Book II · Chapter 21 — Augustin Compliments Victor's Talents and Diligence.

It would take me too long a time to handle and discuss fully all the points which I wish to be amended in your books, or rather in your own self, and to give you even a brief reason for the correction of each particular. And yet you must not because of them despise yourself, so as to suppose that your ability and powers of speech are to be thought lightly of. I have discovered in you no small recollection of the sacred Scriptures; but your erudition is less than was proportioned to your talent, and the labour you bestowed on them. My desire, therefore, is that you should not, on the one hand, grow vain by attributing too much to yourself; nor, on the other hand, become cold and indifferent by prostration or despair. I only wish that I could read your writings in company with yourself, and point out the necessary emendations in conversation rather than by writing. This is a matter which could be more easily accomplished by oral communication between ourselves than in letters. If the entire subject were to be treated in writing, it would require many volumes. Those chief errors, however, which I have wished to sum up comprehensively in a definite number, I at once call your attention to, in order that you may not postpone the correction of them, but banish them entirely from your preaching and belief; so that the great faculty which you possess of disputation, may, by God's grace, be employed by you usefully for edification, not for injuring and destroying sound and wholesome doctrine.

Chapter 22 [XV.]--A Summary Recapitulation of the Errors of Victor.

What these particular errors are, I have, to the best of my ability, already explained. But I will run over them again with a brief recapitulation. One is, "That God did not make the soul out of nothing, but out of His own self." A second is, that "just as God who gives is Himself ever existent, so is He ever giving souls through infinite time." The third is, that "the soul lost some merit by the flesh, which it had had previous to the flesh." The fourth is, that "the soul by means of the flesh recovers its ancient condition, and is born again through the very same flesh by which it had deserved to be polluted." The fifth is, that "the soul deserved to be sinful, previous to any sin." The sixth is, that "infants which are forestalled by death before they are baptized, may yet attain to forgiveness of their original sins." The seventh is, that "they whom the Lord has predestinated to be baptized may be taken away from his predestination, or die before that has been accomplished in them which the Almighty has predestined." The eighth is, that "it is of infants who are fore-stalled by death, before they are born again in Christ, that the Scripture says, Speedily was he taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding,'" with the remainder of the passage to the same effect in the Book of Wisdom. The ninth is, that "there are outside the kingdom of God some of those mansions which the Lord said were in His Father's house." The tenth is, that "the sacrifice of Christians ought to be offered in behalf of those who have departed out of the body without being baptized." The eleventh is, that "some of those persons who have departed this life without the baptism of Christ do not in the meanwhile go into the kingdom, but into paradise; afterwards, however, in the resurrection of the dead, they attain even to the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven."