Letter 201: The Emperors Honorius Augustus and Theodosius Augustus to Bishop Aurelius Send Greeting. 1. It had been indeed long ago decreed that Pelagius and Celestius, the authors of an execrable heresy, should, as pestilent corruptors of the Catholic truth, be expelled from the city of Rome, lest they should, by their baneful influence, pervert the minds ...

Augustine to Valentinus and the monks at Hadrumetum, greetings. I understand there has been confusion at your monastery about my teaching on grace and free will. Some of the brothers, having read my letter to Sixtus, have concluded that if everything depends on God's grace, then human effort is pointless. "Why discipline ourselves," they ask, "if God has already decided who will be saved?" This is a misunderstanding, and I must correct it immediately. Grace does not destroy free will. Grace heals free will. The will is real — genuinely real — but it is wounded by sin. Grace does not replace the will with something else. It restores the will to what it was meant to be: a will that freely chooses the good. Think of a sick man whose illness makes him too weak to walk. A physician gives him medicine that restores his strength. Does the medicine walk for him? No — he walks, with his own legs, by his own effort. But without the medicine, he could not have walked at all. This is what grace does for the will. So do not stop disciplining yourselves. Do not stop praying. Do not stop striving for holiness. But do all of these things knowing that the very desire to do them, and the strength to carry them out, comes from God. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do his good pleasure" [Philippians 2:12-13]. Both halves of that sentence are true. Hold them together. Farewell, dear brothers.

Letter 201 (A.D. 419) The Emperors Honorius Augustus and Theodosius Augustus to Bishop Aurelius Send Greeting. 1. It had been indeed long ago decreed that Pelagius and Celestius, the authors of an execrable heresy, should, as pestilent corruptors of the Catholic truth, be expelled from the city of Rome, lest they should, by their baneful influence, pervert the minds of the ignorant. In this our clemency followed up the judgment of your Holiness, according to which it is beyond all question that they were unanimously condemned after an impartial examination of their opinions. Their obstinate persistence in the offense having, however, made it necessary to issue the decree a second time, we have enacted further by a recent edict, that if any one, knowing that they are concealing themselves in any part of the provinces, shall delay either to drive them out or to inform on them, he, as an accomplice, shall be liable to the punishment prescribed. 2. To secure, however, the combined efforts of the Christian zeal of all men for the destruction of this preposterous heresy, it will be proper, most dearly beloved father, that the authority of your Holiness be applied to the correction of certain bishops, who either support the evil reasonings of these men by their silent consent, or abstain from assailing them with open opposition. Let your Reverence, then, by suitable writings, cause all bishops to be admonished (as soon as they shall know, by the order of your Holiness, that this order is laid upon them) that whoever shall, through impious obstinacy, neglect to vindicate the purity of their doctrine by subscribing the condemnation of the persons before mentioned, shall, after being punished by the loss of their episcopal office, be cut off by excommunication and banished for life from their sees. For as, by a sincere confession of the truth, we ourselves, in obedience to the Council of Nicaea, worship God as the Creator of all things, and as the Fountain of our imperial sovereignty, your Holiness will not suffer the members of this odious sect, inventing, to the injury of religion, notions new and strange, to hide in writings privately circulated an error condemned by public authority. For, most beloved and loving father, the guilt of heresy is in no degree less grievous in those who either by dissimulation lend the error their secret support, or by abstaining from denouncing it extend to it a fatal approbation. (In another hand.) May the Divinity preserve you in safety for many years! Given at Ravenna, on the 9th day of June, in the Consulship of Monaxius and Plinta. A letter, in the same terms, was also sent to the holy Bishop Augustine. About this page Source. Translated by J.G. Cunningham. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102201.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.