On Grace and Free Will (Against the Author of the Conferences) 19–22

From these definitions, then, which we have discussed so far, passing over some things, it is neither obscure nor doubtful what those think about the grace of God who speak against its most sincere defenders and disturb the peace of the victorious church with petty questions taken up again from the school of the condemned. If we were to go over them again as we have heard them, the length of our discourse would be immoderate; since from what has become known from their own pen the godly reader easily understands to what precipices one comes by these paths, and into what muddy marsh of filthy streams the moisture of this whirlpool oozes. I think it necessary, however, before the conclusion of the volume, to set out briefly and together the things which we have shown not to agree with catholic truth, so that what might escape the reader's memory because of our interposed replies may more easily be gone over and recalled at once. IN THE FIRST DEFINITION, THEN, IT WAS SAID: "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God, who both inspires in us the beginnings of a holy will and grants the power and the opportunity of carrying out what we rightly desire. For every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us." This we too warmly embrace and profess to be catholic. IN THE SECOND DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "The divine protection, then, is inseparably present with us, and so great is the Creator's kindness toward his creature that his providence not only accompanies it but also continually goes before it; which the prophet, having experienced it, confesses, saying: My God, his mercy will go before me (Ps 59:10). When he has seen in us a certain beginning of good will, he enlightens it, strengthens it, and urges it to salvation, giving increase to what either he himself planted or he has seen to have sprung up from our own effort." Here already there is a departure from the definition set out first, and what had been given wholly to grace is now credited in part to free choice. IN THE THIRD DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "Except that in all these both the grace of God and the freedom of choice are declared, by which man can sometimes by his own movements stretch out toward the desire for 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 according to the desire of his choice." As though our physician did not also give this to the sick, that they should truly desire health. "But that it may appear more clearly that sometimes, even through the good of nature which has been granted by the kindness of the Creator, the beginnings of good wills come forth, which yet cannot attain to the completion 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 (Rom 7:18)." As though the Apostle had a good will from natural affection and not from the gift of grace, who professes that his sufficiency even for thinking is from God (2 Cor 3:5). IN THE FIFTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "And so these things are in a way mixed and confused without distinction, so that which depends on which is turned over by many as a great question: that is, whether God has mercy on us because we have offered the beginning of good will, or whether we obtain the beginning of good will because God has mercy. For many, believing each of these singly and asserting it more than is right, have become entangled in various errors contrary to one another. 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? One of them, intent on the blood and torture of the innocent, the other on violence and public 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, of the godliness of that thief on the cross, who, by their own desire doing a kind of violence to the heavenly kingdom, anticipated the special warnings of the call?" Both he who asserts that good will is born of grace and he who says that grace depends on good will are said to be in error; and yet both opinions are decreed to be accepted, while the pattern of one is set out in Paul and Matthew, of the other in Zacchaeus and the thief. IN THE SIXTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "These two, then, that is, grace and free choice, seem indeed opposed to each other, but both agree, and we gather from the principle of godliness 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." As though both were to be accepted in such a way that in some people the will precedes grace, in others grace precedes the will; and not in such a way that in all the will follows grace. For according to them, if free choice is taken away when grace goes before, grace is taken away when free choice goes before. IN THE SEVENTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "After the transgression, then, Adam conceived the knowledge of evil, which he had not had; but he did not lose the knowledge of good, which he had received." Whereas both are false: for Adam had learned beforehand, by God's warning, how great an evil he ought to beware of; and he forgot in how great a good he had been set when he believed the devil. Just as the worst knowledge of evil is to be evil, so the worst ignorance of good is not to be good. IN THE EIGHTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "Hence we must beware of so referring all the merits of the saints to God that we ascribe nothing to human nature except what is evil." As though nature before grace were not under condemnation, not in blindness, not in a wound; or as though those were not justified freely whose merits come from the same source as their righteousness. IN THE NINTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "It cannot be doubted, then, that the seeds of the virtues are naturally present in every soul, implanted by the kindness of the Creator; but unless they are stirred up by the help of God, they will not be able to reach the growth of perfection." As though Adam lost nothing of the spiritual goods by transgressing, and virtue were not to be given so that it may be had, but to be exhorted so that it may more easily reach perfection. IN THE TENTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "We read that divine justice made provision for 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 virtue but with the grace of God alone protecting him, and, without any virtue of patience of his own, supported only by divine help, had borne those manifold masses of temptations and disasters sought out by all the enemy's cruelty, how would the devil not have repeated more justly against him that slanderous word which he had uttered before: Does Job worship God for nothing? Have you not hedged him and his house and all his substance round about? But take away your hand, that is, let him fight it out with me with his own strength, and he will curse you to your face. But since the slanderous enemy does not dare to repeat any such complaint after the combat, he confesses that he was conquered by Job's strength, not God's. Although the grace of God is not to be believed to have been wholly absent from him either, which gave the tempter as much power to tempt as it knew Job had the strength to resist." If God only knew what Job could do, and did not also give him the power to do it, he was the witness of his patience, not its helper. And in what will the help of grace be necessary, if that great victory was won by human strength alone? IN THE ELEVENTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID, OF THE FAITH OF THE CENTURION: "The Lord admires and praises him, and prefers him to all those of the people of Israel who had believed, saying: Truly I tell you, I have not found such faith in Israel. For it would have been of no praise or merit if the Lord had preferred in him what he himself had given." An impious opinion, which thinks a man more blessed to whom God has given nothing than one on whom he has bestowed everything. IN THE TWELFTH DEFINITION IT WAS SAID: "Hence it is that when we pray we call the Lord not only protector but also upholder. For in that he first calls and draws us to salvation while we are ignorant and unwilling, he is protector and savior; but in that he is accustomed to bring aid to us as we strive, and to receive and fortify us as we take refuge, he is named upholder and refuge." To this sentence only one can give consent who does not want to be saved by Christ.

By these definitions, then, this is taught, this is written, this is preached in published discussions: that when Adam sinned his soul was not injured, and that the part with which he sinned remained sound in him, since he did not lose the knowledge of good which he had received; nor could his descendants lose what not even he suffered the loss of. That the seeds of the virtues are naturally present in every soul, implanted by the kindness of the Creator, so that whoever wishes can, by natural judgment, anticipate the grace of God and merit his help, by which he may reach perfection more easily; because one who is adorned with given goods, not his own, is of no praise or merit. That one must also beware of referring all the merits of the saints to God as though human nature itself could do no good by itself; since the soundness of its powers is so great that it can fight without God's help against the devil himself and his savagery, even to extreme tortures. That this possibility is natural in all human beings, but that not all will to use the virtues born in them. That the Creator's goodness toward all human beings is so great that some, because they come of their own accord, are received by him with praise, while others, because they resist, are drawn against their will; and that therefore he is the upholder of the willing but the savior of the unwilling. And that, since part of the church is justified by grace and part by free choice, those whom nature has advanced are more glorious than those whom grace has freed; because the will in Adam's descendants is as free for every good work as it was in Adam before sin.

See of what doctrine these men are teachers, who, in order to corrupt the purity of catholic minds by slandering the defenders of grace, tear with rabid mouth the foremost man of our time in the teaching of the church, and believe that they can tear down all the fortifications of authority if they batter this strongest tower of the pastoral watch with the repeated blows of the Pelagian ram. "God's firm foundation stands" (2 Tim 2:19); but these men fittingly do not fail their party. For it is right that they should imitate the madness of those whose opinion they follow. Nor can they say anything other than what has been published in the complaints of the condemned and in the abuse of the most insolent Julian. The shoots of one seed are alike, and what lay hidden in the roots is revealed in the fruits. We need not, then, fight with these men in a new battle line, nor engage in special combats as against unknown enemies. Their engines were broken then, then they fell together with the partners and leaders of their pride: when Innocent of blessed memory struck the heads of the wicked error with the apostolic sword; when the synod of the bishops of Palestine forced Pelagius to pronounce sentence against himself and his followers; when Pope Zosimus of blessed memory joined the strength of his sentence to the decrees of the African councils, and armed the right hands of all the bishops with the sword of Peter for cutting down the ungodly; when Pope Boniface of holy memory rejoiced in the catholic devotion of the most godly emperors and used against the enemies of the grace of God not only apostolic but also imperial edicts; and when the same pope, though most learned himself, asked for the replies of blessed bishop Augustine against the books of the Pelagians. Hence also the bishop Celestine of venerable memory, to whom the Lord gave many gifts of his grace for the defense of the catholic church, knowing that the condemned are to be offered not an examination of judgment but only the remedy of penance, ordered Caelestius, who was asking for a hearing as though the matter had not been examined, to be driven out of all the borders of Italy; so firmly did he hold that the statutes of his predecessors and the decrees of synods were to be kept inviolate that he would not allow what had once deserved to be cut off to be treated again. Nor with less careful attention did he free the Britains from this same disease, when he shut out even from that hidden corner of the Ocean certain enemies of grace who were occupying the soil of their origin; and, having ordained a bishop for the Scots, while he strove to keep the Roman island catholic, he made the barbarian island Christian as well. Through this man the Eastern churches too were cleansed of a twofold plague, when he helped Cyril, bishop of the city of Alexandria, the most glorious defender of the catholic faith, with the apostolic sword to cut out the Nestorian impiety, by which the Pelagians too, while allied with kindred errors, were laid low again. Through this man, within the Gauls, the freedom of evil speaking was taken away from these very men who find fault with the writings of Augustine of holy memory; when, having taken up the action of those who consulted him, and having praised the godliness of the books that displeased those in error, he made known in holy words what ought to be thought of their authority, declaring plainly how much the novelty of this presumption displeased him, by which some dared to rise up insolently against the ancient teachers and to clamor against the preaching of truth with undisciplined slander: "Augustine," he says (Letter of Celestine to the bishops of Gaul), "a man of holy memory, we have always held in our communion for his life and merits; nor did even the rumor of evil suspicion ever sprinkle him, whom we remember to have been of such knowledge that he was always counted among the best teachers even by my predecessors. All, then, have thought well of him in common, as one who everywhere was loved and honored by all." Against this trumpet of most illustrious praise, against this dignity of most sacred testimony, does anyone dare to let out the murmur of malicious interpretation, and to spread the cloud of slanting ambiguity over a clear and most sincere sentence? Namely, that because in the pope's letter the title of the books on whose account action was taken is not expressed, it should appear from this that they were not approved, and that this praise of holy Augustine was bestowed for the merits of his earlier writings? Let this condition stand, by all means let it stand: that the novelty of these books may be seen as rejected if, in the same cause, the earlier work of the same man disagrees with them; and that whatever is found out of tune with what he composed against the Pelagians may be judged useless or unfitting. So, to leave aside the volumes in which, from the beginning of his episcopate, long before the opponents of grace arose, he argued for grace, let his three books to Marcellinus be read; let the letter to holy Paulinus, bishop of Nola, be gone over again; let the pages sent to the most blessed Xystus, then a presbyter of the apostolic see and now its bishop, be run through again; let the volumes published separately to holy Pinianus, to Count Valerius, and to the servants of Christ Timasius and James be turned over; let the first six books against Julian, one to holy Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, on the proceedings in Palestine, another to the priests Paul and Eutropius against the questions of Pelagius and Caelestius, and the four volumes to Pope Boniface of blessed memory, be reviewed. And if in all these works, and in many others which it would take long to list, the same spirit of teaching and the same form of preaching went before, let the slanderers recognize that they object to no purpose that no special and separate testimony was given to these books, whose rule is praised in all his volumes. For the apostolic see approves together with what it already knows whatever does not differ from what it already knows, and does not separate in praise what it joins in judgment. Let those, then, who reject these recently published books acquiesce in the earlier ones, and agree with what was written for the grace of Christ already before. But they do not; for they know that all of it is contrary to the Pelagians, and that nothing can serve them for undoing the later books if they confess that the truth stands in the earlier ones. The depravity of such men, then, must be resisted not so much by eagerness for disputation as by the privilege of authority, so that no member may be allowed to rise from the body of a doctrine long since laid low. For it is known that the cunning of this falsehood is such that, if it sensed that under a pretended image of correction some of its favorers had taken in a shoot of its root, it would wish to restore itself whole from the smallest part of itself. For where the sum is nothing other than the portion, it is not devotion to have given almost all, but fraud to have kept back even the least. That this may not be gained by the snares of hypocrites, we trust will be granted by the Lord's protection, so that what he worked in Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, and Celestine, he may work in Xystus; and that in the guarding of the Lord's flock this part of glory may be reserved for this shepherd, that as they drove off the open wolves, he may drive out the hidden ones; while there sounds in his ears the word of the most learned old man, with which he exhorted him as his fellow worker, saying: "For there are some who think that the most justly condemned impieties are to be defended even more freely; and there are some who creep into houses more secretly, and what they now fear to shout in the open they do not cease to sow in secret. And there are some who have fallen altogether silent, pressed down by great fear, but still holding in their heart what they no longer dare to bring out with their mouth; who nevertheless can be very well known to the brothers from their earlier defense of that doctrine. Therefore some are to be restrained more severely, others tracked more vigilantly; others are to be dealt with more gently, but taught not less diligently: so that, if they are not feared lest they destroy, they are yet not neglected lest they perish" (Augustine, letter to Xystus).

It has been sufficiently shown, I think, that the critics of holy Augustine both raise empty objections, and attack what is right, and defend what is wrong; and that, stirring up a civil war with the weapons of the slain, they rebel against divine sayings and human decrees. Yet as long as they are not separated from the fellowship of the brothers, their effort is rather to be borne than their correction despaired of; so that, until the Lord, through the leaders of the church and the lawful ministers of his judgments, sets in order what has been disturbed through the pride of a few and the ignorance of some, let our zeal be, with God's help, to return love for hatred with quiet and modest patience, to avoid the conflicts of fools, not to abandon the truth nor to contend with falsehood; and always to ask of God that in all our thoughts, in all our wills, in all our words and actions, he himself may hold the first place, who said that he is the beginning. "For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory for ever. Amen" (John 8:25; Rom 11:36).