Letter 175

 

1. [...] After we had gathered as usual in solemn assembly at the church of Carthage and were holding the synod that had been convoked for various reasons, our fellow presbyter Orosius gave us letters from our holy brothers and fellow priests, Hero and Lazarus, a copy of which we decided should be added to this. Having read them, we denounced Pelagius and Caelestius as the authors of a truly wicked error and one to be condemned by all of us. For this reason it came about that we asked that the action we took with regard to Caelestius almost five years ago here at Carthage be reread. After it had been read out, as Your Holiness can see from what has been appended, it was agreed that the judgment was unequivocal by which the assembled bishops thought that the pronouncement of the bishops at that time had excised this great wound from the Church. Nevertheless, we judged in our common deliberation that, even if the same Caelestius is said to have afterward attained the priesthood [presbyterium], we ought to anathematize the authors of an opinion of this sort, unless they themselves most clearly anathematized these things. Thus, in order that, once the sentence pronounced against them is made known, we may procure the salvation if not of those men themselves, then at least of those who have been deceived or could be deceived by them.

 

(trans. R. Teske, slightly altered)