(2.) You see, brothers, what a wicked heresy! You see how all of you shudder: beware lest you be seized! For I know the cunning and evasions of impious men averse to the truth and, because they have already fallen into their opinions, unwilling to be conquered. Look, I beseech you. For behold, he found something to say, therefore we say: Lead us not into temptation, lest something happen to us which we do not have in our power according to bodily temptation. Hence the Lord said: Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation? Did He say this: Watch and pray, lest you break a foot, or lest your head ache, or lest you incur damage? He did not say this, but what did He say? What He said to Peter: I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. I have prayed, He says, for you. God says to man, the Lord to the servant, the teacher to the disciple, the doctor to the sick: I have prayed for you. What? That it might not fail. What? Your hand? your foot? your eye? your tongue, any paralysis, that is, the dissolution of your limbs? No, but that your faith may not fail. According to these we have in our power, that our faith may not fail.
For doing good, the will of man alone is not sufficient.
(3.) Why is God entreated for us? That He may grant us what they say we ought not to ask from the eternal majesty, but to have in our power. Blessings, my brothers, the blessings which we bestow upon you, they nullify, empty, crush. You heard me, I believe, my brothers, when I say: “Turned to the Lord, let us bless His name. May He grant us to persevere in His commandments, to walk in the straight path of His instruction, to please Him in every good work, and such things.” “Certainly,” they say, “all this is established in our power.” Therefore, we wish such things upon you in vain. Let us defend ourselves and you, so that neither we bless in vain, nor you subscribe “Amen” in vain. My brothers, your “Amen” is your subscription, your “Amen” is your stipulation, your consent. Lest perhaps some of them condemn both us and you, let us defend ourselves with the Apostle Paul: let us see if he wished such things for his people as we pray over you. Listen to what he said in a certain place. I speak briefly. What do you say, O new heretic, whoever you are who hears me, if you are present? What do you say? “That we have the power not to sin, so that we can accomplish this without the help of divine grace.” Do you say this? “This,” he says. Therefore, do we have the power not to sin without the help of God? “Indeed,” he says, “our free will suffices for this.” Then what is it that the Apostle says writing to the Corinthians: But we pray to God that you may do no evil? You have attended, you have heard, you have received; and because it is most manifest, without doubt you have understood what the Apostle prayed. We pray, he says, to the Lord that you may do no evil. He could have said: We admonish you, that you may do no evil; we teach you, that you may do no evil; we command you, we instruct you. Which indeed, if he had said, he would have rightly said, because our will also does something; for our will does not act nothing, but by itself it does not suffice. Yet he preferred to say: We pray, so that he might commend grace, so that they might understand, when they do no evil, that they avoid evil not by their own will alone, but by fulfilling what is commanded with the help of God.
Recognize the will, recognize the grace!
(4.) Therefore, brothers, when something is commanded, acknowledge the choice of will; when what is commanded is prayed for, acknowledge the benefit of grace. For you have both in the Scriptures: it is both commanded and prayed for; what is commanded, that is prayed for. See what I say. It is commanded that we understand. How is it commanded that we understand? Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding. You have heard that it was commanded: ask, that you may be able to fulfill what was commanded. "How," you ask, "do I ask?" Listen to the Scripture. What was commanded of you? Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding. Because it was commanded, you recognized the will. Hear that it is prayed for, to recognize grace. Give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments. It was commanded that we have wisdom. Since it was commanded, I read. "Where do you read?" he says. Listen: You foolish ones among the people, and you fools, at least become wise. Now what does he say? "Do you see how God commanded us to be wise?" Therefore wisdom is in our power? I have already said, I heard the command, I recognized the will: listen to the prayer, so that you may also recognize grace. It concerns wisdom, which was commanded to us. Let us hear what the apostle James says: But if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously. Continence is commanded to us. Where is it commanded? The apostle to Timothy: Keep yourself pure. It is a command, a precept: it must be heard, it must be done. But unless God helps, we remain. We indeed try to do by will, and the will strives something. Power should not presume, unless weakness is helped. Certainly it was commanded: Keep yourself pure. Hear another place in Scripture: And when I knew, he says, that no one can be continent unless God gives it, and that this itself was wisdom, to know whose gift it was. "And what," he says, "did I do?" I approached the Lord and entreated Him. What is the need to run through many things, my brothers? Whatever is commanded to us, it should be prayed for that it may be fulfilled. But not in such a way that we dismiss ourselves and lie supine like lazy ones and say: "Let God rain food on our faces, so that we utterly do not wish to act at all"; and when the food has rained down upon our mouth, let us even say: "Let God swallow it for us." We too must do something, we must strive, we must endeavor and in that which we are able, give thanks; in that which we are not able, we must pray. When you give thanks, you avoid being condemned as ungrateful; but when you ask for what you do not yet have, you avoid being left empty, because you are hindered.
Augustine will disclose to the people if he discovers anything new about the error of Pelagius.
Think therefore on these things, my brothers: whoever comes to you and says to you, "What then shall we do? We have nothing in our power unless God gives everything. Therefore God will not crown us, but will crown Himself," you see already that he comes from that poisonous vein. It is a vein, but it has venom. For it has been struck by a serpent, it is not healthy. For this indeed is what Satan now daily strives to do, how through the poisons of heretics he drives out from the Church, just as then through the poison of the serpent he drove out from paradise. Let no one say that anyone is absolved from the bishops. It is an absolution, but confession itself is almost a correction, because the things which were said before the bishops seemed catholic; but what he wrote in his books, the bishops who absolved him did not know. And perhaps he has been corrected: for we ought not to despair of a man who perhaps chose to join himself to the catholic faith and fled to its grace and help. Perhaps this has been done: however, not the heresy is absolved, but the man denying the heresy. But when we shall have read the deeds, when they come into our hands, whatever more clearly we may know about this evil or perhaps about his correction, we ought to announce to your charity with the Lord's help.