The Calling of All Nations

Between the defenders of free choice and the preachers of the grace of God a great and difficult question has long been debated. For it is asked whether God wills all men to be saved; and since this cannot be denied, it is asked why the will of the Almighty is not fulfilled. And when it is said that this happens according to the will of men, grace seems to be excluded; and if grace is rendered for merits, it is clear that it is not a gift but a debt. Hence it is asked again why this gift, without which no one is saved, is not conferred on all by him who wills all to be saved. And so no end is found to the contrary disputes, while what is manifest and what is hidden are not distinguished. Concerning this conflict of opinions, then, I will try to inquire, as far as the Lord helps, with what measure and moderation one should think; exercising and examining the small measure of my ability in those things that have (as I think) soberly fixed themselves in my heart; so that, if my pen proceeds along rules that contain nothing offensive and nothing perverse, it may be useful not only to us but to others that we have reached some limit that we ought not to pass. First, then, we must discuss the movements and stages of the human will. Between it and the grace of God some make an unsound distinction, thinking that by the preaching of grace free choice is denied, and not noticing that the same rule can be turned against them: that they deny grace when they want it to be not the leader of the human will but its companion. For if the will is taken away unless it is itself the origin of true virtues, grace is taken away unless it is itself the cause of good merits. But now, with Christ’s help, let us begin what we have resolved to treat.

In every human soul, as far as one is given to understand and experience it, there is naturally some kind of will, by which what pleases is sought or what displeases is avoided. Of this will, as far as its natural movement is concerned, weakened by the fault of the first transgression, there are two kinds, according to which the will of man is either sensual or animal. But when the grace of God is present, a third kind is added to it through the gift of the Spirit, so that it can become spiritual and, by this more excellent movement, judge all the affections arising from whatever source by the law of the reason from above.

The sensual will, then, which we can also call carnal, does not rise above the movement that arises from the bodily senses, such as is found in the souls of little children, who, though they use no judgment of reason, still show that they want one thing and do not want another, when by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching they love what delights them and hate what offends them. For what is it to love but to will? Or what is it to hate but not to will? So they too have their own will, which, though it is incapable and ignorant of foreseeing and deliberating, yet loves to act in those things that flatter the senses of the flesh, until the vigour of the rational mind is roused through the more mature service of the body and is moved to use the members that serve it, not at another’s nod but by its own law.

From this sensual appetite, then, in which remain those whom we see senseless and foolish even in older years, one rises to the animal will, which, before it is moved by the Spirit of God, even if it can raise itself above sensual motion, is yet occupied with earthly and perishing things, without sharing in the highest love. In this will human talents, even if they do not serve bodily pleasure shamefully and temper their desires by the laws of justice and honour, gain nothing beyond the reward of temporal glory; and though they adorn the present life becomingly, they do not have the reward of eternal blessedness, because they do not refer their right actions and good pursuits to the praise and honour of him from whom they received the power to be wiser and to shine more excellently than others. For when some have turned the eye of the mind not only to the institutions of the most useful arts and the teachings of the liberal disciplines, but even to the inquiry into the highest good, and have seen the invisible things of God, understood through the things that are made, yet not giving thanks to God nor confessing him to be the author of this faculty, but saying that they were wise, that is, glorying not in God but in themselves, as though they had approached the contemplation of truth by their own studies and reasonings, they became vain in their thoughts, and what they had found by the illumination of God’s grace they lost through the blinding of pride, falling back from the light above into their own darkness, that is, from the unchangeable and eternal good to a changeable and corruptible nature. When such men, then, fall back into love of self and so please themselves that they do not refer to God’s gifts all that they judge praiseworthy in themselves, but claim it for themselves and ascribe it to the effort of their own will, they are exiled far from that spiritual will and have nothing in themselves by which they might be carried forward to eternal life; and they begin to corrupt in themselves even those temporal gifts of God and to pass from their good use into the habit of innumerable vices.

For although it is written that, when the Most High divided the nations, as he dispersed the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God, and the Lord’s portion became his people Jacob, Israel the cord of his inheritance; and it is written that the Lord says to Israel, “You shall be holy to me, because I the Lord your God am holy, who separated you from all the nations to be mine”; and although it is written in the book of Esther, in the words of Mordecai, “Thanks be to you, Lord, because you have done new signs and wonders, such as have not been done among the nations, dividing the whole world into two lots; you chose one for yourself, your people, leaving the other to the nations”; and Paul and Barnabas say, “We too are mortals, men like you, announcing to you that you should turn 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”: although, then, the Scripture of truth declares these and many like things, yet according to that same Scripture we believe and most piously confess that the care of divine providence has never been lacking to the whole of mankind; which, though it directed a people set apart for itself to piety by special institutions, yet withdrew the gifts of its goodness from no nation of men, so that they might be convicted of having received prophetic voices and legal precepts in the services and testimony of the elements; whence they too were made inexcusable, because they made gods for themselves out of God’s gifts, and venerated for worship what had been created for use.

Into this impiety that nation too which the Lord separated for himself from all nations would have passed wholly, had he not held out the purpose of his mercy to sustain the lapses of the elect; for the pages of the Old Testament are full of accounts of Israel’s defection, so that it plainly appears that it was always due to divine grace that not all that people departed from the Lord. Thus human nature, vitiated in the transgression of the first man, even amid the benefits, commands and helps of God, is always more inclined to a worse will, and to be entrusted to it is nothing other than to be abandoned. This will, then, wandering, uncertain, unstable, unskilled, weak for accomplishing, quick for daring, blind in its desires, swollen in honours, anxious with cares, restless with suspicions, greedier of glory than of virtues, more careful of reputation than of conscience, and through all its experience more wretched in enjoying what it has desired than in lacking it, has nothing in its own powers except a readiness for danger: since a changeable will, which is not ruled by the unchangeable will, draws near to iniquity the faster, the more keenly it is bent on action. As long, then, as those things please a man that displease God, his will is animal; for even if he acts with good morals, he still lives badly if he does not live for the glory of God. For this is the proper and chief mark of the pious, that they glory in the Lord and love themselves only in God. For they love themselves well who love the works of God in themselves. For God too loves in us what he himself made, and hates what he did not make. If, then, we love God’s work in us, we rightly love a good will in us, which would not be lovable if it were not God’s work. And what man, unless of evil will, would not love in himself a good will, which is the first planting of the heavenly husbandman? For since the Truth says, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up,” it is clear that whatever is not to be rooted up has been planted by the Father. And a good will is the first seed of all virtues. Resting on its origin, it rests in that eternal and unchangeable will, so as to be truly spiritual; since he who cleaves to God is one spirit with him, while through the communion of the one who enlightens and the one enlightened, of the one who justifies and the one justified, of the one who rules and the one ruled, every action is referred to one, and what is referred to one belongs to both. For neither can what he gave be alienated from God, nor what he received from man.

Here, it seems, we must treat whether, when a man begins to be of good will, the same will that was in him is corrected, or another will, which he did not have and which opposes the former, is given him. That this may appear more clearly, let others not be reluctant to inquire. All men were created without fault in the first man, and all lost the soundness of our nature through the transgression of that same man. From this came mortality, from this the manifold corruption of body and soul; from this ignorance and difficulty, useless cares, unlawful desires, sacrilegious errors, vain fear, harmful love, unjust joys, counsels to be regretted, and a multitude of miseries no smaller than that of crimes. As these and other evils rushed into human nature, faith lost, hope abandoned, understanding blinded, will captive, no one found in himself the means of being restored. For even if there was someone who tried by natural understanding to struggle against vices, he adorned only the life of this time, barrenly, and did not advance to true virtues and eternal blessedness. For without the worship of the true God even what seems to be virtue is sin, nor can anyone please God without God. And he who does not please God, whom does he please but himself and the devil? When man was despoiled by the devil, he was deprived not of his will but of the soundness of his will, because he could not be thrust out of the state of innocence unless he sinned by will. What was good by nature, then, became evil by quality; and that movement of the soul which can never be without some love, that is, without some will, did not lose its appetite but changed its affection, taking by desire what it ought to have rejected by judgment. When, therefore, man returns to piety — of whom it is said, “a spirit that goes and does not return,” because, unless God converted him, he would not return — when he becomes a new making and a new creature, no other substance is created in him, but the same that had been damaged is repaired; nor is anything taken from it except the fault, which nature did not have.

For in Adam there was a nature without fault; he, through the disobedience of his will, contracted many evils and passes them on to his posterity, to be multiplied more and more. That these may be overcome and brought to nothing is accomplished only by the grace of the Saviour, who repairs his work by his work; for, as the apostle John says, “For this the Son of God appeared, to destroy the works of the devil.” And so he breaks the chains of the captive, so he clothes the nakedness of the despoiled, so he heals the wounds of the wounded, that what he does in him is also done through him. For it is by no means good for him to fight his enemy without a protector, since he has the contest with one by whom he was once overcome. Let him not trust, then, in his own strength, which did not stand even when it was whole; but let him seek victory through him who alone was not conquered and has conquered for all. And if he seeks, let him not doubt that he has received the very desire to seek from him whom he seeks. Nor, because he is led by the Spirit of God, should he think that he therefore has no free choice, which he did not lose even when he gave himself by his will to the devil, by whom the judgment of the will was depraved, not taken away. What, then, was not destroyed by the one who wounded is not taken away by the one who heals: the wound is healed, nature is not removed. But what perished in nature is restored only by the author of nature, with whom what nature lost has not perished. For wisdom is eternal, truth eternal, goodness eternal, justice eternal; in short, the light of all virtues is eternal, and all that virtue is, is God. If he does not work in us, we can share in no virtue. For without this good nothing is good, without this light nothing is bright, without this wisdom nothing is sound, without this justice nothing is right. For the Lord says through Isaiah, “I am, I am God, and there is no other besides me who saves”; and Jeremiah: “I know, Lord, that a man’s way is not his own, nor is it in a man to direct his steps.” For mortal man, born carnally in the condemned origin in Adam, does not reach the spiritual dignity of the new race except under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Nor does anyone seek it with any desire who has not received the warmth of that very desire from God, of whom the Lord says, “I came to send fire on the earth, and what do I will but that it burn?” And this fire is the love of God, which the lover of the world cannot conceive in a captive heart; for it is full of the love of vanities. Even if he could avoid these in some part, and, passing beyond temporal and visible things, had advanced by understanding to eternal and invisible things; if he had withdrawn even from the worship of images and ceased to venerate heaven and earth and all the elements of this world, yet he will not grasp faith in Christ and love of him, troubled by his very humility, nor overcome by his own judgment the stumbling block of the Lord’s birth and death. For because of the wisdom of the world resisting the wisdom of God, so that the pride of those who presume on themselves might be blinded, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. Hence those who swell with secular learning think the cross of Christ fit to be laughed at rather than adored; and the higher anyone climbs in the institutions of human disciplines, the more he scorns the humble and weak things of our preaching. Nor is it strange if gentile philosophy resists the Gospel of the cross of Christ, when even Jewish learning struggles against it. Neither the learned, then, nor the unlearned, of whatever stock or rank, are led to God by human reason; but every man who is converted to God is first moved by the grace of God. For he is not a light to himself, nor does he kindle his heart with the ray of his own light. For if blessed John, than whom no one born of women was greater, was not the light, because he did not shine by his own splendour, but had received from that true light which enlightens every man coming into this world, so that he might be a lamp: who will be the man who, using only his own judgment, breaks through so many conflicts of opinions, so many bonds of custom, so many prejudices of antiquity, and, with only the voice of a teacher sounding outside him, has from grace only what he heard and from his own will all that he believed? If it were so, there would be no difference between grace and law, nor would the spirit of mercy give life to anyone, if the killing letter remained. For the law does not bring it about that what it commands to be done or not done is done or not done, since its severity is served not in freedom but in fear; but the Lord, in order not to abolish the law but to fulfil it, made the command of the law effective through the help of grace, and by multiplying mercy took away the penalty, so as to destroy sin not by avenging it but by forgiving it. Hence the adulteress, who was to be stoned by the ordinance of the law, he freed both by truth and by grace, when those who were to execute the precept, terrified in their consciences, had left the trembling accused under the judgment of him who had come to seek and save what was lost; and therefore, stooping down, that is, lowered to human things and bent to the work of our reformation, he wrote with his finger on the ground, to empty the law of commandments by the decrees of grace, and to show that he was the one who had said, “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.” This indeed he does daily, while he puts his will into the hearts of the called, and with the pen of the Holy Spirit the Truth in mercy rewrites whatever the devil in envy has falsified on the pages of the soul. When, therefore, the word of God is brought to the ears of the flesh through the ministry of preachers, the working of divine power is mingled with the sound of the human voice, and he who stirred up the office of the one who evangelizes has also strengthened the affection of the hearer. For the food of the word grows sweet to the soul, old darkness is driven out by new light, and the inner sight is freed from the mist of ancient error: the mind passes from will to will; and though the will that is being driven out lingers with some hesitation, yet the will that is being born claims for itself all the better things, so that the law of sin and the law of God have different and separate dwellings in the same man; and, while the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit resists the lusts of the flesh, the tempter may dare to lie in wait through outward things, but the mind fortified by God’s help prevails. For the material of struggles is reserved for the great benefit of the faithful, so that holiness may not be proud while weakness is assailed. Hence the Apostle too says: “Lest I should be exalted by the greatness of the revelations, there was given me an angel of Satan to buffet me. For this I asked the Lord three times that it might depart from me; but he said to me: My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Let the Lord, then, seek his image, and the good shepherd find the wandering sheep, and not disdain to carry on his shoulders the sick sheep, long wearied in pathless places, and save it not only by calling it back but also by carrying it. Let the Lord seek his image, and, wiping away the crust of all the filth that has fallen on it, clear the mirror of the human heart. For it is written: “Who can make clean what was conceived of unclean seed? Is it not you, who alone are?” Let the Lord seek his image, so that it may appear reformed by grace in its renewal and justification, as the apostle Paul testifies was done in himself, saying: “I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea that were in Christ; they had only heard that he who once persecuted us now preaches the faith he once attacked; and they glorified God in me.” So the Christian people had then learned, and so those first members of the Church, who were of one heart and one soul, believed, that when they saw anyone converted from error to the knowledge of the truth, they glorified God and confessed that the faith of the one corrected was a divine gift. The Lord himself too taught his disciples, the teachers of all nations, saying: “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

This faith, then, being fixed in our hearts and immovably founded, by which we most wholesomely believe that all good things, and especially those that carry us forward to eternal life, are had by God’s gift, increased by God’s gift and kept by God’s gift, I think that a pious mind ought not to be disturbed in the question that arises concerning the conversion of all men and not of all, if we do not obscure what is clear by what is hidden, and, while we press boldly on closed things, shut ourselves out of open ones; since it ought to suffice that we walk in that to which we have attained. For what wonder is it if some do not come to the sacraments of life, when many who seemed to have come depart, of whom it is said, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us”? Like them are those who profess that they know God but deny him by their deeds. For though it is written, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” yet the Lord says of some: “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he will enter the kingdom of heaven”; and: “Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will say to them, I never knew you; depart from me, workers of iniquity.” Such men do not call on the name of the Lord, because they do not have the Spirit of the adoption of sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit; and: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” These come to God through God, and, wishing to be saved, are wholly saved, because they conceive the very desire of salvation by God’s inspiration and come to the knowledge of the truth through the enlightening of the one who calls. For they are the children of the promise, the reward of faith, the spiritual seed of Abraham, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, foreknown and foreordained to eternal life, as the Holy Spirit testifies through the prophet Jeremiah, saying: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no one shall teach his neighbour and his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will be merciful to their iniquities and will remember their sins no more. And I will give them another way and another heart, that they may fear me all their days, for their own good and that of their children after them; and I will make with them an everlasting covenant, which I will not turn away after them; and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me, and I will visit them to make them good.” Through Isaiah too the Lord foretells the same things of his grace, by which he makes a new creature out of all men, saying: “Behold, I will do new things, which shall now spring forth, and you shall know them; I will make a way in the desert and rivers in the dry land. The beasts of the field will bless me, the sirens and the daughters of the ostriches, because I have given water in the desert and rivers in the dry land, to give drink to my chosen race, my people whom I have acquired for myself, that they may declare my mighty deeds”; and again: “By myself I swear: righteousness shall go out of my mouth, and my words shall not be turned back, that to me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess to God.” If, then, it is impossible that these things should not happen, because God’s foreknowledge is not uncertain, nor his counsel changeable, nor his will ineffective, nor his promise false, all those of whom these things were foretold are saved without any exception. For he puts his laws into their minds and writes them in their hearts with his finger, so that they receive the knowledge of God not by the work of human teaching but by the instruction of the supreme teacher. For neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but God who gives the growth. All these, from the least to the greatest, know God, because, to come to Christ, they have heard and learned from the Father; all are led out of error and directed into the way of life; to all, their heart changed, it is given to think rightly and will rightly; into all is put the fear by which they are trained in God’s commandments. A way is made in the desert, and the dry land is watered with rivers, so that those who before did not open their mouths to confess God, and, like dumb and irrational animals, had passed into the savagery of beasts, being cleansed by the fountains of the divine words, may bless and praise God, declaring the mighty deeds and wonders of the mercy of him who chose them, adopted them as sons and made them heirs of the New Testament. But if, as the Apostle says, no one despises or adds to a man’s ratified testament, how can it happen that God’s promise is in any part annulled? What the Lord promised to Abraham without condition and gave without law remains entirely and is fulfilled daily. For though some to whom these things were preached did not believe, their unbelief has not nullified the faithfulness of God. For God is true, but every man a liar. And those who, having heard the Gospel, refused to believe were made more inexcusable than if they had heard no proclamation of the truth; but it is certain that in God’s foreknowledge they were not sons of Abraham, nor counted in the lot of those of whom it was said: “In your seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.” For he promised that they would believe who said: “And no one shall teach his neighbour and his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” He promised that they would be reconciled who said: “I will be merciful to their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.” He promised that they would obey who said: “I will give them another way and another heart, that they may fear me all their days.” He promised that they would persevere who said: “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me; and I will visit them to make them good.” Finally, he promised all without any exception who said: “By myself I swear: righteousness shall go out of my mouth, and my words shall not be turned back, that to me every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to God.” Here, if we say that what God swore would be done is not done, we ascribe falsehood to God (God forbid) and a lie to the truth. But if, as piety and faith persuade us, God’s words do not fail and what he has decreed is done entirely, how will the firmness of the truthful promise appear to us, when many thousands of men still serve demons and bend the knee to idols? Only if we recognize that such declarations of God were made according to that unchangeable knowledge in which the whole human race is already sorted out before him, and that whether he speaks of the good or of the bad, he so mentions one part as though he passed over no one. For when the Apostle says, “The old things have passed away; behold, all things are made new,” does he not seem to have said that all men are renewed? Or when he says, “Because in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself,” does he not speak as though he wished no one to be understood as excluded from this reconciliation? Or when he says, “In these last days he has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things,” does the form of the sentence sound anything other than that all men were made over by the Father into Christ’s inheritance, according to the prophecy of David, saying, “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession”? And when the Lord says, “If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself,” does not the conversion of all seem to be promised? Or when it is prophesied of the Church and said, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill brought low, and the crooked shall become straight and the rough ways plain,” does any man seem omitted who is not signified as one to be made subject to Christ? What of the saying, “And all flesh shall come before me to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord”? Or this: “And it shall be in those days, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh”? Or this: “The Lord lifts up all who fall and raises up all who are cast down”? Is it not so stated as though no one were excluded from this gift of God? The people of God, then, has its fullness; and though a great part of men either reject or neglect the grace of the Saviour, yet in the elect and foreknown, set apart from all in general, a special totality is reckoned, so that the whole world seems to be freed out of the whole world and all men taken up out of all men. For just so, when the discourse is about the wicked, the divine pen so orders its speech that what is said of a certain part seems to pertain to all men: as is what John the Baptist says, “He who comes from heaven is above all; what he has seen and heard he testifies, and no one receives his testimony”; or that of the Apostle, “All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ”; or what the psalm of David sings, “The Lord looked down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there is any who understands or seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, not even one.” By these and other proofs, which those who seek can bring forward in greater number, it is shown beyond doubt that sometimes the whole earth is named for a part of the earth, the whole world for a part of the world, and all men for a part of men. Yet Scripture often quickly reveals the distinction, so that the reader’s understanding is carried from the name of the whole to the part that is to be understood. Such is the saying of the Apostle: “We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Is Christ power to those to whom he is a stumbling block, or wisdom to those to whom he is foolishness? But since some of them were justified by faith and others hardened by their impiety, he distinguished one race of believers and unbelievers under the name of the called, so that those whom he signified as strangers to faith, even though they had heard the Gospel, he might show to be strangers to the calling.

By this rule the divine word promises through Isaiah, saying: “I will lead the blind in a way they have not known, and they shall tread paths they do not know; and I will turn darkness into light before them and the crooked into straight. These things I will do and will not forsake them.” But what follows, “But they have turned back,” must be referred to a certain part of their race, not to those of whom he says, “I will not forsake them.” Again the Lord says to Jacob: “Do not fear, for I am with you. From the east I will bring your seed, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Bring them, and to the south, Do not hold them back; bring my sons from a far land and my daughters from the ends of the earth, all who are called by my name. For I have prepared him for my glory, and formed him and made him.” But what follows, “And I brought out a blind people, and their eyes are blind, and they have deaf ears,” can in no way fit those whom he says he has prepared for his glory. For in all these words, which are said of one race of men, the former suit some persons and the latter others. In the Apostle too, what happens in a part of the people is told under the name of the whole people, and the fullness is reckoned in the remnant. For when he was discussing the blinding of the Jews and showing that some of them were saved by grace, he says: “I say then, has God rejected his people? By no means. For I too am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin; God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” The people foreknown, then, the people not rejected, are those who have been justified in Christ. And what seems to be said of all Israel is shown to hold only in those whom the election of grace makes a remnant for itself, as the words that follow in the Apostle set out. For he goes on to say: “Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have dug up your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what does the divine answer say to him? I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So then, he says, at this present time too a remnant has come to be according to the election of grace. And if by grace, it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace.” Not all Israel, then, was rejected, nor all chosen; but voluntary blindness turned a part away, and free illumination kept a part for itself; and yet the discourse about them is so framed that, between those who perish and those who are saved, no division of the whole race seems to be made. For when one reads, “As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers,” the wording sounds as though he called the same men beloved whom he had called enemies. But the Apostle himself wiped away this obscurity by saying, “For blindness has come upon Israel in part,” so that we might understand one race to be divided into two kinds, and that ‘every man’, ‘all the fullness’, ‘all Israel’ are not always to be referred to the whole, but often to a part.

Among these forms of speech we must also notice that manner of expression in the Scriptures by which what concerns men of different times is so expressed as though it were said of one generation of the same age. Such is what the holy apostle Peter says, writing to the gentiles of his own time and of the future: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, that you may proclaim the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; who once were not a people, but now are the people of God; who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” When this was preached, were those men still alive, all of whom God in past generations had let walk in their own ways; and were the same men who had earlier been handed over to their own wills now being called out of darkness into marvellous light? Had they not already perished in their ignorance, were they not already gone from this world, and was no return from error to truth open to men long dead? And yet what grace was doing after many ages in the descendants of the impious he expressed, by the custom of speaking, in such a way that the very men who had once been abandoned seem now to be chosen. But these things pertain not to the same men, but to men of the same race; and the calling that shone out near the end of the world does not run back to past ages. So in a certain way they both are and are not the same of whom and to whom these things are said, while in some respects the special are not divided from the general and in others they are separated from what is common.

But when those who love quarrelsome contests read or hear these things, they will say that by such arguments we contradict the Apostle, who declares that God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. This portion of the Apostle’s words we receive so wholly and fully that we take away from it nothing of what precedes or follows it that belongs to it. For, to set aside the other testimonies of the divine words, this passage suffices both to empty what they slanderously object and to defend what they impiously deny. Writing, then, to Timothy, the apostle Paul says: “I urge, then, first of all, that supplications, prayers and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high position, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and chastity. For this is good and acceptable before God our Saviour, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” Concerning this rule of apostolic teaching, then, with which the universal Church is imbued, lest we wander by our own judgment into a different understanding, let us ask what the universal Church itself holds: for nothing can be doubtful in the precept if obedience agrees in practice. The Apostle, then, or rather the Lord through the Apostle, who spoke in the Apostle, commanded that supplications, prayers and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and for those in high position. This law of supplication the devotion of all priests and all the faithful keeps so harmoniously that there is no part of the world in which such prayers are not celebrated by Christian peoples. Everywhere, then, the Church supplicates God, not only for the saints and those already regenerated in Christ, but also for all unbelievers and enemies of the cross of Christ, for all worshippers of idols, for all who persecute Christ in his members, for the Jews, on whose blindness the light of the Gospel does not shine, and for heretics and schismatics, who are strangers to the unity of faith and charity. And what does she ask for them but that, having left their errors, they may be converted to God, receive faith, receive charity, and, freed from the darkness of ignorance, come to the knowledge of the truth? Since they cannot provide this for themselves, oppressed by the weight of evil habit and bound by the devil’s chains, nor overcome their deceptions, to which they have clung so stubbornly that they love falsehood as much as truth ought to be loved, the merciful and just Lord wills that supplication be made to him for all men; so that, when we see innumerable men rescued from such deep evils, we may not doubt that God has granted what he was asked to grant; and, giving thanks for those who have been saved, we may hope that those also who are not yet enlightened will be rescued by the same work of divine grace from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God before they leave this life.

But if, as we see happen, the grace of the Saviour passes some men by, and the Church’s prayer for them is not accepted, this must be referred to the hidden judgments of divine justice, and we must acknowledge that the depth of this secret cannot be open to us in this life. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, and we see now through a mirror, in an enigma. Nor are we wiser or more knowing than the most blessed Apostle, who, when he was discussing the power of grace and had entered the secret of great mysteries, gave way before what it was impossible to tell. For when he had said: “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, lest you be wise in your own sight: that blindness has come upon Israel in part, until the fullness of the gentiles should come in, and so all Israel would be saved; as it is written, The deliverer will come from Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob, and this will be my covenant with them, when I take away their sins. As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. For as you once did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy because of their unbelief, so they too have not believed now, in your mercy, that they too may obtain mercy. For God has shut up all things in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all”: when, then, he had poured out, in a kind of ecstasy of his mind, these mysteries of the divine works that surpass the measures of human understanding, he turned the whole account of his exposition into amazement and, marvelling at what he had uttered, exclaimed and said: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and unsearchable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor, or who has first given to him, that it should be repaid to him? For from him and through him and in him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen.” For the teacher’s statement just set out gave room to a manifold question: the cause of God’s grace, varying through so many peoples and times, might be sought. Why, namely, in earlier ages all the nations were allowed to walk in their own ways, Israel alone excepted, to be taught by the divine words and chosen for the knowledge of the truth, whose unbelief at last made room for the gentiles to be saved, as though, if one people remained in the faith of its race, the mercy of God could not be extended to the other nations? Why, finally, those whose diminution is the salvation of the gentiles are not freed from their blindness before the fullness of the gentiles comes in: why cannot they be enlightened together with all, they who, once all the nations have been adopted, are all to be saved? Or how is all Israel to be saved when the blindness is removed, when an innumerable multitude of it, failing in its unbelief, does not reach the times promised to those to be saved? Or how is the fullness of the nations themselves, whose calling was not made before, said now to come in, when so many thousands of men of every age and condition in all the nations under heaven die without the justification of Christ? But the pious and learned teacher preferred to hang the causes of these mysteries and judgments on the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God rather than to discuss by rash inquiry the secret of most just truth and most merciful goodness withdrawn from human knowledge, omitting nothing of what must not be unknown, and touching nothing of what may not be known.

For there are many things in the dispensation of the divine works whose causes are hidden and only their effects shown, so that, while what is done is plain, why it is done is not plain; the deed is brought into the open and the reason withdrawn into hiding, so that in the same matter both presumption about what is unsearchable is checked and falsehood about what is manifest is refuted. For if I do not know why this man is created a Greek and that one a barbarian, why this one is born into riches and that one into poverty; why the strong beauty of a tall body exalts one, while the cramped thinness of weak limbs deforms another; why one, born of Catholics, is nursed in the cradle of truth, while another, the offspring of heretics, drinks in the poison of error with his mother’s very milk; if, in short, I cannot judge a thousand other differences in the condition of bodies, in the qualities of minds, in the circumstances of times, in the customs of regions, I am not therefore ignorant that God is the creator and orderer of all these. He indeed created the bodies and spirits of individual men in such a way that, besides the voluntary diversity that would follow from each one’s pursuits, he varied the very beginnings of their condition with a most dissimilar multiplicity. And we would be troubled and pulled in different directions by the many opinions of vain talkers, who have presumed to define unfitting things about the unknowable and have ascribed these original inequalities to the fates (which are nothing) and to the stars, did we not hold with most certain knowledge that God the Creator forms each vessel from the original elements as he wills, and tempers the one nature of souls and the one nature of bodies by measures that please him. These works of God would not be withdrawn from human understanding if they had been meant to become known; and it would be revealed why each thing was done thus, if it were not enough to know that it was done thus. The Lord says to Moses: “Who gave man a mouth, and who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? Was it not I, the Lord God?” And through Isaiah: “Have I not made the fruitful and the barren? says the Lord.” In the book of Ecclesiasticus we read: “Good things and bad, life and death, poverty and riches are from God.” And Job says: “The tents of robbers abound, and they boldly provoke God, though he has given all things into their hands.” And the same, discussing the rise and fall of all human affairs and referring all changes to the judgments of God, says: “With him are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding. If he tears down, there is no one to build; if he shuts a man in, there is no one to open. If he holds back the waters, all things dry up; if he sends them out, they overturn the earth. With him are strength and wisdom; he knows both the deceiver and the deceived; he leads counsellors to a foolish end and judges to stupor; he loosens the belt of kings and girds their loins with a rope. He leads priests away without glory and overthrows the nobles, changing the lips of the truthful and taking away the teaching of the elders, pouring contempt on princes and raising up those who were oppressed. He reveals deep things out of darkness and brings the shadow of death into the light. He multiplies nations and destroys them, and restores the overthrown to wholeness. He changes the heart of the princes of the earth and deceives them, so that they go in vain through a pathless way. They will grope as in darkness and not in light, and he will make them stagger like drunkards.” And again the same, saying that God’s will cannot be made void: “For he alone is, and no one can turn back his thought; and whatever his soul wills, that will be done.”

Part of mankind is set free while part perishes; and if we wish to ascribe this to the merits of wills, so that grace seems to have neglected the bad and chosen the good, the case of innumerable peoples will resist us, on whom through so many ages no proclamation of heavenly teaching shone. Nor can we say that their descendants were better, of whom it is written, “The people of the gentiles who sat in darkness have seen a great light; and to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death a light has risen”; and to whom the apostle Peter says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, that you may proclaim the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his so marvellous light; who once were not a people, but now are the people of God; on whom once he had no mercy, but now he has mercy.” What the elders did not merit is not, then, given for the merits of the younger. For an equal impiety accused fathers and sons, and the same blindness of ignorance plunged all together into the same errors. But why God did not have mercy on those and had mercy on these, what knowledge can comprehend, what wisdom investigate? The reason for this distinction is hidden, but the distinction itself is not hidden. We do not understand the one who judges, but we see him working. Why do we slander a hidden justice, we who owe thanks to a manifest mercy? Let us praise and venerate what is done, because it is safe not to know what is covered.

Look also at the whole multitude of little children, in whom, apart from that sin with which the human race is born into condemnation, neither past nor future merits can be reckoned. For all of whom we are now speaking, before any use of understanding, before any free choice of the will, pass on, some regenerated to eternal blessedness, others not reborn to everlasting misery. If you confess original guilt, the whole number is guilty; if you look for moral innocence, the whole sum is without fault. Human justice finds nothing by which to distinguish them, but the unspeakable grace of God has whom it may choose. The counsel is hidden, but the gift is not hidden; mercy shows the work, power veils the cause. But what is not seen is as beyond doubt as what is seen; for to the author of a manifest work one cannot deny the acknowledgment of a fairness, even an unknown one.

And if you direct the eye of your mind also to those who, having spent a long life in shameful deeds and crimes, are renewed by the sacrament of Christ’s baptism at the very end of their life and, without the support of any good works, are transferred into the fellowship of the heavenly kingdom, with what understanding will you grasp the divine judgment, unless you acknowledge without doubt that God’s gifts are free; and that, just as there are no crimes so detestable that they can keep off the gift of grace, so no works can be so outstanding that what is given freely would be owed to them by a judgment of recompense? For the redemption by the blood of Christ would grow cheap, and the mercy of God would yield to the prerogative of human works, if the justification that comes through grace were owed to preceding merits, so that it would be not the gift of the giver but the wage of the worker. And how could it be proved that no effort is able to remove original sin, unless even the impious and criminal were taken into the kingdom through the washing of Christ, and those who glory in their own righteousness recognized that they can do nothing worthy of the adoption of the sons of God if they have not come to the sacrament of regeneration, since they are held in the same condition as the most wicked sinners, to be equal with them in sanctification if regeneration is present, and to perish with them if the washing is lacking? If, then, grace finds even among the most wicked, at the very end of life, those whom it adopts, while many who seem less guilty are strangers to this gift, who will say that this is done without God’s dispensation or decided without deep equity? It is not unjust because it is hidden, but it is just because there is no doubt that it is God’s judgment. For what depends on his decision, by what sentence it ought to be judged, is uncertain before it is judged; but when the matter has come to its end, no one is free to complain of the outcome, because it is most certain that God ought not to have done otherwise than he did. He established the variety of manifold calling, belonging to one grace, also by that rule of the Gospel parable in which he shows the householder hiring workers for the vineyard at different times on the agreement of a denarius [by which the equality of eternal life is signified]. There without doubt those let into the vineyard at the eleventh hour and joined to the workers of the whole day prefigure the lot of those of whom we are now speaking, whom, to commend the excellence of grace, divine indulgence rewards at the failing of the day and the close of life, not paying a price for labour, but pouring out the riches of its goodness on those whom it chose without works; so that even those who sweated in much labour and received no more than the last may understand that they received a gift of grace, not a wage for works. Hence, if we too murmur against the householder because those called last are made equal to the workers of the whole day, and many works earn no more than almost none, it will be said to us what was answered to one of them: “Friend, I do you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go. I wish to give to this last as to you. Or is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is mine? Or is your eye evil because I am good?” Certainly this generosity seemed unjust to this complainer; and what instruction did he take away, what reason did he receive? The justice of this dispensation was not revealed to him, nor was he admitted to look into the hidden secret; but, so that he might refrain from discussing God’s judgments, the goodness of the one showing mercy and the power of the one willing were set before him, as though the Apostle too were saying to him: “O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me thus?”

For all men, then, of whatever nation and race, of whatever condition and age, the cause of receiving grace is the will of God, with whom the reason of election is hidden, their merits beginning from that grace which they received without merits. If these men could be good without grace, it would not be said: “Unless one is reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven”; and: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you”; but it would be said: “Unless one is just and good, he cannot be blessed for ever.” Nor would there be need to be reborn through water and the Spirit if it were enough to be instructed through a commandment. And the faith that believes that all sins are forgiven through baptism would be emptied if grace were taught to be bestowed not on the bad and impious but on the good and upright. The origin of true life and of true justice, therefore, is set in the sacrament of regeneration, so that where a man is reborn, there too the truth of the virtues themselves arises, and those who could scarcely reach the temporal reward of vain praise begin to advance through faith to everlasting glory. For whether a Jew swelling with knowledge of the law or a Greek puffed up with the study of natural wisdom, before he is justified by faith in Christ he is shut up under sin; and if he persists in his unbelief, the wrath of God remains on him, that wrath, namely, contracted in Adam’s transgression, of which the Apostle speaks, saying: “And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit that now works in the sons of unbelief, among whom we too once lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the thoughts, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest”; and again: “That you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants, having no hope of the promise, and without God in the world”; and again: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord”; and again: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us worthy of a share in the lot of the saints in light, who rescued us from darkness and the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love”; and again: “For we too were once foolish, unbelieving, wandering, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness and humanity of our Saviour appeared, not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, justified by his grace, we might be heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

And so that it may be clear, very briefly, what human nature is like without grace, let the apostle Jude tell what either the ignorance of the unskilled or the learning of the wise does: “But these,” he says, “blaspheme whatever they do not know; and whatever they know by nature, like dumb animals, in these they are corrupted.” Let the evangelist Luke too tell, in the words of Zechariah, in what night the human race lives before the illumination of grace, and from what darkness of ignorance the people of God is rescued: “And you, child,” he says, “will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people for the forgiveness of their sins, through the tender mercy of our Lord, with which the Dayspring from on high has visited us, to shine on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

This tender mercy the Lord bestowed not for the redemption of one people only but for the salvation of all nations, as the evangelist says: “That Jesus was to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who were scattered.” For this is the work of that voice of the Lord which, sounding through the whole world like a trumpet of mercy, both invites and summons all men. For when he had said, “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for so it was well pleasing before you,” he added, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and him to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” And then he added: “Come to me, all who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” And John the Baptist, in the Gospel of John, testifies in a prophetic spirit, saying: “He who comes from heaven is above all; what he has seen and heard he testifies, and no one receives his testimony. He who receives his testimony has set his seal that God is true.” As far as concerns the blindness of the human race, then, contracted in the long night of ignorance and pride, the Creator of the world came into this world, and the world did not know him; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it; he who is above all testifies what he has seen and heard, and no one receives his testimony. But since God the Son of God did not come into the world in vain, but gave himself for all and died not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who were scattered; and says to all, “Come to me, all who labour and are burdened”; and, keeping for himself the decision of an unknowable election, gives knowledge of himself and his Father to those to whom he wills to reveal him: all the children of light, the children of the promise, the children of Abraham, the children of God, the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the true Israelites, foreknown and foreordained to the kingdom of God, who called them not only from the Jews but also from the gentiles, receive the testimony of him who came from heaven, setting their seal that God is true; that is, showing expressly in their own salvation that God is true, fulfilling and completing what he promised to Abraham, the father of all nations, who, when God promised that he would be heir of the world, did not waver in distrust but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and knowing most fully that what he has promised he is able also to do. And who is so alien to the faith of Abraham, who so degenerate from the father of all nations, as to say that God’s promise is either not fulfilled or fulfilled by another than he who promised? Such a man will be a liar; but God is true, and everyone who receives his testimony seals this and shows this, that through the enlightening light he has been made to see, made obedient, made understanding; as John the Evangelist testifies, saying: “We know that the whole world lies in the evil one, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, that we may know the true God and be in his true Son.”

But if it is asked why the Saviour of all men did not give all men this understanding, that they might know the true God and be, that is, remain, in his true Son: though we believe that the help of grace was wholly withdrawn from no men (of which we shall speak more fully in what follows), yet this is perhaps as veiled as that other is hidden, why formerly, passing over all the nations, he took one people for himself to instruct in the knowledge of the truth. If there is no complaint to be made about that judgment of God, much less is there to be murmuring about what is done in the election of all nations. For what God willed to be hidden is not to be searched out, but what he made manifest is not to be neglected, lest we be found unlawfully curious in the one and damnably ungrateful in the other. We are not unaware that there are some of such inconsiderate presumption and such proud arrogance that what the chief teacher of the gentiles — taught not by men nor through a man but divinely — confessed to be removed far and deep beyond the measure of his knowledge, they dare to profane with a teaching of false name; and they will have nothing hidden, nothing secret there, where the Apostle did not disclose what we should think but showed what we should not search into. For (as we have already said above) it is granted to no study and no talent to track out by what judgment or counsel God, unchangeably good, unchangeably just, always foreknowing, always almighty, shut up all things in unbelief that he might have mercy on all; and yet in those ages in which he was instructing Israel alone, put off enlightening innumerable peoples of the impious; and now allows the same Israel to be blinded until the whole of the gentiles comes in, perishing in so many thousands born and dying, and to be saved in those whom the end of the world finds. This mystery, spread through the whole body of the Scriptures, has indeed made known to us what has been done, what is being done and what is to be done; but why it pleased God that it be done so has been withdrawn from the contemplation of human understanding.

But these men, who blush to be ignorant of anything and under cover of obscurity set snares of deception, refer every distinction by which God chooses some and does not choose others (for many are called, but few chosen) to the merits of the human will, teaching that no one is saved freely but by recompense, because it is naturally implanted in all that they can share in the truth if they will, and grace flows to those by whom it has been sought. This definition, to say nothing for the moment of the truth of grace, seems to offer some small reason in the case of those who use free choice. But concerning little children, who without any merit of good will share a common case with the rest of mortals in the original wound, no explanation can be brought to show why these, reborn, are saved and those, not reborn, perish, under the providence and omnipotence of him “in whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all the flesh of man,” and to whom it is said, “The days of man are short; the number of his days is with you.” I do not think these patrons of the will are so shameless as to say either that these things happen by chance or that the unreborn do not perish. For they would be openly convicted either of holding, with the pagans, a belief in fate, or of denying, with the Pelagians, the sin passed on to Adam’s descendants. And not even the Pelagians dared to ascribe to fate that little children are not baptized; but because they dared to declare them free from sin, they deserved to be condemned. But since the question being debated concerns the distinction among all men, and little children cannot be separated from all men, and since the Truth said of men of every age, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost,” those who place the cause of election in the merits of those who are chosen try in vain to open the depth of unsearchable grace through free choice. And though they have brought forward many foolish and false things about the will and judgment of adults, they fail when it comes to the distinction among little children, nor can they boast of having given the reason for a question that is treated concerning all men and is not resolved concerning all.

But the manifold and great abundance of divine grace proves that these men assert even what they say about the wills of adults against the truth, and that the testimonies of the divine words fight against their persuasion. If we wished to attach all these testimonies to our discourse, there would be no end to the discussion. Yet those that offer themselves to memory will not be omitted, so that it may be shown, as far as is sufficient, that man’s good merit, from the beginning of faith to the completion of perseverance, is a divine gift and work. Let the apostle Paul, then, explain from what fountain faith itself is born, the mother of good will and righteous action, he who gives thanks to God for the faith of the Romans, saying: “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in the whole world.” Writing to the Ephesians too: “For this reason,” he says, “I too, having heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of 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 enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” Giving thanks to God likewise for the faith of the Colossians: “We give thanks,” he says, “to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” And, telling what he prays for them, that they may receive other good things from the same author of good things: “Therefore,” he says, “from the day we heard, we too have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you may walk worthily, pleasing God in all things, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with power according to the might of his glory, in all patience and long-suffering with joy.” Likewise to the Thessalonians, who were fervent in the spirit of faith and love: “We give thanks,” he says, “to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers without ceasing, remembering your work of faith and labour of love and endurance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ before God and our Father.” And below: “For this reason we too give thanks to God without ceasing, that when you received from us the word of God that you heard, you received it not as the word of men but, as it truly is, the word of God, who works in you who believe.” Could it be shown more fully or more plainly that the faith of believers is God’s gift than by the fact that thanks were given to God because those to whom the word of God was preached through men did not doubt it as men’s speech, but believed it as God speaking through men, who worked in them so that they believed? In the second Epistle to the same Thessalonians too the Apostle speaks thus of the faith of those advancing in Christ: “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is fitting, because your faith grows abundantly and the love of each of you for one another abounds, so that we ourselves boast of you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and the afflictions that you endure, as an example of the just judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you also suffer.” The apostle Peter too, preaching that faith is had from God, writes thus: “Knowing that you were redeemed from your vain way of life handed down from your fathers, not with perishable things, gold and silver, but with the precious blood of Christ Jesus, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world but made manifest in the last times for your sake, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope might be in the Lord.” Likewise the same speaks thus in his second Epistle of the receiving of faith: “Simon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith equal to ours through the righteousness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” And whence the spirit of faith is had, the apostle John teaches most plainly, saying: “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that dissolves Jesus is not from God, and this is the Antichrist.” Likewise the same says that the Gospel is received by him in whom is the spirit of truth: “We,” he says, “are from God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not from God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles the apostle Peter, declaring that faith is through the Lord Jesus, says: “This man whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that is through him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all.” Of the faith of Lydia too, whose heart, among the other women who were hearing the Gospel with her, the Lord opened, it is told thus in the same history: “On the sabbath day we went out of the gate by the river, where there seemed to be a place of prayer; and sitting down we spoke to the women who had gathered. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of the Thyatirans, a worshipper of God, heard us; whose heart the Lord opened to attend to the things spoken by Paul.” That faith is not from human wisdom but from divine inspiration is confirmed by the voice of the Truth himself. For when the Lord said to his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” And the apostle Paul preaches that this very faith is given in measure according to the will of the giver: “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone among you, not to think more highly than one ought to think, but to think with sobriety, as God has distributed to each the measure of faith.” Likewise the same, commending that the unity of right faith and agreement in honouring God are from God: “May the God of patience and consolation,” he says, “grant you to be of one mind toward one another according to Jesus Christ, that with one accord and one mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And below: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit.” By this testimony we are taught that not only faith, but also joy and peace and abundance of hope are had only in the power of the Holy Spirit. And writing to the Ephesians the Apostle says this of the riches of grace that repays good for evil, and of the faith that is had not from ourselves but by God’s gift: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace you have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. For 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 should boast. For we are his making, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them.” This, then, is proper to the new creature through grace, that those who are God’s making, who are founded in Christ by a heavenly birth, do not grow numb in idleness or go slack in sloth, but advance from virtue to virtue, walking by the way of good works. For this is to be made, this is to become a new creature out of the old, this is to be reformed from the image of the earthly man to the image of the heavenly man. All of this, whether openly through the co-workers of grace or hiddenly through the supply of the Spirit, he begins, he increases and he perfects, whose field, whose building and whose making we are.

It has been shown abundantly, as I think, by these testimonies (though other proofs could have been added), that the faith by which the impious is justified is had only by God’s gift and is given for no preceding merits, but is given for this purpose, that it may be the beginning of merits, and that, when it has been given without being asked, the other good things may follow through its prayers. Hence a few testimonies out of many are to be taken that may show the bounty of grace in the diversity of its gifts. That it is from God, then, that a man chooses God’s way and rises from a fall, the psalm of David sings, saying: “The steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and he will delight in his way. When he falls, he will not be crushed, because the Lord puts his hand under him.” Likewise the same, that one comes to God with God as leader: “Send out your light and your truth; they have led me and brought me to your holy mountain and to your tabernacles.” Likewise, that man’s strength is in the Lord, and that God’s will goes before the one who is to be set free: “I will guard my strength for you,” he says, “for God is my upholder; my God, his will shall go before me.” In Proverbs too we read of wisdom and understanding: “For the Lord gives wisdom, and from his face come knowledge and understanding.” Likewise in the same book, of the dispensations of God’s wisdom, without which no actions are right, it is said: “Counsel and safety are mine; I am prudence, and strength is mine. By me kings reign, and by me tyrants hold the earth.” Likewise elsewhere, that no one can walk rightly unless the Lord directs him: “A man’s steps are set right by the Lord; how then can a mortal understand his ways?” Again elsewhere: “Every man seems righteous to himself, but the Lord directs the hearts.” And below: “The will is prepared by the Lord.” Likewise in the same place, of thought and counsel: “Many are the thoughts in a man’s heart, but the counsel of the Lord prevails.” In the book of Ecclesiastes it is written that both to have the necessities of life and to use them well is God’s gift: “There is no good for a man,” he says, “except that he eat and drink and show his soul good in his labour. And indeed I saw this, that it is from the hand of God. For who will eat or feed without him?” Likewise in the same book we read that the hearts and works of the righteous are in God’s hand, and that they advance in their pursuits only as far as he has given: “However much a man labours in seeking, he will not find; and whatever the wise man says that he knows, he will not be able to find. For all this I laid to my heart, and my heart saw all this, that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God.” In the book of Wisdom it is said thus of the same work of grace: “For he is both the guide of wisdom and the corrector of the wise. For in his hand are both we and our words, and all wisdom and knowledge of works and discipline.” Of continence too, that it is had by God’s gift, the same Scripture speaks thus: “As I knew that I could not otherwise be continent unless God gave it, and this very thing was part of wisdom, to know whose gift it was.” With this sentence agrees the teaching of the apostle Paul, who writes thus in the first to the Corinthians: “I wish all men to be as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that.” And the Lord in the Gospel according to Matthew is related to have hinted at this concerning the gift of continence. For when his disciples said, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry,” Jesus said to them, “Not all receive this word, but those to whom it has been given.” Of the fear of God and wisdom we read thus in Ecclesiasticus: “The fear of the Lord is the crown of wisdom”; and both are gifts of God. Likewise in the same: “The fear of the Lord has set itself above all things; blessed is he to whom it is given to have the fear of the Lord.” Isaiah too speaks thus of spiritual riches, whose author is the Lord: “Our salvation has come in treasures; wisdom and piety and discipline are from the Lord: these are the treasures of righteousness.” Likewise of the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose goodness is anticipated by no one’s merit, he says this: “Who has measured the water with his hand and heaven with his span and the whole earth with his fist? Who has set the mountains in scales and the rocks in a balance? Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor to instruct him? Or whom did he consult, and who instructed him? Or who showed him judgment, or who showed him the way of prudence, or who first gave to him, that it should be repaid him?” Hence in the book of Job too we read, in the same sense, the words of the Lord saying: “Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? All that is under heaven is mine.” Jeremiah declares thus that true wisdom comes to man from God: “I know, Lord, that a man’s way is not his own, nor is it in a man to direct his steps.” Likewise that the conversion of the heart to God is from God, the Lord testifies through him, saying: “I will restore them to this land, and I will build them up and not tear them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up; and I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.” Baruch too preaches that to know God is from God: “And they shall know,” he says, “that I am the Lord their God, and I will give them a heart to know me and ears to hear.” That every good word and every holy work is the supply of the Holy Spirit, without whom nothing is done rightly, the apostle Paul teaches in the first to the Corinthians, 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 one Spirit, 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.” That each has as much grace as the Lord has given, the same apostle says to the Ephesians: “One body and one Spirit, as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and over all and in us all. But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ; therefore it says: Ascending on high he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men.” Likewise the same says in the second to the Corinthians that we are not fit even to think what is spiritual except through God’s grace: “Such confidence we have through Christ toward God: not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who has also made us fit ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” And again in the same Epistle, saying that the effect and sufficiency of good works are supplied by God’s grace: “God is able,” he says, “to make all grace abound in you, so that, having all sufficiency in all things, you may abound in every good work; as it is written, He has scattered, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures for ever. And he who supplies seed to the sower will also provide bread to eat and will increase the harvest of your righteousness, so that, enriched in all things, you may abound in all simplicity.” And writing to the Ephesians the Apostle teaches that all the good things by which God is pleased are gifts of God, and that they must be asked of him so that they may be given to those who lack them: “For this reason,” he says, “I bend my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell through faith in your hearts; rooted and grounded in love, that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, height and depth, and to know also the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we ask or understand, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus for all ages of ages. Amen.” That God is the author of every good, whose gifts are neither uncertain nor changeable but come from an eternal will, the apostle James says thus: “Do not err, my beloved brothers. Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration. Of his own will he begot us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of beginning of his creatures.” With him the prophet Zechariah too agrees, saying: “The Lord saved his people on that day like sheep, for holy stones are rolled upon his land. For if anything is good, it is his, and if anything is best, it is from him.” In the Gospel according to Matthew it is said thus that knowledge and understanding are gifts of God, which he bestows on whom he will: “Then his disciples came and said to him, Why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered and said to them, Because to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” John the Evangelist too declares that no one has anything good except what he has received from above, saying: “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.” In the Gospel of the same is the teaching of the Truth himself, that no one comes to the Son unless drawn by the Father, because God makes the one who comes both understanding and obedient: “No one,” he says, “can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. For it is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God. Everyone who has heard from the Father and learned comes to me.” And below: “For this reason I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given him by my Father.” That to advance in faith and good works and to persevere to the end is of divine gift and help, the authority of the holy Scriptures confirms. For the apostle Paul, writing to the Philippians, says: “Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” But someone, wishing to turn the force of this testimony to the perversity of his own opinion, wanted what was said, “He who began in you,” to be understood as though it had been said, “He who began from you,” so that both the beginning and the completion of the work would be referred not to God but to man, as though he had willed both to begin and to complete it. But this most insane pride the most excellent preacher of grace crushes in the same Epistle, saying: “Be terrified in nothing by your adversaries, which is to them a cause of perdition, but to you of salvation, and this from God. For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him.” And again: “With fear and trembling,” he says, “work out your salvation. For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish for his good will.” Likewise in the first to the Thessalonians he teaches that the beginning, progress and completion of virtues are from God, saying: “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you. And may the Lord multiply you and make you abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, to establish your hearts blameless in holiness before God and our Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.” Writing to the Corinthians too and commending as God’s gift the advancing perseverance of all virtues, he says: “I thank my God always for you for the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in all things you were made rich in him, in all speech and wisdom, as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you lack nothing in any grace as you await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end without reproach, until the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Likewise to the Romans, of the love of Christ by which he makes those whom he loves unconquerable, that is, persevering to the end (for what else is it to persevere than not to be conquered by temptation?): “Who,” he says, “will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written, For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we overcome through him who loved us.” Likewise to the Corinthians, of the victory that Christ accomplishes: “The sting of death,” he says, “is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Likewise to the Thessalonians, of the perseverance that God grants: “May the God of peace himself,” he says, “sanctify you wholly, that your spirit and soul and body may be kept whole and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he who called you, who will also do it.” Likewise to the Thessalonians he preaches thus that all our good things, whether in working or in speaking, and perseverance in them, are gifts of God: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal consolation and good hope in grace, exhort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may run and be glorified, as it is also among you, and that we may be delivered from troublesome and evil men; for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from evil.” Let us hear the apostle Peter too, as he teaches whence the strength of perseverance comes: “But the God of all grace,” he says, “who called us to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after we have suffered a little, will himself perfect, confirm and establish us; to him be power and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.” And the apostle John speaks thus, that the victory of the saints is the work of God who dwells in the saints: “You are from God, little children, and you have overcome the world; for greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.” Likewise the same: “Everything that is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” In the Gospel according to Luke it is set out thus that God grants perseverance in faith: “And Jesus said to Peter: Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned, strengthen your brothers, and pray that you do not enter into temptation.” In the Gospel of John too we read that the Truth says this of Christ’s sheep, which no one snatches from his hand: “But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, nor shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.” Likewise in the same Gospel, of those whom the Father gives to the Son, who all come to the Son and none of whom perishes, these things are said by the mouth of the Lord himself: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and him who comes to me I will not cast out; because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.”

There are many other passages in the series of the canonical Scriptures that we pass over out of a desire to avoid prolixity, since those we have taken are neither few, nor obscure, nor slight, and by them it is most fully declared that all that pertains to meriting eternal life can be neither begun, nor increased, nor completed without the grace of God; and that against every elation that glories in free choice that sentence of the Apostle stands most invincibly: “For who distinguishes you? And 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?” Therefore the depth of that question, which, following the Apostle’s wonder, we confess to be impenetrable, is not solved through the willing and not-willing of free choice. For though a man has in him the not-willing of good, yet unless it is given him he does not have the willing of good: the former nature contracted through guilt, the latter nature receives through grace. But why this same nature, guilty in all men before reconciliation, wretched in all, is not justified in all, and is distinguished in a certain part of itself from those who perish by him who came to seek and save what was lost, cannot be tracked out at all by human sense. For however much the malice of the impious is accused for resisting God’s grace, will it be proved that those on whom it was conferred deserved it? Or could that power of grace, which subjected to itself whom it willed, not have converted those who remained unconverted? Those who were drawn were such as those who were left in their hardness. But to the former grace, to our amazement, gave what it willed; to the latter just truth repaid what it owed; so that God’s judgment is more unsearchable in the election of grace than in the retribution of justice. Nevertheless, lest that part of the faith by which we piously believe that God wills all men to be saved through the knowledge of the truth should seem weakened by what is plainly shown about the effects of grace, we must strive, with Christ’s help, to make the firmness of this definition plain to us. But since the work of a necessary inquiry demands that no slight effort be spent on it, let us begin the discussion that follows at the opening of another book.

When all the contentions that the animosity of intemperate disputes breeds have been put away and renounced, it is clear that there are three things to which one must hold fast in this question, on which we are beginning a second book. One, by which it must be professed that God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; the second, by which it must not be doubted that no one comes to the knowledge of the truth and the receiving of salvation by his own merits, but by the help and work of divine grace; the third, by which it must be confessed that the depth of God’s judgments cannot be penetrated by human understanding, and that it ought not to be inquired why he who wills all men to be saved does not save all men. For if what cannot be known is not sought, no cause of strife will remain between the first and the second definitions, but both will be preached and both believed with secure and tranquil faith. For God, with whom there is no iniquity and all of whose ways are mercy and truth, the good creator of all men, is a just orderer, condemning no one undeservedly, freeing no one deservedly, punishing what is ours when he punishes the guilty, giving what is his when he makes men just, so that the mouth of those who speak iniquity may be stopped, and God may be justified in his words and prevail when he is judged. Neither is the complaint of the condemned just, nor the arrogance of the justified truthful, if either the one says that he did not deserve punishment, or the other asserts that he deserved grace.

And just as the things brought forward from the divine words to show forth grace cannot be violated by any art of argument, so that such clear and harmonious statements, so many in number, should be dragged into some uncertainty of perverse interpretation; so also what is found in the same body of the Scriptures concerning the salvation of all men must not be profaned by any contrary reasoning, so that the harder this is to grasp with the understanding, the more praiseworthy the faith with which it is believed. For great is the strength of assent for which authority suffices to follow the truth, even when the reason is hidden. Let us therefore consider attentively what is commanded by the Lord to the preachers of the Gospel. According to Matthew he says this: “All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the age.” According to Mark it is said to the same apostles: “Go into the whole world, preach the Gospel to every creature; whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” In this command was any distinction made between any nations or any men? He excepted no one for merit, set no one apart by race, distinguished no one by condition. The Gospel of the cross of Christ was sent to absolutely all men. And lest the ministry of the preachers should seem to be carried out by human work alone, he says: “Behold, I am with you all days until the consummation of the age.” That is: when you have gone like sheep into the midst of wolves, do not tremble at your own weakness, but trust in my power, for I will not abandon you in all this work until the consummation of the age; not to ensure that you suffer nothing, but, what is far greater, that you are overcome by no cruelty of the raging. For you will preach in my power, and through me it will come about that among those who contradict and those who rage, sons of Abraham are raised up from stones. I will instil what I have taught; I will do what I have promised. “For they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues, and you will stand before kings and governors for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not think how or what you will speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. For brother will hand over brother to death, and father son, and children will rise against parents and put them to death, and you will be hated by all men for my name’s sake. But whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.” So, as the Apostle says, “the grace of God our Saviour has appeared to all men”; and yet the ministers of grace were hated by all men. And though some were those who hated and others those who were pressed by the hatred of their persecutors, neither part was deprived of the name ‘all men’: the one indeed bore the loss of salvation as the share of the rebels, but the other kept the full reckoning by the dignity of the faithful. For the apostle John says: “But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world.”

It is the mystery of a great and unspeakable sacrament that the preachers to whom it was said, “Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” had been told earlier, “Do not go on the way of the gentiles, and do not enter the cities of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” For though the Gospel was directed to the calling of all men, and the Lord willed all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, he had not taken from himself the power of his dispensations, so that the order of his counsel should run otherwise than he had decreed by his hidden and just judgment. Hence the murmurs of stubborn complaints have no place, for it is clear that what God willed to be done ought not to have been done otherwise than he willed. And at a later time, when the Lord Jesus was already seated in the glory of God the Father and the preachers of the word were devoting themselves to the work they had undertaken, the apostles, wishing to preach the word in Asia, were forbidden by the Holy Spirit, and, planning to go into Bithynia, were prevented by the Spirit of Jesus: certainly not because grace was denied to those peoples, but, as far as appeared, because it was delayed. For afterward the Christian faith grew strong among them too. What the cause of postponing the calling was he did not disclose; and yet we are taught by the example of what happened that, among general promises, works or precepts, God knows how to order certain things, excepted from the common causes, by a more hidden reason. I believe this is so that, when some shadows are set between, the things that shine more secretly may become known more wonderfully, lest the eye grow careless through the ease of seeing and, in a way, doze over familiar things if it is not roused by unfamiliar ones. And these unknowable delays of enlightenment, during which many die in unbelief, we know to occur not only among the remoter peoples of the impious but also in the cities of the faithful, in very many houses and families, while even those who are to become Christians oppose the Christian faith. For many will love what they hated and preach what they do not now accept. And amid all this, who will make known to the querulous or the curious why the Sun of righteousness does not yet rise on certain nations, and why the truth, which is to be revealed, even now withholds its rays from darkened hearts? Why those who are to be corrected are allowed to wander so long, and what is to be granted to old men at the end is not given through so long a life? Why parents are spared who do not yet believe, while their children already believe in Christ? And again, why depraved offspring are at odds with religious parents? Though supplication is made daily for all to God, who is the giver of the beginnings and the growth of faith, according to his own precept, so that, if he hears, the grace of his mercy may be known, and if he does not hear, the judgment of his truth may be understood.

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.

For a certain measure of heavenly teaching was always applied to all men, which, though it was of a sparer and more hidden grace, yet sufficed, as the Lord judged, for some as a remedy and for all as a witness; so that it may appear not doubtfully but plainly that, had grace not superabounded where sin abounded, a like impiety would now too blind the whole human race. Or perhaps, as many prattle, better talents than those of old have arisen in our ages, and the last times have produced souls more fit for divine gifts? Even if this were so, it would have to be referred to the goodness of the author, who, in calling peoples to eternal life, had fashioned hearts that would not resist. But nothing at all has been renewed in fleshly generation, nor has the succession of descendants arisen nobler than their forefathers; rather, in the men of the time in which the Redeemer of the world came, the later the offspring, the stronger the iniquity was found to be. The impiety of the Jewish fury proved this; and how fit for the Gospel of Christ that generation was, the hearts not only of the people but also of the scribes, rulers and priests showed. For it was not enough for them to have raged against the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, against the testimony of the law, against the oracles of the prophets, against the proofs of divine miracles, with riots, insults, spitting, slaps, blows, stones, scourges and finally the atrocity of the cross, unless they also persecuted the witnesses of his resurrection with the same madness. This the apostles, when they were flogged by the high priests, showed to have been prophesied in the psalm of David, saying: “Lord, you are he who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who said by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David, your servant: Why did the nations rage, and the peoples devise vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For truly there gathered together in this city against your holy Son Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate with the gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do what your hand and your counsel had decreed to be done.” So, to make manifest the grace of God that was being arranged from his eternal and unchangeable counsel for the salvation of all nations, the earlier times were not passed over as incapable; but these times were chosen, which produced peoples whose fierce and voluntary iniquity persisted, with the intent not of taking counsel but of raging, in doing what the hand and counsel of God had decreed to be done; so that the grace and power of God might be the more wonderful, which out of such hard souls, such darkened minds and such hostile hearts made for itself a faithful, submissive and holy people, which came to the light of God’s wisdom not through the wisdom of this world but through his gift, of which the apostle John testifies, saying: “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, that we may know the true God and be in his true Son.” With this testimony the apostle Paul agrees, saying: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us worthy of a share in the lot of the saints in light, who rescued us from darkness and from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.” And again the same: “For we too were once foolish, unbelieving, wandering, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness and humanity of our Saviour appeared, not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, justified by his grace, we might be heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” Could it have been explained more fully, more clearly or more truly what merits of men Christ found, what morals he subjected to himself, what hearts he turned to himself, when he came to heal not the healthy but the sick, and to call not the just but sinners? For the people of the gentiles who sat in darkness saw a great light, and to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death a light has risen. The nations raged, the peoples were angry, kings were savage, powers spoke against him, superstitions and all the errors of the world resisted. But out of those who resisted, raged and persecuted, Christ increased his people, and through the chains, tortures and deaths of the saints faith was strengthened, truth conquered, and through the whole world the abundance of the Lord’s harvest was multiplied. For such constancy of faith, such confidence of hope, such fortitude in endurance was given from above that the fire of love which the Holy Spirit had kindled in the hearts of the faithful could in no way be put out by their oppressors; since those who were tortured burned the more vehemently, and those who raged often caught the same flame they were persecuting, the flame with which the blessed apostle Paul was set on fire when he said confidently and fervently: “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 this, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, patience proof, 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.” And again: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written, For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we overcome through him who loved us. For I am certain that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor strength, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This love, poured out through the Holy Spirit, made the world of the faithful conquer the world of the impious. This love put to shame the cruelty of Nero, the fury of Domitian and the rage of many emperors after them by the glorious end of innumerable martyrs, Christ granting his imitators eternal crowns out of the persecutions of kings.

There is no reason, then, to doubt that Jesus Christ our Lord died for the impious and for sinners. If anyone were found free of their number, Christ did not die for all; but Christ died absolutely for all; therefore no one of all men before the reconciliation made through Christ’s blood was not either a sinner or impious, as the Apostle says: “For why did Christ, when we were still weak, at the appointed time die for the impious? For scarcely will anyone die for a just man; though perhaps for a good man someone might dare to die. But God commends his love toward us, because, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us; much more, then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” And the same Apostle says in the second to the Corinthians: “For the love of Christ urges us, since we judge this, that if one died for all, then all died; and he died for all, so that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.” And let us hear what he declares about himself: “Faithful is the saying,” he says, “and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first; but I obtained mercy for this reason, that in me first Christ Jesus might show all patience, as a pattern for those who would believe in him for eternal life.” Whether circumcision, then, or uncircumcision, all were universally shut up under sin, and one guilt had bound all, and among the more and the less impious there was no one who could be saved without Christ’s redemption. This redemption brought itself to the whole world and became known to all men without distinction. For on the fiftieth day after that Passover in which the true Lamb had offered himself as a victim to God, when the apostles and those of one mind with them, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke in the tongues of all nations, a multitude of men of different races came together, roused by the miracle, so that in those present the whole world might hear the Gospel of Christ. For there came together, as it is written, “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and those who live in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, Jews as well as proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, all hearing the mighty works of God preached in their own tongues”; and their witness would run on far and wide even to the more distant nations. For bringing this about we believe that the breadth of the Roman realm was prepared by the providence of God, so that the nations to be called into the unity of the body of Christ might first be joined together under the rule of one empire; though Christian grace is not content to have the same limits as Rome, and has already subjected to the sceptre of Christ’s cross many peoples whom Rome did not subdue by her arms. Rome herself, however, through the primacy of the apostolic priesthood, has been made greater by the citadel of religion than by the throne of power.

But if perhaps, just as we know that certain nations were adopted into the fellowship of the sons of God not long ago, so also now there are some nations in the farthest parts of the world on which the grace of the Saviour has not yet shone, we do not doubt that for them too a time of calling has been arranged by the hidden judgment of God, in which they will hear and receive the Gospel that they have not heard. Yet that measure of general help which has always been given from above to all men is not denied them, though human nature has been wounded with so bitter a wound that unaided contemplation can fully instruct no one to the knowledge of God, unless the true light dispels the shadow of the heart; and this light God, just and good, by an inscrutable judgment did not pour out in past ages as he has in the last days. Hence the blessed apostle Paul, writing to the Colossians, says: “The mystery that was hidden from ages and generations, but now has been made manifest to his saints, to whom God willed to make known the riches of the glory of this sacrament among the gentiles, which is Christ in you.”

Was this mystery unknown even to the prophets? Did those through whom the Holy Spirit spoke not know the things they announced? I do not think it is to be understood so, but that the mystery was hidden from the nations themselves, and the Lord revealed it when he willed and to whom he willed. For of the calling of the nations, which were not God’s people and on which he did not have mercy before but now has mercy, it is said thus in Deuteronomy: “And the Lord saw and was jealous and was angry because of the provocation of his sons and daughters, and said, I will turn my face away from them and show what will be at the last, for it is a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no faith. They have provoked me to jealousy with what is not God, they have angered me with their idols; and I will provoke them to jealousy with those who were not a nation; with a foolish nation I will anger them.” And David sings beforehand of all the nations that would worship God: “All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord, and glorify your name.” And again the same: “And all the kings of the earth will worship him; all nations will serve him.” And again: “In him all the tribes of the earth will be blessed; all nations will magnify him.” Isaiah too announces like things, saying: “For in the last days the mountain of the Lord will be manifest, and the house of God on the top of the mountains, and it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will come to it.” And again the same: “And the Lord of hosts will make a feast for all nations on this mountain: they will drink wine with joy, they will be anointed with ointment on this mountain; he will give all these things to the nations; for this is the counsel concerning all nations.” And again the same: “And the Lord will reveal his holy arm in the sight of all nations, and all the nations of the earth will see the salvation that is from the Lord.” And again: “Behold, strangers will come to you through me and will flee to you.” And further: “Nations that did not know you will call on you, and peoples who do not know you will flee to you.” Hosea too prophesies the like, saying: “And in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God, and the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together.” And again: “I will have mercy on her who was not loved, and I will say to Not-my-people, You are my people; and he will say, You are my God.” And under the apostles, when those who had believed in Christ from the circumcision thought that those who were gentiles and called the uncircumcision could not share in the grace of justification, the blessed apostle Peter teaches how undistinguished both peoples are before God if both come together into the unity of faith: “And when I had begun to speak,” he says, “the Holy Spirit fell on them, as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If, then, God gave them the same grace as he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God? When they heard this they fell silent and glorified God, saying, Then to the gentiles too God has given repentance unto life.” The apostle James too says of this calling of the nations: “Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the gentiles to take from them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, as it is written: After this I will return and rebuild the tent of David that has fallen, and I will rebuild its ruins and set it up, so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the nations over whom my name is called, says the Lord who does these things; his work is known to the Lord from of old.” Simeon too, to whom it had been revealed by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ, said this of the salvation of all nations that was being revealed in Christ: “Now you let your servant go, Lord, according to your word, in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for revelation to the gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.” By these and other testimonies of the Scriptures it is shown beyond doubt that this richest, most powerful and kindest grace, by which in the last time of the world all nations are called into the kingdom of Christ, was hidden in former ages in the secret counsel of God.

And why it was not revealed earlier by this manifestation by which it now becomes known to all nations, no knowledge can comprehend, no understanding penetrate; while that which is most piously believed of God’s goodness, that he wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, must be held to be nothing other than perpetual and eternal, according to those measures by which God knows how to heap special gifts upon general ones; so that those who have had no share in grace may be convicted of their own wickedness, and those who have shone with its light may glory not in their own merit but in the Lord.

On this narrow but straight path of understanding, the consideration of little children raises no small difficulty. They use no judgment of reason by which, perceiving the benefits of their author, they could come to the knowledge of the truth; nor do they seem to be justly charged with neglecting helping grace, being set by nature in that ignorance which beyond doubt receives no knowledge and perceives no teaching. Since, then, God wills all men to be saved, why is so great a multitude of infants estranged from everlasting salvation, and so many thousands of human beings of this age left outside eternal life, as though they had been created by him who created hating no one for this purpose only: that, having come into this world with the flesh of sin, they should fall into the bonds of insoluble guilt without the guilt of any action of their own? What can be deeper, what more wonderful than this? For it is not lawful to believe that those who have not received the sacrament of regeneration belong to any fellowship of the blessed. And it becomes more astonishing and more wonderful that, where no action offends, where no choice resists, where there is the same misery, like weakness and a common case, there is not one judgment in such equality, and grace adopts for eternity such as rejection reprobates.

Nevertheless the heart of our humility is not troubled by this depth of God’s discrimination, if with firm and steady faith we believe every judgment of God to be just, and do not desire to have known what he willed to be secret; so that where it cannot be found out why he judges thus, it may suffice to know who it is that judges. Yet this question is not so unknowable that we can gain no instruction from it, if the tranquil gaze of a sober heart is turned to contemplating what can be seen. For when we consider how great a number of little children perish among pagans, among Jews, among heretics, and among Catholic Christians themselves, who, as far as their own wills are concerned, are known to have done nothing either good or bad, we learn that the sentence remains over them which the human race received in the transgression of Adam, the first parent; and since the rigour of this sentence is not relaxed even toward such, it is shown how great that sin was. For no one would think that a child is not born innocent, unless it were harmful even to such not to be reborn. As for the untimeliness of death, there is no reason to complain, since mortality, having once entered our nature through sin, has made every day of our life subject to it. For there would be a time when man could in some way be called immortal, if there were a period within which he could not die at all. But corruption never shares in incorruption so far that what is owed to setting is not always subject to failing. The beginning of this life is the start of death; nor does our age begin to increase before it begins to diminish. If any span of time is added to it, it does not come in order to remain, but passes in order to perish. What, then, is mortal from its beginning, on whatever day it dies, does not fall against the law of mortality, nor is it ever nearer to being able to live than to being able to fail. And though mortality arose for all men from one cause, corruptible nature is drawn not into one but into manifold weakness. And not only the years or months or days of human life, but all its hours and all its moments are subject to diseases, infirmities and wounds. Nor is there any kind of death or any manner of dying that does not fall on some portion of the whole number of mortals. For a heavy yoke lies on the sons of Adam, from the day they come out of their mother’s womb to the day of burial in the mother of all.

But the weight of this harshest yoke did not fall on the sons of Adam in such a way that divine justice applied none of its measuring to them; it so subjected what was to fail to the laws of failing as not to withdraw from them the power of its moderations; nor did all men fall into all evils because all were subject to all through their common condition, but, the general necessity being varied, the Lord kept for himself occasions of indulgence and of correction, so that in the one debt of all there should be what he as merciful might remit and as just might exact. Since, then, the just and almighty providence of God unceasingly judges all things, and no one comes into this world or goes out of it except by that entry and departure which the arbiter of things decrees according to his highest knowledge and wisdom — as it is written in the book of Job, “Who does not know that the hand of the Lord has made all these things, in whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all the flesh of man?” and again, “The days of man are short, and the number of his days is with you” — who would dare to inquire into the causes of his works and counsels? For it is inscrutable and very secret why the human condition has been varied with such great differences. A long-lasting infirmity consumes one man from infancy to old age, and in his unending pains the time of his appointed age does not run out; another is enlivened by a most long-lived vigour with whole and healthy strength. For one the end comes in childhood, for another in youth. One is not allowed to go beyond young manhood; for another it is impossible to grow up to the first rudiments of speech. These limits of life, unequal in so many ways, fragile mortality would find less bitter if it suffered only the losses of the present age, and if those who went hence without the washing of regeneration did not fall into eternal miseries.

But since the cause of the gifts that grace bestows is more inscrutable than that of the miseries that nature has deserved, the very difficulty of understanding sends us back to our author. And when we ask how he wills all men to be saved who does not grant all men that time in which, through voluntary faith, they may be able to receive grace, I think it is not irreligiously believed nor unfittingly understood that these men of a few days belong to that part of grace which has always been bestowed on all nations; by which, if their parents used it well, they too would be helped through them. For the beginnings of all little children and all those first stages of an infancy not yet rational lie under the choice of another’s will, and they can in no way be cared for except through others; and it follows that they belong to the fellowship of those by whose right or depraved affection they are guided. For just as they believe through another’s confession, so through another’s unbelief or neglect they do not believe. And since they themselves had no desire either for the present life or for the future one, as it was their lot to be born, so it becomes their lot not to be reborn. But just as for adults, besides that general grace that knocks more sparingly and hiddenly on the hearts of all men, a special calling is put forth with a more excellent work, a larger gift and a more powerful strength, so also for innumerable little children the same election is made manifest. It was not lacking, indeed, to those who were not reborn, in the person of their parents; but to those who were reborn it was present beyond their parents, so that often the care of strangers has served many whom the impiety of their own families abandoned, and they came to regeneration through outsiders, which was not to be provided for them by their nearest.

In this work of grace, who but a most arrogant and most vain man would complain of divine justice because a like providence does not care for all little children, and either remove by its power or forestall by its mercy all the dangers that can prevent the regeneration of those about to die? This would certainly be done for all, if it were altogether right that it be done. But it is plain how much care would grow slack in the hearts of the faithful if, in baptizing little children, nothing were to be feared from anyone’s negligence or from their death, since it could in no way happen that such children were cheated of baptism. Indeed, by such an unlosable happiness of infants the opinion of that error would be most vehemently strengthened which dares to preach, against the Catholic faith, that grace is given according to men’s merits. For it would seem owed in all fairness to blameless innocence that adoption should pass over none of those whom no guilt bound; nor would someone have said impiously about the baptism of little children: “Grace has whom to adopt; the water has nothing to wash away.” But all disciples of the truth understand that this was preached detestably; and hence it is manifest that those who are saved are freed not by merit but by grace, since there is no doubt that those who have died without baptism have perished. They certainly would not perish unless they shared in a most grievous sin. But now, by a hidden but just discrimination of God, it is shown both what grace confers and what transgressing nature deserves, so that neither does pride rise up against the gift nor diligence cease against the danger.

Whether, then, we contemplate the last ages, or the first, or those between, it is reasonably and piously believed that God wills all men to be saved and has always willed it; and this is shown from nothing other than those benefits which the providence of God bestows on all generations in common and without distinction. For such gifts were and are so general that by their testimony men could be helped to seek the true God; and over these gifts, which bear witness to their author through all ages, the bounty of special grace has been poured out. Though this is now given more abundantly than before, yet the Lord has kept the causes of its distribution within his own knowledge and hidden them within the secret of his most powerful will. If they flowed to all uniformly, they would not be hidden; and as there is no doubt about the general goodness, so there would be nothing astonishing about the special mercy, and so the one would be grace and the other would not. But it pleased God both to bestow the latter on many and to withdraw the former from no one, so that from both it might appear that what was conferred on a part was not denied to the whole, but that in some grace prevailed and in others nature resisted. [26] For we believe and experience this more abundant grace to be powerful, yet in no way do we consider it coercive, as though whatever is done in saving men were accomplished by the will of God alone, even though help is given to little children through the service of another’s will. The grace of God indeed holds the chief place in all justification, persuading by exhortations, moving by examples, frightening by dangers, rousing by miracles, giving understanding, inspiring counsel, and enlightening the heart itself and imbuing it with the affections of faith; but the will of man too is set under it and joined to it, having been roused by the aids just named for this purpose, that it may cooperate with the divine work in itself and begin to put into practice for merit what it conceived as desire from the heavenly seed, having from its own changeableness that it fails, if it fails, and from the help of grace that it advances, if it advances. This help is applied to all in innumerable ways, hidden or manifest; and that it is rejected by many is due to their own wickedness, but that it is received by many is due both to divine grace and to the human will. Whether, then, we think of the beginnings of the faithful, or their progress, or their perseverance to the end, no kind and no species of any virtue will be found that is had either without the gift of divine grace or without the consent of our will. For grace itself works by every kind of healing and helping to prepare in the one it calls a will that is the first receiver and servant of its gifts. For there is no virtue in the unwilling, nor can faith, hope or love be said to be in those whose consent is a stranger to these good things.

That consent, however, is brought forth not only by the exhortation of preachers and the incentives of teaching, but also by fear; for which reason it is written, “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.” However great the terrors with which this fear is brought in, it does nothing else than make the one whom it has made fearful also willing, and not only willing but also wise. Hence it is also written, “Blessed is he to whom it is given to have the fear of God.” For what is so blessed as this fear, which is the begetter and teacher of wisdom? In devotion to it the will too is devoted, and with grace as its author it advances by the same fear with which it began. When, then, this fear is put in even by a certain force of great terror, reason is not extinguished nor understanding taken away; rather that mist which pressed on the mind is scattered, so that the will, before depraved and captive, may be made right and free. Hence, just as the mind takes in nothing of virtue unless it has received a ray of the true light, so grace confers nothing on the one it calls unless it has opened in him the eyes of the will. In many, as was discussed above, the will is most ardent from its very beginning and is enriched with quick and great increases; but in many it advances slowly and hesitantly and is scarcely brought to those increases that have the firmness needed to persevere. The Lord indeed says: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” But this was said so that we might know that the faith without which no one comes to Christ is had by the Father’s gift, according to what is said to the apostle Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” He who worked in the hearts of those to be drawn that they should believe, brought it about that they should will. For there would be nothing by which they could be drawn if they were not capable of faith and will; for those who do not believe are not drawn at all and do not come; nor do those who dissent draw near, but they draw back. Those who come, then, are led by love: for they were loved, and they loved; they were sought, and they sought; and they willed what God willed them to will.

He so gives the very willing to obey him that he does not take away, even from those who will persevere, that changeableness which is able not to will. Otherwise no one of the faithful would ever have fallen from the faith, desire would conquer no one, sadness would crush no one, anger would overthrow no one, no one’s love would grow cold, no one’s patience would be broken, and no one would neglect the grace given him. But because these things can happen, and the descent into consent to such temptations is all too easy and steep, that voice of the Lord ought never to stop sounding in the ears of the faithful in which it is said to the apostles: “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.” If he had admonished the disciples only to watch and not also to pray, he would seem to have urged on the powers of free choice alone. But when he added “and pray,” he taught clearly enough that it would be a gift from above that the storm of temptation should not overcome them even when watching. Such too is what he says: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when at last you have turned, strengthen your brothers; and pray that you do not enter into temptation.” If, then, the faith of so great an apostle would have failed unless Christ prayed for him, there was beyond doubt in him a changeableness that could waver in temptation; and he had not yet been so made firm by the virtue of perseverance as to be exposed to no dangers. Indeed so grave a disturbance shook him even after this that, in the house of Caiaphas, terrified by the question of one maidservant, he was led, as his constancy failed, to a threefold denial of Christ, with whom he had promised to die. He, then, who then looked on the troubled heart of the apostle not with human but with divine eyes and moved him by his powerful look to abundant tears of repentance, could have conferred such firmness of mind on his chief disciple that, just as nothing deterred the Lord himself from his purpose of fulfilling his passion, so no fear would then have overcome blessed Peter. But this stability belonged only to him who alone could say truly and powerfully: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.” But in other men, as long as the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and as long as the spirit is willing but the flesh weak, an unchangeable strength of mind cannot be found. For the perfect and secure happiness of true peace belongs not to this life but to another; in the uncertainty of the present contest, where the whole of life is a temptation and not even victory itself is safe from the pride of the one who lies in wait, the danger of changeableness is not absent. And though the divine protection gives to innumerable saints the virtue of persevering to the end, from none does it take away what fights against them from within themselves, so that in all their pursuits and efforts willing and not willing always contend within them. This conflict the same most blessed Peter suffered even at the very consummation of all his victories. For the Lord himself testifies this to him, saying: “Amen, amen, I say to you: when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish. He said this to signify by what death he would glorify God.” Who, then, can doubt, who does not know, that this strongest rock, which received a share in the strength and the name of that chief rock, always had this desire, that constancy in dying for Christ might be given him? Yet the struggle against fear was so unavoidable that the man most eager for martyrdom was declared indeed to be going to win the victory of suffering, but not without the temptation of fear. Rightly, then, the Lord is entreated in the same way not only by beginners but also by advanced saints, and it is said: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” For to all who remain in faith and love it is given by him that they are not overcome in temptation, so that he who glories may glory in the Lord. And he ascribes that glory to the very ones to whom he imparts it; so that, though they stood by God’s help, yet, because they had in themselves that by which they could fall, it is their merit that they stood. Just as those who have believed are helped to remain in the faith, so too those who have not yet believed are helped to believe. And just as the former have it in their power to go out, so the latter have it in their power not to come. And it becomes manifest that in diverse and innumerable ways God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; but those who come are directed by God’s help, and those who do not come resist by their own obstinacy.

For though many, loving their own darkness, do not receive the splendour of the truth, and many who had been enlightened grow dark again, yet the word of God remains for ever, and nothing falls away from the truth of the promise. Every day the foreknown and promised fullness of the nations comes in, and in Abraham’s seed every nation, every tribe and every tongue is blessed. For what the Father has given the Son, the Son does not lose, nor can anyone snatch from his hand what he has received. The firm foundation of God stands, and the building of the temple that is to last for ever does not totter, since the truth and mercy of God are spread over all; and what is both denied to no one and owed to no one is accomplished by him in those whom he promised. For he works all in all, but all, beyond doubt, justly and well. For all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth. Just as he foreknew before the ages how great a multitude of men of the whole world, whether using the common gifts or helped by special aids, would yet turn aside from the way of truth and life and enter the broad way of error and death, so he always foreknew how great a number of the godly would come to eternal blessedness through the help of grace and the service of obedience; so that, none falling away from the fullness of those promised, he who could neither be deceived about their progress nor fail them in help might glorify above all those whom he chose out of all. For, as we have abundantly proved, the manifold and ineffable goodness of God has always cared and cares for the whole of mankind in such a way that none of those who perish has the excuse that the light of truth was denied him, and no one is free to glory in his own righteousness; for their own wickedness plunges the former into punishment, and God’s grace leads the latter to glory.

What we suggested at the beginning of this second book, then, we now commend again: that, when the depth and height of grace is discussed, we rely on those three most wholesome and most true definitions. One of them professes that it is eternal and proper to the divine goodness to will all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; the second likewise proclaims that every man who is saved and comes to the knowledge of the truth is helped and ruled by God’s aid, and kept so that he remains in the faith that works through love. And the third declares with moderation and sobriety that not every reason of God’s will can be grasped, and that many causes of the divine works are withdrawn from human understanding; so that, when in times, in nations, in families, in little children, in those not yet born and in twins certain things are known to have been done variously or remarkably, we do not doubt that they belong to those things which the just and merciful God did not will to be known in this passing age. This, indeed, is to be understood as arranged for our benefit: so that, since we have been saved in hope, for which God has prepared what eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, just as we steadfastly believe that what we do not yet see will be seen, so we may patiently wait for what we do not yet understand to be understood. If, then, insidious malice ceases and insolent presumption is quiet, these things having been rightly treated, as I think, no cause of contention remains, nor need we be occupied any longer with interminable questions.

For it has been worked out, as far as the Lord has helped, so as to prove that not only in the last days but in all past ages the grace of God has been present to all men, with equal providence indeed and general goodness, but in manifold working and differing measure; since, whether hiddenly or openly, he is, as the Apostle says, the Saviour of all men, especially of the faithful. This sentence, of the most subtle brevity and the most valid strength, if considered with a tranquil gaze, settles the whole controversy with which we are dealing. For by saying, “who is the Saviour of all men,” he confirmed that God’s goodness toward all men is general; and by adding, “especially of the faithful,” he showed that there is a part of the human race which, by the merit of a faith divinely inspired, is advanced by special benefits to the highest and eternal salvation. This is done without any iniquity on the part of the most just and most merciful God, whose judgment in these dispensations is not to be discussed with arrogance but praised with trembling.

For even among the peoples of the faithful, as was shown above, the same things are not conferred on all, nor equal things, and before any weighing of human merits the measure of the divine gifts is most unequal. For if we do not dare to complain of the judgments of earthly parents when they embrace some of their children with more indulgent affection before any testing of their character and before any services of piety; if masters too have free disposal toward their servants, and no one is justly blamed who, from a household of one condition, chooses some to honour more kindly and to educate more liberally: is there any case to be made against the most benevolent fairness of the highest Father and true Lord because in his great house all things are varied with innumerable differences? And since no one has anything good that he has not given, yet not all shine with the same virtues or are enriched with the same endowment of gifts. Nor can we fit this diversity of degrees to the causes of merits, since grace is the chief cause of all good merit, and from its riches is taken whatever is found praiseworthy in each.

Just as, then, it is impious to conceive any complaint in the heart about the things the Holy Spirit works in manifold ways within the Church, so we must in no way murmur about that providence which presides over unbelievers. For the just and good arbiter is neither of unjust will nor of uncertain discrimination, so that we should think that under the immense mercy and justice of almighty God anyone perishes who ought not to perish. No part of the world is without the Gospel of Christ. And though that general calling does not cease, yet this special calling too has now been made common to all. From every nation and every condition thousands of old men, thousands of young men, thousands of little children are adopted every day; and even the arms by which the world is being worn down serve the workings of Christian grace. For how many who in the quiet of peace kept putting off receiving the sacrament of baptism has the fear of present danger driven to take refuge in the water of regeneration, and sudden threatening terror wrung from slow and lukewarm souls what quiet exhortation had long failed to persuade? Some sons of the Church, taken captive by enemies, made their masters subject to the Gospel of Christ, and those whom they served by the fortune of war they ruled by teaching the faith. And other barbarians, while serving as auxiliaries to the Romans, learned in our lands what they could not learn in their own, and returned to their homes with instruction in the Christian religion. So nothing can stop divine grace from fulfilling what it wills, while even discords lead to unity and wounds are turned into remedies, so that the Church takes increase from what she feared as a danger. To whatever outcome of human affairs, then, our inquiry turns, it will find no ages, no affairs, no comings and goings of generations free from the eternal and inscrutable judgments of God. All the conflicts of differing things, and all the causes of unlike outcomes, which we cannot trace and discern, are in that eternal knowledge known together and set apart together. And nothing there is disordered, not even concerning the qualities of the actions of things that do not yet exist. For in God there is no accidental motion, no new will, no temporal counsel, nor does his thought vary with the inequality of changeable things; but he comprehends all times and temporal things alike in an everlasting and stable gaze, and has already repaid all things to all, he who has already made the things that are to be. Hence that saying of the blessed apostle Paul writing to the Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in his sight in love; who predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace,” and the rest that he joins in proclaiming the same meaning, teaching that the gift and work of grace has always remained in the eternal counsel of God, and that all the sons of adoption were chosen not only at the time when, already existing, they were called, but even before the world was founded. In this election, whoever among men has not been foreknown in Christ will by no means be joined to it. For all who will come into the kingdom of God from a calling at any time were marked out in this adoption, which went before all ages. And just as no unbeliever is numbered in this lot, so none of the godly is separated from this blessing. For from the full number of the members of Christ’s body the foreknowledge of God, which cannot be deceived, loses nothing, and the total foreknown and chosen beforehand in Christ before eternal ages can be diminished by no loss, as the Apostle says, writing to Timothy: “Share in suffering for the Gospel according to the power of God, who has freed us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before eternal times.”

Against this most splendid light of unconquered truth some are wont to say, not soberly, that it is superfluous to labour to acquire the merits of good works, and vain to persist in prayers by which God is hoped to be entreated, if the election of Christian grace stands by his unchangeable purpose and nothing can happen otherwise than has been arranged by the will of the Almighty. But those who think they are raising a clever objection do not understand that the knowledge of God, which embraces past, present and future, is not held by time, and that the things that are to be done stand in his sight as much as those that are being done or have been done. Since this is most true, that power needs no delay for seeing and discerning which with a perpetual and true gaze beholds at once things created and to be created, things arisen and to arise, things done and to be done; and whatever unfolds in the universe of things through the appointed ages and is unrolled in manifold variety, it already comprehends wholly in that order which the end of this world will receive from his supreme and perfect judgment. But this eternal and ever-tranquil knowledge puts us under no necessity of sinning, nor does iniquity flow from the same source as justice. For since the good God made all things good, and evil has no nature at all, transgression arose spontaneously from free wills, which it was certainly good to make free; and changeable nature, whose soundness depended on unchangeable being, broke itself away from the highest good while it perversely delighted in its own; and now the grace of God heals this ruin,

so as to destroy the works of the devil; and they are destroyed in such a way that even those who are helped labour in their destruction, since this too is given by the one who saves. Hence the blessed Apostle says: “And not only this, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience, patience proof, 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.” And the same to the Ephesians: “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 should boast. For we are his making, created in Christ in good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them.” God, then, gives to those whom he has chosen without merits that by which they may be adorned with merits too. And it is said in vain that there is no reason for the elect to work, since they were chosen precisely in order to work. For the gifts of the virtues cannot be idle. For, as the Truth says, “To everyone who has, more will be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” Continence, then, is not given so that it may not fight against desires. Nor are wisdom and understanding granted to anyone so that he may not meditate day and night on the law of the Lord. What does the gift of love do, if the care of kindness is not watchful? What fruit is there of patience, if fortitude has nothing to endure? Or how is one shown to live piously in Christ who is struck by no persecution? Or is the peace that is from God and with God truly at rest, if it is not at odds with the world? Or can the love of God be had without enmity with the devil? The grace of God makes no one immune to temptation. Nor is the Christian army equipped with the protection of heavenly arms on the right and on the left so that it may fight with no enemy, since it is more praiseworthy and happier to have been unconquerable in battle than to have been untempted in idleness.

That the care for prayer is not undone by the purpose of divine election I will prove plainly by one testimony, leaving out the rest for the sake of brevity. In the book of Tobit, then, the angel Raphael says to Tobit’s son Tobias: “Remember your father’s commands, for he commanded you to take a wife from your father’s kin. And now listen to me, brother: take no account of that demon, but ask for her. And know that she will be given to you as wife this night; and when you enter the bedchamber, take some of the liver of that fish and put it on the coals, and an odour will spread, and that demon will smell it and flee and will never appear near her again. And when you begin to wish to be with her, first rise, both of you, and pray to the Lord of heaven that mercy and health may be given you. And do not fear; for she was destined for you before the ages, and you will heal her.” Though, then, what God has decreed can in no way fail to be done, yet the pursuit of prayer is not taken away, nor is the devotion of free choice relaxed by the purpose of election; since the fulfilment of God’s will has been preordained in such a way that through the labour of works, the persistence of supplications and the exercise of virtues the increases of merits come about, and those who have done good are crowned not only according to God’s purpose but also according to their own merits. For this reason the predetermination of this election has been hidden in a secret most remote from human knowledge.

And of no one before his end can it be pronounced that he will be in the glory of the elect, so that a useful fear may keep humility persevering, and he who stands may see that he does not fall; and if perhaps, overcome by some temptation, he has fallen, he may not be swallowed up by sadness nor despair of the mercy of him who lifts up all who fall and raises up all who are cast down. For while one lives in this body, no one’s correction is to be neglected, no one’s restoration despaired of. Let the holy Church, then, pray, and, giving thanks for those who have believed, ask for them a growing perseverance; and for those who are outside the faith let her ask that they may believe. Nor let her cease from her supplications if for some she has not been heard. For God, who wills all to come to the knowledge of the truth, cannot reject anyone without justice.