Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

Here I call ingenerate perfections those which man receives from God, the magnificent Artificer of nature, together with the other created beings, and which perfect and constitute him within the order of nature in such a way that he is thereby ordained to the sole end of nature, to be attained by natural powers. Concerning this state three things above all may be inquired: First, whether man can truly be formed and constituted in the state of pure nature, such that he needs neither the benefits of grace to attain the end due to himself, nor can be removed from it by any sin. Second, what that state would have been like, namely, whether it would have been subject to the same defects of body and mind by which we are now burdened. Third, whether man by his native and ingenerate excellences surpasses created corporeal beings.

Note 1. For the state of pure nature two things are required, in which the purity of nature is judged chiefly to consist: one positive, namely, that in that state human nature possess its entire natural perfection; that is, a substance complete in every way, faculties fitted for operation, and divine providence ready at hand assisting in all things: the other negative, namely, that it possess nothing naturally undue to itself, or that is not fit to inhere in it within the very order of nature, whether evil or good: that is, that it be neither illumined by the gifts of grace, nor by other benefits conducing to the supernatural end, nor infected by any sin, especially original sin; nor be liable to the punishments deriving from it. From this negation of original sin and of any grace whatever, the state of pure nature takes its name; for the purity of nature in the present case denotes only the negation of all those things which do not pertain to man's natural constitution and order. Therefore we call the state of pure nature the mean between the state of original justice, in which the first man was fashioned, and the state of sin, into which he fell. I say the mean, by the negation of the extremes, such that it includes neither sanctity, which gives the possessor a right to eternal life, nor sin, by which he would be excluded from it on account of the guilt of damnation.

Note 2. That state of pure nature has nowhere existed, nor does it seem likely to exist in the future; for the first parents of mankind, fashioned immediately by God, were endowed at once with grace and other heavenly gifts, and enriched in order to the supernatural end, to which they together with their whole posterity were destined. But of their posterity, as many as are conceived — if you except Christ the Lord of the only Virgin Mother of God — are infected with the lethal stain of original sin, and are damned before they are born: and so there is no man who was truly fashioned in the state of pure nature, nor does any seem likely to be so fashioned; since all, by vitiated propagation, are conceived in iniquities; and healed and cleansed by the medicinal grace of Christ the Lord, they are ordained to the attainment of eternal beatitude. — But whether that state is possible not only according to God's absolute power, but also as He works according to the natural inclination of things, very many of the Recentiores deny, teaching that that state is impossible, and that the contrary opinion savors of Manichaeism; and that it is one of the capital errors of Pelagius attacked by St. Augustine. Which assertion indeed Calvin long ago published in book 1. of the Institutes, chapter 15, n. 1, and likewise Luther on chapter 3 of Genesis, where among other things he writes: Let us hold that justice was not a certain gift that came from without, separate from the nature of man, but was natural to it: so that it was of the nature to love God, to believe God, to acknowledge God. These things then were natural in Adam, as it is natural for the eyes to receive light. And further within: Moreover, he says, these things prove that original justice was of the nature of man: yet it having been lost through sin, it is manifest that natural things did not remain intact, as the Scholastics rave.

Note 3. That the gifts and divine aids granted gratuitously to men are of a twofold kind: for some perfect man in order to the end and operation of the natural order: others illumine and assist him in order to the supernatural end, and to operations proportioned to the dignity of that end. Of the former kind are certain special extraordinary aids, exceeding the common activity and course of natural causes, which God sometimes bestows upon natural agents, by which they may carry out their operation, and overcome the extrinsic obstacles that would arise from the concurrence of other causes, and attain the intended natural end. Of the latter kind, however, are all those aids of divine grace by which man, beyond the capacity and order of nature, is promoted to the supernatural end, namely eternal life, which we can obtain only by the benefit of grace divinely infused, according to that of Ephesians 2: By grace you are saved through faith, and this not of yourselves: for it is the gift of God, that no one may glory. — Concerning both aids the present Question is moved, but chiefly concerning the latter: for we inquire whether God can truly create some man in that state, such that, immune from original sin and from the punishments deriving from it, he may be ordained to the sole natural end, and need no benefit of divine grace, and ought not to be illumined and assisted by it.

Single Conclusion. — Man could truly have been created in the state of pure nature. This Conclusion is now common among Catholic Doctors; and the Subtle Doctor holds and teaches it as valid in 2 dist. 22, qu. unica, n. 7, where, demonstrating that there is no immediate opposition between guilt and grace, since a middle state could exist between the two, he says: For someone could be in pure natural things then without grace as without guilt: therefore these are in no way immediately opposed. — The Angelic Doctor affirms the same in 4 q. De malo art. 1, ad 1m, where he says: The lack of the divine vision belongs to someone in two ways: in one way thus, that he have not in himself that from which he could arrive at the divine vision, and thus the lack of the divine vision would belong to him who would be in mere natural things without sin: for thus the lack of the divine vision would not be a punishment, but a defect consequent upon every created nature: and in 2 dist. 30, qu. 1 he says that the defects of human nature which now exist can be compared to it in two ways; namely, either to it as considered in its natural principles, and thus, he says, they are not punishments of it, but natural defects: or to it as despoiled of the contrary perfections which it had received in the first Parent, and thus they are the punishment of the sin committed by him and transfused into his posterity.

Proof 1. From the definition of the supreme Pontiffs Pius V in the year 1570, and Gregory XIII in the year 1579, and Urban VIII, condemning various propositions published in writings or words and defended by Michael Baius. But among these condemned propositions, the twenty-second was: The sublimation and exaltation of human nature into the fellowship of the divine was due to the integrity of the first condition, and therefore must be called natural, and not supernatural. By the fellowship of the divine nature, however, he understands nothing other than what is had through sanctifying grace, as is gathered from proposition 12. Propositions 21, 25, 27 contain the same; but proposition 79 explains his mind more evidently, in which he says: False is the opinion of the Doctors, that the first man could have been created and instituted by God without natural justice: for he had said before that that natural justice was that in which the first man was created: but he was fashioned without sin and illumined by sanctifying grace: he wills, therefore, that man could not have been created without that justice and rectitude which the first man obtained by the benefit of divine grace infused into him: and therefore he denies that a middle state could have existed, in which man would have neither that justice in which he was created, nor the sin with which he is now born; and so he judges the state of pure nature to be impossible. — But since these propositions were condemned in Baius, it does not appear how they can again be defended by certain of the Recentiores as rash.

The adversaries answer that that censure is contrary to those nine supreme Pontiffs by whom the doctrine of St. Augustine against the Pelagians was long ago praised, commended, and approved: in which doctrine nothing is more frequent than that God would be unjust or impotent, if He were to create a creature unstained by sin, subject to the miseries to which it is now subject on account of original sin: and therefore, lest the holy Roman Pontifical See seem contrary to itself, every care must be taken that the later Pontiffs not be judged to depart from the opinion of the earlier ones. And thus the doctrine of the three praised Pontiffs was not that censure of Baius which we set forth. Next they subjoin that those Pontiffs condemned the aforesaid proposition not as false, but as disturbing to peace, since it was contrary to the common opinion of the Scholastics received long ago in the schools with their consent; for since the Bull proscribes at once and respectively many of Baius's propositions as heretical, erroneous, suspect, rash, scandalous, and offensive to pious ears; and does not determine which of those propositions in particular were heretical, which erroneous, etc., it suffices that one part of this censure fall upon this proposition, namely that by which it is said to have given birth to scandal, or offended pious ears. Finally they affirm that they themselves, and everyone else who so thinks, ought to remain with them in doubt between the censure of the three Pontiffs and the opinion of St. Augustine, which he so often proved and followed, and which the Apostolic See admonished should be followed. — On the contrary: first, it is false that the aforesaid proposition concerning the impossibility of the state of pure nature was approved by the ancient supreme Pontiffs, the praisers of Augustine, since no mention of it is made in those chapters drawn from the doctrine of St. Augustine and approved by Pope Celestine in the Epistle to the Bishops of Gaul; nor in the Canons of the Councils of Orange and Mileve, or in others specially celebrated against the Pelagians or Semi-Pelagians, in which the opinion and doctrine of St. Augustine is praised and proved. Moreover I say that it does not befit a Catholic man to set the opinions of supreme Pontiffs against one another, and to say that in receiving and expounding them the authority of the recent Pontiffs must be so defended that the opinion of the ancients be not injured; as if the authority were not equal in each Rector of the supreme See and Successor of Peter, and as if it were licit to appeal from the Recentiores to the more Ancient, as if the latter had established a contrary doctrine. — Secondly, I say that there is no room for rashness in the fact that they apply, by their private judgment and at their pleasure, the milder part of the censure to the aforesaid condemned proposition: for thus they open the way of eluding the note of any other proposition whatsoever proscribed by those Bulls; for of any other one could similarly say that it was reproved and prohibited, not as false, but as offensive and disturbing to peace. Next, it is false that the aforesaid proposition was not condemned as erroneous, or heretical, rash, or suspect; for since it is the foundation of almost all the others condemned there, it is certain that if any among those propositions are heretical and erroneous, as the censure affirms many to be, certainly this one especially, which is the basis and prop of the others. — Finally I say that it is plainly unworthy of Catholic men to remain in doubt between the definition of the supreme Pontiffs and the authority of a particular Doctor of the Church: for thus any heretic could elude all definitions, both of the supreme Pontiffs and of Councils, as if to be postposed to the doctrine of St. Augustine, or even of Sacred Scripture, to which he pretends to cling obstinately. Whence, if it was licit for St. Augustine against the Epistle of the Foundation, chapter 5, to say: I would not believe the Gospel, unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me, anyone can with better right say: I would not believe Augustine, unless the authority of the Church and of its supreme Rector moved me.

Second proof of the Conclusion; for St. Augustine in book 3 against Maximinus, chapter 15, affirms that man, formed to the image of God, therefore becomes by grace a son of God, because he is not so by nature: but if by grace he becomes a son of God, not by nature: therefore this is not connatural to him, or due to him connaturally: for it implies in express terms that something is gratuitous and yet due by nature: and consequently that human nature could have been created pure, without any safeguard, without such a gift. And in book 6 De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 27, he says that the power not to die was bestowed upon Adam from the tree of life, not from the constitution of nature: therefore it is false that the immortality of the first man was not a benefit of grace, but a natural condition. Finally in book 1 against Julian, chapter 16, he says, that the grace of God was great there, where the earthly and animal body had not the bestial lust: therefore the integrity of the first creation, or the absence of unbridled concupiscence, as the Adversaries explain it, was not his natural condition, but a gratuitous benefit of God.

Proof 3. and the preceding argument is confirmed: the Angels were never infected with original sin, and yet, according to St. Augustine, they could have been created without grace: therefore also men, immune from the stain of original sin, can be produced without it. The consequence is evident from the parity of reason: the antecedent is proved from St. Augustine lib. 22. De Civit. Dei, cap. 1. where he affirms that God in the Angels fashioned nature and bestowed grace: for speaking of the good will of the holy Angels, he says: Who had made these, save He who created them with good will, that is, with the chaste love whereby they clave to Him, at once fashioning for them nature and bestowing grace? In which words he distinguishes the donation of holy love from the creation of nature, in that the former is a bestowal of grace, the latter a formation of nature. It is confirmed by what he subjoins, while inquiring into the causes of so unequal an outcome of the Angels, the blessed and the damned, he thinks it can be said that the evil Angels received a lesser grace of divine love: for how would they have received a lesser, if each received what was due to his nature? — It is confirmed again by what he subjoins, that there then belonged to the Angels what is now said of men: The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us: for how would that saying have belonged to the Angels, unless as it is now understood that charity was gratuitously poured forth by the benefit superadded to nature, so it is believed to have been done then? How by the Holy Ghost, if nature drew with itself the necessity of receiving Him against its will? How, finally, by the Spirit who is given, if nothing properly and of itself is given, and no peculiar reason of benefit and gratuitous gift intervenes, besides that which is included in the creation of nature? — It is confirmed finally from book 13. Confessionum, c. 2. 3, seq., where St. Augustine, speaking of the creation of the Angels, distinguishes a twofold action of God toward them: one which he calls the creation of nature, or, as he says, the inchoation of the spiritual creature, by which it had that it should at least float darksome, like an abyss, unlike God: that is, by which it had that it should exist, but without the spiritual things of the mind. The other which he calls the bestowal of grace, or illumination, by which that intellectual creature received these supernatural ornaments, and was illumined with the splendor of grace; concerning which he says these words of God speaking are to be understood: Let there be light, and there was light. This, he says, I understand of the spiritual creature, because there was already a life of whatever sort which you would illuminate: but as it had not merited of you that it should be such a life as could be illuminated, so neither, when it now was, did it merit of you that it should be illuminated, so that both that it lives in some manner, and that it lives blessedly, it should owe to nothing but your grace; in which words he plainly designates that both were to God equally easy and equally a matter of choice: to suffer the Angels, unproduced, to remain in their very nothing, and, the light of grace denied, to leave those produced formless in natural darkness. — Whence they must acknowledge a twofold benefit of God altogether gratuitous: first, that they live in any manner; second, that they live blessedly: for he says, addressing God: what then would be lacking to you for the good that you are to yourself, even if those things either were altogether none, or remained formless, which you made not from indigence, but from the plenitude of your goodness! It is evident, therefore, that grace was not connatural to the holy Angels: and so much the less must this be said to be connatural to man. Which indeed is plainly deduced from the same St. Augustine. — For what he said here of the Angels, he had said almost the same of the first man in the books De Genesi ad litteram, where he likewise distinguishes a twofold operation of God: one by which He wrought man, that he might be man; the other, that he who was already man might be pious and wise: As, he says, man works the earth, not to make a thing be earth, but to work that man may be: so He Himself works that he be just, if man depart not from Him through pride. And again: Wherefore, by which manner of speaking it is said that man works the earth, which was already earth, that it be adorned and fruitful, by that manner of speaking it is said that God works man, who was already of the soil, that he be pious and wise. From which it is evident that St. Augustine distinguishes the productive action of God with respect to man, inasmuch as he is man, from another action by which he becomes wise, just, and holy.

Proof 4. The Conclusion by theological reason: that God can easily execute at His nod which implies no contradiction, nor does it beseem His majesty and the virtue of operating: but such is the state of pure nature; which I thus evince: this state chiefly embraces three things: First indeed it supposes human nature powerful with its essential perfection and all faculties fitted for operating, and connatural accidents, together with the concurrence of divine Providence ready at hand and naturally due to it; Second, with no supernatural gifts, by which it would be illumined for the higher order and end exceeding its ingenerate powers: Third, immune from original sin and from all punishments flowing from it: but neither of these implies a contradiction, nor beseems God operating. Not indeed the first, because He in fact fashioned all natures complete in all their numbers: For He saw all things that He had made, and they were very good. Not even the second, for it is established that man can be created by God without all original sin, as in fact the first Parents were fashioned by God without sin. Not finally the third: for since supernatural gifts are undue to nature, and it belongs to the divine will and gratuitous liberality to adorn human nature equally with Angelic nature with them, it is manifest that God can abstain from their bestowal: therefore from neither head does the state of pure nature imply a contradiction. — Further, if grace and the other supernatural gifts were owed connaturally to the Angel, or to man not infected with original sin, such that he could not, according to the regal order of operating, be created by God without them, it would follow that those gifts and sanctifying grace at once were and were not grace for the Angels and first Parents. It would indeed have been, as is supposed, and as the very name signifies: but it would not have been grace, because it repugns to grace properly so called that it be due to nature, or connatural. For the supernatural gifts of grace and glory, by which the rational creature is ordained to the supernatural end, do not regard its natural power, but only its obediential power, as the Theologians commonly teach; who therefore distinguish a threefold receptive power in creatures: one indeed Natural, in which are received accidents connatural to the subject, as light in the eye, science in the intellect, etc. Another Violent, in which are subjected accidents repugnant to the nature of the subject, as heat in water. Another finally Obediential, by which the rational creature is subjected to God for receiving the forms of the supernatural order. But it is certain that God, in the ordinary mode of operating, is not bound to bestow upon a creature even immune from original sin those things which it can receive by obediential capacity alone, since that regards a preternatural mode of acting; nor is the creature naturally ordained to receive those forms by obediential capacity; otherwise that capacity would not be obediential, but natural: therefore those gifts are not connaturally due to the rational creature. — Finally, men and Angels, however innocent, are only adoptive sons of God; for the only natural Son is Christ the Lord; but every creature is by nature and by force of its origin a servant of God, since such servitude is founded in its nature: but an adoptive son has a right not by reason of birth, but only by reason of gratuitous liberality, both to the inheritance and to the things pertaining to the inheritance; therefore neither Angels nor men, however free from sin, have from their nature a right to the intuitive vision of God, which is their inheritance, nor consequently to the grace necessary for the attainment of that inheritance. Whence deservedly St. Cyril of Alexandria, book 1 on John, chapter 13, affirms that the creature, since it is a servant, is called to supernatural things only at the nod and will of the Father.

The adversaries answer, that grace indeed properly so called is not due to the rational creature from the exigency of its very nature, or by the right of natural works; that it is nevertheless due, and connatural, on account of certain decencies, congruities, and equities which arise from other heads: for nothing, they say, is more connatural to the innocent image of God naturally fashioned with the capacity of enjoying God Himself, than grace: whence although God would not act against justice if He denied grace itself to the creature, He would nevertheless act against wisdom and the regal mode of operating, if He did not furnish to the creature itself the means for obtaining that end to which it is ordained by its nature. — They confirm this from the fact that the Theologians affirm sufficient grace to be grace absolutely, and nevertheless to be so due to the rational creature, even in the state of lapsate nature, that it cannot be denied to it by God in the ordinary way; otherwise God would command impossibilities, and the same man would sin in that which he could not avoid: therefore, they say, similarly, sanctifying grace, without which no one can, would no less be properly grace, although by congruity it would be connaturally due to the rational creature. — On the contrary: first, this response supposes what is false, namely, that man is ordained by his nature to the vision and fruition of God as to a connatural end, as will be evident below. Second, it speaks by implication; for if man be ordained to that end by his nature, it follows that to innocent man, or man without original sin, grace and the vision and fruition of God are due not only by a debt arising from the wisdom of God, or from some congruity, but even by the very right of nature requiring this end from within, to which it is naturally ordained; and consequently requiring the means necessary for the attainment of that same end.

Third finally, he says also erroneously that the notion of debt repugns to grace properly so called only in that it would suppose a work of the creature, but not that it would arise from the natural exigency of the creature itself; such that it would not cease to be, and truly to be called, properly grace, even if it were owed to nature, provided no work preceded on account of which it be judged due. For, as we shall prove in the first Tractate of the following book, by the name of grace properly so taken the holy Fathers and Councils understand a gratuitous gift, superadded to nature, exceeding its due and exigency; not merely that which is not owed to our works by way of wages: otherwise free will and whatever natural perfections could be called grace properly so called: since we performed no work before God granted these gifts to us. But that this is most absurd and erroneous, the Councils and Fathers, as many as proscribed the heresy of Pelagius, judged. — To the confirmation he says that the example concerning sufficient grace is not to the purpose; for although sufficient grace is sometimes said by Theologians to be due to the rational creature, it is no less grace properly so called, because it is not owed to it absolutely, as if God could not deny it to man without injustice; but only by congruity, and on the hypothesis that he be ordained and elevated to the supernatural end, which ordination and elevation is undue to him, and is done by God altogether freely. But according to the opinion of the Adversaries, the elevation itself to the supernatural order is so due to a nature free from original sin, that God cannot abstain from it except in punishment of sin; nor consequently can that nature be created without grace and the other aids necessary for the attainment of its supernatural end.

1. Objection drawn from the manner of speaking of the Holy Fathers. — They object therefore 1. The gifts of integrity and of sanctifying grace are said by the Holy Fathers to have been natural to the first Parents: for Celestine in the Epistle to the Bishops of Gaul, chapter 1, says: Men in the transgression of Adam lost natural possibility and innocence. And St. Augustine in many places, especially book 11 De Genesi ad litteram, affirms that men, by losing the supernatural gifts, could have lost even the things of nature and natural possibility: therefore, according to the ordinary power of God, and His providence over each thing according to its natural exigency, men before sin could not have been created without gifts of this kind, and therefore not in the state of pure nature.

I deny the consequence, and to the antecedent I say that the holy Fathers call natural not only that which man connaturally requires, but also that which human nature received in its origin and creation, although it be undue to it and preternatural. Thus the Apostle to the Ephesians 2 says that we are by nature children of wrath; wherefore St. Augustine, book 1 Retractationum, chapter 15: Properly, he says, that nature is called [natural] in which we were created without vice. And in sermon 14 De Verbis Apostoli, he calls original sin the sin of nature, or natural; not because it is connatural to human nature, but because it is in us from the very beginning of life and nature, and with it is transfused and propagated to all the posterity of Adam. Therefore although the gifts of integrity and of sanctifying grace were undue to Adam and beyond his natural lot, they could nevertheless be called natural by the Holy Fathers, because they were granted to him from the beginning of his formation. Hence it is that the Author of the books Hypognosticon assumes for the same reason that man can naturally do what he wills, and has the same gift of possibility which was lost through the fault of the first Parent.

2. Objection brought from the ordination of man to beatitude. — It is objected 2. God could not fashion a rational creature guilty of no sin incapable of attaining true beatitude, in which it might rest: but man created in the state of pure nature, destitute of the supernatural gifts of grace and charity, would be incapable of attaining true beatitude: therefore he could not be created in that state. The major is established from the fact that all men naturally desire beatitude: for St. Aug. says lib. 13. De Trinitate, cap. 8. That all wish to be blessed the truth cries out, nature compels, which the Creator, supremely good and immutably blessed, has instilled in it. Thence it comes that every rational creature flees misery, and as the same holy Doctor says in the Enchiridion, chapter 101: So we will to live, that we not only do not will to be miserable, but can by no means will it. — But they prove the minor: man cannot be truly blessed unless he enjoy the clear vision of God and his supreme love, by which he may as it were comprehend God Himself: for the rational soul, by this very thing that it is naturally rational and the image of God, is of so immense a capacity that it is satiated by no other thing, nor consequently can it be blessed, save by the possession of that immense divine essence alone, as St. Augustine teaches in many places, especially lib. 14. De Trinitate, cap. 8. and lib. 12. De Civit. Dei, cap. 1. Whence St. Bernard, in the sermon on the dedication, says: My soul can be occupied by created things, but cannot be satiated: and being capacious of God, whatever is less than God will not fill it. But this fruition of God cannot be obtained by the powers of nature: therefore neither can man be formed in the state of pure nature; since he cannot in that state be ordained to beatitude. — I answer to the major, that indeed man, free from sin, cannot be created by God without ordination to some beatitude and ultimate end; but that end can be twofold: namely natural, consisting chiefly in adhesion to God through knowledge and love, attainable by the powers of nature; and supernatural, consisting in the clear vision of God, or love, and beatific joy. But on the hypothesis that man had been created in pure natural things, he would have been destined and ordained only to the former end and beatitude. For that he is now ordained to supernatural beatitude and the ultimate end was of surpassing grace and divine liberality, according to that of Titus 3: That, being justified by his grace, we may be heirs according to the hope of life everlasting. The former beatitude man desires by a natural and innate appetite; to the latter indeed, since he has only an obediential capacity, therefore he does not desire it naturally by an innate appetite, inasmuch as it is supernatural, but only by an elicited one. The former coincides with the natural ultimate end of man; the latter, however, is the same as his supernatural ultimate end. But since God, by gratuitous liberality, above the capacity and exigency of nature, has ordained men to that supernatural beatitude, He doubtless could have abstained from that ordination, free as it was to Him, and have ordained men only to natural beatitude, by creating them in the state of pure nature. But if you ask in what that natural beatitude would consist? I answer, that the Theologians constitute it in the perfect and sweet contemplation of God, as of the Author of nature, which indeed would not extend to the intuitive and clear vision of Him; but would be only an abstractive knowledge of Him gleaned from creatures, especially from separate and spiritual substances. That contemplation, moreover, would be the root and incentive of the natural love of God and of the other natural virtues of which man is naturally capable, and by which he could attain those goods which would fill the natural satiety of soul and body and the ingenerate desire of beatitude.

They insist: That sweet contemplation of God, whatever it might be, would not satiate the soul of man, for from it he would desire the clear vision of God; since from the knowledge of effects the natural desire of seeing the cause is excited: therefore that contemplation would not be satiating for man, nor consequently beatific; and consequently a natural beatitude cannot be given. — I distinguish the antecedent: that there would arise from such a contemplation the desire of seeing the cause, which would be absolute, and productive of disquiet, I deny: that it would be conditional, and not disturbing the quiet of the mind, I concede: for the appetite of seeing the cause, the effects having been seen, is absolute only in him to whom such vision appears possible: whence since to man existing in pure natural things the possibility of the divine vision, which is supernatural, would not be naturally known, it follows thence that the appetite of the clear vision of God would be only conditional, and inefficacious. But an inefficacious volition, or velleity, since it does not move man to the attainment of the desired thing, produces neither disquiet nor anxiety.

They urge again: The beatific vision is naturally due to the rational creature, inasmuch as it is its ultimate end: therefore man desires it naturally, nor can God deny it to man without the fault of the man himself and sin presupposed. They prove the antecedent from St. Augustine, who frequently reproaches the Pelagians, especially book 1 ad Bonifacium, chapter 22, and book 1 against Julian, chapter 3, because they said infants are born without original sin, and yet are excluded from the kingdom of Heaven if they die without baptism: whence sermon 14 De Verbis Apostoli he thus inveighs against Pelagius: Why do you tear away the patrimony of the kingdom of Heaven from an innocent one? where is that justice of God? Say, I beseech you, what does the unbaptized little one offend in? that he has no guilt? etc. But this discourse would not hold unless Augustine judged eternal beatitude to be so connaturally due to man that it can be denied to him only on account of guilt: therefore, etc. — I answer 1. The antecedent of the adversaries contradicts both Scripture and the holy Fathers, who affirm that eternal beatitude is not connatural to man, but supernatural, and the greatest benefit of divine grace. Therefore David the Royal Prophet attributes it not to nature but to grace, Ps. 83: Grace, he says, and glory will the Lord give: and St. Paul pronounces absolutely: The wages of sin is death; but the grace of God, life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord; that is, grace conferred through Christ. Whence St. Augustine lib. 1. De Trinitate, cap. 6. alluding to the place of Paul 1 ad Timoth. 6, Whom no man hath seen, nor can see, says: The Divinity can by no means be seen with human sight: but it is seen with that sight by which they who see are already not men, but beyond men. — I answer 2. That St. Augustine rightly carps at the Pelagians; for he argues from the order already established, according to which the intellectual creature is ordained to the supernatural end, as is the possession of the kingdom of Heaven, which indeed now cannot be denied to anyone except on account of his own guilt; because punishment cannot be inflicted upon anyone except on account of guilt: but exclusion from glory, such ordination supposed, cannot fail to be a punishment. But Augustine does not speak of the state of pure nature, in which man would not be ordained to eternal glory.

Finally they insist: Natural beatitude can be none at all: therefore all that inclination which man has toward beatitude must be toward that which we call supernatural. They prove the antecedent from the fact that every beatitude must chiefly comprise four conditions: namely, that the blessed can neither be offended, nor deceived, nor die, nor be anxious, but secure concerning the perseverance of his beatific state: but these cannot be had in the state of pure nature: therefore, etc. This they prove from St. Augustine in many places, especially from lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 25. where he says: The just man lives not as he wills, unless he has arrived where to die, to be deceived, to be offended is altogether impossible: and since it is certain that it will always be so. For this nature seeks: nor will he plainly and perfectly be blessed unless he has attained what he seeks. The minor will be established in the following Question, in which it will be proved that the state of pure nature would not be without death, miseries, and anxiety over the loss and forfeiture of any good possessed.

— St. Augustine confirms this, Epist. 52, where, after he had said:

How great is the vanity, how great the insanity, and how great the falsehood, for mortal man leading a wretched life with mutable spirit and flesh, burdened with so many sins, subject to so many temptations, liable to so many corruptions, to trust in himself, that he may be blessed: when even that which he has as chief in the dignity of his nature, that is, mind and reason, he cannot vindicate from errors unless God, the guardian light of minds? He concludes: Let us therefore cast away, I beseech you, the vanities of false Philosophers and their lying insanities: because neither shall we have virtue, unless He Himself be present by whom we swear, nor beatitude unless He Himself be present whom we enjoy: and may He absorb all our mutable and therefore corruptible self, which of itself is weak and ever prone to miseries, by the gift of immortality and incorruption: therefore no felicity is to be hoped for on earth.

— I deny the antecedent: and to the major of its proof I say that the four aforesaid conditions desired for beatitude pertain not to temporal but eternal beatitude; not of this life, but of another; nor natural, but supernatural, from which the anxieties of death and the dread of disease are banished forever: for the Adversaries themselves confess that beatitude can be distinguished as twofold: one imperfect, which St. Aug. calls less resplendent than the beatific vision. Another truly perfect, which consists in the very clear vision and fruition of God. The former, they say on Augustine's authority, Adam had in the state of innocence, in which he saw God not intuitively, but only abstractively; destined thence to attain the latter if he had stood firm and unmoved in the former. Why then will it not likewise be licit for us to distinguish a twofold beatitude, one perfect and supernatural, another imperfect and natural, to which pure nature could tend and arrive, and through which it could be promoted to that supernatural and more excellent one?

Perhaps they will answer that that imperfect and less resplendent beatitude designated by them is a disposition to the more excellent one, which that natural beatitude devised by us would not be. — But truly, what hinders us from saying equally that man in pure natural things could be left for some time in the state of that natural beatitude, until, without any merit of his own and out of the pure liberality and grace of God, he should be promoted and transferred to the supernatural: just as the Adversaries themselves contend that Adam could have been left for some time in the state of his imperfect and less resplendent supernatural beatitude, that then, his merit accruing, he might be transferred to the perfect, namely the intuitive vision of God? For we do not contend that man constituted in the state of pure nature must necessarily remain perpetually therein; such that, the benefit of God accruing, he could not be raised to a more excellent and more perfect state: but it suffices us that he remain in it for some time, that that state be not judged impossible, — To the confirmation, and to each opinion of St. Augustine, I say that he speaks not of natural beatitude and of the state of man who would be in pure nature, but of the present state of lapsate nature, and of perfect beatitude, to which we are ordained by the grace of God, and without which we cannot truly be blessed; since we now remain bound by sin, and are pressed by grave hardships and the punishments conjoined with them. But if St. Augustine seems to deny that there is any other beatitude besides the eternal and supernatural, in comparison with which whatever other beatitude be conceived seems to be misery alone, I say he speaks in that sense in which that which is supreme and most excellent is said to be alone in such a genus, and the others which are far inferior are said to be nothing besides it; and in the manner in which God in Sacred Scripture is affirmed to be alone: Art not thou he that art alone? Ps. 11; while the remaining beings besides Him are said to be nothing; so Isaiae 10: As if standing things stood not, so are they, and as a thing of nought and emptiness are they accounted of Him. Whence as created beings, although respectively to God they are called nothing, yet in themselves, pro suo modulo, vindicate to themselves a true and real ratio of being; so that natural beatitude which men can attain in the state of pure nature would participate, pro suo modulo, the ratio of beatitude, proportioned namely to man existing in such a state, from which finally he would be promoted by the benevolence of God to a more excellent one.

3. Objection drawn from the love of God. — They object thirdly: A rational creature cannot be instituted by God except with a will ordered to loving the Creator and to being loved with chaste love, that is, immediately, and only for Himself: but that love cannot be had without the benefit of grace, as St. Augustine indicates in innumerable places: therefore, etc. — I distinguish the major: He cannot be created thus without being ordained to love God with a natural or supernatural love, I concede: with only a supernatural love, and which is perfect charity, I deny. Therefore a twofold love of man toward God can be distinguished; one indeed less perfect and of pure nature, which man could exercise by the powers of nature and with the aid of connatural providence: another more perfect and sublime, which he cannot elicit except by the aid of the Holy Ghost, and which is called perfect charity poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us, whereby we love God not only as the Author of nature and the munificent bestower of natural benefits, but also as the Author of grace and the eternal Maker of our salvation.

They insist, that this distinction of a twofold love of God, natural and supernatural, has neither foundation nor trace in Sacred Letters, nor in the Councils, nor in St. Augustine or the other holy Fathers: but is altogether a human fiction, devised by the benefit of Aristotelian Philosophy: therefore this distinction is not to be admitted in the Schools of Christians. — I deny the antecedent, whose falsity appears as regards all its parts: First indeed Sacred Scripture affords a trace and argument of that natural love of God; for in chapter 1 to the Romans, the Apostle affirms not only the Philosophers knew God by the natural light of reason, but also in chapter 2 teaches that the Gentiles who had not the law did naturally the things that are of the law: whereas the first and highest law signified by the natural light and inscribed in the hearts of men is that God, the Creator of all, must be loved: whence St. Bernard, lib. De diligendo Deo: Justice, he says, cries within by innate and not unknown reason, that He must be loved whose we wholly are, and that we owe all to Him, we do not ignore. For if men can naturally know God to be the Creator of all things, the Author of themselves, and the best Parent and most liberal benefactor, it is highly connatural that they can also pursue Him with natural love; for nature so inclines to the love of parents and benefactors that those appear to have stripped off human sense and reason among all, even Barbarians, who act otherwise. Whence deservedly St. Paul, chapter 1 to the Romans, pronounces that those Gentiles who naturally acknowledged God were thereby inexcusable, because they glorified Him not as God, nor gave thanks, and served the creature rather than the Creator. But the worship of God consists chiefly in His love, according to that of St. Aug., Epist. 120: Piety is the worship of God, nor is He worshiped save by loving: therefore the Apostle judges that the Gentiles ought to have pursued God with natural love. — As regards the Councils, they also furnish evident argument of that distinction: especially Orange, canon 25, and Trent, Session 6, Canon 3, while namely they define the aid of the Holy Ghost to be necessary for loving God, not in whatever manner, but as is required for salvation, or as is required that the grace of justification be conferred: for that limitation, "as is required for salvation," would be put in vain if no other love of God were possible except the perfect and supernatural, which leads to salvation and justification. Therefore, etc. The holy Fathers sufficiently indicate this same thing, as is established both from the praised St. Bernard and equally from St. Augustine, lib. 6 Contra Iulianum, chapter 10, where concerning little ones dying without baptism he thus speaks: If this will not be evil for them, namely to be excluded from the kingdom of heaven, they will not therefore love the kingdom of God as innocent images of God. But if they will love it, and will love it as much as innocents ought to love His kingdom from which they are created to His image: do they suffer no evil from this very separation? In which words he affirms that those little ones, though excluded from glory and left to the powers of nature alone, will love the vision of God, and will have grief that they must be deprived of it forever; for they would not grieve over the loss and forfeiture of God unless they pursued Him with love: but who will say that those infants condemned to the penalty of loss and despoiled therefore of all heavenly gifts terrify with supernatural love into the beauty of God to be seen? There remains therefore that their love toward God be purely natural. Add that among the condemned propositions of Baius this was num. 32: That distinction of a twofold love, namely natural, whereby God is loved as the Maker of nature, and gratuitous, whereby God is loved as Beatifier, is vain and fictitious, devised to mock Sacred Letters and very many testimonies of the ancients: therefore to deny that twofold love of God savors not of a Catholic.

You urge: The love of God, without which the rational creature cannot be fashioned, or at least unless it have it in its power, cannot be other than that whereby God is loved for the sake of God: for if God be loved on account of something else, that will not be the true and chaste love of God which he wishes to attain through God: for, as St. Augustine says on Ps. 77: They who seek God on account of earthly benefits seek not God, but those things, because in the same manner God is worshiped with servile fear, not with free love: thus therefore God is not worshiped: for that is worshiped which is loved: whereas such chaste and right love cannot be had without the true and properly so-called grace of God, as the same Doctor teaches, sermon 15 De verbis Apostoli. chapter 11, and lib. 6 against Julian, chapter 3: therefore, etc. — I deny the minor: for neither would some measure of love of God for Himself be impossible in the state of pure nature, such as is now possible in the state of corrupt nature by the powers of free will, as we shall demonstrate on 3 sent. Nor does it follow either that every love of God which is not purely for Him is vicious and inordinate, as we shall prove in the same place, both from Scripture, wherein He more often exhorts men to love and worship God on account of His surpassing benefits toward us; but He exhorts not to vicious and impure love: and from the Councils and Fathers, who commend even such love of God; and finally, because if God could not be rightly loved except for Himself, and no other good were done except what proceeded from such love, it would follow that there is no other virtue besides charity; which manifestly conflicts with Sacred Scripture itself and the doctrine of the holy Fathers. — By the authority of St. Augustine I say that he himself is to be understood by the aforesaid words of him who would be so affected that he would not love God if those benefits were not granted; as if God would be unworthy of love unless He were beneficent; which affection and estimation of the will is indeed altogether vicious and inordinate. Or he is to be understood of him who loves God on account of His benefits so that he holds the benefits as the better reason, than God Himself, whom he in a manner postpones to them, according to what Augustine himself says on the same Psalm 77: The heart is right with God, he says, when for the sake of God it seeks God.... But the heart is not right with God where it rather loves those things for the sake of which it requires the help of God.

You will insist again: That the principal error of Pelagius was that he asserted some pure and chaste love of God could be had by the powers of nature. Whence there was a grave contestation between him and the Catholics, as St. Augustine testifies, lib. De gratia et libero arbitrio, chapter 18, saying: Whence also in men the charity of God and of neighbor, except from God Himself? For if not from God, but from men, the Pelagians said: but if from God, we say the Pelagians [are answered]. Whence also lib. De natura, et gratia, chapter 2, he says of those who heard nothing of Christ, and who can only believe in God their author, and by living rightly fulfill His will, that they cannot do this without the benefit of the grace of Christ: If anyone, he says, this could be done, or can be done, this I too say, which the Apostle says of the law: therefore Christ died gratis. — I answer, that St. Augustine there speaks of the love and good works conducing to supernatural beatitude; for at the beginning of the chapter of the book just cited he had said: Human nature, begotten in a mass from that one transgressor, if it can suffice itself for fulfilling the law and perfecting justice, ought to be secure concerning its reward, that is, eternal life: even if in some nation, or at some earlier time, the faith of the blood of Christ lay hid from it. Add that Pelagius especially denied grace necessary, not for moral and honest works only, but for supernatural works, by which we are promoted to eternal felicity: and therefore St. Augustine there speaks not of the former works to be elicited by the powers of nature alone, but of the latter, which cannot be done without the aid of grace.

You will urge moreover: That the Gentile Philosophers also acknowledged that the love whereby God, known by the natural light, must be loved as more Just than all, cannot inhere in men without the benefit and grace of God Himself, as St. Augustine testifies in many places, especially lib. 8 De Civit. chapters 5 and 10, and lib. 4 Contra Iulianum, chapter 3: therefore in the state of pure nature no love of God could inhere in men. — I answer. That the sense of the Philosophers was that they willed that love, and Philosophy and wisdom, and the other eminent endowments of man, indeed could not be had without the benefit of God; not indeed of the supernatural order — for the Adversaries themselves openly confess that the Ethnic Philosophers discussed or knew nothing at all concerning the elevation of nature to the supernatural state — but of the natural order, gleaned namely from that special providence of God which does not exceed the limits of the same order, and which does not transcend the capacity of the Philosophers. Therefore in this sense in Augustine, lib. 8 De Civit., chapter 5, they said: the Author, Gift, and maker of things, and illuminator of truth, and bestower of beatitude: and that from Him we have both the principle of nature, and the truth of doctrine, and the felicity of life, which consists chiefly in His knowledge and love: and lib. 4 Contra Iulianum, chapter 3, they also said: That the true virtues are only those which are in a manner impressed upon the mind by the form of that eternal and immutable substance which is God. Nor does it matter that there and elsewhere often St. Augustine says that His grace and its sweetness ought to be given to us by God, that we may love Him: for he understands that we love Him more perfectly than Philosophy teaches, and than the natural powers alone can supply: by which reasoning he requires grace also that we exercise patience and the other virtues more perfectly, according to what he says lib. 22 De Civit., chapter 22: To this end let me be helped altogether by grace in these evils, that with a heart so much the more faithful, so much the stronger we may endure: for which purpose he says Philosophy also profits the learned of this age, since to certain few Gods, as Tullius says, they gave the matter, or to men from them, as it were the greater gift, which could be given.

Finally you will insist that St. Augustine teaches in many places that every love of a rational creature is charity or cupidity; since namely it is necessary that a rational creature in every voluntary action tend to God or to a creature, that it rest in one or the other as last: if in God, it is charity: if in a creature, cupidity. But in this division St. Augustine acknowledges no other charity except that which is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, nor any other cupidity except that by which the rational creature is vitiated and exorbitates from its ultimate end: but this doctrine would be false if some natural love of God were granted which was not comprehended under that divinely infused charity, for it would not truly be cupidity. - I answer. That St. Augustine there takes charity not strictly and properly, for the love of God, whereby He alone is loved for Himself and above all things, and inasmuch as charity is opposed to cupidity; but broadly, for the love of the good and honest, whereby the honest is loved, in which sense lib. 2 ad Bonifacium. chapter 1, he says: What is the cupidity of the good, except charity? Add to these that, notwithstanding the testimonies of St. Augustine produced by Michael Baius for confirming this proposition, this proposition of Baius num. 37 was condemned by the praised supreme Pontiffs: Every love of a rational creature is either viciously cupidity, whereby the world is loved, which is prohibited to us: or that laudable charity, whereby God is loved, poured forth in the heart by the Holy Ghost. Wherefore there is no reason why the Followers of him should again obtrude upon us this same proposition.

1. OBJECTION DRAWN FROM THE VIRTUES AND WORKS MORALLY GOOD. — They object 1. That state implies for the nature of a rational being which both excludes sin and has annexed the impotence of acquiring rectitude and justice, and of exercising virtue: but the purely natural state excludes sin, as is supposed, and has that impotence annexed: therefore that state implies [a contradiction]. They prove the minor from St. Augustine teaching in many places that the rules of whatever rectitude and virtue are to be acquired exist in God: in whom must be discerned whatever true thing is discerned concerning the virtues, as he affirms lib. 2 De libero arbitrio, chapters 12, 13, 14; whence it comes that the mind cannot be wise, just, good, but only distorted and perverse, unless it love those unchangeable rules of wisdom and justice, as he says in the same place, chapter 19. Hence lib. 1 Retract., chapter 9, where he recounts and approves what he had written lib. 2 De libero arbitrio, he says: Not only the great, but even the least goods cannot be, save from Him from whom are all goods: that is, from God, and through the gift of grace, as the words immediately preceding signify. Hence he subjoins: The virtues whereby one lives rightly are great goods: but the powers of the soul, without which one cannot live rightly, are middle goods... Wherefore the abundance and magnitude of the goodness of God has provided not only great, but also middle, and least goods: His liberality is more to be praised in great (that is, virtues) than in middles, such as the will and faculties of the soul: by which he signifies that God confers a greater grace upon us by giving the virtues than He conferred by conferring the faculties of the soul; and therefore that the virtues are not conferred except through supernatural grace. — I answer 1. By denying the minor, and to its proof I say first, that St. Augustine in none of the places cited by the Adversaries affirms that the rules of the virtues cannot be known except in God, although they shine forth most perfectly in Him, and better and more evidently is their knowledge had from Him than from creatures. — I say 2, that he asserts nowhere even that the grace of God is so necessary that without it the rules of the virtues can neither be known nor inquired into: nor is this gathered from the praised words of lib. 1 Retractationum; for there St. Augustine speaks, as he is wont elsewhere in many places, of the virtues conducing to meriting life everlasting, which therefore he teaches are alone the true virtues, for eliciting which grace is chiefly required, as he indicates lib. 1 Contra Iulianum, chapter 3: If for attaining true beatitude, he says, which immortal faith, which is true in Christ, promises us, the virtues of man profit nothing, they can by no means be true virtues. — I say 3. that by those or similar words St. Augustine does not intend that grace is so necessary for acquiring and exercising the virtues that, it failing, man cannot elicit any moral virtue: for he most constantly affirms, as we shall prove more fully elsewhere, that many men even in the state of lapsate nature, outside the state of sanctifying grace, indeed even of faith, exercise works of justice and virtue: for thus most expressly does he speak of the works of infidels alien from the grace of Christ, lib. De Spiritu et littera, chapters 27 and 28: Certain works of infidels, and of those alien from the grace of Christ, are such that according to the rule of justice we can not only not blame them, but deservedly and rightly praise them. And although he says those works, if well examined, would scarcely have the due praise of justice, he subjoins: Yet the image of God has not been so erased in the mind by the stain of earthly affections, that there have not remained in it as it were the ultimate lineaments; whence it can deservedly be said that even in the impiety of his life he does or understands something of the law. And he adds thirdly: as certain works elicited by the powers of nature do not hinder the just man from life everlasting, provided Julian confess those works to be sterile unto life everlasting: and that all those things which lead to it are inspired by none other than God the Father through Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit. But it is certain that man would not be weaker in pure nature than in lapsate nature: therefore similarly he could in the state of pure nature, without sanctifying grace and faith, exercise some works of justice and virtue.

You will insist: That St. Augustine in the same place against Julian proves that virtues acquired outside faith and grace are not true virtues: therefore they are false and feigned, and so no moral good, no virtue, could be exercised in the state of pure nature devoid of grace. — I answer that St. Augustine speaks comparatively, not absolutely, such that he wills that virtues acquired outside grace have not the same perfection and so great force for restoring the integrity and felicity of man as Christian virtues have, whereby our old man is put off from day to day that the new may be put on, and whereby we are promoted to eternal felicity and salvation. Which when we do, he says there, we have the same true virtues because the truth is that for the sake of which we do them, that is, consonant with our nature unto salvation and felicity; for not absurdly was virtue defined by those who said: Virtue is a habit of the mind consonant with nature after the manner of reason. Well said they: but what is consonant for liberating and beatifying the mortal nature they knew not. — Behold wherein St. Augustine places the truth of virtue: that it be consonant with nature unto salvation and true felicity, or, of what sort it be that is consonant with the nature to be liberated and beatified.

The other arguments drawn from the misery of the human body, concupiscence, etc., the Adversaries reject and urge; but lest the present Question be more diffuse, he will recount and refute them.

The present Question is not only a necessary sequel to the preceding, but also its explanation and confirmation: for those who oppose the possibility of the state of pure nature throw every stone in their power to assail it. They assail it most vigorously with three principal arguments, drawn sometimes from natural evils, such as diseases, pains, and other defects of bodies; sometimes from concupiscence, which wages perpetual war against reason and resists it; sometimes from ignorance, which, taking away the knowledge of good and evil, binds the faculty of the will so that it cannot be exercised upon such objects. But since these men think that these things can neither be absent from rational nature without grace, nor present in it without sin, as seems to be urged by innumerable testimonies of St. Augustine, they therefore judge that state impossible in which both grace and sin are excluded from that nature: and so they deem the state of pure nature to be fictitious and chimerical.

But that we may the more easily solve all these windings and difficulties proposed by them, and establish and confirm the possibility of the state of pure nature,

Note 1. The calamities and miseries of body and soul can admit a twofold account: For either they are the pure and simple defects and appendages of nature itself as deficient and corruptible: Or they are punishments inflicted by God, the avenger of crimes, upon each of the first Parent's posterity on account of his sin, as all Theologians commonly hold; which the Adversaries deny, teaching that no punishment, however slight, can be inflicted upon innocent nature; and they contend that St. Augustine removes from divine power and equity the infliction upon the innocent of punishments no less slight than grave; and that Augustine does not speak of punishment as punishment, but as evil: and that he wills that evil cannot be inflicted except under the aspect of punishment, or cannot fail to be a punishment: finally, that he contends such miseries cannot be inflicted except upon sinners. Behold the head and synopsis of the first difficulty: whence they conclude that the divine law, sanctioned by eternal truth, by no means allows God to make a creature miserable without any fault; for this, they say, belongs not to a Lord, but to a Tyrant: whence it follows that this is as impossible as that God is not God.

Note 2. Concupiscence can be used in a twofold sense: namely, either for the power of concupiscence, or for the motion or act of that power. Again, each of these can be taken in a threefold sense: First indeed broadly, for the power or act of appetiting any good whatever, whether spiritual, or material and sensible; in which sense it is the same as the will, or the act of willing. Second, more strictly, for the power or act of appetiting only sensible things; and thus it is the same as the sensitive appetite, or the act of that faculty appetiting those things which are fitting or necessary to nature and do not conflict with the honorable. Third, finally in the strictest sense, for those disordered motions of the sensitive appetite, rebelling not only against the dictate of right reason, but also against the will rightly and justly desiring, and alluring and drawing it toward evil. Taken in the first and second mode, concupiscence is a certain natural perfection implanted in us by God; for it is the very will, or its act, by which the soul appetites good, and pursues those things which pertain to natural perfection and the conservation of nature itself. — Nor does it matter that it can break out into evil and base acts: for on that account it is no less a natural perfection in itself: for just as it would be absurd to judge that life, sense, and intellect are not natural perfections concreated in us by God, because the intellect can decline into falsehood, and the senses can be deluded about sensible objects, and life can cease through death: so equally would it be absurd to deny that the power of appetiting is a natural perfection granted by God, because it can break out into vicious motions rebellious against reason. But concupiscence taken in the third mode is not a natural perfection, but a defect of nature vitiated by sin.

Note 3. Ignorance (which is the lack of that knowledge which man is born apt to have) is chiefly distinguished into three kinds: namely, Invincible, Crass, and Affected. 1. is that by which we are ignorant of some thing which we are either not bound to know or cannot know. 2. is that by which we apply little or no diligence to knowing a thing which nevertheless we are bound to know. 3. is that by which someone spontaneously wills to be ignorant of what he is bound to know, that he may sin more freely: for example, if one were unwilling to know on what day he must fast, that he might more freely give himself to feasts. The first excuses from the whole, the second from so much, the third accuses, and by no means excuses. The first removes all malice; the second part of malice; the third increases it, not indeed according to degree, for since ignorance diminishes the voluntary, an act done from such ignorance will have lesser degrees of malice than if it were done from perfect knowledge: but it is said to increase malice, because to the prohibited operation it adds the affection of such ignorance. Now the present discourse is about invincible ignorance of the natural law, from which (as St. Augustine seems to teach) infinite sins proceed from men, even at times from saints; and with which the condemned nature of man is born; which therefore is so contrary to rational nature that whatever arises from it makes man guilty of fault. Therefore, say the Adversaries, it cannot be that man be created in the state of pure nature, in which there would be such ignorance, whose horrid darkness cannot be veiled except by the illumination of grace. Three things therefore are to be discussed in the present question: namely, first, that the miseries of the body are not so much punishments of sin that they cannot even be simple effects of nature, and therefore can exist in the state of pure nature. Second, that even in that state concupiscence could prevail. Third, that even in that state men could labor under ignorance.

First Conclusion. — Man, constituted in the state of pure nature, could be subject to death, and diseases, and the other corporeal miseries. This is the Doctor's teaching in 2 dist. 10, q. unica n. 3, where he concedes that although the first Parent, innocence standing, was immortal by divine benefit, nevertheless by the constitution of his nature he could have died: not indeed from without, but from within; because man in the state of innocence was of the same nature as he is now, as to substance and connatural qualities. Therefore just as he now has contrary parts, from whose mutual action and struggle he can fail, so also in the state of innocence he could have died, unless by the eating of the tree of life his nature had been wholly restored; and consequently the Doctor judges that much more would man be mortal in the state of pure nature. — To this concurs St. Thomas in 2 dist. 18, q. 1, art. 2, in these words: God could at the beginning, when He created man, also form another man from the clay of the earth, whom He would leave in the condition of his nature, namely that he would be mortal and passible, and feeling the penalty of concupiscence as regards reason; in which nothing would be derogated from human nature, because this follows from the principles of nature. Nor would this defect in him have had the aspect of fault or punishment, because this defect would not have been caused by the will. By which words he plainly teaches our assertion.

Proof of the conclusion: first indeed from the authority of St. Augustine book 6, De Genesis ad litteram chap. 25, where, after he had said: The body of Adam before sin was both mortal because it could die, and immortal because it could not die: for it is one thing not to be able to die, as God created certain natures immortal; another thing to be able not to die, according to which mode the first man was created immortal, which was to be afforded him from the tree of life, not from the constitution of nature; he subjoins: He was therefore mortal by the condition of his animal body, but immortal by the benefit of his Creator, etc. By which he plainly indicates that man from his nature was in truth mortal, even in the state of innocence. Therefore much more would he be mortal in the state of pure nature.

It is proved 2. by reason: If man from his nature required the immortality of the body, it must be either from within or from without; namely, either from his constitutive principles, or on account of the singular care and providence of God preserving man from all corruption: but from neither head can the natural immortality of man be derived. Not indeed from within, for if the body of man were intrinsically immortal, it would not be composed of the elements, nor capable of the vegetative and sensitive soul, since these import perpetual struggle, consumption, and defect; wherefore neither would it be a fitting abode for the rational soul; for this presupposes the operations of sensitive and vegetative life. Nor from without; for such immortality would not have befallen man in a natural manner, but in a preternatural order, and by a certain special and extraordinary reason; and therefore it would not have been connatural to him, but would have accrued to him only by a supernatural way. — Then, if the immortality of the body had been connatural to human nature, God would hardly have promised it to man as the reward of his obedience, and would have threatened death in vain as the just punishment of disobedience; for on account of sin those things which are natural to man are neither taken away nor diminished; since even in the demons the natural things persevered intact: but God had pledged immortality to the First Parents as the reward of their observance and obedience, and had threatened death if they should become hostile: therefore it is a sign that immortality was not connatural to man; and therefore that man from his nature is mortal. — Finally, that is not due to the nature of man which is beyond his natural constitution: but the immortality of the body is not according to the nature of man: for man, according to nature, is a mixed, living, and sentient body: but that which is such has also according to nature that it be corruptible, and therefore could at some time be corrupted; therefore never to die and be corrupted is not according to the nature of man: nor is that power of not dying natural... [truncated]

The same is also proved of the miseries of the body: and that from St. Augustine, who seems to have held the first position in determining whether, on the hypothesis that Adam had not sinned, his sons and posterity would have been born with ignorance, concupiscence, infirmity of strength, pains, and other inconveniences of that kind: therefore false is what the Adversaries say, namely that it is as it were a dogma spread through all the most holy domains of Augustinian doctrine; which from the first beginnings of the received Catholic Religion even to his last breath he taught without wavering, namely that under a just, omnipotent, and good God a rational creature can by no means be tortured with so many and so great miseries, of which the state of pure nature is as it were composed, unless his fault deserve it. Equally false, they say, is this doctrine the capital foundation on which the chief part of that edifice which Augustine built against the Manichees and Pelagians rests, which if it were withdrawn it becomes impossible to defend the doctrine handed down against those pests. — The antecedent is proved from book 1, De peccatorum meritis, et remissione chap. 37, where he does not dare to define whether the same infirmity and mediocrity of body would have been in infants, if Adam were not to sin: whence he reasons only by conjecture and infers, either that the stature must be supplied divinely, as was done in Eve: or that the motive virtue must be increased and its organs strengthened, so that infants born could do what chicks newly issued from the egg do: which granted, there would remain in the infant as much of misery as of due perfection were lacking, and to be acquired in time. I wonder, he says, if the first men had not sinned, whether they would have such sons, who would use neither tongue, nor hands, nor feet. For on account of the capacity of the womb it was perhaps necessary that little ones be born, although since a small part of the body, yet God did not make a little bride for man, whom He built into the woman. Thence, and his sons the omnipotence of the Creator could make at once full-grown as soon as issued. But that I may omit this, He could certainly do what He bestowed on many flocks also, whose chicks... [truncated]

The Notator replies book 2, chap. 19: So great are the goods which proceed from the toleration of evils, that they ought deservedly to be despised, if even a just man suffer something of such penal molestations without fault. — Against this: it is therefore false, as he elsewhere asserted, that evil cannot be inflicted upon a rational creature except under the aspect of punishment, or cannot fail to be a punishment; for if adults already justified, the justice of God safe, suffer such penal molestations, when conflict with them can be fruitful, whence there arise a harvest of virtue and of greater glory; why should not the same equally be able to happen in the state of pure nature, namely, that according to the series of natural providence, and through the aids of the natural order, men subject to molestations of body and mind might from this acquire a great harvest of moral virtue? It is confirmed from this, that he affirms there that some good due to innocent nature can be deferred for a time; namely when it happens that by the deferral it becomes greater: and he alleges St. Augustine as author of this assertion, while by that reason he defends the equity of the counsel which Joseph entered upon in Egypt, when he at first reduced his brethren into those straits which Scripture narrates. For it was not fitting, he says, that their passion throughout that whole time, in which they were troubled, tend to the future exaltation of glory, which was to be revealed in them when the brother was known. What evil then would it be, if a rational creature existing in the state of pure nature were at some time pressed by miseries, and deprived of a good due to it, that it might the better estimate the benefit from it, when it understood from how great a misery God had freed it, and how great a good He had conferred upon it? For, that a purely natural state be said to be possible, it is not necessary that it be perpetual: but it suffices us that it be granted as possible at least for some time; and it will be, if there can be some deferral even of a good that is due: for in this way also we say absolutely that Christ was mortal, even though immortality was due to Him, and to be granted at an appointed time.

It is proved 2. That St. Augustine constantly asserts that God can, apart from the fault of man, inflict temporal punishments upon him, and that without any prejudice to His divine justice and equity. This I establish most of all from the commentary on Psalm 70, where Augustine speaks thus: I greatly wonder at the love and fear of God; fear of God because He is just; love because He is merciful: for who would say to Him, what hast Thou done, if He should damn a just man? What then is His mercy, that He justifies the unjust? Now St. Augustine speaks of damnation not properly taken, juridical and punitive: for that implies, on the hypothesis that he who is supposed to be damned is innocent; but it is understood of the infliction of evils, which are imposed upon the damned as punishment: so that God can inflict these upon the just; even though not as punishment: therefore this infliction of evils does not necessarily presuppose sin.

The Notator replies, author of this assertion, book 3, chap. 16: First indeed, that St. Augustine speaks of the just as they are in the present state of life, in which on account of the merit of original guilt God can damn them, that is, not impede them lest they lapse into sin and damnation; for since God gratuitously confers perseverance upon justified men, it can be said that He damns them when He denies that gift of perseverance, from the denial of which follows mortal sin, and thence eternal damnation; but this gift, he says, God sometimes denies on account of contracted original sin. — Against this, first: this interpretation is altogether ridiculous and alien to the mind of St. Augustine: for what need is there to presuppose original sin in order that God may deny to man the gift of perseverance; and to deny the gift even before original sin? Did He not permit the Angels to lapse with perseverance lost; in whom nevertheless no original sin had preceded? Second, this interpretation militates directly against the Council of Trent, affirming in session 5, Canon 5, and of the sixth session chap. 11, etc. that in the baptized there is nothing at all which removes them from entrance into heaven: and that the whole temporal punishment is always remitted in baptism: and that there is nothing of damnation in those who are truly buried with Christ through baptism into death. For does there not remain much of damnation and the sum of punishment removing from entrance into heaven, if after baptism there still remain that merit of original sin by which the aid to persevere is taken away, that is, by which salvation is made impossible? Third, finally this explanation also plainly conflicts with St. Augustine, who affirms in many places, most of all book 1, De peccatorum meritis chap. 37, that in the baptized concupiscence indeed remains, but that baptism works this, that it may not harm the dead what was in the born. And book 2, chap. 4, he says it remains for the struggle. All sins being deleted, he says, and even the guilt dissolved, by which it held all originally, it remains meanwhile for the struggle, doing no harm at all to those who do not consent to its illicit things. And chap. 28: But this law of sin... [truncated]

Second reply. That passage of Augustine is corrupt: for, he says, where it is read if He should damn a just man, it ought to be read, if He should damn an unjust man: then because there St. Augustine speaks of the unjust: then because his mind was to excite contrition by the commendation of divine justice; but this has its place in the damnation of the unjust, not of the just: therefore, etc. — Against this, first: there are no exemplars which report this opinion otherwise than we have expounded: whence I can deservedly reply what St. Augustine wrote against Faustus book 11, chap. 1: These men, he says, if they are stopped by manifest truth, so blunted that in lucid words they cannot find in them what their fallacy has dug out: they answer that that testimony which was brought forward is false. O blind, fleeing from certainty, pertinacious in madness: so invincible are the things which are brought forward against you from the codices, that you have nothing else to say except that they have been falsified? — Second, if in the first place that unjust had been written, what need was there to repeat it again? Third, this conduced to the aim of Augustine, namely that he might strike terror into sinners: for if God, by His absolute command over creatures, can inflict even upon the innocent every dire punishment, how much ought a sinner to fear and guard himself? For even these things they do in the green wood, what will be done in the dry? says Christ the Lord, Luke 23:31.

You will object 1. Sacred Scripture specially affirms that death is not from God, but from sin: God made not death, says the Wise man in the first chapter, but, it says chap. 2, envy of the devil death came into the world: whence St. Paul to the Romans ch. 6: The wages, he says, of sin, death: but if death were natural to man, God, who is the Author of nature, would be also the Artificer of death, and it could truly be said that He made death: therefore man in truth is not by his nature mortal. — I answer, that God indeed made it not: for He had endowed the first man with the benefit of immortality to be transferred to all his posterity, if he had abstained from sin, as he could most easily; and His intention was that he should not sin, and live forever: whence death is rightly said to have been indicted against His intention, from the sin of man, and the envy of the devil. Hence all those aforesaid contexts are understood of nature as it truly is fallen, and was innocent: not indeed of nature, which could be under the state of purely natural, namely with the gift of innocence, and free from sin; and therefore nothing against our assertion is established from these.

You will object 2. It is unjust that man be afflicted with diseases, pains, and molestations, unless by sin he have deserved these: but man in pure nature would lack even original sin: therefore in that state it would not be just that he experience those miseries. The Notator proves the major with many texts of St. Augustine, most of all from book 8, De Genesis ad litteram, chap. 14, and book 3, De libero arbitrio, chap. 9, where he says: If, sins withdrawn, misery persevered, or even sins preceded, the order and administration of the Universe is rightly said to be deformed: therefore, etc. — I answer, that miseries and corporeal afflictions are of twofold genus: for certain of them are natural defects consequent upon the very nature of men, as are diseases, corporeal death, etc. But others are preternatural, as the punishment of damnation and of eternal combustion. The former follow the very nature of man: but the latter are hurled by God, the avenger of crimes, upon sinners. Of the latter St. Augustine speaks, not indeed of the former, which could happen in the state of pure nature, because God by His ordered providence is not bound to impede the action of natural causes, lest corporeal ones, defective by their nature, should not fail.

You will object 3. St. Augustine in the books against Julian, and elsewhere, proves original sin against the Pelagians, from this, that children, destitute of actual sin, are subjected to death, diseases, pains, and other corporeal miseries: but this discourse would establish nothing, if man in the state of pure nature, in which original sin would not prevail, were liable to the same miseries: therefore in that purely natural state he would not be subject to these calamities. — I answer, that St. Augustine, and the other Fathers, the expugnators of the Pelagians, conclude indeed rightly original sin from those corporeal afflictions with which infants are subject from the very beginning of their conception. For they speak of fact, and according to the tradition of faith, and Sacred Scripture, by which it is established that the first man was endowed by God with the benefit of integrity, immortality, and exemption from pain, the promise being touched of transferring to his posterity these gifts and privileges, if he himself should not sin. Whence, since God is not unjust, nor unfaithful, nor does He fail in His promises, the holy Fathers rightly conclude, from those miseries inflicted upon the whole human race, a posteriori some sin of Adam as the occasion why God willed to strip men of these benefits, and devote them to those molestations; for fault lies hidden, says St. Prosper, book Against the Collator chap. 2, where punishment does not lie hidden, and the society of sin is convicted by the communion of the penalty.

Second Conclusion. — Man, constituted in the state of pure nature, could labor under ignorance.

It is proved from St. Augustine in many places, most truly De Genesis ad litteram book 10, chap. 14, where, since he had wavered among differing opinions about the creation of the rational soul: and had embraced that one which teaches that for each man a single soul is created: yet since thence it seemed to follow that injury is done to divine equity, in that He would compel an innocent soul, mixed with sinful flesh by no fault of its own, to dwell in that ignorance in which all the sons of men are submerged at the beginning of their life; St. Augustine answers, that no inconvenience follows from this, if it were said that the harmless soul was permitted to lie for a time in those shadows of beginnings: But when, he says, little by little from this obligation and torpor the soul, coming to itself, can be converted to God its own, and merit His mercy and truth first by the piety of conversion, then by the perseverance of keeping His commandment; what does it hinder that it be submerged a little in that sleep as it were, from which we are little by little raised into the light of understanding, on account of which the rational soul was made, and can by the will choose a good life? He concedes therefore that the soul can at some time labor under an ignorance which does not arise from sin, or which is not indigestible, as he speaks there; for if it were in some way indigestible, it would be attributed to the Creator. He judges therefore that those gifts can be deferred, with which the rational creature is not unworthy to be endowed, namely knowledge, without any sin of its own: therefore an ignorance can be admitted which does not arise from sin: because if it had its origin thence, it would not be indigestible, nor attributed to the Creator.

It is proved 2. more evidently from the same in the 3rd book De libero arbitrio, where he expressly affirms that human nature can be created with concupiscence and ignorance, no sin presupposed; for he there distinguishes the natural difficulty of those laboring from the penal one: and adds, that if ignorance and difficulty were natural, which is now penal to man, nevertheless his Creator would still be to be praised: But his Creator, he says, is everywhere praised; either because He began it from its very beginnings with a capacity for the highest good, or because He aids its progress.... For not on this account did He create it much, because it is not yet so great as it received that it could be by profiting.

The Adversaries reply. That St. Augustine wrote these things when younger, while he disputed against the Manichees, and before the heresy of Pelagius had sprung up: wherefore he emended that opinion in Epist. 28 to Jerome. — Against this, this response is altogether silly and false; First, for in that Epistle to Jerome there is not even a little word by which St. Augustine signifies that that conditional proposition taken from book 3 De libero arbitrio; if ignorance and difficulty were natural, nevertheless God would be to be praised, does not please him, or is false, as will be evident to the reader. Second, he confirms this very opinion in book 1 of the Retractations, chap. 9, where he reviews that passage of the third book De libero arbitrio in these words: To which misery of just damnation belongs the ignorance and difficulty, which every man suffers from the beginning of his birth: nor from this evil is anyone freed except by the grace of God. Which misery the Pelagians are unwilling to descend from just damnation, denying original sin: although ignorance and difficulty, even if they were the natural beginnings of man, God would not thus be to be blamed, but praised; as we disputed in the same third book De libero arbitrio. But it is established that the first book of the Retractations was written after the Epistle to Jerome: since Augustine in the first book of the Retractations cites the last book De Civitate Dei, and in Epistle 102, says that he had given to Jerome, and had at hand the books De Civitate, of which he had written only five: therefore the Epistle to Jerome was written with the first book of the Retractations not yet written; and therefore it is false that Augustine in that Epistle emended what he had written in the books De libero arbitrio. Add that not when younger, but already an old man he treated the same opinion, and again proved it in the book De bono perseverantiae chap. 12, where, having related among other things the aforesaid words, although ignorance and difficulty, etc., he says; These things I said in book 1 of the Retractations, when I was retracting the books De libero arbitrio: And finally... [truncated]

You will object 1. It does not seem congruous to divine equity and justice, that an innocent creature have reason so bound, and sunk in so profound an ignorance as is in children, except in vengeance of some crime: but in the state of innocence there would be no sin: therefore neither such ignorance and binding of reason. — I deny the major; both because this binding of reason follows the very defect and state of nature, as is sufficiently established from Augustine; And because even in the state of innocence there would have been sleep, as St. Augustine concedes, book 6 Contra Iulianum, chap. 10. For it remains in adults justified, in whom for a third or fourth part of life reason is bound, and lulled to sleep, and all use of science interdicted, namely at the time of falling asleep, which nevertheless no one afflicts as repugnant to the justice and equity of God: therefore neither will it be repugnant, that God suffer the souls of infants to grow torpid as it were for a while in sleep; whence little by little awakening into the light of understanding, on account of which the rational soul was made, they can by the will choose a good life, as we said above from St. Augustine: For if, he himself adds, book 3 De libero arbitrio chap. 2, we in no way rightly call a young tree and rude shrub sterile, although several ages pass without fruits, until at a fit time it brings forth its fertility: why should not the soul also (though little?) be praised with due piety, if He attributes to it such memory, and by studying and profiting it arrive at the fruit of wisdom and justice?

You will object 2. Error and folly, which are the fruits of ignorance and a certain disconvenience of evil nature, cannot be except the punishment of sin; for, as St. Augustine says in the Enchiridion chap. 19: Error itself, by itself, either great in a great matter, or small in a small matter, is always an evil: Who, unless erring, denies that it is evil to approve false things as true, or to hold the uncertain as certain, or the certain as uncertain? And book 5 Contra Iulianum, c. 1: Who, he says, does not daily prove, with human affairs as witnesses, that a little one first knows nothing, and afterwards, if it pertains to the lot of wisdom, knows rightly, and so from infancy advances to middle wisdom.... And you are unwilling to cut down even the root of it, or you do cut it down, which is worse, you deny it. Therefore St. Augustine judges original sin to be the cause of the ignorance of little ones: and therefore it could not be tolerated in the state of pure nature. — I answer, that these are indeed disconveniences of nature, and that in fact they are the punishment of original sin, the state of innocence having been lost through it, in which not only would there have been the greatest facility for acquiring knowledge and wisdom, but also, as the Doctor teaches in 2 dist. 20, quaest. 1, the posterity of Adam, if he himself had not sinned, would have been confirmed in grace, and illustrated with all wisdom and knowledge, and so preserved from ignorance and sin. But this does not stand in the way that man, constituted in the state of pure nature, could labor under ignorance: for since all our cognition hangs upon the senses, which do not perceive spiritual things, nor the essences of things, thence it comes that natural reason is dim and fails in many things, and labors under much ignorance and various errors.

Third Conclusion. — Man, constituted in the state of pure nature, could be agitated and stimulated by the motions of concupiscence.

The truth of this Conclusion follows and stands from the preceding. For truly if man, constituted in such a state, could be pressed by internal and external molestations of body and mind, without doubt he could also be agitated by the motions of concupiscence: especially since he consists of two parts appetiting different things; For the flesh concupisceth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: for the one sighs after and seeks corporeal pleasures: the other the delights of the mind, namely virtue and wisdom: the one delights in terrestrial and corporeal, the other in celestial and spiritual goods and gifts: and therefore they have native inclinations repugnant to one another.

It is proved besides: if anything stood in the way of man's being formed subject to the motions of concupiscence, chiefly because God would have to be judged the author of that concupiscence as of nature: but thence nothing inconvenient follows, nor is any injury inflicted upon the supreme majesty and wisdom of God: therefore nothing stands in the way. The major is evident from the very Novator himself, book 3, chap. 22, where he says that St. Augustine repeats nothing more frequently with greater authority, inculcates nothing more sharply, than that God can be said to be the author of shameful concupiscence as of modesty only by an erroneous and blasphemous opinion. And book 2, chap. 18, after he had declaimed at length against the whole and shameful concupiscence, in order to show that that state of pure nature, in which there would be the same struggle of flesh with spirit, the same repugnance of concupiscence with virtue, the same necessity of blushing at so great foulness, would be chimerical and impossible, concludes in chaps. 20 and 21, that he who asserted these things would be ungrateful and irreligious toward God, and also blasphemous. The minor is proved: on the hypothesis that man would be created without sin, with concupiscence, and at the same time with grace, by which he could resist concupiscence, God could be its author without any prejudice to His divine wisdom and divine majesty: therefore equally He can be the artificer of that state, in which, no sin preceding, nature would have concupiscence annexed to itself, which reason, sustained by natural aids, could resist. The antecedent is evident; for from this nothing is detracted from divine holiness, since no sin annexed is supposed in that state, and from that struggle of concupiscence with the will, the amplest harvest of merit and virtues can be gathered. For since the Novator concedes in book 3, chap. 19, that that unhappiness of the Apostle, agitated by the goads of concupiscence, and therefore crying out, Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? is to be reckoned as nothing, nor that misery to be true misery, since it is an occasion of virtue to be exercised; why could it not equally avail for the exercising of virtue, and p... [truncated]

You will object 1. No vice can be natural to man: but concupiscence, since it inclines to sin, is a certain vice: therefore it cannot be connatural to man. — I deny the minor; for concupiscence in the state of pure nature would not properly be a vice; but a defect of nature itself consequent upon its constitutive principles. For just as from this, that man is naturally constituted of matter and form, it follows that he is corruptible; and just as from this, that he is from nothing, he is also peccable, from which defect God frees no one except in the state of beatitude; so the contrariety and struggle of appetites in man follows naturally from his intrinsic constitution, namely because he consists of a spiritual and a corporeal part, of which the one savors of heavenly, the other of earthly things. This very thing St. Augustine teaches expressly in book 5, contra Iulianum, c. 7, where he consents to Julian in this, that he said concupiscence to be natural: Since, he says, we say both that concupiscence is natural and that it can be conquered, and whether we judge either of them good or evil, the question itself is disputed between us. The same St. Basil teaches in the book De Virginitate, where he says: The natural appetite to gluttony or luxury tickles the body. And St. Chrysostom, hom. 19 to the people of Antioch: Although, he says, we judge custom, how shall we conquer concupiscence, whose root has its beginning from nature? For to concupiscence is natural; but to concupiscence evil is already of custom. It stands therefore that concupiscence is an appendage of nature itself; and therefore would be in the state of pure nature.

You will object 2. Concupiscence is not from God, but from sin, as St. Augustine teaches in many places, most of all in the books De Nuptiis, et Concupiscentia: whence St. James ch. 1: Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted of God: for God is not a tempter of evils, and He tempteth no man: but every one is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured: yet if concupiscence were natural to man, and would befit him in the state of pure nature; since God is the author of nature, concupiscence would also have to be said to be His workmanship: therefore, etc. — I distinguish the major: that concupiscence is not from God, inasmuch as it is the appetitive power of sensible goods fitting to nature and by no means repugnant to reason, I deny: inasmuch as it is the propensity of the appetite to a good contrary to reason, by which it is called the fomes of sin, I concede. For concupiscence can be used in a twofold sense, as was said in the second Notandum: of the latter St. James speaks, not indeed of the former.

You will object 3. The motion of concupiscence injects shame: whence men deservedly blush at it: but in the state of pure nature nothing would be shameful or to be blushed at, because nature is the work of God; but he does injury to God who blushes at His work: For what, says St. Augustine in book 2 De Nuptiis, et Concupiscentia, chap. 9, would shame a man of any work, which not man, but God made in man: since all artificers with as much labor and industry as they can strive that they blush not at their own works? But surely that shames us, which shamed those first men, when they wove coverings. That is full of sin, that is the wound and vestige of sin, that is the allurement and fomes of sin: therefore in the purely natural state there would be no concupiscence. — I deny the minor; for deservedly indeed in the purely natural state there would be shame of concupiscence, as of the work which follows from it, not because it is the work of God, but because it is a defect of nature and an imperfection following from the natural condition and constitution: for more natural things follow any state of man which, although they do not flow from original sin, nevertheless inject shame, of which kind is the evacuation of the belly, which doubtless is natural to man even though not sinning; and therefore that shame which the act of concupiscence injects could be natural, even if there had been no sin in man. But when St. Augustine affirms that shame to be an appendage of vice, he speaks of concupiscence inasmuch as it is now the punishment and fomes of sin, as is evident from his words.

You will urge: if concupiscence flowed from the very natural constitution of man, it would be lawful for all to consent to its desires: for nature unstained by no sin cannot incline to anything perverse: but this appears most absurd: therefore also that from which it follows. — I deny the consequence of the major; for those motions of concupiscence, although they proceed from nature, can be repugnant to right reason; for nature, although good, inasmuch as it is defectible, can do something evil; since the nature of the Angels and of the first Parents had been created immediately by God, and was depraved by no vice before they sinned, and nevertheless sin proceeded from it. Whence in that state those motions of concupiscence could have existed, not that sin should thence be made, but that there should be an occasion of more goods, namely of exercising virtue more generously, and of making it worthy of greater praise and reward; because the more perilous the contest, the more illustrious the victory stands forth: by which reason St. Ambrose in the book De Viduis affirms the purity of men to be more excellent than that of Angels; For the Angels, he says, contend without flesh: but Virgins triumph in the flesh. Although indeed we cannot deny that in that possible state of pure nature there would be motions of concupiscence, the enticements and allurements of beauty, and the enticements of pleasure, which would tickle the senses, and irritate the appetite, and allure the mind, which indeed those goads of dishonest and base concupiscence would follow, which are not in the power of the will, and at which especially every honest and wise man is ashamed, which seem to be natural, and not able to be subjected to reason, as also the motions of the heart, for Aristotle hands down that both exist beyond reason, in the book De causis motuum animalium: nevertheless those motions would be fewer and more remiss than in fallen nature, and would be more easily subjected to reason. Whence St. Augustine, lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, chap. 16: *This, that, he says, the motion of the genital members obeys not reason, is from the punishment of sin, namely... [truncated]

Pelagian, chap. 25, where, answering the Pelagians objecting, from the Manichees, that the calamities and diseases with which little ones who have not yet sinned are tossed about proceed from the commixture of two natures, namely of good and evil, he answers: The Catholic truth refutes these, confessing original sin, by which the human race was made a mockery of the demons, and the progeny of mortals destined for laborious misery. But it would not be so, if human nature had persevered in that state in which it was first founded by free will. Thence it follows that in the state of pure nature there would be much less dissension and struggle between the rational and sensitive appetite than in the state of fallen nature: and that man now has lesser powers for working moral good than he would have in the state of pure nature if it existed. Which indeed three arguments seem effectually to persuade: the first indeed because man on account of original sin is clad in the servitude of the demons, and is tossed about by their temptations without ceasing. The second is, that to fallen man, if he be not aided by grace, he has scarcely the faculty of keeping the natural law. The third, that through sin he has been despoiled in great part even of gratuitous aids within the order of nature, and also wounded in natural things, as Christ the Lord signifies, Luke 10, by the parable of the man fallen among robbers. But nothing of those three would occur in the state of pure nature. Not indeed the first, because then there would have been no cause why he should be so subjected to the temptation of demons. Nor the second, because man in that state would have means fitting, not only physical but also moral aids, for keeping the whole natural law, and for attaining his ultimate natural end. Nor the third, because pure nature would not only not be to be despoiled of goods connatural to it, but neither would it be to be wounded in them in any part; since by that very fact it would not be pure, that is, having nothing more, and nothing less, than it would bear of itself and in view of the beneficent condition of its Creator; therefore it cannot be denied but that fallen nature by reason of its fall is in some measure... [truncated]

TO BE OBSERVED nevertheless that man, created in the purely natural state, cannot repress and conquer the rebellious motions of the sensitive appetite without the special aid of God within the order of nature. Which St. Augustine indeed indicates not obscurely in book 3 of the book De arbitrio, chap. 20, where he says: It behooved the sons of God not only worshipping not to prohibit, but also to adjure, that each one conquer the punishment which his origin had deserved by his aversion… Although in ignorance and difficulty the soul has been born, nevertheless it is not compressed by any necessity to persevere in that state in which it was born. Which it has the faculty, with the Creator adjuring, to exercise itself, and by a pious study can acquire and take to itself all the virtues; and therefore if it should not will, to be held guilty of sin by right, as if it had not well used the faculty which it received. But these things would be said in vain, unless God, aiding, were at hand as often and as long as is needed, for the completing of the natural faculty through the aids necessary to it.

TO BE OBSERVED besides, that that aid is indeed undue to man in such a state; it is nevertheless natural as to its entity and substance; both because in that state nothing would be entitatively supernatural: and because man, constituted in the purely natural state, would not be ordered to a preternatural end; but would pursue God as the Author of nature, as it were the object of his beatitude, through natural cognition and love. — Nor does it matter that those aids are sometimes called by St. Augustine by the name of grace; for St. Augustine himself in Epist. 95 to Pope Innocent, acknowledges a twofold grace: one of creation, and as it were natural, another of predestination, and supernatural: For although, he says, a certain grace of God not to be disapproved is said to be that by reason of which we have been created, that we might be something, nor yet should we be such a thing as that which does not live should fall, and the tree which does not feel, or the beast which does not understand: but men, who both are, and live, and feel, and understand, and on account of so great a benefit we ought to give thanks to our Creator: thence deservedly even this can be called grace, because it has been given not by the merits of the works of any predecessors, but by the gratuitous goodness of God: but there is another, by which predestinated we are called, justified, glorified, that we may be able to say, if God be for us, who is against us?

NOTE 1. Man may be considered in a threefold state, of Nature, of Grace, and of Glory; that is, either inasmuch as he is a rational man, or as he is a Christian, or inasmuch as he is to be beatified. And according to this threefold order he likewise possesses excellencies of a threefold kind: for, as a rational creature, he contains in epitome all the perfections of the whole Universe, and is as it were a world abridged, embracing and shadowing forth in himself the excellencies of every being, corporeal, spiritual, and divine. In the order of grace, he is the sanctuary and the goal of all divine charisms: For all things are for the Elect. But in the order of glory, he is an inhabitant of the Heavens, a fellow-citizen of the Angels, a familiar of God, His heir and possessor. Of the former only is there question here; the perfections of the latter kind we shall discuss in what follows.

NOTE 2. There is a threefold way of detecting the perfection of man: namely, first, by negation, removing from him, to be sure, whatever defects are found in the other creatures; second, by affirmation, attributing to him all the excellencies which we see shining in the other creatures; third, by eminence, attributing that all those perfections are found in him in a nobler degree and in a more excellent manner than in the other created beings. For just as by the negative definition we remove from God the defects of all created being; by the affirmative we attribute to Him whatever perfection shines forth in created being; and by the way of eminence we think and predicate of Him above all being and every conceivable perfection: so in this threefold way the various excellencies of man, above the other created beings, can be detected and affirmed.

NOTE 3. And since man, according to the judgment of the Philosophers and of the holy Fathers, is a Microcosm, or a little world, or a world abridged, his native excellence must be measured and delineated from that intimate commerce which he has with the threefold order of the world. For Platonic philosophy of old distinguished three worlds, namely, the Archetypal, the Intellectual, and the Corporeal world, which man most happily gathers together in himself. The Archetypal world is God, bearing the world in His mind and forming it after His own like image: for He is the first principle, exemplar, and end of all creatures; for in Him exists the fullness of all being, infinite wisdom, and supreme goodness. By reason of the first, He is the supreme cause of existences and essences; by reason of the second, He possesses in Himself the unique ideas, and vindicates to Himself the name of prototype and exemplar; by reason of the third, He discharges the office of the last end. The celestial Intelligences themselves, separated from all matter, are called the intellectual world: spiritual substances, incorruptible in state, everlasting in duration, most wise in the power of understanding, ardent in love, etc. The corporeal world is completed and formed by all creatures devoid of reason and endowed with sense, distinguished in a threefold grade: for some of them have life, existence, and nature, as any inanimate thing whatsoever; some have life; others sense. But in what manner man embraces in a more eminent degree the excellencies of this threefold world must be determined in the present place: wherefore let there be

One single Conclusion. — MAN BY HIS NATIVE AND INBORN ENDOWMENTS EXCELS THE OTHER CORPOREAL CREATURES. The truth of this conclusion is evident above all from the various prerogatives with which the primal formation of man was illustrated.

For first of all he was created last of all, as the supreme Prince and Monarch of the other corporeal things, for whose sake all things were created. Which prerogative Philo thus weighs in the book De mundi Opificio: Therefore, he says, just as those who give concerts do not come upon the stage before the things necessary for the stage have been made ready, and those who exhibit gymnastic games and theatrical shows, before the spectators gather in the theaters or stadia, make ready an abundance of the contestants and of those things which pertain to the delight of the eyes or of the ears: so the Prince of the whole world, as the giver of a contest or of an assembly, about to call man to the banquet and to the spectacles, prepared whatever pertained to both: lest, on his entrance into the world, both the banquet and the most sacred theater should begin at once. To him agrees St. Gregory of Nyssa in the book De hominis Opificio: For it was not, he says, consonant that the Prince should delight himself before those things existed over which he was to rule: but that the empire being already constituted, the king should at length be proclaimed. St. Gregory Nazianzen also agrees, Orat. 13: It was fitting, he says, that the palace be built first as for a King, and so the king be introduced with all ⟦greek: …⟧ Philo himself adduces other causes of this last formation, namely, that from so great and so abundant an apparatus of goods man might learn that he was thereafter to live amid the greatest affluence of things if he should render obedience to his Creator, and should emulate the holiness of Him whose dominion he bore. He adds also that man was created last for this reason, that, coming upon the scene after all things had been brought forth, he might strike terror into the other living beings: for so it was to come about that, at his first sight of him, they, stupefied, would adore him, as an arbiter given by nature, and as Lord. Other reasons also can be brought forward why man was created in the last place, namely, 1. that, since he was to be a rational and contemplative animal, it was fitting that all those things be prepared beforehand which were to be the worthy and just object of his contemplation and meditation. 2. That what preceded in the intention of God it was fitting should follow in His operation, according to the common rule: what is first in intention is later in execution, and vice versa. Now the end, among sublunary creatures, was intended first and principally by God, was man; therefore he had to be last in creation. 3. That a dwelling had first to be provided for man, furnished and adorned with all furniture, namely, this world, complete in all the genera of things, of which man was to be formed the inhabitant. 4. That man has need of all corporeal things, either for conducting and defending his life, or for apprehending and cultivating all doctrines and arts. Finally, that man, since he is a certain nature placed between corporeal and incorporeal things, and a partaker of the nature and properties of both kinds, had to be formed after the extremes, by whose participation he was to consist.

The second prerogative is that man was constituted otherwise, and with a more noble apparatus, than the other corporeal beings; for in the formation of the others God, by the absolute command of His divine will put in use, spoke, and they were made: but when it came to the creation of man, as in an exquisite work, the product of greater industry and wisdom, He first employs consultation and counsel, saying: Let us make man to our image and likeness. Which St. Gregory of Nyssa weighs in a wonderful manner in lib. De hominis Opificio, cap. 3. The rest of creation, he says, is after a certain hasty manner brought forth by the divine power, subsisting by the sole command: but the structure of man is preceded by counsel, and is sketched by the Artificer Himself with a certain summity of painting, what he was to be. To him concurs St. Basil, homil. 20. in Hexaemeron. To know himself? or from this does he take his beginning For upon none of the works which God had theretofore created was that word Faciamus passed into letters; but all things were created by the simple word and command of God. Learn therefore from this, O man, and mark how great goods thou alone art esteemed: for He judged that thy generation was not to be handed over by the common command of creatures, as of a common price: in God the consultation goes before, how great this animal ought to proceed unto life. Let us make, He says, is a wise consultation, and He sets forth for decision what the Artificer was determining with Himself. Before these Tertullian had gone, lib. 2. Contra Marcionem, cap. 4. Who, in fine, he says, is worthy to be cut into the work of God, than His own image and likeness? That also the goodness, and indeed the more operative, wrought it, not with an imperial word, but with a familiar hand, even with a blandishing word set before it: Let us make man to our image and likeness: Goodness framed man of the slime of the earth, etc.

The third prerogative is, that of the other creatures it is said not merely that they were made, but that He created them. But of man it is said that He Formed him, Therefore the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: which Severianus thus weighs, homil. 5: He did not say simply He made, but He framed, or formed: for formation indicates elegance, the grace of art. For the dignity and excellence of that work is commended above all by the divine Artificer Himself, who deigned with His own hands, as it were, to fashion from the very mire that vile and most abject particle of that condition, namely, the body. Which Tertullian commends and weighs thus, lib. De Resurrectione carnis, cap. 5. And God framed man. Great without doubt was the reason of the difference, on account of the condition, namely, of the things. For the lesser things, which were being made, were made for the sake of him for whom they were being made — they were being made for man himself, upon whom the delays of God were bestowed. Therefore deservedly, at the formula of command and of empire, and by the sole vocal power, had all things proceeded forth. On the contrary, man, as the Lord of them, was in this built up by God Himself, that he might be able to be lord, while he is made by the Lord. Moreover, to the commendation of the same excellence of the work pertains this besides, which Prosper sang thus in the poem on Providence.

…And when all things by the word He created: this one with His hands, that he might have more of the Father, He deigns to form.

The fourth prerogative is, that man alone, beyond the other corporeal creatures, bears the likeness and image of God, is alone the contemplator of the divine works and of the Deity, and has the highest commerce with the Divinity. Whence Gregory of Nyssa in the Catechetical book, cap. 5, says that the cause of procreating was man: That God might have one who should behold His light, and be a witness of His glory, and enjoy His goodness. Wherefore, he says, it was necessary that Man, who was created for the enjoyment of divine goods, should have in his nature something cognate to Him of whose participation he was to be. Therefore he cites that he was adorned with reason, and wisdom, and all divine goods. Whence also the Pythagorean Gryphanus speaks elegantly: God, he says, placed man, the most precious animal in the world, answering to his own nature, and a certain eye of the whole Universe: who in the manner of God should range through and behold all things, but above all should delight himself and be occupied in the contemplation and love of the Divinity. Wherefore Lactantius, lib. 7, says that the world was made for this reason, and man constituted in it. Namely, that there might be one who should understand His works: who could admire the providence of disposing, the reason of making, the virtue of consummating, and the senses, and could utter them with his voice: whence he concludes: A plainer argument can be brought forward that God made the world for man's sake, and man for His own, than that of all living beings he alone was so formed, and his eyes directed to Heaven, his face looking toward God, his countenance common with his parent, and it seems that God raised man, as it were lifted up with an outstretched hand from the earth, to the contemplation of Himself. Which also Ovid presaged, lib. 1. Metamorphoseon:

An animal more sacred than these, and more capable of high mind, Was still wanting, and one that could rule over the rest: Man was born: whether He made him of divine gift, That Artificer of things; the beginning of a better world….. He framed him in the likeness of the Gods who rule over all.

Finally, the fifth dignity and prerogative of man beyond the other corporeal things is, that he embraces the excellencies of all beings whatsoever, as well corporeal as spiritual: wherefore St. Gregory, homil. 29. in Evangelia, calls him every creature; and testifies that this was the sentiment of Christ the Lord, when He sent forth the Apostles into the whole world that they might preach the Gospel to every creature: For by the name of every creature, he says, man is signified, because man has something of every creature: for he has being in common with the stones, life with the trees, sense with the animals, understanding with the Angels: whence he concludes: if therefore man has something in common with every creature, in accordance with something every creature is man. Therefore to every creature the Gospel is preached, when it is preached to man alone. — Hence it is that man has been called by the ancients μικρὸς κόσμος or a little world, and the most artful, as it were, abridgment of the whole universe, in which the Creator willed all things both celestial and terrestrial, summarily, as it were depicted in a little map. Thus they named him Clement of Alexandria in the Protrepticus, and Chalcidius in Plato's Timaeus: There is, he says, in our bodies that part which is likewise of the aether, and also of fire and of earth, whence man the more is called by the rest a brief world. The same is the opinion of Philo Judaeus in the book above cited, where he says that man was for this reason created last, that he might correspond as the last to the first divine work. For as at the beginning God had created Heaven, the most perfect of all sensible and incorruptible things; so at the last He made man, born of the earth, and far the most excellent of corruptible things, and abridged as it were Heaven, in which assuredly the endowments and excellencies of the others shine as the stars in Heaven: whence St. Greg. Naz. Orat. 38. affirms that man was created by God as it were a certain other world, great in the little, placed above the earth, an honorary Angel, a mixed adorer, a spectator of visible creature: a mystery intelligible: of those things indeed which are on earth the king, but subject to the heavenly King, earthly alike and celestial. The other natural and inborn excellencies of man we shall open more clearly in the following Articles.

You will say: There are more corporeal creatures which by their native endowments and excellencies excel man: therefore it is false that man holds the first place over the rest. The antecedent is evident: for first, in the perfection of the exterior senses, the sight of the Eagle is keener, that of the fox and the mole more acute, the scent of the dog more sagacious, the touch of the oyster more vigorous, and that of the Spiders more subtle: therefore, etc. Next, in strength of body man yields to the bulls, in stature to the elephants, in longevity to the crows, in swiftness to the tigers. Add that the bodies of the other animals are covered with natural coverings, either hairs, or skins, or hides, or shells, or scales: they are likewise instructed and fortified with natural arms and defenses: some are armed with horns, others either with claws, or teeth, or spines, or stings, whereby they can both defend themselves and terrify and overthrow their enemies: to man alone is given a body naked and unarmed, weak and invalid for attacking and defending. Hence certain persons complain, as in Seneca lib. 2. De Beneficiis, cap. 29. That they are not conquered by the elephants in magnitude of body, by the stag in swiftness, by the lions in ferocity, by the bulls in onset: That the hide is more solid in beasts, more comely in stags, denser in bears, softer in fibres: That dogs conquer us in the sagacity of their nostrils: That many animals surpass us in swimming, the eagle in keenness of eyes, the crow in length of age. — Lactantius answers, lib. De Opificio Dei, cap. 2, that God supplied all these things in man most abundantly with the gift of natural reason and innate sagacity: He gave, he says, to men sense and reason, that Artificer and parent of ours, God, that it might appear that we were generated by Him, because He Himself is intelligence, Himself sense and reason: to the other animals, since He did not attribute that rational life, He provided beforehand how their protection should rather be. For He clothed them all with their own skins, that they might the more easily sustain the force of rain and the colds. But to each genus He constituted its own proper defenses for repelling external onsets: so that either those which are stronger resist by their whole natural powers: or those which are less warlike withdraw themselves from dangers by the swiftness of flight: or those which need both strength and celerity protect themselves by cunning or know hiding places, as.

But man, reason being conceded, and the power of sensing and of speaking being given, made destitute of those things which are attributed to the other living beings: and because wisdom could render what nature had denied to them when created, He determined him naked and unarmed, because he could be armed by genius and resist by reason. But how wonderfully those very things which were given to the mute animals and denied to man make for the beauty of man cannot be expressed. For if He had added to man the teeth of beasts, or a horn, or claws, or a tail, or hairs of various color, who does not perceive how foul a deformity it would have produced in the living being, just as if the mute animals were fashioned naked and unarmed? If you take from them the natural clothing of their body, or those things wherewith they arm themselves of themselves, they can be neither beautiful nor safe: so that, wonderfully, if you regard utility, they will seem equipped; if beauty, adorned: so wonderfully does utility consent with comeliness. But man, whom He was fashioning an eternal animal, and immortal, He armed not outwardly, as the others, but inwardly; nor did He place his defense in the body, but in the mind, since it was superfluous, when He had bestowed on him that which was greatest, that corporeal coverings should both be defenses and especially impede the beauty of the human body.

Seneca adds in the place cited: Therefore whosoever thou art, an unjust estimator of the lot of man, ask how great things our Parent bestowed on us. How much stronger animals do we send under the yoke: how much happier ones do we acquire: since there is nothing mortal not placed by our nod. So many virtues have we received, so many arts, in fine the mind, to which nothing is not perceived at the same moment at which it directs itself, swifter than the stars, whose courses to come after many ages it anticipates: Finally so great a store of fruits, so great a store of riches, of other things heaped one upon another. Though thou look about upon all things, and since thou shalt find nothing whole which thou wouldst rather be, from all thou mayest select single things which thou wouldst wish to be given thee. Thus, the indulgence of nature having been well estimated, thou must needs confess that thou hast been in her delights. These things Seneca spoke assuredly not less truly and wisely, than elegantly and eloquently.