De gratia Redemptoris

Pelagianism is named from Pelagius, a monk, whether Irish¹ or British,² who came to Rome³ about the beginning of the fifth century. The Manichees taught that bodily substance was made by an evil principle, and that evils proceed from it by necessity, evils which man is therefore unable to avoid, and that consequently man is excused when he sins. Against such and similar tendencies to excuse the sins of men by the weakness of nature Pelagius pressed very hard the part of free will, both in avoiding evil and in doing good, to such an extent that he neglected the weakness of fallen nature and the necessity of divine help. By natural powers alone man can keep all the commandments. Divine grace he did indeed affirm in words, but he understood it as either nature itself and free will, or the law of God and doctrine; but grace which is not our nature or our free will is necessary not for simply being able, but for being able more easily. Whether in the course of time the Pelagians admitted an internal grace of illumination is disputed; but the grace of the will they always denied.

St Augustine on Pelagius: “He places the grace of God and the help by which we are aided not to sin either in nature and free will, or in the law and doctrine: namely, so that when God aids a man to decline from evil and to do good, he is believed to aid him by revealing and showing what ought to be done, not also by cooperating and inspiring love, so that he may do what he has come to know must be done.”⁴.

In the same book he cites the following from the third book of Pelagius, De libero arbitrio: “We distinguish these three things as follows, and divide them, each as it were set in order. In the first place we hold that to be able; in the second, to will; in the third, to be. We locate the ‘to be able’ in nature, the ‘to will’ in the will, the ‘to be’ in the effect. That first thing, namely to be able, belongs properly to God, who conferred it on his creature; but the two remaining, that is to will and to be, are to be referred to man, because they descend from the fountain of free will. Therefore in the will and the good work the praise is man’s: nay, both man’s and God’s, who gave the very possibility of the will and the work, and who always aids that possibility by the help of his grace. But that a man can will good and accomplish it is God’s alone. And so that one thing can be even if the other two are not; but those two cannot be without it. Thus it is in my power not to have a good will, nor action: but in no way can I not have the possibility of good: it is in me even if I am unwilling, nor does nature at any time admit its own idleness in this. Some examples will make this meaning clearer to us. That we can see with our eyes is not ours; but that we see well or ill, that is ours... And to comprehend all things generally, that we can do, say, think every good thing belongs to him who gave this power, who aids this power: but that we do, or speak, or think well is ours; because we can turn all these things also to evil. Hence — what must often be repeated on account of your calumny — when we say that a man can be without sin, and in the confession of the possibility received we praise God, who has bestowed on us this power, there is no occasion there for praising man, where the cause of God alone is treated: for it is not of willing, nor of being, but only of that which can be, that the discussion is held.”⁵.

What Pelagius sometimes proposed covertly, his disciple Caelestius⁶ taught clearly and openly, who also explicitly denied original sin, and hence held that infants are not baptized for the remission of sins in the proper sense.⁷.

Pelagius and Caelestius set out for North Africa in the year 410, and shortly afterwards Pelagius made for Palestine, while Caelestius remained in Africa and spread his doctrine. Caelestius was accused by the deacon Paulinus at the Synod of Carthage (411) on account of the following propositions: “that Adam was made mortal, who would have died whether he sinned or did not sin. That the sin of Adam harmed him alone, and not the human race. That infants who are born are in the state in which Adam was before the transgression. That not through the death of Adam does the whole human race die, since neither through the resurrection of Christ does the whole human race rise. That infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life... That a man can be without sin and easily keep God’s commandments: because even before the coming of Christ there were men without sin: and that the law sends to the kingdom of heaven just as the gospel does.”⁸.

In the year 415 Pelagius is accused of heresy by Orosius, who had come to Jerusalem at Augustine’s instigation and had there reported what had been done in Africa concerning Caelestius. The bishop John, however, judged that the matter should be referred to the Roman Pontiff. At about the same time two exiled Gallic bishops, Heros of Arles and Lazarus of Aix, accused Pelagius and Caelestius before Eulogius, metropolitan of Caesarea. Eulogius convoked a synod at Diospolis (Lydda), in which “Pelagius was pronounced catholic by 14 bishops of the province of Palestine.”⁹ Heros and Lazarus, bishops who had not themselves been present at the synod of Diospolis, communicated through Orosius to the African bishops what had been done at the synod. These at Carthage (416) confirmed the judgment previously passed on Caelestius and sent a letter on the whole question to the supreme Pontiff;¹⁰ shortly afterwards the synod held at Mileve did the same,¹¹ and besides them five bishops, among whom was Augustine.¹² Innocent in the month of January 417 replied in three letters,¹³ in which he entirely approves the judgment of the bishops. “Concerning this cause (namely of the Pelagians) two councils were sent to the apostolic see: thence also rescripts came. The cause is finished: would that the error might at some time be finished!”¹⁴.

Pelagius in the year 417 presented to Innocent I a “Libellus fidei,”¹⁵ which however his successor Zosimus received, and in the same year Caelestius came to Rome and promised Zosimus submission under his judgment. Hence Zosimus judged that the matter should be treated anew, and communicated this to the African bishops.¹⁶ In the month of May 418 a synod of more than 200 bishops was held at Carthage, in which 8 (9) canons were established, by which Pelagianism is condemned.¹⁷ The acts of this council were sent to Rome. Zosimus summoned Caelestius to judgment, but Caelestius fled from Rome, and thereafter both he and Pelagius were excommunicated by the supreme Pontiff. In the same year Zosimus sent the letter “which is called the tractoria, by which Caelestius and Pelagius were condemned, which also, sent to Constantinople and through the whole world, was strengthened by the subscriptions of the holy fathers.”¹⁸.

But 18 bishops of Italy refused their subscription, among whom was Julian of Eclanum, who from this point is the head of the Pelagians.¹⁹ When Augustine had learned that he had been defamed before the count Valerius on account of his doctrine on marriage, he sent him the first book “De nuptiis et concupiscentia,” in the year 419. Against this book Julian wrote four books Ad Turbantium (a bishop of his own faction).²⁰.

Pope Boniface I communicated to Augustine, to be refuted by him through Alypius, two letters which Julian had sent, one, as was said, to Rome to his followers, the other to Rufus bishop of Thessalonica; and Alypius at the same time brought extracts of Julian’s work Ad Turbantium. Hence Augustine wrote four books “Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum”²¹ and, against Julian’s work Ad Turbantium, a second book “De nuptiis et concupiscentia.” But after he had received Julian’s work entire, he composed six books “Contra Iulianum.”²² To the second book of Augustine’s “De nuptiis et concupiscentia” Julian replied in eight books Ad Florum (421-422). Augustine was occupied in refuting these books in the last years of his life, yet he could not finish his work, which is accordingly called the “Opus imperfectum contra Iulianum,” consisting of six books.²³.

In the year 428 Augustine thus describes the heresy of the Pelagians: “The heresy of the Pelagians is the most recent of all in our time, arisen from the monk Pelagius. Caelestius followed him as his master in such a way that their followers are even called Caelestians. These men are so much enemies of the grace of God, by which we were predestined unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself,²⁴ and by which we are snatched from the power of darkness, that we may believe in him and be transferred into his kingdom,²⁵ wherefore he says: No one comes to me unless it has been given him by my Father,²⁶ and by which charity is poured forth in our hearts,²⁷ that faith may work through love,²⁸ that they think a man can without it do all the divine commandments: whereas, if this were true, the Lord would seem to have said in vain: Without me you can do nothing.²⁹ Finally Pelagius, reproached by the brethren because he attributed nothing to the help of God’s grace for doing his commandments, yielded to their correction to this extent, that he did not place it before free will, but placed it under it with an unbelieving cunning, saying that it is given to men for this purpose, that what they are commanded to do by free will they may be able to fulfil more easily by grace. In saying ‘that they may be able more easily’ he wished it to be believed that men can do the divine commands even without divine grace, though with more difficulty. But that grace of God, without which we can do nothing good, they say is nothing other than free will, which our nature received from him with no preceding merits of its own, with him helping only through his law and doctrine, so that we may learn what we ought to do and what we ought to hope for, but not so that through the gift of his Spirit we may do what we have learned ought to be done. And thereby they confess that knowledge is given to us from on high, by which ignorance is driven out, but they deny that charity is given, by which one lives piously: so that, while knowledge, which without charity puffs up, is a gift of God, charity itself, which builds up so that knowledge may not puff up, should not be a gift of God.³⁰ They also destroy the prayers which the Church makes, whether for unbelievers and those who resist God’s doctrine, that they may be converted to God; or for the faithful, that faith may be increased in them and that they may persevere in it. For these things, they contend, men do not receive from him but have of themselves, saying that the grace of God by which we are freed from impiety is given according to our merits. This indeed Pelagius, fearing to be condemned in the episcopal judgment in Palestine, was compelled to condemn; but in his later writings he is found teaching this. They go so far as to say that the life of the just in this world has no sin at all, and that from these the Church of Christ is made perfect in this mortal life, so that it is altogether without spot or wrinkle;³¹ as though the Church of Christ were not that which cries to God throughout the whole world, ‘Forgive us our debts’;³² They also deny that little children, born carnally according to Adam, contract the contagion of the ancient death in their first birth. For they assert that they are born without any bond of original sin, so that there is nothing at all which they need to have remitted to them in a second birth: but they are baptized for this reason, that being adopted by regeneration they may be admitted into the kingdom of God, translated from good to better, not absolved by this renewal from any evil of the old obligation. For even if they are not baptized, they promise them a certain eternal and blessed life indeed outside the kingdom of God. They say also that Adam himself, even if he had not sinned, would have died in the body, and that he died not by the merit of guilt but by the condition of nature. Other things also are objected to them, but these are the chief, from which it is understood that those others either all or nearly all depend.”³³.

St Augustine had the principal part in confuting the Pelagians, and against them he had especially to insist on the necessity of grace. Timasius and James, “religious and honourable young men, servants of God ... who ... at the exhortation of Pelagius himself left the hope which they had in the world and now serve God in continence,”³⁴ after they had withdrawn from Pelagianism, gave Augustine a book of Pelagius.

Answering them he wrote (415) “De natura et gratia ad Timasium et Iacobum,”³⁵ in which he shows that nature was indeed created sound but is corrupted by sin; that without the grace of Christ no one can be saved, and that it is not rendered for merits but given gratis, “wherefore also it is called grace.”³⁶ In the same year he sent to the bishops Eutropius and Paul the letter or book “De perfectione iustitiae hominis,”³⁷ in which he answers “the definitions which are said to be of Caelestius”³⁸ and shows that a man cannot be without all sin and that all ought to pray that they enter not into temptation.

In the year 418 he replies in a longer letter³⁹ to the Roman presbyter Sixtus, who was attacking the Pelagians, in which he shows the absolute gratuitousness of grace, which in no way comes from our merits, and which is required both for faith and for prayer.

“What then is the merit of a man before grace, by which merit he receives grace, when our every good merit is made in us by grace alone; and when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing else than his own gifts? For as from the beginning of faith we obtained mercy, not because we were faithful, but that we might be; so in the end, when there will be eternal life, he will crown us together, as it is written, in pity and mercy.⁴⁰ Not therefore in vain is it sung to God: And his mercy shall prevent me;⁴¹ and: His mercy shall follow me.⁴² Whence also eternal life itself, which indeed will be had in the end without end, and is therefore rendered for preceding merits; yet because those same merits for which it is rendered were not prepared by us through our own sufficiency, but were made in us through grace, it too is called grace, for no other reason than that it is given gratis; nor because it is not given for merits, but because the merits themselves for which it is given are also given. But where do we find that even eternal life is called grace, we have in the same magnificent defender of grace, the apostle Paul: The wages, he says, of sin is death; but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”⁴³.

This letter came after about ten years to the monks of the monastery of Hadrumetum, in Africa Byzacena, whence a dissension arose in the monastery “because certain among you so preach grace as to deny that free will belongs to man; and, what is more serious, they say that on the day of judgment God will not render to each one according to his works.⁴⁴ This too however they indicated, that the greater number of you do not think so, but confess that free will is aided by the grace of God, that we may know and do what is right; and that when the Lord comes to render to each one according to his works, he may find our good works, which God has prepared that we should walk in them.⁴⁵ Those who think this think rightly.”⁴⁶ Therefore Augustine sent a letter to Valentine, abbot of that monastery,⁴⁷ in which he explains how the doctrine of letter 194 is to be understood; namely that it was written “against the new heretics the Pelagians ... who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, so that he who glories may glory not in the Lord but in himself, that is in man, not in the Lord,”⁴⁸ “Wherefore I in this letter which has come to you proved by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures, which you can inspect there, that our good works and pious prayers and right faith could in no way have been in us, unless we had received these from him of whom the apostle James says: Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights;⁴⁹ lest anyone should say that by the merits of his works, or the merits of his prayers, or the merits of his faith, the grace of God was delivered to him, and it be thought true what those heretics say, that the grace of God is given according to our merits; which is altogether most false: not because there is no merit, whether good of the pious or evil of the impious; otherwise how will God judge the world? but the mercy and grace of God converts a man, of which the Psalm says: My God, his mercy shall prevent me;⁵⁰ that the impious may be justified, that is, may be made just from impious, and may begin to have good merit, which the Lord will crown when the world is judged.”⁵¹ And after he had cited the words of St Peter,⁵² who says that in the letters of St Paul there are “certain things hard to understand,” he continues: “Take heed therefore to what so great an Apostle says so terribly; and where you feel that you do not understand, in the meantime believe the divine utterances, because both free will belongs to man, and the grace of God, without whose help free will can neither be converted to God nor make progress in God.”⁵³.

Shortly afterwards he sent to the same abbot the book “De gratia et libero arbitrio,”⁵⁴ in which he deals with the question which he himself calls “most difficult ... that is, concerning the will and grace.”⁵⁵.

But when difficulties still remained — namely, what purpose the precepts and reproofs serve in the case of those who do not keep God’s precepts, when all things depend on divine grace — he wrote the other book “De correptione et gratia,”⁵⁶ in which he again shows that the whole economy of salvation is plainly gratuitous and that neither the beginning of salvation nor the perseverance of the will is to be attributed to merits; yet that precepts and reproofs are good and useful, “yet that reproof may profit, it is done only through God.”⁵⁷.

About the same time he sent a letter to Vitalis of Carthage,⁵⁸ who denied that faith is a gift of God. If this were true, says Augustine, it would suffice to preach the gospel, and there would no longer be any need to pray that God convert men to the faith; but the Church not only does this, but also judges it altogether necessary.

In this letter he sets out twelve propositions against the Pelagians.⁵⁹ “Since therefore, with Christ’s favour, we are catholic Christians: 1° We know that those not yet born did nothing in their own life, good or evil, nor do they come into the miseries of this life according to the merits of some previous life, which none of them could have had as his own; but that nevertheless, born carnally according to Adam, they contract in their first birth the contagion of the ancient death, nor are they freed from the punishment of eternal death, which the just condemnation, passing from one into all, draws upon them, unless they are reborn in Christ by grace. — 2° We know that the grace of God is given neither to little children nor to adults according to our merits. — 3° We know that it is given to adults for individual acts. — 4° We know that it is not given to all men, and that to those to whom it is given it is given not only not according to the merits of works, but not even according to the merits of the will of those to whom it is given: which appears most of all in little children. — 5° We know that to those to whom it is given it is given by the gratuitous mercy of God. — 6° We know that to those to whom it is not given it is not given by the just judgment of God. — 7° We know that we shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, that each one may bear according to what he did through the body, not according to what he would have done if he had lived longer, whether good or evil. — 8° We know that even little children will receive good or evil according to what they did through the body. But they did it not through themselves, but through those by whom, answering for them, they are said both to renounce the devil and to believe in God; whence they are also counted in the number of the faithful, belonging to the sentence of the Lord who says: He who has believed and been baptized shall be saved. Wherefore also for those who do not receive this sacrament there follows: But he who has not believed shall be condemned.⁶⁰ Whence also they themselves, as I said, if they die in that little age, are judged according to what they did through the body, that is, in the time in which they were in the body, when through the hearts and mouths of those who carried them they believed or did not believe, when they were baptized or not baptized, when they ate the flesh of Christ or did not eat it, when they also drank his blood or did not drink it; according to these things therefore which they did through the body, not according to those which they would have done if they had lived longer here, they are judged. — 9° We know that the dead who die in the Lord are blessed, nor does there pertain to them whatever they would have done if they had lived for a longer time. — 10° We know that those who believe in the Lord with their own heart do this by their own will and free choice. — 11° We know that on behalf of those who are unwilling to believe, we who already believe act with right faith, when we pray God that they may be willing. — 12° We know that on behalf of those among them who have believed, we ought rightly and truly to give thanks to God as for benefits, and are accustomed to do so.”⁶¹.

The question of predestination, of grace and of free will, however, provoked greater and longer discussions in Gaul. John Cassian⁶² abbot of St Victor’s at Marseilles, sets out a doctrine in which the necessity and the gratuitousness of grace are scarcely preserved sufficiently.

What his opinion was can be known first of all from Collation 13, “De protectione Dei.”⁶³ In ch. 3 he teaches “that the beginning not only of actions but even of good thoughts is from God, who inspires in us both the beginnings of a holy will and grants the strength and the opportunity of accomplishing what we rightly desire.”⁶⁴ Ch. 6: “And therefore, although it can be shown in many things, nay in all, that men always stand in need of the help of God, and that human frailty can of itself alone, that is, without the help of God, perfect nothing that pertains to salvation, in no way however is this shown more evidently than in the acquiring and keeping of chastity.”⁶⁵ Ch. 8: “There is present therefore inseparably with us always the divine protection, and so great is the Creator’s piety towards his creature that he not only accompanies it, but even precedes it with continual providence. This the Prophet, having experienced it, confesses most openly to the Lord, saying: My God, his mercy shall prevent me.⁶⁶ When he has looked upon any rise of good will in us, he immediately enlightens and strengthens it, and stirs it to salvation, giving increase to that which either he himself planted or saw to have emerged from our effort. For: Before they cry, he says, I will hear them; while they are yet speaking, I will hear.⁶⁷ And again: At the voice of thy cry, as soon as he shall hear, he will answer thee.⁶⁸ And not only does he in his kindness inspire holy desires, but he also prepares beforehand the occasions of life, and shows to those who go astray the opportunity of good effect and the direction of the saving way.”⁶⁹ And in ch. 9, after many texts cited from holy Scripture, he asks what these things mean, “unless that in all these things both the grace of God and the freedom of our will are declared, and that a man can sometimes be extended by his own impulses to the appetites of the virtues, but always needs to be helped. For neither does anyone, when he wills, enjoy health, or is freed from the disease of sickness according to the desire of his will. But what does it profit to have desired the grace of health, unless the Lord who grants the use of life itself also imparts the vigour of soundness? But that it may appear more evidently, the Apostle is witness that even through the good of nature, which has been bestowed by the benefit of the Creator, the beginnings of good wills sometimes come forth, which nevertheless, unless they are directed by the Lord, cannot come to the consummation of the virtues, saying: To will is present with me, but to accomplish I find not.”⁷⁰ Ch. 11: “And so these things are in a certain manner indistinguishably mingled and confused, so that what depends on what is tossed about among many in great question, namely, whether because we have offered the beginning of a good will God has mercy on us; or because God has mercy we obtain the beginning of a good will? For many, seeking these several points and asserting more than is just, have been involved in various and mutually contrary errors. For if we say that the beginning of a good will is ours, what was there in Paul the persecutor, what in Matthew the publican, of whom the one, intent on the blood and tortures of the innocent, the other on violence and public robberies, is drawn to salvation? But if we say that the beginnings of a good will are always inspired by the grace of God, what do we say of the faith of Zacchaeus, what of the piety of that thief on the cross, who, offering a kind of violence to the heavenly kingdom by their desire, anticipated the special warnings of vocation? But if we attribute the consummation of the virtues and the execution of God’s commandments to our own will, how do we pray: Confirm, O God, this which thou hast wrought in us?⁷¹ ... These two things, namely the grace of God and free will, indeed seem to each other mutually opposed, but both are in harmony, and that we ought to receive both alike we gather from the reason of piety, lest, withdrawing one of these from man, we should seem to have exceeded the rule of the ecclesiastical faith. For when God has seen us incline to will the good, he runs to meet us, directs and strengthens ... And again, if he has perceived that we are unwilling or have grown cold, he applies to our hearts saving exhortations, by which the good will may either be repaired or be formed in us.”⁷².

Nevertheless grace is always gratuitous, “while to certain slight and small efforts he grants so great a glory of immortality, so great gifts of perennial beatitude, with inestimable largesse.”⁷³.

Kindred doctrines were proposed by others also. Concerning these Prosper writes to Augustine: “Many therefore of the servants of Christ who dwell in the city of Marseilles think, in the writings of your Holiness which you composed against the Pelagian heretics, that whatever you disputed in them concerning the vocation of the elect according to the purpose of God is contrary to the opinion of the fathers and to the ecclesiastical sense.”⁷⁴ Difficulties grew after St Augustine published his book “De correptione et gratia.” Therefore two laymen, Tiro Prosper of Aquitaine and Hilary,⁷⁵ ask Augustine to be willing to give further instruction on these questions. For the most part the discussion is directly about predestination; the points that immediately concern the gratuitousness of grace Prosper sets out thus:

“Some of these indeed do not so far decline from the Pelagian paths that, when they are forced to confess that grace of Christ which precedes all human merits — lest, if it were given for merits, grace should be named in vain — they wish the following condition to belong to each man, in which the grace of the Creator establishes him when he has merited nothing beforehand, because he did not even exist, furnished with free will and reason, so that through the discernment of good and evil he can direct his will both to the knowledge of God and to the obedience of his commandments, and can come to that grace by which we are reborn in Christ through a natural faculty, namely by asking, seeking, knocking: so that he therefore receives, therefore finds, therefore enters, because, having used the good of nature well, he has merited to come to this saving grace by the help of initial grace. But the purpose of the calling grace they define altogether in this, that God has determined to take no one into his kingdom except through the sacrament of regeneration, and to this gift of salvation all men are called universally, whether through the natural law, or the written law, or the evangelical preaching: so that those who are willing may become sons of God, and those who are unwilling to be faithful may be inexcusable; because it is of God’s justice that those who have not believed should perish; and his goodness appears in this, if he drives no one away from life, but wills all men without distinction to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”⁷⁶.

Prosper therefore asks Augustine: “Wherefore, since in these remnants of Pelagian depravity a fibre of no mean virulence is nourished, if the beginning of salvation is wrongly placed in man; if the human will is impiously preferred to the divine will, so that a man is helped for this reason, because he willed, not for this reason, that being helped he may will; if man, evil from his origin, is wrongly believed to begin the reception of good not from the supreme good but from himself; if God is not pleased otherwise than from what he himself has given: grant us in this cause, most blessed pope, best of fathers, as much as with the Lord’s help you can, the diligence of your piety, that the things which in these questions are more obscure and more difficult to grasp you may deign to open by your most lucid expositions. And first, since very many do not think that the Christian faith is violated by this dissension, make plain how much danger there is in their persuasion. Then, how by this grace that works beforehand and cooperates free will is not hindered. Then, whether the foreknowledge of God so remains according to purpose that the very things which are purposed are to be taken as foreknown: or whether these things vary according to the kinds of causes and the species of persons; so that, because the vocations are different in those who are saved without doing anything, the purpose of God alone may seem to exist; but in those who are to do something good, the purpose can stand through foreknowledge: or whether uniformly, although foreknowledge cannot be divided from purpose by a temporal distinction, foreknowledge nevertheless rests upon purpose in a certain order; and as there is nothing in any business which the divine knowledge has not preceded, so there is nothing good which has not flowed into our participation from God as its author. Finally, how through this preaching of God’s purpose, by which those who have been foreordained to eternal life become faithful, no one of those who are to be exhorted is hindered, nor do they have an occasion of negligence, if they despair that they are predestined. That also, we beseech you, show us, patiently bearing our foolishness, how it is washed away, that, when the opinions of earlier writers on this matter are reviewed, the opinion and sentence of almost all is found to be the same, by which they received the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge; so that for this reason God made some vessels of honour and others of dishonour, because he foreknew the end of each one, and under the help of grace itself foreknew in what will and action he would be.”⁷⁷.

Augustine replied in two books, one “De praedestinatione sanctorum,”⁷⁸ the other “De dono perseverantiae.”⁷⁹ In the former he shows that the very beginning of faith is a gift of God, not the increase of faith. “Whence in every good work, both in beginning and in perfecting, our sufficiency is from God: so no one is sufficient for himself either to begin or to perfect faith, but our sufficiency is from God: since faith, if it be not thought, is nothing; and we are not able to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.”⁸⁰ He confesses that he himself had formerly thought otherwise, but was convinced by the words of St Paul, 1 Cor 4, 7. “By which testimony I also was especially convinced, when I erred in like manner, thinking that the faith by which we believe in God was not a gift of God but was in us from ourselves, and that through it the gifts of God were obtained by us, by which we live temperately and justly and piously in this world. For I did not think that faith was preceded by the grace of God, so that through it there might be given to us what we should ask for profitably; but because we could not believe unless the proclamation of the truth preceded: that, however, when the Gospel had been preached to us, we should consent, I judged to be our own and to be in us from ourselves.”⁸¹.

In the other book he wishes to show “that perseverance is a gift of God, by which one perseveres in Christ even to the end.”⁸².

After the death of St Augustine (430) St Prosper continues to defend his doctrine. Pope Celestine, asked by him about the year 431, sent the letter “Apostolici verba praecepti”⁸³ to the bishops of Gaul, in which he protects the memory of Augustine. “We have always held in our communion Augustine, a man of holy memory, for his life and merits, nor did even a rumour of sinister suspicion ever touch him: whom we remember to have been once of such great knowledge that he was always reckoned by my predecessors also among the best masters. Rightly therefore have all thought well of him in common, as one who was everywhere an object of love and of honour to all.”⁸⁴.

Prosper himself, who had already before composed the poem Περὶ ἀχαρίστων, De ingratis, that is, on those who do not think rightly about grace, wrote against the Massilian adversaries of Augustine “Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula obiectionum Gallorum calumniantium”;⁸⁵ against Vincent of Lérins “Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula obiectionum vincentianarum”;⁸⁶ in the little work “Pro Augustino responsiones ad excerpta Genuensium”⁸⁷ he gave to two presbyters of Genoa an explanation of some passages from St Augustine’s “De praedestinatione sanctorum” and “De dono perseverantiae.” At length about the year 433/434 he wrote “De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra collatorem,” that is, against John Cassian.⁸⁸ At Rome about the year 450 arose the “Sententiarum ex operibus s. Augustini delibatarum liber,”⁸⁹ in which Prosper collected 392 brief citations from the works of St Augustine; from this collection several propositions of the council of Orange were later taken.

Moreover Prosper seems to have been the author of the collection⁹⁰ which arose in 435-442 and is known under the name “De gratia Dei indiculus” or “Praeteritorum sedis Apostolicae episcoporum auctoritates,” and which afterwards, about the year 500, was universally acknowledged as the genuine doctrine of the Apostolic See.⁹¹ Perhaps he is also the author of the work “De vocatione omnium gentium,” in which the doctrine of grace and free will is expounded.⁹².

In the second part of the fifth century the presbyter Lucidus taught a twofold predestination, the one to life, the other to death. After Adam’s sin free will was destroyed; hence in those who do good it is not free will but grace alone that works, and they receive it who are predestined to life, for whom alone Christ died; the rest are destined to death.

Faustus, bishop of Riez, sent a letter to Lucidus with six anathemas to be subscribed by him. “Briefly therefore I will say, as far as I can speak with one absent, what you ought to hold with the catholic Church. That is, that to the grace of the Lord you always join the operation of the baptized servant, and that you detest with the dogma of Pelagius him who asserts predestination with the labour of man excluded. Anathema therefore to him who among the other impieties of Pelagius has contended with damnable presumption that a man is born without sin and can be saved by his own labour alone, and who has believed that he can be freed without the grace of God. Likewise anathema to him who has asserted that a man solemnly baptized with a faithful confession and professing the catholic faith, and afterwards fallen away through the various delights and temptations of this world, has perished in Adam and in original sin. Likewise anathema to him who has said that a man is sunk into death through the foreknowledge of God. Likewise anathema to him who has said that he who perished did not receive that he might be saved, that is, concerning one baptized, or a pagan of that age who could have believed and was unwilling. Likewise anathema to him who has said that the vessel of contumely cannot rise up to become a vessel unto honour. Likewise anathema to him who has said that Christ did not die for all, nor wills all men to be saved.”⁹³ Lucidus subscribed, and moreover sent a letter to the bishops gathered in the council of Arles, in which he again condemned his errors and professed the opposite doctrine.⁹⁴.

The council wished that what had been done against predestinarianism should be explained more fully. Therefore Faustus wrote the work “De gratia Dei et humanae mentis libero arbitrio.”⁹⁵ The doctrine set out by him does not seem to be free from the tendencies of the “Massilians”; Faustus himself had been abbot of Lérins.⁹⁶.

When the work of Faustus, after his death (after 485, before 500), had come to Constantinople, a controversy arose concerning the orthodoxy of the doctrine set out. Therefore the Scythian monks, through the African bishop Possessor,⁹⁷ who was living in exile at Constantinople, asked the opinion of Pope Hormisdas, who replied to Possessor on 30 August 520. In the first part of his letter he sharply censures the Scythian monks, who are unwilling to condemn their christological errors;⁹⁸ then he says concerning Faustus: “Those indeed whom you have indicated by your letters to have consulted you about the sayings of a certain Faustus, a bishop of Gaul, let them have this answer: that neither is he received, nor can anyone whom the examination of the catholic faith does not receive in the authority of the fathers either beget ambiguity in ecclesiastical discipline or procure prejudice for religious persons. Fixed are the institutions which the fathers have established for the faithful to follow: whether interpretation, or preaching, or a word composed for the edification of the people, if it agrees with right faith and sound doctrine, it is admitted; if it disagrees, it is abolished. There is one foundation; if any building rises outside it, it is weak; whoever builds upon it, whether worthless things or precious, let him take heed. But he errs from the way who wanders from what the choice of the fathers has shown, nor yet is diligence disapproved which runs through many things, but the mind that declines from the truth. Often instruction is necessarily provided concerning those things by which the rivals themselves may be convinced. Nor can it be counted a fault to know what you should flee; and therefore it is not those who read incongruous things who come into blame, but those who follow them. But if it were not so, that doctor of the Gentiles would never have consented to announce to the faithful: Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.⁹⁹ ... Not without foresight did the venerable wisdom of the fathers define for faithful authority what were the catholic dogmas; fixing, with the Holy Spirit instructing, that certain books even of the ancients were to be received into authority: lest a reader, indulging his own opinion, should assert not what was fitting for ecclesiastical edification, but what his own pleasure had conceived. What need therefore was there for the calumniators to stretch questions beyond the established boundaries of the Church, and to stir up contests concerning the things which are held as said, as though they had not been said, when the Christian faith is bounded by the canonical books, the synodal precepts and the regular constitutions of the fathers with a stable and unshaken limit? Concerning free will however and the grace of God, what the Roman (that is, the catholic) Church follows and asserts, although it can be known in the various books of blessed Augustine, and especially those to Hilary and Prosper, yet in the ecclesiastical archives express chapters are contained, which if you lack and consider necessary, we shall send, although he who diligently considers the words of the apostle may clearly know what he ought to follow.”¹⁰⁰.

The Scythian monks had also sought the judgment of the African bishops who were living in exile in Sardinia on the same matter; through the deacon Peter they had sent them a libellus fidei, “De Incarnatione et gratia Domini nostri Iesu Christi ad Fulgentium et alios episcopos Africae.”¹⁰¹ The African bishops acknowledged the true doctrine, and Fulgentius in their name wrote “Ad Petrum diaconum et alios qui ex Oriente in causa fidei Romam missi sunt, de Incarnatione et gratia Domini nostri Iesu Christi.”¹⁰² The same Fulgentius wrote besides seven books against Faustus, which however have not come down to us; to his friend Monimus three books on predestination;¹⁰³ and three books “De veritate praedestinationis et gratiae Dei ad Ioannem et Vernerium.”¹⁰⁴.

In the year 502 Caesarius became bishop of Arles; although a disciple of the monastery of Lérins, he defended the doctrine of St Augustine. The synod of Valencia of 529 (527) seems to have been occupied with his doctrine of grace; he himself was not present at the synod, but had sent a libellus in which he defended the absolute necessity of prevenient grace.¹⁰⁵.

In the year 529, under Caesarius, the synod of Orange was held, in which 14 bishops took part. In this synod 8 canons, 17 propositions taken from Prosper’s “Sententiae,” and a conclusion in the form of a profession of faith are approved.¹⁰⁶ Caesarius sought the approval of the supreme Pontiff through Boniface, which the successor of Felix, Boniface II, gave in the letter “Per filium nostrum” on 25 Jan. 531.¹⁰⁷ The council teaches first of all the necessity of grace for every salutary work, especially for the very beginning of faith and for perseverance; predestination to evil is rejected. By this approval the question with the “Semipelagians” was decided.¹⁰⁸.

According to Luther, original sin is concupiscence itself. “What then is original sin now? First, according to the subtleties of the scholastic theologians, it is the privation or lack of original justice. But justice, according to them, is in the will only as in a subject, and therefore its opposite privation is there as well. Because, namely, it lies in the predicament of quality according to logic and metaphysics. Secondly, however, according to the Apostle and the simplicity of the sense, in Christ Jesus it is not only the privation of a quality in the will, nay, not even only the privation of light in the intellect and of virtue in the memory, but absolutely the privation of all rectitude and power of all the powers both of body and of soul and of the whole man, interior and exterior. Moreover the very proneness to evil, nausea at good, distaste for light and wisdom, but love of error and darkness, flight from and abomination of good works, and a running to evil... Therefore, as the ancient holy fathers rightly said: that sin of origin is the tinder itself, the law of the flesh, the law of the members, the languor of nature, the tyrant, the disease of origin, etc.”¹.

But this concupiscence is truly sin, a fault, and it remains even after baptism. “But I know what they will object to me here, namely that all the things that have been said² prove that not sin but a defect or infirmity is left in us after baptism. For so they call the tinder and the passions of the flesh... But that they so call it a defect as to deny that it is sin, and wish it to be not a fault but only the punishment of sin, I cannot admit... But let us see on what reasoning they are moved to deny that the lust remaining after baptism is called sin. For they say that it is an injury to baptism if it be not said to bestow the remission of all sins, as the catholic faith of the Church and the holy Gospel holds. If therefore all sins are remitted, what remains ought not to be called sin. I answer: what can I say here, except what Augustine said to the Pelagians who pressed the same argument? namely that sin is remitted as to guilt, but not as to act; or, to use his own words, That sin passes in guilt, it remains in act. For as, as he also says, some sin passes in act and remains in guilt (as every actual sin does), so on the contrary this sin of origin passes in guilt and remains in act. Behold, he does not deny that it is sin, nor does he say that it is only a defect or a punishment, but that it is sin in act and truly”³.

By original sin man is wholly vitiated. “The just man sins mortally in a good work”⁴. The article 35 condemned by the Supreme Pontiff, “No man is certain that he does not always sin mortally, on account of the most hidden vice of pride,” he “revokes” in these words: “I revoke therefore this article and moderate it in this manner: No man ought not to be most certain that he always sins mortally, if his life be compared with the most just judgment of God: for his life is necessarily as unjust as the judgment of God is just, before which it cannot stand. But that judgment is most just, wherefore his life is most unjust and must be preserved only by the covering of mercy”⁵.

Nay, as the condemned article 36 says: “Free will after sin is a thing of mere title, and while it does what is in it, it sins mortally.” “Jeremiah also, chapter 10, says thus: I know, Lord, that the way of man is not his own, neither is it for a man to direct his steps. What could be said more openly? If his way and his steps are not in the power of man, how shall the way of God and the steps of God be in his power? For the way of man is that which they themselves call the natural power of doing what is in him. Behold, this is not in the choice of man or of free will: what then is free will but a thing of mere title? How can it prepare itself for good, when it is not even in its power to make its ways evil? For God works even evil works in the impious, as Proverbs 16 says: The Lord has made all things for himself, even the impious for the evil day; and Rom 1: God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, that they might do things that are not fitting; and 9: Whom he wills he hardens, and on whom he wills he has mercy. As also Exod 9 says of Pharaoh: for this very purpose have I raised you up, that I may show my power in you. For this cause God is terrible in his judgments and works”⁶. “So then that general influence also has perished, about which they prate, that it is in our power to perform natural operations: that the matter stands otherwise, the experience of all men shows. And see us senseless men: the very root of works, namely life itself, which is the head of all works, we all know is not for a moment in our hand, and do we dare to say that any thought is in our hand? What more absurd could be said? He therefore who has kept our life in his hand, has he placed our motions and works in our hand? Far be it. Whence there is no doubt that, with Satan for teacher, this name ‘free will’ has come into the Church, to seduce men from the way of God into their own ways”⁷. “Whence this article also must be revoked. For I said badly that free will before grace is a thing of mere title, but I ought simply to have said: free will is a fiction among things, or a title without a thing. Because it is in no man's hand to think anything evil or good, but all things (as the article of Wycliffe condemned at Constance rightly teaches) come to pass by absolute necessity”⁸. “The inconstancy of human affairs, or (as they call it) contingency, deceives these wretched men: for they plunge their foolish eyes into the things themselves and the works of things, and never raise them to the sight of God, so as to know things above things in God. For to us looking down to the lower things, things appear arbitrary and fortuitous, but to those looking up to the higher all things are necessary, because we do not live, act and suffer all things and all, as we will, but as he wills. Free will ceases in respect of God, which appears in respect of us and temporal things: for there, as James says, there is no change nor shadow of vicissitude, but here all things are changed and varied. And we fools judge divine things according to these temporal things, so as to presume with free will to anticipate God and to extort grace from him as from one sleeping, whenever it has pleased us, as though he could be changed with us and will what he once did not will, and that by our free will working and willing: O fury of furies, the newest of all! And Paul says Eph 2: We also were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. If all who are outside grace are children of wrath from nature itself, then free will also is a child of wrath from its own nature: if from its own nature, much more from all its works. But what can be a child of wrath by nature, except that all things it does are evil, preparing not for grace but for wrath, nay rather meriting wrath? Go now, Pelagians, and prepare yourselves for grace by your works, when Paul here says that they merit nothing but wrath. It would have been milder if he had only said ‘We were children of wrath,’ but by adding ‘by nature’ he certainly willed it to be understood that all that we are and do by nature is nothing but a merit of wrath, by no means of grace. You will scarcely find in the Scriptures a shorter, clearer and more powerful sentence against free will”⁹.

The denial of free will in Luther is founded not only on the doctrine of original sin, but also on the doctrine of God and of his universal efficacious operation, as clearly appears from his work “De servo arbitrio”, in which, in the year 1525, he answers the work of Erasmus “Diatribe de libero arbitrio”¹⁰. “And so this also is above all necessary and salutary for a Christian, to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that he foreknows, purposes and does all things by an immutable, eternal and infallible will. By this thunderbolt free will is laid low and utterly crushed; therefore those who wish free will to be asserted must either deny this thunderbolt, or dissemble it, or drive it from them by some other reasoning... Or do you believe that he foreknows unwillingly, or wills unknowingly? If he foreknows willingly, the will is eternal and immutable (because by nature); if he wills foreknowing, the knowledge is eternal and immutable (because by nature)”¹¹.

“The sophists have sweated over this for many years now, and at last, conquered, they have been forced to concede that all things indeed come to pass necessarily, by the necessity of consequence (as they say), but not by the necessity of the consequent. Thus they eluded the force of this question, but rather mocked themselves. For how empty this is, I shall not be reluctant to show. They call it the necessity of consequence, to speak crudely, that if God wills something, it is necessary that it come about, but it is not necessary that that be which comes about. For God alone is necessarily, all other things can not be, if God wills. So they say that the action of God is necessary, if he wills, but that the thing done itself is not necessary. But what do they effect by these mockeries of words? This, namely, that the thing done is not necessary, that is, has not a necessary essence, which is to say nothing else than that the thing done is not God himself. Nevertheless this remains, that every thing comes about necessarily, if the action of God is necessary, or the necessity of consequence, however much the thing done is not necessarily, that is, is not God, or has not a necessary essence. For if I come about necessarily, it moves me little that my being or my coming about is mutable; nevertheless I, that contingent and mutable one, who am not the necessary God, come about. Wherefore their mockery, that all things come about by the necessity of consequence but not by the necessity of the consequent, has nothing else than this, that all things indeed come about necessarily, but so done they are not God himself. But what need was there for us to say this? As though it were to be feared that we should assert that things done are God, or have a divine and necessary nature. So stands and remains invincible the sentence, that all things come about by necessity”¹².

“Reason and the Diatribe¹³ concede that God works all things in all, and that without him nothing is done or is efficacious. For he is omnipotent, and this belongs to his omnipotence, as Paul says to the Ephesians¹⁴. Now Satan and man, fallen and deserted by God, cannot will good, that is, the things that please God or that God wills. But they are turned to their own desires perpetually, so that they cannot but seek the things that are their own. This will therefore and nature of theirs, thus turned away from God, is not nothing. For neither is Satan and the impious man nothing, nor have they no nature or will, although they have a corrupt and averse nature. That remnant therefore of nature which we say is in the impious man and in Satan, as creature and work of God, is not less subject to the omnipotence and action of God than all other creatures and works of God. When therefore God moves and acts all things, he necessarily moves and acts also in Satan and the impious man. But he acts in them in such manner as they are and as he finds them, that is, since they are averse and evil and are carried along by that motion of the divine omnipotence, they do nothing but averse and evil things, as if a rider rode a three-footed or a two-footed horse: he indeed acts in such manner as the horse is, that is, the horse goes badly. But what is the rider to do? He rides such a horse together with sound horses; for that one badly, for these well; he cannot do otherwise, unless the horse be healed. Here you see that God, when he works in the evil and through the evil, causes evil things indeed to be done, yet that God cannot do evil, although he does evil things through the evil, because he who is good cannot do evil, but he uses evil instruments, which cannot escape the impulse and motion of his power. The fault therefore is in the instruments, which God does not suffer to be idle, that evil things are done, while God himself moves. Not otherwise than if a smith should cut badly with a saw-toothed and jagged axe. Hence it comes about that the impious man cannot but always err and sin, because, moved by the impulse of the divine power, he is not suffered to be idle, but wills, desires and does in such manner as he himself is”¹⁵.

“But why does he not at the same time change the evil wills which he moves? This belongs to the secrets of his majesty, where his judgments are incomprehensible. Nor is it ours to ask this, but to adore these mysteries”¹⁶.

“When now the Diatribe argues: Does the good Lord bewail the death of his people, which he himself works in them? For this seems too absurd. We answer, as we have now said: one thing it is to dispute of God or of the will of God as preached, revealed, offered and worshipped to us, and another of God not preached, not revealed, not offered, not worshipped. Insofar therefore as God hides himself and wills to be unknown by us, he is nothing to us. For here that saying truly holds: The things that are above us are nothing to us... So we say: the good God does not bewail the death of the people which he works in them, but he bewails the death which he finds in the people and studies to remove. For this the preached God does, that, sin and death being taken away, we may be saved. For he sent his word and healed us. But the God hidden in majesty neither bewails nor takes away death, but works life, death and all things in all. For neither has he then defined himself by his word, but has reserved himself free above all things. But the Diatribe mocks itself by its ignorance, while it distinguishes nothing between the preached and the hidden God, that is, between the word of God and God himself. Many things God does which he has not shown us by his word. Many things also he wills which he has not shown by his word that he wills. Thus he does not will the death of the sinner, by his word namely, but he wills it by that inscrutable will. But now we must look to the word and leave that inscrutable will. For we must be directed by the word, not by that inscrutable will. And indeed who could direct himself to a will wholly inscrutable and unknowable? It is enough to know only that there is a certain inscrutable will in God. But what, why and how far he wills it, this it is by no means permitted to ask, to wish, to care for or to touch, but only to fear and to adore. Rightly therefore it is said: If God does not will death, it is to our will that it must be imputed that we perish. Rightly, I say, if you have spoken of the preached God. For he wills all men to be saved, while he comes by the word of salvation to all, and the fault is of the will which does not receive him, as Matth 23 says: How often would I have gathered your children, and you would not? But why that majesty does not take away or change this fault of our will in all, since it is not in the power of man, or why he imputes it to him, since man cannot be without it, it is not permitted to ask; and if you ask much, you will nevertheless never find, as Paul says Rom 11: Who are you, that you answer God?”¹⁷.

“Let countless thousands of most approved doctors be blind here, and let them feign that the Scriptures are not clear and tremble at a difficult question. We have most clear words, which sound thus: On whom he wills he has mercy, and whom he wills he hardens; likewise: You say therefore to me: what then is the complaint? Who resists his will? Nor is the question difficult; nay, nothing is easier even by common sense than that this consequence is certain, solid and true: if God foreknows, it comes about necessarily, once this has been presupposed from the Scriptures, that God neither errs nor is deceived. That the question is difficult I confess, nay impossible, if you wish to establish both at once, the foreknowledge of God and the freedom of man”¹⁸.

Therefore man is without free will, and his natural powers are wholly corrupted by original sin. “The scholastics dispute that original justice was not connatural, but as it were a certain adornment added to man as a gift: as if someone should place a crown on a beautiful maiden. The crown certainly is not a part of the maiden's nature but something separate from nature, which comes from without and can again be taken away without violation of nature. Wherefore they dispute concerning man and the demons that, although they have lost original justice, yet their natural powers have remained pure, as they were created in the beginning. But this opinion, because it lessens original sin, is to be fled like poison. Nay, let us hold this, that justice was not a certain gift which came from without, separate from the nature of man, but was truly natural, so that it was the nature of Adam to love God, to believe God, to know God, etc. These things were as natural in Adam as it is natural that the eyes receive light. But because, if you make the eye diseased by inflicting a wound, you rightly say that nature has been violated, so after man has fallen from justice into sin, it is rightly and truly said: his natural powers are not entire but corrupted by sin. For as the nature of the eye is to see, so the nature of reason and will in Adam was to know God, to trust God, to fear God. Since it is now certain that these things have been lost, who is so mad as to say that his natural powers are still entire? And yet nothing was more usual or more received in the Schools than this opinion. But how much more absurd is it to affirm this of the demons, whom Christ says did not stand in the truth and whom we know to be the fiercest enemies of Christ and of the Church? Entire therefore were the natural powers in man: the knowledge of God, faith, fear, etc. These Satan has so corrupted by sin that, as leprosy infects the flesh, so the will and reason have been so vitiated by sin that they not only no longer love God but flee him and hate him and desire to be and to live without him”¹⁹.

The whole man is bound by sin, and whatever he does is sin. “We conclude therefore universally: that man without the Holy Spirit and without grace can do nothing but sin, and so he goes on into infinity, from sin to sin... All these passages are most general and conclude most strongly for us: that without the Holy Spirit, whose giver is Christ alone, man can do nothing else than err and sin. Therefore Christ also says in the Gospel: I am the vine, you the branches; without me you can do nothing.

But you are without me as a branch cut off, withered, dead and ready for the fire”²⁰.

A neutral act, one that is morally good but neither justice nor sin, is not admitted. “But if he who is a servant of God will not be justified in the judgment of God, nor all the living, among whom it is necessary that some be most holy, if we believe that the holy Church, the communion of saints, lives on earth, who nevertheless fulfil the law, of what frenzy, do you think, are those who rage outside grace and outside the Church, saying that the law can be fulfilled by natural powers as to the whole substance of the deed, though not as to the intention of the one commanding? To this, that I may return again to the Hussite article condemned at Constance, how great an error it is to say that an act neutral and not evil is found, when the act of the just is not justifiable before God!”²¹. “Where then are our neutrals, who have feigned a middle state between sin and the justice of faith, namely the morally good, when the Apostle calls the very justice of the law dead? But nothing is called dead by the Apostle except what is first sin, as he says: but the sting of death is sin. and Rom V: by sin death. Not therefore is some work dead and not mortal (as they say) or not meritorious, but it is at once dead and sin”²².

But all sins are of themselves mortal; by reason of the person, however, there can be talk of venial sins. “Sin is truly sin, whether you have committed it before or after Christ is known. And God hates sin, nay every sin, as to the substance of the deed, is mortal. But that it is not mortal to the believer comes about through Christ the propitiator, who expiated sin by his death. To the one who does not believe in Christ not only are all sins mortal, but even his good works are sins, according to that saying: whatever is not of faith is sin. Therefore the Sophists err perniciously, who distinguish sins by the substance of the deed, not by the person.

He who believes has the same and equally great sin as the unbeliever. Yet to the believer it is pardoned and not imputed, to the unbeliever it is retained and imputed. To this one it is venial, to that one mortal, not because of a difference of sins, in that the believer's sin is less and the unbeliever's greater, but because of the difference of persons. For the believer knows that his sin has been forgiven him for Christ's sake, who expiated it by his death. Therefore he who has sin and yet sins remains pious. On the contrary the unbeliever, sinning, remains impious. And this is truly the wisdom and consolation of the pious, that even if they have sins and commit them, they yet know that they are not imputed to them for their faith in Christ”²³.

The meritorious work of man is denied. “Condemnable therefore is the pernicious and impious opinion of the Papists, who attribute to the work wrought the merit of grace and of the remission of sins. For they say: a good work before grace avails to obtain grace of congruity. But grace having been obtained, the work that follows merits eternal life of condignity. So that a man existing in mortal sin without grace, if with a good natural intention he does a good work, that is, reads or hears Mass, gives alms, etc., he merits grace of congruity. Grace thus obtained of congruity, he now does a work condign and meritorious of eternal life. In the first, indeed, God is not a debtor, but, because he is good and just, it befits him to approve such a work even done in mortal sin and to render grace for such an office. But after grace he has now become a debtor and is compelled by right to give eternal life, because now it is not only a work of free will, done according to substance, but also done in sanctifying grace, that is, in love. This is the Theology of the Kingdom of Antichrist, which I therefore mention, that the disputation of Paul may be the better understood. For opposites placed side by side become more illustrious. Then, that it may be plain how far these blind men and leaders of the blind²⁴ have wandered from the truth, and how by this their impious and blasphemous doctrine they have not only obscured but simply taken away the Gospel and overwhelmed Christ. For if I, existing in mortal sin, can do some little work which is not only according to substance pleasing to God, but can even merit grace of congruity; and when I have grace, I can do works according to grace, that is, love, and acquire by right eternal life: what need have I now of the grace of God, the remission of sins, the promise, the death and victory of Christ? Christ is plainly now idle for me. For I have free will and powers of doing a good work through which I merit grace of congruity and afterwards eternal life of condignity”²⁵.

“Wherefore with Paul we wholly deny the merit of congruity and condignity, and with sure confidence we pronounce that these speculations are mere mockeries of Satan, never done nor shown by examples. For God has never given to anyone grace and eternal life for the merit of congruity and condignity”²⁶.

From what has been said it easily appears that if any change intervenes in the relation of the sinful man to God (justification), the man himself in this business is wholly passive. Christ satisfied God for men and redeemed them by his death, who also intercedes for us. But man becomes partaker of this redemption of Christ by faith. This faith is rather a passion than an action; it is not to do, but to receive. “For they do not know (the Sophists) that faith is a change and renewal of the whole nature, so that the ears, the eyes, the heart itself hear, see and feel wholly otherwise than all other men. For faith is a living and powerful thing: it is not an idle thought, nor does it float upon the heart like a goose upon the water: but as water heated by fire, although it remains water, is nevertheless no longer cold but hot and wholly other water: so faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, forms another mind and other senses, and makes man wholly new. Faith therefore is an operative, difficult and powerful thing: and if we wish truly to estimate it, it is more a passion than an action, for it changes minds and senses”²⁷. “A sublime and great thing it is to have God propitious. Therefore there is need there of a far other Mediator than Moses, or the Law, than our will, than even the grace which they call the charity of God. Here it is wholly fitting that we do nothing, but only receive the treasure, which is Christ apprehended in the heart by faith, even though we feel ourselves to be most full of sins”²⁸. “For this is the true way of salvation, to be subject to God, in faith to yield and be silent to him, to put away the tumult of the presumption of works, by which the impious seek to find him, and to offer oneself docile, that he may work in us, not we ourselves”²⁹.

Faith is a certain confidence. “About the word³⁰ I do not greatly contend, whether you take it for ‘to repute’ or ‘to think’, for the matter comes to the same. For when the divine majesty thinks of me that I am just, that my sins are forgiven me, that I am free from eternal death, and I with thanksgiving in faith apprehend this thought of God concerning me, I am truly just, not by my works, but by faith, by which I apprehend the divine thought. For the thought of God is infallible truth. Therefore when I apprehend it with a firm thought, not with a vague and doubtful opinion, I am just. For faith is a firm and certain, whether thought or confidence, concerning God, that through Christ he is propitious, that through Christ he thinks of us thoughts of peace, not of affliction or of wrath. For these are correlatives, the thought of God, or the promise, and the faith by which I apprehend the promise of God. Rightly therefore did Paul render the word (Haschab) by the word λογίζεσθαι, which also alludes to thought, like the word ‘to repute’. For if you believe God promising, God reputes you just. Nor is mention here made either of the Law, or of circumcision, or of sacrifices, that God would deign them as justice: his own reputing alone, that one thought of grace concerning us, does this. For justice is given to Abraham not working, but believing: nor yet is it given to faith as to our work, but because of the thought of God, which faith apprehends³¹.

This faith is wholly certain. “Let us therefore give thanks to God, that we have been delivered from this monster of uncertainty, and can now firmly determine that the Holy Spirit cries and utters that ineffable groan in our hearts. And this is our foundation: the Gospel bids us look not at our good deeds and our perfection, but at God himself promising, at Christ himself the Mediator. On the contrary the Pope bids us look not at God promising, not at Christ the Priest, but at our works and merits. There doubt and despair necessarily follow, but here certainty and the joy of the Spirit, because I cling to God, who cannot lie; for he says: Behold, I give my Son to death, that he may redeem you by his blood from sins and death. There I cannot doubt, unless I wish wholly to deny God. And this is the reason why our Theology is certain: because it takes us from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, that we may not rely on our own powers, conscience, sense, person, works, but rely on that which is outside us, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive. This the Pope does not know, and therefore he thus impiously trifles with his furies, saying that no man knows, not even the just and wise, whether they are worthy of love, etc. Nay, if they are just and wise, they certainly know that they are loved by God; or they are not just and wise”³².

By faith the justice of Christ becomes our justice. “Therefore by faith in Christ the justice of Christ becomes our justice, and all things that are his, nay he himself becomes ours. Therefore the Apostle calls it the justice of God, to Ro I. The justice of God is revealed in the Gospel, as it is written: The just man lives by faith. Finally faith itself is called the justice of God, as in the same epistle 3: we reckon that a man is justified by faith. This is an infinite justice and absorbing all sins in a moment, because it is impossible that sin should cling in Christ: but he who believes in Christ clings in Christ and is one with Christ, having the same justice with him. Therefore it is impossible that sin remain in him. And this justice is the first, the foundation, the cause, the origin of all proper or actual justice, because it is truly given in place of the original justice lost in Adam, and works that, nay greater than that original justice would have worked. Thus is understood that word of Ps XXX.

In you, Lord, have I hoped, let me not be confounded for ever: in your justice deliver me; not in mine, but in yours, he says, that is, in the justice of Christ my God, which is through faith, through grace, through the mercy of God made ours; and this is called in the psalter, in many places, the work of the Lord, confession, the power of God, mercy, truth, justice. All these are names of faith in Christ, nay of the justice which is in Christ. Whence the Apostle to the Gal 2 dares to say: I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me; and to Eph 3: That he may give you Christ to dwell by faith in your hearts. This justice therefore, alien and without our acts, infused into us by grace alone, the Father drawing us within to Christ, is opposed to original sin, which is similarly alien, without our acts, by generation alone inborn and contracted to us. And so Christ expels Adam from day to day more and more, according as that faith and knowledge of Christ grows. For it is not infused all at once, but begins, progresses and is at last perfected in the end through death. The second justice is ours and proper, not that we alone work it, but that we cooperate with that first and alien one. This now is that good conversation in good works... This justice is the work of the former justice and its fruit and sequel... This justice is opposed to actual sin, our own, as to Ro 6: As you have exhibited your members to serve iniquity unto iniquity, so now exhibit your members to serve justice unto sanctification”³³.

“For there is sin forgiven through grace, and there is sin remaining in the flesh. Sin forgiven through grace is that God for Christ's sake wills not to desert us, however great sinners we are, but wills mercifully to spare us, who are lost and corrupted by sin. This sin forgiven through grace is not enough, for through infirmity we presently relapse into sins. We would therefore that not only sin were forgiven but wholly abolished. For sin, as Augustine speaks, remains in act, but passes in guilt; that is, the thing itself, which is truly sin and has been forgiven and is tolerated by God, remains in the flesh as a remnant and is not yet plainly dead, except that through Christ, as is said in Genesis, the head of the serpent is crushed, yet its tongue still flickers and its tail threatens a blow. For sin, because the grace and mercy of God reign over us, cannot damn us, cannot render God angry with us; and yet in the justified there remain relics of sin, as concupiscence and other vices, which the Prophet beholds in himself as the remaining dregs or seeds, and as above he prayed universally for remission, so here he prays for the purging or extirpation of these relics. This therefore is the second part of the petition, which, as I said, shows us a second distinction of sin, that God wills to destroy sins as to the remission of guilt and as to the very force of sin, not as to the thing or nature of sin. For the force of sin is to accuse, to damn, to bite, to wound, not to leave peace to the heart, to set before it an angry God, hell, etc. This force of sin is taken away by gratuitous mercy, and yet the true relics of this poison remain. Therefore both are true, that no Christian has sin and that every Christian has sin. Hence is born that distinction, that among Christians sin is twofold: sin forgiven and sin remaining, which is to be extirpated and washed away. Sin forgiven is that which has been crushed by confidence in mercy, that it may not damn, may not accuse; and yet on account of this flesh it still sprouts and wars in our flesh³⁴, so as to bring forth fruits like the former, that we be secure, ungrateful, ignorant of God, as we were before. These are the strivings of the relics of sin in us, which the saints also feel, but through the Holy Spirit they do not indulge them. Therefore a Christian, after he is just by faith or has received the remission of sins, ought not to be so secure as though he were plainly pure from all sins, but then at last this perpetual struggle lies upon him with the relics of sin, from which the Prophet here desires to be washed. He is indeed just and holy with an alien or extrinsic holiness, so to speak for the sake of teaching; that is, he is just by the mercy and grace of God. This mercy and grace is not something human, it is not a certain habit or quality in the heart, but it is a divine benefit, which is given to us through that knowledge of the Gospel properly so called, that we know or believe that our sin has been forgiven us through the grace and merit of Christ, and that we hope for Christ's sake in mercy and in many and great compassions, as the Prophet here says. But is not this justice an alien justice, which consists wholly in another's indulgence and is the mere gift of God who has mercy and is favourable for Christ's sake?”³⁵.

But justice is in hope, not yet in reality. “So also in this place³⁶ hope can be taken in two ways, and accordingly it begets a double sentence. The first is: We through the Spirit by faith await the hope of our justice, that is, the hoped-for justice, which is certainly to be revealed in its time. The other: We through the Spirit by faith await justice in hope and desire, that is, we have been justified, and yet we are not yet justified, because our justice still hangs in hope, Ro. 8: We are saved by hope. For as long as we live, sin still clings in our flesh, the law remains in the flesh and in the members, resisting the law of our mind and leading us captive into the service of sin. With those affections of the flesh raging and us resisting in the Spirit, there remains the place of the hoped-for justice. We have indeed begun to be justified by faith, by which we have also received the first-fruits of the Spirit, and the mortification of the flesh has begun, but we are not yet perfectly just. It remains that we be perfectly justified, and this we hope for. Thus our justice is not yet in reality, but still in hope”³⁷.

How in those who are in Christ Jesus there is no condemnation, he thus explains: “Nor do they deign to remember how often I too have brought forward that saying of Paul, that there is no condemnation, although there is something of sin, because he had premised so much about sin; but therefore there is no condemnation, not because there is no sin there, as Latomus lies, but because they are in Christ Jesus, says Paul, that is, as chicks under the hen and under the shadow of that justice they rest; or, as Ro V says more clearly, they have grace and the gift in his grace. Then they do not walk according to sin or the flesh of sin, that is, they do not consent to the sin which they truly have. For God has provided two most strong and most fortified bulwarks, that this sin be not to them unto condemnation. The first, Christ himself the propitiatory (as Ro III), that under his grace they be safe, not because they believe and have faith or the gift, but because they have it in the grace of Christ. For no one's faith would subsist, unless it rested on Christ's own justice and were preserved by his protection. For this is true faith (as I said), not that absolute, nay obsolete, quality in the soul, as they feign, but that which does not suffer itself to be torn from the grace of Christ, nor relies on anything else than what it knows, that he is in the grace of God nor can be damned, nor anyone who has thus cast himself upon him. For so great a thing is this remaining sin, so intolerable the judgment of God, that unless you set against it for yourself him whom you know to be without all sin, you cannot subsist, which true faith does. The second is, that having received the gift they do not walk according to the flesh, nor obey sin; but the former is the chief and most strong, although the other also is something, but in virtue of the former. Because God has made a covenant with those who are in Christ in this manner, that if they fight against themselves and their sin, there is no condemnation. Not therefore is there no condemnation, as Latomus raves, because they do not sin, or because there is no sin in a good work. This he feigns outside and against the open text of Paul, from his own head. But because they are (he says) in Christ Jesus and do not walk according to the flesh, speaking manifestly of mortal sin”³⁸.

The same doctrine is found in the symbolical books of the Lutherans.

Confessio Augustana (1530). Art. 2. “Likewise they teach that after the fall of Adam all men, propagated according to nature, are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without confidence toward God, and with concupiscence, and that this disease or vice of origin is truly sin, damning and bringing now also eternal death to those who are not reborn through baptism and the Holy Spirit”³⁹.

Art. 4. “Likewise they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits or works, but are justified freely for Christ's sake through faith, when they believe that they are received into grace and that sins are remitted for Christ's sake, who by his death satisfied for our sins. This faith God imputes for justice before himself, Rom. 3 et 4”⁴⁰.

Art. 6. “Likewise they teach that that faith ought to bring forth good fruits, and that it is fitting to do the good works commanded by God for the will of God, not that we trust to merit justification before God by those works. For the remission of sins and justification is apprehended by faith... ”⁴¹.

Art. 18. “Concerning free will they teach that the human will has some liberty to work civil justice and to choose things subject to reason. But it has not the power, without the Holy Spirit, of working the justice of God or spiritual justice, because the animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; but this is done in hearts, when through the word the Holy Spirit is conceived... They condemn the Pelagians and others, who teach that without the Holy Spirit, by the powers of nature alone, we can love God above all things, and likewise fulfil the commandments of God as to the substance of the acts. For although nature can in some way work external works (for it can keep the hands from theft, from murder), yet it cannot work the interior motions, such as the fear of God, confidence toward God, chastity, patience, etc.”⁴².

Art. 20. “Since therefore the doctrine of faith, which ought to be the chief one in the church, has so long lain unknown, as all must needs confess, there having been the deepest silence concerning the justice of faith in the sermons, and only the doctrine of works handled in the churches, our men thus admonished the churches concerning faith: In the first place, that our works cannot reconcile God, or merit the remission of sins and grace and justification, but that we obtain this only by faith, believing that for Christ's sake we are received into grace, who alone is placed as mediator and propitiatory, through whom the Father is reconciled. Therefore he who trusts that by works he merits grace, spurns the merit of Christ and grace, and seeks without Christ a way to God by human powers, when Christ said of himself Ioh. 14, 6:

I am the way, the truth and the life... Moreover our men teach that it is necessary to do good works, not that we trust to merit grace by them, but for the will of God. By faith alone the remission of sins and grace is apprehended. And because through faith the Holy Spirit is received, the hearts are now renewed and put on new affections, so that they can bring forth good works... ”⁴³.

Formula concordiae (1577). I. Pars, Epitome. “Concerning this matter⁴⁴ this is our faith, doctrine and confession, namely that man's intellect and reason in spiritual things are wholly blind, and can understand nothing by their own powers... We believe, teach and confess also that the will of man not yet reborn is not only turned away from God, but made hostile to God, so that it only wills and desires and takes delight in those things which are evil and repugnant to the divine will... Therefore we believe that as far as a dead body is from being able to quicken itself and restore to itself bodily life, so far is man, who by reason of sin is spiritually dead, from having any faculty of recalling himself into spiritual life... ”⁴⁵.

“We believe moreover, teach and confess that that justifying faith is not a bare knowledge of the history of Christ, but a great and such a gift of God, by which we rightly acknowledge Christ our redeemer in the word of the gospel and trust in him, namely that for his obedience alone we have from grace the remission of sins, are reputed holy and just before God the Father, and obtain eternal salvation. We believe, teach and confess that the word (to justify) in the phrase of sacred Scripture in this article signifies the same as to absolve from sins, as can be understood from the saying of Solomon (Prov. 17, 15): He who justifies the impious, and he who condemns the just, both are abominable before God. Likewise (Rom. 8, 33): Who shall accuse the elect of God? It is God who justifies. And if at any time in place of the word justification the words regeneration and vivification are used (which was done in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession), they are to be taken in that former signification. For otherwise those words are to be understood of the renewal of man, which is rightly distinguished from the justification of faith. We believe, teach and confess also that, although those who truly believe in Christ and are reborn are subject to many infirmities and blemishes even to death, yet they are not to doubt either concerning the justice which is imputed to them through faith, or concerning eternal salvation, but rather they are firmly to hold that for Christ's sake, according to the promise and the immoveable word of the gospel, they have God propitious to them”⁴⁶.

“That these controversies⁴⁷ may be solidly and rightly explained and decided, this is our faith, doctrine and confession: I. That good works most certainly and undoubtedly follow true faith (provided it be not a dead but a living faith) as the fruits of a good tree. II. We believe also, teach and confess that good works are to be wholly excluded, not only when the justification of faith is at issue, but also when our eternal salvation is disputed... VIII. But this liberty of the spirit in the elect children of God we acknowledge to be not perfect, but still burdened with manifold infirmity, as the divine Paul complains of this matter concerning his own person (Rom. 7, 14-25. Gal. 5, 17). IX. Yet the Lord does not impute that infirmity to his elect, and that for the sake of Christ the mediator. For thus it is written (Rom. 8, 1): There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. X. We believe moreover, teach and confess that faith and salvation are preserved or retained in us not by works, but only by the Spirit of God and by faith (by which namely salvation is guarded), but that good works are testimonies that the Holy Spirit is present and dwells in us”⁴⁸. A similar doctrine of Calvin is to be seen in his Catechism of the church of Geneva (1545)⁴⁹, and of the Zwinglians in the later Helvetic Confession (1562)⁵⁰.

In the bull “Exsurge Domine” (15 June 1520) Leo X condemned the errors of Luther⁵¹, among which are several also that pertain to the matter of grace. Thus the doctrine which says that the concupiscence which remains after baptism is sin (art. 2); the doctrine of the faith required and sufficient for the remission of sins (art. 10-12. 15); that the just man sins in every work (art. 31); that a good work, however well done, is a venial sin (art. 32); that no man is certain that he does not always sin mortally (art. 35); that free will after sin is a thing of mere title (art. 36).

But above all the Council of Trent opposed the true catholic doctrine to the new heresy. In session 5 (17 June 1546), by the decree on original sin, it had condemned the opinion which denies that through the grace of Christ, which is conferred in Baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted, or asserts that not all of that is taken away which has the true and proper character of sin, but says only that it is bruised or not imputed. Concupiscence indeed remains after baptism, but it is not therefore called sin, as though it were truly and properly sin in the reborn, but because it is from sin and inclines to sin⁵².

Then, in the sixth session (13 Jan. 1547), by the decree on justification “it intends to set forth to all the faithful of Christ the true and sound doctrine of justification itself, which Christ Jesus, the sun of justice, the author and finisher of our faith, taught, which the apostles handed down and the catholic Church, the Holy Spirit suggesting it, has perpetually retained, most strictly forbidding that anyone hereafter dare to believe, preach or teach otherwise than is established and declared by the present decree”. The decree contains 16 chapters, in which the catholic doctrine is set forth, and 33 canons, in which false doctrines are rejected⁵³.

Cap. 1-3 show that justification is a mere work of grace from the merits of Christ the Redeemer. Cap. 1: After the sin of Adam neither the Gentiles by the force of nature, nor the Jews by the letter of the Law of Moses could be freed or rise again, although free will was by no means extinguished. Cap. 2: But God took pity on the human race and sent his Son to redeem the Jews and the Gentiles. Cap. 3: But the merits of the passion of Christ must be communicated to men: men must be reborn in Christ; by this rebirth in Christ grace is given them, by which they are made just.

Cap. 4-9 treat of the first justification, that is, of the justification of the man who is still in original sin. Cap. 4: Briefly this justification is described as a translation from that state in which man is born a son of the first Adam into the state of grace and of adoption of sons. This translation, after the Gospel has been promulgated, cannot take place without the laver of regeneration or the desire of it. Cap. 5: The adult ought to prepare himself for this justification. He takes his beginning from the prevenient grace of God, by which, no merits of theirs existing, they are called; but man ought freely to assent to this grace and to cooperate with it. Cap. 6: this manner of preparation is described more accurately. Cap. 7 teaches what justification itself is, namely, not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner man through the voluntary receiving of grace and of the gifts; they are not only reputed just, but are truly named and are just. Moreover the causes of this justification are enumerated. Cap. 8 explains how the words of St Paul are to be understood, that we are justified by faith and gratis; by faith, because faith is the beginning, foundation and root of all justification; gratis, because none of the things that precede justification merits the grace of justification itself. Cap. 9 rejects the vain confidence of the heretics. To him who rests in this confidence alone, sins are not remitted; nor ought those who are truly justified to establish with themselves without all doubt that they are justified; much less is justification perfected by this faith alone.

Cap. 10-13 treat of the second justification, or of the preservation and development of the first justification. Cap. 10: The just grow in the justice itself received, by faith cooperating with good works, and are more justified. Cap. 11: The observance of the commandments is not impossible for the justified; and it is altogether necessary for obtaining the inheritance. Whence the just man in no way sins in every good work, not even when he works with a view to eternal reward. Cap. 12: But although the just man can observe the commandments, he can also sin; nor, if he has sinned, ought he to promise himself a certain repentance. Hence the rash presumption of predestination is to be avoided. Cap. 13: The same holds of the gift of perseverance. For they are reborn not unto glory but unto the hope of glory, and the struggle with the flesh, with the world, with the devil remains to them.

Cap. 14-15 treat of the third justification, or of the justification of those who have lost grace. Cap. 14: Those who through sin have fallen from the grace of justification can be justified again. Briefly the manner of this justification is described and it is indicated how it differs from the first justification. Cap. 15: The grace of justification is lost not by unbelief alone, but by every mortal sin; yet faith is not always lost together with grace.

Cap. 16: it treats of the fruit of justification, that is, of the merit of good works, and of the nature of merit itself.

There follow 33 canons, in which the errors opposed to this doctrine are rejected.

But only a few years after the Council of Trent, the Apostolic See had once again to condemn errors in the matter of grace, in the Bull “Ex omnibus afflictionibus”, 1 Oct. 1567, by which are condemned the errors of Michael de Bay (1513-1589), professor at Louvain¹.

According to Iansen, the principal error of Baius lies in this, that he does not rightly distinguish between the natural and the supernatural; as regards the primitive state his teaching is an optimism, and consequently as regards the state of fallen nature a pessimism².

“The immortality of the first man was not a benefit of grace, but a natural condition” (prop. 78); “The sublimation and exaltation of human nature into the consortium of the divine nature was due to the integrity of the first condition, and therefore must be called natural, and not supernatural” (prop. 21). Yet the opinion of the Baianists is not that those gifts of the first creation were natural properties of man, which emanated from the internal constitutive principles of his nature; but human nature demanded those gifts: its natural destination to the moral and religious life, to perfect union with God, required those gifts. Baianism therefore denied the possibility of a state of pure nature; the honourable good that is merely natural, a religion that is merely natural, have no place in the doctrine of Baius³.

After the sin of Adam man is plainly incapable of moral good (prop. 27, 28, 30, 35, 37, 40). Natural love is not to be had (prop. 36). Either a work is salutary or it is a sin⁴. Hence: “All the works of unbelievers are sins” (prop. 25; cf. prop. 62). “Every love of a rational creature is either the vicious desire by which the world is loved, which John forbids, or that praiseworthy charity by which God is loved, poured forth in the heart by the Holy Spirit” (prop. 38); hence “They think with Pelagius, who understand the text of the Apostle in Romans II: The Gentiles, who have not the law, do naturally the things that are of the law, as referring to Gentiles who do not have the grace of faith” (prop. 22).

Thus in fact the moral freedom of the natural will is denied; without grace man sins necessarily. For an act to be a sin, freedom from necessity is not required; violence alone is repugnant to the natural liberty of man (prop. 66-68). “Everything that the sinner, or the slave of sin, does, is sin” (prop. 35). For sin, not only is the liberty of indifference not required, but the act need not even be voluntary (prop. 46. 47). Even the indeliberate movements of concupiscence are true disobedience (prop. 51, 75); the precept of the love of God is not kept (prop. 76).⁵

To understand justification, according to Baius, a knowledge of charity is necessary. “For one who would discourse on justification, if he wishes to discourse well and usefully, the true knowledge of charity, whereby we love God and our neighbour, must be sought with great zeal, because charity is either the justice which he who is justified strives to obtain ... or at least so conjoined with justice that, although without it justice can be simulated, it can nevertheless be neither possessed nor acquired”⁶. “Just as therefore concupiscence or lust, when in the sacred Scriptures they signify a movement of the soul, is nothing other than the love of the world or the love of the creature, which is not referred to God ... so also charity in this latter way is nothing other than the love or affection of God, which is the same thing that is also called the good tree and the good will ... But whether besides this movement of the soul which is called charity, some other habitual and accidental quality is to be placed in the will which may also be called charity, I do not think it is greatly to be contended; because it can easily be understood that not only a movement of the soul but also some conformable habit can be poured forth into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us: but whether in the sacred Scriptures a distinct and open mention of this habit under the name of charity can be found, is another question, which I have judged there is no need to discuss in this place, because when the act is known it is easy to come to the knowledge of the habit”⁷

This movement of charity is not from ourselves but from God, and this holds not only of the love of God as beatifier, but also as creator⁸. Every love of a rational creature is either charity or a vicious desire⁹.

The movement of the soul which is called charity can precede the remission of sins. “When it is asked whether charity is found even in those who have not yet obtained the remission of sins, because of the long-standing prejudice of the other side; and because most people understand by charity nothing but a certain habit, by which, infused insensibly into a man, the remission of all sins takes place, and which cannot be infused without the remission of sins, it is thought that something quite absurd is being asked; because among men of this sort it is held as certain that which ought first to have come into question, namely whether in the sacred Scriptures, under the name of charity, any such habit is to be understood, or rather a movement of the soul. But those who attend diligently to the definition of the blessed Augustine set out above, where he says: I call charity the movement of the soul to enjoy God for his own sake and the neighbour for God's sake; together with the other testimonies by which he manifestly testifies that charity is nothing other than the good will by which we are turned to God, of which the Apostle says that God works in us to will; such men easily understand that by the name of charity not so much a habit as a certain movement is to be understood, from which we are called good, and therefore it is not without reason doubted whether charity is found only in those who have already obtained the remission of sins, or also in catechumens and other penitents, who before the remission of sins are anticipated by God with many good movements; for that charity is found in many even before the remission of sins seems thus to be shown”¹⁰.

Charity is not always given whole, but in those who are advancing it grows by parts. “It is clear therefore that the beginning of charity is conferred on a man when, turned from unbelief or from an evil will, he begins to will the good, that is, to will to do God's commandment, who before willed evil, that is, to do not God's pleasure but his own, which is nothing other than to desire; and that charity is then rightly named when, with God cooperating, he receives so much increase that he both does God's commandments and conquers the desires which before held him fast in crimes, whether these have been remitted through baptism or reconciliation, or not. For if anyone loves me, he says, he will keep my words, and he who does not love me does not keep my words”¹¹.

In the second book he treats of justice. “Someone has said most rightly: Justice contains all the virtues in itself; since, as St Chrysostom says: Justice is nothing other than the full keeping of all the commandments, which cannot stand without the support of all the virtues. This same thing in the sacred Scriptures is called by another name also charity or love, because he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law, and the fullness of the law is love. Whence Augustine, On nature and grace, says: Charity begun is justice begun: great charity is great justice: advanced charity is advanced justice: perfect charity is perfect justice; by which the Psalmist calls that man blessed or just, who has not gone in the counsel of the ungodly ...”¹². The justice of this life consists of two parts, “namely the remission of sins” and “newness of life”¹³. But the remission of sins is not justice in the proper sense of the name, but is reputed as such, because it is in part equivalent before God to justice properly so called¹⁴. Whence the increase and perfection of justice is not so much to be estimated according to the remission of sins as according to the renewal of man, by which the law of God is observed continually more and more fully¹⁵. “Although therefore the catechumen or the penitent has some justice before the remission of sins ... yet because he does not have the remission of sins, without which the justice of this life does not stand, even if by his purpose and manner of life he surpasses many sons of God, he cannot yet be called just”¹⁶.

In the third book he treats of justification. “When justification is discussed, if in the manner of the dialecticians it is asked only what justification is, and of what parts its full and complete definition must consist, once the knowledge of justice of which we have already spoken is had, the inquiry is brief and easy. For justification is nothing other than a certain continual and unceasing progress towards justice. But justice is the true keeping of all the commandments, either in the doing of the virtues, as it was in Christ, or in the remission of sins, as it is found in great part in all of us as long as we are in this life. For, as Augustine says: Christ also fulfilled the law in this, that having become a priest through the sacrifice of his flesh, he obtains for us the forgiveness of sins. Therefore justification is nothing other than a certain continual progress both in the doing of the virtues and in the remission of sins”¹⁷.

On merit he says: “Whatever pertains to the reparation of the human race is not to be attributed properly to our merits, nor to the just judgment of God, because otherwise we should be at least in part our own redeemers, but only to the purpose of God's grace, through the redemption which was made in the blood of Christ. And therefore faith, prayer, penance, the remission of sins, the abolition of the temporal punishment which is sometimes left after sins have been remitted through the sacrament of penance, a holy conversation and perseverance to the end of this temporal life, indeed even the resurrection of the body itself, are properly to be ascribed to the merits of Christ alone. For although for the remission of sins, the abolition of the punishment remaining after the sacrament of penance, the mortification of concupiscence and perseverance in obedience to the commandments of God, according to the promises of Christ, there are required on our part faith, penance, prayer, satisfaction and the like; yet these of themselves in no way suffice for us to obtain the aforesaid gifts of God by the just judgment of God, unless the price of Christ's blood come to their aid, without whose merit no reparation of man at all takes place. For if they sufficed of themselves, then once these were accepted the passion of Christ would not be necessary for obtaining the rest. Moreover, that those who have lived piously and justly in this mortal life to the end obtain eternal life, is to be attributed not to the purpose of God's grace but to the natural ordinance established at the very beginning of the creation of the human race, and to the just judgment of God, as we have said sufficiently above. Nor in this retribution of goods is regard had to the merit of Christ, but only to the original institution of the human race, in which it was established by the natural law that by the just judgment of God life should be rendered to obedience to the commandments, as eternal death to disobedience. Although therefore the whole reparation of the human race is to be attributed to the merits of Christ alone, lest if any part of it were properly attributed to the merits of anyone else, he should be established as redeemer at least in part; yet that eternal life should be rendered to good works, which God has prepared that we should walk in them, is to be ascribed not to the merits of Christ but to the natural institution of man, as we have said. But what the Apostle writes to Timothy: The Lord delivered me from every evil work, and will save me unto his heavenly kingdom: is not so to be taken as if both were to be ascribed to the merits of Christ, namely that the Apostle was delivered from every evil work, and that for the faith kept he obtained the crown of glory: but only that he obtained these two from the merits of Christ, namely that in past temptations he was kept from every evil work, and that to the end of this temporal life he persevered in obedience to the commandments of God so that he could be saved; for he who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved. Whence the Apostle, wishing to show how in this mortal life we have been saved by the merits of Christ: In hope, he says, we have been saved; namely when we received the remission of sins and obey the commandments of God. That therefore in this life we are made just, pious and fit for the kingdom of heaven, or saved in hope, is to be attributed only to the purpose of God's grace, by which is restored what had perished in us through sin: but that we obtain the heavenly kingdom by the merit of justice and piety is by the just judgment of God”¹⁸.

Then he discusses and rejects the opinion of those “who think that merit is to be measured not by the integrity of the work but by the dignity of the one who works; so that if anyone should imagine an angel or a man so naturally constituted that without the indwelling and direction of the Holy Spirit he kept the whole law of God without blemish, according to the opinion of these men he would have no merit of eternal life at all, until, raised above the condition of his nature by the indwelling Holy Spirit and adopted as a son of God, he had received a share in the divine nature”¹⁹. And at the end of this chapter he says: “Wherefore the opinion of those who measure the whole account of merit in good works from this, that they are obedience to the commandments of God, can, it seems, be shown by these arguments”. And so he shows in chap. 2 that as an evil work is by its nature the merit of eternal death, so a good work is by its nature the merit of eternal life; in chap. 3, that human nature, even destitute of the Holy Spirit, if it kept God's commandments without blemish, would be secure of its reward; in chap. 4, that it is the opinion of Pelagius that good works done without the grace of adoption are not merits of the heavenly kingdom²⁰.

The Baian ideas and tendencies did not cease after the condemnation.

Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, stood in a close relation to the supporters of these ideas¹. According to his view, very many had ceased to set forth the true doctrine of St Augustine on grace, either by receding from his doctrine or by explaining it falsely; for that reason he wished to set forth the genuine and true doctrine of the doctor of grace; to this end he studied his works for many years, and the fruit of that study is the work “Augustinus, seu doctrina S. Augustini de humanae naturae sanitate, aegritudine, medicina adversus Pelagianos et Massilienses” (Augustinus, or the doctrine of St Augustine on the health, sickness and medicine of human nature against the Pelagians and Massilians), in the composing of which he laboured to the end of his life, and whose publication he had to leave to his friends. But he submitted the opinions set out in it to the judgment of the Holy See². The work consists of three volumes, in the first of which “the heresies and morals of Pelagius against the health, sickness and medicine of human nature are reviewed from St Augustine and refuted”.

In the second volume “the genuine opinion of St Augustine on the state and powers of human nature as standing, as fallen, and as pure is drawn out and explained”.

In a single book he treats of the grace of the first man and of the angels. Adam was created in grace and holiness (cap. 1), without any movement of concupiscence (cap. 2); before sin no movements or temptations of excellence, of praise or of pride, whether small or great, could in any way have existed in him (cap. 3); and the first man was immortal (cap. 4).

Adam had free will (cap. 6). “And so Adam was free in a changeable way through that love of the creator, so that he could fall away; and could remain in it, if he wished: and thus, placed as it were on a borderland of life and death, so that whichever of the two he should choose, life or death, that same should be rendered to him eternal, and thereby eternal liberty or slavery likewise: since nothing can be more just than that each one should hold inamissibly for enjoyment what he chose for himself to love by his free will. In this indeed the most just account of merit and reward is established. To either side therefore, that is, to good and evil, to life and death, to the love of the Creator and of the creature, as Augustine most often teaches, that first liberty was indifferent”³.

By the powers of free will he could live justly (cap. 7), he could persevere in justice (cap. 8); but for this he needed the help of grace (cap. 10). “Wherefore just as in the preceding we have heard Augustine most confidently affirming that the holy angels stood in the truth through free will, and that the first man could stand in it through the same free will, which after the fall is conferred on men only through grace: so now, in turn, according to the doctrine handed down by him and according to the Catholic faith explained by him, we say that neither the angels nor the first man could in any way stand in the truth, that is, persevere in the justice received, without the assistance of helping grace”⁴.

This grace was necessary not only for persevering but for each good act (cap. 11). But the ground of this necessity does not come from some peculiar difficulty of persevering or of the good act, but from the impotence of free will, “because (free will) can do nothing for good without the help of the almighty good”⁵, which he explains by a comparison of St Augustine: “For as the eye of the body is not helped by the light so as to withdraw from that light when closed and turned away; but to see it is helped by it, and cannot do this at all unless that light help it; so God, who is the light of the inner man, helps the gaze of our mind, that we may do something good not according to our own justice but according to his”⁶.

But this help was not habitual grace, nor the concurrence of God as operating, that is, God's concomitant operation, but something actual, prior to the action (cap. 12; 13). Cap. 14 asks: “What this help was as regards the manner of operating”. He answers: “For the kind of help is twofold, and consequently the manner of helping is twofold: one is the help by which; the other that without which it is not. That is, one is that by which something is done; the other that without which it is not done. The matter is to be illustrated by examples. Sight is a help, so that you may see; but it helps in such a way that, once it is posited, you see at once, which has its place in all formal causes. In efficient causes, however, such a help is that simultaneous cooperation of God: for once that is given, the operation follows at once without delay; which if it is not given, will never take place. But feet are a help for walking, a ship for sailing, not however that by which, but that without which it is not. For it is not the case that if feet or a ship are present, walking or sailing at once takes place; yet without them it cannot take place”⁷. “For some things help the power in such a way that by the very fact of being given they draw it from potency into act, and actually posit the effect itself; others help in such a way that they indeed prepare, strengthen and assist the power, yet the drawing of the power into second act, or its application and determination to act, must be awaited from elsewhere than from themselves: of this kind is the help of light for seeing, of species and knowledge for understanding, of habit for acting, of feet for walking, of a ship for sailing, of external persuasion for acting, and countless similar things. For all such things indeed prepare, assist and strengthen the power of acting; yet unless the impulse to act come from elsewhere, nothing will be done. The reason of this is manifest, because these helps are of the same order as the power, in aid of whose weakness they are given. For from the helps themselves and from the power there is constituted one perfect and complete faculty of acting, which remains so thoroughly subject to the command of the will, whose office it is to use both itself and all the powers, as if the power were alone and destitute of all helps. From which it follows that however much helps of this kind were increased to infinity, the effect would still never be produced on that account, but could only be produced more completely; it is produced, however, when this power is actually impelled to act, and is not produced when it is not impelled”⁸.

“These things being thus established, Augustine clearly teaches and diligently inculcates again and again that the help of Adam, whose necessity he had recommended so greatly in many places, was not the help by which but the help without which it is not: that is, it was not such a help that by which it should come about that Adam persevered or willed, but by which he could persevere if he willed, and without which he could not persevere: namely in such a way that that help bestowed the full power or sufficiency of persevering, without which he could not persevere; yet did not confer the use of that help, or the very will to persevere; inasmuch as that was left to his free will, on whose most free inclination and nod God willed to make it depend whether he would use that help or not, and so whether he would actually persevere or fall”⁹. “That this help of grace which was given to Adam and the angels was no other than what the school everywhere calls sufficient. For from this very fact that through it he could live justly and persevere in justice, and without it could not, and that it conferred not the act of the power but the power of the act, it follows most openly that it must be called nothing other than sufficient”¹⁰.

There follow 4 books on the state of fallen nature, in the first of which he treats of original sin, which is concupiscence itself; the cause of the transmission of this sin is carnal concupiscence. Book 2 is on the punishments of original sin, where chap. 7 ff. treats of concupiscence.

“That concupiscence, or lust, or cupidity, or pleasure, or delight, whichever of these names you prefer to use, is nothing other than a certain habitual weight by which the soul is inclined to enjoy creatures, or, as Augustine says, things inferior”¹¹. The movements of concupiscence “are nothing other than certain inclinations, impulses, concupiscences, appetences, appetites, cupidities, loves and desires; by all these names, and many others besides, Augustine is wont to call them; sometimes also delights, inasmuch as delight, after the Platonic fashion, is taken for the acts of concupiscence”¹². Their object is whatever is not God; they tend to the enjoyment of things; but it is lawful only to use creatures; hence consent is not to be given to the movements of concupiscence, but they are to be ordered by reason (cap. 23).

Free will remains after sin (Lib. 3, cap. 1). But liberty “of some action does not exclude help, although it does not of itself require it either. For we can freely see when the light is present and the eyes sound, and not see; although seeing requires that aid of light, not seeing does not ... He is therefore free with respect to some good act who has it in his power, so that it is present if he wills and not present if he does not will, namely in such a way that this depends on the nod of his own will; just as a man, with the light present and his eyes sound and unveiled, is free to see: for he becomes seeing as soon as he wills to open them: but if they have been gravely injured, the liberty of seeing has perished, however much light floods around, and nothing of the wonted help is lacking ... Wherefore liberty for good is not opposed to help or to divine grace, but to slavery and captivity to evil. For between those two there is a direct repugnance. For it is impossible that a free will, in order to will and work good, should be at the same time a slave and captive under evil; as the sense of all men declares. For he is not a captive, or bound by the fetters of slavery, who, whenever he pleases, can leap out free at his own mere nod: but only he who is held down under a depressing weight, so that he cannot rise to the good will itself, and much less to doing good, at his own nod. For there can be given in the will's own choice certain impediments, or bonds of the will, by which it comes about that its apex, whose office it is to consent or dissent, is bound as if by a certain delightful glue to creatures, which it can in no way break by its own powers; but must be dissolved from heaven by the most powerful grace inspiring the contrary effect. And as long as God has not done this — and he does it when he wills — the will is not free to work or to will good; but, pressed down under the affection of evil or of sin, it is possessed as captive and slave ... This, then, is what the Catholic faith proclaims, that such a will is not only to be helped by grace, that it may will and do good, but also to be freed, that it may be able to will and to do. For these differ greatly, to be helped and to be freed ... The sentence of Augustine, therefore, which the Pelagians so greatly detested, is no other than this: that the choice of the will after the fall of the first man, before it is visited by divine grace, that is, before it receives the Christian faith whence grace begins, is so closely held captive under earthly desires that that liberty of the will, as if bound with iron fetters, can in no way rise to will or do good; but only turns about in an evil movement as a captive. For which reason free will during all that time is not so much free as slave, that is, free with respect to justice and slave with respect to sin, the proximate indifference to good and evil being utterly removed”¹³.

But not only the liberty of doing good perished, but also that of abstaining from sin: “And so the most holy and most profound Doctor Augustine, not content to have declared that man after the fall is deprived of all liberty of doing any good work, teaches with the same confidence the other part also, that it is no longer free for him to abstain from sins; but that by sinning he has fallen into a necessity of sinning, from which the grace of Christ the Saviour alone can free him”¹⁴.

Cap. 11 he wishes to show that in place of the liberty of abstaining from sin there has been introduced a necessity of sinning. But this doctrine does not disagree with the Catholic faith, according to which man has free will for evil and for good (cap. 13). “From all these you may rightly gather that in no other sense does there remain to us after the fall, before reparation, a liberty of choice for good, than because the will is only capable of good, that is, because, when God repairs what was lost, it can receive the actual liberty of doing good”¹⁵.

This doctrine on the lost liberty of doing good and of abstaining from sin is to be understood not only of the works of true piety and of works meritorious of eternal life, but of every morally good act which is not a sin, whether it contributes to eternal life or not (cap. 14). “And so in this question we judge it undoubted that it is that opinion of St Augustine and of his disciples which we have just stated, namely that no good work, not even a morally good one, can be done by the human will except through grace — not any grace whatever, but that by which it is freed through faith: so that accordingly, before faith, it is not free for it to abstain from sin while it meditates on acting here and now, but whichever way it turns, it is held by a certain necessity of sinning that human powers cannot loose”¹⁶.

No middle course is given between charity and culpable cupidity (cap. 19). Hence everything that is not of faith is sin (Lib. 4, cap. 1). The mere absence of faith suffices for all the works of unbelievers to be true sins (cap. 3). But (cap. 19) “if there is no liberty of abstaining from sin, but a necessity of sinning in the will, then sin will no longer be sin. For what is necessary is by that very fact not a sin, inasmuch as it must be voluntary”¹⁷. “It is answered that this argument, as necessity of sinning and liberty of abstaining are understood by the Scholastics, has no force at all against the opinion of Augustine. For they call necessity of sinning that by which one is so determined to this sin, which is perpetrated here and now, that he cannot abstain from it: but they call liberty that by which he can do this thing and abstain from doing it. But a necessity of doing of this sort Augustine neither attributes to free will nor takes from it a liberty of abstaining of this sort: but this is the necessity which Augustine professes was brought in by sin, that free will is so captive to the desire of earthly things, before it is freed by faith in the Creator and by charity, that whichever way it turns, it must act badly in the generic sense; yet in such a way that in the particular case it perpetrates no sin so necessarily that it cannot abstain from it: but by abstaining from that one it falls into another, which it could likewise have guarded against by doing something else. This necessity has regard to sin in general only, not to individual sins in particular: nor does it take away that indifference of free will which the more recent Scholastics require ... For it will be free as to exercise, as they say; and necessitated as to specification”¹⁸. Cap. 25 ff. he tries to show that this doctrine was not condemned by the propositions proscribed by Pius V and Gregory XIII.

In 3 books “On the state of pure nature” he shows that such a state is impossible; he says that “without a supernatural love of God a rational creature cannot be created innocent”¹⁹.

After he has spoken in volume 2 of the sickness of the human race, he now treats in volume 3 of the medicine. Since free will is held captive, it must be freed. “If anyone wishes to know what that liberation of the will is, he must know what its slavery and captivity is. And since this is in no way a stain of sin, or a guilt of fault or of punishment, but a certain depression of the will beneath the concupiscence of created things, under which its consent is so held captive that it cannot extricate itself from it by its own powers, and raise itself to loving justice; hence consequently the liberation of the will is not the remission of sin, but a certain delightful loosening of that concupiscential bond, or of a certain pestilential sweetness of creatures, to which the soul, bound fast, serves without ceasing, until by grace, with heavenly sweetness infused and the knot of that cupidity broken, it is transferred to loving things above”²⁰.

The efficient cause of this liberation is grace. The will is to be freed by grace so that it may perform acts not only supernatural but also morally good (cap. 4). By its natural powers the will can do nothing towards obtaining that grace. To one who does what is in him by the powers of nature, grace is not given by any fixed law (cap. 5). Grace is either of the intellect or of the will; the grace of the intellect again is either external (preaching, exhortation, etc.) or internal (knowledge of the truth). Both are usually called law or doctrine (cap. 6). This cannot free the will so that it may will and work justice (cap. 7). The grace therefore which frees the will is the grace of the will. But one is the grace of the sound will, and another that of the sick will (Lib. 2, cap. 1 et 2).

The difference between them appears from the distinction between the free will and the enslaved will (cap. 4). “For it lies in this, that the help of that first integrity so helped the will as to work together with it, if it willed; now however the help itself makes it will. That is, before the ruin the help was such that the influx of the help, equally with that of the will, into the work depended on the nod of the free will itself, and so that indifferent liberty, flexible to either side, remained safe: now however after the ruin it is such as to make the will consent, and to influence it, and to will. For it is to be observed that the helps of the will are of two kinds; for one is of such a sort that without it the will cannot will, yet in such a way that to will and not to will, to use or not to use the help, is left to its free choice: the other is that by which it comes about that the will wills determinately. For it is of that nature that by the very fact that it is given to the will, the will at once wills ... by the very fact that it is given, the use of it and the influx of the power are given at the same time. For it is this very thing which by its own efficacy makes the faculty flow into act, and is not subject to the free choice of the faculty itself, but invincibly brings it about that the will chooses and wills this or that”²¹. “The other kind of help is that by which, as soon as it has been given, the effect takes place, and if it is not given will never take place. For it is of such necessity that without it the effect cannot take place, and of such efficacy that by the very fact that it is given, it takes place at once. For it gives both to be able and to act at once”²².

No help is therefore given after the fall that is not at the same time efficacious; in other words, no truly and merely sufficient grace is given (Lib. 3, cap. 1 ff.). There is a certain weakness of the will, by which it cannot overcome certain temptations, and the grace by which they might be overcome is not present, nor the spirit of prayer, by which powers might be obtained (cap. 13). “All these things therefore most fully and most plainly demonstrate that nothing is more certain and more firmly grounded in the doctrine of St Augustine than that there are certain precepts which are impossible for men — not only for unbelievers, blinded and hardened, but also for the faithful and the just, who will and strive according to the present powers they have; and that the grace by which they might become possible is also lacking: for this is daily manifest by the example of St Peter and many others, who are tempted beyond what they can bear: nor does that difficulty of fulfilling such precepts arise from this, that the act of fulfilling them must be supernatural or meritorious, or anything of the like (which never came into Augustine's mind), but from this, that the powers of the will are weak, because of concupiscence drawing it back from willing good; by whose resistance it comes about that the powers of the will are distracted, and so a man does not will fully, does not will integrally, does not will with his whole will. But such a will is not fit to overcome the other, strengthened by age, because through it a man cannot yet will as much as suffices for him to act by willing; but he will be able when he has a great and robust will. To attribute this to himself, however, is not within human power but belongs to the grace of God alone, which we therefore assiduously invoke by faith”²³, “From which it is concluded that the saying that God does not command impossible things is true in no other sense than that whatever he commands can be done by man's will aided by the omnipotent grace of God”²⁴.

Cap. 20 explains how the words of St Paul are to be understood: “God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”, and cap. 21 in what way Christ is the redeemer of all, crucified and dead for all. “From which it is clear that, in the judgment of Augustine, Christ gave himself as a redemption for all, or is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, in no other sense than that he is the redemption and propitiation for the sins of all the faithful, from whom the one Catholic Church is constituted. Nor, unless I am mistaken, is there a place in all the works of Augustine where he teaches that Christ is a propitiation for the sins of unbelievers who remain in unbelief, or that he gave himself as a redemption for them”²⁵. “For neither according to the doctrine of the Ancients did Christ suffer or die for all men absolutely, nor did he shed his blood for all men absolutely and so generally, since they teach that this is rather to be rejected as an error abhorrent from the Catholic faith: but to all those for whom he shed his blood, and insofar as he shed it for them, he also gives a sufficient help, by which they not only can, but also in fact will and do, that which he decreed should be willed and done by them. For by those most secretly just and most justly secret counsels of his, he predestined to give to some men faith, charity, and perseverance in it to the end, whom we call absolutely predestined, elect and to be saved; to others charity without perseverance, to others faith without charity. For men of the first kind, as his true sheep, as his true people to be saved absolutely, he gave and delivered himself up; for their sins to be utterly blotted out and buried in eternal oblivion he is the propitiation; for these to be brought to life for ever he died; for these to be freed from every evil he asked his Father, not for the rest, who failing from faith and charity die in iniquity. For for these he died, and for these he is a propitiation for sins, and for these he asked his Father, in the measure in which they are to be adorned with certain temporal effects of divine grace”²⁶.

What, then, is that medicinal help of Christ in its substance? He answers in lib. 4, cap. 1: “that this medicinal grace of Christ the Saviour, which the school calls efficacious, is nothing other than a certain heavenly and ineffable sweetness, or spiritual delight, by which the will is preveniently moved and bent to will and do whatever God has determined it to will and do”²⁷. “From these it is now clearly understood that this grace of divine delight is so necessary when we struggle with the temptations and delights of earthly things, that unless it is greater than the earthly delight by which our affection is held, it cannot but be that we are conquered by the weakness of our own will. For a greater delight will never, surely, be overcome by a lesser delight, but the mind will follow that one which has held it more by delighting it with sweetness”²⁸.

But the necessity of heavenly delight for willing and acting well does not arise from the nature of the will, but from its punishment (cap. 9). “The true reason therefore why heavenly delight is necessary for good acts must be sought from the nature of the medicine, that is, of the medicinal help. For the will through the sin of the first man has been cast down into the empire of lusts, from which it comes about that in all actions before grace, with a certain libidinous delight going before and titillating, it is provoked, and by consenting to it, sins; as we have shown in its place by very many testimonies of Augustine, as a thing certain from him, and with experience agreeing. For this empire of lusts is not the natural constitution of man, who before enjoyed his own goods in full liberty and peace, but the punishment of the condemned”²⁹.

Lib. 6, cap. 6: necessity is twofold for Augustine, of coercion, and simple or voluntary. The former, not the latter, is repugnant to liberty. Lib. 7, cap. 2: there is something besides the bare faculty of the will, which places the act of the will too in the power of choice and makes it will. And this is delight itself (cap. 3). “Since therefore the true cause why the will is moved to desire something is the delight by which it is soothed inwardly in the will itself, hence it is that Augustine consequently teaches that both in desiring sin and in omitting it the will is made free by delight. For since for Augustine that is free which is in our power, or which is done when we will, it is necessary that that very thing which has been the cause of willing and not willing for the will should also be the cause of liberty”³⁰. “And hence it is born that as sorrow is opposed to delight, and displeasure to complacency, so also, according to the mind of Augustine, liberty is opposed to the coerced. For that to which someone is drawn by coercion is done with displeasure, and conversely, what is done with displeasure is said to be drawn by coercion, not to go freely; and in equal measure, the greater the displeasure, the more it is coerced, and the lesser, the less”³¹.

Lib. 8, cap. 3: “These things, although they are so³², and although the discrepancy between physical predetermination, as the Scholastics are wont to defend it, and the medicinal help of Christ is so great, in this nonetheless, as we have said, the medicinal help agrees with it, that the office of physically predetermining the will truly belongs to it, and that by that word, taken not abstractly but concretely, it can deservedly be so called. For by this very fact that, according to the principles of St Augustine, the true grace of Christ is a help by which it comes about that one wills and perfects, as it is distinguished from the help without which it is not; and likewise is not a potential help, by which we can will and act if we will, but a help of the will and of the action, by which God brings it about that we in fact will and act, as these things have been demonstrated at length in their places; it is plainly clear that this help is such as to draw the will, constituted in potency together with any other grace whatever, to the act, not in such a way that the act follows only if it wills (as was proper to the grace of Adam and of the angels, with which they in fact stood in the truth), but by most efficaciously furnishing it so that it wills. For it does not wait for the will to flow in with it, as happened in the help of the angels, even the holy ones, whose will was so strong that, as, and when, and insofar as it willed, it used or did not use the help; but it makes the will flow in with it, applying it to will and do whatever God has determined should be willed and done through it”³³.

“Nevertheless it may deservedly be doubted whether Augustine understood liberty to remain unimpaired in that way, and so held that the influx of grace was to be reconciled with free will in this sense, that under its efficacy determining the will to will and act, the power should at the same time remain not to will and not to act: namely that he should judge the choice of the will to be free under grace for this reason, that it always so wills and acts through grace as at the same time to be able neither to will nor to act”³⁴. He wishes to demonstrate “that Augustine, in answering the Pelagians, who complained that liberty was violated by grace, never touched upon this manner of reconciling them, namely that the will so wills through grace as to be able not to will, but always the other, namely that with grace operating we are carried to good not like a trunk which God moves, but that grace makes not anyone else but ourselves will what is good”³⁵. And at the end of the chapter he says: “nor does Augustine defend free will, and hand down the concord of the two, in any other way than because it is not grace alone that works in man, but the will also, from unwilling and resisting is made willing, and by willing does something together with grace”³⁶. Cap. 19: “Wherefore Augustine and his disciples did not have regard to those conceptions of free will of certain more recent writers, when, reconciling grace with free will, they say that it does not therefore take away free will, because it brings it about that free will is not idle like a stone and does nothing, nor is forced unwilling to good, but that it also wills and acts. But they looked to that principle which Augustine explained and most frequently inculcated: that is free which is in our power; and that is in our power which is done when we will, or, as he says elsewhere, which someone does if he wills, and does not do if he does not will. But by this definition, which Augustine holds as the rule of an immovable and most certain truth, and which all his disciples held, every will or rational volition whatsoever is free, because as it is impossible that it not be done when we will, and be done when we do not will, so consequently it is impossible that it not be in our power, and by this very fact free”³⁷.

Immediately after the publication of the book “Augustinus” controversies arose concerning the doctrine contained in it, which led to the condemnation of 5 propositions (Innocent X, by the Constitution “Cum occasione”, 31 May 1653; Denz 1092 ff.).

Prop. 1: “Some of God's precepts are impossible to just men who will and strive according to the present powers they have: the grace is also wanting to them by which they might become possible”. Declared and condemned as rash, impious, blasphemous, to be condemned with anathema, and heretical.

The sense is: a just man can be found in such conditions in which he cannot fulfil some precept of God: the powers of the will have been weakened after sin, and the heavenly victorious delight is not present, by which the opposing cupidity might be overcome; grace is wanting, the help by which is wanting. But if the Jansenists object that this impotence is from a defect of the will — for the will could, if it willed — in their system this is nothing; for the will cannot will good unless the grace is present, the victorious delight which gives the power to will and to act. This impotence follows from original sin. Truly and merely sufficient grace is denied in the present order.

Prop. 2: “Interior grace in the state of fallen nature is never resisted”. Declared and condemned as heretical.

Since interior grace in the state of fallen nature is a help by which, it always has its effect. If the heavenly delight is greater than the cupidity, the good act itself is had: for it makes the will will strongly. But if it is lesser, it has the whole effect which it can have in the conflict with a greater earthly cupidity, and for which it is given in such a case, namely it makes the will will faintly. The will can never resist and impede the effect of grace.

Prop. 3: “For meriting and demeriting in the state of fallen nature there is not required in man liberty from necessity, but liberty from coercion suffices”. Declared and condemned as heretical.

This proposition follows from the doctrine of Jansen, that the will necessarily follows the greater delight. If the heavenly delight is greater, the will necessarily follows it, performs a good and meritorious act; if the earthly cupidity is greater, the will necessarily follows it, performs an evil, demeritorious act. But the act remains free, because according to Jansen, if the will truly wills, by that very fact it wills freely (he understands this of the acts of the will which follow knowledge, not of indeliberate acts). But coercion destroys liberty and impedes merit, because what we do under coercion we do not will, and therefore do not do freely. If Jansen sometimes concedes to the will of the wayfarer a certain indifference, this is not an active indifference (with which there would be liberty from necessity), but a passive indifference, that is: the same will which is now necessitated to the good act by the victorious heavenly delight can, if the opposite delight is victorious, be determined to the opposite act, and necessarily performs the evil act.

Prop. 4: “The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of interior prevenient grace for individual acts, even for the beginning of faith; and in this they were heretics, that they wished that grace to be such as the human will could resist and obey”. Declared and condemned as false and heretical.

In the first part it is affirmed that the Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of internal grace for all acts, even for the beginning of faith; therefore their opinion is not heretical for this, that, as is commonly said, they denied the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith; but their heresy lay in this, that they thought falsely about the nature of interior grace (the second part). If therefore the Semi-Pelagians were heretics for that reason, it would be Catholic doctrine that the human will cannot resist or obey this interior grace. This part of the proposition therefore again establishes the Jansenist doctrine of the grace of fallen nature as a help by which (cf. prop. 2). The qualification “heretical” seems to be applied precisely to this second part of the proposition. Therefore the true doctrine is: the human will can resist or obey interior grace.

Prop. 5: “It is Semi-Pelagian to say that Christ died or shed his blood for all men absolutely”. Declared and condemned as false, rash, scandalous, and, understood in the sense that Christ died only for the salvation of the predestined, impious, blasphemous, contumelious, derogating from the divine goodness, and heretical.

Jansen lays down the principle: to all those for whom Christ shed his blood, and insofar as he shed it for them, he also gives the help by which they will and do what he has decreed should be willed and done by them. Hence he died for the salvation of the predestined only, since he decreed to save them alone absolutely. For those reprobate to whom he decreed to give faith and charity without perseverance, or faith alone without charity, he died insofar as he decreed those effects of grace to them; but nothing for the unbelievers who remain in unbelief. In that sense therefore Christ is positively to be said to have died for the salvation not only of the predestined, inasmuch as by his death he also merited for others the helps by which they can be saved.

As has already been said above, Jansen submitted his opinions to the judgment of the Church; he himself therefore is not a heretic.

Among the principal Jansenists must be numbered first of all Jansen's friend, Ioannes Vergerius, abbot of St Cyran (a monastery of Poitiers), whence he was called Sancyranus. He strenuously championed the Jansenist doctrines, and infected also the nuns of Portus Regius (Port Royal), whom he governed, with these errors, so much so that Port Royal became a principal seat of Jansenism. After his death (1643) Antonius Arnaldus succeeded in his place (the author of the book on frequent communion), who died in 1694; him followed Paschasius Quesnel, priest of the Bérullian Oratory. From his work 101 propositions were collected, which were condemned by Clement XI, in the Bull “Unigenitus”, 8 Sept. 1713. And when the synod of Pistoia restored the Jansenist errors, it was condemned by Pius VI, 28 August 1794, in the Constitution “Auctorem fidei”; Denz. 1501.

On the nature of justification

Justification (δικαίωσις), by the force of the term, is the act of justifying; it can also be understood terminatively, or passively, for the effect which that act has in the one who is justified.

Just (δίκαιος) is said of a person, a thing, an act, which agrees with the norm of morals¹. Justice (δικαιοσύνη) is that quality or condition of a person or thing by which it is conformed to the norm of morals, to the law, to the divine will. In a restricted sense it is understood of the virtue which renders to each his own. The justice of God is either that by which he himself is just (Dei = genitive of possession), or that which proceeds from God, by which he makes us just (Dei = genitive of origin). To justify (δικαιόω), by analogy with the other verbs ending in — οω (τυφλόω = I make blind), can mean to make just; thus, as will appear from the argument of Sacred Scripture, in the New Testament. Yet in this sense it does not occur among profane authors, which is easily understood; for by nature a man cannot make another man just. For profane authors, then, to justify is to visit with punishments or rewards, to punish or to reward; besides, to esteem or judge something just; among the LXX the forensic use is frequent, for the act by which a judge absolves someone of a crime, declares him just, or declares which party the law favours.

The words of the thesis are taken from session 6, chapter 7 of the Council of Trent. For the innovators of the sixteenth century wholly overthrew the catholic sense of justification². According to them, in justification (through faith) the justice of Christ becomes our justice; as original sin is alien to us, so also is the justice by which we are justified: the justice of Christ is imputed to us. Nor is sin truly and perfectly destroyed in us in this justification, but it passes away in guilt and remains in act; that is, although we are truly sinners and sin remains in act in us, nevertheless God wills mercifully to spare us; the force of sin, which is to accuse, to condemn, to set an angry God before us, is taken away; in other words: sin remains, but is no longer imputed: before God the Father we are reckoned holy and just. Regeneration, vivification, the renewal of man do not belong to this justification but are distinguished from it; this follows the justification of faith and is its fruit, if faith is living and not dead.

From the opposition to these errors the doctrine stated in the thesis is easily understood. The sinner is unjust and an enemy of God. Justification is a true and properly so-called remission of sins; a true remission, not merely the non-imputation of a sin that in fact remains, but sin itself ceases in man, is truly destroyed, is no longer present. Sins are understood here as those by which a man is truly made unjust, original sin and personal mortal sins. These, as is clear, are not to be conceived as though the act of sin itself, once performed, were made undone, but the guilt contracted by that act and the stain brought upon the soul are wholly taken away. Justification is further said to be the sanctification and renewal of the inner man; therefore man not only ceases to be a sinner, but is positively transferred to a higher state.

Sanctity means internal sanctity, by which a man is not only held to be holy and just but is inwardly constituted holy — that sanctity, as is clear, which alone is had in the present order; renewal, that is, the passage from the former state to a new and better one, which consists in this, that man be truly just, a friend of God, and an heir according to the hope of eternal life, who can and ought by right to hope for eternal life promised to him as to a friend of God.

Both the remission of sin and the internal renewal are had in justification itself. But what relation exists between them is not yet treated in this place; in fact one is not had without the other: sin is not remitted without sanctification and renewal, nor is the renewal and sanctification of the sinner without the remission of sin. Nor does this thesis yet determine more accurately in what that sanctification and renewal consists.

Briefly, then, it can be said: the Protestants defend an imputed justice, catholics an internal justice of their own, inherent in the justified man himself.

A middle view, as it were, has also been proposed: some Protestants (Martin Butzer) admitted, besides imputed justice, a certain inherent justice. Some catholics too (Contarini, Pigge, Gropper, the “Colonienses”) proposed a doctrine of a “double justice”. This is found in the book “Interim” (1541); in the “Antididagma” (Cologne 1544, f. 13) it is stated thus: “We are justified by God by a double justice as it were through formal and essential causes. Of these the one and the prior is the consummated justice of Christ, not indeed as it is outside us in him, but as and when the same is imputed to us for justice (so long, that is, as it is apprehended by faith). This very justice of Christ thus imputed to us is the chief and highest cause of our justification, on which we ought principally to rest and to trust. In another way, however, we are formally justified by an inherent justice, which is given, infused and made our own together with the remission of sins, the renewal of the Holy Spirit and the diffusion of charity into our hearts, according to the measure of each one's faith. Yet upon this inherent justice (because it is imperfect) we do not principally rest”. In the Council of Trent the question of the double justice, which Seripando especially defended, was proposed for discussion in this form:

“Whether the justified man, who has performed good works out of grace and divine help, deriving from the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that he has retained inherent justice, presenting himself with it before the tribunal of Christ, is to be reckoned to have satisfied the divine justice unto the merit and acquisition of eternal life; or whether with this inherent justice he further needs the mercy and justice of Christ, that is, the merit of his passion, whereby the defects of his justice may be supplied, which justice is communicated by divine dispensation according to the measure of faith and charity”³. The Council rejected the doctrine of the double justice; therefore, after it had said in ch. 7: “the sole formal cause (of justification) is the justice of God, not that by which he himself is just, but that by which he makes us just, by which... we are not only reputed, but are truly named and are just, receiving justice in ourselves, each one his own”⁴, it teaches in ch. 16: “nothing further is to be believed wanting to the justified themselves, so that they be reckoned to have fully satisfied the divine law by those works which have been done in God, according to the state of this life, and truly to have merited eternal life, to be obtained also in its own time (if nevertheless they depart in grace)... Thus neither is our own justice set up as though it were of ourselves, nor is the justice of God ignored or rejected; for the justice that is called ours, because we are justified by it as inherent in us, that same is God's, because it is infused into us by God through the merit of Christ”⁵.

THE CHURCH'S DOCUMENTS

Leo X condemned the proposition of Luther: “To deny that sin remains in a child after baptism is to tread under foot both Paul and Christ”⁶.

The Council of Trent, in session 6, defined this doctrine. Ch. 7: Justification “is not the remission of sins alone, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inner man... whence man from unjust is made just and from an enemy a friend, that he may be an heir according to the hope of eternal life... we are not only reputed, but are truly named and are just, receiving justice in ourselves, each one his own... in justification itself, together with the remission of sins, man receives all these things infused at once...”⁷.

Can. 11: “If anyone says that men are justified either by the imputation of the justice of Christ alone, or by the remission of sins alone, to the exclusion of grace and charity, which is poured forth into their hearts by the Holy Spirit and inheres in them, or even that the grace by which we are justified is only the favour of God: let him be anathema”⁸.

In session 5, in the decree on original sin, it had already laid down: “If anyone denies that by the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted, or even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away, but says that it is only shaved off or not imputed: let him be anathema; for in those who are reborn God hates nothing...”⁹.

Pius V condemned the propositions of Baius: 42. “The justice by which the ungodly is justified through faith consists formally in obedience to the commandments, which is the justice of works...” 43. “In men doing penance before the sacrament of absolution, and in catechumens before baptism, there is true justification, separated however from the remission of sins”¹⁰.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

A true remission of sins: Act 3, 19: “Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out”. Ἐξαλείφειν means to wipe out; it is used of a writing that is to be blotted out, Col 2, 14: blotting out... the handwriting of the decree; Apoc 3, 5: I will not blot out his name from the book of life. Cf. Is 43, 25; Ps 50, 3. — 1 Cor 6, 11: “And such (namely sinners) were some of you; but you are washed (properly: you have taken care to wash yourselves), but you are sanctified, but you are justified”. By washing, stains are removed, not merely covered. — Rom 5, 19: “For as by the disobedience of one man many were constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of one many shall be constituted just”. As true sin (which the Protestants themselves concede), so also true justice; therefore it is no longer sin. — Rom 8, 1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus”. Cf. Eph 5, 25 ss.; from the Old Testament 1 Par 21, 8; 2 Reg 12, 13; Ps 102, 12.

They are renewed: Baptism is the laver of regeneration and renovation: Tit 3, 5. On this regeneration Io 1, 3; 3, 6; 1 Io 2, 29; 3, 9; 4, 7; 5, 1. 4. 18; 1 Petr 1, 3. 23. (See the following thesis.) Before regeneration man is the old man (παλαιός, the former): Rom 6, 6; Eph 4, 22; Col 3, 9. By this word is indicated both the corruption of the former state and that something new succeeds it. After regeneration he is the new man: Rom 6, 4, newness of life (καινότης); they put on the new man Eph 4, 24 (καινός); Col 3, 9 (νέος); cf. Gal 3, 27, to put on Christ; they are renewed: Col 3, 10 (ἀνακαινούμενον); Eph 4, 23 (ἀνανεοῦσθαι). And so there is talk of a new creature: Gal 6, 15 (καινὴ κτίσις); 2 Cor 5, 17: if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; cf. Iac 1, 18. But such a renewal cannot be understood except as a real, true change in the man himself. And this is had by baptism, the laver of renovation.

They are justified: Rom 3, 24: “Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. Rom 3, 28, justification through faith; cf. Gal 2, 16. 17; Rom 5, 1, from faith; Rom 5, 9, in his blood; Rom 5, 19, “they shall be constituted just”; 1 Cor 6, 11: “you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God”; Tit 3, 7: “justified by his grace”. These things cannot be understood in the sense that men are merely reputed or declared just, while in fact they are not inwardly just; for 1) the discourse is of a justification to which man cooperates, and which is the effect of redemption; 2) Rom 5, 19 has a parallelism between constituting a sinner and constituting a just man; but sinners are constituted really and not only imputatively; therefore the same must be said of their being constituted just; 3) much less can these things be so understood when one attends to the rest of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture (sins are truly blotted out, man is inwardly renewed); 4) God, who is truthful, cannot declare or repute just one who is not truly just.

But the justice which is thus communicated is the justice of God, namely that which is from God, which has God for its author, Phil 3, 9¹¹.

A friend of God: on this friendship between God and the just man there is fuller treatment in the treatise on charity.

An heir according to the hope of eternal life: Tit 3, 7.

THE FATHERS

Several texts of the holy Fathers are found in Rouet de Iournel, Ench. Patr., ser. 355, 356, 360, 361, from which we select some; cf. also what is proposed on this matter in the treatise on Baptism and on Penance.

Sins are blotted out: ST JUSTIN: “If they do penance, all who will can obtain mercy from God, and the Scripture proclaims them blessed, saying: Blessed is he to whom the Lord has not imputed sin. That is, if he repents of his sins, he receives from God the remission of his sins; but not, as you deceive yourselves and certain others like you in this, who say that even if they are sinners, provided they have known God, the Lord does not impute sin to them”¹²

ST AUGUSTINE: “We say that baptism gives the pardon of all sins, and takes away crimes, does not shave them off; nor is it that the roots of all sins are retained in the evil flesh, as though in the case of the hairs of those who are shaved on the head, whence the sins that are again to be cut back may grow”¹³. “You affirm that I have said that grace does not perfectly make the new man. I do not say this; attend to what I say. Grace perfectly makes the new man, since it even leads him to the immortality of the body and to full felicity. Now too it perfectly renews man, as far as pertains to liberation from all sins whatsoever, not as far as pertains to liberation from all evils and from all the corruption of mortality, by which the body now weighs down the soul”¹⁴. “But you, who think that if concupiscence were an evil, the baptized would be free of it, are much mistaken. He is free of every sin, not of every evil. Which is said more plainly thus: he is free of every guilt of all evils, not of all evils”¹⁵. ST GREGORY THE GREAT: “He therefore who says that sins are not utterly forgiven in baptism, let him say that the Egyptians did not truly die in the Red Sea. But if he confesses that the Egyptians truly died, he must needs confess that sins utterly die in baptism, because surely in our absolution the truth avails more than the shadow of the truth”¹⁶.

Men are renewed: EPISTLE OF BARNABAS: “Where therefore he renewed us by the remission of sins, he made us that we might have another form, a soul namely after the manner of children, inasmuch as he refashioned us”¹⁷. “But it shall be built in the name of the Lord: take heed that the temple of the Lord be built magnificently. How? Learn. Having received the remission of sins and having hope in the name of the Lord, we are made new, created again afresh; therefore in us, in our dwelling, God truly dwells”¹⁸. ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: “The water is poured around outwardly, and the Spirit inwardly washes the soul without failing. And why do you marvel? Take a bodily example, small indeed and lowly, but useful for the simpler sort. If fire, passing through the thickness of iron, works so great a thing within, so that the iron becomes fire, and the cold becomes hot, and the black becomes shining; if fire, which is a body, penetrating into the body of iron, thus works without hindrance, why do you marvel if the Holy Spirit enters into the inmost soul?”¹⁹. ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “Just as if someone should melt down again a golden statue, defiled by time, smoke, dust and rust, he restores it to us most pure and shining, so also God has melted down our nature again, deprived of that beauty which he had himself put into it from the beginning, casting it into the waters as into a furnace and sending in the grace of the Spirit in place of fire, and thence he brings out the renewed, contending in splendour with the rays of the sun, the old man being crushed and the new man fashioned more splendid than the old was”²⁰.

Heirs of the heavenly kingdom: ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “For they are not only free but also holy, not only holy but also just, not only just but also sons, not only sons but also heirs, not only heirs but also brothers of Christ, and not only brothers of Christ but also co-heirs, not only co-heirs but also members, not only members but also a temple, not only a temple but also organs of the Spirit. You see how many are the bounties of baptism, and yet some reckon that heavenly grace consists in the remission of sins alone; but we have counted ten honours”²¹.

A friend: ST JOHN CHRYS.: “If then this faith has saved you, keep it also now; for what has conferred so many good things on you will without doubt not deceive you concerning things to come. For that which made the dead man, the lost man, the captive and the enemy a friend, a son, a free man, a just man and a co-heir, and furnished him with such great things as no one had ever expected — how, after such liberality and benevolence, will it not receive you hereafter?”²²

Objections

1. Ps 31, 1. 2. “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin, nor is there guile in his spirit”. The same is cited in Rom 4, 7. 8. Therefore sins are only covered, not imputed. — I answer. From what has been said in the argument from Sacred Scripture, it cannot have this sense in St Paul. Nor in the Psalm itself: before God something can be covered only in such a way, that is, withdrawn from the eyes, that it is no longer present; and because the sin is no longer present, God no longer thinks of it, that is, does not impute it.

2. 1 Petr 4, 8: “Charity covers a multitude of sins”. — I answer. The sense is: charity towards the neighbour brings it about that we dissemble the sins of others, do not attend to them; the discourse is not of the remission of one's own sins through charity; cf. Prov 10, 12; 1 Cor 13, 7.

3. To justify signifies to declare just. — I answer. It can have this sense: I grant; it always has it: I deny.

4. Rom 4, 3. 9, the discourse is of the justice of Abraham imputed. — I answer. The discourse is not of imputed justice, but faith is imputed unto justice, that is, the justice of Abraham is not from his works but from faith.

5. We are justified not by our justice but by the justice of God or of Christ (1 Cor 1, 30; 2 Cor 5, 21; Phil 3, 9); therefore the justice of Christ is imputed to us. I answer. It is not our justice, because it is not from our merit and our works but from the merit of Christ, and is conferred on us freely by God: I grant; it is not our justice, because it is not internal and proper to us: I deny. Through the merits of Christ we are justified freely, inwardly and truly by God.

6. If we were justified by our own justice, we could place our confidence in ourselves. — I answer. If it were our own, that is, from our merits alone: I grant; if it is our own, that is, internal to us, but from the merits of Christ: I deny.

For more objections see Beraza, De gratia Christi, nr. 715 ss.

The fact of a true internal renewal in the justification of the sinner being established, that renewal must now be further described. We affirm that in justification the sinner becomes a partaker of the divine nature and is constituted an adoptive son of God.

By the consortium of the divine nature is not understood that which is had by reason of the hypostatic union, nor that which is had by reason of the reception of the Eucharist; but how it is to be conceived positively cannot yet be explained in this thesis, but will become clearer and clearer in the following theses. One thing, however, must here be noted: there is no transformation into God, as appears from the condemned propositions of Eckhart and Molinos. Eckhart, prop. 10: “We are wholly transformed into God and converted into him; in like manner as in the sacrament the bread is converted into the body of Christ: so I am converted into him, because he works me into his own being, one, not like; by the living God it is true that there is no distinction there”. Prop. 11: “Whatever the Father gave to his only-begotten Son in human nature, all this he gave to me: here I except nothing, neither the union nor the sanctity, but he gave the whole to me as to himself”. Prop. 12: “Whatever Sacred Scripture says of Christ, all this is verified also of every good and divine man”. Prop. 13: “Whatever is proper to the divine nature, all this is proper to the just and divine man; on this account this man does whatever God does, and with God created heaven and earth, and is the begetter of the eternal Word, and God without such a man would not know how to do anything”¹. Molinos, prop. 5: “By doing nothing the soul annihilates itself and returns to its principle and to its origin, which is the essence of God, in which, transformed, it remains and is divinized, and God then remains in himself; for then there are no longer two things united, but one only, and in this way God lives and reigns in us, and the soul annihilates itself in operative being”².

Adoption³ is the assumption of a person outside the family to the rights of a natural son (specifically to the right of inheritance). A person outside is one who is not a natural son. Since of themselves these rights belong to no one but a natural son, adoptive assumption of itself says something not due to the adopted person, something gratuitous. In justification, therefore, there is gratuitously communicated by God to the sinner a right to the divine inheritance, so that that man is truly an adoptive son; but that son does not succeed to the goods of a Father who has died, but in his own time will share these goods with the Father. Since in adoption as it takes place among men the adopter and the adopted are already of the same nature, in divine adoption God the adopter communicates his own nature⁴. Yet formally “to communicate the divine nature” and “to adopt” do not say the same thing. That communication of the divine nature without adoption can be had, indeed in fact is had in Christ the man. But where divine adoption is had, there the divine nature is also communicated. To the question whether divine adoption without the communication of the divine nature can be found at least in another order, it can be answered that no repugnance appears in God's willing to confer on a wayfaring man the right to the heavenly inheritance without communicating to him even in this life the divine nature; in the other life, however, he must confer that without which man could not enter into the inheritance, that is, without which he could not see God intuitively.

The thesis, insofar as it affirms a special consortium of the divine nature and adoption itself, although no explicit definition of this matter is had in its own right, must be said to be taught so clearly in Sacred Scripture and Tradition that it is simply of faith.

THE DOCUMENTS OF THE CHURCH

CONC. TRID. ses. 6, cap. 4, justification is described as “the translation from that state in which man is born a son of the first Adam into the state of grace and of the adoption of sons”⁵. Ch. 7: “that he may be an heir according to the hope of eternal life”⁶. Sess. 5, can. 5: the reborn “have been made beloved sons of God, heirs indeed of God, but co-heirs of Christ”⁷.

Pius V condemned the error of Baius, 42: “The justice by which the ungodly is justified through faith... does not (consist) in any grace of the soul infused, by which man is adopted as a son of God and renewed according to the inner man and made a partaker of the divine nature...”⁸

SACRED SCRIPTURE

Adoptive filiation: the use of the word “sons” alone does not of itself prove the matter; indeed the very term “adoption of sons” in Rom 9, 4 is applied to the Israelite people, and must be explained there in a theocratic sense. But of individuals adoption is spoken only in the strict sense; for this adoption, according to St Paul, includes the right of inheritance together with the natural Son of God. Rom 8, 12-18: Christians have received “the spirit of adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba (Father)” (v. 15). Of this filiation the Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit (v. 16).

“But if sons, also heirs: heirs indeed of God, but co-heirs of Christ” (v. 17). But the condition of actually acquiring this inheritance is: “if nevertheless we suffer with (Christ), that we may be glorified with (Christ)” (v. 17). To this glorification belongs in a special way the glory of the body to be communicated in the resurrection. The revelation of the sons of God is still awaited; so the sons of God themselves also still await what pertains to the perfect effect of this filiation, the glorification of the body. In this sense the Apostle says: “And we ourselves also, having the first-fruits of the Spirit: even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body” (v. 23). — In a similar way the same doctrine is set out in Gal 4, 4-7: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. Therefore now he is not a servant but a son: and if a son, an heir also through God”. Cf. Eph 1, 5.

Generation: these sons are begotten, are born, of God. Io 1, 12. 13: “he gave them power to become the sons of God, to those... who were born of God”. This St John repeats several times in his first epistle: 1 Io 2, 29; 3, 9; 4, 7; 5, 1. 18. Similarly 1 Petr 1, 3. 23; Iac 1, 18; baptism is the laver of regeneration, Tit 3, 5; cf. Io 3, 5. The same is contained in the use of the phrase τέκνα θεοῦ, both in St John (Io 1, 12; 1 Io 3, 1. 2; 5, 2) and in St Paul (Rom 8, 16. 17. 21; 9, 8; Eph 5, 1). Thus Christ is the first-born among many brethren (Rom 8, 29). Therefore when God makes men his sons, he not only confers certain rights on them, but he begets the sons whom he adopts, that is, he communicates a new life to them, he confers his own nature on them in some special way (for this is to beget), so that they now lead a divine life.

Consortium of the divine nature: this communication of the divine nature is explicitly taught in 2 Petr 1, 4: “by whom he has given us the greatest and most precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature”. These things, if they are considered together with the rest of the doctrine of the New Testament, are easily understood of a communication of the divine nature already made to these wayfarers on earth (not of something still to come), and that physical and real, not merely moral in the sense that we should become conformed to God through good acts. And the text itself not only admits this explanation but altogether suggests and urges it.

THE FATHERS

Adoptive filiation⁹: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: “Baptized, we are enlightened; enlightened, we are adopted as sons; adopted, we are perfected; perfected, we are made immortal: I, he says, said: you are gods and all sons of the Most High”¹⁰. ST ATHANASIUS: “This is the benignity of God, that those whose maker he is should afterwards become also their father by grace: which comes about when men, once created, as the Apostle says, receive in their hearts the Spirit of his Son crying: Abba, Father. These are they who, having received the Word, have received from him power to become sons of God. Nor can they become sons in any other way, since by their own nature they are creatures, unless they receive his Spirit who is the natural and true Son. That this might come about, the Word was made flesh, that he might make man fit to receive the divinity”¹¹.

ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: “If you too have sincere piety, the Holy Spirit descends also into you, and the paternal voice resounds to you from above: not ‘this is my Son’, but ‘this is now become my Son’. For to him alone ‘is’ befits, since in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word; to him ‘is’ befits, because he is always the Son of God; for you it has now become, because you have not the name of son by nature but receive it by adoption”¹². ST BASIL: “Through the Holy Spirit is given the restoration to paradise, the ascent to the kingdom of heaven, the return to the adoption of sons”¹³. ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: “The Son, the genuine Son of God, who exists without beginning, suffered to hear himself called the son of David, that he might make you a son of God; he suffered to have a servant for a father, that he might make the Lord a father to you, a servant. Do you see, from the very beginning, what the Gospels are? But if you doubt about your own affairs, be led to believe these things from those which pertain to him. For it is far more difficult, as far as pertains to the human intellect, that God should become man, than that man should be a son of God. When therefore you hear that the Son of God is the son of David and of Abraham, cease now to doubt that you, the son of Adam, are to be a son of God. Nor would he have humbled himself thus in vain and to no purpose, unless he was to exalt us. For he was born according to the flesh, that you might be born according to the spirit; he was born of a woman, that you might cease to be the son of a woman”¹⁴

ST AMBROSE: “Can men then be so loved by God as the Son, in whom the Father was well pleased? He is well pleasing through himself, we through him; for those in whom God beholds his Son according to his image, them he adopts through the Son into the grace of sons, so that, as through the image we are brought to the image, so through the generation of the Son we may be called to adoption. One love, then, is that of nature, eternal; another that of grace”¹⁵

ST AUGUSTINE: “This is the grace of the new testament, which lay hidden in the old, nor yet did it cease to be foretold and announced by shadowing figures, that the soul may know its God and be reborn to him by his grace. For this birth is spiritual, therefore not of bloods, not of the will of man, but of God. This is also called adoption. For we were something before we were sons of God, and we received the benefit of becoming what we were not: as he who is adopted was not yet, before he was adopted, the son of him by whom he is adopted, yet was already one who could be adopted. And from this generation of grace that Son is distinguished, who, when he was the Son of God, came that he might become the son of man, and might grant to us, who were sons of man, to become sons of God”¹⁶. “The only Son of God by nature was made, for us, by mercy the son of man, that we, sons of man by nature, might by him become sons of God by grace... For as through one man sinning we came into so grave an evil, so through one man, and him God, justifying, we shall come to that good so sublime”¹⁷. “It is clear, then, that he called men gods, deified by his grace, not born of his substance. For he justifies who is just through himself, not through another; and he deifies who is God through himself, not by participation in another. But he who justifies, he it is who deifies, because by justifying he makes sons of God. For he gave them power to become sons of God. If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods; but this is the work of grace adopting, not of nature begetting”¹⁸

ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: “We ascend, then, to a supernatural dignity through Christ; but we shall not be sons of God as he is, without distinction, but by the grace by which we imitate him; for he is the genuine Son existing from the Father, but we are adopted sons by his benignity, receiving this as a grace: I said: you are gods and all sons of the Most High. For the created and servile creature is called to supernatural things by the mere nod and will of the Father; but the Son, God and Lord, has the ground of his being God and Son not by a decree of God and the Father, nor only because he willed it, but shining forth from the very substance of the Father, he receives by nature the good proper to his substance”¹⁹

Consortium of the divine nature. ST ATHANASIUS: “We are all said similarly to be partakers through the Spirit of God... If, then, by the communication of the Spirit we are made partakers of the divine nature, no one surely but a madman would say that the Spirit is not of God but of a created nature”²⁰. ST AMBROSE: “Who would dare to say that the Holy Spirit is separated from God the Father and from Christ, when through him we merit to be according to the image and likeness of God, and through him it comes about, as the Apostle Peter said, that we are partakers of the divine nature”²¹. ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: “If (the Spirit) is neither God by nature, nor his own Spirit from God and therefore substantially existing in him, but is different from him and not remote from the nature of created things, how are we, who are born through him, said to be born of God? For either we shall confess that the evangelist plainly lied, or, if he is truthful and so it is and not otherwise, the Spirit will be God and from God according to nature; by participation in whom, being endowed through faith in Christ, we are both made partakers of the divine nature, and are said to be born of God, and are therefore called gods, not only raised by grace to supernal glory, but now having God dwelling and abiding in us, according to that word of the prophet: I will dwell in them and walk among them”²². ST LEO THE GREAT: “Acknowledge, O Christian, your dignity: and, made a partaker of the divine nature, do not return by a degenerate manner of life to your former vileness”²³.

There can be added from the liturgy: in the preface of the Holy Spirit: “he poured forth the promised Holy Spirit into the sons of adoption”. In the Mass, when water is mixed with the wine: “grant us, through the mystery of this water and wine, to be partakers of his divinity, who deigned to become a partaker of our humanity”.

THE THEOLOGIANS

That the theologians agree in the matter, which is contained so clearly in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, is clear. But in the further explanation of the consortium of the divine nature and of adoptive filiation not all think exactly the same; but these things, as has already been said above, must be set out later (in the third section). From what has been brought forward from Sacred Scripture and from the holy Fathers, it already appears that the communication of the divine nature cannot be reduced to a mere metaphor, or to a moral participation which would consist only in this, that the justified man ought to render himself conformed by good acts to God, who by his nature works only what is good and holy; but without doubt there must be asserted a physical participation of the divine nature, which consists at least in part in a certain special assimilation to God, or likeness with God. For this is an idea so frequent among the holy Fathers in this matter, and recurring again and again among the theologians, that it cannot be passed over in oblivion in explaining the participation of the divine nature. But what this likeness is, and whether the whole participation of the divine nature is contained in it alone, must be explained later.

On the gifts conferred in justification

Justification, according to what has been said, is not something merely external to the justified man, but truly internal: the justified man is inwardly just. The question now is how in the concrete this internal renewal of the sinner is obtained, and what and of what kind are the gifts that are conferred in the justification of the sinner. In this thesis we affirm that some created gift is conferred. “Created” is said here only in opposition to “uncreated”; therefore by this word we say nothing in the thesis itself about the mode by which that being arises, whether by creation properly so called or by eduction; but only: not uncreated. But we in no way deny that the uncreated gift is given in justification; indeed we shall establish this explicitly later; in this thesis, then, it is only positively affirmed that a created gift is given.

The opposite view is attributed to Peter Lombard, who held charity not to be a created infused virtue but the Holy Spirit himself. If moreover he taught that charity and “sanctifying grace” are identical, or if what other theologians attribute to that created being of which the thesis speaks he attributes to charity, that is, to the Holy Spirit, then we have an adversary of our assertion¹.

We say that this created being is physically permanent, that is, it is not an actual gift (e.g. an act of charity) which perseveres morally (in the same way as, after an act of sin, a man remains a “sinner”); but this being itself remains in the physical order, whether the operation of the justified man is present or not. This being is an accident, and indeed of the genus of quality; so all theologians now hold. They affirm, therefore, that in justification there is infused by God into the soul of the sinner a physical accident, a quality, which, since it makes the sinful man holy, is called sanctifying grace, and since it is conceived to be after the manner of a habit, is also called habitual grace.

Morinus, investigating historically the various opinions on the effect of sacramental absolution, says of that opinion “which attributes (to absolution) the infusion of habitual grace, that it is the most recent of all: for scarcely before the year 1200 did the Schools begin to dispute about the habits of grace. Therefore none of the most ancient Scholastics, whether when they dispute about the effect of contrition or about the power of the sacraments, makes express mention of infused habits”². “The Scholastics by disputing attained only this, that the grace by which the sinner is justified is a habit infused by God into the soul. Many doctors cried out against these habits, and long the battle was fought with equal fortune; but at length, around the year 1240, all that dispute cooled down, and all the Doctors agreed in the positing of habits. Meanwhile many great men, some of whom we shall report in chapter 7, have contended down to this very day that, although in fact the justification of the ungodly comes about through an infused habit, it can nevertheless come about without it through acts elicited by the will with the help of the Holy Spirit without a new habit”³. Then in ch. 7 he sets before the reader's eyes “the opinion of the most celebrated Scholastics in this matter, to which he may safely assent”. The authors he brings forward are: Dominic Soto, Melchior Cano, Bartholomew Medina, Ruard Tapper, John Vincent, Thomas Stapleton, Albert Pighius, Louis Molina, Gabriel Vázquez, who at least affirm that the matter has not been defined by the Church.

It is true that Sacred Scripture does not speak explicitly of infused qualities or habits, nor do the holy Fathers employ those terms when they speak of justification. But the Scholastics applied philosophical concepts to the explanation of this matter too, which in the time of the Fathers had already been done in other doctrines (cf. the treatise on the Trinity, on the Word Incarnate). Thus, however, the doctrine itself is not changed, but the same doctrine is presented in another way. In fact, within a short time the Scholastics agreed on this, that in the justification of adults grace and the virtues are infused as to habit. Yet they still disputed whether the same must be said also of the justification of infants. But after the Council of Vienne chose the affirmative opinion as more probable, this dispute too seems to have ceased⁴

How far anything has been defined by the Council of Trent in this matter is disputed. From the history of the council itself it would seem that one must say that the council understood a physically permanent created being⁵; hence the thesis would have to be called defined faith. Yet several theologians either deny the definition or doubt it; but at least the thesis must be called theologically certain. Thus, however, it is not affirmed that it is established with the same certainty that that created gift, physically permanent, is precisely a “quality” or a “habit”.

THE DOCUMENTS OF THE CHURCH

INNOCENT III, in the letter “Maiores”, reports, without deciding, two opinions about the effect of the baptism of infants: one which says that guilt indeed is remitted but grace is not conferred, the other which affirms both⁶. It is supposed that in adults both guilt is remitted and grace infused, since this was denied to little ones by some precisely for this reason, that they did not consent to this infusion.

CONC. VIENNENSE: “But because, as regards the effect of baptism in little ones, certain doctors of theology are found to have held contrary opinions... We, however, attending to the general efficacy of the death of Christ, which is applied through baptism equally to all the baptized, have judged the second opinion, which says that both to little ones and to adults there is conferred in baptism informing grace and the virtues, to be chosen as more probable, and more consonant and agreeable to the sayings of the Saints and to the theology of the modern doctors, with the sacred Council approving”⁷. Here too it is openly supposed that grace is infused into adults, since the reason is introduced: the efficacy of the death of Christ is applied through baptism equally to all the baptized (adults and infants).

CONC. TRID. 1) A created being: Sess. 6 cap. 7: “we are truly named and are just, receiving justice in ourselves, each one his own, according to the measure which the Holy Spirit divides to each as he wills, and according to each one's own disposition and cooperation”⁸. Can. 11: “If anyone says that men are justified... to the exclusion of grace and charity, which is poured forth into their hearts by the Holy Spirit and inheres in them... let him be anathema”⁹. Therefore something distinct from the Holy Spirit himself. 2) A physically permanent being: this is had from the history of the council and from the use of the term “to inhere”, as it was understood in the council (cap. 7 and can. 11)¹⁰.

Pius V condemned prop. 42 of Baius: “The justice... does not (consist) in any grace of the soul infused...”¹¹.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

1. A physically permanent being. From what has so far been brought forward from Sacred Scripture it is clear that men in justification are regenerated, that a new life, a new nature is communicated to them, whence they are sons of God, and that they are a new creature; but all these things cannot signify a merely new moral condition, nor only a transient physical act, but a physical principle permanently in the just man himself.

2. A created being. This new nature is not the Holy Spirit himself. For St Paul calls it, as an effect of the Holy Spirit, a spirit (πνεῦμα), and distinguishes it from the Holy Spirit himself, Rom 8, 16¹². To this can also be referred Eph 1, 13: “in whom you also, believing, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise”; Eph 4, 30: “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God: in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption”.

THE FATHERS

ST IRENAEUS: “And again, men who are unfruitful in justice and, as it were, wrapped round with thorns, if they receive diligence and, as it were, by an insertion receive the word of God, come back to the pristine nature of man, that which was made according to the image and likeness of God. But just as the wild olive, when grafted, does not indeed lose the substance of the wood, but changes the quality of its fruit and receives another name, being now called no longer a wild olive but a fruitful olive: so too man, grafted through faith and taking up the Spirit of God, does not indeed lose the substance of the flesh, but changes the quality of the fruit of his works and receives another name, signifying that transmutation which is for the better; he is now called no longer flesh and blood, but a spiritual man”¹³. ORIGEN: “But also, since many of the saints partake of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit cannot possibly be understood as a body, which each of the saints would receive divided into bodily parts; but he is truly a sanctifying power, of which all are said to have a part who have merited to be sanctified by his grace”¹⁴. ST CYPRIAN: “Buy yourself a white garment, that you, who according to Adam were naked and before were foul and unsightly, may be clothed with the white raiment of Christ”¹⁵. ST AMBROSE: “We are therefore sealed by God with the Spirit. For as we die in Christ that we may be reborn, so also we are signed with the Spirit that we may be able to hold his splendour and image and grace; which is surely a spiritual seal. For although we are signed in the body in appearance, yet in truth we are signed in the heart, that the Holy Spirit may express in us the likeness of the heavenly image”¹⁶. “Whether then justification seems to you to be conferred according to the body or according to the soul, I ask you to answer. But you cannot doubt, since justice, from which justification is derived, is surely of the mind, not of the body. You have been painted, then, O man, painted by the Lord your God. You have a good artist and painter. Do not destroy the good picture, shining not with pigment but with truth, expressed not in wax but in grace”¹⁷. ST AUGUSTINE: “The justice of God has been manifested; he did not say: the justice of man, or the justice of one's own will; but: the justice of God, not that by which God is just, but that with which he clothes man when he justifies the ungodly”¹⁸. “Nor let it disturb us that he said that they naturally do the things of the law, not by the Spirit of God, not by faith, not by grace. For this is what the Spirit of grace does, that he restores in us the image of God, in which we were made by nature”¹⁹. ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA: “Sin therefore has been condemned, put to death first in Christ, to be put to death also in us, when we receive him in our own souls through faith and the communication of the Spirit, who perfects us into the form of Christ, namely through the quality of sanctification. For the Spirit of our Saviour Christ is, as it were, his form, imprinting in us in some way through himself the divine figure”²⁰. “If, sealed by the Holy Spirit, we are reformed unto God, how shall that be created by which the image of the divine substance is imprinted on us and the marks of the uncreated nature inhere in us? For the Spirit does not, after the manner of a painter, paint the divine substance in us, as though he himself were alien to it; nor does he lead us to the likeness of God in this way; but he himself, who is God and proceeds from God, is invisibly imprinted in the hearts of those who receive him, as a seal on wax, repainting nature to the beauty of the exemplar through his own communication and likeness, and restoring to man the image of God”²¹. “Christ is formed in us, the Holy Spirit bringing into us a certain divine form through sanctification and justice. For thus, thus does the character of the substance of God and of the Father shine in our souls, the Holy Spirit, as I said, reforming us through sanctification into himself”²²

THE THEOLOGIANS

As has already been said, the theologians are entirely agreed on the fact; they dispute about the qualification of the thesis, or even about those things which could absolutely come about. St Thomas sets out the matter in 1, 2 q. 110 a. 1 (Whether grace puts something in the soul), and a. 2 (Whether grace is a quality), and answers both affirmatively.

If it is asked whether this created being, physically permanent, sanctifying grace, is really distinct from the soul, one must answer affirmatively; and so almost all theologians, with very few exceptions²³. Although perhaps it is not necessary to affirm that every real accidental change of a substance requires an accident really distinct from the substance²⁴, yet this cannot be denied, if the real change is such as to bring with it a new and greater perfection. In the present case, however, the matter is not as though the same perfection previously existing had only another mode of being, but a truly new and greater perfection supervenes, which the positive arguments prove. Therefore sanctifying grace must altogether be called really distinct from the soul. The opposite opinion is perhaps to be explained from the fact that it conceives an accident after the manner of a most subtle substance; but St Thomas rightly says: “As Boethius says, the being of an accident is to be in something; whence every accident is not said to be a being as though it had being itself, but because by it something is; whence also it is said to be rather of a being than a being, as is said in 7 Metaph.”. And in what follows he touches the question how grace arises: “and because it belongs to that whose being it is to come to be or to be corrupted, therefore, properly speaking, no accident either comes to be or is corrupted; but it is said to come to be or to be corrupted according as the subject begins or ceases to be in act according to that accident: and according to this grace too is said to be created, from the fact that men are created according to it, that is, are constituted in a new being out of nothing, that is, not from merits, according to that word to the Ephesians 2: Created in Christ Jesus in good works”²⁵. And elsewhere: “Grace, since it is not a subsistent form, neither to be nor to come to be belongs to it properly of itself: whence it is not properly created in that mode by which substances subsisting of themselves are created. Yet the infusion of grace approaches to the nature of creation insofar as grace has no cause in the subject, neither efficient, nor such a material in which it is in potency in such a way that it could be led into act by a natural agent, as is the case with other natural forms”²⁶.

For the objections against the thesis see Beraza nr. 730 ss.; and 743 s., which however are easily solved by attending to this, 1) that we do not deny that the Holy Spirit is also given; 2) that the question is not what is absolutely possible, or what God perhaps could have done, but what in fact is the case in the present order.