Section CLVIII

Now these things solemnly defined by Innocent against the Pelagian errors are repeated in precisely the same words in that collection¹ which is entitled Here Begin the Authorities of the Former Bishops of the Apostolic See—

—Concerning the Grace of God², and which is read appended to the letter³ of Celestine to the Gauls. For they are repeated either that a) it may be confirmed that in the transgression⁴ of Adam all men lost natural⁵ possibility and innocence, and that no one can rise from the depth of that ruin through free choice unless the grace of the merciful God raises him up; or that b) it may be established that no one⁶, even when renewed by the grace of baptism, is fit to overcome the snares of the devil and to conquer the concupiscences of the flesh unless through the daily aid of God he has received perseverance in good conduct; or that c) all may be persuaded that⁷ no one uses free choice well except through Christ.

But no one proposed and illustrated this head of doctrine more fully, no one more magnificently, than Leo. For, setting aside the other things⁸, these are his words⁹:

God the Word, the Son of God, who¹⁰ in the beginning was with God, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, was made man in order to liberate man from eternal death. He so inclined himself to the assumption of our lowliness without diminution of his majesty that, remaining what he was and assuming what he was not, he united the true form¹¹ of a servant to that form in which he is equal to God the Father, and joined each nature by so great a covenant that glorification did not consume the inferior, nor assumption diminish the—

“—superior… . For unless he were true God, he would not bring a remedy; unless he were true man, he would not furnish an example.”

And we likewise owe to Leo the things which follow¹²:

Almighty and merciful God, whose nature is goodness, whose will is power, whose work is mercy, as soon as the malignity of the devil had mortified us with the poison of his envy, signified beforehand, among the very beginnings of the world, the remedies of his piety prepared for the renewal of mortals. He announced¹³ to the serpent that there would be a seed of the woman which by its power would crush the exaltation of his harmful head, signifying, namely, Christ to come in the flesh, God and man, who, born of a Virgin, would condemn the violator of the human stock by an incorrupt birth. For¹⁴, because the devil gloried that man, deceived by his fraud, had been deprived of divine gifts, and, stripped of the endowment of immortality, had undergone the harsh sentence of death; that he himself had also found in his evils a certain consolation from fellowship with the transgressor; and that God too, because the rationale of just severity demanded it, had changed his former sentence toward man whom he had established in so great an honor—it was necessary, through the economy of a secret counsel, that the immutable God, whose will cannot be deprived of its own benignity, should fulfill the first disposition of his piety by a more hidden mystery, and that man, driven into guilt by the craftiness of diabolical iniquity, should not perish contrary to the purpose of God.

Therefore¹⁵,

when the times appointed beforehand for the redemption of men arrived, Jesus Christ the Son of God enters these lowest regions of the world, descending from the heavenly seat and not withdrawing from the Father’s glory, generated in a new order, by a new birth¹⁶. For he came to take away our contagions, not to suffer them; not to succumb to vices but to heal them. He came that he might cure every infirmity of corruption and all the wounds of defiled souls—

“—for which reason it was fitting that he who was bringing the new grace of undefiled integrity to human bodies should be born in a new order… . He who had determined to raise up the fallen and to make firm the broken.”

Moreover¹⁷:

The true mercy of God, although ineffably many means were available to him for repairing the human race, chose especially this way of taking counsel for it: that, for destroying the work of the devil, he would employ not the force of power but the rationale of justice. For the pride of the ancient enemy not without desert claimed for itself a tyrannical right over all men; nor did it oppress by an undue dominion those whom, of their own accord departing from the command of God, it had enticed into obedience to its will. Therefore it would not justly lose the original servitude of the human race unless it were conquered from that which it had subjected. That this might be done, Christ was conceived from the Virgin without male seed; not human intercourse but the Holy Spirit made her fruitful.

Therefore, when¹⁸:

the wicked robber and greedy exactor persisted in rising up against him who had nothing of his, and, while pursuing the general prejudgment of a vitiated origin, exceeded the bond upon which he relied, exacting the penalty of iniquity from him in whom he found no guilt, the ill-counseled instrument of the death-bearing compact is therefore dissolved, and through the injustice of demanding more, the sum of the whole debt is made void. That strong one is bound with his own bonds, and every device of the malignant one is turned back upon his own head. The prince of the world having been bound, the vessels of captivity are seized. Nature, purged of its ancient contagions, returns to its honor; death is destroyed by death; nativity is repaired by nativity, since redemption at once takes away servitude, regeneration changes origin, and faith justifies the sinner.

For after¹⁹:

that first and universal ruin of human transgression, from which²⁰ through one man sin entered into this world, and death through sin, and so death passed into—

“—all men, in whom all sinned, no one would escape the foul dominion of the devil, no one the bonds of dire captivity; nor would either reconciliation unto pardon or a return unto life lie open to anyone, unless the Son of God, coeternal and coequal²¹ with God the Father, deigned also to be the Son of Man, coming²² to seek and to save that which had perished, so that²³, just as through Adam came death, so through our Lord Jesus Christ there might be the resurrection of the dead.”

For by such²⁴ “bonds were we held fast that, unless through this aid, we could not be absolved. Therefore the humility of divinity is our advancement. We are redeemed at so great a price; we are cured at so great a cost. For what return would there be from impiety to justice, from misery to beatitude, unless one who was both just inclined himself to the impious, and one who was blessed to the miserable?”