Liber De Praedestinatione Et Gratia

BOOK ON PREDESTINATION AND GRACE. CHAPTER ONE. Since in the sacred volumes of the Scriptures—whether those of the prophets speaking with prophetic spirit, or those narrating past events with historical truth, or those handing down counsels for life by apostolic authority—some statement sounding as if diverse may move the reader or disturb the hearer, it must be held with certain and unshaken faith that the mysteries of one and the same Spirit, and of that Spirit besides whom nothing whatsoever is true, sound more clearly in one place, somewhat more obscurely in another. And so, if something is left suspended in hidden significance, or briefly indicated by the writer and set forth less fully than the dullness of the human heart required, let the reader know that truth appears more clearly here, lies hidden more deeply there, but is never absent. But if, even on account of the magnitude of the matter under inquiry, the understanding does not easily meet the senses of the inquirer—especially if, concerning the immutable will of almighty God, both statements of canonical authority sound diverse—then all those things are to be directed to the rule of piety, so that it be held with unshaken definition that God is not unjust, nor does He loosen the merits of individuals by some confused acceptance of persons, nor is He weak, as if He were unable to accomplish whatever He willed.

CHAPTER TWO. Therefore, under the yoke of this definition, lest necks that are illiberally free run riot into sacrilegious temerity, let us, as far as God grants, recall the hidden aspects of this question, which the blessed apostle Paul, in various places, with words not a little discrepant, sets before studious investigators, and through which he speaks the truth itself. For, concluding a very broad and robust disputation on the pre-eminence of God's grace, he says: "Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills" (Rom. 9:18); while in another epistle, concerning divine benevolence, he himself speaks thus: "Who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4). For it occurs to one why some of them perish, since omnipotent God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; then again why he hardens others, while having mercy on others; or how he wills all men to be saved, when he himself hardens some so that they are not saved. This, as far as human justice is concerned, seems unjust. But who is so foolish, or rather who is so blasphemous, as to say that the justice of God should be disputed by the law of human justice? For that justice, if it opposes the justice of God, is certainly unjust. For it is manifest that from him who is supremely just, everything that is in any way just flows. Who, then, will be the one who subjects the unchangeably abiding wisdom of God, which creates, rules, and preserves all things that exist, to the judgment of human wisdom?

CHAPTER THREE. Concerning this, the same apostle says, because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy of God (Rom. 8:7). And elsewhere, The wisdom of this world is foolishness before God (1 Cor. 3:19). Therefore, the majesty of divine wisdom is not to be debated by the judgment of human vanity. CHAPTER FOUR. But if anyone, deceived by nurturing his own sins, whether by pretense or shadow or the flattering pride of arrogance, says what the blessed apostle Paul immediately saw that some would say—for he added, Someone will say: If He has mercy on whom He wills, and hardens whom He wills, what then is the complaint? For who resists His will? (Rom. 9:19)—let him know that this sentence compels and constrains us all the more to humility and piety. For when the most learned teacher refers everything to God and denies human strength, what else does he urge than that, suspended with our whole heart upon God, we should ask from Him the aids of salvation? Therefore, let him whom this diversity in the dispensation of divine grace moves, and who thinks it unjust that one receives what is denied to another, understand how divinely the Psalmist spoke: All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps. 25:10); and let him recognize that God administers human affairs with such judgment that He either justly renders due punishments or mercifully forgives them. For the stain of the corrupted root has been so spread through the propagation of generations by the transmission of offspring that not even an infant of one day is free from the guilt of the first transgression (Job 14:4, following).

LXX), unless it be freed by the undeserved grace of the Savior. But if even here one who could not have his own is not without sin, it is established that he has drawn that alien sin of which the Apostle says: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and thus it passed into all, in whom all have sinned (Rom. 5:12). He who denies this, certainly denies first that we are mortal. For if, as the Apostle says, Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death: death could not enter unless sin entered. And since death is not a condition of nature, but a punishment for sin, punishment must necessarily follow sin. But because death has passed into all men, sin must necessarily have passed into all. How original sin arises with little ones we cannot see with the eyes of the flesh. But because we see all those carnally born from Adam, even those who have already been reborn in Christ, bound by the law of death, through this which we see—that little ones always die—we are compelled to confess that little ones are always born with original sin. For it could more easily happen that, although sin passes away, punishment would not follow at all, than that, with no sharing in sin, one who has no guilt should receive a share of the punishment.

If, therefore, as has appeared, we are all born debtors from the seed of the transgressor, since in him all have sinned, as the Apostle says, and that mass from which we descend is already condemned from the beginning; let no one dare to complain of his own hardness, nor of his own punishment, which is owed even in the absence of personal sins, solely by the condition of birth. That God, by a gratuitous calling, bestows undeserved mercy upon those who are converted, is to be referred not to the justice of the dispensation, but to the most merciful generosity (or freedom) of the giver, by the reason of truth. Will a debtor dare to accuse a creditor of injustice, if, having forgiven another, he has exacted from him what was owed? If, therefore, in human contracts there is no ground for a plea of prescription on this account, so that a debtor may say that it is unjustly exacted from him because he knows that another debtor has had what he owed forgiven by the same creditor; who would break out into such madness of profane speech as to accuse God of injustice, if He has bestowed undeserved grace upon one, and rendered deserved punishment to another?

CHAPTER IV. Therefore, from the earlier part of this sentence, which says: "Whom he wills, he has mercy on," I think that no one except one unworthy of mercy dares to dispute. But what follows: "Whom he wills, he hardens," there the intention of the human mind is briefly confounded by the novelty of the word. But it is not to be understood as if God works in man that hardness of heart which did not exist. For what else is hardness than to resist God's commands? Whence the blessed Stephen said to the people: "Stiff-necked, and with uncircumcised heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit" (Acts 7:51). He who thinks this is done by God, because it is said: "Whom he wills, he hardens," let him consider the beginning of transgression, and let him attend to the commandment given by God, through which the guilt of transgression was worked in the heart, although not even by him, if he had denied assent, could the tempter have compelled him. Therefore, whatever punishment a man born into that transgression suffers, let him justly acknowledge it to be rightly rendered. For God is said to harden him whom he has not wished to soften. Thus also he is said to blind him whom he has not wished to enlighten. Thus also to repel him whom he has not wished to call. For those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he justified (Rom. 8:30). For he himself gave that we exist, he himself that we can be good.

CHAPTER V. For His divinity foreknew us, His wisdom fashioned us, His justice condemned us, His grace freed us. For the world, although it began in time from the moment it was made, could have no beginning in that light of divine foreknowledge by which it was to be made; and however many men have been born from Adam down to the present day, or will be born by the propagation of generation after our own age, they have already been born before God, and, having completed the whole course of their life, have passed away, yet they remain in that light of the divine gaze. For God, who is confined by no place and anticipated by no time, is full of the knowledge of all things, both of past memory and of impending events; He neither turns back in recollection to the past, nor stretches forward in hope to the future. And whatever things exist at all, which are agitated by the motions of time, from that beginning in which the Word was, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word (John 1:1), up to the end of all ages—concerning which, when blessed Moses said: "Lord," he says, "who reigns in the age and the age" (Exodus 15:18), and still neither are future things hoped for, nor have past things passed away, but they are always determined in the present of the divinity. Therefore, from Him, because He is eternal and prescient, and because He is both just and merciful, who exercises due severity and shows undeserved mercy, and has power in creating and choosing men, as a potter has over clay, some vessels have been made for honor, others for dishonor.

Before He made us, He foreknew us, and in that foreknowledge, when He had not yet made us, He chose us. But by whom could this be done, except by Him who calls all things that are not as though they were (Rom. 4:17)? For the Apostle says, Who chose us before the constitution of the world (Eph. 1:4). Within the world we were made, and before the world we were chosen: and thus in one and the same, neither passing nor future, but continuous time—or if it can be expressed in some other way, if indeed there is such a thing with God—both to be foreknown, and to be made, and to be chosen, and with His foreknowledge remaining unchangeably to choose those to be made: whom He was about to make as those to be chosen. These things, indeed, as far as the rule of faith is concerned, have been said with God enlightening. CHAPTER VI. But now I see what even here malicious perversity can object. For it follows that if those whom He predestined, He also called, and if those whom He called, He also justified (Rom. 8:30), then those who are neither predestined nor called, and consequently not justified, ought to be innocent of all fault, and it would be unjust for punishments to be demanded from them on that day of judgment for the depravity of their past life. Let the Apostle Paul say to these, Is there iniquity with God (Rom. 9:14)? Let him immediately answer, Far from it.

And when it has been established in the human mind with sound piety that there is no injustice in God, let him understand thus: "He has mercy on whom He will, and He hardens whom He will" (ibid., 18); as if to say: He has mercy on whom He will, and on whom He will not, He does not have mercy. And again, let him understand this same thing as if it were said: To whom He will, He gives; and from whom He will, He demands a debt. Whoever persists in calling this unjust, let him hear the Apostle: "O man, who are you to answer God back" (ibid., 20)? For such impiety the apostolic authority fittingly rebukes, striking with the weight of names in exaggeration, when it says, "O man, who are you to answer God back?" Man answering God, clay answering the potter! For the same Apostle added: "Does the clay say to him who fashioned it: Why did you make me thus? Or does the potter not have the power from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor" (ibid., 21)? If therefore he has, indeed because he has, the power, the potter of clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor, O man, who are you to answer God back, because He has mercy on whom He will and hardens whom He will?

But before the blessed Apostle arrived at such a conclusion by the order of his argument, he took this most important example from the ancient Scriptures, in which he might teach the hardening that is said to come from God. He says: "The Scripture says to Pharaoh: 'Because I have raised you up for this very purpose, to show my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed throughout the whole earth'" (cf. Exod. 9:16). Moreover, that God hardened his heart is said most openly in the same Scripture, when Moses was speaking about the signs that were to be performed against the Egyptians through him. For it says thus: "But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, so that he will not let the people go" (Exod. 4:21). Hereupon the cunning slanderer, boasting openly, weighs the justice of God according to his own will, and replies with as great an outcry as he can: "If He has mercy on whom He wills, and hardens whom He wills, what more is sought? For who resists His will?" To this arrogance the Apostle says: "Man, who are you to answer God?" (Rom. 9:19-20). But let him who, piously seeking, desires to find something, reread that passage of the same Scripture where first the fire appeared to Moses in the bush, and so kindled his heart with the ardor of divine love that, in the sight of kings, as David says (Ps. 118:46), he spoke the testimonies of the Lord without confusion; and there he will find that this whole matter—that God hardened Pharaoh's heart—pertains not to God's operation, but to His foreknowledge.

For when the Lord speaks concerning the bush, he says: "But I know that Pharaoh, king of Egypt, will not let you go, except by a strong hand. But I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the marvels which I shall do, and afterwards Pharaoh, king of Egypt, will let you go" (Exod. 3:19-20). This is the first utterance of God, by which he indicates the future will of Pharaoh, as he had foreseen it. Later, in the midst of the very showers of miracles, he is read to have said: "But I will harden the heart of Pharaoh, that he may not let the people go" (Exod. 4:21). Where it is now clearly understood that he repeated his first sentence. For what is "I will harden the heart" except "I will not soften"? For it appears that, with justice remaining toward some and grace flowing toward others, the sentence of that Scripture was fulfilled, because God said to Pharaoh: "I have stirred you up for this very purpose, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth" (Exod. 9:16). For God using even evils well, by the hardening of Pharaoh, the plagues of Egypt, and so many and such great miracles performed in that people both equally and in abundance, what else was accomplished, except that the power of God, great in itself, full in itself, came to the knowledge of the human race, and was to benefit not God, but those reading and believing? That Pharaoh was not to be changed, and that entire people, who after so many blows scarcely refrained from pursuing the people of God, once rescued, even with arms and war, God foresaw with that deep light of his providence.

But the destruction of the perishing He wished to be an argument of salvation for the vessels of mercy predestined by Him, and He used the perdition of some for the salvation of others, because the potter has the power, from the same mass, to throw one vessel into honor, another into dishonor (Rom. 9:21). CHAPTER VII. The blessed Apostle, shortly before, recalling this judgment of divine power in the election of men, demonstrated it with the strongest examples, when he spoke of Rebecca’s offspring, still within the womb, referring everything to the grace of God. For thus he says: “But also Rebecca, from one intercourse having Isaac our father, when they had not yet been born, nor had done any good or evil, so that according to election the purpose of God might stand, not from works, but from the one calling, it was said, because the elder will serve the younger, as it is written: ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated’”; and immediately he subjoined: “What shall we say? Is there injustice in God?” (Rom. 9:10, 11, 12, 13; Gen. 25:23; Mal. 1:2). And denying, he answered: “Far from it,” so that the rest which follows is suspended and referred to this sentence, and when referred, is resolved, by which he denied that there is injustice in God. But what the intention of this apostolic disputation accomplished here is sufficiently clear.

For not only did he compare brothers, but also twins; and not only twins, but even those conceived in the same union and poured forth in the womb: so that, since in those not yet born and not yet having done anything, there could be no moments of merits, nor indeed from the merits of the parents, which could vary at different times, would any obstacle be left against grace. For the merits of the parents, even if we allow that the divine either turned away or reconciled protection for the little ones, whether good or bad, concerning the twin offspring, which were conceived in the same union and brought forth into the light at the same moment, ought to have been equal. But if it is said that the divine judgment distinguished their future characters, certainly that which the Apostle set forth will be nullified, saying: Not from works, but from the one calling it was said, because the elder will serve the younger. For he did not say: From past works, but when he said generally: Not from works, he intended both past and future to be understood there: past, of course, which were none, and future, which were not yet. Jacob was predestined as a vessel for honor, because it was said not from works, but from the one calling: The elder will serve the younger.

CHAPTER VIII. And lest the vessels predestined for honor, by attributing something to their own powers, should deny the grace of the Creator, the Apostle elsewhere called them vessels of mercy, so that they might recognize that whatever they were, they were by mercy. For thus the same Apostle says elsewhere: "And this is not from you, but is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). The blessed Moses also says in Deuteronomy to the people: "And do not say in your heart: My strength and the power of my hand have made this great might for me; but you shall remember your Lord God, because He Himself gives you the strength to do might, so that He may establish His covenant, which He swore to your fathers" (Deut. 8 and following). Likewise a little later in the same place to them: "Do not say," he says, "in your heart, when the Lord your God has consumed those nations before your face, saying: Because of my righteousness the Lord has led me to inherit this good land. Not because of your righteousness, nor because of the sanctity of your heart, do you enter to inherit their land, but because of the iniquity of those nations, the Lord will destroy them from before your face" (Deut. 9:4-5). Behold how ancient a dogma of the Holy Spirit, not only preached in apostolic letters, but also in prophetic writings and even in the very beginnings of the Israelite people, confirmed by the voice of the Holy Spirit. The assault of novel presumption tries to overturn it.

Clearly, in one and the same passage of Scripture, the blessed prophet shows both the goodness and the severity of God, saying that the inheritance of that land was not given back on account of the people’s righteousness, but was granted solely by the grace of the merciful one, while those others were driven out on account of their own injustices. Behold, in those, iniquity is justly punished; in these, no righteousness is gratuitously rewarded. Nor was it enough for the blessed Moses to have said that the inheritance of the land was not granted to the Israelite people on account of their own merits, unless he also added what he subjoined, whereby he showed them to be unworthy of every good. For it follows after what we recalled above: “And you will know today that it is not on account of your righteousnesses that the Lord your God gives you this good land to inherit, because you are a stiff-necked people” (Deut. 9:6). Who here would say that a reward is given according to the debt of preceding merits? Who would not confess it to be an unowed grace? How often does the prophet say: “They tempted him in the desert” (Ps. 94:9)? How often did they deserve the anger of God by the turning away of their heart, and yet he saved them on account of his mercy, so that he might make known his power (Ps. 105:1, 8)? The Apostle says this again: “He endured with much patience the vessels of wrath fit for destruction, so that he might show his riches in the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory” (Rom. 9:22-23).

CHAPTER IX. But lest a person, once again dissolved into the utmost dregs of sloth, should believe that the arduous path of virtue—though traversable only with labor, even with the help of God’s grace—could be brought to him without effort, and should apply no industrious labor to the pursuit of his own advancement, God so divided times and duties between himself and man that we would take the beginnings of good things from his calling, but, once called and enlightened, we would know the ways of his commandments by the understanding of a good disposition, and would either choose or abandon them by free will. Yet if, supported by his help, we were to follow them with constant devotion, in the end he would crown the obedience in us that is not resistant to his commands. But the free will that we have from him flows with a propensity toward wickedness, and when it can do nothing without God’s help for the character of virtue, it subsists, supported by its own strength, fit for every kind of sin. For the law of sin born in the members draws us, and God, according to his justice, abandons those who withdraw from the light yoke and light burden of his commandments and flow down, by the free will of their will away from justice, into the harshest servitude of sin.

Those who have received the gift of calling with a fitting piety, who are not subjugated by carnal allurements, who have lacked the vice of boasting, the torches of avarice, the wind of pride, and, as far as is in man, preserving the good things of God in themselves, have directed all their zeal toward spiritual exercises; and He both aids them as they contend in the struggle of this life, and bestows eternal crowns upon the victors. He Himself, on the other hand, abandons those who go astray, hardens those who resist, and condemns those who despise. CHAPTER X. Concerning the distribution of these degrees, which God either works in us or commands us to work in some way, let us interrogate Him from whose words the question arose which, if the Lord is present, we attempt to untie, so that, by His meanings, set forth through various volumes—indeed, with varied expression but with one and the same intention—if anything lies hidden in this place, it may be unlocked by the comparison of another opinion. We read that the Apostle Paul was called by God, either in that book where his deeds are narrated with all truth, or he himself confesses in his Epistle, saying: "Paul, servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle" (Rom. 1:1). In the second place, however, having followed the calling and having worked everything that was in man, he himself says thus: "I have labored more than all of them" (1 Cor. 15:10). But lest he attribute even this to himself, he added with solicitous piety: "Not I, however, but the grace of God with me" (Ibid.). Now, therefore, for one both called and having followed the calling through works of righteousness, what else remained?

unless, freed from the body of this death, he might attain to the blessedness of that other life which is promised to all the saints by the mouth of Truth? That this is granted not by any human merits but by the bounty of God’s giving grace, he himself answers, after the groans with which he had said: “Wretched man that I am, who will free me from the body of this death?” “The grace of God,” he says, “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 7:24, 23). Therefore, this distribution, by which we have said that men are called by God with no preexisting merits, and that those called need the aids of God to do anything good, the Apostle shows by an example taken from the old writings, after he had referred that election of the two twins, with all rejection of praise of merits, to the grace and judgment of God. Seeing what impious garrulity might blaspheme, he said: “Is there iniquity in God?” (Rom. 9:14). And he continues: “Far from it.” And as if it were said to him: “How do you prove it?” he thought it too little for his authority to suffice for his teaching, unless he also taught his opinion by an example from the Law. For he wished what Moses had said to be understood thus: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I show mercy” (Exod. 33:19): so that we believe the first mercy is granted to men by calling, which alone is not sufficient for living rightly, if the one who called should abandon them.

Therefore it is added: "And I will bestow mercy on whom I will have been merciful," so that it is manifest that even the works of mercy themselves, which we seem to perform, are received from God, and by them we merit God's mercy. For thus it is said in the Gospel: "Blessed are the merciful, for God will have mercy on them" (Matt. 5:7). The Apostle would never have taken care to insert this testimony into his disputation concerning the goods of grace unless he had understood it in this way. CHAPTER XI. — If, however, anyone is troubled that not all, even among those who are called, merit to attain to the second grace, that is, to the gift of living rightly, as the Lord says in the Gospel, "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Matt. 20:16), let him understand from this what it is that he strives to defend against the grace of God, who flatters himself concerning free will. For whoever, having abandoned the gift of divine vocation, flows back again into impious perfidy, it is their own free will that suffices for them to accomplish what they wished, since they themselves are the ones abandoning God's grace. For the Psalmist saw how the order of God's mercies, which the Apostle interprets from the sense of Moses, is sung with the truth of prophetic spirit: "Listen," he says, "my people, and I will testify to you" (Ps. 80:9). What did he want them to hear, that he spoke with testimony? What indeed, if not the commandments of life? As another prophet says: "Listen, Israel, to the commandments of life" (Baruch 3:9).

But what these commandments of life are, the Psalmist adds and continues: "I am the Lord your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt" (Ps. 80:11). And he shows that these are the commandments of life by the prayer with which the Lord commended his disciples to the Father, saying: "For this is eternal life, that they may know you alone as the true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent" (John 17:3). After this calling, what follows is that which both pertains to human efforts and shows that without Him it cannot be fulfilled. For this is what the Apostle says: "That from Him we have both the will and the ability to accomplish for good will" (Phil. 2:13). For from Him we have the will, because He calls and enlightens; from Him we have the ability to accomplish, because it pertains to us to strive for the good things which He has also granted us to will. Nor was it incautiously that the Apostle, after saying "that from Him we have both the will and the ability to accomplish," added "for good will," so that they might see again and again where they have, from God's justice, the free will of which they boast. But let us see that order by which the Lord distributes various mercies in the dispensation of times, just as the Apostle understood Moses to have said, also in the continuous prayer of this psalm. For what does he say, after he had taught those who were called, saying: "I am the Lord your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt"? "Open your mouth," he says, "and I will fill it" (Ps. 80:11). Here again something appears to have been reserved for man, which he must do through free will.

He is commanded to open his mouth, but God promises to fill it. Just as He also said to His disciples in the Gospel: "Do not think about how, or what you should say. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you" (Matt. 10:19-20). He referred this only to them, that they should willingly endure every necessity of tribulation for the sake of truth, but He promised the effect on His own part. Therefore, what place is reserved for free will, so that without God's help human nature, supported by rational dignity, might suffice for itself to accomplish what it wills, the Psalmist immediately shows: "And my people did not hear my voice, and Israel did not pay heed to me" (Ps. 80:12). He who had said when calling, "Hear, my people, and I will speak; Israel, and I will testify to you"; what had he, testifying, commended to the minds of his hearers? "I am your Lord God." What also had he commanded to be done by those whom, freed from the land of Egypt and the darkness of ignorance, he had led out into the light of his commandments, by the splendor of his calling? "Open," he says, "your mouth." And immediately, as if to say, "If you wish to open it while abandoning me, it will be of no use," he added, "and I will fill it." What, then, does he who had called and taught those called, add with a complaining voice about them: "And my people did not hear my voice, and Israel did not pay heed to me"?

Now let the defender of free will against God come forth and hear the Apostle speaking about his own good labors: "Not I, however, but the grace of God with me" (1 Cor. 15:10). Let him hear the voice of God in the Psalm, speaking about those whom He had abandoned: "And I let them go according to the desires of their heart; they will go in their own wills" (Ps. 80:13). Let him hear the same Apostle attributing to himself only evil things, but to grace all good things, concerning the various times of his life: "I who was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor," he says (1 Tim. 1:13). And in another place: "By the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor. 15:10). When he said, "I who was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor," no mention of grace was joined to the wicked work, because the nature of human freedom suffices for itself, as has been said, for wickedness. But when he spoke of the blessedness of his present life, he said, "By the grace of God I am what I am." And that order by which God shows mercy by calling, and thereafter shows mercy by aiding in the beginnings of efforts, as the series of the Psalm has narrated and set forth, the blessed Apostle Paul also preserved in a continuous narrative. For if the selected testimonies are read again in the order he set, he speaks thus: "By the grace of God I am what I am." This is the first mercy, which the works of free will follow. But so that the good works might follow the calling of the Apostle Paul, what does he say? "And His grace in me was not empty." For what did you do? "More," he says, "I labored than all.

Do not be too proud, O defender of free will, hearing Paul boasting about his own labors; note what follows: "Not I, however, but the grace of God with me." I think, indeed, that none of those who, against the grace of God, exalted before the fall, as it is written (Prov. 16:18), blaspheme in their heart, will assume such shameless arrogance as to deem themselves equal to the merits of the blessed prophet David, or even think him to be surpassed. Let us, for the moment, pass over that first reward which no one denies was not owed—namely, the bestowed kingdom—and let us weigh the intentions and affections of his prayers and confessions. For he himself defines in the Psalm: "Blessed is the man whom you, O Lord, have taught, and whom you have instructed in your law" (Ps. 93:12). But let us see whether, for him already taught and sufficiently instructed in all knowledge of the law according to Jewish instruction, this alone sufficed for blessedness. Why, then, did the same man again cry out to the Lord: "Give me understanding, and I will search your law, and I will keep it with my whole heart" (Ps. 118:34)? It was not enough that he had asked for understanding to search the law, unless he also signified that help was necessary for keeping it, saying, "And I will keep it with my whole heart"; as if he were saying, "Then I will keep it with my whole heart, if you give understanding.

CHAPTER XII. Let that proud defender of his own will now respond to this: that the prophet, for understanding the divine commandments alone—which he was nevertheless to fulfill by his own strength—sought the help of divine assistance. If this is so, I would like, blessed David, to inquire a little into the hidden depths of your thoughts. Whence, I ask you, comes this struggle of flesh and spirit? Whence the apostolic contest, as you yourself bear witness? Even after you have been enlightened and instructed with the gift of understanding, which you had divinely sought, you cry out and say, "Avert my eyes, lest they see vanity" (Psalm 118:37). For, having received the discernment to distinguish vanity from truth, as you had begged, why do you not turn your eyes away from the vanity that displeases you? If you condemn avarice, why do you not, by your own separate will, incline your heart toward the commandments of salvation, but instead, as one weak in all things, cry out to God, "Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to avarice"? Is it not because the law of sin, born in the members, suggests avarice, and the holy man still cannot by himself avert his eyes? And thus the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (Galatians 5:17); from which conflict only grace frees us, which is given to small and great alike through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 7:25). For the will is present, but I do not find the accomplishment (Romans 7:18).

Although the willing itself is not from us, but is a gift of God, since from Him we have both the willing and the accomplishing of good will (Phil. 2:1). Therefore you are blessed, because you agree with the apostles of Christ both in doctrine and in the equality of the struggle: for in your writings we recognize the battles of the apostles, and we find your contests in the apostolic letters. CHAPTER XIII. Whence comes this diversity of things and wills in one and the same man, who consists of soul and body, unless it be that, containing the just judgments of God, man finds within himself the penalties of disobedience and the contumacy of the inferior part against God, the creature against the Creator, the lowly against the highest? For by what justice, even if the worse served the better, would a creature serve a creature, if that creature, whatever it was, refused to serve the Creator? But not even this suffices for punishment: that the worse part should resist the better affections of the heart, unless it also often overcomes, leads into captivity, possesses, and not only claims for the service of its own motion the very law of sin in men born in Adam, but also, in those reborn in Christ, with the suggestion persisting, it assails them. Because truly through the gift of regeneration the guilt has been remitted; the condition of grace has not been dissolved, the old chirographs of debts having been erased; it does not yet separate man from carnal passion while he lives in the flesh, so that every man in future time may implore divine aid in each particular.

And how the law was not so much able to remove sin as to point it out—sin which those born into it everywhere claimed for themselves, and, possessed by the consent of concupiscence, plunged them into eternal perdition. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Word of the Father, equal and coeternal with the Father, emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7), and although He Himself was not sin, He took upon Himself sinful flesh, so that, by healing the old man from sin, He might condemn sin in the flesh. He came to seek what was lost (Luke 19:10), to heal what was sick, to raise what was fallen, having the power to forgive sins—what He did not owe to give, what was owed to Him to remit. And after blotting out all the stains of ancient guilt, He restored the nature which He had made. Concerning those for whom the just severity had decreed punishment, according to the ineffable mercy of the hidden dispensation, He chose vessels which He would make into honor, and absolved some from the coming wrath by the gift of a gratuitous calling, while leaving others behind, reserving them for the judgment of equality, yet not removing from them the faculty of recognizing the truth. And thus the fullness of divine foreknowledge was completed, with justice flowing forth toward some, grace toward others, so that, with those perishing whom God foreknew would perish, and those being saved whom in that secret election He foreknew would be saved, the Church, spread throughout the whole world, might be multiplied.

CHAPTER XIV. Rejoice, therefore, O you who have been enlightened, and acknowledge the grace you did not merit. Groan, O you who have been hardened, and confess the justice. Say, O you who rejoice that you have been cleansed from original contagion by the bath of grace: "The Lord is merciful and compassionate, patient and of great mercy. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor has He repaid us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 1 and 10). Say, O you who are condemned: "You are just, O Lord, in all that You have done to us, and all Your judgments are true; indeed, in truth and judgment You have brought all these things upon us because of our sins" (Daniel 3:27, 28). And do not ascribe the blame for your hardening to the injustice of God, because all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Psalm 24:10), so that neither may those who have obtained mercy from God boast of their own merits by the judgment of truth, nor may those who are hardened and condemned believe that they can have any excuse for their guilt from the fact that they have received no mercy by which they might be converted. Therefore, Pharaoh did not receive this mercy, and so his free will sufficed for him to perish; indeed, no one so ignorant of the divine Scriptures would dare to say that he suffered all those things unjustly. Or perhaps, if we think piously about God as is fitting, do we find that mercy was also given to Pharaoh?

The patience of God ought to have availed him for salvation, whereby, deferring a just and deserved punishment, it multiplied the frequent blows of the miracles. Could he not, just as by scourging he drove out the people, so by believing in the miracles acknowledge God of such great power? If it is said that Pharaoh could not be changed, because God had foreknown that he would not be changed, the answer is that God’s foreknowledge does not compel a man to be such as God foreknew him; but it foreknows that he will be such as he is going to be, although God did not make him so. For if it compelled him to be that, it would certainly compel him to be what he is not. Moreover, if it had foreknown that he would be what he is not, it would not be foreknowledge, which is impiously said of God, as anyone who flatters himself for his sins because God foreknew that he would be a sinner perceives. CHAPTER XV. Nevertheless, I think there may perhaps be someone who says that the way to salvation is less suitable if someone is scourged, though not inwardly stirred by any calling. Whence did Nebuchadnezzar merit fruitful penance (Dan. 4:33)? Did he not, after countless impieties, repent when scourged, and receive again the kingdom he had lost? But Pharaoh (Exod. 8 and following) was made harder by the very scourges, and perished.

Here let him render account to me who judges the divine counsel too profound for a wise heart, why a medicine prepared by one physician availed one man for destruction and another for salvation, unless it be that the good odor of Christ is for some the odor of life unto life, for others the odor of death unto death (2 Cor. 2:10, 16)? As regards nature, both were men; as regards dignity, both were kings; as regards the cause, both possessed a captive people; as regards the punishment, both were mercifully admonished by scourges. Why, then, did their ends turn out to be different, unless because one, feeling the hand of God, groaned in recollection of his own iniquity, while the other fought against the most merciful truth of God with free will? Whoever answers here that divine aid was present for the one to be changed and was lacking for the other to be hardened, and contends that this is unjust, because he places the ends of the things themselves in the will of God, let him understand, as the Apostle said, “Whom he wills, he has mercy on, and whom he wills, he hardens” (Rom. 9:18), and as the Lord said, “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), that all those things are either accomplished with the Lord’s help or permitted by his desertion, yet let him know that absolutely nothing is admitted without the Lord’s will.

CHAPTER XVI. But we return to infants, we return to twins: it is not enough that I have said, we return to those not yet born, who were conceived in the same intercourse and were to be brought forth into the light at the same moment. The apparent discrepancy and diversity of divine will in their case confounds the minds of men who too arrogantly dispute about the will of God, the magnitude of the question overwhelming them. Now raise your voice with all your strength, O unjust accuser of the just, and tell me what evil that one committed, what good the other merited? And the Apostle Paul, not I, answers you: They indeed merited nothing; but the potter has power over the clay from the same mass to make one vessel for honor, another for disgrace (Rom. 9:21). You are about to say, Why? What is this so confused diversity of judgment? Let him refute this presumption again, and say, Man, who are you to answer God (Ibid., 20)? Especially because, when the intention of the rustic is turned to the comparison of human actions, it answers that a creditor cannot be accused of injustice who, with two debtors, wished to have such a judgment as to forgive one and demand from the other what is owed by both.

And certainly in all the acts and transactions of human intercourse, for discerning something, for judging this justice which we seem to approve, it is manifest that it flows from the ineffable fullness of divine justice into the hearts of our humility, as the blessed John confirms in his Gospel, since we have all received from His fullness (John 1:16). If this is so, with what impudence, then, does man judge concerning God, clay concerning the potter, not only saying, "Why did you make me thus?" but also, with damnable curiosity, scrutinizing others and saying, "Why from the same mass did you make one indeed thus, and another indeed thus?" If the human race, which is first created from nothing, were not born with the due origin of death and sin, and yet the omnipotent Creator wished to condemn some of them irrevocably to eternal punishment, who would say to the omnipotent Creator, "Why did you make me thus?" For He who had granted them existence when they did not exist had the power to make them not exist; nor would others say why, with equal merits of all, divine judgment differed, because the potter of clay has the power to make from the same mass one vessel for honor, another indeed for dishonor (Romans 9:21). But now, when punishment is justly rendered to the condemned, while grace is given undeservedly to the saved, who, so forgetful of the human condition, would examine the secrets of divine sense, so that, when he himself has justly incurred punishment by his merit, he should ask why another received grace, which was not owed to him?

This divine election, therefore, is not rendered to merits, but is granted to men solely by the munificence of the will. Moses, even then, although he was teaching a carnal people, showed this. For he says clearly in Deuteronomy to the people: "Behold, the heaven of your Lord God, and the heaven of the heavens, the earth and all things which are in it; nevertheless, the Lord chose your fathers to love him, and he chose their seed after them, you, before all peoples." And he added: "Circumcise yourselves, therefore, from the hardness of your heart, and do not harden your neck any further" (Deut. 10:14, 15). But that this hardness of heart remained in them, as we have said above, blessed Stephen showed when he rebuked the Jews. For in the Acts of the Apostles, as he himself says: "Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit" (Acts 7:51). Whence this stiff neck in that people, who were chosen from the whole world, who were afraid to be freed from servitude by ten miracles, to whom the law was given, for whose salvation the mouths of all the prophets fought, from whom Christ was made according to the flesh, and to whom Christ was sent, except because blindness was made in part in Israel, until Israel, adopted from the fullness of the Gentiles, should enter into the kingdom (Rom. 11:25); and the Lord concluded all in unbelief, so that all might need the mercy of the Savior?

Touching upon the sacraments of that divine counsel and the mystery of majesty, which, although he knew through the magnitude of revelations, yet succumbing to human infirmity, even that man who, on account of persecutions and blasphemies, merited to be called the Vessel of Election, wondered and exclaimed: "The depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God" (Ibid., 33)! and confessing his ways to be inscrutable and the judgments of God to be unsearchable. Therefore, with him, when such matters are inquired into, let us wonder, and with the sentence remaining that there is no iniquity in God, if there is anything that is sought which exceeds the measure of our sense and does not deign to enter the narrow confines of our intellect, let us confess that it remains in that fullness of justice, mercy, and divine foreknowledge with unshaken equity. Lest, by disputing about the higher secrets of the divine will otherwise than the condition of our nature permits, we abandon God's justice and, in our desire to establish our own, fall into the abyss of contumacy.