The Conferences 13.8–13.14

“The divine word expressed this care and providence of his for us elegantly through the prophet Hosea, under the figure of Jerusalem as a harlot, hastening with ruinous eagerness to the worship of idols. For when she says: “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink,” the divine condescension, consulting her salvation and not her will, answers: “Behold, I will hedge up her ways with thorns, and I will wall her in, and she shall not find her paths; and she shall follow her lovers and not overtake them, and seek them and not find them, and she shall say: I will return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now.” And again he describes our stubbornness and contempt, with which we disdain him with rebellious spirit when he invites us to a saving return, by this comparison: “And I said: You shall call me Father, and shall not cease to walk after me. But as a woman despises her lover, so has the house of Israel despised me, says the Lord.” Quite fittingly, since he had compared Jerusalem to an adulteress leaving her husband, he compared the love and persistence of his own kindness to a man who is madly in love with a woman. For the kindness and love of God which he always shows toward the human race, in that it is overcome by no injuries so as to withdraw from care for our salvation or, as if defeated by our iniquities, to be called back from his principal purpose, could not be expressed more properly by any other comparison than by the example of a man who loves a woman with most ardent love, and who, the more he feels himself neglected and despised by her, the more he is inflamed with a vehement zeal for her. Divine protection, then, is inseparably with us always, and so great is the Creator’s kindness toward his creature that his providence not only accompanies it but continually goes before it. The prophet, having experienced this, confesses it most openly, saying: “My God, his mercy will go before me.” When he sees in us some beginning of good will, he at once enlightens it, strengthens it, and urges it on to salvation, giving increase to what he himself has planted or has seen spring up by our own effort. For he says: “Before they call, I will hear; while they are still speaking, I will hear,” and again: “At the voice of your cry, as soon as he hears, he will answer you.” And not only does he kindly inspire holy desires, but he also prepares occasions and the opportunity of good effect, and shows those who go astray the direction of the way of salvation.

“Hence it is not easily discerned by human reason how the Lord gives to those who ask, is found by those who seek, and opens to those who knock, and on the other hand is found by those who do not seek him, appears openly among those who did not ask for him, and all day long stretches out his hands to a people that does not believe him and contradicts him; calls those who resist and are far off, draws the unwilling to salvation, takes from those who wish to sin the opportunity of fulfilling their will, and kindly stands in the way of those hastening to wickedness. But to whom is it easily clear how the sum of salvation is ascribed to our choice, of which it is said: “If you are willing and will listen to me, you shall eat the good things of the land,” and how it is “not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy”? What, too, is meant by this, that God “will render to each according to his works,” and: “It is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, for his good pleasure,” and: “This is not from yourselves but is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone should boast”? What is meant also by what is said: “Draw near to the Lord, and he will draw near to you,” and what he says elsewhere: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him”? What is meant by what is said: “Make straight paths for your feet, and direct your ways,” and what we say in prayer: “Direct my way in your sight,” and: “Perfect my steps in your paths, that my footsteps may not be moved”? What is meant again by our being admonished: “Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit,” and what is promised: “I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and I will take away the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my commandments and keep my judgments”? What is meant by the Lord’s command: “Wash your heart from wickedness, Jerusalem, that you may be saved,” and by the prophet’s asking the same thing of the Lord, saying: “Create a clean heart in me, O God,” and again: “You will wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow”? What is meant by what is said to us: “Light for yourselves the light of knowledge,” and by what is said of God: “who teaches man knowledge,” and: “The Lord gives light to the blind,” or indeed by what we say in prayer with the prophet: “Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death”? What else, but that in all these both the grace of God and the freedom of our will are declared, since even by his own movements a man can sometimes reach out toward the desire of the virtues, but always needs to be helped by the Lord? For no one enjoys health when he wishes, or is freed from the disease of sickness at the desire of his own choice. And what does it profit to have longed for the grace of health unless God, who gives the use of life itself, also imparts the vigor of soundness? But that it may be clearer that the beginnings of good wills sometimes come forth even through the good of nature, which has been granted by the kindness of the Creator, but that these cannot reach the perfection of the virtues unless they are directed by the Lord, the apostle is witness, saying: “For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find.”

“For divine Scripture affirms the freedom of our will, saying: “Keep your heart with all watchfulness,” but the apostle shows its weakness, saying: “May the Lord keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” David declares the power of free will, saying: “I have inclined my heart to do your righteous ordinances,” but the same man likewise teaches us its weakness, saying: “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to covetousness”; Solomon too: “May the Lord incline our hearts to himself, that we may walk in all his ways and keep his commandments, his ceremonies, and his judgments.” The psalmist indicates the power of our will, saying: “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit”; our prayer bears witness to its weakness when we say: “Set a guard, O Lord, on my mouth, and a door of enclosure about my lips.” The ability of our will is declared by the Lord when it is said: “Loose the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Sion”; the prophet sings of its frailty, saying: “The Lord looses the fettered,” and: “You have broken my bonds; to you I will offer the sacrifice of praise.” We hear the Lord in the gospel calling us to hasten to him by free will: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you,” but the same Lord bears witness to its weakness, saying: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” The apostle points to our free will, saying: “So run that you may obtain,” but John the Baptist testifies to its weakness when he says: “A man can receive nothing of himself unless it is given him from heaven.” We are commanded to guard our souls carefully, as the prophet says: “Guard your souls,” but another prophet cries out by the same Spirit: “Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” The apostle, writing to the Philippians, says, to indicate their free will: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”; but to show its weakness he adds: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, for his good pleasure.”

“And so these things are in a way mingled and confused without distinction, so that among many it is debated as a great question which depends on which: that is, whether God has mercy on us because we have shown the beginning of good will, or whether we obtain the beginning of good will because God has mercy. For many, believing one or the other of these and asserting it more than is right, have become entangled in various errors contrary to each other. For if we say that the beginning of good will is ours, what was there in Paul the persecutor, what in Matthew the tax collector, of whom one, eager for the blood and torments of the innocent, the other intent on public violence and plunder, is drawn to salvation? But if we say that the beginnings of good will are always inspired by the grace of God, what shall we say of the faith of Zacchaeus, what of the devotion of that thief on the cross, who, by their own desire doing a kind of violence to the heavenly kingdom, anticipated the special admonitions of a call? And if we ascribe the perfecting of the virtues and the carrying out of God’s commandments to our own choice, how do we pray: “Confirm, O God, what you have wrought in us,” and: “Direct the works of our hands over us”? We know that Balaam was hired to curse Israel, but we see that he was not permitted to curse, though he wished to. Abimelech is kept from sinning against God by touching Rebecca. Joseph is sold away by the envy of his brothers, so that the descent of the sons of Israel into Egypt might take place, and while they were plotting their brother’s death, remedies for the coming famine were being prepared. This same Joseph, when recognized by his brothers, makes it plain, saying: “Do not be afraid, and let it not seem hard to you that you sold me into these regions; for God sent me before you for your salvation,” and below: “For God sent me before you that you may be preserved on the earth and may have food to live. I was sent not by your counsel but by the will of God, who has made me as a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and ruler in all the land of Egypt.” And when, after their father’s death, he took away the suspicion of fear from his frightened brothers, he said: “Do not fear; can we resist the will of God? You thought evil against me, but God turned it to good, to exalt me, as you see at present, that he might save many peoples.” Blessed David also declared in the hundred and fourth psalm that this was done then by God’s dispensation, saying: “And he called a famine upon the land and broke every staff of bread. He sent a man before them; Joseph was sold as a slave.” These two, then, the grace of God and free will, seem indeed opposed to each other, but both agree, and we gather by the reasoning of piety that we ought to accept both alike, lest by taking one of them away from man we seem to have gone beyond the rule of the church’s faith. For when God sees us turning to will the good, he meets, directs, and strengthens us: “For at the voice of your cry, as soon as he hears, he will answer you,” and: “Call upon me,” he says, “in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” And again, if he sees that we are unwilling or have grown lukewarm, he applies saving exhortations to our hearts, by which a good will may be either restored or formed in us.

“For we must not believe that God made man such that he can never either will or be able to do good. Otherwise he has not granted him free will, if he has allowed him only to will and be able to do evil, but not to will or be able to do good of himself. And how will that sentence of the Lord stand, pronounced after the transgression of the first man: “Behold, Adam has become as one of us, knowing good and evil”? For we must not think that he was previously such as to be wholly ignorant of good. Otherwise we would have to admit that he was formed like some irrational and senseless animal, which is quite absurd and wholly foreign to the catholic faith. On the contrary, according to the saying of the most wise Solomon, “God made man upright,” that is, to enjoy continually the knowledge of good only; “but they themselves have sought out many thoughts,” for they became, as has been said, “knowing good and evil.” After the transgression, then, Adam acquired the knowledge of evil which he had not had, but he did not lose the knowledge of good which he had received. Finally, that the human race did not lose the knowledge of good after Adam’s transgression is declared most plainly by the apostle’s words: “For when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves; they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or else defending them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men.” In this sense also the Lord through the prophet rebukes the blindness of the Jews, not natural but voluntary, which they obstinately brought upon themselves: “Hear, you deaf, and look, you blind, that you may see. Who is deaf but my servant? And who is blind but he to whom I have sent my messengers?” And lest anyone should ascribe their blindness to nature rather than will, he says elsewhere: “Bring forth the people that is blind and has eyes, deaf and has ears,” and again: “You who have eyes and do not see, and ears and do not hear.” The Lord also says in the gospel: “Because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear nor understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says: Hearing you will hear and will not understand, and seeing you will see and will not perceive. For the heart of this people has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and they have closed their eyes, lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I should heal them.” Finally, to show that the possibility of good was in them, he rebuked the Pharisees: “And why do you not even of yourselves judge what is right?” He would certainly not have said this to them unless he knew that they could discern what is just by natural judgment. Hence we must beware of referring all the merits of the saints to the Lord in such a way that we ascribe to human nature nothing but what is evil and perverse. In this we are refuted by the testimony of the most wise Solomon, or rather of the Lord himself, whose words these are; for when he prayed on the completion of the building of the temple, he said: “And David my father wished to build a house for the name of the Lord God of Israel. And the Lord said to David my father: Whereas you thought in your heart to build a house for my name, you did well in having this very thing in mind. Yet you shall not build a house for my name.” Is this thought and this intention of King David, then, to be called good and from God, or evil and from man? For if that thought was good and from God, why is its effect denied to him by the one who inspired it? But if it was evil and from man, why is it praised by the Lord? It remains, then, that it be believed to have been both good and from man. In this way we can judge our own thoughts daily too. For it was not granted to David alone to think good of himself, nor is it denied to us by nature that we can ever think or understand anything good. It cannot be doubted, then, that the seeds of the virtues have been implanted by nature in every soul by the kindness of the Creator; but unless these are stirred up by God’s help, they will not be able to reach the growth of perfection, since, according to the blessed apostle, “neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” That freedom of will lies open to man in either direction is also taught most plainly by the book called the Shepherd, in which two angels, a good one and an evil one, are said to attend each of us, while it rests with man’s option to choose which he will follow. And therefore free will always remains in man, which can either neglect or love the grace of God. For the apostle would not have commanded, saying: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” had he not known that it could be either cultivated or neglected by us. But lest they should believe that they did not need divine help for the work of salvation, he adds: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, for his good pleasure.” And therefore, warning Timothy, he says: “Do not neglect the grace of God which is in you,” and again: “For this reason I remind you to stir up the grace of God which is in you.” Hence also, writing to the Corinthians, he exhorts and warns them not to show themselves unworthy of God’s grace by fruitless works, saying: “And helping, we also beseech you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” Simon, no doubt because he had received it in vain, did not profit from receiving saving grace; for he would not obey the commands of blessed Peter, who said: “Repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray to God if perhaps this thought of your heart may be forgiven you; for I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” God, then, anticipates man’s will, as it is said: “My God, his mercy will go before me”; and again, when God waits and in a way usefully holds back in order to test our choice, our will anticipates him, as it is said: “And in the morning my prayer will go before you,” and again: “I anticipated in the dawn and cried out,” and: “My eyes anticipated the morning.” He also calls and invites us, when he says: “All day long I have stretched out my hands to a people that does not believe me and contradicts me,” and he is invited by us, when we say to him: “All day long I have stretched out my hands to you.” He waits for us, when it is said through the prophet: “Therefore the Lord waits to have mercy on you,” and he is waited for by us, when we say: “I waited patiently for the Lord, and he regarded me,” and: “I have waited for your salvation, O Lord.” He strengthens us, when he says: “And I have instructed and strengthened their arms, and they have thought evil against me,” and he exhorts us to strengthen ourselves, when he says: “Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.” Jesus cries: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink”; the prophet also cries to him: “I have labored crying out; my throat has become hoarse; my eyes have failed while I hope in my God.” The Lord seeks us, saying: “I sought, and there was no man; I called, and there was no one to answer”; and he himself is sought by the bride, who laments tearfully: “On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loved; I sought him and did not find him; I called him and he did not answer me.”

“And so the grace of God always cooperates with our will for good and helps, protects, and defends it in all things, in such a way that it sometimes even requires or waits for some efforts of good will from it, lest it should seem to confer its gifts on one wholly asleep or slack in idle sloth. It seeks occasions, as it were, so that, when the torpor of human sluggishness has been shaken off, the generosity of its bounty may not seem unreasonable, since it imparts it under the appearance of a certain desire and labor. And nevertheless the grace of God remains free, since in return for certain slight and small efforts it bestows with inestimable generosity such glory of immortality and such gifts of everlasting blessedness. For it must not be declared that, because the faith of the thief on the cross came first, the blessed dwelling in paradise was therefore not promised to him freely; nor must it be believed that the repentance of King David, that one word with which he said, “I have sinned against the Lord,” rather than the mercy of God, took away two such grave crimes of his, so that he deserved to hear through the prophet Nathan: “And the Lord has taken away your iniquity; you shall not die.” That he added murder to adultery, then, was certainly of free will; that he was rebuked by the prophet is the grace of divine condescension. Again, that he humbly acknowledged his sin was his own; but that in the briefest moment of time he gained pardon for such great crimes is the gift of the merciful Lord. And what shall we say of this so brief confession and the incomparable immensity of the divine reward, when it is very easy to consider what the blessed apostle declared about his own countless persecutions, looking to that greatness of future reward? “For this momentary and light affliction of ours,” he says, “works in us beyond measure, beyond comparison, an eternal weight of glory.” Of this he also declares steadfastly elsewhere: “For the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that will be revealed in us.” However much, then, human frailty has striven, it cannot be equal to the future reward, nor will it so lessen divine grace by its labors that grace does not always remain free. And therefore the said teacher of the Gentiles, although he testifies that he obtained the rank of apostleship by the grace of God, saying: “But by the grace of God I am what I am,” nevertheless declares that he too responded to divine grace, saying: “And his grace in me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” For when he says “I labored,” he indicates the effort of his own will; when he says “yet not I, but the grace of God,” he shows the power of divine protection; when he says “with me,” he declares that it cooperated with him, not idle or careless, but laboring and toiling.

“We read that divine justice provided this also in Job, his most approved athlete, when the devil had asked for him for single combat. For if he had engaged the enemy not by his own strength but solely by the protecting grace of God, and had endured those manifold masses of temptations and disasters, sought out with all the enemy’s cruelty, without any virtue of his own patience, supported only by divine aid, how could the devil not have repeated more justly against him that slanderous word which he had earlier uttered: “Does Job serve God for nothing? Have you not fenced him in, and all his property round about? But take away your hand,” that is, let him fight against me by his own strength, “and see if he does not bless you to your face.” But since the slanderous enemy does not dare to repeat any such complaint after the conflict, he confesses that he was defeated not by God’s strength but by Job’s. Yet we must not believe that the grace of God was wholly absent from him; it gave the tempter as much power to tempt as it knew Job had strength to resist, not protecting him from the attack in such a way as to leave no room for human virtue, but providing only this, that the most violent enemy should not, by making him mad and deprived of his senses, crush him with an unequal and unfair weight of combat. That the Lord is accustomed sometimes to test our faith so that it may become stronger or more glorious, we are taught by the example of the centurion in the gospel. Though the Lord certainly knew that he would heal his servant by the power of his word, he chose to offer his bodily presence, saying: “I will come and heal him.” But when the centurion surpassed this offer by the ardor of a more fervent faith and said: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed,” the Lord marvels at him, praises him, and prefers him to all those of the people of Israel who had believed, saying: “Truly I say to you, I have not found such faith in Israel.” For there would be no praise or merit if Christ had preferred in him what he himself had given. We read that divine justice arranged this testing of faith also in that most magnificent patriarch, when it is said: “And it came to pass after these words that God tested Abraham.” For divine justice wished to try, not that faith which the Lord was inspiring in him, but that which, once called and enlightened by the Lord, he could show by the choice of his freedom. Hence the constancy of his faith is not without reason proved, and when the grace of God, which had left him for a little while in order to prove him, came to his aid, it is said: “Do not lay your hand on the boy, nor do anything to him; for now I know that you fear the Lord, and you have not spared your beloved son for my sake.” That this kind of temptation can happen to us too, for the merit of proving us, is plainly foretold by the lawgiver in Deuteronomy: “If there arises among you a prophet, or one who says he has seen a dream, and foretells a sign and a wonder, and what he said comes to pass, and he says to you: Let us go and serve strange gods which you do not know, do not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, for the Lord your God is testing you, whether you love him with all your heart and keep his commandments or not.” What then? When God has allowed that prophet or dreamer to arise, are we to believe that he will protect those whose faith he intends to prove in such a way as to leave no room at all for their free will to fight with the tempter by their own strength? And why should they be tempted at all, if he knows them to be so weak and frail that they cannot resist the tempter by their own strength? But the Lord’s justice would surely not have allowed them to be tempted unless he knew that there was in them a strength equal to resisting, by which, in the justice of his judgment, they could be judged deservedly either guilty or praiseworthy in either case. Of the same kind is what the apostle says: “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has taken you but what is human. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will make with the temptation also a way out, that you may be able to bear it.” For when he says, “Let him who stands take heed lest he fall,” he makes the freedom of the will watchful, knowing that, once grace has been received, it can either stand by diligence or fall by negligence. And when he adds, “No temptation has taken you but what is human,” he rebukes their weakness and the inconstancy of a mind not yet strong, by which they could not yet be attacked by the whirlwinds of the spiritual forces of wickedness, against whom he knew that he himself, or those who were perfect, fought daily; of these he says to the Ephesians: “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” But when he adds, “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,” he does not wish that the Lord should not allow them to be tempted, but that they should not be tempted beyond what they could bear. The former indicated the capacity of human will; the latter shows the grace of the Lord moderating the struggles of temptations. In all these things, then, it is proved that divine grace always stirs up man’s will, but not so as to protect and defend it in all things in such a way that it does not also make it fight by its own efforts against its spiritual enemies; in which, if victorious, it may recognize the grace of God, or, if overcome, its own weakness, and so learn to hope not in its own strength but always in divine aid, and to run continually to its protector. And that this may be proved not by our conjecture but by still clearer testimonies of divine Scripture, let us consider what we read in Joshua: “The Lord left these nations and would not destroy them, that he might test Israel by them, whether they would keep the commandments of the Lord their God, and that they might have practice in fighting with enemies.” And to compare something mortal with the incomparable mercy of our Creator, not as equal in kindness but by some likeness of indulgence: if a devoted and careful nurse carries a little child in her bosom for a long time, so that at some point she may teach it to walk, she first lets it crawl, then holds it up with the strength of her right hand so that it may lean on alternate steps; soon, leaving it a little, if she sees it stumbling, she catches it at once, supports it when it totters, lifts it when it falls, and either keeps it from falling or, letting it fall lightly, raises it after the tumble. But when she has brought it to boyhood or to the strength of adolescence and youth, she lays on it certain burdens or labors by which it is not crushed but exercised, and lets it compete with its rivals. How much more does that heavenly Father of all know whom to carry in the bosom of his grace, whom to exercise in virtue before his eyes by the choice of free will; and yet he helps the one who labors, hears the one who calls, does not abandon the one who seeks, and rescues from danger sometimes even one who does not know it.