Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
good 'things, namely God. [He quotes at length II. xix. 50.] Again I said: "Believe with unshakable piety that you have no good which does not come from God.'' And again, "Since man cannot rise of his own accord as he fell by his own accord, let us with strong faith hold fast the right hand of God stretched to us from above, even our Lord Jesus Christ."
Pelagius made use of from my book—"Who commits sin by an
5. In the Third Book, after the words which as I mentioned act w hich he could by no means avoid? Sin has been committed, therefore it could have been avoided"—I immediately add: "And yet some things are done in ignorance which are disapproved . . .'' [III. x\iii. 51 is quoted at length.] At the close of the next paragraph I say: "To approve falsehood instead of truth, so as to err in spite of himself, and not to be able to refrain from the works of lust, because of the pain involved in breaking away from earthly bonds; these do not belong to the nature of man as he was created. They are the penalty of man as condemned. When w-e speak of the freedom of the will to do right we are speaking of the freedom wherein man was created."
6. You see that long before the Pelagian heresy emerged, I disputed as if I were already arguing against it. All good things, great, medium and small, were said to come from God. Free will was put among the medium goods, because we can make a bad as well as a good use of it, and yet it is good because we cannot live righteously without it. To make a good use of it is virtue, and \irtue is found among the greater goods, of which no one can make a bad use. Because all good things, as I said, great, medium and small, come from God, it follows that from God also comes the good use of free will, which is virtue, and which is numbered among the greater goods. Then I go on to say that the grace of God liberates men from the miser)* inflicted on sinners, because man was able to fall of his own accord, that is, by free will, but was not able to rise of his own accord. To the miser)' due to just condemnation belong the ignorance and inability which every man suffers from his birth. From that evil no man is delivered save by the grace of God. The Pelagians will not have it that misery springs from man's just condemnation, for they deny original sin. But even if ignorance and inabihtydid belong to man's primordial nature, still God should not be blamed but praised, as I argued in that same Third Book. This thesis is to be maintained against the Manichees who do not accept the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, in which