On the Incarnation, Book 6
The Same Root as Pelagius
Otherwise, if the Christ who was born of Mary is not the same person as he who is from God, you certainly make two Christs, after the fashion of that abominable error of Pelagius. In asserting that a mere man was born of the Virgin, it said that he was the teacher rather than the redeemer of mankind; for he did not bring people redemption of life, only an example of how to live, so that by following him they might do the same kind of things and so come to a like state. Your blasphemy, then, has only one source, and the root of the errors is one and the same. They maintain that a mere man was born of Mary; you maintain the same. They sever the Son of man from the Son of God; you do the same. They say that the Savior was made the Christ by his baptism; you say that in baptism he became the temple of God. They do not deny that he became God after his suffering; you deny him even after his ascension.
In one point only, then, does your perversity go beyond theirs: they seem to blaspheme the Lord on earth, and you even in heaven. We do not deny that you have beaten and outstripped those you are copying. They do at last stop denying God; you never do. And yet theirs must not be thought altogether a true confession, since they allow the Savior the glory of divinity only after his suffering; they deny that he was God before it and confess it only afterward. For, as it seems to me, whoever denies any part of what belongs to God denies him altogether, and whoever does not confess that he always existed denies him forever. In the same way, even if you were to admit that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, is now God in the heavens, you would not truly confess him unless you admitted that he was always God. But in fact you do not want to change or vary your opinion at any point. For you assert that the one you call born a mere man is not God even now. What a new and astonishing blasphemy: with the heretics you assert that he is man, yet you do not, with the heretics, confess him to be God!