St. Anastasius II, 496-498

of him who made that visible [sun] fettered by any unworthiness in the minister.

(8) Therefore, then, this person has only injured himself by wickedly administering the good. For the inviolable sacrament, which was given through him, held the perfection of its virtue for others.

The Origin of Souls and Original Sin¹

[From the epistle "Bonum atque iucundum" to the bishops of Gaul, August 23, 498]

170. (1) . . . Certain heretics in Gaul think that by a rational assertion they are persuaded of this, that just as the parents transmit bodies to the human race from material dregs, so also they bestow the vital principle of the living souls. . . . How (therefore) do they, contrary to God's will, with a very carnal mind think that the soul made to the image of God is diffused and insinuated by the mixture of human beings, when that very action by Him, who did this in the beginning, has not ceased even today, just as He Himself said: My Father works up to this time, and I work [cf. John 5:17]? Although likewise they ought to know what is written: "He who lives unto eternity, created all things at the same time" [Ecclus. 18:1]. If, then, previously according to the Scripture He placed order and reason by single species in every individual creature (potentially), which cannot be denied, and causally in the work pertaining to the creation of all things at the same time, after the consummation of which He rested on the seventh day, but now operates visibly in the work pertaining to the passage of time even up to the present,² let the sound doctrines then rest, namely, that He, who calls those, which are not, just as those that are [cf. Rom. 4:17], imparts souls.

(4) By the reasoning of which they think perhaps that they speak piously and well, in declaring that the souls are justly handed down by parents, since they are entangled with sins, they ought to be separated from them by this wise sundering, because nothing else can be transmitted by them than what has been brought to pass by their own evil presumption, that is, guilt and the punishment of sin, which their offspring have followed through the vine-branch³ and clearly show so that men are born vicious and distorted. In this alone at any rate God is clearly seen to have no communion, (and) lest any fall into this necessary destruction, He has prevented it by an inborn terror of death and