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On Nature and Grace
Blessed Augustine, NPNF I.5
Extract from Augustin’s Retractations
Book II, Chap. 42 — On the Following Treatise — “De Natura Et Gratia.”
“At that time also there came into may hands a certain book of Pelagius’, in which he defends, with all the argumentative skill he could muster, the nature of man, in opposition to the grace of God whereby the unrighteous is justified and we become Christians. The treatise which contains my reply to him, and in which I defend grace, not indeed as in opposition to nature, but as that which liberates and controls nature, I have entitled On Nature and Grace. In this work sundry short passages, which were quoted by Pelagius as the words of the Roman bishop and martyr, Xystus, were vindicated by myself1 as if they really were the words of this Sixtus. For this I thought them at the time; but I afterwards discovered, that Sextus the heathen philosopher, and not Xystus the Christian bishop, was their author. This treatise of mine begins with the words; ‘The book which you sent me.’”
Contained in One Book, Addressed to Timasius and Jacobus. Written in the Year of Our Lord 415
He begins with a statement of what is to be investigated concerning nature and grace; He shows that nature, as propagated from the flesh of the sinful Adam, being no longer what God made it at first, — Faultless and sound, — Requires the aid of grace, in order that it may be redeemed from the wrath of God and regulated for the perfection of righteousness: That the penal fault of nature leads to a most righteous retribution: Whilst grace itself is not rendered to any deserts of ours, but is given gratuitously; And they who are not delivered by it are justly condemned. He afterwards refutes, with answers on every several point, a work by Pelagius, who supports this self-same nature in opposition to grace; Among other things especially, in his desire to recommend the opinion that a man can live without sin, he contended that nature had not been weakened and changed by sin; For, otherwise, the matter of sin (which he thinks absurd) would be its punishment, if the sinner were weakened to such a degree that he committed more sin. He goes on to enumerate sundry righteous men both of the old and of the new testaments: Deeming these to have been free from sin, he alleged the possibility of not sinning to be inherent in man; And this he attributed to God’s grace, on the ground that God is the author of that nature in which is inseparably inherent this possibility of avoiding sin. Towards the end of this treatise there is an examination of sundry extracts from old writers, which Pelagius adduced in support of his views, and expressly from Hilary, Ambrose, and even Augustin himself.
Notes
- In chap. 77.