] anything that does not remain in the inspected resurrection of the flesh, [nothing] that may seem to be raised as a different species than the lineaments of integral human flesh designate. Whoever does not perhaps wish to weigh this with moderate reason, willing or unwilling — as has been said — either he must turn back to that higher [principle], that what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man (1 Cor. 2), and not estimate that it is to be scrutinized; or if he tries to break out further, let him himself see the precipitation of his rashness.

But how the members of human substance were honestly created, that fact also admonishes us — that, when the first parents were naked in paradise, they had nothing of confusion in them. Whence after sin and the entering virus of concupiscence, by the disordered perturbation of their bodies they were confused. And so it sufficiently appears that, if [though] placed in that whatever felicity of paradise, [yet] constituted in an earthly body, they could be looked upon without confusion — much more in that spiritual body and in that sublime beatitude, which shall bear the likeness of angels, and so that to man in the resurrection of the flesh nothing shall be lacking, [the body] is reformed entire. And lest the Creator should appear to have created anything deformed, if any good were subtracted from the resuscitated body, rather may his work be approved from this very [restoration] — that his condition may even in those things permanently remain in the decorum of splendor — unless perhaps these [doubters] still consider that bodily motions will arise even there, where (as the Lord himself says) they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels (Mark 12).105 Which surely, if all were to be raised in one species of body and one sex, why this would be said for any reason at all could not have been [explained]. Rather, since marrying belongs more to the female sex, [it is] indicated that [marriage] is not going to be lacking there, but rather utterly to cease from marriages.

But since it is no less written that each may take his proper bodies which he bore, whether good or evil (2 Cor. 5), how would this come to pass, unless each sex undergoes either judgment or receives the reward of the blessed resurrection in the property of its own body?106

Chapter XI: That Those Who Read Ephesians 4:13 (Until We All Attain to One Perfect Man) as Meaning All Humans Rise in Male Form Have Misread the Apostle, Whose Other Statements Show the Church Figured as Both Bride and Body of Christ; That From the Beginning Sacred Scripture Designates Christ and the Church Under the Likeness of Conjugal Union; That the Church Under the Feminine Figure Names the Weakness of the Human Condition Now Joined to Christ as Spouse, While Under the Masculine Figure Names the Manly Strength and Perfection It Receives From Christ Its Head; And That All the Faithful Are Baptized into One Body in Christ, So That Through the Unity of the Sacrament They Become One Flesh With Their Husband, the Perfect Man, of Whose Fullness the Church Is the Body

But they err who think that the Apostle’s testimony favors them, by which they seem to assert that all humans are to be raised in masculine form — when he says: Until we all attain to one perfect man (Eph. 4). What, then, will they do when the same [apostle] says again: I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present a chaste virgin to Christ (2 Cor. 11)? Which surely will be, without doubt, contrary to that opinion of theirs, unless — with the mystery competently inspected — with modest mind they recognize in what way each agrees.107 What it means, therefore, that [the apostle] describes the Church in both sexes — as far as the Lord, opening [it to us, allows us to] perceive — we set forth.

From the beginning, holy Scripture attests that Christ and the Church were designated by the likeness of the conjugal [union] in the human flesh.108 Therefore when the Church is reckoned in the feminine sex, the weakness of the human condition is shown, which is competently expressed as in the Church the spouse of Christ; but by the name of virginity, or of [the Church’s] continence, her purpose or the integrity of the faith — concerning which the blessed Apostle himself discourses — is signified.109

But when it is said, Until we all attain to a perfect man, this is not diverse, nor divided;110 because whatever is contained in the body of the Church — which with Christ is one flesh by the law of sacred marriage — even his very flesh, in every mode, is made in both sexes [to be] what has been said: either there a chaste virgin, or here a perfect man — that thus [the faithful] may be in the Catholic Church living in unblemished faith, and continent in holy purpose. It can yet remain in the weakness of the human condition that, nevertheless, through the one flesh of the Church and Christ — that is, of the spouse and the husband — in him also [the Church] may receive perfect manly firmness and vigor; through the Church’s virginal chastity of faith, by which they are made one flesh with him, and the perfect members of the man.111

Where also those words of the blessed apostle Paul must be treated, by which he says: All we are baptized in Christ into one body (1 Cor. 12). So far as it pertains to the unity of the sacrament, we are one body in Christ;112 so far as it pertains to the diversity of sexes, the same says elsewhere: Whether male or female, we are all one in Christ (Gal. 3); for with his own whole body, which is his fullness, Christ is perfect; and therefore because through one and the same mystery — although of diverse sex — yet one body is received, through the fullness of which body Christ is perfect.113

Therefore, since the husband Christ is to the Church, as to his own spouse, both head, and strength, and perfection, deservedly the whole Church is said to attain to this one perfect man, of whom [the Church] is one flesh.114