De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

What the Manichaeans of old, and the Lutherans and Calvinists of our day, thought about the necessity of grace and the natural powers of our free choice.

I. To explain this difficulty, and to keep Catholic doctrine from being confused with the error of the Manichaeans, Lutherans, or Calvinists, but to make clear the dogma for which these heretics were condemned by the holy Council of Trent, we must observe that, as St. Thomas noted, many heretics, while wishing to avoid certain errors, fell into contrary errors.¹ Thus Arius, while wishing to avoid Sabellius’s error of confusing the persons of the Holy Trinity, fell into the contrary error of dividing the divine essence. Similarly Eutyches, while wishing to avoid Nestorius’s error of dividing the person of God and man in Christ, established the contrary error, confessing that there was one nature of God and man. And when some wish to avoid Origen’s error—that all punishments after death are purgatorial—they fall into the contrary error of saying that no punishment after death is purgatorial. In like manner the Pelagians, to persuade simple people of their destructive dogmas, pretended to depart from the error of the Manichaeans, as if it were enough for a Catholic to attack one ancient heresy without also taking care to avoid every other extreme and to cling to Catholic truth, which lies in the middle. So, too, the Lutherans and Calvinists, wishing to depart from Pelagius’s heresy—that grace is given according to our merits and that a person can perform works of piety by the natural power of free choice—denied, with the Manichaeans, the freedom of that created choice and consequently removed all merit, proclaiming that a person can do nothing freely and that free choice is an empty name, a title without substance. The Council of Sens, held against Luther, also noted this in these words: Luther fell into the error of the Manichaeans by avoiding Pelagius too anxiously and scrupulously. For, fearing to exalt free choice too much with Pelagius, he attributed every good work in a person to God and divine grace, and nothing at all to free choice. Thus, removing free choice altogether, Luther became a Manichaean while fleeing from being a Pelagian. Yet Luther ought to have known from the Apostle that divine grace is so necessary for acting well that, with grace, free choice nevertheless performs a good work.² Therefore, just as Luther, wishing to avoid Pelagius, removed free choice, so Pelagius, wishing to establish free choice against the Manichaeans, left no place for the grace of Christ. Hence St. Augustine, replying to a certain letter of Julian and other Pelagians who, under the pretext of defending freedom of choice, attacked the grace of Christ with hostility, Why is it necessary, he says, to refute even those things that do not contain the treacherous poisons of their doctrine, but only seem to call to their aid, or in support of the Catholic faith against the impiety of the Manichaeans (as they call it), the confession of the Eastern bishops? They strive for nothing else than that, with the dreadful heresy held up as a charge, whose opponents they pretend to be, they may hide as enemies of grace beneath praise of nature.³⁴ Who has ever raised a question against them on this point? Or which Catholics are displeased with them because they condemn those whom the Apostle foretold would depart from the faith, having a seared conscience, forbidding marriage and abstaining from foods they consider unclean, though they do not believe that all things were created by God?⁵ Who ever compelled them to deny that every creature of God is good and that there is no substance which the supreme God did not make, except God himself, who was made by no one? It is not these things in them, which are agreed to be Catholic, that are reproved and condemned. The Catholic faith detests the excessive, foolish, and harmful impiety of the Manichaeans, and so do all heretics who are not Manichaeans. Thus these Pelagians do one thing well: they anathematize the Manichaeans and oppose their errors. But they do two evil things for which they too must be anathematized: one, that they accuse Catholics of being Manichaeans; the other, that they themselves introduce a new heresy. For people are not therefore sound in the faith because they do not suffer from the Manichaean disease. Disease is not of one kind, either in bodies or in minds. Just as a physician of the body does not at once pronounce a patient free from danger of death because he has denied that he is dropsical, if he has found him afflicted with another deadly disease, so the truth does not congratulate these people for not being Manichaeans if they rave in another kind of perversity. Therefore it is one thing that we anathematize along with them, and another that we anathematize in them. We detest along with them what rightly displeases them too, but in such a way that we detest in them the things for which they themselves rightly displease us. And a little later: Let the Pelagians cease to object to Catholics what they are not, and cease to wish to be considered lovable merely because they oppose the hateful error of the Manichaeans; let them rather recognize that they are deservedly hateful because they do not turn away from their own error. Two errors can be contrary to each other, but both must be detested because both are contrary to the truth.⁶ For if the Pelagians are to be loved because they hate the Manichaeans, the Manichaeans too must be loved because they hate the Pelagians. But may it never be that the Catholic Mother, on account of hatred for one side, chooses to love the other, when she warns us—and, with the Lord’s help, must do so—to avoid both and desires to heal both. So that it may become clearer than light how sound Catholic doctrine proceeds between two extreme errors—those of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians on one side, and those of the Manichaeans, Lutherans, and Calvinists on the other—the reader, I think, will welcome the statements of the Manichaeans and other heretics who adhered to them or held their heresy, following the errors of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians that we noted in the preceding disputation.

III.

The Manichaeans, as St. Augustine says, arose from a certain Persian called Manin. Although he too began to be called by the name of his insane doctrine—for before that he was called Urbinus—his disciples in Greece, avoiding the name of insanity, as though more learned and more deceitful than he, doubled the letter n and called him Manichaeus, as though he were pouring forth manna, instead of Manicheus, that is, ‘insane.’⁷ Writing against Faustus: You swear, he says, by your lord Manichaeus, who was called Manes in his native language. But to avoid the name of insanity among the Greeks, as though you had changed and lengthened the name, you added a kind of fusion, so that you might be more greatly freed. One of you explained to me why he was called Manichaeus: namely, so that in Greek he might seem to pour forth manna, since in Greek χεῖ means ‘to pour.’ I do not know what you have done, except that you seem to us to dream insanity even more plainly. For you did not add one letter at the beginning of the name so that Manes would be recognized as ‘manna’; you added two syllables at the end, not calling him Manes but Manichaeus, as though nothing else came to sound through his long and empty speeches than the pouring forth of insanity.⁸

IV.

These men, besides very many other fables that do not pertain to the present question and that St. Augustine also recounts at length under heresy 46, asserted many erroneous dogmas that agree with the Pelagians and others that paved the way for the Lutherans and Calvinists.

First, Manichaeus set up two principles, different and opposed to one another, both eternal and coeternal—that is, existing always—and, following certain other ancient heretics, he held that there were two natures and substances, namely good and evil. He asserted according to his dogmas that these were at war and mixed together, that the good was purged of the evil, and that the good which could not be purged was condemned to eternity with the evil. He tells many fables, all of which it would take too long to weave into this work. ⁹

Second, they held that sinners are evil by nature and produced by an evil principle, and that they are not evil by the freedom of their own choice. Augustine reports this in these words: That discussion, namely, On Free Choice, was undertaken because of those who deny that the origin of evil is derived from the freedom of the will and intend to blame the Creator of all natures, if indeed that is so. In this way they wish, according to the error of their impiety—for they are Manichaeans—to introduce a certain unchangeable nature of evil, coeternal with God. To oppose this error, while he was still living at Rome, St. Augustine wrote three books On Free Choice, as he himself attests in Book 1 of the Retractions, chapter 9. ¹⁰

Third, as the same saint reports, the Manichaeans said: The carnal desire by which the flesh lusts against the spirit is not an infirmity present in us from the nature corrupted in the first man, but they say that it is a contrary substance, so inherent in us that when we are freed and cleansed, it is separated from us and itself lives immortally in its own nature. ¹¹

Fourth, they assert that baptism in water brings no one any salvation, and they think none of those whom they deceive should be baptized. ¹²

V.

Fifth, they said that an evil person cannot become good, nor can a good person become evil by his own freedom. Jerome reports this, recalling that the Manichaeans, among other heretics, asserted: Human virtue and knowledge can attain perfection—and I do not say likeness, but equality with God—so that they claim that when they have ascended to the summit of perfection, they cannot sin even through thought or ignorance. ¹³

Sixth, they say that a human being does not have free choice but does everything by fatal necessity. Jerome reports this in the cited preface, where he says: It is characteristic of the Manichaeans to condemn human nature, take away free choice, and remove God’s help. Augustine reports the same in his work Against Fortunatus the Manichaean; so do Chrysostom, Homily 45 on John, and Socrates, Book 1, chapter 17. These are the points relevant to our purpose, which, together with very many others, St. Augustine also gathers into one place, comparing the Manichaeans with the Pelagians and showing that the Catholic Church refutes both and opposes their errors and inventions; for he says: ¹⁴

VI.

The Manichaeans say that the good God is not the Creator of all natures. The Pelagians say that God is not the cleanser, savior, and liberator of people of every age. The Catholic faith rebukes both: against the Manichaeans it defends God’s creation, so that no creature is denied to have been established by him; against the Pelagians it insists that human nature, lost in every age, be sought out. The Manichaeans blame the desire of the flesh not as an accidental vice but as a nature that has been evil from eternity. The Pelagians praise it as no vice but a natural good. The Catholic faith rebukes both: it tells the Manichaeans that it is not nature but vice; it tells the Pelagians that it is not from the Father but from the world, so that both may allow it to be healed like an illness—one ceasing to believe it incurable, the other ceasing to proclaim it praiseworthy. The Manichaeans deny that the beginning of evil in a good person came from free choice. The Pelagians say that even an evil person has free choice sufficient to do a good commandment. The Catholic faith rebukes both: to the Manichaeans it says, ‘God made man upright’;¹⁵ to the Pelagians it says, ‘If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free.’¹⁶ The Manichaeans say that the soul, a fragment of God, has sin from its mixture with an evil nature. The Pelagians say that a just soul, though not a fragment but a creature of God, has no sin even in this corruptible life. The Catholic faith rebukes both: to the Manichaeans it says, ‘Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.’¹⁷ This would not be said to a person who by nature could not act, unless sin were vice and not nature. To the Pelagians it says, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’¹⁸ Manichaeans and Pelagians contend with these contrary diseases: they have different wills but similar vanity, separated by differing opinions but close in their perverse minds. Indeed, they attack Christ’s grace together, nullify his baptism together, and dishonor his flesh together, though in different ways and for different reasons. The Manichaeans say that help is owed by the merits of good nature; the Pelagians say it is owed by the merits of a good will. The former say, ‘God owes this to the labors of his members’; the latter say, ‘He owes it to the virtues of his servants.’ Therefore for both, the reward is not credited according to grace but according to debt. The Manichaeans profanely contend that the laver of regeneration—that is, water itself—is superfluous and does no good. The Pelagians assert that what is said to expiate sins in holy baptism does not help infants, since they have no sin. In baptizing little children, then, as far as the remission of sins is concerned, the Manichaeans destroy the visible element, while the Pelagians destroy even the invisible sacrament. The Manichaeans dishonor Christ’s flesh by blaspheming the Virgin’s childbirth; the Pelagians do so by making the flesh of those to be redeemed equal to the flesh of the Redeemer. For Christ was born not in sinful flesh, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, because the flesh of other people is born sinful. The Manichaeans, then, detesting all flesh, take away from Christ’s flesh its evident reality; the Pelagians, asserting that no sinful flesh is born, take away from Christ’s flesh its proper dignity. Elsewhere, continuing the same comparison, after listing five dogmas asserted by the Pelagians, he adds: But since in these five matters I have set forth—where they seek hiding places and weave their accusations—they are exposed and refuted by divine teachings, they have devised the hateful name of the Manichaeans to frighten the uninformed, as many as they can, so that they will not lend their ears to the truth against their most perverse dogmas.¹⁹ For the Manichaeans blasphemously condemn the first three of these five, saying that neither human creation, nor marriage, nor the Law was established by the highest and true God. But they do not accept what the truth says: that sin began from free choice, and that every evil, whether of an angel or a human being, came from it. For, straying very far from God, they preferred to believe that the nature of evil is always evil and coeternal with God. They also attack the holy patriarchs and prophets with as many curses as they can. Behold the means by which these new heretics think that, by casting the name of the Manichaeans as an accusation, they can evade the force of truth. But they do not escape it, for the truth pursues and overthrows both the Manichaeans and the Pelagians. A person, when born, rebukes the Manichaean and praises the Creator insofar as he is something good, in that he is human. But insofar as he bears original sin, he rebukes Pelagius and has need of a Savior. For the very claim that this nature must be healed strikes back at both: it would need no medicine if it were sound, which is against the Pelagian; nor could it be healed at all if it were an eternal and unchangeable evil, which is against the Manichaean. Likewise, when we say that the desire of the flesh is not to be attributed to marriage, which we praise as established by the Lord, our view opposes both the Pelagians, who list it among goods, and the Manichaeans, who attribute it to an evil nature, whereas it is an accidental evil of our nature—not to be separated by God’s distinction but to be healed by God’s mercy. Likewise, when we say that the holy, just, and good Law was established not to justify the impious but to convict the proud of transgression, our view opposes the Manichaeans, since the Apostle praises the Law, and the Pelagians, since according to the Apostle no one is justified by the Law.²⁰ Thus, for those to be justified whom the letter kills—that is, whom the good Law, by commanding, makes guilty through transgression—the Spirit of grace freely gives help. Likewise, our saying that free choice to do evil must be liberated by God’s grace in order to do good opposes the Pelagians; our saying that evil, which did not exist before, arose from free choice, opposes the Manichaeans. Likewise, our honoring the holy patriarchs and prophets with the praise due to them in God opposes the Manichaeans. But our saying that the Lord’s propitiation was necessary even for them, though they were just and pleasing to God, opposes the Pelagians. The Catholic faith therefore finds both of them, like the other heretics, opposed to it, and refutes both by the authority of divine testimonies and the light of truth.

VII. The Lutherans and Calvinists agree in part with the Manichaeans and in part with the Pelagians, although they differ from both groups in many of their assertions. They agree with the Manichaeans in removing free choice and asserting that the origin of evil proceeds not from the free choice of the will but from God himself. They agree with the Pelagians in accepting the inference: for the latter, on being convinced by it, denied preoperating grace and removed the eternal, absolute, and efficacious decree of the divine will by which God determined all things to be done in time. Thus they followed the same path into contrary and mutually conflicting errors and departed from the Catholic faith. The assertions of the Lutherans and Calvinists in which they agree with the Manichaeans are the following.

ASSERTIONS OF THE LUTHERANS AND CALVINISTS CONCERNING GRACE AND FREE CHOICE.

VIII. BEFORE we report the assertions of the Lutherans, we must note that they often contradict not only Catholic truth but also themselves, now advancing and now denying what they had taught in earlier writings, as Jodocus Coccius demonstrates at great length with many examples in his Catholic Treasury, Book 8, On the Signs of the Church, articles 7 and 8. Philip Melanchthon also frankly admits his own inconsistency on this point, saying: In the Apology we change many things daily, for they must continually be changed and adapted to circumstances.²¹ A theologian should therefore not assume that Luther, Calvin, or their followers wholly retracted or corrected their errors just because they said the opposite elsewhere. Rather, their craftiness should be execrated: to deceive the simple minds of Catholics and capture the sheep of the Lord Christ, they covered themselves with a sheep’s skin and Catholic words, although they were wolves, and most rapacious wolves, as will become clear from what follows.

The first dogma of the Lutherans and Calvinists, then, is that a person does not truly have free choice, but that free choice in him is a title without substance, a thing that exists only in name. The impious Luther asserted this: Free, he says, choice after sin is a thing in name alone, and when a person does what lies within him, he sins mortally. Free choice is a fiction in reality, a title without substance, since no one has it in his power to think anything good or evil; rather, as Wycliffe, condemned at Constance, rightly teaches, everything happens by absolute necessity. The poet also wished this when he said, ‘Let all things happen under a fixed law.’²² Elsewhere he says: It is an error, he says, to say that free choice has activity in a good work when we are speaking of an inward work.²³ For willing—that is, believing, hoping, loving, as we have already said—is a motion, a being carried along, led by the Word of God, and a kind of continual purification and renewal of the mind and understanding from day to day in the knowledge of God, even if that passion is not always equally intense; nevertheless it is always a passion. ‘Behold,’ Jeremiah says, ‘as clay in the potter’s hand, so are you, house of Israel, in my hand.’²⁴ I ask you, what activity does clay have when the potter shapes it? Is it not purely passive? Elsewhere he says: God foreknows nothing contingently; rather, by an immutable, eternal, and infallible will he foresees, proposes, and does all things. From this he infers: God’s foreknowledge therefore directly conflicts with free choice.²⁵ How invalid this inference is, by which Pelagians and Lutherans alike have been deceived, will appear below when we explain the agreement of free choice with God’s absolute decree.²⁶

IX. Calvin agrees with the passages cited above, especially in Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, section 7; his words will be reported at number 17.

There is nevertheless a difference between Luther and Calvin. Luther asserted that free choice has no activity in an inward good work, but cooperates only passively by receiving a motion produced by God alone, as his words quoted above show. Calvin, however, moderated Luther’s error to some extent. He admits that our free choice does not act purely passively, like some lifeless thing, but cooperates actively and by a spontaneous movement in its own operations—though not freely. Hence in Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 5, section 14, Foreign to the question, he says, is that comparison with which he unfairly burdens us. For who is so foolish as to claim that human motion differs in no way from the throwing of a stone? Nor does anything like this follow from our doctrine. We assign to the natural faculties of a human being the powers to approve, reject, will, refuse, strive, and resist: namely, to approve vanity, reject solid goodness, will evil, refuse good, strive toward wickedness, and resist justice.

X. Philip Melanchthon held the same error. In his second edition, on chapter eight of the Epistle to the Romans, while attacking free choice in man, he says: Since our will is so far from being free that it is carried only where it is driven by God, there is no contingency among things, but necessity, according to God’s declaration. And in Book 2 of the Commonplaces, chapter “On Free Choice,” he says: What then, you will ask: is there no contingency in human affairs? Nothing of chance, nothing of fortune? Scripture teaches that all things happen necessarily. Although contingency may seem to you to exist in human affairs, here the judgment of reason must be overruled. And a little later: Who could have concealed Scripture’s teaching on predestination, when Scripture takes away the freedom of our will through the necessity of predestination, etc. If you refer the human will to predestination, there is no freedom in either external or internal works; rather, everything happens according to divine predestination. If you refer the will to external works, some freedom seems to exist by nature’s judgment; but if you refer the will to the affections, there is absolutely no freedom, even by nature’s judgment.

XI. This heresy of Luther and Calvin, which denies free choice, was an old one among many heretics. For, besides the Manichaeans cited above, Simon Magus (as Clement of Rome reports) held that nothing happens by human choice, but everything by fate.²⁷ The Priscillianists (as Pope Leo I and St. Augustine report), following the doctrines of the Manichaeans, asserted that men are bound by the stars of fate.²⁸ Finally, the Albigensians (as St. Antoninus reports) maintained that sin does not belong to free choice.²⁹ John Wycliffe, Trialogue 2, chapter 13: God, he says, necessitates each active creature to each of its acts, and in Dialogue 3, chapter 9: Can a creature impede God’s determination and make the eternal truth proceeding from God’s purpose concern something that will not happen? As if the divine purpose and eternal truth depended on them. And a little later: God’s purpose must necessarily be fulfilled, and thus every future event will happen necessarily. How these heretics, however, drew from this principle—God has predestined, decreed by an efficacious decree, and ordained from eternity all good acts that take place in time, and impels and moves the created will to elicit them—the false and flimsy argument that the will is not truly free in its operations will become clear below.³⁰

XII. A second heresy, akin to the preceding one, held by the Lutherans, asserts that nothing is future contingently, but that everything happens from absolute necessity. This is clear from the passages cited in the preceding number. But it is explicitly followed by Philip Melanchthon, Book 2 of the Commonplaces, chapter “On Free Choice”; Theodore Beza, in the Summary of Christianity, pages 17, 177, and 186, All things, he says, happen so necessarily from God’s immutable decree that, according to it, Judas necessarily betrayed Christ; Herod and Pilate necessarily condemned Christ; the reprobate sin and perish necessarily; Adam necessarily fell, although he was created good for a time, but in such a way that, by God’s inevitable decree, God knowing and ordaining it, he would fall—since he could not fall in that way except by God’s decree, will, and ordination. And in The Eradication of Nestrusius’s Calumnies, answering the first calumny concerning God’s providence: Not only all things, he says, but also each particular thing is done and happens by God’s decree, and by a decree of such a kind that it can in no way fail. If we consider God’s decree, Judas betrayed the Lord necessarily at that very moment. Herod also and Pilate necessarily condemned Christ (as the Apostles say), since they came together to do whatever the Lord’s hand and counsel had determined beforehand should be done.³¹ And in his book On the Secret Predestination of God against Castalio, folio 359: We say that Adam fell indeed of his own accord and by his own fault, yet not by chance, but as God’s determinate plan, providence, and hand had justly determined things should happen.

XIII. Luther’s third heresy asserts that God’s commandments cannot be kept even through grace, but are altogether impossible for man. Luther says so in his Refutation of Latomus’s Argument: So many, he says, testimonies of Scripture prove that the commandment is impossible for us that nothing is clearer. And in his reply to the dialogue of Sylvester Prierias: You do very badly in denying that the Savior commanded impossible things; you do much worse in daring to call this falsehood. In this life we cannot fulfill God’s commandments. Philip Melanchthon, in the first edition, on chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Romans: When the Law commands that God be loved, it commands something just as impossible as if it ordered us to fly across the Caucasus. And Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 7: Let it be beyond dispute that fulfillment of the Law is impossible in this flesh. Finally, John Monheim, Dialogue 3: No one, he says, however perfect, can accomplish what the Law commands.

XIV. The fourth heresy of the Lutherans, the most impious and blasphemous of all, asserts that God is the cause and author of sin, and works evil deeds in us just as he works good ones. For Luther speaks as follows: How can a man prepare himself for good, when it is not even in his power to make his ways evil? For God also works evil deeds in the wicked, as Proverbs 16 says: ‘The Lord has made all things for himself, even the wicked for the evil day.’ Who dares deny that even in evil deeds he is driven or compelled to do something other than what he had thought?³² And elsewhere he says: If God foresaw that Judas would be a traitor, Judas necessarily became a traitor; it was not in Judas’s hand, nor in that of any creature, to act otherwise or change his will, although he did it willingly and without compulsion. But willing was his act, which God moved by his omnipotence, just as he does all other things.³³

XV. Calvin followed the same error, in his book against Pighius and Book 3 of the Institutes, chapter 23, sections 7 and 8; Philip Melanchthon, on chapter 8 of Romans in the first edition and on chapter 9 of the same epistle; and Zwingli, in his sermon on providence, chapter 6. Other ancient heretics were infected with this error too, but especially Marcion, who (as Tertullian and Irenaeus report) asserted that God is the cause of evil.³⁴ The Persians likewise (as Agathias reports, Book 2, chapter 12), together with the Manichaeans, posit two first principles: one good and productive of all the best things, and the other wholly opposed to these. Among the ancient philosophers, too, there were authors of this same error. For Chrysippus the Stoic (as Plutarch reports in On the Stoics’ Contradictions) God, he says, works wars and wickedness by inciting and perverting men. Simon Magus (as Vincent of Lérins says) dared to call God the author of our evils, that is, of our crimes, impieties, and misdeeds; for he claims that God creates human nature with his own hands in such a way that, by a certain movement of its own and the impulse of a necessary will, it wants nothing other than to sin.³⁵

XVI. Their fifth heresy asserts that our will, unless bent by God’s grace, is naturally inclined to evil. Thus Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, number 8, says: It is by sheer grace that we begin to will the good, since by nature we are wholly inclined toward evil. And in number 9, from Solomon’s words, The Lord inclines our heart toward himself (1 Kings 8), he concludes: This shows the perversity of our heart: by nature it exults in rebellion against the divine Law unless it is bent.

XVII. Their sixth heresy is that God begins and completes a good work in us by moving free choice in such a way that our will does not cooperate freely, but only follows the divine motion by a spontaneous movement. Thus Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, section 7, says: But perhaps there will be those who grant that the will, averse to good by its own disposition, is converted by the Lord’s power alone, yet in such a way that, once prepared, it then has its own part in acting, as Augustine teaches: grace precedes every good work, with the will accompanying, not leading, it, following, not preceding. Peter Lombard improperly twists to this purpose what the holy man did not express badly. I, however, contend that both in the Prophet’s words I cited and in other passages two things are clearly signified: the Lord corrects—or rather abolishes—our depraved will and substitutes for it a good will from himself. Insofar as it is preceded by grace, I allow you to call it following; but since it is the Lord’s work once it has been reformed, it is wrongly attributed to man that he obeys prevenient grace with a following will. Therefore Chrysostom was wrong to write that neither grace without the will nor the will without grace can do anything, as if grace did not also work the will itself, as we recently saw from Paul.

XVIII. The seventh heresy of the Lutherans asserts that God’s grace is efficacious of itself in such a way that our will does not cooperate with it freely, but only spontaneously, willingly, and without compulsion. Thus Calvin, Book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, number 11: Christ’s saying, ‘Everyone who has heard from my Father comes to me,’³⁶ can be understood in no other way than as teaching that God’s grace is efficacious of itself, as Augustine also agrees. Those who wrote against Calvin understood his words in this way, especially Stapleton in the Catholic Promptuary, Friday of the first week of Lent, number 4, where he says: Grace is not efficacious of itself (as Calvin puts it), working the whole thing alone, with which we do not cooperate freely.³⁷ Hence Calvin himself says in number 12: Once we have been tamed by the Lord’s power into the service of righteousness, we proceed willingly and are inclined to follow the action of grace; for it is most certain that where God’s grace reigns, there is such readiness to obey. He says “proceed willingly,” not “freely,” because he always denied that the will freely follows the motion of efficacious grace. In this Calvin erred, though not in recognizing that prevenient grace is truly efficacious.

These and other fictions and errors of the heretics, by which Calvin separated himself from the unity of the Catholic Church, will be refuted below, especially in Disputation 22, number 31; Disputations 24 and 25; Disputation 97, number 11; Disputation 98, number 10; and Disputation 121, especially number 10. There it will be made clear that God’s eternal decree and the efficacy of divine grace that acts beforehand in no way prejudice the freedom of our free choice, but rather perfect, establish, and strengthen it.