Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

When God once questioned and called upon most holy Job to declare in which way the light dwells, and what is the place of darkness, cap. 38., that wisest and most patient of men was so broken by the discussion of so arduous a question that he found nothing to reply: What can I answer? he says, cap. 39, I will put my hand upon my mouth. But the title of the present Question redoubles for us a far greater difficulty of answering. For if we deem hard the things that are upon earth, says the Sage, 9. capite, and we find with labor the things that are in view: the things that are in Heaven, who will investigate? Who will know your mind, unless you give wisdom, and send your Holy Spirit from on high? Who, therefore, will be found of such perspicacity as to open in which way that divine light of Predestination dwells, and what is the place of the darkness of Reprobation, or for what causes God from eternity destines some to be borne up into Heaven, that there they may shine like stars for all eternity; others, indeed, to be thrust down into a land of misery and darkness, where everlasting horror dwells? It does not escape me that various heretics, and not only they but also Catholics, have labored long and much in detecting these causes: yet always with frustrated and fruitless labor, as we shall prove below more clearly than the noonday light. But, lest some foul and gross hallucination occur at the very threshold, I have thought it should be forewarned that the dispute is not here raised about the physical causes of divine Predestination, inasmuch as there are none, or only metaphorical ones: for the divine act of the will itself, by which God destines men to beatitude, acknowledges no efficient cause: for an effect is really distinguished from its cause; this act, however, is really indistinct from the divine will; much less a material and formal cause, since these smack of corporeity and composition, altogether repugnant to divine purity and simplicity: perhaps it does not refuse a final cause; but no other than God himself, who works all things for his own sake. Therefore the present controversy is set to be settled concerning the moral, or meritorious, or motive cause alone, and that after the manner of a condition on account of which, or without which, the divine will is not drawn to form the decree of Predestination. To satisfy which as far as our powers allow, we propose three things especially to be discussed in this Article. First, whether the primary effect of divine Predestination in us, namely the grace that calls and excites, is so gratuitous that no one can merit it by any benefit of nature. Second, whether our election and predestination to glory is wholly gratuitous, or arises from foreseen merits. Third and finally, whether the merit of another can be the motive cause of our Predestination.

But that, with happier success, we may exhibit the Catholic truth, freed from the wiles and trifles of the heretics, in the aforementioned questions, the camps of the heretics must first be surveyed, and their errors concerning the present matter must be detected and brought into the open, so that they may the more easily fall and vanish by the sword of faith and the dart of truth.

I judge that no Theologian is unaware that Pelagius together with his followers most gravely departed from the truth of the present Question, inasmuch as he said that the crown of divine Predestination, namely eternal glory, is the offspring and fruit of free choice alone: whence as many heretics as struck against this stone were either his predecessors or his followers. That we may prove this by the facts, we set down the following little questions, in which there will appear 1. who were the standard-bearers of the Pelagian error, 2. who were its disseminators, 3. who were its followers.

ON THE FORERUNNERS AND STANDARD-BEARERS OF PELAGIANISM. — The primary standard-bearer of the Pelagian Heresy was the very rebel Angel Lucifer, who desired divine beatitude and presumed to obtain it by the proper powers of his own nature, as he himself indicates in these words of Isai. 14. I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God... I will be like the Most High, desiring of course that, as God is blessed through his own nature, so he himself would be blessed through his own nature: which indeed St. Jerome elegantly explains, Epist. to Ctesiphon: You did not do this boldly, he says, (as you falsely think), but lovingly and eagerly, that you might send me a note of an old question, by which, before your letters, it deceived very many in the East, so that through feigned humility they might learn pride and say with the Devil, I will ascend into Heaven, etc.* Hence, just as the Devil was the parent of this error, he was also its propagator and disseminator; for he spread it among those proud men who, Deut. 32., presuming that they had attained by their own genius, powers and labor the things which they possessed, proclaimed with haughty mouth: Our hand is exalted, and not the Lord, has done all these things. Such also were those of whom David says Ps. 11. Our lips are our own; who is our Lord? Such, finally, were the ancient Gentile Philosophers, who, indulging free choice too much, taught that man suffices to himself for attaining happiness: whence St. Jerome affirms that the Pelagian heresy flowed from the source of the ancient Philosophers and especially of Pythagoras and of Zeno, the chief of the Stoics; for he adds in the passage cited: What other greater temerity can there be, than to claim for himself, I will not say the likeness, but the equality of God; and in a brief sentence to embrace the poisons of all heretics, which flowed from the source of the Philosophers and especially of Pythagoras and of Zeno, the chief of the Stoics. Later, however, about the fiftieth year before the birth of Christ, the Sadducees taught that it is in our power to be the authors to ourselves of happiness as much as of misfortune, as Josephus reports lib. 13. Antiquitatum Iudaicarum cap. 9.

But after the birth of Christ, Ecclesiastical History brings forth chiefly four forerunners and standard-bearers of the Pelagian error, of whom the first were certain Christians received from Gentilism and Judaism to the faith of Christ in the very arms of the Church: Jews indeed, who, that they might arrogate to themselves the first place above the other faithful converted from Gentilism, boasted that they had merited their election both by the natural propagation from the Patriarch Abraham, the Father of the faithful, and by the observance of the Mosaic law, which they attributed certainly not to the help of grace, but to the powers of free choice, as may be gathered from the Apostle in the Epistle to the Faithful residing at Rome; in which he labors especially to repress the haughtiness of the Faithful received both from the Jews and from the Gentiles: to the former indeed showing that their lot is to be attributed neither to race nor to the law, but to grace alone and to divine mercy; to the latter opening that, if they have been received into the turn and place of certain reprobate Jews, they nevertheless have no occasion of glory or boasting from that, inasmuch as this substitution and replacement is to be assigned not to their merits, but to grace alone. — He urges the first especially in cap. 3., where, when he had told the Jews that because of the promises made to them and the law prescribed by God they should not be proud, since all were liable to sin, from which they could be cleansed not through the law, but through grace: For by the works of the law, he says vers. 20. no flesh shall be justified before him; or as he adds vers. 21. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Addressing the Jew in verse 27. he concludes: Where then is your glorying? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No: but by the law of faith. He urges the same more sharply in cap. 4., opening how Abraham was justified not through the law, nor through circumcision, but through the justice of faith; nor is he deemed only the Parent of the Jews, but also of all who follow the faith: That according to grace, he says vers. 16., the promise might be firm to all the seed; not to him only who is of the law, but also to him who is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, etc. When, however, in the following chapters he had opened how the Jews, on account of their constant and perpetual sins, had merited their reprobation rather than their election; he concludes cap. 11.: So then at this time also there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. But if by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace. — He likewise proves the second point in the same place, namely that the Gentiles, substituted and elected into the lot of the reprobate Jews, ought not to glory: For if, he says vers. 15. the loss of them is the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? and vers. 17.: And if some of the branches are broken, and you, whereas you were a wild olive tree, are engrafted in them, and are made partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive tree, glory not against the branches, etc. By which it plainly appears that certain faithful, received both from Judaism and from Gentilism, labored under this erroneous opinion, so as to think that they had been selected by God in view of natural and moral goods, flowing not from grace but from free choice, in which they prepared an open way for the Pelagians.

— The Manichaeans hold the second place among the various errors concerning the cause of Predestination: for Manes, from whom the Manichaeans,

Two principles, says St. Augustine lib. de Haeresibus cap. 46., between themselves diverse and adverse, and likewise eternal and coeternal, that is, that they always were, he set up: and, following other ancient Heretics, he thought two natures and substances, namely of good and of evil, asserting according to his dogmas their fight and commixture with each other, the purgation of the good from the evil, and the eternal damnation, together with the evil, of the good which could not be purged, he fabulates many things.

But he especially thought that some souls are so defiled by the admixture of evil that they could not be purged from it by any power, and therefore that they were to be damned for eternity: but others, which were not infected with so tenacious a stain, but could easily be purged and freed from every concretion of evil through the very power of God and the substance of the Deity, which they took in through foods: For by these foods, he maintains, the substance of God is commingled, just as with the whole world, which they think is purged in their Elect by that kind of life by which the elect Manichaeans live... on which occasion, or rather by a certain necessity of execrable superstition, their Elect are compelled to take, as it were, an Eucharist sprinkled with human seed, so that even from that, as also from the other foods they receive, that divine substance may be purged... Hence they do not eat meats, as if from the dead or the slain the divine substance had fled, and so much and such a thing had remained thence, that it is no longer worthy to be purged in the belly of the Elect. Nor do they even take eggs, as if they too breathed when broken, nor is it fitting to feed on any dead bodies, and this alone lives from the flesh, what is received in the flour, lest it die; but neither do they use the nourishment of milk, although it is milked or sucked from the body of a living animal; not because they think that nothing of the divine substance is mingled there, but because the error itself is not consistent with itself: for neither do they drink wine, saying that it is the gall of the Princes of darkness, while they eat grapes; nor do they sip any must, even the freshest. They think that the souls of their hearers return into the Elect, or by a happier shortcut into the foods of their Elect, so that, being already purged from there, they may not return into any bodies. But they think the other souls return both into cattle and into all things which are fixed by roots and nourished in the earth: they also think that herbs and trees live, so that they believe the life which is in them both feels and grieves when they are hurt: nor can anyone pluck or gather anything from them without their torment, for which reason they hold it a crime even to clear a field of thorns. Whence, mad, they accuse agriculture (which is the most innocent of all arts) as guilty of many homicides: and they think that these things are forgiven their Hearers for this reason, because they furnish thence foods to their Elect, so that that divine substance, purged in their belly, may obtain pardon for those by whose offering it is given to be purged, etc. I have written these things a little at greater length, that it might appear into what trifles the genius of raving Heretics runs off, when once it has departed from Catholic truth. — The Priscillianists usurp the third place among these deviants. Whom Priscillian instituted in Spain; they follow especially the mixed dogmas of the Gnostics and Manichaeans, says St. Augustine ibidem cap. 70., although also from other Heresies the filth flowed together into them, as into a certain bilge, with horrible confusion.

But to conceal their contaminations and turpitudes, they have these words in their dogmas: Swear, forswear, be unwilling to betray the secret. These say that souls, of the same nature and substance as God, descend step by step through the seven Heavens and through certain principalities to exercise a certain spontaneous struggle of the inner man, and fall upon the malign Prince, by whom they will that the world was made, and to be sown by this prince through diverse bodies of flesh. They also maintain that men are bound to the fatal stars. So that, just as according to the various constellations of our birth some exist more vigorous and healthy, others infirm and languishing; so according to the same various constellations, they say that some are born destined and fit for glory; others, however, to be handed over to eternal punishments.

— Finally, among the standard-bearers of the Pelagian error, Origen holds the fourth place: For, says St. Augustine lib. 11. De Civit. cap. 23.

Some say that souls were indeed made by God; but that, withdrawing from the Creator, they sinned and, by diverse progresses according to the diversity of sins, merited from the Heavens down to the earths diverse bodies as it were chains. And that this is the world, and that this was the cause of making the world, not that good things might be created, but that evil things might be restrained.

Hence Origen is rightly blamed: for in these books which he called Περὶ ἀρχῶν, that is, on the principles, he thought this, wrote this, etc. Epiphanius attributes this same error to Origen in the Panarion, and Nazianzenus Orat. 31., and Theophilus of Alexandria, Epist. 1. Paschali against the Origenists. St. Jerome confirms all these things, Epist. to Ctesiphon, not far from the beginning, where, with his name suppressed, he thus carps at Pelagius:

Do you wish to know still another Prince of your error? Your doctrine is a little branch of Origen: for in that Psalm 15. where it is written (that we may be silent about the rest) moreover even unto night my reins have chastised me: he asserts that a holy man, of whose number, namely, you also are, when he has come to the summit of the virtues, does not even in the night suffer those things which are of men, nor is tickled by any thought of vices. Nor should you blush at the company of such men, refusing their names, with whose blasphemies you are joined, etc.

And certainly this error is read in Origen in the very book Περὶ ἀρχῶν, in several places; especially lib. 3. cap. 1., where he says near the end: Since therefore the nature of all rational creatures is one, from it God, according to the preceding causes of merits, as a potter from one mass created and formed, some indeed unto honor, others however unto contumely: and cap. 10. he says: That the providence of God governs the immortal Souls according to the merits and causes of each one: and explaining where those merits of souls began, he adds: As long as the human dispensation is not concluded within the life of this age. And below: From the preceding causes each vessel is prepared, either unto honor or unto contumely: and the same preceding causes he below calls more ancient, according to which these are prepared for glory.

Nor does it matter that in lib. 2. Periarchon c. 2. he openly teaches that a spirit was not created, nay, could not even be created without a body; which indeed, although it is erroneous, nevertheless indicates that he did not assert that souls were created long before bodies, nor therefore that they could merit or demerit before the animation of bodies: for, as Suarez rightly gathers lib. 1. De Praedestinatione cap. 1. n. 6., this was the opinion of Origen, that souls were first created in certain little bodies, and thence migrated into these human bodies, as into prisons, so that there they would either do penance for the offense admitted, or, prolonging their sins, be condemned for their demerits to eternal punishments.

But that the writings of Origen truly furnished the greatest patronage to the Pelagians is gathered clearly enough from the trick of Rufinus, whom St. Jerome in several places calls the forerunner of Pelagius; because Rufinus, returning from the East to Rome with Melania, that he might pave an easier way for Pelagianism, carried with him the book Periarchon of Origen, which he had made Latin, having cut off from it various errors, especially those which attacked the mystery of the Trinity, so that he who read a Catholic in the Trinity would not beware of a Heretic in the other things, says St. Jerome Apologia 1. against Rufinus. But lest it be an impediment to him that the name of Origen was ill heard among some, the same Rufinus published the Apologiam pro Origene written by Eusebius of Caesarea, and rendered into Latin by himself, under the name of the Martyr Pamphylius.

Rufinus himself devised several other tricks, to establish the same thing:

But that temerity of his, says St. Jerome, Epist. to Ctesiphon, or rather madness, who could explain in worthy speech, that he prefixed to the book of Sixtus the Pythagorean, a man without Christ and a Pagan, the changed name of Sixtus the martyr and Bishop of the Roman Church? In which, according to the dogma of the Pythagoreans, who make man equal to God and say that he is of his substance, many things are said concerning perfection; so that those who do not know the volume of the Philosopher may drink, under the name of the Martyr, from the golden cup of Babylon.

Finally, in the very volume no mention is made of the Prophets, none of the Patriarchs, none of the Apostles, none of Christ, so that he may contend for a Bishop and Martyr without the faith of Christ. Whence you too usurp very many testimonies against the Church; he had done this also in the name of the holy Martyr Pamphylius, that he might prefix to the book of the defense of Origen, of Eusebius of Caesarea (that he was an Arian there is no one who does not know) the name of the Martyr Pamphylius, so that, namely, he might pour those excellent four volumes of the Periarchon of Origen into Latin ears. And what is more to be wondered at, not even Rufinus himself blushed to boast at Rome that both St. Jerome and also Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, assented to the same errors of Origen, as St. Jerome himself testifies to Pammachius, Epist. 78., where he says: He boasted me and Pope Theophilus of error, and with the barking of the most impudent dogs, to lead astray the simple, he lied about our assent. Thence it happened, as Baronius reports for the year of Christ 397., that the Roman Church then fluctuated with immense danger, when the book Periarchon (that Treasury of Heresies) was carried about in the hands of the Clerics, was praised and copied by the imprudent, and was multiplied everywhere by a viperous warmth: so that unless the Roman Church had been consolidated on Peter by the firmest foundation of the promises of Christ, her fall could rightly have been feared.

But when the virus was already creeping far and wide on account of the simplicity of Pope Siricius, whom St. Jerome censures, because he could not be brought to believe that the poison of heresy was hidden in Christians so conspicuous in fame, from the probity of his soul not knowing how to think evil of others; and therefore he did not immediately, as was fitting, condemn to the fire that translation of the Periarchon of Origen, fraught with poison.

When he had shortly after ended his life, his successor Anastasius, since the heresies of Origen had already been condemned in the Alexandrian Synod, and that by many and manifest proofs, and especially by the writings of holy Jerome sent to Rome, together with the genuine translation of the Periarchon of Origen made by him, in which each one of the same errors was exposed to be inspected by all in the open light: he, I say, Pope Anastasius, by Apostolic authority, condemned the same heresies of Origen in the Year of Christ 400.

Thence letters are written by him throughout the Catholic world, that all might know what things were to be avoided concerning the errors of Origen.

Thence the Bishops, gathered in turn in their provinces, condemned the same errors: nay, that the sanction of the Emperors thereafter followed the judgment of the Bishops, holy Jerome signifies in Apologia prima, where he says, answering the complaints of Rufinus:

If anything is said against Origen and his followers, you think it is said against you: Therefore the Letters also of Theophilus and Epiphanius and of the other Bishops, which I lately translated at their very command, attack you, tear you to pieces. The writings of the Emperors also, which order the Origenists to be driven out of Alexandria and out of Egypt, were dictated at my suggestion: and that the Pontiff of the Roman city detests them with wonderful hatred was my counsel; that the whole world, after your translation, blazed with hatred of Origen, whom it previously used to read simpliciter, my pen accomplished. If I can do so much, I wonder why you do not fear me, etc.

These things having been premised concerning the forerunners of the Pelagian error, we must now proceed.

ON PELAGIUS. § I. Who he was and of what sort.

Pelagius was a Briton by nation, a Scot by native country, for he has the progeny of the Scottish race from the neighborhood of the Britons, says Hieron. in the preface of lib. 2. on Ierem. He was also a Monk by profession, once dear and venerable to Paulinus and Augustine for his feigned piety. That you loved him as a servant of God, we know: but now in what manner you love him we do not know. For we not only loved, but will also love him; yet we will love him in one way, we once loved him in another: then indeed because he seemed of right faith: now however as one who is said to think those things which are inimical and adverse to grace, says Augustine Epist. 105.

Finally he was corrupted in morals, and wholly given to pleasure and the belly, if we give credit to Isidore of Pelusium; who carps at him Epist. 314. thus:

A huge crowd of years has brought gray hairs upon you; and yet you have a rigid and inflexible mind, migrating from one Monastery to another, and scrutinizing and spying out the tables of all. Wherefore if the savor of meats and the seasoning of delicacies is your care, rather flatter those who bear magistracies, and track the kitchens of the cities; for Eremitic men do not have those resources, so that they can receive you as is pleasing to you.

But I do not think the cause of the wandering of Pelagius was only that of seeking out the cook-shops, but rather of pouring out the cup of poisoned heresy to the very inhabitants of the desert, so that the error, drunk and quaffed from men most renowned in piety, might be the more easily drunk down by others.

§ II. How and when he became known as a Heretic.

But this astute and slippery man, lest it be possible to detect what an impious man he was, since he had long feigned himself a true Catholic; at length he became known, first of all to certain Monks of Egypt, among whom he had long sojourned.

Thence this spark of error soon blazed up into a great conflagration, namely about the year, not indeed 415. as Bellarmine says in his Chronico, nor even about the year 413. as Prosper suspects in the Chronico: but more truly about the year 405., as may be gathered from the Epistle which St. Chrysostom, still an exile, wrote to Olympias, where toward the end, these things about Pelagius, the newly emerging Heresiarch:

I have been struck with great grief, he says, on account of Pelagius the Monk: think, therefore, how many and how great crowns they are worthy of, who have stood with a brave soul in the battle-line; when we see men living so piously and holily, and with such great endurance, snatched away and driven into fraud.

But it is certain that Chrysostom died in the year 407. as Socrates reports, lib. 6. cap. 19., and so before the year 413. Pelagius became known as a heresiarch.

Some nevertheless think that that Pelagius of whom Chrysostom speaks was not this heresiarch whose errors we describe: because, they say, this Epistle of Chrysostom was written in the year of Christ 401., when he was in exile, as is evident from its reading: but Pelagius still flourished in the fame of sanctity in the year 413., in which year St. Augustine wrote the books on the merits of sins, after in the previous year 412. Coelestius had merited excommunication at Carthage in the Episcopal Judgment, as he himself says lib. 2. Retractationum c. 33. so that thus, it is credible that Pelagius (after he had been detected in the East, lurking like a wolf under a sheep's skin) set out for Rome; and that there, stirred as it were by some star, he began to make known the errors drawn from the source of Origen through the discourses of Rufinus, and also of all those who favored Rufinus: and that first with his name silent and suppressed, lest namely the heresy should be accused before it had begun to take strength by going on and had been disseminated far and wide, as is gathered from St. Jerome, in the preface of lib. 4. on Ieremiam:

I was dictating the Commentaries, he says, at intervals, so that what was lacking to leisure might be supplied to industry, when suddenly the heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno, namely of impassibility and impeccancy, which was once strangled in Origen and recently in his disciples Grunnius (he means Rufinus) and Evagrius Ponticus and Jovinian, began to revive; and not only to hiss in the parts of the West, but also in those of the East, and in certain islands, especially Sicily and Rhodes, to stain very many, and to grow day by day, while they teach in secret and deny in public.

With these words, St. Jerome lays open the origin and success of Pelagianism. First, teaching how Pelagius, following Origen, asserted that man can arrive in this life at such a point of perfection as to be void of affections and free of every sin. Second, that he had in teaching this error as forerunner and teacher Rufinus, the follower of Evagrius and Jovinian: which the same Jerome again confirms at the beginning of the second book against Pelagius: Do you not blush, he says, to follow the exploded and condemned opinion of Jovinian? For it rests on these testimonies and your arguments: nay, you follow his inventions, disseminating in the East those things which were once condemned at Rome and long since in Africa.

Pelagius therefore began to disseminate his error about the year 405., by having written several Epistles and little Works sprinkled with his leaven: yet so cunningly and with so many and such great circumlocutions and subtleties of words, that he would deceive even the most sharp-sighted. For he feared to say openly in public what he secretly handed on to his Disciples, as Jerome says in the Epistle to Ctesiphon: and instructed in perverse subtleties of words, disputing under the image of the catholic faith, as it were breathing out a pestiferous virus, he sought to overturn the whole discipline of true dogma, says St. Augustine lib. De Natura et Gratia, cap. 10.

While these things were being done at Rome by Pelagius, it happened that she was taken and laid waste by Alaric, King of the Goths, about the year 410. And then, while very many of her inhabitants were fleeing this way and that, Pelagius also with Coelestius fled into Africa and put in at Hippo, St. Augustine, the Bishop of this city, being absent: and shortly after he withdrew from there to Carthage, where he was seen once and again in passing by Augustine, at that time most occupied with the care of the collation soon to be held with the Donatists, and not long after he hastened to Palestine, as that holy Doctor testifies all these things in lib. De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 22.

— But when Coelestius, the chief of his disciples, had stayed in Africa, and there, and especially at Carthage, taught more openly those things which Pelagius scattered only secretly and ambiguously among the Palestinians: and that he might press on with greater authority in propagating his errors, strove with clandestine cunning to be promoted to the grade of the Presbyterate; Paulinus, the Carthaginian Deacon, and certain other Ecclesiastical men, resisting his depraved attempts, brought him at Carthage to the Episcopal judgment; where, accused and condemned by the sentence of excommunication, he was expelled from the Carthaginian Church, so that he might carry back a sentence worthy of his perversity, says St. Augustine lib. De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 22.

But these things happened about the year 412. Coelestius, however, driven from Carthage, departed more convicted than corrected, as holy Augustine says Epist. 89. to Hilary; and thence he migrated into Sicily, and stayed at Rhodes, where he began to infect very many with his errors, so that here he stained the Westerners, while Pelagius was secretly undermining the Easterners with his perverse dogmas.

§ III. By whom the heresy of Pelagius was first assailed and, while it lay hidden, was brought out into the open.

Of all men, Saint Augustine seems to have been the first to assail the Pelagian heresy openly: for in the year 413, shortly after the condemnation of Coelestius, he wrote his first work against the Pelagians, namely the three books De peccatorum meritis et remissione to Marcellinus, as he himself affirms in lib. 2. of the Retractationum, cap. 33. And afterwards another work to the same man, De Spiritu et littera, as he says in the same place, cap. 37. For already about that same time Pelagius had published his heresy in writings, especially in that Letter which he wrote to Demetrias, in order to instruct her in the perfection of the Christian life; and in several other books, one of which was delivered to Saint Augustine by Timasius and Jacobus, noble young men, who had at first indeed been infected with the error by Pelagius, and afterwards, by the efforts of Saint Augustine, were brought back to the right faith, as he himself testifies in lib. De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 6.

— At that very same time St. Jerome was sharpening his pen against the same heretics in the East, at the request of Ctesiphon, to whom he sent a long Letter and the three books of the Dialogi adversus Pelagianos; which books some infer to have been written before the Synod of Diospolis from the fact that he makes no mention of it: indeed, he seems not yet even to have learned which heads of Pelagian doctrine had been condemned in Coelestius at Carthage; otherwise he would not have labored so much in searching out and exposing dogmas about which Pelagius had already been openly condemned in his own disciple.

Others, however, with Baronius, judge them to have been written in the year 415, after Jerome saw that Pelagius had deceived that Synod by evil arts, fraudulent answers, and abjurations. For then, in order to expose his cunning, he prudently devised to compose that dialogue, in which the Catholic, under the name of Atticus, would compel Critobulus — that is, Pelagius — by pointed interrogations to bring out whatever he had hidden, with both Pelagius' name and his own suppressed, as he himself indicates in the preface of book 4 on Ieremiam, where he says of Pelagius:

To this man, long keeping silence and devouring my grief in silence, I was compelled by the frequent expostulations of the brethren, and yet I have not so far burst forth as to set down the names of the authors, preferring that they be corrected rather than defamed: for I am an enemy not of men but of error.

And a little later:

To whom I shall speak in brief: either the things which you teach are good, or they are evil. If they are good, defend them freely: if they are evil, why do you secretly cut the throats of wretched men with error, and boast of an exposition of the right faith with which to deceive every one of the simple? If it is true, why is it hidden? If it is false, why is it written? etc.

And to Ctesiphon: This is the only heresy which publicly blushes to say what it does not fear to teach in secret.

By a goading of this kind Jerome at length achieved this, that he drew forth into the light and before the eyes of all, out of its thickets, the little serpent which had previously been gnawing at the Church in secret. For from that time Pelagius began to spread his heresy openly.

And indeed deliberately and prudently did Saint Jerome take care, says Baronius for the year 411, that the disease feeding on the vitals of the Church should appear on the skin outside, where it could be cured: but yet more deliberately, sending these writings to Ctesiphon beforehand, he thus prepared the antidote. For to show the plague is itself to cure, lest others be harmed by the same pestilence and contagion of the disease.

Whence Jerome adds:

It is the Church's victory for you to say openly what you think. For either you are going to answer the same things that we too say, and you will by no means be adversaries, but friends: or if you say things contrary to our doctrine, we shall conquer in this, that all will know what you think of the Church. To have betrayed your opinions is to have overcome.

The blasphemy is evident at first glance: what is blasphemous by its very profession has no need to be convicted.

Bringing these and other things into public view, Saint Jerome drew out the two-headed serpent lurking and hissing in the corner — the heresy, namely, of Pelagius and Coelestius gaping with open jaws at the Church — so that of this same Saint Jerome that saying of Job may deservedly be spoken: By the working of his hand the crooked serpent was drawn out of its cavern. Once it had come forth into the open, a serpent dreadful to behold in the deformity of its shape, presently each and every Apostolic man utterly destroyed it with the javelins of Apostolic Doctrine.

§ IV. What Pelagius wrote.

Various works indeed, as may be gathered both from the Ecclesiastical Writers and from Saints Augustine, Jerome, etc. For first he wrote the book De fide Trinitatis, as Gennadius of Marseilles affirms in the Catalogo Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum: Pelagius, he says, the heresiarch, before he was exposed as a heretic, wrote for the studious three books on the faith of the Trinity, which are necessary. Secondly, by the same man was written a book on the actual manner of life, marked out with the headings of chapters in the manner of Saint Cyprian the Martyr, as the same Gennadius says; that is, one in which, after the example of St. Cyprian, he gathered together from the Scriptures chapters of sentences. Thirdly, he published the 14 Expositionum libros in Epistolas S. Pauli, about which St. Augustine writes in lib. 3. of De peccatorum meritis et remissione, cap. 1., in this manner: After a very few days I read certain writings of Pelagius, which contained most brief expositions on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle: not without reason do some suspect these to be those books which are commonly wont to be appended to Jerome's Commentaries on several Epistles of Saint Paul.

No small support is given to this suspicion by the fact that this Author writes everywhere that no one is guilty of sin through Adam except insofar as he imitates his example; and that he affirms that free choice, without any grace of the Holy Spirit, can operate anything it pleases — things which certainly savor not obscurely of the Pelagian errors.

Fourthly, a Letter on Virginity to Demetrias was also written by the same Pelagius; concerning which Letter Saint Augustine has these things in Epist. 143. to Juliana:

In a certain Letter of his, he says, this same Pelagius, where he sets down his own name most openly and does not keep silent the name of the sacred Virgin, says that he wrote to her, and strives to prove by the testimony of that same work of his that he most openly confesses the grace of God, which he is said either to pass over in silence or to deny.

Now the reason for writing this Letter to Juliana, the mother of Demetrias herself, was for Augustine, namely, lest both the daughter and the mother, who hung upon the very mouth of Augustine, should be infected by the errors scattered in Pelagius' Letter.

But that Juliana herself was in truth far removed from every suspicion of heresy, with which she might have seemed to have been besprinkled from the letters of Pelagius which she had received, she herself testifies in Epist. to Augustine, in the same work, num. 149., in these words:

May your Priesthood know, she says, that I and my little house are far removed from persons of this kind, and that our whole family so follows the Catholic faith that it has never at any time deviated into any heresy, nor has it ever fallen: I do not say those sects which are scarcely expiated: but not even into those which seem to have small errors.

By which words she signifies that her house was wholly free of those heresies by which the nature and power of God are weakened, such as those of the Arians, Macedonians, and Manichaeans and others like them, in comparison with which she calls the errors of Pelagius small — errors which, however, Saint Augustine afterwards taught her to be very great; to her he also directed various treatises, especially De orando Deo and de bono viduitatis.

Pope Innocent also wrote to the same woman, who commends the holiness of that woman in this way:

That you are a singular member of the Church and the splendor of your Religion, and are most reverently venerated by us, is sufficiently manifest to all. For in the very summit of nobility you devote a far nobler devotion to the Church. And, more joyful in the knowledge of Christ, you obey his precepts and exult rather in faith than take pride in the flower of so great a lineage. It is of the highest virtue to have conquered the glory of the flesh, and it is of the great grace of Christ to have surpassed nobility by your morals, lady daughter, deservedly illustrious.

In which words Innocent, as it were, hid an arrow in his quiver with which to strike Pelagius and to call back from him the mind of Juliana, whom Pelagius himself had tried to infect by the aforesaid Letter to Demetrias, extolling her with praises and soothing her with flattery, that he might draw her over to his side.

For from that Letter of Pelagius, St. Jerome recites and derides these things in lib. 3. contra Pelagium, where, speaking of Juliana, he says:

Flattering the faith of a widow, do you not blush to say that Piety, which is nowhere found on earth, and Truth, which is a stranger everywhere, dwell above all in her? And a little later: Is this to teach or to kill? To raise from the earth, or to hurl from heaven? To attribute to a little woman that which the Angels dare not usurp? But if piety, truth, and justice are not found on earth except in one woman, where will your just men be, whom you boasted to be without sin on earth?

To refute this Letter of Pelagius, therefore, various Letters were written, both to Juliana and to Demetrias, not only by Saint Augustine, Pope Innocent, and Jerome, but also by St. Prosper, which begins in this way: Since you are of most splendid holiness, etc.

Finally, Pelagius wrote the book De Natura, about which St. Augustine writes in lib. 2. of the Retractat., cap. 21.:

Then a certain book of Pelagius came into my hands, in which he defends the nature of man against the grace of God, by which the impious is justified and by which we are Christians, with as much argumentation as he could. The book, therefore, with which I answered him, defending grace — not against nature, but through which nature is freed and governed — I entitled On Nature and Grace.

A book De libero arbitrio was likewise published by Pelagius, about which Saint Augustine treats in lib. De Gratia Christi at length, but especially in cap. 11. 18. etc.

— From all of which it is evident that Pelagius was thoroughly learned, although Orosius the Priest in the Apologia De arbitrii libertate, which he wrote against Pelagius, called him a man puffed up, but empty; just as he does not omit to reproach him for being mutilated and smooth-browed; likewise, that, nourished by baths and feasts, he carried broad shoulders, presenting a sturdy neck and a fatness in his brow.

It is also certain that, before publishing his heresy, he was celebrated among all for his feigned piety; for although Isidore of Pelusium censured his morals, as we said above, yet the judgment of others concerning Pelagius was outstanding: for St. Augustine himself attributes to him in lib. 2. of De Peccatorum meritis et remissione, cap. 16., a chaste life and praiseworthy morals; and he adds that he did not hesitate to do what the Lord commanded to him who sought the counsels of God for obtaining eternal life: for when he had answered that he had already fulfilled all the commandments, the Lord commanded that, if he wished to be perfect, he should sell all that he had and transfer his treasure to heaven.

Likewise in lib. 3., cap. 1.: Pelagius, he says, a man, as I hear, holy and a Christian of no small progress: and cap. 9.: Those who know him speak of him as a good man, and one to be praised: and in the same place: That man so eminently Christian: which is confirmed by Blessed Chrysostom, who, as we said above, laments his fall, as that of a pious man, holy, and one who suffered every grievous thing for Christ; if, however, he was that Pelagius of whom we speak: for some judge it not without reason that Saint Chrysostom spoke of another, as we noted in § 2.

§ V. How many and which were the errors of Pelagius and Coelestius.

Various indeed: for St. Augustine relates in lib. 1. of De Peccato originali that in the Synod of Carthage twelve errors were objected to Coelestius by the Fathers. First, that he had said that Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or not, would have died. Second, that his sin harmed only himself and not the human race. Third, that infants recently born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression. Fourth, that not all the human race dies through the death or transgression of Adam, and that not all the human race rises through the Resurrection of Christ. Fifth, that infants, even if they are not baptized, can have eternal life. Sixth, that baptized rich people, unless they renounce all things, if they are seen to do any good, it is not reckoned to them, nor can they have the Kingdom of God. Seventh, that the grace of God and its help are not given for individual acts, but consist in free choice, or in the law and doctrine. Eighth, that the grace of God is given according to our merits. Ninth, that men cannot be called sons of God unless they have been made in every way without all sin. Tenth, that free choice does not exist if it needs the help of God; since each one has it in his own will to do something or not to do it. Eleventh, that our victory is not from the help of God, but from free choice. Twelfth, that pardon is not given to those who ask according to the grace and mercy of God, but according to the merits and labor of those who through penance have been made worthy of mercy.

— Moreover, just as Coelestius in Africa, after he began openly to spread his errors, was brought before the Episcopal judgment at Carthage: so Pelagius in Palestine, with Eros of Arles and Lazarus of Aix, bishops, accusing him, was indicted for heresy in the Council of Diospolis: where, as St. Augustine writes in lib. De Gestis Pelagii, these heads were objected to him; First, that no one can be without sin unless he has had the knowledge of the law: Second, that all are governed by their own will, as if God governs no one, and it were written in vain: Save thy people, O Lord, and bless thy inheritance, and rule them and exalt them for ever, says St. Augustine, cap. 3. of the cited book. Third, that on the day of judgment the impious and sinners are not to be spared, but are to be burned up in eternal fires, as if those were not to be excepted who have Christ as their foundation, although they build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, says St. Augustine, cap. 3. of the same book. Fourth, that evil does not come into the thought of the just, as if what is evil does not come into the thought of the just, nor do they on that account cease to be just; provided that consent is absent, as the same Doctor says, cap. 4. of the cited book. Fifth, that the Kingdom of Heaven was promised also in the Old Testament, namely as something to be obtained by the force of the Old Law alone, without the grace which belongs to the New Testament, and which had previously been communicated in view of Christ its author: Sixth, that a man can, if he wills, be without sin and keep all the commandments of God, and that for this he does not need grace, but natural powers suffice: Seventh, that Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or did not sin, would die. Eighth, that the sin of Adam harmed only himself and not the human race. Ninth, that the Law leads to the Kingdom in the same way as the Gospel: Tenth, that before the coming of Christ there were no men without sin: Eleventh, that infants recently born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression: Twelfth, that not all the race of men dies through the death or transgression of Adam, nor does all the human race rise through the resurrection of Christ. Thirteenth, that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life. Fourteenth, that baptized rich people, unless they have renounced all things, if they are seen to do any good, it is neither reckoned to them, nor can they possess the Kingdom of God.

These eight last dogmas St. Augustine says, cap. 8. of the cited book, were condemned by the Synod and denied and anathematized by Pelagius himself, since he had interpreted all the preceding ones with ambiguous words in a Catholic sense. Fifteenth, that the Church is here without spot and wrinkle, as if he wished it to be understood, with the Donatists, as consisting in the good alone, whom he asserted to have no sin. Sixteenth, that we do more than is commanded in the Law and in the Gospel, that is, as St. Augustine explains in cap. 10., that we have by nature such a possibility of free choice not to sin, that we do even more than is commanded. Seventeenth, that the grace of God and its help are not given for individual acts, but consist in free choice, or in the law and doctrine. Eighteenth, that the grace of God is given according to our merits — he who, if he gives it to sinners, seems to be unjust; and therefore that grace itself is placed in our will, and that if we do all things by grace, when we are overcome by sin, it is not we who are overcome, but the grace of God, which willed to help us in every way and could not; and if it is the grace of God when we overcome sins, then he himself is at fault when we are overcome by sin, because he either could not or would not keep us entirely safe. To these Pelagius answered by denying that these were his dogmas, and by anathematizing whoever holds thus. Nineteenth, that men cannot be called sons of God unless they have been made in every way without sin. Twentieth, that forgetfulness and ignorance are not subject to sin, because they do not come about according to will, but according to necessity. Twenty-first, that free choice does not exist if it needs the help of God: since each one has it in his own will either to do something or not to do it. Twenty-second, that our victory is not from the help of God, but from free choice. Twenty-third, that pardon is not given to the penitent according to the grace and mercy of God, but according to the merits and labor of those who through penance have been made worthy of mercy.

— Pelagius denied that all these were his, and said that he reprobated them according to the judgment of the holy Church, adding an anathema against all who contravene and contradict the doctrines of the holy Catholic Church. When all these things had been heard, the Synod absolved him and professed him to be of Catholic communion, with John, Bishop of Jerusalem, and thirteen others, who had come together with him to the Synod, showing him favor, attending only to what Pelagius' words sounded like, and not inquiring of him more subtly and inquisitively what evil meaning he concealed and wrapped up in his ambiguous answers.

All these things, I say, when they had been proposed to Pelagius by the fourteen bishops gathered in the Synod, from the little book given against him by Eros and Lazarus, the Gallic bishops, who were indeed absent, inasmuch as on account of the illness of one of them they had been unable to reach the Synod, as St. Augustine reports in De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 35, Pelagius himself anathematized them in these words:

According to their testimony these things were not said by me, for which I ought not to give satisfaction; but nevertheless, for the satisfaction of the holy Synod I anathematize those who hold or have at any time held them. He likewise adds: I say again that these things, even according to their testimony, are not mine, for which, as I said, I owe no satisfaction; but what I have confessed to be mine, I affirm that I speak truly; what I have said not to be mine, I reject according to the judgment of the holy Church, pronouncing anathema upon everyone who contravenes the doctrines of the holy and Catholic Church.

This St. Augustine reports ibidem, cap. 34, from the acts of the Synod itself. Thus the wily man deceived the Synod, which for that reason St. Jerome calls pitiable, Epistola 79, not because it erred in doctrine; for in truth the Fathers of Diospolis condemned all those aforementioned heresies; for when those articles had been read, they said: What does Pelagius the Monk, here present, say to these chapters which have been read? For this the holy Synod and the holy Catholic Church of God reprobates, as St. Augustine reports in the same place; but because they did not notice that Pelagius had only craftily abjured his doctrine, lest he himself be condemned; whence St. Augustine, De peccatorum meritis et remissione, lib. 2, cap. 9: Pelagius himself, he says, deceived the Palestinian judgment: for that reason he seems to have been cleared there. But the Roman Church, where you know him to be very well known, he could not deceive in any way, although he attempted both.

§ VI. By what art Pelagius deceived the Fathers of the Council of Diospolis.

By a varied and manifold one indeed, as St. Augustine himself recalls at length in that very book De Gestis Pelagii, where among other things he notes that Pelagius deceived the Fathers of the Council of Diospolis chiefly by three stratagems. First, by saying that many of the articles objected to him had been said not by himself but by others, especially by Coelestius his disciple, although in truth Pelagius himself had written and taught them. Second, in those things which he was convicted of having written, he astutely added certain words, so that, by feigning Catholic doctrine, he might preserve his own heretical one: thus, when reproached by the Fathers of the Council for attributing nothing to the grace of God for keeping His commandments (says Augustine, De Haeresibus, cap. 88), he yielded to their correction only to the extent that he did not set it against free choice, but with faithless cunning substituted a middle view, saying that grace is given to men for this end, that what is commanded to be done through free choice they may be able to fulfill more easily through grace: by saying "more easily," he wished it to be believed that men could, even if with more difficulty, still fulfill the divine commands without divine grace, etc. Third, he explained his writings by a cunning interpretation, as St. Augustine expressly indicates, cap. 1 of De Gestis Pelagii, where he also discloses other causes of the deception, namely that the Greek bishops, hearing Pelagius' words through an interpreter, did not take care to discuss them:

In these things, he says, which were recited from the little book which our holy brothers and fellow bishops the Gauls, Eros and Lazarus, gave — who on account of the grave illness (as we afterwards learned with more probability) of one of them could not be present — the objections were recited to Pelagius; the first is that in a certain book of his he writes that no one can be without sin except one who has had the knowledge of the law. When this had been recited, the Synod said: did you publish this, Pelagius? And he replied: I indeed said it, but not as they understand it; I did not say that one who has had the knowledge of the law cannot sin, but that he is helped by the knowledge of the law not to sin, as it is written, "He gave them the law as a help." Hearing this, the Synod said: the things said by Pelagius are not alien to the Church. St. Augustine adds: plainly the things he answered are not alien; but that which was proved from his book sounds otherwise.

But the Greek bishops, men hearing those words through an interpreter, did not take care to discuss them: attending only to this, what the one who was questioned said he had meant, not in what words the same opinion was said to be written in his book.

§ VII. In which Councils Pelagius was condemned.

St. Prosper affirms that the Pelagian heresy was first condemned at Rome; for thus he sang in his poems about the ungrateful:

The rising plague was first cut off By the See of Peter's Rome, which, made the head of the world by pastoral honor, holds by religion whatever it does not possess by arms.

By the custom, therefore, of the ancients it came about that a newly emerging heresy should first of all be examined by the first See and likewise condemned; not indeed in Pelagius, who still lay hidden under the Catholic cloak, under which he had long lurked at Rome; but, being detected and Rome having been captured, he had gone away into Palestine; yet it was condemned in Jovinian, the standard-bearer and forerunner of Pelagius, as St. Jerome testifies contra Pelagium, lib. 2, at the beginning, where, addressing Pelagius under the feigned name of Critobulus, he says:

Are you not ashamed to follow the exploded and condemned opinion of Jovinian? For he relies on these testimonies and on your arguments; indeed you follow his teachings, desiring to teach in the East what were long ago condemned at Rome and in Africa.

That Pelagius in truth followed the dogmas of Jovinian, the same Jerome discloses in the Epistle to Ctesiphon, where, having premised that the second proposition of Jovinian which was condemned was this, That those who have been baptized cannot be tempted by the Devil, he adds: The second question of Jovinian is the discipline of your talent. Whatever was answered to him, believe it was answered to you; nor can it happen that the outcome of those be different whose opinion is one.

— Facundus of Hermiane nonetheless testifies that the Pelagian heresy was first of all condemned by Innocent. Since his words contain several things worthy of knowledge, I shall write them out here.

They will find also, he says, that Pelagius the heresiarch, from whom the Pelagians are named — who in the judgment of the Palestinian bishops thought against the grace of Christ that covers sins, and explained away his depraved opinions by cunning — was absolved through that same ignorance. Finally they will find that the blessed Zosimus too, the bishop of the Apostolic See, contrary to the judgment of his predecessor the holy Innocent (who first condemned the Pelagian heresy), praised the faith of Pelagius himself and of his accomplice Coelestius, whom, convicted in the Church of Carthage and appealing to the Apostolic See, he had examined from the very acts, as true and Catholic. Moreover, they will find him also blaming the African bishops because they were believed by them to be heretics, when as yet they themselves (the African bishops disclosing their deceits much more plainly) thought the aforesaid Pelagius and Coelestius orthodox. And yet the Church does not believe that Athanasius, or Damasus, or those bishops and Zosimus were heretics because they thought well of heretics; but rather she judges and honors them as Catholics according to the merit of their faith, since the unperceived cunning of the wicked ought not to be imputed as a crime to the simple.

Again, Prosper, writing in the book contra Collatorem about the condemnation of the Pelagian heresy, signifies that Pelagius was judged by Innocent before he was judged by the Palestinian bishops: When, he says, Innocent of blessed memory struck the heads of the nefarious error with the Apostolic sword: when the Synod of the Palestinian bishops constrained Pelagius to pronounce sentence against himself and his own, etc. Where he also reports that Coelestius, demanding a hearing (as though the matter had not been examined), was ordered to be thrust beyond the borders of all Italy.

It is not, however, to be doubted that the Diospolitan judgment preceded the decree of Innocent and the condemnation of Pelagius and Coelestius: but if anything can be objected to what was said — that the first condemnation of that heresy proceeded from the Roman See — because five years earlier the Coelestian dogmas (which were the same as the Pelagian) were condemned at Carthage by the African bishops, and Coelestius himself was excommunicated, as we recalled above with St. Augustine — this first point presents itself: that Prosper and the others who write that the Pelagian heresy was first of all condemned by Innocent speak of the proper and primary heresy of Pelagius, which consisted in this, that he affirmed that grace is given from the merit of free choice: for of this Prosper speaks expressly — of Pelagius himself, I say, and of that dogma of his by which he asserted that each one merits by his own freedom to receive the promises of the one calling. But Coelestius was not excommunicated for this heresy, but for certain other things which had been spread abroad by him, accused and condemned by Paulinus, which are gathered from Augustine: chiefly that he said that the sin of Adam did not harm infants, nor were they therefore baptized in order to be freed from sin. Then, that (as Facundus reports) when Coelestius after his condemnation had appealed to the Apostolic See, he did not yet conduct himself as a condemned man, but judgment about him was still held as it were suspended.

— Secondly, they were condemned in the Council of Carthage, celebrated in the year of the Lord 412 under Innocent I, the acts of which Council have indeed perished, and from them only a fragment survives, recited by St. Augustine against Pelagius and Coelestius, lib. 2 of De Peccato originali, cap. 2, where he says:

Coelestius indeed appeared in this error more free-spoken to such a degree that not even in the episcopal judgment at Carthage would he condemn those who say that the sin of Adam harmed him alone and not the human race; and that the infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression.

Then he reports and describes the acts of the judgment held at Carthage, in which Coelestius himself was condemned, and together with him the Pelagian heresy then springing up. But Coelestius, condemned by that judgment and seizing upon subterfuges, thought that Innocent the Roman Pontiff should be appealed to: but this only in appearance, lest he be bound by that judgment; since he knew that he would find Innocent equally opposed to him. Whence he did not at all pursue the appeal, but, Innocent being dead, he betook himself to Rome to his successor Zosimus, about to plead his cause before him, and to summon his accusers to the judgment of the Apostolic See, as though harassed by calumnies, in order to declare that he did not believe otherwise than what the Catholic Church held. Therefore, in order to deceive the Pontiff more easily, he composed with such art the little book written by him that it could not, even if Zosimus wished, be rejected by him, but he would be compelled to receive it; inasmuch as after setting forth what he thought about the faith, he appended at the end words of this sort: If perchance, as happens to men, any error of ignorance should creep in, let it be corrected by your judgment; as St. Augustine reports, lib. De Peccato originali, cap. 67. But the Pontiff Zosimus, in order to explore with the greatest exactness whether he assented to the Epistle of Innocent given against the errors of Pelagius to the whole Church — to which Coelestius professed that he himself consented, as St. Augustine testifies, lib. 2 of Contra Epistolas Pelagii, cap. 3.

Hence Zosimus, conceiving hope of restoring Coelestius to the Church and to the Catholic faith, began to deal more gently with him, and wrote to the African bishops that Coelestius' little book was Catholic, and that he himself thought with the whole Church.

In which things, however, St. Augustine demonstrates that Zosimus did not err, against Julian the Pelagian, lib. 2, cap. 3, approving the deed of Zosimus, who, desiring to win Coelestius, behaved kindly with him and admitted him to a hearing. Lest, however, he be deceived by him, with abundant caution he wrote to the African bishops that if they had anything against Coelestius they should send it to him at Rome. These Fathers, gathering at Carthage, took it ill that Zosimus had admitted to a hearing Coelestius, who had been excommunicated by them and condemned as a heretic: to whom, among other things, Zosimus answered: Although we had so much authority that no one could retract our sentence, we did nothing which we did not of our own accord report to your knowledge by our letters. And after much he concludes: Therefore let your Fraternity know that after those letters of yours which we received above we have changed nothing, but have left everything in the same state in which they were before, etc. By which he signifies that he had not absolved Coelestius, but wished to act in so great a matter with all deliberation, and not with a hasty step, namely that he might discuss the matter more exactly, lest Coelestius, the wily heresiarch, be able to deceive him: whence he expected a more evident knowledge of the sentence passed against him by those Fathers.

But those African Fathers not only gave letters to Pope Zosimus against Coelestius, but also among other things sent the little book written by Paulinus the Deacon of Carthage against Coelestius, in which were contained all the heads about which Coelestius was to be interrogated; by which it could appear more clearly whether he was altogether a heretic or a Catholic (as he professed).

But when Coelestius had refused to condemn the things which had been objected by Paulinus the Deacon, he was condemned at Rome by the Pontiff Zosimus and the sacred College of Clerics together with Pelagius, and by the same Zosimus letters were written to all the bishops of the Catholic Church about their condemnation; soon the rescript of the Emperor Honorius against the same heretics followed them, as St. Augustine reports, lib. 3 of Contra Iulianum, cap. 1, and likewise St. Prosper, contra Collatorem, cap. 10, where among other things he writes these words by way of irony:

The most holy See of the blessed Peter erred, which speaks to the whole world by the voice of Pope Zosimus thus: We nevertheless, by the instinct of God (for all good things are to be referred to their author, from whom they arise), have referred all things to the conscience of our brothers and fellow bishops: The African bishops erred, writing to the same Pope Zosimus and praising him for the salubrity of this judgment when they say: But that which you set down in your letters which you took care to be sent to all, saying, we nevertheless, etc.

That Pelagius and Coelestius were in truth condemned in that very Council of Carthage appears not only from what has been said, but is again confirmed from another following Synod of Carthage, assembled of seventy-seven bishops and celebrated four years after the first, namely in the year 416, in which Pelagius and Coelestius were again condemned, as is evident from the Epistle written by the Fathers to Innocent, in which these things are found concerning the articles of Pelagius:

These things therefore being read, they say, we perceive that Pelagius and Coelestius are the authors of a nefarious error to be altogether anathematized by all of us; whence it came about that we sought a recourse as to what, almost five years before, had been agitated here at the Church of Carthage concerning the name of Coelestius.

And a little later they add what was decreed:

Unless they anathematize these things, they say, most openly, it is fitting that they themselves be anathematized: so that if the correction of themselves cannot be obtained, at least the health of those who have been deceived by them, or can be deceived, may be procured, once the sentence which has been passed against them is made known.

Moreover, in the same year 416, sixty-one bishops gathered at Milevis in Numidia — for so many are counted in their Epistle to Pope Innocent — in order to condemn there the Pelagian heresy, which they knew had already been condemned in the Council of Carthage; for thus they address Innocent: We have sent these writings to your holiness concerning the Council of Numidia, imitating our fellow bishops of the Province of Carthage, whom we have found to have written to the Apostolic See, which you, blessed one, illuminate, about this cause.

Moreover, under the pontificate of Zosimus there were chiefly celebrated two African Councils, which St. Augustine mentions in the Epistle to Valentinus and the brethren in these words:

What was written to Pope Innocent, Bishop of the city of Rome, concerning the Council of the Province of Carthage and concerning the Council of Numidia: and somewhat more diligently by five bishops, and what he replied to those three: Likewise, what was written to Pope Zosimus concerning the African Council, and his rescript to all the bishops of the whole world, and what we briefly established in a later plenary Council of all Africa against that same error.

By which words St. Augustine, having mentioned the earlier Councils reported by us, moreover asserts that two Councils were celebrated in Africa against Pelagius; one indeed particular, the other truly universal, which, unless I am mistaken, was the Carthaginian — the third assembled in the cause of Pelagius by 214 bishops — as St. Prosper asserts against the Collator, c. 10., where he says: Did the two hundred fourteen priests therefore err, who in the Epistle which they brought forth with their constitutions addressed the blessed Zosimus, the bishop of the Apostolic See?

The seventh Council in which the heresy of the Pelagians was condemned was the Gallican, in which, with the holy bishops Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes acting, the Pelagians then raging throughout all England were proscribed by a numerous assembly of Fathers, as Bede relates, lib. 1 of Historiae Anglicae, cap. 17, where, speaking of SS. Germanus and Lupus sent by the Pontiff Coelestinus into Britain, in order to drive the heretics out from there, he says:

A few years, indeed, before their coming, the Pelagian heresy, brought in through Agricola, the son of Severianus, a Pelagian bishop, had stained the faith of the Britons with a foul plague: but the Britons, since they neither wished in any way to receive the perverse dogma by blaspheming the grace of Christ, nor sufficed to refute the cunning of the nefarious persuasion with certainty of word; they find a wholesome counsel, that they should seek from the Gallican bishops the help of spiritual warfare. For which cause, a great Synod being gathered, it was sought in common who ought to be sent there to succor the faith, and by the judgment of all there were chosen the Apostolic priests Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus, Bishop of the city of Troyes.

Many other Councils condemned the error of Pelagius, but especially the general Council of Ephesus, in which, since the Pelagians refused to condemn Nestorius, it judged that they were to be condemned together with Nestorius himself, as is evident from Canons 1 and 4. Likewise, in the Synod of Arles anathema was pronounced against him who, among the other impieties of Pelagius, contended with condemned presumption that man is born without sin and can be saved by labor alone, and against him who believed that he can be freed without the grace of God. Similarly in the Council of Lyons, in which the decrees of the Synod of Arles are approved. Moreover in the Council of Sardinia, the second of Orange, as well as that of Valence and the others, which either expressly condemned the Pelagian doctrine or approved the sayings and writings of the holy Fathers against the Pelagians.

§ VIII. What followers and patrons he had.

Two chiefly; and first of all indeed Coelestius, whom St. Augustine, lib. 2 of contra duas Epistolas Pelagii, cap. 3, calls a man of the keenest talent. Of whom likewise Gennadius in the Catalogo virorum illustrium says:

Coelestius, before he ran to Pelagius — indeed while still a youth — wrote from the monastery to his parents three epistles in the manner of little books, necessary for everyone desiring God: for the moral diction in them afterward betrayed nothing of vice there; but it held everything to the incitement of virtue.

He wrote many things with which to defend and disseminate the errors of Pelagius. Among his other writings, indeed, St. Augustine, in lib. De perfectione iustitiae against Coelestius, places definitions, or rather reasonings and questions as if formed by others, so that in that way he might introduce the heresy into the Church through mines. In lib., moreover, De peccato originali, cap. 11, Augustine also mentions the Epistle, or little book, which Coelestius himself offered to Pope Zosimus, in which he expressly asserts that original sin binds none of the infants.

He likewise wrote several letters and pamphlets with which he would extol and defend Pelagius as his master, while assailing his adversaries. Whence St. Jerome, speaking of Pelagius in Epist. to Ctesiphon, says:

One of his disciples (namely Coelestius), already indeed a Master and the leader of the whole army, and running against the Apostle as a vessel of perdition through the thorn-bushes of solecisms, and — not as his followers boast — of syllogisms, thus philosophizes and disputes: If I do nothing without God's help, and by His working it is that I shall have done each of my deeds, then it is not I who labor, but God's help in me that will be crowned: and in vain did He give to free choice a power which I cannot fulfill unless He always aids me; for the will that needs another's help is destroyed: but God gave free choice; and otherwise I shall not be free, unless I do what I will. And on this account he says: either I once for all use the power which was given to me, so that free choice may be preserved, or if I need another's help, the freedom of choice is destroyed in me. You who say these things, how do you not exceed blasphemy? What poisons of the heretics do you not surpass, etc.

He discloses further on in what manner Coelestius attacked him: I have not yet written, and you threaten me with the thunderbolts of your writings, so that, terrified by this fear, I dare not open my lips: and you do not observe that we write for this very reason, that you may be compelled to answer, etc.

Secondly he had Julian, a Campanian bishop indeed, but of which city in Campania — whether Celanensis, or Celenensis, or Eclanensis — the dispute is still under judgment; concerning him the above-praised Gennadius says: Julian, Bishop of Capua, a man keen in intellect, learned in the Scriptures, a scholar in the Greek and Latin tongue. Before, therefore, he revealed the impiety of Pelagius in himself, he was illustrious among the Doctors of the Church: but afterwards, having seemed to defend the heresy of Pelagius, he wrote against Augustine, its impugner, four books, and again eight books. There is also a book of the altercation of both defending their own parts. He adds: Having distributed all his goods to the needy at the time of famine and distress, and enticing many of the nobles, especially of the Religious, under the appearance of compassion, he joined them to his heresy. Likewise Bede writes of him in the Canticles: Julian, as he was a most skilled rhetorician, so he was, after Pelagius, the fiercest impugner of the grace of God, as his writings, in which he raged even against Augustine, the most strenuous defender of grace, show more openly; for the sake of this duel he first composed a little book on love, under the pretext, as it were, of keeping it from the foulest pleasure; in reality, however, to confirm his own heresy. He adds: He says that holy and generous love is implanted in us from the very beginning of light, with nature reconciling, and that, supported by the strength of the mind alone, it persists in vigor even to the last old age, without any loss to itself. Hence in the same place he warns the reader to read most cautiously the little works of the Bishop of Cellanensis from Campania, which he composed on the same book of the Canticles, lest through the abundance of flattering eloquence he fall into the mire of harmful doctrine.

§ IX. Who were the principal assailants and conquerors of him?

Two especially, first of all St. Jerome, who was the first of all to bring the errors of Pelagius into the open and to assail them in a wonderful manner, as St. Prosper testifies in his poem De ingratis:

Then too Jerome, the guest of renowned Bethlehem, graceful alike in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin eloquence, an example of morals and a teacher of the world, cut the enemy to pieces with most excellent books, and made it known with what a whirlwind the rising darkness sought to obscure the true light.

By these he discloses the wonderful design of St. Jerome in writing. For when St. Jerome had seen that the crafty Pelagius had deceived the Palestinian Synod and obscured Catholic truth with the darkness of his errors cast over it, he devised that prudent invention, as we have already said, of writing three dialogues against Pelagius under assumed names, calling himself indeed Atticus, but Pelagius Critobulus; lest, that is, if he had expressed the proper names, he should stir up ill will against himself by rising up against a man whom the Synod of Diospolis had absolved, and accusing him of heresy; likewise he made no mention of the Synod of Diospolis in those dialogues, lest if he had approved what had been done by it, he should seem also to approve the absolution of Pelagius: but if he had condemned it, he himself would rather be condemned, who should accuse the Synod. In these dialogues, moreover, by the most exquisite questions he forces the poison lying hidden within to be brought into the open, and demonstrates to all what sort of man he was who, condemning errors, would have wished to appear in the Synod as altogether Catholic: whence among other things he says in the preface: But to those who say that I write this work inflamed with the torches of envy, I will briefly answer that I have never spared heretics, and that I have taken every care that the enemies of the Church should also become my enemies.

St. Augustine fostered and aided him with all the zeal and labor he could; he, as Possidius says, labored ten years against the Pelagian heresy with indefatigable zeal, together with Aurelius, who presided over the Council of Carthage; of whom St. Prosper:

For to what other end could the holy Council proceed, whose leader was Aurelius; and the genius was Augustine: whom the grace of Christ, watering with a more abundant horn, gave as a light to our age, a light indeed kindled from light: For his food, and life and rest is God: and all his pleasure is the one love of Christ: one is the honor of Christ to him. And while he attributes no goods to himself, God becomes to him all things, and wisdom reigns in his holy temple.

There is no need to enumerate, nor does it belong to this place to recount all those things which that most holy man and the most unconquered assailant of all heresies wrote against Pelagius, Coelestius and Julian; for these things appear clearly enough in the 7th volume of his Works.

Several others among the holy Fathers, namely Orosius, Hilary of Arles, Fulgentius, Prosper and the rest, assailed the Pelagians in word and writing: but since their chief business was with the Semipelagians, therefore of them below.

§ X. Whether Pelagius ever tempered his error, and at length admitted some internal and necessary help of grace.

That Pelagius indeed changed and tempered his opinion, at least in words sounding externally, is evident from many things. For first he asserted that the nature of man suffices for performing whatever works of virtue, for keeping all the commandments of God, and for living without any sin, and finally for attaining true and eternal happiness: whence Pelagius in Epist. to Demetrias, a most noble Virgin, cap. 2, speaks thus:

Whenever I have to speak of the formation of morals and the conduct of a holy life, I am accustomed first to show the power and quality of human nature, and to make clear what it can accomplish; and from that point already to stir the mind of the hearer to the kinds of virtues, etc. For the best incentives of the mind are when one is taught that something can be done.

St. Augustine reproves and assails this error of Pelagius in various places; for in lib. 3. contra Iulianum c. 3 he writes this: This nature, fallen into such great and so manifest miseries, has Christ as its necessary liberator, cleanser and redeemer: praising Julian, not Coelestius.

And in lib. 3. contra duas Epistolas Pelagianas cap. 14: We ought not, he says, so to praise the Creator that we are compelled — indeed rather convicted — to say that the Savior is superfluous. Let us honor human nature with worthy praises, and refer those praises to the glory of the Creator; but because He created us, so let us be grateful, that we are not, because He heals us, ungrateful.

But when Pelagius was badly spoken of among the Catholics because he denied divine grace, in order to avert ill will and to put a false show upon the Catholics, he began to understand free choice under the name of grace; for thus St. Augustine reports of him in De verbis Apostoli cap. 7: Pelagius says, I do not dispute against the grace of God. Whence do you prove it? By this very fact, he says, I do not dispute against the grace of God, because I defend free choice. Whence St. Augustine exclaims: See the cleverness, but it is glass! As if it shines with vanity, but is broken by truth.

He devised this trick especially at the Synod of Diospolis, in which, lest he be condemned by the Fathers, he admitted the necessity of helping grace; but craftily understanding by grace free choice and the Nature in which we were created, as St. Augustine complains together with the other African Fathers in Epist. to Pope Innocent and in Epist. 105 to Sixtus, in which he speaks thus:

Since these men are enemies and hostile to this grace: Pelagius nevertheless, in the Palestinian ecclesiastical judgment — for otherwise he would not have escaped from there unpunished — anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to merits. But when it is asked of these men what grace Pelagius thought to be given without any preceding merits, when he anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to merits, they answer that without any preceding merits that grace itself is the human nature in which we were created: for neither before we existed could we merit anything in order to exist.

St. Augustine adds: Let this be cast away from

the hearts of Christians, this deceit: for the Apostle does not at all commend that grace by which we were created that we might be men, but that by which we were justified that we might be just men: for this is the grace through Jesus Christ our Lord; for Christ did not die for nothing, that men might be created, but for the ungodly He died, that they might be justified.

They thus built up this their invention, as the same St. Augustine reports in serm. 11. De verbis Apostoli, where, playing the part of the one questioning and the one answering,

Explain to us then, he says, O Doctor, what grace you mean. When I say, he says, the free choice of man, see that I speak of that which is man's. What next? He is a man; who created him? God. Who gave him free choice? God. If therefore God created man and God gave man free choice, whatever man can do by free choice, to whose grace is it owed, except to His who founded him with free choice?

And this was said by them as if acutely. See nevertheless, brethren, how, preaching that general grace by which man was created, by which we are men — and indeed we are men also with the ungodly: but we are not Christians with the ungodly.

Secondly, when Pelagius observed that the minds of the pious were offended because he placed all grace in nature, and that he could not conveniently satisfy so many texts of the Scriptures in which grace is opposed to nature and is said to emanate from Christ and to be conferred by Him, he added to free choice the grace of doctrine and of the law, as St. Augustine indicates in lib. De Gratia Christi cap. 3.

He places the grace of God, he says, and the help by which we are aided not to sin, either in nature and free choice, or in the law and doctrine: so that evidently when God helps man to turn away from evil and do good, by revealing and showing what ought to be done, He is believed to help.

Hence Prosper, in De Ingratis, cap. 2: With you grace is nothing other than the Law, and than what the admonishing Prophet speaks, and than what the doctrine of the minister imparts.

They therefore asserted that all and only the external instruction flowing from the Evangelical law and doctrine is the grace of Christ, as St. Augustine affirms in the same place, capit. 10:

To doctrine, he says, belongs even that which wisdom reveals: to doctrine belongs it whenever all that is good is urged. And if between teaching and urging, or rather exhorting, something seems to differ, yet even this is included under the generality of doctrine, which is contained in whatever speeches or writings. For the sacred Scriptures both teach and exhort; and there can be in teaching and exhorting also the operation of man.

By which they attributed a twofold mode of doctrine; one from books, through reading; the other from speech, through the operation of another man. But when they were pressed by the Catholics that this grace of law and doctrine does not suffice for the salvation of men, as St. Augustine proves by many arguments in the cited place,

They devised a third kind of grace, namely the example and imitation of Christ the Lord, saying that just as the first Adam harmed us by his evil example, so Christ, the second Adam, profited us by his good example, as St. Augustine reports in the same place, cap. 2: They are accustomed, he says, to tell us that in this Christ provided the help for not sinning, because by living piously and justly He left an example: and c. 14.: Pelagius placed the grace of Christ not in the help of His power, but in the example of imitation. St. Augustine demonstrates in the same place that this is false by many arguments; whence in lib. 2. contra posteriorem responsionem Iuliani c. 15 he concludes: This is the hidden and horrible poison of your heresy, that you have left the grace of Christ to be in His example, not in His gift; saying that men are made just through His imitation, not through the ministration of the Holy Spirit.

But when they saw that this also, their opinion, like the preceding ones, was condemned, especially in the Council of Carthage, by canon 5, in these words:

Whoever shall say that the same grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord helps us to avoid sinning for this reason only, because through it the understanding of the commandments is revealed and opened to us, so that we may know what we ought to seek, what to avoid: but that it is not granted to us through it that we may also love, and be able, to do what we have known to be done, let him be anathema.

when, I say, they observed themselves to be so constrained,

Fourthly they devised another kind of grace, namely the grace of the remission of sins, by which God would forgive and pardon sins, as the same St. Augustine reports in lib. De Gestis in Synodo Palaestina c. 33.

They say, he says, that human nature, which was created with free choice, can suffice for us not to sin and to fulfill justice, and that this is the grace of God; because we were so created that we can do this by will, and what help of the law and of His commandments He gave, and that He forgives past sins to those converted to Him — in these alone the grace of God is to be reckoned, not in the help of our individual acts.

whence in lib. 2. contra posteriorem Iuliani responsionem he thus censures him:

You, in your manner, which descends from your error, do not acknowledge grace except in the remission of sins, so that from now on, by free choice, man himself may fashion himself just: but this is not what the Church says, which cries out as a whole what it learned from the good Master, lead us not into temptation, etc.

They understood this remission of sins to be only an external condonation of God: whence at that time they admitted no internal grace, which, since it had likewise been condemned in the Council of Carthage by canon 3, in these words:

Likewise it pleased that whoever shall say that the grace of God, in which we are justified through Jesus Christ our Lord, avails only for the remission of sins which have already been committed: and not also as a help that they may not be committed, let him be anathema.

Having at length considered and heard these things,

Fifth, Pelagius in some fashion began to confess the internal help of the divine power of the Holy Spirit operating in man; but he placed it only in the mere illumination of the intellect: he did not want grace to be given to the will, whether exciting it so that it might awaken, or actual so that it might help, or habitual so that it might sanctify, as St. Augustine reports in lib. 1. De Gratia Christi cap. 7. from Pelagius saying:

God helps us through His doctrine and revelation, while He opens the eyes of our heart, while He shows us future things lest we be occupied with present ones; while He lays bare the snares of the Devil, while He illuminates us with the manifold and ineffable gift of heavenly grace.

By these words Pelagius not only confessed the external preaching or reading of the word to be necessary, but freely required an interior assistance of the Holy Spirit through the illumination and persuasion of the word; so that a man, indeed, or an Angel, operating externally, teaches a man and illuminates his will: but the Holy Spirit has this special property, that He instructs the soul interiorly.

Nevertheless Pelagius did not on that account wish the will to be helped by that internal aid, and to receive strength by which it would will and be able to pursue the good, as St. August. affirms, haeresi 78.

They say, he says, that He helps only to this end through His law and doctrine, that we may learn what we ought to do and what we ought to hope; but that we are helped to this end through the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we may do what we have learned to be done: and thus they confess that knowledge is given to us from God, by which ignorance is driven away; but they deny that charity is given, by which one lives piously: namely, since knowledge, which without Charity puffs up, is a gift of God, Charity itself, which builds up so that knowledge does not puff up, is not a gift of God.

Likewise in Epist. 95., which together with the bishops Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius he wrote to Innocent, that he should not also absolve Pelagius, who had been absolved in the Palestinian Synod through fraud, and that he should not be deceived by him as the Fathers of Diospolis had been, he warns: Whether he says that grace is free choice, or that grace is the remission of sins, or that grace is the precept of the law: he says none of those things by which, through the supply of the Holy Spirit, it pertains to conquering concupiscences and temptations.

Thus Pelagius indeed affirmed that the Holy Spirit illuminates our intellect, and with that illumination posited, the will could pursue the good by its own powers and the strength of free choice: which was far removed from Catholic truth, as St. Augustine discloses in lib. De Gratia Christi, which book the holy Doctor wrote after the heresy of Pelagius had been condemned, first by Innocent I., then by Zosimus, as he himself testifies in lib. 2. Retract. cap. 50. — in that book, I say, De Gratia Christi, cap. 28., where he cites these words of Pelagius from his book in defense of free choice:

Since, however, we have in ourselves free choice so strong, so firm against sinning, which the Creator implanted generally in human nature, again, on account of His inestimable kindness, we are protected by His daily help: namely, by external or internal illumination, with which posited, the will could carry out the good by the powers of free choice.

Sixth, there are not lacking theologians who acknowledge that Pelagius, when he heard his heresy condemned by Innocent and Zosimus, from that time began to recognize and confess internal grace and supernatural help, through which the will receives sufficient strength to elicit any salutary acts whatsoever. And they confirm this from the fact that Pelagius distinguishes these three things, being able, willing, acting; and affirms that the being able of the will is divinely helped: St. August. reports his words in lib. De Gratia Christi, cap. 4.

We thus distinguish these three things, says Pelagius in lib. 3. in defense of free choice, and divide them, arranged as it were into a certain order. In the first place we set being able: second, willing: third, being. We place being able in nature, willing in choice, being in affection. That first thing, that is, being able, properly pertains to God; who conferred it upon His creature: but the two remaining, willing and being, are to be referred to man, because they descend from the fountain of choice: therefore in the will and the good work is the praise of man; indeed both of man and of God, who gave the possibility of that very will and work, and always helps that very possibility with the help of His grace.

By these words, although Pelagius seems to admit grace interiorly exciting and helping the will to the good work, nevertheless in reality he did not admit it, as St. August. affirms in the same place, cap. 5. For we ought to know, he says, that he does not believe either our will or our action to be helped by divine aid, but only the possibility of willing and acting, which alone of these three (namely possibility, will, and action) he affirms we have from God: as though this were weak, which God Himself could bring about in nature: but the other two, which He willed to be ours, are so firm and strong and sufficient to themselves, that they need none of His help, and therefore He does not help that we may will, He does not help that we may act: but only helps that we may be able to will and act. Whence he concludes in cap. 8.: Hence it therefore appears that he confesses that grace by which God shows and reveals what we ought to do; not that by which He gives and helps that we act.

It is confirmed from cap. 25. of the same book, where he says thus:

Let Pelagius cease to deceive both himself and others by disputing against the grace of God: let him cease to say that we can do, say, and think every good; that it belongs to Him who gave this being able, who helps this being able, but that what we either do well, or speak well, or think well is ours; let him cease, I say, to say these things; for God not only gave and helps our being able, but also works in us both willing and operating.

And further on:

How does Pelagius say that our being able to speak well is God's, that our speaking well is ours; when the Lord says: It is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you? For He does not say, you are not the ones who gave yourselves the ability to speak well, but He says, who speaks in you; not signifying the progress of possibility, but expressing the effect of cooperation; how does the proud Assertor of free choice say that our being able to think well is God's, but that our thinking well is ours? To him the humble Preacher of grace responds: not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God; for He does not say being able to think, but thinking.

Seventh, finally, some judge that Pelagius, compelled to admit some supernatural grace by which the will would pursue the good, admitted it only as not indeed necessary, but only useful, by which of course the will would perform the good work more easily, as St. August. indicates in the book De Gratia Christi, cap. 22. and 23., where, when he had reported the words of Pelagius writing in the Epistle to Demetrias: Supernatural help is granted to us, that we may merit divine grace and more easily resist the wicked spirit with the help of the Holy Spirit, St. Augustine adds:

He surely signifies what he thinks: for why did he insert this word, more easily? Was not the sense complete, that we resist the wicked spirit with the help of the Holy Spirit? But who does not understand how much harm he did with this addition? Wishing of course that it be believed that the powers of nature are so great, which by extolling he casts down, that even without the help of the Holy Spirit, although less easily, the wicked spirit is nevertheless in some way resisted.

And in lib. 2. contra duas Epistolas Pelagianorum cap. 2. he says:

Pelagius says that what is good is fulfilled more easily if grace helps: by this addition, that is, by adding more easily, he surely signifies that he thinks this, that even if the help of grace be lacking, the good can nevertheless be fulfilled, although with more difficulty, through free choice.

therefore not undeservedly Alvarez, in lib. 1. De auxiliis, Disp. 1. n. 1., gathers that Caelestius indeed admitted the necessity of sufficient help; but not of efficacious help for operating: that Julian indeed recognized the necessity of helping aid, but not of prevenient and exciting aid: but that Pelagius admitted only the utility of grace, not indeed its necessity.

Paragraph XI.

The principal causes which impelled Pelagius, a man otherwise learned and celebrated under the name of piety, into this foul error seem to be, first, that he saw the great slothfulness of Christians in doing good works, which he certainly hoped could be corrected if they thought something great of their own powers, lest they should pour back all their virtue in the good into the sole grace of God. Second, that he wished to avoid the error of the Manichaeans, who affirmed that nature was wholly corrupted and useless for any good whatsoever. Third, that he was moved by the sayings of certain holy Fathers, who, when they attacked the Manichaeans, brought forth many things in favor of free choice; not distinguishing what man could do by nature, what by grace; because no one had as yet stirred up a controversy on this matter; and since Pelagius himself did not attend to this, he began so to oppose the Manichaeans that, declining into the opposite direction, he fell into the contrary heresy. Fourth, finally, certain words of St. Augustine perhaps stirred his stomach to think this, as he himself relates in lib. 2. De bono Perseverantiae, cap. 20., saying: Certainly in my books of Confessions I said to our God, and often said: give what You command and command what You will — which words, when they had been recalled in his presence by a certain brother, my fellow bishop, Pelagius could not bear, and contradicting somewhat more excitedly, almost quarreled with him who had recalled them: since indeed he could not bear that anything be taken away from the liberty of choice so that it be attributed to the grace of God.

ON THE FOLLOWERS OF PELAGIUS.

After the error of Pelagius had been conquered and especially vanquished by St. Augustine, on the occasion of those things which the same St. Augustine had written about the necessity and efficacy of divine grace and about gratuitous election, two other errors no less intense arose. For certain grave men, well deserving of the sciences, so understanding the writings of the holy Doctor himself as if he attributed the whole business of our salvation to grace alone and to gratuitous election, and likewise poured back the whole cause of the perdition of some into divine reprobation and into the subtraction of grace, and not into human freedom deviating from the right path, were persuaded and asserted that the Elect do not freely work out their own salvation, nor do the Reprobate weave their own perdition for themselves; but that each one was led and drawn by a certain fatal necessity to his own end predestined by God; wherefore they were called the predestined, or Predestinarians, as Sigebert relates in his Chronicle around the year 415.

Between this error of the Predestinarians, however, and that of the Pelagians, which were extremely opposed, some learned and Catholic men dwelling in Gaul, and especially in the city of Massilia, wove another error, as it were by a middle and safer way; having indeed nothing in common with the doctrine of the Predestinarians, but differing from Pelagius, not only because they confessed original sin, but also because they acknowledged the necessity of interior grace for any good work whatsoever: and likewise from Julian; for he believed that man is helped in the good work, and likewise is prevented by divine grace for operating well; and he affirmed that man always begins well without the help of grace, and by that splendid effort merits divine grace; both of which they rejected. In this, however, they erred with Pelagius and Julian, that they said the beginning of salvation is from us, that is, that it consists in some natural desire, petition, effort, and labor, by which we obtain the helps of grace necessary for salvation. Whence they were called by St. Prosper, in the Epistola ad S. August., remnants of Pelagian depravity, as well as Massilian presbyters, and finally Semi-Pelagians: whose authors, men illustrious and excellent in all zeal for virtues, indeed even saints, to whom the defenders of Augustinian doctrine were second to none, St. Prosper himself expressly pronounces. But what their principal errors were, and who were the masters of the errors and the principal defenders and impugners of the sect, must be set forth.

Paragraph I.

In what things the Semi-Pelagians differed from Pelagius and Julian has already been said: for they conceded that we are prevented by grace for beginning and perfecting every good work, as St. Hilary affirms, Epistola ad S. Augustinum: They agree, he says, that no one can be sufficient to himself for either beginning or perfecting any work: which same thing St. Augustine teaches in lib. 1. De Praedestinatione, cap. 1.: They have even arrived, he says, at confessing that the wills of men are prevented by the grace of God, and at agreeing that no one can be sufficient to himself for either beginning or perfecting any good work: and in cap. 16. lib. De bono Perseverantiae: Moreover these men, on account of whom we do these things, are so far removed from the heretical perversity of the Pelagians, that although they are not yet willing to confess that those who are made obedient and persevering through the grace of God are predestined, they nevertheless now confess that it proceeds from the will of those to whom this grace is given.

Nevertheless they seem to have gone astray with Pelagius in five principal heads especially. For first, with him, they affirmed that in us there is a certain beginning of faith, or an affection of believing and a desire of conversion, by which we could merit faith itself, and likewise all the helps necessary for salvation from it. Concerning the beginning of faith indeed, St. Prosper lucidly discloses that this was their opinion in the Epist. ad S. Aug., where he says: They say that eternal life is appended to those who have believed God spontaneously and have received the help of grace by the merit of their credulity. Concerning the desire of conversion he affirms the same:

Since in those who have received the time of free will there are two things which work out human salvation, namely the grace of God and the obedience of man; they will that obedience be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation must be believed to stand from the one who is saved, not from the one who saves; and the will of man brings forth for itself the aid of divine grace, not that grace subjects the human will to itself.

Similarly St. Hilary, in the Epistola ad Augustinum, teaches that the Semi-Pelagians attributed both the beginning of faith and the desire of healing to nature, in these words:

They assert this to be agreeable to truth, and congruous to preaching, that when the opportunity of obtaining salvation is announced to those prostrated and never to rise by their own powers, by that merit by which they have willed and believed that they can be healed of their disease, they obtain both the increase of faith itself and the effect of entire health.

The same thing St. Augustine himself teaches in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum; for when in cap. 1. he had said that the Massilians acknowledge and confess both the corruption of the human race in Adam and the necessity of grace for the good work, both to be begun and to be consummated, and so far to dissent from Pelagius in these things; he discloses the state of the question and controversy to be disputed with the Massilians themselves in cap. sequenti, saying:

But now I see that we must respond to those who say that the divine testimonies which we have adduced on this matter (namely concerning the faith by which we are Christians, which is a gift of God) avail to this end, that we know that we indeed have faith itself from ourselves, but its increase from God, as though faith were not given to us by Him, but is increased in us by that merit by which it began in us.

But in what way they built up this same error, St. Prosper discloses in the Ep. laudata, where according to the opinion of the Semi-Pelagians he says:

Man, meriting nothing beforehand, because the grace of the Creator constituted him even as existing with rational free choice, so that through the discernment of good and evil, both to the knowledge of God and to the obedience of His commandments, he can direct his own will, and arrive at that grace by which we are reborn in Christ, namely through the natural faculty by asking, seeking, knocking, and therefore let him receive, let the same enter, because having used the good of nature well, he merited to arrive at that saving grace by the aid of initial grace.

By these words he indicates that the Semi-Pelagians acknowledged a twofold grace, namely the natural one by which we were created by the benefit and gratuitous liberality of God, which they called the rational grace of the Creator, the natural faculty, the good of nature, initial grace; but the other, the supernatural or saving grace, by which we are reborn in Christ, so that they asserted that from initial grace through its good use one arrives at salvation; according to that promise of Christ the Lord: Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you.

The second error of the Semi-Pelagians was that they ascribed not only the beginning of faith, but also of all works of salvation, to free choice and the good human will, so that they judged that we all begin the good work first by desiring, asking, striving through the powers of free choice, and then are helped by the grace of God to perfect the good which we desire: for in reality they denied every true help of prevenient grace, whether for faith or for good works, not only efficacious but even sufficient. But if some of them sometimes confessed that we are prevented by the grace of God for good works, as will be established below concerning Faustus and Cassian, the principal patriarchs of the Semi-Pelagians, they understood that of the grace of the law and of doctrine and of external divine protection.

But that they asserted the beginning of any good work whatsoever to depend on free choice is gathered from St. Augustine in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 2., where, speaking of the Semi-Pelagian opinion, he says:

We do not therefore depart from that opinion which Pelagius himself was compelled to condemn in the Palestinian episcopal judgment, as those same acts testify, namely that the grace of God is given according to our merits, if the fact that we have begun to believe does not pertain to the grace of God; but rather from that opinion that it is added to us for this reason, that we may believe more fully and more perfectly: and thus we give to God the first place in the beginning of our faith, so that its supplement may be repaid to us, together with whatever else we faithfully ask.

St. Prosper openly indicates the same thing against the Collatorem, that is, Cassian, the writer of the collations, or conferences, where he thus addresses him in cap. 5.:

Do you think that you sufficiently guard against the calumnies of the Pelagians, if what is to be thought concerning the whole body of the called you concede to us only in a portion? But neither with the heretics nor with the Catholics do you have full concord. They defend the beginnings of all just human works as belonging to free will; we always believe that the principles of good thoughts proceed from God. You have discovered some formless third thing, unfit for either party, by which you would neither win the agreement of your enemies nor remain in the understanding of our side. But how do you not notice that you fall into that condemned doctrine, that, whether you will or not, you are convicted of saying that the grace of God is given according to our merits, when you affirm that something of good work proceeds from men themselves, on account of which they obtain grace? etc.

St. Hilary teaches the same thing in his Epistola ad S. Augustinum, where, after he has asserted that the Semi-Pelagians think that there is in us some beginning of faith, he adds:

From this they think it follows that faith is to be exhibited by him to whose nature this has been granted by the will of the Creator, and they think that no nature is so depraved or extinguished that it should not, or could not, will to be healed, on account of which a man is either healed by his own strength, or, if he is unwilling, is punished with his own sickness. Nor do they deny grace, if such a will is said to precede which only seeks the physician, but does not yet itself avail anything: for they want those testimonies, such as that one, as God has dealt to every one the measure of faith, and similar ones, to have this force, that he who has begun to will is helped, not that the will is given to him that he may will, the others being cast off from this gift, equally guilty and able in like manner to be freed, if the will to believe, which is granted to those who are equally unworthy, were likewise granted to them as well.

The third error of the Semi-Pelagians was that, for preserving sanctifying grace, we need no other help than what had been implanted by nature and free choice, or had been acquired together with regenerating grace, as St. Prosper discloses in the poem De ingratis, where among other things:

That this freedom is common to instructed minds alike, that by persevering they can complete the blessed course, the end, and the sought effect, God granting it to talents, who never fails the honest.

The same thing is evident from the opinion of Cassian, Collat. 13. cap. 14., where, after he had said that the Devil was overcome by Job not by God's strength but by Job's, he adds: although it must be believed that the grace of God was not wholly wanting to him; and explaining what that grace was: all this, he says, God brought about, lest the most violent enemy, making his soul senseless and powerless, should weigh him down with an unequal understanding and an unjust burden of combat: and in collatione 7. cap. 14., explaining that saying of the Apostle, God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted above that which you are able, he says: He certainly does not hinder the Lord from permitting them to be tempted; but that they might not be tempted above what they were able to bear. For the former indicates the faculty of human choice; the latter shows the grace of the Lord moderating the struggles of temptations.

In this, however, the Massilians agreed with Pelagius; for that Pelagius thought that each one perseveres by his own powers, St. Jerome teaches us in lib. 11. Contra Pelagianos, and St. Augustine in lib. De perfectione iustitiae; likewise in heresy 88, where he says: That faith may increase and men may persevere in it, they contend that they do not receive it from him, but have it from themselves. These are also the words of Julian in lib. De Bono constantiae: For this is the constancy which chiefly asserts the power of choice for good, and the movement of its nature and of the human mind.

That the Semi-Pelagians taught the same thing or something similar, St. Prosper indicates not obscurely in his Epist. ad S. August., about the middle, where he says:

Now here they bring forward testimonies by which the exhortation of the divine Scriptures incites the wills of men to obedience, which wills either do what is commanded or neglect it from free choice, and they think it follows that, just as the transgressor is for that reason said not to have obeyed because he did not will, so also a believer should not be doubted to have been devout for this reason because he willed; and that each one has as much faculty for good as for evil, and moves his mind with equal impulse either toward vices or toward virtues, him whom the grace of God fosters when he seeks good, and whom a just condemnation receives when he pursues evil.

Hence their fourth error was that they asserted that good works, the beginning of which they attributed to the powers of free choice, are the motivating cause of Predestination; otherwise, they said, as St. Prosper reports in the same Letter, all industry is removed and virtues are taken away, and under this name of predestination a certain fatal necessity is introduced, or the Lord is said to be the Creator of diverse natures, if no one can be other than he was made. And a little before he had said that they assert that propitiation is proposed to all men without exception, so that whoever wills may be able to be saved.

St. Hilary affirms the same thing in his Epistola pariter ad S. Augustinum, where he says that they said that such a will remained in all men, by which each one can either despise or obey, and thus a ready account is given of the Elect or of the Rejected, in that to each one the merit of his own will is attached.

But when, says St. Prosper in the same place, the multitude of innumerable infants is objected to them — who, certainly, apart from original sin, under which all men are born alike in the condemnation of the first man, having as yet no wills, no proper actions, are separated not without the judgment of God, so that before the discernment of good and evil they are taken away from the use of this life, some through regeneration are taken up as heirs of the heavenly kingdom, others without baptism pass over as debtors of perpetual death — to answer this argument they wove a fifth error: namely that some infants obtained the grace of baptism because God foresaw that they would merit grace through free choice, if they reached adult age; but that others for this reason did not obtain baptism, because God had foreseen that they would not have such merit, if they had lived.

Or, as St. Prosper speaks in the same place: They say that those are lost and those are saved whom divine knowledge foresaw they would be in their later years, if they were kept to adult age. Nor do they consider that they subject the grace of God — which they will to be common, not previous to human merits — even to those wills which, according to their own fancy, they do not deny to have been prevented by it: but to such an extent do they subject the Election of God to whatever fictitious merits, that, because they feign past things which do not exist and future things which will not be future, by a new kind of absurdity among them, both things not to be done are foreseen, and foreseen things are not done.

Paragraph II.

Among them Cassian seems to have held the first place: formerly a disciple of St. John Chrysostom, and, after the latter's death, a Presbyter of the Church of Marseille, whom St. Prosper designates and attacks under the name of the Collator, from the collations written by the Fathers, in cap. 2., where he says: A certain man of priestly order (meaning Cassian), who excels in the practice of disputation among those with whom he lives, introduces a certain abbot discoursing on the grace of God and free choice, whose opinion he shows himself to have approved and embraced in all things: whence in cap. 3. he thus addresses Cassian as the inventor and chief defender of the Semi-Pelagian dogma:

But neither with the heretics nor with the Catholics do you have full concord. They defend the beginnings of all just human works as belonging to free will; we always believe that the principles of good thoughts proceed from God: you have discovered some formless third thing, unfit for either party, by which you would neither win the agreement of your enemies nor remain in the understanding of our side.

But what Cassian's erroneous opinion was, St. Prosper himself indicates clearly enough in the whole book against the Collatorem, where among other things he thus addresses him:

Catholic Doctor, why do you abandon your profession? Why, having left the serene light of truth, have you rolled down into the notorious darkness of falsehood? What do you marvel at in those who ask, seek, and knock, and why do you not ascribe it to that same grace which is desired? You see good efforts and pious pursuits, and do you doubt that they are God's goods? Did the work of grace lie hidden, as long as the faith implanted in thoughts was closed up in secrecy, so that where is the suppliant prayer, where the diligent inquiry, where does the frequent knocking appear? Why do you not understand, from the quality of the work, the help of the one who incites?

With these words St. Prosper openly indicates that Cassian asserted that the natural seeds of good works are found in us, and also the beginning of faith, which was that very opinion of the Semi-Pelagians. Since, however, his writings were filled with many excellent documents for pursuing virtue, therefore, that they might be held and read by the faithful with a secure foot, several grave and Catholic men certainly strove to purge his writings and to fit them to the Catholic truth: first of these was Eucherius, Presbyter of Lyon, of whom Gennadius says: But the same Eucherius, resolving certain little works of Cassian, polished in broad speech, into a narrow path of words, collected them into one volume: but I judge more truly that Eucherius did not so much purge Cassian's errors as write an Epitome of his books free from errors; for if Eucherius had already purged the whole Cassian, what need was there for this labor to be undertaken anew by Victor, who set about vindicating him from errors? as Cassiodorus indicates in these words in lib. Institutionum divinarum cap. 22.: Cassian's sayings, he says, Victor Martiritanus, an African Bishop, so purged with the Lord's help, and added what was lacking, that the palm of these matters is deservedly conferred on him: whom, among others, we believe should be sent to us quickly from the parts of Africa.

Moreover, it may be conjectured that Cassiodorus did not then have this purged Cassian when he himself later appears to have undertaken this labor, for thus Ado writes of him at the year 425: His works (he says of Cassian) are to be read by Catholics most cautiously, especially those on free choice and grace; but he also favored the heresy of the Encratites somewhat incautiously: Cassiodorus, Senator of Ravenna, wishing to purge his errors, could not do so fully in every part.

This also is easily gathered from that very book of Cassian which still exists today; for whatever St. Prosper attacks in Cassian as erroneous, that very thing is also found in that book; which book the most learned Ciacconius ordered to be brought to light at Rome, restored to its integrity and illustrated with notes, Vossius demonstrates and collects at length in lib. 4, first part, of the Historiae Pelagianae, where he expressly shows that whatever was asserted by the Massilians and impugned by the holy Fathers, that very thing is found in Cassian's writings.

FAUSTUS RHEGIENSIS.

Faustus, made Bishop from Abbot of the Monastery of Lerins at Rhegium in Gaul, says Gennadius, a man sufficiently intent on the divine Scriptures, taking occasion from the tradition of the Creed, composed a book on the Holy Spirit, in which he shows that, according to the faith of the Fathers, he is both consubstantial with and coeternal with the Father and the Son, and holds the fullness of the Trinity; he also published an excellent work on the grace of God by which we are saved, and on the choice of the human mind, in which work he teaches that the grace of God always invites and aids our will, and that whatever the freedom of choice itself acquires by the labor of pious reward is not one's own merit, but the gift of grace.

With these words Gennadius seems to signify that Faustus was free from the error of the Semi-Pelagians: nevertheless, his writings testify that he was a chief assertor of that same error, especially De gratia et libero arbitrio, where, refuting the Predestinarians, he seems to have fallen into the opposite error and openly to defend the Semi-Pelagian doctrine, as Ado, Bishop of the Church of Vienne, testifies in his Chronico in the year of the Lord 492, when he treats of Faustus in these words:

Faustus, made Bishop from Abbot of the Monastery of Lerins at Rhegium in Gaul, attempting to destroy the Pelagian dogma, falls into error: whence those who proclaim his sense in this part as catholic (as Gennadius, writing on illustrious men, does) err altogether; for Augustine and the rest of the Catholics in the Church of God teach free choice in such a way that its illumination, virtue, and salvation are from Christ and through Christ and with Christ: but this Faustus so attempts to teach free choice that its illumination, virtue, and salvation are not from Christ, but from nature.

Against him Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, writes with the clearest faith, refuting his error, and likewise John, an erudite man, a Presbyter of Antioch.

But on what occasion he published those books themselves, we gather from his Epistola ad Lucidum Presbyterum Lugdunensem: for when that Lucidus followed and defended the opinion of the Monks of Hadrumetum, attributing all things to grace in such a way that they took away the freedom of choice, and taught that by reason of predestination men are necessarily driven to the ends destined for them by God, whence they were called Predestinarians: to draw this Lucidus away from this opinion, Faustus sent him a Letter, in which he utterly overthrows the dogmas of the Predestinarians; to which Letter the Synod of Bishops gathered at Arles subscribed, as may be conjectured from Faustus himself; and also another Synod celebrated at Lyon, to which Lucidus himself subscribed, anathematizing his error, as is known from his Letter to this Synod.

Faustus moreover signifies that he wrote his book de gratia, ac libero arbitrio at the request of that same Council; for thus among other things he writes to Leontius:

That, for the pastoral solicitude of the blessed Pope Leo in condemning the error of Predestination, you, a Council of the highest Bishops, with all the churches of Gaul gathered together, have provided. But that you have entrusted to weak shoulders the labor and the care of ordering those things which you set forth most learnedly in public conference, you have, as I think, consulted too little for so great a business, too little for your holy estimation, and you have deemed me worthy by the judgment of Charity, not by the risk of election. You, therefore, who know that your own person also labors under the burden imposed on us, etc.

Namely, because he had conducted himself strenuously, as a man of elegant and acute genius, in refuting the errors of the Predestinarians, he seemed especially fit to commit the opinion of the Synod to writing. But, exceeding the limits of the mandate, he inserted into his little book things to which Claudianus Mammertus and the other most distinguished men who took part in that Synod would never have subscribed, says Vossius in lib. 1. cap. 8. And indeed truly; for although Faustus seemed to defend grace as necessary in all things, nevertheless he thought with the Semi-Pelagians, as John Maxentius notes in his response to the Epistolam Hormisdae, when he says of Faustus:

For, shrewdly weighing the sense of that same Pelagius and as it were reproaching him because he denied grace in the name of Christ; and also those who, according to the Apostle, confess that the grace of God is given to men with no preceding merits: he himself, as if most wise and most prudent, a new Apostle of a new perversity, strives to teach that the grace of God is given according to the merit of faith and of labor, so that thus the grace of God is already not grace.

Note, however, that notwithstanding these things, he was received into the list of the Saints; for although Cardinal Baronius wrote of him at the year 490:

Moreover, Faustus himself, when his deceits were detected, by which he attempted to tear up the Pelagian trenches into the fall of the simple, alienated from himself the minds of the Bishops, and departed inglorious: whom we wonder that some, imprudently indeed, write as holy: but we are much more astonished that the same man is reduced by others into the class of the Monks of the Order of St. Benedict, since, before that same Saint undertook the monastic life, Faustus, an old man, had already departed this life, having been created Bishop long before that same Benedict was born.

Yet, the matter being more maturely weighed, he wrote in the Appendix to Volume 6:

Indeed, in the earlier edition it was not unseemly to have affirmed these things from the writings of various authors adduced; but now, from things later known and adduced, we do not deem it unworthy that the judgment itself be called back again; the sentences of the Fathers concerning his writings, however, remain immovable. For that the Gallican Martyrology kept this same Faustus among the saints even up to our times — from which Molanus first expunged him; that also (as we have heard) the Church of Rhegium in Gaul, where he himself sat as Bishop, always venerated him as a Saint, celebrating his birthday on the seventeenth of January, and a Basilica anciently erected there in his memory, distinguished with the title of his name, has to this day been frequented by the faithful for his cult; and that for so many centuries, with the Christian world looking on and the Roman Church silent, with no one at all (as far as is known) contradicting, these things are understood to have been exhibited to this same Faustus. We are not forbidden to think that what is asserted of many holy men could have happened to this same Faustus, that, offending, he erred: since, however, that question was defined by the authority of the Apostolic See, and his opinion was condemned by the sentence of other Fathers, that he himself detested his error in contrary writings which could, like very many others, have perished: or that he himself died before the condemnation of his writings made by the Church (for the year of his death is uncertain), having in mind in these matters to follow what the Church would teach to be followed. That he was indeed of this mind, and that it was known to others, can easily be understood from this: that always, as the acts of the Councils of Arles and Lyon recited above indicate, he had communion with the most holy Orthodox Bishops of Gaul. Let Faustus therefore keep his full rights, nor let him suffer prejudice from our writings, nor let it be lawful, by the novelty of judgment, to overthrow antiquity.

Whence Andreas du Saussay in the Martyrologio Gallicano for 28 September adds: Today Faustus, Bishop of Rhegium, departed with a holy end, glorious in many titles of doctrine and pious conversation, whom the Rhegian Church itself, according to ancient custom, honors with the cult of sanctity; and to whom Cardinal Baronius, the matter however being more maturely weighed, confessed that the full rights of his sanctity remain.

VINCENTIUS LIRINENSIS.

Vincent of Lerins also seems to have adhered to and favored the Semi-Pelagians, and is reckoned by some as the writer of the Vincentian objections to which St. Prosper responded. Although the other things may be silent about this, this sufficiently proves it: that in the same way he did not hesitate, just as the other Semi-Pelagians did against the Catholics, to usurp for his own side the Letter of Pope Coelestinus by which the Catholics defended themselves against the Semi-Pelagians: for since Coelestinus in his Letter, which he sent to the Priests of the Gauls, arguing their connivance, because, abandoning the ancient faith by silence, they suffered profane vanities to arise, said: Rightly does the cause concern us if we foster error by silence: therefore let men of this kind be rebuked; let it not be free for them to have speech according to their will.

From these words St. Prosper and those who favored his cause concluded that silence was imposed on the adversaries of St. Augustine, namely the Semipelagians. The Semipelagians, however, together with Vincentius of Lérins, argued against the Catholics that by these words of Pope Coelestinus the later little works of St. Augustine, hostile to the Semipelagians, were proscribed. For thus Vincentius writes in the Opusculo contra profanas vocum novitates:

Perhaps someone here may still doubt who those are whom he forbids to have free speech in place of their own will: the Preachers of Antiquity, or the inventors of Novelty; let him himself say, and let him himself dissolve the doubt of the readers: "Let it cease," he says, "if the matter is so" — that is, if it is so that, as your Cities and Provinces indeed accuse before me, you consent to dangerous novelties through harmful dissimulation: "Let novelty cease," he says, "if the matter is so, to assail antiquity."

By pressing that word (if) so strongly, he indicates not obscurely that he regards the accusation of Prosper and Hilary as false. St. Prosper, on the contrary, in cap. 43 of lib. contra Collatorem, after he had cited from the Epistola of Pope Coelestinus this eulogy of Augustine:

"Augustine," he says, "a man of holy memory, for his life and for his merits, we have always held in our communion, nor did even a rumor of sinister suspicion ever bespatter him, whom we remember to have been once of such great knowledge that he was always held among the best teachers even by my predecessors."

All, therefore, had rightly thought well of him in common, since he was everywhere both loved and honored by all; he adds:

Against that trumpet of most brilliant praise, against that dignity of a most sacred testimony, does anyone dare to emit the murmur of a malicious interpretation, and to spread over a clear and most sincere sentence the cloud of oblique ambiguity — namely, that because in the Epistola of the Pope the title of the books on behalf of which the matter was undertaken is not expressed, hence it may appear that they were not approved, and that this praise of St. Augustine was bestowed for the merits of his earlier writings.

Then, having recalled the books which Augustine wrote against the Pelagians, he subjoins these words:

Let the calumniators acknowledge that they object in vain that no special or decreed testimony is forbidden to these books, since in all their volumes the norm is praised. For the Apostolic See approves, together with what it has previously known, what does not differ from what it has previously known, and it does not divide the judgment which it joins to praise. Let those, therefore, who refute these most recent books acquiesce in the earlier ones and consent to those things which were written earlier in favor of Christian grace; but they do not do so, etc.

From which it is clear how differently Vincentius and Prosper drew the Epistola of Coelestinus to their own sides. For Vincentius, or at least the Adversaries of Augustine, urged from that Epistola the point that novelty ought to yield to antiquity. Hence they concluded that if Augustine in his earlier writings agreed with antiquity, but not likewise in his later ones, the eulogies of Coelestinus pertained only to the earlier writings of Augustine. On the contrary, Prosper urged from the same Epistola the praise of Augustine, which, since it is pronounced by Coelestinus without distinction, he affirmed must be understood of the later writings no less than of the earlier ones, especially since the same things are taught in both sets of books.

But although Vincentius adhered to Cassianus, the writer of the Collationes, against whom St. Prosper fought, nevertheless St. Eucherius indicates that he was judged not to be a bad Catholic, in lib. De Eremi laude, where, treating of the most holy men of the Island of Lérins, he speaks thus:

This had Lupus of reverend name, who reported to us that wolf from the tribe of Benjamin. This had his brother Vincentius, conspicuous with the inner splendor of gems. This now possesses Caprasius, venerable in gravity, equal to the ancient Saints. This now has those holy Elders who, with their cells divided, brought the Egyptian Fathers to our Gauls.

GENNADIUS MASSILIENSIS.

Gennadius, Priest of Marseilles, who lived at the time of Pope Gelasius, about the year 490, is not without reason believed to have adhered to the Semipelagians, since in lib. De viris illustribus he praises Cassianus and Faustus and prefers their opinion on grace to the doctrine of Prosper, and celebrates St. Augustine so coldly that he even says that by his great loquacity he did not avoid sin and scarcely exempts him from heresy. Therefore Pope Gelasius rejects his works among the Apocryphal books, and Baronius, ad annum 433, num. 28.¹ affirms that Gennadius was of the same stamp as Cassianus. And ad annum 440, num. 25.² he says that he was one of the Gallican Priests, of whom St. Prosper and St. Hilary complained before Pope Coelestinus, that they opposed the doctrine of Augustine. He adds, however, that by the efforts of Gelasius he came to his senses and, having been taken up as Bishop of Marseilles, truly departed this life Orthodox and Catholic. And the eulogy of Pope Adrianus in the Epistola ad Carolum Magnum concerning this same Gennadius persuades us of this, which runs thus:

These testimonies of the Most Holy Pontiffs have been offered, namely of St. Gennadius, Bishop of Marseilles, on how the bodies and relics of the saints are to be venerated, cap. 40, where he says that the bodies of the Saints and especially the relics of the Blessed are to be honored most sincerely as members of Christ, and that the Basilicas called by their name, as places devoted to divine worship, are to be approached with purest affection and most faithful devotion. If anyone comes against this opinion, let him not be believed a Christian, but an Eunomian.

Paragraph III.

Indeed, various men most celebrated for piety and learning: but especially St. Augustine, who chiefly wrote against them the books De Praedestinatione Sanctorum and De Bono perseverantiae. St. Hilary of Arles and St. Prosper lent him a hand, the latter of whom attacked the Semipelagians best and most fiercely of all and dissolved all their arguments most subtly, as is clear from his writings.

They were likewise fought against by Coelestinus the Supreme Pontiff, and by Gelasius, who placed the books of Cassianus and Faustus among the Apocryphal books, because they denied prevenient grace. Nor was the judgment of Felix IV different.

The Semipelagian errors were likewise condemned in various Councils, but most especially in that of Orange, whose principal purpose seems to have been to condemn the doctrine of Faustus. For the first error of Faustus was that he denied the necessity of prevenient grace. But this is established in Canons 3. 1. 6. 11. 17 and 22. The second error concerned the efficacy of man with God, not from a power superadded to nature, but from natural power; this opinion is condemned in Can. 7. 16 and 22. The third error concerned the justification of the ancients through the law of nature or of Moses, which is disapproved in Can. 19 and 25, where especially it is denied that Abel, Noe and Abraham were saved through the Law of nature. The fourth concerned the origin of faith from the principles of nature; this error is rejected in Can. 6 and most especially 20.

ON THE HERESY OF THE PRAEDESTINATIANS.

As heresy is the fruitful parent of monsters, hence it is no wonder if that heresy which arose on the occasion of divine grace did not long stand still in the Pelagians alone, the most hostile enemies of that very grace. For in them, when it felt itself attacked and routed by the Catholic champions of truth, most especially by St. Augustine, immediately taking the contrary path it sprouted again in the Praedestinatians, who, disputing about divine grace and Predestination from the badly conceived writings of St. Augustine himself, asserted that the labor of good works did not profit those living piously, if they had been foreseen by God for damnation, nor did it harm the impious, even if they lived wickedly, if indeed they had been predestined by God to life. And so they judged that the whole business of our salvation was to be referred back solely to divine Election and Predestination. And hence they judged that free choice is depressed or extinguished by the necessity of grace, in whose presence the human will could not act well, and in whose absence it could not operate otherwise than badly.

Since the Calvinists had drunk in this heretical assertion, to be sure, with all their heart, lest they should appear the revivers and re-cookers of a heresy buried not long ago, they resolved to accuse the trustworthiness of all the historians who wrote that some heresy of the Praedestinatians had existed, and they contended that the Praedestinatians were none other than those more earnestly devoted to the doctrine of St. Augustine, and so to the Catholic opinion, who were harassed by the Semipelagians. This bold design, above all others, was undertaken by Iacobus Usserius, the standard-bearer of the Irish Calvinists, in the book which he entitled Gothescalci et de Praedestinatione controversiae ab eo motae historia, where he sharply contends that the Praedestinatians were none other than those who championed the opinion of St. Augustine against the Semipelagians. Hence he insults the Catholic writers, because they write that the opinion of the Praedestinatians was dug out of the stinking tombs of the ancient Heretics by the Calvinists of today. This same refuge was seized by the Artificer of the new opinion; for he writes in libr. 8 of De Haeresi Pelagiana, cap. ultimo, that there never was any Praedestinatian heresy:

"I think," he says, "that there never was in the nature of things a Praedestinatian Heresy, or Praedestinatian Heretics; but on the contrary that the Catholic doctrine which St. Augustine and Prosper taught was calumniously traduced by the Massilians under the name of that heresy. And so those Praedestinatian Heretics were none other than St. Augustine, St. Prosper, St. Hilary and all who followed their doctrine, whom the Semipelagians pointed out by that name and, with their names suppressed, placed among the Heretics; under which names credulous posterity turned away from certain persons as Praedestinatian Heretics. How far these things are from the truth will be clear in the following Paragraphs."

Paragraph I.

I affirm it, and I chiefly argue it, first of all, from St. Augustine, who in lib. 2 of the Retract., cap. penult., relates that the Monks of Hadrumetum dwelling in Africa, when his Epistola 105 to Sixtus had been read, were divided into two parties and opinions, one of which, under the leadership of Florus, believed that grace was so preached by St. Augustine himself that it took away free choice. The other, however, fought so for the defense of free choice that it declined into the heresy of the Pelagians. In order to remove this dissension from the midst, that holy Doctor wrote two Epistles to Valentinus, the superior of the Monastery of Hadrumetum, and to its Monks, which occupy n. 16 and 17 among the Epistles of the holy Doctor himself; he directed just as many books to them, one De Gratia et libero arbitrio, the other De Correctione et Gratia. In these he warns that both errors are to be avoided, and that, with the extremes set aside, the middle way which the Catholic Faith holds is to be followed. So that neither is free choice believed to have been extinguished by the sin of Adam, but weakened and debilitated; nor is it impeded or destroyed by grace, but helped and healed; and thus free choice is not denied to be in us, whether for good or for evil, nor yet is so much attributed to it that without the grace of God it suffices for doing good or avoiding evil. Therefore, he says, Epist. 47, the Apostle said to you, Romanorum 3:

Do not decline to the right hand, nor to the left, that is, do not so defend free choice as to attribute to it good works without the grace of God, nor so defend grace as, being as it were secure about it, to love evil works, as if the grace of God itself turned them away from us.

By these words he takes care that free choice is not so to be championed that the whole business of our salvation is referred back into it, according to the error of the Pelagians, nor is the necessity of divine grace so to be defended that, with good works neglected, God alone is judged the artificer of our salvation, according to the opinion of the Praedestinatians, who, to be sure, preached that good works did not profit the predestined, nor evil ones harm them.

This same truth is confirmed from St. Prosper in the Epist. ad S. Augustinum prefixed to the book De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, where he warns him that some in Africa (he undoubtedly means the Monks of Hadrumetum) had already been disturbed by those things which he had written about Predestination; just as many had begun to be disturbed in Gaul by those same writings of his on this matter. He likewise recounts what was objected against his doctrine of Predestination, chiefly by the Priests of Marseilles, and observes that they report from it:

This purpose of God's coercion, by which before the beginning of the world, or in the very creation of the human race, a separation of the chosen and the rejected is said to have been made, and according to it it pleased the Creator that some should be created vessels of honor and others vessels of dishonor, and to take away from the fallen the care of rising again and to bring upon the holy the necessity of time, because on both sides the labor would be superfluous, since neither could the rejected enter by any industry nor the elect fall away by any negligence — for in whatever way they conduct themselves, nothing other than what God has defined can happen, and under uncertain hope the course cannot be constant; since if Election holds something else for the predestined, the intention of one striving is vain. Therefore all industry is removed, virtues are taken away, and under this name of Predestination a certain fatal necessity is introduced.

From these things it is clear how true it is that some Assertors of a fatal Predestination existed from the badly conceived writings of St. Augustine. Hence the same St. Prosper, concluding the epistle, asks St. Augustine himself to explain how satisfaction can be given to the great difficulties raised about his doctrine, and to vindicate him from the suspicion of so sinister an opinion.

"Grant," he says, "O best Father, that you deign to open what is more obscure in these questions: how through that preoperating and cooperating grace free choice is not impeded; just as through this preaching of the purpose of God no one of those who are to be exhorted is impeded, nor do they have an occasion of negligence, if they despair of being predestined."

By these things it is established how far those wander from the mind of SSt. Augustine and Prosper and from the truth of the matter, who nevertheless strive to persuade that the doctrine of both is their own — the error which was refuted by Augustine, and which St. Prosper resented being attributed to him, and asked to have explained how he might refute that calumny.

Secondly, the same thing is proved from Gennadius of Marseilles in the appendix to the book of St. Augustine De haeresibus, where to the eighty-nine heresies enumerated by the holy Doctor himself he added four that arose afterwards, namely the Praedestinatian, Nestorian, Eutychian and Timothean, as is had in the codex of the Library of St. Victor, and Hincmarus testifies in lib. De Praedest., cap. 1:

"But," he says, "concerning 88 heresies the same wonderful Doctor Augustine composed a book, to which he last of all subjoined the heresy of the Pelagians. Thence Gennadius, a very learned Priest of Marseilles, places this Praedestinatian heresy as the ninetieth to the Pelagian sect. Then he sets the ninety-first, the Nestorian, and so the Eutychian, and after this the Timothean."

It is confirmed from the Epistola Hincmari ad Nicolaum summum Pontificem, in which, informing him about the errors of Gothescalcus, he says:

"If your wisdom wishes to know the catholic articles which he seems to teach against the faith of the Church, and which he drew from the old heresy of the Praedestinatians (which was first impugned in Africa and afterwards in Francia, at the same time at which the Nestorian heresy, under Pope Coelestinus, was convicted as much by the authority of the latter as by the care and vigilance of St. Prosper), I will set them out for you in order, not all the articles which he maintains, but only some of them, which are nevertheless of the greatest importance. He says, therefore, that which the ancient Praedestinatians also said: that just as God predestined some to eternal life, so also he predestined others to eternal death."

It is established, therefore, that some Praedestinatians existed, convicted and impugned by SSt. Augustine and Prosper.

Thirdly and finally, the same thing is evinced from the Councils in which the Praedestinatian heresy was condemned. For first, the second Synod of Orange had regard to this heresy in Can. 25, when it said:

This also we believe according to the Catholic faith: that, having received grace through baptism, all the baptized can and ought, with Christ helping and cooperating, to fulfill those things which pertain to salvation, if they are willing to labor faithfully. But that some are predestined to evil by divine power, we not only do not believe, but even if there are those who wish to believe so great an evil, we say anathema to them with all detestation.

But this heresy was expressly condemned in the Council of Arles in the year, as Baronius holds, 490, in which the Epistola of Faustus to Lucidus was approved and fortified with the subscription of the Bishops, by which Epistola the errors of the Praedestinatians are expressed and anathematized, errors which Lucidus himself had renewed and defended. For as Baronius relates, ad annum Christi 490, and from him Alvarez in De origine Pelagianae haeresis, c. 23:

After the death of St. Augustine, some came forth who, from his badly understood writings, introduced many errors, which they tried to defend in the name and authority of St. Augustine. But St. Prosper, acting for the defense of St. Augustine himself, validly refuted them. These were called (as Sigebertus noted, ad annum Domini 415) followers of the heresy of the Praedestinatians. When he had censured their errors, he thus continues the narrative: Now one Lucidus, a Priest of great name, was held by these errors, to whom Faustus wrote that epistle which we said was approved as truly Catholic by the Bishops of the Council of Arles and fortified with their subscription. In this epistle Faustus warns Lucidus that the Supreme Bishops were planning to suspend him from communion unless he detested his errors, and when he had prescribed the very words by which he must execrate the impious dogmas, he thus threatens: "But if you are unwilling to transmit that epistle subscribed, as I said, you will openly prove by that very silence that you still persist in error, and so you will already make it necessary for me to expose your person in public assemblies." But when Lucidus had received this epistle, immediately obeying the Fathers and recovering from his error, he directed to the Council this Epistle containing the confession of his faith, in which he abjures all the erroneous articles according to the form prescribed in the epistle of Faustus.

Note further the beginning of the letter of Lucidus, by which he addresses the bishops thus: Your correction is the public safety, and your judgment is medicine. Whence I also hold it the greatest remedy to excuse myself by accusing past errors and to wash them away with my saving confusion.

And therefore, in accordance with the aforesaid recent statutes of the Council, I condemn together with you that opinion which says that the labor of human obedience should not be joined to divine grace: which says that after the fall of the first man the choice of the will was wholly extinguished: which says that Christ our Lord and Savior did not undergo death for the salvation of all: which says that the foreknowledge of God violently compels a man to death, or that those who perish perish by the will of God, etc.

But where Baronius has related the entire letter of Lucidus, he warns thus:

Thus far the profession of Lucidus, according to those things which were defined in the Synod by the named bishops, the Fathers applying themselves to this, that they might explode the errors especially of those who, from the doctrine of Saint Augustine badly apprehended by them, or calumniously twisted into a depraved sense, had drawn depraved conclusions.

This heresy was likewise condemned in the Synod of Mainz, gathered from the bishops of Germany under the presidency of Rabanus, Archbishop of Mainz, in which Gottschalk was condemned for renewing the heresy of the Praedestinatians; and also in the Synod of Quierzy, in which Gottschalk was again condemned by Hincmar and other bishops, and thrust back into a monastery, where he was beaten with rods until he threw his book into a fire lit nearby, as we shall relate more fully below: but first the objections of the Innovators are to be resolved, who attack the existence of the Praedestinatian heresy.

Paragraph II.

They object 1. If there had been any Praedestinatian heresy, Saint Augustine would without doubt have numbered it among the heresies, and would have openly impugned it, or at least have made some mention of it: but no trace of that heresy is found in St. Augustine, although Sigebert asserts that it had its origin together with the Pelagian one around the year 415: it is therefore an argument that the heresy itself is fictitious and imaginary.

I deny the minor. For, as is clear from the preceding paragraph, Saint Augustine made mention of the principal error of the sect of the Praedestinatians in Letters 46 and 47 written to Valentinus and the monks of Hadrumetum, and in the books De gratia et libero arbitrio and Correctione et gratia, which he wrote to extinguish that same error at its very origin. Nor does it matter that he does not call that opinion about predestination either a heresy or Praedestinatian: for since the virus of this heretical opinion had not yet spread far, it had not yet obtained the appellation of the Praedestinatians; just as, by a like case, the Semi-Pelagian heresy, although it was most fiercely impugned by the saints Augustine, Prosper, and Hilary, is nevertheless not called the Semi-Pelagian heresy by them: but it received this name after the death of those holy Fathers, chiefly from the Scholastics.

They object 2. The first of all who wove and reviewed the dogmas of the Praedestinatians was Gennadius, priest of Marseille: but no faith is to be given to him, since, infected with the Semi-Pelagian heresy, he was supremely hostile to Augustine and Prosper, the most upright champions of grace; whence he taxes Augustine as sinning and erring by verbosity; Prosper, however, he attacks with taunts, because he impugned the salutary little works of Cassian (as he himself says), that is, the errors about grace. Moreover, in weaving the catalogue of heretics he indeed counts the Praedestinatians among the heretics, but makes no mention of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, as being his friends. For this reason Saint Isidore, Bishop of Seville, when he had seen that book of Gennadius and had thence described several heresies in exactly the same words, added the Pelagians passed over by Gennadius and passes over the Praedestinatians placed by him: therefore it is a sign that these heretics did not really exist.

I answer 1. denying the major, for it is false that Gennadius was the first of all to place the Praedestinatians in the roll of heretics. For before him St. Augustine and St. Prosper held them as heretics, as did also the ancient anonymous author of the book entitled Praedestinatus, in its preface, where he relates that Pope Celestine so execrated the book published by the Praedestinatians themselves under the feigned name of Augustine and offered to him, that he ordered it to be condemned to perpetual silence. The same author first expressly undertook the refutation of that heresy, which he also placed ninetieth in the Catalogue of heresies, under the distinguished name of the Praedestinators, as did also Prosper Tyro — not indeed that Aquitanian bishop, disciple of Augustine, but another of the same name and age, as is clear from the Chronico Pithoeano, published by the care of Pithou from a codex of the library of St. Victor of Paris.

I answer 2. It is false that the Pelagians were passed over by Gennadius for the sake of friendship and alliance: for first, Gennadius wrote no book about heresies expressly, but only added an appendix of heresies to the book of Saint Augustine, as we proved in the preceding §. by the testimony of Hincmar. Moreover, in the Parisian Victorine codex, after the end of the book of St. Augustine De haeresibus, that appendix of Gennadius is joined and is related in this manner:

Here ends the account of Saint Augustine, bishop, on heresies. These things, however, which follow are set down by the holy Gennadius of Marseille

by the priest. The ninetieth: the Praedestinatians are those who say that God, etc. The ninety-first: the Nestorians say of the Holy Virgin, etc. The ninety-second: the Eutychians say of the Lord Jesus, etc. The ninety-third: the Timotheans say that the Son of God, indeed a true man born of the Virgin Mary, etc. then afterwards it is added: here ends the book on heresies.

From which it is clear that Gennadius did not proceed further, but only appended these four heresies to the catalogue of St. Augustine. Secondly, they wrongly affirm that the Pelagians were passed over by Gennadius, since he did not pass over those enumerated by Augustine in the eighty-ninth place among the heretics, nor ought Gennadius, as favoring their errors, to have passed them over, since in the Catalogo Illustrium Ecclesiae Scriptorum he had openly named Pelagius a heresiarch. Thirdly and finally, it is false that the Praedestinatians were passed over by Isidore because he had found them expressed in Gennadius; for Gennadius wove not a catalogue of heretics but only an appendix, which Isidore could have read, as we have just said. Nor perhaps had he read that appendix of Gennadius, since where he speaks of the Nestorians and Eutychians, Isidore does not seem to have borrowed so much as one iota from Gennadius. Wherefore it should rather be asserted that the Praedestinatians were passed over by Isidore because he had not read that appendix of Gennadius.

They object 3. If any argument proves that the Praedestinatian heresy once existed, it is chiefly this, that (as we said above) it seems to have been condemned by the Fathers of the Council of Arles, and abjured by Lucidus, who had earlier defended it: but this argument is wholly light and futile. First, for no authority ought to be attributed among us to this Council, for it was nothing other than a gathering of Semi-Pelagians, or of bishops deceived by the Semi-Pelagians, namely by Faustus. It is confirmed, because the books of Faustus De libero arbitrio, teeming with errors, were approved by the bishops of that Council of Arles, which is an argument that either those bishops were contaminated with the Semi-Pelagian heresy, or that they were deluded by the arts and prestiges of Faustus, the craftiest of the Semi-Pelagians. Secondly, Faustus himself (who composed the decrees of that Council, by which the Praedestinatian heresy is said to be proscribed, in his letter to Lucidus) was not only the standard-bearer of the Semi-Pelagians, but also their fiercest champion: what faith, then, is to be given to a ringleader of heretics and adversary of Catholic truth? Thirdly, that letter of Faustus to Lucidus, by which the Praedestinatian heresy is condemned, teems with Semi-Pelagian doctrine. The letter of Lucidus, however, by which he is said to abjure the Praedestinatian heresy, openly savors of Pelagianism, and therefore faith is to be given to neither: therefore neither from these does the existence of the Praedestinatian heresy seem to be asserted.

I deny the minor. For it is certain that those bishops who were present at the Council of Arles, if you except Faustus alone, were most renowned for piety and doctrine; to prove which, it is pleasing to hear Baronius at the year 490. n. 25., where, when he had reviewed the names of those who had subscribed to the letter of Faustus to Lucidus, he adds:

We wished here to review the names of the bishops, because nearly all were bishops of great fame, mention of whom is made in Sidonius; for Auxianus, placed in the first place, and Pragmatius likewise, who is held in the fifth place, a saint as well, to whom the letters of Sidonius stand, was the bishop of Autun, and known in the Council of Epaon. Patiens, who follows in the sixth place, also numbered among the saints, was the bishop of Lyon. The memory likewise of Eufronius, who is counted seventh, flourishes in Sidonius, who names him a saint, as also of Megetius, written in the eighth place, to whom there exists a letter of the same Sidonius. Claudius, who follows in the ninth place, was the bishop of Besançon, likewise celebrated in memory among the saints, etc.

Behold whom the Innovators call Semi-Pelagians; whether faith is to be given to them rather than to so many most holy men, let the reader judge.

The Innovators reply. Those subscriptions of the bishops are supposititious and false: first, because Henry Canisius asserts that he found a most ancient manuscript codex of that letter of Faustus to Lucidus in the monastery of St. Gall, to which those subscriptions of the bishops were not annexed: then, because if anyone among the fathers of Arles ought to have subscribed to this letter, it was above all Leontius, Archbishop of Arles and president of the whole synod: but his name is not read among the other subscribers. Therefore those subscriptions do not seem legitimate.

I deny the antecedent. and to its proof I say that Canisius speaks of a single manuscript of St. Gall, and a most disordered one, since it does not have annexed to the letter of Faustus even the subscription of Faustus himself: but it inserts certain other things wholly foreign to the purpose, and finally, after about one hundred and twenty pages, it reports the subscription of Faustus conceived in these words: Likewise in another hand, I Faustus have re-read the copy of my letter and subscribed. Therefore no faith is to be given to that disordered codex.

I say 2. that although Leontius and certain other prelates are not read to have subscribed to the letter of Faustus, it is nonetheless certain for that reason that it was subscribed by those eleven who are named in the published editions of that letter. Nor can it be doubted that the letter of Faustus and the doctrine contained in it, and proposed to Lucidus, was approved by the Council: for that is manifestly clear from the words of that letter of Lucidus, by which he addresses the Fathers of the Council thus:

Your correction is the public safety, and your judgment is medicine. Whence I also hold it the greatest remedy to excuse myself by accusing past errors and to wash them away with my saving confusion. Therefore, in accordance with the aforesaid recent statutes of the Council, I condemn together with you that opinion which says that the labor of human obedience should not be joined to divine grace, etc.

Add. that in tome 2. Conciliorum Gallic. pag. 147. that Synod of Arles is furnished with this title: Concilium Arelatense a Leontio Arelatensi Episcopo ad condemnandum Praedestinationis errorem congregatum etc. It is therefore certain that this Council was convoked against the Praedestinatians, and that Leontius, together with the other bishops there assembled, condemned the errors of the Praedestinatians renewed and defended by Lucidus.

To the confirmation. I indeed confess that Faustus, in the dedicatory letter by which he dedicated and offered that little work of his on grace and free choice to Leontius, wrote these words: In which little work, indeed, after the subscription of the Council of Arles, new errors having been detected, the Synod of Lyon required that something be added.

But, as Baronius skillfully observes at the year of Christ 490. n. 10., that subscription of the Council of Arles of which Faustus speaks does not pertain to his little work De gratia et libero arbitrio, but only to the letter which he gave to the priest Lucidus in the name of the Council of Arles, that he might recall the man who had fallen into errors to the Catholic faith. And indeed from that very letter of Faustus to Leontius, whence these words are taken, it plainly appears that that little work De gratia et libero arbitrio was composed after the Synod of Arles, and therefore could not have been approved by its subscription: Behold, he says, the beginning of the letter:

That out of pastoral solicitude, blessed Pope Leontius, you held a council of the greatest bishops, the churches of all Gaul being gathered together, for condemning the error of predestination. But that you entrusted to weak shoulders the labor and care of setting in order those things which you most learnedly set forth in public collation, you consulted, as I think, too little for so great a business, too little for your holy estimation.

From which it is clear that Faustus composed his books De gratia et libero arbitrio after the Synod of Arles, at the request of Leontius, that he would expound more fully what had been sanctioned in it. But in order to procure some authority for his work (which he foresaw would be displeasing to Catholics, because it savored of Pelagianism and sowed the seeds of Semi-Pelagianism), he attached to his books the monuments of two councils, namely of Arles and Lyon. Moreover, he also wove into the letter to Leontius those ambiguous words, by which the unwary would be led to believe that his books had been approved by the Council of Arles.

Let it therefore be lawful, with Severinus Binius, to conclude that the little book most full of Pelagian errors, which he entitled De gratia et libero arbitrio and published to the whole world, and which Caesarius of Arles and Avitus, bishops of Vienne, and John, priest of Antioch, refuted by a contrary writing, and which finally Pope Gelasius rightly placed among the apocrypha — this little book, I say, the sacred assembly of bishops by no means approved.

To the second proof. I say that Faustus was indeed at that time the standard-bearer of the Semi-Pelagians; nevertheless, since, hiding an erroneous mind under an ovine and Catholic appearance, he had found the greatest trust among the Fathers of the Council of Arles, says the cited Baronius, n. 30., that he had led Lucidus, a man of great name, to penance, and had merited praise among the sacred synodal assemblies, at which most holy and most learned men were present.

For one could see, adds Baronius, n. 36., that the same Faustus appeared in the assemblies of the holy Fathers (namely of Arles and Lyon), like Saul among the prophets, himself also a prophet, thinking the same as them: but that afterwards, by private writings, with deceitful art he destroyed the whole doctrine concerning the justification of man, while wishing craftily to seem to fight against Pelagius, he was found out to have favored Pelagius. Nevertheless, while he wrote that letter to Lucidus, he seemed still to show a Catholic mind, since he inserted into the letter itself nothing that did not savor of Catholic doctrine.

To the third proof. I say that those letters both of Faustus to Lucidus and of Lucidus to the Fathers of the Council of Arles are truly called Catholic, not only by Cardinal Baronius and Didacus Alvarez, Bishop of Trani, but also by John Malderus, Louvain doctor and Bishop of Antwerp, as well as by John Brasichellana, Master of the Sacred Palace, in that censure of his which is now prefixed to the little work of Faustus, where he asserted that the letters of Faustus and Lucidus were confirmed by the judgment of two synods, and that they are sound and truly Catholic.

Add. that the things which the Innovators denounce in those letters savor of Semi-Pelagianism only in appearance, as Anthony Deschamps pursues at length, Lib. 2. in Iansenium disp. 7. cap. 1. n. 12. and following; for what they most of all carp at in the letter of Lucidus, who says: I condemn that opinion which says that from Adam until Christ none of the Gentiles was saved by the first grace of God, that is, by the law of nature, unto the coming of Christ, because they lost free choice in the first Parent.

They do this only by a most foul manner of calumniating; for to give credence to their accusation, after these words 'the law of nature' they insert a comma, to signify that Faustus and Lucidus understand by the first grace of God the law of nature taken precisely and separated from every grace of Christ the Savior, which is certainly the height of caviling; for the mind of Cardinal Baronius, Didacus Alvarez, Severinus Binius, and Margarinus de la Bigne was far otherwise, who, understanding that by the first grace of God was here designated the law of nature with that grace which flowed back upon it from the future coming of Christ, so that it might appear more clearly in one continuous context and without any distinction, joined these words: that by the law of nature they were saved unto the coming of Christ.

The same rash lust of calumniating (says Anthony Deschamps) drove them to call to judgment these words of Lucidus as well: I condemn that opinion which says that some are destined to death, others predestined to life. To which certainly all Catholics ought to subscribe, for here no other notion of foreknowledge or predestination is proscribed than that which is now defended by the Calvinians, and was defended by the same Lucidus before he abjured his errors; for thus a little before he had described it. Faustus: I condemn that opinion which says that the foreknowledge of God violently compels a man to death, or that those who perish perish by the will of God. Which condemnation is truly that of a Catholic man.

They object 4. All the things which Gennadius, Sigebertus, and Hincmar ascribe to the Praedestinatians are the very dogmas of Saint Augustine, which the Semi-Pelagians carped at and denounced as handed down by that holy Doctor and expressed in his books: therefore in reality no Praedestinatian heretics ever existed. They prove the antecedent, first, because Gennadius says that the Praedestinatians teach by their dogmas that God accepts the persons of men, and that God draws some, even unwilling, after many evil works, to salvation, but rejects others after good works. These are the very complaints of the Semi-Pelagians against the distribution and operation of grace, and the sound doctrine of predestination, which they invidiously traduced under this Praedestinatian name, namely that some, after many evil works, are sometimes called to salvation, others, however, after many good works, are sometimes rejected. Secondly, from the fact that among the dogmas ascribed to the Praedestinatians some are openly Catholic, as that God does not give perseverance to all the just, namely to those who are not predestined, and that those who are predestined to eternal life, even if they wallow in perfidy or in every kind of sin for a long time, indeed even to the end of life, will receive grace, and so the occasion by which they both believe in God and live piously and holily, which doctrine is altogether Catholic: Therefore, etc.

I answer. Indeed several dogmas were falsely attributed by the Semi-Pelagians to Saint Augustine, which were nevertheless far alien from his mind; as St. Prosper testifies in the preface of the responsionis ad capitula Gallorum, and in the book against the Collatorem, cap. 1., he says that the Massilians, by their objections against the doctrine of St. Augustine, draw to themselves many unlearned men, and disturb hearts that have not the spirit of discernment. Therefore that those dogmas which are attributed to the Praedestinatians are not the doctrine of Saint Augustine, St. Prosper teaches in the books of the Responsionum ad capitula Gallorum and to the obiectiones Vincentianas, as well as to the excerpta Genuensium.

To the second. I say that Gennadius rightly reckons among the dogmas ascribed to the Praedestinatians that they said that perseverance is not given to all the just; for he does not speak nor understand of perseverance in actu secundo, or in the state of being accomplished, in which sense it is most true; but of perseverance in actu primo, that is, of the potency of persevering, which the Praedestinatians wished to be given to the predestined alone; against which error the second Synod of Orange pronounced, Can. 25.: that it must be believed according to the Catholic faith that, grace having been received through baptism, all the baptized, with Christ helping and cooperating, can and ought, if they wish to labor faithfully, to fulfill those things which pertain to salvation, and consequently that they have the power of persevering.

That he again asserts that the Praedestinatians teach that those who are predestined to eternal life will receive grace, etc., he understands it according to the sense of the Praedestinatians, who wished that to happen from antecedent necessity, introduced through predestination and reprobation themselves: because, they said, God by his mere good pleasure selected some out of the mass of perdition, whom he decreed to save through necessitating means; and that they, by the force of such an election, are necessarily to be saved, nor can they die a most evil death, whatever evil they have previously committed: others, on the contrary, he left in the mass of perdition, and therefore deprived them of the grace necessary that they might die holily and piously, although through the whole preceding time of their life they had lived laudably: which opinion, indeed, all Catholics execrate as heretical. Therefore Gennadius attributes no Catholic dogma to the Praedestinatians.

In the same way is to be understood what Gennadius says, that the Praedestinatians by their dogmas make God an acceptor of persons, namely in this, that they thought God finally necessitates to conversion those whom he had determined to save, though unwilling and long resisting; and after whatever evil works, draws them to salvation: others, however, after long-continued good works, finally casts off, and that by the force of their predestination or reprobation alone, which opinion is wholly heretical: what, then, is there to be blamed in Gennadius in this matter?

Paragraph III.

The heresy of the Predestinarians, extinct long before, was roused from the underworld around the year eight hundred and fifty by Gottschalk, a Belgian by birth, as Aventinus holds in lib. 4 of the Annalium, or a Gaul, as it seemed to Trithemius in lib. 3 of the Vitae Rabani; who, when he had devoted himself to the religious life in the Monastery of Orbais near Soissons, so conducted himself in that place that he seemed by habit a Monk, but savage in mind, impatient of quiet, and delighting in the novelty of expressions, and singular among his own for harmful fickleness. At length, from all the perverse seeds which he had then come to know in these regions, he chose for himself certain chapters, so that he might be able to become known by the novelty of his expressions; and leaving the Monastery irregularly, having traversed very many regions, as the worst of sowers he sowed deadly seeds: as Hincmar reports in the Epist. ad Nicolaum Papam, who had heard the very same from the Abbot and the Monks with whom that Gottschalk had lived.

Rabanus, Archbishop of Mainz and President of the Council in which Gottschalk was condemned, testifies to this very thing.

Let it be known, he says, to your charity, that a certain wandering Monk named Gottschalk, who asserts that he was ordained a Priest in your Parish, came from Italy to us at Mainz, introducing a new superstitious and harmful doctrine concerning the Predestination of God and leading peoples into error; saying that the Predestination of God is in evil just as it is in good; and that there are certain persons in this world who, on account of the Predestination of God, by which He compels them to go to death, cannot be corrected from error and sin: as if God had made them from the beginning to be incorrigible, and liable to punishment, to go to destruction. Having therefore recently heard this opinion from him in the Synod held at Mainz, and finding him incorrigible, with our most pious King Louis assenting and commanding, we have decreed to send him, condemned together with his pernicious doctrine, to you; so that you may confine him in your Parish, from which he first departed irregularly, and not suffer him to teach error any longer and seduce the christian people, because already, as I have heard, he holds many seduced.

But so that the controversy moved concerning Gottschalk may be treated thoroughly and lucidly, it is pleasing, with Anthony Deschamps, to distribute it into three parts: The first will embrace the beginnings of that contention and will exhibit Gottschalk condemned in the Council of Mainz. The second will follow the controversy spreading more widely and will show that the same man was condemned again in the Synod of Quierzy and consigned to a narrow prison. The third will reconcile the canons of the Council of Valence, which seem to favor Gottschalk, and to oppose the Council of Quierzy.

GOTTSCHALK CONDEMNED IN THE COUNCIL OF MAINZ.

That Gottschalk was condemned in the Synod of Mainz is clear not only from the aforesaid testimony of Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, but also from various Writers and Annals which have made mention of him, and which with the greatest agreement assign him no last place among the Predestinarian Heretics. Thus especially the Annals of Fulda and of St. Bertin, Flodoardus, lib. 3 of the Historiae Remens., Aventinus, lib. 4 of the Annalium: Trithemius, lib. 3 of the Vitae Rabani; concerning which matter, the writer of the Frankish annals published by Pithou, who lived in those same times, speaks thus:

About the Calends of October, he says: (King Louis) held a general assembly at Mainz, in which he received, heard, and dismissed the legates of his brothers and of the Normans and Slavs: he also reconciled with him the men of Bishop Rabanus who had conspired against their lord, having been publicly convicted. Also a certain Priest Gottschalk, thinking wrongly concerning the Predestination of God, and affirming that both the good are predestined by God to life and the wicked to perpetual death, inevitably, was reasonably convicted in the assembly, as it seemed to very many, and was sent to his own Bishop Hincmar, at Rheims, first however confirming by oath that he would not return again into the kingdom of Louis.

Hincmar also testifies, in the epistola ad Nicolaum Papam, where he speaks thus of Gottschalk:

Having traversed very many regions and, the worst of Sowers, sowing deadly seeds; at length, a Synod having been held in the city of Mainz and he presenting to Archbishop Rabanus the little book of his error, he was condemned by all the Bishops of Germany and, with synodal letters, sent back to the Metropolis of Rheims, over which, by the Lord's authority, I already presided.

But how great authority the censure of this Synod against Gottschalk ought to have, the eminent piety and erudition of the Archbishop of Mainz, the president of that Synod, testifies in the first place. For this is that great Rabanus Maurus, whom Saint Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, calls Catholic in faith and fully instructed in spiritual knowledge: Hermannus Contractus, an outstanding expounder of the divine books: John Trithemius, a man most learned in the divine letters, to whom neither Italy produced a like, nor Germany an equal: Sixtus of Siena, a man most complete in the knowledge of all disciplines, to whom Germany brought forth no peer in that age: Cardinal Baronius, a star of Germany shining in those times, the summit of the Theologians of that time and a Doctor not unequal to the great ones. What, therefore, will the Innovators be able to mutter against the decrees and sanctions of a man of so great a name? The Bishops who were present at this Synod testify the very same, and in so great a number that Hincmar writes to Nicholas the Supreme Pontiff that Gottschalk was condemned in this Synod by all the Bishops of Germany. But of what sort and how celebrated in great doctrine and piety those Pontiffs were, Trithemius teaches in the Chronicle of Hirsau for the year 848 in these words:

There were present there among others the most renowned men, the Bishops: Helti, Archbishop of Trier, Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne, Altefrid, Bishop of Hildesheim, Haimo, Bishop of Halberstadt, Ludericus, Bishop of Bremen, etc.; and many other Bishops and Abbots and Monks, among whom several were most famous in life and doctrine.

But how much this first sentence passed upon Gottschalk ulcerated his mind is evident from this, that afterwards he did not cease to rage and rave against Rabanus, the President of the Synod: nor did he only tear him with the most atrocious injuries, but also those whom he experienced as opposing and resisting he called, from the name of Rabanus, Rabanite heretics, as Amolo, Archbishop of Lyons, testifies in the Epistle which he wrote to Gottschalk himself.

In the seventh place, he says, two wholly grave evils in your ways have displeased us very much; one, that you tear the Priests of God and the Rectors of the Churches with such injuries and insults and curses, and trample them with such contempt and contumacy, miserably deceived, assuredly, by the spirit of error and pride; so that you seem to have nothing at all of Christian patience, nothing of Christian reverence. For among other things, you do not fear to call heretics all who resist the faith with the insane zeal of your senses, and you presume to name them Rabanites after a good and learned man and a Catholic Bishop.

GOTTSCHALK CONDEMNED IN THE COUNCIL OF QUIERZY.

Such is the plague of pernicious and heretical doctrine, that it seems it must be purged by no fire, and by no thunderbolt sent from heaven. Which Gottschalk himself certainly demonstrates; for condemned by the Fathers of the Synod of Mainz, yet not corrected, he set out from Germany into Gaul, as Hincmar reports in the Epistle to Nicholas the Supreme Pontiff:

Gottschalk, he says, having been condemned by all the Bishops of Germany, was sent back with synodal letters to the Metropolis of Rheims, over which, by the Lord's authority, I already presided. But what happened thereafter, he immediately subjoins: Afterwards, he says, having been heard by the Bishops of Rheims, and of Gaul, Belgium and the other Provinces, and found a heretic, because he did not wish to come to his senses from his perversity; lest he should harm others, since he did not wish to profit himself, by the judgment of the Bishops of the aforesaid Provinces, in our Parish, (since Rothaldus, Bishop of Soissons, of whose Parish he was, did not know how to resist him, and, being a lover of novelty, he was feared by us, lest he should learn to think perversely, he who was unwilling to think and teach what is right:) and lest the same Gottschalk, living a common life with others, should make them partakers of his error, he was consigned to Monastic custody, etc.

Or as he speaks in lib. De Praedest., cap. 2. Thence in the synodal assembly in the Palace of Quierzy, Gottschalk is again heard by the Bishops and very many other Ecclesiastical and Religious men who took part in the same Synod. There were present, however, two Archbishops, Wenilo and Hincmar, the former of Sens, the latter of Rheims: and indeed quite many Bishops, Fulconius of Thérouanne; Teudericus of Cambrai, Rothaldus of Soissons, Ragenarius of Amiens, Imo of Noyon, Erpoinus of Senlis, Lupus of Châlons, Irminfridus of Beauvais, Pardulus of Laon, Teutbordus of Langres, and Gernobrius, Bishop in the Province of Tours. Also two Chorepiscopi, Rigboldus and Wiruus, the former of Rheims, the latter of Cambrai: finally other men notable in doctrine and piety were present; among whom Wenilo stood out, afterwards Archbishop of Rouen, Aeneas and Isaac, then Bishops of Paris and Langres, and Bavo himself of the Monastery of Orbais, and so Gottschalk's own Abbot.

Hincmar moreover subjoins in the same place:

In whose presence, just as in the city of Mainz, having been found a heretic and incorrigible, deprived of the Presbyteral honor, which through Rigboldus, Chorepiscopus of Rheims, when he was a Monk of the Parish of Soissons, without the knowledge of the Bishop of his own city, he had usurped rather than received; and, for his irrevocable contumacy, according to the laws and the Canons of Agde, and the Rule of Saint Benedict, beaten with rods as a wicked man, just as the Bishops of the Provinces of Germany had decreed; lest he should harm others, he who did not wish to profit himself, he was thrust back into a workhouse.

Hincmar nevertheless exerted every effort to bring Gottschalk back to better fruit by the way of Evangelical Charity before he summoned him to the tribunal: for Flodoardus reports, lib. 3, cap. 28, that Hincmar wrote to Gottschalk, the Monk who had fallen into heresy, concerning certain sayings of the Authors, which he did not understand or expound well, especially those of Prosper, whose meaning Hincmar explains through the sayings especially of Blessed Augustine, and proposes the other suitable witnesses, the Doctors of the Apostolic faith, whose doctrine he admonishes to be followed in all things; and he shows by manifest testimonies that God both foreknows good things and evil things: but He foreknows evil things only, the good things, however, He both foreknows and predestines: whence foreknowledge can be without predestination: but predestination cannot be without foreknowledge: and because He foreknew and predestined the good to the Kingdom; the wicked, however, He foreknew only, He did not predestine, nor did He compel them by His foreknowledge to perish. To which definition Gottschalk himself most pertinaciously refused to subscribe. But Gottschalk, condemned by the decree of the Synod of Quierzy and enclosed in the Monastery of Hautvillers, published a double profession of his faith, one shorter, the other more prolix, in which he shamefully dissembles his dogma concerning Predestination, for he teaches this one thing, that the reprobate are predestined to punishment: he does not, however, deny that they are also predestined to fault, as he had earlier taught; by which he wove his opinion craftily and fraudulently. For it is certain that he asserted that the reprobate are predestined by God not only to punishment, but also to fault; for Rabanus affirms this in the Epistle to Count Eberhard, with whom he complains that he suffers a certain know-it-all named Gottschalk to remain with him, who so expounds Predestination as if God by His predestination compels man to perish: and likewise Amolo, Archbishop of Lyons, in the Epistle to Gottschalk himself, where he writes thus:

In the fourth place, it displeases us very much, because you think and speak so harshly and undisciplinedly and shamelessly concerning divine Predestination in the damnation of the reprobate, that all those who are to be placed on the left in the day of judgment and to be damned with the Devil and his Angels to eternal fire for their evil merits, are so predestined by God to destruction, that absolutely none of them could ever have been, and none can be, saved. To think and to say this, what else is it than to blaspheme gravely and horribly against God? so did his predestination irrevocably impose on them this necessity, that they cannot at all operate anything which would profit for their salvation.

But so that it may appear more clearly what the pestiferous dogmas of Gottschalk himself were, it pleases to subjoin these under the following title.

WHAT WERE THE CHIEF ERRORS OF GOTTSCHALK.

Hincmar writes and recounts them all in the Epist. to Pope Nicholas, where he says of Gottschalk: But if your catholic wisdom wishes to know what things he seems to say against the Catholic faith, from the old heresy of the Predestinarians (which first arose in Africa, afterwards in the Gauls at the same time when the Nestorian heresy also arose, and in the time of Pope Celestine was overcome by his own authority and the insistence of Saint Prosper), we signify to you a few of the many, item by item, few in number but not in weight:

He says what the old Predestinarians also said: that just as God predestined some to eternal life, so He predestined some to death. He says what the old Predestinarians also said: that God does not will all men to be saved, but only those who are saved: all, however, are saved whom He Himself has willed to save: and by this, whoever are not saved are wholly not of His will that they be saved, since if not all are saved whom God wills to be saved, He did not do all things whatsoever He willed; and if He wills what He cannot, He is not omnipotent, but weak. He is, however, omnipotent who did whatsoever He willed, the Scripture saying: all things whatsoever the Lord willed He did in Heaven and in Earth, in the sea and in all the abysses, and again: in your will, Lord, all things are placed and there is none who can resist your will; if you have decreed to save us, immediately we shall be freed. He says what the old Predestinarians also said: that not for the redemption of the whole world, that is, not for the salvation and redemption of all, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was crucified and died, but only for those who are saved. He says, with a different tradition but an equal error, what the old Predestinarians also said, expounding the saying of the Apostle Peter, denying the Lord who bought them: He bought them, he says, by the Sacrament of Baptism, yet He did not undergo the cross for them, nor bear death, nor pour out blood: but that the reception of Baptism is called redemption, the Doctor of the gentiles openly acknowledges: do not grieve, he says, the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. But that redemption which is proper and special to all the Elect alone, which the Crucified imparted to them alone, their pious Redeemer, as from past, so certainly from present, the born and the unborn, the living and the dead, namely all the Elect alike, redeemed, delivered, and washed from sins. And the same Gottschalk writes the same elsewhere: far be it from me that I should wish even to dream, let alone once whisper, that the ancient serpent could seize him for perpetual perdition with himself, for redeeming whom so precious blood of His Son, our Lord, was poured out to God the Father. Amen. And the same, speaking to God: it is thus clear quite openly that no one perishes to you, whoever has been redeemed by the blood of your cross.

Although, however, these pestiferous dogmas seemed to all Catholics to be execrable, they nevertheless had some champions: for in the first place Lupus Servatus, a Priest of Mainz, seems to have written for Gottschalk the little book De tribus quaestionibus: nevertheless Gottschalk himself did not think him to be wholly of his party, for thus he writes of him to Ratramnus, Monk of Corbie:

Indeed I have striven to give a proper meaning to the three of these, Macaudus, Jonas, and Lupus, with mouth shining, earnestly asking that they strive to report true things, but no one has yet rendered anything to me except one, who, since he is clever and at once clever and moderate, thus weighing the three responses of his little book, so that, full distinction being removed, with neither part he accords.

Gottschalk therefore confesses that Lupus wrote in such a way that he inclines to each part and fully fits neither. And certainly while he treats the third question, which is about the blood of Christ, (says Anthony Deschamps), after he has shown that many testimonies of Sacred Scripture, by which Christ is said to have died for all, can be so explained that they are understood of the predestined alone, he adds also that those testimonies of Scripture concerning sufficient redemption can be accepted and extended to absolutely all men. — There also came forth several little books which seem to be written for Gottschalk: but of these only two treat at length of the divine will of saving all men, of which one is inscribed On the three Epistles, the other On retaining the truth of the faith. But who was the Author of those books is still a question under judgment; for some attribute them to Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, others to Florus, Deacon of the same Church: which since it was uncertain, the usage prevailed that they were circulated under the name of the Church of Lyons: whence in Volume 4 of the Library of the Fathers these little books are inserted under this title, Ecclesia Lugdunensis contra Ioannem Scotum: but of these little books we shall make a fuller discourse below. — Prudentius likewise, Bishop of Troyes, was the fiercest defender of Gottschalk, as is clear from the Epistle which he wrote to Wenilo, Archbishop of Sens, in which he denies that he will consent to the ordination of Aeneas, Bishop of Paris, unless he first subscribe to four chapters, which he himself designates, and which are opposed to those of Quierzy. But who that Prudentius was, the annals of the Franks, or of St. Bertin, report for the year 461 in these words: Galindo, surnamed Prudentius, Bishop of the city of Troyes, a Spaniard by nation, eminently learned in letters, who some years before had resisted Gottschalk the Predestinarian: afterwards, moved by gall against certain Bishops resisting the heretic with him, the fiercest defender of that heresy itself; and thence, scribbling no few things diverse among themselves and adverse to the faith, he dies. — But that this man truly subscribed to the decrees of Quierzy, Hincmar testifies, lib. De Praedest., cap. 21.

We wonder, he says, that since in the aforesaid Synod of Quierzy Lord Prudentius subscribed to the chapters remembered above, and has the Canonical Sanctions and the decrees of the Pontiffs of the Apostolic see sufficiently known concerning synodal subscription and profession, he so inconsiderately and unaccustomedly, without probable consultation, against the institutions of the rules, sent a writing of this kind, for the consent of the ordination of his fellow Bishop, to the Archbishop and his fellow Bishops.

Nor does it matter that that Prudentius is numbered among the Saints, and his feast is celebrated at Troyes and in the Gallican Martyrology on the sixth of April, (which was published by the most learned man, Lord Andrea du Saussay), his virtue and sanctity are commended. For the same can be said of him which we said above of Faustus of Riez, namely, that near the end of his life, the heretical doctrine having at length been abjured, and, out of charity and mutual concord, minds having been composed, he thought with the other catholic Prelates, and illustrated his excellent virtues, seen by all, with integrity of faith.

But there were many opponents of the errors of Gottschalk; among whom I shall not commemorate John Eriugena, or Scotus, who, although he fought against Gottschalk with all art and might, was nevertheless stained with various errors, as will be clear below. But above the other opponents and condemners of Gottschalk, Hincmar shone forth, who, besides the Epistles and the Apology which he wrote for the Catholic faith against the error of Gottschalk to Pope Nicholas, also brought many other things forth into the light, and among the rest a Collection of the sentences of the Orthodox Fathers, for confuting the blasphemies of that Gottschalk, which he dedicated to the sons of his Church, teaching that the Deity of the divine Trinity ought not to be called Triple, since in the supreme Trinity there is unity. Likewise he vowed a most learned Poem to King Charles, in which is treated the grace and predestination of God, the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, the manner of seeing God, the origin of the soul, and the faith of the holy Trinity. And he inscribed this work Ferculum Salomonis. Moreover he collected and composed a very great volume De Praedestinatione Dei et libero arbitrio against certain Bishops his censors, and especially against the said Gottschalk and Ratramnus, Monk of Corbie. — Likewise he wrote another most beautiful book against the same Gottschalk and the other Predestinarians in the name of the King, and wrote to his Majesty in these words: To Lord King Charles, etc. These things Baronius reports for the year 848, n. 16, and Flodoardus, who surely was able to know this controversy preeminently; for he was a Canon of the Church of Rheims in the time of Artoldus, who, in the forty-eighth year after the death of Hincmar, was substituted in the Archbishopric of Rheims to Fulco, the successor of Seulfus, whose predecessor was Henry, who had succeeded Hincmar a little later.

WHAT THE SYNOD OF VALENCE DID CONCERNING THE DOCTRINE OF GOTTSCHALK.

While the questions moved by Gottschalk were being agitated with so great contention on both sides (says Anthony Deschamps), by the command of the Emperor Lothair the Prelates of three Provinces, Lyons, Vienne and Arles, convened at Valence, so that they might hear the case of the Bishop of that city, who had a very bad reputation on account of various crimes: but that matter having been discussed, they thought that something should be decreed by them concerning those controversies with which Gaul had now resounded for so many years; and since in that assembly there were some not a little hostile to Hincmar, they undertook the patronage of Gottschalk as far as was permitted, and attacked the decrees of the Synod of Quierzy, in the framing of which Hincmar had presided, as far as was lawful. Six Canons were sanctioned on this matter. The first universally prescribes that novelties of expressions are to be avoided with all diligence, and aims at John Scotus, or Eriugena, who had published against the genuine Predestination of Gottschalk a book teeming with errors and profane novelty of expressions. The second decrees that the foreknowledge of God imposed on no evil at all the necessity that it could not be otherwise: and so it condemns the opinion of Gottschalk, long since detested in the Synod of Mainz. The third asserts that Predestination is twofold, one of the Elect to life, the other of the Impious to death: and so in appearance it favors Gottschalk, and verbally differs from the first chapter of Quierzy, which had been conceived thus: we say only one Predestination of God, which pertains either to the gift of grace, or to the retribution of justice. The fourth treats of the redemption of the blood of Christ, nor does it in reality fight with the decree of Quierzy; it establishes, however, that all the regenerated are washed from sins, yet not all are saved: and it destroys that error of Gottschalk by which he asserted that only the predestined obtain grace in Baptism. — But the principal author of decrees of this sort was Ebbo, as can be known from the preface of that Council, in which, after the Archbishops, Ebbo alone among the Bishops is named with this eulogy: With the most venerable Ebbo, Bishop of Grenoble, laboring together with them as much as possible. This man, moreover, carried on hidden quarrels with Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims; because he was the nephew, through his sister, of that Ebbo who had conspired against Louis the Pious, and who, for that reason deprived of his office and driven from the Archbishopric of Rheims, had borne it most heavily that Hincmar was substituted into his own see. About to avenge this grief of his uncle, Ebbo of Grenoble maligned Hincmar and the chapters of Quierzy rather freely. And since he could do very much in the Synod of Valence, and composed its decrees, he inserted into them these words: Moreover the four chapters, which were received by the Council of our Brothers too little foreseen, on account of their uselessness, or even harmfulness and error contrary to truth: but also other chapters concluded most ineptly in nineteen syllogisms; and although it is boasted, resting on no secular literature, in which the device of the Devil rather than an argument of faith is detected, we wholly expel from the pious hearing of the faithful. By the first part the chapters of Quierzy are designated: by the second, however, the opinions of John Scotus, who, having undertaken to attack the heresy of Gottschalk, dashed into others by no means more tolerable and most worthy of the execration of all Catholics. It was unjust, however, that the decrees of Quierzy, which differ from the Valentines only in the assertion of a twofold predestination, and that verbally, should be joined with the most impure errors of a writer, and be punished with the same sentence: wherefore the very Prelates who had taken part in this Council of Valence, when they afterwards had convened at the Synod of Langres, so approved these same decrees of Valence, that they willed that that mark against the Council of Quierzy be removed, just as it was also removed in the Synod of Toul: which is an argument that it had been attached rather by the craft of Ebbo than by the judgment of the Council. — But when King Charles the Bald had received these decrees of the Synod of Valence from Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, he handed them to Hincmar, so that he might either attack them or subscribe to them. Hincmar, however, long deferred the attack on those chapters, hoping perhaps that the Prelates of the Synod of Valence would change their opinion, or that a Synod would have to be convened by Remigius of Lyons, by which he judged that all things could be better composed: at length, three years later, the same chapters having been excerpted, to King Charles, he says

Flodoardus, lib. 3, cap. 15, composed a huge volume containing several books on the Predestination of God and free choice, against certain Bishops his censors, and especially against Gottschalk, and Ratramnus, Monk of Corbie. — But Hincmar censured many things in this Council of Valence. First, that in his absence and without his knowledge, nor having been warned beforehand, beyond the duty of fraternal charity, they had condemned with Synodal authority four chapters, which they knew to have been approved by himself and his fellow Bishops in the Synod of Quierzy. Besides, that while they join the chapters of John Eriugena together with Hincmar's chapters, they seem to make Hincmar guilty of those things which Eriugena had written; although he had not received any knowledge of them even by hearsay. Next, that they twist into another meaning the things which he had written; as can be seen in his Epistle in Flodoardus, at the cited place. But that in reality the Synod of Valence did not dissolve the decrees of Quierzy, but only interpreted those propositions of Gottschalk more benignly than the latter had done, is clear from its very decrees. For when Valence approves that God predestined some to eternal life, just as others to eternal death, it understood that He predestined them to eternal death consequently, namely on account of their foreseen sins: not, however, that by an antecedent and efficacious will He predestined them to eternal death, and so to sin, which is its cause. But the Synod of Quierzy with Hincmar, and before it the Synod of Mainz with Rabanus, condemned that proposition of Gottschalk in this second sense, which Hincmar testifies to have been the sense of the old Predestinarians, c. 15 lib. De Praedest.: The old Predestinarians, he says, confess the Predestination of the reprobate to destruction: whom, just as they say are predestined by God to destruction, so also to sin. The modern Predestinarians change the color of this, but they reek with the understanding of its odor and taste. For they say: God predestined the reprobate to destruction, not to sin: although they cannot reach destruction except through sin. Similarly, when the Synod of Valence approved what Gottschalk was saying, that God does not will to save all men, but only those who are saved: and that Christ did not die for all, etc., it understood him to speak of the efficacious and absolute will of saving: not, however, of the conditional one and after the manner of good pleasure: in which sense Hincmar and the Synod of Quierzy had not undeservedly understood him: and concerning the death of Christ and redemption, not only as to sufficiency, but also as to efficacious application, so that in reality it profited them for obtaining salvation. By which it is clear that both Synods fought only in appearance, and by a diverse understanding of Gottschalk's words, yet that in reality both condemned his perverse dogmas.

That the twofold principal effect of Predestination, namely Grace and Glory, is plainly evident from what has been said; wherefore we shall fully resolve the proposed difficulty, if we show what are the causes of each. — That this may be done more plainly,

Note 1. Although Pelagius, Julian, and the Massilians fell into this foul error, asserting that free choice is in some part the cause of grace; yet their opinion was not entirely the same. For Pelagius, as St. Augustine reports, Epist. 107., after he had said in lib. 1. De libero arbitrio: He who uses well the freedom of choice so delivers himself wholly to God, and mortifies all his own will, that with the Apostle he can say, I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me; and places his heart in the hand of God, that He Himself may turn it whither He wills, adds: But this so great a help we then merit, when without that help we run to the Lord solely from the freedom of choice, desiring to be ruled by Him, etc. Julian, however, and his followers will, says St. Augustine lib. 2. Contra duas Epist. Pelagii c. 8., that the desire of good begins in man from man himself, so that for the merit of this beginning he may also obtain the grace of completing it. The Massilians, however, say, that eternal life is awarded to those who have believed God of their own accord and received the help of grace at the beginning of their belief, as St. Prosper writes Epistol. ad St. Augustine. Thus Pelagius held that by good works elicited by the powers of free choice we can obtain grace, not such as was altogether necessary, but such as conducted to the easier pursuit of the virtues: Julian, however, contended that we have from ourselves a right will and a pious endeavor, by which we would attain the grace necessary for eliciting a good work: the Massilians, however, conceded that our wills are anticipated by grace in every endeavor and good work; yet they asserted that there are in us certain beginnings of faith, by which God was moved to confer the first helping grace, against all of whom stands the Conclusion that follows

Unique conclusion. — By no powers of nature can we in any way merit helping grace. This is determined as a matter of faith in the Councils, the Arausican Council, Can. 6. If anyone says that mercy is conferred upon us when we will, desire, and knock, without the grace of God; and does not confess that it is brought about divinely in us, that we may be able to do all these things as we ought, through the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, etc., let him be anathema. And the Tridentine Council, sess. 6. cap. 3. If anyone shall say that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit and His help a man can believe, hope, love, or repent as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be conferred upon him, let him be anathema. And ibidem cap. 5. it had said earlier: That the beginning of justification itself in adults is to be taken from the grace of God coming through Christ Jesus, that is, from His calling, by which they are called when no merits of theirs exist. That the Palestinian Council defined the same altogether, St. Prosper affirms adversus Collatorem cap. 10., saying: In the judgment of the Oriental Bishops, Pelagius was compelled to anathematize those who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, that he might be able to appear a Catholic.

St. Augustine proves this same truth in several ways: First indeed by the example of Christ the Lord: Christ the Lord was the exemplar of our Predestination, since He predestined us to be made conformable to the image of His Son, says the Apostle: but the hypostatic union, which is the primary effect of the predestination of Christ the Lord, was altogether gratuitous; for as Saint Augustine speaks in the book De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 15. Let it be answered, I ask, whence did that man merit this, that, being assumed by the Word coeternal with the Father into unity of person, he might be the only-begotten Son of God? What good of his, of whatever kind, went before? What did he do before, what did he believe, what did he ask, that he might arrive at this ineffable excellence? Thence he concludes: By that grace any man whatsoever is made a Christian from the beginning of his faith, by which grace that man was made Christ from his own beginning. And below: As therefore that One was predestined, that He might be our Head, so we many have been predestined, that we might be His members.... Whoever in our Head shall have found the preceding merits of that singular generation, let him in us, His members, seek the preceding merits of the multiplied regeneration, etc. — Secondly, he proves the same by the example of St. Paul saying 1. Corinth. 15. I am not worthy to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God, etc. Whom St. Augustine thus presses in the book De Gestis Pelagii c. 14.:

O Saint Paul the Apostle! Pelagius the Monk says that you were worthy to receive all the graces of your Apostleship; you yourself, what do you say? I am not worthy to be called an Apostle.... Is it so, that to pay honor to Paul, I should dare to believe Pelagius more than Paul about Paul? I will not do it. For I would rather burden myself, than honor him, if I did so. He adds: Let us hear also why he is not worthy to be called an Apostle? Because, he says, I persecuted the Church of God. If we followed the sense, who would not judge that this man ought rather to be damned by Christ than called? Who so loves the Preacher as not to detest the persecutor.... Doing therefore so much evil, whence did you merit so much good? Let all nations hear him answering: by the grace of God I am what I am. Is grace otherwise commended, except because it is given to one unworthy? And His grace in me was not void.

Whence, however, does he prove that grace in him was not void, except from that which follows: but I labored more than all of them? Therefore he did not labor that he might receive Grace; but he received it that he might labor; and so, that he might become worthy to receive the due rewards, being unworthy he received grace gratuitously. — He proves 3. ibidem from the nature of grace itself, The very name of Grace, he says, and its meaning is taken away, if it is not given gratuitously, but he who is worthy receives it. And serm. 41. De verbis Apostoli: Therefore it is grace, because it is given gratuitously, because it is not rendered as a kind of wage after the weighing of merits; but a gift is given after the pardon of offenses. Whence lib. 1. Contra duas Pelagii Epistolas cap. 2. he concludes: This is the intention by which they strive to destroy Grace, that they contend it is given according to our merits. From which it is established that Grace by its own nature requires that it be given gratuitously and with no preceding merits. For, says the Apostle ad Rom. 11. if by grace, then not from works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. — He proves 4. From the fact that grace itself is the principle of all merit:

What merit, he says, Epist. 105. ad Sixtum, does a man have before grace, by which merit he may receive grace? since grace alone makes all our good merit in us: and when God crowns our merits, He crowns nothing else than His own gifts; and he had said before: No merits precede the receiving of this grace: since to the merits of the impious not grace, but punishment is due: nor would this be grace, if it were not given gratuitously, but were rendered as due.

All these proofs are confirmed by theological reason: No work of the natural order can merit anything supernatural: but grace is of the supernatural order: therefore by no work elicited by the powers of nature can anyone merit it. The minor is evident. The major is proved: there must be some equality and commensuration between debt and compensation, labor and wage, contest and prize: but there is none between a natural work and grace, which is of the supernatural order; and so by natural works no one can merit grace: whence rightly Saint Augustine cap. 14. De Gestis Pelagii: Although faith obtains grace for one working well, certainly that faith itself, that we might have it, we merited by no faith; but in giving it to us, in which we would follow the Lord, His mercy anticipated us.

You will object 1. If, no cause existing and no preceding merit or demerit on the part of man, God would grant or deny His grace, He would be an acceptor of persons, and not an equal bestower and distributor of His gifts: but this directly militates against the Apostle saying 2. ad Rom. and 6. ad Ephes. There is no acceptance of persons with God: therefore etc. — I deny the sequel of the major: for the acceptance of persons is turned into a vice only when that which is due to many equally deserving is conferred upon one alone: but divine grace and any gift of the supernatural order is due to no one at all, as is clear from what has been said: therefore God, granting grace to one, but not to another, is not to be regarded as an acceptor of persons: for in those things, says St. Thomas art. 5. ad 3., which are given from grace, one can give at his own pleasure, to whom he wills more or less (provided he withdraw from no one what is due) without prejudice to justice; and this is what the Father of the family says, Matth 20.: Take what is yours and go, am I not allowed to do what I will? Which St. Prosper excellently confirms lib. 2. De Vocatione Gentium saying:

We do not dare to complain of the judgment of carnal Parents, when they embrace some of their Sons with a more indulgent affection before any manners, before any services of piety. In masters also the disposition toward servants is free; nor is he justly reproached, who from a family of one condition chose some for himself whom he would more kindly honor and more liberally instruct: is complaint, then, to be made against the most benevolent equity of the supreme Father and true Lord, that in His great house all things vary with innumerable differences?

You will object 2. If God conferred His grace antecedently to the operation and merit of the will, human freedom would be altogether destroyed and would fall: but this directly militates against all the sacred Scriptures affirming and proving the free choice of man: therefore it is necessary that men merit grace through the suitable and right operation of their free will. — I deny the antecedent: for although divine grace anticipates human wills and prepares them for the good work, and is conferred with no preceding merits; nevertheless it does not extinguish, but rather perfects the free choice of man, since it moves it only morally, and does not physically promote and impel the will to consent and to the work. Whence rightly Saint Jerome Epist. ad Ctesiphontem, after he had said of the Pelagians: But that which they toss up and down, that free choice is destroyed by us: he adds: Let them hear on the contrary that those destroy the freedom of choice, who abuse it badly against the benefit of the Giver. Who destroys choice? He who always gives thanks to God and refers whatever flows in his little stream to the fountain? Or he who says: depart from me, because I am clean, I have no need of you; for you gave me once the freedom of choice, that I may do what I will: why do you again thrust yourself in, that I can do nothing, unless you complete your gifts in me? The same ibidem: *You think injury is done to you and the freedom of choice destroyed, if you always have recourse to God the author, if you depend on His will and say: My eyes are always to the Lord; for He Himself will pluck my feet out of the snare: whence you even dare to utter with a rash tongue that each one is ruled by his own choice! If he is ruled by his own choice, where is the help of God? If he does not need Christ as ruler, how does Jeremiah write: the way of a man is not in him, and the steps of a man are directed by the Lord? And a little after: In vain you blaspheme and thrust into the ears of the ignorant, that you condemn free choice. Let him be damned, who damns. — With which Saint Augustine agrees lib. De Spiritu et littera cap. 30.:

Do we then empty free choice through grace, he says? Far be it; but rather we establish free choice. For as the law through faith, so free choice through grace is not emptied, but is established. For the law is not fulfilled, except by free choice: but through the law comes the knowledge of sin, through faith the obtaining of grace against sin, through grace the healing of the soul from the vice of sin, through the health of the soul the freedom of choice, through free choice the love of justice, through the love of justice the operation of the law.

Note 1. It is beyond all controversy among Catholics that predestination, in the order of execution, depends entirely on merits and good works, especially with respect to adults, to whom eternal beatitude is conferred not only under the title of Inheritance, in the manner in which it is granted to infants reborn by baptismal water and departing this life before the use of reason; but also under the title of Reward, Crown and Wage: whence the only difficulty that remains to be resolved is whether the election itself of the predestined to glory, that is, the efficacious intention and willing which God has from eternity of conferring glory on the elect, and by which He separates them from the reprobate, presupposes foreseen merits, and depends on them as on a motive cause, in view of which God is stirred and moved to select them before others; or whether God begins to distinguish the predestined from the non-predestined by an election to glory proceeding from His sheer liberality and goodness, so that from this there follows only the election to grace and to the means by which the predestined will infallibly attain glory. In the resolution of this difficulty a threefold opinion of the authors is at work. For some, together with the Thomists, expressly affirm that predestination is not made from foreseen merits, nor are the foreseen merits of the predestined a cause, but rather an effect of predestination. Some, with Catharinus, assert that certain persons are eminently predestined and from eternity selected to glory antecedently to the prevision of their merits; while the election of others presupposes merits. The rest, however, together with Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, Albert the Great, with whom the Subtle Doctor and the Angelic Doctor do not disagree, together with a numerous host of the more celebrated Doctors both ancient and modern, teach that the efficacious election of the predestined to glory presupposes foreseen merits and depends on them as on a motive cause: whence they suppose that, antecedently to the prevision of merits, there is in God only the will of complacency of giving glory, common to the predestined and the reprobate.

Note 2. Predestination, as far as the present difficulty is concerned, can be taken in a threefold way: first indeed, for predestination to grace alone, taken in itself and singly; second, for predestination to glory, precisely insofar as it is only glory and apart from grace; third, finally, for predestination to grace and to glory together conjointly: for it is one thing to predestine to grace, which is the primary effect of predestination; another to predestine to glory, which is the crown of predestination; and another to predestine at once to both conjointly. It is certain, however, and clear from the preceding Question, that predestination to grace is made independently of any good works and from the sheer liberality and mercy of God. It is equally certain that predestination to grace and glory together and conjointly also presupposes no merits; because grace, which in predestination itself is involved together with glory, is not given, nor destined to be conferred, on account of merits; therefore the only difficulty that remains to be resolved is that concerning predestination to glory considered separately.

Note 3. The opinion asserting that predestination to glory, considered singly and nakedly, is made before foreseen merits, has absolutely nothing in common with the erroneous opinion of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians: since the Pelagians (as has been said) either denied altogether every grace preceding, exciting and moving our wills to good work; or affirmed that it is not simpliciter and absolutely necessary, but only for working more easily; whence it is manifest that they asserted predestination to glory to be made not from foreseen merits proceeding from the grace of Christ and the human will, but only from works to be elicited by the power of free choice. The Semi-Pelagians, however, since they contended that the beginning of faith, that is, the first affection of belief, arises from us, and not from God, nor from His exciting and helping grace, also affirmed that our predestination to glory is not adequately and universally from foreseen merits proceeding from grace and the human will; whence it is clear that their opinion strays far from the teaching of the Catholic Doctors who affirm that our predestination is made from foreseen good works proceeding from grace and human freedom; with whom it stands

Only conclusion. — The efficacious election of the predestined to glory is made from their foreseen merits, by which God is induced and moved to choose them before others and to destine them to eternal beatitude. This is the open teaching of the weightier and better-known theologians, as will appear below; which indeed we are pleased to prove by four arguments in the following distinct paragraphs, so that the matter may appear more clearly and efficaciously.

§ 1. — First Proof from Sacred Scripture.

The Sacred Scriptures set forth this same conclusion in such express words that it seems impious to doubt its truth; and first indeed Christ expressly expresses it in Matth. 25., where He thus addresses the elect: Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me to eat. By which words Christ signifies that the kingdom of glory was prepared for the elect from their foreseen good works; which is evident both from the causal particle for, which, being connected with the two words prepared and possess, shows that the kingdom of heaven is not only conferred in execution, but is also designed and prepared in intention on account of good works. And because the holy Fathers so interpret the aforesaid passage, above all St. Chrysostom in Homilia 80. in Matthaeum: I knew, he says in the person of Christ, that you would be such before you were born; these things were prepared for you by me: and also St. Augustine on Psalm. 49., where, weighing these words: Come, blessed of my Father, receive, he says: Receive what? The kingdom: For what reason? I was hungry and you gave me to eat... So much is the Kingdom of Heaven worth, etc. By which he indicates that the works of men are the motives of the justice rendering the Kingdom in return for works. And in sermon 50. De Tempore he says: Why the causes either of so great a reward, or of so great a punishment? Receive the Kingdom, and go into the eternal fire. Why are these to receive the Kingdom? For I was hungry and you gave me to eat. Why are these to go into the eternal fire? I was hungry and you did not give me to eat. By which he openly indicates that the causes and motives of glory were the works of mercy foreseen from eternity. It is confirmed from the following words of Christ, where, addressing the reprobate, He says: Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the Devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you did not give me to eat. From which I argue thus: we must reason in the same way about the destination of the Just to glory as about the destination of the reprobate to hell: but the Devil and his reprobate followers were not destined from eternity to hell, except on account of their foreseen demerits: therefore neither is the kingdom prepared for the Just, except on account of their foreseen merits. The major is evident: for in both cases there is the same causal particle, and a continuous antithesis of the elect and the reprobate, of good and evil works, of the kingdom and the eternal fire.

The adversaries reply. that a twofold decree is to be distinguished in God before the actual conferral of glory, one indeed of intention, by which God gratuitously and without foreseen merits wills to save them; the other is of execution, by which God wills to save those already predestined, indeed, and to confer glory on them, but through merits: about the first, they say, the aforesaid text does not treat, but only about the second: whence they infer that that causal particle for is to be referred not to the word prepared, which signifies the decree of intention, but to the antecedent words come and possess, which designate the executive decree, which presupposes the foreknowledge of merits. — On the contrary: first, that twofold decree is altogether fictitious, and unheard of not only among the holy Fathers and the older theologians, but also among the philosophers, who, besides the will and the decree about obtaining some end, acknowledged nothing else than the execution and the application of the means consequent upon such a decree. Second, those two decrees do not cohere with one another; for the second not only narrows and restricts the first, but also altogether changes and overturns it; since the first decree, which is of intention and gratuitous, either is altogether efficacious and absolute independently of the second, or it is not: if it is not, it is altogether useless, since it would have its efficacy only from the second, from which it would depend as from a condition: if it is, it cannot subsist with the second: for since the first decree is altogether gratuitous and absolute, it also altogether conflicts with the second decree, which is burdensome and conditional, because it depends on works to be elicited: for it is impossible that the same thing in the same respect be gratuitous and burdensome, absolute and conditional: for these things conflict no less than simple and composite, which are so impossible that they cannot stand together at once in the same respect. Add that the first decree is for this reason called gratuitous, because it is about giving glory simpliciter from the sheer liberality of God without any motive and any condition on the part of the Predestined: the second, however, is burdensome, because it involves the condition of merits and of labor; but that glory is to be given without any condition and with some condition, and by sheer liberality and from debt and wage, absolutely and conditionally, independently of anything extrinsic and dependently, are altogether contradictory things: therefore they cannot subsist with one another in the same respect. Finally, no one will deny that if someone had absolutely promised another that he would give him something, and wished afterwards that that other, to whom he promised, should merit or buy the thing itself; no one, I say, will deny that by the second statement he would have revoked the first; since the first was about a donation, the second, however, would be about a sale; but sale and donation are opposite acts, one of which revokes the other, because donation is purely gratuitous, whereas sale is burdensome: therefore a pari, if God had that twofold decree, by the former of which He would will to give glory freely and from pure liberality, by the latter, however, would will it to be conferred only through works; there is no doubt that the latter decree would revoke and overturn the first; and so it would not only make God mutable, but would also turn His divine goodness and infinite wisdom into a reproach; which can indeed be proved and illustrated by a most apt example: if some rich man had first had it in mind to receive all his parents and friends at an excellent and sumptuous banquet for free; while, however, they feast lavishly and magnificently, the rich man himself, thinking of what and how great expenses he incurred in preparing that banquet, would decree within himself that each of those reclining at table should pay his share of the dinner, and would exact it, saying indeed that he had first invited them freely and out of friendship, but that he had at last decided that they should pay all the expenses: who would not rightly laugh at and be angry with the sentiments of the inviter? The asserters of those two decrees think exactly the same of God, by the first of which God had decreed that glory was to be conferred on the elect from sheer liberality and gratuitously; by the second, however, He would decree that it was not to be bestowed except from presupposed good works by which it was to be merited.

Others reply. that there are not indeed two decrees, but a twofold connotation of the same decree and will, according to the notion of intention and of execution: so that in the first sign of reason God willed to confer glory efficaciously on all His elect from His sheer liberality; but yet to be obtained through merits infallibly future, and dependent in execution on merits of this kind: and therefore in the prior sign, in the order of intention, glory is destined before merits; in the posterior, however, and in the order of execution, it is not given to the elect except from merits. — On the contrary: it is contradictory that something be at once to be obtained from the pure liberality of the giver, and from the labor of the obtainer, as has been said: therefore it is equally contradictory that God decree that glory be obtained from His pure liberality and from the merits of the elect; for what is altogether gratuitous excludes every notion whatsoever of merit, labor and purchase. Then, this interpretation directly militates against the holy Fathers praised above and to be cited below, who so interpret the aforesaid passage as to assert that the merits of the elect are the cause of the preparation itself of glory; and not only of its conferral: so that God prepared glory for the elect before others in no other way than because these were foreseen as working well. Finally, the reason is the same for the kingdom prepared for the elect as for the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels: but in the order of intention the eternal fire was not prepared for the Devil and his angels before their foreseen demerits: therefore in the order of intention likewise the kingdom was not prepared for the elect except from the prevision of their own merits: and so, just as a twofold will cannot be distinguished, namely executing and intending, with respect to the reprobate, so neither is one to be assigned with respect to the elect.

Finally they reply. that in the aforesaid passage of Sacred Scripture a reason is indeed rendered why the possession of the eternal kingdom is handed over to those to whom it is owed on account of works, but a cause is not assigned which impelled the Father to prepare the kingdom for them rather than for others. And they prove this from those words, Blessed of my Father, which signify that God by His Predestination was the cause of the whole happiness of the Saints; for the divine blessing in the Sacred Letters does not presuppose, but causes the good which it expresses, thus Genesis 1. He blessed them and said: Increase and multiply and fill the earth, etc. — On the contrary: first, the particle for is truly causal; and not merely explicative, as is established among all the interpreters of Sacred Scripture: therefore the reply is null. Second, it must be causal in the same way with respect to the destination of the elect to glory as with respect to the designation of the reprobate to hell: but no one will say that it is not causal with respect to the reprobate, to whom hell is decreed only on account of their evil merits: therefore no one likewise ought to deny that it is causal with respect to the elect. Finally, the very series of the words and the intention of Christ the judge pronouncing that sentence demand this very thing, for He says: possess the kingdom prepared for you, for I was hungry, etc., as if He were saying: because you rendered me so much good, because you were at hand to me in my urgent need and that of my own; therefore, in compensation for the benefit, Come, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. While, however, the Predestined answer: Lord, when did we see you hungry, and fed you; thirsty, and gave you drink? Christ always, adducing His gratitude and persisting in the aforesaid reason of compensating the benefit, says: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. Which words of Christ, by signifying gratitude, also undoubtedly indicate the motive why the kingdom was prepared for the elect, namely because their offices of charity were foreseen. For confirmation I say that, although the blessing of God is sometimes used in that sense in Scripture, nevertheless frequently by it there is signified something consequent upon the good work of the creature, on account of which the latter is loved and blessed by God; thus in Genesis 22. God, addressing Abraham, says: Because you have done this thing and have not spared your only-begotten Son for my sake, I will bless you, etc. That the blessing of which Christ speaks in the words cited above from Matth. 25.¹ is of this kind, however, the causal particle immediately subjoined shows, For I was hungry, etc.

Proof 2. from the first Ad Corinth. 2., where it is said that neither has the eye seen, nor the ear heard, nor has it ascended into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love Him; where there is speech about Predestination: for the word prepared sounds the same as predestined, as St. Thomas explains in the same place: but of this predestination, or preparation of glory, a cause is brought forth on the part of the elect, namely the love of God, which is the formal cause why God prepared glory for them, as is evident from the words. Then, if that preparation did not presuppose love, glory would not fittingly be said to be prepared for those loving God, but either for the enemies of God, if Predestination was made through original sin, by which all men are constituted enemies of God; or it would be said to be prepared for those altogether indifferent, if it had been made before the foreseen original sin, since in this state we would be neither friends nor enemies of His: therefore, when it is said to be prepared for those who love, it truly presupposes love, that is, the foreseen future state in which we love God. Finally, every act presupposes its object, because the object is the cause of the act: but the object of that preparation of glory is the love of men: for it is said that it is prepared for those who love: therefore that love of the elect is presupposed for the preparation of glory, and is the objective cause of that preparation. Nor does it avail to say that that preparation signifies the execution, and not the intention. For this reply openly militates against the text itself, in which there is no speech about the preparation of the means for making the execution: indeed rather those means are presupposed. For glory is said to be prepared for those who love, that is, for those already having love, which is the principal means for attaining glory; and consequently there is no speech there about the preparation of means, but about the preparation itself of glory with respect to those who are in fact foreseen to love God and by this love to merit eternal glory.

Proof 3. from the same Apostle, ad Rom. 8. Whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son, which text the holy Fathers interpret of the knowledge of future things, as it is directive of Predestination; and so as presupposing foreseen merits for Predestination. Thus St. Ambrose, lib. 5. De Fide cap. 3., where he thus has: Whom He foreknew, these He also predestined, because He did not predestine before He foreknew: but whose merits He foreknew, their rewards He predestined. In a similar manner Sedulius speaks in Epist. ad Rom.: Those whom He foreknew would be devoted to Him, he says, these He chose to take hold of the promised rewards: and a little later: It is one thing to foreknow, another to predestine: Foreknowledge therefore foreknows what is to be done; afterward predestination describes what is to be repaid; that one foresees merits; this one predestines rewards. And also Primasius, a disciple of August.: He predestined, he says, that he who by His gift would be conformable in life, would be conformable in glory. Then in the same place the Apostle skillfully places foreknowledge before predestination: Whom He foreknew, he says, He also predestined: by which he signifies that the foreknowledge of good works precedes Predestination of merits; for Sacred Scripture speaks nothing unadvisedly and imprudently. Finally, that very thing is evidently gathered from the antecedent and consequent words; since in verse 17. of the same chapter the Apostle begins to exhort the faithful to patience, on which, he says, our being future heirs of eternal life depends as on a necessary condition; But if sons, he says, also heirs: heirs indeed of God, coheirs, however, of Christ: if nevertheless we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified; and in verse 28. he shows that tribulations cannot harm the elect, but rather turn out for them unto good, namely for attaining eternal glory: We know, he says, that to those loving God all things work together unto good, to those who according to His purpose are called holy: that is, according to the antecedent will of saving them, which passes from conditional into absolute, presupposed the prevision of their perseverance in the love of God; whence he adds: For whom He foreknew, supply: such as would be; these He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son in glory, just as they were conformable in patience; whence he infers: but whom He predestined, namely through that knowledge, these He also called with prevenient graces: and whom He called, these He also justified, those namely who consented to the calling; but whom He justified, these He also glorified; foreseeing of course that they would persevere in the love of God, and on that account He predestined them efficaciously and absolutely to the fellowship of the glory of Christ.

Proof 4. From those words of Christ in Matth. 20., where, addressing the sons of Zebedee, He says: To sit at my right hand or my left is not mine to give to you, but to those for whom it is prepared by my Father; as if He were saying: eternal glory is not prepared by my Father so that it be conferred in the way in which earthly Kings are wont to confer their gifts at their pleasure and by mere will upon their Parents, Friends and Courtiers; but just as the Father has established, that is, according to the norm and measure of merits, as St. Augustine rightly weighs in Psalmum 126., expounding this verse, It is vain for you to rise before the light, where, when he had said:

Such were the Zebedees to themselves, who before they were humbled according to the Passion of the Lord were already choosing places for themselves where they would sit, where one at the right hand, the other at the left: they wanted to rise before the light, therefore they went in vain. The Lord recalls them to humility etc.; he adds: Rising from humility you arrive at the kingdom: for if you snatch the kingdom, you fall from the kingdom before you rise: Can you drink, he says, the Cup which I am about to drink? and they: We can; and He: You will drink my Cup, but to sit at the right hand, or the left, is not mine to give to you: It is prepared for others by my Father. What is, it is not mine to give to you, unless it is not mine to give to the proud? for this they still were; but if you wish to receive it, do not be what you are. It is prepared for others: And you, be others, and it is prepared for you. What is, be others? First be humbled, you who already wish to be exalted.

By which St. Augustine indicates that eternal glory is not prepared except for good works. The rest of the Fathers agree with him, interpreting the aforesaid passage in the same way; thus Epiphanius, haeres. 69.: This, he says, he wants to show, that this thing is not done according to acceptance of persons, but according to dignity: and below: If you have labored, it will be prepared for you by my Father. Cyril, lib. 10. Thesauri c. 6.: It is not mine to give the supreme honor to you who ask, which is reserved in the foreknowledge of the Father for those whom the excess of striving has commended: Theophylactus on this passage, Chrysostom, Hom. 63., and also St. Thomas agree with these, where he reports from St. Jerome: It is not mine to give, etc., as if he said: the eminence of dignity is not given to the person, but to merit, and this according to divine predestination, etc. Finally, it is proved by all those texts of Scripture by which eternal life is signified to be given as the wages of good works: thus Matth. 25., where the parable is proposed of the laborers working in the vineyard; and of the servants to whom the trading from the talents received had been entrusted; who all brought back wages according to their labor: but no Father of the family decrees that a wage is to be given to any laborer unless his labor is presupposed: therefore neither does God decree that glory is to be given except from foreseen works. Nor does it matter that, when the first laborers complained there that the Father of the family made those who had labored for a shorter time equal to them in the wage, he seems to refer this not to the more fervent labor of the later workers, but to his own goodness and liberality: for he does not attribute this to his goodness by reason of the total wage, but only by reason of the excess of the wage above the labor rendered: for he does not say simpliciter: I will to give this man a denarius, but: I will to give to this last one as to you, in which there is only a comparison of the one wage with the wage of the other, which indeed is equal in both: but it seems superabundant in one, namely on account of the lesser labor expended, which superabundance the Father of the family himself gives from pure liberality. — There are several other texts of Scripture insinuating the same thing; thus 2. Petri 1. Strive, brethren, that by good works you make your calling and election certain; as if he said: since your election depends on works, as long as this life lasts, insofar as it precedes the prevision of the end, it does not order us so firmly to salvation that it cannot be frustrated by the outcome; wherefore Strive, etc. The same thing is confirmed by Apocalypsis 3. Hold what you have, lest another take your crown; by which it is established that the crown is not so certainly and firmly decreed before the foreseen end of life that it cannot in fact be lost: that certainty of the crown, which is made through efficacious election, presupposes meritorious works. From these and other passages to be cited below it is clear that Sacred Scripture, according to the genuine interpretation of the holy Fathers, openly fights for the truth of our conclusion.

§ II. Second Proof from the holy Fathers.

Although several of the holy Fathers openly defend this very truth of our conclusion by their oracles, I nonetheless judge that those are to be heard above the rest whom the Council of Valence 3. called judges and arbiters in the controversy of Predestination, in these words:

Without hesitation, to the Doctors who piously and rightly handle the Word of truth, and to the most lucid expositors of Sacred Scripture themselves, that is, to Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and the others who rest in Christian piety, we submit reverent hearing and obedient understanding, and with all our strength we embrace what they have written for our salvation.

That I may carry this out more plainly, first I have judged that those are to be praised whom Augustine himself praised and commended. Then is to be opened what St. Augustine himself judged concerning this truth. Finally, what was the opinion of the Disciples of Augustine on this matter.

THE OPINION OF THE FATHERS PRAISED BY ST. AUGUSTINE.

St. Epiphanius, whom St. Augustine praises in the book ad Quodvult-Deum, in lib. Adversus haereses, haeresi 69., explaining those words of Matthew, It is not mine to give to you: This, he says, he wants to show, that this thing is not done according to acceptance of persons, namely, according to dignity, etc. Whence he gathers: It is not mine to give to you, but if you have labored, it will be prepared for you by my Father. By which he openly signifies the election before merits through that preparation. — St. Ambrose, whom St. Augustine in lib. 1. contra Iulianum calls the Excellent dispenser of God, whom, he says, I venerate as a Father, whose grace and constancy for the Catholic faith I have myself experienced, and the Roman world does not doubt to proclaim with me: he, I say, in the Commentary on the Epistle ad Rom. (if indeed it is his), expounding those words of chapter 8., Whom He foreknew and predestined, says: those whom He foreknew would be devoted to Him, these He chose to take hold of the promised rewards: and cap. 9. on that, I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, he says: I will have mercy on him of whom I was foreknowing that I was about to give mercy, knowing that he would be converted and would remain with me: but because some deny that this book was written by St. Ambrose, therefore that same one is to be heard in lib. 5. De Fide cap. 3., where, expounding the praised words of Matthew, It is not mine to give to you, he says:

Finally, referring to the Father, he added to those for whom it is prepared, to show that the Father also is wont to defer not to petitions, but to merits, because God is not an acceptor of persons: whence the Apostle says whom He foreknew, He also predestined: for He did not predestine before He foreknew, but whose merits He foreknew, their rewards He predestined.

By which words he openly explains the truth of our conclusion. — St. Chrysostom, whom St. Augustine in lib. 1. contra Iulianum capitul. 6. pronounces learned in the Catholic Faith and instructing others, in Homil. 80. in Matthaeum, expounding those words, Come, blessed of my Father, says:

O how great in glory, how great in beatitude are these words! and he does not only say receive, but by inheritance, as it were your own, as it were paternal, as it were yours, which were owed to you from the beginning: for before you were born, because I knew you would be such, these things were prepared for you by me.

and in Sermon 1. in Epistolam ad Ephesios, expounding the same text, he says: But to be chosen is both the judgment of divine benignity and of the virtue of those who are chosen; for altogether he chooses the approved, etc. — St. Jerome, whose eloquence shone for us from the East to the West after the manner of a lamp, says St. Augustine in the praised book, chapter 7., he, I say, in the first chapter of Isaiah, expounding that, if you are willing, you will eat the good things of the earth: thus he says: He preserves free choice, so that on either side, not from the prejudice of God, but from the merits of individuals, there is either punishment or reward. Note (not from the prejudice of God), that is, from an anticipated sentence, preceding namely the examination of the cause; the same in chapter 1. of Malachi, expounding that, I have loved Jacob, but have hated Esau, thus he has: The love and hatred of God arise either from the foreknowledge of future things, or from works. Otherwise we know that God loves all things, and hates nothing of those things which He created, namely antecedently and from Himself. Finally, in Epist. 105. ad Hedibiam quaest. 10., speaking about the Reprobate and those Predestined to glory, he says:

The vessels of mercy, which He prepared unto glory, which He called, that is, we who are not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles, He does not save irrationally and without the truth of judgment; but with preceding causes (namely merits), because some received the Son of God, others, however, of their own accord did not will to receive Him.

By which it appears that he speaks of election, and not indeed of execution alone: likewise of election to Glory, and not indeed to Grace; for everywhere he presupposes faith and the reception of the Son of God in those about whom he treats.

The adversaries reply. that the praised Fathers are to be understood only of a certain consequent and remuneratory election, which is made after foreseen merits; and not of a purely gratuitous election prior in notion to foreseen merits and antecedent to them. — On the contrary: the praised Fathers expressly assert that God, in efficaciously and sincerely preparing the Kingdom of Heaven for the elect, keeps justice, not grace; that He does not defer to petitions, but to merits, because He is not an acceptor of persons; and that He did not predestine before He foreknew; but whose merits He foreknew, their rewards He predestined: therefore they reject that efficacious election purely gratuitous and antecedent to foreseen works, in which justice is not kept, but grace; nor is anything deferred to merits, but all is from the mere acceptance of persons.

Second, the holy Fathers affirm that punishment and reward, that is, reprobation and predestination, are not from the prejudice of God, that is, from an anticipated sentence antecedent to the examination of the cause: and likewise that the love and hatred of God arise either from the foreknowledge of future things, or from works; since otherwise God loves all things, as the praised St. Jerome speaks: therefore they openly reject that gratuitous, absolute and efficacious election antecedently to the prevision of merits. Finally, the same holy Fathers with open words exclude that antecedent, absolute and efficacious election, while they affirm that election is made by reason of works and of foreknowledge preceding predestination: therefore, etc.

THE TESTIMONIES OF ST. AUGUSTINE HIMSELF.

Various are the arguments and statements of St. Augustine by which he declares that Predestination is made only from foreseen works; I bring forth, however, the principal ones.

First. Whenever St. Augustine speaks of the order of Predestination, he places foreknowledge before all those things which pertain to Predestination. Indeed he describes Predestination itself through foreknowledge, and judges the two so strictly conjoined that he very often uses foreknowledge for predestination. He thinks, therefore, that predestination is made from the foreknowledge of our cooperation with divine Grace. The antecedent is evident as to the first part, namely that he places foreknowledge before predestination; for in lib. De Natura et Gratia cap. 5., speaking of the sinners whom Christ came to save, he says: Whom He foreknew, He predestined, called, justified, glorified. He keeps the same order in lib. De Correctione et Gratia cap. 9., saying: All those things are already done: He foreknew, predestined, called, justified. And below: Whoever therefore in the most provident disposition of God have been foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified, etc. By which he sufficiently indicates that, just as calling precedes justification, and justification glorification, so also foreknowledge is presupposed to predestination. — The same antecedent is evident as to the second part, namely that he defines Predestination through foreknowledge, for in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae cap. 14. he says: This Predestination of the Saints is nothing other than the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits by which whoever are freed are most certainly freed. It is consequent, therefore, that foreknowledge is not only intrinsic to Predestination, but is also to be placed before it according to the priority of concept. — Finally it is evident as to the third part, namely that St. Augustine uses that foreknowledge for predestination; for in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae cap. 17. he says: These gifts of God, if there is no predestination which we defend, are not foreknown by God; but they are foreknown; this, therefore, is predestination; it is also signified by the name of foreknowledge, as the Apostle says: God has not cast off His people whom He foreknew. This which he says, He foreknew, is not rightly understood except as He predestined. And at the end of the chapter he adds: For without doubt He foreknew, if He predestined; but to have predestined is to have foreknown this, which He Himself was about to do. By which it is clear that, according to the opinion of St. Augustine, foreknowledge is so closely conjoined with predestination that he nonetheless judges it to precede it according to our concept.

The adversaries reply. that St. Augustine also at times places predestination before foreknowledge itself, for in lib. De Bono perseverantiae cap. 10., speaking of good works and of perseverance in them, he says: that they are foreknown by God and on this account predestined: therefore, they say, that foreknowledge is posterior to predestination, since predestination is inferred from it. — Against this, first. Although from the passage cited by the adversaries that could perhaps be gathered, nevertheless it is certain that in the passages assigned by us St. Augustine is to be understood of the Foreknowledge that precedes Predestination; both because, as we have said, he expressly places foreknowledge before predestination and defines it through foreknowledge, as through something prior and in no way consequent upon Predestination itself. For if foreknowledge were something consequent upon Predestination itself, it would likewise be extrinsic to it and consequently impertinent to its definition. Then because from the cited cap. 18. of De Bono Perseverantiae St. Augustine infers foreknowledge from predestination, saying: Without doubt He foreknew, if He predestined: therefore he does not judge that foreknowledge presupposes predestination. Then because in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 10. he affirms that Foreknowledge can be without predestination, but not predestination without foreknowledge. He holds, therefore, that foreknowledge is prior to predestination, at least in the legitimate consequence of subsistence. Finally, because St. Augustine in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae cap. 17. 19. 22. affirms that there is no greater difficulty in Predestination than in simple foreknowledge, certainly for no other reason than that foreknowledge precedes predestination, so that in foreknowledge as prior God sweetly and kindly disposes the gifts and aids by which He orders and destines the creature to glory, whence it comes about that Predestination, following that foreknowledge and disposition, is easily conceived; and so he knew such foreknowledge and ordination. Add that in the passage cited by the adversaries it can also be said that Augustine is to be understood of antecedent foreknowledge, and that he therefore infers predestination from it, not because he judges predestination to be prior to foreknowledge, but because it is so closely connected with it that the one is rightly inferred from the other without distinction, in that manner, namely, in which the light of the sun is gathered from the day and the day from the light of the sun; for just as that inference is sound: the sun shines, therefore it is day, and conversely: it is day, therefore the sun shines, namely on account of the intrinsic connection of both, so likewise it is lawful to infer: God foresaw that He would give perseverance in good: therefore He predestined him; and conversely: God predestined this man: therefore He foresaw him persevering in good; which things are indeed true by reason of the very close connection of predestination with foreknowledge, not however from the fact that foreknowledge precedes predestination.

They reply, secondly. that not only in the passages assigned by us, but also elsewhere St. Augustine speaks of the foreknowledge of good works insofar as it follows upon predestination and coincides with the knowledge of vision; for he attributes to that foreknowledge the same object which is customarily attributed to the knowledge of vision, namely the thing not conditionally, but absolutely future; for he says that God by that foreknowledge knew what He would do if this or that had happened, which manifestly indicates absolute knowledge. From this this argument can be formed: that foreknowledge follows upon predestination and is the same as the knowledge of vision, which has the same object with them: but the foreknowledge of which St. Augustine speaks has the same object as predestination and the knowledge of vision, namely the things which are truly future: therefore, etc. — I distinguish the major: that which has the same object both materially and formally, I concede; only materially, I deny. Likewise I distinguish the minor: that foreknowledge has the same object as predestination, materially, I concede; formally, I deny. For this foreknowledge indeed regards the future, which is truly future, but not insofar as it is absolutely future. That this may be perceived more evidently, it must be noted that, although conditioned knowledge in itself is one and simple, yet if it is considered in order to its object, it can be distinguished as twofold, namely that which is concerned with an object conditionally indeed, but nevertheless truly future, such as was the knowledge by which God foreknew that Saul would truly be converted, if he were called in this or that manner; and that by which God knows what would have been future, if the condition had been posited, which since it is not to be posited, so neither are they future, such as was the future conversion of the Tyrians if Christ had been announced to them, which since it was not done, so neither were they converted.

Since, however, the Semipelagians abused that foreknowledge of things that would never be future, in order to defend their error, saying that some infants were therefore brought to baptism before death, because God had foreseen that if they had lived longer they would have led a just and pious life; others, on the contrary, departed from among the living before receiving baptism, because He had foreseen that they would be impious if they had lived; whence they inferred that the grace of baptism is granted according to merits although nowhere future. To destroy this error St. Augustine speaks only of the foreknowledge of things conditionally future, which nevertheless are truly future. But that foreknowledge of things nowhere future, which nevertheless would have been future if the condition required for their futurition had been posited, St. Augustine judges, as useless, to be rejected in the business of predestination, which to prove, he at length explodes this erroneous opinion of the Semipelagians.

Whence in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae cap. 9., wearied by their so absurd opinion, he says:

Are we to return to this, that we should still dispute with how great absurdity it is said that dead men are judged even for those sins which God foreknew they would have perpetrated, if they had lived, a thing which so abhors Christian, or utterly human, sentiments, that it can refute nothing at all? For why is it not also said that the Gospel itself was preached with so great labor and the passions of the Saints in vain, or is still preached in vain, if men could be judged even without having heard the Gospel according to the contumacy or obedience which He foreknew they would have had if they had heard?

It must be concluded, therefore, that although St. Augustine in the aforesaid passages does not speak conditionally, he is nonetheless to be understood of the conditioned knowledge antecedent to the decree and to predestination. — All these replies are confirmed and at the same time the aforesaid argument is strengthened from the fact that St. Augustine asserts Predestination to be the effect of divine foreknowledge: therefore he truly judges that predestination to glory is made after foreseen merits. The consequence is clear; for an effect is always posterior to its cause, either by the instant from which or in which, or by the posteriority of supposition or of duration. The antecedent is proved from the book De Spiritu et littera where he says: Through the Holy Spirit God diffuses charity in the hearts of those whom He foreknew in order to predestine, etc. As if he would say that foreknowledge is assumed as a cause for effecting predestination, and so he judges predestination to be posterior to foreknowledge itself and as it were its effect. This is confirmed from the similar manner of speaking of St. Augustine about Predestination to grace; for in the book De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 18. he presses the Pelagians to confess that grace is prior to good works, from the fact that the Apostle says that God chose us, that we might be holy, not because we were holy: therefore likewise St. Augustine argues that foreknowledge is prior to predestination from the fact that he himself asserts that God foreknew in order to predestine, not however because He had predestined; for the manner of speaking is the same in both.

The second proof is drawn from lib. 1. to Simplicianus, qu. 2. where in express words he affirms that Predestination to glory is made from foreseen works, for explaining that saying of the Apostle to Rom. 9. When they had not yet been born, or had done anything good or evil, so that the purpose of God according to election might remain, not from works, but from the one who calls it was said to her, because the greater will serve the lesser, as it is written: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau; the same St. Augustine infers:

Therefore the purpose of God does not remain according to election: but election from purpose, that is, it is not because God finds good works in men which He may choose that the purpose of justification therefore remains, but because that purpose remains in order that He may justify believers, therefore He finds works which He may already choose for the kingdom.

As if he would say: it is not because He chose us for the kingdom of Heaven that He willed to justify us, but rather because He justified us, therefore He chose us for the kingdom of Heaven. Whence he subjoins:

Yet election does not precede justification, but justification precedes election. For no one is chosen unless already distant (by foreseen good works) from him who is rejected. Whence what was said: God chose us before the foundation of the world, I do not see how it was said, unless by the foreknowledge of good works, namely, together with the grace of God and final perseverance.

By which he clearly signifies that one is chosen before another because by reason of foreseen merit he is already distant from him who is rejected, for as he had said before: How is election just, or of any kind at all, where there is no distance? For if Jacob was chosen by no merit, he could not at all be chosen, no difference existing by which he would be chosen.

The adversaries reply. that this authority is not to be made much of, from the fact that St. Augustine wrote this book while he was younger and before the Pelagian heresy arose, and therefore did not so accurately unravel the questions about Predestination in that book, as he himself confesses in lib. 2. Retractat. — Against this: first, it is false that St. Augustine wrote those books to Simplicianus while he was younger, since he himself affirms in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae that he wrote them at the beginning of his episcopate, for he says in cap. 1., speaking of the Semipelagians:

Let them see whether in the later parts of the first book of those two which I wrote at the beginning of my episcopate, before the Pelagian heresy appeared, to Simplicianus, Bishop of Milan, anything remains by which it may be called into doubt that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, and whether I did not sufficiently treat there that even the beginning of faith is a gift of God, and whether from the things which were said it does not consequently shine forth, although it is not expressed, that even perseverance to the end is given by none other than Him who predestined us into His Kingdom and Glory:

therefore it is false that St. Augustine wrote those books to Simplicianus while he was younger. Likewise it is plainly false that he emended those books in the books of the Retractations. For although in book 2. of the Retractations cap. 1., treating of the first of those two questions which he unraveled in the first book to Simplicianus, he confesses that he afterwards discovered things more probable than those which he had written about that former question, nevertheless so far is he from having found anything worthy of reproach in the second question, from which the aforesaid text is excerpted, that he rather commends it there as most consonant with grace,

The latter, he says, in this book is the question from that place where the Apostle says: Not only, but also Rebecca, etc. up to and unless the Lord of hosts had left us seed, etc. In the solution of which question, indeed, labor was spent for the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered, nor could it arrive at anything else than that the Apostle be understood to have said with the clearest truth: Who distinguishes you, etc.

By which things St. Augustine is so far from judging that in that latter question to Simplicianus there is anything worthy of emendation, that he rather approves and confirms the same in the aforesaid book of the Retractations. Add that Augustine himself in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae, which he wrote as an old man and after the books of the Retractations had already been written, approves the same Question to Simplicianus; for when he had said that before the Pelagian heresy arose he had preached the grace by which God frees us from our evil errors and morals, without our good merits preceding, doing this according to His gratuitous mercy; he subjoins: which I began to understand more fully in that Disputation which I wrote to Simplicianus, Bishop of the Church of Milan, of blessed memory, at the beginning of my episcopate, when I also knew and asserted that the beginning of faith is a gift of God. Moreover Primasius, the disciple of Augustine and most zealous defender of grace, judged these books to Simplicianus so orthodox that he wrote word for word in his Commentary on chapter 10. of the Romans that whole part from which the aforesaid second proof is drawn, saying: Here begins the exposition from the book of St. Augustine, excerpted from the passage to St. Simplicianus concerning Jacob and Esau, etc.

The third proof is drawn from Sermon 7. on the words of the Lord where, explaining that: No one putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God, he says: In this Chapter we learn that whom the Lord willed, these He chose. He chose, however, as the Apostle says, both according to His grace and according to their justice. And on those aforesaid words of the Apostle to Rom. 11. I have left for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee before Baal, he subjoins: What is I have left for myself? I chose them, because I saw their minds presuming of me, not of themselves, nor of Baal. By which he openly confesses that God chooses some for the Kingdom of God from His grace and their foreseen justice, or from the foreseen works of justice. But in what way that election is at once according to grace and according to justice, he himself explains in lib. De Correptione et Gratia cap. 13., namely because those good works on account of which we are efficaciously chosen for eternal life are not elicited from ourselves alone and the powers of nature, as the Pelagians wished, but from the grace of God preceding and aiding us.

The fourth and last proof is drawn from Sermon 233. De Tempore, where he assigns no other reason why some are chosen for glory, others on the contrary are rejected from it, than because their good or evil works are foreseen.

Many, he says, wish to know why the Lord calls that one and does not call that one, helps one and does not help another; this one He holds worthy and that one unworthy, honors this one and tortures that one. He answers: Hear, O man; He holds this one worthy for his good works, that one unworthy for his evil works.

The same he confirms in lib. 83. Quaestionum, quaest. 68. He has mercy on whom He will, he says, and hardens whom He will, but this will of God cannot be unjust; for it comes from most hidden merits, because even the sinners themselves, since on account of the general sin they have made one mass, yet there is not no diversity among them. Something therefore precedes in the sinners, by which although they are not yet justified, they are made worthy of justification. And likewise there precedes in other sinners that by which they are worthy of hardening. By which words, although St. Augustine expressly treats of the conversion and hardening of the sinner, nevertheless since the reason on account of which God has mercy on one and hardens another equally fits the efficacious election of some to glory and the exclusion of others, namely because the will of God cannot be unjust, and it would be unjust unless from the part of the sinners some difference preceded on which it would be founded, therefore the aforesaid sentence confirms the truth of our conclusion and directly fights against the adversaries.

THE OPINION OF THE FATHERS, FOLLOWERS AND DISCIPLES OF AUGUSTINE.

What was the genuine mind and opinion of St. Augustine is clear from his Disciples and Followers, namely Prosper, Fulgentius, Primasius, Anselm and Bernard. — St. Prosper expressly asserts in many places that no one is Predestined except from the foreknowledge of his good works, most of all in the responses to the chapters of the Gauls; thus in the third response, speaking of sinners forsaken by God, he says: They left and were left, and were changed from good to evil by their own will, and although they had been reborn, had been justified, yet by Him who foreknew them such, they are not predestined. He has similar things in the response to the 7. and 15. objection. Likewise to the Vincentian objections in Response 12., explaining these words: They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us, he says: by will they went out, by will they fell, and because they were foreknown as about to fall, they are not predestined, but they would have been predestined if they were about to return and to remain in holiness and truth. — St. Fulgentius agrees with him in lib. 1. Ad Monimum around the middle, where he says:

Therefore God, about to show what He foreknew He would repay and what He would give, predestined to punishment those whom He foreknew would depart from Him by the vice of an evil will, and predestined to the Kingdom those whom He foreknew would return to Him with the help of prevenient mercy and would remain in Him with the help of subsequent mercy.

By which words he openly supposes the foreknowledge of works for election and reprobation, whence he subjoins: Because the Lord is merciful and just, He predestined the Just to glory and the Impious to punishment. But more clearly in lib. 3. De Veritate Praedestinationis et Gratiae around the end, he says:

As through mercy He prepared the gratuitous gift of justification, so through justice He prepared the reward of eternal justification. Thus the work of grace in all the predestined is begun by gratuitous mercy and perfected by just retribution. God therefore predestined His Saints both to the grace of a good life and to the grace of eternal life; God gives the prepared grace that men may be justified and live well, and may receive eternal life for things rightly done; and therefore even eternal life itself is the grace of God, as is said to the Apostle, because a good life is given to men freely.

By which he openly distinguishes the preparation of grace from the preparation of glory, in that the former is the work of mercy alone and altogether gratuitous, the latter the work of justice and presupposing our works. He speaks, however, not of the execution and actual collation, but of the eternal preparation, and so he explains and strengthens our opinion. — Primasius, finally, the most zealous defender of grace, in the Commentary on the Romans cap. 8. and 11. expressly affirms that Predestination presupposes foreknowledge, and likewise on 2. Timothy 4. on these words, I have kept the faith etc. I have kept, he says, the faith to the end through His grace, which the just Judge will render to me on that day, who knew me to have fought even to death with the help of His justice. As if he would say: therefore God will repay, because He foreknew fidelity and merits. — St. Anselm, whom the adversaries themselves affirm to be not the last follower of the Augustinian doctrine, teaches that Predestination is related to the predestined in the same way as foreknowledge is to foreknown things; for he writes in lib. De Concordia Praedestinationis et liberi arbitrii cap. 2.:

As foreknowledge, which is not deceived, foreknows nothing but the true, so predestination, which is not changed, predestines nothing but as it is in foreknowledge, and as what is foreknown, although in eternity it is immutable, yet in time it can sometimes be changed before it comes to be, so it is in all things concerning Predestination.

Whence he concludes that just as foreknowledge does not hinder liberty, because it does not precede the futurition of human actions, but supposes them as future, so he judges that Predestination also for that reason does not hinder liberty, because it does not precede the futurition of merits, but supposes it. — St. Bernard, the distinguished defender and follower of the Augustinian doctrine, in Sermon 23. on the Canticles expressly affirms that those are predestined who were foreknown as conformed to the image of the Son of God, for he says:

The eternal heavenly generation is Predestination, by which God loved His elect and graced them in His beloved Son before the foundation of the world, so appearing before Him in holiness that they might see His power and His glory, that they might be sharers of that inheritance to whose image they also appear conformed.

§ III. — Third Proof from Theological Reasons.

Various theological reasons are brought forward by the Authors defending this same conclusion of ours, as may be seen in Lessius, Treatise De Praedestinatione sect. 2., Albertus Pighius lib. 8. De libero arbitrio cap. 2., Osorius lib. 9. De Iustitia, Richard art. 7., Cardinal Sadoleto on cap. 8. ad Rom., Cardinal Contarini in the Opuscule De Praedestinatione, Turrianus De Electione divina, Carthagena in his Opuscules De Praedest., Vasquez and Gregory of Valencia in the first part q. 23., Joseph of Troyes in the Opuscule De Praedestinatione post praevisa merita, and our Pontius in the commentary on question 41. of the first book of the Sentences of Scotus. But the more pressing are:

First, that which is sincerely proposed to be obtained as a reward, a prize and a crown is decreed on account of merits and presupposes them: but eternal glory is proposed in this way in the sacred Scriptures: therefore, etc. The minor is evident: for in Matth. 5. eternal beatitude is proposed as a reward in these words: Rejoice and exult, because your reward is great in heaven; in 1. ad Corinth. 9. it is established as a crown: those indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, we an incorruptible one. Finally it is proposed as a prize in Apocalypse 2.: To him who overcomes I will give to eat of the tree of life. And in Philippians 3.: I press toward the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus. But the major is proved: every effect of justice presupposes merit, otherwise it would not be an effect of justice, but either of mercy or of liberality: but reward, crown and prize are effects, or objects, of justice; for just as to render a just price for a thing received from someone is an act of justice, so likewise to compensate the reward of a work or of labor is an act and effect of justice; which the Apostle confirms in 2. ad Timoth. 4.: There is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the just judge will render to me on that day. Add that since the motive of liberality and grace is directly opposed to the motive of reward and prize, it follows that as the motive of grace and liberality is pure love, without any regard to labor and work, so the motive of reward is the meritorious work itself, nor is a prize anywhere decreed without a merit being seen, either present or future. Hence, since the sacred Scripture expressly proposes glory to us as a reward and a prize, it follows that it presupposes merit as a motive foreseen by God before He decreed the prize.

The adversaries reply. that the volition of reward, prize and crown does not so necessarily presuppose the prevision of merits but that sometimes the volition of reward and prize is prior to the volition of labor and work, as is clear from the example of a King who out of liberality can decree that some good be conferred upon his subjects, which he nevertheless wills to be attained by them through generous acts. For that he wills that good for them proceeds from his liberality and grace; but that he intends it to be attained through merits arises from some justice, so that he first wills the good for them as an end, and then the generous acts as means conducing to the attainment of the decreed good. — On the contrary: he who intends a prize either formally and sincerely intends it under the notion of a prize, or he does not. If he intends it thus, it follows that he wills to confer it only in view of and from the presupposition of works and merit, for a prize has no formal notion of a prize except in relation to labor and merits. Hence although in the intention of him who hopes for a prize, merit comes before prize, because he regards merit as the means and prize as the end, yet in the intention of him who is to award the prize it happens otherwise; for the one who awards first intends the merit rather than the prize, first the labor rather than the reward, first the fight and victory rather than the crown, because through merit, labor and victory he is moved to decree the reward, prize and crown. But if he does not intend it thus, the reply is not to the point, since the sacred Scripture openly indicates enough that eternal glory is to be conferred under the notion of a prize. Nor does the adduced example of the King help at all; for in this hypothesis the King does not decree to confer the proposed good from a formal motive of justice, or insofar as it is formally a reward and prize, but either from a motive of friendship, or from a motive of magnificence and royal liberality. Nor does it matter that he establishes such a circumstance, namely that the subject attain the proposed good through works, for he orders this for this reason, that the acquisition may be more glorious to the subject, inasmuch as he will have contributed something from his own part to it.

Others reply. that although eternal beatitude is sometimes promised in the sacred Scripture under the notion of a prize, a crown and a reward, nevertheless it is also sometimes promised as an inheritance: but an inheritance passes by the law itself and not by industry, and presupposes only birth, not merits nor labor: therefore on this ground it is not decreed from foreseen merits.

I answer. that although beatitude is indeed promised as an inheritance, it is nevertheless not to be conferred by right of birth, but by the benefit of divine adoption alone; for which adoption two things are required: first, that through justification we be sealed as sons of God, as the Apostle speaks in ad Rom. 8.: You have received the spirit of adoption of sons of God, that is, sanctifying grace through which we are reborn spiritually and are constituted adopted sons of God. That being justified by his grace, he says in ad Titum 3., we may be heirs according to the hope of life everlasting. Secondly, for that adoption it is required that we preserve it and make it known through good works, according to that: Let them see your good works and glorify your Father. Hence that inheritance coincides with the notion of reward and prize, wherefore the Apostle in ad Colossenses 3. calls it the retribution of the inheritance, Whatever you do, he says, do it from the heart, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that you will receive of the Lord the retribution of the inheritance. By which he signifies that that inheritance is not conferred, especially on adults, except in the manner of retribution and reward. Hence in ad Romanos 8., explaining the same, he says: And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him. As if he would say, that divine inheritance is founded not only on the justifying grace which one may have had at some time, but also on labor and the exercise of virtues, and likewise on perseverance in them: For he who will have persevered to the end, he shall be saved: therefore also eternal glory, to be conferred in the manner of an inheritance, is not decreed except from presupposed merits.

The second argument is formed in this manner: that mode of predestining is to be attributed to God which is judged more suitable to His glory and to the salvation of men: but to predestine men after their merits have been foreseen befits the divine glory and the salvation of men more than if predestination were made antecedently to that prevision: therefore, etc. The major is evident from that celebrated rule of Saint Augustine in lib. 3. De libero arbitrio cap. 5. where he says: Whatever occurs to you as better by true reason, know that God has made it, as the Creator of all good things. By reason, moreover, it is persuaded that the ultimate end of predestination is the glory of God, and the proximate and less principal one is the salvation of men, and so the suitability of the modes of predestining must be taken in order to the greater glory of God and the salvation of men. The minor is also established as to its first part, namely that predestination from foreseen merits more redounds to the glory of God. For from this the supreme goodness and clemency of God is most highly commended, that as far as in Him lies He sincerely wills all men to be saved, and prepares and supplies sufficient graces to all, according to each one's state and condition, by which they can arrive at eternal life if they will, so that their perdition is to be traced not to the part of God, nor to His anticipated determination, but to their own perverse will. But this same thing does not follow from the opposite opinion, as is evident. The same minor is also evident as to its second part, namely that that mode is more in keeping with our salvation, namely from the fact that absolutely all men, not even one excepted, can and ought to strive with all their strength to attain eternal glory, inasmuch as they know that the attainment of it is left to themselves, and that they are not bound to a single one by any previous decrees on the part of God, as the opposite opinion contends: therefore etc.

Thirdly, from the opposite opinion various absurdities follow, which openly militate against the glory of God and the salvation of men. For first it follows that God does not sincerely will the salvation of absolutely all men: but that consequent is most absurd: therefore also the antecedent. The minor is evident from the countless texts of Scripture by which it is openly established that God wills the salvation of absolutely all men; thus 1. ad Timotheum 2.: God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. And in cap. 4. He is called God the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful, from which it is gathered that God has had from eternity a sincere will, as far as in Him lies, of saving absolutely all men, not even one excepted, which is more openly evident from these places, Matth. 18.: It is not the will before your Father that one of these little ones should perish. And 2. Petri 3.: He deals patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance. Which is to be understood not only of the kinds of individuals, as the adversaries say, but also of the individuals of the kinds; for since the word "not willing" contains a negation which removes all and excepts nothing, it follows that God wills that absolutely no man perish, as far as in Him lies; and likewise since that particle "any" is indefinite, it also pertains to individuals taken indefinitely, whence it comes about that if you except only two from that good will of God, it follows that He wills that some perish, namely those two whom you except; but this openly militates against the cited text: therefore truly God, no one excepted, wills all men to be saved. The major is proved: if God sincerely wills the salvation of all men, why, before the prevision of future things, does He elect so few and so neglect all the others not so elected that none of them is saved? For this defect of salvation on the part of the non-elect cannot be charged back to their own demerits, since they are not yet regarded as foreseen, and therefore it would have to be charged back to the very will of God not sincerely willing their salvation.

It is confirmed. he does not sincerely will the salvation of all men, especially of the reprobate, but only in pretense and delusively, who prepares for them only incongruous grace: but from the opposite opinion God prepares for the reprobate only grace incongruous to their salvation: therefore He does not truly will their salvation. The major is evident; the minor likewise; for according to the adversaries God, before the prevision of works or of the final state, elects absolutely and efficaciously as many as are to be led to glory, in the individual and in such a degree of glory, so that all of them are to be led there infallibly, and besides them absolutely no one else. Hence it follows that in a later sign God decrees the congruous means by which those so elected infallibly arrive at the place and degree of glory destined, and consequently that He supplies to the others only, who are not elected, incongruous means, lest perhaps one of them attain glory.

You will say. that God therefore does not industriously choose incongruous means for the reprobate, or the neglected; but gives as occasion offers, whatever the course of things and the opportunity of circumstances demands, not attending whether they are congruous or incongruous.

— On the contrary, if the matter is so, it seems incredible that absolutely no one from so great a multitude of the reprobate should obtain congruous grace and be saved, and on the other hand that none from so great a multitude of the elect should obtain incongruous grace and be damned. For let two huge multitudes of men be imagined standing on either side, and someone in the midst of both distributing to all of these and those coins from a huge chest full of silver coins, partly good, partly counterfeit: can it come about that some from each multitude do not receive good coins, and some false and counterfeit ones, unless he industriously selects all the good ones for one multitude and all the counterfeit ones for the other? In the same way, if God sincerely distributes all His graces to the Predestined as well as to the reprobate, and does not select incongruous ones for the reprobate, it cannot come about that some do not obtain congruous grace, and so they will be saved: therefore either that grace which God supplies to the reprobate is not sufficient, or its incongruity has been industriously sought.

The adversaries reply. that God has no less a sincere love and will of saving all men, although He has foreknown that many are not to be saved: therefore just as that sincere will of saving all stands together with such a foreknowledge of those not to be saved, so also it will be able to stand with their non-election. — On the contrary: there is no parity between Foreknowledge and Election, for the former depends in a certain way on the outcome of things, since things are not future because God foresaw them, but He foresaw them because they are future. Hence the foreseen fault of the reprobate is to be traced back not to the part of God, but to their own part. Wherefore there can stand in God a sincere will of saving all men together with the prevision of the sins which will be the causes why they are reprobated and damned. But it is otherwise with election, for that is wholly from the part of God, if it is made antecedently to foreseen merits, and so with it there cannot stand a sincere will of saving those whom God has not elected to eternal salvation.

The second inconvenience is that from the opinion of the Adversaries it follows that the reprobate are in that very instant of reprobation efficaciously and positively expelled from beatitude even before their evil works are foreseen: but this is foreign to the Catholic faith and wholly savors of Calvinism: therefore, etc. The minor is evident, and the Adversaries readily admit it. But the major is proved: he who wills absolutely and efficaciously some whole, coalescing from only certain parts known in the individual after the manner of a perfect aggregate, by that very fact excludes all other parts, even possible ones, and all those other parts left out are excluded efficaciously and infallibly, if that intention and determination is infallible. But God, according to the Adversaries, so conducts Himself that as many as He elects to glory, He elects them absolutely and efficaciously in the individual: therefore just as an Architect conceiving in his mind a building to be constructed, when he elects for it certain stones determined in number and in the individual, so that he wills to elect and mark out not others nor more for it, is by that very fact regarded as positively rejecting the neglected stones, because the stones cannot serve the building to be constructed unless they are elected, marked out and taken up by the Architect: so by parity, if God from eternity, with no merits foreseen, elects a certain number of the Predestined as living stones for constructing the heavenly Jerusalem, so that all and only those elect can serve this spiritual structure, it follows that all those who are not so destined nor taken up are positively reprobated, even if this reprobation is not understood to take place through a positive act and an actual decree by which God devotes them to eternal punishments; for he is sufficiently excluded from glory who is not included in the will of the one electing to glory.

Thirdly, from that antecedent decree it follows that human freedom is taken away, as regards the attainment of glory: but this is against the faith, which asserts that it is in our freedom and in our hand to lose glory if we will, or to acquire it with the grace of God: therefore a decree of this kind is not to be admitted. The sequel of the major is proved: because, with that decree posited in the composite sense, it is impossible that one should not attain eternal life; otherwise the efficacious divine decree could be deceived or frustrated, and the creature would be more powerful to reject glory than God to confer it: but that composite sense would be antecedent and independent of our will: therefore it would not have freedom with respect to attaining glory. The consequence is proved: because the will is not free with respect to that for the positing or not positing of which it has no power, once all the prerequisites and antecedents of its action are posited, which in no way depend on it: therefore if the efficacious decree is antecedent and independent of the will, and with it posited the will cannot bring it about that it does not have glory, it is not in its own hand to have and not to have glory, nor consequently will it have freedom in order to this.

Fourthly, from the opposite opinion all solicitude about attaining beatitude and securing salvation through good works is taken away and banished; for each one can reason thus within himself: either I am predestined from the sole good pleasure of God, or I am not: if I am, without doubt whatever I do I shall be saved; for since the decree of God is efficacious and invariable, it cannot be frustrated of its effect. If I am not, my diligence about pursuing virtue and eliciting good works will be utterly vain and useless, since those things serve nothing toward securing predestination, inasmuch as it has been fixed and ratified from eternity antecedently and independently of the prevision of good works; all of which directly militate against that admonition of Saint Peter: Be diligent, brethren, that by good works you make your calling and election sure.

§ IV. — The objections are solved. 1. From the sacred Scripture.

The adversaries object. various texts of the sacred Scripture, by which it is signified that the gratuitous election of men depends on the sole purpose and decree of God, and not on foreseen merits. First indeed that of Lucae 12.: Fear not, little flock, because it has pleased your Father to give you a kingdom; where by the little flock they wish the Predestined to be understood, who are called a little flock in comparison with the greater number of the reprobate. By the word "it has pleased" they hold that a special election and an antecedent will is designated, inasmuch as it is proposed to them: finally by the word Kingdom they contend that the election to glory is designated, which alone obtains the name of kingdom: therefore, etc.

I answer 1. that it is not certain that the Predestined are designated by the little flock, for Christ directed these words to absolutely all the Apostles and Disciples, who were not all Predestined, since Judas Iscariot was among them, the traitor and son of perdition; hence I judge that it is more truly said with Maldonado that the aforesaid words were spoken to those to whom the preceding ones had been directed, and those had been dictated to absolutely all the Hearers, and in their person to all future faithful.

I answer 2. that by the word "it has pleased" an antecedent efficacious will is not signified: both because an efficacious will attains its effect; but it is evident from that little flock, whether you understand all the Hearers or only the Apostles, that some did not attain the effect of Predestination, namely eternal glory: then because the revelation of such an efficacious will contributed nothing to establishing that confidence which Christ intended to excite in their souls; indeed it would have stirred them to a certain sloth and indolence, since they would have thought that no effort was to be applied on their part, because by the efficacious decree of God their blessed lot was already accomplished: and finally because, to provoke that confidence, it sufficed that the promised eternal reward be decreed consequently and from foreseen merits; for Christ intended to persuade the Apostles that they ought to place all their care and solicitude in the providence of God; not only because, He says, He who feeds the animals will not leave men unfed: but also drawing an argument from the greater to the less, if God has decreed to give you His kingdom, which is the greatest thing, how much more will He supply temporal things to you? For this it sufficed that eternal glory had been decreed to be given to men; whether meanwhile it was decreed before or after foreseen merits.

I answer 3. that although an efficacious will is signified by the aforesaid words, it is nevertheless not a pure will of good pleasure and by exclusion of merits; but a good pleasure from a motive of justice founded in the prevision of merits: both because that glory is signified to be given to the humble on account of their littleness, wherefore it is called a little flock, The little flock, says the venerable Beda, either in comparison with the greater number of the reprobate; or rather he names it on account of humility; in which manner also Christ in Matth. 19.: Suffer the little children (that is, the humble) to come to me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven: then because Christ insinuates the same thing there; for when He had proposed to the Apostles that riches were to be neglected for the glory of God, all earthly solicitude banished, and even life despised, that He might excite them to undergo these grave things with an even mind, He said: Fear not, etc., as if He would say: these things ought to seem sweet to you, since on account of the endurance of these it has pleased your Father to decree the Kingdom of Heaven as a reward and a prize: and finally because if the word "it has pleased" signified that the election is wholly gratuitous, it would also express a wholly gratuitous execution and conferral; for that whole sentence declares execution more than intention, since it is not said "it has pleased to elect", which pertains to intention, but "it has pleased to give", which imports execution: but no one would say that glory is conferred gratis according to execution: therefore neither ought he to assert that it is decreed gratis according to intention.

They object 2. several sentences of Saint Paul by which he seems to hint that divine Predestination is made from the sole absolute decree and purpose of God. Thus in ad Ephes. 1.: He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight, in charity, who has predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the purpose of his will, unto the praise of the glory of his grace, etc. But he speaks, they say, of an absolute will, as is evident from the election to glory, because he speaks of those whom God blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places; but grace, which is common to the reprobate and the Predestined, is not every blessing, since the blessing of glory still remains; nor a blessing in heavenly places, since it is bestowed on wayfarers only on earth: therefore according to Saint Paul Predestination is made from the mere absolute good pleasure of God, not from the foreseen works of men; and so our aforesaid conclusion openly contradicts the sacred Scripture.

I answer. by denying the consequence; since in that place the Apostle is to be understood of Predestination, not indeed to glory and eternal beatitude, but to grace, by exclusion of the works elicited by the powers of nature, as Saint Jerome interprets in his Commentary and August. in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum c. 19. For Saint Augustine strongly urges this place against the Semipelagians, who, since they asserted that the beginning of faith is to be attributed to the powers of free choice and not to grace; he confutes them from the fact that the Apostle says God chose us, not because we were, but that we might be holy. Hence Augustine himself there in cap. 18., treating the same text, says:

He did this according to the good pleasure of his will, that no one should glory in his own, but in his will: He did this according to the riches of his grace, according to his good will which he purposed in his beloved Son, in whom we have obtained a lot, being Predestinated according to the purpose not of ourselves, but of him who works all things;

by which it is evident that he explains the text of the Apostle about Predestination to grace. Then because the Apostle himself indicates these things through the subsequent words: He has predestinated us unto the adoption of children... in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins, all of which denote grace, not glory; for adoption, redemption and the remission of sins pertain to the grace of justification. And finally because he directed these words to all the Ephesians, of whom the Apostle was not certain that they were all Predestined to glory, since he himself was not secure about his own Predestination, but trembling and fearing said: I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself become a reprobate.

They object 3. that passage of ad Romanos 9.:

When they had not yet been born (namely Jacob and Esau) or had done anything good or evil; not of works, but of him that calls, it was said to her (Rebecca): the elder shall serve the younger: as it is written: Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. And a little after: So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy: therefore he has mercy on whom he will; and whom he will, he hardens. And, cannot the potter make of the same lump one vessel indeed unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

But all these things signify the efficacious will of God in predestining men antecedently to their foreseen works: therefore Predestination to glory is from the mere mercy of God, and not from foreseen merits.

I deny the sequel. for first the Apostle indeed says that God loved Jacob before he had done anything good, but he does not say that He loved him before He had foreseen what Jacob was one day about to do; hence he excludes indeed the works already done, and says that they were not the reason of the love of Jacob and the hatred of Esau; but he does not exclude the foreseen works: and so God loved Jacob from eternity when he had not yet done anything good, namely from eternity, because he did not yet exist; although he had been foreseen as about to do good in time, which prevision was the cause why he was loved by God.

I answer 2. that the Apostle is to be understood of the election to grace, not to glory; otherwise it would follow from this that Esau also was reprobated and destined to gehenna before his demerits were foreseen: for in the same manner the Apostle speaks of the hatred of Esau and the love of Jacob, saying: Before they had done anything good or evil, I loved Jacob and I hated Esau: but no one, except Calvin, would say that reprobation is made before foreseen demerits; therefore no one likewise ought to assert that Jacob was predestined before his merits were foreseen, and so this election is to be understood not to glory, but to grace. Not that God truly willed to lavish grace on Jacob and deny it to Esau, for God denies His grace to no one; but the Apostle wished to signify that God loved Jacob because He conferred on him greater graces than on his brother, whom he is said to have hated for this reason, that by loving him less He also conferred lesser graces on him: for hatred in the sacred Scripture sometimes signifies lesser love; for so is to be understood what Christ said in Luca 14.: If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple: which sentence in Matth. cap. 10. he renders thus: He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter above me, is not worthy of me.

I answer 3. that the Apostle speaks of the election to faith; for in that whole chapter he teaches that the Jews were rejected from justice and salvation on account of unbelief, and that the Gentiles were admitted to it on account of faith in Christ: which is especially evident from vers. 30. where he concludes that whole chapter thus:

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice; even the justice that is of faith; but Israel, by following after the law of justice, that is, the old law of legal justice, has not come to the law of justice, that is, of true holiness conferred through Christ; because not of faith, but as it were of works; for they stumbled at the stone of stumbling, as it is written: Behold I lay in Sion a stone of stumbling and a rock of scandal, and every one who believes in him shall not be confounded.

Thus Saint August. interprets this text in Epist. 105. and in lib. 1. Ad Simplicianum q. 2. and in De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 16. and 19., and also the Master of the Sentences in lib. 1. dist. 41. cap. 1., and even Saint Thomas on this place, saying:

It can be understood figuratively (namely as the Apostle took it) so that by the Major is understood the people of the Jews, who first received the adoption of sonship, that is, grace; and by the Minor is figured the people of the Gentiles, who later was called to faith. The greater people therefore serves the lesser, inasmuch as the Jews are our book-bearers, keeping the books from which testimony is borne to our faith.

The same thing is also gathered openly enough from the following words of the Apostle, which chiefly indicate election to grace and faith; for dilection presupposes sanctifying grace, as the motive of divine love: hatred, on the other hand, proceeds from the privation of grace: similarly these words, It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy, do not look to predestination and eternal glory; otherwise the Apostle would have repeated for men, even those given to piety, the greatest occasion of despair, if those striving for glory with all their strength and with the help of grace had nevertheless understood that it was to be denied to them. They signify therefore only the concourse, or the actual grace of God, in good works, as may be gathered from this word "Running," which designates the actual course and striving toward eternal beatitude through good works, as St. Augustine explains in the same book cap. 8. and St. Thomas in the same place. These words likewise aim at the same thing, He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth; for the Apostle does not say "he reprobates," but "he hardens," which implies the privation of efficacious grace, and consequently signifies that the mercy preceding, to which it is opposed, is the conferral of efficacious grace. Since therefore all these words sound only of grace, it follows that the Apostle there uses election and purpose for election to grace, or to faith.

You will say. at least from these words, Vessels of mercy, which God hath prepared unto glory, it is gathered that the Apostle intends predestination to glory: therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent. since these very words can also rightly be expounded of Predestination to grace; for Glory is not there taken for heavenly glory, but for that extrinsic glory of God, or the clarification and honor to which God ordered the elect as vessels unto honor, namely that men, seeing their good works, might glorify and praise God in them, as Haymo interprets: the Greek also agrees, for the word δόξα, which our Interpreter renders as glory, properly signifies honor, fame, splendor and the clarity of a name, as St. Augustine himself explains in tract. 10. on John, That very thing, he says, which in Greek is called δόξα, whence the word δοξάζειν is derived, is interpreted both as clarity and as glory: for by glory each one becomes clear, and by clarity glorious, and thus what is signified by both words is the same thing. Just as, moreover, the most renowned authors of the Latin language defined, Glory is the frequent fame of someone with praise.

They object 4. that passage of Actor. cap. 13. concerning the Antiochenes: As many as were ordained to life everlasting, believed; by which it is signified that Predestination is the cause of faith and of good works, and so that it is not made from foreseen merits.

I deny. that this is the sense of the context, for by that Preordination nothing else is signified than a predisposition, or the disposition of those very Antiochenes who had care and desire of their own salvation by the benefit of the grace granted to them, and this is gathered from the Greek text, where for "ordained" we read τεταγμένοι, that is, ordered, disposed, well prepared, which comes about through the desire of salvation: and because God by eternal counsel had put this into their minds, they can rightly be called preordained. This predisposition, however, in the same place vers. 46. is opposed to the evil disposition of the Jews who from malice contradicted the preaching of the Apostle, whom Paul therefore addresses with these words: To you it behooved first to speak the Word of God; but since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold we turn to the Gentiles.

I answer 2. that by the word "Preordained" there is signified not a complete Predestination and to glory, but an incomplete one, namely to grace; then because Predestination to glory is most hidden, nor does any reason appear why those who were Predestined in the city of Antioch should be revealed to the sacred Writer; then because this revelation would have given to those who then believed an occasion for laying aside all care of their own salvation, and would have redoubled the despair of those who did not believe; for if all who were predestined then believed, it follows that the others who did not believe were reprobates; then finally because it is not likely that in that most famous city there were no other Predestined than those who were then baptized in small number.

I answer 3. that by that preordination there can also be signified in another way Predestination to eternal life; not indeed antecedently, but consequently to the prevision of good works, which is therefore called preordination because it is made from eternity and before those works are elicited in time.

They object 5. That saying of Christ to the Apostles, Ioan. 13.: If you know these things, you shall be blessed if you do them: I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, he that eateth my bread shall lift up his heel against me; by which, they say, Christ speaks to the Apostles alone of an antecedent, absolute and efficacious election. First, because He excepts Judas from the number of the elect: but an antecedent, conditional and inefficacious election is common to all, and no one is excluded from it. Second, because Christ adduces that election as the cause why He excepts Judas, when He says: I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen, etc.; but an antecedent election, inefficacious only and conditional, is not the cause of excepting anyone: it is otherwise, however, with an antecedent will, absolute and inefficacious, by which the rest are virtually excluded: therefore Christ really speaks of an antecedent election by which the Apostles, except Judas, were predestined from the mere good pleasure of God.

I deny the consequence. For Christ there does not treat of election to glory, but to the offices of the Apostleship to be discharged after his death, from which offices Judas the traitor was to be kept away, both because of his treachery and because of his impenitent death before Christ the Lord was raised from the dead: as to the text, however, I say that this is its genuine sense: Blessed are you if you know these things, which I say to you, that is, if you believe and if you do them; since in fact you already believe and will someday do them, I speak not of you all, because you do not all believe, or will do them. I know whom I have chosen, that is, I know what you are interiorly, whom I chose as Apostles. From which it is evident that the discourse is only about election to the Apostleship.

You will say. St. Augustine interprets this text of election to glory. And that saying also favors this exposition, Blessed are you if you do these things, where there is discourse of the beatitude of glory.

I answer. that the interpretation of election to the Apostleship, as more literal and proper, is admitted by other Fathers, whom Maldonatus and Toletus follow; of which also that saying of Christ in John 15. is to be understood: You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and have appointed you that you should go and bring forth fruit. He says "that you should go," for to go is proper to Apostles, that is, to the sent: and that saying of Ioann. 6.: Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? I add that not even that explanation of St. Augustine hurts us: for this can be the sense: I know whom I have chosen efficaciously to glory, foreseeing namely both what they would do and what final state they would have, from the prevision of which I chose them efficaciously.

They object 6. That saying of John 10. where Christ, addressing the unbelieving Jews, says: You do not believe, because you are not of my sheep: my sheep hear my voice; and I know them and they follow me, and I give them life everlasting, and they shall not perish forever, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand: from which the Adversaries infer that Predestination to glory is the cause of the calling to faith; for to be a sheep given to Christ and to be predestined is the same thing: therefore truly predestination to glory is made before foreseen merits: since indeed it is made before faith, which is the first principle of merit.

I deny the consequence 1. because even if the aforesaid text were understood of the Predestined to glory alone, it would not nevertheless follow from this that it is to be understood of predestination before foreseen merits: indeed St. Aug. seems to use the text itself of predestination after foreseen merits, since in lib. De Correptione et Gratia cap. 9. he says: Those therefore are understood to be given to Christ who are ordained to eternal life, for they are presupposed to be ordained, or made fit for eternal life, before they are given to Christ. — 2. I say that the aforesaid text is to be understood of Predestination to grace and faith; otherwise Christ would have unjustly reproached the Jews because they were not of his sheep, nor wished to believe in him. For since the absolute decree of predestination is immutable, it follows that if the defect of predestination had been the cause why they themselves did not believe, certainly that defect of faith would not be culpable in them, since indeed it would proceed not from their perverse will, but from the ordinance of God, who had not predestined them. And so the sense of that passage is that, since the Jews were of a perverse mind toward Christ, they were in no way ready and disposed to believe, so as to become his Sheep and Disciples, therefore he says: You do not believe me, because you are not of my sheep: that is, you do not have the docility of my sheep, indeed you are wolves seeking to devour and destroy the Shepherd together with the sheep: whence he adds: My sheep hear my voice, that is, they do not resist my words and the graces by which I call them to faith: but they readily acquiesce in the truth which I myself announce to you. Nor does it matter that he subjoins I give them life everlasting, etc.; for these are not taken absolutely, but under this condition: if they wish to consent to my words and obey my precepts; for God does not compel anyone to salvation; but only invites and calls that he consent freely and voluntarily. Nor likewise do the following words hinder: No one shall snatch them out of my hand: for there by "hand," power is signified, as St. Augustine affirms in Tract. 48. on John, whence the sense is that God so fortifies the faithful with his graces and helps that no one can lead them away from him, except by their consent; so that no one perishes except by his own will, not however by the defect of the protector: not otherwise than if someone had fled to the palace of a certain Prince, that there he might protect his life against the enemies, and the Prince had said to him: no one will snatch you from my hand, or lead you away from the Palace: and meanwhile he who had so fled should of his own accord go out of the Palace and give himself to his enemies; certainly the Prince could not be accused of fault or of lying. So by parity God is not to be accused because some of those to whom he supplies his helping hand fall away from grace, because this deviation is to be traced back to their evil will, not to a defect of divine protection.

The objections from the Fathers are solved: — They object 1. That saying of Cyril of Alexandria on John cap. 21. I have chosen you, not you me: I made myself known to you who were ignorant, moved by humanity and clemency; I have so strengthened you that you can proceed and advance to such great confidence with God, that whatever you ask in my name shall be granted to you. In which words the adversaries weigh 1. that the election of God precedes, which is the cause of each virtue in the predestined man; 2. that from this arises the power of obtaining in prayer; 3. that this grace was conferred by God without preceding merits, by the sole benignity and clemency of God.

I answer. that Cyril is not to be understood of all the Predestined, but of the Disciples alone, or the Apostles, and of their election to the Apostleship, as is manifest from the following words, by which the Apostles are said to have been chosen by Christ, instructed with knowledge, strengthened with confidence, etc. All of which stand very well without an antecedent election to glory. Add that Judas was then among the Disciples and Apostles to whom these words were directed; but it is certain that he was not efficaciously elected to glory, and so neither St. John nor St. Cyril are to be understood of election to glory, but to the Apostolic dignity.

They object 2. That saying of St. Chrysostom Homil. 51. on Matthew: Those whom he knows to be his own before the constitution of the world, he loads with such great labors and makes them labor so long, until they become worthy of the heavenly kingdom: therefore Predestination is the cause why they become worthy, not however is their dignity the motive and reason why they are predestined.

I answer 1. that this text is not of St. Chrysostom himself but of an anonymous author. 2. I say that all these things can easily be understood of the foreknowledge and efficacious election made from eternity after foreseen merits, which nevertheless will only come to be in time; so that there is not an antecedence of the decree, but a simple succession of time to that which God saw and approved from eternity; for he first foresaw the meritorious works, and thence decreed that glory was to be conferred, before those works had in fact been elicited.

The objections from St. Augustine are solved. — They object 1. St. Augustine in lib. De Correptione et Gratia cap. 7. where he thus has: Whoever have been separated from that original damnation by this largess of divine grace, there is no doubt that both the hearing of the Gospel is procured for them, and when they hear they believe, and in the faith which works through dilection they persevere to the end, and if at any time they wander they are corrected when reproved. And a little after: All these things he works in them, who has worked them as vessels of mercy, who also chose them in his Son before the constitution of the world by the election of grace. But if by grace, then not of works, otherwise grace is no more grace. From which words of St. Augustine the Adversaries gather that he undoubtedly thought that men were predestined to have been efficaciously elected to glory apart from the prevision of merits: and according to his mind this order is to be established in the decree of the divine will, that in the first instant of reason all men were foreseen in the mass of perdition; in the second, that God predestined some of them, that is, all, from this mass by a gratuitous and efficacious election to glory; in the 3rd, that he chose the means by which they would infallibly be led to the destined end; he chose, I say, by virtue of the preceding separation which drove him to choose the congruous and efficacious means.

I answer 1. with Lessius, Martinon and Iosephus Tricassinus, that St. Augustine is there to be understood of election to grace. For his scope was to teach how all good works and perseverance itself were not from us, that is, from the bare powers of free choice, but from the grace and gift of God; likewise that the separation from the mass of perdition and the election to the grace of justification and thence to glory are not from works, but from the grace and gratuitous mercy of God. That this, however, is the sense of St. Augustine is evident from the very text itself, for thus he has a little before the words quoted: They are distinguished, he says, not by their own merits, but through the grace of the Mediator, that is, justified freely in the blood of the second Adam, etc. From which it is evident that he affirms that justifying grace, which presupposes the free consent of man, is required for that separation, or Predestination. Then he himself in the same place explains that saying, Not of works, while he subjoins: They are chosen by the election of grace, not of their preceding merits, because grace is to them all merit; that is, not from merits preceding grace, because all their merit is from grace; and so that gratuitous election does not exclude the merits which are from grace, but only those which are not from grace. It is confirmed that this is the mind of St. Augustine, because in that place and other similar ones he disputes against the Pelagians, whose heresy did not consist in this, that they thought glory is given on account of the works of grace, but in this, that they said it is given on account of works done by the sole powers of nature, as is manifestly evident from the words of the same Augustine in lib. De Gratia et libero arbitrio cap. 6. where, expounding that saying of 2. Timoth. 4.² For the rest there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day: he subjoins:

to whom would the just Judge render the crown, if the merciful Father had not given grace? And how would that crown be one of justice, if the grace which justifies the impious had not gone before? How would those debts be rendered, if that gratuitous one had not first been given? But when the Pelagians say that this is the only grace according to our merits, by which sins are forgiven to man: but that that which is given at the end, that is, eternal life, is rendered to our preceding merits; it must be answered to them: for if they so understood our merits, that they recognized even those very gifts themselves to be of God, that opinion would not be reprobated. But since they so preach human merits, that they say man has them from himself: most rightly indeed does the Apostle answer: For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received? Truly to one thinking such things it is most truly said: God crowns his own gifts, not your merits, if your merits are from yourself and not from him.

These are the words of St. Augustine; from which it openly appears that his intention is only to teach that perseverance and efficacious election to glory are not from the works of nature, but from grace and the works of grace.

You will insist. St. Augustine in the same place, explaining to what those who are called according to the purpose are elected, says: But they are chosen to reign with Christ and to obtain his Kingdom: where by the name of Kingdom he does not understand the militant Church, which he usually calls the Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospel; for he subjoins that those thus called will persevere to the end and that none of them will perish. Which certainly cannot be understood of the faithful of the militant Church, for many of them perish, and hence there he speaks only of Predestination to glory before foreseen merits.

I deny the consequence. for even if St. Augustine there treated of Predestination to glory, it would not nevertheless follow from this that he intends that Predestination to be made before the prevision of works; indeed the contrary is deduced from it. Then because in the same place he places foreknowledge before Predestination; for speaking of those who, when they have at some time been justified, yet having again fallen into sin die in it, he says: Without doubt neither at that time, in which they live well and piously, are they to be counted in that number of the Predestined: for they are not separated from that mass of perdition by the foreknowledge and Predestination of God, and therefore neither are they called according to the purpose, and by this neither chosen: therefore since the calling presupposes Predestination and this foreknowledge of works and of cooperation, it evidently follows that St. Augustine there treats only of Predestination after foreseen merits. Then because he gathers the certainty and infallibility of Predestination from that foreknowledge, for he says: If anyone perishes, God is deceived, but none of them perishes, because God is not deceived. For since this infallibility does not infer necessity to the human will, it follows that God is therefore not deceived, because he foreknows the merits of men before he decrees anything about their eternal beatitude. Then because he there speaks of the election of the Predestined to the kingdom, in the way he speaks of the election of Judas to shed the blood of Christ; those therefore, he says, he chose to obtain his kingdom, him to shed his blood: but Judas was not chosen to perpetrate so great a crime before the prevision of his own malice; for God is not a tempter of evils: therefore neither were the Predestined chosen to glory before the prevision of their own merits.

You will press. St. Augustine nowhere acknowledged that twofold incomplete Predestination to glory, or to grace, but as often as he speaks of Predestination, so often he understands only the complete destination to glory and grace at once: therefore there is no answer.

I deny the antecedent. for its falsity is gathered from various places of St. Augustine. For first, in lib. De Bono perseverantiae cap. 17. and 18. he affirms that every gift of God which he works in us through the exciting and helping graces is truly predestined by God: for whatever God gives, he says, this he predestined to do and to give: but faith and justice even in the reprobate are gifts of God: therefore they are also predestined by God: and consequently St. Augustine acknowledged an incomplete Predestination to grace, and not only the complete one to grace and glory at once, for there is in the reprobate no Predestination to glory. Secondly, the same in De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 10.: When God promised Abraham the faith of the Gentiles, etc., he promised not from the power of our will, but from his predestination; but he promised not only the faith which is given to the Predestined to glory alone, but also to those who from the same stock of Abraham are not Predestined: and consequently there St. Augustine admits an incomplete Predestination to grace. Thirdly, St. Augustine acknowledged a twofold separation of men; one to grace alone, the other indeed to grace and glory: therefore he also acknowledged a twofold Predestination, one incomplete to grace alone; the other indeed complete, to grace and glory at once. The consequence is clear, because separation and predestination sound the same with St. Augustine. The antecedent is proved from lib. De Bono perseverantiae cap. 9. where, speaking of the non-persevering, and so of the not-Predestined to glory, he says: According to these things, that is, according to faith and justice, they were of us; nevertheless according to a certain other separation they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us. What is this, "according to a certain other separation they were not of us," except according to a distinct separation by which the reprobate are set apart from the Predestined? and so a twofold separation is given, since another is given than that which is of the persevering and to-be-saved: but it cannot be except an incomplete predestination to grace, or to faith and christian justice: therefore it is false that according to St. Augustine no other Predestination is given than that which is to grace and glory at once. Fourthly finally, the same thing is certain from several places of the same holy Doctor, most especially from the praised book cap. 17. where he clearly speaks of the one predestined incompletely, that is, to some grace, abstracting from glory; for he says: Whom God predestined to be chaste in the future, although he holds this as uncertain, does not therefore not act so that he be chaste, since he hears by the gift of God that he will be what he believes. And below: what I said of Chastity, this can be most truly said of Faith, of Piety, of Charity, etc.: but Predestination to these virtues, which accompany grace, is only incomplete: therefore truly St. Augustine acknowledged a twofold Predestination, namely complete to grace and glory at once, and incomplete to grace alone; the same he affirms expressly in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 6. 9. 15. and 19.

They object 2. The same St. Augustine in lib. De Bono perseverantiae cap. 18. where he thus says:

Of two infants therefore bound by original sin, why this one is taken up and that one is left; and of two now grown impious persons, why this one is so called that he follows the caller, but that one either is not called, or is not so called that he follows the caller, the judgments of God are inscrutable. Of two pious ones, however, why to this one perseverance to the end is given, and to that one is not given, the judgments of God are more inscrutable.

With which words D. August. seems to insinuate that this comes from the fact that one is elected, the other not elected to life; which he openly teaches with the following words when he says: That nevertheless ought to be most certain to the faithful, that this one is of the Predestined, that one is not: for if they had been of us, says one of the Predestined who had drunk this secret from the breast of the Lord, they would surely have remained with us. Then he asks what that is: they were not of us: and at length he answers: They were not of those who were not called according to the purpose, they were not chosen in Christ before the constitution of the world, they did not obtain a lot in him, they were not Predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things. With which words St. Augustine teaches that the reason of that calling, or non-calling, is to be traced back to the election, or non-election to glory: therefore truly St. Augustine contends that election, or Predestination to glory, is the cause of merits, not that it presupposes merits.

I deny the consequence. for the contrary is evinced from the very text itself: for either St. Augustine knew that Predestination to glory is the cause of the concession, or of the denial, of efficacious grace and perseverance; or he did not know: if he knew, why does he say those things are inscrutable, since he himself holds their reason; for that is not inscrutable whose cause does not lie hidden? If he did not know, why then does he affirm with such great certainty that Predestination to glory is the cause why one is called, another indeed is not? Since therefore in this there is an open contradiction, it is most certainly to be attributed not to Augustine, but to the false interpretation of the Adversaries: whence rightly St. Bonaventure in 1. dist. 41. q. 2.: If, he says, there were no other reason why God chose this one and not that one, except because it so pleases God, certainly the divine judgments would no longer be called hidden, but manifest; since anyone grasps this reason; nor would they be called wonderful, but rather voluntary.

You will say. That the same difficulty arises in our opinion, namely this reason could be given, why this infant is not baptized and this pious man does not persevere; namely the negligence of the parents and the inconstant will of man: therefore in our opinion this mystery would not be inscrutable.

I indeed say. that some reasons can be brought forth, why of two infants baptism is procured for one, but not for the other, namely the common course of things which God does not wish nor is bound to change: the impiety or piety of the parents, by which God is moved to confer or to deny the grace of baptism, by not impeding the series and course of things. Likewise some reason could be brought forth on the part of those who are converted; namely because they wished to consent to the calling and to the helps conferred for persevering. But St. Augustine did not wish to apply his mind to bringing forth those reasons, so that he might the more easily proscribe the error of the Pelagians, who traced back the difference between the called and the not-called, on the part of adults, to the good use of free choice; on the part of infants, however, to their good works conditionally future, if they had lived longer. The whole secret of Predestination therefore is situated in the grace of the calling, wherefore

I answer 2. That St. Augustine in that passage does not treat of Predestination to glory, but of predestination to faith and to perseverance, and intends nothing other than that efficacious calling to faith and to perseverance is a gift of God granted purely gratis; and for that reason it is inscrutable why efficacious grace to faith is conferred on this man and not on that one; why perseverance is given to this man and not to that one: for since the conferral and the intention of conferring grace is purely voluntary on God's part, therefore no one can uncover its cause, for who has known the mind of the Lord? When moreover he adds; that nevertheless must be most certain, that he to whom he gives faith and perseverance is of the predestined, while he to whom he does not give these is not of the predestined; by these words he does not render the reason of the preceding things, but only, in that uncertainty and ignorance of the cause of the preceding things, asserts that which is certain, namely that that cause, whatever it may be, and which is unknown to us, holds on God's side, and not on the side of human choice alone, as the Pelagians wanted; for to be predestined and to be of God is the same thing for Augustine.

They object 3. St. Augustine, in lib. De Gratia et libero arbitrio cap. 9, where, expounding these words of the Apostle, the grace of God is eternal life, weighs them thus: since the Apostle could have said, and rightly said, the wages of justice is eternal life, he preferred to say, but the grace of God is eternal life, so that from this we might understand that God leads us to eternal life not on account of our merits, but on account of his mercy: by which he clearly signifies that in decreeing predestination he does not attend to our works. Moreover he openly teaches that same gratuitous Predestination in lib. 3. Soliloq. cap. 28, where, addressing God, he says: But you cleanse from among us the sons of men those in whom you have been pleased to dwell, whom, from the inaccessible depths of the more incomprehensible secrets of the judgments of your wisdom, always just though hidden, you predestined without their merits before the world, called out of the world, justified in the world, and you magnify them after the world.

I answer the first. St. Augustine calls eternal life a grace for this reason, that, as we said above with St. Fulgentius, we cannot attain it by the powers of nature, but through works elicited by the benefit of grace: hence St. Augustine rightly says, that God leads us to eternal life not on account of our merits, but on account of his mercy; because to be sure our merits are nothing unless they proceed from the grace of God together with free choice; but that this is the genuine opinion of St. Augustine is clear from his words; for if he altogether judged that merits, even those proceeding from grace, do not serve toward Predestination, he would also assert that they do not profit toward the attainment of eternal life; for he speaks rather of actual attainment than of destination to glory; but that consequence is heretical, and therefore that was not his opinion.

To the second. I say that St. Augustine published only two Soliloq. books, as he himself recalls in lib. 1. Retractationum cap. 4; for which reason the Doctors of Louvain rightly judge that this 3. Soliloq. book, from which the aforesaid opinion is taken, is to be placed among the works falsely ascribed to St. Augustine. Add that even if some credit were to be given to this book, it would nonetheless not favor the Adversaries; for it treats only of Predestination to cleanness, that is, to sanctifying grace, not indeed to glory. Finally, even if it spoke of predestination to glory, it would not have to be understood of predestination to glory alone, but of the predestination which involves grace and glory together, as was said in Note 3.

They object 4. The opinion of St. Augustine in the matter of Grace and Predestination was entirely different from and totally opposed to the teaching of Faustus of Riez, bishop of the Gauls and standard-bearer of the Semi-Pelagians: but that Faustus in the two books published De Gratia et libero arbitrio asserted that Predestination is made on the basis of foreseen merits, even merits elicited with grace: hence he calumniates St. Augustine, with his name nonetheless suppressed, as a Manichaean and guilty of gentile superstition, because he asserted the contrary: therefore in reality St. Augustine taught that Predestination is made before foreseen merits. The minor is proved from lib. 2 of Faustus himself, c. 6, where, expounding these words of the Apostle, It was said not on the basis of works, but of the one calling: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated, he speaks thus:

By these words the impiety of gentile superstition would have it understood that God, without any examination of a Moderator between good and evil, not by the order of one governing, but by the right of one condemning, renders that one worthy of affection and this one of hatred: that one he receives with zeal, this one he excludes by command, etc.

I distinguish the minor. That Faustus taught that Predestination supposes the foreknowledge of merits proceeding from the prior disposition of free choice alone, I concede: that they proceed from the help of grace, to the exclusion of that disposition which they called the beginning of faith, I deny: and so St. Augustine rightly opposed the opinion of Faustus of Riez and of the Semi-Pelagians, who wanted works preceding grace to be the reason why some were called while others were neglected, whom he attacks and assails, affirming that that calling to grace is purely gratuitous. Hence the only dispute he had with the Semi-Pelagians was about calling to grace, not indeed about calling to glory: likewise about works elicited by the power of free choice alone, not about works which are done dependently on the help of grace.

They press. Many of the Massilians against whom St. Augustine contends asserted that election to glory is on the basis of the foreseen merits of grace: therefore there is no solution. The antecedent is clear from the Epist. of St. Prosper to Augustine, where he has this:

This is their own (namely, of the Massilians) definition and profession: that every man indeed sinned with Adam sinning, and that no one is saved on account of his own works, but through the grace of God by regeneration. But God, before the constitution of the world, foreknew those who were going to believe, or who were going to remain in that faith which was to be kept through the grace of God, and predestined into his Kingdom those whom, freely called, he foresaw would be worthy of election and would depart from this life with a good end.

I answer. Indeed some Semi-Pelagians were of that opinion, that God predestined only those whom, freely called, he foresaw would be worthy of the eternal kingdom through their own consent and their own works: but I deny that they were for that reason reproved by Augustine, for the controversy between Augustine and the Semi-Pelagians was not raised about election to glory, but to grace, as may be seen in the books On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance, in which he is wholly engaged in assigning and establishing predestination to grace as proceeding from the pure mercy of God, and not from any preparation on the part of free choice; that you may perceive this more easily — it must be observed that the Massilians suffered a twofold difficulty concerning the doctrine of St. Augustine, one indeed real and true, the other imaginary and fictitious: the former arose from that very doctrine of Predestination and Grace, which embraces so deep and so abstruse a mystery that Augustine himself rightly said in De Gratia Christi cap. 47: This question, he says, in which free choice of the will and the grace of God are disputed, is so difficult to discern that when free choice is defended, the grace of God seems to be denied; when however the grace of God is asserted, free choice is thought to be taken away. Hence it came about that Augustine himself, before he had more accurately sifted this question, was involved in the same error of the Massilians, thinking that the beginning of faith is from man and not from God, and is repaid to human merits rather than granted gratis, as he himself frankly confesses in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 3.

For I did not think, he says, that faith is preceded by the grace of God, so that through it there might be given to us what we should ask profitably, unless because we cannot believe if the proclamation of the will does not go before: but that we should consent to the Gospel preached to us, I judged to be our own and to be from ourselves; which error of mine my little works sufficiently indicate before my episcopate, etc.

Wherefore it is no wonder if the Semi-Pelagians, excessively devoted to the vain philosophy and teaching of men and assertors of free choice, also went astray and could scarcely be brought to assert that free choice can effect nothing without the grace of God. The second difficulty of the Massilians, however, was entirely imaginary, because, wrongly interpreting the words of St. Augustine on prevenient grace and on the Gift of Perseverance, they imagined that St. Augustine, through those efficacious gifts dependent on God alone, introduced a certain fatal necessity and took away all faculty of free choice, whereas St. Augustine himself spoke only of an extrinsic and consequent necessity, by which a thing, while it is, cannot not be: whence the foreknowledge and futurition of things was certain and infallible. For he did not take perseverance for a habit infallibly moving and inclining a man to continue infallibly and immovably in grace, so that, with that grace posited, a man could live long with it, but could not with it deviate from virtue, as those erring ones imagined; but he employed the grace of perseverance for that instant of a death occurring in the state of grace; so that, in the mind of St. Augustine, to have the grace of perseverance was nothing other than to die in the state of sanctifying grace: hence he laughs at those erring ones in lib. De Bono perseverantiae cap. 6.

Those brothers, as you write, do not want this perseverance to be so preached that it cannot either be humbly merited or contumaciously rejected; in which they attend too little to what they say: for we speak of that perseverance by which one perseveres up to the end, which, if it has been given, one has persevered up to the end; if however one has not persevered up to the end, it has not been given.... Let not men therefore say that perseverance has been given to anyone up to the end, unless when the end itself has come and he to whom it was given has been found to have persevered up to the end, etc.

By which words he clearly says that the grace of perseverance is not some habit infallibly moving the will to persevere in grace until the end, but that very sanctifying grace, in which the predestined one is found at the instant of death.

They object 5. St. Augustine affirming in many places, most especially in Letter 105 and in the books De Correptione et Gratia cap. 8, as well as in the book De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, that the same judgment is to be made about adults as about infants departing this life before the use of reason and after receiving Baptism: but infants are not predestined by reason of foreseen merits, since they are not endowed with the use of free choice, nor consequently capable of their own merit: therefore neither are adults so predestined. The major will be evident to one reading the aforesaid books: the minor is also evident per se, and St. Fulgentius elegantly inculcates it in the book De Incarnatione et Gratia Christi cap. 30, where, gathering the gratuitous election of adults from the example of the gratuitous election of infants, he says:

That we may avoid prolixity, let us omit other things which could be replied to this depraved opinion on behalf of the truth of the faith: in the meantime let them be confounded and convicted by the testimony, not of speaking men, but of silent infants, in whom, for emptying the wisdom of the word, the power of Christ greatly shines, which shows that the same salvation is wrought by itself gratis in all men using their own will, which it deigns to work in infants having no will: for in them there is neither a good will, so that the reward may be just in those willing, nor an evil one, so that there may be a just damnation in those unwilling. If therefore, to save men, as these wish, he does not stir up nor change, but waits for the wills of men: how does he give eternal salvation to infants, who are baptized and die in that same infancy, whose good will he neither waits for nor finds?

He concludes therefore, from the example of infants, that the salvation of adults also is brought about by God, their will not being awaited nor found; but rather that God, to save them, stirs up and changes their will, as he speaks, so that the intention of saving is prior, and from it arises the will of stirring up and changing their will, and then at last the good work of such a will is found, that is, foreseen by God.

I answer 1. Sts. Augustine and Prosper are to be understood of works elicited by the power of free choice alone, as is clear both from their words and from the books cited; since the holy Fathers' business was with the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, who wanted the election of men to faith, grace and glory to be traced back to works elicited by the powers of nature; in order to proscribe whose error the Defenders and Assertors of grace urge them with the example of infants, some of whom, having received baptism, attain eternal life; others, however, with baptism denied, are reprobated, without any actual merit to be demanded of them. But that the aforesaid holy Fathers from this only gather that the election of adult men to faith and grace is gratuitous, and make no mention of election to glory, is clear from St. Fulgentius himself, who in the same place adds thus:

Therefore, because the Catholic Church truly believes and confesses God to be just and good, it must be most certainly believed and confidently confessed that one and the same grace of God works in the adults to be saved the beginning of a good will, by which in infants, without will, it works the effect of salvation. That same grace redeems infants neither willing nor unwilling, which, by enlightening adults, makes them willing from unwilling; and this work of salvation in infants is perfected by the grace of God working without the assent of their own will, which in adults is begun by the divinely given beginning of a good will, so that by the work of grace alone the will, which was evil, becomes good, and thereafter exhibits to grace working with it the service of cooperative obedience.

By which it is clearly established that he treats only of calling to grace; whence he adds: Just as God is not cruel in damning infants, to whom he does not grant the benefit of baptism; so he is not unjust in regard to adults when he does not bestow a good will; and just as their own evil will, so the condemned origin causes these to be punished justly, etc.

I answer 2. Infants indeed who depart this life after receiving baptism are predestined without any prevision of their own works and merits; they are, however, predestined on the basis of the merits of Christ, who willed to institute Baptism and to confer on it by his own blood the power of remitting sins, so that it might be salutarily applied as a remedy for sin to infants as well as adults, as we will demonstrate in the following Question.

They object 6. The genuine opinion of St. Augustine could not be detected more evidently than from his Disciples: but from these it is clear that the election of adults to glory is gratuitous: therefore, etc. The minor is proved: First, from St. Prosper, cap. 2, to the Vincentian objections, where he says: That many perish is the merit of those who perish; that many are saved is the gift of the one saving; and, in cap. 6, treating of the gratuitous election of men against the excerpts of the Genoese, he says:

If all these things have not been rightly said, the judgments of God are inscrutable and his ways unsearchable, and it is not hidden why that one rather than this one is saved; and he will glory in himself and not in the Lord, who, while others perish by their own fault, has been found worthy of election; and so it will indeed be justice that very many are damned, but it will not be grace that very many are freed. Far be this from catholic hearts, far be such impiety, that we should think that anyone is snatched by his own merits from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God by a due, not a gratuitous, adoption: and further on: From the whole race of men he saves innumerable ones, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and the grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before eternal times.

Secondly, from Fulgentius, lib. 1. Ad Monimum cap. 13: He could, he says, as he willed, predestine some to glory, some to punishment: but those whom he predestined to glory he predestined to justice, while those whom he predestined to punishment he did not predestine to fault. Since in these words he opposes Predestination to Reprobation in this, that the former is gratuitous while the latter is from justice, it follows that he judged that Predestination to glory is not on the basis of foreseen merits: he confirms the same in De veritate Praedestinationis et Gratiae in many places. Thirdly, finally, from St. Bernard, who in his Sermon on that passage of Wisdom 10, The Lord led the just man through right ways and showed him the kingdom of God, says:

The kingdom of God is granted, promised, shown, received: it is granted in Predestination, promised in calling, shown in justification, received in glorification..... In Predestination there is grace, in calling power, in justification joy, in glorification there is glory.

Where, when he says that in Predestination there is the grace of God, he understands a gratuitous election: therefore not on the basis of foreseen merits.

I answer. From all those opinions this only is inferred, that men are not chosen on the basis of works elicited by the powers of nature, but of works done by the benefit of grace; wherefore election is rightly called gratuitous, because grace, which is the principle of those works, is granted gratis by God, who bestows it on whom and when he wills. Hence not incongruously does St. Bernard call it a gratuitous election, because it is made only on the basis of works foreseen in grace and elicited by grace.

The objections from theological reason are solved. — They object 1. The authority and argument of the Subtle Doctor, who in 1. dist. 41. q. unica, n. 11. embraces the contrary opinion and strengthens it with this argument: everyone willing ordinately wills the end before the means to the end: but God wills ordinately: therefore he wills the end before the means to it: but glory is the end and merits are the means leading to it: therefore God wills glory before merits, and consequently election to glory cannot be on the basis of the prevision of merits.

I answer. I deny the consequence, and to the authority of the Doctor I answer that it stands with us. For since the Doctor in that place had weighed the present question on both sides with the singular subtlety of his genius, and had examined the various opinions about it, he at length concludes in these words:

Concerning these opinions, because the Apostle, disputing about this matter at the end of the Epistle ad Rom., seems to leave the whole matter inscrutable, saying, O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God: and who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? therefore, lest by scrutinizing the deep, according to the saying of the Master, one go into the deep, let that be chosen which pleases more, provided that divine freedom is preserved, without any injustice, and the other things which must be preserved about God as one choosing liberally; and whoever has held the other opinion, let him answer to the things which have been brought against it.

By which words he clearly signifies that our Conclusion is probable, and that all things objected against it can be dissolved. — He seems, however, to think otherwise about the opposite opinion; for since he saw that it teemed on every side with the greatest difficulties, some of which he strives to solve, he affirms it indeed probable: Provided, he says, that divine freedom is preserved without any injustice, and the other things are preserved which must be preserved about God as one choosing liberally: which two things indeed can scarcely be preserved in the opposite opinion; for it imposes on God the greatest antecedent necessity against divine freedom and justice, of providing and taking care lest the elect finally fall away from grace: likewise, that the non-elect, however just, perfect and innocent they may become through good works and the Sacraments of the Church, nevertheless at length slip into sin, and die in that state, and perish eternally, which indeed seems very harsh and highly injurious to divine freedom and justice. Likewise the supreme freedom and kindness of God in choosing can scarcely be preserved; for why, since he could choose all, or at least more, did he choose so few and abandon almost innumerable ones to perish, and that from his mere and sole will: and with no least diversity supposed among those chosen? all which absurdities do not follow from our opinion, and so it is no slight indication that it pleased the Subtle Doctor more. — To the argument I answer first, that this argument proves too much; for it not only persuades that Predestination was made before foreseen merits, but also that it could not have been made otherwise, since indeed

Since God can will nothing in a disordered manner, because He is most wise, it follows that if He wills in an orderly way, He ought first to will our justification rather than our merits; He could not, even by absolute power, will merits before glorification, which is plainly absurd, as even the adversaries themselves admit. Secondly, I answer that the major is true only with respect to one's own end, and not another's: for one can will, for example, the victory to be obtained by a soldier before the reward to be given to him, although victory is not the end of the soldier himself, but the reward: thus, since our glorification is not the end of God but ours, nor are our merits means with respect to God but with respect to us, it is not necessary that God will our glorification before our merits, but He can rightly and in an orderly way will the merits before He wills our glorification. Add that our glorification has, as it were, the character of a means, whereas the bestowal of grace has, as it were, the character of an end with respect to God: since He Himself proposes glory to us so as to provoke us to merits and good works. — I answer 3., that the major is true of physical means, not of moral ones, which stand variously with respect to eternal life: for since a moral means concurs to the attainment of the end not really, but only by way of impetration; and it cannot concur by impetration unless it is supposed to be in the knowledge of him from whom the end is to be obtained by impetration, for nothing can move the will unless it is known, because nothing is willed that is not known; hence it is necessary that moral means be intended before the end to be obtained through them. — I answer 4. by distinguishing the major: he who wills in an orderly way first wills the end before the means, if the end is considered absolutely and under the formal notion of end, I concede: for as such, whoever wills the end efficaciously is moved by the end itself so as to will efficaciously also the means conducing to its attainment, and hence wills the end before the means; if it is considered conditionally and under the notion of reward, I deny: for as such, he who wills in an orderly way does not will efficaciously to give a reward to someone unless he has first foreseen the merit. But our glorification is called wages, crown, and retribution, and hence it is no wonder if God foresees and wills the merits before glory.

You will insist. God truly intends the end before the means: therefore no solution remains. The antecedent is proved from St. Augustine, book De Bono perseverantiae cap. 11, where, treating of the Tyrians and Sidonians, he says that they could have believed if they had seen those wonderful signs of Christ; but because it was not given to them to believe, even the means of believing were denied them: by which words he indicates that God first chooses unto faith, and then grants the means, namely the preaching and the signs by which faith is obtained: whence it came about that, since the Tyrians and Sidonians were not predestined to faith, efficacious means were not granted to them so that they might obtain faith: therefore, they say, God wills the end before the means.

I deny the consequence. Both because a general induction is not made from a single kind of act; here, however, a single kind of predestination is brought forward, namely predestination to grace, from which it is not lawful to gather that the same must be said of predestination to glory. And because where one thing is inferred from another compared with it, it is necessary that some parity obtain between the two; but there is no parity between predestination to faith, or grace, of which alone St. Augustine speaks in the objection, and predestination to glory, of which we now treat; for the end of the former is absolute, since faith does not depend on merits but on the liberality of God alone, and hence precedes all merits; whereas glory is a conditioned end depending on merits: whence, since it is repugnant that a conditioned thing be decreed before the prevision of the future condition, it is likewise repugnant that God will our glorification, which supposes merits, before He intends the merits themselves.

They object 2. An effect is posterior to its cause, at least in some sign of reason: but the meritorious works willed by God are effects of predestination: therefore they are willed by God in a posterior sign of reason, and hence predestination takes place before foreseen merits.

I deny the minor. With Ockham, Gabriel, St. Bonaventure, Faventinus, Valentia, Isambert, Joseph of Troyes, and others; for the one and proper effect of predestination properly so called, of which we are speaking, is the beatific vision itself and our glorification; for this is conferred on us by reason of the formal character of predestination, just as St. Augustine, lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 10, speaking of predestination to grace itself, says: Predestination, which is unto good, is, as I have said, the preparation of grace; but grace is the effect of that predestination. So, by analogy, while we treat of predestination to glory, we can truly assert that its one proper effect is glory itself and our beatification.

They object 3. Our salvation is predestined in the same way as our perseverance, for salvation depends on it totally and adequately, according to that saying of Matth. 12: He who perseveres to the end, this one will be saved: but our actual perseverance is predestined by God without any merits, and is a gratuitous gift of God, which indeed cannot be obtained from any other source than from Him who is able to establish him who stands, so that he stands perseveringly, and to restore him who falls, says the Council of Trent, sess. 6, cap. 13. Therefore our salvation and predestination to eternal glory likewise depend on the gratuitous will of God, not on merits.

I distinguish the minor. Our perseverance is a gratuitous gift of God that cannot be merited by merit of condignity and from justice, I concede: by merit of congruity, of impetration, and of decency, I deny. For perseverance is not so gratuitous a gift of God that it depends on Him alone, without any other free cooperation of ours, in the manner in which the first graces of calling depend on Him alone, which He works in us without us; but it admits our free cooperation in consenting to grace, obeying the commandments of God, and resisting all occasions of sinning mortally; whence God does not predefine the grace of perseverance taken adequately, absolutely and efficaciously, apart from the prevision of our cooperation; and therefore the consequence must be denied.

You will insist. St. Augustine speaks of predestination to perseverance in the same way as of predestination to first grace: but predestination to first grace excludes all merit whatsoever: therefore perseverance too.

I deny the major. It is indeed true that he removes every merit whatsoever for first grace, but not so regarding the grace of perseverance: indeed, in lib. De Bono perseverantiae cap. 6, he declares that this grace can be merited: This gift of God, therefore, he says, can be humbly merited; but once it has been given, it cannot be lost contumaciously: whence in cap. 16 he distinguishes the grace of perseverance from the beginning of faith, in that God grants the latter freely, but bestows the former sometimes on those who pray: Since, he says, it is certain that God has prepared some things even for those who do not pray, such as the beginning of faith, and other things only for those who pray, such as perseverance to the end. Hence he exhorts to prayer, that we may be able to obtain that gift of perseverance, not indeed from merit of justice, but from merit of impetration and of decency.

They object 4. The predestination of Christ is the exemplar of our predestination, St. Augustine saying, lib. De Bono perseverantiae c. 24: There is no more illustrious exemplar of predestination than the Savior Himself: let any faithful person who wishes to understand it well attend to Him, and in Him find also himself: but the predestination of Christ was made entirely gratuitously and without any merits: therefore our predestination also.

I distinguish the major. The predestination of Christ is the exemplar of our predestination to grace, I concede: to glory, I deny: and, with the minor similarly distinguished, I deny the consequence, for Augustine intends nothing else; which is evident not only from the aim of the whole book, which is about predestination to grace and to the gift of perseverance, but especially from that very chapter cited, where, after the words placed in the objection, he concludes:

Therefore He who made this man from the seed of David righteous, who would never be unrighteous, without any merit of his preceding will, He it is who makes the unrighteous righteous without any merit of their preceding will, so that He is the Head, and they are His members. Therefore He who made that man without any of his preceding merits, drawing from his origin, or perpetrating by his will, no sin that would have to be forgiven him; He it is who, with none of their preceding merits, makes believers in Him those to whom He forgives every sin, etc.

It is clear, therefore, from these words that Augustine there treats only of predestination to grace.

They object 5. God confers on the predestined certain efficacious means, by which they attain glory, which He does not give to the reprobate: therefore it is a sign that God has an efficacious will of conferring glory on those, not on these, antecedently to their foreseen merits.

I distinguish the antecedent. He gives certain means which are efficacious on the part of God and before the foreseen cooperation of man, I deny: on the part of the recipient and cooperator, I concede. Thus the means, or graces granted, both to the predestined and to the reprobate, can be considered insofar as they are given by God, or insofar as they are received and applied by man. In the former way all graces are efficacious in actu primo, because of themselves they have sufficient power to attain their effect, if on the part of man no opposition intervenes which would impede their efficacy: but in the latter way they are called efficacious or inefficacious in actu secundo, according to the assent or dissent, the cooperation or rejection, of man. Add that even to the reprobate themselves there are sometimes granted more efficacious graces than to the predestined; for Judas, that worst of the reprobate, received far more and greater graces than some peasant who, keeping the precepts of God, ends his life in the state of sanctifying grace; yet the former is damned, the latter is saved: therefore it does not follow that the predestined have more efficacious graces than the reprobate.

You will insist. God chooses and confers on all the predestined, and on them alone, efficacious means, insofar as they are efficacious: therefore the means conferred on the predestined differ from the means conferred on the reprobate; but that difference can be traced back to no other source than that the predestined are chosen for the Kingdom before their foreseen merits and before the decree of conferring those efficacious means: therefore God truly predestines them before foreseen merits, and for that reason confers on them means different from those which are given to the reprobate.

I answer 1. By denying the major; otherwise it would follow that the reprobate are damned for this reason, that God had denied them sufficient means, and thus their damnation would have to be ascribed not to their evil works, but to the absolute decree of God, which smacks of Calvinism.

I answer 2. By distinguishing the major itself: God selects and distinguishes means for the predestined insofar as they are efficacious, I deny: insofar as they are apt and sufficient for attaining the end, I concede. Thus that those means are efficacious and will have their effect depends on the outcome and the free cooperation of man; which outcome, indeed, God foresaw and approved when He chose the means themselves, but He did not choose them because He foresaw that they would have their effect, as if He would not choose those means unless they were to have their effect; just as, on the other hand, He did not choose inefficacious means for the reprobate insofar as they are inefficacious, although He foresaw, from the depraved freedom and will of man, that they would be inefficacious, and decreed to permit it: but He chose them as good and suitable for attaining the effect, if those to whom these means were conferred had been willing.

You will press. Although God did not choose means for the reprobate insofar as they are inefficacious, nevertheless He knowingly and freely chose means which He knew would not in fact profit them: whence their damnation follows no less necessarily than if God had chosen those means insofar as they are inefficacious: therefore our opinion does not better safeguard and explain the sincere love of God for their salvation; for how would He have sincerely and from the heart willed to save those for whom He knowingly and freely chose means which He knew would not profit them, when He could nevertheless with equal ease have chosen means which would profit?

I distinguish the antecedent. God knowingly and freely chose for the reprobate means that would not profit, from a defect of efficacy of the means, I deny: means that would not profit from the malice or negligence of those who receive them, I concede. To the sequela I say: from this follows the damnation of the reprobate by defect of the efficacy of the means, I deny: by defect of the negligence or malice of the reprobate themselves and of the state of mortal sin in which they voluntarily die, I concede; whence the consequence must be denied: for the opposite opinion traces their damnation back to the very antecedent decree of God, excluding virtually or equivalently all those whom God looked down upon, or neglected, before the prevision of their works and with no occasion given on their part; and hence it cannot stand together with the sincere affection of God for saving men. But it is otherwise with our opinion, which traces reprobation itself back to their foreseen evil works and to the abuse of grace and of the means, not to the will of God itself, except only consequently to that prevision.

They object 6. God chose some who were eminently predestined to glory or to some supernatural dignity before all prevision of future things, as is evident concerning the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist, the Apostles, and others eminently predestined: therefore, since the reason is similar in all the predestined, and no motive occurs for excepting anyone from this manner of choosing, it must be affirmed that all are thus predestined before foreseen merits.

I deny the antecedent. For it is more probable that no pure creature was chosen efficaciously and absolutely to glory, or to any dignity, before foreseen merits or the final condition; indeed, not even the Blessed Virgin was chosen, not only to glory, but not even to the Motherhood of God, without her foreseen consent: whence theologians probably maintain that she herself merited this divine Motherhood of hers; which the Church also indicates, both in the little prayer Queen of Heaven, rejoice, for He whom you merited to bear has risen; and also, that she might merit to be made a worthy dwelling of your Son. Add that, whatever be the case concerning the Most Blessed Virgin, whose privileges cannot be extended to any other pure creature, it can in no way be proved that others eminently predestined were chosen before their foreseen works; for neither does Sacred Scripture teach this, nor do the holy Fathers affirm it, nor can it be efficaciously gathered from any other source. For that St. John the Baptist and the Apostles and other most holy men should be called eminently predestined, for this it sufficed that God heaped upon them ampler benefits and supernatural gifts, by which they would more easily remain in grace, and would exclude all occasions of sinning mortally.

They object 7. Some infants are snatched away immediately after Baptism, others a little before receiving Baptism, even with every diligence employed that Baptism might be procured for them: whence it happens that the former are predestined to glory, while the others are destined to Gehenna: but this diversity of lot does not proceed from any foreseen merits or demerits: therefore it must be traced back to predestination alone, and not to merits.

I deny the consequence. For it is not necessary that this proceed from such an election and reprobation as would precede all prevision of future things; for that can happen either through the negligence or malice of the parents, or through the order of things being so disposed that an infant naturally cannot live longer, and hence cannot attain to the grace of Baptism; but God conducts Himself permissively toward this privation, because He is not bound to invert the common order of things impeding this reception of Baptism, nor to do violence to the will of the parents, who were unwilling that Baptism be conferred on the infant: for it pertains to the wise providence of God to allow things to act according to their own nature, free things freely, contingent things contingently, and not to work miracles indiscriminately, and thereafter to overturn everything, for the sake of the good of some particular persons. Whence this privation of Baptism in an infant holds in the supernatural order just as monsters do in the natural order; and just as the death of that adult who falls into madness, apoplexy, or lethargy after mortal sin. For God permits all these things, because, since He is the supreme and wise Provider of all things, He ought not to change the order of things for the sake of some particular good, unless perhaps He is moved to this by the prayers of parents or of others. But when He changes the ordinary course of things because of the prayers or vows of parents, this does not proceed from an antecedent absolute election, but from the prevision of such prayers.

Finally they object. If election to glory were made from foreseen merits, the mystery of predestination would not be incomprehensible: but this is contrary to the Apostle exclaiming ad Romanos, cap. 11.: O the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge! therefore, etc. The major is evident, for it does not seem wonderful that God should have decreed to save those whom He foresaw would act well, and to damn others whom He foresaw would live badly, just as no one wonders if he sees the guilty punished by a judge, and the innocent set free.

I deny the major. For although predestination is made from foreseen merits, nevertheless the greatest occasion for exclamation remains on account of the inscrutable judgments of God. For although all are called to glory, nevertheless sometimes He calls some with a calling so congruous that they respond, as He called Paul, Magdalen, etc.; but He calls others with only an ordinary calling, to which they can indeed respond, yet do not respond: but why He employs this diverse calling, that is altogether inscrutable, as St. Augustine openly declares in the Enchiridio cap. 95, where he clearly indicates that there are some causes why infants and adults are taken up to first grace, or are excluded from it: which, he says, we shall know in eternal blessedness, since they are hidden from us in this life: hence it is that when he seeks these causes of the diverse calling of God and administration of grace, he always recurs to the inscrutable judgments of God, and not to His mere will, because namely he supposes there to be some cause there, but one unknown to us.

FOURTH QUESTION. WHETHER AND HOW THE PREDESTINATION OF MEN WAS DECREED FROM THE FORESEEN MERITS OF CHRIST.

Note 1. Predestination can be considered in two ways, namely with respect to the act of the One who predestines, or with respect to the effect of predestination. Again, the act of the One who predestines can be viewed in two ways, namely either absolutely and according to entity; or respectively and according to its extrinsic termination at some effect of predestination. Likewise, predestination can be considered according to its effect, either according to the order of eternal intention, or according to the order of temporal execution. But it is certain that Christ the Lord is not the cause of our predestination with respect to the act of the One who predestines viewed absolutely, for since this divine act, according to entity, is altogether really the same as the divine Essence, it acknowledges no cause of itself, physical or moral, that is, neither productive nor meritorious: only the question therefore remains to be discussed concerning that very divine act of predestination insofar as it is terminated at some effect of predestination itself, namely at the grace that calls, aids, and sanctifies, and also at glory, which alone is properly the effect of predestination.

Note 2. Christ the Lord can be said to be the cause of our predestination in three ways, namely either exemplar, insofar as His predestination is the exemplar of our predestination: or final, in that our predestination is ordered to His glory; or finally meritorious, so that the merits of Christ were foreseen and accepted as reasons moving God to decree our predestination. But it is certain that Christ the Lord is truly the exemplar cause of our predestination, since God predestined us to be made conformable to the image of His Son, says the Apostle ad Rom. 8. Whence St. Augustine, lib. De Bono Perseverantiae cap. 24, says: There is no other more illustrious exemplar of predestination than Christ Jesus. It is likewise certain that He is the final cause of our predestination itself, since, as the Apostle says ad Ephes. 1., God predestined us through Jesus Christ unto Him, that is, for His sake: whence the Council of Trent rightly, Sess. 6, c. 7., speaking of justification, says: The causes of this justification are these: the final cause, indeed, the glory of God and of Christ. And the same seems to be said of predestination. Only this, therefore, remains to be discussed: whether truly

the foreseen merits of Christ were causes moving God to decree our predestination.

Note 3. It is certain that Christ the Lord is said to be the meritorious cause of our predestination and of all its effects, as to execution; this, namely, St. Paul indicates openly enough in Ephesians, cap. 1., saying: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity. With which words he embraces the effects of predestination, namely the grace that calls, aids, and sanctifies, granted to us for the sake of Christ, which he openly signifies when he adds: Who predestined us unto the adoption of sons of God through Jesus Christ unto Him, that is, for His sake. For in the Apostle these words are for the most part synonyms: through Christ, in Christ, and for Christ. The Council of Trent explains the same thing most clearly, Sess. 6, cap. 6., in these words: The holy Synod further declares that the beginning of justification itself in adults is to be taken from the prevenient grace of God through Christ Jesus, that is, from His calling, by which they are called while no merits of theirs exist, etc. An evident reason also persuades this: for the merits of Christ were foreseen before any supernatural gift to be granted to us, for He is the Firstborn before every creature, Eccl. 24.; and hence, with His merits and works at least in common, foreseen before those gifts, and consequently there is no doubt but that, in view of them, the divine Father decreed that all the means for attaining salvation and eternal glory were to be conferred on us: namely, that from Him, the divine Head, that sacred Spirit of grace might overflow and flow out upon all the faithful, His members; which the holy Church also indicates not obscurely, as often as it desires and demands all those offices and gifts from God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So much, therefore, remains to be resolved here: whether our predestination was truly decreed from the foreseen merits of Christ according to the order of intention; wherefore it is that

Single conclusion. — Christ is the meritorious cause of our predestination, even according to the order of intention and election. This seems more probable.

It is proved first. Christ, inasmuch as He is God-man, was predestined and foreseen before the predestination of any creature: therefore His foreseen merits were the reasons moving God to decree our Predestination. The consequence is clear; for if in that very sign of eternity, in which God chose the Predestined, the future merits of Christ are already present, it is evident that since those merits are worthy of any possible reward, and are offered to God the Father for the salvation and Predestination of men, they also move the divine Father to decree all the graces to be conferred on men in time, by which, if they will, they will obtain eternal glory. The antecedent is proved by all those texts of Scripture by which Christ is said to have been foreseen before any creature; thus 8. Proverb. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, etc.; where the Septuagint interpreters render, The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways; which words cannot be understood of Christ according to the Divinity, as being exempt from creation: nor of His temporal creation and formation according to execution, since the incarnation took place only in the midst of the years: it remains therefore that they be understood of the formation of the incarnate Word itself according to eternal destination and prevision. Likewise Ioann. 17. Christ says: Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you, before the world was made. By these words He asks that there be conferred on Him the glory which He had before the world was founded: but He does not ask the glory of the Divinity, since He never lacked it: therefore that of the humanity, which He had in divine Predestination before the world was founded. Finally, Coloss. 1. Christ Himself is called the Firstborn of every creature, which surely must be understood according to the humanity: but He cannot be so called Firstborn, except by reason of predestination, namely inasmuch as He is predestined before every creature: therefore He was predestined and foreseen before any creature; and so His merits were present to God before the Predestination of any creature.

Secondly: Sacred Scripture expressly signifies that all graces and all spiritual gifts to be conferred on us in time were decreed by God from eternity through Christ Jesus: therefore it likewise indicates that His merits were the reasons moving God to decree that conferral of heavenly gifts. The antecedent is clear from the passage of the Ephesians already cited: He blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ, etc., where the particles in Christ and through Jesus Christ signify the merit of Christ; for what other signification could be imagined? This is also explained more clearly by the following words of the Apostle: for he adds: In which he hath graced us in his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood: by which he declares that that divine election, by which God chose us before the foundation of the world and predestined us to grace and glory, was made in view of the merits of Christ. 2. ad Timoth. 1. signifies the same thing more openly: Who hath delivered us and called us with his holy calling, not according to our works (elicited by the powers of nature), but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus, before the times of the ages. By which words the Apostle signifies that God decreed from eternity that grace be conferred on us in Christ, that is, on account of Christ; which the Council of Trent also expressly teaches, sess. 6. cap. 4., when it says:

The justification of the ungodly, that is, 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 the sons of God, is made through the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior: for this translation from the state of sin to the state of justice includes the first calling grace, on which depends the whole edifice of Predestination:

therefore since these gifts of graces, to be granted in view of the merits of Christ, were decreed from eternity, as the Council indicates in the same place, cap. 5., saying: It declares moreover that the beginning of justification itself in adults is to be taken from the prevenient grace of God through Jesus Christ, that is, from his calling, etc., the consequence is that Predestination itself was decreed only on account of those merits.

Thirdly, reason persuades the same thing: God in time executes nothing except according to the decree established from eternity concerning the things to be done in time: but all admit that any grace whatever, and glory itself as well, is granted to us on account of the merits of Christ: therefore since glory and grace are to be granted in time as the reward of the merits of Christ, certainly from eternity God also willed and disposed to grant them by reason of such merits of Christ: whence it comes about that it must be attributed to Christ alone and to His merits as to the moving and meriting cause. Then, our predestination, as has been amply proved, was decreed only after foreseen merits: but those very merits of ours depend entirely on the grace to be granted through Christ: therefore it was necessary that the merits of Christ be foreseen before our predestination was established.

The adversaries reply. All these things are indeed true according to the order of execution, but not according to the order of intention; so that when God from His good pleasure had chosen all who are to be saved, each to his own grade, the rest being negatively reprobated, and had predefined for them all good works, perseverance and congruous grace to be received and executed in time, He willed to execute all this through the merits of Christ. — On the contrary: from that opinion it follows that Christ is a mere executor of the paternal decrees, without any power of conferring on anyone a grace greater than each one in fact receives in time: for He could not exceed the prescription of the divine decree, which He clearly beholds in God and knows is to be discharged and carried out by Him: but this seems to fight against Sacred Scripture, which signifies that full power was granted to Christ the Lord, not only over temporal and earthly things, but also over heavenly, spiritual and eternal ones: thus Ioann. 13.³ He knew that the Father had given all things into his hands: and Matth. 28. All power is given to me in Heaven and on Earth: but how would He have all power, unless because He can dispose of all things by His own authority, most especially those which pertain to the salvation of men? This is further confirmed in Ioann. cap. 5. and 6., where Christ Himself affirms that all manner of authority was granted to Him of vivifying, judging and beatifying the dead; not indeed by reason of the Divinity, by which He holds supreme authority together with the Father, nor is there need that it be given to Him; but by reason of the humanity: whence He says:

He gave him power to do judgment, because he is the son of man. Do not wonder at this, because the hour comes in which all who are in the graves shall hear his voice (of the Son of man) and shall come forth, they who have done good things, to the resurrection of life, but they who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.

and cap. 6. I will raise him up on the last day: by which words not merely simple execution, but also supreme power is signified as granted to Christ. — Then, Christ is called the Head and King of the whole Universe: therefore just as the Head vivifies and governs all the members, and an earthly King administers his whole kingdom and all his subjects, and decides about their functions, offices and state; so Christ directs the whole universe, most especially in those things which pertain to salvation, since God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. — Finally, according to the Doctor, in 3. dist. 13., the humanity of Christ is to be exalted and dignified as much as it can be dignified without repugnance; for in commending Christ, he says, I prefer to exceed than to fall short of the praise due to him, if on account of ignorance one must fall into either: from which he gathers that in Christ the highest creatable grace is to be admitted, which he indeed confirms by that saying of St. Augustine on free choice: Whatever occurs to you as better by true reason, know that God has made this rather than not made it; but it redounds far more to the glory of Christ that He should have not only executive, but also authoritative power in those things which pertain to the salvation of men, and no reason persuades that this is repugnant; and so not only according to temporal execution, but also according to eternal prevision and destination, Christ by reason of His merits had authority concerning the establishing of our predestination; for it was fitting that He who on His part was to have merited all graces through His merits, should also have some liberty in applying His merits, and not be restricted to the mere execution of those things which had been decreed from eternity by the Father concerning such application.

You will say 1. God predestined us according to the mere good pleasure of His divine will: therefore not on account of the merits of Christ. The antecedent is proved from the cited passage of Ephes. 1. He predestined us to the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his grace: by which he signifies that we were Predestined through Christ as to execution; but through the purpose of God as to intention.

I answer. That is not the sense of the Apostle; indeed from it is gathered that our predestination depends on the merits of Christ also according to intention, since that especially pertains to the glory and excellence of Christ; but predestination is said to be made according to the purpose of the will, not to exclude the merit of Christ, but only to signify that Christ efficaciously offered His merits for those only, for whom He knew God willed that they be so offered; for as the Doctor speaks in 3. dist. 19. n. 6.

Just as the Word foresaw the passion to be offered to the Father for the predestined and the elect, so He efficaciously offered it in effect: so the whole Trinity efficaciously accepted the passion for them, and for no others was it efficaciously offered, nor accepted from eternity, and therefore it merited for them only the first grace ordering to consummated glory.

You will say 2. The predestined were given to Christ that He might keep and sanctify them: therefore in truth He did not merit their predestination. The antecedent is clear from that passage of Ioann. 17. Those whom you gave me I have kept. The consequence, however, is proved: every donation is gratuitous, nor does it presuppose merits; thence St. Augustine gathers that first grace and faith are not granted on account of merits, but are given freely.

I deny the consequence. And to its proof I say that the donation is gratuitous with respect to the one to whom the donation is made, I concede: with respect to the one on account of whom the donation is made, I deny: thus the Apostle says in Ephes. 2.: By grace you are saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God: and yet the holy Fathers, as well as the Council of Trent praised above, affirm that the grace of calling, and even faith itself, is granted to us on account of the merits of Christ, and consequently some donation can be at the same time gratuitous with respect to the one to whom it is made, although it presupposes some justice by reason of the one on account of whom it is made.

You will say 3. If Christ had merited predestination, He could have conferred it by His own authority: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The sequel is proved from that passage of Matth. 21. To sit at my right hand, or at my left, is not mine to give you, but to those for whom it is prepared by my Father.

I deny the sequel. For, as we have said, those words only signify that the eternal kingdom is not to be conferred by title of kinship, but only by reason of merit. Whence Christ does not exclude His authority concerning the conferral of eternal glory; indeed He establishes it, as is clear from that passage of Lucae 22. I dispose to you a kingdom, as my Father has disposed to me.

You will say 4. God predestined and chose us out of mere charity: therefore not on account of the foreseen merits of Christ. The antecedent is proved from that passage of Rom. 5. But God commends his charity towards us, because when as yet we were sinners, in due time Christ died for us.

I deny the antecedent. And to its proof I say that the Apostle there does not treat of predestination to glory, but of the decree of the incarnation of Christ, which depends on the mere liberality of God; for by no preceding merits, whether of Christ or of others, could God be moved to decree the Incarnation; but He decreed that it would be gratuitously and out of pure charity and mercy.

You will object 5. The Doctor, in 3. dist. 19. n. 6., where, proving that Christ was predestined before others, he establishes this order of predestination,

Then, he says, this was the order in the divine prevision. For first God understood Himself under the notion of the highest good. In the second sign He understood all other creatures. In the third He predestined these to glory and grace, and concerning the others He had a negative act by not predestining. In the fourth He foresaw that they would fall in Adam. In the fifth He preordained, or foresaw, the remedy, how they would be redeemed through the passion of the Son.

therefore Christ in the flesh, like all the elect, was foreseen and predestined to grace and glory before the passion of Christ was foreseen, as a medicine against the fall, just as a Physician first wills the health of a man before he orders the medicine for healing. Therefore the Doctor judges that men were predestined before the merits of Christ were foreseen; which he confirms by adding:

Just as the elect are predestined before the passion of Christ is foreseen as a remedy against their fall, so the whole Trinity first ordered the predestined and the elect to final grace and glory, as to efficacy, before it foresaw the passion of Christ as a medicine to be accepted for the elect falling in Adam, predestined before to final glory.

I answer. The Doctor is to be understood of predestination according to the order of execution, and inasmuch as it is in fact fulfilled in time; but not according to the order of intention, and as it was decreed from eternity; otherwise he would contradict himself, for he teaches that Christ is the first predestined: the incarnation of Christ, he says, was not foreseen occasionally, but as an end it was seen immediately by Him from eternity, and so Christ in human nature, since He is closer to the end, was predestined before the others. Therefore in truth he does not intend that the merits of Christ were foreseen only in the fifth sign according to intention, but according to execution; otherwise His Incarnation would have been decreed only on the occasion of sin, nor would He Himself have been foreseen and destined before every creature. — Or it must be said that he is to be understood of Christ in passible flesh, but not of that state in which He had been foreseen as to be incarnated if Adam had not sinned. — Whence, according to his own principles, if you regard the order of intention, this order is to be established. In the first sign the Incarnation of Christ was decreed, abstracting from passible or impassible flesh, and as yet decreeing nothing about the mortal or immortal state. In the second it was decreed that He would be the head of absolutely all men to be saved, and so likewise all the graces to be conferred were decreed in view of His merits. In the third Christ offered those very merits of His to the Father for those whom God foresaw, and Christ Himself knew, would use the graces and means well. In the fourth, the sin of Adam being foreseen, the incarnation in the passible state was then decreed; the passion of Christ likewise foreseen, and His merits offered for those very ones who were to persevere in grace; and then the decree of predestination was formed absolutely and efficaciously; and so, simpliciter and absolutely, the predestination of men was not completed according to the order of intention before the merits of Christ were foreseen.

You will say finally. If Christ merited predestination according to the order of intention, He also merited the reprobation of the abandoned: but the consequence is repugnant to the supreme charity of God and to His most excellent office of Redeemer: therefore it must not be said that He so merited Predestination.

I deny the sequel of the major. For although Christ merited the election of the Saints, He did not however merit the reprobation of the others; for just as the merits of the Just will on the day of judgment be the cause why they are separated from the impious, yet they will not be the cause of the abandonment and damnation of the impious: so the merits of Christ, which were offered efficaciously for the predestined, were not the cause why the others were left behind, since He offered those very merits of His sufficiently for all, and the reprobate were causes to themselves, on account of their malice and negligence, why those very merits of Christ were not also efficaciously offered for them, nor profited them.