De Gratia Libri Duo

PROLOGUE. A PROFESSION OF FAITH AGAINST THOSE WHO, WHILE CLAIMING THAT SOME ARE DRAWN TO LIFE AND OTHERS DRIVEN TO DEATH BY THE WILL OF GOD ALONE, THEREBY ASSERT FATE WITH THE PAGANS ON THE ONE HAND, AND DENY FREE WILL WITH THE MANICHAEANS ON THE OTHER. TO THE MOST BLESSED AND MOST REVEREND LORD LEONTIUS THE POPE, FAUSTUS. That you, blessed Pope Leontius, out of pastoral solicitude, gathered a council of the highest bishops to condemn the error of predestination, you have done for all the churches of the Gauls. But that you entrusted the work and care of ordering those matters which you set forth most learnedly in the public conference to my weak shoulders, you have, as I think, consulted too little for so great a business, too little for your holy reputation; you have burdened me with the judgment of charity, yourselves with the peril of choice. Therefore, since you know that your own person labors under the burden imposed upon us, you are acting in a common cause in this matter, if you extend the hand of support to one whom you judge by your opinion to be unequal to the task. He undertakes the task of asserting grace competently and salutarily who joins the obedience of a servant's labor, as if an inseparable attendant minister clings to a patron or master. But if one should be without the other, either the master will appear dishonored without a servant, or the servant, forgetful of his condition, will usurp the master's place. Rightly, therefore, between the one who aids and the one who strives, this order will be preserved: that the former holds dominion by full right, and the latter renders service in full subjection.

The dignity of the commander will be increased, if the diligence of the subordinate is always at hand. Let the low be joined with the high, and joined in such a way that they are indeed subjected, not made equal. But just as it is not fitting for a helmsman to lack his rower, a priest his minister, an emperor his soldier, so it is necessary that grace be bound to obedience, its pupil, by an inseparable servitude. However, because Pelagius too importunately exalts naked labor and, in his madness, foolishly believed that human weakness could suffice for itself without grace, and impiously preached, attempting to erect a tower of pride to heaven, I judged it necessary to circumscribe and confute his blasphemies in a brief discourse, lest perhaps he who excludes the gift of labor, that is, the precept of the one commanding, should, when we assert that God’s mercy is to be merited by faith and works, ignorantly apply the Catholic voice to the sense of Pelagius, and, abandoning the royal road, falling to the right, believe that we decline to the left, and, while we speak of the labor of the servant to grace, we might seem to have placed an obstacle before the feet of the blind. But when we make mention of work and labor, we will use both the words and the senses of the prophet, the apostle, the evangelist. If anyone presumes to contradict these, he will attempt not to destroy our inventions, but without doubt to dissolve the divine laws and to undermine the foundations of the faith.

We have drawn out the discourse on foreknowledge and predestination at some length, so that what were thought obscure might be rendered clearer to the slower. But let no one who delights in verbal embellishments be offended that, content with the force of testimonies, we have brought forth the light of truth without sublimity of speech; in which little work, after the subscription of the Council of Arles, when new errors were detected, the Synod of Lyons required that some things be added. BOOK ONE. THAT THE OPINION OF PELAGIUS, WHO DENIED GRACE, MUST FIRST OF ALL BE DESTROYED. Treating of the grace of God and the weakness of free will, with the Holy Spirit enlightening us according to the evangelical disciplines and apostolic rules, we believed that in the first place the blasphemies of Pelagius—already long since betrayed by the faith of the Catholic Church, confounded by learning, trampled by authority—ought to be touched upon in a brief and necessary discourse, for the reason that among the other abominations of his doctrine he even attempted to affirm, with damnable pride, that human effort could avail without grace. And therefore we shall take care to bring forward his nefarious opinions, at least in part, so that each attentive person may recognize that it is one thing to join the office of labor to saving grace, but quite another to assert bare effort without the patronage of grace by the rashness of the heart alone.

Here, therefore, while it exalts human frailty too high, unmindful of divine fear, it has lost the soundness of its judgment and has fallen to the other side, just as those who assert that free will was entirely nullified, while it preaches free will as whole and unharmed. In this place, therefore, twin errors wrestle with each other, one of which insinuates only grace, the other only labor, having abandoned the path and measure of truth. They are of different kinds of sects, but alike in impiety; they hiss with diverse zeal, but with the spirit of a single serpent. One of them, that is, the preacher of grace alone, at first conceals its poison under the appearance of piety; the other, that is, the assertor of labor, immediately manifests its swelling tumor with shameless pride. This profession, by insinuating only labor, is detestable by its very title; that one is more to be feared under a religious color. This one betrays its sacrilege to the ears themselves; that one pours its poison into the innermost vitals almost before it is felt. You would think them two rocks besetting a narrow strait, one of which is submerged in the deep, the other threatens the sky. One is seen as dangerous to sailors; the other works unseen shipwrecks. That one speaks of grace, this one of labor. Both are confirmed by divine eloquence. If you remove the dissenting parts and join the sayings, the full sincerity of faith will appear.

But because, like reckless oarsmen without a pilot, they commit their sails to an uncharted sea and know neither how to temper the rudder nor how to handle the helm, one is borne toward the peril on the right, as it were, of Scylla, the other rushes into the abyss on the left of Charybdis. And if you should ask what they ought to do in these straits: let them entrust the ship to the waves with a pilot provided, hold a middle course, and with a favorable wind on the right, they will be brought to port. Let us see to what impiety we may liken or compare this twin error. In a similar way, those who have presumed to assert either that Christ the Lord is only God, or that He is only man, having lost the light of discernment, stumble upon the rock of scandal. Almost each excess, because it does not know how to maintain discernment and distinction, incurs an equal fault. Therefore, whoever says that Christ is only man has denied the power of the Author; whoever says He is only God has lost the mercy of the Redeemer. And thus, those who confess one substance in the Lord and Savior will be constrained by this necessity, that they are forced to say either that only a man fell from heaven or that only God was crucified. But it is not so. For neither could only God suffer death, nor could only man overcome it, and therefore, by reason of the twofold nature, man underwent it and God conquered it.

If, therefore, you assign to each part its own properties and believe and assert that Christ is both God and man, it is the same as if you join grace with effort and do not repel human striving from the help of God—yet in such a way that you do not mingle the fault of pride with the devotion of the one who strives, because, as much harm as there is in not laboring, so much danger there is in presuming from labor. Pelagius therefore says that for obtaining salvation, human nature alone suffices for itself. Thus this pestilent teacher affirms, as if the condition of our nature still remained unimpaired in its original state. I judge that free will could not suffice for itself without the support of grace, even before the first transgression violated that privilege. How, then, can it now suffice for itself, to whose arrogance it is said: "Because without me you can do nothing," to whose presumption the divine word is directed: "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain"? This, indeed, is denied to pride to accomplish without grace, but is granted to humility to fulfill with grace.

He continues further: Pelagius says that Adam was made mortal, who, whether he had sinned or not, would have died. But since the apostle says: "Therefore," he says, "just as through one man sin entered this world and through sin death," you understand that, if sin had not preceded, death would not have followed, and the granted immortality would have endured, which indeed is manifestly bestowed under a prescribed law and conferred with a condition, so that, if he had not withdrawn in pride from obedience, he would have remained eternal in glory. For when the heavenly prohibition had decreed, saying: "On whatever day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall die the death," the ill-advised presumption of forbidden taste became the accidental occasion of death. "You shall die," it says, "the death." If the grace of the giver contributed nothing, what is it that the offense of the condemner took away? Death, therefore, that is, a foreign and adventitious evil, is not an order of nature, but a penalty of sentence. For, he says, the Lord did not make death. That immortality was entrusted to man is testified by the envy of the enemy himself, and because, cast down, he begrudged him immortality, he therefore introduced the cause of death, saying: "On whatever day you eat of this tree, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods." If he had only said this: "When you have eaten, you will experience satiety from the pleasantness of the food," the transgression would have reached only the enticement of carnal concupiscence.

But when he set this end to the transgression by saying, "You will be like gods," the fault of gluttony advanced to the ambition of divinity and even to the crime of treason. Therefore they were made like gods, stripped of the gift of heavenly grace and cast down from the height of their blessed state; and thus the cunning serpent, cast out of heaven for the evil of pride, devised for himself, from his own fall and lapse, engines to overthrow man, and just as he fell, so he deceived. What else, indeed, is to be understood even in the image of God in which man was created, except the emblem of perpetuity?—a perpetuity which you recognize as not only not taken away from the soul, but also restored to the body by the power of resurrection. Therefore, do not doubt that immortality was entrusted to man before the fault, which you see is restored even after the ruin. Therefore Pelagius asserts that Adam, whether he had sinned or not, would have died in any case. And this proceeds from that very perversity by which he denies original sin. For while he strives to affirm that the necessity of death was a matter of condition, not of transgression, he wishes it to appear that the origin of this debt began not from a servant, but from the Lord, not from a despiser, but from the Creator, so that the law of death is believed to be a matter of ordinance, not of crime. And is this lamentable ruin thought to have been transmitted over the human race not by the transgressor, but by the Creator? And where is that saying: "Through the envy of the devil, death entered into the world"?

But when he denies original sin, he entirely removes the cause for which the Redeemer came. Let us see whether the unhappy and lamentable condition took its beginning from the will of God or from the depravity of man. Hear what the trumpet of truth sounds: "Therefore," it says, "just as through one man sin entered this world, and through sin death, so death passed through to all men, in whom all have sinned." By saying that Adam was made mortal in the first order of creation, Pelagius establishes death, which is known to have been imposed as a penalty for the transgression in the third stage. For man is the work of God, sin is the work of the devil, death is the punishment of sin. For the apostle did not say: "Death is the will of God," but: "Death is the wages of sin." Therefore let us examine more carefully his deceits lurking in the depths. He attributes death to the Creator so that the evil from which it chiefly takes its beginning cannot be recognized, and thus he may more freely assert that infants are not bound by the bond of origin. When he says this, he blasphemes with a double impiety, both by recalling death to the discredit of the Author and by denying the original bond, he empties the grace of the Restorer. And so, in order to be able to assert that little ones do not need baptism, he denied general sin. With this denied, this was the order of his error: that he did not know whence death was generated. What wonder if he does not recognize that tree in its fruits, which he was unwilling to know in its root? Since he suppresses the cause of the wound and conceals the sword by which the wound was inflicted.

The wages of sin is death,” he says. Because he neglected to understand the prince of such great evil, he therefore failed to recognize that the condition of death imposed is the attendant of sin, concerning which we have spoken above: the wages of sin is death. He received a reward worthy of such a deed, such wages as he deserved who served the devil. Hence the chosen vessel most clearly shows and proclaims the rationale of redemption, saying: “For what? When we were still weak, did Christ die for the impious? For scarcely does anyone die for a just man.” This is to say: if justice had abounded on earth, medicine would not have been sent from heaven. But in order that the unique remedy might come, a general infirmity demanded it. In the midst of these things, since Pelagius is bound by such great chains of sacrileges, it is no wonder if he is delivered over to manifold error through his depraved understanding, he who thinks he can be saved by effort alone. Rightly, against the presumption of this arrogance, the divine word has exerted the force of its authority or rebuke: “No one,” it says, “comes to me unless the Father has drawn him,” and again: “It is not of the one willing nor of the one running, but of the merciful God.” He who, with Pelagius, places his salvation in his own will and virtue will rightly consider this to have been said to himself. This, of course, need not be objected to one who does not presume upon effort alone, but recognizes that God’s daily mercy and continual grace must be implored for his endeavors, and who demands the Lord’s help with vigilant supplication.

II. AGAINST THE OBJECTION OF PELAGIUS, WHO SAYS THAT INFANTS HAVE NO NEED OF BAPTISM. Pelagius also observes this: if original sin is removed by the gift of baptism, children born of two baptized parents ought to lack this sin. How, he says, do they transmit to their descendants what they themselves did not have at all in themselves? To these it is easily answered that there are two births, from one of which sin is transmitted through the desire of the begetter, from the other sanctification is bestowed through the adoption of the regenerator. How, he says, do they transmit to their descendants what they themselves did not have at all in themselves? How irrational and full of iniquity is this objection! You do not wish them to transfer to their descendants what belongs to nature, and you wish them to be able to confer upon them, as if from their own, what belongs to grace, concerning which nature the apostle says: you were, he says, by nature children of wrath. Rightly they cannot give as if from their own what they received from above and from without. Most imprudently does Pelagius believe that the purity of innocence is given by parents to children. The second birth does not pertain to the ministry of parents. He wishes the office of man to be what is the gift of God, so that, as if by some hereditary order, what is established to be outside human substance might run through human posterity.

But that original sin passes from parents, even baptized ones, through the origin of the flesh to their children is not in doubt, as we daily say with the prophet: "Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and my mother bore me in sins," just as the Apostle confirms that this incurable guilt has passed from one to all men. But Pelagius says that original sin does not exist because the concupiscence of generation itself is from God. Yet if you ask whence comes this bond which drags down posterity, it is without doubt through the incentive of the accursed heat of generation and through the voluptuous embrace of both parents. For when you see that only he is immune from the contagion of original sin who was conceived not by flesh but by spirit, and not by a shameful passion but by a wondrous blessing, recognize that the cause of original evil arises from the delight of conception and from the vice of pleasure. For this reason also Adam and Eve in their origin were not held by this condition, because their own birth, from the ministry of the two, was alien to and knew no enticement in its nativity and creation. But perhaps you ask why original sin is placed in conception. The beginning of the whole ruin was disobedience. For man was first exalted, then humiliated and confounded.

and because, when he was in a position of honor, he did not understand, he was therefore compared to senseless beasts and made like them. So long, then, as humility maintained reverence in obedience to the author, the conscience, being immaculate, did not feel its nakedness; but when, with that intention of being a god, he sought the taste of the lethal food and extended his damnable lust into an ambition for majesty, forgetful of the law and rebellious against the law's commands, he is punished by the assault of his members, and while he presumes upon equality with his Lord, he lost power over his own body. From pride was born incontinence. For it shows what was struck in him when he covers his private parts. Elation preceded, and shame followed. Ambitious for divinity, he began to be a captive of lust. But perhaps you will say: while you argue this, you are found to condemn marriage. It is not so. The ordinance of marriage began from a blessing; generation conceived corruption from transgression. Between the gift of marriage, still granted in paradise by the creator, and its use, which took its beginning outside paradise, sin stood in the middle. Between generation and concupiscence, whatever divine precept established, I praise; whatever human transgression added, I reject. Just as if someone were to bespatter the whiteness of a snow-white garment with a foul stain, it is not the workmanship that displeases, but the stain. The garment has not lost its use, even if it has lost its dignity.

future generation would undoubtedly have been chaste and pure, had not hostile transgression intervened. But flesh addicted to a curse stained the immaculate marriage-bed, and through the spirit of pride corrupted simple affection, and just as it lost the privilege of immortality, so it lost the gift of purity. It is not nuptial grace that is called into complaint, but the injury of obscene passion. It is not gold that comes into blame, but whatever adulterine fraud of iniquity mixed with pure gold, just as the author of wickedness infected the spirit of Pelagius himself, divinely formed for better pursuits, with a pestilential corruption. III. AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY THAT EVERY MAN IS SAVED BY GRACE ALONE WITHOUT ANY EFFORT. Now we must come to those who, while asserting that grace is given to some and denied to others, have lost the gift of grace along with Pelagius. They say, therefore, that for the worship of God and service, even after the saving gift of baptism, the obedience of devoted servitude is not required, but that grace alone by itself works the effect of human salvation. Everything, they say, is of grace alone. This could be better said by us, this will more fittingly be applied to our own side, who confess that the benefits of grace are extended not to a part, but to the whole human race, yet in such a way that we judge the zeal of human vigilance to be joined to it in all things. For he who denies that the effort of a servant's labor is to be associated with grace, takes away from man the duty of service.

I do not know where or when he should rest from work, when he ought to be left to leisure, who is commanded to work even in paradise, where, as we read, he was so established that he would work and guard it. Against that opinion which, by saying that one is preordained to death, another predestined to life, cuts off the hope of praying by the very facts themselves. When they have said: "Everything is of God's grace," who would not incline with all the heart's affection toward so reverend a name? But when we reply: "It is entirely of grace, but the Creator and Redeemer offers and presses it upon all for the salvation of all," to this they, departing far from the path of piety, presume to answer: "The Savior did not give it to all, because He did not die for all." Behold, immediately in the second part appears the impugner of grace, who in the first was thought to be its assertor. They cast up the name of grace in order to cover an abominable sense with blasphemy. Thus they exclude the supports of prayer from either side. For what more should he hope, whom grace has already made its own? And on the contrary, what should he not despair of, whom violent predefinition has condemned? In this one, fault has no place; in that one, grace has no place. Justice will be imperiled in both. The one assumed will be rewarded without the merit of faith; the one abandoned will be condemned without his own crime. Salvation is to be thrust upon the one not seeking it, and taken away from the one laboring for it.

But you say: he ought to pray, because he does not know to which part he belongs. Who would not think this was reasonably and wisely answered? But what will prayer avail a man placed altogether in one of these two conditions? For even if he does not know to which part he has been assigned, he does not know that both parts are fixed and immutable. What does it matter if he does not yet know his place, when he knows most definitively that the right hand no longer admits of danger, nor the left hand of improvement? But if such a confused persuasion still considers prayer necessary, let him acknowledge without doubt that, contrary to his own definition, he can pass from salvation to perdition and from perdition to salvation. If, therefore, he does not think the practice of prayer should be omitted, let him not exclude the effort of working. What is this? You judge that I ought to knock, and you despair that the door will be opened to me? Therefore, do one or the other: either deny the fruit of prayer, or exclude the law of appointed perdition. Thus we see that this assertion, full of error, while it cuts off the cause of prayer, begins from the light of grace and its end runs down and fails into the darkness of sacrilege. Thus the devil, with the cunning of ancient artifice and manifold ingenuity, seasons the allurements of sin. Thus also sorcerers are accustomed to act, who temper deadly juices of herbs, preparing the taste with feigned sweetness in some sweetened draught to be given to the unsuspecting, obscuring the bitterness of the poison with the fraud of sweetness.

The first scent of the cup entices, but the hidden taste of poison chokes. Honey is what rises to the lips, gall is what descends into the vitals. They say that in one or the other state of things, death claims those, life defends these. When those who affirm that one is lost from the beginning, the other elect by predestination, say these things, see to what shameless persuasion it declines. For what else does it say, but that neither needs the help of prayer? For it will not be necessary for those already preordained to life, nor can it benefit those assigned to death. In the one it will be judged superfluous, in the other ineffective. He who is in the predestination of acquisition does not require the benefits of supplication; he who is in the part of perdition does not receive them. But if he thinks that care should be given to prayer, let him understand without doubt that those things which impend can be changed, according to the evangelical saying: "Watch and pray, that you do not enter into temptation," and again: "Therefore watch at all times, praying that you may be deemed worthy to flee all these things which are to come, and to stand before the Son of Man," and again: "This kind of demon is not cast out except by prayer and fasting." But if prayer is not necessary, why did he who is to be entreated institute the form of prayer and pray? Therefore, in him who flatters untaught ears with the assertion of grace alone, that prophetic saying will be fulfilled: "The malicious one," it says, "harms when he has mingled himself with the just.

The appearance of gold is presented at first by its color, but the worthlessness of lead is detected lurking within. Just as if, under the guise of a pretended citizen, an enemy suddenly appears, or if the deceitful cunning of an adversary transforms itself into an angel of light, so under the front of piety the evil of paganism and, hidden within the name of grace, a fatal decree will lie concealed. If, therefore, one is destined for life, another for perdition, as they assert, as one of the saints said, we are not born to be judged, but judged, and according to these claims no equity of judgment can stand. For if God gave nothing to the servant, what will he demand from the servant? IV. THE WORKS OF THE LAW ARE DESTROYED AND THOSE OF GRACE ARE COMMENDED, OR AGAINST THIS, THAT THE MOST UNLEARNED TESTIMONIES ARE PUT FORWARD FOR THE ASSERTION OF GRACE ALONE. We read, they say, in Romans: "For if Abraham was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God"; likewise: "But to him who works, a reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt. But to him who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the impious, his faith is reckoned for righteousness." They also add: "But if grace is not from works, otherwise grace is no longer grace." To these things it must be answered that there are two kinds of works, one of which is removed after the coming of the Lord, the other is approved. For by saying: "But to him who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the impious, his faith is reckoned for righteousness," it openly prefers faith to the works of the law.

For we shall not say that the testimonies of the apostles are conflicting and contrary to each other, when one apostle says: faith without works is dead, and again: show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith from works. You believe, because there is one God; you do well. Even demons believe and tremble. Likewise: just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. But neither will the teacher of the Gentiles, Paul himself, appear diverse and contrary to himself when he speaks thus: in all things let us show ourselves as ministers of God in much patience, in tribulations, in necessities, in distresses, in plagues, in prisons, in seditions, in labors, and again: each one will receive his own reward according to his labor. These things will seem discordant to the unskilled, the untaught, and to those who with obstinate spirit resist the truth. But according to the catholic rule, the works of the law which are according to the letter are voided, and those things which are to be done after grace, with grace accompanying, are affirmed.

Let us see if we are able to prove that this is so by the things themselves. We read that the works of the law are destroyed, when he [the apostle] crushes the pride of the Jews, saying: "Where," he says, "is your boasting? It is shut out. By which law? Of deeds? No, but by the law of faith. For we consider that a man is justified through faith without the works of the law." Similarly, he says to the Galatians: "Knowing," he says, "that a man is not justified by the works of the law except through faith in Christ Jesus, and we believe in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. On account of which, not every flesh will be justified by the works of the law before him." And thus the impious error said that works are abolished, but it suppressed with deceitful cunning what those works were. Now, therefore, you will suffer difficulty in understanding, if you have not understood the distinction of persons or of works. For it is said to the Jews: "Not every flesh will be justified by the works of the law." But to Christians already reborn in Christ, the discourse of instruction is directed thus: "Do good to all, but especially to the household of faith," and again: "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." To Christians, I say, it is said: "Let your light shine before all men, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, who is in heaven," that is, that we should not so much be dissolved in idleness as glory in good works not in ourselves, but in the Lord.

It is said to Christians: I have found in truth that God is not a discriminator of persons, but in every nation, whoever fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him. V. CONCERNING THE STATEMENT: "I AM WHAT I AM BY THE GRACE OF GOD." Hear the apostle mingling his labor with the humble confession of grace: "But I am what I am by the grace of God, and his grace in me was not empty, but I labored more abundantly than all of them: not I, however, but the grace of God with me." See how to the gift of grace he always joins the service of labor: "not I, however." Because he had introduced a mention of labor alone, he quickly ran back, as if to the embrace of mother grace, saying: "but the grace of God with me." "By grace," he says, "I am." Piously subject, he assigned the first parts to grace alone; the middle parts, the teacher of obedience, he assigned to labor; in the conclusion he moderated both, joining grace and labor. He did not say: "I without grace" or "grace without me," but "the grace of God with me." Those things which he had previously set forth separately, one by one, how well he connected them at the end of the sentence. And thus among the regenerate, when grace without labor or labor without grace is placed in the scriptures, one is suppressed, not separated. When one is said without the other, the other is passed over in silence, not denied, according to that rule which Bishop Augustine suggests: not all things that are passed over in silence are denied.

But in another place the Apostle says: "I chastise my body and bring it into servitude, lest, after having preached to others, I myself be found reprobate." Behold, the blessed Apostle, already acquired for Christ, already made a vessel of election, by no means relaxes his hands under the name of predestination and grace, but joins his own efforts to the benefits of God and says: "I chastise my body and bring it into servitude." Behold, he is already a soldier of the right-hand side, and see how he, already proven, fears to be in peril, how he, the elect, dreads being reprobate. He already holds victory in his hands and has not yet laid down his arms; he has already been led to triumph and still fears the outcome of his service. Since these things are so, recognize that you are rising up not against some weak person, but against the teaching of the supreme Apostle with the weapons of impious error, and contradicting Christ, who speaks within him. And while you remove the servitude of labor and the reasons for prayer, acknowledge that you are closing the door of salvation to the human race, and while you do not know how to flee the impiety of Pelagius, understand that you are declining toward the pestilential dogma of the Manichaeans, who deny free will entirely.

VI. HOW IT IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD: "Grace," he says, "you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves. For it is a gift of God, not from works, lest anyone boast." Here both faith is counted among works, and the food of the law is described as perishing, the food of grace as remaining. Just as between the works of law and faith, as a friend of idleness and ignorant of discernment, you deviated from the path of understanding, so between the two times of grace, following your persuasion as the worst guide, you lost the shining rule of catholic faith. The time of grace, by which we were redeemed, did not await human merits, did not seek works at all; God was content with the devotion of our faith alone, according to that saying of the Apostle: "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness," just as in another place he says: "But the just man lives from my faith. If he withdraws himself, he will not please my soul." He asserted that he is just and lives from faith, because he remembers that he conferred faith and righteousness upon him who sought them. But by saying: "If he withdraws himself," when he voluntarily turned aside to devious ways, he did not perish as if abandoned, who ungratefully withdrew himself from the mercy that offered itself. Likewise, to the Hebrews: "But one who approaches God must believe that he exists, and he becomes a rewarder to those who seek him." How well he joined the office of the Lord and of the servant by saying: "and he becomes a rewarder to those who seek him." For just as the bestowal of rewarding pertains to God, so the devotion of seeking pertains to man.

But you say that faith itself cannot belong to all. It is no wonder if, for a man to whom you deny that works pertain, you also strive to detract from faith, which is manifestly counted among works, as we have in the Gospel: "Work not for food, which perishes, but for that which endures to eternal life," where the food, that is, the understanding of the letter, is described as perishing, but the food of grace, that is, faith, is described as enduring. And the discourse continues accordingly: "The Jews said to him: What shall we do, that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent." Do you not notice that nothing in the service of God is carried out without work, when even he who seems to believe is working? Likewise in the Apostle: "Neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision, but faith, which works through charity." Similarly, to the Thessalonians [Second]: "May God deem you worthy of his calling and fill every will of goodness and the work of faith in you," and concerning Abraham in the epistle of the Apostle James: "You see that faith was cooperating with his works and from works faith was perfected." Recognize here the twin office of both operation and faith. "Grace," he says, "you have been saved through faith.

The first calling, therefore, requires from us the compendia of faith; the grace of the subsequent time, however, imposes upon the redeemed, washed, and renewed the diligence of work and the care of laborious service, so that what we have received without labor, with the help of assisting aid, we may preserve with labor, the apostle admonishing: “See,” he says, “that you do not receive the grace of God in vain.” Acknowledge that the stages of calling and of consummation are distinct. Faith it expects from the little ones; works, together with faith, it requires from the confirmed, yet in such a way that it increases the disposition of belief in those who are progressing and that a daily helper stands by those who are laboring. VII. AGAINST THIS, THAT THEY SAY FREE WILL WAS ENTIRELY TAKEN AWAY. The assertor of this depraved persuasion considers man, enriched with intellect, endowed with reason, adorned with the honor of the divine image, to be comparable to brute animals and senseless beasts, so that he is drawn to the right path by no guidance of his own, but only by the violent command of the author.

in such a way he also attempts to liken him to insensible elements, so that, just as from the nature of lands, which produce nothing of fertility by their own choice, which are ignorant of their own fecundity, to which neither sense of any kind nor liberty nor will is available, yet the yield of crops is taken from them by the working cultivator, so from a man idle from all exercise of virtue, the fruits of justice and the appetite and progress of good things are taken solely by God’s insistence, and, as if he neither feels nor consents in any way, so whatever he has sought or done is judged to pertain in no way to his effort and zeal, and just as the great sea, which is rolled this way and that by the driving winds, so the human mind is turned to any good deed without any affection of its own, solely by the impulse of divine power. Since these things are so, if understanding does not recall a man from the left of evil, if ambition does not rouse him to the right of good, he will no longer be held by the condition of a man, but of a beast.

Behold, the heretic, under the pretext of grace, what kind of man he wishes man to be after grace. Therefore, if free will has perished entirely—which assuredly consists in the love of innocence, or the operation of justice, or in the sanctification of the body—if this has been entirely removed in the transgression of the first man, how do we read: "Learn justice, you who inhabit the earth," and again: "The just man lives from my faith," and: "The just will possess the earth by inheritance," and: "The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears are open to their prayers"? Has innocence perished utterly, because its possessor neglected to stand in its first degree? I think not, for it is written: "The innocent and the upright adhered to me," and again: "Who will stand in His holy place? Innocent of hands and pure of heart," and again: "The Lord will not deprive of goods those walking in innocence." Is the sanctification of the body to be believed entirely lost, because, with the members in a rebellious slave not preserving their servitude to him, the first dignity of purity was shattered? Not at all, for we read: "That you may present your bodies as a living, holy sacrifice pleasing to God," and again: "Be holy, for I am holy." Thus, in this kind of those goods which the carefree inhabitant of paradise had received from his benevolent author, the action has not perished, even if perfection has been lost. The chastity of these virtues, I say, has not perished, even if virginal integrity has been violated.

VIII. HOW THE WEAKNESS OF FREE WILL IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD. But you ask and say: how is the weakening of the human mind’s free will to be understood? Its diminished liberty requires the supports of grace more, just as a man worn down by long illness has greater need of aids and comforts, his step faltering. Therefore, just as after a long-standing habit of luxury the restoration of continence will be achieved with great effort, and just as sobriety, once captive through long use of drunkenness, is scarcely recovered with the violence of a harsh cross—whereas before, when it was kept unimpaired, it was preserved with little trouble, since it is possessed with a certain pleasure by an inviolate conscience—and just as after various carnal allurements of vices, which an early age, retaining its state, could easily have trampled, one returns to the path of virtue with great struggle, as if against the ascent of a steep mountain, so the freedom of the human will, granted by God, lost the flower and vigor of its grace, yet itself did not perish, so that it perceives divine gifts not so much as forbidden to it, but rather recognizes that they are to be reclaimed by itself through the patronage of assistance with the utmost labor and sweat.

Hear the lawgiver disputing about the will’s free choice, when he says: “I have set before your face life and death, good and evil. Choose life, that you may live,” and again: “I have chosen the way of truth, I have not forgotten your judgments.” You see that no necessity of fate or imposed perdition presses anyone here, where the power of choice is fitting, nor does predestination drag toward one part, where the election of both parts is offered. Likewise: “Let your hand be, that it may save me, because I have chosen your commandments”; that is to say: the pernicious pleasure of the world was indeed soliciting me toward the left part, but the utility of your commandments drew me to the right. And so, since even the Gentiles themselves are directed by an inborn free choice to the judgment of good and evil, how much more can a humble Christian, who places his own capability in the power of God’s help, moderate his will’s freedom toward the good part, to whom it is said: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have,” and again: “Do you wish to become healthy?” Conscious of how much the powerful Creator has bestowed upon the human heart, he questions the will of the one whom he is about to heal. For also in another place, he rebukes the people walking with the granted freedom of choice thus: “Lead out the blind people who have eyes, the deaf who have ears.” Here, that he is deaf and blind is understood to be from obstinacy, not from nature.

And in the Gospel he clearly shows that the affection of good will is implanted in man: “If anyone,” he says, “wishes to come after me, let him deny himself to himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is to say: It is by my mercy that you are called, but it is entrusted to your will that you follow. Let us see if God invites man to himself through leisure. “Let him deny himself to himself,” he says, that is, let him who is evil strive to be good and say in supplication: “And from my will I will confess to him.” Each one is commanded to convert from his will, lest the sinner perhaps despair of being able to change for the better. “If anyone,” he says, “wishes to come after me, let him deny himself to himself,” that is, let him become one thing from another. Let patience overcome anger, temperance restrain lust, humility expel pride, the cross crush pleasure. Who would think these things are conferred upon a sleeping man through grace alone, without labor of the heart, without affliction of the flesh, without the great struggle of both parts of man? “Let him deny himself to himself,” this is to say: O man, do not think you were so created by your author that you cannot become just from unjust, chaste from lustful, kind from malevolent. To be able to achieve this, it is not your nature that must be changed, but your life. In saying these things, we do not equate labor with grace, but we entirely prefer grace without comparison.

CHAPTER 9. HOW IT IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD: “IT IS NOT OF THE WILLING NOR OF THE RUNNING, BUT OF THE PITYING GOD,” OR THAT PASSAGE: “I HAVE NOT COME TO CALL THE RIGHTEOUS, BUT SINNERS TO PENITENCE.” But you say: man is nothing, but everything is of the grace of God, to such an extent that the Apostle says: it is not of the willing nor of the running, as the Jew arrogates to himself from the law or Pelagius from the presumption of free will, but although with the servitude of man, yet everything is of the pitying God, not of the willing nor of the running. Here he clearly marks and refutes the one who thinks that he alone suffices for himself without the helping hand. But to the one who joins his own efforts with the help of the pitying one, he does not say: not of the willing nor of the running, but he speaks to him quite otherwise: “Run,” he says, “in such a way that you may seize,” and again: “You were running so well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?” If the will of the runner is not also to be awaited, why is it said: “I therefore run thus, not as into uncertainty,” and again: “I have completed the course, I have kept the faith”? “Not of the willing nor of the running”: he has woven for himself the shadows of error who does not know how to question either the persons or the causes in the holy scriptures. In this passage the Apostle of the Gentiles, asserting the faith, curbs and restrains the pride of the Jews, who arrogated righteousness to themselves from the works of the law and rejected the mercy and grace of God, who, as the Apostle says, seeking to establish their own righteousness, were not subject to the righteousness of God.

Whom elsewhere, with feigned justification and an oblique voice through irony, he condemns, saying: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to penitence.” The righteous, that is, those who flatter themselves from the presumption of righteousness, just as elsewhere he rejects the Pharisee who justifies himself and receives the publican who accuses himself. “I have not come,” he says, “to call the righteous, but sinners to penitence,” that is, I have not come to the Jews who claim for themselves privileges of righteousness from the law, but rather I seek the Gentiles who profess penitence for sins from faith. For to their pride he also says elsewhere: “There is no need of a physician for the healthy, but for those who are ill.” But the Jews boasted that they were righteous and healthy, yet they were not. Who, however, with a sound heart would dare to call himself sound, when the whole of the human race, struck by one serpent’s bite, lay languishing? Therefore, there is one hope of health for the sick person: if he acknowledges himself sick before the physician. But it is fitting that he who feigns ignorance of his own illness should lack a remedy. And for that reason, there will be greater joy for the angels in heaven over one sinner doing penitence than over ninety-nine righteous who do not need penitence. Who would not believe, at this point, that those who do not need penitence are truly righteous? But no one is more in need of health than he who does not understand that he is in need. And therefore that true shepherd rejoices more over one sheep that has been recalled from error than over ninety-nine sheep that have not gone astray.

and who can be immune from the evil of deadly error, when the prophet testifies: we have all wandered like sheep, each one has turned aside into his own way? How lamentable was the blindness of the Jews, who had lost the way by denying the Saviour and were unwilling to know their error. Therefore this divine discourse, under the appellation of the righteous, without prejudice to another sense, rather marks and rebukes the arrogance of the Jews. For just as the number ten and the number one hundred designate the righteous and the perfect, so the number nine and the number ninety designate the unjust and sinners by the very principle of the imperfect number. Hence in this place the Apostle’s teaching chastises the pride of the Jews, who, justifying themselves from the Law, had rejected the mercy of the Redeemer, by saying: not of the willing, because in the humble Christian obedience and subjection themselves are a course and an ascent, while in the pride of the Jew there is a fall and a descent. Not, he says, of the willing nor of the running. How can that statement pertain to the faithful man subject to Christ’s laws, to whom it is said: and in the law of the Lord was his will, and what we have cited above: if anyone wishes to come after me, and: I will willingly sacrifice to you, Lord, and: he who wishes to save his soul will lose it, and he who loses his soul for my sake will find it?

See what a great and arduous work—the losing and finding of a soul—he places even in man’s will, and for that reason he concluded thus: “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of his Father, and then he will render to each according to his works.” Note that, when he says “according to his works,” the giver of grace placed man’s salvation not in the predestination of the maker, but in the operation of the servant. Therefore here it is not man’s condition that is indicated, but his conduct; and for that reason he says elsewhere: “We will all stand before the tribunal of God, so that each one may render account of his own body, according as he has conducted himself, whether for good or for evil.” Recognize in this passage that it is not the evils of another’s race or origin, but the deeds of one’s own body that are to be examined at the final judgment. For this reason, from a man who has been reborn in Christ, it is not what he was born that is to be called into judgment, but what he has done. If, therefore, a man’s act is not also a matter of will, how does he say: “If you will and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the earth”? Thus the creator of both—that is, of the outer and the inner man—God, just as by his power he disposed the members of the human body, so by his ordering he permitted man to perform and administer the ministry and use of those members.

and just as He Himself formed the right hand in every man, but placed it in man’s power to extend it wherever he wished and to apply it to various works, in like manner He inserted, inspired, and infused the sense of reason and the will’s choice into each soul, but left it to be moderated and exercised in the hand of human counsel, and committed its functions to man’s right and dominion, so that if, corrupted, it should seek evil, it would know that it was permitted to itself in the freedom of choice, but not that it was lawful; if, however, it should desire good, it would demand its action and perfection from the Creator, while to its reward would belong the dutiful devotion. And therefore the former and ruler of man assigned the use of good will to man, and reserved the effect for Himself. So He did not deem it just and right to grant will to one and deny it to another, but just as He gave hand, eye, and gait to every man, so likewise He granted will to every man, that he might turn it to whatever parts he wished. Therefore justice in man is not a personal, but a general and public gift of God. The approach to attaining salvation, like a kind of fountain set in the midst of this world and granted in common, lies open to all for drawing, so that the giver may justly hold guilty the one who has neglected to draw.

Therefore, it is offered to all, and it is to be demanded from all. For if, as they say, the dispensation concerning man’s salvation is special, I do not see how the judgment can be general. But since it says: we must all appear before the tribunal of God, He would not terrifically demand it from all unless He had mercifully offered it to all. Thus, the apostle exhorts the one placed on the battlefield of service: labor as a good soldier of Christ. No one serving God entangles himself in worldly affairs, so as to please the one to whom he has proved himself. For he who contends in the contest is not crowned unless he has fought lawfully, and again: the laboring farmer must first receive from the fruits. Hear also in another place the apostle not preaching your idleness: For the rest, he says, brothers, be strengthened in the Lord and in the power of His might. Clothe yourselves with the armor of God, so that you can stand against the snares of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against princes and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavens. Therefore, take up the armor of God, so that you can resist on the evil day and stand perfect in all things. So stand, girded in your loins with charity, clad in the breastplate of righteousness, and shod in the preparation of the gospel of peace, taking up in all things the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

since it says: that you may be able to stand against the snares of the devil, and again: that you may be able to resist on the evil day, and in what follows: taking up the shield of faith, in which you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one, it shows most clearly that the possibility of the will was granted by God to every man, by which it would be ready for him not only to resist his own flesh, but also to fight against the devil, concerning which he says in another place: be watchful, he says, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour. If this adversary had already been assigned to certain individuals by the necessity of origin, as you assert, he would not seek whom to deceive, nor would it profit those assigned to be watchful. But it is not so. For just as the enemy is brought near to all, so the right hand of protection and assistance is not denied to all, and mercy’s kindness comes to the aid of those who pray and keep watch, which is certainly offered to those who knock more from devotion than from predestination.

Therefore, among these things, does not one who says that grace alone, without the exercise of work and labor, can suffice, seem to you to burst forth with a deranged mind into this voice of blasphemy: let no one keep vigil, let no one fast, let no one chastise the assault of luxury by the contrition of abstinence, let no one declare war on vices by the mortification of the outer man, let no one contend with the wounds of inner care by health-bringing affliction, let no one contradict lust, let no one seek remedies for crimes through the labor of macerated flesh, let no one strike back at the enemy armed with the allurements of obscene pleasure by the forces of the cross, but let him expose his naked breast against the fiery darts of the foe, let no one redeem the debts liable to eternal death by the sacrifices of alms, let no one bring care to wounds through works of mercy and justice, but let him bear them whole to the day of judgment? Behold, this man, who a little while ago was thought to be an advocate of grace, by blocking the way of human salvation, is found to be an opponent of the grace through which salvation itself was conferred, and is shown to have passed over into the counsels of the devil as a helper of perdition.

X. AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY THAT FREE WILL IS PROMPT ONLY TOWARD EVIL FOR MAN, AND TOWARD GOOD NOT AT ALL. Where is that saying of the prophet: "Hear me, you who follow what is just, and seek the Lord," or that of the apostle: "Do you not know that, to whom you present yourselves as servants for obedience, you are servants of that which you have obeyed, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness"? Therefore, while the apostle demands better efforts from man, he shows that the faculty of good will is present in him, which, when we prefer it, we openly proclaim the ordering and wonderful disposition of its author, prepared for righteous duties, as the same apostle demonstrates, saying: "Therefore, let not sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its lusts. But neither present your members as weapons of iniquity to sin, but present yourselves to God as if living from the dead, and your members as weapons of righteousness to God." Again: "I speak humanly on account of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you have presented your members to serve impurity and iniquity for iniquity, so now present your members to serve righteousness for sanctification." Does he not here provoke the very same man to the pursuit of good works, whom he previously showed to have been given over to evil?

Therefore, while the destroyer of free will declares that everything is established and defined by predestination in either direction, he also empties the supreme remedies of penance by the sense of his broken impiety. And how does he preach grace, who denies mercy? How does he seem to assert the gift of God, whose help he removes? How does he dare to presume upon testimonies from the Scriptures, who tries to exclude the benefits of the Scriptures? How am I told: "Turn away from evil and do good," if I cannot turn away from evil? Why does the Apostle say: "Mortify," he says, "your members," and again: "You were," he says, "once darkness, but now light in the Lord, so walk as children of light"? How does the preacher of my change insinuate a change in me, if the maker imposed an immutable law: "Stripping off," he says, "the old man with his deeds, putting on the new"? How do you contend that the congealed stain of sin pertains inseparably to origin and condition, when you recognize that it can be laid down and put off? Understand that you speak with a spirit contrary to the Holy Spirit, who gave the sacraments of the law and the prophets, the oracles of evangelical truth to the world as help, and promised the heavenly kingdom through the offices of laborious servitude, with grace cooperating, to those who keep the divine precepts.

Therefore, measure the honor of holy work and labor by the magnitude and dignity of the reward, whose palm and crown you undoubtedly judge cheap if you affirm that it can be seized without laborious contrition. Can that commandment of divine precept be fulfilled without great intention of work? "Do not," it says, "be conquered by evil, but conquer evil in good," or that: "Do not be led astray; evil conversations corrupt good morals." And how, amid these, do you assert that the received gift of grace is in no way endangered, when you read that good implanted in morals can be corrupted by evil? Will it be by idleness that what the apostle says is obtained: "In all things we suffer tribulation, but we are not distressed; we are in difficulty, but we are not abandoned; we suffer persecution, but we are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we do not perish," and what he says elsewhere: "But for me the world is crucified, and I to the world"? If these and similar things, with which the holy scriptures are full, are acquired through idleness, why are they not obtained by all? Much will be detracted from the glory of the rewarded and the justice of the rewarder, if the highest and most illustrious men are crowned through quiet and laziness. And where is that prophetic saying: "Because of the words of your lips, I have kept hard paths"?

If the management of seeking salvation is a leisurely business, and the way of virtue is common, general, and broad, then the Gospels lie when they say: how narrow the gate and strait the way which leads to life, and few are those who find it. If works will cease, merits will have no honor; if there is nothing arduous in labor, there will be nothing precious in virtue. But this arduous way offends the slothful, and labor deters the idle. Therefore, it is not the violence of the one who foreknows, but the disobedience of the one who sins that is at fault, as we read: they perished because of their iniquities like a dream upon waking, and again: depart from me, all who work iniquity, and in another place: they did not keep the covenant of God and refused to walk in his law. Therefore, it is not impossibility that recalls man from the work of justice, but iniquity and will. When, moreover, the apostle says: rebuke the sinner before all, there is no reason why he who sins unwillingly should be either rebuked or condemned. But it is not so. For when through his prophet the Lord says: I will judge each one according to his ways, house of Israel, whoever has succumbed to passion was not overcome by pressing foreknowledge, but was seduced by flattering sin. Those still denying the effort of human labor oppose this testimony: unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Those who ignorantly raise this objection and believe that everything must be denied to man cannot, first of all, expedite their understanding according to the literal sound. For does the Lord administer the salvation of the human race solely by Himself, as if by a solitary management? Not at all. But when the body, arranged through its members, carries out the command of the head, the Lord builds His house through the prelates and pastors of the Church, through those who say: "For we are helpers of God." For whoever undertakes the care of saving a man is a helper of the Redeemer. Therefore, the Lord builds this house through His saints, and the saints through their Lord. The Church is built through the one who said: "As a wise architect, I have laid the foundation." Do you recognize that the Church is built otherwise than through the labors and offices of priests, through the ministries and examples of saints, through the virtues of apostles and the deaths of martyrs? But among these, although the servant must labor up to the endurance of all evils and the sacrifice of life, yet the effect of the labor is always to be referred to the Lord. But whoever presumes to arrogate to himself either the beginning of the work or its end, to him it is rightly said: "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." Moreover, just as the devotion of unceasing service is to be expected from man, so the perfection of the completed work is to be assigned to the Lord, whose gifts that one alone did not have who neglected to preserve them.

For that servant also acknowledged that he had received what was entrusted to him, who scorned to double the talent committed to him in the business of salvation, but rather entrusted it to the earth, languishing in idle leisure. And Saul also received the grace of God, anointed by Samuel, and obtained special munificence and royal power under this condition, that he not deviate from the precepts of God. And he who had overthrown groves and shrines with their pythons, under the master priest, upon the death of that same master, lost the faith and afterwards flew to the deceitful responses of the pythoness, he who had shown by the overthrow of idols that he could belong to God. XI. AGAINST THE OPINION OF THOSE WHO SAY THAT A VESSEL OF DISHONOR CANNOT BECOME A VESSEL OF HONOR. They say that a vessel of dishonor cannot pass into a vessel of honor, because the Apostle said: "Does not the potter have power from the same lump of clay to make one vessel for honor, another for dishonor?" In this passage, he suppressed the preceding causes by which a man passes either into honor or into dishonor, by a condensed expression. For when a man has begun to be a vessel of honor through grace, he must be vigilant that the honor received is preserved by divine cooperation, lest the acquired man afterwards be turned into a vessel of dishonor by an existing fault. But what they say—that a state of man predetermined from an early age for the better cannot be changed for the worse—that is believed to happen there after the departure from this life, where there will be neither correction nor change, in the underworld.

Moreover, even the worst can pass over to righteousness, and the perfect can fear danger, right up to the end, as we read in 1 Kings: "Those who glorify me, I will glorify; but those who despise me, they will be ignoble." Why is this one honored and that one despised? For this reason, certainly: because both the one who offered insult could have glorified God, and the one who offered glory could have despised Him, because it was possible for him who was willing to be unwilling to please his Lord God, and possible for him who was unwilling to be willing. Nor should you think here that there is a difference of nature. It is the same one who wills, the same one who does not will. Therefore, each person reborn in Christ cannot be a vessel of malice, offense, and wrath unless he first becomes so through his own fault. And conversely, to become a vessel of mercy, he must first be a vessel of obedience, so that the sentence of the just judge follows upon preceding causes. Let us show that a vessel of insult can pass into a vessel of honor with the help of God and his own effort: "If," it says, "I say to the impious man, 'You will die by death,' and he performs penance for his sin and executes judgment and justice, he will live by life and will not die." What is the impious man but a vessel of insult? Behold, through the remedy of penance he is suddenly honored with the brightness of grace and clothed with the beauty of righteousness, so that, with the dregs of sin wiped away, he can confidently say with the prophet: "You will sprinkle me with hyssop and I will be cleansed; you will wash me and I will be made whiter than snow.

Listen to the apostle, how he declares that the stains of conscience can be whitened, so that from a vessel of iniquity a vessel of sanctification may appear: "In a great house," he says, "there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthen ones, some indeed for honor, others for dishonor." Lift up your heart, free from immutable necessity, O human condition, and recognize the ineffable goodness of your Lord concerning the salvation of man. When he had said: "Some indeed for honor, others for dishonor," he opened and widened the hand of hope to the faithful, saying thus: "But if anyone cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel sanctified for honor." Therefore, the vessel of the heart is capable of either state, and what it previously allowed to be poured into itself, it can easily be emptied by a change of its former purpose, so that the same vessel itself remains in itself and with itself, with the iniquity poured out. Thus the vessel pertains to the substance of man, but what is stored in the vessel pertains to the kind and diversity of the will. And in another place the Lord shows that the lost can be restored, when he says: "I was sent only to the sheep that perished of the house of Israel," and again: "It is fitting to feast and rejoice, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life, was lost and has been found." Therefore, the ruin had not been made in his nature, but he who was dead through the contempt of withdrawing, came back to life through the desire of returning.

For just as it is his own crime that he flees the eyes of his pious parent far away, so it is his own devotion that, deliberating through the good implanted in him and rising up, he runs back to his father’s embraces. But the grace which had struck him as a wanderer herself received him as he returned. Let the definition of original or fatal [predestination] depart from here. Behold, the dead man is brought to life and the lost man is found, just as the woman in the Gospel, who seeks the drachma lost in the house—that is, a thing of either some value or of salvation—by a lamp lit and applies her effort to the oil of grace, and with God’s help the intention of the seeker joins itself, and thus what she had lost within, she finds within. If, therefore, a man ever becomes good from bad or bad from good by the effort of the mind’s choice, the will, which is free, given by God, is corrected; it is not the force of predestination that works. And as often as you read in the sacred pages: “On whatever day you groan, having been converted, then you will be safe,” and again: “I do not desire the death of the impious, but that the impious man turn back from his way and live. Turn back from your worst ways,” and again: “The impiety of the impious will not harm him, on whatever day he has been converted from his injustice,” and that: “Remove the old leaven, so that you may be a new batch,” and as often as a man, with the help of grace, is converted to better things, having rejected worse ones, so often from a vessel of dishonor a vessel of honor is made.

But that good men become evil—this human frailty more readily admits, so that it passes from a vessel of honor to a vessel of disgrace, as we read in Habakkuk: “and his choice foods,” concerning which it is also said: “he will count gold as chaff.” Jeremiah likewise: “How has the gold become tarnished, the best color changed?” And as the apostle says: “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot?” Thus the clear statement is that a man can be changed from the body of Christ into the party of the devil through his own fault, just as elsewhere he teaches most explicitly that the best becomes the worst and that the temple of God can be violated, saying: “You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone violates the temple of God, God will destroy him.” Behold, it is already recognized as the temple of God, already possessed by the Holy Spirit, and yet it is recorded that it can be violated and corrupted through negligence and occupied by an unworthy guest, just as the prophet rebukes the soul voluntarily emptied of God’s grace: “I planted a choice vine, every true one. How have you turned into the bitterness of a foreign vine?” Behold, a vine planted by God from a noble root, chosen by the cultivator’s care, shown to be corrupted by its own fault. And therefore concerning it, in the Song of Isaiah, it is said: “I waited for it to produce grapes, but it produced thorns.” The expectation of the rebuking farmer shows that this vine could have produced fruits of justice.

and when it testifies that one who stands can fall, saying: "and he who thinks he stands, let him see that he does not fall," and on the contrary speaks to one who lies prostrate: "does not he who fall rise again? for God is able to set him up," it openly shows that the state of man can be turned in different directions not by the constitution of God, but by the freedom of the will. But Isaiah also clearly affirms that what is corrupted can be corrected and what is stained can be washed away, when he speaks to sinners saying: "wash yourselves, be clean, remove the evil of your thoughts from my eyes." XII. LIKEWISE, WILLING AND NOT WILLING, JUST AS TOWARD THE EVIL PART, SO ALSO TOWARD THE GOOD PART, IS SHOWN TO HAVE BEEN ENTRUSTED TO MAN'S FREE CHOICE. Among these things we must carefully inquire, in the face of heretics, whether man cannot do good or will not. The implanted seeds of good will in man are clearly indicated when it says: "if you will to keep the commandments, they will keep you," and: "do not fail from the discipline of the Lord," and: "do not refrain from doing good to the needy," and: "do not fabricate evil against your friend," and: "do not become like the horse and the mule, in which there is no understanding," and: "do not reject the counsels of your mother," and: "do not heed a deceitful woman," and: "he did not will to understand, so as to do good," and: "they did not will to accept discipline." To whom not willing is objected, it is clearly shown that willing was at hand. And there are many similar things in the utterances of the Old Testament, all of which specifically constrain and convict the will itself.

In the new evangelical and apostolic books as well, what else is shown but the freedom of the will, where it is said: do not store up treasures on earth, and: do not fear those who kill the body. Be sober, be just, and do not sin, to Timothy: do not neglect the grace that is in you. Nor let your good be as if from necessity, but from will. It even urges servants themselves to serve their masters from the soul with good will, and in another place: do not have faith in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ with an acceptance of persons. Do not slander one another, and: do not err. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he also reaps, and: do not love the world nor those things that are in the world. We see, therefore, that the consent of the human mind can pass both to the good side and to the contrary side. And so in another place it says: let us not, he says, grow weary in doing good, for in due time we shall reap without growing weary. Let us therefore do good to all, but especially to those of the household of faith. Do not, he says, love the world: unless it had turned his affection to better things, it would not forbid him the appetite for evil, and therefore he is drawn to the left by his own fault, who is called by his lord to the right. And for that reason it says again: do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good. Clearly, he is not pressed by the necessity of evil, to whom victory is promised from the choice of good.

For the law of origin does not drag into a byway the one whom the author placed at a crossroads, and thus, to whom will is given, so that he can overcome evil, if by chance he yielded to his adversary, the spirit to fight was lacking to him, the outcome of obtaining was not lacking. We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "For we, sinning voluntarily after having received knowledge of the truth, a sacrifice for sins is no longer left for us." According to this, if we do not have freedom of the will, how do we sin with will? For what reason is he guilty, if you ask, because after having received knowledge of the truth he turned aside to the spirit of error. "After having received," it says, "knowledge": understand that he received grace and through negligence lost it, and again: "One who makes the law of Moses void dies without any mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses; how much more do you think those who have trampled upon the Son of God and considered the blood of the covenant polluted, in which he was sanctified, and have done insult to the spirit of grace, deserve worse punishments?

Why is a person accused before two or three witnesses and dies as if guilty of his own crime, if he is already oppressed by an unavoidable law of nature that compels him to sin? But without doubt he deserves punishment precisely because he was able to keep justice and chose not to. If you ask for what reason he was stripped of such a great good, the answer is: because he offered insult to the spirit of grace. Recognize here that grace was not so much absent because it was denied to man, but rather that the kindness of the giver abandoned man after it had first been abandoned and scorned by him. With a certain grief it rebukes the insult of the one who spurns it, and thus, when he voluntarily turned aside into byways, the one who was abandoned did not perish, for he, ungrateful, withdrew himself from the mercy that was offering itself, becoming like those of whom the psalmist declares: "And he blessed them, and they multiplied exceedingly," and in what follows he sets forth the causes of the lost blessing: "And their own vanities led them astray," he says, "and led them astray into a pathless place and not on the way." Here the transgressor of the commandment appeared guilty because he was more seduced into evil than compelled. Similarly, in the letter to the Galatians, he turns the blame for transgression back to human offense, saying: "But then, indeed, ignorant of God, you served those who are not gods by nature." According to this, Christ is God by nature, whom we are commanded to serve. It follows: "But now, since you have come to know God—or rather, have been known by God—how is it that you turn back to weak and needy elements, which you wish to serve again?" He did not say: "You cannot be good," but "You wish to be evil.

unless they could have stood corrected in good, they would not be accused of having lapsed into worse. To them he says again: "My little children, whom I bring forth again, until Christ is formed in you." Behold, he asserts that these, who were born of faith but had become miscarriages, can still be reformed into the image of Christ, and while he calls the lost still his children, he condemns transgression without despair, teaching that both lost things can be restored and that which has been conferred can be taken away. For when elsewhere the heretic interprets the apostle's statement as the predestination or predefinition of God, where it is read: "I will have mercy on whom I wish, and I will grant mercy to whom I will have mercy," he must be asked whether what God wills is ordered or disordered, just or unjust? Since he will answer that what is necessary is just, it must be said: consider here that these are words of justice, because the divine will is justice. And thus this expression is to be understood: "I will have mercy on whom I wish," that is, on whom I have known to be just (in counsel), on whom I have seen ready faith, on whom I have perceived to obey my precepts, on whom I have proven to do my will.

And I will show mercy, he says, to whom I show mercy: which is to be understood thus: whoever has preserved the mercy conferred by God with a submissive and anxious mind will obtain greater mercy, as he says elsewhere: for he who has, it will be given to him and it will abound, that is, whoever guards the gift of God with vigilance and fear of heart will receive an increase of that grace more and more, so that progress itself produces for him increments of progress, as he says elsewhere: and let the holy one be sanctified still further. But as for their thinking that what the apostle says is to be referred to God's predetermination: therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills: you say to me, then, what further complaint is there? for who resists his will? Here the apostle clearly introduces the contrary sense under the persona of one questioning or objecting, which contrary proposition he then chastises with the following rebuke, saying: O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does not the potter have the power to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for honor, another for dishonor? Here he restrains the curiosity of the unbeliever with the authority of the one who argues. And when he says: does he not have the power, he sets before the slanderer only God's power, disregarding the reason of the same, who was ignorantly and unfaithfully ascribing all human acts to divine ordinance. Does not the potter have the power to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for honor, another for dishonor?

While he says these things from the same mass, whoever you were who thought there were two masses of the human race, recognize one from sacred reading. But two are made by the depravity of pursuits and the diversity of wills. Thus, according to their qualities, not by the impulse of God, each one becomes either a vessel of contumely or of honor. XIII. WHERE THE GRACE OF GOD AND HUMAN WILL ARE UNITED BY THE ASSERTION OF TESTIMONIES. If you apply your mind well, you will clearly and abundantly recognize how, throughout the pages of the holy scriptures, the power of grace is now asserted, now the assent of the human will. We demonstrate the weakness of free will when we say to God: "Set, Lord, a guard at my mouth and a door of circumspection at my lips." Likewise, the divine word commands that the will may have some vigor, when it says to man: "Restrain your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit." The word of wisdom commends free will when it says: "Guard your heart with every watchfulness." But the apostle shows that this cannot happen without divine help when he says: "May the Lord guard your hearts and your understandings in Christ Jesus." The prophet asserts the capacity of his own will concerning himself, saying: "I have inclined my heart to perform your justifications." But he understands that nothing is to be presumed from his own strength alone, when he proclaims to God: "Incline," he says, "my heart to your testimonies and not to avarice.

On account of free will it is commanded to us: make straight courses with your feet and direct your ways. But we, taking refuge in grace out of awareness of our weakness, beseech: direct my way in your sight, and: perfect my steps in your paths. He commands us, who by the general dispensation of his own will grants authority: kindle for yourselves the light of knowledge. But for that which is wholly to be referred to the author of grace, we read: who teaches man knowledge, or: the Lord enlightens the blind, and again: enlighten my eyes, that they may never fall asleep in death, and: blessed is the man whom you, Lord, have instructed and whom you have taught from your law. The apostle, a preacher of the will, urges its freedom thus, saying: guard your souls, but he attests to the mercy of God thus, recalling: may the Lord guard your coming in and your going out. Through these things, therefore, by which on the one hand the freedom of the will is asserted, on the other heavenly bounty is shown, now man is admonished concerning the granted powers, lest he hope idly from grace alone, now he is commanded to hope from grace, lest he be secure from effort alone. But you say: if there is no predestination, why are some infants baptized, while others are snatched away without the sanctification of baptism? It is the craft of a serpent to flee from the light into dark caverns, when through all the volumes of sacred scripture the free will clearly speaks.

What reason is there for you to wish to inquire into hidden matters, when you see that manifest things respond most fully to your concern? What use is it to set aside certainties and consult uncertainties, about which you find nothing written in Catholic reading? Do you not understand that you scrutinize, to the injury of truth, whatever truth has not wished you to know? You propose a subject concerning the rationale of free will and, in order to discuss the state of infancy, you slide into a pernicious error, in which no trace of free will, no indication of its own will can appear at all. XIV. AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY THAT THOSE WHO PERISH AFTER BAPTISM DID NOT BELIEVE IN BAPTISM AT ALL. At this point it must be answered: from what author do you read this, from what teacher do you presume to assert it? And since you do not deny that original sin is abolished in baptism and that baptism is confirmed as firm, where the undivided Trinity is invoked, give the reasons why a baptized person still remains within the debt of original sin. "And they themselves," you say, "perish in Adam, because they did not believe in baptism." Did you not say a little earlier that the effort of man is not required for receiving the gifts of God? Behold, you yourself most manifestly profess that without the devotion of the recipient the generosity of the giver is void. You, I say, yourself confirm that without the merit of faith, that is, without the cooperation of the human will, grace is of no avail, and, as you say, God reserved everything for himself concerning the state of man and gave nothing to man.

Behold, even according to your own opinion, the mystery of regeneration itself cannot stand firm unless a person has brought the affection of belief to the gift of blessing. You deny him effort; why do you require assent from him? When, moreover, the prophet says: "Living waters will go forth from Jerusalem," by which he designates the sacraments of the life-giving wave, how can it happen that the renewed man retains with himself the canceled bond of the old man? How can it happen that he rises absolved with the debt of Adam in Christ? How can it happen that from the irrigation of the sacred font the life of the adopted of God still gives birth to death, when the apostle says: "Whoever among you have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ"? Whom, indeed, no one can put on unless he has put off the garments of the first birth. But as for one who comes voluntarily to baptism, will you be able to teach that baptism did not benefit him, when even to a heretic regenerated in the name of the Trinity the very power of the mystery confers so much by itself that, if he later passes over to the faith of Christ, he does not need a repetition of baptism, but is judged to have been washed by grace working in such a way that he is only clothed with the blessing of chrism? The catholic church detests this reprobate sense of your persuasion. "Therefore," you say, "those who are drenched in any kind of birth-water do not receive the gift of baptism, because they come to baptism unfaithfully." It is not so. Pay attention, because this very thing—coming to baptism and desiring salvation—is already of faith.

Whoever, you say, perishes after baptism perishes in Adam, because they did not believe in baptism. You would more rightly say that they perished after baptism because they were unwilling to join the duty of labor to the gift of grace, because negligence of habit and sloth of heart recalled them from vigilance of work and from the industry of attentive service. But if the fault of unbelief is the cause of perdition, what shall we think of little children, to whom, in the devotion of their parents and in the simplicity of nursing infancy, the full watchfulness of faith is assigned, who without any danger of unfaithfulness receive the immaculate gifts of regeneration, and many of them, as age advances, are plunged into the precipices of death? What reason drives this, except that they are overcome by enervating idleness? CHAPTER XV. ON THE RUIN OF THE ANGEL AND ON HOLY ANGELS HAVING THE LIKENESS OF GOD, AGAINST THE PERSUASION OF CERTAIN PERSONS. ... and he set forth the reason why they seemed broken: because of unbelief, he says, they were broken, not, of course, because of foreknowledge. He does not teach that God's munificence toward believers is special, when he shows that even those whom he accuses of unbelief could have believed.

In this manner he also shows that the unbelievers have received the abundance of faith, and, by saying that they are broken off from the natural branches, he has restrained the presumptuous with a salutary rebuke: if, he says, he did not spare the natural branches, lest perhaps he might not spare you either, and he added: and those, he says, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in. God is able to graft them in again. Therefore he here addresses magnanimity and humility of heart—humility, so that even one who has been grafted in may fear being broken off, and magnanimity, so that one who has been broken off may not lay aside hope of reward. Thus the diligent shepherd sought the lost sheep and, when found, carried it back to the fold on his subjected shoulders. How would he abandon the one who follows, when he follows even the one who abandons him? XVI. AGAINST THE CLAIM THAT CHRIST DID NOT DIE FOR ALL. They say that our Lord Jesus Christ did not take on human flesh for the salvation of all, nor did he die for all. The Catholic Church utterly detests this. For if it were so, how would the Apostle say: just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be brought to life? Here it cannot be said that the part stands for the whole.

For just as the first part of the sentence clearly shows that all die in Adam, without doubt what follows—that all will be brought to life in Christ—the apostle indicated that this pertains not partially but generally to all who are to be brought to life in Christ, that is, even the impious are believed to be raised by the power of Christ’s resurrection, although they rise not to be judged but to be punished. But when the apostle says: “who is the savior of all men, especially of the faithful,” what he said, “of all men,” looked to the purpose of divine goodness. But what he said, “especially of the faithful,” in that place he proclaimed and distinguished those who, through faith, through obedience, through a submissive will, received the gifts of the Redeemer. That Christ came for all, the same apostle declares: “The charity of Christ,” he says, “urges us, judging this, that if one died for all, then all are dead.” And he died for all, so that those who live no longer live for themselves, but for him who both died and rose for them. Therefore, because the general resurrection pertains to the power of redemption, if redemption does not pertain to all, neither will the resurrection pertain to all. And so, just as we all rise, although not all are changed, so we testify that the Lord Redeemer came with the benefit of general mercy, even if unbelief, because it was unwilling, did not receive it.

For at any time whoever has sought God has found him, and whoever has not been seen to have found him has not sought him. But if, as broken blasphemy impiously asserts, some seem to be preordained to death and others predestined to life, then Christ had no reason for coming, no necessity for dying—which his piety discovered—that could have availed anything. Therefore a new remedy could accomplish nothing if an ancient definition had fixed human affairs before the ages. But because the fatalistic persuasion, which introduces the force of compelling foreknowledge, is to be rejected entirely, for that very reason God gave the law and roused up the prophets in the intervening times, because he knew that the will of human choice had been weakened, not taken away. For if its vigor had entirely perished, how would it be read: "And in the law of the Lord was his will," and again: "I will willingly sacrifice to you, O Lord," and to Philemon: "that your good might be not from necessity but voluntary"? And when he says in the Gospel: "It is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world," we ought not to doubt at all that he gave himself for the whole world, who gave more than the whole world was worth, just as the blessed evangelist John testifies: "For he is the propitiation for our sins, and also for the whole world.

But you say: how did he redeem the whole world? Behold, we see men living in their sins; how shall we consider redeemed those whom we see remaining captives? At this point, let us gather understanding from the proposed analogy. For example, if some envoy or priest, about to intercede for a captive city, brings a larger price and receives the entire population of captives from the hand of him who held them by right of war, and the law and necessity of servitude is altogether relaxed, and during this, if perhaps some of the captives are tempted either by the delight of habit or by a flattering seducer, and each one, a slave of his own will, refuses the gratuitous benefit, has the contempt of the ungrateful diminished the price of grace? Has it brought any diminution of the redeemer's benevolence, that one who spurned freedom? It is not so. On the contrary, just as one who returns can be grateful to the redeemer, so one who remains is guilty of contempt. For he redeemed those who were willing, the rewarder of wills. For God, a just judge, desires the willing return of one whom he remembers fell unwillingly. Since this is so, tell me, whom has he excluded from the grace of redemption, who cancelled the general bond of the ancient condemnation?

Against this, that they interpret the evangelical sentence with an unskilled and dishonest sense. "No one," he says, "comes to me, unless the Father, who sent me, has drawn him." Who is so forgetful of his own salvation as to presume to deny the mercy of the one who draws? But truly impious is he who does not testify that it is offered to all, that it is bestowed upon all. In this place, he thinks that the salvation of the one drawn is the violence of the one drawing. It is clear that he knows nothing but the chains of abject servitude, who is ignorant of the bonds of devoted love. But this divine word specifically rebukes a man who is arrogant about his own strength and who impiously presumes upon his own labor. Since, in these matters, one attributes everything to labor, the other everything to grace, the Greek saying is fulfilled in both: "Excesses," it says, "are inequalities." Similar dishonesty and equal impiety is proven, if everything is ascribed to grace alone or if everything is ascribed to labor alone. What ought we to think in these matters, except that we should always subject labor to grace and always join grace with labor?

But before all things, let us shun the arrogance of labor and claim nothing for ourselves from its merits, lest we seem to imitate the Pharisee with the deadly presumption of boasting. For when that man, praying, spoke the undoubted truth—"I fast twice in the sabbath, I give tithes of everything I possess"—he emptied the faith of truth, because he mixed vanity with truth. Therefore, it is not the operation, but the elation of the heart that must be avoided. "No one," he says, "comes to me, unless the Father has drawn him." Is he, then, to be moved and dragged from place to place like some insensible and inert material? But to the Lord standing by and calling, the servant extends the hand of faith, by which he is drawn, and says: "I believe, Lord; help my unbelief." And so these two are joined together—the power of the one drawing and the affection of the one obeying—just as if a sick man tries to rise, and his strength does not follow his will, and for that reason he begs that a hand be reached out to him. The will cries out, because infirmity alone does not know how to lift itself. Thus the Lord invites the willing, draws the desiring, raises the striving. What, then, is "to draw" but to preach, to rouse with the consolations of the Scriptures, to deter with rebukes, to set forth things to be desired, to threaten things to be feared, to threaten judgment, to promise reward?

Hear the Lord, drawing not with hard bonds but with the hands of hope and the arms of love inviting, as the prophet says: "I drew them with the bonds of charity," and that: "After you we will run in the scent of your ointments." And therefore he says: "Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you," so that no one can excuse himself as excluded who is convicted of being invited. For although he foreknew that not all would exhibit obedience, yet he had given to all both the will and the ability. At this point let it be more carefully inquired whether each person wishes to be drawn or not. If he does not wish, he absolutely does not deserve the benevolence of the one drawing. But if he does wish, behold, the consent of man already cooperates with God. "No one," he says, "comes to me unless the Father has drawn him." Why, when you see the one drawing, do you pretend not to see the one coming? And therefore, just as it is of grace that he is drawn, so it is proved to be of obedience that he follows. If this mercy of the drawing God is given to the worthy, you perceive that it is already also bestowed upon human effort, such as it is, of service; but if to the unworthy, it follows that it is not denied even to the reprobate, and by evident compassion the goodness of God is offered indiscriminately to both the just and sinners.

But the one whom you perceive as drawing requires in every way those who keep the precepts, so that he who is called can be grasped and drawn by a kind of handle of the will. If you think he draws the unwilling, you impose the weight of injustice upon heavenly justice. But if he is found to draw the unwilling, how much more does he embrace the desiring! For even he who seems to be drawn without labor will have to labor in order to cling to the one drawing. For how many have come and withdrawn, because, drawn into grace, they did not wish to persevere with the desiring caller, as it is written in the Gospel: "Many of his disciples, hearing, went back and no longer walked with him." Likewise: "But Jesus said to the twelve: 'Do you also wish to go away?' Peter answered him: 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe and know that you are Christ, the Son of God.'" In both cases the will was free—in those who departed with ungrateful mind, and in these who remained with the freedom of faith.

XVII. Against What They Say, That God’s Violence Hardens a Person, So That He Cannot Come to Salvation. If He Himself, as you blaspheme, hardens, how does He say in the psalm: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts,” and again: “According to your hardness and your unrepentant heart, you store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath,” likewise in Jeremiah: “You struck them and they did not grieve, you crushed them and they refused to accept discipline. They hardened their faces upon the rock and refused to turn back.” Moreover, note the cause of hardening according to the judgment of the most wise Solomon, who says: “When the impious man has come into the depth of evils, he despises,” that is, from the habit of sinning, despair is born, and hardening is in fact generated from despair. When Jeremiah says: “They refused to turn back,” you see that the hardening of the heart is a crime of one’s own will. Dishonorable, greedy, and bloodstained is the slave of any crime whatsoever, if he does not struggle against his sins.

Let us see, then, from what this hardening arises. It is not at all from the violence of one who compels, but the occasion of hardening is from the clemency of one who relaxes, and while unfailing goodness sustains the delinquent for repentance, the elated security abuses the benevolence of the one who forgives. Hence the blessed apostle says: “Do you despise the riches of His goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you store up for yourself wrath on the day of wrath and revelation of the just judgment of God.” Do you note that the apostle, by saying “according to your hardness and impenitent heart,” ascribes the fault of the hardened heart not to God, but to man: “not knowing,” he says, “that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you store up for yourself wrath on the day of wrath and revelation of the just judgment of God.” Recognize that it is not God’s severity that hardens the hearts of the wicked, but His goodness. For because they are not afflicted by the labors of tribulations and by scourges on account of God’s patience, they are therefore corrupted by pride. That this is so, the prophet also clearly recalls, saying: “They are not in the labors of men, and they will not be scourged with men, therefore their pride has taken hold of them.” And thus, while punishment is reserved for judgment, and while the Lord’s long-suffering summons to correction, impunity fosters contempt in the servant.

who renders, it says, to each according to his works, certainly does not impose on man the necessity of sinning according to his foreknowledge, from whom he is read to exact an account according to his works. "I have sinned," says the prophet, "and what sad thing has happened to me?" That is to say: it is certain that God does not know sins, because he does not hasten to punish with vengeance; and again: "For he said in his heart: God has forgotten, he turns his face away, so that he does not see until the end." Therefore, while he says "God has forgotten," he judges the patience of the one who forgives as the negligence of one who is ignorant, and he considers forgotten what the magnanimous steward reserves for later. In this manner, the admonition of a punishing God corrects the one who fears, while the leniency of a moderate God hardens the one who scorns, so that the impious man thinks of God that, until the end, with ignorance obscuring, he does not see whatever at present the benevolence of the one who endures refrains from punishing; and, when contempt is proven by the one who insults, it is thought to have wrought hardening. For while he suspends his anger amid multiplying sins, he allows the sinner to insult.

XVIII. AGAINST THE CLAIM THAT MEN ARE DRIVEN INTO DEATH BY THE WILL OF GOD. If, however, as the heretic says, men are drawn into perdition by the will of God, how is it that in the reading of Kings the woman speaks to David: "God does not wish," she says, "the soul to perish, but he deliberates, thinking lest he who has been cast away should utterly perish"? Likewise Ezekiel, in the words of God, discourses thus: "I have labored with much toil, and its excessive rust has not come out of it, nor has your abominable filth been removed by fire, because I wished to cleanse you and you have not been cleansed of your impurities." Behold, God not only desires man to be saved, but sweats with much labor for his purification. Moreover, for the sake of justice, the effect of the healer's care is not accomplished by itself, because it awaits the will of the one who is to be cleansed. Likewise: "The bellows have failed, the blower has blown in vain. For your evils have not been consumed." When you hear of the office of the bellows or the blower, understand pure metal corrupted by adulterous mixture and vitiated from its natural sincerity. If man is driven into death by the impulse and will of God, why does God, again in Ezekiel, speaking reproachfully and as if grieving, say: "Why will you die, house of Israel, since I do not want the death of the impious, says the Lord? Return and live." And how does he drive them into death, as you blasphemously claim, when he invites them to life not only by the nod of a commander but by the affection of a suppliant?

I live,” says the Lord, “I do not desire the death of the impious, but that the impious man turn back from his way and live.” Let him who is summoned by the Lord to return recognize that the return is in his own power. “I live,” says the Lord. Lest the guilty one doubt concerning the indulgence, the judge confirms his clemency even by a certain interposition of an oath. But through the sentence of the Apostle Peter the will of the most benevolent author is intimated: “The Lord,” he says, “does not delay his promise, but acts patiently for your sake, not wishing any to perish, but to return to penance.” Penance is urged upon the sinner, so that in granting mercy justice may be able to have its place. “But he acts patiently,” he says, for the correction of man, because he impatiently desires, he patiently awaits. Likewise according to Luke: “And when he drew near, seeing the city, he wept over it, saying: ‘They will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.’

Here the heretics must be constrained. If the Lord had blocked the way of salvation for those who were perishing, then their lament over their destruction would be false. But if, as is evident, He truly grieved their ruin with sorrow, He showed that it was not His will that was lacking to man, but man’s consent to His will. What wonder if He sheds tears for the salvation of man, soon to pour forth His blood? Likewise in Matthew: “Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you, how often did I wish to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling?” Here the divine discourse does two things. For when it says, “how often did I wish and you were unwilling,” the goodness of intention is expressed in God, the freedom of choice in man. But by saying, “Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you,” it declares that He wished to save them, even as it plainly sets forth the reasons for which He ought to have denied them salvation. In this passage, the iniquity of a bloodthirsty mind is shown in the servant in a twofold manner, and the indulgence of a most benevolent will is revealed in the Lord. If God wishes man to perish, how is it that the prophet Micah also says: “I will show you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, namely, to do justice and to love mercy and to walk carefully with your God”? When it says, “and what the Lord requires of you, namely, to do justice,” He would not demand a ready will to perform a good work if He had not given it.

You see that, just as it belongs to God to exhort by way of challenge, so it is reserved for human obedience to follow. BOOK TWO. AGAINST THE IMPIOUS ASSERTION THAT PHARAOH’S HEART WAS HARDENED BY GOD. Here let us scrutinize the sense of Holy Scripture more carefully and consult the mind of the objector, as to whether Pharaoh was hardened by the Lord willingly or unwillingly. If unwillingly, you assign the blame for the hardening to him; if, however, unwillingly, you accuse the injustice of the God who hardens. For what justice would it be, that He should punish the one whom He Himself had hardened? But when the Lord Himself speaks to him and says: “Why will you not let my people go?” or “How long will you not submit to me?” — behold, where by divine testimonies we recognize that Pharaoh’s will was free. By this reasoning, the Lord says, “I will harden Pharaoh,” while I permit him to insult me in the ten plagues, which I remove at Moses’ entreaty. “I,” He says, “will harden Pharaoh’s heart.” Thus sometimes, even among men, we familiarly adopt this kind of expression; thus sometimes we reproach stubborn servants with our own gentleness, saying: “It is my patience that made you worst; it is my leniency that nurtured your malice and pride; it is my indulgence that rendered you contumacious; it is my dissimulation that animated your heart to be hardened against me.” And in this way, what is a testimony of virtue in the Lord’s goodness becomes a vice in the servant’s wickedness.

The divine word says: "And Pharaoh, seeing that rest had been given, hardened his heart." In this passage it is most clearly recorded that the granted rest hardened Pharaoh's heart. For what it says: "he hardened his heart" is not a passive verb, but an active one. Do you wish to know that it is by divine moderation that the hardening of the mind is brought about for a reason? This same Pharaoh, placed under the ten plagues, was softened when he was struck, and hardened when he was given respite. And thus impious severity inclined him, goodness hardened him, and, to show that he was of free will, when God punished, he released the people; when God spared, he recalled them. Observe how heavenly gentleness hardens the rebellious spirit. He grows meek when the scourges approach, insolent when they recede. Recognize the reason for the hardening and the force of his own will. The Hebrew people, whom he now orders to depart because of the contrition imposed upon him, and now forbids to depart because of the moderation of the plagues, in the end, under the pressing plagues, he even urgently hastens and compels them to leave. Therefore, he is not hardened by the great power of God, but becomes a despiser through the great patience of God. Finally, amid the alternating turns of punishment and remission, when scourged he is humbled, when heard he is raised up, when freed he insults, when afflicted he obeys; and the sons of Israel, whom he is known to have sent out after the tenth plague, his final will testifies that he could have sent them out at the first.

And when, in the midst of reproaches, he declares: "You are just, Lord, but I and my people are impious," he shows himself, not as corrupted by God, but by his own will, bearing witness to his own conscience. And do you presume to assert that God was harsh or unjust toward Pharaoh, whom even that sacrilegious man could not deny to be just and merciful toward himself? Does a Christian complain that God is harsh, whom even an impious man confesses to be merciful? Thus the dispensation of heavenly mercy works among men as the infusion of a rain shower does on earth. When a copious rain falls, a cultivated and tamed sod multiplies with the offspring of shoots, but an uncultivated and raw one fills up with useless weeds and thorns; and thus one and the same rain produces two different and contrary results, according to the cultivation or the effort, or the vice, as we read: for the earth, often drinking in the rain that falls upon it and generating the appropriate herb for those who cultivate it, receives a blessing from God. But producing thorns and thistles, it is reprobate and near to a curse, whose end is in burning. Recognize the earth under one and the same rain, now sprouting thorns and thistles, now bringing forth fruits fit for blessings. In the same way, while the mercy of God waits and spares, the obedient is corrected, the unrepentant is hardened.

II. That God’s Foreknowledge Does Not Violently Compel Human Wills Either to Right or to Wrong Actions. Those who maintain that the cause of human actions arises from it misunderstand God’s foreknowledge and predestination. First, we must discern what depends on what, or what proceeds from what. It is not that a man will do something because the authority of the one who foreknows will compel him, but rather that the freedom and will of the foreknown man imposes the quality of foreknowing upon God. Therefore, the cause of sinning is not imposed on man by the violence of foreseeing, but rather the order of foreknowing arises from the merits of men that are to follow. Thus, the general foreknowledge, which remains with God concerning the state of the whole world, arises from his power, but concerning the state of man, the qualities and species of foreknowing are borrowed from the inspection of the human act. But amid these things, you answer God and say: O Lord, how could I have managed to grasp the good, when you foreknew that I would be evil? It is not so. It is one thing that God wills, another that God permits. He wills the good, therefore, and permits evil; he foreknows both. By his just goodness he aids, by the freedom of the will he permits the unjust. What is from him is that he gives grace; what is from you is that he foreknows the offense. And hence it is that, concerning the wicked, he is found incessantly forbidding what he has foreseen.

Never would it command the perverse pursuits of men to be converted to better things, if it knew they could not be changed, and therefore divine providence will answer you accordingly: O man, I did not make you such as I foreknew you would be. I formed you good according to the law of my justice and, lest you follow evil, I admonished you; I foresaw you as evil according to the iniquity of your wills that would follow. Where there is no compulsion, but a consent to sinning, the complaint finds not the author, but the transgressor, at fault. If you look to the maker, O man, it says, you could have been good; if to the foreknower, you compelled me, by the order of your deeds, to foreknow evil concerning you. But you turn back and say: foreknowledge and predestination fix and excite the causes of human acts and merits. It is not so. Rather, the origin of human will is the source from which the nature of foreknowledge is derived. But that some are led by the depravity of their own thought and judge their actions to begin from foreknowledge—this proceeds from their own vice of mind and from incorrigible obstinacy, while they pretend to struggle against their passions and think they cannot do what they are unwilling to do. They call the law of immutable evil the habit of sinning. But you still say that the works and wills of men begin from the nod and impulse of celestial foreknowledge. It is not so. Rather, recognize this: that the foreknowledge of God takes its beginning from the matter of human acts.

what God should foreknow and foreordain concerning us, as far as the future is concerned, consists in the progress and decline of man. Take that example, in which the foreknowledge of God is turned by human action. To the bedridden King Hezekiah, death is brought, announced by the sad word of a truthful prophet in a response saying: Order your house, for tomorrow you will die. But he, turned to weeping, ordered his house, because he humbled his soul. He recognizes the prophet of proven sanctity, but despair is repelled by hope: prayer interdicts the oracle, supplication dissolves the definition, full faith in the saying overcomes the truth, the extreme weakness of the weeping one conquers the unavoidable cause of the announced death. Human frailty humbles itself, and the divine sentence suffers a certain force, as it is said: the kingdom of heaven suffers force. He would have died in every way, unless, terrified, he had supplicated. Choose whichever you wish: either confess that the predetermined necessity was changed, or prove that the truth was lied.

III. THAT IT IS ONE THING TO FOREKNOW, ANOTHER TO PREDESTINE. The Apostle says: those whom he foreknew and predestined to be made conformable to the image of his Son. It is one thing to foreknow, another to predestine. Foreknowledge, therefore, foreknows what is to be done; afterward, predestination describes what is to be rewarded. The former foresees merits, the latter preordains rewards. Foreknowledge pertains to power, predestination to justice. Foreknowledge subsists from another’s act, but predestination from its own judgment; the former reveals the deed, the latter condemns it; the former is a witness, the latter a judge. When the former has announced the cause, then the latter announces the sentence. From foreknowledge, what is ours is disclosed; from predestination, what is prepared. And thus, unless foreknowledge has investigated, predestination decrees nothing. The eyes, however, perform the function of foreknowledge; what has presented itself to sight, that it will see. Is it believed to have done what it is known to have detected? But since the eyes see those things not which they themselves inwardly produce, but which are outwardly presented to them, if they happen to catch sight of someone sinning, I think the crime will be judged not of the seer, but of the committer. Thus every offense will pertain not to the foreknower, but to the foreknown.

Thus also God foresees, before the day of man, those things which are to be done not by Himself, but by man. And just as existing matter brings it about that the keenness of the eyes beholds it, but the eye does not cause the thing to be seen to come into being, so too the prescience of God does not demand that those things which are to follow from man’s merits should happen, but it runs ahead of the things that will happen. And because it is the custom of sacred Scriptures, by means of whatever simile is taken up, to open the truth of the matter to be asserted—just as sometimes we read the kingdom of heaven compared either to a grain of mustard, or to the leaven of the woman in the Gospel, or to a net cast into the sea, and many such things—so too we, wishing to distinguish future things, gather that the kind of foreknowing is instituted. For if to foreknow is to compel, then he who foresees the sinner is himself the cause of the sin? Does God foresee adultery? Then does He Himself inflame the bones and marrows with the fires of obscene frenzy? Does God foresee the murderer? Does He Himself then suggest bestial motions to disturbed minds, does He Himself sharpen the sword of the bloody mind for the perpetration of the crime? Does He foresee the impious man? Does He then instigate the spirit of the madman to profane sacrifices? Is it to be believed that He is the author of those things of which He is the avenger? And amid these things, is He to be judged as pressing the assent of the captive will to evil, He who did not permit even the devil to compel the unwilling? It is the will that works the offense; it is the will that merits the help.

But you say: I find where grace alone, without the partnership of human will, operates; for in Bethlehem the whole multitude of infants attains so blessed a death solely from divine predestination. It is not so. For then perhaps the operation of grace alone would be at work, if the shedding of innocent blood had not intervened. But if the cause of the infants was then one and the same, why is not every infant saved there? For from the glory of that time, every age of the other sex is excluded. If the special condition of predestination makes a particular case for each individual, why do all the boys, born at different times of days or months, obtain one and the same felicity? But if a promiscuous principle of selection among the human race is at work, why is every female state excluded from this gift? Here, therefore, with the lot of the decree ceasing, death is inflicted on the boys by the fury of the devil, but the blessedness of death is conferred for the honor of God. Thus, predestination did not doom them to death, but the occasion of the cause consecrated them. Therefore, this slaughter of little ones was not ordained by God’s arrangement, but by the impiety of the enemy. But God, who uses even the evils of men well, works the glory of the slain from the crime of the slayers. The contriver of malice indeed arranges contrary things, but the author of goodness composes adverse designs for the better.

IIII. AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY: HE IS MERCIFUL TOWARD THOSE WHOM HE ACQUIRES, JUST TOWARD THOSE WHOM HE LEAVES, WHEN HE APPEARS BOTH MERCIFUL TOWARD THE WICKED AND ALSO JUST TOWARD THE GOOD. If God disposes of man’s state, as impiety blasphemes, not by equity but by power, then perhaps the one who knocked is shut out, and the one who did not seek is drawn in. And thus He will not seem to have been merciful toward the saved, to whom He did not give that they might merit mercy by their duty, nor can He be considered just toward the lost, who without their own fault are repelled from mercy. But if both are guilty by nature, then justice will be imperiled in the one who is unworthily chosen without merit, and mercy in the one who is consigned to perdition without judgment of sin. For by what mercy is the idle man honored, by what justice is the innocent man condemned? Therefore, while unskillfully taking away man’s freedom, it is impiously proven to deny justice to God. If you say that He is only merciful in the one acquired and only just in the one lost, in each person you will abruptly deny each virtue. For there will be no equity in this, if He chooses one not proven, nor goodness in that, if He destroys one without merit.

But we confess this twofold good in the works of God, joined in an inseparable embrace, as we read: “I will sing of mercy and judgment to you, O Lord,” and again: “The Lord is merciful and just, and our God will have mercy,” and again: “The Lord is merciful and compassionate and just.” For He is merciful even toward the lost, who seeks out and invites the erring, who long endures the delinquent. And just as He makes His sun rise over good and bad alike and rains upon the just and the unjust, so He has indifferently filled both with the light of reason, clothed them with the honor of His image, and generally summoned them to the grace of redemption. Was He not merciful toward the one on whom He heaped so much, whom He will judge from neglected and lost mercy? That is already a lesser matter, that we teach Him to be as just as He is merciful toward those He acquires. He is just, I say, also toward those whom He receives when they return, whom He does not abandon when they struggle, whom He makes worthy of freedom by faithfully serving. The heretic, however, denies that He is merciful toward the wicked because he does not believe that the opportunity of salvation was offered to those who fall into death. For the same reason, he does not assert that He is just toward the good, because he thinks nothing was conferred upon them for humble devotion. Therefore, He is merciful, because He instills in the wicked both the understanding of reason and the affection for goodness; He is just, because He sets a reward before the obedient; He is just, because He saves no one unwilling.

Thus the Apostle magnificently joins the duty of labor to the gift of grace, saying: "The laboring farmer ought to receive from the fruits." Behold how divine and human things are united in a wonderful exchange. Labor pertains to obedience, but the fruit of labor to grace. And again: "Each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor," while the Lord says in the Gospel: "When you have done these things, say: 'Unworthy servants, we have done what we ought to do.'" Note that he does not exclude the zeal of the work, but requires the obedience of the worker; he does not refuse the labor of servitude, but suggests the humility of the mind. Therefore, the vice which you think must be most ignorantly avoided in labor does not consist in the work, but in the heart. Therefore, I will labor with all my strength, but whatever I receive from heavenly bounty, I will attribute to grace, not to industry; I will call it a benefit, not a price; I will testify that it is a gift, not a debt; a remuneration, not a retribution. Thus, when we do something out of duty, we can by no means impute it to God, because we are paying what we owe. But you, do not begrudge divine goodness, if the work which, with its help, I have done well, or even if I have lost what I received. In this manner, they do not allow those who are converted by preceding evils to be healed.

V. AGAINST THIS, WHICH THEY SAY: NOT SO MUCH HE WAS UNWILLING AS HE WAS UNABLE TO BE SAVED, WHO PERISHED, ACCORDING TO WHAT WE READ: AND THEY WERE UNABLE TO BELIEVE. Among these things, when the evangelist John records: for this reason they were unable to believe, because Isaiah also said: he blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, in this place the expression, thus concluded, sounds as if a necessity of not believing seems to be imposed upon the unwilling. But the order of the reading in the following passages makes clear the cause or fault of unbelief having arisen from those things, saying thus: nevertheless, even many of the leaders believed in him, but on account of the Pharisees they did not confess, so that they would not be cast out of the synagogue. For they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God. Here he indicates absolutely, as we also read concerning Simon, that the power of belief was conferred even upon the unfaithful, to whom, just as the capacity for believing was present, so the will for confessing was lacking. That they believe is the generosity of grace; that they do not accommodate the profession of what is believed is the dishonesty of the mind, and it is fulfilled in them: he who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

See how the good of will and faith, when mixed with malice, corrupted it, just as in another place in the same Gospel the Lord himself says: How can you believe, you who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that is from God alone? You see, therefore, that, just as when causes are suppressed the truth is hidden, so when they are made manifest the obscurity is removed, which in the testimony of Isaiah seems to draw somewhat denser clouds, while it asserts that those whom their own wickedness had rendered deaf and blind were blinded by God, lest, with their heart turned to God, they be healed. And so, to defer a little what Matthew has expressed more clearly, according to the very rigor of the speech, which from the words of the prophet strikes the reader's ear more harshly, let us inquire more deeply why in this place the Lord is thought to be unwilling that they be healed, that is, lest, having taken up a momentary conversion, they abuse the benefits conferred, when, having been tested, they are found to have neglected and spurned what they received, with a relapsing weakness, the medicine, just as the one to whom the Lord himself speaks: You have now been made well, do not sin, lest something worse happen to you.

Attend to how the goodness of health burdens the impious. Thus Pharaoh is found to have insulted the mercy of God, who, when he was bound by plagues, repenting, converting, and humbling himself, as often as God wished to heal him, so often did he find him worse after the humanity of clemency. Why, I ask, does He refrain from healing these? Lest they become, of course, like that one who was sown on rocky ground, that is, who for a moment receives the word with joy, who believes for a time and in time of temptation withdraws. What is it to receive momentary health? That is, to believe for a time and in time of temptation to depart due to infidelity of spirit and to fail with a weak root at a slight heat of temptation. Let us see whom He attempted to heal and for whom it profited little due to subsequent unbelief. Behold, for that servant in the Gospel, oppressed by great debts and languors of the soul, the ten thousand talents which seemed to have been remitted to him are exacted with added torments through the crime of his own malice, where it must also be noted how acquired things are lost and benefits already conferred are revoked.

But also that man from whom the unclean spirit was driven out for a time is read to have been healed, concerning whom the divine word says: when the unclean spirit has gone out from a man, it wanders through dry places seeking rest and finding none. Then it says: I will return to my house, whence I came out. And coming, it finds it vacant, swept with brooms and adorned, that is, emptied of virtues and filled with vanities. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and entering, they dwell there, and the last state of that man becomes worse than the former. Behold, to whom the granting of health was of no benefit, upon whom, with multiplied evils, a harmful sickness settled and grew. But also in another place, he who, after receiving knowledge of the truth, that is, after the cure of health was conferred upon him by the truth, had polluted the blood of the covenant in which he was sanctified, that is, in which he was healed, is shown by the testimony of the apostle to deserve more severe punishments. Thus grace turns into guilt, unless guardianship follows. But in these matters, the evangelist Matthew, while he refers the hardened heart, the stopped-up ears, and the closed eyes to the fault of man, as to why they were not healed, taught with clearer sense and clarified reasoning, when, I say, he says: The heart of this people has become hardened, and they heard heavily with their ears, and they closed their eyes.

Does it not seem to you that, as if to those asking why those who see do not see and those who hear do not understand, he forthwith gave an evident explanation of the causes on account of which they neither see nor understand? Because they were unwilling to hear and to see, that is, to understand and to obey. Because, he says, not all obey the gospel, because all day long he spreads out his hands to a people not believing and contradicting, just as also the Lord himself already speaks through himself: I have begotten sons and raised them up, but they themselves have spurned me, and again: because they have abandoned the vein of living waters, the Lord, and in the Acts of the Apostles: Seeing, he says, the crowds, the Jews were filled with zeal and contradicted those things which were being said by Paul, blaspheming the way of the Lord, and likewise: Paul, he says, was insisting with his word, testifying to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ. But with them contradicting and blaspheming, shaking out his garments he said: Your blood will be upon your head, I, clean from this, will now go to the Gentiles. With them contradicting, he says, and blaspheming. See how the physician applies remedies and the sick man refuses. Whose hardness even the blessed Stephen rebukes with equal authority, saying: Uncircumcised in heart and ears, you have always resisted the Holy Spirit. Behold why they cannot see: because they resist the Holy Spirit and, with eyes voluntarily closed to themselves, they shut out the light of truth.

Therefore, what follows in the Gospel and says: "lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted and I heal them," that they might not be able to be converted and healed, is the vice of a hardened heart and the punishment of sin. "Lest," he says, "they be converted and I heal them." Here he does not deny healing to those who are willing, but declares that he is unwilling to heal those who resist, that is, that he ought not. The physician's goodness is most ready to apply the remedy, but the intemperance of the sick man opposes it. For whoever thinks that it is to be understood that he was unwilling to heal them absolves man and condemns the author. Therefore no one is excluded from the benefits of God who must first be judged concerning neglected benefits. VI. WHAT IT MEANS WHEN HE SAYS: "WHEN THEY HAD NOT YET DONE ANYTHING GOOD OR EVIL." But they attempt to confine that meaning of the apostle within the narrows of a Gentile decree, where he says: "This is a word of promise: according to this time I will come and there will be a son of Sarah, and not only that, but Rebecca, from one conception, having Isaac our father." For when they had not yet been born or done anything good or evil, so that according to election the purpose of God might remain, it was said not from works but from the one calling, because the greater will serve the lesser, as it is written: "I have loved Jacob, but I have held Esau in hatred.

In these words he wishes to be understood the impiety of gentile persuasion, that God, without any examination of a moderator between evil and good, not by the order of a ruler, but by the right of a master, renders one worthy of affection, another of hatred, one he receives with zeal, another he excludes by command, and between two lost men no consideration of labor, no devotion is held, but one without reason, with duties ceasing, is taken up, the other without discrimination is condemned. And thus, while in either one neither the substance of merit nor of fault exists, the cause of future judgment is altogether removed. But if this so unworthy confusion is also alien to the sense of the human mind, let us more carefully inquire what is fitting to divine justice, with the apostle discoursing. Placed between two peoples, the teacher of the Jews and of the Gentiles, when he says thus: "Because the greater will serve the lesser," in the elder the arrogance of Judea is reproved, in the younger the faith of the Gentile is chosen. Therefore, he draws upon himself the clouds of ignorance who does not so much accommodate himself with a following sense to the holy scriptures, as violently and presumptuously strives to drag and apply the holy scriptures to his own understanding, and persuades himself, according to his own capacity, with the reason of preceding or following matters omitted, from which the apostle did not at all intend to speak. But if you recur to the beginning of the very chapter which is in question, you will avoid all ambiguity without any difficulty.

If the teacher of the gentiles had begun to treat of the origin of men and had said that the whole course of a man’s life was predetermined from his origin and was entrusted more to necessity than to free will, because the lord of all, by the violent nod of his power and by his violent decree, left some to perdition and chose others for salvation, then perhaps, as if by running lines, this color of unjust persuasion could be asserted. But when the apostle weaves together the promises of God and the calling of the gentiles with examples drawn from higher up, and strives in every way to repress the presumption of the Jews, who were insolently puffed up from the works of the law, he does not establish a fatal decree in the origin of the elders Ishmael or Esau, but shows the election of the younger people in the blessing of Isaac and Jacob, and for that reason he preferred the younger to the elder not as if by the power of God, but by justice. For he foresaw the impiety of the Jews just as he foresaw the obedience of the gentiles. Therefore, because he says: “For when they had not yet done anything good or evil, it was said not from their works but from the one calling, that the younger would serve the elder,” it was indeed said from the one calling, yet it is manifest that it was said not to compel or repel, but to those who would believe and those who would not believe, so that, with divine justice remaining constant, it pertains to the will of man either to reject or to observe the precepts. Therefore, when you hear: “but it was said from the one calling,” understand him as inviting, not compelling.

Likewise, when he says: "not by works," he asserts that among them, the works of the Law—which had certainly not yet come—did not prevail, but rather that even before the Law, the gifts of divine mercy and munificence flourished. "Not by works," he says. You hear the works of the Law being destroyed, and yet, because of your inept understanding, you believe that others living under the law of grace can be saved without works of grace, while others, even with works, are excluded from the door of salvation by a natural bond and a fatal law. "I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau." How, according to the interpreter of a perverse understanding, is the heavenly judgment pronounced here concerning those not yet born? For one not yet born can be neither guilty nor beloved. He merits nothing who has not yet been brought into the light; but just as their future conduct was still to be determined, so the future offense known beforehand, the future election is foretold. For divine providence, as it knows how to judge deeds already done, so it does not know how to prejudge deeds still to be done.

Let no one therefore think that a necessity of diverse merits was fixed for brothers not yet born, since this is what the prophet Malachi recalls concerning them after the completed service of life, and pronounces a divine judgment with manifest equity about their past state: "I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau." What wonder is it, if justice loves innocence and rejects iniquity, before whom even future deeds are present? But that the younger is preferred to the elder by law, and Jacob is loved while his brother is neglected, obscurity arises for the somewhat slow-minded from this: that the testimony of love or hatred is thought to refer to brothers not yet born, while the evident reasons why one displeased and the other pleased are suppressed. In these two, therefore, the rights of nature are not fixed for men, but the statutes of justice concerning the faith of the Gentiles and the unfaithfulness of the Jews are narrated. For in this passage, not the persons of the brothers are described literally and specially, but the causes and mysteries of the matters, as the Lord says: "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will be divided from your womb." But if it were a question of a fixed law of origin, what need was there to insert the age of the elder and the younger, which was irrelevant to the matter, unless because among the progeny of the Jews the younger is always preferred to the elder in the calling of two peoples?

In this diversity of parts, however, many from among the reprobate Jews are chosen, and many from among the elect Gentiles are rejected, so that you may understand that in both peoples the just judge observes not a decree, but merits. But you say: when they had not yet done anything good or evil, they were already assigned to predetermined parts. What wonder is it if, since He foresaw their actions, He also prefigured their outcomes, and therefore, just as it was certain that they would arrange their course of living according to their own will, so by the power of God they are foreknown, and by His justice they are preordained? All this is predicted concerning them, not predetermined. Therefore, in Jacob the faithful people are described, in Esau the unbelieving people are designated, concerning both of whom it is said: What then shall we say, that the Gentiles, who did not pursue justice, seized justice—but the justice that comes from faith—while Israel, pursuing the law of justice, did not attain the justice of the law? Why? Because not from faith, but as if from works. For they stumbled upon the stone of offense. When it is said: not from works, you see that the works of the law are destroyed, and that obedience opened the way to mercy for the Gentiles, while for the Jews, preceding iniquity and unbelief prepared the offense. Not from works, he says, but from the one calling, it was said. He does not say that they were empty of their own works, but he denies that they were saved by the works of the law.

Far be it that the condemnation of origin should be thought to be set forth here, where the kindness of the one who calls and the humility of the one who obeys are proclaimed, and where the general teaching inculcates the riches of faith and instills the light of belief. Therefore, let not the assertion of iniquity, which speaks of a part of the human race as condemned in the very condition of its creation, intrude itself here. But the reasons why God loved Jacob and held Esau in hatred, the history of Genesis clearly expressed, so that you may understand that the divine pronouncement was not made without examination of works nor without clear reason, that Esau was held worthy of hatred, and Jacob of the love of God. Evident causes appeared plainly in the life of Jacob, which [determined] the judgment. VII. ....................... (WHAT IT MEANS THAT THE PLAN OF GOD REMAINED). VIII. (AGAINST THOSE WHO SAY: ADAM PERISHED ENTIRELY). ....... his appetite will be under you, and you will rule over him. Sin did not place itself above man under this law of its ordering, but subjected itself.

Behold, the most merciful Ruler, desiring His creation to be noble even after its fallen inclination, does not command that the will of man be the servant of all passion and concupiscence, but its mistress, and has placed the friendship or rejection of the seducer in the hand of man and set it in his judgment. He seems indeed to have permitted the appetite for each work to His choice, but for this reason, that the license of evil might become the glory of good. "But his appetite shall be under you, and you will rule over it." He is not bound by any necessity of sinning, to whose discretion it is committed that he may rule, by the freedom of the superior, over sin. But a degenerate spirit, who with the benefit of God could obtain victory over sin, prefers, with offense to God, to be a servant of sin. These things being so, after the first man's transgression, it was not the death of free choice that followed, but its weakness; not impossibility, but difficulty, with the proposed labor. But even Abel merited pleasing the divine sight through the good implanted generally by God, that is, through the affection of his own will. This man, therefore, to whom the perfection of an immaculate life gave the surname "the Just," by whose instruction would he have become a follower of justice, unless the law inscribed in his very bowels had taught him?

or how would he have known to choose the offerings pleasing to God and to be taken up by celestial fire from the fats and first fruits, unless the faith which had made him a lover of virtues had inspired him, as we read: "Faith bears witness that Abel offered a much greater sacrifice than Cain, his gifts being acceptable to God." This he could by no means have obtained unless the servant's obedience had approached the Lord's gift. And do you judge that he has nothing of his own by God's ordinance, whose devotion God bears witness to? You see that the good of belief is not a new privilege but an ancient one, and that even in the very beginnings of the coalescing world, the human mind was endowed by the supreme Author with intellect and reason, and also with faith. Therefore, even then He gave His knowledge to the soul when He deigned to entrust His image to it. IX. IN WHOSE IMAGE AND LIKENESS THE FIRST MAN WAS CREATED. But you say: Why do you join the image of God to my freedom of will, when that eminent Creator, who was to be the future Redeemer in later ages, made man more in that image which He was to assume from man through the Virgin? This persuasion is put forward by many, but it is stripped of all reason, because the beginnings of the prior cannot in any way assume the image of the much later. Or how could he who was created first receive the likeness of one not yet created? Among these things, it could more easily be believed that the first Adam transmitted his own image to the second Adam according to the order and reason of time.

But it could by no means happen that the one who was being formed many centuries before would be called the image of a substance not yet existing, and that a rash assertion would be proven, that, as they say, the author of the likeness to be born from a virgin would be preceded by the person of the most ancient protoplast. To this is added that that matter would greatly humiliate the glory of primeval innocence in man, if the immaculate one were fashioned after the model of him who was to heal the stains of him who would sin, so that, when transgression did not yet exist, the form of the future intercessor would nevertheless already bear the guilt of transgression. Consequently, it was not fitting that the consummate and perfect one be made in the image of him through whom the lost one had to be restored, lest under the name of the coming physician, at the very time of the happy beginning, ruin seemed to be foretold for the one to be undermined. Therefore, it is more in accord with reason that in man, to whom in that likeness itself the gift of grace is given by God, not of nature, this image is rather called that which is received from a prior and superior source, and that the likeness is judged to have been conferred more fully from the truth, which, however, the father rightfully shares with his natural son. Then too, it must be noted more carefully that our Lord Jesus Christ in the first age conferred better things from his own, but in the second age he received worse things from ours.