De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. Since I have determined to publish a brief treatise on Evangelical liberty, I must first investigate and set forth the common account and definition of liberty. For without this knowledge, this matter can scarcely be explained.

2. Therefore, as is received by all, the account of absolute liberty must be constituted thus: that it is a faculty and power of one's own action toward diverse and even opposite things. For when we choose a thing such that choosing or not choosing it lies in our free decision, no one fails to understand that it is decided by free choice. The same also occurs in external action. That man acts freely is evident, who has the free faculty of acting or not acting, of doing this or that. For who would not confess that this man, who can both sit and not sit, if he sits, sits freely? By the same law, he is said to act freely who, from many things by which he can reach one end, accommodates what he prefers by his own power of will to the prescribed end. For if a sickness can be cured by many modes, he who consults for his health can adopt for himself the medicine he judges more suitable for curing the sickness. But if by some force and compulsion anyone instills a humor into his throat, he does not take the medicine by his own decision, but violently, necessarily, with nature repugning.

3. This, I say, is the proper and true account of absolute liberty, which by common consent is attributed to God Most High, to angels, and to men. For the ability to fall into sins and crimes, which some perhaps attribute to liberty, is far removed from the account of absolute liberty. But it belongs only to that liberty which is found in weak and frail nature. Wherefore also in his Proslogion B. Anselm¹ says: "To be able to sin is neither liberty nor a part of liberty." For we do not deprive God Most High, nor angels, nor blessed men of liberty, although they cannot dare any evil. For whatever God effects in created things, this same thing He can not effect: because nothing is so joined with divine goodness that it cannot be manifested without its being produced. Angels also, and even happy souls, although they cannot will evil, can nevertheless will or not will many good things: they can also act and not act. For angels by some natural knowledge of theirs, blessed souls by that doctrine which they acquired for themselves by study and diligence while touched by mortal body, can use and not use. They can consider the natures of plants, the morals of men, the motion of heavenly bodies. Wherefore we must also concede the account of liberty to them.

4. However, I do not think this should be passed over: when we said that liberty is a certain faculty toward opposites, no alternation or succession of opposite actions ought to be understood in this definition of liberty. For that I reject a thing previously acquired by my desire, afterward from all my desire for the thing, pertains to my liberty; because I have obtained a variable and inconstant will. For nothing is more inconstant than human will. But this change of will does not enter the common and absolute account of liberty. Who indeed would be so foolish as to say that the immortal God, whom we confess to be the author of all liberty, can be changed in His institution? For I, He says, am the Lord and I do not change.² Therefore the definition of that liberty which is common to God, to angels, to men, comprehends only this account: that there is a certain faculty of either opposite, of choosing either toward one end, or even of accomplishing it.

5. But a certain scruple offers itself to me, which seems to shake, indeed to remove, indeed to utterly overturn this true definition of liberty. For when God Most High has sanctioned by eternal will whatever He constituted to do in things, if it cannot be changed from His first counsel, the account of liberty seems to be endangered: when it can by no means be confirmed that divine will can be poured out into opposite actions. For when by His sempiternal law He designated what nature He would constitute, no time or point of time can be found in us, in which He has faculty toward opposites. For neither at that moment when He instituted the creation of the whole mass of the universe can we say His will was twofold; so that He could both determine by His own decision the creation of the world, and not determine. For these things fight against each other: that He constitutes the universe to be created in one moment, and in the same moment has a doubtful and as it were dubious will about creating it. For if He willed to create, who could think that He then stood with doubtful and uncertain will? But neither can any moment be posited in which He either did not think about the creation of the universe, or certainly did not deliberate. Since nothing precedes eternity, which is the proper duration of divine will. Which if we add that divine will, as Sacred Letters transmit to us, cannot be changed from its purpose; either we must confess God Himself Most High not to be of free will, or that account which we defined to be of absolute liberty is vain.

6. This question is indeed difficult. But if we notice by how great an interval divine will descends from created will, this Gordian knot can either be resolved or cut. Not therefore is the condition of divine and created will the same, but plainly far diverse. For a creature, which in its actions has succession, can so be bent toward diverse and opposite things that it is borne into neither part at some time. For someone can, by some interval of time, think nothing about undertaking or not undertaking a battle with an enemy, and it is of his duty to deliberate what he judges more commodious in that matter. Wherefore it comes about that in human will there is a certain potentiality conjoined with liberty. But this is most abhorrent from divine will: since God is a most simple act, and by His own nature is devoid of all passion, all defect, all indigence. Wherefore divine will is not at any time like human will, either dubious or uncertain. But in this the account of its liberty is constituted: that it is borne into neither part of contradiction, nor into any nature of created things, by any absolute necessity. For just as no thing is without which divine goodness cannot be manifested; so, since with eternal God Most High He constituted some thing of Himself to be created, by that same moment of eternity He could constitute that it not be brought forth into light. For the creation of things is to be referred not to any necessity of nature or will, but to the most ample liberality of God.

7. Therefore we did not place faculty toward diverse and opposite things in the common definition of liberty, as if we judge that every free will is uncertain and twofold at any action whatever. But because in neither of them is it driven by any absolute necessity, although with the election of one the opposite cannot equally be elected.