Letters 194.9–194.34

They can indeed say that the forgiveness of sins is a grace given without any preceding merits; for what good merit can sinners have? But not even the forgiveness of sins itself is without some merit, if faith obtains it. For the merit of faith is not nothing: by that faith the man said, 'Lord, be merciful to me a sinner', and went down justified by the merit of faithful humility, since 'whoever humbles himself will be exalted'. It remains, then, that faith itself, from which all righteousness takes its beginning (which is why it is said to the Church in the Song of Songs, 'You will come and pass through from the beginning of faith'), it remains, I say, that we attribute faith itself not to human choice, which these men extol, nor to any preceding merits, since from it begin whatever good merits there are, but confess it to be a free gift of God, if we think of true grace, that is, grace without merits. For, as we read in the same letter, 'God apportions to each the measure of faith.' Good works are done by a human being, but faith is produced in a human being, and without it those works are done by no one; for 'whatever is not from faith is sin'.

Therefore, lest even the merit of prayer itself should exalt itself, although help is given to one who prays to overcome desires for temporal things and to love eternal goods and God himself, the fount of all goods, it is faith that prays, which was given to one who was not praying; and unless it had been given, he could not pray. 'For how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.' Accordingly, the minister of Christ, the preacher of this faith, according to the grace given him, plants and waters; 'yet neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth', who apportions to each the measure of faith. Hence it is said elsewhere, 'Peace to the brothers, and love with faith', and lest they attribute it to themselves, he added at once, 'from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ'; since faith does not belong to all who hear the word, but to those to whom God apportions the measure of faith, just as not all that are planted and watered sprout, but those to which God gives growth. But why one believes and another does not, when both hear the same thing, and, if a miracle is done before their eyes, both see the same thing, is the depth of the riches of his wisdom and knowledge, whose judgments are unsearchable, and with whom there is no injustice, while he has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills; for these things are not unjust because they are hidden.

Then, after the forgiveness of sins, unless the Holy Spirit dwells in the cleansed house, does not the unclean spirit return with seven others, and the last state of that man become worse than the first? And for the Holy Spirit to dwell there, does he not breathe where he wills, and is not the love of God, without which no one lives well, poured into our hearts, not by ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us? For the apostle defined this faith, saying: 'Neither circumcision is anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.' This is the faith of Christians, not of demons. For the demons also believe and tremble, but do they also love? For if they did not believe, they would not say, 'You are the Holy One of God', or, 'You are the Son of God'; but if they loved, they would not say, 'What have we to do with you?'

It is faith, then, that draws us to Christ; and unless it were given us from above as a free gift, he himself would not say, 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.' Hence a little later he says: 'The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.' Then the evangelist adds: 'For Jesus knew from the beginning who were those who believed and who it was that would betray him.' And lest anyone think that believers belonged to his foreknowledge in the same way as unbelievers, that is, that faith itself was not given them from above, but only their future will was foreknown, he went on to add: 'And he said: This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is given him by my Father.' This was why, of those who had heard him speak of his flesh and blood, some were scandalized and went away, while some stayed by believing: because no one could come to him except one to whom it was given by the Father, and therefore also by the Son himself and by the Holy Spirit. For the gifts or works of the inseparable Trinity are not separated; but the Son, in honouring the Father thus, does not offer proof of any distance between them, but gives a great example of humility.

Here again these defenders of free choice, or rather deceivers, because inflaters, and inflaters, because presumers, speaking not against us but against the Gospel, what else will they say than what the apostle put to himself as if it were said by such people? 'You will say to me then, Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?' He put this objection to himself as if from another, as from the voice of those who will not accept what he had said above: 'So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills.' To such people, then, let us say with the apostle (for we cannot find anything better to say than he did): 'O man, who are you to answer back to God?'

For we look for the merit of hardening and we find it. For by the merit of sin the whole mass has been condemned, and God hardens not by imparting malice but by not imparting mercy. For those to whom it is not imparted are neither worthy of it nor merit it; rather, that it should not be imparted, this they are worthy of, this they merit. But we look for the merit of mercy and do not find it, because there is none, lest grace be made void, if it is not given freely but paid to merits.

For if we say that faith came first, and that in it lay the merit of grace, what merit did a human being have before faith, so as to receive faith? 'For what does he have that he did not receive? And if he received it, why does he boast as if he had not received it?' For just as a human being would not have wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, piety and the fear of God unless, according to the prophetic word, he had received the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God; just as he would not have power, love and self-control unless he had received the Spirit of whom the apostle says, 'For we have not received a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control'; so he would not have faith unless he had received the spirit of faith, of whom the same apostle says: 'Having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we too believe, and therefore we speak.' And that it is received not by merit but by the mercy of him who has mercy on whom he wills, he shows most plainly where he says of himself: 'I obtained mercy to be faithful.'

If we say that the merit of prayer comes first, so that the gift of grace follows, prayer, by obtaining whatever it obtains, clearly shows that it is a gift of God, lest a human being think he has it from himself; for if it were in his power, it would certainly not be asked for. Yet lest even the merits of prayer be thought to come first, so that grace would not be given freely (and then it would no longer be grace, since it would be paid as owed), prayer itself too is found among the gifts of grace. 'For we do not know what to pray for as we ought', says the teacher of the Gentiles, 'but the Spirit himself intercedes with unutterable groanings.' But what is 'intercedes' except 'makes us intercede'? For to intercede with groanings is a most certain sign of one in need; but it is not lawful to believe the Holy Spirit to be in need of anything. It was said 'intercedes' because he makes us intercede and inspires in us the disposition to intercede and groan, like that saying in the Gospel: 'For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.' For this too does not happen with us as if we were doing nothing. The help of the Holy Spirit, then, is so expressed that he is said to do what he makes us do.

For the apostle himself shows clearly enough that we are not to understand our own spirit as the one of whom it was said, 'He intercedes with unutterable groanings', but the Holy Spirit, by whom our weakness is helped. For he began thus: 'The Spirit helps our weakness'; then he added, 'For we do not know what to pray for as we ought', and so on. Of this Spirit he speaks more plainly elsewhere: 'For you did not receive the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption as sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father.' See, here he did not say that the Spirit himself cries out in praying, but 'in whom we cry', he says, 'Abba, Father.' Yet in another place he says: 'Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' Here he did not say 'in whom we cry', but preferred to say that the Spirit himself cries, by whom it is brought about that we cry; like those sayings, 'The Spirit himself intercedes with unutterable groanings', and, 'It is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.'

Just as, then, no one is rightly wise, rightly understands, rightly prevails in counsel and strength, no one is knowingly pious or piously knowing, no one fears God with chaste fear, unless he has received the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God; and no one has true power, sincere love, devout self-control except through the Spirit of power and love and self-control; so without the spirit of faith no one will rightly believe, and without the spirit of prayer no one will pray healthfully. Not because there are so many spirits, but 'all these are worked by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each individually as he wills', since 'the Spirit breathes where he wills'. But, it must be admitted, he helps in one way when not yet dwelling in us, and in another when dwelling in us: for when not yet dwelling in us he helps people to become believers; when dwelling in us he helps those who are already believers.

What, then, is the merit of a human being before grace, by which merit he receives grace, since only grace produces every good merit of ours in us, and when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing but his own gifts? For just as at the beginning of faith we obtained mercy, not because we were believers, but so that we might be, so at the end, which will be eternal life, he will crown us, as it is written, with compassion and mercy. Not in vain, then, is it sung to God, 'His mercy will go before me', and, 'His mercy will follow me.' Hence eternal life itself too, which will certainly be possessed at the end without end and is therefore paid to preceding merits, is nevertheless also called grace, because those same merits to which it is paid were not produced by us through our own sufficiency but produced in us through grace; called grace for no other reason than that it is given freely, not because it is not given to merits, but because even the merits to which it is given were themselves given. And where do we find eternal life too called grace? We have it in the same magnificent defender of grace, the apostle Paul: 'The wages of sin', he says, 'is death; but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

See, I beg you, with what brevity and how vigilantly he placed his words; when these are carefully considered, the obscurity of this question becomes somewhat clearer. For when he had said, 'The wages of sin is death', who would not judge that he would add most fittingly and consistently if he said, 'But the wages of righteousness is eternal life'? And it is true; for just as death is paid as wages to the merit of sin, so eternal life as wages to the merit of righteousness. Or if he did not wish to say 'of righteousness', he might at least have said 'of faith', since 'the righteous live by faith'. Hence it is also called a reward in very many places of the holy Scriptures; but righteousness or faith is never called a reward, because a reward is paid to righteousness or faith. And what a reward is to one who works, wages are to one who serves as a soldier.

But the blessed apostle, fighting most vigilantly against pride, which tries to creep even into great men, so that he says that for this reason an angel of Satan was given him to buffet him, lest he raise his head in presumption, fighting, then, against this plague of pride, says, 'The wages of sin is death': rightly 'wages', because it is owed, because it is fittingly repaid, because it is deservedly paid. Then, lest righteousness exalt itself on the basis of good human merit, as evil human merit is undoubtedly sin, he did not say by contrast, 'The wages of righteousness is eternal life', but, 'The grace of God', he says, 'is eternal life.' And lest some other way than the mediator be sought for it, he added, 'in Christ Jesus our Lord', as if to say: Having heard that the wages of sin is death, why are you preparing to exalt yourself, O human pride, not righteousness but plainly pride in the name of righteousness? Why are you preparing to exalt yourself and demand eternal life, the opposite of death, as wages owed? True righteousness is that to which eternal life is owed; but if it is true righteousness, it is not from you; it is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. To have it, if indeed you have it, you certainly received it; for what good do you have that you did not receive? Therefore, O man, if you are going to receive eternal life, it is indeed the wages of righteousness, but for you it is grace, for whom righteousness itself is grace. For it would be paid to you as owed if the righteousness to which it is owed came to you from yourself. But as it is, 'from his fullness we have received' not only the grace by which we now live righteously amid labours until the end, but also 'grace for this grace', so that afterwards we may live in rest without end. Faith believes nothing more healthful than this, because understanding finds nothing truer; and we must listen to the prophet saying, 'Unless you believe, you will not understand.'

'But', someone says, 'people who do not want to live rightly and faithfully will excuse themselves, saying: What have we done, we who live badly, since we have not received the grace by which we might live well?' They cannot truthfully say that they do nothing evil, since they live badly; for if they do nothing evil, they live well; but if they live badly, they live badly from what is their own, either what they drew from their origin or what they added besides. But if they are vessels of wrath, made for the destruction that is paid them as owed, let them impute it to themselves, because they have been made from that mass which God deservedly and justly condemned because of the sin of one, in whom all sinned. But if they are vessels of mercy, to whom, though made from the same mass, he did not will to pay the punishment owed, let them not be puffed up, but glorify him who showed them mercy not owed; and if they think otherwise in anything, he will reveal this too to them.

Finally, how will they excuse themselves? Surely in the way that the apostle briefly objected to himself as if in their voice, so that they say: 'Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?' That is to say: Why is there a complaint about us that we offend God by living badly, when no one can resist the will of him who hardened us by not showing mercy? If, then, they are not ashamed to contradict, with this excuse, not us but the apostle, why should we be reluctant to say to them again and again exactly what the apostle said: 'O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to the one who formed it, Why have you made me thus? Has the potter no power over the clay, from the same lump', certainly deservedly and rightly condemned, 'to make one vessel for honour', not owed, because of the grace of mercy, 'and another for dishonour', owed, because of the justice of wrath, 'and to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy', thus showing what he bestows on them, when the vessels of wrath receive the punishment that was owed equally to all? Let it be enough meanwhile for a Christian, still living by faith and not yet seeing what is perfect but knowing in part, to know or believe that God sets no one free except by free mercy through our Lord Jesus Christ, and condemns no one except by most equitable truth through the same our Lord Jesus Christ. But why he sets free or does not set free this one rather than that, let him search out who can so great a depth of his judgments; yet let him beware of the precipice. 'For is there injustice with God? By no means!' But 'his judgments are unsearchable and his ways inscrutable'.

And at least in older ages it can rightly be said: These did not wish to understand so as to act well; these, which is worse, understood and did not obey; for, as it is written, 'A hard servant will not be corrected by words; for even if he understands, he will not obey.' Why will he not obey, except by his own most evil will? To him a heavier condemnation is owed by divine equity; for to whom more is given, more will be required of him. For Scripture calls those inexcusable from whom the truth is not hidden and in whom iniquity persists. 'For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven', says the apostle, 'against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of those men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness, because what is known of God is manifest in them; for God has manifested it to them. For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, understood through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity, so that they are without excuse.'

If, then, he calls those inexcusable who could clearly see his invisible things understood through the things that are made, and yet did not obey the truth but remained unrighteous and ungodly (for they did not fail to know, but, 'knowing God', he says, 'they did not glorify him as God or give thanks'), how much more inexcusable are those who, instructed by his law, are confident that they are guides of the blind, and, teaching others, do not teach themselves, who preach that one must not steal and steal, and the other things the apostle says of them! For to them he says: 'Therefore you are without excuse, O man, everyone who judges; for in judging another you condemn yourself; for you do the same things that you judge.'

The Lord himself also says in the Gospel: 'If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.' They would certainly not have had no sin at all, since they were full of other great and many sins; but he means to be understood that they would not have had this sin if he had not come, namely that, having heard him, they did not believe in him, asserting that they do not have the excuse by which they could say, 'We did not hear, therefore we did not believe.' For human pride, as if presuming on the powers of free choice, thinks itself excused when its sinning seems to be a matter of ignorance rather than of will.

In respect of this excuse, divine Scripture calls inexcusable all whom it convicts of sinning knowingly. Yet God's just judgment does not spare even those who have not heard; 'for all who have sinned without the law will perish without the law.' And although they seem to excuse themselves, he does not admit this excuse who knows that he made man upright and gave him a commandment of obedience, and that sin, even that which passed to his descendants, flowed only from the free choice of the will which he misused. For those who have not sinned are not condemned, since that sin passed from one to all, in whom all sinned in common before the personal sins of each. And so every sinner is inexcusable, whether by the guilt of origin or by the addition of his own will as well, whether he knows or does not know, whether he judges or does not judge; because ignorance itself, in those who did not wish to understand, is without doubt sin, and in those who could not, the punishment of sin. So in both cases there is no just excuse but just condemnation.

But the divine words call inexcusable those who sin not in ignorance but knowingly, so that, by the judgment of their own pride, by which they trust so much in the powers of their own will, they may see themselves to be inexcusable, since they no longer have the excuse of ignorance, and there is not yet the righteousness for which they presumed their will was sufficient. But he to whom the Lord granted the grace both of knowing and of obeying says: 'Through the law comes knowledge of sin', and, 'I did not know sin except through the law; for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, You shall not covet.' And he means to be understood not a man ignorant of the law that commands but one in need of the grace that sets free, where he says, 'I delight in the law of God according to the inner man'; and with this not only knowledge but even delight in the law, he afterwards says: 'Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' So no one sets free from the wounds of that slaughterer except the grace of the one Saviour; no one sets free those sold under sin from the chains of captivity except the grace of the Redeemer.

And so all who want to be excused in their wickedness and iniquities are most justly punished, because those who are set free are set free only by grace. For if that excuse were just, it would no longer be grace but justice that set them free. But since only grace sets free, it finds nothing just in the one it sets free: not the will, not the action, not even the excuse itself; for if this were just, whoever used it would be set free by merit, not by grace. For we know that some even of those who say, 'Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?', are set free by the grace of Christ. If this excuse is just, they are no longer set free by free grace but because of the justice of this excuse. But if it is grace by which they are set free, then certainly this excuse is not just. For it is true grace by which a person is set free only if it is not repaid according to what is owed in justice. Nothing else, then, is happening in those who say, 'Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?', than what we read in Solomon's book: 'The folly of a man corrupts his ways, but in his heart he blames God.'

Although, then, God makes vessels of wrath for destruction, to show his wrath and make known his power, by which he makes good use even of the evil, and to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he makes for honour, not owed to the condemnable mass but given by the bounty of his grace, yet in those same vessels of wrath, made for the dishonour owed because of the merit of the mass, that is, in human beings created for the good of their nature but destined for punishment because of their vices, he knows how to condemn the iniquity which truth most rightly reproves, not to make it. For just as human nature, which no one doubts is to be praised, is attributed to his will, so fault, which no one refuses to condemn, is attributed to the human will. That human will either transmitted hereditary vice to the descendants it had in itself when it sinned, or acquired other vices too, when each one lived ruinously in himself. But neither from that which is drawn from origin, nor from the evils which each gathers in his own life, whether by not understanding or by not wishing to understand, or even, instructed by the law, heaps up by the addition of transgression, is anyone set free and justified except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, not only by the remission of sins but first by the inspiration of faith itself and of the fear of God, and by the healthful imparting of the disposition and power of prayer, until he heals all our diseases, redeems our life from corruption, and crowns us with compassion and mercy.

But these men who think God becomes a respecter of persons if, in one and the same case, his mercy comes upon some and his wrath remains upon others, surely lose all the force of human argument in the case of little children. For, to say nothing for the moment of the fact that little children, however newly come from their mother's womb, are not outside that punishment of which the apostle speaks, saying, 'Through the trespass of one it came upon all men to condemnation', from which no one sets free except that one of whom he also says, 'Through the justification of one upon all men to justification of life', to pass this over, then, for the moment, and to say only this about little children, which they themselves too, frightened by the authority of the Gospel, or rather overwhelmed by the most harmonious agreement in faith of Christian peoples, concede without any refusal, namely that no little child enters the kingdom of heaven unless reborn of water and the Spirit: what reason, I ask, will they give why one is so guided that he leaves this life baptized, while another, handed over to the hands of unbelievers, or even of believers, dies before he is presented by them for baptism? Will they attribute this to fate or fortune? I do not think that men who wish to keep the Christian name, however little, will break out into such madness.

Why, then, will no little child enter the kingdom of heaven without receiving the washing of regeneration? Did he himself choose unbelieving or negligent parents to be born of? What shall I say of the countless unexpected and sudden deaths by which infants even of devout Christians are often overtaken and snatched from baptism, while on the other hand the infants of sacrilegious people and enemies of Christ, coming somehow into Christian hands, do not leave this life without the sacrament of regeneration? What will they say here who contend that some human merits precede, so that grace can be given, lest God be a respecter of persons? What merits went before here? If you think of the little children themselves, they have none of their own; the mass is common to both. If you look to the parents, those whose children perished by sudden deaths without Christ's baptism were good, and those whose children reached the sacraments of the Church through the authority of some Christians were evil. And yet the providence of God, by whom our hairs are numbered, without whose will not a sparrow falls to the ground, which is neither pressed by fate nor hindered by chance events nor corrupted by any injustice, does not provide for all the little children of its own sons to be reborn to the heavenly inheritance, and does provide for some little children even of the ungodly. This infant, born of believing spouses, received with his parents' joy, smothered by the drowsiness of his mother or nurse, is made a stranger to the faith of his parents and without share in it; that infant, born of sacrilegious fornication, exposed by his mother's cruel fear, is picked up by the merciful kindness of strangers, baptized by their Christian concern, and made a sharer and partaker of the eternal kingdom. Let them think of these things, let them consider these things, and here let them dare to say that God is either a respecter of persons in his grace or a rewarder of preceding merits.

For even if they try to suspect some merits, bad or good, of an older age, what will they say about these infants themselves, of whom the one could not, by any bad merits of his own, bring on himself the violence of the one who smothered him, nor the other, by good merits, the care of the one who baptized him? They are excessively vain and blind if, even after considering these things, they do not yet deign to cry out with us: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways!' Let them not, then, oppose God's free mercy with most obstinate madness. Let them allow the Son of Man to seek and to save what was lost, at whatever age, and not dare to judge his unsearchable judgments, why in one and the same case his mercy comes upon one and his wrath remains upon another.

For who are these men to answer back to God, when to Rebecca, carrying twins from one act of intercourse with our father Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing good or evil, so that his purpose according to election might stand (the election, that is, of grace, not of debt, the election by which he himself makes, not finds, those to be chosen), he says, not from works but from him who calls, that the elder will serve the younger? To this statement the blessed apostle also added the testimony of a much later prophet, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated', so that it might be understood that what was made plain later through the prophet was in God's predestination through grace before they were born. For what did he love in Jacob, before he was born and had done anything good, except the free gift of his mercy? And what did he hate in Esau, before he was born and had done anything evil, except original sin? For neither did he love in the one a righteousness which he had not done, nor hate in the other the nature which he himself had made good.