OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/Against Two Letters of the Pelagians/Book I/Chapter 39

Chapter 39 [XXI.]—Julian’s Fifth Objection Concerning the Saints of the Old Testament.
“We say,” says he, “that the saints of the Old Testament, their righteousness being perfected here, passed to eternal life,—that is, that by the love of virtue they departed from all sins; because those whom we read of as having committed any sin, we nevertheless know to have amended themselves.” Of whatever virtue you may declare that the ancient righteous men were possessed, nothing saved them but the belief in the Mediator who shed His blood for the remission of their sins. For their own word is, “I believed, and therefore I spoke.” Whence the Apostle Paul also says, “And we having the same Spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.” What is “the same Spirit,” but that Spirit whom these righteous men also had who said such things? The Apostle Peter also says, “Why do ye wish to put a yoke upon the heathen, which neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? But, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we believe that we shall be saved, even as they.” You who are enemies to this grace do not wish this, that the ancients should be believed to have been saved by the same grace of Jesus Christ; but you distribute the times according to Pelagius, in whose books this is read, and you say that before the law men were saved by nature, then by the law, lastly by Christ, as if to men of the two former times, that is to say, before the law and under the law, the blood of Christ had not been necessary; making void what is said: “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ Ps. cxvi. 10.
* ↑ 2 Cor. iv. 13.
* ↑ Acts xv. 10, 11.
* ↑ See above, On Original Sin, 30.
* ↑ 1 Tim. ii. 5.
# Natural History, Birds/Index

INDEX.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
K.
L.
M.
O.
P.
R.
S.
T.
V.
W.
FINIS.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 51

Chapter 51.—Why the Devil is Said to Hold the Power and Dominion of Death.
Hence the Lord Himself willed to die, “in order that,” as it is written of Him, “through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” From this passage it is shown with sufficient clearness that even the death of the body came about by the instigation and work of the devil,—in a word, from the sin which he persuaded man to commit; nor is there any other reason why he should be said in strictness of truth to hold the power of death. Accordingly, He who died without any sin, original or actual, said in the passage I have already quoted: “Behold, the prince of this world,” that is, the devil, who had the power of death, “cometh and findeth nothing in me,”—meaning, he shall find no sin in me, because of which he has caused men to die. As if the question were asked Him: Why then should you die? He says, “That all may know that I am doing the will of my Father, arise, let us go hence;” that is, that I may die, though I have no cause of death from sin under the author of sin, but only from obedience and righteousness, having become obedient unto death. Proof is likewise afforded us by this passage, that the fact of the faithful overcoming the fear of death is a part of the struggle of faith itself; for all struggle would indeed be at an end, if immortality were at once to become the reward of them that believe.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Heb. ii. 14.
* ↑ John xiv. 30, 31.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 52

Chapter 52 [XXXII.]—Why Christ, After His Resurrection, Withdrew His Presence from the World.
Although, therefore, the Lord wrought many visible miracles in order that faith might sprout at first and be fed by infant nourishment, and grow to its full strength by and by out of this softness (for as faith becomes stronger the less does it seek such help); He nevertheless wished us to wait quietly, without visible inducements, for the promised hope, in order that “the just might live by faith;” and so great was this wish of His, that though He rose from the dead the third day, He did not desire to remain among men, but, after leaving a proof of his resurrection by showing Himself in the flesh to those whom He deigned to have for His witnesses of this event, He ascended into heaven, withdrawing Himself thus from their sight, and conferring no such thing on the flesh of any one of them as He had displayed in His own flesh, in order that they too “might live by faith,” and in the present world might wait in patience and without visible inducements for the reward of that righteousness in which men live by faith,—a reward which should hereafter be visibly and openly bestowed. To this signification I believe that passage must be referred which He speaks concerning the Holy Ghost: “He will not come, unless I depart.” For this was in fact saying Ye shall not be able to live righteously by faith, which ye shall have as a gift of mine,—that is, from the Holy Ghost,—unless I withdraw from your eyes that which ye now gaze upon, in order that your heart may advance in spiritual growth by fixing its faith on invisible things. This righteousness of faith He constantly commends to them. Speaking of the Holy Ghost, He says, “He shall reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they have not believed on me: of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye shall see me no more.” What is that righteousness, whereby men were not to see Him, except that “the just is to live by faith,” and that we, not looking at the things which are seen, but at those which are not seen, are to wait in the Spirit for the hope of the righteousness that is by faith?

## Footnotes

* ↑ Hab. ii. 4.
* ↑ John xvi. 7.
* ↑ John xvi. 8–10.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 46

Chapter 46.—Guilt May Be Taken Away But Concupiscence Remain.
You must not be surprised at what I have said, that although the law of sin remains with its concupiscence, the guilt thereof is done away through the grace of the sacrament. For as wicked deeds, and words, and thoughts have already passed away, and cease to exist, so far as regards the mere movements of the mind and the body, and yet their guilt remains after they have passed away and no longer exist, unless it be done away by the remission of sins; so, contrariwise, in this law of concupiscence, which is not yet done away but still remains, its guilt is done away, and continues no longer, since in baptism there takes place a full forgiveness of sins. Indeed, if a man were to quit this present life immediately after his baptism, there would be nothing at all left to hold him liable, inasmuch as all which held him is released. As, on the one hand, therefore, there is nothing strange in the fact that the guilt of past sins of thought, and word, and deed remains before their remission; so, on the other hand, there ought to be nothing to create surprise, that the guilt of remaining concupiscence passes away after the remission of sin.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Compare Augustin’s Contra Julianum, vi. c. 22.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 47

Chapter 47 [XXIX.]—All the Predestinated are Saved Through the One Mediator Christ, and by One and the Same Faith.
This being the case, ever since the time when by one man sin thus entered into this world and death by sin, and so it passed through to all men, up to the end of this carnal generation and perishing world, the children of which beget and are begotten, there never has existed, nor ever will exist, a human being of whom, placed in this life of ours, it could be said that he had no sin at all, with the exception of the one Mediator, who reconciles us to our Maker through the forgiveness of sins. Now this same Lord of ours has never yet refused, at any period of the human race, nor to the last judgment will He ever refuse, this His healing to those whom, in His most sure foreknowledge and future loving-kindness, He has predestinated to reign with Himself to life eternal. For, previous to His birth in the flesh, and weakness in suffering, and power in His own resurrection, He instructed all who then lived, in the faith of those then future blessings, that they might inherit everlasting life; whilst those who were alive when all these things were being accomplished in Christ, and who were witnessing the fulfilment of prophecy, He instructed in the faith of these then present blessings; whilst again, those who have since lived, and ourselves who are now alive, and all those who are yet to live, He does not cease to instruct, in the faith of these now past blessings. It is therefore “one faith” which saves all, who after their carnal birth are born again of the Spirit, and it terminates in Him, who came to be judged for us and to die,—the Judge of quick and dead. But the sacraments of this “one faith” are varied from time to time in order to its suitable signification.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 5

Chapter 5 [V.]—The Will of Man Requires the Help of God.
Now for the commission of sin we get no help from God; but we are not able to do justly, and to fulfil the law of righteousness in every part thereof, except we are helped by God. For as the bodily eye is not helped by the light to turn away therefrom shut or averted, but is helped by it to see, and cannot see at all unless it help it; so God, who is the light of the inner man, helps our mental sight, in order that we may do some good, not according to our own, but according to His righteousness. But if we turn away from Him, it is our own act; we then are wise according to the flesh, we then consent to the concupiscence of the flesh for unlawful deeds. When we turn to Him, therefore, God helps us; when we turn away from Him, He forsakes us. But then He helps us even to turn to Him; and this, certainly, is something that light does not do for the eyes of the body. When, therefore, He commands us in the words, “Turn ye unto me, and I will turn unto you,” and we say to Him, “Turn us, O God of our salvation,” and again, “Turn us, O God of hosts;” what else do we say than, “Give what Thou commandest?” When He commands us, saying, “Understand now, ye simple among the people,” and we say to Him, “Give me understanding, that I may learn Thy commandments;” what else do we say than, “Give what Thou commandest?” When He commands us, saying, “Go not after thy lusts,” and we say to Him, “We know that no man can be continent, except God gives it to him;” what else do we say than, “Give what Thou commandest?” When He commands us, saying, “Do justice,” and we say, “Teach me Thy judgments, O Lord;” what else do we say than, “Give what Thou commandest?” In like manner, when He says: “Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled,” from whom ought we to seek for the meat and drink of righteousness, but from Him who promises His fulness to such as hunger and thirst after it?

## Footnotes

* ↑ Zech. i. 3.
* ↑ Ps. lxxxv. 4.
* ↑ Ps. lxxx. 3, 4.
* ↑ Da quod jubes; see the Confessions, Book x. chap. 26.
* ↑ Ps. xciv. 8.
* ↑ Ps. cxix. 73.
* ↑ Ecclus. xviii. 30.
* ↑ Wisd. viii. 21.
* ↑ Isa. lvi. 1.
* ↑ Ps. cxix. 108.
* ↑ Matt. v. 6.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 54

Chapter 54 [XXXIV.]—Why Punishment is Still Inflicted, After Sin Has Been Forgiven.
But, inasmuch as there are not wanting persons of such character, just as we say in answer to those who raise this question, that those things are punishments of sins before remission, which after remission become contests and exercises of the righteous; so again to such persons as are similarly perplexed about the death of the body, our answer ought to be so drawn as to show both that we acknowledge it to have accrued because of sin, and that we are not discouraged by the punishment of sins having been bequeathed to us for an exercise of discipline, in order that our great fear of it may be overcome by us as we advance in holiness. For if only small virtue accrued to “the faith which worketh by love” in conquering the fear of death, there would be no great glory for the martyrs; nor could the Lord say, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends;” which John in his epistle expresses in these terms: “As He laid down His life for us, so ought we to lay down our lives for the brethren.” In vain, therefore, would commendation be bestowed on the most eminent suffering in encountering or despising death for righteousness’ sake, if there were not in death itself a really great and very severe trial. And the man who overcomes the fear of it by his faith, procures a great glory and just recompense for his faith itself. Wherefore it ought to surprise no one, either that the death of the body could not possibly have happened to man unless sin had been previously committed, since it was of this that it was to become the punishment; nor that after the remission of their sins it comes to the faithful, in order that in their triumphing over the fear of it, the fortitude of righteousness may be exercised.

## Footnotes

* ↑ John xv. 13.
* ↑ 1 John iii. 16.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 48

Chapter 48.—Christ the Saviour Even of Infants; Christ, When an Infant, Was Free from Ignorance and Mental Weakness.
He is therefore the Saviour at once of infants and of adults, of whom the angel said, “There is born unto you this day a Saviour;” and concerning whom it was declared to the Virgin Mary, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins,” where it is plainly shown that He was called Jesus because of the salvation which He bestows upon us,—Jesus being tantamount to the Latin Salvator, “Saviour.” Who then can be so bold as to maintain that the Lord Christ is Jesus only for adults and not for infants also? who came in the likeness of sinful flesh, to destroy the body of sin, with infants’ limbs fitted and suitable for no use in the extreme weakness of such body, and His rational soul oppressed with miserable ignorance! Now that such entire ignorance existed, I cannot suppose in the infant in whom the Word was made flesh, that He might dwell among us; nor can I imagine that such weakness of the mental faculty ever existed in the infant Christ which we see in infants generally. For it is owing to such infirmity and ignorance that infants are disturbed with irrational affections, and are restrained by no rational command or government, but by pains and penalties, or the terror of such; so that you can quite see that they are children of that disobedience, which excites itself in the members of our body in opposition to the law of the mind,—and refuses to be still, even when the reason wishes; nay, often is either repressed only by some actual infliction of bodily pain, as for instance by flogging; or is checked only by fear, or by some such mental emotion, but not by any admonishing of the will. Inasmuch, however, as in Him there was the likeness of sinful flesh, He willed to pass through the changes of the various stages of life, beginning even with infancy, so that it would seem as if even His flesh might have arrived at death by the gradual approach of old age, if He had not been killed while young. Nevertheless, the death is inflicted in sinful flesh as the due of disobedience, but in the likeness of sinful flesh it was undergone in voluntary obedience. For when He was on His way to it, and was soon to suffer it, He said, “Behold, the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. But that all may know that I am doing my Father’s will, arise, let us go hence.” Having said these words, He went straightway, and encountered His undeserved death, having become obedient even unto death.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Luke ii. 11.
* ↑ Rather to Joseph, Mary’s husband; Matt. i. 21.
* ↑ John xiv. 30, 31.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 49

Chapter 49 [XXX.]—An Objection of the Pelagians.
They therefore who say, “If through the sin of the first man it was brought about that we must die, by the coming of Christ it should be brought about that, believing in Him, we shall not die;” and they add what they deem a reason, saying, “For the sin of the first transgressor could not possibly have injured us more than the incarnation or redemption of the Saviour has benefited us.” But why do they not rather give an attentive ear, and an unhesitating belief, to that which the apostle has stated so unambiguously: “Since by man came death, by Man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive?” For it is of nothing else than of the resurrection of the body that he was speaking. Having said that the bodily death of all men has come about through one man, he adds the promise that the bodily resurrection of all men to eternal life shall happen through one, even Christ. How can it therefore be that “the one has injured us more by sinning than the other has benefited us by redeeming,” when by the sin of the former we die a temporal death, but by the redemption of the latter we rise again not to a temporal, but to a perpetual life? Our body, therefore, is dead because of sin, but Christ’s body only died without sin, in order that, having poured out His blood without fault, “the bonds” which contain the register of all faults “might be blotted out,” by which they who now believe in Him were formerly held as debtors by the devil. And accordingly He says, “This is my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.
* ↑ Col. ii. 14. Chirographa, i.e. “handwritings.”
* ↑ Matt. xxvi. 28.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants/Book II/Chapter 53

Chapter 53 [XXXIII.]—An Objection of the Pelagians.
But those persons who say, “If the death of the body has happened by sin, we of course ought not to die after that remission of sins which the Redeemer has bestowed upon us,” do not understand how it is that some things, whose guilt God has cancelled in order that they may not stand in our way after this life, He yet permits to remain for the contest of faith, in order that they may become the means of instructing and exercising those who are advancing in the struggle after holiness. Might not some man, by not understanding this, raise a question and ask, If God has said to man because of his sin, “In the sweat of thy brow thou shall eat thy bread: thorns also and thistles shall the ground bring forth to thee,” how comes it to pass that this labour and toil continues since the remission of sins, and that the ground of believers yields them this rough and terrible harvest? Again, since it was said to the woman in consequence of her sin, “In sorrow shall thou bring forth children,” how is it that believing women, notwithstanding the remission of their sins, suffer the same pains in the process of parturition? And nevertheless it is an incontestable fact, that by reason of the sin which they had committed, the primeval man and woman heard these sentences pronounced by God, and deserved them; nor does any one resist these words of the sacred volume, which I have quoted about man’s labour and woman’s travail, unless some one who is utterly hostile to the catholic faith, and an adversary to the inspired writings.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Gen. iii. 18, 19.
* ↑ Gen. iii. 16.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On the Predestination of the Saints/Book II/Chapter 2

Chapter 1 [I.]—Of the Nature of the Perseverance Here Discoursed of.
I Have now to consider the subject of perseverance with greater care; for in the former book also I said some things on this subject when I was discussing the beginning of faith. I assert, therefore, that the perseverance by which we persevere in Christ even to the end is the gift of God; and I call that the end by which is finished that life wherein alone there is peril of falling. Therefore it is uncertain whether any one has received this gift so long as he is still alive. For if he fall before he dies, he is, of course, said not to have persevered; and most truly is it said. How, then, should he be said to have received or to have had perseverance who has not persevered? For if any one have continence, and fall away from that virtue and become incontinent,—or, in like manner, if he have righteousness, if patience, if even faith, and fall away, he is rightly said to have had these virtues and to have them no longer; for he was continent, or he was righteous, or he was patient, or he was believing, as long as he was so; but when he ceased to be so, he no longer is what he was. But how should he who has not persevered have ever been persevering, since it is only by persevering that any one shows himself persevering,—and this he has not done? But lest any one should object to this, and say, If from the time at which any one became a believer he has lived—for the sake of argument—ten years, and in the midst of them has fallen from the faith, has he not persevered for five years? I am not contending about words. If it be thought that this also should be called perseverance, as it were for so long as it lasts, assuredly he is not to be said to have had in any degree that perseverance of which we are now discoursing, by which one perseveres in Christ even to the end. And the believer of one year, or of a period as much shorter as may be conceived of, if he has lived faithfully until he died, has rather had this perseverance than the believer of many years’ standing, if a little time before his death he has fallen away from the stedfastness of his faith.