De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

IN WHICH IT IS EXPLAINED WHAT NATURAL POWERS free choice possesses for knowing or carrying out the good proportionate to nature, and for rejecting evil, especially in fallen nature.

Having considered those matters that pertain to the external helps of God, what remains is a consideration of the internal helps by which the predestined are aided by God to turn away from evil, do good, merit eternal life, and attain it. But in order that it may become evident from the weakness of free choice that the help of grace is absolutely necessary for all these things, it is necessary to discuss certain matters concerning the natural powers of that same free choice. For it was for this reason, as St. Thomas observed, that the Word did not become flesh immediately after the fall of the first man, on account of the condition of human sin, which had arisen from pride.¹ Hence man had to be delivered in such a way that, once humbled, he would recognize that he needed a deliverer. To confirm this, the holy Doctor adduces the ordinary gloss, which, explaining the passage in Galatians 3, Ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator, says: By a great counsel of God it came to pass that, after man's fall, the Son of God was not sent at once. For God first left man in freedom of choice under the natural law, so that he might thereby know the powers of his nature. When he failed there, he received the law; once that was given, the disease grew strong, not through any fault of the law, but through the fault of nature, so that, having thus come to know his weakness, he might cry out to the physician and seek the help of grace. And St. Augustine: Most wholesomely, he says, we confess that God so ordered the life of angels and men that in it he first showed what their free choice could do, and then what the benefit of his grace and the judgment of his justice could do.² First, then, we must consider what free choice can do with respect to acts of the natural order, and then what it can do with respect to supernatural acts. Since free choice can be considered in three states—before the reception of grace, in the reception of grace, and after the reception of grace—with respect to acts both of the natural and of the supernatural order, we must first inquire what free choice can do by the capacity of nature, before the reception of grace, with respect to natural acts; second, what it can do with respect to supernatural acts; third, what powers it has for supernatural good after it has received from God the prior helps of divine grace.³ But before all these matters, in order to proceed in due order, the state of human nature after the first sin of our first parent must be explained, together with the losses it incurred through that sin, so that from this we may infer for which acts grace is necessary. Four questions will be disputed concerning this.

I. Whether all infants who descend from Adam by seminal propagation contract original sin.

II. Whether through original sin man was stripped only of original justice and supernatural gifts, or was also wounded in natural things.

III. What wounds man incurs through original or actual sin.

IV. Whether free choice in fallen nature, with the helps of grace set aside, has the same natural powers for good that it would have had if it had been created in pure nature.

Whether Adam's children contract through seminal propagation original sin, which truly and properly has the character of guilt in them.

I. CONCERNING this difficulty, there were certain Jews before the coming of our Savior who asserted that circumcision had not been instituted by God as a remedy for original sin, but to mark his people and distinguish them from other nations. They proved this from Genesis 17:¹ You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, etc., so that it may be a sign of the covenant; and consequently they denied original sin. After the Gospel had been promulgated, the first heretic expressly to deny original sin was Pelagius, together with his associate Caelestius, as St. Augustine reports. Julian the Pelagian followed the same error in the four books he wrote against original sin, as the same St. Augustine reports.² But thereafter this heresy lay silent for very many years; around the year of our Lord 600, however, the Armenians revived the same error, which Augustine had buried, as Guido the Carmelite reports.³ St. Antoninus also attributes this error to the Albigensians, in part 4, title 11, chapter 7, § 5. Then, around the year of our Lord 1520, Jacobus Faber Stapulensis asserted in his commentary on Romans 5 that infants contract nothing from Adam. Other heretics, however, called Sacramentarians, while admitting the contagion of original sin contracted from the first parent through seminal propagation, asserted that it is not properly sin and does not merit any punishment, not even the punishment of loss; rather, it is a certain sickness and misery, just as it is misery and not guilt that a man is born leprous or a slave. Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius held the same view. St. Augustine presents and refutes the arguments of these heretics in the passages cited below.⁴ We, however, shall bring forward only those arguments that present greater difficulty.

The first argument is Julian's against St. Augustine. What belongs to the nature of sin is that it be voluntary; but in infants, before the use of reason, there is nothing voluntary, nor can there be; therefore there is no sin either. If it is said that original sin is voluntary for infants, not by their own actual will, but by the will of the first parent, which in some way was the will of all infants, since Adam existed as their head, there is an argument against this: original sin truly turns the infant's very will away from God and turns it toward a changeable good; therefore the will of the first parent, and his sin, do not suffice for infants to contract any sin. The consequence is proved: for that will and the sin of the first parent place nothing intrinsic in the infant's will, but stand wholly external to it; therefore it is impossible that, on account of them, the infant's will be said to be turned away intrinsically.

This is confirmed, and the force of the argument is shown. The external executive powers, since they do not have any will in themselves, but their acts are called voluntary only by an extrinsic denomination from the will in the soul's interior power, are capable of no sin except by an extrinsic denomination alone. Therefore, in like manner, the infant's will, since it has no actual freedom, will be said to contract or have original sin only by an extrinsic denomination.

Second. No one gives what he does not have. But Adam no longer has original sin; likewise, the proximate parents, if they have been baptized, do not have original sin. Therefore they do not transmit it to their descendants.

Third. The conjugal act is in itself lawful and sometimes meritorious; therefore original sin is not transmitted through it. The consequence is clear: for if it were transmitted through that act, then such an act would be a cause of sin and consequently sin. This argument too belongs to Julian and Pelagius.

Fourth, Pelagius argues thus in Augustine's Letter 156. The rational soul is not derived by propagation, since it is created by God; therefore it does not contract original sin. For it is unjust that a soul produced today, not from Adam's mass, should bear so ancient an alien sin; therefore there is no reason to concede that God, who forgives one's own sins, imputes those of others. Since, then, sin is primarily in the soul itself and not in the flesh, it follows that Adam's children contract absolutely no sin of nature.

II. Fifth. Adam does not transmit original sin to his descendants morally, that is, by way of merit, nor as an efficient cause, that is, in the manner of a physical cause; therefore he transmits it in no way, and consequently Adam's children do not contract original sin from him. The consequence is proved because there can be no other way in which Adam could transmit original sin to his children. The antecedent is proved as to its first part: just as Adam's demerit arose from his sin, so too, had he persevered, his merit would have arisen from grace and original justice, which was a gift bestowed upon the whole of human nature in Adam. But if Adam had persevered in original justice, he would not have transmitted it to his descendants by way of merit; otherwise grace and original justice would not be given to infants purely as a free gift, but on account of Adam's merits, which seems contrary to grace itself. For if it is by grace, it is no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace, as the Apostle argues in Romans 11. Therefore Adam does not transmit original sin to his children by way of demerit, or as a moral cause. That he does not transmit it as a physical cause is proved as follows: what does not exist actually or virtually does not act physically; but Adam and his sin do not exist actually, as is evident in itself, nor do they remain virtually. For if they did remain, it would be especially in the seed; but there no power that causes original sin remains. Therefore.

This is confirmed. Original sin is not formally something positive, but privative; therefore it has no positive physical cause. For a privation, since it is not a being, cannot have a physical cause. Therefore Adam cannot be the physical cause of the transmission of original sin.

Sixth. Original sin is not transmitted through seminal propagation as through an instrument; therefore it is not transmitted from Adam in any way. The consequence is proved: for if it were transmitted, it would be necessary to assign some means, or instrument, through which it is transmitted; but no other means can be assigned except seminal propagation. The antecedent is proved as follows: an instrument acts through some power communicated to it by the principal agent; but the seed separated from Adam himself, or seminal propagation, has no real power communicated to it by Adam himself by which it could concur instrumentally in transmitting original sin, together with human nature, to descendants. Therefore.

III. Seventh. No instant can be assigned at which Adam's children contract original sin; therefore they do not contract it. The antecedent is proved because they do not contract this sin at the instant when the rational soul is created by God; otherwise the soul itself would have sin from its creation, and thus the same sin would be attributed to God. For this reason St. Thomas teaches that it was impossible for an angel to have sinned by a disordered act of free choice in the first instant of his creation: that sin would be attributed to God, since an operation that begins at the same time as a thing's existence comes to it from the agent from whom it has its existence, just as upward motion comes to fire from the one who generates it.⁵ Adam's children do not contract original sin at the instant when the soul is united to the body either, because sin is not derived from the body into the soul, since the immediate subject of that sin is not the body but the soul or a rational power. Therefore no instant can be assigned at which Adam's children contract original sin; therefore they do not contract it.

Among Catholics, however, Jerome Osorius, in book 7 of On Justice, and Ambrosius Catherinus, in his short work On Original Sin, chapters 5 and 6, while admitting original sin, said that infants are constituted sinners by an extrinsic denomination, through the sin that preceded in Adam. In favor of this opinion there is

The seventh argument, from the Apostle in Romans 5, who says: Through the offense of one, many were constituted sinners. These words seem to signify that all men are formally constituted sinners by the offense of the first parent. But Adam's offense cannot denominate his children sinners except by an extrinsic denomination, because sin denominates intrinsically only the subject in which it exists. Therefore, etc.

Finally, other Catholics, although they admit with all theologians that original sin is proper to each person, and intrinsically denominates and constitutes Adam's children as sinners, nevertheless assert that infants who die without the laver of regeneration will, after Judgment Day, when their souls have been restored to their bodies, be supernaturally freed from all the troubles and hardships to which we are subject in this mortal life, and will lead through everlasting ages a better life in natural things, free of every defect of mind and body, than any mortal has ever led. Ambrosius Catherinus seems to suggest this opinion in his commentary on chapter 3 of the First Epistle of St. Peter. It will, however, be treated expressly in Disputation 114.

On the contrary, the Apostle says: All sinned in Adam;⁶ from this testimony the sacred Councils, supreme Pontiffs, and holy Doctors to be cited below infer that all who descend from Adam through seminal propagation contract original sin along with their nature.

IV. To explain this difficulty, note first that original sin is called the sin of nature, according to Ephesians 2: We were by nature children of wrath, because it corrupted and defiled the whole mass of human nature in the first parent, who was the head and source from whom human nature is derived into others.⁷ It is also called the sin of the world, in John 1: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world, because it invaded all men, excepting one who is God and man, through whom the others were to be redeemed. Hence St. Jerome calls it the sin of the human condition. For, explaining Psalm 50, Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and my mother conceived me in sins, he says: Not in the iniquities of my mother, or at any rate in my own, but in the iniquities of the human condition.⁸ St. Chrysostom calls it radical sin, because from original sin, when the bridle of original justice had been removed, there followed disordered concupiscence and desire, which, as the Apostle says, is the root of all evils.⁹ Hence original sin was also in a certain way the root and beginning of all sins, and for this reason it is not inappropriately called radical sin. Thus the same Chrysostom, in his homily on Adam and Eve: From that very, he says, sin of transgression all sins spring forth. When, therefore, man is said to be handed over to his desires, he is guilty by that very descent, because, abandoned by God, he yields to his desires, consents, is overcome, captured, dragged along, and possessed.

Second, note that this is the difference between original sin and the actual sin of a private person: actual sin is committed by the sinner's own will, and hence cannot be transferred to another.¹⁰ For Ezekiel says: The soul that sins shall itself die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, and the father shall not bear the iniquity of the son; the justice of the just shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.¹¹ But original sin, since it is a sin of nature, does not require the proper and particular will of the one who contracts it; the will of the first parent suffices. For the will of the head is reckoned as the will of the whole of human nature and of all who by origin share human nature from him, as St. Thomas very aptly observed.

V. Third, note that, as Master Soto observes, when an infant is conceived in the womb and a soul is infused into him, he is not properly said to sin at that instant, but to be conceived in sin, or to contract sin along with a corrupted nature.¹² For, properly speaking, all Adam's children sinned originally at the instant when Adam himself sinned actually, by eating from the forbidden tree, in accordance with what the Apostle says: All sinned in Adam.¹³¹⁴ For Adam's sin was not only a sin of a person but also of nature.

Fourth, note that infected human nature stands in one way with respect to Adam, or his sin, and in another way with respect to Adam's children and the original sin they contract. In Adam, the person was first infected by actual sin before nature was infected, because the contagion passed from the person into nature.¹⁵ Hence this causal statement is true: because Adam was infected by actual sin, human nature was stained in him. With respect to his children, however, the matter stands conversely. For nature itself is understood to have been corrupted before the person is understood to have been stained by original sin, because original sin passes from corrupted nature into the persons descended from Adam. These foundations being supposed, let there be

VI. First Conclusion. In accordance with the Catholic faith, it must be asserted that infants descended from Adam through seminal propagation contract original sin.¹⁶ This conclusion is against all the heretics cited above. It is nevertheless proved by the clearest testimonies of sacred Scripture, drawn from both the Old and the New Testament. The first testimony is found in Genesis 17: A male whose foreskin has not been circumcised his soul shall be cut off from his people, because he has broken my covenant. Here circumcision is declared necessary for infants for the remission of sin, lest they perish forever on account of having broken God's covenant. From this testimony St. Augustine argues thus against the Pelagians: Infants did not break God's covenant through actual sin, because, since they have no use of free choice, they cannot commit actual sin; therefore they broke God's covenant through original sin; therefore they contract it by origin.¹⁷ It should incidentally be noted that the infant himself is said to have broken that covenant which the Lord made with Adam, saying: On whatever day you eat of it, you shall surely die;¹⁸ for he truly and properly sinned in Adam and in him broke that covenant of the Lord.

The second testimony is found in Psalm 50, where the royal Prophet, in the name of all who descend from Adam, says: For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and my mother conceived me in sins. From this passage nearly all the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, prove that our conclusion is of the faith. Among the Greeks, above all, are Origen, Homily 8 on Leviticus; Basil the Great in his scholia on Psalm 50; and Chrysostom in his homily on Adam and Eve. Hesychius, book 3 on Leviticus, chapter 12, observes that by these words he accuses no sin of his own mother, but names the maternal nature, signifying that the uncleanness of the sin of Adam and Eve descended upon the whole human race. Euthymius explains the same passage in the same sense in his commentary on that Psalm. Among the Latin Fathers are St. Hilary, on Psalm 118, at the words My soul shall live and shall praise you; Ambrose, book 1 of On Penance, chapter 2; Jerome, on chapter 47 of Ezekiel, whose words we cited above; Rufinus, on Psalm 50; Bede, on chapter 21 of Leviticus; Innocent III, book 1 of On Contempt of the World, chapter 3; and Gregory the Great, on the fourth penitential Psalm.

VII. The third testimony is found in Ecclesiasticus 40: A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam from the day they leave their mother's womb until the day they are buried in the mother of all. Explaining this passage, St. Augustine: What is this, he says, heavy yoke, if not sin? And why is it called a yoke, if not because it comes from the two, Adam and Eve? Or does it press and crush the necks of the two, that is, of male and female, that is, of evil and impious persons, since it is a yoke upon both sexes? Therefore he says generally, “A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam.” By saying “upon the sons,” he made no distinction of ages or sexes; and by comparing the yoke to sin, on account of Christ, who, unlike the others, was not born through the intercourse of married people, he showed that all the rest were sinners. Bound by this yoke, that is, original sin, old and young, born of that very defect, we drag it as a plow for as long as we are in the body of death, by the plowshare of whose desire our earth is broken up, that is, corrupted.¹⁹²⁰ Many other holy Doctors also infer from this same passage that infants contract original sin.

The fourth and most important testimony, drawn from the New Testament, is found in John 3, where Truth himself says: Unless someone is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. St. Augustine often triumphs over the Pelagians by this testimony, showing that infants contract original sin from Adam and, unless they are freed from it by the laver of regeneration, will remain forever excluded from the kingdom of heaven. He treats this matter at great length in several places, but especially in book 6 of On Baptism against the Donatists, chapter 12; book 1 of On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, chapters 17, 20, 29, and 30; and book 2, chapter 27. Pelagius replied to this argument that infants are indeed baptized, but not as a remedy for any original sin; rather, they are baptized so that they may be admitted with Christ into God's kingdom.

But St. Augustine's argument against the Pelagians defeats this evasion. Unbaptized infants remain excluded from the kingdom of God, as Pelagius admits; therefore they are excluded on account of some sin. For in fact no one is excluded from God's kingdom except for sin, as St. Thomas shows in Against the Gentiles, book 4, chapter 50. But they are not excluded on account of actual sin; therefore they are excluded on account of original sin.²¹

VIII. Some of the Pelagians replied that infants who die without baptism will remain excluded from the kingdom of God, not on account of any original sin they contracted or actual sin they committed, but on account of the mortal sins they would have committed had they lived. They seemed to gather « ? » this solution for themselves²² from Wisdom 4: He was taken away lest malice change his understanding, and lest deceit beguile his soul.²³ But St. Augustine attacks this solution in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 14, showing that the authority drawn from Wisdom 4 is to be understood not with respect to foreknowledge but with respect to the dangers of life, as was said in Disputation 7. It is further refuted as follows: God does not condemn anyone on account of sins he would have committed, but on account of those he in fact commits or contracts. Otherwise, if unbaptized infants are damned on account of sins they would have committed had they lived, many of them would also be saved on account of the merits they would have had through God's grace had they lived, or on account of the baptism they would have received had they been born from their mother's womb.

The fifth testimony is found in Romans 5: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so death passed into all men, in whom all sinned. From this passage St. Chrysostom, in his homily on Adam and Eve, Theodoret in his commentary on Psalm 50, St. Augustine in book 1 of On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, chapter 9; book 4 of Against the Two Letters of the Pelagians, chapter 4; book 1 of Against Julian the Pelagian, chapter 2; and book 6, chapter 12; St. Prosper in book 3 of On the Contemplative Life, chapter 12; and the Master of the Sentences, book 2, distinction 3, prove our conclusion as a matter of faith.

Second, the conclusion is proved by the authority of the supreme Pontiffs, especially Celestine's letter to Nestorius, where he praises him for holding a correct view of the defect of our origin and for not denying that nature itself is bound by guilt. Likewise, Leo the Great, in letter 86 to Nicetas, teaches that baptism benefits all as a remedy for original sin; and Leo IX, in his letter to Bishop Peter, says: I believe and preach that the soul is not a part of God, but is created from nothing and, without baptism, is liable to original sin.

IX. Third, it is proved by the definition of Councils. For the Council of Milevis, canon 2, as quoted in On Consecration, distinction 4, says: It was also decided that whoever denies that infants newly born from their mothers' wombs are to be baptized, or says that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins but contract from Adam no original sin to be cleansed by the laver of regeneration, so that the form of baptism “for the remission of sins” is consequently understood in them as not true but false, let him be anathema. For what the Apostle says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed into all men, in whom all sinned,” is to be understood in no other way than as the Catholic Church, spread everywhere, has always understood it. For on account of this rule of faith, even infants, who could not yet commit any sins in themselves, are truly baptized for the remission of sins, so that what they contracted by generation may be cleansed in them by regeneration.²⁴²⁵ The Council of Orange, canon 2, says: If anyone asserts that Adam's transgression harmed only himself and not his descendants, or testifies that only bodily death, which is the punishment of sin, and not also sin, which is the death of the soul, passed through one man into the whole human race, he will do an injustice to God, contradicting the Apostle who says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death passed into all men, in whom all sinned.”²⁶²⁷

Fourth, it is proved by the authority of the ancient Fathers, who infer this same truth from sacred Scripture. Origen is especially notable in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 6, where he speaks as follows: In the law it is commanded that, for one who has been born, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons be offered, one for sin and the other as a burnt offering. For what sin is this one young bird offered? Could he have sinned just now? And yet he has sin, on account of which a sacrifice is commanded to be offered, and from which no one is said to be clean, even if his life should be but one day? From Homily 8 on Leviticus 1: Every soul that is born in the flesh is stained by the filth of iniquity and sin. Justin Martyr teaches the same truth in his Dialogue with Trypho; as do Irenaeus, book 5, chapters 17 and 19; Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 2; Basil the Great, on Psalm 32, explaining The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord, and on Psalm 50, at For behold, I was conceived in iniquities; Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 42 on holy Easter and Oration 38 on the Nativity of Christ; Chrysostom, in his homily on Adam and Eve, where he proves it with many scriptural testimonies; Cyril of Alexandria, book 1 on Genesis; Theodoret, on Psalm 50, at For behold, I was conceived in iniquities; John Damascene, book 2 of The Orthodox Faith, chapter 28; and many other Greek Fathers.

X. The Latin Fathers too unanimously taught the same faith: Cyprian, letter 59; Hilary of Poitiers, on Psalm 118; Ambrose, book On Tobit, chapter 9, and on Psalm 48, where, explaining The iniquity of my heel shall surround me, One thing is, he says, our iniquity; another is the iniquity of our heel: in that heel Adam was wounded by the serpent's tooth, and by his wound left behind an inheritance of guilt for human succession, so that we all limp from that wound.²⁸ He says the same in book 1 of On Penance, chapter 2. Also Jerome, on chapter 42 of Ezekiel; Augustine, book 14 of The City of God, chapter 1, and letter 89; St. Prosper, response 1 to the chapters of Vincent's objections and book 3 of On the Contemplative Life, chapter 2; Fulgentius, On the Grace of Jesus Christ, chapter 31, and On the Faith to Peter, chapter 26; St. Gregory, on the fourth penitential Psalm; Bede, on chapter 21 of Leviticus and on chapter 9 of Mark; St. Bernard, on Wednesday of Holy Week, on the Passion of the Lord; and the Master of the Sentences, book 2, distinction 30, letter I, together with all the Scholastics on the same distinction. Jodocus Coccius reports the words of these authors in The Catholic Treasury, volume 2, book 2, article 2, on original sin; some of the same testimonies are also reported by Brother Peter Crespetius Caelestinus in The Summary of the Catholic Faith, under the entry “Sin.”

Fifth, the conclusion is proved by reason: in every law, even the law of nature, some remedy was always instituted for erasing original sin, as the theologians prove with St. Thomas in part 3, question 61, articles 3 and 4. Therefore all Adam's children truly contract original sin.

This is first confirmed by the reasoning of the Councils of Toledo and Trent. For if there is in infants no original sin to be erased by baptism, it follows that the form of baptism is false. For it means that the baptized person is washed by baptism from the stain of sin. Therefore, if there is in infants no original sin, it follows that the form of baptism is false.

This is confirmed, secondly. One who is baptized dies to sin through baptism, as St. Augustine elegantly proves in lib. 6. cont. Iulianum, cap. 1., ex illo ad Rom. 6: All we who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized in his death; for we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ rose from the dead, we too may walk in newness of life. Therefore, if infants are baptized, they die to sin; therefore, before baptism they were in original sin.

XI. Sixth, it is proved as follows. It is of the faith that Christ the Lord is the Redeemer of all, as is clear from the Apostle's words: Who is the Redeemer of all, especially of the faithful;²⁹ and the Evangelist John says: He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world;³⁰ therefore it is of the faith that Christ truly redeemed all infants, some as regards sufficiency, namely, those to whom the sacrament of baptism was not applied, and others as regards efficacy, namely, those who in fact received baptism. But no one can truly be called redeemed unless he was previously captive through sin, as Pope Zosimus defines in these words: For no one is made free except one who is a slave to sin, nor can anyone be called redeemed unless he was truly captive through sin before, as it is written: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”³¹ Since, then, infants who die before the use of reason were not captive through actual sin, it follows that they were bound by original sin.

This is confirmed by the reasoning of St. Augustine, lib. 6. contra Iulianum, cap. 2. et 4., where he argues thus. The Apostle says in 2. ad Corinth. 5: If one died for all, then all died; and Christ died for all. Therefore all died. But Christ died for infants, since he redeemed them; therefore they were dead through sin; therefore they were at some time in sin, not actual sin, and therefore original sin.

XII. Nor should we listen to certain most foolish Pelagians who, denying original sin in infants, asserted that they commit I know not what actual sins as soon as they are born from the womb. St. Augustine rebukes them, saying: Behold, infants are certainly innocent in their own works, having with them nothing but what they drew from the first man. For this reason they need the grace of Christ, so that in Christ those who died in Adam may be made alive; so that, because they were defiled by generation, they may be cleansed by regeneration.³²³³ I will therefore call them as witnesses themselves: answer me, why do they die, if all men are born immortal? And is it because they sin that they die? What do you think could have been said? What ears could bear the words? Did they sin too? Where did they sin, I ask; when did they sin, how did they sin? They do not know what good and evil are. Do those who cannot grasp a commandment receive sin? Prove to me that infants are sinners. What did you say? Truly, you have forgotten what you once were: prove the sin of infants to me. Is it because they cry that they sin? Because by movements like those of dumb animals they ward off discomforts and take pleasures, do they therefore sin? If those movements are sins, there are greater sinners at baptism, since they resist most vehemently while being baptized. Why is sin not imputed to them in such resistance, unless because the choice of the will is not yet present? But I say something else. These who have been born, you think, have sinned; for you say that if they had not sinned, they would not die. What do you say about those who die in the womb? A difficulty! “They too,” you say, “have sinned; that is why they die.” Are you lying, or mistaken? The Apostle says the opposite: “Not yet born, nor having done anything good or evil.” I listen to the Apostle rather than to you; I believe the Apostle rather than you: “Not yet born, nor having done anything good or evil.” But if you reject this testimony, dare instead to go on to those wanderings and say that they sinned in heaven and are cast down from there into bodies. St. Thomas adduces other reasons for this conclusion 4. cont. Gent. cap. 50; Ferrariensis and Master Soto, book 1 of On Nature and Grace, chapter 7, should be consulted there.

Second Conclusion. Original sin is not merely a certain misery, like the bondage of a slave, but is truly and properly sin and guilt.³⁴ This conclusion is against the heretical Armentarians³⁵ cited above, but it is proved by the arguments given for the preceding conclusion.

Moreover, original sin causes a stain in the soul and constitutes men children of wrath, according to ad Ephes. 2: We were by nature children of wrath. Finally, it excludes man from the kingdom of God, as is clear from the authority of Ioan. 3, cited above. Therefore it is truly sin and not merely misery. The consequence is clear, for man is excluded from the kingdom of God only on account of sin, as St. Thomas proves 4. cont. Gent. cap. 50..

XIII. Third Conclusion. Original sin does not constitute infants sinners by an extrinsic denomination, as though original sin itself had existed previously only in Adam and his children were formally called sinners on his account. Rather, in each infant there is a proper original sin contracted from the first parent and existing in them, through which they are formally sinners and enemies of God.³⁶ This conclusion is against Jerome Osorius and Ambrosius Catherinus in the passages cited above. Nevertheless, it is so certain that it cannot be denied after the Council of Trent. For in sess. 5. in decreto de peccato originali, can. 3, it is defined as follows: If anyone asserts that this sin of Adam, which is one in origin and is transmitted to all by propagation, not by imitation, and is inherent in each as his own, is removed either by the powers of human nature or by any other remedy than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. There the term inest, “is present,” indicates an intrinsic denomination.

Moreover, it is proved by reason. Infants are truly cleansed by baptism from the stain of sin, as is clear from ad Ephes. 5: Cleansing her by the laver in the word of life. Therefore they had in themselves original sin, contracted from the first parent.

Second, it is proved as follows: Adam's sin stands in relation to sinners born from Adam by carnal generation as Christ's justice stands in relation to the just, spiritually reborn, as is clear from the Apostle's words: As all die in Adam, so also all will be made alive in Christ;³⁷ and in ad Rom. 5: As through the disobedience of one man many were constituted sinners, so through the obedience of one many will be constituted just.³⁸ But those reborn from Christ the Lord are not formally just merely by an extrinsic denomination through the justice that is in Christ; rather, they are just through grace and justice inhering in them, as defined by the Conc. Trid. sess. 6. de iustificatione can. 10, where it anathematizes anyone who says that men are justified without the justice of Christ, by which he merited for us, or that they are formally just by that very justice. Therefore, in like manner, infants are formally sinners through original guilt existing in them, and they are not called children of wrath merely by an extrinsic denomination from the sin that preceded in the first parent.

XIV. Fourth Conclusion. Infants who die without the laver of regeneration, when their souls have been restored to their bodies, will not be supernaturally freed from all misery; nor will they lead through everlasting ages a better life in natural things, free of every defect of mind and body, than any mortal has ever led.³⁹ St. Augustine proves this conclusion; his words have been cited and will be examined in Disputation 114, where the conclusion will be expressly disputed.⁴⁰

XV. TO the first of the arguments made at the beginning, it is answered from the foundations laid down that original sin is voluntary for infants by the will of the first parent, insofar as he was the head of the whole nature corrupted in him; and this voluntary character suffices for original sin.⁴¹ The reason is that original sin, insofar as it is original, is not a sin of a person but of nature. Hence it is not required that it be contracted by the proper will of the person who is born; the voluntary character that preceded in the head of the whole nature suffices. As to the argument that this will is external to infants, the reply is that it is external to them if they are considered as particular persons in themselves, but not if they are considered as members of Adam and parts of a corrupted nature; for in this respect they constitute one with Adam. An example is a man who, by his will, moves his sensitive appetite to an act of intemperance. That will is external to the man's sensitive appetite considered in itself, but is not external to it insofar as it is the sensitive appetite of a man; for the will is the inclination of the whole human supposit, and consequently of all its parts insofar as they are its parts. Accordingly, a vice and a virtue are found intrinsically in the sensitive appetite, even if in the appetite itself there is not formally any voluntary character proper to the appetite, but only a voluntary character participated from the will, which is the inclination of the whole supposit. The same, then, must proportionally be said of infants, who by generation contract a sin proper and intrinsic to themselves, although they have no other voluntary character than that of the first parent, who was the head of the whole nature. For that voluntary character is reckoned as the infant's, as was said.

To the confirmation, it is answered that the case of infants with respect to original sin is not altogether the same as that of the external executive powers with respect to actual sin. The difference is this: external powers are not capable of a virtue or vice inhering in themselves, as S. Tho. shows in 1. 2. q. 50. ar. 1. and Cajetan and Master Medina there. Such powers are determined to one thing and have no proper motion of their own by which they could resist the motion of the will; consequently, they are not perfected through habits. For, as Aristot. says in 2. Ethic. c. 1., things determined to one do not become accustomed through habits and virtues. Infants, however, are a subject capable of vice and virtue. Hence, although before the use of reason they cannot have an actual sin intrinsic to themselves, they can nevertheless contract an original sin proper to themselves.⁴²

To the second, it is answered that the proposition “No one gives what he does not have” is to be understood thus: no one gives what he does not have actually or virtually. The sun produces heat, which it does not have formally in act, but has virtually.⁴³ Therefore baptized parents communicate original sin to their children: although they do not have original sin actually, they do have it virtually in the seed and in the concupiscence of corrupted nature.

Second, a reply is given by the solution of S. Aug. lib. 2. de peccatorum meritis, et remis. cap. 9. et lib. 3. cap. 8. et 9.. Baptized and holy parents do not beget children insofar as they are holy and baptized; for as such they are not children of Adam but of God, since their sanctification does not come from having been born of Adam, but from being reborn of God through grace, according to Ioan. 1: Who were born not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. They therefore beget children who are children of Adam, from whom they received a corrupted nature, and in this corrupted state transmit it to their descendants. It is like a golden or silver vessel that receives corrupted and muddy water from a spring and communicates it, also corrupted, to others. This can also be illustrated more clearly by another example used by St. Augustine himself. Wheat, when cleaned through human care, produces more wheat that is not cleaned but wrapped in chaff and awns, because the sown wheat was born in the same way. Proportionally, since the proximate parents were born from Adam with original sin, even if they were cleansed from it through baptism or penance, they nevertheless later beget children infected with the original sin in which they themselves were born.

XVI. To the third argument, which Augustine discusses in many places, it is answered that the deformity of original sin follows from carnal generation, not in itself as generation, nor insofar as it proceeds from proximate parents, but insofar as it is referred back to the first parent, who sinned voluntarily and by sinning infected the whole of human nature.⁴⁴ Hence the defect of original sin must be attributed to the first parent and not to proximate parents, just as we said above in disp. 18. et 24. that the defect and evil that follow upon an act of sin are attributed to the deficient cause, namely, the human will, and not to God. For although that defect follows upon the act of sin, it does not follow from it insofar as it is an act or insofar as it is from God, but insofar as it proceeds from a created will that is deficient.

But there is an argument against this. It follows at least that whenever any infant contracts original sin, Adam sins. The proof is that Adam is the principal cause inducing original sin in infants; therefore Adam sins whenever anyone proceeds from him by carnal propagation.

It is answered that when infants contract original sin, Adam does not sin; rather, all the malice of such original sins preceded in that actual sin by which he ate from the forbidden tree. For, as St. Thomas says in 2. 2. q. 163. ar. 3. ad 2, Adam's sin was most grave on account of the circumstance, or the harm of original sin, which he transmits to descendants.⁴⁵ St. Thomas explains this solution. It is certain that if someone inflicted a mortal wound on Peter, from which he later died, and then repented of that sin before Peter died, the killer would not commit a new sin at the instant Peter died; rather, all the malice of that external homicide preceded in the act that caused the subsequent death. The same, proportionally, must be said here of Adam's sin with respect to the death of infants.

XVII. If an argument is made that proximate parents can prevent infants from contracting original sin, since they can refrain from begetting them, yet do not prevent that sin, therefore they sin, the consequence is denied. They are not bound to prevent that sin. For in order for someone who does not prevent an evil to sin, it does not suffice that he be able to prevent it and does not do so; beyond this, it is required that he be bound to prevent it, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2. q. 6. ar. 3., and 2. 2. q. 79. ar. 3., in the body and reply to objection 2.⁴⁶

To the fourth argument, St. Augustine replies in the cited letter 156 that Pelagius should rather have asserted that the origin of the soul was unknown to him than denied that Adam's children contract original sin.⁴⁷

Second, it is answered that the soul is indeed produced by God alone through creation, as regards its existence, which it has independently of the body; in this respect it neither contracts nor can contract original sin, for otherwise that sin would be attributed to God. But if the rational soul is considered insofar as it is actually a part of human nature and the form of the body, then in this respect it does not come from God alone; rather, it also falls under the efficient causality of the man begetting the whole composite, through the power of the seed separated from the first parent, who sinned voluntarily. In this respect it contracts original sin along with nature. Therefore this sin and defect must be referred not to God but to a deficient secondary cause.

To the fifth, there are various ways of speaking.

The first is that of John Driedo, who asserts that Adam caused original sin in his children by way of nature, not by way of merit, or morally.⁴⁸ Other theologians, however, hold that original sin is transmitted from Adam to descendants both by way of merit and by way of an efficient cause.

XVIII. Their opinion is more reasonable and more in keeping with the mind of St. Thomas. Indeed, St. Thomas asserts that Adam was a meritorious cause of the transmission of original sin in 3. p. q. 19. ar. 4. in arg. sed contra, where he says that Adam's demerit is derived to his descendants and is the cause of their condemnation; from this he proves that Christ's merit benefits the justified.⁴⁹ Pope Leo holds the same opinion in serm. 5. de natali Domini, where he says that Adam, obeying the Devil to the point of transgression, merited that we all should die in him; but merit implies moral causality. The reasoning drawn from St. Thomas supports this: Adam's sin stands in relation to his children as Christ's justice stands in relation to the justified, as is clear from ad Rom. 5: As through the offense of one man there was condemnation for all men, so also through the justice of one there is justification for all men. But Christ's justice was the meritorious cause of our justification; therefore Adam's sin was the meritorious cause of original sin and of the condemnation of his children.

Moreover, one who commits some fault for which such-and-such a punishment has been established is the moral and meritorious cause of that punishment. But Adam committed a fault on account of which he and his children incurred the punishment of eternal death; therefore he is the moral cause of the transmission of original sin to his children, on account of which they incur that punishment.

This is confirmed: not only the death of the soul but also the original sin that Adam's children contract is a punishment for Adam's own actual sin. For original justice was given to him on this condition: if he kept God's commandment, he would transmit that justice to his children through carnal generation; otherwise he himself and his descendants would be deprived of that justice.

Finally, it is proved as follows. As St. Thomas says in 1. 2. q. 6. ar. 3., one who can and is bound to avoid something, but does not avoid it, is its moral cause and is judged indirectly to will it. But Adam could and was bound to prevent original sin in his children: for he could and was bound not to commit the actual sin from which original sin subsequently followed in his descendants, but he did not prevent it. Therefore.

That the first parent, or his sin, was also the physical and real cause of the transmission of original sin to descendants is proved as follows. Whatever is the physical and real cause of some quality to which the privation of another quality follows, is consequently and indirectly the physical cause of that privation, in the way in which privations have a cause. For one who causes whiteness in a subject consequently causes the privation of blackness. But the first parent was the real cause of a turning toward an object contrary to reason, by eating from the forbidden tree; and the privation of original justice followed upon that disordered turning, both in him and in the whole nature and in his children. Therefore.

Hence, to the objection raised against this in the fourth principal argument, it is answered that just as a man who is just and in a state of grace, if he sins, merits through his sin the loss of that grace (although he did not in any way merit its infusion by any act of his, since first grace is not subject to merit), so proportionally in the present case, although Adam's children remain deprived of original justice on account of Adam's demerit, just as he himself remained deprived, nevertheless, if Adam had persevered in that same justice, he would not have merited its transmission to his descendants. For from the beginning he received it from God as a free gift, without any preceding merits, for himself and his children. Hence, if Adam had persevered in original justice, his perseverance would only have been a condition without which original justice would not be transmitted to descendants; it would not properly have been a meritorious cause of that transmission. There is also another difference: the first root of good and merit comes from God and from his grace, whereas evil and demerit proceed from us alone, according to Oseae 13: Your evil is from you, Israel; only in me is your help. Therefore Adam could be the first moral and demeritorious cause of the transmission of original sin, but he would not have been the first or principal moral or meritorious cause of the transmission of original justice, even if he had persevered in grace.

If an argument is made against this that Adam was not the first moral head of human nature, but only its natural head, insofar as he physically generated and transmitted nature to his descendants by carnal generation, and therefore he did not morally transmit original sin, or transmit it by way of demerit, to his descendants but only by way of nature, it is answered that Adam had both roles: he was the natural head of the whole nature insofar as he really communicated human nature to all his children by carnal propagation, and he was its moral head insofar as by a moral and free act he stained the whole nature and merited that it be deprived of original justice. Hence he is the cause of original sin in both ways, morally and as an efficient or physical cause, which is the same thing.

To the other objection, which proves that Adam is not the physical cause of the transmission of original sin, it is answered that Adam and his sin remain in his descendants virtually, namely, in the seed separated from Adam, insofar as it has a relation to the tinder of corrupted nature. Through the power left in the seed, Adam transmits original sin to descendants along with nature as an efficient cause, as will be clear in the reply to the second argument.

XIX. To the confirmation, it is answered that it touches on the difficulty whether original sin, formally considered, is something positive or privative. Some have said that formally it is something positive, namely, a certain vicious and morbid quality inhering in corrupted nature, by which it is inclined toward a changeable good without the order of reason. This is held by William of Auxerre, who distinguishes a twofold morbid quality in original sin: one immediately in the soul, in which quality he teaches that original sin essentially consists; the other in the body, which consequently pertains to original sin as its effect.⁵⁰ The same opinion is defended by Henr. and Greg. Arim.; Gabriel says it is probable in 2. d. 30. q. 2. art. 2. concl. 2; and Driedo holds it in lib. 1. de gratia et libero arbitrio, tract. 3. cap. 3. p. 4.⁵¹ The chief foundations of this opinion are as follows. First, the Council of Trent, sess. 5. in decreto de peccato originali, can. 3., defines that original sin inheres in all; St. Thomas also teaches this in 1. 2. q. 82. ar. 3. But inherence is proper to a positive being; therefore.⁵² Second, St. Thomas says in that same art. 1.⁵³ that original sin is a habit, like sickness. But sickness is formally something positive, for it is placed in the category of quality and is opposed to health as its contrary, as can be seen in St. Thomas, q. 27. de verit. ar. 1. ad 4. Therefore. Third, St. Augustine says in lib. 5. contra Iulianum, cap. 3., that the soul in the flesh is corrupted like water in a corrupted vessel. But water is corrupted through a vicious quality that it contracts from the vessel; therefore. Fourth, actual sin of commission is formally something positive, because it essentially signifies a turning toward an object contrary to reason, from which it is specified, as the Thomists commonly teach with St. Thomas and Cajetan. But original sin likewise essentially signifies a turning toward an object contrary to reason and is specified by it, for aversion from an unchangeable good follows from a turning toward a changeable good. Since, then, in original sin there is an aversion from an unchangeable good, it must follow from a turning toward a changeable good contrary to reason, and be specified by that turning. Thus original sin will formally be something positive, just as actual sin is. Fifth, original sin is a sin of commission, not omission. For St. Thomas says in q. 5. de malo, ar. 1. ad 12., that original sin in infants is not one of omission but of commission; therefore it is formally something positive. The consequence is proved as follows: a sin of commission is against a negative precept, which is broken only through a positive act contrary to reason, as St. Thomas teaches in 2. 2. q. 79. ar. 2. 3. et 4. This is confirmed because the same St. Thomas says in q. 2. de malo, ar. 1. ad 4., that in a sin of omission, properly speaking, it is true that there is only a privation, but not so in a sin of transgression, or commission. Therefore, if original sin is a sin of transgression and commission, it will formally be something positive and not a pure privation. Sixth, original sin cannot formally consist in the privation of original justice; therefore it does not consist in any privation, and consequently it will formally be something positive. The consequence holds because no other privation can be assigned in which original sin essentially consists. The antecedent is proved as follows: St. Thomas says in 1. 2. q. 76. ar. 2.⁵⁴ that the privation of grace in itself is not sin but a punishment for sin; therefore the privation of original justice likewise will formally be a punishment for sin, not sin itself.

Some Thomists say that original sin belongs to two genera: first, to the genus of evil simply, and in this genus it is not formally something positive but privative, as all his disciples admit with St. Thomas concerning actual sin; second, it belongs to the genus of moral evil, and in this genus they say original sin is formally something positive. If it is asked what this positive thing is, they answer that it is a certain habitual turning toward a changeable good, arising from the turning of the first parent, in whom we were all turned toward a changeable good by Adam's will, insofar as he was the head of the whole nature. For his will is reckoned as ours; hence the Apostle also says: All sinned in Adam.⁵⁵ They attribute this opinion to St. Thomas and cite many other important authorities in its favor. M. Medina, in 1. 2. q. 82. ar. 1. is very doubtful and seems, from the force of the arguments, to incline now to one side, now to the other. M. Victoria, as Soto reports in lib. 1. de natura, et gratia c. 8. in fine, tried to explain this difficulty, saying that original sin is nothing other than a certain enmity, which in Spanish he called desgratia, through which all those propagated from the first parent are constituted children of wrath.

XX. Another opinion, which I judge to be true and to reflect the mind of St. Thomas, asserts that materially original sin is something positive, but formally it is a privation of original justice as regards its primary effect.⁵⁶ To make this clear, consider that, as Cajetan and Master Soto teach, something is called material with respect to another in two ways. In one way, properly, as a body is material with respect to whiteness, because it is informed by whiteness and denominated from it. In this way, in actual sin of commission, the substance of the interior act itself is material, because it is the subject of moral evil, by which it is formally constituted as sin.⁵⁷ In a second, more general way, that is called the material of sin which is its effect. In this way an exterior act is called material with respect to an interior one, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2. q. 18. ar. 6., ad 2. In this sense we say that disordered concupiscence and the other disordered lower powers are material in original sin, because they are effects of its formal character. Hence St. Augustine in many places calls this concupiscence a daughter of original sin, especially in lib. 1. retra. c. 15. et lib. 1. de nuptiis, et concupiscentiis c. 24. et lib. 1. cont. duas epist. Pelag. c. 13. It cannot, however, be called material in the first way, because such disordered concupiscence is in the flesh, or in the sensitive appetite, while original sin formally is in the essence of the soul; thus such concupiscence cannot be its proper immediate subject.⁵⁸ In this sense, then, we assert that materially original sin is something positive, namely, disordered concupiscence and the tinder of sin, as St. Thomas proves in the cited 1. 2. q. 82. art. 3. Whether this concupiscence, or tinder, is a morbid quality added to and distinct from the lower powers as one thing from another, or is itself the appetite disordered and habitually inclined toward a changeable good, matters little to the present question. On this, see S. Tho. q. 4. de malo, art. 2.; 3. p. q. 15. art. 2. et q. 27. art. 3., and Cajetan and Medina there.

XXI. That original sin is formally privative is proved from St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 82. ar. 3., who says that the formal element of original sin is the privation of original justice. For he says: Materially, original sin is concupiscence, but formally it is the defect of original justice. More clearly, he teaches the same in q. 4. de malo, ar. 2. ad 4., from the objections on the contrary, saying: The privation of grace is not in the act itself but in the subject of the act, and therefore it does not pertain to actual sin. But the lack of original justice is in nature, and therefore it can pertain to original sin, which is the sin of nature. The solution of other Thomists, who assert that St. Thomas is speaking there of original sin not as moral evil but as evil simply, just as he very often teaches concerning actual sin, is not valid. I say that this explanation is invalid because, in that reply to objection 4, St. Thomas establishes a difference between actual and original sin: he says that the privation of grace does not pertain to actual sin because it is not in the act itself but in its subject, namely, the soul; but the lack of original justice is in nature, or in the essence of the soul, and therefore can pertain to original sin, which is the sin of nature. But if St. Thomas were speaking of original sin as evil simply and not according to its particular character in the genus of morals, there would be no difference, since actual and original sin agree in both being privative insofar as each is placed in the genus of evil simply. St. Thomas therefore holds that original sin, in its character as moral evil, is formally something privative.

Moreover, original sin does not include in its essence a turning toward a changeable good, but only an aversion from an unchangeable good; therefore it is formally a privation.⁵⁹ The consequence is clear, for aversion is something privative. The antecedent is proved from St. Thomas, q. 24. de verit. ar. 12. ad 2., where he says that original and mortal sin do not differ as regards aversion, since in both there is a habitual aversion from an unchangeable good, but they differ on the side of conversion, since in mortal sin there is a habitual turning toward an undue end. In q. 5. de malo, ar. 2. in corp., he says that in original sin there is no conversion but only aversion. The same antecedent is confirmed. No punishment of sense corresponds to original sin, but only the punishment of loss, as St. Thomas admits in q. 5. de malo, art. 2., where he proves that those who die with original sin alone have no punishment or interior pain of the will, even after Judgment Day. Therefore original sin consists in aversion and not conversion.⁶⁰ The consequence is clear, for according to St. Thomas in that same art. the punishment of loss corresponds to sin on the side of aversion, while the punishment of sense corresponds to it on the side of conversion. Finally, disordered concupiscence and every other positive quality found in original sin pertain not to its formal element but to its material element, as St. Thomas teaches in the passages from 1. 2. cited above. Therefore it is not formally something positive.

XXII. Hence, to the first argument for the opposite opinion, drawn from the Council of Trent, it is answered that original sin is said to inhere in a broad sense, as blindness is said to be in the eyes, since the privation of sight must be where sight ought to be.⁶¹ Or it may be said that original sin properly inheres, not formally, as though the formal element of original sin inhered, but materially, because its effects, namely, the tinder and disordered concupiscence, inhere. To the second, it is answered that St. Thomas expressly held the opinion we defend, as is clear from the passages we cited.⁶² As to the passage brought forward against it, the reply is that the comparison with sickness, which the holy Doctor uses to explain the nature of original sin, does not hold in every respect. It holds in this respect: just as bodily sickness follows when health is removed, so when original justice and the soul's subjection to God are removed, languor and disorder of the lower powers, rebellion against the spirit, and the tinder of sin follow. This tinder is something positive in the manner explained above. Nevertheless, this positive being does not pertain formally to the constitution of original sin, but materially, as an effect that follows from the same sin, as was said above. By this we also answer the third argument, drawn from the comparison with water existing in a corrupted vessel, which St. Augustine uses to explain the nature of original sin.⁶³

To the fourth, it is answered that original sin in infants is not specified by a disordered turning toward a changeable good, as was said.⁶⁴ For this disordered turning preceded in Adam's actual sin. As to the refutation, it is answered that in actual sin aversion follows from a turning toward a changeable good, or toward the object from which actual sin is specified, because the whole essence of actual sin is understood before its formal aversion. But in original sin, since it is not committed through the infant's own act or personal will, but is transmitted by origin along with the nature corrupted in the first parent, its essence cannot consist in a turning but in a privation of original justice, as was said.

XXIII. To the fifth, it is answered that original sin, as it exists in infants, is not properly a sin of omission or commission, for that division of sin into commission and omission is made concerning actual sin.⁶⁵ Hence St. Thomas in that reply to objection 12 does not say that an infant's original sin is one of commission, but only says that it is not one of omission; from this, however, it is not permissible to infer that it is one of commission. If St. Thomas had ever said that original sin is one of commission, he would have to be understood as speaking of original sin insofar as it preceded in the first parent, in whom the same sin was, under one aspect, an actual sin of a person and, under another, the sin of nature. By this we answer the other objections commonly made against this doctrine.

To the sixth, it is answered that the privation of grace that follows actual sin in adults is not sin but its effect in the order of demeritorious causality; in original sin, however, the privation itself constitutes the sin, as was said.⁶⁶ St. Thomas gives the reason for the difference between these two sins in q. 4. de malo, ar. 2. in corp., in the reply to the fourth principal objection, and in the reply to objection 4 among the objections on the contrary. Actual sin consists in a voluntary act of a person; therefore it must necessarily be subjectively in a power that is the principle of action, and accordingly it intrinsically includes a turning toward some disordered object, by which it is constituted in its species. Hence it cannot primarily consist in the privation of grace, because such a privation is not primarily subjectively in any power, but in the essence of the soul itself, in which habitual grace has its subject. Original sin, however, since it pertains to nature, is in the essence of the soul, as is original justice, to which it is opposed. Hence such a privation can pertain to the essence of original sin.

XXIV. We have, then, that original sin is formally a privation of original justice. For a fuller explanation, it should be observed that three things can be considered in original justice: first, the gift of original justice itself, considered in itself; second, its primary effect, which is the rectification of the soul with God; third, its secondary effect, by which the lower powers were rectified in relation to reason.⁶⁷ When, then, we assert that original sin is formally a privation of original justice, we are not speaking of a privation of original justice in itself. For the character of original sin cannot consist in a privation of original justice in itself, as some have thought. Otherwise original sin would not truly be remitted by baptism with respect to that in it which formally has the true and proper character of sin, which nevertheless is contrary to the decrees of the Councils of Milevis and Trent.⁶⁸⁶⁹ The consequence is proved as follows: a privation cannot be removed unless the form of which it is the privation is restored, just as blindness is not removed unless sight is restored. But baptism does not restore original justice in itself; therefore it does not remove the privation of original justice in itself. Therefore, if original sin formally consists in the privation of original justice considered in itself, it follows that original sin is not remitted with respect to that in it which has the true and proper character of sin. We must therefore say, as many most learned Thomists think, that it consists in a privation of original justice with respect to its primary effect. St. Thomas teaches this clearly enough in 1. 2. q. 82. ar. 3., when he says that the privation of original justice, through which the will was subject to God, is the formal element in original sin.⁷⁰ Manifest reason supports this: original sin is formally that privation which is removed primarily through baptism; but baptism primarily removes the privation of the soul's rectitude with God, for through baptismal grace the soul is reconciled and rectified with God, from whom it had been turned away through original sin. Therefore original sin is formally a privation of original justice with respect to its primary effect, which was the soul's rectification with God.

If the argument made above is turned against this opinion—that a privation of the primary and formal effect of a form cannot be removed unless the form itself, from which that effect proceeds, is restored; but baptism does not restore the gift of original justice itself; therefore it does not restore the primary effect of that gift; therefore original sin cannot consist in the privation of original justice with respect to its first effect, since otherwise it would not be removed through baptism—it is answered that the soul's being rectified in relation to God is not the adequate formal effect of the gift of original justice. For the soul can be rectified in relation to God without original justice, through habitual grace, which is at least formally distinct from original justice.⁷¹ Hence, for the privation of original justice to be removed through baptism with respect to its first effect, and for the soul to be rectified in relation to God, it is not necessary that the gift of original justice itself be restored as such; it suffices for habitual grace to be restored, through which the soul too is rectified in relation to God.

From these points the confirmation of the fourth principal argument, on whose occasion we raised this difficulty, is readily answered. We say that although original sin is formally privative, it is materially something positive, as was said; in this respect it can have a real efficient cause, and it can have such a cause formally as well, in the way in which privations have causes. For blindness has a real cause that primarily terminates in a quality contrary to the visual power, from which contrary quality the privation of sight follows.

XXVI. To the fifth principal argument, it is answered that it raises another difficulty: namely, whether there is in the seed some quality, at least intentional, by whose power original sin is transmitted to descendants, as in other instruments a certain motion bearing the power of the principal agent is posited, added to the instrument's nature, by which it attains the effect of the same principal agent.⁷² Albert the Great held that, from the curse of God found in Gen. 3, Cursed is the earth in your work, a certain power was communicated to human seed for staining the soul of the one who is derived from Adam through carnal propagation.⁷³ He proves this from Sap. 12: For the seed was cursed from the beginning. Capreolus too posits in the seed a certain intentional power that causes original sin. His opinion seems to have a foundation in St. Thomas, q. 4. de malo, ar. 1. ad 4., where he says that original sin is in the man's seed according to a certain intention of it.⁷⁴

Nevertheless, it must be said that no real power is required in the seed itself for original sin to be transmitted through it to Adam's children. This is the view of Cajetan, Ferrariensis, and Scotus.⁷⁵ Ferrariensis proves this by reasoning: formally, original sin is a pure privation of original justice, as was said above; therefore it has no real cause that directly and in itself terminates in it. Consequently, there is no need to posit in the seed some real or intentional power productive of original sin, distinct from the tinder of sin, so that Adam may be said to transmit original sin as an efficient cause to descendants by the power of the seed. The consequence is proved as follows: something incomplete and intentional is posited in instruments for producing the effect of the principal agent when the instrument's action terminates directly in something real, the intention of which must precede in the instrument itself. Moreover, it is proved by reasoning drawn from St. Thomas, q. 4. de malo, ar. 3. ad 2. Since original sin is the sin of nature, it does not pertain to the soul or get contracted by it except insofar as the soul is part of human nature, which was corrupted in Adam. Therefore, by the very fact that the soul becomes part of corrupted human nature, it incurs original sin. Therefore, it is not necessary to posit in the seed some real power causing it; the power it has to unite the soul with the body, so that the soul becomes part of human nature, together with the relation that the seed has to the tinder and to the first parent who sinned voluntarily, suffices. From this it follows that if the rational soul were not united to the body as the form of matter, but as a mover to what is moved, as the Platonists held, it would not be infected with original sin, because it would not then become part of the whole nature. So says S. Tho. q. 3. de pot. art. 4. ad 3. et 4.

Hence, to Albert's argument, it is answered that in this passage in Sap. 12, “seed” does not signify male seed but wicked men; it is often used in this sense in sacred Scripture, as in Isa. 1: Woe to the sinful nation, the wicked seed, the criminal children, and Dan. 13⁷⁶: Seed of Canaan, and not of Judah.

To the authority of St. Thomas brought forward for Capreolus's opinion, it is answered that by the “intention” of original sin St. Thomas means not some added quality, but the defect and privation of rectitude, from which it follows that human nature produced by the power of the seed is subject to original guilt. Ferrariensis and Cajetan reply in this way. This defect is called an intention of original sin because it is a certain likeness of it by way of proportion.

Second, it is answered that the seed itself, insofar as it has a relation to the tinder and to the first parent who sinned voluntarily, is called a certain intention of original sin without any other added quality.

XXVII. FROM these points the fifth principal argument remains solved. For we say that the seed, or the act of generation by the power of the seed, insofar as it has an order to the tinder and to the first parent who sinned voluntarily, concurs as an instrument in transmitting original sin. Hence St. Thomas says in 1. 2. q. 81. ar. 1., reply to objection 2, that through the power of the seed human nature is transmitted from parent to offspring, and together with nature, the infection of nature. And in q. 83. art. 1. ad 2., he says that original sin is caused by the seed as by an instrumental cause.

XXVIII. To the sixth principal argument, it is answered that original sin is contracted at the instant when the soul is united to the body by the power of the seed; for at that instant the soul actually becomes part of corrupted nature, which is accompanied by original guilt, as St. Thomas says in 1. 2. q. 81. ar. 1., reply to objection 3.⁷⁷ As to the refutation, it is answered that the soul is not infected through the flesh but through the seed. The reason is that given by St. Thomas in 1. 2. q. 81. ar. 1., reply to objection 4: the seed is the principle of generation, which is the proper act of nature, serving its propagation. Therefore the soul is infected more through the seed than through the perfected flesh, which has already been determined to a person. But original sin is not formally in the seed; it is there causally, as in an instrument, as was said.

To the seventh argument, it is answered that by Adam's offense all his children are constituted sinners causally, because the corruption of nature took its origin from him as from a cause. They are not, however, constituted sinners formally by the offense that was in Adam, but by the sin proper to each one, which each contracts, as was said about Christ's justice with respect to those regenerated by grace.

Whether through original sin man was stripped only of original justice and supernatural gifts, or was also wounded in natural things.

I. In this part we have a twofold controversy: one with heretics who expressly denied original sin, the other with Catholics who, while admitting with the Church of Christ that Adam's children contract original sin, say that natural things remained intact after sin. For Pelagius, as Augustine reports in lib. de nat. et gratia, c. 19, just as he denied original sin, so consequently he also said that man's nature was not weakened or changed through Adam's sin. His chief reason was this: sin is either some substance or is wholly without substance. If the first is granted, it follows that sin is from God, since every created substance is from God. But if the second is granted, how could sin have weakened or changed human nature? For what is without substance, and is no thing, no existing entity, no body, certainly cannot corrupt or weaken nature.

Other heretics, by contrast, asserted the opposite extreme: that man's natural freedom was not only injured or weakened by sin, but wholly extinguished. This was the view of Luther and the other heretics of our time cited in Disputation 3, but especially Calvin in lib. 1. inst. c. 15. § 8, where he says that the corruption of nature consists in this: through sin man lost the free choice he had possessed before sin. The arguments of these heretics will be brought forward and resolved below, in the discussion of the agreement of free choice with the efficacy of the helps of divine grace.

Among Catholics who admit both original sin and man's free choice even after the fall, some have said that the first parent's sin harmed us only in gratuitous gifts, and that for this reason natural things remained intact in us after sin, as they would be by their nature if they had not been endowed with any supernatural gift. This opinion is proved as follows.

First, by the authority of St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 95. art. 1., in the body, where he says: It is clear that the subjection of the body to the soul and of the lower powers to reason was not natural; otherwise it would have remained after sin, since the natural gifts bestowed on demons also remained after sin, as Dionysius says in c. 4. de divin. nomin. In these words he clearly teaches that in the first parent, just as in demons, natural things remained intact after sin. He therefore holds that through sin man was stripped only of supernatural gifts and not wounded in natural things. Hence Master Medina, 1. 2. q. 85. ar. 3., § “Second, it follows,” defends the same opinion on the authority of St. Thomas: This is, he says, the true opinion of divine theology, taught by all theologians, namely, Cajetan, 1. 2. q. 85. ar. 3., and q. 109. ar. 2.; Mars. in 2. q. 18. ar. 1.; and the most learned Father Soto lib. 1. de nat. et grat. c. 13.

This is confirmed: St. Thomas compares man after sin to demons with respect to the evils that followed from sin itself. But demons through sin were stripped only of supernatural gifts and were not wounded in natural things; therefore the same holds of men.

Second, it is argued that the sole difference between human nature after sin and before the gifts of grace, and the same nature if it had been created in pure nature, is this: exclusion from glory and the lack of grace and original justice properly have the character of privation and punishment with respect to those who sinned in Adam, but not with respect to a man constituted in pure nature. Therefore through sin man was not wounded in natural things, but was stripped only of gratuitous gifts.

Third. Man after original sin and man in pure nature differ as a naked man and a man who has been stripped. For in pure nature man would be naked, because he would not have grace and charity, which is the wedding garment of the soul; but in the state of original sin he is said to have been stripped, because he lost the supernatural gifts with which he had been adorned. Therefore, with respect to natural things, man is no more wounded in fallen nature than he would be in pure nature, if he had been created in that state.

Fourth. By original sin the natural inclination to the good was not diminished in man; therefore by that sin he was not wounded in his natural endowments. The consequence is clear, because a wound of rational nature cannot be understood unless the natural inclination to¹ the good of reason is diminished by it. The antecedent is proved: for the natural inclination to the good of reason is a property, or proper passion, consequent upon the principles of rational nature, since it is nothing other than the rational power itself inclined toward the good. But a property of a nature, or its proper passion, cannot be diminished; for a proper passion always stands in the same way, being predicated of its subject convertibly and unchangeably, as Porphyry says in the chapter on the Proper. Hence St. Thomas, I–II, q. 85, art. 1, in the body, says that the gift of nature—that is, the principles by which nature itself is constituted—and the properties caused by those same principles are neither taken away nor diminished by sin. Therefore.

The same antecedent is confirmed, first. The natural inclination of human nature is finite, since human nature itself is finite; therefore, if it is diminished by sin, through the multiplication of sins it could be wholly destroyed. For everything finite is consumed by subtraction, if the subtraction is not made in proportional parts; but in the present case the subtraction is not made in proportional parts, as St. Thomas teaches in I–II, q. 85, art. 2. Yet it is impossible that the natural inclination to the good of reason be wholly destroyed while human nature remains, as St. Thomas proves in the same second article. Therefore.

The same antecedent is confirmed, secondly. The natural inclination to the good of reason is not increased by acts of the virtues; therefore neither is it diminished by sin.

Fifth, an argument is made. Sin diminishes the good of nature insofar as it generates a vicious habit; but original sin generates neither a vicious habit nor any morbid quality, since formally it is a pure privation of original justice, and consists in aversion, not in an inordinate turning toward something, as was said above. Therefore, the same conclusion follows as before.

St. Thomas teaches the contrary opinion in I–II, q. 85, art. 1, as do very many Thomists. Hence let this be

The first conclusion against the Pelagians: According to the Catholic faith, it must be asserted that human nature was changed, weakened, and debilitated by sin. All Catholics agree on this conclusion. For it is gathered from the sacred Scriptures, especially Psalm 40: I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, because I have sinned against you. Explaining these words, St. Augustine says: What is healed, if nothing has been wounded, nothing hurt, nothing weakened and corrupted? And Isaiah 1: Every head is sick, and every heart is sorrowful; from the sole of the foot to the crown there is no soundness in it: wound, and bruise, and swelling sore. It has not been bound up, nor treated with medicine, nor soothed with oil. And Matthew 9: Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill; for I came not to call the just, but sinners. Secondly, it is proved from the definitions of the councils, especially those of Orange and Trent, to be cited below, in which our conclusion against the Pelagians is defined. Thirdly, it is proved by the authority of the Saints, especially St. Chrysostom, Homily 30 to the People of Antioch: there he compares the sinner to a sick man stricken with fever, who has suffered not only this distress, that he is sick, but also that after the illness he will be weaker, even if he returns to good health after a long sickness. St. Prosper, On the Call of All Nations, book 1, chapter 7, says: From there—that is, from the sin of the first man—mortality was drawn; from there came the manifold corruption of body and soul.

The second conclusion: Human nature was not merely stripped of gratuitous gifts by original sin, but was also wounded in its natural endowments. This conclusion is against certain more recent theologians, but it is proved. First, for it is said of that man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, who bore the type of the sinner, in Luke 10, that he fell among robbers, who stripped him and, laying wounds upon him, went away, leaving him half dead:² here it is asserted not only that this man was stripped of gratuitous gifts, but also that he was wounded in his natural endowments, as Bede explains in the Ordinary Gloss on the same passage, and Ambrose, Commentary on Luke, book 7.

Secondly, it is proved from the definition of the Council of Orange, canon 1, where it says as follows: If anyone says that through the offense of Adam’s transgression man was not wholly changed for the worse—that is, in body and soul—but believes that only the body was made subject to corruption, while the soul’s freedom remained unimpaired, deceived by the error of Pelagius he opposes the Scripture that says: ‘The soul that has sinned shall itself die.’ And do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey? And by whomsoever a person is overcome, to him he is also made a slave.³ The sacred Council of Trent confirms the same definition in Session 5, in its decree on original sin, in these words: If anyone does not confess that the first man Adam, when he had transgressed God’s command in Paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and through the offense of this transgression incurred the wrath and indignation of God, and hence also the death with which God had previously threatened him, and with death captivity under the power of him who thereafter held the dominion of death, that is, the Devil, and that the whole Adam through that offense of transgression was changed for the worse in body and soul: let him be anathema.⁴⁵ Here man is said to have been changed for the worse in soul and body by original sin for this reason: because he was not only stripped of supernatural gifts, but was also wounded in his natural endowments. The same is evident from the Council of Valence, chapter 6, whose words must be cited in Disputation 54, no. 10.

The authors of the contrary opinion reply that the Councils speak by comparison with the powers that free choice had in the state of innocence through the presence of original justice, and not by comparison with the powers it would have had if man had been created in pure nature.

This solution, however, does not seem to agree with the words of the Councils and of sacred Scripture cited above. For if, when they say that through sin man was changed for the worse in soul and body, they are not speaking of man by comparison with the state of pure nature, it would follow that man received no wound in himself through sin and was not left half dead, as Scripture signifies. For in pure nature man would truly have no wound and would not be called half dead, although there would be in him rebellion of the sensitive appetite and a struggle between flesh and spirit arising from human nature itself.

Moreover, as will be clear below, free choice in fallen nature does not have the same natural powers for the good that it would have had if it had been created in pure nature. For in fallen nature, without the help of grace, it cannot elicit any act of love of God above all things as the author of nature, whereas it could elicit such an act if man had been created in pure nature, as will be clear below. Therefore, through sin man was changed for the worse not only with respect to the state he had in intact nature, but also with respect to the state he would have had if he had been created in pure nature.

IV. The conclusion is proved thirdly. For the natural inclination to the good of reason proportionate to human nature is diminished by sin, as St. Thomas teaches in I–II, q. 85, arts. 1 and 2, as do Cajetan and Conrad there, Capreolus in 2 Sentences, dist. 24, single question, art. 1, conclusion 3; Ferrariensis, Against the Gentiles, book 3, chapter 12; Alexander of Hales, Summa, part 2, q. 94, member 8, art. 4, in the body and in reply to objection 2; Richard in 2 Sentences, dist. 35, around the second principal point, qq. 1 and 2; and Gregory in the same distinction, single question, art. 1, reply to objection 6, against the first conclusion.⁶ Reason supports this: the aptitude of a natural power for the good, or for the exercise of good acts, is diminished by sin, because by reason of it the power is made less ready to do good than it would be if it had committed no sin; experience itself teaches us this. Therefore, through original sin man is placed in a worse state with regard to this sort of inclination and natural propensity toward the good of virtue than he would be in pure nature, if he had been created in that state.

To the argument of Pelagius made at the beginning, St. Augustine replies in On Nature and Grace, chapter 20, that just as abstaining from food is not a substance, and yet the substance of the body, if it abstains from food altogether, grows weak, is impaired by an imbalance of health, is drained of strength, weakened by fatigue, and broken down, so sin, although it is not a substance, could weaken human nature, diminish its powers, and make it infirm.

Secondly, it is replied that although original sin is not formally something positive but privative, as was said above, actual sin is formally something positive and causes in the soul a habit of vice contrary to the habit of virtue. In this respect too it can diminish the natural powers of human nature and weaken it, so that it cannot by itself accomplish the works of sound nature unless it is divinely helped and healed by grace.

To the first argument brought forward in favor of the Catholic opinion, it is replied that St. Thomas expressly teaches our opinion in the places cited above, and does not say the contrary in the passage drawn from the First Part. For there he does not say that natural endowments remained wholly intact in men or demons after sin; he says only that they remained intact if the subject is the first good of nature, which is to be, to live, and to understand. For thus he explains Dionysius in his reply to objection 1 of the same article.⁷ And by this the confirmation is answered.

Secondly, it is replied that in demons there is no concupiscence or disorder of the sensitive appetite, as there is in fallen man, since there is no sensitive appetite in angels. Hence, in this respect, man can be more wounded in his natural endowments by sin than the devil.

V. To the second argument, the antecedent is denied, because in fallen nature the absence of grace and original justice has not only the character of punishment but truly the character of guilt, through which human nature remains wounded and unable to perform perfect good works, even natural ones, such as loving God above all things without qualification and resisting more serious temptations.⁸ For these and similar things man cannot accomplish in fallen nature, even for a short time, unless he is healed and helped by grace; yet in pure nature he could have elicited one or another purely natural act of love of God above all things by the powers of nature, and could have resisted more serious temptations for a short time, as will be clear below.

To the third argument it is replied that man in fallen nature and in pure nature do indeed differ as a naked man and a man who has been stripped; but they differ not only in this, but also because in fallen nature, by the very fact that he has been stripped through sin, man has suffered many wounds in his natural endowments that he would not have had in pure nature.

To the fourth argument, the antecedent is denied. To the proof, it is replied that the rational power of human nature cannot be diminished intrinsically and entitatively by destruction of some degree of that power; yet it can be diminished by the addition of an impediment, such as sin, or by a contrary inclination toward sins, which inclination is generated by evil acts.⁹ For it is necessary that, from the fact that something is inclined toward one of two contraries, its inclination toward the other is diminished. Since, then, sin is contrary to virtue, by the very fact that man sins the good of nature, which is inclination toward virtue, is diminished, as St. Thomas teaches in I–II, q. 85, art. 1, in the body.

VI. To the first confirmation, it is replied with St. Thomas that this objection proceeds when diminution occurs through subtraction.¹⁰ But through sin the natural inclination to the good is not diminished by subtraction, but by the addition of an impediment, which neither takes away nor diminishes the root of the inclination. Since sin does not diminish rational nature itself, it cannot diminish the root of the natural inclination to the good, which is identical with nature itself. Therefore this sort of inclination is diminished only on the side of its term, insofar, that is, as through sin an impediment to reaching the term is posited, as St. Thomas explains in the body of the same article. Hence, however infinitely sins may be multiplied, the natural inclination of the person to the good of reason cannot be wholly destroyed. The same solution is pursued by the holy Doctor in 1. p. q. 48. ar. 4, reply to objection 3.

But an argument presses against this solution: so many impediments can be added and so many sins multiplied that the natural inclination of human nature toward virtue can not only act with greater difficulty in an act of virtue, but also be wholly unable to do so. Therefore such a natural inclination can be wholly destroyed through the multiplication of sins. The consequence is proved: for by the same reasoning that the natural inclination to the good can be diminished through the addition of an impediment, so that it can exercise a good act only with difficulty, impediments could be multiplied to such a degree that it could not issue into a good act at all. The consequence is denied in reply, and the reason for the distinction is this: for the natural inclination to the good to be diminished, it suffices that it be made in some way less, whether this happens intrinsically through subtraction or extrinsically through the addition of an impediment; but for it to be wholly destroyed, the entire entity of that same inclination must perish.

VII. To the second confirmation, it is replied that acts of the virtues, insofar as they generate a habit by which the power is perfected with respect to acts of the virtues, in a certain way increase its inclination.

To the fifth argument, it is replied that actual mortal sin wounds intellectual nature by diminishing its inclination toward the good through the addition of a contrary inclination, even if it is a sin of omission, since in its exercise it is never found without any act at all.¹¹ Original sin, however, wounds in natural endowments by removing original justice and the other gifts by which the lower powers were kept under the bridle of reason, and insofar as by that same sin the intellectual creature is turned away from its ultimate end, and consequently rendered unable to perform the most perfect acts of that same nature, such as the love of God above all things as the natural end. Thus actual sin wounds man in his natural endowments by inducing a positive inclination of vice, contrary to the inclination of virtue; original sin, however, wounds in natural endowments by taking away from the rational powers the gifts by which they were kept in order, and by introducing a stain into the soul and turning it away from its ultimate end, as was said. See M. Soto, On Nature and Grace, book 1, chapter 14.

What wounds man incurs through original or actual sin.

I. St. Thomas touches on this difficulty in I–II, q. 85, art. 3, where he asks whether infirmity, ignorance, malice, and concupiscence are suitably posited as the wounds of nature consequent upon sin. He answers affirmatively, proving this by the authority of the venerable Bede, found in the Ordinary Gloss on the words of Luke 10, And laying wounds upon him, they went away, leaving him half dead.¹ There he enumerates the four wounds mentioned above that man incurs through sin. In the body of the article he gathers the sufficiency of these wounds as follows: For by original justice perfect reason held the lower powers of the soul in check, and reason itself was perfected by being subject to God. But this original justice was taken away through the sin of our first parent, as has already been said; and thus all the powers of the soul remain, in a certain way deprived of their proper order by which they are naturally ordered to virtue, and this deprivation is called a wound of nature. There are four powers of the soul that can be the subjects of virtues, as was said: reason, in which prudence resides; will, in which justice resides; the irascible power, in which fortitude resides; and the concupiscible power, in which temperance resides. Thus, insofar as reason is deprived of its order to the true, there is the wound of ignorance; insofar as the will is deprived of its order to the good, there is the wound of malice; insofar as the irascible power is deprived of its order to the arduous, there is the wound of infirmity; and insofar as concupiscence is deprived of its order to the pleasurable as moderated by reason, there is the wound of concupiscence. Accordingly, these four were inflicted on the whole of human nature through the sin of our first parent. But since the inclination of virtue to the good is diminished in each person by actual sin, as is clear from what has been said, these four wounds also follow from other sins, insofar as by sin reason is blunted, especially in practical matters, the will is hardened toward evil², greater difficulty in doing good increases, and concupiscence grows more ardent.³

II. For fuller explanation, it should be noted that, as St. Thomas teaches in I–II, q. 109, art. 2, reply to objection 3, human nature is more corrupted by sin with respect to appetite for the good than with respect to knowledge of the true, because the will is the inclination of the whole man. Hence a person can know more by himself, without the help of grace, than he can accomplish by the powers of nature, although the intellect too was wounded.⁴ Accordingly, with respect to the intellect, man was wounded by sin with the wound of ignorance. For although by the powers of nature he can know some truth, not only speculative but also practical, among matters belonging to the order of nature, he cannot know every truth, especially practical truths concerning the right ordering of natural life, without the help of grace. Hence St. Prosper sharply reproves Cassian because, from the words of Genesis 3, Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he wrongly inferred: Therefore after the transgression Adam conceived a knowledge of evil that he had not had, but he did not lose the knowledge of good that he had received.⁵ The same St. Prosper elsewhere attacks this teaching, Now, he says, since no one can escape eternal death without the sacrament of regeneration, does not the very uniqueness of this remedy show most clearly into what depth of evil the nature of the whole human race was plunged by the transgression of him in whom all sinned, and that whatever he lost, they lost? First he lost faith; he betrayed continence, lost charity; he was stripped of wisdom and understanding; he lacked counsel and fortitude; and, impiously pursuing higher things, he was cast down from knowledge of the truth and the piety of obedience.⁶ And below: Hence, before he digests the lethal crudity by eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood, memory slips, judgment errs, his gait falters, and he is in no way fit to choose and desire that good of which he freely deprived himself. And in chapter 21: After Adam subjected himself—that is, the image and temple of God—to his deceiver, he lost knowledge of the good, because he lost a good conscience. Hence it is written in Wisdom 9: The thoughts of mortals are fearful, and our plans uncertain; for the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and this earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks on many things. We can scarcely judge what is on earth, and what is before our eyes we find with labor. But who can search out what is in heaven? Here, from the body's corruptibility, which comes from sin, it infers that human foresight is uncertain. Hence shortly after the beginning of the same chapter, it had said: A man is weak and short-lived, and too little able to understand judgment and laws. For even if someone is perfect among the children of men, if your wisdom is absent from him, he will be counted as nothing. As if it said: A weak man can know little, and with difficulty, so as to judge rightly and make laws, unless he is healed by your wisdom. Therefore he immediately asks God for it: Send her, he says, from your holy heavens, and from the throne of your greatness, that she may be with me and labor with me, and that I may know what is acceptable to you. Sin, therefore, first clouds the eyes of reason, so that afterward the wretched man is dragged without a bridle into the abyss. As a sign of this, Samson first lost his eyes and afterward was assigned by the Philistines to the mill. Hence Gregory says: Because often the eye of contemplation is first lost, and afterward through carnal desires the soul is subjected to the labors of this world, Samson, captured by the Philistines, bears witness: after he lost his eyes, he was assigned to the mill. For surely, after the wicked have gouged out the inward eye of contemplation with the goads of temptations, they send the soul outward, in all directions, to labor.⁷⁸

III. Hence sin is also compared to night, because just as in the night the bodily eye does not distinguish white from black, so too the sinner scarcely judges through the eyes of reason what is good and what is evil. Chrysostom noted this in these words.⁹ For just as in darkness neither friend nor enemy is recognized, but everything is wholly unknown, so it comes to pass in sin. For he who gapes after profit understands no difference between friend and enemy, and the envious man regards even his closest friend no differently than an enemy; robbers likewise make war on everyone and lie in wait for all; and in general, all who defile themselves with the filth of vices differ no more from the drunk and the insane in discerning distinctions among things. And just as at night, when the light is removed, we see and judge wood, lead, iron, silver, precious stones, and all other things in the same way, so those who live a foul and vicious life discern neither the force of modesty nor the beauty of wisdom. For in darkness, as I have already said, even precious stones display no appearance or brilliance, through no fault of their own but through the fault of eyes clouded over. Nor is this the only thing that troubles us while we live under the impious tyranny of vices; there is also this, that we are consequently tormented by fear. And just as those who travel through a dark night are shaken by fear even when there is nothing to fear, so those who commit some crime, even if no one sees it or reproves them, do not trust themselves any better but fear everything and suspect everything; for they are driven by the continual goads of conscience and look about them fearfully.¹⁰ And in Homily 22 on the First Epistle to the Corinthians: Just as, he says, robbers, when they wish to steal something precious, put out the light and then set about it, so reason is corrupted in sinners. For in us the light of reason is always burning; if the spirit of iniquity attacks it with greater force and extinguishes it, as soon as he has darkened the soul and overcome it, he plunders whatever is stored up in it. For when the soul has been seized by the desire of lust, just as bodily eyes are seized by mist and darkness, so the mind’s foresight is taken over by that desire and can look no farther—not at the precipice, not at hell, not at fear. And like a wall placed before the eyes without a door, it does not allow the ray of justice to illumine our minds. Just as the blind receive no light even if they are outdoors at midday, so these people, although countless teachings sound in their ears from every side, block their hearing against every argument because their minds have been preoccupied by this passion. Hence Origen too, explaining Job 3, Let a dark whirlwind seize that night, says: Unless the devil first darkens the hearts of men, unless he first blackens their souls, unless he first makes them forget the fear of God and his dreadful judgments, he will never be able to sow the seed of sins in their hearts. But after he has darkened the soul and turned it away from God, then, toward every evil, toward impurity, toward unbelief, and toward every desire of the flesh,¹¹ he easily turns them, as people who are in darkness.

When the judgment of reason has been wounded, the poison of sin spreads to the soul’s remaining powers, leaving nothing untouched and nothing unharmed; first of all, the will, which is the appetite of the whole man, is infected with the same poison and suffers many injuries.¹² For it remained turned away from its ultimate end, both natural and supernatural, and consequently without sufficient powers to turn itself by its own strength toward God himself, even insofar as he is the author of nature. Hence it also remained unable to keep the whole natural law and to resist the more serious temptations that arise. Hence, through the habit of sinning, free choice remains more and more weakened, inasmuch as it has voluntarily been handed over to the devil’s power. Thus St. Augustine: I sighed, he says, bound not by another’s iron, but by my own iron will. The enemy held my will, and from it he had made a chain for me and bound me. For from a perverse will came lust; and when lust is served, habit is made; and when habit is not resisted, necessity is made. By these links, as it were, joined one to another—which is why I called it a chain—cruel slavery held me bound.¹³ Origen explains in these words how the soul is affected by various wounds through different sins: Whenever the soul sins, it is wounded; and do not doubt that it is wounded by sin as by darts and swords. Hear the Apostle warning us to take up the shield of faith, with which we can extinguish all the fiery darts of the wicked one. You see, then, that sins are the arrows of the evil one, directed against the soul. The soul also suffers not only wounds from darts, but also fractures of the feet, when snares are laid for its feet and its steps are tripped up. O, if only we could see through each sin how our inner man is continually wounded! The soul is wounded through the tongue, and is wounded through thoughts and evil desires; it is broken and crushed through the deeds of sin. If we could see all these things and feel the scars of the wounded soul, it is certain that we would resist sin unto death.¹⁴

IV. When the will had been bruised and wounded by sin, the other powers and lower faculties also remained infected and weakened, namely the irascible and concupiscible powers. Although God had given these powers to man to aid reason, as a woman is given to a man, when the Lord said, Let us make for him a help like himself, they nevertheless helped reason itself to fall into sin by consenting to it.¹⁵¹⁶ Hence wretched man is stirred by various passions: he fears, grieves, and rejoices over what should not be feared, grieved over, or rejoiced over. Hence Augustine says: A rightly ordered life has all these affections rightly ordered, and a perverse life has them perverted. The elect fear eternal punishment and desire eternal life. They grieve in this life because they still groan within themselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of their body. They rejoice in hope, because the saying that is written will come to pass: Death is swallowed up in victory. Likewise, they fear to sin, desire to persevere, grieve over sins, rejoice in good works, and so on. But the perverse are shaken by these affections, disordered as if by diseases and disturbances.¹⁷¹⁸ Finally, the Apostle, speaking in the person of fallen man: I see, he says, another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive into the law of sin. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?¹⁹ And answering himself, he says, The grace of God through Jesus Christ. Thus we are to understand that these wounds, which human nature incurred through the sin of our first parent, can be healed only through the grace of Jesus Christ.

Whether free choice in fallen nature, when the helps of grace are set aside, has the same natural powers for the good that it would have had if it had been created in pure nature.

I. Those authors who say that through sin man was only stripped of gratuitous gifts, and was not wounded in his natural endowments, consequently teach that man’s free choice in fallen nature has precisely the same natural powers for the good that it would have had if it had been created in pure nature. They prove this by the same arguments with which, in the preceding Disputation, they claimed to prove that man was not wounded in his natural endowments through sin. For if the natural powers truly were not wounded by sin but remained wholly intact, it follows as an evident consequence that after sin they retain precisely the same natural powers that they would have had if man had been created in pure nature.

Moreover, the same opinion is proved as follows: A man created in pure nature would have precisely the same struggle of appetite against reason that he in fact now has in fallen nature; and consequently the same difficulty in doing the good proportionate to nature would exist in either state, and likewise the natural powers would be of the same kind, just as human nature itself is. Therefore the natural powers for carrying out the good of reason would be precisely the same in either state.

Secondly. There is no identifiable good work that a man could produce by the powers of nature in pure nature and not in fallen nature. Therefore in either state he would have the same natural powers for the good. The consequence is proved: for the whole perfection of natural powers is assessed, or at least known a posteriori, from the good works they can produce. The antecedent is proved as follows: good works are of two kinds. Some belong to the supernatural order, such as faith, hope, and charity; these man could not elicit by the powers of nature alone in pure nature, just as he could not in fallen nature. Others accord with and are proportionate to nature, such as an act of temperance, mercy, or liberality. These works can be produced indifferently by man after the Fall without the help of grace, and also in pure nature, if he had been created in that state. Therefore, and so on.

II. Thirdly. Man did not lose free choice through sin, as the Council of Trent defines against Luther and Calvin.¹ Therefore by the powers of free choice he can perform in fallen nature any good work that he could have performed in pure nature; and consequently he has the same natural powers for the good in either state. The consequence is proved as follows: as will be clear in Disputation 115, free choice is the faculty of will and reason for either alternative, namely, to act or not to act, or to perform this or that act. If, then, man did not lose free choice through sin, it follows that he has a natural faculty for performing all those good works that he could have performed in pure nature; otherwise, with respect to those same works he would not have free choice after sin.

It is confirmed. No one is bound to do the impossible, since no one sins in what he cannot avoid. But in fallen nature man is bound by a natural precept to do the good proportionate to his nature and to avoid the evil opposed to it, just as he would be bound in pure nature. Therefore he has a natural faculty to do this, just as he would have had in pure nature. Thus the same conclusion as before follows.

III. Fourthly. In fallen man there is a natural light for knowing the evil and the good suited to the natural end, as is clear from Psalm 4. After the Prophet had said, Many say, Who will show us good things? he immediately adds, The light of your countenance, O Lord, is marked upon us, by which we know what is good and to be pursued, and what is evil and to be avoided. Therefore there are in him natural powers for embracing the good proportionate to himself and avoiding evil, just as he would have had them in pure nature. Therefore he would have the same powers in either state.

It is confirmed, first, from the passage in Romans 2: When the Gentiles, who do not have the law—that is, the written law—do by nature the things that are of the law, although they do not have the law, they are a law to themselves; they show the work of the law written in their hearts. Behold, Paul says that the Gentiles sometimes do by nature, that is, by the powers of nature alone, what belongs to the natural law, which plainly consists of moral goods suited to the natural end.

It is confirmed, secondly, by the authority of Augustine, Hypognosticon, book 3, who says: We confess that free choice exists in all men, having indeed the judgment of reason, not by which it is able without God to begin or certainly to complete what pertains to God, but only with respect to the works of this present life, both good and evil. Here he teaches plainly enough that free choice without grace can will whatever good pertains to the present life, and excludes only the good that pertains to God as the supernatural end. Therefore, according to Augustine, free choice has the same natural powers for the good that it would have had in pure nature.

Finally, all the arguments to be set forth in Disputation 54 may be brought forward for the same opinion. By these the same authors try to prove that a man in fallen nature, so long as the judgment of reason is not overwhelmed, has a natural faculty without the help of grace to resist, at each instant, any temptations whatsoever, even the gravest, that must be overcome in order to keep the natural law. For once this is admitted, it evidently follows that he has precisely the same natural powers for embracing the good proportionate to himself and avoiding evil that he would have had in pure nature.

This opinion, however, just like the one we refuted in the preceding Disputation, is not approved by very learned men, nor is it consonant with the teaching of Saints Augustine and Thomas; rather, it is wholly alien to it. Hence let this be

IV. The first conclusion. A man in fallen nature, without the help of grace, does not have the same powers for embracing natural good and avoiding evil that he would have had in pure nature.² This conclusion follows manifestly from what has been said: through sin man was not only stripped of gratuitous gifts, but was also wounded, weakened, and changed for the worse in his natural powers. In pure nature, however, he would truly not be wounded in his natural endowments, weakened, or afflicted with wounds. But a wounded man, afflicted with wounds and weakened by infirmity, does not have the same powers for performing the works of nature that he would have if he had suffered no infirmity or weakness of his limbs. Therefore.

Secondly, through original or mortal sin man has been turned away from God not only as the supernatural end but also as the natural end. For it is impossible that a man ordered to eternal life be turned away through sin from the supernatural end without also being turned away, at least consequently, from the natural end; otherwise he could at once be turned away from God as the author of grace and turned toward him as the author of nature, which plainly involves a contradiction. But in pure nature he would in no way be turned away from God, even as the author of nature, for that state excludes grace and sin, and man in it is considered precisely according to what belongs to him from the principles of nature. Yet a man turned away from his ultimate end, even the natural end, does not have the same powers for the good proportionate to that end that he would have had if he had not been turned away from that same end. Therefore, and so on. The minor premise is proved: as Aristotle says, the ultimate end in practical matters stands as first principles do in speculative matters. But an intellect turned away from the first speculative principles does not have the same powers for inferring scientific conclusions that it would have if it were well instructed in those principles. Therefore, likewise, a man turned away through sin from the ultimate natural end does not have the same powers for embracing the good proportionate to that end and avoiding evil that he would have had if he had not been turned away from that same end through sin.

It is proved thirdly because, as will be clear in Disputation 51, a man in fallen nature cannot by the powers of nature alone love God above all things without qualification, even as the natural end; but in pure nature he could by his own powers elicit one or another act of love of God above all things insofar as he is the end of nature, as will be made clear in the same Disputation. Therefore, in fallen nature he does not have the same powers that he would have had in pure nature. And by this the objections are answered.

V. To the first argument, then, it is replied that a man in fallen nature is turned away from the ultimate end, even the natural end, from which he would not have been turned away if he had been created in pure nature. In this respect he has greater difficulty in doing the good proportionate to his nature than he would have had in pure nature.³ If, besides original sin, he also has actual sins, the sensitive appetite is made stronger in its struggle against reason, and through a habit of vice generated by multiplied acts the will is more and more inclined toward evil. In this respect he will have less power to carry out the good than he would have had in pure nature.

To the second argument it is replied that in pure nature a man could, by the faculty of nature alone, elicit one or another purely natural act of love of God above all things without qualification, which, however, he cannot elicit in fallen nature, as was said.

To the third argument it is replied that, although man’s free choice was not extinguished by sin, it was nevertheless bruised, wounded, and injured, as was said above in Disputations 45 and 46; these wounds, however, he would not have had in pure nature. Therefore, by his own powers in fallen nature he cannot perform every good work, even a natural one, that he could have performed in pure nature. Nor does it follow from this that man lost free choice with respect to those works that he cannot perform without the help of grace. For he can produce any act, at least with special help, which suffices for him to be considered to have free choice with respect to any good work; for what we can do through friends we are considered able to do ourselves, as Aristotle says in Ethics 3, chapter 3.

VI. To the confirmation it is replied with St. Thomas that, if something is said to be within man’s power with the help of grace excluded, then man is bound to many things that he cannot do without prevenient grace, such as loving God and neighbor, and likewise believing the articles of faith.⁴ Yet he can do this with the help of grace, which help is mercifully given by God to whomever it is given. To those to whom it is not given, it is withheld in justice as punishment for prior sin, and at least for original sin, as Augustine says in On Correction and Grace.⁵

To the fourth argument it is replied that, as St. Thomas teaches, human nature is more corrupted by sin with respect to appetite for the good than with respect to knowledge of the true. Hence it does not follow that the will can, without the help of grace, do all the good that the intellect can know by the light of nature.⁶

To the confirmation it is replied that this is not the sense of the Apostle touched upon in the argument; otherwise by the powers of nature alone a man in fallen nature could fulfill all the natural precepts of the law and love God above all things without qualification as the author of nature, which is false, as will be clear in Disputation 51. I add that this explanation of the Apostle had earlier been given by Julian, as Augustine reports when he says: Hence I do not see at all how those whom you wished to mention help you: those of whom the Apostle says, The Gentiles who do not have the law are a law to themselves, having the work of the law written in their hearts. For by means of them you have tried to prove that even those outside the faith of Christ can have true justice, because, according to the Apostle, they do by nature the things that belong to the law.⁷⁸ St. Augustine explains the Apostle’s passage twice in the same chapter. The first explanation is that the Gentiles are said to do by nature the things of the law without the law, that is, through a nature corrected by grace.⁹ For he says: They are therefore said to do by nature the things of the law without the law because they came from the Gentiles to the Gospel, not from circumcision, to which the law was given; and they do so by nature because, in order that they might believe, their nature itself has been corrected by God’s grace. You cannot prove by them what you wish, namely, that even unbelievers can have true virtues; for they are believers. He gives the same explanation in On the Spirit and the Letter, chapters 26 and 27, which St. Thomas follows in many places, especially I–II, q. 109, art. 4, reply to objection 1. For when he had cited the Apostle’s passage above in proof that man can fulfill the precepts of the law without grace by his natural endowments, he replies that, as Augustine says in On the Spirit and the Letter, we should not be troubled by the fact that he said they do by nature the things of the law; for the Spirit of grace does this, restoring in us the image of God in which we were made by nature. St. Augustine’s second explanation in the same place is that, if the Apostle’s cited passage is understood of Gentiles who do not have the faith of Christ, it should not be extended to all the precepts of the law, but to some easy ones, and to the fulfillment of a precept in some particular matter as regards the substance of the act, but not as regards the rectitude that arises from the ultimate end. For Augustine says: Or, if they do not have faith in Christ, then surely they are neither just nor pleasing to God, since without faith it is impossible to please him. But let their thoughts defend them on the day of judgment, so that they may be punished more tolerably, because they did to some extent by nature the things of the law, having the work of the law written in their hearts to this extent: that they would not do to others what they would not wish to suffer themselves. Yet they sin in this, that as men without faith they did not refer these works to the end to which they ought to have referred them. For Fabricius will be punished less than Catiline, not because the former was good but because the latter was worse; and Fabricius is less impious than Catiline, not because he had true virtues, but because he did not deviate so far from true virtues. This will be explained more fully in Disputation 50.

VII. To the second confirmation it is replied that St. Augustine explains in the same place what those moral good works are that man can do in fallen nature without the help of grace. For he immediately adds: By good works I mean those that arise from the good of nature: that is, wanting to work in the field, wanting to eat and drink, wanting to have a friend, wanting to have clothes, wanting to build a house, wanting to marry a wife, to raise livestock, to learn a craft of various good things, wanting whatever good pertains to this present life. All these things do not stand without divine governance; indeed, they are or began to be from him and through him.¹⁰

WITH these matters concerning original sin and the wounds inflicted by it on the whole of human nature established, it must consequently be explained what natural powers free choice has for knowing or performing the good proportionate to nature and for rejecting evil, especially in fallen nature. Seven questions arise concerning this.

I. Whether man’s free choice can know all truth pertaining to the order of nature by its own powers alone, without the help of grace.

II. Whether by the powers of nature alone it can assent to all supernatural mysteries proposed and explained to it as revealed by God, with a purely natural assent, certain and firm on the part of the believer.

III. Whether, without the help of grace, a person can perform some work of moral virtue that is good by its object and all its circumstances, and that, by comparison with the ultimate natural end, is truly good and a work of true virtue.

IV. Whether in fallen nature, by his own powers alone, with the general concurrence of God, a person can elicit an absolute, purely natural act of love of God above all things, with an absolute resolve to please him in all things.

Here it is explained whether a man, if he had been created in pure nature, could by his own powers elicit some natural act of love of God above all things.

V. Whether free choice, with only the general concurrence of God, can elicit attrition or contrition as regards only the substance of the act, together with an absolute resolve never again to sin mortally.

VI. Whether man can, through the natural powers of his free choice, prepare the good connatural to him that he lost through sin.

VII. Whether fallen man can, without the help of grace, keep all the commandments and resist at every moment of time all the temptations that confront him, even the gravest, which must be overcome in order to keep the natural law.

Whether man can know every truth pertaining to the order of nature by the powers of nature alone, without the help of grace.

I. To explain this difficulty, it should be noted that natural truths are of two kinds. Some are purely speculative, such as that quantity is distinct or not distinct from the thing quantified, that the principles of natural things are three, and other truths of this sort. It is most certain, and established by experience, that man can know some natural truths without the special help of grace. The reason is that the natural light was not extinguished through sin, but only injured. Other truths are moral and concern good moral actions as such, for example: theft must be avoided; parents must be honored.

Practical judgment concerning particular actions to be done, and so forth, is concerned with these truths. Speaking of these truths, Gregory of Rimini in 2 Sentences, dist. 27, q. 1, dist. 1, and Capreolus in the same book, dist. 28, q. 1, conclusion 1, hold that after the Fall man cannot know any moral truth by the powers of nature alone, without the special help of grace. Their chief arguments are given by Medina, part 2, q. 109, art. 1, doubt 1. But this opinion is commonly rejected by theologians. Hence, for the resolution, let this be

II. The first conclusion. In fallen nature man can know some moral virtues without the special help of grace.¹ It is proved by the argument already made: sin did not extinguish the dictate or light of natural reason, but only wounded and injured it. Therefore, by his own powers together with the general concurrence of God, a man can know some natural truth. It is also proved as follows: as will be clear in Disputation 50, fallen man can by the powers of nature perform some morally good work, such as planting vines or giving a small alms to a needy person. Therefore, much more can he know by the powers of nature alone that this work should be done. The consequence is clear, for, as St. Thomas says, part 2, q. 109, art. 2, reply to objection 3: Human nature is more corrupted by sin with respect to appetite for the good than with respect to knowledge of the true.

The second conclusion. After the Fall man cannot by the powers of nature alone know all moral truths pertaining to the order of nature, nor have certain judgment in every situation about what should be done or avoided. This conclusion is common; Medina proves it in the same place, conclusion 2. The chief reason is that a weak and wounded nature cannot do all that a sound and intact nature can do. But knowing what should be done and avoided in every situation belongs to a sound and intact nature. Therefore in fallen nature man cannot know all these things unless he is first healed and helped by the aid of medicine. Hence the Wise Man says: The thoughts of mortals are fearful, and our plans uncertain; for the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and this earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks on many things; we can scarcely judge what is on earth, and what is before our eyes we find with labor.² See what was said concerning this conclusion in Disputation 46, no. 2.

III. The third conclusion. Even in intact nature, with habitual grace, every help, and every special gift set aside, man could not, morally speaking, know collectively everything knowable that pertains to the order of nature, so as to have at once knowledge of all natural things.³ To make this conclusion clear, it should be noted that, as St. Thomas teaches in I, q. 101, art. 1, if some children had been born in the state of innocence, they would not have been perfect in knowledge at once; rather, they would have acquired it successively through the ministry of the senses, by discovery or from a teacher, though without any difficulty. The reason is that, as Aristotle teaches in On the Soul 3, text 14, our soul by its nature is like a blank tablet on which nothing has been depicted. Therefore, with the gift of grace set aside, no man has knowledge, nor would he have it in that state, unless he acquired it. Our conclusion is therefore proved: morally speaking, even in that state it would be impossible for one man to use the ministry of the senses to know collectively everything that is knowable by nature. For the power of any human intellect is limited, and, with the gift of grace set aside, it must receive species from knowable objects. But while the intellect attends to one knowable object, it turns away from another. Therefore, morally speaking, it could not collectively know everything knowable that pertains to the order of nature.

It is confirmed: although there is no ignorance in the holy angels, there is nevertheless nescience with respect to certain things, as Dionysius teaches in Celestial Hierarchy, chapter 7. Therefore ignorance with respect to certain things knowable by nature could also be admitted in a man, if he had been born in the state of original justice, when the thing knowable did not pertain to his state.⁴

IV. But an argument is made against the second and third conclusions. All natural truths are proportionate to our intellect according to its natural power. Therefore, even with the help of grace set aside, it can know all those truths. The antecedent is most certain: all natural truths are contained within the limits of nature; therefore all are proportionate to our intellect. It is confirmed. All natural truths are knowable by nature; therefore they can be known by some intellect through nature; therefore there could be an intellect of some man so perfect that he might know all natural truths by the powers of nature without the help of grace.

It is replied that all natural truths, taken separately, are proportionate to our intellect in intact nature, but not if they are taken collectively. Thus prime matter is proportionate to all natural forms taken separately, and so can naturally receive all of them separately, but not collectively.

It is replied, secondly, that if the argument proceeds in fallen nature, it presents no difficulty, since the intellect was wounded by sin and therefore is not proportionate to everything knowable by nature. But if it proceeds concerning man in intact nature, we say that, with the gift of grace set aside, even if all natural truths taken collectively were proportionate to man’s intellect, metaphysically speaking, because they belong to the same order, they would nevertheless not be proportionate to it, morally speaking, for the reasons given above. To the confirmation it is replied that all natural truths taken collectively are knowable by nature to some intellect, even a created one, namely, the angelic intellect; but it does not follow that all are knowable by nature collectively to the same human intellect, at least morally speaking.⁵ Other matters pertaining to this difficulty should be seen in Medina, in the place cited above.

Next we must treat supernatural truths and explain what natural powers man has, especially in fallen nature, for assenting to truths of this kind.

Whether by the powers of nature alone man can assent to all the supernatural mysteries proposed and explained to him as revealed by God, with an assent that is certain and firm on the part of the believer.

I. Concerning this difficulty, before the time of Pelagius there was the heresy of Basilides, who, with the Valentinians, said that faith is natural to man.¹ So Clement of Alexandria reports in Stromata, book 4. Later, around the year 400, the heresy of Pelagius arose. As St. Augustine reports in Epistle 106 to Paulinus and Epistle 107 to Vitalis, and St. Thomas in II–II, q. 6, art. 1, Pelagius asserted that faith is not a gift of God, but is in us from ourselves; it depends on God only insofar as he reveals what must be believed through preachers, or through the law and teaching. Tyconius was in the same error before Pelagius, as St. Augustine reports in On Christian Doctrine, book 1, chapter 3. Indeed, before he had examined this question more carefully, St. Augustine himself adhered to the aforesaid opinion, as he admits in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 3, where he says he had erred before his episcopate when he thought that the faith by which one believes in God was not God’s gift but came from us and was in us, and that through it we obtained from God the gifts by which we live piously in this world. He reports the same in Retractions, book 1, chapter 23. Then, around the year 440, Faustus of Riez, a Gallic bishop, followed the same error, as John Maxentius reports in his reply to Pope Hormisdas’s letter and in the preface to the faith, as does Fulgentius in On the Incarnation and Grace of Christ. It is plainly gathered from Faustus’s own books On the Grace of God and the Free Choice of the Human Mind, whose words we cited in Disputation 2.²

Likewise Cassian and certain other Massilian Semi-Pelagians adhered to this error. For in Conference 13, chapter 17, he distinguishes two ways of calling to faith and to grace itself, and says that³ in some people God’s grace and help precede every human will, so that it comes beforehand to those who are not asking or knocking, but are asleep, that they may come to faith, according to Isaiah 65 and Romans 10: I was found by those who did not seek me; I appeared openly to those who did not ask me. Yet he asserted that they came to faith unwillingly. So St. Prosper reports in Against the Collator, chapter 4. At other times, however, man himself began by the powers of nature to believe, ask, knock, and desire faith, and by the watchfulness of his free will had certain imperfect beginnings, on account of which God at once conferred the help of grace so that he might believe more fully and perfectly; and then man believed freely. The same Prosper reports this in Against the Collator throughout, especially chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9, and in his letter to Augustine, section But some do good. We cited his words in Disputation 2, where we recounted the error of the Semi-Pelagians at length. Their arguments are these.

The first argument is drawn from Romans 10, If you believe, you will be saved, and Mark 16, He who believes and is baptized will be saved. There something is required of man, namely faith, and something is offered to him, namely salvation. Therefore, just as the salvation offered is within God’s power, so the faith required will be within man’s power. Hence man can believe by the powers of nature, for nothing is within anyone’s power except what he himself can do.

II. Secondly, an argument is made from Cassian, Conference cited above, chapter 9, from Romans 7: To will is present with me, but I do not find how to accomplish it; Isaiah I: If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; Luke 12: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you, and so forth; and Isaiah 30: At the sound of your cry, as soon as he hears it, he will answer you. Therefore from the good of nature there can arise certain beginnings of a good will, by which one seeks, asks for, and desires faith, and so on.

He confirms this in chapters 11 and 12 with many other testimonies of Scripture, from which he concludes that the beginning of a good will is not always to be attributed to grace, nor always to free choice, but sometimes to grace and sometimes to free choice. For sacred Scripture says in some places that grace itself takes the initiative, as in Romans 10 and Isaiah 65: I was found by those who did not seek me; I appeared openly to those who did not ask me, and so forth; and Isaiah: All day long I have spread out my hands to a people that does not believe but contradicts me.⁴ Psalm 48 says, My God, his mercy will come before me; Psalm 118, I waited for him who saved me, and so forth. In other passages it says that free choice takes the initiative before God’s grace, as Psalm 87: And in the morning his prayer will come before you; Psalm 118: I came before dawn and cried out; Isaiah 30: Therefore the Lord waits, that he may have mercy on you. He proves the same in chapter 13 from the Gospel: in Matthew 4 the Lord took the initiative by calling and drawing Peter and Andrew to himself, when they were thinking nothing about their salvation; finally, in Luke 18 Zacchaeus took the initiative before the Lord by his desire, for he climbed a sycamore tree in order to see him, and the Lord received his will, honored him, and turned him to himself.

Thirdly, an argument is made for the same opinion. According to the common philosophical maxim, a power is necessary for acting at all, but a habit, since it is a perfection of a power, is not necessary for acting at all, but only for acting better and more perfectly. But the gift of faith is a habit; likewise, prevenient actual help is reduced to a habit or is its complement, as was shown in Disputation 19. Therefore neither the habit of faith nor special help is necessary for believing at all, but only for believing more easily and better. If it is said that acquired habits are necessary for acting better and more perfectly, but infused habits are necessary for acting at all because they elevate the power to act above the whole capacity of nature, the counterargument is: every operative habit belongs essentially to a power as its perfection. Therefore it presupposes the active power of the faculty that it perfects. Therefore the intellect, even without special help, has the character of a power with respect to the act of believing. Therefore it can produce that act by its own natural power alone, at least as regards the substance of the act.

III. Fourthly, an argument is made from Matthew 11: If the mighty works that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Explaining this passage, St. Augustine says in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 14: The Tyrians and Sidonians could have believed if they had seen those miraculous signs of Christ. But since it had not been given to them to believe, even that by which they might believe was denied to them. From this it appears that some people naturally have, in their very native ability, a divine gift of understanding, by which they are moved to faith if they hear words or see signs suited to their minds. And yet, if by God’s higher judgment they have not been separated from the mass of perdition by the grace of predestination, neither divine words nor deeds are brought to bear on them, through which they could believe if they were to hear or see such things. And in To Simplicianus, book 1, question 2, explaining Matthew 20, Many are called, but few are chosen, he says: Those are chosen who are called suitably; those who were not suited and did not conform themselves to the call were not chosen, because they did not follow, although called. By these words he seems to indicate that it is from God that the Gospel is suitably proposed outwardly or even inwardly, through signs and words by which it is made credible, but that, once the Gospel has been proposed in this way, giving assent proceeds from man and from the natural faculty of free choice. The same seems to be gathered from Romans 10, How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? and so forth, and afterward he adds: Therefore faith is from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Fulgentius seems to say the same in On the Grace of Christ, chapter 23, where he teaches that man can believe naturally.

IV. Among more recent theologians, some respond to the difficulty proposed with certain assertions. The first assertion is that man, with only the general concurrence of God, can by a purely natural act assent to all supernatural mysteries as revealed by God, and, because they have been revealed by God, with an assent that is certain and firm on the part of the believer. They add, however, that this assent is not as it must be for salvation.⁵ To explain their opinion more clearly, they affirm that, concerning the objects in which a Lutheran does not err, when he assents to them as revealed by God and because they have been revealed by God, we elicit a supernatural assent, while the Lutheran elicits a natural one from his own natural powers alone, without any mediated or immediate supernatural influx from God. Yet as regards infallibility concerning the objects, which follows from that first ground—that God truly revealed them to the Church through his servants and ministers—Lutherans are on a par with us, and no more falsity can underlie such an assent of the Lutheran than underlies ours.⁶ Secondly, they say that neither the habit of faith nor God’s special help is necessary for our intellect to assent easily and with discernment to the aforesaid mysteries, nor for the act of assent to be certain and firm with a certainty and firmness on the part of the believer; rather, such help is necessary for the act of believing to be supernatural and as it must be for salvation.⁷ Thirdly, they say that after a man has been taught that supernatural assent is necessary for salvation, he can desire to believe in this way and also try to assent by a supernatural gift and help of God. Finally, he can ask that this help be given to him and diligently prepare himself to receive it.⁸ Fourthly, they say that if a person does all that lies within him by the powers of nature in order to assent to the mysteries of faith proposed to him, God will infallibly, according to a certain law established by the Father with the Son on account of the merits of his Passion, give him the help of grace so that he believes as it must be for salvation. For this reason they teach that the supernatural act of believing is placed within the faculty of our free choice: if a man does all that lies within him in order to believe, God will give him special help so that the act of faith is supernatural and as it must be for salvation.⁹ But this law must be treated more fully in Disputation 65. Therefore, to prove the first three assertions, especially the first and the second, there is

V. The fifth argument. If the Gospel is proposed to someone with signs and miracles that make it appear most credible, a man sins against faith if he does not believe. Therefore, once the Gospel has been proposed in the aforesaid way, a man can believe as regards the substance of the act by the faculty of nature. The consequence is clear, because no one sins by failing to do what he truly cannot do; for no one is bound to do the impossible. If it is said that he can believe, but only with special help, and therefore sins if he does not believe, the counterargument is: let us suppose the case in which God has decided not to give him any special help, but only the general concurrence. The argument then stands. In the case supposed, that man sins if he does not believe or disbelieves. Therefore by the faculty of nature alone he could produce the act of believing as regards its substance, by which he would fulfill the precept of believing; otherwise in the case supposed that man would necessarily sin.

Sixthly, an argument is made. The act of faith is natural as regards its substance and supernatural only as regards its manner. Therefore, as regards its substance, it can be produced by the natural faculty of the intellect alone. The antecedent is clear: as regards its substance, the act of faith is intrinsically a vital act and therefore signifies an intrinsic order to a vital power, namely, the intellect, which is a natural power. Therefore in this respect the act of faith is natural as regards its substance; therefore it can be produced by the faculty of nature alone.

Seventhly, when the Council of Trent, Session 6, decree on justification, canon 3, and the Second Council of Orange, chapters 6 and 25, determine that special help from God is necessary for the act of believing, they always add the phrase as it must be, so that the grace of justification may be conferred on man. Therefore both Councils hold that man can by the faculty of nature alone believe supernatural mysteries as revealed by God with a purely natural assent, though not as it must be for salvation; otherwise the Councils would have added the phrase as it must be to no purpose.

Eighthly, an argument is made from John 15: If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin; and again: If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. Therefore, at least those who heard Christ and saw his miracles could give assent to the doctrine of Christ the Lord with only the general concurrence of God.

VI. I affirm that St. Augustine and St. Thomas hold the contrary opinion. To make this clear, it should first be noted¹⁰ that, as St. Thomas teaches in II–II, q. 4, art. 2, in the body, believing supernatural mysteries is an act of the intellect insofar as it is moved by the will to assent. Hence St. Augustine says at the end of On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 5, that faith consists in the will of believers,¹¹ insofar, that is, as the intellect assents to things believable at the command of the will. Hence a devout affection is required on the part of the will. The reason is that, since the object of faith does not compel the intellect, the intellect itself must be moved by the will to assent to matters of faith. It should be noted, secondly,¹² that someone can assent to the mysteries of faith in two ways. First, with a certain opinionative and fallible assent as regards the formal reason for assenting: so that he believes the revealed mysteries only materially, but does not formally assent to them as revealed by God, or because of divine revelation, which is infallible, but on account of some human motive or probable reason, to which, speaking in itself, falsity may attach. Secondly, he can assent to the aforesaid mysteries with an assent that is certain, firm, and infallible on the part of the believer, as revealed by God, or because of divine revelation as the formal reason for believing. It should be noted, thirdly,¹³ that the present difficulty concerns not only faith formed by charity but also unformed faith, such as is found in a faithful sinner. For, as St. Thomas shows in II–II, q. 6, art. 2, such unformed faith is truly and properly Christian faith, of which the Councils, Supreme Pontiffs, and holy Doctors determine that it is a gift of God. Fourth,¹⁴ it must be assumed that everyone holds as most certain that for an act of faith God, on his part,¹⁵ must first, himself, propose inwardly and immediately the object to be believed, or explain externally, by the ministry of preachers, what is to be believed with sufficient clarity. This is plainly clear from Romans 10: How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? The Pelagians themselves did not deny this, as St. Augustine expressly reports in On the Grace of Christ against Pelagius and Celestius, book 1, chapter 7, where he cites these words of Pelagius: God helps us through his teaching and revelation, when he opens the eyes of our heart, when he shows us future things so that we are not occupied with present things, when he discloses the snares of the devil, and when he enlightens us with the manifold and ineffable gift of heavenly grace. From these words, as Augustine noted in the same book, chapter 8, it is plainly clear that Pelagius confesses a grace by which God shows and reveals what we ought to do and believe, but not one by which he gives and helps us to do and believe. He reports the same in chapter 33 and in other places cited in Disputation 1, no. 6 and following, which will be explained further below in Disputation 95. There I shall prove by the clearest testimonies of St. Augustine and the other Fathers that the chief question they had with Pelagius was not about exciting grace but about assisting grace. The whole controversy, then, concerns the inward assent by which man believes and assents, with an assent certain and infallible on the part of the believer, to the aforesaid mysteries proposed and explained to him as revealed by God: whether, to elicit such an assent, the special help of assisting grace is necessary without qualification on the part of both intellect and will. Therefore let this be.

VII. The first conclusion. No one can assent to the aforesaid mysteries as revealed by God with Christian assent by the faculty of nature alone, without special help from God.¹⁶ No Catholic Doctor denies this conclusion, for it was defined by the Church against the Pelagians at the Second Council of Orange, canons 5 and 7; at the Council of Milevis, canon 4; and at Trent, Session 6, decree on justification, canon 3. St. Augustine proves it at length in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapters 17 and 19, where in support of the same opinion he cites St. Cyprian, Ambrose, and Gregory Nazianzen. He proves the same in Epistle 105 and the two following letters, and in On the Spirit and the Letter, chapters 31 and 32. St. Prosper of Aquitaine proves it in On the Calling of All Nations, book 1, chapter 24; in Against the Collator, chapters 36 and 37; and in reply 8 to the Chapters of the Gauls.

Secondly, it is proved from Philippians I: It has been granted to you not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him; Ephesians 2: You have been saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God; and 1 Corinthians 4: What do you have that you did not receive? By this testimony especially, together with the authority of Cyprian, Augustine admits in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 3, that he was convicted to retract the opinion he had asserted before his episcopate: Faith is not God’s gift, but is in us from ourselves. For the Apostle, in order to include faith itself, says absolutely: What do you have that you did not receive, and so on.¹⁷ For faith is something, and something conducive to salvation.

VIII. It is proved thirdly: if such an assent of faith comes from us without the special help of assisting grace, it follows that the first beginning of our justification comes from us, and hence that one man distinguishes himself from another by the faculty of his free choice, at least by taking the initiative. This is contrary to the Apostle’s words in 1 Corinthians 4: For who distinguishes you? The consequence is proved: the first beginning of justification is Christian faith, according to the Apostle’s words, He who comes to God must believe, and so forth.¹⁸ Therefore, if by the faculty of nature alone a man can believe with Christian assent, he can by the faculty of nature alone supply the first beginning of his justification.

It is proved fourthly by St. Thomas’s reasoning in II–II, q. 6, art. 1. The mysteries of faith exceed the whole capacity of nature. Therefore no one can assent to them with Christian assent by the powers of nature alone, unless the intellect and will are elevated by some special help of prevenient grace, so that they may assent to those same mysteries.

It is confirmed: water cannot heat unless it has been heated by fire, because heating exceeds the whole natural power of water itself. But believing the mysteries of faith with Christian assent exceeds the whole power of a created intellect much more. Therefore, unless it is elevated by a supernatural gift, it cannot assent to the mysteries of faith with Christian assent.

IX. The second conclusion. Even for the very first beginning of Christian faith, the special help of prevenient grace is necessary. Thus no beginning or commencement of Christian faith, however imperfect, can arise from the powers of nature alone or from the sole vigilance of free choice, whether it consists in asking for or desiring such faith, or anything else. This conclusion is against Cassian and the other Massilian Semi-Pelagians, but is asserted by the holy Father Augustine in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 2, and On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 20; and it is defined in the Second Council of Orange, canon 5, where it says: If anyone says that, just as the increase of faith, so also the beginning of faith itself and the very affection of belief by which we believe in him who justifies the impious and come to the regeneration of baptism, is naturally in us and not through the gift of grace—that is, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit correcting our will from unbelief to faith, from impiety to piety—he is proved an adversary of the apostolic dogmas, since blessed Paul says: We trust,¹⁹²⁰ that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that other passage: It has been granted to you for Christ not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him. And: You have been saved by grace through faith, not from yourselves: it is the gift of God. For those who say that the faith by which we believe in God is natural thereby declare all those who are alien to the Church of Christ to be in some way believers.²¹ By these words it teaches plainly enough that not only the act of believing but also the very affection of belief, or desire to believe in him who justifies the impious, is not naturally in us—that is, from the powers of nature—but comes from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Let the words the beginning of faith, the very affection of belief be weighed. For they signify that the affection or desire to believe is the beginning of faith: although faith is an act of the intellect, it presupposes a devout affection of the will, as St. Thomas teaches in II–II, q. 2, art. 2. Let the passages of Scripture also be noted that the Council adduces to confirm the same teaching. Moreover, in canon 6 immediately following, it says: If anyone says that divine mercy is conferred on us when we believe, will, desire, strive, labor, watch, study, ask, seek, and knock, without the grace of God, but does not confess that it comes about through the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit within us that we believe, will, or are able to do all these things as we ought, and subordinates the help of grace to human humility or obedience, nor agrees that it is the gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he resists the Apostle who says, What do you have that you did not receive? and, By the grace of God I am what I am.²² And in canon 7 it defines that by the vigor of nature man cannot consent to the preaching of the Gospel without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives sweetness to all in consenting and believing. If anyone maintains that by the vigor of nature he can think, as is expedient, of any good pertaining to the salvation of eternal life, or choose it, or consent to saving preaching—that is, the preaching of the Gospel—without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives all sweetness in consenting to and believing the truth, he is deceived by a heretical spirit, not understanding the voice of God in the Gospel, saying, Without me you can do nothing, and the Apostle’s words: Not that we are competent to think anything of ourselves, as if from ourselves, but our competence is from God.²³²⁴²⁵ From these words it follows that without the help of grace man cannot consent to the preaching of the Gospel proposed and explained to him. It is not enough to reply that the Council did not say absolutely that man cannot consent by the powers of nature alone to the Gospel sufficiently proposed, but added as is expedient or as we ought. For this is opposed by the fact that to assent to all the mysteries of faith proposed as revealed by God, or because of divine revelation as the formal reason for believing, is to assent to those same mysteries as is expedient for salvation. The same Council confirms this in canon 25 near the end, where it says: We also healthfully confess and believe that in every good work we do not begin first and are afterward helped by God’s mercy; rather, he himself first inspires in us, without any preceding good merits, both faith and love of himself. But if the assent of faith were from us, man would already begin to believe without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore.

This is confirmed by a notable testimony of St. Augustine in Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, book 2, chapter 8, where, reporting and attacking their opinion, These people, he says, want the desire for good to begin in man from man himself, so that the grace of completion may follow as a reward for this beginning. And below: Perhaps²⁶, then, they preserve a place for grace in this way at least: they think that without it man can have a desire for good, though imperfect, but that it can be perfected not merely more easily through grace, but only through grace. Yet even in this way they say that God’s grace is given according to our merits. He proves the same in chapters 9 and 10, where in confirmation of this teaching he adduces Psalm 76: And I said: Now I have begun; observing that it does not say: this is the change of my will, but: of the Most High’s right hand. For even the very beginning, however imperfect, of faith and of any pious action is not in us from ourselves, but from the help of prevenient grace. Since, then, to assent to all supernatural mysteries as revealed by God is some beginning of faith—indeed, it is perfect faith as regards its essence, since believing is nothing other than thinking with assent—it follows that this sort of assent cannot be had without the help of grace.

Secondly, it is proved from Philippians 2: We trust that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Christ. From these words the aforesaid Council, canon 5, proves that both the beginning and the completion of faith proceed from the gift of grace.

Thirdly, it is proved from Romans 11: For from him and through him and in him are all things. St. Augustine argues from these words against the Massilians in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 2, as follows: According to the Apostle’s decree, all things are from God; therefore the very beginning of faith is also from God. For, says Augustine, the other things are not from him with this one excepted; rather, from him and through him and in him are all things.

Fourth, it is proved by another argument of that same Augustine in the same chapter:²⁷ For if a human being begins to believe by the powers of nature, and to have some beginning of a good will by seeking, asking, and knocking, on account of which faith itself, or the help of grace, is granted, it follows that grace is given on account of merits, contrary to the Apostle's statement: But if it is by works, it is no longer grace. The inference is proved: for one who began to believe from himself merits from the one in whom he believes the gift of faith. St. Prosper develops this argument in the book against the Collator, c. 6., when he says: How, then, do you fail to see that you fall under that condemnation which, whether you wish it or not, you are convicted of asserting: that God's grace is given according to our merits, since you affirm that some good work must precede, coming from human beings themselves, on account of which they obtain grace? For the faith of one who asks, the devotion of one who seeks, and the persistence of one who knocks cannot be considered to have no merit—especially since all such people are said both to receive, to come, and to enter.²⁸ In this matter it is superfluous, indeed impious, to wish to make room for merits existing before grace in such a way that what the Lord says would not be wholly true: No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. This would be so if the conversion of anyone to belief were without God's illumination, or if in any way a human will could extend itself to God without God, who draws to the Son the one whom he has called—not by compelling one who resists and is unwilling, but by making a willing person out of an unwilling one, and by whatever means inclining the unbelief of one who resists, so that the heart of the hearer, as delight in obeying is generated within it, rises where it had been pressed down, learns where it had been ignorant, trusts from where it had distrusted, and wills from where it had been unwilling.²⁹ Here St. Prosper concludes that grace is given according to our merits if it is once granted that some good work can proceed from the powers of nature, whether asking, desiring, or something similar, upon the performance of which a person infallibly obtains the gifts of grace. Nor is it enough to answer that this work of nature is not meritorious of grace and is not of the same order as grace. For St. Prosper seems tacitly to reject this solution in those words just cited: Whether you wish it or not, you are convicted of saying that grace is given according to our merits, etc. St. Augustine uses the same kind of argument in letter 143 to Anastasius, against certain people who are excessively confident in the human will, which they think, once the law has been given, can suffice for them to fulfill it, without any grace of holy inspiration to assist it beyond the teaching of the law. Arguing against them, he speaks as follows: Through their discussion, wretched and needy human weakness is persuaded that we ought not even to pray, lest we enter into temptation. They do not dare to say this openly, but this is what their view necessarily implies, whether they wish it or not. For³⁰, why are we told, Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation? Why also, in keeping with this exhortation, when he taught us to pray, did he command us to say: Lead us not into temptation, if this is not accomplished through the help of divine grace, but lies wholly within the free choice of the human will?

Fifth, another argument of that same Augustine, in chapter 2 of the cited work On the Predestination of the Saints, proves the point from 2 Corinthians 3: We are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as though from ourselves. Augustine argues from these words as follows: thinking is less than believing, and even less than beginning to believe; for believing is thinking with assent, and therefore includes both thinking and assenting. But thinking the mysteries of faith that are to be believed is not from us, but from God's gift, as the Apostle says. Therefore, all the more, the very beginning of faith will not be from us. Augustine proves the same conclusion in the passages cited before the preceding conclusion. Master Soto may be consulted on this in book 2 On Nature and Grace, chapter 8.

X. Third Conclusion. By the powers of nature alone, a human being can assent to supernatural mysteries proposed to him with a certain opinionative and fallible assent, insofar as concerns the believer; but not as to things revealed by God, in such a way that divine revelation, or the First Truth revealing, is the formal reason for assenting. Rather, the assent is given on account of some other motive or human reason.³¹ This is the conclusion of St. Thomas, 2. 2. q. 5. art. 3. in the body of the article and ad 1; it is also maintained by Capreolus, in 3. d. 24. q. 1., in the replies to Scotus’s first and fourth arguments against the second conclusion; Cajetan, p. 2. q. 109. ar. 1. and 4.; Medina, in the same article, dub. ult.; Soto, in the place cited above; and Báñez, 2. 2. q. 6. art. 1. It is the common opinion.

It is proved first: a heretic who disbelieves one article assents to the others, because he wills to do so, as experience shows; yet that assent does not proceed from the help of grace. Therefore it proceeds from the powers of nature.

It is proved second. Such an act, by which someone assents materially to revealed mysteries, but not insofar as they are revealed by God, is not a true act of Christian faith, but so only equivocally. For it belongs to the essence of Christian faith to rest upon the First Truth revealing as the formal reason for believing, as St. Thomas proves, 2. 2. q. 5. art. 1. Therefore special help is not necessary for that act, and consequently it proceeds from the powers of nature alone. The second part, however, will be evident from the proofs of the following conclusion.

XI. Fourth Conclusion. By a merely natural act, with only God's general concurrence, a human being cannot assent to all supernatural mysteries as revealed by God, with certain and firm assent, or infallible assent on the believer's part; rather, the special help of prevenient grace is necessarily required to elicit such an act.³² This conclusion is manifestly established by the teaching of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and by the common opinion of the Thomists; it is so certain that the opposite view seems to have no probability at all. This is shown as follows.

First: as is clear from the first and second conclusions, and from the arguments brought forward for them, no one can elicit a true assent of Christian and divine faith without the special help of grace. But the assent of which we speak in this conclusion is a true assent of Christian faith. Therefore. The minor is proved: as follows from St. Thomas, 2. 2. q. 1. art. 1 and q. 5. art. 3, in the body of the article and ad 1, Christian faith is distinguished from human faith in this respect: divine, or Christian, faith rests upon the First Truth as its formal reason, whereas human faith rests upon human testimony as the formal reason for believing, or upon some other human motive.³³ From this there follows in turn another difference: Christian faith is certain and infallible on the believer's part, because it rests upon an infallible and unfailing formal reason, namely, the First Truth revealing, which can neither be deceived nor deceive. Human faith, however, is fallible and liable to fail on the believer's part, because it rests upon a fallible foundation, namely, human testimony, although in another respect, on the part of its object, it is infallible. But the assent of which we speak rests upon divine revelation as its formal reason, for through it a human being assents to supernatural mysteries as revealed by God and because they have been revealed by God. Likewise, such assent is certain, firm, and infallible on the believer's part, with as great a certainty as Christian faith has, as is clear from the second statement of the opinion we are refuting. Therefore it is truly and properly an assent of Christian faith.

This is confirmed first. No assent is infallible unless it is assent to a thing known by the evident light of first principles or of science, or by a non-evident supernatural light, such as the light of faith or prophecy. But the aforesaid assent is infallible, and it is not assent to a thing known by the light of first principles or by scientific light. Therefore it must necessarily be assent to a thing known by the light of faith or prophecy. Therefore the special help of grace is required for it.³⁴

This is confirmed second: Christ the Lord praised Peter's faith when he declared, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, because it rested upon divine revelation as its formal reason, as is clear from those words in Matthew: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Therefore every assent by which someone assents to all the mysteries of faith as revealed by God is praiseworthy and must be regarded as a true assent of Christian faith.³⁵

It is proved second: St. Augustine and Prosper, in the cited passages, teach openly against Pelagius and the Massilians that no beginning or initial stage of faith, however imperfect, can proceed from the powers of nature alone. But a certain and firm assent by which someone assents to all supernatural mysteries as revealed by God is at least some imperfect inception and beginning of faith, and in some way leads toward attaining perfect faith, or toward obtaining the special help of grace. Therefore it cannot be had from the powers of nature alone. The minor is proved: according to the second opinion in the fourth statement, once that merely natural assent on the human being's part is posited, God immediately, by a certain law, bestows the help of grace, by which that work becomes supernatural and such as is necessary for salvation. Therefore it is some beginning of salvation and something that leads toward obtaining the help of grace.

It is proved third, and the fourth statement is refuted more fully: if a human being can have, by the powers of nature alone, an act of believing, upon the performance of which the help of grace is given by a certain law, it seems to follow that grace is given according to our merits. The inference is proved: as St. Augustine says in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 2: Who would say that one who has already begun to believe merits nothing from the one in whom he believes? But that person already begins to believe by the powers of nature. Therefore he merits from the one in whom he believes that perfect faith be bestowed upon him.

XII. If it is said that the assent preceding grace, being merely natural, has no value or merit for obtaining grace, nor any proportion to it, because they are of different orders, the reply is: Faustus and Cassian also affirmed that those good beginnings are merely natural.³⁶ They also said that a human being has no merit for obtaining grace, and that grace always remains gratuitous, as is clear from what was said in disputation 2, nos. 15, 26, and 28. Nevertheless, St. Prosper, on the basis of his statements, reproaches him for positing merit for grace. For he says: How do you fail to see that you fall into that condemned error which, whether you wish it or not, you are convicted of asserting: that God's grace is given according to our merits, since you affirm that some good work must precede, coming from human beings themselves, on account of which they obtain grace? For the faith of one who asks, the devotion of one who seeks, and the persistence of one who knocks cannot be considered to have no merit—especially since all such people are said both to receive, to come, and to enter.³⁷ Therefore, if all who have the aforesaid act of believing by the powers of nature receive the help of grace by a certain law, come, and enter, then by that act of believing they have already given some beginning to grace and in some way merit to enter.

It is proved fourth by the Apostle's authority, Romans 4: To one who works, however, the reward is not reckoned according to grace but according to debt. An argument is drawn from these words: as will be clear in disputation 56, if a king, out of his generosity or at a prince's request, were to establish this law—Whoever first enters such-and-such a city, I will give him that city—then in fact the person who first enters that city makes it due to himself, and, given the law, the king is bound by a kind of justice to give it to him. For that person performed the work to which the city was promised; but the reward is not reckoned to one who works according to grace, but according to debt. Yet that work, considered in itself, has no proportion to the city and no equal value; nevertheless, given the law, the city is owed to him. Therefore, correspondingly, if a law has been established, on account of Christ's merits, that the help of grace be given to one who believes by the mere capacity of nature, that help will be owed to the person who performs the work, given that law, even if the work in itself has no merit or value in relation to so great a reward.³⁸

XIII. Finally, it is proved: as is clear from what was said in disputation 1, among other reasons Pelagius erred because he thought that a human being could begin an act of faith and charity by himself, which God then perfected by subsequently giving grace. Although Pelagius denied that grace was necessary without qualification to perfect an act of faith and other good works, Julian nevertheless conceded this, as was said in disputation 1, no. 5. Therefore.

This is confirmed because the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians never said that the act of faith which they located in nature was supernatural on the part of the efficient cause, since it entails a contradiction that an act proceeding from the capacity of nature alone should be caused efficiently by a supernatural agent. Therefore the act of faith which the authors of the opposing opinion say proceeds from our free choice, with only general concurrence, seems in every respect to be like the act of faith which the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians located in nature.³⁹ The inference is clear: according to the opinion we are refuting, nothing at all is lacking to an act of faith produced from the powers of nature alone except that it becomes supernatural through a new inflow of grace together with free choice.

From these points it follows, against the second statement of that same opinion, that the special help of grace is necessary not only so that the act of believing may be supernatural and of the kind required for salvation, but also so that that assent may be certain and infallible on the believer's part. It is likewise necessary so that the act of believing may be directed toward a supernatural object, insofar as it is revealed by God; and, finally, so that it may simply be an assent of that kind of faith. It follows, second, against the third statement, that after a human being has been taught that supernatural assent is necessary for salvation, he cannot, without the help of grace, wish to believe in this way, or try by a supernatural gift and help of God to assent, or ask that this help be given to him, or endeavor to prepare himself to receive that same help. This is proved from what has been said: asking, wishing or desiring, and trying to have faith, etc., is some beginning of faith. Therefore such acts or efforts cannot be had from the powers of nature alone; rather, the special help of prevenient grace is necessarily required in order to elicit each one⁴⁰ of them.

XIV. In answer to the first argument made in support of the error of Pelagius and the Massilians, St. Augustine treats the matter expressly in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 10. We say with him that both are in God's power: what he requires of us and what he offers us.⁴¹ The holy Doctor proves this from Rom. 8, where it is said: If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. There we are required to put the deeds of the flesh to death, while life is offered to us. Would it then please us, Augustine says, to say that putting the deeds of the flesh to death is not God's gift, and to refuse to acknowledge it as God's gift, because we have heard it required of us, with the reward of life offered if we do it? May this never please those who share in and defend grace. We therefore say that our very act of believing is in God's power, as in the one who gives help for believing and as the one who first begins the work; and, once the help of grace is given, it is also in the power of our free choice, as the proximate cause freely eliciting that same act. For, as Celestine says: So great is God's kindness toward us that he wishes what are his own gifts to be our merits.⁴² Hence 1 Chronicles, chapter 29,⁴³ says: All things are yours, and what we have received from your hand we give back to you.

XV. Regarding Cassian's second argument, which concerns the Apostle's authority in Rom. 7, St. Prosper replies in lib. contra Collat. c. 8. that the same Apostle who said, To will is present with me, also said in Phil. 2, For it is God who works in us both to will and to accomplish, and in 2. ad Cor. 3, Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as though from ourselves. Hence that expression, To will is present with me, is the voice of a person called by God and placed under grace, who indeed delights in the law of God according to the inner person, but sees another law in his members, opposed to the law of his mind and taking him captive under the law of sin.

To the other two passages of Scripture, the reply is that we truly are the ones who will and ask, but God, by the special help of grace, brings it about that we will and ask,⁴⁴ according to the Apostle's statement: God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father;⁴⁵ that is, making us cry out, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas often explain. And again he says: For we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself pleads for us with inexpressible groanings;⁴⁶ that is, he makes us plead, as the holy Fathers commonly explain. And Ezekiel 36 says: I will cause you to act, and to walk in my commandments, etc.

In answer to the confirmation, we reply from the teaching of the Council of Trent, decree on justification, chapter 5, that when Sacred Scripture says, Turn to me, and I will turn to you, we are reminded of our freedom. But when we answer, Turn us, O Lord, to you, and we shall be turned, we confess that we are preceded by God's grace.⁴⁷⁴⁸ We say the same here: in those passages of Scripture where it is asserted that our prayer precedes God, or that God waits in order to have mercy on us, we are reminded of our freedom, because we believe and love freely, not under compulsion.⁴⁹ In other passages, however, it is signified that before we will and believe, we are preceded by the help of divine grace. Or one may say that, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. 2. q. 111. art. 3, in the body of the article, the same effect of grace can be prevenient in relation to some things and subsequent in relation to others. Therefore, when Scripture says, My prayer will precede you, that prayer is a subsequent effect in relation to the first calling and first prevenient grace; but in relation to a further effect of grace, it can be called prevenient. This will be discussed more fully in Disputation 95, where it will be explained in what sense God is said to wait for us to will.

XVI. As for Cassian's statement that those who are preceded by God's grace do not come freely, Prosper replies in Against the Collator, chapter 39, definition 6, that if free choice is taken away when it is preceded by grace, then one must also say that grace is taken away when it is preceded by free choice.⁵⁰ Therefore, just as the proper manner of acting is not taken away from natural causes but rather perfected when they are moved by God, so free choice is not destroyed but perfected when it is preceded by grace. For grace moves in accordance with the way free choice is apt to be moved—that is, freely—as was said in Disputations 18, 21, and 22.

To the third, the major premise is denied: we say that this is not an essential difference between a habit and a power, but an accidental difference between a power and an acquired habit, which, insofar as it is acquired, presupposes a capacity in the power to produce an act with respect to its substance.⁵¹ This is proved as follows: the habit of first principles is necessary in order to act at all. We therefore say that a supernatural habit, or special help, because it raises a power to something above the entire capacity of nature, takes the place of a power and is required in order to act at all. For a supernatural habit, since it is the highest among all habits, in a certain way reaches the character of a power, according to the common saying: The highest of the lowest reaches the lowest of the highest. To the reply, it is answered that every operative habit presupposes a power which that habit perfects or raises above the capacity of its nature. Hence the intellect, without special help, does not have proximately and formally the character of a power in relation to the supernatural act of believing; it has it fundamentally and remotely, insofar as by its nature it is capable of being raised by the help of grace so as to elicit an act of believing. The other external powers do not have this, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. 2. q. 50. art. 1.

XVII. To the fourth, we reply that in that passage, Matth. 11, it is not asserted that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have believed through those outward signs alone, if indeed they had been performed in Tyre and Sidon; rather, it is simply affirmed that, if they had been performed, they would have believed.⁵² This must nevertheless be understood with the addition of God's efficacious inward motion through the special help of grace, which God in his mercy would have given the Tyrians and Sidonians if the signs performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been performed among them, as was explained in disput. 7. num. 23.

To St. Augustine's authority from chapter 14 of On the Gift of Perseverance, the reply is that he is speaking there of what is required for faith on the part of the presentation of things to be believed, and with respect to the motion that belongs to the object. For it is natural that some people be more affected by an object presented with such signs or words than if it were presented otherwise.⁵³ For some people are naturally more inclined to joy than to sorrow; hence the Gospel is presented to them more fittingly, when they are led to believe through motives proportioned, on the part of that same object, to their inclination. And since it had not been granted to the Tyrians and Sidonians that they believe, this too was denied them, namely, a fitting presentation of the Gospel. This explanation is gathered from the context itself, for Augustine is speaking of miracles and signs by which the things to be believed are presented and confirmed. Yet besides this fitting presentation of the credible object, another inward motion on the part of the power is necessarily required for faith, through special help, as the same Augustine expressly admits very often, especially in lib. 1. cont. duas epist. Pelag. cc. 34 et 35, and lib. 1. de gratia Christi contra Pelagium et Caelestium, c. 24, where he says: Let them read, then, and understand; let them consider and acknowledge that God works in human hearts not by the law and teaching sounding outwardly, but by an inward and hidden, wonderful and ineffable power—not only true revelations, but also good wills.⁵⁴ And on c. 6 of Ioan. he says: Even if they hear these things from human beings, nevertheless what they understand is given inwardly; it shines inwardly; it is revealed inwardly. And on Ps. 87, near the end, he says: How would I believe unless I heard? But in order that I might believe what I heard, he himself drew me. Hence Acts 16 says: And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, who worshiped God, heard; the Lord opened her heart to attend to the things that were being said by Paul. From these words, Prosper in lib. 1. de vocat. gent. c. 2, in epist. ad Ruffinum, and in lib. contra Collat. c. 30 proves that, beyond the presentation of the Gospel, however fitting, an inward motion of God on the part of the power through special help is necessarily required for faith. The authority of St. Augustine cited from q. 2. ad Simplicianum is to be understood in the same way, as is also clear from the context itself. For immediately after the words quoted, he adds: We see some people moved to believe in one way and others in another, when the same things are shown or signified. For example, Simeon believed in our Lord Jesus Christ while he was still a tiny infant, recognizing him because the Spirit had revealed him. Nathanael, upon hearing one statement from him—Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you—answered: Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel. Much later Peter confessed the same, and deserved to hear that he was blessed and that the keys of the kingdom of heaven would be given to him. When a miracle was performed at Cana of Galilee—the beginning of Jesus’ signs, as John the Evangelist records—with water changed into wine, his disciples believed in him. Since one person is moved to faith in one way and another in another, and the same thing often moves when said in one way but does not move when said in another, and moves one person but not another, who would dare to say that God lacked a way of calling by which Esau too could have applied his mind to that faith and joined his will to it, in which Jacob was justified?^55565758 See, Augustine speaks expressly of moral motion, which takes place through different words or deeds.

XVIII. To the passage of Fulgentius, we reply that when he says a human being can believe naturally, he is speaking of a remote power, or capacity, which naturally belongs to a human being because he is of an intellectual nature and has free choice, pliable in either⁵⁹ direction. In this sense Augustine said: The ability to have faith belongs to human nature; having it belongs only to the faithful. This explanation is gathered from the context itself, for Fulgentius adds that it is divinely granted to a human being to believe. Or the word naturally should be understood to mean through a nature healed by grace. St. Augustine also explains in this sense the passage, Rom. 2: The Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things of the law.⁶⁰

To the fifth, the reply is that, as St. Thomas teaches, 2. 2. q. 2. art. 5. ad 1: If something is said to be in a human being's power, with the help of grace set aside, then a human being is bound to many things that he cannot do without prevenient grace, such as loving God and neighbor and likewise believing the articles of faith. Nevertheless, he can do this with the help of grace; and that help, to whomever it is divinely given, is given mercifully, while to those to whom it is not given, it is justly not given as punishment for preceding sin, at least original sin, as Augustine says in lib. de corrept. et gratia, cc. 5 et 6. The same is taught in book III Against the Gentiles, c. CLIX and CLX. Therefore, in the case described in the argument, if that person scorns the faith and does not believe, he sins mortally against faith—not because, once the Gospel had been preached, he could elicit an act of believing by the powers of nature alone, as the argument claims, but because he could do so with the help of grace and did not wish to, but maliciously hindered that help from being given to him.⁶¹ But if a person who hears the Gospel is not aroused and moved by God to believe by any inward help, even sufficient help, he does not sin against faith by failing to elicit an act of believing, because in fact he cannot elicit it without special help. Hence he is only negatively, not contrarily, an unbeliever, as follows from St. Thomas, 2. 2. q. 10. art. 1, where Master Báñez also expressly teaches this, dub. 3. concl. 5. I said: if he fails to elicit an act of faith, for if he positively resists the Gospel when it has been sufficiently presented and scorns it, he will sin against faith, as Master Báñez explains in the same place.⁶²

To the sixth, the antecedent is denied; it will be treated expressly in Disputation 65. In reply to the proof, we say that the proximate and formal vitality of an act of faith also comes from the habit of faith itself, as the principle by which, or from special help. For since that act is one and utterly simple, it is impossible for it to be composed of two entities, one natural and the other supernatural.⁶³ Moreover, this is clear from the authority of the Gospel: I give them eternal life,⁶⁴ where the very life possessed by the act of the beatific vision is attributed to the gift of grace. The reason is that since the vitality of that vision is unfailing by its nature, it cannot proceed from the natural power alone of a created intellect, which is in itself liable to fail; rather, it must proceed from an intellect raised by the unfailing light of glory, as will be clear in Disputation 64. The same must be said of other supernatural acts. In answer to the objection, we say that an act of faith, insofar as it is vital, expresses an intrinsic order to a vital power, but one raised by the habit of faith or by special help. For it is sufficient for the character of a vital act that it be produced by a vital power, either according to its natural power or by a power it receives from a superadded habit, as is clear in the beatific vision.

XIX. To the seventh, we reply that the phrase as is fitting was added in the Councils to distinguish this from an opinionative and fallible assent on the believer's part, by which someone assents to supernatural mysteries not insofar as they are revealed, but on account of some motive or human reason, as is found in a heretic.⁶⁵ For such assent is not as is fitting, and the process of justification does not begin from it; consequently the Councils are not speaking of it. But the assent by which someone firmly believes, on the believer's part, all the mysteries revealed, insofar as they are revealed, or on account of divine revelation as the formal reason, is truly an assent as is fitting. The first beginning of justification is taken from it, and thus it cannot be had without the special help of grace.

To the eighth, the inference is denied. For the Jews mentioned in those passages did not sin because they could, by the capacity of nature alone and with only general concurrence, assent to Christ's teaching as revealed by God. Rather, they sinned because, although they could believe through the help of grace, they resisted God as he called them and placed an obstacle in the way of that same grace, as was said.

Whether, without the help of grace, a human being in fallen nature can perform some moral work that, in comparison with the ultimate natural end, is truly good and a work of true virtue.

I. To explain the title of the question and make known the point under dispute, we must observe that, as St. Thomas teaches in 2. 2. q. 23. art. 7, in the body of the article, something may be called, or be, a true virtue in two ways. First, in relation to a particular good and to the proximate end of that same virtue, or to its object: namely, because the particular object that the virtue immediately regards is not an apparent good but a truly good one, since it can, considered in itself, be ordered to the principal good, which is the ultimate end. An example is someone who, while in mortal sin, gives a small alms to a poor friend out of natural piety, without adding a bad circumstance; and the same holds for other good works of this kind. The present difficulty does not concern this sense. For it is most certain in St. Thomas's teaching—and indeed in accordance with the decree of the bull of Pius V, which we will cite at the end of the following disputation—that without the help of grace a human being can elicit some morally good act that is truly good and a work of true, though imperfect, virtue in comparison with its object, or particular good, as in the case just given. For the aforesaid act can, considered in itself, be ordered to the principal good, which is the ultimate end. In this respect it differs from a feigned act of virtue that is not true virtue, which concerns a particular apparent good, as in the temperance of the avaricious, who restrain their appetite for costly lust, and the fortitude of the avaricious, who expose themselves to many dangers in order to become rich. For virtue of this kind is not true virtue, even imperfect virtue, but a false likeness of virtue. St. Thomas expressly teaches this in the cited art. 7, for he says: If virtue is taken insofar as it is ordered to some particular end, then some virtue can be said to exist without charity, insofar as it is ordered to some particular good. But if that particular good is not a true good but an apparent one, the virtue ordered to that good will also not be true virtue, but a false likeness of virtue. Thus the prudence of the avaricious is not true virtue, by which they devise different sorts of profit; nor the justice of the avaricious, by which, for fear of serious losses, they refrain from taking what belongs to others; nor the temperance of the avaricious, by which they restrain their appetite for costly lust; nor the fortitude of the avaricious, who, as Horace says, flee poverty by sea, over rocks, through fires, as Augustine says in book 4 Against Julian. But if that particular good is a true good, for example, the preservation of a city or something of the kind, it will indeed be true virtue, but imperfect, unless it is referred to the final and perfect good. Accordingly, absolutely speaking, true virtue cannot exist without charity. He teaches the same thing in many other places, from which it follows that in comparison with a particular good there can be true moral virtue without charity, although imperfect. For in relation to its proper object, by which it is specified, it has the true essence of virtue, although the act, on the part of the one acting, is not referred to God, supremely loved, as the ultimate end.

In the second way, something may be called true virtue, and its act truly good and a work of true virtue, not only in comparison with its object, or particular good, but also in comparison with the ultimate end, or universal good. This means that not only is that act, considered in itself, capable of being ordered to the principal good, which is the ultimate end, but also that on the part of the one acting it is actually or virtually referred to God as the ultimate end, loved above all with natural or supernatural love. The present difficulty concerns this sense, not the former.

There is, then, a first opinion of certain theologians who assert that, with only God's general concurrence and without any other gift or help of grace, a human being can perform a morally good work suited to the natural end of a human being and truly good, and a work of virtue, in comparison with that end. They add that free choice, by its own natural powers and with only God's general concurrence, can refer such morally good acts to God, known by the natural light, as the ultimate end. If they speak consistently, they understand this as a formal or virtual reference made through an act of charity, by which God is loved above all absolutely by the powers of free choice alone, insofar as he is the author of nature. For, as will be clear in the following disputation, they hold that a human being in fallen nature can elicit such an act of natural charity without the help of grace. They prove their opinion by the following arguments.

First. In a human being there is a natural light for knowing moral good and evil, as is clear from Ps. 4, where, after the Prophet had said, Many say, Who will show us good things? he adds, The light of your countenance, O Lord, has been marked upon us. This signifies that the natural light impressed upon us by God shows the moral good to be pursued and the evil to be avoided. Since there is no serious difficulty in many good acts, such as showing honor to parents, giving alms to a poor person, and other things of this kind, it follows that by the powers of nature alone a human being can not only will these things but also perform them.

This is confirmed: a human being was created to act honorably as toward a natural end. Therefore, by the powers of nature alone, even after sin, he can perform some moral good that is truly good and a work of true virtue. Otherwise, after sin free choice would not merely be wounded but extinguished.

It is argued second from Rom. 2: When the Gentiles, who do not have the law—that is, the written law—do by nature the things of the law, although they do not have the law, they are a law to themselves. They show the work of the law written in their hearts. Behold, Paul says that the Gentiles sometimes do by nature, that is, by the powers of nature alone, what belongs to the natural law; these are plainly moral goods suited to the natural end.

II. It is argued third from the authority of St. Augustine, lib. de spiritu et littera, c. 29, where he clearly teaches that sinners can perform some morally good works. His words are: Just as certain venial sins, without which this life is not lived, do not prevent a just person from attaining eternal life, so certain good works are of no benefit toward eternal salvation for an ungodly person, without which the life of any very wicked person is found only with great difficulty. And in lib. 3. Hypogn. he says: We confess that free choice exists in all human beings, having indeed the judgment of reason, not such that it is capable, without God, of beginning or certainly completing things that pertain to God, but only in the works of this present life, both good and evil.

Fourth: for the Council of Trent, sess. 6. can. 1, defines: If anyone says that a human being can be justified before God by his own works, whether performed by the powers of human nature or through the teaching of the law, without divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. These words sufficiently imply that moral good works can be performed by the powers of human nature alone or through the teaching of the law, since it defines that they are not sufficient for justification without divine grace through Jesus Christ.

Fifth. For a moral act to be truly good and a work of true virtue, it is not necessary that it be ordered to the supernatural ultimate end; it is enough that, by its object and circumstances, it be good and be ordered to the ultimate natural end, namely, to God as known by the natural light. But an unbeliever, or a believing sinner, can without the help of grace perform some moral work good in its object, without adding a bad circumstance, and order it to the true God as known by the light of nature. Therefore, by the powers of nature, he can perform some moral work that is truly good and a work of true virtue.

III. St. Augustine seems manifestly to teach the opposite opinion in lib. 1. retract. c. 3 and at greater length in lib. 4. cont. Iulianum c. 3, where from many testimonies of Scripture he shows that no one has any true virtue, even moral virtue, unless he is just. But it is impossible for anyone to be or become just without the help of grace; otherwise, as the Apostle argues: If righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing.¹ Therefore, without the help of grace there can be no true virtue or act of true virtue.

St. Thomas discusses this difficulty in 2. 2. q. 23. art. 7, where he asks whether there can be any true virtue without charity; and in 1. 2. q. 65. art. 2 he discusses whether the moral virtues can exist without charity; in art. 4 he inquires the same about faith and hope; and also in q. 14. de verit. art. 6. All Thomists treat the same difficulty in those places, especially Master Báñez, who addresses it in the cited 2. 2. Since it is therefore for us to resolve this briefly, we will touch only on those points where the opinion of the Thomists differs from that of the other theologians. First, then, we must assume, in accordance with the common opinion of theologians, that a human being, whether believer or unbeliever, can by the powers of nature alone perform some moral work that in the particular instance is not a sin, even a venial sin, but is good in the moral order. St. Thomas proves this expressly in 2. 2. q. 10. art. 4; Cajetan and all the Thomists do so there, showing that not all the works of unbelievers are sins. Second, we must also assume, according to the common opinion, which the authors with whom we dispute share, that free choice, not only in fallen nature but even in intact nature, cannot without the help of grace perform any act of virtue that is truly good or a work of true virtue in relation to the supernatural end. St. Thomas also proves this in the cited 2. 2. q. 23 from the authority of the Apostle, 1. Cor. 13: If I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I hand over my body so that I burn, but do not have charity, it profits me nothing. Moreover, the supernatural end, which consists in the clear vision of God, exceeds every capacity of created nature. Therefore, unless it is raised by the help of grace, it cannot perform any act of virtue ordered to such an end.

IV. The whole difficulty, then, consists in this: whether free choice in fallen nature can, without the special help of grace, perform some moral work that, in comparison with the ultimate natural end, is truly good and a work of true virtue, as I noted in explaining the title of the question. And although some theologians contend that the difference is merely in the name, when the matter is examined and explained in full, it will become clear that the controversy concerns not only the name but the thing itself.

For a brief resolution of this difficulty, we must consider that by sin a human being's free choice was not only stripped of original justice and supernatural gifts, but was also wounded and harmed in natural goods, and so weakened and inclined that, unless it is healed and helped by grace, it cannot perform perfect and more difficult works, even in the natural order, as was shown in disput. 45.

V. Second, we must note that just as by mortal sin a human being's free choice remains turned away from God, not only as the supernatural end but also as the natural end of an intellectual nature, so by an act of charity it is turned toward and ordered to God insofar as he is the universal good and ultimate end of rational nature. If the act of charity is natural, such as Adam could elicit by the powers of nature alone in intact nature, by that act a human being is ordered to God as the end of nature. But if the act of charity is supernatural, such as that which proceeds from the help of grace in the justified, by that act he will be ordered to God as the author of grace and the supernatural end, and will attain him under that same aspect. Since a virtue that attains some end orders the acts of the other virtues to that same end, it follows that acts of temperance and every other moral virtue are ordered to God as the ultimate end through an act of charity, as St. Thomas teaches, 2. 2. q. 23. art. 8. Hence it is impossible for such acts of virtue to be ordered formally or virtually, on the part of the one acting, to God as the ultimate end unless they are referred to him through an act of charity.

VI. We must therefore say that no moral act elicited by a human being in fallen nature without the help of grace is truly good and a work of true virtue in the sense explained above, even in comparison with the ultimate natural end.² This is the constant teaching of St. Augustine, especially in that chapter 3 of book 4 against Julian, where he speaks as follows: Since chastity is a virtue, to which unchastity is the contrary vice, and all the virtues, even those that act through the body, dwell in the soul, how can a body rightly be called chaste when the soul itself commits fornication against the true God? And a little later: In the very matter in which you wish a human being, as you say, to be stirred by the impulses of a noble heart toward something praiseworthy, when you do not wish him to glory in the Lord but in free choice, and to put himself first so that a reward may be paid to him, and in this way grace may not be grace because it is not gratuitous. And below: How much more tolerable would it be to attribute those virtues which you say are in the ungodly to a divine gift rather than merely to their will? They themselves may not know this until, if they are among the number of the predestined, they receive the Spirit who is from God, so that they may know the things given to them by God. But far be it that there be true virtue in anyone unless he is just; and far be it that anyone be truly just unless he lives by faith, for the just person lives by faith.³ Indeed, that St. Augustine attacks the first opinion set out above in the same sense in which its authors asserted it is clear from this: they say that a morally good work performed by the powers of nature alone is truly good and a work of virtue suited to the natural end, though not to the supernatural end. But Julian too, whom St. Augustine refutes, asserted this very thing, namely, that the morally good works of the ungodly are not suited to the supernatural end but are sterile fruits unless they are helped by grace, as is clear from these words of Augustine a little after the beginning of the same chapter: When, then, a human being is helped by God, he is helped not only to attain perfection, which is what you yourself proposed, plainly wishing it to be understood that he begins by himself, without grace, what grace perfects; but also in the way the Apostle speaks, so that he who began a good work in you may perfect it to the end.⁴ And near the end of the same chapter he reports Julian as saying that the good works of unbelievers are sterile and do not lead them to eternal salvation and the kingdom. For Augustine says: But what will you answer, Julian? What but empty words? I said, you reply, that people who do good things not for God's sake are sterile in their goodness, and do not obtain eternal life from him. And below, after St. Augustine had refuted this opinion, he adds: Or certainly, since you at least concede that the works of unbelievers which seem good to you do not nevertheless lead them to eternal salvation and the kingdom, know that we call that good in human beings—the good will, the good work—which, without the grace of God given through the one mediator between God and human beings, cannot be conferred on anyone, and through which alone a human being can be led to God's eternal gift and kingdom. Accordingly, let all the other things that seem to have some praise among human beings seem to you to be true virtues, seem to be good works, and to have been done without any sin. As far as I am concerned, I know that a good will does not do them. For an unbelieving and ungodly will is not good. Here St. Augustine requires, for an act to be a true virtue in comparison with the ultimate end, that the will necessarily be upright, or made upright, and through charity refer that act of virtue to God, loved above all, as the ultimate end. It is not enough to answer that St. Augustine speaks only of the supernatural ultimate end, in comparison with which there is no true virtue simply without charity. For this is contrary to the fact that St. Augustine, both in that cited chapter 3 and in other passages to be cited in the following disputation, teaches clearly that without the help of grace a human being in fallen nature cannot love God above all absolutely, even as the author of nature. This is also the opinion of St. Thomas, as will be said in the same disputation. For the will cannot be good, upright, and ordered to God as the natural ultimate end while turned away from God insofar as he is the ultimate end of the supernatural order, as will be said below.

St. Cyprian holds the same opinion in lib. de bono patientiae, in princ., where he proves that unbelievers do not have the true virtue of patience. Among other things, he says: Philosophers too profess to pursue this, but their patience is as false as their wisdom. For how can someone be wise or patient who does not know the wisdom or power of God, when God warns and says of those who seem wise to themselves in the world: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and reject the prudence of the prudent?⁵ St. Cyprian is speaking of true virtue in comparison with the ultimate end, in the sense we explained above. St. Thomas speaks in the same way in the cited 2. 2. q. 23. art. 7, when he says that absolutely speaking, true virtue cannot exist without charity. This is proved as follows.

First. Although every morally good act is, in itself, capable of being ordered to God as the ultimate end, loved above all with natural or supernatural love, in fact and in its exercise it is ordered in that way only through an act of charity, as was said. But in fallen nature a human being cannot, without the help of grace, elicit an act of charity by which God is loved above all absolutely, even as the natural end. For such an act is the most excellent act of a sound nature, and consequently the free choice of a weakened human being cannot perform it, as will be shown in disput. 51. Therefore, without the help of grace, no morally good act can be referred by the one acting, formally or virtually, to God as the ultimate end. Since, then, for an act of true virtue, even in comparison with the natural end, it is necessary that it be referred to God as the ultimate end in the aforesaid way, it follows that no moral act elicited by a human being in fallen nature without the help of grace is truly good and a work of true virtue, even in comparison with the natural end.

This is confirmed. Without charity there is no true virtue. Therefore neither is there any act of true virtue, even in comparison with the ultimate natural end. The inference is proved: since a habit exists for the sake of acts and is specified by them, what is necessary for a habit to be a true virtue is all the more required for an act elicited by that habit to be a work of true virtue. So an act of faith without grace and charity is unformed, not formed, because the habit of faith without grace and charity is unformed. The antecedent is St. Thomas's, 2. 2. q. 23. art. 7. It is proved by the argument he gives in the reply to the second objection: the end in matters of action is like the principle in matters of speculation. But there cannot be absolutely true science if a right judgment about the first and indemonstrable principle is lacking. Therefore there cannot be absolutely true justice or true chastity if the due ordering through charity to God, loved above all as the ultimate end, is lacking, however rightly someone may be disposed in other respects.

VII. It is proved second. Virtue, as Aristotle teaches, is that which makes its possessor good. But no moral habit without grace makes its possessor good, because no one is good, even in comparison with the ultimate natural end, without grace and charity. Therefore without charity there is no true virtue, even moral virtue; and consequently there is no act of true virtue.

It is proved third by an argument drawn from St. Augustine against Julian: just as the Apostle says most truly of the law, If righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing,⁶ so it is most truly said: if righteousness is through nature and the will, then Christ died for nothing. But Christ did not die for nothing and without cause; rather, as the same Apostle says, Christ died so that we might live for righteousness. Therefore true righteousness cannot be acquired or possessed through nature or the will without the help of grace.

The same holy Doctor confirms this in the same place: through that by which there is true righteousness, there is also the kingdom of God. For God himself would be unjust—far be it—if a truly just person were not admitted to his kingdom, since his kingdom itself is righteousness, as it is written: The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy.⁷ Moreover, if the ungodly do not have true righteousness, they will certainly not have the other virtues that accompany and belong with it.

It is proved fourth by another argument of that same Augustine. For a moral act to be a work of true virtue, it is required that it be performed prudently, courageously, temperately, and justly. For it is not enough for an act of true virtue that one do what is just unless one does it justly and with the other required circumstances, according to the saying: You shall pursue what is just justly.⁸ But in fallen nature a human being cannot, without the help of grace, perform any moral work prudently, courageously, temperately, and justly. For in order to act courageously, one must act with such firmness of spirit that no dangers or temptations, even fear of death, turn one away from that good or draw one toward the contrary evil. It is clear, however, from what was said above, that without the help of grace a fallen human being cannot overcome all the temptations that must be overcome in order to keep the natural law, even with respect to this or that particular matter. Therefore the same conclusion follows as before.⁹

VIII. Fifth. According to the Catholic faith, after the day of judgment there will be no intermediate state between the supreme happiness enjoyed by the elect and the supreme misery endured by the reprobate. But all who do not enjoy eternal glory with Christ the Lord will be consigned to the eternal punishments of loss, or even of sense if they are adults, as is clear from Matth. 25: These will go into eternal punishment, but the just into eternal life. But if anyone had true virtue or true righteousness by the powers of nature alone, without the help of grace, then after the day of judgment an intermediate state between those two would necessarily have to be assigned, where he would receive eternal recompense for those good works. Therefore.¹⁰ The minor is proved: one who practices righteousness by the powers of nature alone will not attain the kingdom of heaven, for such people did not please God, since they did not have faith, without which, as the Apostle says, It is impossible to please God;¹¹ those who do not please God do not attain the kingdom of heaven. Nor will they be engulfed in eternal fires, since otherwise they would be in everlasting damnation while possessing true righteousness, which God's equity does not permit. Therefore an intermediate place must be appointed between damnation and the kingdom of heaven, where these people will not be in misery but in everlasting blessedness.

All these points are confirmed from Matth. 7: A bad tree cannot bear good fruit;¹² there the created will is compared to a tree, while its good works are compared to the tree's fruits. If, then, a tree cannot bear good fruit so long as it is bad, it follows that an evil will, unless it is healed by grace and changed into a good will, cannot perform good acts that are truly good and works of virtue. Augustine urges this argument against Julian in these words: Do not rush to a conclusion; consider carefully what answer it is fitting for you to give. Do you say that an unbelieving person is a good tree? Then he pleases God, for what is good cannot fail to please the good. Where, then, will we find what is written, Without faith it is impossible to please God? Will you answer that he is a good tree not insofar as he is an unbeliever, but insofar as he is a human being? Of whom, then, does the Lord say, A bad tree cannot bear good fruit, since whoever he may be, he will be either a human being or an angel? But if a human being, insofar as he is a human being, is a good tree, then surely an angel, insofar as he is an angel, is a good tree. For these are God's works, since he is the creator of good natures. And so there will be no bad tree of which it was said that it cannot bear good fruit. Who could be so unbelieving as to think this unbelievingly? Therefore, insofar as a person is a human being, which is God's work, he is not a bad tree; rather, insofar as he has an evil will, each person is a bad tree and cannot bear good fruit. Consider, then, whether you would dare to call an unbelieving will a good will. But¹³¹⁴ perhaps you will say: A merciful will is good. That would rightly be said if mercy were always good, just as the faith of Christ—that is, the faith that works through love—is always good.

IX. Sixth. The soul's right ordering toward God as the end of nature and toward God as the supernatural end are in fact so closely connected in a human being ordered to eternal life that one cannot exist without the other. Therefore it is impossible for the soul to be set right in relation to God as the ultimate natural end without being right in relation to God as the supernatural end. But according to the Catholic faith no one can be set right in relation to the supernatural end without the help of grace. Therefore in fallen nature no one can be set right in relation to the ultimate natural end without the help of grace, and consequently neither can he elicit any work that is truly good and a work of true virtue, even in comparison with the ultimate natural end. For through true virtue a human being is made right, at least in relation to that same end, as is clear from its definition, which St. Thomas gives from St. Augustine: Virtue is a good quality of the mind by which one lives rightly and which no one uses badly.¹⁵¹⁶

X. In reply to the first argument, we say that a human being can indeed give a small alms by the powers of nature, and honor his parents out of natural piety without adding a bad circumstance, so that he does not sin in the particular instance of such an act. Nevertheless, unless such acts are referred formally or virtually to God as the ultimate end through an act of charity, they are not to be regarded as works of true virtue.

In answer to the confirmation, we reply that in intact nature a human being could, by the powers of nature alone, perform every good work proportionate to the natural end. But in fallen nature he cannot do this without the help of grace, nor can he even have a natural act of loving God above all, through which moral works are referred to God himself as the ultimate end. Nevertheless, from the good of nature he can perform some morally good works, though imperfect and involving no serious difficulty; and this suffices to show that his free choice was not extinguished by sin.

To the second, we reply that the same argument was once put to St. Augustine. In answer, St. Augustine says: Hence I do not see at all how those people too, whom you wanted to mention, help you, those of whom the Apostle says: The Gentiles, who do not have the law, are a law to themselves, having the work of the law written in their hearts. Through them you have tried to prove that even those who are strangers to the faith of Christ can have true righteousness, because, as the Apostle testifies, they do by nature the things of the law. Here you have expressed more clearly your doctrine, by which you are enemies of the grace of God given through Jesus Christ our Lord, who takes away the sins of the world, by introducing a class of human beings who can please God without faith in Christ, by the law of nature. This is what the Christian Church most detests in you.¹⁷¹⁸ A little later he replies by explaining the Apostle's words in two senses, as was seen in Disputation 47, nos. 6 and 7.

XI. If anyone asks what use those imperfect good works were to the Gentiles, the reply is that they served to avoid a new sin and to be punished with a milder penalty in hell.¹⁹ Hence in the same context St. Augustine adds: But to this end their thoughts will defend them on the day of judgment²⁰, so that they may be punished more tolerably, because to some extent they did by nature the things of the law, having the work of the law written in their hearts to the extent that they would not do to others what they would not wish to suffer themselves. Yet they sinned in this: being human beings without faith, they did not refer these works to the end to which they ought to have referred them. For Fabricius will be punished less than Catiline, not because the former is good, but because the latter is worse; and Fabricius is less impious than Catiline, not because he possessed true virtues but because he deviated less from true virtues.

To the third, we reply that the good works which Augustine teaches sinners can perform by the capacity of nature are not acts of true virtue, in the sense in which we now speak of true virtue, as Augustine himself teaches very often in the other passages cited above. The same must be said in reply to the fourth argument.

To the fifth, we reply that for an act to be an act of true virtue, it is required that it be ordered through charity to God, at least as the natural end. A human being in fallen nature cannot do this without the help of grace, as is clear from the foregoing and will become clearer from what will be said about the act of charity in the following disputation.

Whether in fallen nature a human being can, by the powers of nature alone with God's general concurrence, elicit an absolute, purely natural act of loving God above all, with an absolute resolve to please him in all things.

I. Some reply that in the state of fallen nature human nature cannot exercise its natural powers in this natural love of God so absolutely and efficaciously as it could in intact nature. But there is no controversy about this. They do not expressly determine whether, speaking absolutely, a human being in fallen nature can elicit one or another act of loving God above all without qualification, without the help of grace, although they seem to imply or assume this tacitly. Others, however, say outright that in fallen nature a human being can, without the special help of grace and from the capacity of his nature, elicit the aforesaid act of loving God above all, together with an absolute resolve not to sin thereafter, although he could have produced it much more easily and readily in intact nature. To explain this, they distinguish three acts of the will with respect to loving God above all.¹ The first is a certain velleity, by which someone, from an affect of love, would wish to keep all the commandments but does not will this simply and absolutely; and thus he does not have an absolute act of loving God above all. For one who loves God in this way ought to resolve to keep all his commandments, according to the saying: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.² The second act is an absolute and efficacious act of loving God above all, by which, from that same love, one absolutely wills to keep all the commandments and afterward fulfills this in deed. They make the third act intermediate between velleity and absolute, efficacious love. They call it an absolute but ineffective love of God above all, because although, from an affect of love and love of God above all, a human being resolves with an absolute resolve to keep all God's commandments and please him in all things and in every way, he does not afterward fulfill this in deed. They say that a human being can have this love of God above all in fallen nature, by the powers of nature alone and without special help on the part of the will, especially if there is faith on the part of the intellect. They say the same concerning supernatural love of God, contrition, and any other act of infused virtue, as regards the substance of the act. For they affirm that a human being can elicit such an act by the capacity of nature alone. They cite in support of this opinion Master Soto, in 4. dist. 17. q. 1. art. 5 and lib. 2. de nat. et grat. cc. 14 et 22; Master Cano, in relect. de poenit.; Cajetan, q. 1. de contritio.; St. Bonaventure, in 4. dist. 17. art. 2. q. 3; and other doctors.

II. This opinion is proved from St. Thomas, in 4. dist. 17. q. 2. art. 1. quaestiunc. 1. ad 6, where he says that contrition comes from God alone as regards the form by which it is informed, but as regards the substance of the act it comes from free choice and from God, who works in all works of nature and of the will. Therefore, according to St. Thomas, with only general concurrence free choice can elicit an act of contrition and an absolute love of God above all, as regards the substance of the act. The inference is clear: God works through general concurrence in all works of nature and of the will. Likewise, in 2. 2. q. 171. art. 2. ad 3 he expressly teaches that an act can be above human nature in two ways: In one way, as regards the substance of the act, as in performing miracles and knowing hidden and uncertain things of divine Wisdom; no gift of habitual grace is given to a human being for these acts. In another way, something is above human nature as regards the manner of the act, but not as regards its substance, as in loving God and knowing him in the mirror of creatures; for this a gift of habitual grace is given.³ Therefore, according to St. Thomas, the act of loving God above all, for which habitual grace is given, does not exceed the capacity of nature as regards the substance of the act but only as regards its manner, insofar as that act is supernatural or meritorious of eternal life. Therefore, as regards its substance, it can be produced by the capacity of nature alone. He teaches the same doctrine in q. 24. de verit. art. 14, in the body of the article, where he says: There is a twofold good: one is proportionate to human nature, while the other exceeds the capacity of human nature. If we speak of acts, these two goods do not differ in the substance of the act but in the manner of acting. He teaches the same in the replies to the first and second objections of the same article, where he says that no precept is impossible for a human being to keep, because as regards the substance of the act he can do it by the capacity of free choice, and as regards its manner he can do it by the gift of grace. Finally, in 1. sent. dist. 17. q. 1. art. 4, in the body of the article, he says that through love proceeding from a habit one cannot discern whether the act proceeds from an infused or an acquired habit. He therefore holds that an act of loving God above all can be produced as regards its substance by the powers of nature alone. Otherwise, through the act of supernatural love which a just person experiences in himself, he could know with certainty that he has the habit of supernatural charity and consequently is in a state of grace. This, however, is contrary to the express passages of Scripture and the Councils, as is clear from what was established in disput. 42.

It is argued second. By the powers of nature a human being can know that God is supremely good and supremely lovable, and that sin is supremely detestable and the cause of many evils of the soul. Therefore, as regards the substance of the act, the will can by the powers of nature love God above all and detest sin more than anything else that is detestable. The inference is clear: for such knowledge of divine goodness can rouse and move the will beforehand, especially in a believer, so that with only God's general concurrence it elicits an act of loving God above all and detests sin more than anything else that is detestable, as regards the substance of the act. Therefore it can produce that act by itself.

This is confirmed: it is not difficult for a human being, even one who has fallen, to elicit an act of loving God above all, especially when the most serious difficulties and temptations and occasions of sinning are absent, because then no obstacle stands in the way of such an act of love. Therefore. The antecedent is proved: the whole difficulty of an act of loving God above all lies in afterward fulfilling the absolute resolve to please him in all things, which is required for that love to be efficacious. Therefore in an absolute but ineffective love of God there is no serious difficulty that a human being cannot overcome by the powers of nature alone.

III. Third. A human being can approach the sacrament of penance without the special help of grace, with an absolute resolve thereafter to avoid all mortal sins except one, for example, homicide. For a resolve of this kind does not proceed from the special help of grace, since the Holy Spirit does not move someone to detest one mortal sin without the others, given that it is impious to hope for half a pardon from God and one mortal sin cannot be remitted without the others, as St. Thomas teaches in 3. p. q. 86. art. 3. Therefore, by the powers of nature, he will be able to approach with a resolve to abstain from all mortal sins and also from that one sin of homicide, and thus will be able to have a resolve to abstain from all of them. The inference is clear: the resolve to abstain from that one sin of homicide, when compared with the resolve to abstain from all the others, has little or no difficulty. Therefore, for the same reason that a human being can resolve by the powers of nature to abstain from all the others except homicide, he can have an absolute resolve to abstain from all of them.

Fourth. Acts of infused temperance and acquired temperance are of the same species as regards the substance of the act. For temperate eating is always of the same species as regards its substance, whether it is elicited by infused or acquired temperance. Therefore, likewise, an act of infused love of God and an act of acquired love of God will be of the same species as regards the substance of the act. But an act of acquired love or acquired temperance does not exceed the capacity of nature as regards its substance. Therefore neither does an act of infused love or infused temperance exceed the capacity of nature as regards its substance. Therefore free choice can elicit such acts by the powers of nature.

Fifth. For from the opposite opinion it would follow that an angel knew by experience, through the capacity of his nature, that he had the habit of supernatural charity and grace. The consequence is impossible, since grace cannot be known evidently by the capacity of nature alone. Therefore. The inference is proved: an angel experienced in himself an act of loving God above all, which he had in the first instant of his creation. Therefore, if the substance of that act were supernatural, the angel would know by experience and evidently that the act proceeded from grace and charity. For since the angel knew all natural things evidently and did not see the substance of that act among natural beings, he necessarily knew by experience that the act was supernatural as regards its substance and consequently knew that it proceeded from a supernatural habit.

Sixth. When the Second Council of Orange, cap. 6. et 25, and likewise the Council of Trent, sess. 6. can. 3, determine that the special help of prevenient grace is necessary for an act of love, faith, and hope, they add the phrase to love, to believe, and to hope as is fitting, so that the grace of justification may be conferred on a person. They therefore hold that a human being can, without the special help of grace, love God above all, believe, and hope, but not as is fitting for salvation or for obtaining the grace of justification or glory, only as regards the substance of the act. This is confirmed:⁴ for, by an argument from the contrary sense, the Council seems to have indicated that the opinion which asserts that the aforesaid acts can be elicited without the help of grace as regards their substance, but not as is fitting for salvation, is true. Otherwise the Council would have added to its definition in vain the phrase as is fitting for salvation.

IV. The second opinion is that of St. Augustine in the passages to be cited below, and of St. Thomas, p. 2. q. 109. art. 4 and in many other places. The Thomists commonly follow it. To explain it, we must note first that, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. 2. q. 100. art. 10, and as Cajetan and all the Thomists teach there, although the manner of charity does not fall under the precept of the other virtues, nor is it necessarily included in their acts, as in the precept of the virtue of temperance or fortitude, nevertheless it falls under the precept of the virtue of charity itself and is included in it.⁵ Hence, if there is a precept to fast or a precept to honor one's parents, that precept is fulfilled by the act of fasting performed in mortal sin and by an act of filial piety toward one's parents, even if performed in mortal sin, because the manner does not fall under the precept. But if there is a natural precept by which a human being is bound to elicit an interior act of loving God above all, then by force of this precept he is bound to love God also as regards the manner of loving, so as to love him with his whole heart, according to Matth. 22: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.⁶ But to love with one's whole heart, as St. Thomas teaches in the same art. 10. ad 2 and 2. 2. q. 44. art. 4 et 5, is to love God in such a way that one refers oneself and all things to God as the ultimate end and admits nothing in one's heart contrary to divine love.

Second, we must note that an absolute love of God includes virtually the observance of all the commandments, at least in readiness of mind.⁷ So Medina teaches, 1. 2. q. 109. art. 3. dub. 1, § deinde advertendum; this is clear from Ioan. 14: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and 1. Ioan. 5:⁸ This is love, that we keep his commandments. Hence throughout the time that this love above all, or its power, lasts, the observance of all the precepts remains joined to it, at least the natural precepts if the love is only natural, and also the supernatural precepts if the love is supernatural. But because in the present state the act of charity and its power can be interrupted by a contrary act, it follows that even if someone has a true and efficacious absolute act of loving God above all, even a supernatural act, and an absolute resolve to please him in all things and keep all the commandments, it nevertheless happens afterward in fact that he does not keep them, and the power of the preceding act of charity is interrupted by mortal sin.

V. Third, we must note that for an act of loving God above all and an absolute resolve to keep all the commandments to be considered efficacious, it is not necessary for a human being to keep all the commandments throughout his whole life. It suffices that he keep them throughout the time that the act of love, or its power, lasts.⁹ This is a foundation against the authors of the opinion cited above. It is proved as follows: otherwise no love, even a supernatural love, however intense, would be efficacious except that alone which has joined to it the gift of perseverance to the end, which nevertheless seems absurd. This is confirmed: if someone once loved God above all and by virtue of this love kept all the commandments for an entire month, then his love was efficacious throughout that month in which its power lasted. Therefore even if, after the month had passed, he breaks one precept, the preceding love was still efficacious during the time its power lasted. From this it follows that every absolute love of God above all and every absolute resolve to keep all the commandments is efficacious at least for the instant in which it is elicited. For it is impossible for a human being, in the same instant in which he elicits such love, to break some precept binding under mortal sin, because, as the Apostle says, Love is the fullness of the law.¹⁰ Therefore for some instant or brief time it always has joined to it the observance of all the commandments, and so it will be efficacious for that time. Finally, we must assume the distinction between natural and supernatural love.¹¹ Natural love of God above all is that which is directed toward God as the author of nature, as the ultimate end, preferring him to all things. Supernatural love, however, is the love by which we love God as the author of grace and as the supernatural ultimate end. Therefore:

VI. First Conclusion. A human being in fallen nature who is in mortal sin can, without the special help of grace, have a conditional act of loving God above all, or a certain velleity, expressed in these words: I would wish to love God above all and to please him in all things. This conclusion is common among theologians. Master Medina proves it, p. 2. q. 109. art. 3. dub. 1. concl. 3. The reason is that this act of love is not the most perfect act of a sound nature, nor true love of God above all; nor is a human being turned away from mortal sin by it, nor is he in fact turned toward God as the ultimate end. Therefore it can be had by the powers of nature.

Second Conclusion. A human being in fallen nature, especially if he is in mortal sin, cannot, without the special help of prevenient grace, love God above all with an absolute natural love, nor have an absolute resolve to please him in all things.¹² This conclusion is opposed to the opinion cited above, but it is expressly stated by St. Thomas, in the cited art. 3 and 1. 2. q. 100. art. 10. ad 3, where he says that the precept of charity is not fulfilled without grace. He is also speaking of the precept of charity to which a human being is bound by the law of nature. Some reply¹³ that St. Thomas means that a human being in fallen nature cannot love God above all with an efficacious love that lasts throughout his whole life without any failure, though he could do this in intact nature. This solution, however, is contrary to St. Thomas's mind:¹⁴ for he teaches that a human being in fallen nature cannot fulfill the precept of charity without grace, and the precept of charity is fulfilled through an absolute act of love of God above all, even if afterward one in fact breaks some precept. Otherwise only those who have the gift of perseverance would fulfill the precept of charity. Therefore. The same opinion is expressly held by St. Augustine in epist. 107. ad Vitalem, where he says: By the magnitude of the first sin we lost free choice for loving God, that is, we lost the power to love God through the capacity of nature alone. He teaches the same in lib. de gratia et lib. arb. c. 18, where, among other things, he says: If the love of God and neighbor comes not from God but from human beings, the Pelagians have won; but if it comes from God, we have defeated the Pelagians. St. Prosper establishes the same conclusion against Cassian in lib. contra Collat. cc. 30 et 31, and St. Gregory in 33. moral. c. 20, where he says: If our love precedes God, where is what the Apostle John said: Not because we loved God, but because he first loved us?¹⁵

VII. It is further proved from the passages of Scripture cited by Prosper in the cited places. For Sacred Scripture asserts that charity, or love of God above all, is a gift of God,¹⁶ as in Rom. 5: The charity of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. And 1. Io. 4: Charity is from God. Likewise, the Council of Milevis, can. 4, defines that both are God's gifts: knowing what we ought to do, and loving so that we may do it. And the Second Council of Orange, can. 25, says: It is wholly a gift of God to love God. Therefore. If it is said that Sacred Scripture and the Councils speak of supernatural love insofar as it is supernatural, and of love that proceeds from an infused habit, the reply is: Pelagius never taught that the love which he located in nature was supernatural or proceeded from an infused habit. Rather, he said absolutely that love of God above all and an absolute resolve never to sin can simply be had by the powers of nature alone.¹⁷ For it entails a contradiction for love to be supernatural and to proceed from the powers of nature alone; otherwise it would be supernatural and not supernatural at the same time. Yet St. Augustine and Prosper refute this assertion of his. Therefore. This is confirmed: if Pelagius asserted that love of God above all can be had by the powers of nature alone, then he was speaking of merely natural love. The inference is clear: love proceeding from the powers of nature alone is merely natural. Therefore the saints, when they determine against Pelagius that a human being cannot love God above all by the powers of nature alone, are also speaking of natural love by which God is loved absolutely above all. Some theologians reply that Scripture and the Councils speak of efficacious love, not absolute but ineffective love. But the reply is: as we showed in the second and third foundations, every absolute act of loving God above all is efficacious at least for the instant and time that it lasts, since it essentially includes the observance of all the commandments for that same instant or time. Therefore.

VIII. It is proved second. An absolute act of loving God above all is incompatible with mortal sin. Therefore, if a human being can elicit an act of loving God above all by the powers of nature alone, he will be able by those same powers to rise from mortal sin. This, however, cannot be admitted, as St. Thomas shows, p. 2. q. 109. art. 7.¹⁸ The antecedent is proved: it is impossible for a human being to be turned away from God as the ultimate end and at the same time turned toward God as the ultimate end; otherwise he would at the same time be turned away from God and turned toward him, which entails a contradiction. But one who is in mortal sin is turned away from God and turned toward a creature as the ultimate end, whereas one who loves God above all is turned toward him as the ultimate end. Therefore it is impossible for an act of loving God above all to be compatible with mortal sin. This argument is confirmed: as St. Thomas teaches, p. 2. q. 1. art. 5, it is impossible for anyone to have two ultimate ends at the same time. But if a human being remaining in mortal sin could elicit an absolute act of loving God above all, he would have two ultimate ends at the same time. Therefore it is impossible for him, while remaining in mortal sin, to elicit such an act of loving God above all. The minor is proved: one who is in mortal sin has a creature as his ultimate end. But the person in question remains in mortal sin, as is assumed. Therefore he has a creature as his ultimate end. Again, one who loves God above all with an absolute love loves him as the ultimate end. Therefore, if a person in mortal sin can love God above all by the powers of nature, he can at the same time love him as the ultimate end. Therefore, if he does in fact love him, he will have God as the ultimate end and likewise a creature, which nevertheless seems expressly contrary to the Apostle's saying: What fellowship has light with darkness? etc.¹⁹ This conclusion will become clearer from the arguments to be brought forward for the following conclusion.

IX. Third Conclusion. A human being in fallen nature cannot love God above all as the supernatural end by the powers of nature alone, even if what is meant is an act of love as regards its substance and the person is a believer. Thus, however much God is proposed by the intellect to the will as the supreme supernatural good and as supremely lovable, the will cannot love him above all with an absolute act, even as regards the substance of the act, nor have an absolute resolve to please him in all things, without the special help of grace. This conclusion follows all the more from the preceding conclusion and its arguments. It is proved first: a fallen human being in mortal sin cannot, without the special help of grace, have imperfect desires or imperfect beginnings of virtues or seeds, as Prosper shows against Cassian throughout lib. contra Collat., especially cc. 27 et 28. We recounted Cassian's error in disput. 2. Therefore, much less can he have a most perfect act, such as loving God above all as the supernatural end, especially since, according to the opposing opinion, once that merely natural act of love is posited, God by a certain law confers the help of grace so that the act may be as is fitting for salvation, as we will demonstrate in disput. 56 et seq.

X. It is proved second: from the opposing opinion it follows that a human being can suffer martyrdom out of love for God as the author of the supernatural order, without the help of grace. This conclusion must not be admitted. For if he could suffer martyrdom without God's help, he could attain final salvation without the help of grace. For it is said in Matth. 10: He who loses his life for my sake will find it, and Augustine says: He does an injustice to a martyr who prays for him. Therefore. The inference is proved: if he can love God above all absolutely by the powers of nature, then he can love him more than himself and more than his own life. Therefore he can expose his life for love of God. Therefore he can suffer martyrdom for love of God by the powers of nature. In reply to this argument, they deny the inference:²⁰ for it is not enough for the character of martyrdom to expose one's life for some act of virtue; it is necessarily required that one expose it out of supernatural love of God, as is clear from the Apostle, 1. ad Cor. 13: If I hand over my body so that I burn, but do not have charity, I am nothing.²¹ But an argument against this solution is:²² as the authors of the opposing opinion admit, God has established a law that whoever does all that lies within him by loving God above all, etc., will obtain the help of grace, by which that act becomes supernatural and as is fitting for salvation. Therefore, one who loves God above all by the capacity of nature and exposes his own life by the capacity of nature obtains the help of grace so that the act may be as is fitting for true martyrdom. Therefore, by the powers of nature he becomes a martyr. This is confirmed: at least it follows that the beginning of martyrdom, or imperfect martyrdom, is by the powers of nature, and that the help of grace is necessary only for martyrdom and the act of love to be perfect. But this cannot be admitted, as is clear from the foregoing. Therefore.

XI. It is proved third from the Council of Trent, sess. 14. cap. 4. de sac. poeni., where it says: As for that imperfect contrition called attrition, since it is commonly conceived either from consideration of the shamefulness of sin or from fear of hell and punishments, if it excludes the will to sin and is joined with hope of pardon, the Council declares that it not only does not make a person a hypocrite and more of a sinner, but is also a gift of God and an impulse of the Holy Spirit, who does not yet dwell in the penitent but only moves him; helped by this, the penitent prepares the way for himself to righteousness.²³ Therefore, the Council holds that the will and absolute resolve never to sin again is a gift of God and proceeds from the motion of the Holy Spirit, and thus cannot be had by the powers of nature alone. They reply that the Council neither intended to determine nor determines that attrition is a gift of God and an impulse of the Holy Spirit insofar as it includes an absolute resolve not to sin, as regards the substance of the act, but only insofar as it is a disposition for salvation and is made supernatural and, in a believer, proceeds from hope of pardon and fear of hell.²⁴ This explanation, however, does not seem sufficient or in keeping with the mind of the Council.²⁵ First, because the same difficulty applies to hope of pardon, fear, and the other supernatural acts, since, as the authors with whom we dispute assert, a human being can elicit them by the powers of nature as regards the substance of the act. Second, because the Council absolutely determines that attrition having all those conditions is a gift of God. To restrict the Council to supernatural attrition, so that the sense is that supernatural attrition is a gift of God and proceeds from the motion of the Holy Spirit, is to restrict that decree too severely. For other decrees of the Councils could be restricted in the same way, and so we would have no firm decree against Pelagius. For, as we said above, Pelagius never asserted that supernatural love proceeding from an infused habit is caused efficiently by the powers of nature alone, since that plainly entails a contradiction. Moreover, to say that supernatural attrition comes from a supernatural motion of the Holy Spirit is to say virtually that supernatural attrition is supernatural. Therefore the Council intended to define something more; therefore that attrition is a gift of God.

Moreover, the Council of Trent had already defined, concerning the act of faith and hope, in sess. 6. de Iustificatione can. 3, that the help of grace is necessary for such acts. Therefore, when it later teaches in sess. 14 that attrition on account of the punishments of hell, which excludes the will to sin and is joined with hope of pardon, is a gift of God, it means that it is a gift of God not only by reason of faith or hope of pardon or fear of the punishments of hell, which acts usually precede attrition itself, but also by reason of attrition itself, or sorrow for sins, together with an absolute resolve not to sin thereafter.

XII. Finally, our conclusion is proved by the argument Prosper uses against Cassian: otherwise free choice would not have been harmed or wounded by sin, since it could elicit by the capacity of nature alone the most perfect act of a sound nature, such as natural love of God above all. But this consequence is false, as was shown in disput. 45. Therefore.

XIII. In reply to the first argument from the authority of St. Thomas in 4. Sent., we say that the passage is rather on our side. For the form of contrition is grace and charity, by whose command contrition arises; for contrition is a sorrow for sins undertaken²⁶ on account of God, supremely loved. Therefore, when St. Thomas says that contrition comes from God alone as regards its form, he teaches plainly enough that habitual charity, by whose command contrition proceeds, comes from God alone. But when St. Thomas says that contrition, as regards the substance of the act, comes from free choice and from God, he does not mean that it comes from God through general concurrence but through special help. Nor do these words pose an obstacle: who works in all works of nature and of the will. For St. Thomas does not say that it comes from God as he works in all works of nature, etc.; rather, he says that it comes from God, who works in all works of nature, etc. This is quite true, for the same God works in all supernatural works and in the works of nature. But in the works of nature he works formally as the author of nature, whereas in supernatural works he works as the author of grace. Hence, although contrition as regards the substance of the act comes from free choice and from God through special help, it still remains true and is verified that the substance of that act comes from free choice and from God, who works in the works of nature and of the will. St. Thomas adds these words to explain the universal dependence of every act of the will on God himself as the first agent. This solution and explanation of St. Thomas is gathered from the very argument to which he replies, which is as follows: contrition is given to us by God, but what is given is not undertaken. Therefore contrition is not a sorrow undertaken. In summary, St. Thomas replies that even if it is given by God in the aforesaid way, nevertheless that sorrow is undertaken by us because we elicit it voluntarily, on the supposition of divine action.²⁷ From this, however, it does not follow that this action is through general concurrence. For to resolve this argument, it was not necessary to assert that contrition, as regards the substance of the act, does not proceed from special help. Otherwise an act of supernatural charity, insofar as it is supernatural, would not be free or freely undertaken, for even on the opposing opinion it proceeds from special help insofar as it is supernatural. This solution is also certain: as Medina proves, 1. 2. q. 62. art. 2, from the Councils of Milevis, Orange, and Africa, supernatural help is entirely necessary for any act of a theological virtue, not only as regards the manner of the work but also as regards the substance of the act. Cajetan teaches the same, 3. p. q. 76. art. 7, after the middle of the commentary, where he shows that an elicited act of the theological virtues differs in species from acts of natural virtues concerning the same matter, not only in the moral order, or as regards manner, but also in its natural being and as regards its substance. This is also clearly gathered from St. Thomas, in the cited q. 62, and will be proved expressly by us in disput. 65. St. Thomas therefore never understood that an act of charity or contrition proceeds, as regards the substance of the act, from the capacity of nature alone with only God's general concurrence.

XIV. To the other passage from 2. 2, Medina replies in the cited q. 62, in the reply to the first objection, that St. Thomas speaks there of love of God in general, abstracting from natural and supernatural love. This does not exceed the capacity of nature as regards its substance. Medina understands this to mean love absolutely, or imperfect love, but not love of God above all without qualification. Although this explanation contains truth, it does not seem to reflect St. Thomas's mind in that passage. For in the reply to the third objection he speaks expressly of an act of charity for which the gift of habitual grace is given. But no gift of habitual grace is given for love of God in general, abstracting from the natural and the supernatural. Therefore St. Thomas is not speaking of that.

A better reply, then, is that St. Thomas speaks there of an act of supernatural charity, not an act elicited immediately by supernatural charity itself. For such an act, as will be clear in the cited disput. 65, exceeds the powers of nature even as regards its substance, just like the act of the beatific vision. Rather, he speaks of a commanded act of charity, such as an act of fortitude or of the other virtues, which, insofar as it is referred by charity to the supernatural end, is called an act of supernatural charity, though it is commanded.²⁸ He also speaks of an exterior act. For acts of this kind do not exceed the capacity of nature as regards the substance of the act, but only as regards the manner, namely, insofar as they are done from charity. This also answers the passage cited from q. 24. de verit., for there he explains himself just as we explain him. For after the cited words he adds: For example, the act of giving alms is a good proportionate to human powers insofar as a person is moved to this by a certain natural love or kindness; but it exceeds the capacity of human nature insofar as a person is moved to this by charity, which unites the human mind to God.

To the other passage from the First of the Sentences, the same reply is given; or one may say that the only conclusion to be drawn from that authority is that a human being can have, without an infused habit or without the help of grace, some imperfect love of God, which is a velleity, or even a certain natural love by which God is loved, not simply above all nor for his own sake, but only insofar as he is the common good on which all things depend for their existence. For St. Thomas himself admits that this imperfect love is in demons, to whom it is clear that God gives no special help, 1. p. q. 60. art. 5. ad 5. He confirms the same doctrine in 1. 2. q. 109. art. 3, in the body of the article, showing that every²⁹ creature loves God more by natural love, as the universal good on which every particular good depends, than it loves itself.

XV. To the second argument, the inference is denied. For, as St. Thomas teaches, 1. 2. q. 109. art. 2. ad 3,³⁰ human nature is more corrupted by sin with respect to its appetite for the good than with respect to its cognition of truth.³¹ The reason is that sin is consummated in the consent of the will. In reply to the proof, the antecedent is denied if what is meant is physical motion, which gives the human will the power to elicit an act of loving God above all. For such cognition, since it is external to the will and only represents the object and its suitability to it, does not give the weakened will the power to elicit an act so perfect, which belongs to a sound nature.

In reply to the confirmation, the antecedent is denied. We say that the difficulty of that act does not consist only in this: that a human being afterward fulfill what he resolved and in fact keep all the commandments throughout his whole life. It also consists in this: that it is difficult, indeed impossible, for weakened nature to elicit an act so perfect as loving God above all without qualification, unless it is helped and healed by grace. For, as was said, throughout the time that the power of such an act lasts, observance of all the commandments is joined to it.

To the third argument, the inference is denied. For a resolve to abstain from all other sins except one, homicide, is an absolutely bad resolve insofar as it includes a resolve not to abstain from one sin, because evil arises from any defect, and so that resolve can come from us. But a resolve to abstain absolutely from all sins is a good and perfect resolve. Hence from the fact that a human being can have the first resolve without the help of grace, it is wrongly inferred that he can also have the second.

XVI. In reply to the fourth argument, we say that an exterior act of infused and acquired temperance is of the same species as regards the substance of the act, but not an interior elicited act, as was said above. St. Thomas himself gives the reason for this in the cited 1. 2. q. 62: the interior acts of infused and acquired temperance or charity have formally different objects. Therefore they formally differ in species, for acts are specified by their objects.

XVI. To the fifth argument, the inference is denied. For, as St. Thomas teaches, p. 2. q. 62. art. 1, at the end of the body of the article, the habits of the theological virtues are known with certainty and infallibly only through divine revelation.³² Indeed, Master Báñez adds in the passages to be cited below, disputations 118 and 119, that they cannot be known evidently according to their ultimate difference through any created species, but only through the beatific vision, which is elicited through an uncreated species. In reply to the objection, we say that because the acts of infused and acquired charity are similar, without divine revelation a person cannot know infallibly that the act of charity he has in this life is supernatural, nor can he discern with certainty whether it proceeds efficiently from an infused habit, an acquired habit, or bare power. This is the solution of St. Thomas, in 1. sent. d. 17. q. 1. art. 4, and of Master Soto, lib. 1. de natura et grat. c. 22. coroll. 3, which Cajetan develops at greater length, 2. 2. q. 6. art. 1, with Master Báñez there; and art. 2. dub. 2, and q. 5. art. 1. ad 1, against St. Thomas's first conclusion; and ad 3, in support of Cajetan's opinion; and 1. p. q. 32. art. 1. dub. 2. ad 1 et 3. The reason why experience of acts, however supernatural they may be, does not entail infallible experience of the supernatural habits from which they proceed, but only probable experience, is that the formal reason under which supernatural acts are elicited cannot be known infallibly by experience, but only through divine revelation. Master Báñez gives this reason in the place cited above. When it is argued, An angel evidently knew that the substance of that act was not natural; therefore he evidently knew it was supernatural, the antecedent is denied. For although an angel left to his nature, apart from a special miracle, knows all natural things, whether substances or accidents, God by his absolute power can nevertheless conceal some natural thing from him, and the angel knows this evidently by his nature, because he knows that God is omnipotent and infinite.³³ Since the angel did not know evidently and could not know by the capacity of his nature whether God would or would not use this absolute power, he therefore did not have evident knowledge that the substance of that act was not natural. Most Thomists commonly give a similar solution to the question whether an angel can know infallibly by the capacity of his nature that Christ's humanity can subsist through an uncreated subsistence. See Medina, in the introduction to 3. p. q. 2, in the reply to the sixth of the objections in the second place. The same solution is applied to the argument made in 3. p. q. 76. art. 7.³⁴ concerning the question whether an angel knows by the powers of nature the sacramental conversion of bread into the body of Christ. See Soto, in 4. d. 10. q. 1. art. 7. Also see what we shall note in Disputations 118 and 119, where this same difficulty in the argument will be treated.

XVII. In reply to the sixth argument, we say first that the Council of Milevis and the Second Council of Orange in the cited places, in support of the second conclusion, determine absolutely that loving God is a gift of God, and they understand this of an absolute love of God above all. The holy Fathers, especially Augustine, likewise say this absolutely, and the phrase “as is fitting” is not added there. Second, one who loves God absolutely above all and prefers him to everything without exception loves him as is fitting, just as we said in disput. 50, in reply to the seventh argument: one who assents to supernatural mysteries with certainty and infallibly as revealed by God assents as is fitting for salvation. But the Council of Trent and the Second Council of Orange, in the cited places in the argument, added the phrase “as is fitting” to exclude an imperfect love of God, which is not simply above all and is not directed absolutely toward God, but loves him only insofar as he is the common and universal good on which every particular good depends intrinsically.³⁵ For, as we said above from St. Thomas, demons have this love by nature; indeed, every natural thing is more inclined to preserve the whole than to preserve itself. These points also answer the confirmation.

As for the authors cited in support of the first opinion, we say that they do not support it in any way. In particular, Master Soto expressly refutes the first opinion in lib. 1. de natura et gratia, c. 22. concl. 3, and in the section beginning “Ad dilectionem Dei.” He affirms that a fallen human being cannot have, by the powers of nature, a love of God above all, even a natural one, nor an absolute resolve to please him in all things, even if what is meant is a love and resolve that are not afterward fulfilled in execution. He asserts that this is Augustine's opinion and cites many passages of his. And in the section beginning “Igitur ad propositam quaestionem,” he teaches that a human being in fallen nature cannot fulfill the natural precept of inwardly loving God above all without the special help of grace. Cajetan too, p. 2. q. 109. art. 3, in the passage beginning “Ad evidentiam,” teaches most clearly that a fallen human being cannot love God absolutely above all by natural powers alone. In art. 4 he teaches that a human being cannot fulfill the precept of love of God and hope without the special help of grace, even as regards the substance of the act. If perhaps Cajetan or another Doctor cited in support of the first opinion said some obscure word somewhere that seems to support it, he explained himself in a sound sense in other places.

One argument nevertheless remains to be resolved at the end of this disputation, by which some theologians attack our opinion. It is drawn from a certain bull of Pius V, confirmed by Gregory XIII in 1579, on the fourth day before the Kalends of February, in the eighth year of his pontificate, against Michael Baius, a Doctor, as they say, of Louvain. Among the propositions of this author condemned there is listed proposition 34, namely: That distinction between two kinds of love, natural love, by which God is loved as the author of nature, and gratuitous love, by which God is loved as the beatifier, is empty and fabricated, and devised in order to make a mockery of Sacred Scripture and many testimonies of the ancients. Therefore, according to the decree of the Apostolic See, it must be asserted that there is a natural charity by which God is loved above all as the author of nature through the proper powers of free choice, without the help of grace. Otherwise that distinction between two kinds of love would be empty and fabricated.

To resolve this argument and the others that can be drawn from the same bull, we must note that the propositions of Michael Baius contained in that bull were condemned in the sense intended by their author. This is clear from the wording of the bull, where, after listing seventy-nine propositions, it says: These opinions, weighed in a strict examination before us, although some of them could in some way be defended, in the strict and proper sense of the words intended by their author, we condemn, circumscribe, and abolish, by the authority of these presents, as, respectively, heretical, erroneous, suspect, rash, scandalous, and offensive to pious ears, together with anything spoken or written concerning them. We also forbid the freedom to speak, write, or dispute in any way henceforth about these and similar matters. Given this, we reply that this distinction between two kinds of love should indeed be admitted; but it is not rightly inferred from it that a human being in fallen nature can, without the help of grace, love God above all without qualification, insofar as he is the author of nature. The Supreme Pontiff does not teach this in any way. Nor is it necessary that the love of God, or an act of charity natural on account of the object loved, also be natural on account of the principle eliciting that same act. For many acts whose object does not exceed the capacity of free choice are nevertheless given special help of grace by God, either because of the weakness of rational nature, which cannot of itself proceed to perfect acts, even acts proportionate to it, unless it is helped by the assistance of medicine, or also so that an act which otherwise could have been produced as regards its substance by the powers of nature alone may enter the supernatural order, as a disposition for grace or as a merit of glory. This is clear in many acts of the moral virtues elicited by a sinner at the special impulse of the Holy Spirit, who does not yet dwell in him but moves him, and likewise when they are elicited by a just person and are ordered through charity to the supernatural end, in which case such acts are meritorious of glory. Yet it is certain that acts of this kind are not supernatural on account of their proximate object, by which they are specified, but on account of the principle eliciting them and the ultimate end to which they are ordered. Second, we reply that to preserve this distinction between two kinds of love even in practice, it suffices that in the state of innocence our first parents could have loved God above all by the powers of nature alone, insofar as he is the author of nature. It may also be added that a created will is naturally more inclined to love God insofar as he is the universal good on which all other particular goods depend for their existence than it is inclined to love itself. Nevertheless, for this reason the demons too love God more than themselves, as St. Thomas teaches in the passages cited in no. 14 of this disputation.

We can confirm our opinion from the same bull. Among the propositions of the aforesaid Michael Baius, this proposition, which is no. 33, is condemned: That charity which is the fullness of the law is not always joined with the remission of sins.³⁶ From this an argument is drawn. An act of charity by which God is loved above all without qualification, insofar as he is the author of nature, virtually includes the observance of all the commandments, at least as regards their substance for the instant or time in which that act of charity is elicited or its power lasts, since transgression of one or another precept is incompatible with that act of charity. Therefore such love is always joined with the remission of sins, and consequently cannot proceed from the powers of nature alone. Therefore it must proceed from the help of divine grace. Otherwise, through that act of charity a human being would by the powers of nature alone dispose himself to obtain the remission of all sins and would in fact obtain it. This, however, cannot be admitted.

A small doubt is an appendix to the preceding question: whether, if a human being were created in pure nature, he could elicit by the powers of nature one or another natural act of loving God above all without qualification. Master Medina holds that a human being in pure nature cannot love God above all by the capacity of nature alone, just as neither can he in the state of fallen nature, and he proves this.³⁷ First: a human being in pure nature differs from a human being in fallen nature as a naked person differs from one who has been stripped. Therefore a human being in pure nature does not have greater natural powers than in fallen nature. But a human being in fallen nature cannot love God above all without the special help of grace, as was shown above. Therefore neither can he in pure nature.³⁸ Second: otherwise a human being in pure nature could by the capacity of nature alone keep all the precepts of the law, persevere in the good to the end of his life, and fail in nothing. Yet no one admits this.³⁹ The inference is proved: love of God above all virtually includes the observance of all the commandments, as was said above. Therefore if a human being in pure nature could love God above all by the capacity of nature, he could also keep all the commandments.

XIX. Nevertheless, the opinion of other Thomists seems true to me: they assert that a human being in pure nature can produce by the capacity of nature, for some short time, an act of loving God above all.⁴⁰ The chief reason for this is that in that state a human being would have a natural precept to love God above all as the author of nature, for this precept accompanies nature itself. Therefore he could fulfill that precept. The inference is clear: precepts are not given concerning impossibilities, as Jerome teaches in his exposition of the Catholic faith to Damasus. But in that state a human being would not have any help of grace by which he could fulfill that precept. For if he had help of grace, he would no longer be in pure nature, since this state excludes grace and sin and includes only those things that belong to a human being by his nature. Therefore by the capacity of nature he could fulfill it in one or another act.

XX. In reply to the first, we say that a human being in pure nature differs from one in fallen nature as a naked person differs from one who has been stripped, with respect to being deprived of grace and original justice, because in neither state would he have grace or original justice. Just as a person who has been stripped is without clothing, so is a naked person.⁴¹ Yet on another side, as we showed in disput. 45, there is a difference in this: the state of a human being in pure nature includes no guilt by which he is turned away from the ultimate end and wounded in his natural powers, whereas the state of fallen nature includes guilt, at least original guilt, by which he is turned away from the supernatural ultimate end and wounded in his natural powers, as St. Thomas explains, p. 2. q. 85, especially art. 3, where from Bede he enumerates the four wounds a human being incurs through sin, which were discussed in disput. 46. Hence a fallen human being cannot love God above all with natural love by the powers of nature. Otherwise he would at the same time be turned away from God as the supernatural end and turned toward him as the author of nature, which entails a contradiction. This argument does not apply to a human being in pure nature, because in that state he would not be turned away from the supernatural end or wounded by sin. Therefore the cases are not alike.

XXI. In reply to the second argument, we say that in pure nature a human being could love God above all for a short time. Hence he could keep all the commandments that would morally arise for him during that same time, but he could not keep all the precepts collectively throughout his life or for a long time. For because of the conflict of the sensitive appetite against reason that would exist in that state, a human being would eventually fail.⁴²⁴³ For Augustine says: If, in the great weakness of this life, a weakness in which virtue had nevertheless to be perfected so as to restrain pride, their will had been left to them so that they could, if they wished, remain in God's help, without which they could not persevere, and God did not work in them to make them will, then amid so many and such great temptations their will would succumb to their weakness. And so they could not persevere, because, weakened by their frailty, they would not will, or would not will strongly enough through the weakness of their will, to be able to persevere.⁴⁴

Whether free choice, with only general concurrence, can elicit attrition or contrition as regards only the substance of the act.

I. In the preceding disputation we briefly touched on certain matters concerning this difficulty, which seemed pertinent to a fuller clarification of the proposed question about the act of loving God. Now it must be examined more closely, so that the weakness of human free choice after the Fall may become more evident and it may turn more confidently to God's help in grieving for sins on account of God, supremely loved. There is, then, a first opinion asserting that our free choice, with only God's general concurrence, can elicit not only an act of natural attrition—that is, sorrow for sins from fear of God, together with a resolve not to sin mortally again—but also an act of natural contrition, which includes that same resolve not to sin mortally again.¹ In support of it they cite several authors, among them St. Thomas in 4. Sent. dist. 17. q. 2. art. 1. quaestiunc. 1. ad 6 and in other places cited in the preceding disputation, no. 1. They prove this opinion first: if the light of faith is especially already present, by which we know God to be our creator and the countless and greatest benefits of nature and grace which he has conferred on us, even to the shedding of his own blood on the Cross; and by which we also know that everlasting happiness is proposed for the just, but everlasting fire and the utmost misery for the ungodly; and if mortal sin is so great an evil and an offense against the Divine Majesty that even one sin is enough for the person who commits it to lose supreme happiness and fall into the utmost misery unless he grieves for it and resolves to commit nothing of this kind again; then undoubtedly this thought is so powerful in arousing and moving the will that² the free choice of one who has persuaded himself of these things and, by his own insight or by another's suggestion and exhortation, has carefully considered the matter, can, with only God's general concurrence and in view of the extreme evils into which he would otherwise fall, elicit sorrow or detestation of his crimes together with a resolve to avoid all mortal sins in the future. In this consists attrition as regards the substance of the act. In view, however, of God's goodness and benefits, it can elicit a similar detestation and resolve, in which the character of contrition consists as regards the substance of the act, though insufficient for salvation because it has not been aroused and affected by a particular impulse of the Holy Spirit.

This is confirmed: when at least the objects and occasions of sinning are absent, it is not very difficult; indeed, it presents itself as easy to elicit, as regards only the substance of the act, detestation of sin more than anything else that is detestable and an absolute resolve not to sin mortally again, of the kind sufficient for contrition and attrition. For anyone will experience this in himself if, by the light of faith, he sets before his mind and persuades himself that he will be excluded from everlasting blessedness, surrounded by countless other evils, and tormented on every side by everlasting fire unless he grieves for his past sins and resolves not to sin mortally again. It lies within the power of his free choice, with only general concurrence, to elicit in general an absolute resolve not to sin mortally again, so as to escape so great an evil. For it is natural for anyone, when faced with two hardships to be endured, at least in the absence of both, to choose the lesser and resolve to undergo it in order to avoid the greater. Therefore, at least someone illuminated by the light of faith can, with only God's general concurrence and as regards only the substance of the act, elicit an act of contrition or attrition with an absolute resolve not to sin thereafter.

They prove it second: contrition or attrition, as regards only the substance of the act, and an absolute resolve not to sin mortally thereafter, lies outside the whole latitude of the order of grace, contributes nothing to the supernatural end, and is a single act that is merely natural in itself and proper to free choice. Therefore the natural light of the intellect itself and moral and natural philosophy teach that this should not be denied to the natural powers of human free choice, with God cooperating only as the universal cause through general concurrence alone, in the way in which he cooperates with other secondary causes. Indeed, anyone who denies this is bound to prove the contrary, which must not be admitted until it has been established by sound arguments.

This is confirmed: it is not clear what benefit follows from weakening the natural powers of human free choice to such an extent that they are said to be unable, without the special help of grace, to perform the aforesaid act of contrition or attrition as regards only the substance of the act, or similar natural and simple acts.

They prove it third: assenting to the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the other revealed mysteries, which transcend the natural light, is no less difficult than grieving for sins committed, in the absence of all objects and occasions of sinning, on account of God or in order to avoid the punishments of hell, and resolving to restrain oneself from every mortal sin. But a human being can do the former as regards the substance of the act without special help, not with Christian assent but with merely natural assent, as was shown in disput. 49. Therefore, especially with a view to avoiding eternal punishments and attaining everlasting happiness and serving God, to whom he is bound by so many considerations, he can do the latter, which is so agreeable to reason and the natural light.

Finally. They prove the same thing by the third argument brought forward in the preceding disputation, no. 3.

I consider the contrary opinion true and in keeping with the mind of St. Augustine and St. Thomas. Hence let it be as follows.

II. First Conclusion. Our free choice, with only God's general concurrence, cannot elicit an act of attrition—that is, sorrow for all sins from fear of God, with an absolute resolve not to sin mortally again, together with hope of pardon. Rather, the special help of grace is absolutely necessary for such attrition. To make this conclusion clear, we must consider that the necessity of the help of grace for eliciting the aforesaid act of attrition can be understood on three grounds. First, on account of the sorrow, which is commonly conceived either from consideration of the shamefulness of sin or from fear of hell and punishments. Second, on account of the absolute resolve not to sin mortally thereafter. Third, on account of hope of pardon, or on account of faith in the punishments of hell, which is included in the aforesaid sorrow. We say, then, that the special help of grace is required for eliciting the aforesaid attrition or contrition not only on account of faith in the punishments of hell, nor only on account of the hope of pardon included in that sorrow, but also on account of that same sorrow together with an absolute resolve not to sin mortally thereafter. The authority of the Council of Trent seems to prove this conclusion, sess. 14. Decreto de Sacramento Poenitentiae, cap. 4, whose words we cited and examined in the preceding disputation, no. 11, where we also partly refuted the explanation which the authors of the opposing opinion attribute to the words of the Council of Trent.

Moreover, the same explanation can be refuted as follows: the Council teaches that attrition, which is a gift of God, disposes a sinner to obtain the grace of God in the sacrament of penance. But attrition disposes one to obtain grace in the sacrament of penance not only on account of fear of the punishments of hell or hope of pardon, but also on account of sorrow for sins itself, together with an absolute resolve not to sin thereafter. Therefore, the Council also holds that attrition is a gift of God on account of that same resolve.

It is proved further: as was shown in the preceding disputation, a human being in fallen nature cannot elicit love of God above all without the special help of grace, even as regards the substance of the act, because this love is an act proper to a sound nature, and is very difficult; hence it exceeds the capacity and power of weakened free choice, such as is the free choice of a human being in fallen nature. But sorrow for sins together with an absolute resolve never again to sin mortally is also very difficult. Therefore a sinner cannot elicit it without the help of grace, especially since rising passions of the sensitive appetite, the devil's temptations, and very many other inducements to sinning, which commonly occur in human life, impede such an absolute resolve. Therefore.

Moreover, an absolute resolve never to sin virtually includes the observance of all the commandments, at least for the time that such a resolve, or its power, lasts, just as was said of the act of charity in the preceding disputation. But a human being in fallen nature cannot keep all the commandments without the help of grace, not only throughout his entire life but even for any moment or short time, since the precept to believe, hope, or love often arises or can arise for him, and these precepts cannot be fulfilled without the help of grace, as is clear from the foregoing. Therefore, etc.

This very point is proved further: when other precepts of the natural law arise, it often happens that strong temptations of the sensitive appetite rise up, which must be overcome in order to keep those precepts. But without the help of grace, free choice cannot overcome such temptations, as will be made clear in the following disputation. Therefore it cannot, without the help of grace, keep any precept of the natural law for the time such temptations arise, and consequently it cannot have an absolute resolve not to sin thereafter.

They reply that this argument applies only to an absolute efficacious resolve, not to an absolute resolve that is nevertheless ineffective and is not afterward put into execution. But this solution has already been refuted from the preceding disputation, when we were treating absolute love of God. For it was shown that every absolute love of God is efficacious at least for the time in which it is elicited and in which its power lasts. Therefore the same must be held of an absolute resolve not to sin thereafter. Consequently, such a resolve will always be efficacious for the instant in which it is elicited and throughout the time that its power lasts.

This is confirmed: it entails a contradiction for someone to have, for some instant, an absolute resolve never to sin and nevertheless to sin mortally in that same instant. For such a resolve would be ridiculous and consequently would be called an absolute resolve not to sin in name only. Therefore a true absolute resolve not to sin is always efficacious for the same instant in which it is elicited and for all the time that its power lasts.

Second Conclusion. Free choice is even less able to elicit an act of contrition without the help of grace, that is, to grieve for sins on account of God, supremely loved, together with an absolute resolve not to sin thereafter. The arguments made for the preceding conclusion effectively prove this conclusion, and they apply all the more to contrition.

Moreover, this is proved from that definition of the Council of Trent, Session 6, On Justification, Canon 3: If anyone says that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his assistance a human being can believe, hope, love, or repent as is fitting for the grace of justification to be bestowed upon him, let him be anathema. But to grieve over all sins on account of God, supremely loved, with hope of pardon and an absolute resolve never to sin, is to repent as is fitting for the grace of justification to be bestowed; for it is not possible that a sinner repent in this way and that justifying grace not be bestowed on him. Therefore such sorrow cannot be elicited by the sole powers of nature without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his cooperation.

Second, this is proved from passages of Scripture. For Lamentations 5 says: Convert us, O Lord, to yourself, and we shall be converted. From this testimony the Council of Trent, Session 6, On Justification, chapter 5,³ proves that contrition, by which sinners are converted to God, proceeds from prevenient grace—that is, from God's calling, by which they are called without any merits of theirs—so that those who had been turned away from God through sins may, through his grace that stirs and assists them to turn themselves toward their own justification, be disposed by freely assenting to and cooperating with that same grace. To prove this, it adduces at the end of that same chapter the authority already cited; therefore, the point stands. It is also proved from 2 Tim. 2: Lest perhaps God give them repentance for the knowledge of the truth, and they recover from the snares of the Devil. From these words St. Augustine, book 5 against Julian, chapter 3, draws the same truth, saying: However much patience he may show, unless he himself has given it,⁴ who will do penance? Have you forgotten that this same Doctor says: Lest perhaps God give them repentance, etc.? He seems to speak of the repentance by which one grieves over sins on account of God, supremely loved, with an absolute resolve to sin no more thereafter; for this is true repentance. Hence Augustine himself says near the end of Letter 106: The Apostle calls that very repentance, he says, a gift of God, where he says of certain people: Lest perhaps God give them repentance. And in book 2, On the Merits and Remission of Sins, chapter 18, he says: That we turn away from God is our own doing, and this is an evil will; but that we turn to God, we cannot do unless he himself stirs and assists us.

Third, it is proved by reason: for free choice in fallen nature cannot love God above all things without qualification without the help of grace, nor have an absolute resolve thereafter not to sin mortally, as is clear from what was said in the preceding disputation. Therefore it cannot elicit an act of contrition either. The inference is proved because love of God above all things and an absolute resolve thereafter not to sin mortally are necessarily included in an act of contrition, as is clear from what was said above.

Fourth, it is proved because, as will become clear in disputation 65, an act of contrition is supernatural as regards the substance of the act, just like an act of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Therefore, even as regards its substance, it cannot be elicited by free choice without the help of grace. The passages of St. Thomas cited in support of the contrary opinion were already answered in the preceding disputation.

To the first of the arguments made at the beginning, it is answered that this consideration of God's benefits, insofar as it is ordered toward obtaining the contrition or attrition explained above, cannot be had without the help of grace. For the Apostle says: We are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as though from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God:⁵⁶ Hence attrition or contrition arising from the aforesaid thought or consideration is not elicited without the special help of grace that stirs and assists.

To the confirmation it is answered that, even in the absence of occasions for sinning, it is not merely difficult but also impossible, without the help of grace, to elicit hatred of sin above everything hateful and an absolute resolve thereafter not to sin mortally, of the kind required for contrition and attrition. Nor does any experience teach the opposite; for, as St. Gregory says, The human mind often deceives itself, and imagines that it loves what it does not love, and does not love what it loves. And to the objection about the two proposed hardships, it is answered that, when those hardships are to be avoided for some human motive that does not exceed one's own powers, it is natural to undergo the lesser in order to avoid the greater. This does not occur in the present case: for an act of contrition includes something that exceeds the powers of that same nature, by reason of an absolute resolve never to sin mortally, so as to avoid the punishments of hell. Hence it is not something natural, but truly a gratuitous gift, for free choice to elicit that act of contrition.

To the second argument it is answered that contrition, even as regards the substance of the act, exceeds the capacity of nature, just as do acts of believing, hoping, and loving God insofar as he is the author of grace, as will be clear in disputation 65. Attrition, however, with all the conditions explained above, enters the supernatural order: for it disposes at least remotely toward obtaining the grace of justification, as was said; hence it cannot be elicited by the sole powers of nature. The same must be said of an absolute resolve never to sin mortally: for in a person ordered to eternal life, such a resolve virtually includes observance of the supernatural precepts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, etc. Those precepts cannot be kept without the help of grace, as is clear from the premises.

It is answered, second, that even if one granted, without conceding, that such a resolve lies entirely outside the scope of the order of grace, free choice still could not elicit it by the sole powers of nature, any more than it could elicit an act of loving God above all things as the author of nature, because of the difficulty and perfection of the act, which weak nature therefore cannot attain unless it is stirred and assisted by grace.

To the confirmation it is answered first that the same argument could be turned against the authors of the contrary opinion. For it is not apparent what benefit follows from praising and extolling the natural powers of human free choice in fallen and weakened nature to such an extent that very difficult acts, exceeding its feeble power, are attributed to it without the help of grace. For it is already clear from what was said above how many disadvantages follow from this assertion.

Second, it is answered that many benefits follow from our affirming that the natural powers of human free choice have been so weakened by sin that it cannot elicit certain acts without the help of grace, even acts that are merely natural, such as loving God above all things as the author of nature and making an absolute resolve never to sin mortally against the natural law. The first benefit is this: free choice is thereby humbled and kept within its proper bounds, so that, recognizing its own weakness and frailty, it has recourse to God's help, as is clear from what was said above. But when these acts are attributed to free choice without the help of grace, a great occasion is given it to grow proud and exalt itself against God's grace.⁷ Hence St. Augustine calls the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians not defenders but promoters, squanderers, and destroyers of free choice, because they attributed to its natural powers acts exceeding the capacity of that same free choice. The second benefit is this: by this doctrine we conform ourselves to the statements of Scripture, the Councils, and the holy Fathers cited above and to be cited below, and we depart far not only from the errors of Pelagius but even from their tracks. On the other hand, we expose ourselves to no danger, but walk the middle way, affirming that free choice in fallen nature can elicit some morally good acts without the help of grace, though not all of them—namely, not those that contain grave difficulty, as was explained in disputation 50.

To the third argument it is answered that, just as free choice cannot elicit an act of contrition or attrition with an absolute resolve thereafter not to sin without the help of grace, so too it cannot, without that same help, assent to the mystery of the Trinity and all the other things as revealed by God, as was shown in disputation 49.

The solution to the fourth is clear from what was said to the third in the preceding disputation.

Whether a human being can, by the natural powers of free choice, restore the good connatural to him that he lost through sin.

I. The affirmative position is first proved by the authority of St. Thomas in 2, dist. 28, in his exposition of the text, at the end of that same distinction, where he says: By the natural power he received from God, a human being can change his will for the better; therefore, the claim follows.

Second, it is proved as follows. Natural rectitude consists in the will's being subject to God; but this subjection can be had in natural matters through the powers of nature: for after a human being has sinned, he can subject himself to God and obey him in matters pertaining to the natural order. Therefore, he can restore the rectitude of will that he lost by sinning.

Third, vicious and depraved habits do not necessitate the will to remain in them always. Therefore, by the powers of nature and through habits of virtue opposed to them, the will can expel them and thus restore the rectitude of will that it lost by sinning.

II. The answer is given briefly by the negative conclusion, which St. Augustine proves in book 4 against Julian, chapter 3, where he shows that a human being cannot, by the capacity of nature alone, repair the losses he has inflicted upon himself, nor return from vice to virtue.¹ St. Thomas proves the same in 1, 2, q. 109, art. 7, reply to objection 2, where he says that natural reason is not a sufficient principle of this health that is in a human being through justifying grace; rather, its principle is grace, which is taken away through sin. And therefore a human being cannot be restored by himself, but needs the light of grace to be infused into him anew, just as a soul would have to be infused anew into a dead body to raise it to life. And in his reply to the third objection he says that human nature, declining through the act of sin, since it does not remain intact but is corrupted, cannot be restored by itself, either to the good connatural to it, much less to the supernatural good of justice. The most decisive reason for this is that a human being cannot, by the capacity of nature, remove the privation of grace incurred through sin; for grace is from God alone as an efficient cause, in accordance with the saying: The Lord will give grace and glory.² Nor can a human being rectify his own will toward a supernatural end, since this exceeds the whole capacity of nature; nor toward a natural end, because such rectification requires love of God above all things without qualification, by which a human being is converted to God, the author of nature, from whom he had been turned away through sin. But one who is in mortal sin cannot love God above all things even with natural love, as was shown in disputation 51; therefore, the conclusion follows.

III. TO THE FIRST objection it is answered, first, that St. Thomas explicitly teaches our opinion in the cited passage of 1, 2. Hence, in the second book of the Sentences he is not speaking of all the disadvantages a human being incurs through sin, but only of one of them. For by nature a human being can perform some morally good act that is not a sin in its particular instance; yet he cannot exercise all moral goods without the help of grace. Moreover, that morally good work which he performs by the powers of nature is not true good without qualification, nor does it have the character of true virtue as regards its manner, as St. Augustine teaches in the cited passage, and as we have sufficiently shown in disputation 50.

To the second it is answered that a human being in mortal sin can, without the help of grace, subject his will to God in a qualified way and with respect to some moral operation, by fulfilling some natural precept as regards the substance of the act. Yet by the capacity of nature alone he cannot subject himself to God without qualification, nor have an act of love of God above all things, in which observance of all the commandments is virtually contained. Hence it does not follow that he can restore to himself even the natural rectitude of will that he lost by sinning.

To the third it is answered that from the fact that vicious habits do not necessitate the will without qualification, it follows only that a person sins freely when he sins. If someone objects, “Therefore he can sin and not sin,” the answer is that of himself and by his own powers he can sin, and likewise he can refrain from sin, but then by the help of grace. For although by the powers of nature he can avoid one sin or another, he cannot avoid all sins without qualification. On this, see St. Thomas, 3. cont. Gent. c. 149.