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AT any rate we think that this fact ought not to be omitted, which was
special and peculiar to that heresy mentioned above which sprang from the
error of Pelagius; viz., that in saying that Jesus Christ had lived as a
mere man without any stain of sin, they actually went so far as to declare
that men could also be without sin if they liked. For they imagined that it
followed that if Jesus Christ being a mere man was without sin, all men
also could without the help of God be whatever He as a mere man without
participating in the Godhead, could be. And so they made out that there was
no difference between any man and our Lord Jesus Christ, as any man could
by effort and striving obtain just the same as Christ had obtained by His
earnestness and efforts. Whence it resulted that they broke out into a more
grievous and unnatural madness, and said that our Lord Jesus Christ had
come into this world not to bring redemption to mankind but to give an
example of good works, to wit, that men, by following His teaching, and by
walking along the same path of virtue, might arrive at the same reward of
virtue: thus destroying, as far as they could, all the good of His sacred
advent and all the grace of Divine redemption, as they declared that men
could by their own lives obtain just that which God had wrought by dying
for man's salvation. They added as well that our Lord and Say-four became
the Christ after His Baptism, and God after His Resurrection, tracing the
former to the mystery of His anointing, the latter to the merits of His
Passion. Whence this new author of a heresy that is not new, who
declares that our Lord and Saviour was born a mere man, observes that he
says exactly the same thing which the Pelagians said before him, and allows
that it follows from his error that as he asserts that our Lord Jesus
Christ lived as a mere man entirely without sin, so he must maintain in his
blasphemy that all men can of themselves be without sin, nor would he admit
that our Lord's redemption was a thing needful for His example, since men
can (as they say) reach the heavenly kingdom by their own exertions. Nor is
there any doubt about this, as the thing itself shows us. For hence it
comes that he encourages the complaints of the Pelagians by his
intervention, and introduces their case into his writings, because he
cleverly or (to speak more truly) cunningly patronizes them and by his
wicked liking for them recommends their mischievous teaching which is akin
to his own, for he is well aware that he is of the same opinion and of the
same spirit, and therefore is distressed that a heresy akin to his own has
been cast out of the church, as he knows that it is entirely allied to his
own in wickedness.
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