On the Gift of Perseverance 17–20

Among these goods there remains perseverance to the end, which is asked of the Lord daily in vain if the Lord does not work it by his grace in him whose prayers he hears. See now how foreign to the truth it is to deny that perseverance to the end of this life is the gift of God, since he himself gives an end to this life when he wills; and if he gives it before an impending fall, he makes the man persevere to the end. But more wonderful, and more evident to believers, is the bounty of God's goodness, that this grace is given even to little children, though there is no obedience at that age to which it might be given. To whomever, then, God gives these gifts of his, he certainly foreknew that he would give them, and in his foreknowledge prepared them. “Those whom he predestined, then, he also called,” with that calling which I am not ashamed to mention often, of which it is said, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” For to arrange his future works in his foreknowledge, which cannot be deceived or changed, is altogether this and nothing else: to predestine. And just as he whom God foreknew would be chaste, though he regards it as uncertain, acts so as to be chaste, so he whom God predestined to be chaste, though he regards it as uncertain, does not on that account fail to act so as to be chaste because he hears that he will be what he will be by God's gift; rather his love rejoices, and is not puffed up as though it had not received it. Not only, then, is he not hindered from this work by the preaching of predestination, but he is even helped toward it, so that when he glories he may glory in the Lord. What I have said of chastity can most truly be said of faith, of godliness, of love, of perseverance, and, not to go through them one by one, of all the obedience by which God is obeyed. But those who place only the beginning of faith and perseverance to the end in our power in such a way as not to think them gifts of God, nor that God works our thoughts and wills for having and keeping them, while granting that he gives the rest when they are obtained from him by the faith of the believer: why do they not fear that exhortation to those other things, and the preaching of them, is hindered by the definition of predestination? Or perhaps they say those too are not predestined? Then neither are they given by God, or he did not know that he would give them. But if they are both given and he foreknew that he would give them, he certainly predestined them. Just as they too, then, exhort to chastity, love, godliness, and the other things which they confess to be gifts of God and cannot deny to be foreknown by him and therefore predestined, and do not say that their exhortations are hindered by the preaching of God's predestination, that is, by the preaching of God's foreknowledge of these future gifts of his; so let them see that their exhortations either to faith or to perseverance are not hindered either, if these too are said, as is true, to be gifts of God, and to be foreknown, that is, predestined to be given; but that what is rather hindered and overthrown by this preaching of predestination is only that most deadly error by which it is said that the grace of God is given according to our merits, so that he who glories may glory not in the Lord but in himself. To explain this more plainly for the slower ones, let those bear with my delay to whom it has been given to fly ahead in understanding. The apostle James says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and does not reproach, and it will be given him.” It is written also in the Proverbs of Solomon, “For the Lord gives wisdom.” And of continence we read in the book of Wisdom, whose authority has been used by great and learned men who expounded the divine oracles long before us; there, then, we read, “When I knew that no one can be continent unless God gives it; and this very thing was a part of wisdom, to know whose gift it was.” These, then, are gifts of God, namely, to say nothing of others, wisdom and continence. These men too agree; for they are not Pelagians, to contend against this plain truth with hard and heretical perversity. “But,” they say, “that these may be given us by God, faith obtains, which begins from us”; and they contend that both beginning to have this faith and remaining in it to the end are ours, as though we did not receive it from the Lord. Here without doubt the Apostle is contradicted, who says, “For what do you have that you did not receive?” The martyr Cyprian too is contradicted, who says, “We must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours.” When we have said these and many other things which it is tiresome to repeat, and have shown that both the beginning of faith and perseverance to the end are gifts of God, and that God could not fail to foreknow any of his future gifts, both what would be given and to whom, and therefore that those whom he sets free and crowns have been predestined by him, they think they should answer that “the definition of predestination is opposed to the usefulness of preaching, because when it is heard no one can be roused by the goads of rebuke.” Saying this, they do not want it “preached to men that coming to faith and remaining in faith are gifts of God, lest despair rather than exhortation seem to be brought, while the hearers think that it is uncertain to human ignorance to whom God grants these gifts and to whom he does not.” Why, then, do they too preach with us that wisdom and continence are gifts of God? And if, when these are preached as gifts of God, the exhortation by which we exhort men to be wise and continent is not hindered, what reason is there, after all, for them to think that the exhortation is hindered by which we exhort men to come to faith and remain in it to the end, if these too are said to be gifts of God, which is proved by his Scriptures as witnesses? See: to say nothing of continence, and to discuss in this place wisdom alone, the apostle James mentioned above says, “The wisdom that is from above is first chaste, then peaceable, modest, easily persuaded, full of mercy and good fruits, beyond price, without pretence.” Do you see, I beg you, with how many and great goods the wisdom that comes down from the Father of lights is filled? For “every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights,” as the same apostle says. Why, then, to pass over the rest, do we rebuke the unchaste and the quarrelsome, to whom we nevertheless preach that chaste and peaceable wisdom is the gift of God; and we do not fear that, troubled by the uncertainty of the divine will, they will find in this preaching more despair than exhortation, and be roused by the goads of rebuke not against themselves but rather against us, because we rebuke them for not having these things which we ourselves say are not produced by human will but given by divine bounty? Why, finally, did the preaching of this grace not deter the apostle James himself from rebuking the unruly and saying, “If you have bitter zeal, and there are quarrels in your hearts, do not glory and be liars against the truth; this is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but earthly, unspiritual, devilish; for where there is zeal and contention, there is instability and every evil work”? Just as, then, the unruly are to be rebuked, both with the divine oracles as witnesses and by our own actions, which these men have in common with us, and this rebuke is not hindered because we preach that the peaceable wisdom by which the quarrelsome are corrected and healed is the gift of God; so unbelievers, or those not remaining in the faith, are to be rebuked, this rebuke not being hindered by the preaching of the grace of God, which teaches that faith itself and remaining in it are gifts of God. For even though wisdom is obtained from faith, as James himself, when he had said, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and does not reproach, and it will be given him,” at once added, “But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting,” yet, because faith is given before it is asked for by him to whom it is given, it is not therefore to be said that it is not the gift of God but is from us, because it was given us without our asking. For the Apostle says most plainly: “Peace to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” From whom, then, peace and love come, from him faith comes too; and for that reason we ask of him not only that it be increased in those who have it, but also that it be given to those who do not have it. Nor do these men, on whose account we say these things, and who cry out that exhortation is hindered by the preaching of predestination and grace, exhort only to those gifts which they contend are not given by God but are from us, such as the beginning of faith and perseverance in it to the end; which they certainly ought to do, exhorting only unbelievers to believe and believers to continue believing. But those things which they do not deny with us to be gifts of God, so that with us they may demolish the Pelagian error, such as chastity, continence, patience, and the other things by which one lives rightly and which are obtained from the Lord by faith, they ought only to have shown must be prayed for and only to have prayed for, either for themselves or for others, and not to have exhorted anyone to take them up and keep them. But since they exhort to these too, as they can, and confess that men must be exhorted, they certainly show clearly enough that exhortations, whether to faith or to perseverance to the end, are not hindered by that preaching either, since we preach that these too are gifts of God, and are bestowed on anyone not by himself but by him. “But,” they say, “each one forsakes the faith by his own fault, when he yields to and consents to the temptation by which he is being moved to forsake the faith.” Who denies it? But perseverance in the faith is not on that account to be said not to be the gift of God. For he asks for it daily who says, “Lead us not into temptation”; and if he is heard, he receives it; and therefore, asking daily that he may persevere, he certainly places the hope of his perseverance not in himself but in God. But I do not wish to exaggerate with my own words, but rather leave it to them to consider and see what sort of thing it is of which they have persuaded themselves, that by the preaching of predestination more despair than exhortation is brought to the hearers. For this is to say that a man despairs of his salvation at the time when he has learned to place his hope not in himself but in God; when the prophet cries out, “Cursed is everyone who has his hope in man.” These gifts of God, then, which are given to the elect called according to God's purpose, among which gifts are both to begin to believe and to persevere in faith to the end of this life, as we have proved by so great a witness of reasons and authorities: these gifts of God, I say, if there is no predestination such as we defend, are not foreknown by God; but they are foreknown; this, therefore, is the predestination we defend.

Hence this predestination is sometimes signified also by the name of foreknowledge, as the Apostle says, “God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew.” Here what he says, “foreknew,” is not rightly understood except as “predestined,” as the context of the passage itself shows. For he was speaking of the remnant of the Jews which was saved, while the rest perished. For he had said above that the prophet had said to Israel, “All day long I have stretched out my hands to a people unbelieving and contradicting”; and as though it were answered, “Where, then, are the promises of God made to Israel?”, he at once added, “I say, then, has God rejected his people? Far from it! For I too am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin”; as if to say, “For I too am of that very people.” Then he added what we are now dealing with, “God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew.” And to show that the remnant had been left by the grace of God, not by the merits of their works, he went on to add, “Or do you not know what the Scripture says in Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?” and the rest. “But what,” he says, “does the divine answer say to him? ‘I have left for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’” For he does not say, “Seven thousand have been left to me,” or, “They have left themselves to me,” but, “I have left for myself.” “So, then,” he says, “at this present time also a remnant has come about by the election of grace. But if by grace, then no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.” And connecting what I have already put above, “What then?”, and answering this question: “What Israel sought,” he says, “it has not obtained; but the election has obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” In this election, then, and in this remnant which came about by the election of grace, he wished the people to be understood which God did not reject because he foreknew it. This is that election by which he chose in Christ those whom he willed before the foundation of the world, that they should be holy and without blemish before him in love, predestining them to adoption as sons. No one, then, who understands these things is permitted to deny or doubt that, where the Apostle says, “God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew,” he meant to signify predestination. For he foreknew the remnant which he himself was going to make according to the election of grace. This, then, is “he predestined”; for without doubt he foreknew if he predestined; but to have predestined is to have foreknown what he himself was going to do.

What, then, prevents us, when we read in some expositors of the word of God of the foreknowledge of God, and the calling of the elect is in question, from understanding the same predestination? For perhaps they preferred to use this word in that matter because it is both more easily understood and does not conflict with, indeed even agrees with, the truth which is preached about the predestination of grace. This I know, that no one has been able to argue against this predestination, which we defend according to the holy Scriptures, except by erring. Yet I think that for those who seek the opinions of expositors on this matter, Cyprian and Ambrose, holy men praiseworthily renowned everywhere for Christian faith and doctrine, whose testimonies so clear we have set out, ought to suffice; and ought to suffice for both purposes: that they believe in every respect and preach in every respect the free grace of God, as it is to be believed and preached, and do not think this preaching opposed to the preaching by which we exhort the slothful or rebuke the wicked. For these men too, when they so preached the grace of God that one of them said, “We must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours,” and the other, “Our heart and our thoughts are not in our power,” did not on that account cease to exhort and rebuke, so that the divine commands might be done. Nor did they fear that it might be said to them, “Why do you exhort us? Why do you rebuke us too, if no good that we have is ours, and if our heart is not in our power?” Those holy men could by no means fear that this would be said to them, with the mind by which they understood that it has been given to very few to receive the teaching of salvation from God himself or from the angels of heaven with no man preaching to them, but to many it has been given to believe God through men. Yet in whatever way the word of God is spoken to a man, it is without doubt the gift of God that he so hears it as to obey it. Hence the most excellent expositors of the divine oracles mentioned above both preached the true grace of God as it is to be preached, that is, the grace which no human merits precede, and urgently exhorted to the doing of the divine commands, so that those who had the gift of obedience might hear what commands were to be obeyed. For if any merits of ours precede grace, it is certainly the merit of some deed, or word, or thought, where the good will itself too is understood; but he who says, “We must glory in nothing, since nothing is ours,” has most briefly embraced all kinds of merits. And he who says, “Our heart and our thoughts are not in our power,” did not pass over deeds and words either; for there is no deed or word of man that does not proceed from the heart and thought. And what more could Cyprian, most glorious martyr and most luminous teacher, do in this matter than where he reminded us that in the Lord's Prayer we ought to pray even for the enemies of the Christian faith? There he showed what he thought about the beginning of faith, that this too is God's gift; and he showed that the church of Christ prays daily for perseverance to the end, because God gives this too only to those who will have persevered. Blessed Ambrose too, when he was expounding what Luke the evangelist says, “It seemed good to me also,” says: “What he declares seemed good to him can have seemed good not to him alone. For it did not seem good by human will only, but as it pleased him who speaks in me, Christ, who works that what is good may seem good to us too: for whom he pities he also calls. And therefore he who follows Christ, if asked why he willed to be a Christian, can answer, ‘It seemed good to me also.’ When he says this, he does not deny that it seemed good to God; for the will of men is prepared by God. For that God is honoured by a saint is the grace of God.” Likewise in the same work, that is, in the Exposition of the same Gospel, when he came to that place where the Samaritans would not receive the Lord as he was going to Jerusalem, he says: “Learn at the same time that he would not be received by those not converted with a simple mind. For if he had willed, he would have made devout men out of undevout. But why they did not receive him the Evangelist himself recorded, saying, ‘Because his face was set toward Jerusalem.’ But the disciples longed for him to be received within Samaria. But God calls whom he deigns, and makes religious whom he wills.” What plainer, what clearer do we seek from expositors of the word of God, if we are pleased to hear from them too what is clear in the Scriptures? But to these two, who ought to have sufficed, let us add a third too, holy Gregory, who testifies that both to believe in God and to confess what we believe is the gift of God, saying: “Confess, I beseech you, the Trinity of one Godhead; but if you will otherwise, say that it is of one nature, and God will be besought that a voice be given you by the Holy Spirit”: that is, God will be asked to permit a voice to be given you by which you may confess what you believe. “For he will give it, I am certain; he who gave what is first will give what is second also”: he who gave believing will give confessing too. These teachers, such and so great, saying that there is nothing of which we may glory as our own which God has not given us; that our heart itself and our thoughts are not in our power; and giving all to God, and confessing that we receive from him that we are turned to him so as to remain; that what is good may seem good to us too, and we may will it; that we may honour God and receive Christ; that from undevout we may be made devout and religious; that we may believe in the Trinity itself and confess with our voice too what we believe: these men certainly attribute these things to the grace of God, acknowledge them as God's gifts, and testify that they are ours from him, not from ourselves. Will anyone say that they so confessed this grace of God as to dare to deny his foreknowledge, which not only the learned but even the unlearned confess? Further, if they knew that God so gives these things that they were not ignorant that he foreknew he would give them, and could not fail to know to whom he would give them, they certainly knew the predestination which, preached by the apostles, we defend more laboriously and carefully against the new heretics; and yet, as they preached obedience and fervently exhorted to it as each could, it would in no way rightly be said to them, “If you do not want the obedience to which you kindle us to grow cold in our heart, do not preach to us this grace of God, by which you confess that God gives what you exhort us to do.”

Therefore, if both the apostles and the teachers of the church who succeeded and imitated them did both, that is, both preached truly the grace of God, which is not given according to our merits, and instructed godly obedience by wholesome precepts, what is it that these brothers of ours, hemmed in by the unconquered force of truth, think they rightly say: “Even if what is said about the predestination of God's benefits is true, it is nevertheless not to be preached to the people”? It must certainly be preached, so that “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” But who has them, if he has not received them from him who says, “I will give them a heart to know me and ears that hear”? Certainly let him who has not received reject it, provided that he who takes it in takes and drinks, drinks and lives. For just as godliness is to be preached, so that God may be rightly worshipped by him who has ears to hear; chastity is to be preached, so that nothing unlawful may be done with the genital members by him who has ears to hear; love is to be preached, so that God and neighbour may be loved by him who has ears to hear: so this predestination of God's benefits too is to be preached, so that he who has ears to hear may glory not in himself but in the Lord. But as for what they say, “that there was no need for the hearts of so many less intelligent people to be troubled by the uncertainty of a discussion of this kind, since the Catholic faith has been defended no less usefully for so many years without this definition of predestination, both against others and especially against the Pelagians, in so many books of Catholics, both of others and our own earlier ones”: I greatly wonder that they say this, and do not notice, to say nothing here of others, these very books of ours, written and published even before the Pelagians had begun to appear, and see in how many places of them, not knowing the future Pelagian heresy, we were striking it down by preaching the grace by which God sets us free from our evil errors and ways, with no good merits of ours going before, doing this according to his free mercy. This I began to understand more fully in that discussion which I wrote to Simplician of blessed memory, bishop of the church of Milan, at the beginning of my episcopate, when I both came to know and asserted that the beginning of faith too is the gift of God. And which of my works could become more widely and more pleasingly known than the books of my Confessions? Though I published them before the Pelagian heresy had arisen, in them I certainly said to our God, and said often, “Give what you command, and command what you will.” When these words of mine were mentioned at Rome by a certain brother and fellow bishop of mine in the presence of Pelagius, he could not bear them, and, contradicting rather heatedly, almost quarrelled with the one who had mentioned them. But what does God first and chiefly command but that we believe in him? This too, then, he gives, if it is well said to him, “Give what you command.” And in those same books, what I narrated about my conversion, God turning me to that faith which I was ravaging with most wretched and furious talkativeness: do you not remember that it was narrated in such a way as to show that I was granted not to perish to the faithful and daily tears of my mother? There I certainly preached that God by his grace turns to the right faith the wills of men which are not only turned away from it but even opposed to it. And how I asked God for advancing perseverance you both know and can review when you will. All the gifts of God, then, which in that same work I either wished for or praised, who would dare, I do not say to deny, but even to doubt that God foreknew he would give, and could never have failed to know to whom he would give them? This is the manifest and certain predestination of the saints, which necessity afterwards compelled us to defend more carefully and laboriously, when we were already arguing against the Pelagians. For we have learned that each heresy has brought into the church its own questions, against which divine Scripture was defended more carefully than if no such necessity compelled it. And what compelled the passages of Scripture in which predestination is commended to be defended more fully and more minutely by this labour of ours, but that the Pelagians say that the grace of God is given according to our merits? And what else is this but the complete denial of grace?