De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. It is sufficiently and more than sufficiently clear that the Evangelical liberty is the same liberty that we call Christian, since the law of Christians, by which their conduct and actions are ordered, is nothing other than the Gospel. But the Evangelical law is constituted from two things: namely, the grace of the Holy Spirit¹ and the very written text of the Gospels. Grace claims the first place in this matter. For, writing to the Romans,² the Apostle says: The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed me from the law of sin. Augustine also says in his book On the Spirit and the Letter³: “What are the laws of God written by God himself⁴ in hearts, if not the very presence of the Holy Spirit?” The writing of the Gospel claims the second place, since it supplies us not only with aids for acquiring grace, but also most abundantly hands on those things by which we may use the grace of the Holy Spirit in a manner worthy of it. For this very commandment—the Gospel of Christ set down in writing—most clearly explains both his divinity and his humanity, which are the subject of Christian faith, by which we are prepared for grace. In many ways, too, it exhorts us to contempt of the world, through which we are made capable of grace; moreover, it admonishes us to embrace all works of the virtues, in which the good use of grace consists. It follows that the Evangelical liberty is to be called that which the writing of the Gospel and the grace of the Holy Spirit confer upon Christians.

2. For the rest, the madness of heretics in this matter must be guarded against.⁵ They think a) that no interpreter of the Evangelical law should be accepted, and that nothing belongs to the law of Christians which is not written in those books that we call the Gospels; and they say b) that everything⁶ not contained in the Gospels, or at least in some one of Paul’s letters, must be rejected.

3. How impudently their first claim has been devised can be understood even from this: they accuse of rashness nearly countless most holy Fathers, both Greek and Latin, who have interpreted the sacred Gospels. They also condemn the Catholic Church’s observance over so many centuries, which receives interpretations of the sacred Scriptures⁷ and chants them in divine praises. Finally, they accuse themselves of wrongdoing: while rejecting all such accounts, they set themselves up as the sole investigators of the Gospels. Thus, as they strive to overthrow all expositors of Scripture, they condemn themselves as well, since they claim to act as faithful interpreters of the Gospels. But who is so mad as to wish and desire that only he himself be believed, after rejecting so many Fathers who are at once most holy and most learned?

Many things in the Gospels lie obscure and hidden; there are also some which, unless we interpret them piously and faithfully,⁸ seem to conflict with one another. For who would deny that these words of Christ in Matthew, chapter XI,⁹ need an interpreter: No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him? In Matthew, chapter V,¹⁰ it is also said: Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works; then, after a few intervening words, it is added:¹¹ Take care not to perform your righteousness before men in order to be seen by them. Does not this latter statement seem to take away and erase the former? I would run out of time if I wished to list every passage in the Gospel that calls for a faithful and devout expositor. If an interpreter is needed somewhere in the sacred Scriptures,¹² should I reject those holy and most learned Doctors whom the Church accepts and venerates, in order to imitate the follies of others who depart from Christian simplicity and are alien to Christian conduct? The heretics are surely mistaken if, in such great ignorance, they expect to find followers of their inventions who will consider themselves wise.

4. Their second claim, which these same men, full of rashness, advance—that nothing not written in the New Law¹³ belongs to Christian doctrine—can easily be refuted from the sacred Scriptures and the Church’s longstanding custom.

That our Lord Jesus Christ taught many things which were not committed to writing may be inferred, indeed seen most clearly, from the words of the Apostle John. For in the final chapter of his Gospel¹⁴ he says: There are also many other things that Jesus did; if each of them were written down, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would have to be written. Just as many of Christ’s signs and miracles were not committed to writing, it is likewise probable that he taught many things in synagogues and cities which those who recorded his deeds omitted. How many things, too, do we believe the Apostle Paul taught while preaching the Christian faith that were not written in any of his letters? For, writing to the Thessalonians in the second chapter,¹⁵ he says: Brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions you were taught, whether by word or by our letter. No one but an obstinate and arrogant person will deny that the same was true of the other Apostles. For in John, chapter XIV,¹⁶ our Savior Jesus Christ said to them: He will give you another Paraclete, to remain with you forever, the Spirit of truth. It follows that we see very many things observed in the Catholic Church which have come down to later generations by the Apostles’ tradition, as if by hereditary succession, even though they are not found written in their books.

5. Therefore Christ himself, lending authority to the Apostles’ words and ordinances, says: Whoever hears you, he says,¹⁷ hears me; and whoever rejects you rejects me. But whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me. Blessed Cyprian the martyr declares¹⁸ that these words were spoken also to all those who succeeded the Apostles in governing the Christian commonwealth. It is also said in Acts, chapter XVI,¹⁹ As they passed through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decrees decided upon by the Apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. Augustine says in the fifth book of On Baptism, against the Donatists:²⁰ “There are many things which the universal Church holds; these are rightly believed to have been enjoined by the Apostles, although they are not found written down.” Finally, Innocent III, a man of great renown and Supreme Pontiff, is cited in the chapter “Cum Martae,” in Decretals, book III, title 41, chapter 6:²¹ he asserts that many things done and said by the Lord were omitted by the Apostles, and that the Apostles themselves supplied them either by word or deed. As evidence for this, he cites the Apostle Paul, who, as we read in Acts of the Apostles,²² says: Remember the word of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said: It is more blessed to give than to receive. Writing also to the Corinthians,²³ Paul says: He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once—although none of the Evangelists mentions them.

6. Therefore, by the name of the Evangelical law we understand not only²⁴ those things written in the Gospels and the canonical writings of the Apostles²⁵ but also those things done or said by the Apostles which have come down to us, as it were, through a tradition passed from hand to hand. To return, then, to the point from which we digressed: we say that Evangelical liberty is that which proceeds from this Christian law we have defined.²⁶ This liberty is twofold: one from sin, the other from the burden and subjection of the ancient law. For through the grace of the Holy Spirit, which we said holds the first place in the Evangelical law, we are freed from bondage to sin; through the written Gospel itself, we are freed from observing the ancient law, and are constrained only by those precepts without which grace cannot be possessed. The whole liberty of Christians consists in these two kinds of liberty.