And indeed, III., concerning the proposition which stands opposite to this and by which it is taught that our Lord Jesus Christ underwent torments and death for the salvation and redemption of all men, Prosper hands down: a) that it is most rightly said that the Savior was crucified for the redemption of the whole world; b) that the Redeemer of the world gave his blood for the world; c) that the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is the price of the whole world; d) that the Son of God died for sinners and debtors to death; e) that the blood of Christ is the redemption of the whole world; f) that all are rightly said to have been redeemed; and g) that the cup of immortality, prepared from our weakness and the divine power, has within itself the capacity to benefit all.
Nor, IV., could he believe otherwise or profess otherwise, who a) held that it must most sincerely be believed and professed that God wills all men to be saved; and who b) had resolved to depart in nothing from the path of those definitions which are contained in the disputations of Saint Augustine. For the Apostle testifies concerning Christ that he did not enter the world before he had said: “Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not, but a body thou hast fitted to me; holocausts and sacrifice for sin did not please thee. Then said I: Behold, I come; in the head of the book it is written of me that I should do thy will, O God.” Therefore, in undertaking and fulfilling the economy for the human race, Christ bore that will which was most like the Father’s and was deservedly regarded as its most perfect ectypal image.
But it must most sincerely be believed and professed that God wills all men to be saved. Therefore, with the same sincerity and constancy it must be believed and professed that Christ tasted death for all men and poured forth his blood.
Cyril of Alexandria, understanding this well, did not hesitate in the third book of his Commentaries on Isaiah to call this universal will of Christ and the death endured for all σκοπὸν τοῦ διασώζοντος, “the purpose of the Savior.” But Ammonius, and with him other Greek Fathers in the catenae, speaking on the occasion of the Lord’s words1, “I came not that I might judge the world, but that I might save the world,” confirm περὶ σκοποῦ τῆς παρουσίας, concerning the purpose of the advent, that Christ therefore came and met death in order that he might provide for all and furnish the faculty of obtaining salvation.
But since others2 have collected very many things from Augustine, and not a few which I might add are available to me, I shall mention only two. First, these most explicit words of his3:
The will obtains justice from the Lord and drinks it as from its own fountain. No one is prohibited from approaching this fountain, if he approaches worthily. Finally, behold thy aid. Thy silver redeemed thee from barbarians; thy money redeems thee from the first death; the blood of thy Lord redeems thee from the second death. He had blood with which to redeem us, and for this purpose he received blood, that there might be that which he would pour forth for our redemption. The blood of thy Lord, if thou willest, was given for4 thee; if thou art unwilling, it was not given for thee. Perhaps thou sayest: My God had blood with which he might redeem me;
but now, when he suffered, he gave it all. What remained to him that he might give it also for me? This is the great thing: that he gave it once, and gave it for all. The blood of Christ is salvation to the willing, punishment to the unwilling. Why then dost thou, who dost not will to die, hesitate to be liberated rather from the second death? Thou art liberated from it if thou willest to take up thy cross and follow the Lord; because he took up his own and sought his servant.
I shall next mention that Augustine did nothing else through many continuous years and in many published works than defend against the Pelagians the universal propagation of original guilt from the universal amplitude of the death of Christ. For with this argument he contended against them in the Enchiridion5; with this he renewed the battle in the books Against Julian6; upon this he insisted in the work The City of God7; nor did he depart from it in his final, unfinished work against the same Julian8. In order to extricate himself from this snare, Julian objected that it is known from nearly innumerable examples of the Scriptures that all is employed for many, according to that saying, “All have turned aside.” But Augustine in turn reduced him to extremity thus9:
Free thyself from this, if thou canst: that10 one died for all; and dare to say that not all are dead for whom Christ died, when at once the Apostle presses thy throat and crushes thy most audacious voice, showing what follows and saying: “Therefore all are dead.” Do not praise the Apostle in such a way; do not expound him in such a way that thou art unwilling to hear: “If one died for all, therefore all are dead.” Whatever thou mayest argue, whatever thou mayest endeavor to overturn of the apostolic words, thou dost not show little children to be immune from the death which is in sin.
And therefore11 thou dost not show them immune,
because the Apostle says: “Therefore all are dead, and one died for all,
so that those who live may no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them and rose again.” Therefore all are dead in sins, with no one12 excepted, whether in original sins or also in those added by the will, whether by ignorance or by knowing and not doing what is just.
It was therefore necessary that Prosper, for whom it was fixed to adhere to the footsteps of Augustine and who professed that God wills the salvation of all men, should no less profess that the death of Christ extends to all, and that there is not even one for whom Christ did not offer his blood.
Footnotes
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John XII. 47. ↩
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Petavius, On the Incarnation, book XIII, chap. III; De Champs, On the Jansenist Heresy, book III, disputation VII; Tricassinus, On the Predestination of Men to Glory, part I, section VII, § II, points I ff.; and Alticotius, Augustinian Summa, part I, question III, article II. ↩
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Sermon CCCXLIV, no. 4; otherwise XXXI among the Sirmondian sermons. ↩
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So that, with Augustine as doctor, anyone can repeat the words of Paul in Gal. II. 20: “I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself for me.” ↩
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Enchiridion, chaps. XLI–XLVII; compare with these chapters what Faure most opportunely noted. ↩
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Against Julian, book VI, chaps. IX, XV, XXIV. ↩
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The City of God, book XX, chap. VI. ↩
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Unfinished Work, book II, nos. 133, 134, 138, 162, 171, 172, 175. ↩
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Unfinished Work, book II, no. 175. ↩
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II Cor. V. 14. ↩
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The City of God, book XX, chap. VI, no. 1. ↩
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“It is remarkable,” says Tricassinus in the work On the Grace Necessary for Salvation Given to All and Each, part I, section III, “that Augustine, although he spoke so often of original sin as being in all and each, nevertheless never excepted the Blessed Virgin, although in those places he often excepted Christ, and indeed said that he alone was excepted. Yet it must not therefore be certainly inferred that he was unwilling that the Blessed Virgin should also be excepted from that sin; since in book V Against Julian, chap. I, where he most expressly asserts that no one is excepted from original sin save Christ, he nevertheless says toward the end of that chapter that no one had original sin who afterward did not sin actually, if he survived long enough—placing as though upon an equal footing, in adults, either having both original and actual sin or having neither of them, as is evident from these words of his, where, speaking of Christ, he says thus: ‘Certainly he would also have committed sin when older if he had had it when a little child; for therefore there is no man besides him who did not commit sin upon reaching a more advanced age, because there is no man besides him who did not have sin at the beginning of infancy.’
“Here thou seest that he asserts that original sin has place only in those in whom there was actual sin when they grew up.
“But in the book On Nature and Grace, chap. XXVI, he indicates sufficiently clearly that the Blessed Virgin never sinned actually, as is evident from these words of his: ‘Except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I will that no question whatever be entertained when sins are treated; for thence we know that more grace was conferred upon her for conquering sin from every side, who merited to conceive and bear him whom it is certain had no sin.’
“Here he speaks only of actual sins and not also of original sin, as some wrongly interpret that passage; both because the discourse there concerned actual sins, without which Pelagius said that very many saints had lived and Augustine denied it, and also because he spoke of sins which can be conquered by the one sinning, of which kind original sins are not, but only actual sins.
“Therefore, since Augustine says here that the Blessed Virgin did not sin, and in the passage cited above said that he who has original sin has sinned actually if he reached the years of discretion, it is manifest that some inadvertence intervened in these matters, or certainly that, according to his custom, he was unwilling to decide this incidental question—namely, whether the Blessed Virgin was also exempt from that sin.” ↩