Saint Augustine (354-430)

Of the Merits and Remission of Sins,
and of the Baptism of Infants

Translated by Peter Holmes

Book II

Chapter 16

We must not deny that God commands that we ought to be so perfect in doing righteousness, as to have no sin at all. Now that cannot be sin, whatever it may be, unless God has enjoined that it shall not be. Why then, they ask, does He command what He knows no man living will perform? In this manner it may also be asked why He commanded the first human beings, who were only two, what He knew they would not obey. For it must not be pretended that He issued that command, that some of us might obey it, if they did not; for, that they should not partake of the fruit of the particular tree, God commanded them, and none besides. Because, as He knew what amount of righteousness they would fail to perform, so did He also know what righteous measures He meant Himself to adopt concerning them. In the same way, then, He orders all men to commit no sin, although He knows beforehand that no man will fulfil the command; in order that He may, in the case of all who impiously and condemnably despise His precepts, Himself do what is just in their condemnation; and, in the case of all who while obediently and piously pressing on in his precepts, though failing to observe to the utmost all things which He has enjoined, do yet forgive others as they wish to be forgiven themselves, Himself do what is good in their cleansing. For how can forgiveness be bestowed by God’s mercy on the forgiving, when there is no sin? or how prohibition fail to be given by the justice of God, when there is sin?

“But see,” say they, “how the apostle says, ‘I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished my course: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness’; which he would not have said if he had any sin.” It is for them, then, to explain how he could have said this, when there still remained for him to encounter the great conflict, the grievous and excessive weight of that suffering which he had just said awaited him. In order to finish his course, was there yet wanting only a small thing, when that in fact was still left to suffer wherein would be a fiercer and more cruel foe? If, however, he uttered such words of joy feeling sure and secure, because he had been made sure and secure by Him who had revealed to him the imminence of his suffering, then he spoke these words, not in the fulness of realization, but in the firmness of hope, and represents what he foresees is to come as if it had already been done. If, therefore, he had added to those words the further statement, “I have no longer any sin,” we must have understood him as even then speaking of a perfection arising from a future prospect, not from an accomplished fact. For his having no sin, which they suppose was completed when he spoke these words, pertained to the finishing of his course; just in the same way as his triumphing over his adversary in the decisive conflict of his suffering had also reference to the finishing of his course, although this they must needs themselves allow remained yet to be effected, when he was speaking these words. The whole of this, therefore, we declare to have been as yet awaiting its accomplishment, at the time when the apostle, with his perfect trust in the promise of God, spoke of it all as having been already realized. For it was in reference to the finishing of his course that he forgave the sins of those who sinned against him, and prayed that his own sins might in like manner be forgiven him; and it was in his most certain confidence in this promise of the Lord, that he believed he should have no sin in that last end, which was still future, even when in his trustfulness he spoke of it as already accomplished. Now, omitting all other considerations, I wonder whether, when he uttered the words in which he is thought to imply that he had no sin, that “thorn of the flesh” had been already removed from him, for the taking away of which he had three times entreated the Lord, and had received this answer: “My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” For bringing so great a man to perfection, it was needful that that “messenger of Satan” should not be taken away by whom he was therefore to be buffeted, “lest he should be unduly exalted by the abundance of his revelations,” and is there then any man so bold as either to think or to say, that any one who has to bend beneath the burden of this life is altogether clean from all sin whatever?

Although there are some men who are so eminent in righteousness that God speaks to them out of His cloudy pillar, such as “Moses and Aaron among His priests, and Samuel among them that call upon His name,” the latter of whom is much praised for his piety and purity in the Scriptures of truth, from his earliest childhood, in which his mother, to accomplish her vow, placed him in God’s temple, and devoted him to the Lord as His servant;—yet even of such men it is written, “Thou, O God, wast propitious unto them, though Thou didst punish all their devices.” Now the children of wrath God punishes in anger; whereas it is in mercy that He punishes the children of grace; since “whom He loveth He correcteth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” However, there are no punishments, no correction, no scourge of God, but what are owing to sin, except in the case of Him who prepared His back for the smiter, in order that He might experience all things in our likeness without sin, in order that He might be the saintly Priest of saints, making intercession even for saints, who with no sacrifice of truth say each one even for himself, “Forgive us our trespasses, even as we also forgive them that trespass against us.” Wherefore even our opponents in this controversy, whilst they are chaste in their life, and commendable in character, and although they do not hesitate to do that which the Lord enjoined on the rich man, who inquired of Him about the attainment of eternal life, after he had told Him, in answer to His first question, that he had already fully kept every commandment in the law,—that “if he wished to be perfect, he must sell all that he had and give to the poor, and transfer his treasure to heaven”; yet they do not in any one instance venture to say that they are without sin. But this, as we believe, they refrain from saying, with deceitful intent; but if they are lying, in this very act they begin either to augment or commit sin.

Book II Chapter 15

Book II Chapter 17