The Calling of All Nations 2.4–2.14

But not even in past ages was this same grace lacking to the world, the grace that after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ was spread everywhere, and of which it is written, “Your lightnings lit up the world.” For though it is clear that the Israelite people was chosen by the special care and indulgence of God, and that all other nations were allowed to walk in their own ways, that is, permitted to live according to their own will, the eternal goodness of the Creator did not so turn away from those men as to give them no signs to admonish them to know and fear him. For heaven and earth and sea and every creature that can be seen and understood has been ordered chiefly for this benefit of the human race: that rational nature, from contemplating so many forms, experiencing so many good things and receiving so many gifts, might be trained to the worship and love of its author, the Spirit of God filling all things, in whom we live and move and are. For though salvation is far from sinners, yet nothing is empty of the presence and power of salvation itself. So, as the prophet says, “The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,” which was never lacking in any age or any generation; and he always spent that providence by which he administers and holds together the universe of things in ruling and nourishing natures, having arranged from the eternity of his unchangeable counsel in what times he would distribute each thing, and the unsearchable and untraceable measures of his manifold grace, by which he would vary his gifts and sacraments. For as this bounty of grace, which has at last flowed out on all nations, does not empty that which was dewed on Israel alone under the law, nor do present riches abolish belief in past scarcity, so neither must we conjecture from that care of God which presided especially over the sons of the patriarchs that the helm of divine mercy was withdrawn from other men. They seem cast off in comparison with the elect, but they were never disinherited from God’s manifest and hidden benefits. For we read in the Acts of the Apostles that the apostles Paul and Barnabas said to the Lycaonians: “Men, why are you doing these things? We too are mortals, men like you, announcing to you to turn from these vain things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who in past generations let all the nations walk in their own ways. And yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, giving rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.” And what is this witness, which always served the Lord and was never silent about his goodness, but the unspeakable beauty of the whole world itself and the rich and ordered bounty of his unspeakable benefits, through which certain tablets of the eternal law were set before human hearts, so that in the pages of the elements and the volumes of the seasons the common and public teaching of divine instruction might be read? Heaven, then, and all heavenly things, the sea and the earth and all that is in them, in the harmonious concert of their beauty and order, declared the glory of God and with perpetual preaching spoke of the majesty of their author; and yet the greatest number of men, who were allowed to walk in the ways of their own will, did not understand or follow this law, and the odour of life, which breathed toward the way, became for them an odour of death unto death, so that even in those visible testimonies it might be learned that the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. What was done in Israel, then, through the establishment of the law and the words of the prophets, this the testimony of the whole creation and the wonders of God’s goodness always did among all nations.

But since in that people, over which both kinds of instruction presided, no one was justified except by grace through the spirit of faith, who would doubt that those who, from whatever nations and in whatever times, were able to please God were set apart by the spirit of God’s grace? This grace, though earlier it was sparer and more hidden, yet denied itself to no age: one in power, diverse in measure, unchangeable in counsel, manifold in working.

For even in these days, when rivers of ineffable gifts water the whole world, not the same manner nor the same measure is conferred on all. For though the same truth is preached to all through the ministers of the word and of the grace of God, and the same exhortation is applied, yet it is God’s field, God’s building, whose power works invisibly so that what is built or cultivated advances by growth. As the apostle Paul testifies, saying: “What then is Apollos, and what is Paul? Ministers of him in whom you believed, and to each as the Lord has given. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one; and each will receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are God’s helpers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” Each one, then, is a helper and worker and minister of this cultivation and building as far as the Lord has given to each. And those who are cultivated by the ministers’ labour advance to the measure to which the author of growth has raised them. For in the Lord’s field the planting is not uniform nor single. And though the structure of the whole temple comes together into one beauty, the place and use of all the stones are not the same; just as in one body all the members do not have the same function, as the Apostle says: “But now God has placed the members, each one of them, as he willed.”

Whence these members are fit, whence useful, whence beautiful, the same teacher explains, saying: “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says ‘Jesus is accursed’, and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and varieties of workings, but the same God who works all in all. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good: to one through the Spirit is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing in the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of words. But all these the one and same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills.” When the teacher of the gentiles preaches these things with such light and such clarity, what reason, what cause is there to doubt whether the seed of all virtues in us is from God? Or who, unless most foolish, would complain of the difference in the divine gifts, or think that what is not conferred equally from heaven’s liberality must be ascribed to unequal merits? For if this distribution came according to the merits of preceding works, the Apostle would not end the catalogue of these gifts with such a conclusion as to say, “But all these the one and same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills.” Here, if he had wished the causes to be understood as merits, he would have said, “dividing to each as they deserve”; just as he promised the planters and waterers the reward of their devotion, saying, “But each will receive his own reward according to his own labour.”

To each, then, is given without merit that by which he may strive toward merit, and before any labour that is given by which each may receive a reward according to his own labour. That this is so is also recognized from the teaching of the Gospel truth, where it is said in a parable that a man going abroad called his servants and handed over his property to them, and to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, “to each according to his own ability,” that is, according to his own natural capacity, not according to his own merit: for it is one thing to be able to work, another to work; one thing to be able to have love, another to have love; one thing to be capable of continence, justice and wisdom, another to be continent, just and wise. Not every one, therefore, who can be restored is restored, nor is every one who can be healed healthy; for to be restorable and curable belongs to nature, but to be restored and healthy belongs to grace. Finally, those to whom an unequal number of talents was entrusted according to the measure of their capacity, which the distributor of the property foresaw in them, received not the reward of merit but the material of work. In this the most watchful industry of two servants is not only honoured with glorious praise, but they are even bidden to enter into the eternal joy of their Lord; but the lazy idleness and slothful wickedness of the third is punished so that he is both disgraced by the shame of reproach and stripped of the portion he had received. For he deserved to lose a useless faith who had not exercised love. Hence also in the discourse that follows, in which the form of the future judgment is most openly declared, the Son of Man sitting on the throne of his majesty, before whom all the nations are gathered, and some are said to be set at his right, others at his left; those on the right are praised for works of love, while nothing else is charged against those on the left but their neglect of mercy and kindness. These too, then, had received faith, but had not pursued love; and they will be condemned not for a gift not kept but for a gift not increased. For though all good things are gifts of God, yet some things are given by God even when not asked, so that through what has been received what has not yet been given may be sought. For the seed cast into the earth is not sown so that it alone may remain, but so that by bearing fruit it may become manifold and numerous. Its growth indeed is from him who gives the growth; but the living earth, rational and already fertile with the rain of grace, has something expected of it: to increase what it has received.

These things having been treated rightly, I think, as far as the Lord has granted, let us return to the point from which the discussion digressed, namely to the consideration of the differences by which the works and gifts of divine grace have been varied. The depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose judgments are inscrutable and ways untraceable, has always so tempered his mercy and justice that, by the most secret will of his eternal counsel, he did not will the measures of his gifts to be equal in all times, over all generations or over all men. For he helped in one way those whom he summoned to know him by the testimony of heaven and earth; in another way those for whom he cared not only by the service of the elements but also by the teaching of the law, the oracles of the prophets, the signs of miracles and the cooperation of angels; and in a far different way he declared his mercy to all men when the Son of God became a son of man, so that he might be found by those who did not seek him and appear to those who did not ask for him; and so that the honour of the Israelite stock should excel not in one people only, but in every nation under heaven the multiplied seed of Abraham should arise, and into the succession of heirs not the children of the flesh but the children of the promise should enter; and so that the scarcity of grace that was once on the other nations in past ages should now be as great in the Jewish nation, though, once the fullness of the gentiles has come in, the flood of the same waterings is promised even to their dryness. What, then, are the causes of these differences under the same grace, or what the reasons, who will say, when the holy Scriptures do not say? And when in them the knowledge of the apostle Paul passes from argument to amazement, whose presumption will be so great as to think that these things are to be opened by discussion rather than wondered at in silence?

Let so remote a secret, then, withdrawn from human knowledge, be left unknown with patience and calm. Yet, because closed things cannot be penetrated, we must not on that account pass by the entrance to those that are open. For many authorities of the divine words have made it manifest, and the continuous experience of all ages has taught, that the just mercy and merciful justice of God has never been lacking either for nourishing men’s bodies or for teaching and helping their minds. For he has always rained on the good and the bad, always made his sun rise on the just and the unjust, always supplied life-giving air, always ministered the alternation of day and night; he has always bestowed fertility on the field, multiplication on seeds, fruitfulness on those who beget men. And if ever he lessened any of these, he chastised with kindly corrections the aversion and sloth of those who used them badly, so that they might seek in adversity the mercy of him whose justice they had not feared in prosperity. Finally, if we run back to the very beginnings of the world, we shall find that the Spirit of God was the guide of all the saints who came before the flood, for which reason they were also called sons of God; since, as the Apostle says, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” And when these same men, neglecting the observance of their fathers, had mingled in unlawful marriages with the reprobate, and for that wicked fellowship were judged worthy of destruction, the Lord said: “My Spirit has not remained in these men, because they are flesh.” Hence it appears that this people, whose generations are set out in a distinct order with the number of their years, was spiritual before, with a will over which the Holy Spirit presided; applying the rule of his governance in such a way as not to take away the power of turning aside to vices; and if this people had not used that power, it would not have left God nor been left by God, and would have been the one of whom it is said, “Blessed is he who could transgress and did not transgress.” As long, then, as it remained with God, it remained by the will that God inspired and ruled. For, as it is written, “The will is prepared by the Lord.”

But of this preparation there is not always one progress nor one measure. For in many ways and with innumerable differences the works and gifts of grace are varied, and within the single kinds of gifts there are dissimilar degrees and unequal quantities. For just as in the shoots of plants and trees that the earth produces there is not one species nor one kind in all, but each is born in the form of its own seed and the quality of its own stock, and they do not receive their full beauty as soon as they come forth, but advance by fixed and ordered increases until through successive growth they reach the perfect size of their state; so the seeds of graces and the plants of virtues are not born all at once in every field of the human heart in the full form they will have, nor is maturity easily found in the beginning or perfection in the first start. Indeed the mighty and merciful God often brings forth these wonderful effects of his working, and in some minds, without waiting for the delay of progress, brings in at once all that is to be. In Abraham’s loins Levi is sanctified, and with him the house of Aaron and the priestly order are blessed. In Isaac, conceived by promise and born against hope to barren old parents, the calling of all nations and the whole form of Christ are prefigured. Jacob, with no merit to support him, is loved and chosen before he is born. To Jeremiah it is said: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came out of the womb I sanctified you.” John, filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, leaps, and, so that none among those born of women might be greater, feels the beginnings of grace before those of nature. But though other examples of similar proofs are not lacking, which we pass over for brevity, much more frequent and much more numerous is that part of mankind to whom whatever heaven’s bounty gives accrues bit by bit, so that the causes of gifts yet to be conferred are produced from those already conferred. Some, having received faith, are not without distrust, which he certainly knew to be in himself who said, “I believe, Lord; help my unbelief.” Nor did those feel it wholly absent from their minds who said, “Increase our faith.” Some do not understand what they believe, and many of them are long held within the measure of their simplicity. But many quickly receive the light of understanding. Yet understanding itself does not have the same vigour or similar capacity in all. And very many, though they seem adorned with both faith and understanding, yet labour under lack of love, and cannot cling to what they see by faith and understanding, since one cannot persevere in what is not loved with the whole heart. The gift of love itself, too, is not always such that whatever belongs to its fullness is taken by the receiver at once. For there is a love that can be overcome by another love, and often the love of God withers through the love of the world, unless, with the Holy Spirit inflaming it, it advances to that fervour which can be extinguished by no cold and can languish in no lukewarmness. Since, then, in this unspeakable gift of God lies the sum of all gifts and a kind of life of all virtues, the other gifts are conferred for this purpose, that the intention of the faithful soul may have the means by which it can strive toward perfect love. And since love is not only from God but is God, it makes stable, persevering and unconquerable those whom he has filled with the river of his delight. But those who do not know the sweetness of these waters and still drink from the torrents of this world, or who, even if they have tasted something of the fountain of life with the tips of their lips, yet delight to be made drunk with the golden cup of Babylon, are deceived entirely by their own choice and fall by their own will; and if they persevere in this sloth, they themselves strip themselves of what they received. For any good things can easily perish without love, which cannot profit without love.

Let these things, touched on summarily and briefly, serve to make us know with full certainty that no one of the faithful is left by God unless he departs from God, and that no one’s ruin is arranged by divine decree; but that many who already use the judgment of reason are free to depart, so that not having departed may be a reward, and that what cannot be done except with the cooperation of the Spirit of God may be counted to the merits of him by whose will it could have been left undone. This will can be alone in evil actions, but cannot be alone in good ones. For though by its nature it is meant to be good, yet the fault that fell into nature through an evil will is overcome not by the strength of nature but by grace.

That first people of God, then, was ruled by the Spirit of God, and through the instruction of the Holy Spirit it kept away from the fellowship and morals of the cursed and condemned people, guarding its separation from mixing with the carnal; whose evils the patience of God bore as long as the good, by not imitating them, could please him. But when even the good were corrupted by imitating the bad, and through voluntary defection the whole multitude conspired in the same wickedness, one impiety profaned them, the house of Noah excepted, and one sentence destroyed them. Yet the goodness of God was not lacking even to that part which did not stand in love and from its beginning swelled with the poison of the devil’s envy. For the prince of the impious nation, envying the merits of his holy brother and planning his murder with a fratricidal heart, the Lord deigns to soften with fatherly counsel, saying to Cain: “Why have you become sad? Why has your face fallen? If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned? Be still. For his turning will be toward you, and you shall rule over him.” Lay aside, he says, the sadness that arose from the rivalry of envy, and put out the flames of cruel hatred; Abel has done you no harm, nor has he injured you by pleasing me. I rejected your gifts by my own judgment, not at his wish. For you did a good work carelessly. Your offering would have been right if your dividing had been right. Knowing to whom you offered, you should have known what you vowed. You did not divide fairly between me and you, since you kept the choicer things for yourself. This error, then, is yours, and yours the sin. Be still, and do not be stirred against your innocent brother; let your fault rather be brought back to yourself. Do not give sin dominion in you, but rather take dominion over it. For by repenting you will not go on to a greater crime, and you will be cleansed of that in which you grieve to have displeased me. When God spoke thus to Cain, then, can it be doubted that he willed, and (as far as that manner of healing sufficed) acted, so that Cain might come to his senses from that fury of impiety? But stubborn malice was made more inexcusable by what ought to have corrected it. And God certainly foreknew to what end the madman’s design would proceed. Nor was the crime of the will driven by any necessity of sinning from the fact that divine knowledge could not be deceived. From his intention and its effect Abel’s safety could have been defended unharmed, had it not pleased God, with great praise of his patience, that the temporal fury of the impious should become the everlasting honour of the just. As for the descendants of this fratricide, though they lived in the ways of their forefather, who would not easily see that the divine goodness never denied itself to them, if he considers how much so long a patience of God, so rich an abundance of temporal goods and so numerous a propagation of multiplied fruitfulness could have profited them? These benefits, though they brought no remedy or amendment to the hardened, still prove that their turning away was not of divine decree but of their own will.

In the preservation of Noah and his sons and their wives, in whom the seedbed of all nations was being set, holy Scripture shows how great were the works of divine grace that were revealed: while in that ark of wonderful capacity, which received every kind of animal as far as was enough to restore them, the Church is figured, which will gather to itself every race of men; while through wood and water the redemption of the cross of Christ and the washing of regeneration are disclosed; while those who were saved from that devastation of the world are blessed as the fullness of all nations; while the gift of fruitfulness is renewed, and, with only the eating of things strangled and of blood forbidden, the freedom to eat what one pleases is enlarged, and the security of salvation is consecrated in the testimony of the many-coloured bow, that is, in the sign of manifold grace. These mysteries and sacraments imbued not only the very few men of one family at that time, but in them all their descendants, so that what was spent on instructing the parents might profit the knowledge of the children. And then, as the increase of human propagation ran on, when the very multitude of mortals grew proud of its own multiplication and, in the height of its elation, desired to thrust into heaven the mass of an immoderate building, how wonderful was the censure of divine justice in checking this insolence! It confused the one speech of those peoples, which agreed in meanings known to them all, by the variety of seventy-two languages, so that, concord perishing among the discordant voices of the builders, the machine of the mad undertaking might fall apart, and the timely dispersion of an evil gathering might give inhabitants to the world that was to be peopled. In this work of God’s providence the wonders of Christian grace were being foreordained, which was to fit all this dispersion into the frame of that building in which every knee bends to God and every tongue confesses that Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. This breadth of grace, to be revealed in the fullness of the appointed times, God’s promise made to Abraham was already indicating with clearer signs, when his twofold succession, namely the children of the flesh and the children of the promise, was compared to the multitude of the sands and of the stars, and the old man, already estranged from hope of offspring through his wife’s long barrenness, believed with praiseworthy faith that through the seed of one son he would be the father of the world, foreseeing, or rather beholding, in his seed him who said, “Abraham saw my day and rejoiced.” When Abraham was justified by this faith, he had not yet received the command of circumcision; but while he was in natural uncircumcision, his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. And the same faith received the seal of circumcision in that member of the body through which the seed of procreation was to reach that flesh in which, without carnal seed, the Son of God, God the Word, would become flesh and be born of the Virgin Mary, a daughter of Abraham; all being taken into the fellowship of this birth who, reborn in Christ through the Holy Spirit, should believe what Abraham believed. But this faith, before that seed came of which it was said to Abraham, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,” was contained within the people of one stock, the hope of our redemption flourishing among the true Israelites. For even if there were some of foreign birth whom the truth deigned to enlighten in the times of the law, they were so few that it is scarcely known whether there were any. Nor are the nations excusable on this account, which, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, having no hope and without God in this world, perished in the darkness of ignorance, because this abundance of grace which now waters the whole world did not flow before with equal bounty.