Declaración y réplica del padre Báñez acerca del papel del padre Suárez (1594)

In the city of Salamanca, on the twenty-seventh day of the month of October of the year fifteen hundred and ninety-four, before the lord Doctor Palacios de Teran, commissary of the Holy Office, and before me the present notary, there appeared in person, having been summoned, Father Friar Domingo Ibañez, of the Order of Saint Dominic of this city, professor of prime of theology in this University, from whom the said lord commissary received oath in due form of law, and he took it fully, placing his right hand upon his breast. And being questioned according to the tenor of the said commission, he said: that at the end of August of this year, this deponent coming from Madrid found the report in Salamanca that there went about a paper written by hand in the vernacular in defense of free choice, which is in everything the same as the one shown to him by the said lord commissary, in better handwriting — for to recognize it he went through the whole of it in my presence. And presently this deponent sought to obtain a copy of the said defense. And time passed, and he found it in the hands of Friar Francisco de Pedrosa, friar master of students of the convent of San Esteban of this city, who said that Diego de Carvajal, alderman of this city, had given it to him, to whom it had been given by fathers of the Society or by a father of the Society. And this deponent, reading the said paper, was much scandalized, not only by the bad doctrine contained in the said paper, but also by the wrong it did to the friars of Saint Dominic, as will be seen from the said paper.

And besides this, this deponent was no less scandalized that in the vernacular and vulgar tongue there should be spread abroad by the fathers of the Society such doctrine concerning mysteries so difficult and incomprehensible. And therefore this deponent at once set about writing against what was contained in the said paper, giving first of all notice of the said paper, and of the step he wished to take, to the said lord commissary, that he might give it to the lord inquisitors. And so this deponent wrote, and has written, twenty-one sheets of paper against the doctrine of the said paper and in defense of sound and Catholic doctrine, which he has communicated to no one, nor has anyone seen them, save the provincial of this deponent, who is Master Friar Tomas de Guzman, in Valladolid, at a meeting held there in the monastery of San Pablo of masters and weighty theologians of his province. The which said father provincial, at the petition of this deponent, delivered the twenty-one sheets of paper to masters and presented friars among the most learned who were found there of the Order of Saint Dominic, that — the twenty-one sheets of paper which this deponent had so composed being seen — they might give their judgment, concordant and unanimous, that it was doctrine worthy of being presented to the said holy Tribunal of the general Inquisition, as will be seen from the said twenty-one sheets of paper signed by the said masters and presented friars, which this deponent will send to the said holy tribunal by the hand of his said provincial, as he understands it to be commanded him by the lords of the said supreme Council.

Item, this deponent declares that the said twenty-one sheets which are to go into the hand of the said supreme Council of the Inquisition are the first ones that were written, this deponent dictating them, with Friar Diego Lili de Artiaga, resident of the said convent of San Esteban, as his scribe, upon whom a precept of obedience was laid, with the authority of the said father provincial, to keep secret what he was writing and the step this deponent was taking.

Item, this deponent declares that he had twenty-one sheets copied, which he has in his power, laying a precept of secrecy upon three priest-friars of the said order who copied them in parts; and that he wished to keep the said copy by him, not to communicate it to anyone — as he will not communicate it — unless by order of the said Holy Office; but he keeps it by him to make use of what he has there composed for another, longer treatise, in Latin, which he has begun to compose on the same point and matter, to present it to the holy tribunal of the supreme Council of the Inquisition, and if need be to the holy Apostolic See.

Item, he declares that the presented father, Friar Pedro de Herrera, of the Order of Saint Dominic, professor of theology in this University, told this deponent that Father Gaspar de Mena, of the Society of Jesus, had written the said paper in defense of free choice, Father Francisco Suarez, of the said Society, dictating and composing it for him.

Item, he declares that the said Friar Francisco Pedrosa, master of students, told this deponent that on the part of the said Society of Jesus the said paper in defense of free choice was offered to Doctor Diego de Vera, professor of prime of canon law of this University, and he had not wished it to be given to him nor to receive it.

Item, this deponent declares that the said Friar Pedro de Herrera or the said Friar Francisco Pedrosa, one of them, told this deponent that on the part of the said Society the said paper in defense of free choice had been given to a lay gentleman called Don Antonio Rodriguez, resident and alderman of this city.

Item, that Friar Juan de Espila, lecturer in arts of the said convent of San Esteban, told this deponent that he came away scandalized that some nuns of the convent of Santa Isabel of this city had told him that the Dominican fathers were heretics because they denied free choice, and that the said nuns were great partisans of the teatinos and dealt much with them.

And this he declared concerning what he has been asked. And he said he was sixty-six years of age. And his deposition being read to him, he said it was all true. Secrecy was enjoined upon him under pain of excommunication latae sententiae. He accepted it and signed it, as did the said lord commissary. — Friar Domingo Bañes. — Passed before me, Antonio Velazquez.

REPLY OF FATHER BAÑEZ TO THE MEMORIAL SPREAD ABROAD BY FATHER SUAREZ "IN DEFENSE OF THE SOCIETY CONCERNING FREE CHOICE"

1. — Most illustrious Lord: After I arrived in Salamanca I found a novelty that caused me amazement and seemed to me boldness, especially on the present occasion. And it is that there went about a defense written in the vernacular, of the Society, concerning free choice, which by the hands of the fathers of the Society was given to different persons for their own defense and for offense to the Order of Saint Dominic, as will be seen from the course of it. One came to my hands, which is the one that goes with this, and it seemed to me that I was bound to give account to Your Highness, although I believe this deed will have come to your notice by another way.

I hold it understood that no one may communicate in writing treatises in the vulgar tongue concerning the mysteries of our Catholic faith, and spread them from hand to hand among the commonalty of the faithful, without giving account to Your Highness. But leaving this aside, which is not of my office to judge, it has seemed to me that I shall do some service to our Lord and to that apostolic and holy tribunal of Your Highness if on this occasion I reply against the said defense, whose author is understood to be a father of the Society who is here in Salamanca as principal lecturer in theology, called Francisco Suarez. And for greater distinction and clarity I shall go on answering, clause by clause and paragraph by paragraph, the whole of the said defense, interweaving my answer and reply by way of apology. And I hope, with the favor of our Lord, to satisfy Your Highness and any dispassionate judgment, and to show how the Order of Saint Dominic goes by the royal and beaten road in the school of theology which had its beginning in the great master of it, Saint Augustine.

The said defense begins, then, thus, with the following title:

2. — SOCIETAS. In defense of the Society concerning free choice. Two principal things offer themselves to me to lay before your worship, which may help to give a fuller and more upright judgment and to set a firmer remedy to the differences which, concerning the matter of gratia et libero arbitrio, pass with such scandal between the religious of Saint Dominic and of the Society of Jesus.

BAÑEZ. — It seems this treatise is directed to a private person, and that it is for setting a remedy to these differences which, it says, pass with such scandal. And if this is so, to what end do the fathers of the Society go about communicating this treatise so commonly, and to persons who know no theology nor how to judge whether the defense is good or bad?

3. SOCIETAS. — One is to set down in sum the points in which the difference lies; the other, to note its root and what may help toward the greater resolution and union.

BAÑEZ. — That very thing is my intent in another treatise which I am making in Latin, to prepare Your Highness and His Holiness, for I believe the Society will not rest content with the resolution which Your Highness may take from the theologians of Spain. But meanwhile, until I conclude the said treatise, I beseech Your Highness to admit another apology in the vernacular upon so high a mystery as is the harmony of divine predestination and grace with the free choice and free acts of man concerning all good, quoniam in vitium vitio coarctamur alieno. And our Lord knows that in this mystery, and in others like it which I have many times read to my disciples, I have always endeavored to follow the precept of Saint Paul, 12 (v. 3): Dico enim per gratiam quae data est mihi omnibus quibus sunt inter vos, non plus sapere quam oportet sapere, sed sapere ad sobrietatem. Sobriety is a virtue contrary to the vice we call drunkenness, which consists in drinking more wine than a man's head can bear; and by the taste of too much wine he comes to lose the judgment of reason; and what God had created to gladden the heart of man comes to be the destruction of his judgment. So the Apostle gives us to understand that the wisdom of most high things is like a delicate wine that is softly drunk. And for men to want to know more than their capacity calls for, secundum mensuram fidei quam Deus unicuique divisit, as the same Saint Paul says in the same place, will come to raving and to falling like the proud man, volens sapere plus quam oportet sapere.

The Apostle had given us a good example when, in the preceding chapter 11, having made a long discourse from ch. 9 concerning the predestination of Jacob and the reprobation of Esau, and taught men humility and fear of God and subjection to the secret judgments of His divine majesty, setting an example in the calling of the Gentiles and the forsaking of the people of the Jews, he says thus: Nolo enim vos ignorare fratres mysterium hoc, ut non sitis vobismetipsis sapientes, quia caecitas ex parte contingit in Israel donec plenitudo gentium intraret (11, 25). Giving to understand, according to the common understanding of the saints, that God permitted the blindness of so many peoples of the Jews in order thence to draw a great good — as was that the multitude of the Gentiles should enter to share the mercy of God through Jesus Christ. And the Apostle, considering that to human wit of small capacity no reason can be given that after its manner should satisfy it, concluded by saying: O altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei: quam incomprehensibilia sunt judicia ejus et investigabiles viae ejus! Quis enim cognovit sensum Domini? Aut quis consiliarius ejus fuit? Aut qui prior dedit illi et retribuetur ei? Quoniam ex ipso, et per ipsum, et in ipso sunt omnia, et ipsi gloria in saecula saeculorum.

Of this testimony I mean to make use further on, to show how some theologians of the Society volunt sapere plus quam oportet sapere, and claim to give the human wit a very plain satisfaction — as indeed they would give, were what they claim true. And we should hold Saint Paul ignorant, who so marveled at the incomprehensible judgments of God, since after a while these theologians reduce to free choice the difference between the predestined, called and justified, and the others who remain in darkness and in sin. I said "some theologians of the Society," for I am certain that others, no less learned and of good wits, are on our side, save that some dare not speak, because it goes ill with those who speak and have spoken, as Your Highness will by experience have notice of. But the friars of Saint Dominic, bred in the doctrine of Saint Thomas, are all as one in the principal point of this harmony in question, which is no small argument that our sentence is the true one.

4. SOCIETAS. — As to the first, two extreme and opposite heresies are to be set down in this matter. The one is that of Pelagius, who denied the necessity of grace, saying that to save ourselves the natural powers of our choice and its natural acts sufficed; the other is that of Luther and Calvin, who on the contrary said that there is in us no liberty at all, but that we do only that which God makes us do, without our being able to resist Him, alike in the natural and in the supernatural, and alike in evil and in good.

BAÑEZ. — Pelagius did not only attribute salvation to the natural powers of our choice and to its natural acts; rather, he confessed faith to be necessary, and consequently said that God had done us the grace and favor of giving us Christ our Lord to preach to us and to send us preachers to teach us the will of God and how we were to hold Christ for pattern and example. But his error, and that of his followers, consisted in thinking that by the natural powers of free choice we could believe and do what was preached to us of the Gospel. So that Pelagius never said that natural acts sufficed to save us, for by them we cannot come to knowledge of the Gospel unless it be preached to us; nor did he deny faith in Jesus Christ to be necessary, save that he said faith was given to us for our merits, as appears from the treatises of Saint Augustine against Pelagius and his followers.

After this error, confuted by Saint Augustine and in the ancient councils of Orange and Milevis and in a Carthaginian council of two hundred and seventeen bishops about the year of the Lord 423, there failed not to remain some relics of that error, even among some of the faithful — it seeming to them that free choice was taken away by the doctrine of Saint Augustine, who taught that the consent of the understanding and will to the faith of Jesus Christ was an effect of the grace and mercy of God, and not because man could by his natural powers consent to the interior callings of God. Of all which there should be read, in the seventh tome of the works of Saint Augustine, De reliquiis Pelagianae haereseos in Gallia subolescentibus, and another by Hilary of Arles, bishop, on the same argument, and then the answer of Saint Augustine to the said bishops. All which, whoever shall have seen it all, being a dispassionate theologian, will know that other like relics rise up in our times under the title of defending free choice. And truly, whoever teaches them aims at nothing but giving entire satisfaction to human pride, which would comprehend the incomprehensible, et sapere plus quam oportet sapere.

So the Thomists do not accuse of being Pelagians outright those who affirm that with equal aid of God one is converted and another remains in sin; but we say that this doctrine is de reliquiis pelagianorum, for it reduces to divine foreknowledge alone — and not to His providence, but to that of man — that by his powers he added something to the movement of the grace of God by which he was distinguished from the other who remained in sin. For it is plain that in such a case the one is not distinguished from the other in the supernatural succours they received of the mercy of God; but they were distinguished, according to this sentence, in that he who was converted added, by the powers of his free choice, what the divine succour did not bring with it — namely, to consent in believing or hoping and loving; and so free choice made the divine succour of the mercy of God efficacious. So that it could be said that believing by infused faith is not a gift of God except insofar as God inspired man and gave him aid with which he could believe. Let it be seen whether this doctrine is compatible with the Catholic faith and with the testimonies Saint Augustine brings in the place cited and in others a little before, De correptione et gratia. Of all which, more at length, with the divine favor — in whose providence I hope — I shall treat, and shall show how pernicious and destructive of Christian humility the said doctrine is. The which Father Molina, with a thousand distinctions and new inventions, endeavors to persuade in his book entitled Concordia, whence has been born all the discord between the truly Thomist theologians — not Dominicans alone (for it appears there are many in Spain in other religious orders, and men in square caps) — and some fathers of the Society; among whom I am told is Father Suarez, in his Third Part and in his lectures — which I have certainly not wished to weary myself reading.

5. SOCIETAS. — The other is that of Luther and Calvin, who on the contrary said that there is in us no liberty at all, but that we do only that which God makes us do, without our being able to resist Him, alike in the natural and in the supernatural, and alike in evil and in good.

BAÑEZ. — How great this blindness of Luther and of all the rest who deny man's free choice is, is so manifest to all the faithful that the contrary seems to us brutish, and that by good natural reason it is proved, and by experience known, that man is of free choice, choosing with judgment between good and evil what most pleases him, and between two goods executing the one and leaving the other, though it be the better. And of this I have disputed at length upon question 83 of the First Part of Saint Thomas, art. 2, through the whole Commentary.

But at times I have considered what cause there could have been for men to fall into two extremes of such great follies as Pelagius and Luther fell into; and I find it was the same occasion, founded in pride. For Pelagius, experiencing his free choice in himself, it seemed to him so free that neither in the natural nor in the supernatural was there any who lorded it over it. And so he attributed believing the Gospel to his natural powers, though God did man the favor of sending Christ as teacher and example. On the other hand, the senseless and blasphemous Luther, knowing the omnipotence of the providence and will of God, and experiencing the inclinations and passions of man and his weakness for good, fell to thinking it impossible for man to cease sinning, and on the other hand that he could be saved by the sole confidence that God would not impute his sins to him, if he stood firm in believing that Christ had satisfied for all and that His justice sufficed us to be called just, though we were laden with sins. And inasmuch as this blasphemer judged that this trust alone was the gift of God to save us — which to some He gave and to others denied by His eternal providence — he came to cast himself headlong and deny totally the faculty of our free choice, and to attribute to God alone the good and the evil; for he could not understand how the efficacy of the providence of God, by which all good is done and evil permitted, could be compatible and harmonized with our free choice being lord of doing good or evil and of withdrawing from sin and drawing near to virtue.

And by this road many of the philosophers erred, some denying the providence of God, others denying free choice, for not comprehending how the great lordship of free choice, and of our providence concerning the acts of our will, was compatible. And so they said: Labia nostra a nobis sunt; quis noster dominus est? (Ps. 11, 5). And so all, as many as with little humility have wished to comprehend this concert, have grown vain and fallen into one of the two extremes. And before our Lord who is to judge me, I fear that in our times there is some root of this pride, for it is claimed by some to give a complete satisfaction to curious men as to how they are free, taking away from the providence of God and from His free choice the deliberation of good human acts in the singular — it seeming to them that it suffices the majesty of God to provide in common, whereby men may choose the good, but not that they do choose it — though they do not deny that God knows all that free choice is to do of good and of evil. And with this it seems to them that they satisfy the majesty of God and harmonize His providence in common with human providence and free choice in the singular.

I confess that, dictating this, my hair stands on end, that there should be among Catholics any who thinks so basely of God and so highly of themselves and of their faculty for choosing good and withdrawing from evil. I would pass on, for afterwards I shall say, by the mercy of God, the true harmony which the humble Christian, learned and unlearned, must understand, if he would remain humble and stayed upon the majesty of God.

6. SOCIETAS. — Between these heresies stands Catholic doctrine, which confesses the necessity of grace, both for supernatural acts and their perfection, and by reason of the loftiness of the supernatural end for which God created us, and also for not failing in the natural acts and precepts for whose fulfillment our nature stands weak and feeble after original sin. And this grace which we say to be necessary, besides the supernatural and infused habits, includes two kinds of aid which God gives for working any of the supernatural acts, such as faith, hope, charity, religion, penance, etc., and for working also, speaking commonly and regularly, the natural and moral acts that are good and honorable, such as giving alms, making restitution, etc. One kind of these aids is called exciting or prevenient, with which God prevents us, wakens, raises, and heartens us to aspire to work the said supernatural acts and the other acts of virtue and honor. The other is called assisting and cooperating aid; for it does not suffice that God waken us, but when we work He must actually work in us and give actual help that we may work with Him, and that it be supernatural when the acts are supernatural. And when these aids are of such a condition that in effect they make us work, or with them we work, they are called efficacious. But when we do not work, they are called sufficient. Together with this, the Catholic faith confesses that there is in us liberty, not only for natural acts but also for supernatural ones; and that, though it is not in our liberty that God prevent us and touch the heart, yet it is in it to resist or consent, aided with His grace.

BAÑEZ. — All that he says in this paragraph he affirms to be Catholic doctrine between the two heresies. With all that, he says some things which are not so straightforwardly of Catholic faith; rather, they could be caviled at, for in them he goes on insinuating his opinion. And I leave aside what he says — that the grace which we say to be necessary ultra the infused supernatural habits includes two aids — which seems false as to what he says ultra the supernatural habits, of the aids that come of the grace and mercy of God. But I do not believe he meant to teach this by that word ultra, though he could have spoken more plainly.¹ And also to affirm that the infused habits and the supernatural aids of God are equally necessary for working any of the supernatural acts, such as those of faith, hope and charity, religion and penance, is false. For that these aids of the divine motions are necessary is absolutely of Catholic faith; but that the first act of faith, hope and charity in one who is converted from infidelity to the Gospel proceeds from the habit is not only not of Catholic faith, but it is a very common opinion that those works of believing, hoping and loving do not proceed from the infused habits which at that point God infuses into him who is converted.

And in this the fathers of the Society well agree; though I hold it as opinion that such acts, in one kind of cause, are a disposition for the infusion of the habits, and in another kind of cause are an effect of the same habits infused by God in the very instant of justification. But in the end these are opinions. And would to God that all our difference were in these philosophies or metaphysics.

Also, that there are infused habits, though it is a truth most conformable to our Catholic faith — so much so that we theologians censure the contrary as rash and proximate to error — yet we do not affirm it to be straightforwardly of Catholic faith, nor a conclusion which necessarily and by evident consequence follows from Catholic faith.

But I pass on, and I note concerning the division he makes of the divine aids — that some are called exciting and prevenient, and others assisting and cooperating. In this he speaks well. But in another division he makes of these aids, saying that when they are of such a condition that in effect they make us work, or in effect we work with them, they are called efficacious, but when we do not work they are called sufficient — I say that in these words is hidden the poison of his bad doctrine. For in that distinction he gives to understand that the very same aids, without being greater or less, are at one time efficacious for supernatural acts and at another time not. And that the reason of their being efficacious comes to them from our working with them and making them efficacious.

But we Thomists say that our working the supernatural acts proceeds from the efficacy of the aids which comes of the grace and mercy of God — so strong and so sweet that infallibly they make us work freely that for which God of His absolute will sends them. And so we understand what Saint Paul said: Ipse est qui operatur in nobis et velle et perficere pro bona voluntate (Phil. 2, 13); and that of Saint John, ch. 6 (v. 44): Nemo potest venire ad me, nisi Pater meus qui misit me traxerit eum. But further on I shall declare this doctrine more, and much more, with the favor of God, in a treatise I am making in Latin, De vera concordia.² So that not all he has said in the preceding clause is as much of Catholic faith as he thinks.

7. SOCIETAS. — This Catholic doctrine being supposed, in which there can be no difference among Catholic doctors (Bañez: I have already said what difference there can be), and for the declaration of it and for fleeing the two heresies rehearsed — among other questions there has been moved one which is much disputed, over finding out how there may be compatible with each other the efficacy of grace and of the divine will, and on the other hand our liberty. For we cannot work unless God works in us, in such a way that it is necessary that He begin by working, as being the first and principal cause of our works; and otherwise it is impossible for us to work. And if He begins and works in us, it will also be impossible for us not to work with Him. And so this never seems to remain in our free election. To this the whole point of the controversy is reduced.

BAÑEZ. — Right on the mark, and to his own purpose, he sets forth the state of the cause and suit which in these times has been moved. But I too would set forth wherein lies the point of our difference.

We all confess the supernatural succour of God to be necessary that we may work supernaturally — for example, to believe firmly as befits our justification and salvation. And it makes a difficulty, to my judgment, on the one hand urging that, if this succour of God which proceeds from His will is to make us believe, then we no longer believe freely, for we cannot but believe, nor resist the divine will which wills that we believe and so makes us believe. On the other hand, if we are free and are to believe freely, we shall be able to resist the divine motion, however strong, sent from the will of God which wills that we believe, and so His will shall not be fulfilled if we will not believe, however strong the aids He gives us. In this lies the point of the difficulty.

8. SOCIETAS. — In which the Dominican fathers say that for all the acts of our will there goes before in us a kind of divine motion which, once placed in us, determines us totally to do that to which we are moved. So that, this motion being supposed, it is impossible for us to resist; and without it, it is also impossible for us to work, for this motion, which they call aid, is of itself efficacious.

BAÑEZ. — The Dominican Fathers declare the concurrence of the will of God much better: that He gives us succours and movements and inspirations and aids, when He absolutely wills to convert us, as strong and as sweet as His divine omnipotence and wisdom knows and can make them. Which, with all their being most efficacious and fulfilling the will and eternal counsel of God, wherein it was decreed that the sinner should be converted to God, do no wrong to man's free choice; rather, they lift his nature and perfect it, that with greater light he may know and judge what befits him and may choose it with a dictate of his understanding caused by the divine illumination. And so far is God from taking away his liberty that rather He confirms it, and makes it more like the liberty of God, who mercifully moves him and wills to conform him with Himself. And so there is verified what Saint Paul says: Qui adhaeret Deo unus spiritus est (1 Cor. 6, 17); et qui spiritu Dei aguntur hi sunt filii Dei (Rom. 8, 14). And this is the true liberty of those who, at the point of justification, are made sons of God. Of whom there is also verified what Saint John says (1, 12-13): Dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri, his qui credunt in nomine ejus; qui non ex sanguinibus, neque ex voluntate carnis, neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo nati sunt. In which words there is given us to understand, according to the interpretation of the saints, that the efficacy of our justification is not to be attributed to the powers of our free choice, making efficacious the indifferent aids of God, but rather to the will of God and to His free choice, which sends efficacious succours to cause in us that we choose what God has deliberated that those should choose whom He absolutely wills to be His adoptive sons, born of God.

Of these divine succours I have written at length upon question 23 of the First Part; but in particular I beseech whoever is to pass judgment on this paper of mine to see what I have written upon question 10 of the Secunda secundae, art. 1, from column 569 on, in three documents which I there go on setting forth, where the doctrine of the Dominican fathers will be understood.³ And now I shall briefly declare it; but first I would take occasion from what this father of the Society says we impute to them out of our own mind.

9. SOCIETAS. — And from this their mind there is born to them to impute to those of the contrary opinion three principal things, leaving others aside. The first is to tell them that they deny the efficacious aid of divine grace, which is a grave error. The second, that they attribute actual conversion to free choice, so that if God calls two persons with equal aids, it happens that the one is converted and not the other, and that they attribute this to liberty and not to God's having communicated more grace to the one than to the other — which, they say, is an error. The third, that they deny that God has providence in particular whether a thing be done or not — which is also an error.

BAÑEZ. — As to the first objection, so it is in truth that we say it, and we prove it. For if the fathers of the Society affirm that the divine aid, as it comes from God, comes indifferent, and not determinately directed to causing in us that we believe; and that we, by the powers of our free choice — though prevented by that succour, without which they well confess we could not believe — make that succour be efficacious, and determine it to work — it is plain that the aid, of itself and as directed and sent from God, does not bring efficacy with it, since I must give it to it, and I am the one who makes it differ from another like succour which he received who would not be converted. And so it was not God who by His grace distinguished me from him who remained in sin, for I distinguished myself from the other by what God had not given me more than to the other. An example offers itself to me for the declaration of this. If a man of good strength should span a crossbow, and set in it a poisoned bolt to kill a wild beast, and deliver it to another who by his powers could not have spanned it, but once spanned and delivered into his hands he may level the aim and loose the crossbow; and though it were needful that he who spanned it for him help him to loose it and to hold it in his arms — with all that we should say that all he received from the stronger man was not efficacious for killing the beast, but that he who leveled the aim made the stroke efficacious and killed the beast. So the fathers of the Society would have us level the succours of God and determine them as an aim to hit the mark of the last end, and that thus God goes on working with us — and not because from His eternal counsel and providence His aid comes leveled to our conforming ourselves with the level which God has determined in His divine providence. So that if these fathers of the Society call the aids of God efficacious, it is because we make them efficacious, for of themselves they are no more than sufficient, as they are sent from the eternal providence of God.

Which does not accord well with what Saint Paul says, 1 Cor. 4 (v. 7), to humble men: Quis enim te discernit? Quid autem habes quod non accepisti? Si autem accepisti, quid gloriaris quasi non acceperis? For truly, if I added, upon the eternal counsel of God and His providence — which provided no more than to give me the aid they call sufficient, and left it to my providence to make it efficacious — I may well glory in the work of my providence, which was not provided for in the providence of God, and I may glory in myself that I distinguished myself from the other who, receiving equal sufficient aid, did not make it efficacious. "Non sic pius atque humilis doctor ille sapiebat, Cyprianum beatissimum loquor, qui dixit in nullo gloriandum quando nostrum nihil sit; quod ut ostenderet, adhibuit Apostolum dicentem: Quid autem habes quod non accepisti? Si autem accepisti, quid gloriaris quasi non acceperis?" These are the words of Saint Augustine, bk. 1 De praedestinatione sanctorum, ch. 3, and of Saint Cyprian, bk. 3 Ad Quirinum, ch. 4.⁴ And further on, Saint Augustine, chs. 4 and 5, goes on marvelously descanting upon those words of Saint Paul: Quis enim te discernit? Which places must needs be seen, not only for the authority of Saint Augustine, but also for the theological demonstrations he goes on making. Which, well considered, have place against those who affirm that their providence does not provide in the singular for making use of that aid which is common to another — God not having provided that I should provide in the singular, but only having given me the sufficient aid, that, if I would provide, He too would carry on working with me, continuing the same aid; and so positing in God only foreknowledge — that He knew what I was to do — not because He had provided what I should do.

So that now the providence of man and his election goes a step ahead of the divine cooperation, for God therefore exercises it because He foreknew, and not because He provided, that His creature was to consent to the first aids with which He prevented it. Which doctrine I know not how it can be harmonized with the second canon of the Arausican council (can. 4), where it is determined in this form: "Si quis ut a peccato purgemur voluntatem nostram Deum expectare contendit, non autem ut etiam purgare velimus per Sancti Spiritus infusionem et operationem in nos fieri confitetur, resistit ipsi Spiritui Sancto per Salomonem dicenti: Praeparatur voluntas a Domino (Prov. 8, 35), et Apostolo salubriter praedicanti: Deus est qui operatur in nobis et velle et perficere pro bona voluntate" (Phil. 2, 13). So that not only do we anticipate ourselves with the sufficient aids, but even the willing to be purged from sin is an effect of the Holy Spirit. And it is confirmed by canon 20: "Multa in homine fiunt bona quae non facit homo, nulla vero facit homo quae non praestet Deus ut faciat homo." In the first it gives to understand the divine inspirations and motions which come suddenly before our consideration and care, which God alone makes; in the second it gives to understand the consent and election of our will which consents by believing, hoping, loving. And of these works it says: "Nulla vero facit homo quae non Deus praestet ut faciat homo." So that it is a new favor of God to make us will that to which by His antecedent inspirations He invites us; and another, more efficacious succour is that which makes us choose the good than that other with which God inspired us and invited us and taught us that it was possible to choose the good, withdrawing ourselves from evil. Whoever shall read Saint Augustine, second book De praedestinatione sanctorum, chs. 10 and 11, will clearly see his sentence to be that which we affirm, which he founds upon what Ezekiel says, ch. 36: Ego faciam ut in praeceptis meis ambuletis et judicia mea custodiatis. And Saint Augustine says: "Ideo enim haec et nobis praecipiuntur et dona Dei esse monstrantur, ut intelligatur quod et nos ea facimus et Deus facit ut illa faciamus sicut per prophetam Ezech. dicit." And besides this he brings a marvelous example which, if it is not a theological demonstration, I know no theology — for to my wit it is moving — and he says: "God promised Abraham the faith of the Gentiles in his descendant Christ, saying to him, Pater multarum gentium posui te. Unde dicit Apostolus: Ideo ex fide ut secundum gratiam firma sit promissio omni semini, hoc est non de nostrae voluntatis potestate, sed de sua praedestinatione. Promisit enim quod ipse facturus fuerat non quod homines, quia etsi faciunt homines bona quae pertinent ad colendum Deum, ipse facit ut illi faciant quae praecepit, non illi faciunt ut ipse faciat quod promisit. Alioquin ut Dei promissa compleantur, non in Dei, sed in hominum est potestate, et quod a Domino promissum est ab ipsis redditur Abrahae" (1).

If these new harmonizers of divine predestination and their free choice would consider this reason of Saint Augustine with attention and humility, they would not do God such injury as, without understanding themselves, they do Him — to make themselves more lords of their free choice and of their industry, for they will not confess that in the singular, hic et nunc, God has predeliberated and provided that others should deliberate and provide. What sane and humble Christian will dare to say that God equally fulfilled His word to Abraham in calling many of the Gentiles with precedent inspirations and callings — who would not come — and in the others who really consented and believed in Christ? And that this follows from the harmony made by Father Molina and others of the Society manifestly follows, if the aids of God are not of themselves efficacious, but the will of free man must make them efficacious. Then the promise of God remained depending in its effect upon the uncertainty and inconstancy of free choice. And so, for what was on God's part and on the part of His promise, He equally fulfilled it by giving equal succours to those who did not believe and to those who in effect believed. They fulfilled it to Abraham with what God — as far as was on His part and on the part of His succours, indifferent of themselves — gave them not, but with what they added by actually believing and making the divine aids efficacious.

May God by His mercy enlighten with a special light those who do not understand this to be blasphemy against the divine majesty — taking from Him what befits Him, to add to the free choice of the creature what neither befits it nor can befit it: namely, to be the first deliberator of the good act in the singular — denying to God that He has eternally deliberated in the singular all the goods that are to be, and the manner and mode in which they are to be, with such force and sweetness as does not derogate from man's free choice. Such as these Saint Augustine rebukes in the place cited, chapter 12, saying of them that "nisi aliquid sibi assignent quod priores dent ut retribuetur eis, ab omni studio pietatis reprimi se putant"⁵.

And although it is true that the said harmonizers confess it necessary that God prevent us with interior inspirations and excitations — and in this they differ from the purely Pelagian — yet presently they would go on making use of those succours, which use they set on their own part, without God's having predeliberated it as the infallible effect of His divine providence. And with this it seems to them they remain consoled, and understand how they are free. And if this were true, I confess it would be easier to understand how we are free in the supernatural acts, and even in the natural acts of free choice, for we ourselves were the first deliberators of the good act.

But for this to be true is compatible neither with the Catholic faith, nor even with natural reason, nor with the majesty of God, who is the highest and infinite good, and supernaturally free, and the perfect provider of all good to be found outside Him, in common and in the singular. Nor do I understand how else there can be verified what Saint Paul says, ad Rom. 11 (v. 35): Quis prior dedit illi et retribuetur ei? And he gives the reason: Quoniam ex ipso, et per ipsum, et in ipso sunt omnia. Whence it is not to be borne to take out any good, however singularly considered — for it is plain that, if it is good, it is ordered to God as to the last end.

And if the said new harmonizers do not understand how they are free, if God has predeliberated what they are to deliberate, I answer them that that is much liberty for the creature — for it is proper to omnipotent God, who is no less God and lord of man's free choice than of the heavens and earth. And much less could I understand how God is the most perfect lord, who with His power penetrates all things strongly and disposes of all things sweetly, were it true that in His wisdom and eternal providence it is not deliberated and defined that I believe the Gospel as I truly believe, with the liberty and election of my will. But when I go to examine it, I find no good thing which I do not attribute to the divine mercy and providence which provided that I should now do it, and not only that I could do, this act of believing in God three and one. And it would seem to me the pride of Lucifer to arrogate to myself, saying that I am the first definer and deliberator of this act in the singular. And the same I say of good moral acts conformable to natural reason.

So the truly humble man must hold fast set in his understanding this sentence which I heard from a religious man, very aged: God with me, and I with Him; He before, and I after Him. And it is the doctrine of Saint Augustine that our will can never anticipate the will of God, but must always be its follower — pedissequa, as he says — of the mercy of God, which anticipates us and prevents us in every good work and in every good movement and pulse of our will. And so the Church prays: "Tua nos Domine gratia semper praeveniat e sequatur, ac bonis operibus jugiter praestet esse intentos." And what it says, sequatur, is not to be understood as going after us, but that as it prevented us, so also it goes on holding us by His hand and doing us the favor that we persevere in good works. And although together we go on working with God, yet always understanding that, if we work, it is born efficaciously of God's being first in His concurrence — at least in causality — that we work well. Just as, if a man with his hand pulls a chain, first is, though not in time, the movement the hand causes in the first link than in the second, and in the second than in the third, by the dependence they all have upon the motive power communicated to the hand — so I understand that divine grace, through Jesus Christ and His merits, always prevents us, even when we are working, and that our work or merit was not only prevented in the singular in the divine providence or predestination, but also in the knowledge of Christ our Lord, who knew in the book of predestination all the predestined, and also those who were to believe and be justified, and all the good works they were to do. And all fell under the merits of Christ our Lord, who merited that they be done, not only as to the sufficiency of the merit — as He merited redemption for the whole world — but also as to the execution of those meritorious works; and the Eternal Father promised them to Him in reward of His obedience. And so by His merits, and by the power of this hand of God which is Christ, God moves us and justifies us, and makes us believe and hope and love, etc., to continue and persevere in good works. A fine thing it would be, that what the Eternal Father promised to Christ our Lord — which is our believing in Him — that we ourselves alone should be the effective cause in the singular, when we determine the sufficiency God gives us and make it efficacious, which of itself was not so, for exercising the work of believing and the other supernatural works! But how this concerns and accords with the work's being free, further on I shall declare, giving the true definition of free choice.

Now let us see what they say we impute to them in the other two objections, for of the first we have said enough. From which we conclude it to be indeed true that the second and third objections which they say we impute to them do follow from their sentence. And truly it is no imputation, for they plainly affirm that God does not determine by His providence the acts of free choice in the singular; and so they affirm that with equal succour one is converted and another not. But inasmuch as that word determinar has some obscurity, I have always used the word "deliberate," because even Saint Thomas, in the First Part, expounds a saying of Damascene — "quod Deus non determinat hominum voluntates" — which he understands of constraining determination, and of coercion. But if we speak of determination of providence, he confesses "quod Deus praedeterminat voluntatem ad actus bonos." And so the Lord says: Filius hominis vadit sicut diffinitum est de illo. And it is certain that such eternal definition of the divine counsel did not take away liberty from the obedience of Christ our Lord, sed oblatus est quia ipse voluit. Although in this point there has not lacked one who has said that Christ did not merit in obeying the precept, because, on the supposition that He could not sin, He was not free in obeying. But, they say, He merited in obeying more willingly and with more intenseness than He was bound to. And I replying in public disputation that that intenseness of Christ's obedience was predefined in the eternal counsel of God — with which it was incompatible that that intenseness should not be found in Christ's obedience — I was answered with the saying that that intenseness was not predefined in the providence of God, but that the soul of Christ our Lord — or He insofar as man, with His human will — determined it. And this answer was from a father of the Society who was defending the act⁶ — from which answer there arose a great uproar in the hall, on whose occasion the inquisitor Arrese was sent to Salamanca. And even today I am told there is one who sustains the same opinion. And all these novelties are born of not understanding the true definition of free choice and of the free act. Let us now pass on and see what the adversaries impute to us.

10. Societas. — And to avoid them, the said fathers say that God determines our will to all acts, though they be evil, predefining them, as they say, or providing and willing absolutely and efficaciously that our will do them, before God knows that of itself it is to do them. Those of the contrary opinion say that in the aforesaid opinion and doctrine there are at least three grave errors. The first, to make God the author of sin, attributing to the divine will not only that it permits, but that it ordains and positively wills, that our will do that act which in itself is evil, and that it even makes it do it — which is to the letter the heresy of Calvin, and against all that divine Scripture and the saints affirm. And although the said authors endeavor to evade this error with a scholastic distinction of the material and the formal in sin, yet if it be attentively looked at, they come to differ from Calvin only in terms and language. At which the Calvinists laugh, and to Catholics it takes away the nerves necessary for impugning Calvin's heresy and defending the faith. The second error is that our conversion and supernatural acts leave us no liberty at all; for this, according to the mind of all philosophers and theologians, consists in that, having what is necessary for working, it be in our hand to do it or leave it. For so it is that they say that, that divine motion being placed in us, it is not in our hand to consent to it or resist it, but only to work according to it; and on the other hand without it neither can we do anything: then there never remains in us occasion of working freely. Just as, though my arm be of itself indifferent to be moved to one part or another, yet because, upon the arrival of the efficacious motion of the will which determines to such movement, the arm does not remain indifferent or free to move to this part or that, but determined to one of them — for that reason such movement is not called free as regards the arm, but as regards the will. So too, although it, before God moves it, be indifferent to this good act or its contrary, yet upon the arrival of that divine motion which determines it efficaciously to one of them, it will not remain free, but totally determined; and so that act will not be called free with respect to it, but with respect to God.

M. BAÑES. — Two errors this paragraph imputes to us, gathering the first from a false witness it raises against us — that we say God determines our will to all acts, though they be evil — whence it follows, that we make God the author of sin, and that this is Calvin's heresy.

To this I answer, before all things, that it is a marvelous thing that, the doctrine we Thomists teach being so expressly that of Saint Thomas, no one until now has fallen into the reckoning that this is the error and heresy of Calvin — unless it be the fathers who have joined themselves to giving man's choice exemption from the providence of God in good acts, and in all the good to be found in the act of sin. And I would that we first treated of the divine predestination of good acts than of the other manner — how God concurs with the good there is in the act of sin, permitting the sin. But since it is an apology, I shall have to follow the order of the adversaries.

I say, then, that absolutely speaking it is a plain error to say that God has predefined or provided or willed sin, or the act of sin insofar as it is evil — and never did any Thomist theologian utter such blasphemy. What we say is what Saint Thomas teaches to the letter in the Prima secundae, q. 79, a. 1.⁷ And in the first he sets down this conclusion: [that God orders all] to Himself as to the last end, as Saint Dionysius says, ch. 2 De divinis nominibus. And he confirms it because God directs all He does to Himself as to the last end, as Saint Dionysius says, ch. 2 De divinis nominibus. And since sin is a withdrawal from the order to the last end, it is plainly concluded that God cannot be the direct cause of sin. Item, he proves that neither indirect — for although it happens that to some God does not give such help as, had He given it, they would not have sinned, yet for that the sins of those men are not to be imputed indirectly to God because He did not hinder them, though He could have hindered them — as there is attributed to the governor of the ship its being lost and going to the bottom because he did not set the governance he could and ought to have set. For God, although He could have hindered sin by giving efficacious succour with which it would have been hindered, yet He is not bound to give it; for to permit man to sin, He does it according to the order of His wisdom and justice. All that is said is the express doctrine of Saint Thomas, as will be seen in that first article.

The second conclusion, which he sets down in the second article, is upon a supposition, as foundation: quod Deus sit causa omnis actionis inquantum sit actio. And he proves it by a saying of Saint Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, ch. 5, which says that omne ens quocumque modo sit, oportet quod derivetur a primo — he interposes his conclusion thus: "Et secundum hoc Deus est causa actus peccati, non tamen est causa peccati, quia non est causa hujus, quod actus sit cum defectu." And the same he says in the solution to the second argument, worthy to be considered by whoever is to pass judgment on this paper. So that this is what we affirm. And consequently we say that of all of which God is cause, and which He does in time, He has so provided to do and govern it in His eternal counsel as He executes it in time — touching and reaching with His providence and wisdom all the good circumstances in the singular to be found in any good, though it be a free act of free choice.

This universal proposition is the precipice whence the proud and the heretics take occasion to say that they do not understand how, if that is true, man remains free in his good and evil acts. And much less do they understand how it is not imputed to God to be cause of sin, if He is cause of the act which in the singular, all its circumstances considered, is sin. And this same occasion some fathers of the Society take to introduce into the school of theology their new harmonies, claiming to make them of Catholic faith — albeit at the first they entered affirming them as probable opinions.

But we Thomists have always stood firm, affirming the new harmony to be an error against the Catholic faith. And at this they have grown exasperated and turned against us, saying that the harmony we set down is the error of Luther and of Calvin. And hereby they have endeavored to make it a formal suit, and to challenge all the Dominican theologians — and even, if they could, all the Thomists and those they understand not to be of their mind. So that in Spain it seems to them there will be no theologians who by order of Your Highness can define this cause, as to the censuring of these propositions which they affirm. May God set His hand to it, and enlighten Your Highness, as I hope He will — for it is necessary for the quiet of these realms, and even of the whole Church — and that He set the most efficacious remedy.

And finally the author of this defense of the Society accuses us that, to evade the said error, we use a scholastic distinction of the material and the formal to be found in sin — which, he says, if attentively looked at, comes to differ from Calvin only in terms and language, at which the Calvinists laugh. And to my mind, it is he who laughs at the common distinction of Saint Thomas and of all the Thomists, with which they declare that, although God be cause of the action and of the real and positive entity to be found in sin, yet for that He is not rightly cause of the defect to be found in the act — for this is attributed to the free choice of the creature alone. Not because it wills to work, but because it wills to work without the rule of the law. And this defect has its origin in that the rational creature is defective and peccable, for the part it has of nothingness. And so by its natural powers it can fail, God permitting it — who well could have hindered it, and does not hinder it — in order, with the occasion of sin, to show Himself powerful and just, reducing to the order of His justice him who would withdraw himself from the highest good, and together to show more His mercy with those whom efficaciously He willed to hold by His hand, giving them aids impeding sin. And let the heretic laugh at this, and whoever be on his side — for he takes the occasion to himself, as heretics are also wont to take it from the doctrine of the Gospel; as from what Saint Paul said of Christ our Lord, 1 Cor. ch. 1 (vv. 30-31), Qui factus est nobis sapientia et justitia et sanctificatio et redemptio ut... qui gloriatur in Domino glorietur, they gather their error — that there is in us no inherent justice nor sanctification, but that the extrinsic justice of Christ alone is the formal reason whereby we are called just. And they laugh at us Catholics, who affirm inherent justice and sanctification to be necessary to be saved. To me it has been painful that this theologian, whoever he be, should allege Calvin's laughter against a distinction so ancient and so necessary, even in good metaphysics, as is to distinguish in the act of sin the good there is, natural, which proceeds even from the same free choice insofar as it is God's creature — which in its movements discloses the inclination to good, though sinning by not willing to work subject to the law — and this is its own, and not God's, for the part that it is made of nothing.

The second error they impute to us is that, positing predefinition in God and in His providence of all good in the singular, we leave no liberty at all to men. And they reprove it by a common definition of free choice, which they say is of all philosophers and theologians. And the definition is this: "Liberum arbitrium est quod, positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum, potest agere et non agere." Hence they infer that, if we say that divine motion, efficacious of itself, is necessary for us to work, it follows that, it being posited, there remains not in our hand to cease working nor to resist it; and on the other hand without it neither can we do anything: then there never remains in us occasion of working freely. This is the greatest argument the said fathers have for denying to the divine providence the predeliberation of the free works of virtue.

To this argument I answer that it has two faults. The one is the bad understanding of the definition. The other is the bad consequence they draw. And all comes from ignorance of the definition of free choice. And that this is so I prove. First, that definition is found neither in Aristotle nor in Saint Thomas nor in the Master of the Sentences in the second book in dist. 24 and 25. I well believe it will be found in Almain and in other nominalists. Although it is true that if it is understood as that phrase, positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum, has to be understood, although it is not a formal definition, it is a truth that follows from the true definition of free choice. For its examination I ask: of what requisites do they speak when they say, positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum? For if they speak of all the requisites that accompany the action when it is exercised, it would be a bad definition, because it is clearly established that for the free election of the will the dictate of the understanding is necessary, which being posited it is impossible, or to speak better incompossible, that the will not elect. And with all that the election is free. For although the dictate stands determined ad unum hic et nunc, by being subject to another higher judgment that precedes in the understanding, by which man judges the indifference of the means to the end; and in virtue of this judgment the election is called free, and not because it and the dictate lack formal determination to one means.

Hence it follows that, although the divine motion that accompanies our election be most efficacious, since it does not erase that judgment of the knowledge of the indifference of the means to the object of the will, it does not take away freedom in the election, but rather perfects it, by being a motion accompanied by divine light that clears the understanding so that it better judge among many means what suits it. And in this consists the strong and sweet motion of the divine wisdom, strong in executing what stands in its divine providence, and sweet in executing it in each thing according to its nature. And because man is made to the likeness of God by the reason and free choice he has, He moves him giving light in the understanding and inclination in the will. And so although at the time and instant that man believes there is required illustration of the understanding and pious affection on the part of the will, which things being posited it is incompossible that man not believe, notwithstanding that both the illustration of the light of faith and the pious affection of the will are efficaciously gifts of God and of His Spirit, he does not for that cease to believe freely. And the reason is because neither the illustration of the light of faith nor the pious affection of the will destroys the judgment that man has of knowing himself powerful for not believing, although he will not fail to believe when God moves his will, giving him the pious affection to what is proposed to him and discovered by the light of faith, or actual divine illustration, with which there is infused sine nobis efficientibus the infused virtue of faith, non tamen sine nobis consentientibus pia affectione voluntatis.

From what has been said it is concluded that that particle, positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum, cannot be understood of omnibus requisitis concomitantibus ipsam actionem, but of requisitis prius tempore quam sit ipsa actio. And what I say is understood on the supposition that they want the other part of the definition which says, potest agere et potest non agere, to be understood in sensu composito, where the contrary action or non-action is composed cum ipsis requisitis ad agendum. But if this second part of the definition were understood, as it can be understood, composing only the power of not acting cum omnibus requisitis ad agendum, well could this phrase be understood even of requisitis concomitanter cum ipsa actione quae exercetur. And this the good logicians and theologians call the divided sense, because act is not composed with act or with not acting, but with the power alone, which is not destroyed for not being exercised in a determinate act, as is clearly understood in this example. Peter sits freely, because all the time he sits he has power for not sitting, and with all that he stands determined to keep sitting. And it would be incompossible, sitting, to be standing. And in this composite sense Aristotle said, "omne quod est, quando est, necesse est esse". For he did not speak of absolute necessity, but of the necessity of the consequence, because it necessarily follows that Peter runs if he runs, and that he is not black if he is white. And with all that what is white can be black.

In part I am ashamed to speak of these trifles which the summulists know. But, as I said at the beginning, in vitium vitio coarctamur alieno. The ignorance of the true definition of free choice has come to such a point that some fathers of the Society laugh at us when we make this distinction, so ancient in the school of theology, of sensu composito and sensu diviso, as though it were not necessary in good natural reason for answering many sophistic arguments that are wont to be made in the matter of future contingents and of free choice. As if I should say now: God has provided and determined eternally to conserve the world: therefore now He does not conserve it freely. And should want to prove the consequence, because, His providence and determination of His immutable will being supposed, which is necessary for this effect, He cannot not conserve it: therefore He is not free in conserving it. It is clear that to loose this argument it is necessary to use the distinction in sensu composito or in sensu diviso. For the power that God has to annihilate the world stands very well with His having determined to conserve it forever. That is not taken from Him for determining one effect and not the contrary. But power to do something from which two contradictories together would follow as true, that there is not nor can there be. And they would follow if, God having determined and said that the world shall be forever, it should now cease to be, for God would be changeable and not true, and thus He would not be God if His word should fail.

In this form we may say, when they argue against us saying that, the efficacious succour of divine grace being posited, we cannot fail to act, and that thus we do not remain free in that consent. To which we answer that, with that efficacious aid standing, it is incompossible that we not act; but it is not incompossible that in acting we have power for not acting, because the power well comports with the act contrary to the other which stands in potency. For otherwise no election of man would be free, since, the dictate and command of reason being posited, it is incompossible that he not elect; but it is not incompossible that at the same time he have power for not electing. Rather when he elects he has knowledge of the indifference of the means he chooses for the end of the will, which knowledge is the first root of the free election of the will, notwithstanding that the singular dictate and command determines the will to one. And it is no good to say that the dictate and command that I have is ab intrinseco, and that I can change it. First, because that very dictate and command is also an effect of God, who works in me more inwardly than my own soul: In ipso enim vivimus, movemur et sumus. And so we cannot have vital act or movement unless God works it in us, for He is the intimate cause of all our being, without dependence on another cause; since He is omnipotent to make and conserve all that is necessary for the effect He intends. And so our dictate comes most efficaciously from the will of God, who absolutely wills that now I choose this good in singular without derogating from my free choice, but rather perfecting it and moving it in its own mode, as God of the natural and of the moral.

And whoever does not understand this concord, let him believe it and some time he will come to understand it, as the most learned Abbot Chaeremon says in the Conferences of the Fathers, in the second book, in conference 13, last chapter, where after having posited summam nostrae salutis deputandan esse caelesti gratiae, he says: Porro si quid humana argumentatione et ratione versutum collectum videatur his derogare, "vitandum est potius quam ad destructionem fidei proponendum aut provocandum. Non enim meremur fidem ex intellectu, sed intellectum ex fide, ...quemadmodum plene comprehendi non potet ratione humana qualiter Deus omnia operetur in nobis".⁸

Secondly, because, if it were necessary for the election to be free that after once being had it could be changed, it would follow that neither God nor the angel nor the soul of Christ our Lord elects freely, since it is impossible that God nor the angel nor the soul of Christ our Lord change the election they once had. And if we can change it, it is not perfection of freedom, but imperfection, from our being changeable and not so considerate as the angels, to whom by the perfection of their understanding no new circumstance can be represented for changing mind and election.

From what has been said is demonstrated how bad is the understanding of that common saying which they say is the definition of free choice: "Positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum, potest agere et non agere, et agere contrarium", if it is understood in sensu composito, since we have seen the clear instances given against this understanding. And because this definition is confused and occasioning sophistry, neither Saint Thomas nor the Thomists ever use it, nor even a father of the Society of much name in our times called Robert Bellarmine, in tome 3, ch. 11, which is de gratia et libero arbitrio, book 3, ch. 3, where he posits five definitions of free choice, and none of them is that one, positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum etc. And it is to be believed that a most diligent man like Bellarmine would not have failed to posit that definition if he had found it in some grave author. And finally he resolves in choosing for the complete and perfect definition of free choice the fifth, which he gathers from the doctrine of Saint Thomas, and it is this: "Liberum arbitrium est libera potestas ex iis quae ad finem aliquem conducunt unum prae alio eligendi, aut unum et idem acceptandi vel pro arbitrio respuendi, intelligenti natura ad magnam Dei gloriam attributa". Which definition he declares in his own way in the said chapter.

But in my judgment, although what he says is true, yet by way of definition it is not artful but superfluous and confused, and even somewhat limited, if it pretends to define free choice according as it is common to God and to creatures. For since in God there is formally free choice, it is just that we give a definition that be common formally, although analogously, to the free choice of God and of His creatures, made to His image. But the said definition in its last word excludes the free choice of God. And that it is confused is manifested because it posits both parts of the thing defined in the definition, saying, libera potestas and pro arbitrio.

And since, as I have said, all the errors there are about the concord of the grace of God with free choice proceed from ignorance of what free choice is, I will posit the true and substantial definition drawn from the doctrine of Saint Thomas, for in Aristotle it will not be found, at least I have not found this word, liberum arbitrium, nor its definition, although we find election and counsel and their definitions and properties. And I do not marvel that in this part he went short, since he came to fall into so grave an error as to deny that there is in God free choice for making this world, but that necessarily and without beginning it proceeded and proceeds from God. And indeed we have in Aristotle a good example for taking fright and humbling ourselves and not wanting to know more than befits our short capacity. The whole reason why Aristotle was concluded to say such a folly was because he could not understand how, being pure act and most simple in His essence, and there being nor being able to be in Him any difference, but that He must always be totally uniform, it was possible that the world could not proceed from God and afterwards proceed, or how it was possible that it never proceed. And he made to himself this reason: Causa totali invariabiliter existenti semper idem, effectus sequitur, vel nunquam sequitur. Since for the creation of the whole universe there could be no other cause but God alone, since He had to make it from nothing: it is gathered that He always and eternally produced it. And for this same reason he affirmed ex nihilo nihil fit. So that this monster of nature, who in so many things so sharply hit the mark, honoring on the one hand the purity and immutability of the divine majesty, came on the other to deny Him so great a perfection as to have free power for not producing the world and for producing it, as He really produced it in the beginning of time. From which error many others by good consequence are gathered, as that the soul is not made from nothing, but from matter, like other things, and thus would not be immortal. In which Aristotle walked dazzled, however much the Peripatetics want to excuse him. And if the world were ab aeterno, and men with it, it would be necessary that now there be infinite souls, or they have been corrupted or passed from one body to another. And if the intelligences, which are the angels he posited, proceed eternally and necessarily from God, they have nothing for which to give Him thanks for having created them or conserving them in being, since by necessity of His nature He produces and conserves them. And a thousand other follies could be gathered from that first one.

I have wanted to posit and enlarge this example because for me it is one of the greatest arguments that can be brought to teach us modesty and humility in the inquiry and investigation of the divine mysteries. And I make this argument thus: If natural reason by its natural discourse, coming to know the immutability and purity of God, man wanting to pass on and concord the being of the universe with the causality of God, is dazzled by a petty reason it makes, founded on a principle it finds to be true in creatures, and wanting to apply it to the causality of God, came to deny in God free choice for making the world and being able not to make or conserve it, what marvel is it that we in the discourses of the supernatural mysteries come to some difficulty where, if we want to find it out satisfying our short discourse, we are dazzled and fall as proud men, and come to deny what is clear for not understanding what is dark? They are words of Saint Augustine, book 2 De dono perseverantiae, ch. 14: "Nunquid ideo negandum est quod apertum est quia comprehendi non potest quod occultum est?"⁹

This befell the philosophers who, wanting to comprehend the concord of the providence of God with the works of our free choice, some denied providence, others free choice, this being so experienced in ourselves, and providence demonstrated by natural discourse to be in God, from His being the highest good from whom all goods are derived, and from His being highest wisdom from whom is derived all that there is in creatures.

Luther too and his followers fell on this occasion, and deny our freedom because it seems to them not to comport with the great perfection of the providence of God, who provides and orders all in singular as it is done according to the order of His divine wisdom, of whom it is said quod est omnium artifex et quod attingit a fine usque ad finem fortiter et disponit omnia suaviter (Sap. 7, 21).

In this same tone some Catholic theologians in their person and intention have pretended and pretend in our times to give entire satisfaction to the curious human wit about this concord, not denying altogether the providence of God nor the necessity of His grace, but limiting it, to widen free choice and give it something of good which God has not provided nor efficaciously gives it, as is the execution in singular of free acts, both good moral acts done by the natural powers of man, and supernatural free acts, for which man has need of supernatural aid of God the Saviour. But they neither want nor can understand that both the one aid and the other be efficacious as sent from God and from His providence, but that it be indifferent and that free choice make it efficacious and not want to act with it. And even one of the said theologians, who is Father Molina, affirms in the book of his Concordia, p. 207, in the paragraph beginning Nonum and in the one beginning Decimum, that the general concurrence of God, positing no other for good moral acts, is indifferent for acting with it ill or well. And that although God knows how we are to profit by His aid, doing good works by our freedom, and complacet in illis, vult quod absoluta voluntate ut sint, but that ut fiat non vult voluntate absoluta, sed conditionata. So that according to this author, Deus complacet in illis bonis operibus absque absoluta voluntate ut fierent.

In proportion to this they want the supernatural succours, however great they be, if we are to act with them freely, not to be so efficacious that, with them standing, this proposition should not comport as true: Homo non credit Deum esse trinum et unum, for otherwise they do not understand how man believes freely, if God with those succours makes him believe and wills absolutely and willed eternally that he should believe. And indeed it would be far safer to believe that the one can be with the other, than to put in doubt the eternal predestination of God and His preparation of the good works we are to do for our justification and salvation. But I for myself am well satisfied by the mercy of God how the one with the other is possible, although I confess I do not entirely comprehend it; but I answer their arguments sufficiently, the most formal definition of free choice being supposed. And I have wanted to make this digression before, so that how necessary is the definition of free choice which I shall now posit be more clearly understood.

Vera diffinitio liberi arbitrii. — Of the true definition of free choice I have in print on the First Part of Saint Thomas, q. 19, a. 10 and on q. 83, a. 1, to which places I remit what I shall say less here. And I beseech those who are to pass judgment on this paper to see them now briefly. I say that, it being Catholic faith that in God there is formally free choice, as there is knowledge and wisdom, it befits to give a definition where we do not exclude this attribute so proper to God. And let this definition be: Liberum arbitrium est facultas intellectus et voluntatis ad agendum vel non agendum, vel ad prosequendum unum vel aliud.

In this definition on purpose I exclude a word which the Master of the Sentences posits, secundo Sent., dist. 24 [ch. 3], where he says:

"Liberum arbitrium est facultas rationis et voluntatis", and in place of that word rationis I posit intellectus, so that the definition be common to the angels and to God. For there the Master defines free choice according as it is found in man, and thus he added: "qua bonum eligitur gratia assistente, vel malum eadem desistente". And further on in distinction 25 he repeats again that "liberum arbitrium dicitur quantum ad voluntatem quia voluntarie ferri potest ad ea quae bona vel mala judicat vel judicare valet".

But in very truth the power to sin is not freedom nor part of freedom, as Saint Thomas teaches in the First Part, q. 62, a. 6 ad 3 and in Secunda secundae, q. 88, a. 4 ad 1, and I Sent., dist. 42, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3 and in many other places; it is rather imperfection and weakness of free choice, which of itself is inclined to the good and ordered to the good, in such manner that it cannot be moved to evil except under some account of good, as Saint Thomas teaches, First Part, q. 63, a. 1 ad 4. Whence it is gathered that free choice will be the more perfect the more removed it stood from electing what is evil and out of order to the true last end. And so it stands most perfect in God, whose will by nature loves the highest good, and thence freely loves all the good that is outside God and is the free cause of it. For there can be no good in the creature that is necessary for the beatitude that God has, although He can order all good to Himself as to the last end. Whence it is also gathered that the free choice of man will be so much the more perfect as it more resembles that of God. And so that of the angels even in the natural is more perfect than that of man, for being more constant in choosing the good and persevering in its election immutably.

And although it is true that no intellectual creature is impeccable by its nature, as Saint Thomas teaches, 1 p., q. 63, a. 1, yet the grace of God is so powerful that it can confirm free choice, likening it in such manner to God that it cannot sin. And for that it does not take from it freedom in the election of the good, as He did in the Mother of God, who neither mortally nor venially could sin, and in the Apostles as to not sinning mortally. And in all the blessed free choice stands so perfect for many things in which they have freedom that it is impossible there be in them any sin. I do not speak of the soul of Christ our Lord, for that one it is clear that by virtue of the hypostatic union, even had it no other graces, it was impossible to sin, for that sin would be attributed to the person of the divine Word, according to the common understanding of all theologians. Whence finally is gathered how ill Father Molina spoke in the book of his Concordia, p. 12, that that freedom has the full and perfect account of freedom which can will the contrary of what it wills; as if man wills to be temperate, to be able to be intemperate, and to be able to be honest and dishonest.

Let us declare now then our definition, whose chiefest understanding hangs on perceiving in what formally consists the indifference of being able to will a means and being able not to will it, and to will one thing or another indifferently. And I say that the principal root and foundation of this indifference is born of the understanding judging the indifference there is in the means with respect to the end. Hence it is that this indifference need not be subjected in the very understanding or in the will that has to choose, for if this were true, there could be no free choice in God, apud quem non est transmutatio nec vicisitudinis obumbratio, since God is pure act as we said above, and it is impossible for Him to be in Himself otherwise than as He eternally is. Therefore for the freedom of the will it suffices that the understanding judge and propose the indifference of the means to the end.

It is well true that in the creature there is not nor can there be such uniformity that it not be necessary that the understanding and will, whose faculty we said free choice was, have some indifference in itself for judging and choosing some means convenient to the end. For it is clear that when our will elects a means, it is not disposed in the same way as when it judges hic et nunc aliquid eligendum, and when it does not so judge or judges another means convenient to the end. But since both the one and the other goes founded on a more general judgment of the indifference of either of those means to the end, the will does not cease to be free in the act of election already determined to one means by the singular dictate and command of the act of the understanding, which judges hic et nunc hoc eligendum. And the reason is because both the election and the command of the singular judgment militate under another judgment which the understanding has actually or virtually of the indifference of what is elected in order to the end. And so the creature acts freely in virtue of that power it has in itself for being able to act and not act, or to act the one leaving the other.

Hence is inferred that whenever the act of the will originates from the said root of that judgment of the indifference of the means to the end, it will always be free. It is also gathered that, since in this stands the formality of the free act, all else that precedes or accompanies or supervenes on the said act of the will will not take from it the freedom of the operation, if it does not take from it that judgment of the indifference of the means to the end.

And so we may give as a certain definition of the one acting freely in this form: Agens liberum est quod operatur propter finem cum cognitione indifferentiae mediorum ad finem. For truly in that consists the power of free choice, in that man be like to God, who freely and with lordship works all that He works outside Himself, with power of not working it. And so the theologians understand with Damascene, book 2 De fide orthodoxa, ch. 12, quod propterea homo dicitur factus ad imaginem Dei cum creatus est cum libero arbitrio. And the very sacred text of Genesis ch. 1 gives us to understand this same thing according to the propriety of the name that God there takes in the holy tongue, namely elohim, which means judex, repeating the name in this form: et creavit Elohim Adam in imagine sua, in imagine Elohim creavit eum, ac si diceret, in imagine judicis.

Now then let us come to our purpose. It is a grave matter that there be theologians to whom it seems that we take freedom from man when God, who is the prototype, is united by His grace with the will of His creature, enlightening its understanding and its judgment of the indifference of the means to the end and at the same time giving it light with which He efficaciously persuades it and makes it have a singular dictate and communicates command to it so that its will elect what God absolutely wills it to choose, and thus be verified what Saint Paul says: Qui adhaeret Deo, unus spiritus est; et qui spiritu Dei aguntur hi sunt filii Dei. So that when the impetus of our will is guided and carried by the impetus of the Spirit of God lovingly, it does not for that cease to go with perfect freedom, since they do not take from it that universal judgment in which is judged the indifference of the means to the end; rather it goes walking with fear that it is possible to cease from the love of God or fail His law by the power it feels in itself before attaining the last end, which is to see God. Where then the will shall no longer remain with freedom for being able to cease to love God, because the clear vision of God discovers to it that in Him are all goods together in one highest and infinite good, and so it can no longer have that judgment that it can befit it to will some good outside God. But even then it remains free for loving creatures known in their own kind, directing this love to God, because neither does the divine precept erase the judgment of the indifference which that means of itself had for attaining to enjoy the last end. So also the soul of Christ our Lord in the instant of the incarnation with most perfect freedom obeyed and accepted the precept of dying for the honour of the Father and the salvation of men. Et oblatus est quia ipse voluit, and by His obedience and humility He merited to be exalted, and not only by the intensity with which He obeyed. Of which intensity and fervour the new concordants say that He had no precept, in such manner that if God had commanded Him to obey with as much fervour as He obeyed, His obedience would not have been meritorious.

To such follies do they come to end by saying that they do not understand how it remained free, since it could not sin. Better would they say that they do not understand in what free choice consists nor the freedom of the act. And before our Lord I say and protest that, if these boldnesses are not remedied, the Catholic faith in Spain runs danger, by the much liberty and favour that those have who want to introduce a new theology and a new concord of the grace and providence of God with our free choice.

It remains now to declare a word of the definition I have posited, whence some ignorant or malignant sophist could take occasion to contradict the truth I have said. And the word is that I have many times repeated to be necessary for the free act that it come originated from the judgment of the indifference of the means or mean to the end. For someone could argue against me that the keeping of the commandments no one can judge, unless he be a heretic, to be indifferent for attaining the end of eternal life. To this I answer that the end of which we speak and understand in defining free choice need not always be in particular the true end which is God, but it suffices that by end be understood what Saint Thomas, Primae secundae, q. 1, said, that "omnis actus humanus est propter finem" and that "omnia quae homo agit, agit propter ultimum finem". For truly man as made to the image of God does not err in the common account he seeks, pretending to find a good that satisfies him. And as he does not know it clearly in singular, many times he seeks it under the common account in other goods where really it is not; rather by them he departs in particular from God.

For this reason Saint Augustine said to sinners: quaerite quod quaeritis, sed scitote quaerere. And this doctrine is very common in those who are read and learned in the first question of the Prima secundae of Saint Thomas, where this is treated at length.

So that when I say that the judgment of the indifference of the means to the end is necessary, I understand of the end to which the will stands determined, at least as to specification, as in this life ours stands. And if it stood so as to exercise, it would not for this have less freedom about the means, as the blessed have the will determined to the last end they enjoy in such manner that they are not free even as to exercise, by the perpetual presence of the highest good with whom supernaturally stands all account of good. But they do not for that cease to have judgment of the indifference that many other goods have of their own in order to this last end. And so they freely will them to the glory of God. And although the precept supervene, it does not erase that judgment of the indifference of that means considered in itself; although, the precept that ab intrinseco supervenes being supposed, the exercise is necessary by necessity of consequence, and not by absolute necessity of the consequent. And all this was verified in the obedience of Christ our Lord, of whom with truth it is said: Oblatus est quia voluit, and at the same time, sicut mandatum dedit mihi Pater, sic facio; et Filius hominis vadit sicut definitum est de illo.

And if these things were considered with humility, we would not want to measure these mysteries with the short span of reason, nor would we affirm novelties to satisfy curious wits; rather we would give glory to the divine majesty, submitting our understanding and believing what we do not understand. And for now let this suffice as to the definition of free choice and of the free act.

11. Societas. — To this they say that God, by being infinitely omnipotent and wise, accommodates Himself to free choice and disposes it in such manner that on the one hand He makes it act with efficacy and strength, and on the other with sweetness.

Bañes. — They do not say ill in this answer; rather very conformably to what Wisdom says, ch. 8 (v. 1): Attingit ergo a fine usque ad finem fortiter et disponit omnia suaviter. Which Saint Bernard declares in a sermon on the Circumcision (I believe it must be, but well I remember they are his words): "fortiter pro se et suaviter pro me", as if to say, in acting strongly and efficaciously He acts conformably to who He is, and in acting disposing sweetly our free choice with light and knowledge, persuading us to consent and to will freely to consent with Him, in this He accommodates Himself to the nature of our free choice.

12. Societas. — But this in no way satisfies those who look on it dispassionately and desire to give light to the truths of our faith, and not to darken or weaken them.

Bañes. — To me it seems on the contrary that they speak with passion and little humility who, not understanding the said reason, come to deny what on the other hand is certain and is gathered from the Catholic faith and from natural reason. For we must confess that God omnia quaecumque voluit fecit, and not leave the will of God suspended, as the influence of the heavens stands to be determined by particular causes or by our free choice. And as I have already said, it would follow that our providence provides what God had not provided, namely, the singular election of the good. And in this way they do not give light to the truths of our faith; rather they darken them, weakening the omnipotence of the will and providence of the wisdom of God, making our free choice the first deliberant of this good in singular, which is to believe that God is triune and one, as though it were of the account and essence of freedom to be the first cause of its operation.

I said above and showed to be necessary that some difficulties which offer themselves even to natural reason, discoursing naturally, it is necessary for the satisfaction of the human understanding to reduce to the infinity of the omnipotence and wisdom of God. And I put an example in a difficulty where Aristotle stumbled and fell grossly, denying to be possible that the world should begin to be in the beginning of time, founded on that maxim of which we already spoke, namely: causa totali omnino eodem modo invariabiliter existenti, eumdem effectum semper producit. And it seemed to Aristotle that he was demonstrating that ex nihilo nihil fit. And no philosopher nor theologian, I dare say, will answer me to Aristotle's argument an answer that satisfies, unless by saying that that maxim has truth in finite causes limited in their being, and thus they depend in their causing on something they do not cause. But God, of infinite being and actuality, cannot depend on anything outside Himself, as the art of the carpenter depends on there being wood in which to introduce the form. But if to the art of the carpenter it belonged to make wood from nothing, his art would not depend on the wood. So the wisdom of God, quae est omnium artifex, cannot be said to depend on our free choice, since by His omnipotence we are created and conserved. And so the effect of our election has in God a practical idea, and powerful to make it by means of our free choice, without His omnipotence depending on our free choice, although the election depends on our free choice, as many of the effects of God depend at times some on others. And so, not denying that the election depends on our free choice as an elicited act of the said power and as levelled by the choice of reason which communicates to it the form of election, which is the formal effect of the act of prudence, as Saint Thomas teaches, 1. 2, q. 13, a. 1, we deny that thence it follows that the will and providence of God, which provides and wills that act, depends on the free choice of His creature. Since God knows and can most efficaciously and sweetly not only conserve free choice, but also move it, persuading it sweetly to will in effect what God absolutely wills, and that our free choice go after the current of the will of God; and not on the contrary, the will of God go after the current of our free choice, giving it only an indifferent concurrence of itself so that free choice run whither it will and God go after it. And the worst is that with the same concurrence one sins and another does a good moral work, as Father Molina affirms in the place cited above. From here what follows stands confuted.

13. Societas. — For God's being omnipotent does not make possible what implies contradiction, as really happens in what they affirm in this answer. For the essence and nature of the free act stands in this, that the power that works it, having all that is necessary for being able to do it, stand with all that indifferent and undetermined for acting or not. Then to take from it this indifference and to say on the other hand that it remains free is not to join efficacy of strength and sweetness with the will, but to say that it is free, not having the essence and being that the free thing requires.

Bañes. — His understanding being founded on a bad understanding of the definition of the free act, I do not marvel that what we say seems to him to imply contradiction. I have already sufficiently declared what free choice and free act are and in what consists the necessary indifference, which is in judging the indifference of the means to the end and the will electing what the singular dictate and the command of reason orders it. And with this requisite standing, it is incompossible that the will not act. And this is not to take freedom from it; rather then it has it in act, perfected by the form which its own reason stamps and induces on it, which for the good stands illustrated with divine light in singular, natural or supernatural. And this is to understand in what our freedom consists, and not in our always standing indifferent and changeable.

14. Societas. — And so the Council of Trent, to teach that grace does not take away freedom, said that, the divine motion being posited in us, it stands in our hand to resist it. And although those of the contrary opinion strive to limit this text, yet in the reality of truth the definition of the council is absolute, and the principle on which it is founded, which is the one already proposed, is universal and runs in whatever kind of motion that forestalls our free consent.

Bañes. — From an intolerable ignorance it is no great thing to fall into another such and even greater, which is to want the holy Council of Trent in session six in canon 4 to have pretended to define their sentence, which says thus: "Si quis dixerit liberum hominis arbitrium a Deo motum et excitatum, nihil cooperari assentiendo Deo excitanti atque vocanti quo ad obtinendam justificationis gratiam se disponat ac praeparet, neque posse dissentire si velit, sed velut inane quoddam nihil omnino agere, mereque passive se habere, anathema sit". This canon I have declared in my Commentaries on q. 10 of the Secunda secundae, a. 1, doubt 2, column 575, whither I remit the qualifier in what shall here be brief.

Two things does the sacred canon define. The first is that our free choice, moved and excited by God and consenting to His call and excitation, works something with which it is disposed for attaining the grace of justification. And in this part there is not nor can there be difference of understanding among Catholics. The other part is: neque possit dissentire si velit, sed velut inane quoddam nihil omnino agere, mereque passive se habere, anathema sit. In this part it is clear that the heresy of Luther is condemned. But in the understanding of how it is condemned and in what sense is to be understood liberum hominis arbitrium a Deo motum et excitatum posse dissentire si velit, in this we Thomists differ from some fathers of the Society. For we say that the council could pretend no more than to affirm the true freedom in the consent we give to God in the point of justification, which freedom, as we have shown, is not destroyed by the efficacious aid which in that instant God gives the sinner; rather his freedom is perfected for determinately choosing what God commands him. And so I say that this proposition, liberum arbitrium a Deo motum et excitatum potest dissentire si velit, has two true and Catholic senses, and another third false and in my judgment erroneous. The first true sense is that it be understood of the motion and excitation and call that God makes in the soul before the instant of justification. And in this sense it is plainly verified that potest homo resistere et dissentire Deo vocanti et excitanti, as is established, ch. 1 of Proverbs (v. 24): Quia vocavi et renuistis; and ad Rom., ch. 2 (vv. 4-5): Ignoras quoniam benignitas Dei ad paenitentiam te adducit? Tu autem secundum duritiam tuam et impaenitens cor thesaurizas tibi iram in die irae. And it is manifest that in these places they speak of the divine motion before the point of justification.

Nor must anyone think that man can resist the absolute will of God when He absolutely wills that the sinner be converted. Although well I know that there is no lack of one who denies that there is in God such an absolute will about the consent of free choice, but this is what I hold for error and against that of Psalm 113 and 134: Omnia quaecumque voluit fecit in caelo et in terra. Which testimony to this day theologians have always declared de voluntate Dei absoluta. And it is also against that of Esther ch. 13 (v. 9): Non est qui possit resistere voluntati tuae; and against that of Isaiah (46, 10): Consilium meum stabit, et omnis voluntas mea fiet. But with all that the sinner is said to resist God who calls and invites him, inasmuch as with his own freedom and by his natural powers and many times by his antecedent malice he says that he does not want the operation God commands him to do and invites him to do. And so for sinning he has no need of the other efficacious aid. But if God absolutely willed that such a man should consent, without any doubt he would do it, as Saint Augustine says in the Enchiridion, ch. 95 and 96, condemning the contrary as error in this form: "Alioquin quomodo Deus esset omnipotens, si aliquid voluit facere et non fecit, et quod est indignius, ideo non fecit quoniam ne fieret quod volebat omnipotens, voluntas hominis impedivit? ... Atque ita periclitatur ipsum nostrae fidei confessionis initium, qua nos in Deum Patrem omnipotentem credere confitemur"¹⁰. Hence is inferred that they raise false testimony against the sacred council who say that it pretended to condemn this doctrine of Saint Augustine.

The second sense is also true and Catholic, that that proposition be understood simpliciter et absolute loquendo, although it speak of the efficacious motion and excitation and call, whence infallibly and by necessity of the consequence it follows that man consent with God who calls and invites him. But even in that instant it is verified, absolutely speaking, that homo habet potestatem dissentiendi, si velit, which conditional is verified absolutely and in sensu diviso, as the theologians say and I have declared above. But together with that conditional stands in truth this copulative as impossible: Deus tali auxilio efficaci movet liberum arbitrium hominis, et liberum arbitrium non consentit Deo sic excitanti atque vocanti. For this implies contradiction and repugns the omnipotence of God and what Christ our Lord says through Saint John (6, 45): Omnis qui audit a Patre et didicit, venit ad me; and what the Church asks in a secret prayer in the Mass twice in the year: "Ad te nostras etiam rebelles compelle voluntates". Where by that word compelle she does not ask that He take from us free choice, but that He give us most efficacious succour with which we be converted, although we be rebels. And in this sense Saint Augustine understands what the Redeemer says in ch. 6 of Saint John (v. 44): Nemo potest venire ad me, nisi Pater qui misit me traxerit eum, by these words: "Magna gratiae commendatio? Nemo venit nisi tractus. Quem trahat et quem non trahat, quare istum trahat et illum non trahat, noli velle judicare si non vis errare". Then already Saint Augustine gives to understand that not all receive that great succour and efficacy of the grace of God with which infallibly are converted all who receive it, and that it is dangerous to seek the reason why God gives this succour more to some than to others.

And if what some want to say were true, that the aid is of itself indifferent, it would be very easy to judge why this one is converted and is drawn to God and the other not, by saying that this one by his free choice determined the aid of God and made it efficacious, and the other did not want to act with it. But to Saint Augustine it seemed no safe thing to want to sound the abyss of the judgments of God. And with all that he consoles us saying: "Nondum traheris? Ora ut traharis". And he posits the argument that moves the newly concordant: "Si trahimur ad Christum, ergo inviti credimus; ergo violentia adhibetur, non voluntas excitatur". And he denies the consequence saying: "Nolite cogitare invitum trahi. Invitus non trahitur animus, sed amore. ... Est quaedam voluptas cordis cui dulcis est ille panis caelestis". And declaring how sweetly God knows and can draw after Himself our free choice, he says some words worthy of being written in letters of gold, or to speak better in the heart of those who with humility treat the business of their salvation. "Porro si poetae dicere licuit, trahit sua quemque voluptas; ... non obligatio, sed delectatio; quanto fortius nos dicere debemus trahi hominem ad Christum, qui delectatur veritate, delectatur beatitudine, delectatur justitia, delectatur aeterna vita quod totum Christus est? ... Da amantem et sentit quod dico; da desiderantem, da ferventem, da in ista solitudine peregrinantem atque sitientem et ad fontem aeternae patriae suspirantem, da talem et scit quid dicam"¹¹.

Behold how Saint Augustine posited strength and sweetness in the movement of the mind of man whom God so nobly draws after Himself; in the end He draws him as a son. And I say before God who is to judge me, that reading this in Saint Augustine and dictating it, it has made me greatly marvel how it be possible that men who profess prayer and spirit come to feel so dryly of the movement of the grace of God as to make it so indifferent that with equal excitation it draws one after itself, and another not, and want to attribute this difference to their freedom, with which they determined the grace of God to what of itself it was not efficacious for. For even I, being a sinner as God knows and a man of little spirit and less prayer, but knowing that I am the workmanship of His mercy and that each day He suffers my ingratitude, reading these words of Saint Augustine, I have held back tears, and knowing my faults, I have invoked the mercy of God such as efficaciously draws me after Himself. May God give light to all of us so that with humility we attribute to God what is His own, and to ourselves what alone is our own, which is sin, in which God has no part, although being able to impede sin, He permits it by His secret judgments.

And I do not know what we ask when we say, et ne nos inducas in tentationem, if what we ask we have already received, which is a succour with which without receiving another more efficacious we could not sin, making it efficacious ourselves. For, as Saint Augustine says in the single book De natura et gratia, ch. 18, declaring those words, Dimitte nobis debita nostra et ne nos inducas in tentationem, "ut praeterita expientur [ms. experiantur] et futura vitentur gratia Dei opus est ... Nam quid stultius quam orare ut facias quod in potestate habes?"¹². Whence I infer that if the just without new maintenance of God can persevere in His grace, they would have no need to pray et ne nos inducas in tentationem. And I would hold for bad doctrine to say that in one same occasion one just man falls and another equally just does not fall, the temptation having been equal. For in such case he who did not fall has no more to thank God for than he who fell, since the holding back from sin was not the effect of greater succour nor of special maintenance of God, for in this they were equal, but the last resolution is to be made that he who persevered wanted to profit by his free choice from what he had already received from God.

Let whoever will say this; I, conformably to the doctrine of Saint Augustine, hold it for pride born of much ignorance of the mercy and power of God, and little understanding of the providence of God, who by His secret judgments permits one to fall and holds another by His hand. And let Father Molina pardon me, who holds the contrary in his Concordia, disputation 12. And the worst is that he alleges Saint Augustine, book 12 De civitate, ch. 6, and does not faithfully report his words, as whoever reads this place of Saint Augustine will see, where he goes inquiring the cause of the evil will, and speaking by frequent interrogations; and he never affirmed the proposition Molina brings, "a sola libertate arbitrii evenire posse utriusque ut unus consentiat in peccatum et alter non consentiat". Nor will such a proposition be found in Saint Augustine. What Saint Augustine affirms and concludes is that the evil will was not made by free choice as it was good, sed ex eo quod de nihilo natura facta est. And that is what he goes inquiring and defining with greatest care and humility, that the cause of the malice of the will is not some nature evil of itself, but that its defect in sin comes from the nature being made from nothing. And his conclusion stands in chapters 7, 8 and 9 of the place cited. But he never affirmed that man's standing firm in the same temptation and occasion was to be attributed to the powers alone of the free choice of the creature, especially in the just man, who has the grace of God and whom God conserves with special aid and gift so that he not fall, or gives him perseverance to the end, or conserves him so that he not fall in the temptation which to the other, equally just, was occasion for sinning and he sinned.

Nor do I understand how in the contrary doctrine canon 9 of the Council of Orange comports: "Divini est muneris cum recte cogitamus et pedes nostros a falsitate et injustitia tenemus"; and with what Saint Augustine says in book 10 of the Confessions: "Gratiae tuae deputo peccata quae non feci"; and in homily 23 in the Book of the Fifty Homilies, declaring that of Saint Luke ch. 7: Cui autem minus dimittitur minus diligit, he says that, although one has sinned fewer sins than another, he can love more than another, si cognoscat peccata quae non fecit ex misericordia Dei fuisse. And in another place which I do not remember he says these express words: "Nullum est peccatum quod faciat unus homo quod non faceret alius homo, nisi ab illo detineretur per quem factus est homo"¹³.

Well I know that many times to avoid a sin the concurrence of God as author of rational nature suffices; but also in this concurrence we consider special providence of God, by which He permits one to sin and impedes another so that he not sin, giving him particular succour and illustrating his understanding with particular reason so that he choose to abstain from sin. And so all the sins that man avoids, placed in the occasion, he avoids with particular aid of God, either as creator or as saviour. And in this sense Saint Augustine seems to have spoken in those words: "Nisi ab illo detineatur per quem factus est homo". But in the end ordinarily in those who have Catholic faith, the conquering of temptation comes to them from particular consideration founded on supernatural knowledge and supernatural divine inspiration.

From this doctrine which I have here proposed I took foundation in my Commentaries on the First Part of Saint Thomas, on q. 14, a. 13, column 518, letter D, for loosing an argument which was this: "Sequitur ex illis conclusionibus et probationibus earum quod peccatorum quae solum pendent ex voluntate libera operantis, Deus non potest habere certam cognitionem in suis causis. Probatur sequela. Divina voluntas non determinat voluntatem creatam ad peccandum, sed relinquit illam indifferentem et liberam; at per causam indifferentem et indeterminatam non potest haberi certa cognitio effectus futuri: ergo Deus non potest habere certam cognitionem futurorum peccatorum".

And to declare how the foreknowledge of God could not depend on a future contingent indeterminate in itself and in its cause, I had already said that as to the good the presence of God was certain, because all stood predetermined in the divine will. But as to future sins I said two solutions. The first was that malum culpae futurum cognoscitur a Deo per ideam boni cui opponitur. But this solution did not satisfy me so much, because it gives place to many replies. And so I said the second, positing a foundation, that voluntas creata infallibiliter deficiet circa quamcumque materiam virtutis, nisi efficaciter determinetur a divina voluntate ad bene operandum. Quocirca ex eo quod Deus cognoscit suam voluntatem non determinasse voluntatem creatam ad bene operandum in materia v. gr. temperantiae, cognoscit evidenter quod voluntas creata peccabit et deficiet in materia illius virtutis.

From this solution some calumniator inferred by a bad consequence that I said quod voluntas creata adeo ex se determinata sit ad malum, quod circa materiam cujuscumque virtutis, nisi a Deo efficaciter determinetur in contrarium, deficiet et peccabit. And I never said such a thing nor will such be found written, that voluntas creata sit determinata ad malum, for that is blasphemy against God, author of nature, which would be to say that God is the author of sin, since what the creature takes from God is inclination to evil. But what I affirm is that the created will est defectibilis et peccabilis ex natura sua ex ea parte qua animus ex nihilo est, as is the common sentence of theologians and of Saint Augustine in the place cited, book 12 De civitate.

Thence it is not inferred that of itself it is inclined to evil, nor is it inferred either from saying that the created will would infallibly fail about whatever matter of virtue, if God by His providence in the occasions that are to offer themselves had not decreed to aid it efficaciously so that it not fall. And I give a manifest instance for any good theologian. It is a certain thing that all creatures, although they be the heavens and the angels, would turn to nothing and be annihilated, if God by His free will had not determined to conserve them. But he would be a very bad dialectician and worse metaphysician and theologian who thence inferred: therefore the creatures of themselves are inclined to not-being, as though it were true that omnia appetunt esse. It is also a very bad consequence to infer from the will having need of the succour of the providence of God, which is infallible, for all the good in singular, that thence it follows that the will of itself is inclined to evil. And whoever makes this consequence does not understand that the inclination of creatures is to be considered on the part of the form and end and terminus ad quem for which they were created and conserved, and not of the terminus a quo whence they were drawn by the omnipotence of God, which was ex nihilo, whence comes to them the power to sin.

And just as the natural appetite of all things flees as much as possible from losing its being, so also the rational soul made to the image of God has natural inclination to the highest good. And all sin is against its natural inclination in such manner that even when it sins, it pretends some good. Nemo enim intendens ad malum operatur. But since the soul is made from nothing as from terminus a quo, thence comes to it that it fail and sin, pretending some good not regulated by the law. And it truly grieves me that with such blindness walk those who, to defend their new inventions, raise false testimony against what stands in print, and say that we say the consequents which they infer by bad consequence from our doctrine. And in this tone they must have made other calumnies against those of us who have in print the doctrine of Saint Thomas, which let be seen to this purpose, ad Rom. 9, lect. 4, in illud: Notam facere potentiam suam.

15. SOCIETAS. — The third inconvenience that follows from this sentence is that forcibly, it being posited, it must be said that to all men who are not converted there is lacking something on the part of God, without which they are not powerful to be converted, nor is it in their hand to have it. And so they will seem to have just excuse for not having in effect corresponded to the vocation of divine grace, if it be so that until that motion of God guides them, which these authors say to be necessary, they are not powerful to be converted or consent, nor can they do anything so that God give them that motion. And so neither it nor the conversion is in their hand. And to say this is manifest error: which indeed is not seen how it can be evaded. And so there will have to be attributed to the divine will not only the not giving the said motion to man, but consequently his perdition. For if they say that it stands in the hand of man to have this motion, and that by his resisting it is not given to him, we shall ask them: then what is it that man must do so that it be given to him? And if he has need for that of another motion of God of like efficacy as the other, for if that is required, there remains the same difficulty, that it is not in his hand to have it. And if it is not required, that is what we say, that neither is it required for the free conversion.

BAÑES. — This very objection Saint Paul represents, ad Rom. 9, on behalf of the proud human heart when, Saint Paul having said that God by His will and eternal purpose, and not by works, had elected Jacob and reprobated Esau, he says: Igitur non volentis neque currentis, sed miserentis est Dei. Dicit enim scriptura Pharaoni, quia in hoc ipsum excitavi te, ut ostendam in te virtutem meam, ut annuntietur nomen meum in universa terra. Ergo cui vult miseretur, et quem vult indurat. And he then makes the reply of the proud who with their short reason want to penetrate all the secrets of God. Dicis itaque mihi, quid adhuc quaeritur? Voluntati enim ejus quis resistit? And without doubt Saint Paul speaks of the absolute will, of which he had said ut secundum electionem propositum Dei maneret. So that the reply is: of what does God complain? As if they said, if we sin and be evil, for to His will and purpose who will be able to resist? And so if to some, whom it pleases Him, He communicates His mercies coming from His firm purpose so that they profit in effect and be converted and be saved, and to others He denies these mercies, as to Pharaoh, our perdition must not be imputed to us. And the Apostle Saint Paul, so enlightened in this mystery of predestination, the first answer he gave was to rebuke him who thus replies, saying: O homo, tu quis es qui respondeas Deo? Nunquid dicit figmentum ei qui se finxit, quid me fecisti sic? An non habet potestatem figulus ex eadem massa facere aliud quidem vas in honorem, aliud vero in contumeliam? How easy it would have been for the Apostle to shut the mouth to this reply of the human heart, if what these fathers say were true, by remitting all the difference and separation of the good and of the evil to the free choice of man. But he did not want to say what was false, to content and satisfy men, who gladly hear their excellence, although it be a lie. But the Apostle did not want it, nor would the Holy Spirit have allowed him.

Rather He wanted to shut their mouth with the omnipotence and majesty of God, with the example of the potter, who from the same clay makes one vessel for the table and another for vile service. But lest from this answer the proud man take occasion to blaspheme God, saying that God was the cause of sin, the Apostle gives the second solution, in which he declares the difference there is between good and evil with respect to the divine providence, and says thus: Quod si Deus volens ostendere iram, et notam facere potentiam suam, sustinuit in multa patientia vasa irae apta in interitum, ut ostenderet divitias gloriae suae in vasa misericordiae, quas praeparavit in gloriam. On which place let Saint Thomas be seen, lect. 4. From whose doctrine is perceived the difference the Apostle makes of the concurrence of the providence of God about the good and about the evil. For about these it is permission, and about the good it is directly divine preparation. To whom God shows greater mercy in punishing them to discover the more the greater mercy and the riches of His grace toward the predestined, whom He calls vessels of mercy quae praeparavit in gloriam.

And without any doubt, if God used as much mercy with those whom He permits to sin and die in sin, all would be saved, none would be condemned, He would permit none to sin, and God would have nothing in which to show in effect His omnipotence and also His vindictive justice against the evil. But because it pleased Him to show in His effects these attributes of His divine majesty, therefore He permitted that there be sinners who die in sin, with whose comparison His great mercy, which He used with the predestined, should rise in point. This is an abyss which only the humble can contemplate without being puffed up; rather with greater profit to themselves they submit to the mercy of God and invoke it with instant prayers; and they bear this cross which settles on them not on the corporal shoulders, but in the centre of their spirit, annihilating themselves in the presence of the divine majesty, casting all their solicitude on God, and at the same time working what God commanded them to work. And having worked it, they put it again in the hands of God, recognizing that by His sheer grace He gave them aid with which they did it in effect. And they ask anew for new aids and above all the great gift of perseverance, which no one can merit nor be certain he will have, unless he to whom God revealed it. Such find a short cut for the road to heaven, which although it is with labour of spirit, yet is of much gain, for it is of much humility founded on a sovereign truth with which is known who God is and who the creature is. And such descendunt in infernum viventes with consideration and confession, and from now confess God for holy and just if for their sins He cast them there. And if this consideration and confession those who are in hell could make, it would not be hell, although the torment which the corporal fire caused by the omnipotence of God were such as competed with the corporal, as competed the love that Saint Lawrence had stretched on the fire. And of what I say only the proud or ignorant man can be scandalized. Of whom I understand to have been said what Saint Peter said in the second epistle, last chapter (vv. 15-16): Sicut et carissimus frater noster Paulus secundum datam sibi sapientiam scripsit vobis, sicut et in omnibus epistolis, scribens in eis de his; in quibus sunt quaedam difficilia intellectu, quae indocti et instabiles depravant, sicut et ceteras scripturas, ad suam ipsorum perditionem, since on occasion of the incomprehensible judgments of God, many let themselves go after their concupiscences. But as Saint Augustine says, book 2 De dono perseverantiae, ch. 15 and 16, the necessary truth must not be left unsaid because some on occasion of it say they remain disconsolate and faint in the execution of good works and prayer. And he speaks of this truth of the predestination and foreknowledge of God. And this place in any case let be seen, for unless by saying that Saint Augustine erred, they cannot say to us that we err.

It will seem to some that I have been fleeing from the argument this father on behalf of the Society has made. I have not fled; rather dissemblingly I have cut its roots. And now I want to come to answer in form the sophistic argument, the like of which remained loosed in the antecedent paragraph. And so now to this I say that from our doctrine it does not follow that those who are not converted cannot be converted, for it is a different business to be possible to be converted according to the common laws of God and of His gospel, and different to say that he who is not converted does not receive from God the efficacious aid for being converted. This second we say; the first we deny. And what the arguer says, that before they have that special aid with which they are to be converted they are not powerful to be converted, nor is it in their hand to have it, has equivocation. Which we distinguish with the common distinction of sensu composito et sensu diviso, which, as I have shown above, is necessary for loosing many sophistic arguments. And so I say that, although the sinner does not have that aid which we call special and efficacious of his conversion, yet he can have it, for God not only is powerful to give it to him, but invites him with it even with interior inspiration. And for the sinner to say that he does not want it, but to stay in his sin, he has no need to have it first. For if he had it, with it at once he would be converted. And so he sins, not because he did not have it, but because he said that he did not want it, and resisted the invitation of God. And this he could do with his free choice; for sinning by himself he is sufficient. And so the sinner has no just excuse, since sin consists in voluntary defect. And since God proposed it to him as possible, according to His ordinary law, and man by himself could say and said that he did not want it, and so sinned. And to him alone is the sin attributed, and not to God, who did not give him what He did not owe to give him, although He wanted to give it to another with whom He used the greater mercy.

And to what the argument says, that that efficacious motion and consequently the conversion is not in the hand of the sinner, and that to say this is manifest error, has much confusion. For if it wants to say that it is not in the hand of the sinner, that is, that it is not to come out of his powers and potency, so we say; and it is not error, but Catholic faith. But if it wants to say that God does not offer it to him as possible coming from His divine hand, this would be error and blasphemy. And by this way those who with humility consider this profound and sovereign mystery justify God, although He permits sin, and attribute it to the creature, which by its free choice and powers can sin. And indeed, I do not know what greater difficulty they find in understanding this than in loosing another argument which I would make them about the gift of perseverance, of which the holy Council of Trent says in session 6, can. 16, that no one can know that he has it, and of which it is also certain that it does not fall under human merits however holy a man be, except the merits of Christ, who to all who persevere merited this gift for them. And I shall make this argument thus: No one can persevere without the gift of perseverance. And this gift God has determined to give to a certain number of His elect. Therefore all the rest cannot persevere. Likewise in another form I shall argue. For man to be saved the gift of perseverance is necessary. This is not in his hand, nor does God give it to all. Therefore those who do not have it cannot be saved, and their perdition will be attributed to the divine will, which did not give them this gift. I would like to hear them how they loose this argument. For if they answer that to those to whom this gift is not given, they merit by their fault that it not be given to them, then the reply is certain and makes greater difficulty. There stand two men just and equally holy, and the one on one occasion and with equal temptation sins, and at once they kill him. The other on the same occasion perseveres, and also then dies. I ask...

[(Rome, General Archive of the Order of Preachers XIV-165. Incomplete. In the Roman manuscript there follows next a "Tractatus de motione seu auxilio efficaci ad liberos et supernaturales actus necessario", by Suárez).]