To the Bishop of Aquileia, on Pelagian Clergy

From the account of our holy brother and fellow bishop Septimus, contained in the letter enclosed with this one, we have learned that in your province certain priests, deacons and clergy of various orders, who had been drawn into the Pelagian or Caelestian heresy, have been admitted to catholic communion without being required to renounce their particular error. We have learned that while the shepherds set to watch were fast asleep, wolves dressed in sheepskins, but without laying aside their beastly minds, have entered the Lord’s sheepfold. And they make a practice of what the injunctions of our canons and decrees do not allow even to those who have done no wrong: they leave the churches in which they received or regained their office and carry their unsettled ways in every direction, loving always to wander and never to stay on the foundations of the apostles. For without being sifted by any test or bound by any earlier confession of faith, they make much of their right to go from one house to another under cover of being in communion with the church, and they corrupt the hearts of many through people’s ignorance of the false name they bear. And yet I am sure they could not do this if the rulers of the churches had used due care in receiving such men, and had not allowed any of them to wander from place to place. [a]

So, lest this be attempted any further, and lest this harmful habit, which came in through the negligence of certain people, end in the ruin of many souls, by this our authoritative injunction we charge you, brother, to take care that a synod of the clergy of your province be called. All of them, whether priests or deacons or clergy of any rank, who have been readmitted from their alliance with the Pelagians and the Caelestians into catholic communion so hastily that they were not first made to renounce their error, must now at least be compelled to a true correction. That can do them good and harm no one, since their deceit has in part been exposed. Let them by public confession condemn the authors of this presumptuous error, and renounce everything in their teaching that the universal church has rejected. And let them declare, in full and open statements signed with their own hand, that they embrace and wholly approve all the synodal decrees which the authority of the Apostolic See has confirmed for rooting out this heresy. Let nothing obscure and nothing ambiguous be found in their words. For we know their cunning: they reckon that the meaning of any single clause of their accursed teaching can be defended, if only they keep it apart from the main body of their damnable views. [e]

When they pretend to disapprove of all their definitions and to give them up, so as to make their escape easier through their whole art of deception, they make one exception, unless their meaning is detected: the dogma that the grace of God is given according to the merits of the one who receives it. And yet surely, unless it is given freely, it is not a gift, but a price paid and a compensation for merits. For the blessed apostle says: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may perhaps be exalted. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God prepared so that we should walk in them.” So every gift of good works is of God’s preparing, because a man is justified by grace rather than by his own excellence. For grace is, for everyone, the source of righteousness, the source of good, and the fountain of merit. But these heretics say that grace is anticipated by men’s natural goodness, and they say it for this reason: so that nature, which, as they see it, stands out before grace for good desires of its own, may not seem marred by any stain of original sin; and so that what the Truth says may be proved false: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” [g]

You must take care, therefore, beloved, and make provision with great diligence, that stumbling blocks long since removed are not set up again through such men, and that no seed of the same evil springs up in your province from a teaching that has once been uprooted. For it will not only take root and grow, but will also taint the future generations of the church with its poisonous breath. Those who wish to appear corrected must clear themselves of all suspicion and, by obeying us, prove themselves ours. And if any of them, whether cleric or layman, refuses to satisfy our wholesome injunctions, he must be driven from the fellowship of the church, so that he does not betray the safety of others as well as lose his own soul.

We also urge you to bring back into full force that part of the church’s discipline by which the holy fathers, and we ourselves, have often decreed in former times that no one, whether in the rank of the priesthood, in the order of deacons, or in the lower ranks of the clergy, is free to move from church to church. The purpose is that each may remain where he was ordained, without being enticed by ambition, led astray by greed, or corrupted by the evil beliefs of others. And so, if anyone, seeking his own interests and not those of Jesus Christ, neglects to return to his own people and church, he is to be counted as shut out, both from promotion and from the bond of communion. But do not doubt, beloved, that we will be more than a little troubled if, as we do not expect, our decrees for keeping the canons and the soundness of the faith are neglected. For the failings of the lower clergy are to be laid at no one’s door so much as at that of slothful and careless rulers, who often foster much pestilence by shrinking from applying a stern remedy. [j]