Epigrammata In Quempiam Augustini Obtrectatorem

An epigram of Saint Prosper of Aquitaine against the same or some other detractor of Augustine. Against Augustine a certain writer is said to creep, whom long-standing envy has already consumed. A wretched little serpent, covered by dark caverns as best it could, a force has driven to raise itself from the ground. Either let the Britons of the sea feed this one with their own grain, or let Campanian grass swell his heart with pride. Let him bring forth what he conceives and cherishes, let him give birth to what he labors to produce; whether he arms himself with old doctrine or new. Into whatever coils he twists the circles of his folds, and conceals his treacherous head with much art, the old man, running over crushed asps and basilisks, the viper will not be able to avoid. A WARNING ON THE EPITAPH OF THE NESTORIAN AND PELAGIAN HERESIES. So that this epitaph may be clearly understood, two heads, as it were, in the Nestorian heresy are to be noted. One concerns the union of the human nature with the divine in Christ, which Nestorius proclaimed was made only by habitation, not truly into a unity of person, so that there were two persons in Christ equally as two natures, and the Son of God was not the same as the son of Mary. The other head concerns the manner by which Jesus arrived at that union, such as it is. For he affirmed that he did not obtain it immediately at the moment of conception, but achieved it afterwards by his own merits.

Why does the old Chronologer, in the work of Liberatus, have this concerning the Nestorian heresy: In the consulship of Felix and Taurus, Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, attempted to introduce a new error into the Churches, preaching that Christ was born a man only, and not also God, and he says that divinity was conferred upon him as a reward for merit. Saint Prosper especially regards this latter error, and in it he compares the Nestorian heresy with the Pelagian. He says that the former is both the mother and the daughter of the Pelagian: the mother, because the error of that man who destroys grace in its source, and who contends that Jesus attained the dignity of Christ by his own merits (which is the heresy of Nestorius), is the fount and beginning of that error which overturns grace in its members, and which affirms that men can obtain the dignity of Christians by their own merits (which is the Pelagian heresy); the daughter, indeed, because Nestorius did not publish his own heresy until after the Pelagians had been condemned.

And so, when at the threshold of this epitaph he had said that the Nestorian heresy succeeded the Pelagian, as if it arose later—which is true, if you consider its dissemination by Nestorius—he nevertheless says that both arose simultaneously, both because of the affinity and kinship that exists between the errors of each, and also because before Nestorius the Nestorian heresy was contained within the Pelagian: as is evident from Leporius, a Gallic monk, who, while being a most vehement defender of the Pelagian doctrine, also taught that heresy for which Nestorius was later condemned; but through the works of Augustine he returned to a sound mind. Nestorius disseminated his heresy shortly after the Pelagians were condemned, around the year 429. This same epitaph, placed by our Prosper on the tomb of both heresies, was denied by Jean Gamerius of the Society of Jesus in the chapter of his dissertation prefixed to the works of Marius Mercator; he contends that something like a riddle is put forward, when it is said that one heresy was both mother and daughter of the other: which, he admits, is cleverly said, but denies that it is true; and from this he tries to prove that from the third century, through the ravings of the Samosatene, the Nestorian error began to be prefigured, and he adds that pardon is all the more easily granted to our poet, because Cassianus himself sinned in the same way, and drew his friend Leo the Great into his own opinion, and afterwards many others followed their authority.

Despite these objections, Anthelmius, in his dissertation on the works of SS. Leo and Prosper, denies that the little work is to be taken from Prosper, both on the authority of Cassian and Leo the Great—to whom, if they were allowed this in serious discussion, much more indulgence is to be granted to a poet, who speaks not so much according to the norm of history, but, as it were, with reins loosened and pipes inflated, wishes to mock buried errors—especially since this comparison of both heresies is not found to have been first employed by him, but he also relates in his own Chronicle that at Ephesus, Nestorius was condemned along with the heresy of his own name and with the Pelagians, who supported a dogma akin to their own error, and Cassian reproaches him for this very conjoining of both errors in the book written against him, chapter: "Through this man (Coelestinus), the twin plagues of the Eastern Churches were also purged, when, with the apostolic sword, he assisted Cyril, bishop of the city of Alexandria, in cursing the Nestorian impiety, by which the Pelagians, while they were being crushed by the same errors, were again overthrown." In what sense this connection between the two is to be understood, you have already explained sufficiently above.