De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. In addition, just as some heretics previously condemned the entire religious state, so the Lutherans now seek to undermine and utterly overthrow it. For in their view, it cannot be reconciled with Christian liberty for anyone to bind his faith to God, since he may one day repent of having pledged his faith. Augustine¹ says in his letter to Armentarius and Paulina²: “For since you have vowed³, you have bound yourself. You may do nothing else. You will not be as you would have been had you not done what you vowed: then you would have been less, not worse. But now, God forbid, you will be all the more wretched if you break faith with God, and all the more blessed if you fulfill it.”⁴

2. And let us examine the individual vows of religious: a) They think that when chastity is vowed, one acts against evangelical liberty. Experience itself testifies that a man is often beset by the goads of sexual desire. “Would it not⁵, then,” they say, “be better and more conducive to peace of mind to be able to enjoy lawful sexual relations than to wage a perpetual war against such disturbances and so often be driven away from the work of virtue?”

b) What benefit, then, does the vow of obedience provide? Does not the person bound by such a vow wholly cast off his liberty, so that he must forever live according to another’s will? How sound this is, and how fitting for a Christian, may be understood even from this: the paths to better works are closed to him. For, as Augustine⁶ writes to Pollentius on adulterous unions⁷: “Those duties of ours are more pleasing which, although we are free⁸ not to perform them, we nevertheless refrain from performing for the sake of love.” But how are we free not to perform our duty toward the one to whom we have already bound all our duties by vow? We can therefore perform no pleasing service to God if we have assigned our will to him.

c) They say we can infer how useless the vow of poverty is, and how contrary it is to divine law, from this: services rendered under compulsion⁹ do not please God. If you intend to despise and reject earthly riches, do so by your own choice, not under the necessity of a vow. For when Christ, our supreme good, showed us the perfection of life, he made no mention of a vow of poverty, precisely because he held that a Christian should do everything by free choice. Thus we read that neither Christ himself nor the Apostles paid anything to God under the obligation of a vow.

3. Finally, they disparage the fixed and prescribed use and color of the clothing worn by monks and members of religious communities. “What,” they say, “could be more illiberal—or indeed more servile—for a person than to be confined to a particular garb and a prescribed color? Even those who have fallen into another’s service sometimes wear clothing of different kinds.” In short, while promising that they wish to assert the full liberty of the Christian people in every rank, sex, and age, they strive to weaken and destroy the practices and institutions of all religious.

4. But on this matter the Lutherans are badly mistaken when they suppose that every necessity and every restriction to a single course conflicts with evangelical liberty. They want a Christian to be able to carry out with impunity whatever comes into his mind. They are wrong, I say, and snore through both nostrils, as the saying goes, because they do not understand the nature and character of necessity. What can conflict with liberty from sin—which we have already defined as the chief Christian liberty—except enslavement to sin? To be sure, there is also the external violence by which someone is compelled to undertake a task against his will, since such coercion seems to diminish the praise due to virtue. But necessity and limitation to one course that arise from an inward disposition of the mind neither destroy the nature of true liberty nor diminish virtue’s praise. Works of justice are not done with less freedom or less merit when they proceed from an inward disposition of justice than when, as often happens, they are done without virtue. For although virtue makes action easy, it does not take away evangelical liberty. What else¹⁰ is the purpose of the evangelical law than to make us good and lovers of virtue? If we strive with all our strength to have all our works are¹¹ adorned with the splendor of virtue, that does not detract from evangelical liberty; nor does it impair such liberty if someone chooses a way of life in which all his actions are virtuous. This is the aim of religious when they profess religious life: to direct all their actions to the virtue we call religion or devotion¹². It belongs to that virtue, by a deliberate act of the mind, to promise something to God, our supreme good, and to offer it as fully as one can in his service and worship. Thus one and the same work of a monk or religious person can belong to two virtues. Just as someone who steals in order to squander his gains on prostitutes is charged with both lust and greed, so someone who rejects all sexual pleasure¹³ by vow performs an act of not only¹⁴ chastity but also religion. A vow, then, does not oppose evangelical liberty; it makes all the Christian’s works more excellent.

5. Moreover, if I set myself a definite end to attain, and there is something without which I cannot attain it, do I not freely choose to set my hand¹⁵ to that task, even though the necessity of the prescribed end impels me toward it? This is the necessity for acting that those who dedicate themselves to religious life impose on themselves; the Peripatetics, I say, call it necessity arising from an end. Since they have chosen to be subject to God, our supreme Lord, in all things through devotion and religion, they must bring their vows to a good conclusion if they wish to keep their promises. Since they have freely subjected themselves to God and freely chosen this way of life¹⁶, what reason¹⁷ is there to deny that everything involved in this devoted submission is also done freely? I turn to you, Luther: your chief aim seems to be to claim for yourself the leadership of a single sect and thereby win everlasting fame. Yet you cannot carry out this plan unless you arm the Saxons against the Roman Church with your destructive sermons. Do you not preach freely, and freely take on the labor of drawing those peoples over to your opinion¹⁸? Your impious¹⁹ sermons join absolute liberty to a certain necessity arising from the end—if you wish to achieve your vow. This, then, is the kind of necessity to which members of religious communities commit themselves when, to attain the perfection of Christian life, they bind their faith to obedience, poverty, and chastity; yet they do not cast off evangelical liberty.

6. That the very person who has vowed may at some point repent of having pledged his faith²⁰ does not impede liberty. It is certainly most beneficial for him that he cannot withdraw from fulfilling the duty to which he bound himself by vow without the stain of sin, even if he regrets having promised it. Thus Augustine, writing to the same Armentarius mentioned above²¹, says: “Do not repent of having vowed; rather rejoice that you are no longer permitted to do what would have been permitted to your detriment. Happy is the necessity that compels us toward better things.”

7. The argument they use to attack the vow of continence can also readily be shown to have no force. Anxiety about a wife, children, and household affairs brings greater distress of mind than the struggle against disordered desires of the flesh²². The former is continuous and unceasing; the latter is temporary and undertaken in one’s spare hours²³. Besides, if someone once or twice puts a bridle on sexual desire and weakens the body through fasting and other forms of restraint, the body is enfeebled, weakened, and subdued; consequently, it distracts the mind less from investigating divine things and from the practice of virtue. But when the reins are loosened on sexual desire, and someone eagerly gives himself over to it²⁴, he becomes more excited, more vehement, more ardent, and so is greatly deterred not only from contemplating divine things but even from discerning the truth. Such is the nature of pleasure: it makes the appetite come to rest in the thing desired.

Nevertheless, I would not deny that there may be someone for whom it is better and more peaceful to live in marriage than to remain continent. Our Savior seems to have intimated this when, after praising continence, he added: “Not everyone can accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given. Let anyone who can accept it accept it.”²⁵ But we consider what usually happens more commonly. For more people suffer less disturbance of mind if they remain continent than if they are tormented by the troubles of marriage.

8. What they next object against the vow of obedience is of little importance. Someone who submits himself to another’s will through obedience is not deprived of the liberty we call evangelical; rather, he is made freer from enslavement to sin²⁶, since he has bound himself more closely to virtue. For by prescribing for himself a certain necessity of living well²⁷, he departs from all enslavement to sin. Nor should we think that something will be more pleasing to God, our supreme Lord, if it is offered without the necessity of a vow than if it is paid in fulfillment of a vow. What we pay in fulfillment of a vow, and the vow itself before it was undertaken, both lay within our power. Therefore, when by vowing²⁸ we surrender our liberty to God, so that we are bound to repay what we once promised, we bestow on him a remarkable gift, far more pleasing than if we repaid it without having bound ourselves by a vow.²⁹ Augustine³⁰ does not therefore regard as “more pleasing among our duties” everything that we are free not to perform³¹, but only what we give without any binding testamentary obligation or any constraining bond imposed by another. Yet those things that we are not³² free to withhold because we ourselves pledged our faith to perform them are far more pleasing to a person than if it were left to his discretion not to perform them. For the force of that first affection and freedom, by which we willingly and generously bound ourselves to give, endures in the duties we perform in fulfillment of a vow, so that they may be said to be performed freely and with goodwill.

9. Further, their outcry against the vow of poverty is easily answered if we consider the advantage and usefulness of poverty. If we assess human goods with sound judgment, the accumulation of riches holds the lowest place, while virtue holds the highest. Wealth counts as a human good only to the extent that it can help us perform works of virtue. If riches impede virtue, they are not good but evil: they are to be condemned and cast away. What? Are riches not an impediment to someone who has devoted himself entirely to spiritual things and considers nothing more important³³ than imitating Christ’s way of life?

Unless we reject the words of our Savior, this cannot be denied³⁴. For in Matthew, chapter 19³⁵, he says: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give it to the poor, then come, follow me.” And in chapter 13³⁶ he had foretold: “The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word.” We also have many philosophers as examples in this matter³⁷, who renounced their paternal wealth in pursuit of virtue. To pass over the others³⁸, Jerome³⁹ writes of Socrates to Paulinus⁴⁰: “That Theban Socrates, once a very rich man, was going to Athens to study philosophy when he threw away a weight of gold, judging that he could not possess both riches and virtues at once.” It is therefore no obstacle to evangelical liberty that religious, who intend to observe the counsels and example of our Leader and Emperor and direct their minds⁴¹ with all their strength to divine things, reject riches.

Nor is it altogether true that Christ, our legislator, urged poverty alone and not a vow of poverty. When he invited us to the perfection of life, he taught not only that riches should be cast away but also exhorted us not to return to them. For in Luke, chapter 9⁴², he says: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Hence Augustine⁴³, in the book On the Harmony of the Gospels⁴⁴, says, following Matthew’s and Mark’s account, that Peter and Andrew followed the Lord “without drawing their ships ashore as if they intended to return,” but rather “as men following one who commanded them to follow.” Finally, it can be understood that the Apostles dedicated all they had to God, since they followed the Lord after leaving everything behind.

10. Finally, why should it trouble the Lutherans that each religious order has defined a particular habit for itself⁴⁵? Is it not customary in human⁴⁶ society for clothing to vary according to people’s station? Soldiers wear one kind of clothing, lawyers another, and merchants another. Likewise, men’s clothing⁴⁷ differs from women’s. There are also different garments for the body according to each person’s rank. Besides, just as soldiers wore military dress in the early Church, Christians wore Christian dress. It is therefore no wonder⁴⁸ if different religious orders⁴⁹ also have different institutions, customs, and habits, by which each person displays the religious order he professes.