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

Some people dare to say that the grace of God, by which we are Christians, was not rightly defended by Augustine, bishop of holy memory, and they do not cease to attack with immoderate slanders his books written against the Pelagian error. Their domestic malice, clamoring within, would be no less to be despised than the heretical loquacity barking outside, if they did not lend support to the wolves cast out of the Lord's fold, who go under the name of sheep (Matt 7:15), and if they were not men such that neither their rank in the church nor their talents seem negligible. For having "the appearance of godliness" (2 Tim 3:5) in their zeal, whose power they deny in their thought, they draw many unlearned people to themselves and disturb hearts that have no discernment of spirits; and they are trying to bring the church's cause to such a point that, while they assert that our people did not speak truly for grace, they persuade others that the enemies of grace were unjustly condemned. This evil, then, must not be neglected, which grows daily from hidden and small seeds and spreads further and wider from its source; we must strive, so far as the Lord helps, to uncover the hypocrisy of these deceitful slanderers. From the very greatness of the injury which, in one man, they have done to all, and above all to the pontiffs of the apostolic see, they are judged by the unlearned and the incautious to have superior knowledge; and by a wretched and perverse success they draw easy consent to falsehood, because they have won reverence for themselves by presumption. For since they are men of good reputation, no one believes that they could have broken out into the outcry of a needless complaint from slowness of understanding or rashness of judgment; rather, that they labored with great talent and intense zeal, so that, having taken in the arguments of a most subtle writer, a stricter censure and a keener inspection might now find what a secure favor and an incurious goodwill had not seen before. Where, then, has this diligence of so severe an examination come from? Where has the brow of a stern forehead armed itself with such austerity that an insidious scrutinizer sifts the measures of meanings, the weights of expressions, the numbers of syllables, and presumes that he accomplishes something great if he fixes the mark of error on a catholic preacher? As though some unknown work, hidden until now, were being attacked, and not that teaching being torn by these bites which scattered the inventions of the new heretics and crushed the devilish swelling of Pelagian pride. It is twenty years and more that the catholic army, under this man's leadership, has been fighting against the enemies of God's grace and conquering. And it conquers, I say, because it does not allow those it has conquered to breathe again, and for their destruction it wrote one sentence by the hand of all the bishops. Let those who were driven out by the pontiff's judgment and deprived of communion complain of the happiness of our victory and arm their tongues against us, since they preferred to be exiles from the truth rather than citizens of the church. But why do our own people, members of the same body and sharers of the grace of Christ, find fault with the arms by which the common faith was defended? Why do they reopen a war that is finished and weaken the fortifications of a peace long secure? Are the victors displeasing and the vanquished pleasing? And are condemned errors cherished with such insolence that, under the odium of depravity, both our authorities and our judges are assailed? Or has the more exact rule of the new censors so tempered itself that it asserts none of the things that were cut off, and rejects some of the things that were defended? See, with the peace of the catholic victory kept safe, and with reverence for the indissoluble decrees kept safe, we are ready to hear the patrons of an improved doctrine and to recognize lines of a most subtle discernment, trimmed of every error. Let what has come out of these new talents be put in the open.

And lest we seem, in order to obscure the knowledge of the more learned, to stir up what the ignoble crowd and the forward loquacity of fools pour out without restraint, we shall report the definitions of one man above all, who without doubt excels all of them in the study of the holy Scriptures. For the present it is right to take them into discussion for this reason alone, that there can be no doubt that they are as they are: they are written and published by their author's own edition, and the question is no longer whether they exist, but what they teach is to be shown. In the book, then, whose title is On the Protection of God, a certain priest, who excels among those with whom he lives in the practice of disputation, introduces a certain abbot discoursing on the grace of God and free choice, and shows that he approved and adopted his opinion in everything; so that our business now is not with that abbot, who might perhaps refute such opinions of his by denying them or wash them away by correcting them, but with this man, who has taken pains to bring out such a teaching, to the advantage of the enemies of the grace of God. 2. Yet at the beginning of the discussion this teaching does not depart from the godliness of the truth, and would deserve to be honored with just praise, if it did not turn aside from the right course it had begun by a headlong and sinister advance. For after the comparison with the farmer, which he fitted to the pattern of one who lives under grace and faith, and whose labor he said is fruitless unless it is helped in everything by God's aid, he brought in a most catholic definition, saying: "From these it is plainly gathered that 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 good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (Jas 1:17), who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us, as the Apostle says (2 Cor 9:10): He who gives seed to the sower will also supply bread to eat, and will increase the fruits of your righteousness." Here, lest anyone should think that nothing remained to be done by free choice, he added, not unreasonably, something to prove that free choice is not taken away by these gifts but rather strengthened, unless, turned back to its own iniquities …, it should prefer to turn away from God's help. "But ours it is," he says, "humbly to follow the grace of God that draws us daily; or else, resisting it with stiff neck and uncircumcised ears, as it is written (Acts 7:51), to deserve to hear through Jeremiah: Shall not he who falls rise again? Or shall not he who has turned away return (Jer 8:4)? Why then has this people in Jerusalem turned away with a stubborn turning away? They hardened their necks and would not return." Again, further on, when he had taught that all efforts after the virtues need the grace of God, he added, acceptably, saying (Conference 13, chapter 6): "All these things, just as they cannot be desired by us continually without divine inspiration, so neither can they in any way be accomplished without his help." In the seventh chapter, wishing to show the general grace of Christ, which passes over no human being anywhere and does not forsake even the rebellious and hostile, he says: "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." In this he may be seen to have called providence a companion because it often does not forsake even those who forsake it, or because it follows all those whom it goes before. But he goes on to say: "When he has seen in us a certain beginning of good will, he enlightens it, strengthens it, and directs it to salvation, giving increase to what either he himself planted or he has seen to have sprung up from our own effort." Here too he can still say that he meant the beginning of a good will whose first principles were planted or inspired by God, because from hearts already enlightened wholesome efforts may come forth, which are said to belong to the man himself because he has already received the capacity for good efforts, while their seeds are referred to their author. But in the ninth chapter also he added: "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 again is found by those who did not seek him, appears openly among those who did not ask for him, stretches out his hands all day long to a people that does not believe him and contradicts him (Isa 65:1–2), calls those who resist and are far off, draws the unwilling to salvation, takes away from those who desire to sin the means of fulfilling their will, and kindly opposes those who hasten to wickedness." Here already, as though through an inscrutable diversity, a definition is introduced which teaches that many come to grace without grace, and that some have this disposition of asking, seeking, and knocking from the alertness of a free will; while in others that will is said to be blinded by so great an aversion that it cannot be called back by any exhortations, unless it is led unwillingly by the force of one who drags it. As though it were not the work of manifold grace, throughout, done in the souls of all, that the unwilling become willing; or as though anyone of those who already use the judgment of reason could receive faith except by the will. Hence it is as foolish to say that anyone strives to share in grace unwillingly as to assert that anyone comes to it without being stirred by the Spirit of God. Quickly, then, this disputant has forgotten the definition he set out first; quickly, with unstable lightness, he has departed from his own opinion. For he had said, as a rule: "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God." And lest this should be understood of a teaching applied from outside, he had carefully added: "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 good 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." Catholic teacher, why do you abandon your profession? Why, leaving the light of most serene truth, do you roll down into the smoky darkness of falsehood? What you admire in those who ask, seek, and knock, why do you not ascribe to the same grace that is desired? You see good efforts and godly zeal, and do you doubt that they are gifts of God? The work of grace may have lain hidden as long as the faith implanted was shut up in the secret of thought; but when suppliant prayer, diligent searching, and frequent knocking appear, why do you not understand from the quality of the work the supply of the one who stirs it up?

And you think you are sufficiently on guard against the slanders of the Pelagians if you grant us in a portion what must be held of the whole number of the called. But you are in full agreement neither with the heretics nor with the catholics. They maintain that in all the righteous works of human beings the beginnings come from free will; we believe that the first principles of good thoughts always come from God; you have found some shapeless third thing, unsuitable to both sides, by which you would neither win the agreement of the enemies nor remain within the understanding of our people. How do you not notice that you fall into that condemned position, which you are convicted of saying whether you will or not, that the grace of God is given according to our merits, when you affirm that something of good work comes first from human beings themselves, on account of which we obtain grace? For the faith of one who asks, the … of one who seeks, the persistence of one who knocks cannot be held to be of no merit, especially since all such are said to receive, to find, and to enter. In this it is superfluous, indeed impious, to want to make room for merits existing before grace in such a way that what the Lord says would not be wholly true: "No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44). This would by no means be said if anyone's conversion were to be believed to happen without God's enlightenment, or if man's will could in any way stretch itself toward God without God. He draws the one called to the Son; he does not compel him while he resists and is unwilling, but makes him willing from unwilling, and by whatever means he bends the unbelief of the one who resists, so that the heart of the unwilling, a delight in obeying having been produced in it, rises where it was pressed down, learns where it was ignorant, trusts where it distrusted, wills where it did not will. "For the Lord will give sweetness, and our land will yield its fruit" (Ps 85:12). But let us see what follows (Conference 13, chapter 9): "But to whom will it be easily plain how the sum of salvation is attributed to our choice, of which it is said, If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land (Isa 1:19); and how it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy (Rom 9:16)? What also is this, that God will render to each according to his works (Matt 16:27); and, It is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, for his good will (Phil 2:13); and, This is not from yourselves but is the gift of God, not from works, lest anyone boast (Eph 2:8–9)?" And the rest, which he collected from the Scriptures as though they were opposed to one another in meaning, so as to entrust the zeal for the gifts of grace to human industry, and, having divided all human beings, so that there are some whom the grace of God saves and others whom the law and nature justify. But the law can command that no evil be done; it cannot free from evil. It makes the commandment known, but does not supply the disposition to obey, unless what kills by the command of the letter becomes life-giving through the spirit of grace. After this he concludes, saying (ibid.): "Except that in all these both the grace of God and the freedom of our choice are declared, and that man can sometimes by his own movements stretch out toward the desire for the virtues, but always needs to be helped by the Lord." And where is what was set out first as a rule: "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God, who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us"? See: here, even though you confess that God's help is necessary for good beginnings, you nevertheless ascribe those praiseworthy movements and desires for the virtues, with the grace of God removed, to the bare freedom of choice; so that good and wholesome efforts cannot indeed make progress unless God helps, yet can begin even if they are not inspired by God.

Then, to define more clearly what man has from free choice and what he receives from grace, you add and say (Conference 13, chapter 9): "For no one enjoys health when he wishes, or is freed from sickness and disease according to the desire of his choice." You teach, then, that man cannot indeed take hold of health by himself, but that he has the desire for health from himself, and comes to the physician of his own accord only, and that even this, that he comes, is not also the physician's work. As though the soul itself were not sick, and, being healthy, provided a remedy for its body. But the whole man, from it and with it, fell into the depth of his misery, where, before it receives from the physician knowledge of its calamity, it delights to lie, always loving its errors and embracing false things for true. Its first health is to begin to be displeasing to itself and to hate the oldness of its weakness; the next is to desire to be healed and to know by whom it is to be healed. These things precede its cure in such a way that they are implanted in it by the one who is going to heal the sick soul; lest, since they cannot in any way be in it to no purpose, it should seem to have been saved by merit, not by grace. Then you add (ibid.): "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 God, the Apostle is witness, saying: For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find (Rom 7:18)." Then, according to this definition, you said falsely before: "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God, who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us." But this cannot in any way be false in any part; and nothing contrary to it ought to have been brought in, so that what you rightly professed to begin from grace you would afterwards affirm that we have through the good of nature and through free choice. The blessed Apostle did say: "For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find" (Rom 7:18). But the same man said: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything from ourselves as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Cor 3:5). And the same man said: "For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for his good will" (Phil 2:13). The Apostle, then, does not contradict himself. But when to will the good has been given to us, we do not at once find also how to do it, unless the one who gave the desire grants the accomplishment to those who ask, seek, and knock. For that voice of one saying, "For to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find" (Rom 7:18), is the voice of one who has been called and is already set under grace, who delights indeed in the law of God according to the inner man, but sees another law in his members, fighting against the law of his mind and making him captive in the law of sin (Rom 7:22–23); and although he has received the knowledge of willing rightly, he does not find in himself the power to work what he desires, until, for the good will he has received, he is counted worthy to find the capacity for the virtues that he seeks.

After this you set out very many testimonies by which free choice is shown to be now strong, now weak; as though there were some who fulfil by their own strength what others cannot do unless God helps them, or as though man received a commandment for any other purpose than to seek divine help. You conclude, then, and say (Conference 13, chapter 11): "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." See: as it seems to you, what was mixed has been distinguished, and what could not be unravelled has been resolved. For you define two errors contrary to each other, in which those are entangled who do not know what is to be held between free choice and grace. In one you place those who say that God has mercy on us because the beginnings of good will have been offered by us, meaning without doubt the followers of the Pelagian doctrine, who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits; in the other you put those who say that the first principles of good wills come forth from the mercy of God, wanting to be understood as those who have defeated the enemies of grace. If, then, it is an error to ascribe the beginnings of good will to a man not helped by God, and it is an error to confess that "the will is prepared by the Lord," where are we to be directed so as to avoid both? If we follow both, you say, we acquiesce in no error. You subject us to two, and double the depravities, as you understand them: by dividing you condemn, by mixing you justify. By this law, by this rule, you will be able to preach that those who say one must always deceive err as much as those who lay down that one must never deceive, but that, in order to sin in neither, both must be followed, because falsehood is not always to be avoided, nor truth always to be disregarded. Your opinion deceives you completely. From two evils one good cannot come; two vices do not beget one virtue; two falsehoods do not make one truth. For things that are equal in deserving are not lessened by coming together, but increased. So those who assert that the beginnings of good wills are produced by the inspiration of God ought not to have been censured with the same sentence that convicts those who think that free choice can suffice for these things without the aid of grace. For of these definitions one has been overthrown by the church, the other defended; and the compact of this new treaty does not suit them in any way, by which the catholic doctrine would be more corrupt and the Pelagian more correct. "Many," you say, "believing each of these singly and asserting it more than is right, have become entangled in various errors contrary to one another." Are you pleased, then, to condemn catholics with heretics, victors with the vanquished, and to brand with the mark of error those who drove error out of the church? For according to your censure, by which you will not have the beginning of holy and faithful wills come from God in all human beings (as though you gave much to grace if you agreed that it works this in the minds of some), Pope Innocent erred, most worthy of the see of Peter, who, speaking of those who glory in free choice, said (Letter 29): "For what right judgment can we form henceforth of the minds of those who think that they owe it to themselves that they are good?" And again, writing of the fall of the first man: "For he once suffered his free choice; while he used his goods too heedlessly, falling, he was sunk in the depths of transgression and found no way by which he could rise from there; and, deceived for ever by his own freedom, he would have lain crushed by this ruin, had not the coming of Christ afterwards raised him up by his grace." The Eastern bishops erred, at whose judgment Pelagius, in order to seem catholic, was compelled to anathematize those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits. The councils of the African bishops erred, which laid down in their decrees that both are a gift of God, to know what we ought to do and to love to do it, so that, with love building up, knowledge cannot puff up; for as it is written of God, "He who teaches man knowledge" (Ps 94:10), so it is written, "Love is from God" (1 John 4:7). The two hundred and fourteen bishops erred, who, in the letter which they placed before their decrees, spoke thus to the bishop of the apostolic see, the blessed Zosimus: "We have decreed that the sentence pronounced against Pelagius and Caelestius by the venerable bishop Innocent from the see of the most blessed apostle Peter should stand, until they confess most openly that by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord we are helped in every single act, not only to know righteousness but also to do it, so that without it we are able to have, think, say, or do nothing of true and holy godliness." The most holy see of blessed Peter erred, which speaks thus to the whole world by the mouth of Pope Zosimus: "Yet we, by the prompting of God (for all good things are to be referred to their author, from whom they are born), have referred everything to the conscience of our brothers and fellow bishops." The African bishops erred, who wrote back to the same Pope Zosimus and praised him for the soundness of this statement of his, saying: "What you set down in your letter, which you took care should be sent to all the provinces, saying, 'Yet we, by the prompting of God (for all good things are to be referred to their author, from whom they are born), have referred everything to the conscience of our brothers and fellow bishops,' we have taken as said so that, as if passing by in haste, you cut off with the drawn sword of truth those who exalt the freedom of human choice against the help of God. For what have you done with so free a choice as referring everything to the conscience of our humility? And yet you saw faithfully and wisely, and said truly and confidently, that it was done by the prompting of God; surely because the will is prepared by the Lord, and, that they may do something good, he himself touches the hearts of his children with fatherly inspirations (Prov 8 LXX). For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God (Rom 8:14); so that we neither feel that our own choice is lacking, nor doubt that in all the single good movements of the human will his help is the stronger." Do you see your rules broken by the solidity of the invincible decrees, and the crooked and cracked joints in the structure of faith fallen, like the walls of Jericho, at the joint blast of the priestly trumpets (Josh 6:20)?

For when the question was being argued between our people and the Pelagians about the origin of holy wills and the first principles of faith and love, the contest was not ended with a doubtful victory or an uncertain outcome, so that we should still have to negotiate about the most unjust peace of this treaty of yours. The enemy army has been laid low, the war is finished, we are the victors through him who "has shown strength with his arm, has scattered the proud in the thought of their hearts, has put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1:51–53); through him who, "showing mercy to our fathers, remembered his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to Abraham our father, that he would grant us that, delivered without fear from the hand of our enemies, we might serve him in holiness and righteousness before him all our days" (Luke 1:72–75); through him "who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor 15:57); through him from whom "we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things given to us by God" (1 Cor 2:12). Why do you strive to gather broken weapons from the petty reasonings of crushed arguments? Why, by warming the ashes of an extinct doctrine, do you try to kindle the smell of dying smoke into a revived flame? Free choice is in no danger from the grace of God, nor is the will taken away when to will well is produced in it. For if it is not to be thought ours because it is formed, ruled, ordered, and instructed, then the sons of God who are led by the Spirit of God (Rom 8:14) are robbed of freedom; they lose the vigor of the rational soul and are deprived of all praise for willing devotion, they to whom is given the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and godliness, and of the fear of the Lord (Isa 11:2). Indeed, those who think they do not need these reformings have passed from the habit of an old disease into frenzy: they spit out the remedy, they shout, they rave, they resist; but if they are children of the promise, they will grow quiet and be healed.

But now let us see what the sobriety of this disputant brings in. To drive out vice with vice and cure error with error, he has confused definitions contrary to each other by a new art; and to offer this cup of his compound to unsuspecting hearers, he has tried to color what he mixed with examples. For he says (Conference 13, chapter 11): "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?" By this unlikeness of good beginnings, then, he tries to prove that some can do by free choice, without God's help, what others cannot do except with God working with them; and he wants this understood of the slower obedience of some and the readier consent of others. As though, where hard unbelief is subdued to God and suddenly yields to the gospel which it long attacked, there the right hand of the Most High works the change of the man (Ps 77:10); but where a docile hearer embraces a quiet exhortation or a mere report without the hesitation of distrust, the good of such a conversion belongs only to the human will. As though the power of God drew to the Son only those whom it has rebuked with a voice, or crushed with punishment, or made to tremble with terror, and brought nothing of its power to bear on the minds of those who ran with eager hope and avid desire to the promises of their Redeemer. But the Truth says: "No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44). If, then, no one comes unless drawn, all who come in any way are drawn. So the contemplation of the elements, and the most ordered beauty of all that is in them, draws to God: "For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made" (Rom 1:20). Those who relate history draw; those who tell the praises of the Lord and his powers and the wonders he does (Ps 78:4) inflame the mind of the hearer. Fear draws: "For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov 1:7; Ps 111:10). Joy draws, since "I rejoiced at the things said to me: We will go into the house of the Lord" (Ps 122:1). Desire draws, since "My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord" (Ps 84:2). Delights draw: "How sweet are your words to my throat, more than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth" (Ps 119:103). And who could perceive or recount through what affections the visitation of God leads the human mind, so that it follows what it fled, loves what it hated, hungers for what it loathed, and suddenly, by a wonderful change, what had been shut to it becomes open, what was burdensome becomes light, what was bitter becomes sweet, what was dark becomes bright? "All these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each as he wills" (1 Cor 12:11). "For God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, has himself shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus" (2 Cor 4:6), that is, in the manifestation of his Son, who is in the glory of the Father. He, then, who shone in the heart of Matthew the tax collector and of Paul, then persecuting the church, also shone in the heart of Zacchaeus and in the heart of the thief crucified with the Lord; unless perhaps the Lord's voice was idle when he deigned to address Zacchaeus, who was seeking to see who Jesus was, saying: "Zacchaeus, hurry, come down, for today I must stay at your house" (Luke 19:5), and did not prepare for himself the soul of the man whose hospitality he chose. Finally, when all murmured that he had gone in to lodge with a sinful man, and Zacchaeus, now doing penance, gave half his goods to the poor and promised to repay fourfold what he had defrauded, the Lord said: "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham." And lest the cause of this salvation be hidden, he added: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost"; so that we might know that the one whom we recognized as saved had been anticipated by the one who sought him. In the justification of the thief too, even if no signs of grace at work could be discerned, would we not take him also as drawn, together with all believers? For the Lord says: "All things have been handed over to me by my Father" (Luke 10:22); and, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself" (John 12:32). That he was among all those either handed over or drawn, his own confession teaches; for after he had blasphemed Jesus Christ for some time, he was suddenly changed and said: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42). But how so great a diversity of conflicting voices arose in one man, let the blessed Apostle instruct us and say: "No one speaking in the Spirit of God says, Anathema to Jesus; and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3). So that we may not doubt that, in the will of the same man, his blasphemy was from himself and his faith was from the Holy Spirit. In vain, then, did this disputant try to fit the argument of his definition to the inscrutable variety of the one grace, so that a portion of the justified should be believed to come to Christ by the movements of their own will alone, while a portion, resisting, is dragged and compelled against its will; since it is God who works all things in all (1 Cor 12:6), whether he wills to draw some in this way and others in that, to whom no one comes unless he is in some way drawn.

After this he adds testimonies from sacred history, by which he shows that the keeping of God's commandments and the completion of the virtues are to be credited to divine grace (Conference 13, chapter 11), which we too most readily confess. And having recalled the examples of Balaam, whom God turned, when he wished to curse Israel, to words of blessing (Num 22–24); of Abimelech, who was not allowed to sin against Rebekah (Gen 26); and of Joseph sold by his brothers, whose evil will God turned to good (Gen 37), he goes back to confirming his definition, so as to take away, as far as he can, from one part of the human race the free choice which he says he joins to grace, and to establish it in another part, saying: "For these two, 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." The rule of the church's faith is, as the Apostle preaches: "No one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3). It is the church's rule: "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7). It is the church's rule: "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not in vain, but I labored more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me" (1 Cor 15:10); and, "I obtained mercy to be faithful" (1 Cor 7:25). It is the church's rule: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the excellence of the power may be of God and not from us" (2 Cor 4:7). It is the church's rule: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God; not from works, lest anyone be lifted up" (Eph 2:8–9). It is the church's rule: "Be in no way frightened by your adversaries, which is to them a cause of destruction, but to you of salvation, and this from God; for it has been given to you for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him" (Phil 1:28–29). It is the church's rule: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in us both to will and to work, for his good will" (Phil 2:12–13). It is the church's rule: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything from ourselves as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Cor 3:5). The Lord confirms this rule, saying: "No one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father" (John 6:65); and, "All that the Father gives me will come to me" (John 6:37); and, "Without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5); and, "You did not choose me, but I chose you" (John 15:16); and, "No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him" (Matt 11:27); and, "As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he wills" (John 5:21); and, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (Matt 16:17). By this rule the will is taken away from no human being; for the power of grace does not work in wills so that they may not exist, but so that from evil they may become good, and from unbelieving, believing; and what in themselves were darkness become light in the Lord; what was dead is made alive, what lay prostrate is raised, what was lost is found. We believe that the grace of the Savior does this in absolutely all human beings who are rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God's love, without exception of any person. For, as this same man laid down acceptably but not steadfastly, we say and defend: "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 good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (Jas 1:17), who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us." If its author had remained in this opinion, he would not go beyond the church's rule, nor would he be at once hostile to free choice and ungrateful to the grace of God; for while he points to one of the two as working in Paul and Matthew and the other in Zacchaeus and the thief, he does not understand that he has taken away free choice in the former and grace in the latter.

Then he added: "For when God sees us wishing to turn toward the good, he meets us, directs, and strengthens us. For at the voice of your cry, as soon as he hears, he will answer you (Isa 30:19); and, Call upon me, he says, in the day of your trouble, and I will rescue you, and you shall glorify me (Ps 50:15)." Who does not see that this teaching assigns to free choice a merit by which grace is anticipated, so that grace serves it by paying a debt, not by bestowing a gift? This definition was condemned in the synod of the bishops of Palestine, with Pelagius himself anathematizing it. For in the one who begins to will the good and desires to depart from iniquity and error, we profess that the grace of God works this very thing. For "the steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will delight in his way" (Ps 37:23); and, "Every man seems righteous to himself, but the Lord directs the hearts" (Prov 21:2); and, "A man's steps are directed by the Lord; how then can a mortal understand his ways?" (Prov 20:24). And what the Apostle says: "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom 8:15). After this he goes on and says (Conference 13, chapter 12): "For God must not be believed to have made man such that he can never will or be capable of the good. Otherwise he did not grant him free choice, if he allowed him only to will and be capable of evil, but neither to will nor to be capable of good. And how will that sentence of the Lord, passed after the transgression of the first man, stand: Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:22)? For he must not be thought to have been, before, such as to be wholly ignorant of good. Otherwise we should have to confess that he was formed like some irrational and senseless animal, which is quite absurd and altogether foreign to the catholic faith. Rather, according to the saying of the most wise Solomon, God made man upright (Eccl 7:29), that is, so that he might continually enjoy the knowledge of good alone; but they themselves sought out many thoughts. For they became, as was said, knowing good and evil. 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." That the first man, in whom the nature of all human beings was created together, was created upright and free of every fault, it is not lawful to doubt; and that he received such a free choice that, if he did not forsake God who helped him, he could persevere in the goods he had received by nature, because he willed to, and by the merit of a willing perseverance could come to that blessedness in which he would neither will nor be able to fall into worse things. But by that same free choice, by which he remained good as long as he willed, he departed from the law laid down for him, and did not fear the punishment of the death announced to him; forsaking God and following the devil, rebelling against the Lord his preserver and obeying the enemy his destroyer. "Adam existed, then, and in him we all existed; Adam perished, and in him all perished." Blessed Ambrose said this as truly as the Truth himself says: "The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). For in that ruin of universal transgression neither its substance nor its will was taken away from human nature, but the light and beauty of the virtues, of which it was stripped by the fraud of the envious one. Once the things were lost through which it could have come to the eternal and unlosable incorruption of body and soul, what remained to it except what belongs to temporal life, which is wholly a life of condemnation and punishment? For this reason those born in Adam must be reborn in Christ, so that no one may be found in that generation which perished. For if the descendants of Adam acted by nature in those virtues in which Adam was before sin, they would not be "by nature children of wrath" (Eph 2:3), they would not be darkness (Eph 5:8), nor under the power of darkness (Col 1:13); in short, they would not need the grace of the Savior, because they would not be good in vain, nor be cheated of the reward of righteousness, having those goods by the loss of which our first parents deserved exile from paradise. But now, since no one can escape eternal death without the sacrament of regeneration, is it not most plainly evident from the uniqueness of the remedy itself into how deep an evil the nature of the whole human race has sunk by the transgression of him "in whom all sinned" (Rom 5:12), and whatever he lost, they lost? He lost first faith, he lost self-control, he lost love; he was stripped of wisdom and understanding, he was deprived of counsel and strength; and by impiously pursuing higher things he was cast down from the knowledge of the truth and the godliness of obedience; not even fear was left to him, so that he who would not abstain from forbidden things for love of righteousness might at least avoid them from fear of punishment. Free choice, then, that is, the spontaneous desire for what pleases it, when it grew weary of using the goods it had received, and, the safeguards of its happiness becoming cheap to it, turned a mad craving toward the experience of transgression, drank the poison of all vices and soaked the whole nature of man in the drunkenness of its intemperance. Hence, until by eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood it digests that deadly surfeit, its memory slips, it errs in judgment, it staggers in its gait; nor is it in any way fit to choose and desire that good of which it deprived itself of its own accord; because it cannot rise again without God raising it, as it could fall without God pushing it. It was not rightly said, therefore: "For God must not be believed to have made man such that he can never will or be capable of the good." As though we said that this weakness of man was created by the Creator, and not contracted by man through the merit of sin. Whoever, then, thinks it follows that, if free choice is said to be blinded, the blindness itself is referred to the author of nature, wants to persuade us that free choice is as sound in Adam's descendants as it was in Adam before sin; which we hold to be quite foreign to the catholic faith. For what has been injured by sin, if that has not been injured by which sin was committed? Unless perhaps it is said that the punishment, not the guilt, passed to Adam's descendants; which is said altogether falsely, and for that reason perhaps is not said. For it is too impious to think this of the justice of God, that he willed those free from transgression to be condemned together with the guilty. The guilt, then, is plain where the punishment is not hidden, and fellowship in sin is proved by sharing in the penalty, so that what belongs to human misery comes not from the Creator's institution but from the judge's retribution. For what he linked to prove that free choice is unharmed is put foolishly and against the sense of all writers, when he says: "And how will that sentence of the Lord, passed after the transgression of the first man, stand: Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:22)?" As though the devil had promised Adam true things, and Adam, by transgressing God's command, had advanced to the likeness of God, and God had declared that this had been conferred on him; whereas these words rather signify what he did not attain, who, having entered on the way of pride, lost what he had while he coveted what he had not received. Nor is the error less in the very conclusion of this line of thought, when it is 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." Adam had the knowledge of good then, when he kept the good and holy command of God with a faithful heart, and was righteous, remaining in the image of his Creator and not forgetting his law. But after he sold himself, that is, the image and temple of God, to his deceiver, he lost the knowledge of good, because he lost a good conscience. For iniquity drove out righteousness, pride destroyed humility, lust crushed self-control, unbelief snatched away faith, captivity took away freedom; nor could any portion of the virtues remain there, where so great a troop of vices had burst in. "For no one can serve two masters" (Luke 16:13); and, "Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin" (John 8:34); and, "By whatever a person is overcome, to that he is also bound as a slave" (2 Pet 2:19). No one serves except with some freedom, and no one is free except with some servitude, as the Apostle says (Rom 6:20–22): "For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit, then, did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, freed from sin and made slaves of God, you have your fruit in sanctification, and the end, eternal life." So one who serves the devil is free from God; but one who, set free, serves God is free from the devil; so that it is clear that a bad freedom could be had from the failure of the human will, but a good freedom could not be received without the help of the liberator.

But lest this calamity of the first man should seem to have passed to his offspring, this teacher, intending to prove by the example of the gentiles with how sound a judgment the nature of all human beings remains, adds and says (Conference 13, chapter 12): "Finally, that the human race did not lose the knowledge of good after Adam's transgression is declared most evidently by the sentence of the Apostle, who says (Rom 2:14–16): 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 even defending them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men." If the Apostle is speaking of those who were called from the uncircumcision, and who, "when they were far off, have been brought near" (Eph 2:13), believing in him who now has mercy on those on whom he once had no mercy (1 Pet 2:10), and who, justifying the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith (Rom 3:30), "created the two in himself" and, having destroyed "the dividing wall of hostility" (Eph 2:14) between Jews and gentiles, made peace in one new man, "shutting up all things under unbelief, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe" (Gal 3:22); if, I say, the Apostle is speaking of those in whose hearts God writes the new covenant with his finger, that is, with the Holy Spirit, so that they carry out the fulness of the law and the works of love by nature, a nature, that is, reformed and renewed: how is the novelty of this most proud opinion helped by it, since the reconciliation of enemies can be ascribed only to the grace of the Mediator? "For all have sinned and lack the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace" (Rom 3:23–24). Grace, then, is the glory of God, not the merit of the one set free. "For who has first given to him, that he should be repaid?" No work of good comes from the dead, no righteousness proceeds from the ungodly; all their salvation is free, and therefore it is the glory of God, so that "he who boasts" may "boast" in him whose glory he lacked (Rom 11:35; 1 Cor 1:31). But if (as this disputant would rather have it understood) these words are said of those who, strangers to Christian grace, established by their own judgment certain things after the likeness of the commandments of the law, understanding that the morals of cities and the concord of peoples could not otherwise be maintained unless rewards were decreed for right deeds and punishments for sins, as was said by the very Wisdom of God, "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and in every nation I held the first place; I sought rest in Jacob and found it": who, then, would doubt that this wisdom survives in the human race, for the advantage of temporal life, from the remnants of the nature created by God? For if the talent of the rational mind did not remain strong even for ordering these earthly things, nature would not be damaged but extinguished. Yet even if it is strong in the most excellent arts and in all the disciplines of mortal learning, it cannot be justified by itself; because it uses its goods badly, and in them, without the worship of the true God, it is convicted of impiety and impurity, and is accused by that by which it thinks it is defended. Since, then, Paul lays down that "by the works of the law no flesh is justified" (Rom 3:20), and that "in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation" (Gal 6:15), why does this man equip the impious freedom of unbelievers with natural goods and want to justify it by its own principles? Why does he define the nakedness of a transgressing knowledge as fit for the renewal of a worn-out old age? As though this knowledge, whether obtained as a remnant from the resources of nature or sought from instruction in the teaching of the law, could by being grasped bring it about that we love to do what we know must be done; or as though there were any movement of good will except that which the breath of love, poured out through the Holy Spirit, has created. For "without faith it is impossible to please" (Heb 11:6); and, "Everything that is not from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23); and, "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love" (Gal 5:6).

After this, in the conclusion of the testimonies by which he wished to prove that those who are called deaf and blind in the prophetic rebuke can, by the capacity of nature, both open their ears to hear and their eyes to see (as though the Lord did not say of the same people: "And I will give them another heart, and I will give them a new spirit; and I will take away the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may walk in my commandments and keep my ordinances and do them," Ezek 11:19; 36:26), he adds and says (Conference 13, chapter 12): "Finally, to show that the possibility of good was in them, he rebukes them, saying: Why do you not judge even of yourselves what is right? (Luke 12:57). He would certainly not have said this to them unless he had known that they could discern what is just by natural judgment." Now he ascribes to free choice not only the will for good but also the ability, as though understanding were demanded of them and righteousness required precisely because they could bring these forth from the goods of nature without the gifts of God. But these things are commanded to man so that, from the very command by which what he received is enjoined on him, he may recognize that he has lost it by his own fault; and that the demand is not unjust because he is not able to pay what he owes; but that from the letter that kills he may flee to the life-giving spirit, and seek from grace the capacity he does not find in nature. If he does so, great is the mercy of God; if he does not, just is the punishment of sin. Then, to complete the foregoing discussion, he pronounces as a rule, saying (Conference 13, chapter 12): "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 and perverse." What could have been defined more clearly, more expressly, by any of their disciples according to the invention of Pelagius and Caelestius? They say: "The grace of God is given according to our merits"; and they also say: "The grace of God is not given for single acts"; this man has enclosed both blasphemies within one sentence, saying that 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 and perverse. He wants, then, many merits to belong to human beings themselves, not bestowed by the generosity of grace, to which certain gifts from above are owed to increase the riches of nature. He wants us not to receive the grace of God for single acts, and so not always to pray for every good work. And so it will follow either that no merit is to be believed in God's gifts, since one whom God has always helped in everything is without merit; or, if some merits are placed even in what God bestows, it will be established that they too could have been acquired by one's own capacity; and so we need to be helped in some things in order that what was not impossible by nature may become more possible by grace. See: in this brevity of a few words there is already a numerous chain, not of two impieties only, but of many; and if it is handled with the discernment of a more scrupulous care, it will be shown to be loosed in no part from the chain of the condemned error.

But lest we seem to cling to suspicions and to probe the hiding places of meanings beyond the words, let what follows teach what is added to what we know. He, then, who at the beginning of his discussion had 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," now, wishing to prove that religious thoughts and holy counsels, conceived without any inspiration of God, can come forth from natural wisdom, sets out the words of Solomon, who says: "And David my father wished to build a house to 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 to my name, you did well in turning this over in your mind; yet you shall not build the house to my name" (1 Kgs 8:17–19). Then, to show how this is to be understood, the writer himself adds (Conference 13, chapter 12): "This thought, then, and this deliberation of King David, is it to be called good and from God, or bad and from man? For if that thought was good and from God, why is its accomplishment denied to him by the one by whom it was inspired? But if it was bad and from man, why is it praised by the Lord? It remains, then, that it be believed both good and from man. In this way we can also judge our own thoughts daily. For it was not granted to David alone to think good from himself, nor is it denied to us that we can ever naturally understand or think anything good." By no means can it be proved by this testimony and argument that godly thoughts arise from free choice alone and not from the inspiration of God. For David's will, which was certainly good, is not to be believed not to have been from God because the Lord willed the temple to be built for him not by David but by his son. We must ask, then, from what spirit the disposition of this will proceeded: surely from that Spirit of God in which he said: "If I enter the tent of my house, if I go up to the bed of my couch, if I give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids or rest to my temples, until I find a place for the Lord, a tabernacle for the God of Jacob" (Ps 132:3–5). When the prophet desired this, he was not unaware that the true and perfect temple was to be founded by him who, being the Son of God, also became the son of David; and who, seeing the temple built by Solomon, said: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." But he spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:19, 21). So, that this temple might be prefigured which was being arranged in Christ and in the church, it was fitting that not David but the son of David was chosen to build it; so that by the son of a man the Son of God and of man might be signified, and by a temple that could be destroyed the incorruptible tabernacle might be indicated; for the founding of whose image both David's will was approved and the work was transferred to the one whose person fitted that image better. And so it was from God that David willed this, and from God that Solomon did it. To make this clearer by examples, let us look for a case where God did not will to be done what men, with God willing it, willed to do. The Lord commanded the apostles, saying: "Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matt 28:19–20). When the apostles heard this, they certainly did not receive bare words through bodily sounds with their outward ears only; but by the power of the living Word an inextinguishable flame of love was kindled in their hearts, by which they most ardently wished to preach the gospel of Christ to all nations. But when they were forbidden to speak the word in Asia, and when they tried to go into Bithynia and were prevented by the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:6–7), did they not have this will from God, that they wished to turn to the faith the hearts of these also, whom God, by a hidden judgment, did not then will to hear the gospel? Or when the church prays daily for its enemies, that is, for those who have not yet believed God, does it not do so from the Spirit of God? Who would say this, except one who does not do it, or who thinks faith is not a gift of God? And yet what is asked for all is not obtained for all. Nor is there injustice with God, who often does not grant what he has given men to ask. Good will, then, that by which one clings to God, must not be denied to be man's own, and must be confessed to be conceived by God's inspiration. For since "no one is good but God alone" (Luke 18:19), what kind of good will that be which has no good author? For in human nature, of which God is the creator, there remain even after the transgression its substance, its form, life, sense, and reason, and the other goods of body and soul, which are not lacking even to the wicked and vicious; but it does not have in them the grasp of the true good: by them they can make mortal life honorable, but they cannot confer eternal life. Nor is it unknown how the Greek schools, Roman eloquence, and the inquiry of the whole world, laboring with the keenest studies and the most excellent talents to find the highest good, achieved nothing except to become futile in their thoughts (Rom 1:21), and the foolish heart of those was darkened who used themselves as guides to know the truth. If, then, someone, ashamed of wretched vanities and deceitful follies, understands that whatever he embraced as light and life is darkness and death, and tries to draw himself away from them, this conversion is not from himself, though it is not without himself; nor does he strive toward the beginnings of salvation by his own strength; but the hidden and powerful grace of God does this, which, removing the ashes of earthly opinions and dead works, stirs up the firebrand of the buried heart and inflames it with desire for the truth; not to subdue the man against his will, but to make him desirous of subjection; not to drag him in ignorance, but to go before him as he understands and follows. For free choice remains, which God certainly created together with its name; and it is changed from the vanities and desires into which it flowed when God's law was neglected, not by itself but by the Creator; so that whatever in it is restored for the better is neither without the one who is healed nor from anyone but the one who heals; whose new creation and new making we are, "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:10).

Now let us see where the disputant's purpose is heading. "It cannot be doubted," he says (Conference 13, chapter 12), "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; for according to the blessed Apostle, neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth. That freedom of choice lies open to man in either direction is also most plainly taught by the book called the Shepherd, in which two angels, a good one and a bad one, are said to attend each of us, while it rests with man's option to choose which to follow. And therefore free choice always remains in man, so that he can either neglect or love the grace of God." If it cannot be doubted that the seeds of the virtues are naturally present in every soul, implanted by the kindness of the Creator, then Adam alone transgressed, and in his sin no one sinned; we were conceived in no iniquities, and our mothers bore us in no sins (Ps 51:5); we were not by nature children of wrath, nor were we under the power of darkness (Eph 2:3); rather, since virtues remained in us by nature, we were born children of peace and light (Col 1:13). Far from the minds of the godly be the insidious deception of a deceitful teaching! Virtues cannot dwell with vices. "For what partnership," says the Apostle, "has righteousness with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?" (2 Cor 6:14). For Virtue in the first place is God, for whom to have virtue is nothing other than to be virtue. When we share in him, Christ dwells in us, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24); faith dwells, and hope, love, self-control, understanding, counsel, strength, and the other virtues. But when we withdraw from this good, all the contraries arise for us from ourselves. For when beauty departs, what follows but deformity? When wisdom goes away, what remains but folly? When righteousness does not reign, what rules but iniquity? So the seeds of the virtues, which were implanted by the kindness of the Creator, were overturned by the transgression of the first parent, and they cannot be had except when he who gave them restores them. For human nature can be reformed by its former and is capable of the goods it had, so that through the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, in that very thing which remained to it, it can recover what it lost. What remained to it is the rational mind, which is not virtue but the dwelling of virtue. For by sharing in wisdom, righteousness, and mercy we are not wisdom, nor righteousness, nor mercy, but we are wise, righteous, and merciful. These goods, although our rational part has been occupied by vices, and, when we transgressed, an unclean spirit invaded the temple of God, can nevertheless flow back into that rational part through him who casts out the prince of the world (John 12:31), and binding the strong man plunders his goods (Mark 3:27), and, having put to flight the spirit of this world, gives the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things given to us by God (1 Cor 2:12). "But whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him" (Rom 8:9). I think that this man is deceived by a likeness to the truth and errs in the appearance of false virtues, while he supposes that the goods which can be had only by God's gift are found even in the souls of the ungodly; because, namely, many of them are followers of justice, temperance, self-control, and benevolence. They have all these not in vain nor uselessly, and they obtain from them much honor and glory in this life; but because in these pursuits they serve not God but the devil, though they have a temporal wage of empty praise, they do not belong to that truth of the blessed virtues. And so it is most plainly evident that no virtue dwells in the souls of the ungodly, but that all their works are unclean and polluted, since they have a wisdom not spiritual but unspiritual, not heavenly but earthly, not Christian but devilish, not from the Father of lights but from the prince of darkness; while they subject even what they would not have unless God gave it to him who first withdrew from God. He, then, who says that the seeds of the virtues are present by nature in every soul without any work of grace, what does he labor to show but that from these seeds certain shoots of merits sprout which precede the grace of God? Finally, so as to seem to have given something to grace, he says: "These seeds will not be able to reach the growth of perfection unless they are stirred up by the help of God"; so that, namely, the help of God is exhortation and teaching, while the mind, rich in the seeds of the virtues, uses the capacity it possesses, needing help only to grasp the summits of those virtues whose beginnings it knows are in it. According to him, then, the human soul will be built into the temple of God without receiving the foundation other than which no one can lay, which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor 3:11). But when is this foundation begun, except when faith is produced in the heart of the hearer? If faith was there by nature, nothing was begun there, but something was built on top. So it would seem superfluous … one who had faith before he believed. And this can also be said of the beginnings of the other virtues, which grace would have to increase because they exist, not give because they are lacking. But all the words of the holy Scriptures teach us otherwise. We read that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov 1:7), and we read that this virtue is a gift of God: "The fear of God," it says, "has set itself above all things; blessed is the man to whom it has been given to have the fear of God" (Sir 25:11–12). Since, then, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, what virtue can be had without wisdom, whose beginning is from fear? The blessed apostle Peter says: "Grace and peace be fulfilled to you in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has now given us by his divine power all things that pertain to life and godliness" (2 Pet 1:2–3). Does he say: who has stirred up in us by his help the seeds of the virtues which we had naturally implanted? No, he says: who has now given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. By saying this, what virtue did he place the beginning of in nature, which was not bestowed by him who gave all things? For this reason blessed Paul too says: "For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7). All things, then, that pertain to life and godliness we do not have through nature, which is damaged, but have received through grace, by which nature is repaired. Nor ought we to think that the beginnings of the virtues lie in nature's treasures because many praiseworthy things are found even in the talents of the ungodly. They do come forth from nature; but since they have withdrawn from him who created nature, they cannot be virtues. For what is lit by the light is light, and what lacks that light is night; because "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Cor 3:19). And so what is thought to be virtue is vice, since what is thought to be wisdom is foolishness. When can it happen that those who glory in the seeds of natural virtues, which this man extols, submit their very virtues, to be advanced, to the teaching which says: "If anyone among you seems to be wise, let him become a fool, that he may be wise" (1 Cor 3:18); and, "Since, in the wisdom of God, this world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe" (1 Cor 1:21)? What would that presumption of knowledge and wisdom judge more foolish and more laughable, unless the Spirit of God subdued the scorn of the proud and destroyed by the power of his grace those reasonings which fought with dog-like eloquence against the unknown truth, so that the earth of the heart, first furrowed, may conceive the seed of the word, and God's husbandry may produce fruits worthy of the eternal barns? After that testimony of no authority which he inserted into his discussion from the little book of the Shepherd, from which he wished to show that, between the contrary persuasions of the good and the bad angel, every man is so entrusted to natural judgment and his own discernment that he has no more protection from God than danger from the devil, he added the rule of his definition, saying: "And therefore free choice always remains in man, so that he can either neglect or love the grace of God." In this sentence, even what he says, that free choice always remains in man, does not hold in some part, since many thousands of infants, taken up into the kingdom of God or excluded from the kingdom of God, receive or lose the grace of God without any choice of their own will; and many who are senseless in everything and fools are rescued from the bonds of eternal death through the sacrament of regeneration. Yet let us take this saying as if this definition properly concerned those who can use a free will. Is this freedom so free that, as much as it has of itself the distaste to neglect the grace of God, so much it has of itself the delight to love it? Has no breath of noonday heat loosened that icy stiffness of old unbelief, and has the torpor of the bound mind grown warm from its own cold; and, when the Lord says, "I came to cast fire on the earth" (Luke 12:49), has no spark reached the cold heart, and has dead ash burst into the flame of love by itself? Nothing like this happened in those lovers of grace who experienced what they said: "Was not our heart burning when we were with him on the way, and he opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32). Nor was there done in them what was done in Lydia, the seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, who alone among the women to whom the Apostle preached there is shown to have believed then: "whose heart," it says, "God opened, to attend to what was said by Paul" (Acts 16:14). And according to this man, so great is the soundness and capacity of free choice that they have love, which is at the summit of all the virtues, not from God's gift but from their will alone. What, then, is repaired in the soul by its builder? Or by what generosity of grace will it become more adorned, if those things are its own without which the gifts cannot profit? But the Apostle, who declares that without love neither the working of miracles, nor knowledge, nor faith, nor prophecy, nor the giving away of riches, nor even the endurance of the cruellest tortures profits anything (1 Cor 13:2–3), does not keep silent about where love itself is had from: "Because the love of God," he says, "has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:5); and, "Peace to the brothers, with love and faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 6:23). Let the holy apostle John also instruct us from where we began to share in this good: "Beloved," he says, "let us love one another, because love is from God" (1 John 4:7). And lest we might think that love was said to be from God because this affection was sown in man's nature, a little later he says: "Not that we loved God, but that he loved us" (1 John 4:10); and again: "Let us love God, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Let human poverty recognize, then, that what is rightly said of any goods is said to it far more rightly of that without which all goods are of no profit: "For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7).

After this, having given man before grace as much as it is most fruitful to have through grace, he added some tangled and confused things to show the vigor of free choice; and from what it does with powers already given it, he wants to fortify what he defines as being in it by nature; so that what it has accomplished through God's help it would have begun from the freedom of free choice. But let us pass over these things as tolerable; for we too say that free choice has conceived the disposition of good will and the beginning of faith with grace at work, so that through these things, given to it with no merit going before, it may merit what has been promised to one who will work; always asking the power to do some good from him who says, "Without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). Leaving these aside, then, let us go back over what he set down about the sufferings of holy Job. For he says (Conference 13, chapter 14): "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 (Job 1:9–11). 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 as it knew Job had the strength to resist; not protecting him from that attack in such a way as to leave no room for human virtue, but only taking care that the most violent enemy should not, by making his soul mad and powerless in mind, overwhelm him with an unequal and unfair weight of combat." Who would believe that these things were preached by catholics among catholics, if what has often been defended in private conversations were not also read in writing? Has the sight of understanding grown so dark in all people, and has the spirit of knowledge and godliness so departed from all the children of the church, that they are not ashamed to thrust such dishonorable falsehoods on the judgment of readers? Grave man, wise doctor, truthful teacher, give us back the catholic definition with which, at the beginning of your discussion, you captured our ears and minds. You had pronounced the faith of the church with a Christian voice: "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 inspires what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us" (Jas 1:17); and by the solidity of this sentence you had shattered all the engines of the enemy remnants. Why, with your profession changed, do you build what you destroyed and attack what you defended? Why, deserting the citadel of most invincible truth, do you run down step by step to the Pelagian precipices? For you who had defined that the beginnings neither of holy thoughts, nor of godly wills, nor of good actions are from us, but that all good things in us are produced by the inspiration of God and the help of his grace and are brought to progress and perfection, a little later began to make the efforts of free choice equal to the gifts of grace, so as to show that man can have from himself the beginnings which you had assigned to God, saying: "That man can sometimes by his own movements stretch out toward the desire for the virtues, but always needs to be helped by the Lord"; and again saying: "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." And after this, to show that some are anticipated by grace, while in others you placed the cause of receiving grace in their merits going before, you said that it is doubtful "which depends on which: 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." Lest you leave these two rules in doubt, you took care to fortify both with examples that seemed fit to you, confirming one by the forced conversion of Paul and Matthew, and strengthening the other by the willing faith of Zacchaeus and the thief, whose desire you say was so violent that they anticipated the special warnings of the call so as to storm the kingdom of heaven. Then, as the discussion advances, to make plain the soundness of the inner man, you affirm that Adam himself conceived the knowledge of evil which he did not have, but did not lose the knowledge of good which he had received. And when you had wished to prove this also by comparison with the ungodly, you slid so far as to proclaim that "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." And lest we should believe that this nature lost any virtues in Adam's transgression, you defined that the souls of all human beings are by nature as sound as that of the first man was before sin, saying: "It cannot be doubted, then, that the seeds of the virtues are naturally present in every soul, implanted by the kindness of the Creator." Considering, then, these definitions of yours, it is not hidden how far you have departed from the soundness of that first sentence, in which, by deceitfully proclaiming what was to be attributed to grace, you wished to win for yourself the judgment of catholic ears, so that, made secure by the front of your opening profession, what followed might easily creep in, if the first things had pleased.

But until now, so as not to seem to differ altogether from the rule you had set out, you transferred the beginnings of virtues and merits from free choice to grace only so far as to confess that the voluntary movements of good desires themselves can neither be advanced nor completed without God's help. But now, removing God further and separating him from the support of man, you give such power to free choice that it not only accepts steadily and calmly the loss of manifold possessions and the most bitter end of the whole household and of its kin together, but also overcomes the unspeakable tortures of its own body by the resolve of the bare will. And so that no one can doubt it, as you argue, you set up the example of holy Job, who, you say, fought without God's protection against that notable cruelty of devilish savagery; and you strive to prove by the argument that the bloodiest enemy himself confessed that he was overcome not by the Lord's strength but by Job's, in that he did not say that the grace of God had opposed him in the heavier combat; as though that man needed to be covered by protection from above in his losses and bereavements, but did not need to be helped in the torments of his flesh and soul. If, then, nothing more memorable, nothing more illustrious is found among the palms of the saints than this greatness of soul, which the penalty of so many deaths inflicted on every one of his limbs does not overcome, and you assert that it stood in him by human strength alone, what praise and merit will there be that the freedom of choice, which you have crowned at the end of so great a contest from its own strength, cannot obtain amid the pursuits of quiet and peace? I ask you, then: does it seem to you that this man, when he was being tried by the tortures we read of, had the Holy Spirit in him? If you say he had, it is certain that God, who did not forsake him, helped him. But if you say the Holy Spirit had departed from him, his own prophetic word convicts you, when he says: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day I shall rise from the earth, and I shall again be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another; this hope of mine is laid up in my bosom" (Job 19:25–27). If this is rightly understood as a prophecy of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the resurrection of him who is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, and of the hope of redemption which is laid up in him for all the saints, it is plainly evident that the grace of God had not departed from its temple, and that the Lord was already then doing in this holy one of his what he later promised would be done in his apostles and martyrs, saying: "But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you are to speak; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you" (Matt 10:19–20). When the same saint answered his foolish comforters, did he not trust in God's help, saying: "He who is mocked by his friend, as I am, will call upon the Lord, and he will hear him" (Job 12:4)? Or did he not know that he had what he had from him of whom he says: "With him are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding" (Job 12:13); and of whom he says: "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the spirit of all human flesh" (Job 12:10); and again: "I wait," he says, "until my change comes: you will call and I will answer you; you will stretch out your right hand to the work of your hands; you have numbered my steps, but you spare my sins; you have sealed up my offenses as in a bag, but you have healed my iniquity" (Job 14:14–17)? The Lord, then, had not forsaken the one whom he was healing, nor had he withdrawn his help from the one to whom he applied purifying remedies, that he might shine more brightly. For this endurance of sufferings, in which this saint shone out, he too had been prepared by the Lord who said: "For though I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (Ps 23:4); and that: "The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord, and he is their protector in the time of trouble" (Ps 37:39). For this endurance he too had been prepared by the Lord who referred both believing in Christ and suffering for Christ to Christ, saying: "Being justified, then, by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God; and not only so, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, and patience proof, and proof hope, and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:1–5). And again (Rom 8:35–37): "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are put to death all day long; we are regarded as sheep for slaughter (Ps 44:22). But in all these things we overcome through him who loved us." From where the strength of this endurance came down, blessed Peter, and in him the whole church, learned from the voice of the Truth himself, who said (Luke 22:31–32): "Behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail." Whoever, then, does not fail in tribulations, let him not doubt that he is helped by him to whom the hearts of all the faithful cry daily: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" (Matt 6:13); because "the Lord keeps the souls of his saints; he will deliver them from the hand of sinners" (Ps 97:10). But as to what you say, that the grace of God is to be understood as not having wholly withdrawn from Job in that God gave his tempter as much power to tempt as he knew Job had the strength to resist: would you not speak more rightly and truly if, where you said, "as much as he knew Job had the strength to resist," you said rather, "as much as he knew he had given him the strength to resist"? By correcting that word you would have tempered with some sobriety all that glory which you wished to assign to human strength, so that that wonderful patience in so great affliction would be ascribed both to the help of God and to the free choice of man. But you feared to lessen the praise of human nature if you professed that its strength was given by God. Therefore you will not have it believed that God was a fellow worker in that combat and victory, but only a spectator; so that anyone whom you can persuade that so hard a contest was won through the natural capacity of free choice will not dare to doubt that in lighter matters the effects of good will are much freer; and so he will fall into the pit of that condemned sentence by which it is said that the grace of justification is given to us so that what we are commanded to do through free choice we may be able to fulfil more easily through grace; as though, even if grace were not given, we could still fulfil the divine commands without it, not easily indeed, but nevertheless. Since the catholic bishops judged this worthy of anathema, we must use the testimony they used, saying: "For the Lord was speaking of the fruits of the commandments when he did not say, Without me you can do it with more difficulty, but said, Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5)."

To these definitions of yours, which you believed were fortified by sufficient authority, you add, as though sure of your readers' agreement, that God is sometimes accustomed to offer more than is enough in order to test our faith, so that it can be known how firm the faith of believers is. And you show this by the example of that centurion who, when he asked for the healing of his servant and the Lord promised that he would go to his house, answered: "I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed" (Matt 8:8); in which the Lord praised him with such admiration that he declared he had not found such faith in Israel. And by a short conclusion you confirm almost the whole Pelagian doctrine, saying (Conference 13, chapter 14): "For it would have been of no praise or merit if Christ had preferred in him what he himself had given." Then it was written falsely (Wis 8:21): "No one can be continent unless God gives it." The Apostle preached falsely when, speaking of the same virtue, he said (1 Cor 7:7): "I wish all men to be as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another." He too taught falsely who said (Jas 1:5): "If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, and it will be given him." Nor was it said according to the truth (Jas 1:17): "Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights"; and (John 3:27): "No one can receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven." Or must it be said that all the virtues are indeed to be counted among God's gifts, but that man is praiseworthy in those which he has had from his own, and that there are merits where God's gifts have not been? Then, according to your rule, those to whom it was given not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him have lost both praise and merit; and those who glory not in themselves but in the Lord have no true glory. But we listen more rightly to the prophet who says (Jer 17:5): "Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord"; and to him who says (Ps 18:1): "I will love you, O Lord, my strength"; and (Ps 34:2): "In the Lord my soul shall be praised"; and (Ps 118:14): "The Lord is my strength and my praise." So that we may know most plainly that those have neither any praise nor merit in whom there is not found what is not had unless the Lord gives it. But you thought that from the testimony of a faith that was praised a prejudice could be produced against the gifts of grace; as though faith, where it was shown to be praised, were not shown to be given. The Apostle praises the faith of the Romans, and for this good of theirs he gives thanks to God, saying (Rom 1:8): "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in the whole world." To the Corinthians too he writes with similar affection, saying (1 Cor 1:4–5): "I thank my God always for you, for the grace of God which has been given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you have been enriched in him, in all speech and all knowledge." By giving thanks to God, did he take away praise from the believers? Or by praising the believers, did he deny the author of their merit? Let us hear also what he thinks of the faith of the Ephesians. "For this reason," he says (Eph 1:15–18), "I too, hearing of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened." These, then, had faith, and had the works of love, which could lack neither praise nor merit; but for these virtues the Apostle does not cease to give thanks to God, knowing that these gifts came from the Father of lights, from whom he also declares that he asks that he who gave them faith working through love may give them the Spirit of wisdom and understanding; so that the Ephesians might know that they had received what they have from him from whom they learn to hope for what they do not have. For the Philippians too he gives similar thanks to God, and does not suppress their merit and praise, saying (Phil 1:3–6): "I thank my God in every remembrance of you, always in all my prayers for you all making my prayer with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." What cause of human praise and merit is now suspended here on God? What of virtue or godliness is excepted, which has not flowed from the fountain of grace, where from beginning to end both the beginning and the completion of the good work are credited to the Lord? To whom his saints sing (Ps 89:15–17): "Lord, they will walk in the light of your face, and in your name they will rejoice all the day, and in your righteousness they will be exalted, for you are the glory of their strength."

One must consider well in this opinion of yours how much you help those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits; whom, nevertheless, so as to be shielded by the shade of the catholic faith, you profess to be of a profane opinion, saying: "But let no one think that these things have been brought forward by us in order to try to establish that the sum of salvation lies in the power of our faith, according to the profane opinion of some, who, attributing everything to free choice, define that the grace of God is dispensed according to each one's merit." But I wonder greatly how you do not see, or think that others do not see, that you condemn yourself with your own mouth. For by saying that the centurion, whose faith was praised by the Lord's voice, would have been of no praise or merit if the Lord had preferred in him what he himself had given, you defined that that centurion had a faith not given but his own; and so that nothing had been bestowed on its beginnings by grace; but that in that same faith lay the cause both of praise and of merit, neither of which he would have if the Lord had bestowed that to which praise and merit are owed. In vain, then, to escape the odium of the condemned error, do you deny that the sum of salvation lies in the power of our faith, since salvation can in no way be except from faith. "For the righteous lives by faith" (Rom 1:17; Hab 2:4). For the Truth says: "Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but will pass from death to life" (John 5:24). And again: "This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:40). And again: "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3). Since, then, it is established that eternal and blessed life has been prepared for this faith, which you have honored with merits and praises precisely because you prefer it to be counted among the goods of free choice rather than among the gifts of God, how will you avoid the wound with which you pierce yourself, by declaring profane those who define that grace is dispensed according to human merits, and by asserting that those who are faithful by the gift of grace evidently have neither praise nor merit? Wherever you turn, you are both defeated and bound by yourself. For if merits do not precede grace, and faith cannot be without merit, faith does not precede grace; and whatever it is from which merit is born, which is not had before grace, is had in every way from grace.

So that the absurdity of your definitions may not seem to contradict itself, you try to mix incompatible things, and by a new presumption you establish the unity of the members of the body of Christ in two kinds of faithful: in one, namely, to which belongs what you said at the beginning (Conference 13, chapter 3), "Not only of good actions but also of good thoughts the beginning is from God, who both begins what is good, and carries it on, and completes it in us"; in the other, which suits that rule by which you say that the centurion would have had neither any praise nor merit if the Lord had preferred in him what he himself had given. And although you have drawn the whole web of your discussion out to these two formulas, which can in no way agree, you now state more distinctly and expressly what you wished to establish, saying: "Through these examples, then, which we have brought from the records of the Gospels, we shall be able to notice most clearly that God provides for the salvation of the human race in diverse and countless ways and by inscrutable paths; that he urges the course of some who are willing and thirsting to a greater ardor, but compels some even against their will and unwilling; and that now he helps that what he has seen us usefully desire may be fulfilled, now he even inspires the beginnings of the holy desire itself, and grants either the beginning of a good work or perseverance. Hence it is that when we pray we call the Lord not only protector and savior but also helper and 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." With this distinction laid down, then, there will be, as you define, this diversity in the one church: that our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it was said (Matt 1:21), "And you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins," and of whom it was said (Acts 4:12), "For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved," would be the savior not of all Christians but of some, and the upholder of others; so that only those would be saved whom God compelled, averse and resisting, to receive grace, while those would be upheld who anticipated the call by the fervor of a spontaneous course; and to the former a free gift would be given, but to the latter a due reward paid; the former would be of no praise or merit, having nothing good except what they received, while the latter would abound in glory and grow rich in reward, who, devout by their own capacity, offered what they had not received; and so Jesus Christ would have found some already free and freed others. And then what he says would not apply to all, "You did not choose me, but I chose you" (John 15:16), if there are some by whom he was chosen when he had not chosen them; this would not apply to all, "No one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father" (John 6:65), if there are some who could come to the Son without the Father giving it; what the Evangelist says would not apply to all, "He was the true light which enlightens every man coming into this world" (John 1:9), if there are some who either came into this world in such a way as not to be darkness, or began to be light in such a way as not to need the enlightenment of the true light; nor would what the Apostle says be understood of all the adopted (Col 1:13), "Who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love," if indeed they themselves break their bonds and, having shaken off the yoke of the old captivity, run across with free eagerness from the domination of the devil into the kingdom of God. If these things can be preached within one church, so that neither opinion yields to the other but each gives way to the other, it may come about that we accept what the Pelagians hold and the Pelagians accept what we hold. But in this way they will not so much be catholics as we (which God forbid) shall be Pelagians. For the mixing of contraries is the failure of the better; because when virtue admits vice, it is not vice but virtue that is abandoned. In no way, then, do Christian hearts accept what you have tried to persuade them: that those who are what they are by the grace of God have neither any praise nor merit, and that, by him who came to save what was lost, part of the Christians has been saved and part upheld; for disciples of the gospel and apostolic teaching, not minding high things but agreeing with the lowly, shudder at this madness of proud elation. For in the whole body of the church, and in each member, what was dead has been made alive, what was captive has been redeemed, what was blinded has been enlightened, what was lost has been sought, what wandered has been found. Nor, according to this new division, is Christ the savior of some and the upholder of others; but he is both savior and upholder of all the faithful everywhere. Nor are those deprived of merit and praise who receive that by which they may merit eternal goods; and they become the more blessed the fewer the things they have that are their own and the more the things they have that are God's. For we are not disturbed by the foolish complaint of the proud, by which they allege that free choice is taken away if the beginnings, the progress, and the perseverance in good things to the end are said to be gifts of God. For THE AIDS OF DIVINE GRACE ARE THE SUPPORTS OF THE HUMAN WILL. We pray willingly, and yet God has sent the Spirit into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6). We speak willingly, and yet, if what we speak is godly, it is not we who speak, but the Spirit of our Father who speaks in us (Matt 10:20; Mark 13:11). We work out our salvation willingly, and yet it is God who works in us that very willing and working (Phil 2:13). We love God and neighbor willingly, and yet love is from God (1 John 4:7), poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). This we profess of faith, of the endurance of sufferings, of the chastity of the married, of virginal continence, and of all the virtues without exception: that unless they had been given to us, they would not be found in us; and that free choice, naturally implanted in man, remains in his nature, but changed in quality and condition through the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who turned the will itself away from what it perversely willed and turned it toward willing what was good for it; so that, moved by delight, cleansed by faith, raised by hope, kindled by love, it might take up a free servitude and cast off a servile freedom.

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).