Scotus Academicus, Tomus octavus: De Divino Gratiae Beneficio, et initium De Virtutibus Theologicis

Although this present distribution of grace not long ago bore the burden and was the seed-bed of a most weighty division and disputation among Catholic Doctors; nevertheless, since under the wind of Christ the Lord reigning through the Prelates of the Church this tempest has been calmed, and a great tranquility restored throughout the universal Church: therefore our business will be only against the most intense enemies of that same Church, the Calvinists, whose standard-bearer not only ridicules but most sharply attacks this present division of grace. For in book 2 of his Institutes, chapter 3, n. 11, having said that our will is moved by God — Not in such wise, he says, as for many centuries it has been believed and handed down, that after the motion of election of God it should be ours either to obey or to resist, but He effectually affecting it: he insolently subjoins: That saying therefore so often repeated by Chrysostom must be rejected: Whom He draws, He draws willing: whereby he insinuates that the Lord merely awaits with outstretched hand whether it please us to be helped by His aid. Therefore against this raving traducer of the Holy Fathers and detractor of Catholic doctrine we shall have to contend in the following §§, demonstrating first what the name of sufficient grace signifies, and what its energy is: secondly, that that grace must necessarily be admitted: thirdly, that it is conferred upon all adults: fourthly finally, that sufficient aid unto salvation is not denied even to infants themselves who depart from this life before adult age.

§ IV. What Sufficient Grace Is, and What Is Signified by This Name. — Lest through ambiguity of the word there arise equivocation or delusion, it must be observed that Sufficient Grace can be taken generically or specifically. Taken generically, it is called aid divinely granted beyond what nature owes, conferring the power of acting supernaturally in any manner whatsoever; that is, defectibly or indefectibly; in which sense even efficacious grace is called sufficient, 2 Corinthians 12: Sufficeth thee (Paul, my grace. For whatever is efficacious is also judged sufficient; because a cause cannot work efficiently unless it be sufficient to operate in that manner wherein it is a cause. Specifically, however, sufficient grace, inasmuch as it is distinguished from efficacious, is rightly defined from the Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 4: An internal motion and excitation infused by God, to which free choice can dissent if it wills. — Now sufficient and efficacious grace agree in this, that each is not only such as to give the power of acting and confer the potency for operating, but is also ordered toward the very operation by the intention of God: for I cannot prove what certain persons affirm, namely that sufficient grace is ordered only toward the power of operating, and not toward the operation itself, as Bellarmine seems to hold in book 1 On Grace and Free Will, c. 11. Indeed sufficient grace agrees with efficacious in this, that both are ordered toward an act; but differs from it in that efficacious always has annexed to itself the consent of the will, while sufficient very often does not at- tain its ef- fect: which assuredly does not proceed from any defect of power, but pre- eminently from the resistance and negligence of the will, as is gathered from the Coun- cil of Trent, Session 6, Canon 11, where we read: God commandeth not impossibilities, but by commanding admonisheth thee to do what thou canst, and to ask what thou canst not, and helpeth thee that thou mayst be able. By which words the Council establishes that man excited is moved by God to do what he can, that is, to reduce by sufficient grace the power which he has of operating well to act: therefore the Coun- cil judges that sufficient grace is ordered not only toward the power of operating, but also toward the operation itself.

The arguments also support this. First, because every active form constituting a potency in first act regards immediately the second act, toward which it orders the potency which it perfects: but sufficient grace is an active supernatural form constituting our will, and our intellect, in first act: therefore it immediately regards the second act toward which it orders those faculties: therefore sufficient grace regards not only the power of operating, but also the operation. — Then, that is judged sufficient by common consent which excludes the necessity of any other thing: therefore grace, that it may be truly sufficient, ought to exclu- de the necessity of another aid for eliciting the act. — Finally, God does not command nor exact from us only that we be able to operate well whenever His preventing grace stirs us up, but commands and exacts that we operate well de facto: therefore every exciting grace, whatever it be, is given by God, that de facto we operate well if we will. Hence to man having sufficient grace nothing whatsoever is wanting on the part of the active principle or of grace, but only, as we said, on the part of the reduction of the ac- tive principle to act: but that reduction takes place through the consent of free choice: therefore it must be concluded that sufficient grace is that which confers both power and operating, if we will; for there is none which confers only power and not operating; otherwise it would not be sufficient, nor indeed grace, since aid would be fruitless, if it were not ordered toward the operation itself.

You will say. St. Augustine in the book On the Predestination of Saints, chapter 16, says: For God calleth many predestinated sons of his, that he may make them mem- bers of his one predestinated Son, not with that calling wherewith they were called who would not come to the marriage: for with that calling the Jews were called, to whom Christ crucified is a scandal, and the Gentiles to whom Christ crucified is foolishness: but with that calling are the predestinated called, which the A- postle distinguished, saying, preaching to them that were called Jews, and Greeks, himself the virtue of God, and the wisdom of God; for thus he says, but to them that are called: that he might show those not called, knowing there is a certain fixed calling of those who are called according to purpose. By which words St. Augu- stine seems to distinguish a twofold calling: one whereby the predestinate are called, which is ordered not only toward power, but toward act; and which of itself is efficacious: the other truly whereby the reprobate are called, which of itself indeed is sufficient, but not efficacious: therefore he holds that sufficient grace of itself lacks energy, and confers only power toward the work. — I deny the consequence. For although ⟦illegible: 1 word (OCR "rocati")⟧ according to purpose God confer some exciting, special, and singular grace, because He foresees that they will consent by grace, and not fail in their calling; yet those whom He foresees will be such He loves more ardently and follows with greater aids: nevertheless it does not follow thence that He bestows upon the others only inefficacious and incongruous grace. Hence also there are some eminently predestinate, to whom a special vocation is given, as to the Apostles, especially the Saints Paul, Matthias, etc.

But that the matter itself may appear more clearly and be set forth more exactly, it must be observed that when it is said, sufficient aid is given to man, that he may be able to operate, two things are there to be distinguished: one is that which is formally given through the aid; the other, that which is as it were the term or end of such aid. What is formally given through sufficient aid is power: but the term or end for which it is given is to will or to accomplish. Therefore when it is said that sufficient aid is given on account of power, that assertion either concerns the formal effect of the aid: for it is given that it may constitute man simply potent toward willing; or it concerns the end for which it is given. If however it be understood of the end or term for which it is given, this expression is false; for power is not given on account of power as on account of the ultimate term, but on account of operating: thus therefore sufficient aid is not only toward power, but also toward operating: and hence that it may truly be sufficient, it must give sufficiency not only toward power, but also toward operating; therefore the first cannot be given without the second; for power cannot simply constitute anyone potent in some genus unless it be toward it sufficient. Nor did St. Augustine distinguish in that sense between aid toward power, and toward willing, as though the one were sufficient for act, and not the other: but that the one had act conjoined, and not the other. But it can be sufficient toward act, and yet not have it conjoined on account of the liberty of the agent.

It is confirmed, this doctrine by St. Augustine, in the book On Rebuke and Grace, chapter 12, where he distinguishes a twofold aid, one sufficient, and another deficient. Yet he indicates that the sufficient is given not only on account of the power of operating, but also on account of the operation: provided, of course, the consent of our will accede; for he says: One thing is aid without which something is not done (whereby he signifies sufficient aid), another is aid whereby something is done (whereby he denotes efficacious, or efficient aid); for without food we cannot live, and yet although food be present, it does not follow that he who wishes to die lives: therefore the aid of food is without which it is not done that we live. By which words St. Augustine declares that to sufficient grace nothing whatsoever is wanting whereby good could be done, except the consent of the will, which indeed completes not the active virtue of the same will, but reduces it to act. Thence it happens that we operate well. Therefore sufficient grace is given by God toward being able to operate de facto as toward the term and end; which end, if it be frustrated thereof, this must be referred not to the intention of God, but to the senselessness and hostility of our will. Whence that sufficient grace sometimes produces no effect is due not to innate sterility, but to a perverse will.

§ II. — Sufficient Grace Is Given, Which the Human Will Sometimes Resists. Proof 1. This assertion is confirmed by all those oracles of Scripture, of the Councils, and of the holy Fathers, whereby in the preceding Section it was proved that medicinal grace differs from the grace of health in this, that (as the heretics will) the latter would leave the will of innocent man altogether free; whereas the former seizes and impels the will of fallen man so necessarily that it cannot resist it at all. Truly since the heretics attempt to take these sacred defenses away from us with their cavils, false interpretations and responses, hence it pleases us here to repeat some of those sacred texts, together with the erroneous repliques of the adversaries, and the preclusions of those texts. Lest however I be longer, omitting the various texts which could be adduced from the Old Testament, let me bring forward and examine only one or other from the New.

The first text is Matthew 11. v. 20. 21. Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein were done the most of his miracles, because they had not done penance. Woe to thee Corozain, woe to thee Bethsaida, for if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they would long ago have done penance in sackcloth and ashes. From these words Christ the Lord upbraids the Corozaites because they had not done penance at the sight of so many miracles: therefore truly they were able to do penance not only remotely, but proximately; for Christ's upbraiding to be valid, which certainly it is in the highest degree valid, it is necessary that, as the Tyrians and Sidonians at the sight of Christ's miracles would have grieved not only remotely but proximately, so the Corozaites, instructed with the same helps, could have done penance. For the former, that is the Tyrians, would truly have been pricked with sorrow, according to the oracle already cited: therefore the latter, namely the Bethsaites, could have been pricked proximately; otherwise no force would have existed in the parity of Christ, nor any strength: for if those could proximately, these only remotely, why should these be punished more severely in judgment, those more lightly, as Christ the Lord wills there, v. 22? Nevertheless I say unto you: It shall be easier for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment, than for you. Shall he who could do more receive lighter, while he who could do less receives heavier punishments? Yet no one does or can do that salutary penance (of which Christ speaks) by the force of exterior grace alone: for whoever should assert this would be marked with the error of Pelagius. Therefore the Corozaites, as also the Sidonians, could by the force of interior grace do penance. Now it is certain that men of this sort did not do penance, toward which they were inwardly urged: therefore they repulsed that interior grace of penance offered through Christ: but grace of such sort as is repulsed we call sufficient: therefore it must be admitted.

You reply 1. That when it is said that, those miracles being wrought in Tyre and Sidon, the inhabitants of those cities would have been converted, the sense is either that God would have converted them by interior necessary grace, which He would have bestowed upon them by working signs before them, just as He conferred it upon the inhabitants of Bethsaida and Corozain while He worked those signs before them: or the sense is that God would have converted them by grace which they had independently of those signs, and which would have wrought its effect upon their presence. If the first: then it is true that the Tyrians and Sidonians did not have grace necessary for conversion; nevertheless they were damned. If the second: nothing is furnished that evinces our argument; for it ought to prove, and not suppose, that the same grace would have been in the Tyrians and Sidonians which was in the inhabitants of Corozain. — Against: this response is utterly empty, and by no means breaks the force of the aforesaid argument: for falsely it concludes from this, that the Tyrians and Sidonians saw not the signs which Christ wrought in the cities of Corozain and Bethsaida, and had not those graces which sufficiently, at the sight of those signs, would move the beholding will to penance, thence to follow that they had not elsewhere sufficient graces for their conversion; whereas God, who wills all men to be saved, and wills no one to perish, but all to be converted to penance, suffers even His sun of justice to rise over good and bad; inasmuch as He enlightens every man coming into this world, and rains showers of grace upon the just and unjust.

You reply 2. That in that complaint of Christ only exterior grace and that of miracles is treated of, expressed by this word miracles, and said by Christ the Lord, that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have been converted if they had seen those signs which were wrought in Corozain and Bethsaida; not because those miracles alone could have converted them, which indeed no one but a Pelagian would say, nor even because both those peoples had by virtue the same interior grace, as the objection pretends: but because the Tyrians and Sidonians would have had from God the interior grace of conversion, whereby they would have been converted, and would have received that grace God so willing, supposing that those miracles had been wrought among them: whereas the Corazaites and Bethsaites did not receive that grace, because they were rebels, and contradicted chiefly those miracles; by which rebellion and contradiction they were made unworthy that God should join to them the grace of conversion: but thus the Tyrians and Sidonians would not have contradicted. Because, says St. Augustine, book On the Good of Perseverance, chapter 11.

They had naturally the divine gift of understanding, whereby they might be moved to faith, if congruous to their minds they had either heard words or beheld signs. There, he says, the Tyrians were left, and the Sidonians, who also could have believed if they had seen those miraculous signs of Christ: but since that they should believe was not given them, even whence they might believe was denied. From which it appears that some have in their very natural endowment the divine gift of understanding, who might be moved to faith, if congruous to their minds they either hear words or behold signs; and yet if by the higher judgment of God they are not separated from the mass of perdition by the graces of predestination, neither are applied to them the divine words or deeds, whereby they might believe, if certainly they heard or saw.

Therefore, say the heretics, in the Tyrians and Sidonians we have an illustrious example from Augustine, because although they had the gift of understanding, whereby they might be moved to faith if they either heard words or saw signs, since nevertheless they were not predestinate, and saw no signs nor heard words, presently they had not sufficient grace for doing penance. — Against. The upbraiding of Christ given to the Corozaites, that they had not done penance at the sight of so many miracles, would have been utterly futile and unjust, if truly the Corozaites had been able to do penance not only remotely, but not proximately, and consequently unless they had had grace proximately moving to penance. For Christ's upbraiding to be valid and just, it is necessary that, as the Tyrians and Sidonians at the sight of Christ's miracles would have grieved not only remotely but also proximately, so the Corozaites, the same grace shining upon them, could have done penance: therefore it is false that the Corozaites lacked sufficient grace for doing penance because by reason of their rebellion they were judged unworthy of that grace. Equally false is it that the benefit of converting grace was denied to the Tyrians and Sidonians because they were absolutely reprobated by God; for although, as we said, they had not that grace which moves to penance at the sight of Christ's signs and the hearing of His oracles, thence it is not consequent that they had not sufficient graces, whereby if they had so willed they could have repented.

In confirmation of this truth, according to the oracle cited above, recourse may be had to Matthew 23, where Christ complains of the Jews under the name of Jerusalem in these words: How often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not! But this will would be plainly hypocritical if they truly had not, with grace calling them inwardly or outwardly, sufficient help whereby they might be gathered under the wings of the Lord and flee for refuge to Christ through penance. Hence Luke 19: the same Savior, seeing the city, wept over it, saying: Because if thou also hadst known, and indeed in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace, etc. For the Jews might justly have answered that this ground of complaint was pretended in vain, since they had not sufficient help whereby they could either receive Christ or do the things that were for their peace.

You will say 1. By these and similar texts is signified only that the vocation which is resisted is merely external, namely that which comes about through the will of sign, and not the internal, which comes about through the will of good pleasure; for it is well known that in God there is a twofold will, namely of sign and of good pleasure. The former is that by which God bears Himself in the manner of one willing, inasmuch as He commands or counsels, forbids and permits something; the latter, however, is that by which God properly wills what is pleasing to Himself: the former is not always fulfilled; the latter, they say, always obtains its effect. — To the first. This thought is impious and unworthy of God, should anyone imagine that God stirs man to penance by His external voice alone, and does not truly will that any inspiration be granted him whereby he may convert himself; for He would mock men if He did not call those whom He calls with the intention and purpose of converting them themselves: nor would God intend to convert them unless He joined some internal help to His external calling; for, as St. Augustine teaches, book On Grace and Free Will, chapter 18: Free will would be admonished altogether without its fruit unless it first received something of love, whereby it might seek that what was commanded be added to it and fulfilled. Second, the end of the law, and consequently of any external vocation whatever, is that if man experiences difficulty he ask for help; if facility, that he render thanks to God, as St. Augustine teaches in many places, especially Epistle 89: Therefore He commands that, having attempted to do what was enjoined, and wearied under the law in our infirmity, we know how to ask for the help of grace; and if we have been able to accomplish anything of good work, let us not be ungrateful to Him who helps. Book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 19: The law was given that grace might be sought; grace was given that the law might be fulfilled. Likewise most evidently St. Prosper in his Epistle to Demetrias: Nor, he says, is a precept given for any other reason than that the helper of the one commanding may be sought. Therefore either God employs His calling in vain, or at least He imparts with it a secret and interior inspiration by which man is at least admonished of his infirmity, that he may have recourse to the help of grace.

You will say 2. The argument drawn from the aforesaid text of Matthew 23 is the same which Julian objected to St. Augustine, as appears from the work Imperfect, chapter 93, where from the same Gospel text Julian gathers that the divine will is sometimes hindered by the human: which St. Augustine there rejects as heretical, saying:

It must be forgiven, because you are deceived in a matter very obscure. Far be it that the intention of the Omnipotent and All-knowing should be hindered by man. Too little do such men think of themselves, or they do not suffice for harassing Him, who think that God omnipotent can will something and yet cannot do it because frail man hinders: as it is certain that Jerusalem would not have her children gathered together by Him, so it is certain that He, even against their unwillingness, gathered together whatsoever of them He willed.

Therefore so far is our argument from supporting Catholic truth that rather it savors of the Pelagian error. — To the first. If these things are so, then the Fathers of the Council of Sens must be marked with the Pelagian error, and they took up the arms of Julian in order to root out the pestiferous dogma of the Lutherans; for in decree 15, by the same argument which we employ, they proved that we are not carried away inevitably by divine inspirations, as appears from the plain words of that decree. Second, there is no one who does not tacitly understand that a great gulf stands fixed between us and Julian if with the Theologians we distinguish two wills in God, namely the will of sign, by which God moves man through ordinary means to do what He commands, and urges him to seek the aid of the Savior. Of which will indeed St. Augustine makes mention in the same chapter of the Imperfect Work; for he subjoins after the words already praised: Now Scripture commonly suits the will of man, that admonished he may perceive what he has not and cannot: and elsewhere, where all good things are, that the needy may ask. The other is that of good pleasure, by which He effectually incites man to good. That the former will can be resisted St. Augustine there confesses; for he says: Wherefore through the Prophet, Isaiah 1, it was said: If you will not, and hear me not, the sword shall devour you: whence St. Augustine gathers that the will of sign, with respect to the effect of mercy, is sometimes hindered, although it is not hindered with respect to the effect of justice. But the latter will, namely of good pleasure, is not hindered, as St. Augustine there declares against Julian:

If, as you say, man ought not by any necessity to be recalled from his own intention, assuredly an evil one, why is the Apostle, breathing slaughter and thirsting for blood, recalled from his worst intention by a violent blindness of body and a terrible voice from heaven, and, cast down from being a persecutor, raised up to become a more laborious preacher than the rest of that Gospel which he was assaulting? Acknowledge grace.

But the case stands thus: God calls whom He deigns to call; and the Spirit breathes where He wills. Julian, however, contended that any will of God whatsoever, even the will of good pleasure, is sometimes frustrated in its effect by human will; but we contend that only the will of sign, which declares and signifies itself through sufficient means, can be hindered with respect to the effect of mercy, although it is always fulfilled with respect to the effect of justice: therefore our opinion differs very far from that of Julian.

Finally the assertion can be proved by all those texts of Scripture in which God invites and exhorts men to penance and to the pursuit of justice. Thus Canticles 5: Open to me, my sister, my spouse; and likewise that of the Prophet Joel 2: Be converted to me, and I will be converted to you. By which words, says the Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 5, we are admonished of our liberty; even as we confess the necessity of grace while we answer Lamentations 5: Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted; for from these and similar texts it is gathered that, as it is proper to God to go before us by knocking at and exciting our hearts through sufficient grace, so it is proper to the will to open to Him by its free consent, rendering His vocation efficacious.

The same truth can also be proved by those parallel texts of Scripture in which God rebukes and condemns the hostility of men, and likewise their continual reluctance and struggle against His divine grace. Thus Isaiah 65: All the day I have spread forth my hand to an unbelieving people, that walketh in a way that is not good after their own thoughts. Proverbs 1: I called, and you refused: I stretched out my hand, and there was none that regarded. Matthew 20: Many are called, but few chosen. Chapter 22: He sent his servants to call them that were invited to the wedding; and they would not come. John 15: If I had not come, and spoken to them, they would not have sin: but now they have no excuse for their sin. And afterwards: If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin: but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. Acts 7: You always resist the Holy Ghost. Romans 2: Knowest thou not that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance? 2 Corinthians 6: We exhort you that you receive not the grace of God in vain. Apocalypse 3: I stand at the gate and knock; if anyone shall open, etc. From which passages it can plainly enough be gathered that sometimes it depends on human will whether grace obtain its effect.

But that the heretics may bridle these sacred defenses of ours, they devise various exceptions against these texts of Scripture. For they answer 1. that by those sacred words is signified the external, not the internal vocation; or if the discourse be of the internal, that vocation is not to be considered which is according to purpose. For they observe that vocation is twofold: namely internal, which comes about through interior grace; and external, which comes about through law and doctrine. Of both these vocations St. Augustine makes mention, Epistle 107, in these words: If therefore God were thus to prepare and work the will of man, that he would only apply his law and doctrine to his free will (behold the external vocation), and by that other, secret vocation (behold the internal vocation) should not so avert his sense as to accommodate assent to the same law and doctrine. And St. Prosper on the 5th chapter of Galatians: If vocation in the Gospel be understood only of preaching, it is not said truly that to some and to others it is preached otherwise and otherwise; but if it be regarded with respect to the effect of planting and watering, one thing was done in those whose outer ears were struck by bodily voice; another in those whose inner sense God opened.

They observe 2. that the internal vocation is twofold, one according to purpose, another not according to purpose. The former is proper to the predestined alone: the latter belongs to the reprobate, who believed it and were members of the Church, Augustine, book On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 16. For God calls the predestined as many sons of His, that He may make them members of His predestined only-begotten Son, not by that vocation by which they were called who would not come to the wedding: for by that vocation both the Jews were called, to whom Christ crucified is a scandal, and the Gentiles, to whom Christ crucified is foolishness: but by that vocation He calls the predestined which the Apostle distinguished, saying: Both to the Jews and to the Greeks, etc. And book 5 Against Julian, chapter 1: Not all who are called are called according to purpose; for many are called, but few chosen. Who then are elect? These are called according to purpose. Why however certain persons are called not according to purpose he teaches in the same place, namely because they are born for the utility of the predestined. And in the preceding passage: Not that hard things may profit them, but that, He Himself using them well, hard things may profit them unto mercy, namely that they may understand from how deep a mire they were delivered by the grace of God. — But against this: for, as we have already said, it is impious to assert that God excites sinful man to penance, and the just man to the pursuit of the works of piety, by the external voice alone, and does not truly will that any inspiration, any internal help whatever, be granted him whereby he may convert himself and pursue good works. Wherefore St. Prosper in the Epistle To Demetrias asserts that the voices of teachers and the letters of pages, which serve God for the instruction of those hearing or reading, are not devoid of the virtue of Him whom they serve; and thereupon he holds that the internal vocation is ever joined to the external. Which St. Augustine likewise openly teaches in the places praised above, when he says in book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 19: The law was given that grace might be sought: grace was given that the law might be fulfilled. And book On Grace and Free Will, chapter 18: Free, he says, will is admonished altogether without its fruit unless it first received something of love, whereby it might seek that what was commanded be added to it and fulfilled. False therefore is it, in the mind of St. Augustine, that the external vocation is not conjoined with the internal. Nor does it matter that that most holy Doctor asserts a twofold vocation, one according to purpose, another not according to purpose. For by vocation not according to purpose he does not understand a purely external vocation, bare, and of itself insufficient for conversion and justice; but a vocation lacking its fruit; and that not from the inefficacy of the grace of the Caller, but from the hostility and malice of the resisting human will, as the same holy Doctor signifies in the words praised above, book On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 16, saying: Those called by a vocation not according to purpose were they who would not come to the wedding; for it is certain that they were in truth sincerely invited and called by the Father of the family with the intention that they should come, as appears from the Gospel text; for St. Luke says, chapter 14, that the Father of the family sent his servant at the hour of supper to say to the invited that they should come: because now all things are ready. For why should he prepare the supper, invite many, send servants to them, if he did not call them with sincere mind to the supper? Nor does the Evangelist assign the cause of the delay and refusal of the invited on the part of the Caller, but on the part of the very invited: for he says: They began all at once to excuse themselves: which excuse St. Matthew, chapter 22, teaching it to have been pure unwillingness and reluctance of will, where relating the same Parable under the name of the wedding, says: he sent his servants to call them that were invited to the wedding, and they would not come. — But that this was the mind of St. Augustine, namely that by vocation not according to purpose he would not signify only the external vocation, but comprehend under this name also the internal grace of the will, is sufficiently gathered from book 2 of the Retractations, chapter 1, where he manifestly says that he disputed concerning the true grace of Christ, which is victorious, and distinguishes the Predestined. In the solution of which question, he says, labor was indeed spent on behalf of the free will of the human will: but the grace of God conquered; nor could one arrive at anything else than that the Apostle be understood to have said with most liquid certainty: who discerneth thee? Hence it is that in that place he affirms that a vocation of this kind ought to be present, because the will of man alone does not suffice that we live justly and rightly, unless it be helped by the mercy of God. Hence it is that there he describes it thus: that vocation is the maker of good will; which in the book On the Predestination of the Saints he expressed thus: By which vocation he is made a believer. Hence finally, that he may more clearly explain its necessity, he says: The will itself, unless something occur that delights and incites the mind, can in no wise be moved. All these things manifestly signify that that vocation of which he speaks embraces also the very grace of the will: since it is that which delights the soul, which makes the good will, and which is called necessary by the mercy of God for living justly and rightly.

You will say 2. To the testimonies of Scripture cited above, that the internal vocation too is sometimes resisted, but by concupiscence, which remains even in the just themselves, and often conflicts with the most holy motions of the divine Spirit. — But this answer is utterly futile: for either concupiscence resists without the consent of the will, or with the will consenting. If the first, as happened to the Apostle, who said Romans 7: Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, that is, concupiscence, then that rebellion of the flesh is not formally sin, but only effectively, or the effect of original sin, as St. Augustine teaches in many places, especially book 3 Against Julian, chapter 26, where he says: Concupiscence, the spirit not consenting, does not arrive at works deserving damnation. If the second: therefore the will can resist interior grace. But that the texts of Scripture are to be understood of this latter resistance is clear, because in the passages adduced of Holy Scripture they are condemned who resist the vocation of God and the Holy Spirit: therefore that resistance is culpable, and consequently voluntary.

Second proof from the Councils. — That sufficient grace is to be admitted the Councils have decreed and defined; and first indeed the Council of Valence III, celebrated in Gaul in the time of Leo IV, in which Canon 2 decrees: Not for this reason do the wicked perish, because they could not be good, but because they would not be good. Hence we gather 1. that grace is granted to the wicked whereby they could be good; for without grace they cannot be such: nor grace alone which illuminates the intellect; for by a grace of this kind men could not be good. 2. That grace is repudiated by them because they would not be good: but the grace repudiated, whereby men could have been good if they had willed, is sufficient grace: therefore it is to be admitted. — 2. The same truth is laid down in the Council of Sens, celebrated in the time of Clement VII under the Most Illustrious Cardinal and Chancellor of France Antony of Prato; for in decree 15 it laid down that we are not always moved efficaciously by divine inspirations, and gathered it from Holy Scripture: Nor, it says, such is the help of God drawing, as cannot be resisted; how often did the Lord will to gather together the children of Jerusalem, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and they would not? In vain surely would Stephen rebuke the Jews of hard neck and uncircumcised heart, who always resisted the Holy Spirit. In vain would Paul admonish the Thessalonians not to extinguish the spirit, if men were inevitably carried away by divine inspirations. From which oracle it is gathered that grace is sometimes frustrated in its effect; not from defect of its fecundity and virtue, but from defect of the resisting human will. The same is defined in the Council of Cologne, celebrated in the year 1536 under Hermann, part 2, chapter 32, in these words: Although no one be converted to the Lord unless drawn by the Father: nevertheless let no one here bring forward the excuse that he is not drawn, since He ever stands at the door knocking, namely through the internal and external word threatening, that we may be converted from our most evil way, etc. By which and similar words it so plainly hands down that sufficient grace is to be admitted that this one definition of this Council seems sufficient for establishing that truth. But let no one be frightened because the Council says: Not even does a moment pass in which God stands not at the door and knocks; which its interpreter Clichtoveus, chapter 33, explains thus: God admonishes us assiduously by interior impulse and inspiration: nor indeed, as Didacus Alvarez rightly notes, is the sense that for every moment whatsoever every sinner receives into himself help sufficient for salvation: for while he sleeps, he is surely not moved by an actually sufficient help: but these words are to be expounded according to common usage of speech. — 3. Finally and above all it is defined by the Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 11, where it openly teaches us that sufficient grace is present for keeping the divine precepts; which however we sometimes spurn; for it says: God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes thee both to do what thou canst, and to ask what thou canst not, and helps thee that thou mayest be able. Which sentiment the Council seems to have drawn from St. Augustine, partly from book On Nature and Grace, chapter ⟦illegible⟧, where in almost the same words he has the first part of this sentiment: God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes thee both to do what thou canst, and to ask what thou canst not: but the other part from other places of the same holy Doctor, in which he teaches that God grants to those asking; especially book 1 To Boniface, last chapter, near the end: That they may ask, he says, He instructs them falling down, and mercifully hears them asking: which indeed accords with those words of Christ the Lord, saying Matthew 7: Ask and you shall receive: seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. — From which sufficient grace is manifestly established by this argument: any justified person whatever, while a precept is imposed upon him, is admonished to do what he can, or ask what he cannot: therefore he has an internal and secret inspiration whereby he is thus admonished to do or ask: for mere external admonition, unless it have grace for its companion, does not ward off the impossibility of fulfilling the precept, but rather increases its difficulty from occasion; since, as St. Augustine says, book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 3: The law, though good, if holy spirit help it not, increases evil desire by forbidding; for it becomes more pleasant because coveted: and thereupon the Council treats of the interior vocation and motion of the will: yet most justified persons neither do what is commanded nor ask help for doing it: therefore they resist at least one or other inspiration.

You will say 1. To the Council of Valence: its sense is that the wicked were compelled to sin not by divine foreknowledge or anything similar, or by necessity, but sinned by their own evil will original or actual: for this the same Council indicates when in the selfsame Canon 2 it says: ⟦Ver?⟧ altogether did the foreknowledge of God impose necessity upon any evil, such that it could not be otherwise. And afterwards: Nor do we believe anyone to be condemned on account of its prejudgment, but by the merit of his own iniquity; nor do the wicked themselves perish for this reason, because they could not be good, but because they would not be good, and by their own fault remained in the cause of damnation, whether by the merit of original or even of actual sin. This answer is confirmed: both because that Council condemned the four chapters of the Synod of Carthage; and because that this is its sense can easily be gathered from the mind of its President, namely Remigius of Lyons, books On the Three Epistles, and On Holding the Truth of Scripture. — But this answer is utterly vain: for although the Council truly decrees that the wicked were necessitated to sin not by the foreknowledge of God, but from their own evil will vitiated by original or actual sin; nevertheless it openly teaches that the wicked perish for this reason, not because they could not be good, but because they would not be: therefore the Council concedes that the wicked had sufficient help whereby they could have been saved and been good, if they had willed; which nevertheless they rendered utterly useless and vain through the hostility of their own evil will.

You will say 2. To the Council of Sens: its authority is null or slight, because it is only a Provincial Council approved by no Supreme Pontiff. — Next, its sanction contributes nothing toward establishing sufficient grace: because, you will say, it speaks not of interior graces alone, but abstracts from interior and exterior; for it speaks of graces which are always at hand, and which we have at every moment: yet it is certain, you will say, that we do not at every moment have interior graces: therefore it speaks of graces abstracting from interior and exterior. — Finally, one must distinguish especially in Councils between what is placed in the place of a decree or definition and what is brought forward as the reason of the definition or decree: for when Councils define, they act as sacred authors; but when they reason, they act in human fashion; and thereupon sometimes they slip: yet in this which is cited as the decree of faith, namely that the necessity of grace does not prejudice free will, the reason of that definition is that it is always at hand, nor would even a moment pass by; which reason certainly seems less to be approved. Therefore nothing at all avails, nor does the decree of the aforesaid Council of Sens support us in any way. — To the first.

It is certain, says Caius, book 5 Of Theological Places, chapter 4, that Provincial Councils, unless they are specially reprobated, are commended by the common knowledge of the Church, or even by implicit consent, if they have come to the common notice of the Church; for it is by no pact made plausible that the Church should long have dissimulated the heresy of a Provincial Council divulged throughout the whole world.

Now that Council of Sens was not only divulged throughout the whole Christian world, but also most well known; for it was very often employed by Catholic Doctors for explaining and resolving controversies concerning auxiliaries. — Moreover, the Council of Trent (says Suarez, Prolegomena 6 On Grace, chapter 5), which was celebrated twenty years later, approves by its authority the whole doctrine of grace which the Council of Sens had handed down, because it teaches and defines the same there more expounded and completed. — Finally, no slight authority is lent to this Synod by the fact that it was held at Paris, and that besides the Bishops there attended the most celebrated Doctors each and all of the sacred Faculty of Theology of Paris

Doctors ; wherefore Jodocus Clichtoveus, most celebrated Doctor of that age and keenest subduer of Luther, calls that Synod an assembly of most learned men in the book which he entitled : Compendium ve-ritatum ad fidem pertinentium contra erroneas Lutheranorum assertiones, from the acts done in the Council of Sens celebrated at Paris.

I answer 3. To the Council of Cologne: its authority aids us not at all: both because Hermann presided over it, who afterwards for heresy and apostasy from obedience to the Roman See was deposed from the Archbishopric by Pius III the Pontiff and Charles V the Caesar: then because in the passage praised for our proof the Council treats only of penance, and not of grace: finally, because by the internal word, whereby God is there said always to admonish us, nothing else can be understood than the grace of intellect ; which sort of grace the Pelagians admitted ; whence it follows that, if this be the sense of the passage, namely that every man has always grace sufficient for his conversion, this Council approved the doctrine of Pelagius. — To the first. If anything of the authority of the Council of Cologne departed through the apostasy of Hermann, very much also would be derogated from the Council of Nicaea and others, since Osius of Corduba presided over those, whose subsequent fall proved so fatal that Cardinal Baronius, writing of him at the year 357, number 18, says thus: The fall of Osius surpassed the case of all who went before, whether Origen, or Tertullian, or whomsoever of others you name. To how many Councils did he not attend, and bear great part, as at Elvira, Arles, Neo-Caesarea, ⟦illegible: Ilerandrino⟧, Gangra, the two great and ecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Sardica, and others of which memory has perished ? This very Osius, whom the Arians called prince of Synods, and whom the Nicenes said conceived the formula ; this man, I say, was shamefully cast down in the conciliabulum of Sirmium, basely made a betrayer of that same Nicene faith. Certainly no one of sane mind took occasion from that fall of Osius to reject the Synod of Nicaea : therefore with equal reason there is not why the adversaries should strive to defame the Synod of Cologne, over which a Catholic had before presided, by the case of Archbishop Hermann. — To the second I say, the answer of the adversaries is ludicrous ; for although the Council treats ex professo of penance, and not of grace ; nevertheless it plainly signifies that no one can perform salutary penance unless he be moved and helped thereto by grace, which grace is sometimes frustrated in its effect, when namely the human will, according to its liberty, resists it, as the Council there admonishes. — To the third I say. By the internal word, whereby God is said to admonish us, not only is signified the illumination of the human intellect, but also the motion of the will, seeing that the Council there treats of salutary penance, unto which not only the illumination of the intellect, but also the motion and cooperation of the will is necessary.

I answer 4. To Trent: this head of the Council was framed against Luther and his Followers, who say that the commands of God are impossible not only for sinners but even for the just even with actual auxiliaries ; and not against those who say that at times the grace of praying and of working is denied to the just, whence the commands of God become impossible for them. — But this answer is utterly useless ; for although this chapter was published especially against Luther, yet the Fathers premised the opinion expounded above as most efficacious for refuting utterly the error spoken by Luther. For if the justified either has grace whereby he can fulfill the commands and likewise conquer the delight of concupiscence, or at least grace whereby he can implore that help, what can hinder the justified from being able to fulfill the law of God? And truly the Council gathers the same from this opinion and other similar ones. Whence it is clear that those oppose the doctrine of orthodox religion who say that the just man sins at least venially in every good work, or, what is more intolerable, merits eternal punishments.

Nor does it avail to say, that it is true that the precepts of God are not impossible under condition, namely if the will be aided, but that thence it does not follow that to all is given grace sufficient for keeping the commands of God. On the contrary, a command which is not possible except under some condition is judged absolutely impossible with respect to him upon whom it is imposed, unless he have the necessary condition, or some means whereby he can attain that necessary condition: but the commands of God are impossible with respect to the justified man unless he have healing grace, or a means whereby he can obtain it: therefore they are not possible for the justified unless he have either the grace of working, or the power of obtaining and asking such grace.

Third proof from the authority of St. Augustine. — I make mention of all the holy Fathers who preceded or followed St. Augustine, of those opinions by which they plainly signify that the human will sometimes struggles against divine grace; for already we have sufficiently reviewed these in the preceding section, by referring the testimonies of the same holy Fathers to prove that the grace of Christ does not necessarily and inevitably drive the human will to good. I shall bring forward Augustine alone, in whose patronage the heretics most glory: for this most holy Doctor teaches in many places in open words that His grace is frustrated in its effect on account of the struggle of the human will, in whose liberty it lies to consent to or dissent from grace. Here however I shall not describe all the testimonies of that most holy Doctor, for this would be tedious, but I shall enumerate only the principal ones.

Therefore the first testimony, whereby from St. Augustine it can be proved that man sometimes struggles against divine grace, and consequently not every grace is efficacious, is taken from the fact that he teaches in many places that the sin of the adult man consists in this, that he contemns and repudiates the grace of God. Thus especially book 3, chapter 19, Of Free Will:

Since God, he says, is everywhere present, who in many ways through creation serving Him calls to Himself, teaches the believing, consoles the hoping, urges the loving, assists the attempting, hears the entreating, not what you know not is imputed to you as guilt, but that you neglect to seek what you know not; nor that you gather not your wounded limbs, but that you contemn Him willing to heal you: these are your own proper sins, etc.

To which certainly nothing is more evident for asserting sufficient grace. — Nor does it avail to answer with David Paraeus, book 2 Of Free Will, chapter 5, that these things were written by Augustine before the birth of the heresy of Pelagius, while he was still held by the error of the Massilians. For the same St. Augustine in the book On Nature and Grace, chapter 67, where he attacks the Pelagians more sharply, described them in precisely the same words. But that he might repel from himself every injury inflicted upon divine grace, he subjoins there: Thus also I exhorted as much as I could to live rightly, and I did not make void the grace of God, without which human nature, now darkened and vitiated, cannot be illuminated and healed. By which words he sufficiently denotes that when he wrote those books On Nature and Grace he was altogether free from every error concerning grace, and above all from Semipelagianism, which admits the beginning of faith from ourselves; since in the words just praised he openly professes that he did not make void the grace of God, without which human nature, now darkened and vitiated, cannot be illuminated and healed. He acknowledges therefore that nature cannot be illuminated except through grace, and thereupon confesses that for that illumination faith is necessary, as a benefit of that very grace. — Add to these all the testimonies of that most holy Doctor in which he asserts that sinners are therefore to be damned in the last judgment because they scorned the redemption offered by Christ. Thus tractate 36 On John: Christ came first to save, afterwards to judge; condemning unto punishment those who would not be saved: leading unto life those who by believing spurned not salvation. From which it may be gathered that as they alone will be crowned in judgment who spurned not salvation; so those only will be condemned who would not be saved, and consequently rejected healing grace. Hence most excellently in book 2 On the Creed, c. ⟦illegible: chapter number⟧ he describes in prayer the terrible countenance of Christ the Judge, etc., in these words:

To His enemies, he says, He will show His wounds: wherefore it was said through the Prophet: They shall look on him whom they pierced: not that He may say to them as to Thomas: because thou hast seen, thou hast believed: but that the truth convincing them may say: Behold the man whom ye crucified; behold God, and man, in whom ye refused to believe. Ye see the wounds which ye inflicted: ye recognize the side which ye pierced, since it was opened both by you and for you: and yet ye would not enter.

The second argument is sought from that axiom frequent with St. Augustine: God does not desert unless he be deserted. Thus in the book On Nature and Grace, chapter 26, he says:

As one limping from a wound is cured for this purpose, that when the past evil is healed his future going may be directed: so our evils the heavenly physician heals not only for this, that they may now be no more: but that hereafter we may walk rightly: which indeed even the sound could not do unless aided by Him. For when the physician, a man, has cured a man, he commits him henceforth to be sustained by the elements and bodily aliments, that the same health may grow strong by fit succor and persist, to God, etc. But God Himself, when through the mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ, He spiritually heals the sick, or vivifies the dead, that is, justifies the impious, and when He has led him on to perfect health, that is, to perfect life and justice, does not desert him if he be not deserted, that he may live piously always and justly. For as the eye of the body, even wholly sound, cannot see unless helped by the whiteness of light: so man, even justified most perfectly, cannot live rightly unless divinely aided by the external light of justice. God takes care therefore not only that He blot out what we have sinned, but also that He grant that we sin not.

Which sentiment indeed the Council of Trent retains and proves, Session 6, chapter 11, where you set forth the reason why the just are obliged to walk in the way of justice, whereby already delivered from sin, made servants of God, living soberly, justly, and piously, they may profit through Jesus Christ, through whom they have had access into this grace. This reason of the obligation it sets forth: For God by His grace does not desert the justified unless He be first deserted by them. Where the Council added the word, first, which St. Augustine has not, for more clearly insinuating this truth and the mind of the same holy Doctor. From these one can thus argue: God does not desert the just man, endowed with actual auxiliaries necessary for profiting in the way of justice, by withdrawing from him His divine succors, unless he be first voluntarily deserted by him, scorning these very offered auxiliaries: therefore men can sometimes struggle against the divine auxiliaries whereby they could profit in the way of justice: but those auxiliaries, when rejected, are sufficient graces: therefore they are to be admitted.

You will say. The context of the aforesaid holy Doctor is to be understood of habitual grace; so that God does not desert the just by withdrawing from them sanctifying grace, unless He be first deserted by them through mortal sin. Against this, St. Augustine there speaks of the withdrawal of that grace which against the Pelagians he willed to assert as supremely necessary for salvation: but the Pelagians nowhere denied that sanctifying grace is necessary for salvation, nor was it ever proved by St. Augustine contending against them; seeing that concerning sanctifying grace there was no dispute with them, but only concerning actual graces: therefore the answer of the adversaries is futile and vain. Next the same is plainly clear from the scope of that chapter, whence the aforesaid words were drawn: for Pelagius affirmed that the mercy of God was not necessary that we sin not, but because we have sinned: which in that whole chapter St. Augustine refutes most strongly, showing that the justified is not deserted by God through the withdrawal of actual grace necessary for living piously. It is certain therefore from the very scope of the Augustinian disputation that the discourse here is not of that desertion which withdraws habitual grace, but of the other, which withdraws actual grace only. That same is plain from these words, wherein he accommodates the adduced comparison of the wounded man to his purpose: so our evils the heavenly physician heals not only for this, that they may now be no more, but that hereafter we may walk rightly, which indeed even the sound could not do unless aided by Him. Whereby he plainly signifies that assisting grace, which is still necessary for men even sound, and indeed having habitual grace, that they may walk rightly. — Add to these, that for this reason the holy Doctor proves that God does not desert the just man unless He be first deserted, because, he says, He does not desert if He be not deserted, that he may live piously always and justly: for as the eye of the body, even most purely sound, cannot see unless helped by the whiteness of light, so also man, most perfectly justified, unless divinely aided by the eternal light of justice, cannot live. Whereby Augustine shows that the just, most perfectly justified, cannot persevere without actual grace, but stand in continual need of the help of God, which surely God does not deny: for, as St. Augustine subjoins, God heals therefore, not only that He blot out what we have sinned, but also that He grant that we sin not: that is, He continually gives help to the justified that he may live rightly if he wills; whereby he plainly signifies that he is there treating of actual grace: for he who grants that we sin not certainly does not withdraw what is necessary that we sin not: but not only habitual but also actual grace is necessary that we sin not, since by the force of habitual grace alone we cannot in the ordinary way avoid sins and conquer the graver temptations; for spirit must be added and strength supplied, when the strong armed man takes to himself many others worse than himself: therefore there is there discourse not of habitual, but of actual grace.

A third argument of no small weight for insinuating the same truth is sought from the book On Correction and Grace, c. 1, where he teaches:

If they shall not deliver themselves from this damnation, he says, who are able to allege that they heard not the Gospel of Christ, since faith is of hearing: how much less shall they deliver themselves who shall say: Perseverance we received not? For the excuse of those saying: We received not hearing, seems more just than that of those saying: We received not perseverance: since it can be said: Man, in that thou hadst heard and heldfast, in that thou wouldest have persevered hadst thou willed: but it can by no means be said: that which thou hadst not heard thou wouldest have believed hadst thou willed.

Whereby he testifies that sufficient grace is present to man for persevering, without which he could not persevere, and with which he could persevere if he willed: therefore he who did not persevere had sufficient aid whereby he could persevere, yet persevered not, because he despised the aid. That this is the mind of St. Augustine is confirmed from those things which he had said a little before, and whereby he confirmed the superior words: for the question is whether the regenerate merits correction while he sins: and whether this excuse of his is just which the holy Doctor sets forth, chapter 6: What have I done, that I received not? Which question he thus solves: If one already regenerate and justified relapse into an evil life by his own will, certainly he cannot say: I received not: because the grace of God received he so lost into evil by free choice. Whence at the beginning of the seventh chapter he says: We nevertheless correct them, and justly do we correct them, who, when they have well begun, have not persevered therein: for from good into an evil life they were changed by their own will: then he says that their excuse shall be vain in the day of judgment: perseverance we received not. To prove and confirm all these he employs this, since it can be said: Man, in that thou hadst heard and heldfast, in that thou wouldest have persevered hadst thou willed: whereby it stands established that St. Augustine by those words, thou wouldest have persevered hadst thou willed, demonstrates that that man did not persevere by his own fault, his own vice, his own will, his own free choice.

You will say, that St. Augustine by these words, in that thou hadst heard and heldfast, thou wouldest have persevered, hadst thou willed, teaches nothing else than that that man would have persevered if he had complete and perfect will of persevering; for thus to will to persevere is in fact to persevere. Against this, if these things were true, it would follow that St. Augustine trifles, nor signifies anything else by these words, he would have persevered if he willed, than he would have persevered if he persevered, which certainly is altogether trifling. Next St. Augustine speaks in the same manner of the baptized man not persevering as of Adam; for as for retorting this excuse of the baptized sinner, perseverance I received not, he opposes this one thing only, thou wouldest have persevered hadst thou willed, so a little after for deciding the same question about Adam, chapters 10 and 11, which he frames in these words: Why did Adam perish by not persevering, who received not perseverance? He inculcates oftener this, he would have persevered if he willed: but all testify that Adam had complete power of persevering: therefore the same must be judged of the baptized sinner not persevering.

Fourth proof taken from theological reason. — The first reason persuading that sufficient grace is granted to all men is deduced from the possibility of observing the divine precepts, which can be formed in this manner: God does not command impossibilities: yet most of His divine precepts are impossible to men without the subsidy of grace, namely those which are of the supernatural order, and which from the natural order impose grave difficulties in their observance: therefore since God imposes precepts of this kind, either He grants grace whereby they can be fulfilled, or at least whereby the strength for keeping them can be obtained. But not all to whom such precepts are prescribed fulfill the same, or ask of God the strength for keeping them; therefore some of them struggle against divine grace. The adversaries admit the minor. But the major is proved: First, from the Scriptures, Deut. 30: This command that I command thee this day is not above thee, nor far off placed: but the word is very nigh thee in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it. — Second, from the Council of Trent, Session 6, chapter 11: God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes thee to do what thou canst, and to ask what thou canst not, and helps thee that thou mayst be able. — Third, from the holy Fathers, especially Basil, Homily 6 on the Hexaemeron: If the works of approved operations are not placed within us, but necessities emerge from birth, in vain surely do the makers of laws prescribe things to be done and not to be done. To St. Chrysostom, Homily 16 on the Epistle to the Hebrews: Man cannot say, I cannot, nor accuse the Creator; for if He made us impotent and then commands, the fault is His. To St. Jerome, book 3 against the Pelagians: God commanded possible things; of this no one doubts. — But especially from St. Augustine in many places, above all book 2 On the Merits of Sins, chapter 6: I cannot doubt, he says, either that God commanded nothing impossible to man, or that anything is impossible to God for helping and assisting that what He commands be done; and hereby man can if he will be without sin, aided by God. And in the book On Nature and Grace he inculcates this truth often, especially chapter 13; wherefore in chapter 69 he openly professes: By this very fact that we most firmly believe that God, just and good, could not command impossibilities, hence we are admonished both what to do in easy things and what to ask in difficult ones.

Finally, the same truth stands by this reason: the first intention of one wisely commanding is that what is commanded be done: but what is impossible cannot be done: therefore God most wise does not command impossibilities.

You will answer, that the commandments can be said to be possible in a fourfold way: First, in the most remote manner, by reason of the faculty of free will, flexible toward good and evil; or by reason of free nature, insofar as it is capable of faith, hope, and charity. Second, somewhat more closely, insofar as man already has faith, which is the seed of prayer, by which he can obtain the grace necessary for living well. Third, much more closely, inasmuch as man already has habitual charity, by which he is said to be able to love God. Fourth, proximately and most completely, when the will is so prepared by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that it not only can, but even wills; which assuredly does not happen except through actual grace, without which habitual charity, however great and perfect, cannot pass into act. These things supposed, nothing is commanded to man which is not possible by some one of these four ways; yet that is not always commanded which is possible proximately and most completely.

But on the contrary, God commands man nothing, especially the just man, unless he have proximate and complete power, either for praying or for acting through actual grace, as is clear both from St. Augustine, book On Nature and Grace, chapter 13, whose teaching the Council of Trent praised above sets forth and proves, defining in Session 6, chapter 11, that nothing is commanded to man unless he be at once admonished both to do what he can and to ask for what he cannot; and consequently that, beyond nature and faith and habitual charity, he receive moreover an actual inspiration, either whereby he may fulfill the precept, or whereby he may obtain help for fulfilling it. Add that the precept remains still absolutely impossible to the man having nature, faith, and even habitual charity, unless moreover actual grace be granted him, either whereby the precept may be fulfilled immediately, or at least whereby the help necessary for fulfilling the law may be obtained: no otherwise than the precept of giving alms remains impossible to the man who does not have money, nor the power to procure it for himself, even if he have the will to bestow alms, and also the natural faculty, namely the hand for distributing it: therefore just as the precept of giving alms is not imposed upon the man who neither has money nor can procure it, even if he have the natural faculty whereby he could distribute and bestow it; so the precept of doing justice or exercising charity is not imposed on the man who has nature, faith, and even habitual charity, unless besides he have either the actual grace necessary for exercising works of charity, or at least the means of obtaining actual grace, namely the grace of prayer. Therefore one must conclude with St. Leo, Sermon 16 On the Passion: he urges us justly by the precept who runs before us with help; and likewise with Tertullian, book Against Marcion: A law would not be laid upon him who did not have the obedience owed to the law within his power. Hence St. Jerome, book 1 Against the Pelagians: We confess that God gave possible commandments lest He Himself be the author of injustice, should He demand that be done which cannot be done. Which Abbot Odo of Cluny explains most beautifully, book 2 of the Collations, number 13: We oppose nature's frailty to God, as though He knew not what sort of men He made us, and as though, forgetful of our human fragility, He had laid upon man commandments which he could not bear. O blind madness! O profane rashness! For we seem to accuse God in two ways: for neither is He just who ⟦illegible: word(s) lost between "posse" and "impossibile"⟧ impossible thing can be commanded, nor is He good who would damn man for those things which he cannot avoid: and how would what He Himself declares stand firm: My yoke is sweet? Let us therefore ascribe neither iniquity to the just One nor cruelty to the good One.

ARGUMENTS OF THE ADVERSARIES FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE.

They object 1. Calvin, book 2 of the Institutes, chapter 3, brings forward that word of John 6: Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to me; concerning which St. Augustine, book On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 8: What is, every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, except that there is none who hears and learns and cometh not to me? For if every one who heard of the Father and learned comes, certainly every one who comes not has not heard of the Father nor learned: therefore no one is stirred up and enlightened by the grace of God unless he straightway follow Him who stirs up and enlightens. — I distinguish the antecedent: that every one who has heard of the Father and learned comes taught and called by efficacious grace, I concede: howeversoever called, I deny. For a twofold kind of calling must be distinguished: one indeed whereby a man is taught and called so that he may proximately believe in Christ; and he who hears by this kind of calling doubtless learns, believes, and comes, as St. Augustine teaches in the same place, saying: we see many come to the Son because we see many believe in Christ: but where and how they heard this of the Father and learned it, we do not see, since that grace is secret; yet that it is grace who doubts? This grace therefore, which is bestowed secretly upon human hearts by divine bounty, is rejected by none of hardened heart; for it is bestowed precisely that the hardness of heart may first be taken away. Another kind of calling is that whereby man is solicited to pray for and obtain that singular and ineffable benefit of the grace softening the heart, while it is not granted by God. Augustine touches on this in many places, but especially in Tractate 28 on John, where he weighs the aforesaid words of John thus: Great is the commendation of grace: no one comes unless drawn: whom He draws and whom He draws not, why He draws this man and not that, do not wish to judge, if you wish not to err; take once for all and understand: you are not drawn; pray that you may be drawn. Of the former calling Augustine must be understood, as he himself indicates near the end of the same chapter, saying: Therefore to be drawn of the Father to Christ, and to hear and learn of the Father so as to come to Christ, is nothing else than to receive from the Father the gift whereby one believes in Christ.

You will urge. From the same St. Augustine, book On the Grace of Christ, chapter 14, where the same text of John is weighed: When God teaches, not by the letter of the law but by the grace of the Spirit, He so teaches that what each one has learned he sees not only by knowing, but desires by willing and perfects by doing; and by this divine mode of teaching even the will itself and the very occasion, not merely the natural possibility of intending and operating, is aided. Hence he concludes: Every one who has learned of the Father not only can come, but comes — where there is already both the progress of possibility, and the affection of will, and the effect of action. Therefore every grace is efficacious.

I answer. First, by distinguishing the antecedent: when God teaches not by the letter of the law but by the efficacious grace of the Spirit, which heals either from sin or from infirmity, ⟦illegible: omnis quisque didicit, non solum …⟧ everyone who has learned not only … but even desires by willing and perfects by doing, I concede: by sufficient grace, which moves and solicits toward the expiation of sins and the recovering or obtaining of health, I deny. I answer secondly. That St. Augustine by the words cited signifies nothing else than that grace is necessary not only habitual, which completes a power such as Pelagius alone seemed to require; but also actual, which concurs toward the operation. For, as St. Augustine notes there, to be able to come he places in nature, or even, as Pelagius has begun to say, in grace of whatever sort he may feel it to be, whereby, as he says, the possibility itself is aided: but to come is already in the will and in the work. It is not, however, consequent that he who can come also does come, unless he wills it and does it.

You are pressed further. From the same St. Augustine, chapter 13 of the same book: Whoever knows what he ought to do, and does it not, has not yet learned according to grace, but according to the law: not according to the Spirit, but according to the letter; therefore whoever neglects a good work is judged to have not interior but only exterior grace: and presently, either there is no sufficient grace, or only an external one. I distinguish. The antecedent: he has not yet learned according to efficacious and complete grace, I concede: according to sufficient grace, and such as is frustrated of its effect through the negligence or resistance of the agent, I deny. For he recognized, through the internal help afforded him, how great his infirmity is and how much he needs divine protection, which he ought suppliantly to entreat: but because he obeys not such inspiration, nor obtains the divine help, therefore he is said simply not to have learned, or not yet to have heard; for spiritual hearing properly is the assent of the heart, as St. Augustine teaches most excellently, book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 14: Ears, he says, for hearing is itself the gift of obeying, that they who have them may come to Him to whom no one comes unless it were given him of His Father. We exhort therefore and preach: but they who have ears for hearing obeyingly all hear: but they who have them not, let that be in them which is written: that hearing they hear not; namely, hearing with the sense of the body, they hear not with the assent of the heart.

You object 2. Calvin adduces that word of the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 9: It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. And yet if anyone called does not obey, and it lies within his will placed in him either to obey or not to obey, it could rightly be said also: it is not only of the merciful God, but also of the willing and running man, to pursue and attain the good; because the mercy of the caller determines no more to the good work than the obedience of the called, which the impious do not bear: therefore man cannot strive against that calling.

I answer. That text of the Apostle must be understood of that singular calling whereby a man is efficaciously and eminently called antecedently to any merits, as St. Augustine explains, book I to Simplicianus, question 2: It is true, he says, not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy, because although He call many, He has mercy nevertheless on those whom He calls in such wise as that it is given them to follow. Which exposition surely fits the mind of the Apostle best; for he intends there to set forth the reason why God called Jacob, not Esau, by a special calling, as appears from the text. That singular calling, therefore, must be distinguished from conversion, or the operation of justice, which follows that calling: for conversion is from God and from us; but calling must be ascribed to God alone. Which truth Augustine commends most excellently, book On Grace and Free Will, chapter 5, where he presses the Pelagians, who wrongly interpreted that text of Zechariah, Be converted to me, and I will be converted to you, so as to ascribe man's conversion to his own power, not to the grace of God: They do not attend, says St. August., who think thus; because unless our conversion itself to God were a gift of God, it would not be said: God of virtues convert us, and Thou God converted shalt quicken us, and convert us, God of our salvation, and other things of like sort which it were long to recount. By which words St. August. signifies that our conversion must be ascribed partly to the divine and partly to the human will: which he presses chiefly from that word of 1 Cor. 15: By the grace of God I am what I am: and that he might show also free will, he soon adds: and his grace in me was not void, but I labored more abundantly than all they. Yet lest the ⟦illegible: voluntas?⟧ itself be thought able to do anything good without the grace of God, continuing after he had said: his grace in me was not void, but I labored more abundantly than all they, he subjoins, saying: yet not I, but the grace of God with me: that is, not alone, but the grace of God with me: lest by this neither the grace of God alone, nor he himself alone, but the grace of God with him. By which he signifies that conversion must be ascribed partly to the hu-human and partly to the divine will, although principally it is the work of the divine will and mercy. But that calling alone is to be ascribed to God, he teaches in the same place: That ⟦illegible: utem?⟧ we should fall from heaven, and be converted rather, and by a most efficacious reason, was the grace of God alone; because his merits were great, but evil.

You will object 3. That word of 1 Corinthians 1: Who discerneth thee? and what hast thou that thou hast not received? Whereby the Apostle signifies that no one can discern himself nor glory in his own merits; for that must be ascribed to grace alone, as St. Augustine explains, book On the Predestination of the Saints: Nothing, he says, is so contrary to this sense of the Apostle, Who discerneth thee? as for anyone to glory in his own merits, as though he had made them himself, not the grace of God; but the grace which discerns the good from the evil, not as common to the good and the evil. But, say the adversaries, sufficient grace being given to two men, of whom one obey, the other resist, he who obeyed can say that he discerns himself from him who resists, and glory in his own proper obedience: therefore he contradicts the Apostle.

I answer. First, that this inference departs from the mind of the Apostle in his words; since there the Apostle treats not of the operation of grace, whereby one is discerned from another; but of that dissension arisen among the Corinthians, whereby one gloried that he was a disciple of Paul, another of Apollo; and the Apostle insists on this one thing, that they not glory in men, as appears from chapter 3, verse 21, and pursues the same argument in the following chapter, and exhorts that no one be puffed up against another, whether on behalf of Apollo or on account of his own gift, because in the dispensation of the word one seemed more eloquent, another better instructed in spiritual gifts, and immediately joins: For who discerneth thee? and what hast thou that thou hast not received? but if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? Now you are filled; now you are made rich, etc. But lest they think that dissension should be removed on account of the title of Apostleship, wherewith Paul himself, and not Apollo, was endowed, he teaches therefore that the faithful, received unto faith of themselves, have no ground above others for glorying; which that he might prove, he adds: For I think that God hath set forth us apostles last, as appointed to death; as if he said: it is not for you to make schisms in the Church on our account, nor to glory that you were baptized by some one of the Apostles; for what is an Apostle? A man given over to death, a victim of expiation, a spectacle to the world and to men.

I answer secondly. But if these words of the Apostle be transferred to the present question, as in fact St. Augustine often used them, to show against the Pelagians that we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but that our whole sufficiency is of God as of the principal cause: thus, I say, the aforesaid text being so used, I distinguish the major: no one can say that he discerns himself, simply and absolutely, I concede: relatively and insofar as he was moved and helped by divine grace, I deny. For just as a boy still unskilled in the art of writing, while guided and directed by his Master of writing, forms some letters, or even copies whole words, cannot boast that he wrote simply, although nevertheless he truly wrote; so he who kept the commandment of God, while another did not consent, who had been called by like grace, cannot say without arrogance, simply, that he himself fulfilled the commandment and thereby discerned himself from the other: yet as the boy who formed some words while the scribe directed truly can say that he wrote, and in this way discerned himself from another who likewise had not written; so the man in the proposed hypothesis can affirm that he discerned himself in some measure, aided not only by his own powers but by the benefit of grace. Nor indeed does he who thus discerns himself, by the grace surely of God, by which he is anticipated and helped, contradict the Apostle, who forbids only that man say that he discerns himself by glorying in his own powers, and as it were of a good which he had not received: nay, rather he imitates the same Apostle saying: By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not void: for I labored more abundantly than all they, etc. In which words the Apostle ascribes something to himself above the rest: yet he attributes it not to his own powers but to the benefit of grace. Which interpretation St. August. approves, book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 31, where, after he had said: When God acts with the rational soul that it believe, surely God works in man the very willing to believe, and in all things his mercy anticipates us: but to consent to the calling of God, or to dissent from it, as I said, belongs to one's own will. Immediately he subjoins: Which therefore not only does not weaken what was said, what hast thou that thou hast not received?, but even confirms it: for to receive and to hold he cannot hold the gift of which he hears this, unless by consenting; and hence that they have, and that they receive, is of God: but to receive and to hold is surely of the receiver and holder.

You will urge. The grace which discerns the good from the evil is not common to the good and the evil, as St. August. teaches in the words cited in the objection: but sufficient grace is common to the good and the evil: therefore by it no discernment can be made.

I distinguish. The major: the grace which discerns the good from the evil with that perfect discernment whereby one is plucked out of the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of God, is not common to the good and the evil, I concede: that by that discernment whereby one prepares himself for that perfect discernment there is not that grace common to the good and the evil, I deny: for all, both good and evil, are called by the Father of the family to the marriage; and our heavenly Father makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and pours the dew and rain of grace upon the just and the unjust.

You object 4. That word of Philippians 2: For it is God who worketh in us both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will. Whereby the Apostle signifies that not only the beginning of the work but its consummation must be ascribed to God alone: therefore no place is left for a sufficient grace which may be resisted; but every grace, whatsoever it be at length, is efficacious, which works in us either willing alone or both willing and accomplishing together.

I answer. First, by denying the consequence: which will appear altogether absurd if anyone weigh the entire Apostolic text. For the Apostle says there: Wherefore, my dearly beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence, with fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish. In which words St. Apostle admonishes us to fear and tremble in the matter of salvation, because God works in us both to will and to accomplish: from which so far is it rightly concluded that we cannot resist grace, that on the contrary it may thence be understood that we ourselves can resist grace: and therefore that there is great occasion and ground for fearing: for if every grace were most efficacious, doubtless they who have it and work well, and do not flatter themselves in their works, would have nothing to fear, but would work out their salvation without any dread. I answer, secondly, by distinguishing the antecedent: God works in us to will and to accomplish either without us or with us, I concede: without us only, I deny. For through operating grace He works in us without us; but through cooperating grace with us, as St. Augustine teaches, book On Grace and Free Will, chapter 19: We believe, he says, He works without us when beginning: but when we will, and so will as to do, He cooperates with us when perfecting. Hence St. Bernard, book On Grace and Free Will, says most excellently: God works these three things in us, namely to think, to will, and to accomplish: the first, namely to think, without us: the second, namely to will, with us: the third, namely to accomplish, through us.

ARGUMENTS DRAWN FROM THE COUNCILS AND HOLY FATHERS AND FROM THEOLOGICAL REASON.

You will object 1. Canon ⟦illegible: canon number⟧ of the Council of Orange, wherein we read thus: If anyone confesses that, that we may be cleansed from sins, God awaits our will, but not that we should even will to be cleansed through the infusion and operation of the Holy Spirit wrought in us, he resists the Holy Spirit Himself speaking by Solomon: The will is prepared of the Lord: and by the Apostle pronouncing wholesomely: It is God who worketh in us both to will and to accomplish. From which it is inferred thus: that we may be cleansed from sin, God does not await our will; therefore any grace determines our will efficaciously, and presently no sufficient grace is given. — I distinguish the antecedent: God does not await our will such that this ought to anticipate His grace, and prepare itself toward it by its own powers, as the Semi-Pelagians wished, I concede: He does not await our will following the motion of His grace, that it consent to it, I deny. But that such is the mind of the Council is gathered most openly from the other canons, especially the sixth, wherein whosoever subordinates the help of grace to human humility or obedience, that is, makes it posterior, is anathematized.

You will object 2. Diverse sayings of St. Augustine and of his Disciples, whereby divine grace seems signified to be always efficacious, nor does the human will anywhere strive against it. But since I have already resolved very many of those sayings in the preceding Section, here I shall subjoin only one or two: above all that which St. Augustine teaches chapter 10 On the Grace of Christ: But let these men sometimes confess with us that we will with grace, whereby the magnitude of future glory is not only promised but also believed and hoped; neither is wisdom only revealed but charity also infused; nor is everything that is good only urged but also persuaded. And somewhat after: This grace Pelagius ought to confess, if he wish not only to be called but also to be a Christian. — I answer, that by the words cited Augustine signifies nothing else than that beyond the law and doctrine, in which Pelagius placed the whole account and virtue of grace, another help is desired, whereby not only is everything that is good urged but also persuaded. Whence the same holy Doctor, book 2 of the Unfinished Work, chapter 157, thus addresses the Pelagians: I admonish you to understand of what grace you are enemies, by denying that God works wills in the minds of men, not that unwilling they believe, which is said most absurdly, but that from unwilling they become willing: not as man the doctor does by teaching and exhorting, threatening and promising in the word of God, which is done in vain unless God work within and will through His unconquerable ways: for while the doctor plants and waters, we can say: perhaps the hearer believes; but when God gives the increase he believes without doubt and profits: behold what is the difference between law and promise, between letter and Spirit. In which words St. Augustine censures Julian, who wished that Jews could by the law and Gentiles by nature become sons of Abraham; which that he might demonstrate false, St. Augustine shows the law, without the Spirit working within, that is, without the grace of adoption, to be useless and vain; for, as he says, book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 19: The law was given that grace might be sought: grace was given that the law might be fulfilled. But the law of itself would not suffice unto the grace of adoption, unless some beginning of salutary grace annexed to itself were conveyed by the author of the law. Therefore St. Augustine teaches no otherwise that God works in us to will than because beyond the external grace of the law and doctrine He also supplies an internal help, without which we could will and work nothing at all that is good.

You will object 3. Sufficient grace in our opinion seems nowise to differ from the grace of possibility which the Semi-Pelagians admitted: but such a grace of possibility St. Augustine rejects, and condemned it in many places, chiefly book On the Grace of Christ: therefore sufficient grace ought not to be admitted by Catholic teachers. — I deny the major: for the grace of possibility, which St. Augustine impugns, differs most widely from the sufficient grace which we admit, as may be gathered from the same St. Augustine reporting Pelagius's opinion about the grace of possibility itself, book On the Grace of Christ, chapter 4, where Pelagius says: We, he says, distinguish these three things thus, and distribute them as it were digested into a fixed order: in the first place we place the being able, second the willing, third the being. The being able we locate in nature, the willing in choice, the being in effect. That first thing, namely the being able, properly pertains to God, who bestowed it on His creature: but the rest, namely the willing and the being, are to be referred to man: because they descend from the fountain of choice: therefore in the will and the good work there is praise of man, nay rather of man and of God, who gave the possibility of his will and work, and who ever aids the possibility itself with the help of His grace. From Pelagius's words it is clear that the possibility of the work, or natural power, is both from God and aided by the help of divine grace. But by that help Pelagius wished to signify nothing else than law and doctrine, remission of sins, and the example of Christ, as St. Augustine declares at greater length in the same book: who on the contrary teaches that the help whereby our possibility is aided is some secret inspiration, or virtue of the Holy Spirit: for thus he opens his mind at the beginning of chapter 13 of the same book: This, he says, if it must be called doctrine, certainly must be so called that God be believed to infuse it more deeply and more interiorly with ineffable sweetness, not only through those who plant and water outwardly, but also through Himself, who ministers its increase hiddenly; so that He show not merely the truth but impart also the charity of things: for thus God teaches those who are called according to His purpose, granting together both that they know what to do, and that they do what they know. — From which it appears that St. Augustine thought otherwise concerning the grace of possibility than Pelagius. — They disagreed moreover among themselves about the mode whereby the grace of Christ aids: for Pelagius wished the grace of possibility to be ordered only to the natural power, which it ought to aid and perfect; but not to concur toward action and operation; whereas St. Augustine taught that the grace of God works in us not only the being able but also the willing and accomplishing, or not possibility alone but volition and action also. Moreover Pelagius ascribed to free will the consent which he rendered to grace; but holy Augustine contended that this consent must be attributed principally to grace. Therefore long is the difference between sufficient grace, which we admit, and the grace of possibility which the Pelagians alleged. First indeed Pelagius constituted the help of possibility in outward helps only; but we with St. Augustine judge sufficient grace must be placed in the secret operation of the Holy Spirit. Second, although Pelagius perhaps admitted some internal grace of possibility, still he did not hold it necessary for each act of piety, but only that acts be done more easily, as we have often noted; but we profess that sufficient grace is to be desired for each single act. Third, Pelagius wished the grace of possibility ordered only to the power, not to action; whence he ascribed consent principally to free will; but we contend that sufficient grace so excites the will that concomitant and subsequent grace is necessary for willing and operating, by reason of which the determination and consent of the will is attributed principally to the virtue of grace.

You will object 4. Therefore the Massilians were condemned as heretics because they judged the help necessary for believing sufficient, that man anticipated might believe he could if he willed: but the sufficient grace which we admit is of this kind: therefore we subscribe to the Semi-Pelagians. — I answer, by denying the major, whose falsity appears from this condemned proposition: The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of interior prevenient grace for each act, even for the beginning of faith, and herein were heretics, inasmuch as they wished that grace to be such as the human will could resist or obey. Which proposition Innocent X declared false and heretical, and as such condemned it. False therefore is it that the Semi-Pelagians were condemned because they admitted sufficient prevenient grace, to which man could consent if he willed or dissent: but they erred chiefly in teaching that we can merit by a merely natural affect desiring faith the grace of faith, and consequently the other gifts, as we have taught already many times.

You will object 5. The efficacy of grace does not depend on free will: but if sufficient grace were granted, which became efficacious through the consent of the will, its efficacy would depend on free will: therefore none is to be admitted. — I distinguish the major: the efficacy of grace does not depend on free will in act first, namely that virtue which it has to move the will infallibly, I concede: efficacy in act second, that is, the consent given to the divine calling does not depend on free will, I deny: for, as holy Augustine teaches, book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 31: After this manner when God acts with the rational soul that it believe … surely God works in man the very willing to believe, and in all things his mercy anticipates us: but to consent to the calling of God, or to dissent from it, as I have said, belongs to one's own will.

II. — WHETHER SUFFICIENT GRACE IS GRANTED TO ALL MEN WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

I AFFIRM IT. And that truth may licitly be confirmed openly by very many oracles of Sacred Scripture: which arguments, that they may become more evident, it helps to weigh under distinct headings.

It is proved first From the universal vocation and illumination through Christ. — For indeed John 1, of the Lord Christ it is said: He was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. From which testimony St. Augustine, book On Genesis against the Manichees, chapter 3, proves that all men, if they will, can keep the precepts of God: That light, he says, feeds not the eyes of irrational animals, but the more numerous hearts of the faithful, who believe in God, and turn themselves from the love of visible and temporal things to His precepts to be kept: which all men can do if they will, because that light enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. The aforesaid St. Chrysostom anticipated him, Homily 1 on these words of John, He enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world: where he says: « He enlightens assuredly so far as lies in Him. But if any have been unwilling of their own accord, with the eyes of their mind closing, to direct their gaze to the rays of this light, they have persisted in darkness not from the nature of the light but from their own malice, who of their own accord made themselves unworthy of so great a gift; for grace is diffused upon all: it excepts or disdains no Jew, no Greek, no Barbarian, no Scythian, no freeman, no servant, no man, no woman, no old man, no youth, etc. But they who neglect to enjoy its gift, let them impute this their fault to themselves: since since it is given to all, open to all, and forbidden by none, certain lost and wicked men refuse to enter by their own malice only ».

To this also pertains what is said generally in Wisdom 1, that infidels, and all men among whom there is no knowledge of God, have not lacked a sufficient means whereby they may arrive at His salutary knowledge. Which the Apostle confirms, Romans 1, verse 19, saying of the Gentiles that God sufficiently manifested Himself to them, that they might render Him the glory due Him, such that they are inexcusable, in that they glorified Him not as God, and setting aside His worship served idols. Doubtless because, as St. Prosper rightly says, book 2 On the Vocation of the Gentiles, chapter 17, even those who formerly lacked, or still lack, the external preaching of the word of God, did not lack nor lack the necessary and sufficient grace whereby they may come to faith and the light of truth. Even now, he says, in the farthest parts of the world there are some nations upon whom the grace of the Savior (that is, the Gospel) has not yet shone: yet to these the measure of general utility? kept utilii from above is ever bestowed upon all men, and is not denied.

Second proof. From the general will of God to save each and every man. — Whoever wisely and sincerely intends an end also wills to employ the means absolutely necessary for attaining that end: but God most wise sincerely intends the salvation of all men: therefore He also wills that grace be conferred on them whereby they may attain salvation. The major is evident. The minor is proved: First indeed from that of Ezekiel 33: Why will you die, O house of Israel? saith the Lord. I desire not, I desire not the death of the wicked, but that he be converted and live. Where Tertullian notes, book On Penance, chapter 1, that God swore, that He might without any difficulty be believed: Swearing also, he says, like the Lord, Titus, where He wishes to be believed. O blessed are we for whose sake God swears! O wretched, if we believe not even a swearing God! But most openly 1 Timothy 2, where the Apostle hands down this truth, teaching that prayer is to be made for all, even for Pagans and Gentiles, brings forward this reason of that obligation: For this is good, he says, and acceptable in the sight of our Savior God, who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Which truth surely he confirms with this threefold reason: For one is God, one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: who gave himself a redemption for all, in their times. In which words the Apostle signifies that God wills the salvation of all men under a threefold title: first because He is Creator of them all; second because He is Redeemer of all; third because He must be Judge of all, and the blood which He shed for all upon the cross will be unto testimony in their times that He was not Himself the cause why any should be rejected and damned. Hence Paulus Orosius embraces this threefold reason most excellently, book On the Liberty of Choice, after the middle: This therefore Lord Christ, he says, I say, the Son of God, founded in the beginning in the power of the Father and glory, redeemed in the middle, and will judge also at the last.

But that this will extends quite to all, holy Chrysostom above all teaches writing on this passage: Imitate, he says, thy God: if He wills all men to be saved, deservedly one must pray for all. St. Damascene, book 2 of the Orthodox Faith, chapter 29: Let it, he says, not escape us that God, excelling in goodness, primarily wills indeed to save all men and make them possessors of His kingdom: but as just, wills nevertheless that punishment also be inflicted on those who sin. But Augustine above others hands down this truth in many places, chiefly book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 33: God, he says, wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth: yet not so that He take from them free will, whereby using well or ill they may be judged most justly: which when it happens, infidels indeed act against the will of God, when they believe not His Gospel: yet do they not thereby conquer it: but defraud themselves of a great and supreme good, and involve themselves in present evils, about to experience in punishments the power of Him whose mercy in gifts they despised... He therefore shall be guilty unto damnation under His power who despised His mercy unto believing. Whoever however believed in Him, who despised not being absolved by Him from all sins, healed from all vices, kindled with His heat and light, and enlightened, shall have from His grace good works, whereby he may be redeemed also according to the body from the corruption of death, adorned, and satisfied with goods, not temporal but eternal. — To him St. Prosper sings in harmony most excellently, Reply 2 to the Objections of the Vincentians: Most sincerely, he says, must it be thought and professed that God wills all men to be saved, since the Apostle, from whom is this saying, diligently prescribes that it be guarded with piety in all Churches, that supplication be made to God for all men; whence that many perish is the merit of the perishing; that many are saved is the gift of Him who saves. Hence in Reply 8 to the Chapters of the Gauls, he says constantly: Who says that God does not will all men to be saved but a certain number of the predestined, speaks more harshly than must be spoken of the height of secr⟦illegible: opening of the obiection lost by the OCR; only this closing fragment of its line is legible⟧table grace of God, who also wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

I answer. Every divine will is fulfilled, for all things whatsoever the Lord willed He hath done in heaven and in earth, Psalm 134. And, who resisteth his will? Romans 9. Whence St. Augustine, book On Correction, chapter 11: To God willing to act no arbitrament of man resists; for so is willing and unwilling within the power of the willing or unwilling one that it neither impedes nor overcomes divine power. To whom St. Fulgentius accords: What He wills, he says, He always does insuperably: therefore since He wills all men to be saved, this surely is fulfilled in them which the immutable and impenetrable will of omnipotent God holds. The same the African Prelates exiled in Sardinia write in their Synodal Letter: Always the will of God is fulfilled, because His power is nowise conquered: He Himself is He who hath done all things whatsoever He would in heaven and in earth, in the sea and all abysses, and whose will no one resists: but not all men quite are saved: therefore it is a sign that God does not will the salvation of all men. — True, I say with Molina, that God wills something outside Himself in two ways: first, so efficaciously and powerfully that His intention is never hindered in effect; second less validly, yet still sufficiently, because the effect could follow were some condition not lacking. By the former will God wills the salvation of the elect: because, says the Apostle, 2 Timothy 2: The sure foundation of God standeth having this seal: namely the seal whereby the eternal Father ratified and fixed in His foreknowledge the salvation of sons and signed it; For the Lord knoweth who are his, and no one shall snatch them out of his hand. By the latter indeed He intends the salvation of all men generically, and that sincerely so far as from His side; but men themselves through their negligence or malice are defrauded of eternal salvation, because they themselves withstand the divine will; yet neither does the general divine will become so barren that from it innumerable graces always ready and opportune for procuring salvation are not born for whosoever possess them, would they but will to use them. But if perchance they should refuse to use them, nevertheless the human will the divine will will always overcome, destined to obtain a secondary end as often as it shall have been defrauded by our fault. For thus, says St. August. on Psalm 110, are the works of the Lord constituted, that the creature established in free choice overcome the will of its Creator. God wills not that you perish, for He forbids: yet if you sin, think not that man has done what He willed, and that there befell God what He willed not: for as He wills that man sin not, so He wills to spare the sinner, that he return and live: thus finally He wills, though not primarily, to punish him persevering in sin, lest contumacy escape the power of justice. Thus whatever you choose, omnipotence shall not lack wherewith to complete its will concerning you. Therefore either God efficaciously and determinately intends the salvation of the elect, and then nowhere is He frustrated of it; or He intends disjointly the salvation of all, or certainly punishment if they refuse to be saved: which punishment the sinner never shall escape: and thus it comes about that the divine will is fulfilled one way or the other always.

I answer 2. A conditioned will to be equivalent to an absolute will when the positing of the condition depends on the will: but the very condition on which the salvation of men depends, namely if they themselves will, no less depends on the will of God than salvation itself; for it cannot be supplied by human will unless it be supplied by the divine will, since man can neither will nor work unless God give this, He Himself being He who works in us both to will and to accomplish; therefore the conditioned will of saving all is equivalent to the absolute: but there is no absolute will in God of saving all: therefore neither an antecedent and conditioned will.

I distinguish the minor: the condition on which salvation depends depends on the will of God — altogether, I deny: partly, I concede. For although man cannot be saved unless God willing prepares the will of man, nevertheless He does not prepare it so in all things that He desires not also the consent of man, as St. Augustine teaches most excellently, book On the Grace of Christ and Free Will, chapter 11: He Himself, he says, that we will, works when beginning, who cooperates with the willing when perfecting. That we therefore will, He works without us; but when we will, and so will as to do, He cooperates with us: yet that without Him willing or operating we will, or operating with us when we will, toward good works of piety we avail nothing. — To him St. Prosper elegantly subscribes, book 2 On the Vocation of the Gentiles, chapter 9: His own willing unto obedience He so bestows that He takes away not even from those who will persevere that mutability which can will otherwise. Otherwise no believer would ever have fallen away from faith, concupiscence would overcome no one, sadness would crush no one, anger would vanquish no one, the charity of none would grow cold, the patience of none would be broken, and no one would neglect the grace bestowed on him; but because these things can happen, and into consent to such temptations the descent is too easy and prone, never ought that voice of the Lord cease to sound in the ears of the faithful: watch ye, and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. Finally he concludes thus: therefore as they who believed are helped that they remain in faith; so they also who believe not yet are helped that they believe. And as those hold it in their power to go out, so these hold it in their power to return: and it becomes manifest that by diverse and innumerable ways God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth: but they who come are directed by the help of God; they who come not resist by their own pertinacity.

I answer 3. That God is judged to will the salvation of all men in that mode whereby St. Augustine explains that will: but that most holy Doctor explains the will so that he uses the particle all, not collectively but distributively; such that that divine will is ordered not to all men quite one by one but only to some of them. First indeed he interprets that divine will of saving all men by a fitting distribution, book On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 8: As, he says, we speak integrally when concerning some teacher of letters, who alone is in a city, we say, this man teaches all letters: not because all learn, but because no one learns letters there except from him: so we say rightly: God teaches all to come to Christ: not because all come, but because no one comes otherwise. Second he takes this saying incompletely; or, as they speak, not for the individuals of genera but for the genera of individuals, because clearly out of every genus of men, age, sex, condition, the predestined are elected. So book On Correction and Grace, chapter 11: What is written, he says, He wills all men to be saved, yet not all are saved, can be understood in many ways: but here I shall say one thing, that it was said so that all the predestinated be understood, because every genus of men is therein. Third he says God is said to will all men to be saved because He makes all who are saved will to be saved: in which sense, book On Correction and Grace, chapter 15, he interprets that saying of the Apostle to the Galatians, chapter 4: God sent the Spirit of his Son crying: Abba Father, that is, making us cry. If therefore, he says, Scripture rightly calls the spirit crying, by which it is brought about that we cry, rightly also God willing, by whom it is brought about that we will. From these the adversaries infer that God does not intend the salvation of individual men. — True, I deny this inference; for in these places, examples, negation of the divine will toward all cannot be inferred, but negation only of execution and effect; therefore those expositions are to be referred only to the absolute and consequent will; which indeed appears plainly from the very manner of speaking familiar to that most holy Doctor; for everywhere he asks not so much why God or mediator labors to free those who perish, as why He frees not in fact, redeems not, saves not: in which sense the Apostle said to the Galatians miserably perishing, chapter 5: Christ will profit you nothing: you are evacuated from Christ, that is, St. Augustine expounding the place, Christ cut Himself off from you as from a possession He held: because evidently through your defect His death shall profit you nothing.

Third proof. From the death of Christ for all men. — Sufficient graces are prepared and furnished for those for whom Christ underwent death and offered His most precious blood in redemption to the divine Father: but He offered it for each and every man: therefore He prepares and confers sufficient grace on each. All admit the major. The minor truly is proved. 1. From that of Cor. 5: If one died for all: therefore all are dead: which inference of the Apostle can be understood threefold: First, that it be inferred that all are dead by the death of sin in Adam. Second, that all are dead to the old life. Third, that everyone ought to reckon himself as dead to himself. But in whatever sense this consequence be understood, it presupposes what is conceded in the antecedent, that Christ died for all men altogether. For if Christ died only for some, how is thence gathered that all are dead by Adam's sin, that all ought to die to the old life, that each ought to reckon himself as dead to himself? The same truth is gathered from that of 1 John 2, where of the Lord Christ it is said that He is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.

Where by the name of the whole world He signifies not only the Elect out of the whole world but also the reprobate, as the Council of Trent interprets, Session 6, chapter 3, wherein from that passage of St. John which it cited at the end of the preceding chapter it infers thus: And although He died for all, yet not all receive the benefit of His death, but only those to whom the merit of His passion is communicated. In which words the Council teaches that Christ died even for those who received not the benefit of His death.

It is proved 2. The same major by the authority of the holy Fathers, 1st indeed of those who preceded St. Augustine, who with unanimous consent ⟦illegible: closing lines of the page are lost in the OCR; the page ends on a hyphen-split word whose second half is "culo" at the head of p290, evidently printed "se-/culo"⟧seculum teach that Christ died for all. Thus Nazianzen, Oration 20: All, he says, without exception have we been renewed by the heavenly Adam, of whom we were partakers of the first Adam, snatched from the serpent, and dead to sin. Chrysostom, Homily on chapter 2 of the Epistle to the Hebrews: That the grace of God, he says, might justify death for all, not for the faithful alone: but for the whole world: for He Himself died for all. Epiphanius, heresy 80: For the whole world indeed He offered Himself victim, Himself sacrifice, Himself priest, Himself altar, Himself God, Himself man, Himself king, Himself Pontiff, Himself lamb; He became all things in us for us, that life might be wrought for us in every way. Ambrose, Sermon on Psalm 118: That mystic sun of justice arose for all, shone for all, suffered for all, and rose again for all.

It is proved. 3. By the authority of St. Augustine himself, who confirms this truth with very many monuments: First indeed in all those places where he says Christ poured out blood for each and every man whom He will judge at the end of the world. Thus on Psalm 95: He shall judge the orb of the earth in equity: not a part; because He bought not a part: He holds to judge the whole: because He gave the price for the whole. Shortly after he explains what by the name of the orb of the earth he understands, saying: He who judgeth the orb of the earth in equity, and the peoples in His truth: what is equity, and truth? He will call together with Himself His elect unto judging: but the rest He shall separate one from another: for He will set some at the right hand, others at the left, etc. Therefore by the name of the orb of the earth he understands all those who in judgment shall be placed both at the right and at the left hand, that is, all the elect and reprobate: accordingly since he asserts Christ will judge the whole orb because He bought the whole, he expressly signifies Christ will judge all elect and reprobate, because He expended blood upon elect and reprobate alike. Which truth surely he confirms and explains most excellently Sermon 67 On Time, where he introduces Christ so compelling sinners on the last day of judgment:

Ego te, o homo, de limo manibus meis feci, ego terrenis artubus infundere spiritum.... cum expulsus de Paradiso, iure peccati, mortis vinculis tenereris, virginalem uterum, sine dispendio virginitatis pariendus introivi, in praesepe expositus et pannis obvolutus iacui, instantiae contumelias, humanosque dolores, quibus tibi similis fierem, ad hoc scilicet, ut te mihi similem facerem, pertuli; irridentium palmas, et sputa suscepi, acetum cum felle bibi: Flagellis caesus, vepribus coronatus, crucifixus, vulnere perforatus, ut tu eripereris, morti animam in tormentis dimisi. En clavorum vestigia, quibus affixus pependi, en perfossum vulneribus latus. Suscepi dolores tuos, ut tibi gloriam darem; suscepi mortem tuam, ut in aeternum viveres: conditus iacui in sepulchro, ut tu regnares in caelo; cur quod pro te pertuli perdidisti? cur ingrate redemptionis tuae munera renuisti? non te ego de morte mea quaero, redde mihi vitam tuam, pro qua meam dedi.... Cur me graviore criminum tuorum cruce, quam illa in qua quondam pependeram afflixisti? Gravior enim apud me peccatorum tuorum crux est, in qua invitus pendeo, quam illa in qua tui misertus mortem tuam occisurus ascendi: cum essem impassibilis, pro te pati dignatus sum. Sed tu despexisti in homine Deum, in infirmo salutem, in via reditum, in iudice veniam, in cruce vitam, in suppliciis medicinam. Haec. Doctor. — Confirmatur. 2. Hamdem veritatem sanctus ille Doctor iis omnibus testimoniis, quibus clare affirmat Christum pro omnibus sanguinem fudisse, quos Adami culpa infecit. Sic lib. 20 De Civit. Dei, c. 6. ait: Apostolus inquit: Ergo omnes mortui sunt, quod pro omnibus mortuus est unus: ut qui vivunt, iam non sibi vivant, sed ei qui pro ipsis mortuus est, et resurrexit: omnes itaque mortui sunt in peccatis, nemine prorsus excepto: sive in originalibus, sive etiam voluntate additis: sive ignorando, sive sciendo, nec faciendo quod iustum est: et pro omnibus mortuis unus mortuus est, idest nullum omnino habens peccatum.

As if he said: for all those who were dead, whether by original or by actual sin, Christ died; but there is no man whatsoever who was not dead through sin, whether original or actual: therefore Christ died for all men absolutely without exception.

Most elegantly and in a novel manner he establishes this same truth, lib. 2 Operis Imperfecti, c. 17. where, when Julian had said, in order to elude certain testimonies of the Apostle: Innumerable testimonies of Scripture almost beyond number attest that He died for many rather than for all; St. Augustine answers:

Hinc te exue si potes, quod unus pro omnibus mortuus est, et aude dicere non omnes esse mortuos, pro quibus mortuus est Christus: cum statim tibi Apostolus fauces premat, et opprimat ad audacissimam vocem quae sequeretur ostendens, et dicens: ergo omnes mortui sunt. Noli sic laudare Apostolum, noli expunere ut non vis audire: si unus pro omnibus mortuus est: ergo omnes mortui sunt, in hos omnes qui mortui sunt: cum peccato mors pertransiit, per illum in quo omnes moriuntur: ubi sunt et parvuli, quia pro ipsis Christus mortuus est, qui propterea omnibus mortuus est, quia omnes mortui sunt.

By which he openly signifies that this word, all, must be understood in exactly the same manner when the Apostle says that Christ died for all, as when he says that all are dead. — It is confirmed. 3. From all the passages in which he teaches that many are in fact damned, for whose redemption Christ died: thus in Psalm. 38. he teaches that Christ wished also to redeem Judas the traitor, and that he shed his blood so as to bestow eternal salvation upon him:

Christus patitur, inquit, et punitur, per quem passus est. Nam Iudas traditor punitus est, et Christus crucifixus est: sed nos redemit sanguine suo, et punivit illum de pretio suo: proiecit enim pretium argenti, quo ab illo Dominus redemptus erat: nos agnovit pretium, quo ipse a Domino redemptus erat.

To him subscribes St. Fulgentius, lib. 2 De Redempt. pecc., c. 7. where he says:

Miserrimus Iudas, qui cum male crimen traditionis admiserit, peius illius criminis poenitentiam gessit: quia penitus indulgentiam non quaesivit: ne sic illa gravis culpae poenitentia deterior est inventa, quam culpa. Illud etenim Dominicae traditionis peccatum habuit posterius tempus, quo posset absolvi: illum non punit sententia, quae non conversionem habuit, sed desperationem. Ideo poenitentem non adiuvit, sed peremit: quia sibi conversionis tempus incisione abstulit, et indulgentiam desperatione substraxit: tantum valet opportunitas concessi temporis ad indulgentiam peccatorum.

Hence you see that Christ was most ready to grant pardon, had the traitor not withdrawn it from himself by anticipating in death that later time in which his sin could have been absolved. — The same truth John Malderus, Bishop of Antwerp, confirms in Antisynodo, c. 7. with this invincible argumentation, whereby he attacks the Calvinians insofar as they establish that Christ died for the elect alone: no elect person perishes: someone for whom Christ died has perished: therefore someone for whom Christ died is not elect. He proves the minor from that testimony of the Apostle 1. Corinth. 8. In your opinion the infirm brother will perish, for whom Christ died. And also from that ad Rom. 11. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died.

Finally it is proved that Christ died for each individual man from the common doctrine of the disciples of St. Augustine. First of all St. Prosper declares this matter expressly in praefatione ad obiectiones Vincentianas, where he most clearly demonstrates that the Massilian Priests, who complained that St. August. had taught that Christ did not die for all and each individual man, he proves to calumniate them, and with a prodigious lie to attribute to so great a Doctor an impious, profane, and blasphemous opinion; for there he says that the enemies of Aug. had collected prodigious lies of certain most foolish blasphemies, in order to persuade men that such things are taught by him as are contained in a diabolical indictment; which opinions also he calls impious, profane, blasphemies: then, enumerating those opinions, he assigns the first place to this one, that our Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer for the salvation and redemption of all men: hence there in the same place he himself opens his judgment, writing in response to the first objection, As regards, he says, the magnitude and power of the price, and as regards the fact that it pertains to one cause of the human race, the blood of Christ is the redemption of the whole world. but those who pass through this age without the faith of Christ, and without the sacrament of regeneration, are aliens from the redemption. Since therefore on account of the one nature of all, and the one cause of all received in truth by our Lord, all may rightly be said to be redeemed, yet lest all should be plucked from captivity, the property of redemption doubtless belongs to those of whom the prince of this world has been cast out. And with some words interposed: For the chalice of immortality, which is compounded of our infirmity and the divine power, has indeed this quality, that it may profit all: but if it be not drunk, it does not heal. He employs a most similar answer when he dissolves the chapters of the Gauls; for then he sets down this, as it were, argument: The Savior was crucified for all of us. Then he subjoins: Since therefore it is most rightly said that the Savior was crucified for the redemption of the whole world, on account of the certain assumption of human nature, and on account of the common perdition of all in the first man: nevertheless it can be said that he was crucified for those only upon whom his death conferred benefit.

And that he might show more clearly that Christ died for the reprobate themselves also, Their lot, he says, is different from that of these, because we are reckoned among those of whom it is said, The world knew him not. And according to this it could be said: The Redeemer of the world gave his blood for the world, and the world would not have him, nay the darkness did not receive the light. That he might explain by these words how Christ so pleaded the cause of men on the cross that none was passed over by him, he adduces two grounds, under which Christ comprehended all and each individual in his oblation, with none at all excepted. The first is, the human nature which he assumed. The second, the original corruption of the same nature, which flows from the sin of Adam; for since he destined his blood both for human nature and for its original offense, and since there is no one who is not a partaker of that nature and offense, so neither can there be any one on whose account he did not undergo death. — St. Leo, whose Notary Prosper is said to have been, adduces things most similar in Sermon 1. On the Nativity of the Lord: Our Lord, he says, the destroyer of sin and death, just as he found no one free from guilt, so he vouchsafed to rise for the deliverance of all. And Serm. 11. On the Passion of the Lord: The Lord having died for all the impious, he says, even Judas could have obtained remedy in him, had he not hastened to the halter. — St. Salvianus, lib. 2. To the Church: the universe owes him, thus the whole, so each individual. — St. Caesarius of Arles, Homily 27. opening why Christ in the judgment is going to show to the reprobate the wounds received on their behalf, says: What if you ask how he shall come? Surely in that body which was assumed for our salvation, born for our absolution, and for the healing of our wounds pierced with lance and nails. For unbearable to the guilty will be the first sentence recalling the scars then present: what therefore shall we do at that time, when against us shall be brought forward the bruises of the crucified Lord, the marks of our sins, and the stains of our lust? or with what worship, do you think, will our Redemption regard our perdition? So much the graver will human offenses be, by how much greater the divine benefits shall have shown themselves. Similar things are found in Beda in cap. 21 Lucae, and Laurentius Iustinianus lib. cit. cap. 4.

You will object. Christ the Lord died for the predestined alone: therefore not for all and every individual man.

Proof of the antecedent: first from Scripture. Thus Ioann. 10. I lay down my soul for my sheep. And cap. 17. I ask not for the world, but for those whom you have given me. There St. August. He wishes this, he says, to be understood in this manner, by those who are not in that lot of grace as to be chosen by him out of the world. Therefore not for these, but for those whom the Father gave him, he says he asks. Hence Epist. 102. recounting these words of Christ the Lord Ioan. 27. Those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them has perished, he says: Not one of those for whom Christ died has perished: therefore, etc. — I answer, that just as there is a twofold kind of intention in God concerning human salvation, one general, which is often deprived of what is intended or of its effect; the other special, which is never impeded or unfruitful: so in the Son of God, written with unwavering stability in the memorial of his Father, as St. August. says, lib. De Correptione et Gratia, c. 9. there is a twofold intention of the Mediator: one general, which can be defrauded of its effect, of which the Apostle spoke ad Galatas, saying: You are made void of Christ, that is, you are made void of his merits, dead indeed for you, but uselessly on account of your sloth and inconstancy: the other truly special, which pertains to the Predestinate, and to those who apply to themselves the merit of the Passion of Christ by their faithful obedience. Both intentions of the Mediator St. Prosper thus explains ad obiectionem nonam Gallorum: Although it is most rightly said that the Savior was crucified for the redemption of the whole world, yet it can be said that he was crucified for those only whose benefit his death itself was. In exactly the same sense speaks St. August. exposition in Psalmum 87. expounding these words: All the day long I have stretched forth my hands: where he says: His good works profited the predestined alone to eternal salvation, but not all men. The testimonies placed in the objection must be understood of the latter intention of the Mediator; not however of the former, of which we are speaking.

You will object. 2. That passage Ioan. 11. I knew that you always hear me. From which you argue thus: Christ is always heard by the Father for those for whom he prays: yet he is not heard for the salvation of the reprobate: therefore for them he neither prays nor dies. — I distinguish the major: Christ is always heard in those things which he asks of the Father efficaciously and absolutely, I concede: in those which he asks only conditionally, I deny; for, as St. Thomas excellently says in cap. 17. Ioan. Christ, as far as lies in himself, prayed for all, because his prayer, as far as lies in itself, is efficacious, so as to avail for the whole world; yet he does not obtain effect in all, except in the saints and elect of God: and this on account of the impediment of worldly men.

You will urge. From St. August. lib. 21. De Civit. Dei, c. 27. If the Church were certain about some persons that they are predestined to the eternal fire prepared for the devil, she would no more pray for them than for the devil himself: yet Christ knows the reprobate are predestined to eternal fire: therefore he did not pray for them. — I answer first, that St. Augustine does not assert this so ⟦generaliter?⟧ universally, namely that if the Church knew who are predestined to go into eternal fire with the devil, she would no more pray for them than for the devil himself: for far different is his mind in that place: he is arguing against those who think that in the judgment of God all the guilty are to be spared on account of the prayers of the Saints. And he confutes this opinion from the fact that, it being admitted, there would be no reason why the Church should not pray even now for the devil and his Angels: that he may convince this to be absurd, he asserts that if the Church knew which of the living are predestined to go into eternal fire, she would not pray for them, by a prayer doubtless arising from an absolute will of salvation, although she could pray for their conversion to Christ while they are among the living. For just as God, the foreknowledge of the damnation of Lucifer being posited, willed, as far as lay in him, his salvation, and conferred upon him sufficient aids for obtaining it, so, says St. Bonaventura in 1. dist. 16. quaest. 1. If anyone knew certain persons to be foreknown, he ought, as far as in him lies, to will them to be saved, yet not with an absolute will. Therefore the Church, the reprobation of a man still living being known, can will his salvation, as far as in her lies, and from that will ask sufficient graces for him.

You will object. 3. St. Augustine, Epistola 107. where he says: We know, he says, that the grace of God is given for greater things, even for each single act: we know that it is not given to all men; we know that to those to whom it is given, it is given by the free mercy of God: we know that to those to whom it is not given, it is not given by the just judgment of God. And lib. On the merits and remission of sins, c. 19. he teaches that God sometimes does not bestow upon the just either certain knowledge, or victorious delight: Let us understand, he says, if we can, that God, who is good, therefore sometimes does not bestow even upon his Saints either a certain knowledge of each work of justice, or victorious delight, that they may know that not from themselves, but from him is the light whereby the darkness of their heart is illuminated. Similar things he has in several places. Therefore God denies grace to some. — Bellarmine answers, lib. On Grace and free will, c. 8. that St. Augustine is to be explained chiefly by the Epistle to Vitalis on Grace, wherein he discerns the faithful from the infidels, and the just from the impious, namely concerning the grace of faith, and also sanctifying grace. The truth of this answer is gathered first, from the fact that concerning that grace was the question between St. Augustine and Vitalis; for Vitalis thought, as St. Augustine relates at the beginning of the same Epistle, that to believe in God, to consent to the Gospel, is not the gift of God, but that this is of ourselves, that is, from our own will, which God himself has not wrought in our heart. This opinion St. August. expresses still more clearly at the end of the same Epistle: But you, if those things refuse to be heard concerning yourself ⟦audiri recusant?⟧, where is the beginning of faith, which is also the beginning of good, that is, of pious will? You do not wish it to be the gift of God, but contend that we have it from ourselves, that we may begin to believe: whereas God consents to give the other goods of religious life through his grace to those already asking, seeking, knocking from faith.

Secondly, because St. Augustine seems to intimate this in the preceding words, where he indicates that grace by which we are reborn in Christ: We know that those born carnally according to Adam contract the contagion of death surely in their first birth, nor are they delivered from the punishment of eternal death unless through grace we are reborn in Christ. Thirdly, because St. Aug. says this grace is properly called by this name in Apostolic doctrine. Epistola 95. This, he says, the Apostolic doctrine calls by that name the grace whereby we are saved, and justified from our own iniquity.

You will press further. This grace, namely of faith in Christ, is not necessary for each single act: but the grace which St. Augustine says is not given to all is the same which is said to be necessary for each single act: therefore, etc.

I answer. The same Bellarmine answers that justifying grace is necessary for each single act which are properly called acts, that is, for acts of justice. Nor does he depart altogether from the sense of Augustine, since St. Augustine suggests this lib. On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter From faith, he says, therefore the Apostle says man is justified not from works, because the first is given, that by which the others which are properly called works are asked, in which one lives justly. But if you wish St. Augustine there to treat of grace generically, which he denies is given to all, I shall answer that he says it is not given to all because it is not given to certain little ones: for he subjoins: How is it said that most will accept this grace⟦plerosque?⟧ if not those to whom it is not given rejected it by their own will, since God wills all to be saved, although it is not given to many little ones, and without it most die who have no contrary will, and sometimes it is not given by God unwilling to believing and hastening parents and ministers ⟦illegible: ministrisque credentibus… (faded print)⟧ when suddenly, before it is given, the child expires, for whom it was being hastened that he might receive it.⟦final clause uncertain⟧

You ask first. — Whether God also grants to infidels themselves sufficient grace, both for avoiding sins, and for promoting themselves from grave guilt to salvation.⟦reatis gravibus?⟧

I affirm: for here the influx of divine goodness and mercy toward absolutely all men, whoever have been, are, and will be, is plainly gathered⟦influxus?⟧, both from the general will of God, whereby he wills all men to be saved, and from that special oblation of the Lord Christ for the salvation of all and every individual man. And this moreover is perspicuously gathered from St. Augustine, when he says that all adults are therefore to be damned because they insolently repudiate the grace of the Redeemer offered to them: for what else does he signify, when he says lib. On Nature and Grace, chapter ⟦illegible: chapter number⟧ let not that be imputed to fault which he ignorantly knew not, but that which negligently he did not receive⟦whole clause very uncertain from faded print⟧... which you know not: nor that you gather not your wounded limbs, but despise him willing to heal you; are these sins of yours own? What, when he exclaims tract. 36. on John Christ came, but first to save, afterward to judge: judging unto punishments those who would not be saved: illuminating unto salvation those who by believing did not repudiate salvation? What finally, when he says lib. On catechizing the uninstructed, cap. 26. From which destruction, that is, everlasting punishments, merciful God willing to liberate men, if they be not enemies to themselves, and resist not the mercy of their Creator, sent his only-begotten Son? etc. By which he declares that God wills to liberate men if they resist not the mercy of their Creator; and thereupon bestows on them that grace whereby those who are damned could be snatched from everlasting punishments, unless they repudiated that divine benefaction. This Doctor was forestalled by his celestial Teacher Ambrose in Psal. 108. in these words: The mercy of the Lord is full the earth, where he says: That mystical Sun of justice has risen for all, come for all, suffered for all, and risen for all: and he suffered that he might take away the sin of the world: but if anyone believe not in Christ, by the general benefaction he defrauds himself: as if anyone, shutting the windows, should exclude the rays of the Sun, not therefore has the Sun failed to rise for all, but he defrauds himself of its warmth: but what belongs to the Sun keeps its own prerogative: what belongs to the imprudent excludes from himself the common grace of light. — To these subscribes most excellently and expressly holy Prosper, lib. 2. De vocatione Gentium, c. 31.

It has been labored, he says, as much as the Lord has helped, that not only in the last days, but also in all past ages it should be proved that the grace of God was present to all men, with providence indeed equal and goodness general, but in a manifold manner of operation and diverse measure: since whether hiddenly or manifestly, he himself is, as the Apostle says, Savior of all men, especially of the faithful: which sentence, of most subtle brevity and strongest force if it be considered with tranquil gaze, resolves this whole controversy which we are treating; for by saying who is Savior of all men, he confirmed that the goodness of God over universal men is general: but by adding especially of the faithful, he shows there to be a part of the human race which by the merit of divinely inspired faith is advanced by special benefactions to supreme and eternal salvation.

You will say. That grace whereby God calls infidels to himself is that very one which the Pelagians admitted, asserting that infidels are summoned to God through the ministries of creatures: therefore truly God does not lavish grace upon infidels. — I deny the major. For the Pelagians admitted only exterior grace of exhortation, law, and doctrine: It has been understood, says St. Prosper, Epistola ad Rufinum, and most healthfully perceived, that this only do they profess concerning grace: that something is the mistress of free will, and thus through exhortations, through law, through doctrine, through contemplation of creatures, through miracles, and terrors from without it is shown to its judgment. Moreover our assertion differs far from their madness; for although we do not refuse that God instills into infidels knowledge and fear of himself through the ministries of creatures, as St. Augustine teaches, lib. De natura et gratia, cap. 67. saying: He is present everywhere, who by many evils through creature serving him as Lord calls back the averted, teaches the believer, consoles the hoping, exhorts the loving, purifies, adjures, hears the beseeching: nevertheless that exterior grace of infidels is joined with an interior one, whereby their intellect is illumined, and their will excited and helped toward good; just as the grace whereby men believe in Christ, although it is always conferred through the external preaching of the Gospel, comprehends nevertheless the interior breathing of the Holy Spirit. This truth Orosius luculently declares in his Apologeticum on the liberty of the will, where he thus carps at Pelagius: Now this has ever been the faithful and undoubted judgment, that God minister his help, not only in his body, which is the Church, to which on account of the faith of believers he lavishes the special gifts of his grace, but also to all Nations in this world he supplies his longanimous and eternal clemency: not, as you assert with your disciple Caelestius, whose hidden nature of impious dogmas has already been confounded before the African Synod, in natural good alone, and in free will generally one grace contributed to all, but specially, daily, through seasons, through days, through moments, through instants, to all and each individually he ministers. Lest anyone however gather from this that grace is conferred in each single moment, a little later he explains his mind, and teaches that this must be understood of those moments in which we are urged by the temptation of the demon, or by domestic corruption of the flesh to sin. Most evidently, he says, it has been declared that the aid of God fails no man, especially since the seducer presses, and infirmity inheres: that is, impotence of executing the commandment proceeding from the infirmity of the flesh.

You will say. The Semipelagians admitted that sufficient grace is poured out upon all, and accordingly that infidels can by its benefit come to faith: for thus St. Prosper, in Epist. to St. Augustine concerning them says: The propitiation which is in the sacrament of the blood of Christ is proposed to all men without exception: so that whoever wish to come to faith, and to baptism, can be saved: therefore our assertion savors of the error of the Semipelagians. — I deny the consequence. For the Semipelagians taught that any man whatever can by the forces of nature, and without the interior aid of the Holy Spirit, seek, knock, believe; and merit grace by these works of nature, as St. Prosper teaches in the same Epistola: They cultivate, he says, that prior is the obedience of those obeying than grace, so that it must be believed that the beginning of salvation stands from him who is saved, not from him who saves: and that the will of man gives birth to aid for divine grace for itself. It is manifest therefore that we differ far from their heresies: inasmuch as we affirm that not even the least movement of will aspiring to faith and salvation can come to pass without interior and supernatural grace.

You will say. Faith is the first grace: but infidels do not have faith: therefore neither that grace. — I answer, that a twofold faith is distinguished; namely one whereby one believes in God in whatever manner, that is, in some way, whether insofar as known through creatures, yet not without some supernatural light, such as was the faith in Cornelius, before he was incorporated into the Church by participation of the sacraments: another whereby men become faithful, and by which they are truly incorporated into the body of the Church. Concerning the former St. Augustine is consulted, lib. 1. ad Simplicianum, q. 2. *Man begins to receive grace from the moment he begins to believe in God, moved to faith either by internal or external admonition: but it matters by what articles of times, or by celebration of sacraments a fuller and more evident grace be infused: for catechumens do believe, or truly

Cornelius did not fail to believe in God when by alms and prayers he showed himself worthy to whom an Angel was sent: but in no way would he have done these things unless he had first believed: nor in any way would he have believed unless he were called either by secret admonitions through visions of mind or spirit, or more manifest ones through the senses of the body. But in some there is so great a grace of faith as does not suffice for obtaining the kingdom of heaven, as in catechumens, as in Cornelius himself before he was incorporated into the Church by participation of the sacraments. Concerning the latter faith speaks the same holy Doctor in the same place, saying: In some there is so great a grace of faith that they are already assigned to the body of Christ, and to the holy temple of God. The former faith is offered to all having the use of reason, according to that Ioann. 1. He enlightens every man coming into this world: the latter however is proper to the faithful alone. Hence St. Augustine, cap. 9. De praedestinatione Sanctorum: Faith therefore, both begun and perfect, is a gift of God: and that this gift is given to some, not given to others, let him not at all doubt who does not wish to conflict with most manifest sacred letters.

You will insist from St. Augustine, lib. De praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 9. Even faith begun is not given to all: therefore not all have sufficient aid unto salvation. — I distinguish the antecedent: faith begun insofar as it signifies faith in Christ beginning through the preaching of the Gospel is not given to all, I concede: insofar as it signifies ⟦illegible: faded passage; OCR preserves only the fragment "…rius…", where roughly one printed line is lost — the sense resumes below with the reply citing S. Augustine⟧ …rius… fourth Epistle he had written against Porphyry; where treating of the time of the rise of the Christian religion, and resolving why God so long delayed the advent of Christ, he says: What then is wonderful if Christ knew the whole world so full of infidels in prior ages that he would not deign to appear to them, or to be preached; since he foresaw they would not believe his words, nor his miracles? For neither is it incredible that all then were such as we wonder that so many have been and are from his advent even to this time, and yet from the beginning of the human race sometimes more hiddenly, sometimes more evidently, as seemed congruent to the times divinely, neither did he cease to prophesy, nor were those wanting who would believe in him: and from Adam even to Moses, and in the people of Israel itself, by a certain special mystery there was a prophetic race; and in other Nations before he had come in the flesh. Thus the holy Doctor.

You will press further: God denies the aid of faith, whether begun or perfect, to those whom he forbids the Gospel to be preached: but to some nations God forbade the Gospel to be preached: for we read Acts 16. that Paul and Timothy were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word of God in Asia, and when they attempted to go to preach in Bithynia, the Spirit of Jesus permitted them not: therefore the grace of faith is denied to some. — I distinguish the minor: the grace of Evangelical preaching is denied to some on account of foreseen abuse, and on account of their sins, I concede: grace in any manner manifesting God, and inducing to his worship is denied to some: I deny.

You will say. The Apostle says Acts 11.: In past generations he suffered all nations to walk in their own ways: therefore he did not minister to them sufficient aids whereby they might recover themselves to the true path of virtue and salvation. — I deny the consequence; for, as St. Prosper says most excellently, lib. 2. De Vocat. Gentium, cap. 1. For indeed in past ages this same grace, which after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ has been diffused everywhere, and of which it is written: your lightnings have illumined the world, was wanting to the world; although with special care and indulgence of God the Israelitic people had been chosen: and all other nations were permitted to walk in their own ways, that is, to live according to their own will: nevertheless the eternal goodness of the Creator did not so turn itself away from those men as to admonish them by no signs to know and fear him. And that he may show in what sense the Gentiles are said to be forsaken by God, he subjoins: Who indeed although in comparison with the elect, that is, the Jews, they seem rejected: yet never were they disinherited by manifest and hidden benefactions.

You will insist: The same Apostle says: How shall they invoke him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher? Yet to very many nations the Gospel has not been preached: and accordingly there has not been furnished to them a sufficient means unto salvation. — I deny the consequence: For the Apostle there answering his own objection says: Their sound has gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world; which surely is understood either of the Apostles and Evangelical preachers, who everywhere preached Christ ⟦illegible: one faded word or two before "Domino mandatum" (likely something like "praedicaverunt iuxta")⟧ the commandment of the Lord: You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the last of the earth: or those words are understood of the very harmony of the heavens, and the most ordered disposition of all creatures, whereby easily the Creator of all can be known: For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the Creator of them may be seen knowably, says the Wise Man, cap. 13. For the invisible things of God, by those things which have been made, being understood, are seen; also his everlasting power and divinity, says the Apostle Rom. 1. so that those nations, which have not the law, namely the Mosaic or Evangelical, are inexcusable... because when they had known God, they did not glorify him as God. Hence Trismegistus in his dialogues says this world is a most splendid mirror in which the author of nature is discerned. And Dionysius to Titus calls the world of divine things, which are not seen, an integument. And Basil Homil. in Exameron says it is the book in which God is read. And Athanasius in his oration against idols says it is a musical instrument whence the sweet concord of divine knowledge is uttered: that it is the painting which proves its Author: all which the Apostle confirms Rom. 10. saying: There is no distinction of Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is rich unto all who call upon him. Where by ⟦illegible: "firaerum"; sense requires a term for the non-Iewish nations (perhaps "Graecos")⟧ the Apostle understands the other nations distinct from the Jews, to whom God bestowed the most sufficient means unto salvation. Hence St. Prosper, lib. On the Vocation of the Gentiles, cap. 15. There has ever been applied to all men, he says, a certain measure of supernal doctrine, which although it was of a more sparing and more hidden grace, as though before they knew it not, we call into the fellowship of the sons of God to be adopted: So also now in the farthest parts of the world there are certain nations upon which the grace of the Savior has not yet shone: we do not doubt that even concerning these the time of vocation is disposed by the hidden judgment of God, wherein they shall hear and receive the Gospel which they have not yet seen: nevertheless that general measure of aid which from above is afforded to all men is not denied to them.

You ask: Whether infidels, by those general aids which accrue to them for knowing God, and keeping his commandments known by natural light, can be prepared unto the faith of Christ? — I answer, that this seems more probable: partly because Cornelius Acts 10. by prayer and alms obtained this, that God should direct an Angel to him, who should admonish him that Peter must be summoned, that he might be instructed in the faith of Christ and baptized: partly because the Holy Fathers and Theologians teach this, for St. Basil in the briefer rules, interrogation 124. says: If it happen that some be like Corneliuses, who are occupied in nothing evil, and desirous of perfection, if with true knowledge and sincerity they exercise those good things whatsoever placed within their power, without doubt God will lavish upon them those things which also upon Cornelius. Wherefore St. Thomas, quaest. 14. On Truth, art. 11. to the first: If, he says, anyone be nurtured in the forests, where he hears nothing of the faith, nor can know it, yet following the dictate of natural reason with appetite of good and flight of evil, most certainly it must be believed that God would either inspire in them by internal inspiration those things necessary to be believed; or send a preacher of the faith, as to Cornelius the Centurion. Finally, because it pertains to divine providence to provide for each one the things necessary for salvation, provided no impediment arise on the part of the receiver.

You ask secondly — Whether God has provided sufficient remedies for salvation for all infants?

To be observed before satisfaction be made to the question, that here I institute discourse concerning little ones dying after received sacred baptism, for no one doubts that this sacrament is for them the most sufficient remedy of attaining salvation; but we treat only of those little ones who depart from this life before they be baptized; who indeed are in a twofold difference: for some die in the wombs of mothers, and that either through the carelessness of parents, or by mere chance, and the sole force of nature: others truly die after they have been born, and before they arrive at years of discretion.

Moreover a distinction must be made between the little ones of infidels and of the faithful; for for the little ones of infidels dying, whether in the wombs of mothers, or under the dominion of parents, baptism can by no human diligence whatsoever be applied. But whether certain remedies can be applied to the little ones of the faithful thus departing is controverted among some Theologians: for some judge it not improbable that God succor extraordinarily the little ones of the faithful dying in the wombs of mothers on account of the singular piety of parents, and their assiduous prayers and continual vows, wherewith they entreat God that the little ones be promoted to the grace of Baptism. So taught Gabriel in t. dist. 4. qu. 2. art. 3. and he adduces thereto the authority of Gerson exhorting parents to pray for their little ones, insofar as God sanctify those whom he foresaw not to be given the grace of baptism. Concerning little ones however dying after nativity taught Cajetan 3. par. qu. 68. art. 2. that where baptism cannot be applied by human diligence, another remedy supplies for them, namely the faith of parents applied to the little ones, whether by the sign of the cross, or invocation of the Holy Trinity, or in another manner. But St. Pius V supreme Pontiff commanded these articles, with many others, to be expunged as erroneous.

The present difficulty is not raised concerning those infants for whom Baptism could be procured through the ministry of men: for to that extent Christ can be said to have provided that baptism be applied to them, insofar as he instituted it for attaining salvation, and ordained ministers who should administer it, as St. Prosper teaches most excellently, lib. 2. On the Vocation of the Gentiles, cap. 17. I judge it not irreligious to be believed, he says, nor inconveniently understood, that these men of few days belong to that part of grace which is always bestowed upon all nations: whereby certainly if parents used it well, even they themselves would be helped through the same: for the beginnings of all little ones, and those whole beginnings of an age not yet rational, lie under the arbitrament of another's will, nor can counsel be given them in any manner except through others: and it follows that they belong to the fellowship of those whose affection, whether upright or perverse, they are governed: for just as from another's confession they believe, so from another's infidelity or dissimulation they believe not. And since they themselves have had neither desire of the present life, nor of the future, which it was their deed to be born, so it comes about that theirs it is not to be reborn: but as among adults, besides that general grace more sparingly and more hiddenly knocking at the hearts of all men, a special calling arises with more excellent operation, larger gift, more powerful virtue; so also concerning innumerable little ones the same election is manifested, which indeed failed not those parents whose children were not reborn, but was especially present with those parents whose children were reborn, so that often to many, whom the impiety of their own deserted, the care of strangers served, and they came unto regeneration through extraneous persons, which for them was not to be provided by proximates. These things St. Prosper, which being premised,

I answer first, that for little ones dying whether in the womb, or outside the womb, whether by chance, or by the negligence of parents, God prepared not only remedies sufficient for salvation, but also, as far as lies in himself, sufficiently provided that they be applied to them. First because God by antecedent will wills all men to be saved: therefore as far as from himself he sufficiently prepared the means necessary for salvation, and provided that they be applied to them: for he acting wisely who intends an end prepares sufficient means for attaining that end, and as far as from himself provides that they be applied. Then because a remedy is judged sufficient on the part of the provider when it has every kind of power of conferring the effect to which it is ordered: but the defect of application draws not itself from the part of the provider himself: but God insofar as he intends the salvation of all men instituted Baptism as the most sufficient medium for attaining it, and intends that remedy be applied to each individual; otherwise he would not sincerely will the salvation of all men: therefore, etc. Finally because a physician is judged, as far as lies in himself, to have sufficiently provided for the sick man concerning remedy and its application, who not only prepared the medicine, but committed it to ministers, that they carry it to the sick man and administer it themselves; although the sick man cannot take it, either because the ministers and ⟦illegible: "tamuli"?⟧ physicians are forbidden to approach the sick man, or because the sick man himself, being otherwise guilty of a capital crime, is demanded unto death by public lictors: therefore by similitude God, as far as lies in himself, must be said to have sufficiently provided concerning the remedy necessary for little ones unto salvation, since he instituted baptism for that end, and ordained ministers for applying it; although it sometimes happen that ministers are impeded, or the little one prohibited by natural causes, which in a certain manner serving the celestial King, exact from him the punishment of original crime.

I answer secondly, that although it sometimes happens that through human negligence the remedies instituted for salvation cannot be applied to little ones dying either in the womb or outside it, nevertheless this non-application is not reckoned as positively willed and ordered by God, but merely permitted. This assertion follows from what has gone before; for it implies that God sincerely wills the salvation of all, while at the same time positively intending and ordaining that necessary means should not be supplied to some. Add that the opposite opinion would afford parents an occasion of despair, carelessness, and negligence regarding those things which are necessary for the salvation of their little ones.

Finally, since God reprobates no one without foreknowledge of demerits, it does not appear why He should positively intend some little ones to remain in the mass of corruption and perdition rather than others: therefore it is more consonant with the divine will and providence to hold that God does indeed intend and sincerely will that convenient remedies unto salvation be applied to each little one, although, by the gentle ordination of His providence, He does not wish to hinder the course of natural causes, which He foresees are to be united unto the ruin and death of certain little ones before the remedy necessary unto salvation can be applied to them.

You will say: He is not reckoned to provide sufficiently for him whose care he has undertaken, who, when evil impends over him, does not drive it off while he can repel it: yet God can hinder those things by which little ones are prevented from coming to baptism, and nevertheless He does not hinder: therefore He is not reckoned to provide sufficiently for them. — I distinguish the major: if the provider be particular, and ordained only to the special good of one, I concede; if he be a general provider, respecting the common good, I deny. For since the care of the general provider extends to all things, he must so provide for individuals as not to cast aside care of the rest, nor disturb his own ordinance. Now God cannot hinder the causes by which death is procured for a child in his mother's womb, and before he arrives at baptism, without prejudice to their nature or activity, and without disturbing the order established by Himself, which assuredly He is not bound to prevent: For God is not constrained by fate to come to the aid of those infants, says St. Augustine in book De Bono Perseverantiae, chapter 12. But lest, because He does not aid them, when He is the common cause of both, we should think that human affairs in little ones are governed not by divine providence but by fortuitous chances, etc.

You will urge: St. Augustine says in the same place: And again, though the parents hasten and the ministers are ready, so that baptism may be given to the little one, yet, God not willing, it is not given, who held him but a little while in this life, that it might be given: therefore God does not will baptism to be applied to those little ones. It is confirmed from Epistle 107, in which, by the example of those little ones dying before receiving baptism, that holy Doctor proves that God does not will all men to be saved: How, he says, is it said that all men were to receive grace, if not those to whom it is not given refused it by their own will? Since God wills all men to be saved; whereas it is not given to many little ones, and without it most die, who have no contrary will, and sometimes while their parents are desirous and hastening, and the ministers also willing and ready, by God's willing it is not given, when suddenly, before it is given, he expires, for whom they were running that he might receive it. Whence it is manifest that those who resist this evident truth do not at all understand in what manner of speech it was said that God wills all men to be saved, since so many are not saved, not because of themselves, but because God does not will it, which is made manifest without any obscurity in little ones. — I answer. 1. That particle, God not willing, is not to be understood of the primary volition of God to damn some little ones without fault, but only of some permission, or of the volition of prohibiting the course of secondary causes; which indeed St. Augustine explains by the example of the sparrow not falling to the ground without the will of God, that is, unless God permits and knows its fall. Whence formally I distinguish the antecedent: baptism is not conferred upon these little ones, God unwilling to disturb the order, nor to prohibit the power of natural causes by preserving the life of the little one longer than the natural order requires, I concede; unwilling, the order of nature being preserved, that ministers concur to the application of baptism, I deny. — To the confirmation I say that St. Augustine speaks thus only to exclude grace according to merits: for he argues against Pelagius, repeating and refu…

You will insist. All things that are done in the world, except sin, God positively wills and ordains: but that lack of baptism with which little ones are afflicted is not sin: therefore God positively wills and ordains it. — I distinguish the major: God wills and ordains it either by primary and antecedent will, or only by secondary and consequent will. If the former, I concede; always by primary, I deny. Now God by primary and antecedent will does not will baptism to be denied to little ones, but only by consequent will: because indeed He wills natural causes to act by their own motions, nor does He will to prohibit their power.

You will press further. St. Augustine in the same chapter of De Bono Perseverantiae refers to the inscrutable judgment of God the reason why baptism is given to one little one rather than to another. — I answer: he says this only of those in whose favor the hidden providence so orders particular causes that they do not act by their own motion, nor prevent the little one from obtaining baptism, but certainly does not affirm this of all in general: hence in book De Gratia et libero arbitrio, chapter 22, he teaches most excellently:

Sometimes, he says, this grace is bestowed upon the children of unbelievers, when by the hidden providence of God they somehow come into the hands of the pious; and sometimes the children of the faithful do not obtain it, some impediment existing whereby help cannot be brought to them in peril: but these things come to pass by the hidden providence of God, whose judgments are inscrutable and His ways past finding out; which the Apostle having said, consider what he foretold, etc.

You will urge again: St. Augustine in Epistle 105 openly teaches that some little ones sometimes die before receiving baptism, not on account of the sin or negligence of their parents, but on account of the sole divine ordination, whereby He willed them to perish;

What shall I say, he says, of the unexpected and sudden deaths of innumerable infants, by which often even the children of religious Christians are anticipated, and deprived of baptism before it; whereas on the contrary, the children of the sacrilegious and enemies of Christ, coming somehow into the hands of Christians, depart from this life not without the sacrament of regeneration. … What merits, pray, went before here? If the merits of the same little ones are considered, they have none proper of their own, for that is the common mass of both: if you attend to the parents, good are those whose children perished by sudden deaths without the baptism of Christ: evil truly those whose children, through some power of Christians, arrived at the sacraments of the Church. And why did the providence of God, by which the hairs of our head are numbered, without whose will not a sparrow falls to the ground, which is neither pressed by fate, nor hindered by fortuitous chances, nor corrupted by any iniquity, bestow rebirth unto the heavenly inheritance not upon all the little ones of her children, but upon some of the impious? This infant, sprung from faithful spouses, received amid the joy of parents, suffocated by the drowsiness of mother or nurse, becomes an outcast and exile from the faith of his own. That infant is born of sacrilegious defilement, exposed through the cruel fear of his father, gathered up by the merciful pity of strangers, baptized by their Christian solicitude, becomes a sharer and partaker of the eternal kingdom. Let them think on these things, let them ponder these things; hence let them dare to call God either a respecter of persons in His grace, or a rewarder of preceding merits. Thus far St. Augustine.

He has things similar and no less excellent in book 6 against Julian, chapter 14, where he says:

Which is much more wonderful: He sometimes adopts into sonship whom He forms in the womb of a most unclean woman: and sometimes He does not will to be his father whom He forms in the womb of His own daughter. The former indeed reaches baptism by I know not what provision; the latter, overtaken by sudden death, does not reach it. And thus God, in whose power are all things, makes him whom He formed in the devil's dwelling to be in the fellowship of Christ; and does not will him whom He formed in His temple to be in His kingdom: or if He wills, why does He not do what He wills? Not even as you are wont to say of adults, God wills, and the little one wills not. ⟦illegible: Certi h… ubi tati⟧ there is no immobility, no rashness of fortune, no digni«ty of person; what remains but the profundity of mercy and truth?» — I answer: that St. Augustine by these words does not signify that God by positive will shuts out some little ones from the grace of baptism; but only by permissive will; namely, by not impeding the concurrence and activity of natural causes, on account of the general and gentle administration of His divine providence, whereby it comes to pass that little ones are extinguished before they arrive at the grace of baptism.

YOU ASK THIRDLY. — Whether God also confers aids sufficient unto salvation upon senseless and blinded and hardened sinners?

Note 1. Those sinners are called blinded and hardened who adhere to sins with so firm a mind, and are so averted from the divine light, that they neither recognize nor abhor their most wretched state, but rather take from it an occasion of persevering in sin. Hence obstinacy and blindness import two things: one on the side of the human will, namely the firm adherence itself to evil: the other on the side of divine justice, which is the very subtraction of grace; from which it follows that the mind is neither illumined to perceive the evil, nor is the heart touched to withstand it. There are therefore two causes of hardening and obstinacy in evil: the first is the perversity of man, whereby he rejects the divine graces offered to him: in which sense it is written Psalm 91: Today if you shall hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts. Hence the Apostle admonishes Hebrews 3: Take heed, brethren, lest perhaps there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, to depart from the living God: but exhort one another every day, while it is called today, that none of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. In which sense St. Fulgentius writes in book De fide, chapter 3: He is hardened, either he who is not converted, despairing of the pardon of his sins; or he who so hopes in the mercy of God as to remain unto the end of this present life in the pertinacity of his crimes. The second cause of hardening is the divine justice, which removes from the unworthy man those proximate aids by which he might be converted. Thus St. Augustine explains it in tractate 51 on the Gospel of John: Some, he says, did not believe and could not believe, because by the hidden, yet not unjust judgment of God they were blinded and hardened, He forsaking them who resists the proud and gives grace to the humble; and thus hardening on the part of God is nothing else than the subtraction of efficacious grace. Hence the same St. Augustine in Epistle 109: God does not harden, he says, by imparting malice, but by not imparting mercy.

Note 2. The question is not raised concerning sufficient operating aid; for no one doubts that God takes away from those who do not cooperate with the exciting grace the helping or cooperating aid. Nor is the discourse even concerning external sufficient aid, whatever it be, of natural order, which seems to us to be conceded by the benefit of creation: but chiefly the question concerns supernatural aid, both external, such as miracles, the preaching of the Gospel, etc., and internal, such as pious illustrations of the intellect and motions of the will. The difficulty therefore is whether God gives to any whatsoever most wicked, blinded, and hardened sinners always aids sufficient, both internal and external, of supernatural order, by which they can proximately do penance: or whether at least He supplies to them remotely sufficient graces for working conversion: about which difficulty to be resolved Theologians vary, some affirming, some denying. Nevertheless the opinion of those who uphold the affirmative part seems to me more probable. Therefore I answer, more probably to all men is given grace at least remotely sufficient, by which they can impetrate the grace necessary for repenting and recovering themselves. Which assertion is gathered first from Ezekiel 18, where God thus protests: I desire not the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live. Therefore toward any sinner whatsoever, as long as he is among the living, He intends not death, but conversion: but He would act otherwise if He supplied no aid to him for repenting: therefore, etc. Which indeed is confirmed from 2 Peter 3, where God is said to deal patiently with sinners, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Wherefore the Lateran Council under Innocent III decrees: If anyone after receiving baptism shall have relapsed into sin, he can always be restored through true penance.

The same assertion is proved by the authority of St. Augustine, who does not deny all manner of grace to those most desperate men who are commonly called blinded and hardened. First indeed that holy Doctor teaches that the blindness and hardening proper to this life is only imperfect, and differs greatly from that by which the damned are said to be utterly confirmed in evil. Thus in Psalm 6 after the middle he speaks thus:

He gave them up to a reprobate mind: for such is the blindness of mind: into it whoever has been given up is shut out from the interior light of God; but not yet wholly while he is in this life. For there are outer darknesses, which are understood to pertain more to the day of judgment, that whoever, while time is, would not consent to be corrected, may be wholly outside God: for what is it to be wholly outside God, but to be in the highest blindness?

Therefore he admits that the blinded, while they live here, are not wholly shut out from the interior light. ⟦gap in print/OCR: one or more lines lost between the preceding sentence and "dixisset"⟧ dixisset, since nothing is incurable for the Almighty physician, he thus addresses the hardened sinner:

But even though you refuse to cure your wound, He admonishes you that you be cured, and recalls you when averse, and in a certain manner compels and draws back to Himself him who flees: in all things He fulfills what is said: His mercy prevents me.

By which words He openly signifies that even the hardened themselves are prevented by the mercy of God, that they may ask the help of the omnipotent physician, with which they are admonished to implore it.

Which doctrine St. Prosper expressly defends, saying in book 1 De vocatime gentium, chapter 21: We believe that to no man was the help of grace wholly subtracted. Which he shows most clearly in book 2 chapter 13 in the very Cain, the standard-bearer of all the hardened: for where he expressed in most elegant words those interior voices with which the obstinate fratricide's heart was smitten, he adds:

When therefore God spoke such things to Cain, did God then not do so, and did He not act as much as sufficed, that that hardened man should recover himself?

This sentiment of the holy Doctor can also be strengthened by all those places in which he teaches that the blinded and hardened, at the very time when they sin from blindness and hardening, can cast aside both, namely by impetrating a more abundant grace, whereby the blindness and hardness of heart may be driven away. Thus in tractate 53 on John, explaining why the hardened Jews could not believe, he says: They could not believe, because Isaiah the Prophet foretold this: but this Prophet foretold it, because God foresaw that this would be: but why they could not, if it be asked of me, I quickly answer: because they would not. He judges therefore that the blinded Jews did not believe because they would not; and immediately indicates that they were endowed at least with the power of believing once removed. Which he affirms still more clearly in book De praedestinatione Sanctorum, chapter 9: It is easy, he says, that we accuse the infidelity of the Jews as coming from free will, who after such great virtues wrought among them would not believe.

Finally, that this was the mind of the most holy Doctor can be gathered from the sins of the hardened; for no one, as he inculcates repeatedly, sins in that which he cannot in any way avoid; seeing that God commands impossibilities to no man, and every sin proceeds from free will: but those things which the blinded and hardened commit against the laws of God are imputed to themselves as fault, as the holy Doctor himself proves in many places: for in Sermon 78 De tempore he refutes most sharply those who, when the treatment concerns the crimes committed by hardened Pharaoh, say within themselves: why is that iniquity imputed to Pharaoh? And in tractate 53 on John, disputing of the blinded Jews, he admonishes lest anyone dare to excuse the sin which the hardened have committed: nay moreover in book 5 against Julian, chapter 3, concerning the same blindness of the Jews he pronounces thus: That blindness was for the Jews a great evil of incredulity, and a great cause of sin, that they might kill Christ. Hence the author of the book De Praedestinatione et Gratia, chapter 15, among the works of the same holy Doctor, tom. 7, says the cause why Pharaoh perished was that with free will he fought against the most merciful truth of God: otherwise than Nebuchadnezzar, who yielded to the scourges of God and did penance.

As to nature, he says, both men were equal: as to dignity, both Kings: as to cause, both possessed captive(?) the people of God: as to punishment, both were admonished mercifully with scourges. What then made their ends different, except that the one, feeling the hand of God, groaned in the recollection of his own iniquity: the other with free will fought against the most merciful truth of God?

You will say: St. Augustine in the exposition of certain propositions taken from the Epistle to the Romans, which he censures and examines in book 1 of the Retractations, chapter 23, says that it was not imputed to Pharaoh that then, that is, when he was hardened, he did not obey: Because indeed, he says, with a hardened heart he could not obey: but because he made himself worthy that his heart should be hardened by prior infidelity: therefore Pharaoh had no aid by which he could obey; otherwise by not obeying he would have sinned. — I deny the consequence; for such was not the mind of the holy Doctor: for if he held that the sins of the hardened could not be imputed to them, nor be punished with eternal torments, there would follow in like manner with him the teaching that the good works of the elect are attributed to them in no way, nor can they be crowned with an eternal reward; for he subjoins: For thus in those whom God elects, faith, not works, begins merit, so that through the gift of God they may work well: so also in those whom He damns, infidelity and impiety begin the merit of punishment, so that through itself(?) he may pay the punishments. Therefore St. Augustine wills nothing else, when he says that Pharaoh's disobedience is not imputed to him, but only his prior infidelity, whereby he made himself worthy that his heart should be hardened, than that by a certain special kind of imputation the infidelity itself was more imputed, than the sins which proceeded from that hardening.

You will say 2: From 1 John 5 there is a sin unto death for which one ought not to pray: therefore there are certain sins which import a total desertion of God. — I distinguish the consequent: if by sin unto death be understood final impenitence, as St. Thomas interprets it, I concede; if any other sin whatsoever be understood, I deny; for there is no sin so great that it cannot be remitted in this life; and for which the grace of penance cannot justly be impetrated. To these add that those words of St. John are explicated differently by the holy Fathers: for St. Ambrose, book 1 De Paenitentia, chapter 8, understands by sin unto death the gravest sin in each genus, for whose pardon, he says, not just anyone but only a man of eminent sanctity ought to pray. But St. Jerome in dialogue 2 against Jovinian understands that prohibition of praying is not to be received simply and absolutely: but only in this sense, that whoever prays for a sin unto death ought to have such confidence and such certitude of obtaining pardon, as if he prayed for other sins which are not unto death. Which interpretation indeed seems to be the genuine mind of St. John, as is gathered from what precedes: for he had said: This is our confidence which we have towards God: because whatsoever we shall ask according to His will, He hears us. And a little after: He who knows his brother to sin a sin not unto death, let him ask, and life shall be given to him who sins not unto death. And immediately he subjoins: There is a sin unto death, etc. By which he signifies that with such confidence prayer is not to be made for that sin, because pardon is most difficultly granted. Finally St. Augustine, book De Correptione et Gratia, chapter 12, having brought forward those words of St. John, says: Concerning which sin, since it has not been expressed, many and diverse things may be thought: but I say that it is that sin whereby the faith which works through charity is deserted even unto death.

You will say 3: From Matthew 12, he who shall have spoken a word against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come: therefore to the man who has committed a sin of that kind no sufficient aid for repentance is afterwards given. — I distinguish the consequent in like manner: if by the word against the Holy Spirit be understood final impenitence, as St. Augustine explains, book 1 against Cresconius, chapter 8, I concede; if either blasphemy against the divinity, or sin from malice, as St. Basil explains in the shorter rules, response 253, and St. Chrysostom, Homily 12 on Matthew, I deny; for although these sins are most difficultly remitted, both on account of their enormity, and on account of the pertinacity and unworthiness of the sinner; nevertheless they are not absolutely irremissible. To these add, that the sin against the Holy Spirit is said to be that which is committed against the manifest works which are wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit. For Christ the Lord, when He cast out demons by the finger of God, that is, by the power of the Holy Spirit, which wonderful power indeed the Jews calumniating and blaspheming attributed to Beelzebub, therefore Christ the Lord, reproving their malice, said: if your sins were against the Son of man, certainly they would offer some occasion of excuse, forasmuch as my divinity lies hidden from you: but truly because they were sins committed against the manifest works wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit, hence it comes to pass that your sins have no motive of excuse annexed. Nevertheless He did not judge those to be wholly irremissible: since it is not improbable that some of the Jews who blasphemed against the Holy Spirit did penance, and were received unto the faith and grace of Christ.

You will say 4: St. Augustine, book De Correptione et Gratia, chapter 12, distinguishing the grace conferred upon the first man from that which is granted to his posterity, affirms that this is not given to some in punishment of sin; But now, he says, to whom such aid is lacking, it is already the punishment of sin: but if grace must be denied in punishment of some sin, especially on account of the sin of blindness and hardening: therefore according to the mind of St. Augustine grace is denied to hardened sinners. — I distinguish the major: St. Augustine teaches that the aid by which good can proximately be done, which was granted to the first parent, is denied to some, I concede; that by which that proximate aid can be impetrated, I deny. For, as St. Augustine teaches repeatedly, especially book 1 ad Simplicianum, question 1: It is left to free will in this mortal life, not that it may fulfill justice whenever it wills: but that with simple piety it may turn itself to God, by whose gift it may be able to fulfill it.

⟦heading?⟧ § II. — WHY NO DISCOURSE IS MADE HERE CONCERNING EFFICACIOUS GRACE.

Although all Catholics confess that there is some distinction between efficacious and sufficient grace, nevertheless they do not agree among themselves in assigning the distinction of each: for so varied is, and wholly(?) opposed, the opinion and conflict of Authors concerning asserting this truth, that scarcely anything certain can be defined in this matter; since upon both sides arise the heaviest waves of difficulties, which scarcely can human mind, however practiced and illumined, avoid. Nor indeed is this a wonder; for I judge that the harmony of efficacious grace with human liberty is so obscured and hidden from investigation, that it justly claims for itself the name and reason of a mystery utterly impassable for us who dwell in this vale of miseries. But since he who scrutinizes Majesty is oppressed by glory, lest we fall into Scylla desiring to avoid Charybdis, we have judged it a part of religion to refrain from inquiry of this kind: especially since it seems to have been retained by the supreme Pontiffs, Paul V in the year 1607(?), and Urban VIII in the year 1625, and again in the year 1641. Lest anyone, namely, without the special license of the supreme Pontiff, restore by sharper disputations those conflicts once calmed, published to light and committed to press, concerning the distinction of such divine aids.