On the Gift of Perseverance 12–16

It follows, then, that the grace of God is not given according to the merits of those who receive it, but according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise and glory of his grace, so that he who glories may in no way glory in himself but in the Lord; who gives to men to whom he will, because he is merciful, and if he does not give, he is just; and does not give to those to whom he will not, so that he may make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy. For by giving to some what they do not merit, he willed his grace to be free and therefore true; by not giving to all, he showed what all merit. Good in the benefit to some, just in the punishment of the rest; and good in all, because it is good when what is due is rendered; and just in all, because it is just when what is not due is given without wrong to anyone. Now the grace of God without merits, that is, true grace, is defended even if baptized little children, as the Pelagians hold, are not rescued from the power of darkness because, as the Pelagians think, they are liable to no sin, but are only transferred into the kingdom of the Lord: for even so the kingdom is given without any good merits to those to whom it is given, and without any evil merits is not given to those to whom it is not given. This we usually say against the same Pelagians when they object to us that we attribute the grace of God to fate by saying that it is not given according to our merits. For it is rather they who attribute God's grace in little children to fate, since they say that where there is no merit there is fate. For no merits, even according to the Pelagians themselves, can be found in little children for which some of them should be sent into the kingdom and others estranged from the kingdom. Just as now, to show that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, I have preferred to defend this according to both views, both our own, namely, which says that little children are bound by original sin, and that of the Pelagians, who deny that there is original sin, and yet I have no need on that account to doubt that little children have something for him to forgive who saves his people from their sins; so in the third book On Free Choice I resisted the Manichaeans according to both views, whether ignorance and difficulty, without which no man is born, are punishments or the beginnings of nature; and yet I hold one of these, which I expressed clearly enough there too: that this is not the nature of man as created, but the punishment of man as condemned. In vain, then, is the age of that book of mine urged against me, to prevent me from pleading the cause of little children as I ought to plead it, and from proving from it by the light of plain truth that the grace of God is not given according to the merits of men. For if, when I began the books On Free Choice as a layman and finished them as a presbyter, I still doubted about the condemnation of infants who are not reborn and the deliverance of those who are reborn, no one, I think, would be so unjust and envious as to forbid me to make progress, and to judge that I must remain in that doubt. But since it can more rightly be understood that I ought not to be believed to have doubted about this matter for the reason that those against whom my aim was directed seemed to me to be refuted in such a way that, whether the punishment of original sin was in little children, which the truth holds, or was not, as some in error think, in no way should that mixture of two natures, of good and evil, which the error of the Manichaeans brings in, be believed: far be it that we should so abandon the cause of little children as to say that it is uncertain to us whether those regenerated in Christ, if they die as little children, pass into eternal salvation, while those not regenerated pass into the second death; since what is written, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men,” cannot rightly be understood otherwise; nor does anyone, small or great, deliver from the everlasting death which has most justly been rendered to sin, except him who died for the forgiveness of our sins, both original and personal, without any original or personal sin of his own. But why these rather than those? Again and again we say it, and we are not ashamed: “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” “His judgments are inscrutable and his ways unsearchable.” And let us add this: “Seek not things too high for you, and search not things too strong for you.” For you see, dearly beloved, how absurd it is, and foreign to the soundness of faith and the sincerity of truth, for us to say that dead little children are judged according to what they were foreknown to be going to do if they lived. Into this view, which certainly every human sense supported by however little reason, and especially Christian sense, abhors, those have been compelled to go who wished to be so far from the error of the Pelagians as still to think that it must be believed, and moreover put forward in argument, that the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, by which alone we are helped after the fall of the first man, in whom we all fell, is given according to our merits; which Pelagius himself condemned before the Eastern bishops as judges, for fear of his own condemnation. But if this is not said, namely about the works of the dead, good or evil, which they would have done if they had lived, and which are therefore none and not going to be even in God's foreknowledge; if this, then, is not said, which you see with how great error it is said, what will remain but that we confess, with the fog of contention removed, that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, which the Catholic Church defends against the Pelagian heresy, and that we see this with more evident truth especially in little children? For God is not compelled by fate to help these infants and not help those, since the case of both is common; nor shall we think that human affairs in little children are governed not by divine providence but by chance happenings, since they are rational souls to be either condemned or set free; since not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of our Father who is in heaven. Nor is it to be attributed to the negligence of parents that little children die without baptism, in such a way that heavenly judgments have nothing to do with it; as though those who die badly in this way had chosen by their own will negligent parents to be born of. What shall I say of the fact that a little child sometimes breathes its last before help can be given it through the ministry of the one baptizing? For often, though the parents hasten and the ministers are ready for baptism to be given to the little child, it is not given, God not willing it, who did not keep him a little longer in this life so that it might be given. What of the fact too that sometimes help could be given by baptism to the little children of unbelievers so that they should not go to perdition, and could not be given to the children of believers? There it is certainly shown that there is no respect of persons with God; otherwise he would rather set free the children of his worshippers than those of his enemies.

Now, since we are dealing with the gift of perseverance, what does it mean that help is given to one who is about to die unbaptized, so that he does not die without baptism, while help is not given to one baptized who is about to fall, so that he dies first? Unless perhaps we are still to listen to that absurdity which says that it profits no one to die before he falls, because he will be judged according to the acts which God foreknew he would have done if he had lived. Who would patiently hear, who would endure, this perversity so vehemently opposed to the soundness of the faith? And yet those who do not confess that the grace of God is not given according to our merits are driven to say it. But those who do not want to say that each of the dead is judged according to what God foreknew he would have done if he had lived, seeing with what plain falsity and how great absurdity it is said, have no ground left for saying what the church condemned in the Pelagians, and made Pelagius himself condemn, that the grace of God is given according to our merits; since they see some little children taken from this life unregenerated to eternal death, others regenerated to eternal life; and of the regenerated themselves, some departing hence persevering to the end, others kept here until they fall, who certainly would not have fallen if they had departed hence before they fell; and again some who have fallen not departing this life until they return, who certainly would perish if they departed before they returned. From this it is shown clearly enough that the grace of God both for beginning and for persevering to the end is not given according to our merits, but is given according to his own most secret, and at the same time most just, most wise, most beneficent will; since “those whom he predestined, he also called,” with that calling of which it is said, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” No man is to be said by men with certain assertion to belong to this calling until he has departed from this world; but in this human life, which is a trial upon earth, “let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” For this reason, as we said above, those who will not persevere are mixed by God's most provident will with those who will persevere, so that we may learn not to be high-minded but to consent to the lowly, and to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling; “for it is God who works in us both to will and to work, for his good will.” We will, then; but God works in us even to will. We work, then; but God works in us even to work, for his good will. This it profits us both to believe and to say: this is godly, this is true, so that the confession may be humble and submissive, and all may be given to God. Thinking, we believe; thinking, we speak; thinking, we do whatever we do; but as regards the way of godliness and the true worship of God, we are not sufficient to think anything as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. “For our heart and our thoughts are not in our power”; hence the same Ambrose who says this says also: “But who is so blessed as always to ascend in his heart? But who can do this without divine help? In no way at all. Finally,” he says, “the same Scripture says above, ‘Blessed is the man whose help is from you, O Lord; ascents are in his heart.’” Ambrose certainly not only read this in the sacred writings in order to say it, but, as must be believed of that man without doubt, felt it in his heart too. What is said, then, in the sacraments of the faithful, that we should have our heart lifted up to the Lord, is the Lord's gift; for which gift those to whom this is said are admonished by the priest after these words to give thanks to the Lord our God himself, and they answer that it is “fitting and right.” For since our heart is not in our power, but is raised by divine help so that it ascends and minds the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, not the things that are on earth, to whom must thanks be given for so great a thing but to the Lord our God who does this, who by such a benefit, delivering us from the depth of this world, chose and predestined us before the foundation of the world?

But they say that “the definition of predestination is opposed to the usefulness of preaching.” As though it were opposed to the Apostle's preaching! Did not that teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth both commend predestination so often and not cease to preach the word of God? Because he said, “It is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will,” did he therefore not himself exhort us both to will what pleases God and to work it? Or because he said, “He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus,” did he therefore not himself urge men to begin and to persevere to the end? Surely the Lord himself commanded men to believe, and said, “Believe in God, believe also in me”; yet his statement is not therefore false, nor his definition vain, where he says, “No one comes to me,” that is, no one believes in me, “unless it has been given him by my Father.” Nor, again, because this definition is true, is that command vain. Why, then, do we think the definition of predestination, which the same divine Scripture commends, useless to preaching, commanding, exhorting, and rebuking, all of which divine Scripture frequently uses? Will anyone dare to say that God did not foreknow to whom he would give that they should believe, or whom he would give to his Son, so that of them he would lose none? If he foreknew these things, he certainly foreknew his own benefits, by which he deigns to set us free. This is the predestination of the saints, and nothing else: namely, the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, by which whoever are set free are most certainly set free. And where are the rest left by the just divine judgment but in the mass of perdition, where the Tyrians and Sidonians were left, who could even have believed if they had seen those wonderful signs of Christ? But since it was not given them to believe, even that by which they would have believed was denied them. From this it appears that some have in their very nature a divine gift of understanding by which they would be moved to faith if they heard words or saw signs suited to their minds; and yet if, by the higher judgment of God, they have not been separated from the mass of perdition by the predestination of grace, those very divine words or deeds are not brought to them through which they could believe if they heard or saw such things. In the same mass of perdition the Jews too were left, who could not believe such great and clear miracles done before their eyes. For why they could not believe the Gospel did not keep silent, saying: “But though he had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled which he spoke: ‘Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ And therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.’” The eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians, then, were not so blinded, nor their heart so hardened; for they would have believed if they had seen such signs as these saw. But neither did it profit those that they could believe, because they were not predestined by him whose judgments are inscrutable and ways unsearchable; nor would it have harmed these that they could not believe, if they had been so predestined that God would enlighten them when blind and would will to take away the heart of stone from the hardened. What the Lord said of the Tyrians and Sidonians can perhaps be understood in some other way; yet that no one comes to Christ except one to whom it has been given, and that it is given to those who were chosen in him before the foundation of the world, he without doubt confesses who hears the divine word not with ears of the heart that are deaf, but with the ears of the flesh. And yet this predestination, which is set out clearly enough even in the words of the Gospel, did not prevent the Lord from saying, for the sake of beginning, what I mentioned a little before, “Believe in God, believe also in me,” and, for the sake of persevering, “Men ought always to pray and not lose heart.” For those to whom it has been given hear these things and do them; but those to whom it has not been given do not do them, whether they hear or do not hear. “Because to you,” he says, “it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; but to them it has not been given.” Of these, the one belongs to the mercy, the other to the judgment, of him to whom our soul says, “Of mercy and judgment I will sing to you, O Lord.” The preaching of predestination, then, is not to hinder the preaching of persevering and advancing faith, so that those to whom it has been given to obey may hear what they ought; for how will they hear without a preacher? Nor, again, is the preaching of faith advancing and remaining to the last to hinder the preaching of predestination, so that he who lives faithfully and obediently may not be lifted up about that obedience as though about a good of his own not received, but that he who glories may glory in the Lord. For “we must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours.” Cyprian saw this most faithfully and defined it most confidently, and by this he certainly proclaimed a most certain predestination. For if “we must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours,” then certainly we must not glory even about the most persevering obedience, nor call it ours as though it were not given us from above. It too, then, is the gift of God, which God foreknew, as every Christian confesses, that he would give to his called with that calling of which it is said, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” This, then, is the predestination which we preach faithfully and humbly. Yet that same teacher and doer, who both believed in Christ and lived most perseveringly in holy obedience even to suffering for Christ, did not on that account cease to preach the gospel and to exhort to faith and godly ways and to perseverance itself to the end, because he said, “We must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours”; where he declared without any ambiguity the true grace of God, that is, the grace not given according to our merits; and since God foreknew that he would give it, predestination was without doubt preached in these words of Cyprian; and if it did not keep Cyprian from preaching obedience, it certainly ought not to keep us either. Although, then, we say that obedience is the gift of God, we nevertheless exhort men to it. But to those who obediently hear the exhortation of truth, that very gift of God has been given, namely to hear obediently; but to those who do not so hear, it has not been given. For it was not just anyone, but Christ, who said, “No one comes to me unless it has been given him by my Father,” and, “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” And of continence: “Not all receive this word,” he says, “but those to whom it has been given.” And when the Apostle was exhorting married people to marital chastity, he says, “I would that all men were as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that”; where he shows clearly enough that not only continence but also the chastity of married people is the gift of God. Since these things are true, we nevertheless exhort to them, as far as it has been given to each of us to be able to exhort; because this too is his gift, in whose hand are both we and our words. Hence the Apostle too says, “According to the grace that was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid the foundation.” And in another place: “To each,” he says, “as the Lord gave: I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” And therefore, just as he exhorts and preaches rightly who has received this gift, so he certainly hears obediently one who exhorts and preaches rightly who has received this gift. Hence it is that the Lord, when he was speaking to those who had the ears of the flesh open, nevertheless said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”; which he certainly knew not all had. And from whom whoever has them has them, the Lord himself shows where he says, “I will give them a heart to know me and ears that hear.” Ears to hear, then, are the very gift of obeying, so that those who had it might come to him, to whom no one comes unless it has been given him by his Father. We exhort, then, and preach; but those who have ears to hear hear us obediently, while in those who do not have them what is written comes about, “that hearing they may not hear”: hearing, that is, with the sense of the body, they do not hear with the assent of the heart. But why these have ears to hear and those do not, that is, why it has been given to these by the Father to come to the Son and not given to those, “who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?” or “who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” Must what is plain be denied because what is hidden cannot be grasped? Shall we say, I ask, that what we see to be so is not so, because we cannot find why it is so?

But they say, as you write, “that no one can be roused by the goads of rebuke if it is said in the assembly of the church, in the hearing of many: ‘The fixed sentence of God's will concerning predestination stands thus: that some of you, having received the will to obey, have come from unbelief to faith, or, having received perseverance, remain in the faith; but the rest of you, who linger in the delight of sins, have not yet risen because the help of pitying grace has not yet raised you up. Yet if any of you are not yet called whom he has predestined by his grace to be chosen, you will receive that same grace by which you may will and be chosen; and if any of you obey, if you are predestined to be rejected, the strength to obey will be withdrawn, so that you cease to obey.’” When these things are said, they ought not to deter us from confessing the true grace of God, that is, the grace not given according to our merits, and from confessing the predestination of the saints in accordance with it; just as we are not deterred from confessing the foreknowledge of God if someone speaks of it to the people in such a way as to say: “Whether you are now living rightly or not, you will afterwards be such as God foreknew you would be, good if he foreknew you good, evil if evil.” For if, on hearing this, some turn to torpor and sloth and, sliding from labour into lust, go after their desires, is what was said about the foreknowledge of God therefore to be thought false? If God foreknew that they would be good, will they not be good, in however great wickedness they are now engaged; and if evil, will they not be evil, in however great goodness they are now seen? There was a man in our monastery who, when the brothers rebuked him for why he did certain things that should not be done and did not do things that should be done, answered: “Whatever I am now, I will be such as God foreknew I would be.” He certainly spoke the truth, and he did not profit by this truth for good; but he went so far for evil that, abandoning the fellowship of the monastery, he became a dog returned to its vomit; and yet what he will yet be is uncertain. Must the true things that are said of God's foreknowledge, then, be denied or kept silent because of such souls, at a time, that is, when, if they are not said, people go into other errors?

There are also some who either do not pray or pray coldly, because they have learned from the Lord's own words that God knows what is necessary for us before we ask him. Is the truth of this statement to be abandoned because of such people, or thought fit to be deleted from the Gospel? On the contrary, since it is established that God has prepared some things to be given even to those who do not pray, such as the beginning of faith, and others only to those who pray, such as perseverance to the end, certainly he who thinks he has this from himself does not pray to have it. We must beware, then, lest while we fear that exhortation may grow cold, prayer be extinguished and pride kindled. Let the truth be spoken, then, especially where some question compels it to be spoken; and let those take it who can; lest perhaps, when it is kept silent because of those who cannot take it, those who can take the truth, by which falsehood may be guarded against, be not only defrauded of the truth but even taken by falsehood. For it is easy, indeed even useful, to keep silent some truth because of those incapable of it. For whence is that saying of the Lord, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now”? And that of the Apostle, “I could not speak to you as spiritual, but as carnal: as to little ones in Christ I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able, nor are you able even now”? Although by a certain way of speaking it can come about that what is said is both milk to little ones and food to the great. As, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”: what Christian can keep silent about it? Who can grasp it? Or what greater thing can be found in sound doctrine? Yet it is not kept silent to the little ones and to the great, nor hidden from the little ones by the great. But the reason for keeping silent a truth is one thing, the necessity of speaking a truth is another. It would take long to seek out or set down all the causes for keeping silent a truth; yet this is one of them, that we may not make those worse who do not understand, while we wish to make those who understand more learned; who, if we keep silent something of this kind, do not indeed become more learned, but do not become worse either. But when a true thing is such that the one who cannot grasp it becomes worse if we speak it, and the one who can grasp it becomes worse if we keep silent, what do we think should be done? Is it not rather that the truth should be spoken, so that he who can grasp it may grasp it, than kept silent, so that not only do both not grasp it, but the more intelligent himself becomes worse? Who, if he heard and grasped it, would cause many others to learn through him. For the more capable he is of learning, the more fit he is to teach others. The enemy of grace presses on and urges in every way that it be believed that grace is given according to our merits, and so grace is no longer grace; and are we unwilling to say what, with Scripture as witness, we can say? For we fear, it seems, lest by our speaking he be offended who cannot grasp the truth; and we do not fear lest by our silence he who can grasp the truth be taken by falsehood? For either predestination must be preached as holy Scripture plainly declares it, that in the predestined the gifts and calling of God are without repentance; or it must be confessed that the grace of God is given according to our merits, which is what the Pelagians think, although that opinion, as we have often said, is read in the proceedings of the Eastern bishops to have been condemned even by the mouth of Pelagius himself. Now these brothers, for whose sake we are doing this, are so far removed from the heretical perversity of the Pelagians that, though they are not yet willing to confess that those are predestined who by God's grace become obedient and remain so, they already confess that this grace anticipates the will of those to whom it is given; certainly for this reason, that grace may not be believed to be given otherwise than freely, as the truth says, but rather according to the merits of a preceding will, as the Pelagian error says against the truth. Grace, then, also anticipates faith; otherwise, if faith anticipates it, without doubt the will too anticipates it, since faith cannot exist without the will. But if grace anticipates faith because it anticipates the will, it certainly anticipates all obedience; it anticipates also love, by which alone God is obeyed truly and sweetly; and grace works all these things in the one to whom it is given, and all of which it anticipates.