De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

We have therefore completed the first book, with God's help, in which we disputed according to the narrowness of our ability concerning the threefold state of man. Namely, if he had been created in pure and naked nature, what offices he could perform by free will with the general influence of God, and where he would need special help. And if he had persisted in original justice, what he could do even by his own nature, and for what he would need grace. And finally, how far the natural faculty of fallen man suffices in good morals, and in what it fails. It follows immediately that we speak of the justification of the same man through Christ our Savior. For we have undertaken to set forth these four states of man in the present work. But since justification is one thing by which the unjust man, with his mind changed, is received into the grace of God: and another by which the just man is still justified by just works, in this second book we shall speak of the first: in the third, finally, of the other. Namely, that in this we may elucidate the causes, reasons, manner and order by which fallen man is justified: and in the third we may weigh the power and faculty of the justified man. Wherefore in the narration both are placed nearly in the apology of the sixth session of our holy Synod of Trent,¹ which is on justification. And although in the former books the incursions of the Lutherans were not lacking to us, with whom we had therefore frequently to contend, these nevertheless are the books in which greater contests with them must be undergone by us. For here the whole matter turns on that inextricable and most troublesome question, whether we are justified by faith alone: and nearly the whole third book on that, whether it is faith alone by which we fulfill the law. For that little word, faith alone,² has been so deeply thrust into their minds by I know not what angry god, that now the battle is fought over it not with words but with arms, the whole world being shaken. Wherefore, as we said in the vestibule of the work, we shall be occupied in this place principally with this, to narrate the manner in which FAITH WORKS THROUGH CHARITY. This meditation on justification³ is therefore divided into three members. Since we must consider works: first, those which precede justifying grace: then, those which come together in the very moment of justification: and finally, those which follow in the man already justified. For the Lutherans say that the preceding works are all evil: that the concurrent works have no efficacy for recovering grace: and that the subsequent works are of no merit for eternal life. Concerning the first kind we have spoken in the first book: concerning the third we shall speak in the last: and concerning the second in this middle book. But the preceding works are some merely natural, which are not done as proper dispositions for grace: concerning which it has been shown that they are not all sins, but some are morally good: but others are those by which we are prepared for the grace to be entered. And from these the present disputation must begin. Concerning them there is a threefold⁴ question to be examined. Namely, whether man can prepare himself for grace: whether indeed he can do this without the special help of God: and finally, whether works of this kind, which precede grace, are some merit of the same grace, at least of congruity. The first question has been defined among Catholics without controversy on the affirmative side, although whether he can do it naturally is not agreed among all. But it was Luther⁵ who, as we began to report in ch. 19, under I know not what pretext of extolling the grace of Christ, rejected all disposition and preparation in us. His words have already been brought forward by us in ch. 15 from his article 36. Where he says: Free will after sin is a thing of mere title: and while it does what is in itself, it sins mortally. And article 6: Contrition, he says, which is prepared by the discussion, collection and detestation of sins, by which one reconsiders his years in the bitterness of his soul, weighing the gravity, multitude and foulness of sins, the loss of eternal beatitude and the acquisition of eternal damnation: this contrition makes a hypocrite, nay rather a greater sinner. This is Luther. But from this position his family has never to this day yielded, but they abhor to hear the name of disposition or preparation: crying out in all their colloquies and apologies that from this the grace of Christ is shamefully diminished. But we have already in good part established this position in ch. 15, where we showed that we are freely moved by God while he works our salvation in us. And then in ch. 19, where we made clear that not all works outside grace are sins, nay rather that some can be done in a certain way good: wherefore the dispatch will now be shorter and easier. Especially because below there will be discourse in particular and in the individual about dispositions. The Catholic conclusion,⁶ therefore, contrary to the Lutheran, is that no one using the judgment of his own will is reconciled to God unless disposed and prepared by the motion of free will: as the holy Synod has just defined. The first reason for this⁷ shines forth to me from the nature of things. For faith (which must never cease to be inculcated against these men) does not reject the virtues which nature teaches, but perfects those which by themselves do not suffice. But no other right is more deeply implanted in the minds of mortals than that in reconciling friendships, penance for injuries is first necessary in him who inflicted them: so that in him who received them, forgetfulness may follow, by which hatred, torn up by the roots, may make room for love: therefore God, the perfecter of nature, requires the same preparation of mind from sinners. Except that he, the inspector of hearts, cannot be deceived by any outward feigned appearance of penance, unless there be true penance within the mind. Nor indeed is anything taken away from the grace and mercy of God by this: not only because the proximate disposition is made in us by prevenient God, as we shall say in the following chapter: but also because we do not so establish preparations of this kind that there is any true account of justice between us, while we are his enemies, and God, until by his mercy our works are accepted by him. Wherefore, without money, says the prophet, you shall be redeemed.⁸ And: Come, buy without money, and without any exchange, wine and milk. But you say,⁹ Christ has already died for us, paying the price of the sins of the whole world: what need is there of any disposition of ours? Namely, that as our works would have been of no value unless he had paid the price, so that precious blood washes no one except the one who assents and cooperates: except little children, who from the original fault, which they contracted by another's will, are washed without their own will by the sacrament. This we have supported in the cited chapter 15 of the previous book¹⁰ by several testimonies and reasons. Namely, that since we are men, and therefore free, we are moved by God according to our nature. For this reason no irrational creature is capable of the grace of God: because it is not fit to be led by reason. And therefore as he moves those creatures to their own ends naturally, according to their nature (wherefore it is neither praise to them to be moved, nor blame if they are not moved), so he draws us to himself, who is our end, freely according to our disposition: so that our assent and the cooperation of those obedient to him may be given to us for praise: but refusal for blame and reproach. These and other causes of this kind we have most copiously enriched in their place. But unless God were to open the assent and cooperation of our free will, why does he persist in knocking at the door of our heart?¹¹ Could he not break the iron bars of our breast? Could not he who made the sun out of nothing with that power to illuminate the air without its assent and nod, when the true light itself came, unless he awaited our spontaneous cooperating will, suddenly flood the whole human race with his grace? Surely there would be no need to call us to penance, to entice us to come, and to be converted to him, and even to strike with errors those who are rebellious. Nor would he have said that "woe" to Jerusalem, because, though he wished so often to gather them as a hen gathers her chicks,¹² they resisted: unless he had established this preparation of our mind as necessary (as it was in the natural law). Nor would the obstinacy of our heart otherwise be our fault, unless our disposition were necessary. But because the patience and expectation of God, as Paul is the author,¹³ does not compel us to penance but leads us: therefore those who are not converted treasure up wrath and anger for the day of wrath. Whence¹⁴ Chrysostom, Homily 9 on John, says: God, he says, compels no one, but persuades us to do rightly: and whoever assent to him, he both entices and draws. Therefore when he came into the world, some received him, others neglected him. God wills no servant unwilling, none compelled: but only those who of their own accord desire him, embrace him, and understand that they have the grace of God and of virtue. For men (since they necessarily need the works and service of servants) restrain wicked and disobedient servants by the right of possession: but God, since he is sufficient to himself and needs nothing, works all things only for the sake of our salvation, and freely permits us to be of our own judgment and right. But if he should drag the unwilling to serve, he would owe them no differently than if they had rendered no service. This is Chrysostom. Whence that canon 4 of the Council of Orange,¹⁵ that God does not await our will so that we may be cleansed from sin, is not so to be heard as that he does not work our assent, but that he does not precede himself in us, but rather he precedes us. And in the same way Augustine answers,¹⁶ book 1 against the two epistles of the Pelagians ch. 19, to the argument which can be made from the word of the Gospel, No one can come unless the Father¹⁷ draw him: where, since he does not say "lead," Christ seems to suggest that men are drawn unwilling, and therefore not assenting. For one is drawn unwilling, but led willing. He answers, I say, that it was said "draw," not because God draws anyone by force: nay, no one, he says, comes unless willing: but lest from the word "lead" an occasion be given to suspect that we will first, it was said "draw." Not that he compels the unwilling, because it is impossible, he says, that anyone believe unwillingly: but because he makes the unwilling willing. Whence, as we noted in book 1, ch. 15, Luther¹⁸ most falsely and most shamefully, in article 36, cites Augustine in the same book, that God converts the unwilling and reluctant. Therefore our assent, cooperation, and so our disposition for our justification is necessary. For which cause the Apostle to the Philippians¹⁹ says: Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish, for his good will. As if he had said: Although it is God who moves your will, nevertheless you ought with trembling to cooperate through free will. This Augustine wisely noted in ch. 9 of On Grace and Free Will.

But if the motion of our will to penance, as we showed in the first argument, is a necessary preparation for grace: it follows that all things which move us to this most wholesome affection are also in some way preparations, although not so proximate and necessary. As the terrors of hell and of the judgment of God: nay, the fear of disgrace among men, and of the other punishments which are decreed by law for the guilty and criminal. The testimonies of this are more common in both pages of sacred Scripture than that there is need for us to be troublesome here with such prolixity. For it is recorded in very many histories of the Old Testament that God often restrained that hard and fickle people by the fears, threats and other scourges of enemies, and recalled them to life. Whence David says: When he slew them,²⁰ then they sought him, and returned: or as another reading has it, they feared. And again: They cried to the Lord when they were in tribulation. But the same craftsman of medicinal penance says: The sorrows of death surrounded²¹ me, and the torrents of iniquity troubled me. The sorrows of hell surrounded me: the snares of death prevented me: in my tribulation I called upon the Lord. But it is superfluous to beg for these things, since the Gospel is open. For its preaching began with penance and with the striking of the fear of hell. For so John: Brood²² of vipers, who will show you to flee from the wrath to come? And Christ our redeemer himself bids us fear him who can cast body and soul into hell, and even the most dreadful signs of that last day. These things are common.²³ But let us weigh how our Protestants strive to mock all these things. They indeed confess in the Augustan Confession, and everywhere, that evangelical preaching convicts sins, so that terrified hearts may flee to faith. But Melanchthon²⁴ adds in his Apology that before we overcome those terrors through faith, they are themselves sins. And Bucer²⁵ in that book in which he came forth as composer of the controversies says that whatever works of preparation, even contrition itself, before faith is present (and he means before grace is present), are sins. In the same rut the heretic always persists with his accomplices, that he who is in sin, and therefore a son of the wrath of God, can do nothing except what is also worthy of the wrath of God. But I wish to bring these men to this point. If Christ brought those terrors of hell, which our sins threaten us with, to this end, that through them we might be recalled to his faith and grace, how are they sins even before one arrives at grace?²⁶ Did God not know how to move us from our iniquities by another compendium than by throwing us into new crimes? Suppose it does not at once obtain its effect: is it therefore to be judged a sin? If a man of crude breast, hearing the words of God in a sermon, cannot yet be sufficiently softened, is it therefore a sin for him to have heard the word of God? Have you never considered that if those terrors are sins, it will also be a sin to strike men with them? And so (not to utter such blasphemy against Christ who strikes them) at least John, when he terrifies the brood of vipers with the wrath to come, and Peter and Paul and the rest of the apostles, when they preached penance to sinners, involved themselves in fault and crime, stirring the people to evil? Surely this new theology, which taught you these fictions, is deservedly to be judged. For there is no inference, if you know dialectic, that if a man is a son of wrath, whatever works he does are worthy of wrath.²⁷ For on this point I believe we have sufficiently driven you off in ch. 19 of the previous book: and we shall answer you again on the same matter in book 3, ch. 4. Surely punishments would have been established in vain, whether eternal from God or temporal from men: the admonitions and counsels of the young, and finally all remedies for restraining the wicked: nay, such institutions would be pernicious if the fear of them were sins before men arrive at grace. Truly God, most clement and most benign toward us, as is often said by Chrysostom and the other Fathers, did not will the punishments of hell principally for this, that he might torture lost men (although this too is his justice), but certainly that by the fear of hell he might keep from sins those whom he would mercifully reward. Nay, civil punishments too were decreed with a similar intention. But from that prodigal son²⁸ of the Gospel a manifest argument is taken against these men, since after he had squandered his father's goods, compelled by want, and by the foulness and shame of feeding swine, he thought of returning. Unless perhaps they wish to defend that that confusion and horror which he conceived, and the affliction of beggary, before his father received him into grace, were all sins. Therefore although the fear of hell, and other things of that kind into which our sins cast us, are not, in the absence of grace, absolute virtues: nevertheless it does not immediately follow that they are sins, but they are useful goods. This is conspicuous in the example of Augustine, tractate 9 on the epistle of John, concerning the bristle introducing the thread.²⁹ For the bristle is more fragile and weak than that it could sew leather, yet it does not follow that if it does not have the strength and firmness of thread, it is therefore bad: for it is useful in introducing the thread, which, when the bristle is excluded, holds the leather. So altogether, although the fear which precedes charity does not sufficiently glue and join us to God, nevertheless it is useful for introducing that which, when fear is cast out, accomplishes it. Wherefore, as the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord is good.³⁰ Besides, it is wonderful that to mourn the deaths of dear ones and other calamities is not a sin even for those who are in sin: and yet to bewail the miseries into which our own crimes have brought us is imputed to us as sin and hypocrisy. Further, the pains of a woman in labor, however much they torment her, are not reckoned evil, when they open the way by giving birth. Whence Isaiah according to the Hebrew truth: As she who has conceived, when she has drawn near to birth, cries out in her pains: so have we been made before thy face, O Lord.³¹ We have conceived, and as it were been in labor: and we have brought forth the spirit. Where Jerome says: As a woman approaching birth is compelled by pain to cry out, so we in anguish seek thee, and from the face of thy strength we have conceived and been in labor and brought forth, not children of the flesh, but of the spirit.³² Nor was it by any other nod that God once announced that terrible judgment to the Ninevites through the prophet, except that he might dispose them for grace by terror.³³ Wherefore it would be blasphemy to say that that terror was a sin for them. Nay, as we said in book 1, ch. 18, he took care to soften both Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh by the same plagues, except that the one heard and learned, while the other saw and refused. All things are full of testimonies of this kind, most common, of our preparation. And all those things which I have most widely devised in the last eight chapters can be brought to this place. Concerning this, therefore, enough. For below there remains to be treated by us what this preparation is, and how many are the acts of which it consists.

The causes by which these men are stirred to pronounce with such bitterness against this our disposition and preparation of the soul are roughly these. They form the first from that passage of Paul,¹ If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not charity, I have become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. If I have prophecy, and the rest that follows, without charity, I am nothing. Behold, says Luther, art. 6, whatever is outside charity is not from the whole heart, and therefore is hypocrisy; according to that saying, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.² For this reason, he says, Christ calls them hypocrites; but hypocrisy is sin; therefore whatever work is outside charity is sin, and so there can be no disposition to grace. But there is no probability in the consequence:³ because something is outside charity, it is nothing in the sight of God, [and therefore] it is forthwith sin. For whatever office falls short of that degree of divine grace is reckoned of no weight or price with God; yet it does not immediately follow that it is sin. Nay, Paul's suggestion there is far different. For he chose his example in things which are good in their own kind, in order to teach that although prophecy outside charity is truly prophecy, as it was in that wicked high priest Caiaphas, and dead faith also has its own account and the substance of faith,⁴ nevertheless they are nothing in the judgment and estimation of God unto eternal life. But nevertheless they can be in their own kind, that is, morally good. But the Lutheran school,⁵ as its master teaches in the same place, reckons it impiety that any natural work should be morally good, as if it were midway between the love and the hatred of God, so as to proceed from neither. And it even denies that faith outside charity is faith. This they strive everywhere to defend. Hence they also infer that whatever work of a sinner, since it is not from love, proceeds from hatred, and therefore is sin. But how they can persuade men of sound mind of this, I do not see. Whom, I ask, will they persuade that one who is guilty of some outrage—for example, one who cannot cast out from his soul a shameful love or hatred of an enemy—whatever he does that is good in its kind, that is, if he is hospitable to the poor, if he is benevolent to his fellow citizens, if he prays, if he confesses the faith with heart and mouth, if finally he eats or drinks, does all these things in hatred of God? What if, terrified by the divine judgment, desiring to vomit out that pus and to return to God with his whole heart, he distributes alms to the poor, macerates his flesh with fasting, perseveres in assiduous prayers before God, in order to be freed from that virulent sickness of soul? Do all these things too, because they are not done from true love of God, consequently proceed from hatred? Surely we ought not to despair so much of human nature that such a thought should enter any free soul. Nor, Luther, is that which you think hypocrisy, if you consider more attentively the definition of Christ our teacher. For our Redeemer calls those hypocrites who display one thing outwardly in effect while bearing another in affection.⁶ But one who performs these offices, although on account of an admixture of fault he does not do them from the whole heart, nevertheless does them for the sake of what is honorable, or perhaps, as we have added, with the intention of inclining God to himself, by whose help he may be healed: he, I say, displays nothing outwardly other than what he bears in his heart; wherefore neither is he a hypocrite. If all rational and natural philosophy had not been exploded by you, you would see that not all things done by a depraved man proceed from depravity. For the man whom we are now depicting has an affection of friendship, from which he is filthy and shameless, or a hatred of an enemy, from which he is iniquitous; but he has at the same time another distinct will of doing what is honorable, or even a desire of recovering his senses, fighting against the former affection, from which those works, however good, flow. And by this interpretation the sense of Augustine becomes clear,⁷ in his second letter to Sixtus: whose words they accordingly object to us, yet they are no obstacle to us. For he says that no merits precede in the impious for receiving the first grace. Because, he says, to the merits of the impious not grace but punishment is owed. By these words indeed the individual works of the impious are in no way condemned, but only this is discerned, that there are no merits in him except of punishment. For works morally good are merits neither of eternal life nor of punishment. Wherefore the sense of Augustine is precisely this, that he has no merits of grace, but on account of the one mortal sin that he has, he is worthy of eternal punishment.

Next these men bring forward in their own favor that saying of Paul, The law entered in, that sin might abound. Whence, by I know not what art of dialectic, Luther⁸ fashions the notion that every work preceding grace, and any detestation whatsoever of sins, makes a man more a sinner. For he says that whatever recollection of sins before grace necessarily engenders hatred of the law, because on account of its prohibition those things are sins. And therefore the sinner has a greater hatred of the law than of sin; since therefore hatred of the law is sin, it follows that such a remembrance of sins makes a man more a sinner. Wherefore, unless faith (namely formed faith, which alone he admits to be faith) precedes, the thought of sins is pernicious.⁹ See how unworthy an argument it is, to which any response should be given. First, the law was not given for this, that is, intended to lead men to sin, otherwise it would not be a holy law and a holy commandment, as Paul says;¹⁰ but certainly as regards the moral precepts, it was to make men good (which is the proper office of the law), and as regards the ceremonial precepts, to foreannounce Christ to come. But (as the most common gloss has it) from the fact that it prohibited, yet did not extinguish concupiscence, it was an occasion, not to all, but to sensual men, of sinning:¹¹ both by multiplying commandments, and because man's appetite strives more vehemently toward what is forbidden. Hence only this is inferred, that whatever works are against the law are sins. And besides, that hatred of the law itself, whether written or natural, because it restrains our desires, also becomes impiety. But not everyone who execrates the sins he has committed because of the loss and damages he has suffered thereby hates the law. Wherefore, not only where living faith does not precede, but dead faith does, and even where no infused faith precedes, but only natural knowledge that God is and is a rewarder, fear of punishment and subsequently hatred and detestation of sins bring no evil at all, but confer very much usefulness toward salvation.¹²

But there is no one who does not wonder to what lengths they violently distort the third passage in order to drag it into their opinion. Now that passage is about the cut-off branch: a most beautiful similitude used by our Savior,¹³ If anyone does not remain in me, he will be cast forth as a branch and will wither; and they will gather him and cast him into the fire, and he will burn. For Luther comments, art. 36, that the first two things pertain to free will in this life, namely to be cast forth and to wither; but the remaining three, namely to be gathered, cast into the fire, and burn, pertain to the future age. Whence, he says, whoever here falls away from the grace of God by sin is drawn away by Satan, who does not permit him to strive for good, but compels him to wither and become always worse. Yet this passage first of all pertains wholly to the last judgment. For there, as Christ set forth in the example of the net cast into the sea, the angels will go out and separate the wicked from the midst of the just¹⁴ (which is to be cast forth), withering with fear and expectation of the horrible judgment that awaits them; and so they will gather them as it were into bundles fit for burning, and cast them into eternal fire. But even if we freely grant that those first two members pertain to the present life, far be it that whoever falls from the grace of God should be cast forth to such an extent into the power of Satan that no liberty remains to him of returning into the grace of Christ, who is most ready to stretch out his hand to anyone. For then he would never call sinners to return to him, which nevertheless he continues to do assiduously and most urgently throughout the whole Gospel. But those who never think of returning, but bar the door of the heart against divine mercy with the bolts of their desires, we plainly concede wither more and more day by day, as those whom that fountain of living water springing up unto eternal life does not wash. The remaining arguments of the Lutherans are of this stamp. Nevertheless it does not escape me that the Lutherans now speak somewhat better of the disposition to grace in the imperial book of Ratisbon, although they do not altogether establish the matter plainly; of whose opinion there will be a fuller discussion in chapter 12.

This disputation with the Lutherans having been held, it follows in the second place that we discuss whether this disposition can be made by human powers, or whether special help of grace is necessary. Here it is worthwhile to note beforehand how many meanings this name grace has.¹ Grace in general (as the word itself openly sounds) borrows this name from its cause, as we said at the beginning of the previous book. For it is a gift which is not owed to the receiver, but is given by gratuitous will. Otherwise, as the Apostle says, if it is from works, it is now not grace.² Yet when under some general name a species or supposit has some peculiar quality beyond others, from which it can obtain its own nomenclature, the general name itself becomes, as it were, special to the others. Each of the divine persons is the Holy Spirit: but because the Father and the Son have proper notions by which they are named, the name Holy Spirit is attributed to the third person. In like manner, every grace of whatever kind is so called because it is freely given: but because there is one special grace by which God formally makes us grateful to himself: according to that saying, Being justified freely by his grace,³ this is properly denominated from its effect "sanctifying grace": the rest retaining the generic name, so that they are called graces freely given.⁴ But the graces freely given, which are set apart over against sanctifying grace, are those gifts which are conferred not for the good of the receiver but for common utility: which therefore nothing prevents being given to wicked men, such as the gifts of prophecy, of tongues, and of healings, and the rest which Paul recounts to the Corinthians.⁵ The account of sanctifying grace is different: as that which is bestowed for the proper good of the possessor. But the concurrence and assistance of God preventing and converting us to himself, although it is counted among graces freely given, nevertheless has the peculiar name of special or gratuitous help,⁶ namely by which he raises us above nature. So that it is distinguished from the general influx by which he moves and fosters natural things.

Next it must be considered in the second place that the disposition to grace can be twofold:⁷ one, if you please, improper and most remote, neither sufficient nor altogether necessary: namely, any morally good work which is done from pure natural powers with the general help of God for the sake of what is honorable, or for the sake of certain reasons and human necessities which are good in their kind. Yet these offices, insofar as they are works of some virtue or other, cannot but in some way pave the way of themselves to charity. And especially if a sinner exercises himself in such works with the intention of bending God to soften his hard heart to penance. Which end, as also other honorable ends, he can naturally set before himself. But these natural works are not those which justification follows as its proper disposition by established law. The other is the proper disposition, and necessary for justification. And concerning this is the question, whether a man can so dispose himself to grace from his natural powers that grace always certainly and infallibly follows. And there are many among theologians who have persuaded themselves of this.⁸ Scotus, 2 Sent. d. 28 (as we were saying a little before), when he speaks of those things which a man can do naturally concerning the divine commandments, brings forth these words concerning the precept of loving God above all things: Whenever the will performs the act of this precept, even if it is unformed, it disposes itself by congruity to sanctifying grace; when that is offered, it will either resist and sin, or consent and be justified. Where he seems to affirm three things. First, that the disposition sufficient for grace can be the love of God above all things, which we must repeat below in the dispute. Second, that the disposition can be made from pure natural powers: of which we are about to make examination here. And third, that such a disposition is meritorious of congruity: of which we will discuss in the following chapter. And in book 4 d. 14 q. 2 he says: A man can from natural powers with common influence have attrition, which is a disposition and merit of congruity for the remission of mortal sin. But concerning at least the second and third points, namely that there is some disposition to grace from natural powers, and that it is a merit of congruity, many have adhered to him. For almost all the nominalists⁹ except Gregory of Rimini. Adrianus follows him besides in Quodlibet 7 q. 4, and Durandus in the same distinction q. 5. Nevertheless the answer to this question is negative. Namely, that no one by human faculty can sufficiently dispose himself to grace, unless supported by special help in that disposition which grace follows infallibly and by certain law. And lest we glue different questions into one: I say nothing now about the merit of congruity, but I affirm even this, that although that disposition were not called a merit of congruity, nevertheless it is not to be admitted that a man can dispose himself to grace by such a disposition. Nor indeed is this negation (unless my scruple deceives me) to be reckoned merely the opinion of St Thomas or of any theologian: but a conclusion¹⁰ which is so gathered from the sacred passages that it cannot be refuted by an orthodox man. Nor does St Thomas hold this conclusion only as an opinion, but truly as the faith of Christ:¹¹ where he says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Let us begin therefore from his words in 1.2 q. 109 art. 6. He says: The preparation of the will for good is twofold. One indeed for acting well and enjoying God, which cannot be made without habitual sanctifying grace, which is the principle of meritorious work. Moreover this first conclusion is the common consensus of theologians against Pelagius. But the other is the preparation for obtaining and receiving habitual grace itself: which preparation is not through another preceding habit. For otherwise before this second another prior would be required, and so there would be a going to infinity. Nor is there any disagreement of theologians concerning this second. But, he says, some gratuitous help of God must be presupposed, moving the soul inwardly, or inspiring a good purpose. And concerning this third the doctors disagree (as has been said). The reason which St Thomas brings is a certain natural similitude. For since, he says, every agent acts for its own proper end, such as is the order of ends, such also is that of agents: namely, that the more superior the agent, the more it refers its actions to a higher end. As in an army the first agent is the leader or prince, whose proper end is therefore that which is supreme, namely to conquer: but the tribune who acts under the leader has as his proper end and scope only to govern a particular legion by the command of the supreme leader: and therefore it pertains to the first leader to dispose all the parts of the army, insofar as it better contributes to victory. Since therefore God is the first cause of infusing grace, by which we are converted to the last end, it pertains to him to dispose and prepare our souls for receiving that same gift. But Durandus¹² and the rest say that this reason does not conclude, asserting against it another natural example. For God is the one who infuses the soul in the generation of a man, and yet the matter is disposed by a lower agent, namely by natural causes. And in like manner, although God alone is the one who infuses grace, nothing prevents a man from disposing and accommodating himself by natural power to the same grace. But indeed the first similitude destroys nothing; nay, it rather corroborates the reasoning of St Thomas. Because the power of the seed disposing the matter for the infusion of the rational soul is also the power of the rational soul, namely of the man generated: and therefore the disposing cause has a proportion with the form to which the disposition is ordered. But besides, whatever may be the case with natural reason: this is where these men are deceived, that they think St Thomas relies on that natural reason alone, when the matter is far otherwise. For he presupposes that truth as evangelical, which is stronger than every natural reason. But he brings the reason only for the sake of explanation. Whence when in 2 Sent. d. 27 and 28 he had followed the common opinion and affirmed both that a man could dispose himself to grace from natural powers, and that that disposition was a merit of congruity, afterward in the Summa, examining more attentively the sacred utterances and the sentences of the Fathers, especially Augustine, he retracted both.¹³

The first reason of the conclusion therefore is: For a man to dispose and prepare himself for grace is nothing else than to move his soul away from iniquity and turn it to God, from whom he receives grace: as if one who had his face turned away from the sun should look at it, so as to be flooded with light. But conversion is attributed in sacred Scripture to God preventing: according to that saying,¹⁴ God of hosts, convert us. And, Convert me, Lord, and I shall be converted. And, Convert us, Lord, to you, and we shall be converted. But if we read in the reverse order also, Be converted to me with your whole heart,¹⁵ and, Be converted to me and I will be converted to you: there only it is signified that it stands with us that we are not converted by God continually knocking at the door, as we set forth more fully in the previous book, chapters 16 and 18. Besides, the same preparation, because it is made spiritually, after the likeness of bodily motion, is called drawing, and yet no one (says Christ)¹⁶ can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Nor indeed is the answer safe which some devise for their security: namely, that these and similar testimonies are referred to the infusion of grace. Nay, this is what chiefly moves me against them, that the infusion of grace is not drawing or conversion, but the terminus of that motion. Wherefore if the disposition were made naturally by us, with God only infusing grace, God would not properly be the one who draws or converts us, but we ourselves by our own power would return to him, about to receive grace. Just as when I turn my face toward the sun, it does not turn me itself, but enlightens me. But to God is attributed not only illumination, which is the terminus, but the motion itself, which is drawing and conversion: according to that saying of Augustine in On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 5: Unless it were a gift of God, even our very conversion to God would not be said to him, Lord God of hosts, convert us.

Second. The sufficient disposition, which¹⁷ grace certainly and infallibly follows, is a certain beginning of justification. But Paul denies even that beginning to us who admit it: where he says that we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves.¹⁸ And by the name of thought he designates the first disposition and beginning of motion, which is the right way to grace. As if expounding the word of Christ,¹⁹ Without me you can do nothing. For Christ speaks there of the fruit which we bear in Christ, as branches in the vine: whose first beginning also is from the vine. And therefore against Pelagius (as is clear in the Council of Milevis, and in the Palestinian, as Augustine reports to Paulinus)²⁰ it was defined not only that grace is given without any merits of ours, but that there is no beginning in us, but that God is the beginner: concerning which Augustine himself corrected himself in book 1 of Retractations:²¹ who had once been in that error, that at least the beginning of our justice before God was from us.

Third, this is chiefly proved from Paul,²² where, when we are justified, he reckons us as clay in comparison with God. But clay is not only formed by the potter, but is made soft, prepared, and fitted by him.²³ Add (from which this is chiefly confirmed) that the disposition of which we speak is an effect of predestination:²⁴ but the effects of predestination, which indeed had no cause in us, are all preceded by God, as supernatural effects. To this at last is added the express sentence of Augustine,²⁵ wherever he conflicts with the Pelagians. Especially in book 3 of the Hypognosticon, where concerning the wound and infirmity of free choice he so expressly determines that it can neither begin nor suffice to complete, unless it is preceded by medicine, that is, unless it is healed by the grace of Christ: subjoining that testimony,²⁶ I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. Which (he says) signifies nothing else than that the fallen wills of men are repaired and prepared through Christ. And he concludes that the will is prepared by God: according to that saying of the Psalm,²⁷ Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit in my inmost parts. Thus far Augustine, subjoining the example of Peter,²⁸ whom, unless the Lord had looked upon him, never moved by penance would he have wept bitterly. Ambrose also noted this in book 9 on Luke.²⁹ Wherefore when the Wise Man says,³⁰ It is man's part to prepare the soul, he immediately adds, And the Lord governs the tongue. And where he says, The heart of man disposes his way, he forthwith adds, But it is the Lord's to direct his steps. Namely, that he may plainly teach us that the preparation for grace is the work of God and also ours: of God indeed preventing by his special favor, but ours of those consenting and cooperating. Whence the same Augustine, who wisely foresaw all these things, in book 2 Against the Two Letters of Pelagius, chapter 8, since that wicked man said that at least the desire of good begins from us, beats back that very word most sharply. For then (he says) merit would have begun without the grace of God, to which the help of grace would come as if from debt. Against that saying, Without me you can do nothing. And that of Paul, He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ.³¹ And, Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves.³² Wherefore far be it (he says) that one who reads in Proverbs, It is man's part to prepare the heart, should be deceived so as to think this can be done without the help of the grace of God. For therefore it is added, that it is the Lord's to govern the tongue, as if he himself begins. And at last he concludes: Who can prepare the heart for good by a good thought? Far be it that they understand it so, except the proud defenders of their own free choice and deserters of the catholic faith. Thus Augustine. Than which I know not what could be said more effectively to conquer and refute the sufficient disposition to grace without the preventing help of God. The conclusion of this chapter therefore is that the preparation and disposition sufficient for grace is the work both of God and of ours. Of him indeed preventing, but ours of those consenting and cooperating. For he who says, I will take away from them the heart of stone, and I will give them a heart of flesh, nevertheless knocking at free choice, says, Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Augustine well noted this in On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 14. Whence it happens that he is the first cause of our dispositions, but we are the whole cause of our hardening: according to that saying, Your destruction, O Israel: only in me is your help. He said help, to designate the cooperation of free choice. For he hardens only by permitting, as we said in book 4, chapter 18. This is the confession of the present holy Synod of Trent, which immediately in chapter 5 declares that the beginning of justification in adults is to be taken from God through Christ Jesus by preventing grace, by which grace, exciting and helping them to convert themselves, men are disposed to their own justification by freely assenting to the same grace and cooperating. In which confession it must be noted that none are properly called dispositions except those which are made by God preventing and by us assenting. For it says that without the grace of God a man cannot move himself to justice before him. Although canon 7 has decided that not all works before justification, in whatever way done, are sins: because even if they are done naturally, they are at least morally good: as was said in the previous book.

But this divine disposition in us is made not in one way only, but in two. For (as St Thomas is the authority in 1.2 q. 112 art. 2) one is imperfect, the other perfect. Imperfect indeed, not because every motion of God is not perfect in relation to its end, but because God through it calls us not proximately to grace, but to other preceding goods, through which he may lead us gradually and little by little in time to grace itself. Which disposition is indeed meritorious neither of grace nor of glory. But the other is that which is at the same time with grace, preceding it only in nature. Just as in fire there are some dispositions preceding the form to be generated, and others coming together at the same time, yet prior in nature. And this second is always necessary, as is made clear from the sudden conversion of Paul: but the former is not so. Add that this necessary preparation, although it is not meritorious of grace, is nevertheless meritorious of glory, insofar as it is informed by grace. But concerning this a little later more fully.

Finally, two words remain for us to say: one to the Lutherans, the other with the Catholics. These our adversaries, as we began to say before, in their imperial book of Ratisbon seem to approach closer to this matter than they were instructed by their patron. For they say that it is clear that adults do not obtain the benefit of reconciliation unless by the preventing motion of the Holy Spirit, by which their mind and will are moved to detestation of sin: according to that word of Augustine, It is impossible to begin a new life unless we repent of the former. And according to the institution of John the Baptist and of the Apostle Peter, nay, of Christ, preaching penance for the remission of sins. Which article Bucer³³ in his concord of justification explains in exactly the same way as we were just saying: namely, that a salutary penance for sins must precede justification in us: although not in time, at least in nature. Which, he says, cannot be stirred up in us except through the Holy Spirit. Let us therefore ask these men: if justifying grace never follows unless this affection of our free choice precedes, what more do they desire in order plainly to confess that a disposition is required in us for grace? Especially since in fact (as will be clear in all places where we need this confession of theirs) it is the same as admitting a disposition, or affirming that that motion is necessary in us. For if it is necessary, they cannot deny that our justification depends on it in some way. But concerning works preceding in time they persist in condemning them all as sins. Against them a very great argument is taken from the distinction made above. For to name as sins those things which are done by the nod of God and his help in a sinner is blasphemy.

Therefore, to return to those Catholics³⁴ who are the authors of this natural disposition: their chief argument is this. From natural powers we can know that sin is an offense of God and contrary to his will: therefore under this account we can repent of it, and detest it on account of him, as on account of any other cause, so that that penance of ours is a morally good work. But such a work, especially a detestation of this kind, is a disposition to grace: therefore we can dispose ourselves to grace (as they say) by congruity. But this argument is broken at the very threshold. For since the grace of justification is not comprehended within the bounds of nature, but is a supernatural gift, owed neither to the person nor to nature, although natural reason seems to conclude something to which we do not know how to answer, nevertheless by faith, which is above nature, we are taught that God alone bestows that gift in such a way that we can do nothing from which that gift follows by any necessity, certainty, or infallibility. Otherwise it would necessarily follow that we were in some way its cause: as will become still more fully clear in the following chapter. Yet God everywhere ascribes to himself to be the first cause, so that nothing precedes in us: according to that saying, You did not choose me, but I chose you.³⁵ And, Who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him?³⁶ Whence the Fathers against Pelagius used no natural reason, but fought with the sacred Scriptures alone, to establish that there is no beginning in us for grace. Wherefore it must be answered that although we can know that sin is an offense of God, and so from natural powers have a detestation which is a remote preparation, as we said at the beginning of the chapter, nevertheless to dispose ourselves sufficiently in such a way that grace certainly and infallibly follows, we truly cannot without divine help. Because that certainty could not exist except on account of the law of God. But there is no law of conferring grace except to him whom God has drawn to himself.

In the same way it is answered to the other argument³⁷ concerning one who, coming to the use of reason, and before he admits any deadly sin either by himself or by the instruction of others, would know that there is one God who is to be served, as a rewarder of good and evil: it must be answered, I say, that although such knowledge could perhaps be natural, yet the motion of the will toward God, which is the final and proper disposition to grace, could not happen to him without special help. And the same must be thought concerning man³⁸ in whatever state: whether created in pure natural powers, or persevering in original justice.

The third and likewise common argument is this. God commands us nothing impossible: but he commands that we be converted to him: Be converted, he says,³⁹ to me, and I will be converted to you: therefore conversion, which is the same as disposition, is possible to us from nature. Likewise fourth, it is a common saying and most received by all that God does not fail one who does what is in him: according to that saying,⁴⁰ God gives a good spirit to those who ask him. And, Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. But for a man to do what is in him is to do what is in his power: therefore a man can sufficiently dispose himself to grace. The arguments are in the same place of St Thomas. To the first of them⁴¹ he answers that insofar as the cooperation of our free choice is necessary, we are commanded to be converted. Which, although we cannot do without the help of God, is nevertheless not impossible to us, because he is most ready to help us unless we resist. But to the second he answers, and the answer is indeed to be meditated on, because it is most true and is understood to be necessary. Namely, that for a man to do what is in him⁴² is not understood before the help of God, but rather with God preventing. For then a man does what is in him when he cooperates by responding to God inspiring him, and then by a most certain law grace follows.

But I would add a last argument,⁴³ perhaps of greater weight. When someone contrite approaches the sacrament, say without an obstacle, but nevertheless bringing no such disposition as would suffice for grace without the sacrament, then that disposition seems possible from natural powers, since it is not sufficient for grace, but is such as would perpetually have fault with it: yet if such a contrite person receives the sacrament without any other change of will, he will receive grace: therefore a disposition to grace can be made from natural powers. Concerning this there will be speech again in what follows. Meanwhile, however, we will answer that, with all the parts of the argument granted, nothing is concluded against us, because God works there not through the disposition, but through the sacrament, which he uses as an instrument to infuse grace into a man, if not disposed, at least not opposing an obstacle.

Hitherto we contended only this: that from natural powers there can be no sufficient disposition for grace, even if it were reckoned under no name of merit. But now we proceed to establish also this, according to our ability: that before justification, which is made through sanctifying grace, there is in human works nothing of merit, whether of condignity or of congruity. Not only, I say, in morally good works which are done naturally, but neither in those which by divine help are a disposition and preparation for grace—at least in the respect in which they precede grace.¹ I have deliberately distinguished these two members. For after this merit of congruity from pure natural powers has fallen into such ill repute in this age, there are those who now introduce it only with prevenient special help. They wish to attribute this opinion to Scotus. Yet he expressly says in the place cited above, in 4, distinction 14, question 2, that from pure natural powers with common influence there can be attrition which is a merit of congruity for the deletion of mortal sin. And for greater explanation he adds that if it is perfectly circumstanced in the genus of morals, it seems altogether a sufficient disposition for obtaining justice at the term of that attrition, which God has fixed as the term of that attrition. By these words he notes that it is sufficient by the established law. And, that no hesitation may remain, he subjoins that otherwise it would be difficult to save the claim that there is no acceptance of persons with God. And therefore he expressly concedes that such an act from pure natural powers is a merit of congruity for justification. Finally he adds that the same act, unchanged, by the assistance of grace afterward becomes contrition. And he speaks where no sacrament intervenes. Nothing can be said more clearly to assert a natural merit of congruity sufficient, to which by divine law grace infallibly succeeds. And in book 2, distinction 28, he affirms the same of the love of God. Nay, nowhere does he mention special help as regards our being disposed for grace. So much does he everywhere hold it as settled that we can naturally be disposed by congruity for justification—which disposition alone he teaches. But Adrian, Durandus and almost all the Nominalists both think he undoubtedly means this, and themselves hold it. Wherefore this former sense must be examined by us in the first place, since we are soon to speak of special help. And first of all, if the things said in the preceding chapter have truth, by which it was shown that there is no sufficient disposition for grace from our nature, it is more strongly and evidently proved that there is no merit of congruity from nature, since merit carries with it I know not what energy more than disposition.² But that the disputation may be equipped from its own terms, the authors of this opinion distinguish between the merit of condignity and of congruity thus: namely, that the merit of condignity is that which brings with it the nature of debt and justice, like the work of a hired man, by which he makes a right for himself to the wage which is therefore truly owed him. But the merit of congruity is a work to which wages are not owed by justice, but only from a certain congruity. And by this distinction they think themselves sufficiently guarded from the Pelagian contagion. Nor do I brand Catholic men with that mark, as the Lutherans do; nay, I believe a sound and orthodox mind was in them. And therefore I think it a calumny when this crime is objected to them by the Lutherans—nay, on their account, to all Catholics. But if I may disclose my own conscience, the more deeply I consider this merit of congruity, the less I seem to see that it is congruent with the nature of justifying grace. And I understand that the question concerns not only the name but also the matter itself.

The first argument therefore offers itself to me from the name itself.³ For “merit” in Latin, unless it is altogether alienated from its signification beyond all use, is a relative of reward and wages. For where there is no nature of wages, there can be no nature of merit. Nay, merit is derived from wages; therefore unless there is a work to which wages are owed in some respect, it cannot be reckoned merit in any respect. Wherefore, just as wherever there is properly merit there is properly debt, as altogether correlatives, so wherever there is any nature of merit whatsoever, there must also be some little nature of debt. But if there is no nature of debt, neither properly nor improperly, then certainly there will be no nature of merit, properly or improperly. But to establish any nature of debt in natural works, however much it is called improper, cannot be done without detracting something from the nature of grace. For if (according to Paul) where there is debt, there is no longer grace, in the same way that properly owed debt takes away the whole nature of grace, so any asserted nature of debt diminishes the nature of grace.⁴ These are the words of the second Council of Orange, chapter 18:⁵ “Wages are owed to good works, if they are done” (behold the nature of merit, which is understood only in respect of wages), “but grace,” it says, “which is not owed, precedes so that they may be done.” The other point, by which this first argument is confirmed, is to me certainly very great.⁶ Namely, during all the time the Church endured the Pelagian war, it never came into the mind of any of them, whether Pelagians or catholic Fathers, to make this distinction—which, if it were true, would then above all have been necessary. I would not doubt that if they could have devised some name of merit which would in no way injure the nature of grace, either the Pelagians would have protected themselves with it, or the catholic Fathers would have tempered with it the rigor of their censure against them. But simply, without any distinction of merit, in the seventh condemnation of the Council of Palestine, as Augustine reports to Paulinus,⁷ since in the Council of Milevis it is not so expressly stated, he is anathematized who says that the grace of God is given according to our merits. And the same Augustine proves in the Hypognosticon, book 3, that there is no merit of man before grace, from that saying,⁸ “When we were dead in sins, he quickened us together in Christ,” implying that in the sinner, as in a dead man, no merit precedes. And finally he says: “Hear, foolish heretic and enemy of the truth of faith: the good works of free will, which are prepared so that they may be done by the prevenient grace, we do not condemn as having no merit of free will. But by divine authority we condemn the works of free will which are set before grace and are extolled as merits by which one is justified in Christ; for who⁹ has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him?” Thus Augustine. He does not condemn all works preceding grace as evil, but as having any nature or name of merit. And on the letter to the Galatians, chapter 4: “Christ,” he says, “is formed in the inner man, in a meek and humble heart, not boasting of the merits of works, which are nothing, but with grace itself beginning some merit.” Truly, when he says “they are nothing,” but every merit is begun by grace, he altogether denies that any merits precede grace, whether of condignity or of congruity. For if a merit of congruity had preceded, there would have been some beginning of meriting, whence man could in some way glory. And in the second letter to Sixtus, which is 105: “For receiving this grace,” he says, “by which he who was formerly unjust is made just, no merits precede, since to the merits of the impious not grace but punishment is owed.” Most clearly he says that in the impious there are no merits but of punishment; which he would never have said if morally good works were in any way merits of congruity. And in On Grace and Free Will, chapter 6: “When anyone is made just from being impious,” he says, “then good things are rendered to him for evil things.” He would not have said this if any nature of merit had preceded. And in this sense he there expounds the Redeemer’s word, “Without me you can do nothing”:¹⁰ that is, nothing that contributes anything to the grace of justification. And in the two following chapters he strains with all his sinews to make it most certain that man is justified without any good merits at all, but with only evil merits preceding. I do not know by what color the words of Augustine can be constrained so that he speaks precisely of the merit of condignity. Since the merit of congruity among these men is a good merit, and yet he says that no good merit precedes, but only evil—namely, because although the unrighteous man does some morally good work, that work nevertheless has no quality or name of merit.

But the third reason seems more urgently to overthrow this merit of congruity.¹¹ For Pelagius (as we have it in Augustine against his two letters, chapter 7) used this argument among others against the Catholics: that if no beginning or work preceded in us by which we might be accommodated to grace, then grace would be rather fate or acceptance of persons than benevolence. For if there were nothing more in one than in another, and God nevertheless received this one into his grace before that one, this, he said, would be either from fortune or from acceptance of persons. But if this opinion of the merit of congruity were true, the answer would be ready: namely, that he is received who disposes himself by congruity, while the other is rejected who neglects it. Nay, Scotus himself so answers,¹² since unless this disposition by congruity from natural powers is posited, it is difficult to save the claim that there is no acceptance of persons with God. This word, if I may be pardoned, sounds to my ears the worst of all from this opinion. For Augustine there and all the Fathers everywhere did not refer this cause to any disposition of ours, but only to the mere will of God. For Augustine says¹³ that there is no acceptance of persons except where there is some nature of debt. “Nor indeed,” he says, “is it to be called acceptance of persons when there is no iniquity.” As when that lord of the vineyard in the Gospel parable says:¹⁴ “Friend, I do you no injury if I wish to give to this man what I do not owe.” And therefore, since God owes nothing to anyone, from his good pleasure he draws this one and does not draw that one. Truly, if any such disposition of congruity had been known in that age, neither would Pelagius have had anything to argue, nor would the Fathers have had recourse to the good pleasure of God. And therefore those who think to guard God from acceptance of persons by saying that he gives grace on account of the merit of congruity, which is man’s first work, manifestly meditate in that merit something of a cause in respect of grace. This I believe neither the ancient Fathers nor Paul himself would endure.

Finally, in the last place, that interval between the merit of congruity and of condignity is called into question.¹⁵ Merit is not called condign because God properly owes us anything, as will be explained in its place, but because he has freely established a most certain law that he will render rewards to those who do his commands. Whoever therefore says that we can so prepare ourselves from natural powers—namely, by such a sufficient disposition that, it being posited, God has established immediately to confer grace—is little short of being compelled to say that it is a merit of condignity, such as Pelagius affirmed before the first grace. For to answer that by that disposition grace is not properly owed by justice seems a begging of the question, since between us and God there is no other justice or debt than God’s own law. Certainly if the Church had once granted this to Pelagius, I believe he would have been content, because he did not contend that grace was owed to us by God on account of works, as there is a debt of equality among men, but that it was that just law of God that he who acts well from his natural powers should infallibly be received into his grace. Therefore let us listen to the Fathers, and especially Augustine, in the many places cited and very many others, where he wishes every kind and name of merit previous to grace to be unheard of among Christians. “For grace,” he says at the beginning of the book On the Predestination of the Saints, “is no grace if it is given according to our merits.” And a little later, chapter 2: “Moreover, if God works our faith so that we believe, is it to be feared that he cannot do the whole, and that man therefore claims the first parts for himself so as to deserve to receive the last from him?” See whether anything else is done in this way than that the grace of God be given in any way according to our merits, and thus grace not be grace. For in this way it is rendered as a debt, not given freely. Note “in any way,” for it is as if he had said: in order that grace be grace in a perfect manner, no merit ought to precede in any manner. And such seems to be the determination of the Church. First in the Council of Milevis, although not so expressly, yet in canon 5, where it is determined that the grace of justification is not given so that we may more easily fulfill by grace what we are commanded to do by free will, but simply so that we may fulfill it; and at the same time it is determined that the beginning is simply from grace, and therefore with no merit preceding.

But in the Council of Orange there is an express determination in canon 25, under these words:¹⁶ “This also we healthfully profess and believe: that in every good work we do not begin and afterward are helped by the mercy of God, but he himself, with no good merits preceding, inspires in us both faith and love of himself,” etc. And in these same words the holy Synod of Trent¹⁷ now most rightly uses, session 6, chapter 5 of the confession, where it says that the beginning of justification is from God, with no merits of man preceding. I have brought forward the merits as causes and witnesses; let it be for others to judge whether the merit of congruity is to be rejected, of which neither the Church nor the Fathers ever made mention. Nay, from the time that such hatreds were kindled from the North against the Church of God in these past years. And let the Lutherans now make an end of affixing this disgrace upon us; for not all Catholics approve the merit of congruity, nor do its authors intend the Pelagian sense; nor has the Church ever ceased to confess, whatever may be said of scholastic opinions, that men are justified through Christ our Lord with no merits of their own preceding.

But what I conjecture first deceived the inventor of this name¹⁸ was that he read among the ancients that it is congruous that God should mercifully help him who uses his natural powers well. For it is congruous with the divine goodness that if man, according to his frailty, does what nature can, God according to his mercy should supply what he cannot—supply, I say, not by immediately infusing grace, but by special help, preparing and converting to himself the one to whom he infuses grace. That congruity therefore is not in us but in God. But merit, although they add “of congruity,” unless they wish to call earth heaven, does not place congruity only in God, but a work in man to which grace is in some way owed. And this can in no way be except in one who is in grace. Most clear are the words of Anselm in the Proslogion, chapter 10, speaking with God: “When you punish the wicked, it is just, because it is congruous with their merits. When you spare the wicked, it is just, not because of their merits, but because it is fitting to your will and goodness.” Anselm therefore acknowledges no congruity in our merits, but in his goodness. But when someone begins to be in grace, then he can merit both for himself by condignity and for others by congruity. Wherefore Saint Thomas,¹⁹ although in 1.2 he rejected the opinion which he seemed to follow in the second book of Sentences—namely, that one could merit the first grace for himself by congruity (as is clear in question 114, article 5)—nevertheless does not deny that one who is in grace can merit the first grace for another by congruity, by meriting that God dispose him by good inspiration and motion. And in 3, question 11, he scents in the holy Fathers some merit of congruity with respect to the coming of Christ—namely, prayers proceeding from grace. Yet this merit is not founded on any established law of God always to grant and infallibly to concede what is asked. For many just men pray most earnestly for the conversion of others, and yet do not obtain it, as the Prophet testifies, where he says: “If Moses and Samuel stood before me, my soul would not be toward this people.”²⁰

But whether at least that motion by which man is disposed for grace through special help is a merit of congruity, as some are now beginning to publish? Certainly although this would not inject as much scruple as that work which is done from pure natural powers, nevertheless neither is this to be reckoned under any name of merit. First, because among the Fathers there is no such distinction between the merit of congruity and of condignity, since they nowhere acknowledge the nature of merit where the nature of debt and justice does not underlie it. But the disposition for grace, insofar as it precedes grace in time or in nature, has no nature of right to grace. For there is no dignity at all, and therefore no merit of work, unless first, at least in nature, the person is worthy through sanctifying grace, according to that saying: “The Lord looked upon Abel²¹ and upon his gifts”—that is, upon the gifts because he had first looked upon the person. Hence, as we have it in Augustine’s consideration²² in the Hypognosticon, book 3, and wherever he preaches, fallen man can neither rise again nor do any good except through the grace of Christ; he understands that this is unless he is first freed from sin through him. To this judgment he repeatedly calls that testimony:²³ “If the Son has freed you, you will be truly free,” as if before justifying grace man, a captive, could offer nothing of merit. To this also belongs, “And who has first given to him?” and the rest of that kind.²⁴ Nay, if you do not wish to be deceived in the ancient Fathers, they reckon the divine motion of man to grace and sanctifying grace itself not as two actions of God but as one altogether, like motion and its term—although Saint Thomas, for the sake of explanation, distinguished the help of grace from habitual grace itself. And therefore they do not esteem that motion as merit unless the term is first understood. And then it is no longer only a merit of congruity, but certainly of condignity—not indeed of grace, but of glory, as we shall explain not long after. And so the Fathers reckoned that the help and motion of God, and grace itself, do not fall under merit.

The foundations of the merit of congruity are overturned.— I see no foundations of this merit of congruity in the authors, unless they are those which Saint Thomas brings against himself, chiefly the word of Augustine: “Faith merits justification,” which is in the letter to Paulinus, 106. And in the second letter to Sixtus, which is 105, he had said not dissimilarly that not even the remission of sins is without some merit, if faith obtains it. For the merit of faith is not nothing, by which faith that Publican²⁵ said, “Be propitious to me, a sinner,” and went down justified. But to the first Saint Thomas answers²⁶ that Augustine was sometimes of the opinion that the beginning of faith is from us, which he afterward retracted in the first book of the Retractions. And perhaps to this retracted sense belongs also that “faith merits justification.” Thomas does not say that Augustine formally retracted that faith merits justification, but that the beginning of faith is from us. Yet he says that to the same thing pertains that faith is the merit of justification; and therefore he is judged at the same time to have retracted that the merit of justification is from us, if he ever in this sense thought that faith as our work is the merit of justification. It is true, however, that Augustine²⁷ spoke obscurely about the grace of faith. For in book 2 to Simplician, chapter 2, he distinguishes a twofold grace: namely, the first grace of faith, which is not sufficient for obtaining the kingdom of heaven (and he gives the example of catechumens before they are incorporated into the Church by participation in the sacraments), and the other by which men are now, he says, assigned to the body of Christ and to the holy temple of God. Because unless one is born again of water and the Holy Spirit,²⁸ he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. But he calls the first grace a beginning, like conception; the second, birth, so that one may come to eternal life. From these words, however, we now take precisely this, which is beyond controversy: namely, that man can receive faith without charity through special help, which is also called the grace of God. Saint Thomas holds this as most certain in 2.2, question 6, article 2. And catechumens sometimes perhaps have that faith without charity, although without doubt they often receive sanctifying grace through the desire for baptism before baptism in reality, as we shall show in its place below. It is therefore a conjecture that wherever Augustine says that faith begins merit and obtains justification, he speaks of that faith which in time, through the help of God, can precede sanctifying grace, as in book 1 of the Retractions, chapter 13, and often elsewhere. But he calls it the beginning of merit exclusively, because faith shows us from whom we ought to ask help. And he also calls this “to obtain justification,” not because there is any nature of merit there. For Augustine never thought that merit is anything other than condignity—namely, that which follows justifying grace. Hence in the Hypognosticon, book 3, where he says that without the help of grace man can begin nothing, he explains that prevenient grace is sanctifying grace. “For man is prevented,” he says, “by medicine—that is, by the grace of Christ—so that he may be healed and restored.” Wherefore he repeats most often that man, a captive through sin, has no liberty for good unless he has been freed by the Spirit of grace from him who said, “If the Son has freed you, you will be truly free,”²⁹ as is clear in On Correction and Grace, book 1, and everywhere in him. The act of faith, therefore, is the beginning of merit.³⁰ But if it is considered as by nature it precedes grace, it is the beginning of merit exclusively, not merit, from the fact that it is the first act and motion by which we are drawn by God. But if it is weighed as following grace, then it is plainly the first merit. And this is the genuine sense of Augustine.³¹ Indeed, in the letter to Paulinus, which is 106, where he speaks of the merit of faith, he expressly says that if a man does some good thing so as to merit grace, the reward is not imputed to him according to grace but according to debt. But if he believes in him who justifies the impious, so that his faith is reckoned to him for justice, then certainly before he is justified by grace, so as to be made just, what is the impious man but impious? Therefore before justifying grace he admits no nature of merit at all, not even in the act of faith. And he adds: “But if anyone says that faith merits the grace of doing well, we cannot deny it.” But yet those who have the faith by which they obtain justification have come to the law of justice through the grace of God. And a little below he says more clearly that faith obtains justification, but immediately he explains his mind, saying: “Not that any merit of man precedes the grace of God, but that grace itself merits to be increased, so that, being increased, it may merit to be perfected.” He does not therefore will that the first grace fall in any way under merit, but the increase of grace. And he speaks expressly of sanctifying grace, since it alone is what is perfected in the fatherland.

But that no doubt may remain concerning Augustine, he openly explains himself in the book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 13, wherever he has said that faith obtains justification. For he does not understand it as by the manner of any merit, but because he teaches how we ought to ask from God the help of doing what the law commands. And we answer in like manner to that passage in the second letter to Sixtus concerning the merit of the Publican’s faith. For either Augustine’s sense is of the merit of condignity,³² because when the Publican entered the temple it is likely that he had come in grace, as one who already then bore in his mind the same humility which he afterward brought forth by the confession of his mouth. And therefore he merited only an increase of justice and holiness. But he is said to have gone out justified—that is, to have done a work of justice—which we shall repeat in the last chapter. Or if merit is spoken of works preceding, it is understood that it was the beginning of merit exclusively, as was explained above concerning the act of faith through special help. And in the second of these senses we must hear Augustine, and Cyprian, and whoever speaks of this matter, saying that faith is some merit. Although perhaps some Fathers speak of merit in the way in which we are accustomed to say of a man who has long lived in sin that he afterward merited to be justified, on account of some morally good works which he did in sin. Not that those are in any way merits with God, but in the usage of speaking we call merits that good use of natural powers, as we were saying before in the first acceptation of merit. It is therefore an invention never before devised³³ that anyone should wish to fasten on Augustine the merit of congruity, which I believe he could never have suspected. But it is also an injury to the Master of the Sentences³⁴ to say that he held that the first grace falls under merit. For in 2 Sentences, distinction 26, he does not deviate a cross finger from Augustine, but expressly denies it. And in distinction 27, chapter 4: “In meriting good things,” he says, “the principal causality is attributed to grace, because the principal cause of good merits is grace itself, by which free will is aroused and healed.” But the grace by which we are healed is without doubt none other than sanctifying grace. And he repeats the same in chapters 5 and 6, where, explaining how faith merits justification, he says that it is proper to each virtue to be a merit through its own act—namely, with charity as guide. To conclude now this troublesome disputation, this is a most evident argument:³⁵ that neither Augustine nor the Fathers knew any other merit than that of condignity. But if they had anywhere spoken of any merit before the first grace, they would forthwith have expressed that they did not understand this of the merit of justice and condignity, but of the merit of congruity or any other, so as to guard against making men Pelagians. Since therefore they never so distinguished concerning merit, it is most manifest that they knew no nature of merit before the grace of justification.

At last we have come to that point of our design where the chief controversy with the Lutherans lies before us. We have spoken concerning works preparing us for justification up to the point of the infusion of grace itself. It follows now in order that I speak more fully concerning the same works insofar as, preceded by God, we cooperate with our justification. That is whether we are justified by faith alone.¹ But this dispute about faith alone is so obscure from its beginnings, and so wrapped up and entangled by the long struggle on both sides, that an approach to discovering the truth scarcely lies open to us from anywhere. Wherefore if in this business, in which so many wise men have been engaged, our work can contribute anything, I will at least try to establish the state of the cause with what clarity I can. Namely, to open both the adversaries' opinion and ours, and by what path and order, at what points they disagree. This is always missing in those whom we have read up to now. For since these men now almost agree with us in words, it does not help much to pile up testimonies and arguments that we are not justified by faith alone, unless we lay bare their meanings, and then aim precisely at their articles. Because perhaps this has not been done by our people up to now, they have advanced the less. Especially because if the Church has ever suffered any hostile men who fought under the mere perplexity and darkness of speech,² these men have been able above all by the mere density of shadows to delude the common people in this matter: therefore they must be conquered with the greatest clarity. As this fallacy will have been brought forth most explicitly, so will it be forthwith most effectively convicted. Therefore that first parent of these men, Martin Luther,³ if credence is to be given to the story he himself tells at the very beginning of the first volume of his works, conceived the poison which he afterward vomited out from envy of the Roman see, chiefly on account of the indulgence traffic (as he says). And since there are remissions of sins, he soon began to deny the necessity of works which are done in satisfaction for sins: preaching that after sin is dismissed no guilt of punishment remains, because Christ paid the price for all. Thence he made a step, so that under the pretext of extolling faith he reckoned all works vain: affirming that we are justified by faith alone: namely, only by this, that each one believes that his sins are forgiven him through Christ. At last he burst forth into such madness as to reckon all works, even those of the most holy man, as sins. Nay, that by that one faith all the commandments are fulfilled, and so the one who believes is free from the law: which we must refute in book 3. Therefore this article, much more virulent and pernicious in its birth and nourishment for a time than it is now defended, began in this sense, and Luther's offspring thereafter professed, that we are justified by faith alone, because one who had this one certain and firm faith that his sins were freely forgiven through Christ would be bound by no other law of works: but whatever work he performed, if he retained faith, he would in no way fall from grace. Therefore I will set out their assertions concerning this matter,⁴ not confusedly, as is usual, but in order, so that they may be better weighed step by step. For first Luther, in the assertions addressed to Leo, art. 1, comparing faith with the sacraments, says: Neither the sacraments of the new nor of the old testament, but faith alone justifies. And the contrary opinion is heretical. In art. 15: Those who approach the sacrament of the Eucharist, this faith alone makes pure and worthy, if they believe and trust that they will obtain grace there. Second, comparing faith with works, he says in the book On Christian Liberty that faith alone suffices for salvation: works in no way justify. And in the exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians he says: Faith alone is necessary, all other works are most free, neither commanded nor forbidden. And in the book On the Babylonian Captivity: By faith alone we can deal with God; he cares nothing for works, nor needs them. And in On Monastic Vows: Faith and works are as far apart as possible from each other, and are contrary, so that works cannot be taught without loss of faith: for the Gospel fights with the law. And in the little book On Christian Liberty he teaches that one who has faith is free from all the commandments of the law, and needs no works to be saved: but faith alone, he says, bestows all these things abundantly. Third, therefore, he advances so far as to think that no works, however wicked, can harm one who has faith. For thus he says in his sermon against Carlstadt: There is no sin except unbelief, no justice except faith. From which, in On the Babylonian Captivity, he infers that no sins can condemn a man, even if he wishes, except unbelief alone. Nor must one who has faith doubt his salvation: because the promise made there is not changeable by any sins, but only by unbelief. And in On Monastic Vows: No works are so evil for one who believes in Christ that they can condemn and accuse him. The rest will be added in their proper places. His disciples afterward persevered for some time in defending all these dogmas to the letter, and in sprinkling their works with flowers of this kind: as is especially seen in Melanchthon's Commonplaces. But in this explained sense: namely, that no other works besides faith are necessary to such an extent that no sin exists outside unbelief, it is a most insane heresy,⁵ and it is a wonder that it occupied the mind of a Christian man. Yet it is not a new plague, but one that derives its lineage from the very beginning of the nascent Church. For it was the heresy of Eunomius,⁶ which Augustine records in the book On Heresies, chapter 54, in these words: He is reported also to have been so great an enemy of good morals as to assert that the perpetration and perseverance in any sins whatsoever would harm no one, if he were a partaker of the faith which he taught. Luther affirms the same, except that he says faith ought not to be idle, but a Christian ought freely to exercise himself in works of charity toward his neighbor. And in On Faith and Works, chapter 114, the same Augustine says⁷ that in the time of the apostles themselves this very heresy had altogether the same beginnings as in these our adversaries now. For while certain obscure sentences of the Apostle Paul were not understood, he says—namely, The law entered in, that sin might abound,⁸ and, We judge that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law—some thought that faith was enough for salvation without other good works, nay, that even evils were no obstacle. For which cause, he says, the other apostolic epistles of Peter, John, James, and Jude direct their intention chiefly against this, so as vehemently to assert that faith without works profits nothing. As Paul himself says, Faith which works through love. And on Psalm 31 he brings in the words of the same heretics, promising the mercy of God to sinners in such a way that, while they persevere in any sins whatsoever, provided they believe, they said that God delivers, God forgives, and it is prepared: so that no one of the faithful wicked would perish. To whom he answers that that just God, to whom mercy and judgment are sung, will condemn the man who presumes evilly of himself, and who abuses the very mercy of God to his own destruction.

Furthermore, since this sense involves many errors,⁹ namely against the necessity of the sacraments and works, and against the number and variety of commandments and sins: if we attacked the whole crowd at once, it would overwhelm us with its own army. Christ ordained that the price of his blood be derived to us through the sacraments,¹⁰ so that whoever wandered from faith, unless born again of water and the Holy Spirit, could not enter the kingdom of God: and those who had committed a deadly crime, unless they did penance,¹¹ would all perish together. Finally, to none, however reconciled, unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, would there be life in themselves.¹² Luther barks against this, that the sacraments are not necessary for those to be justified, but faith alone. From the beginning God engraved in the minds of mortals the law of nature, that they should worship God with religion, and that men should keep themselves unharmed in peace and tranquility by certain prescribed commandments, and help one another by mutual offices: he afterward inscribed those things on two tables: and then, since faith was the perfection of nature, Christ renewed them in the Gospel, adding certain other things which were his authority: admonishing that whoever wished to enter into life should keep the commandments:¹³ threatening eternal punishments to transgressors: commanding the apostles that, baptizing the nations in the sacrament of faith, they should teach them to observe whatever he had commanded them.¹⁴ Luther cries out against God that no works are necessary besides faith, nor are men bound by any other law. The Apostle distinguishes many works of the flesh, which are fornication, uncleanness, and very many of that kind: and various fruits of the spirit, which are charity, peace, patience, etc.¹⁵ Luther cuts all these away, so that there is no other work of virtue besides faith, and no sin outside unbelief. Let us reserve the rest for their proper places. Now in this book let us examine only this: whether in the point of justification there are other works necessary besides faith, which equally prepare us together with the act of faith. Therefore the other sense of this assertion¹⁶ is: We are justified by faith alone. Which the Lutherans now strive to defend as exactly polished, as they think. For the sake of clarity, which we especially strive for, we explain it through these propositions drawn from their doctrine.

The first assertion of theirs, and the foundation of all, is: We are justified by faith alone through Christ our Savior. Which (they say) is most expressly had in Paul. For because he says, We judge that a man is justified by faith, not by works.¹⁷ And, By grace you are saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God.¹⁸ And this is the chief point in which they dissent from the catholic truth, which we, legitimately interpreting Paul, defend against them: namely, that we are not justified by faith alone.

And although this series and order is by no means observed among them, nevertheless, so that the disputation concerning individual points may be clearer, let their second proposition be for the exposition of the first.¹⁹ To be justified is said in three ways. For sometimes it is used of that which is to be approved or judged that someone is just. In the second way it is taken for that which is, to be made just from unjust. And in the third way for that which is, for justice to be increased in him. Concerning these acceptations there will be a fuller discussion in the next chapter.

To this is subjoined the third proposition from their assertions.²⁰ When it is said that we are justified by faith alone, this is to be understood both of the second and of the third mode of justification. So that both the acquisition and the increase of justice are attributed to faith alone. But if the good works of one who is already justified are said in some way to justify him, they say that this is only in the first use of justification: namely, that a just man is pronounced just by God through his works, because his works are reckoned just by him, and are commended as testimonies of faith. Nay, from that pertinacity that after baptism concupiscence still remains sin, they make it follow that all works, even of the justified, are of themselves sins, except that through the grace of Christ they are not imputed. But these disputations pertain to book 3.

Their fourth assertion is:²¹ The name of faith is taken in three ways.²² In the first way, of the faith of history. In the second, of the faith of promise. And in the third, of the faith of miracles. For they distinguish both the old and the new testament, saying that some things in sacred Scripture pertain to history: as the creation of the world, the flood of the deluge, and the other histories of the Fathers. And in the new testament: the nativity, life, and death of Christ. Other things pertain to the promises. As, In your seed all nations shall be blessed. The scepter shall not be taken away from the tribe of Judah until he comes who is to be sent. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven, etc. Concerning the faith of miracles, a little later. The distinction was first Luther's in On Christian Liberty, and art. 1 to Leo, and is most celebrated among his followers.

They suppose also, in addition to this distinction, a fifth proposition.²³ When we teach, they say, that we are justified by faith alone, we do not understand the faith of history, by which we believe that Scripture is true, but faith: that is, confidence,²⁴ by which each one ought to trust the promises of God concerning the remission of sins to be effected through Christ. So they. Therefore some wrongly think that by them historical faith is called faith acquired in a human way,²⁵ as distinguished from divinely infused faith. Nay, historical faith in the Lutheran school is also inspired by divine breath, but on the part of the object it is distinguished from the faith which we must have in the divine promises.

Their sixth proposition is,²⁶ and one most especially to be noted, indeed the basis of their fabricated justification. The faith (they say) by which we are justified is not confidence alone in general, by which we trust that God is ready to reconcile all through Christ, if their hardness and fault do not stand in the way. But it is faith and confidence by which each one in particular, and without any condition, firmly believes and certainly trusts that his sins are now in fact forgiven him by God freely through Christ. And since this assertion is the greatest of all the controversies among us, nay, the nourishment and root and cause of all of them, understand it thus. When they say that we are justified by faith, they do not understand that that act and assent of faith is in any way the merit or cause of justification: nay, not even a disposition or preparation: but that it is, as it were, the hand or hook by which we apprehend the mercy of God, only through this, that it is the assent by which we believe that God is truthful and a faithful sponsor: as I will now explain more openly.

The seventh will be,²⁷ and the last conclusion of theirs. Although the faith of history of the rest of the Gospel, which is also a gift of God, can indeed remain without hope and charity, yet firm faith in the remission of sins can by no means be without them: but they are, they say, inseparable companions, yet that historical faith without charity is not properly faith.

Therefore, to return to the point of the beginning of justification, by which we are made just from unjust, do not be weary, most diligent reader, still to survey and discern in summary the state and seat of this controversy.²⁸ For it is placed (as we proposed at the beginning of the first book) in the understanding of this word, FAITH WHICH WORKS THROUGH CHARITY.²⁹ Concerning this word there is a very great disagreement between us and them. For both sides confess that by faith working through charity the justice of God is apprehended:³⁰ but nevertheless they use this "apprehended" very differently from us. For to apprehend is for them the same as to believe, and to give assent and faith to the faithful God promising salvation. And by that act alone, they say, we receive the grace, mercy, and justice of God: but after grace there immediately follows the infusion of charity. And so they recognize no act previous to grace except that of faith. Of which they give this reason, both Luther in On Christian Liberty and his accomplices everywhere. Namely, that one single thing is needed for life and justice, namely the word of God. According to that saying, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.³¹ And in the Psalm, He sent his word and healed them.³² And this word, he says, is the evangelical promise. But since the word and promise, he says, is apprehended by faith alone through the intellect, that assent alone apprehends mercy: which charity and works afterward follow. And for this cause, in art. 5 to Leo, he contends that the sacrament does not confer grace: but faith alone in the word of Christ promising. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.³³ And whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.³⁴ They teach the same in the Augsburg Confession, art. 5. In its Apology Melanchthon says:³⁵ Faith is not only praised as if it were the beginning of justification, as the adversaries say, but we think thus concerning faith, that properly and truly by faith itself, on account of Christ, we are reckoned just. And again, he says: By faith alone in Christ, not through love or works, do we obtain remission of sins: although love follows faith. And below: By faith alone we apprehend mercy: because it receives the promise, by which God promised that on account of Christ he will be propitious to those who believe in him. And below: Because the promise, he says, cannot be received except by faith. See how he always takes it for the precise act of the intellect and without any enigma at all. Bucer, in his Concord of Controversies,³⁶ expounding the imperial book, says that faith, as it is faith, as it is assent to the Gospel, faith itself alone: that is, primarily and per se, is the solid and full receptive cause of the first grace and adoption of God, and of the beginning of justification: that is, by which we are made just from unjust: then charity follows, for working just things. Note therefore how openly they in truth deny that we are justified by faith working through charity: since, they say, by the mere assent of the intellect grace is apprehended: which grace charity and so works immediately follow. And for this cause they assert that there is a necessary connection between faith and charity. Namely, that faith alone obtains the first grace, which grace charity immediately follows. But we, according to the evangelical truth,³⁷ say that to apprehend grace and mercy is not the same as to assent and believe: unless "to apprehend" is taken for that which is to know: whence the cognitive powers are called apprehensive. But we maintain that to apprehend is, by the act of believing, hoping, and loving through detestation of sins, with divine breath and help preceding, to be disposed, prepared, drawn, to come and be converted to receive sanctifying grace. So that faith works not only after grace, but in the reception of grace itself through the act of love. Because Paul was speaking of the first justification itself when he said that with God neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail: but faith, which works through charity. But what offspring is propagated to these men from this dogma will appear in what follows. Therefore, best reader, we will send you back to this again and again hereafter. Keep this little page before your eyes, which you may look back to hereafter.

At the very beginning of the disputation, therefore, it is worthwhile to explain these two terms, justification and faith. Justification is taken in three ways (so that in their second proposition we may agree with the Lutherans).¹ The first and genuine notion of this name is the acquisition of justice: namely that from unjust one becomes just. As heating is from cold to become hot. For names of this figure signify a change between two contraries. The second notion, close to this, is that it signifies an increase of justice. For in those forms which have degrees, the verbal noun signifies not only the first change, but also progress. For heating is also said to be the intensification of heat. These two acceptations are indeed most celebrated in the sacred utterances. Of the first Paul says:² But to him who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the impious. And, He who has died is justified from sin. For justification in this first way is,³ as it is in the gloss on that of Rom. 8, Whom he called, them he also justified, the remission of sins through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Namely, by which grace we are formally justified by the virtue and merit of Christ. Hence Paul to the Corinthians says: Fornicators, serving idols, adulterers, and the rest, you were: but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. Wherefore justification at present is not said from justice as a special virtue: but, as we were saying in the first book about original justice, as it imports the rectitude of the whole man. For in this sense Aristotle also uses the name of justice,⁴ after the likeness of bodily justification: for then one thing is justified together with another, when both are equalized. And although between us and God, since there is no equality at all, the full nature of justice cannot exist, nevertheless we are justified when, subject to his will, we are measured according to his law and rule, and according to our frailty are referred and conformed to it. For this is the justice which Paul mentions at the very beginning of the epistle to the Romans. For where he says that the Gospel is the power of God, he immediately adds, For the justice of God is revealed in it from faith to faith. Of the second mode of justification⁵ we read, He who is just, let him be justified still.⁶ And, Do not fear to be justified even unto death.⁷ And, You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.⁸ To which words Paul would have contradicted,⁹ where he says, We judge that a man is justified by faith, and not by works, unless Paul were speaking of the first justification, and James of the other. Although we will explain in its place how our works also concur in justification. Except that Paul speaks of preceding works. In the third mode¹⁰ the name of justification is further used for this, that one is absolved as guilty in judgment, and pronounced [just] by it. Nor is this usage so foreign to the first, but rather entirely akin to it. For as to be justified in a matter before God is for him who was unjust to become just: so in an external forum before men, it is for him who is held unjust, and is made guilty, according to what has been alleged and proved, to be pronounced just. In this sense the Wise Man says,¹¹ He who justifies the impious, and he who condemns the just, are both abominable before God. And, If there shall be a cause¹² between some, and they have appealed to the judges, whom they perceive to be just, they shall give them the palm of justice. To render the Greek word it would be, They shall justify him. Nor indeed is that signification of the psalm far from this:¹³ That you may be justified in your words, and overcome when you are judged: that is, that when men have judged concerning you, you may be found just. In almost this manner, to justify also signifies to commend, or to boast of justice. According to that, But he willing to justify himself.¹⁴ And, You are they who justify yourselves before men: but God knows your hearts. But this third signification is nowhere in Paul, nor in Scripture: where there is mention of our justification through Christ. In which the Lutherans (which is their third proposition) are shamefully false, and wickedly deceive. But justification is taken in the first way for the true acquisition of new justice. And where it is taken in the second way, there is also designated a true increase of justice, which is made through our works, emanating from the grace of God, and not merely a reputing or commending of justice, as will be demonstrated more fully in what follows. Paul therefore uses the name of justification (if we may conjecture the matter) perhaps alluding to the original justice in which our first parents were created. For since we all lost it by their fault, he significantly named justification the liberation from this our original contagion: that is, the restitution, and in some measure the restoration, not indeed of that same original justice, but nevertheless of the rectitude of man toward God, which was its form and root.¹⁵ Wherefore as St Thomas cleverly noted, 1-2 q. 113,¹⁶ although our justification is begun by faith and consummated through charity, it nevertheless takes its name from neither of these virtues: but from general justice. Because faith is a peculiar virtue of the intellect: as charity of the will: but justice designates the whole rectitude of man. Hence it happens that justification is taken only passively for that motion which is in man.¹⁷ Nor is that distinction proper which some fashion, that one justification is in Christ, which is the cause of ours, and another in us, which is its effect. For as among the philosophers, motion is not in the mover, but in the thing moved, as heating is not in the fire: but the cause of heating, whence proceeds the heating which is in the water. Nor would Aristotle concede that heating is an action in the fire, but from the fire: for motion, action, and passion are the same, although the respect of action is in the fire. In the same way neither in God nor in Christ is our justification properly, except that in him is the cause whence proceeds our justification.¹⁸ Hence Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter ch. 11, expounding that of Paul, The justice of God is revealed in it, etc., says that it is therefore called the justice of God because by imparting it to us he makes us just. And on that of Ps. 30, In your justice deliver me: The justice of God, he says, becomes ours when it is given to us. And these things concerning the first word of the question, namely justification.

But the other, namely faith,¹⁹ not only the opposing party, as we reported in their fourth proposition, but also our own men cut up and tear apart into as many meanings as there are words about faith in the Scriptures. So much so that we can scarcely retain in mind such a manifold equivocation of the name. For the adversaries, in order to deny that faith which is outside charity is faith, of which nevertheless Paul says, If I have faith,²⁰ so as to remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing, fabricate I know not what faith of miracles, distinct from the Catholic faith. And in order to defend that we are justified by faith alone, they distinguish another faith of the evangelical history (which they cannot deny can exist outside grace) from their justifying faith, and fabricate I know not what other faiths: as is especially to be seen in Melanchthon²¹ in the Apology, and more fully in the Commonplaces: and in Bucer²² in his recent reconciliation of the controversy of justification. Indeed Pighius,²³ also one of ours, teaches that faith is taken for confidence: likewise for conscience. And I have heard others multiplying [meanings] up to fifteen sections of faith: namely for authority, for promise, for oath, and I know not what other ways. Which variety and diversity, besides that it attributes to a simple thing without reason and art, cuts off all the fringes and nerves of the disputation about faith. For since Christ had laid one Catholic faith²⁴ as the base of the Christian structure, and had endowed it with very many privileges, so as to impress it more deeply on the minds of mortals, any passage of Scripture where such a privilege and power of faith is commended is now easily eluded and rejected. Indeed when anyone fabricates that this or that way is used there, he has once for all torn faith apart. I would not indeed deny that the homonymies and amphibologies must first of all be explained,²⁵ lest the disputation labor under this fault: but they are to be distinguished by judgment and art. I will deal first with our own men. For concerning the notions in which the Protestants use this name, there will be speech a little further below. Therefore, as far as I can meditate, there are only two meanings in this name faith.²⁶ For it signifies both a moral virtue, which is in the will, and an intellectual one, which is in the intellect. Which explanation shines through from the very etymology of the name. For both Cicero earlier, book 2 On Offices, and afterwards Augustine in epist. 19 to Jerome, noted in the two syllables, of which the first is from fio, the second from dico, that faith is so called because what is said is done.²⁷ Hence faith first of all signifies the constancy and truth which ought to be in the words of one asserting or promising something: which moral virtue is also now called fidelity. For which reason Cicero says there, Faith is the constancy and truth of words and agreements: which is indeed the foundation of all justice.²⁸ And for that reason in pacts, where there is mutual promise on both sides, he said, Receive and give faith.²⁹ They are therefore mistaken, unless I am mistaken, who say that faith is taken in one way for a promise or pledge. For a promise is a thing prior to faith. For when anyone promises anything, he is said by that promise to give, bind, and oblige his faith: which he afterwards frees when he fulfills the promise, or violates if he does not fulfill it. Yet he is not said to oblige or give a promise, just as neither is he said to fulfill faith, but a promise. Faith therefore is not a promise, but the firm truth which must be kept because of a promise, and which we as it were pledge by promising. And therefore one who is wrongfully circumvented or defrauded by someone implores the faith of gods and men: that is, constancy and truth. Nor is there need to fabricate another acceptation of faith for the authority of him who is to be believed. Since it falls back into this constancy and truth which we have just mentioned. For from this each one is worthy that faith be given to him, that he is reckoned constant and true, so as to do what he says. Whoever lacks this constancy is said to lack faith. As, There is no faith in the brow. And in this way we are said to derogate faith from him whom we cause not to be believed, and to reconcile faith to him whom we cause to be believed. And anyone is said to act or possess in good faith when he does so without deceit.

In the second way faith is taken,³⁰ as an intellectual virtue. Namely the assent which we give to one announcing or promising something to us. Which notion is born from the former. For when he whom I know to have faith in the first way (that is, constancy and truth of words) asserts anything to me, or promises, he indeed persuades me of what he says: and (which has the same force) makes faith for me: that is, generates in me the assent by which I believe him. Which assent is accordingly called faith. Although those fastidious observers of idioms say that this kind of assent is not so properly called faith. For in Greek it is called πίστις,³¹ from πέπεισμαι, which is "I have been persuaded," and "I have made faith." And therefore πίστις, they say, should rather be translated into Latin as persuasio than fides. Indeed some very learned grammarians say it cannot be rendered by one Latin word. And on this they fill very long pages. But although Quintilian translated it as persuasion, nevertheless the most celebrated Latin authors also call it faith. And deservedly indeed. For as fides among the Latins, so πίστις among the Greeks is taken as much passively as actively. For among them there is πίστιν διδόναι, καὶ δέχεσθαι, which we translate as to give and receive faith. And therefore that persuasion which is made to me by another is best called faith, which he makes for me, and I have for him. Hence to have or apply faith is to believe. As in Terence, If she believes that this will be preferred to you. And in the Poet,³² I believe indeed, nor is there one faith that they are gods. And Cicero in the Topics: An argument is a reason producing faith in a doubtful matter. And the same in the Offices: We have faith, he says, in those whom we think understand more than we do. And although the holy doctors were the first who gave the matter this name, this notion would have enough authority. For it is received by all ecclesiastics with the highest consent. Therefore if we grant two meanings to this name faith, it is enough.³³ Namely that faith be what someone gives me when he asserts or promises anything, and what I in turn give him when I believe. These notions only Augustine teaches³⁴ in On the Spirit and the Letter ch. 31, in these words: For we now speak of this faith which we apply when we believe something: not which we give when we promise something: for that itself is also called faith. But we speak in different ways. "He did not have faith in me": but otherwise, "He did not keep faith with me." For the former is, He did not believe what I said: the latter, He did not do what he said. According to this faith by which we believe, we are faithful to God: but according to that by which what is promised is done, even God himself is faithful to us. For this the Apostle says:³⁵ God is faithful, who does not permit you to be tempted beyond what you can bear. So much Augustine. Let us note therefore that faith is spoken of in two ways. First, that by which God is faithful to us; second, that by which we are faithful to God. In one passage of ch. 3 to the Romans Paul designates both.³⁶ For where he says, What if some of them did not believe? Has their unbelief made void the faith of God? By no means, there faith is taken in the first way for the faith by which God is faithful in his promises: which moreover do not depend on our works, as the Jews thought. And therefore he says that although some did not believe the promises of God, nor kept his law, nevertheless the truth remains firm in his words, so as to do what he said. But where a little further below he says, But the justice of God through the faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all who believe in him, he speaks of faith in the second way: namely by which we who believe are faithful to God, which is indeed the cause and foundation of our justification. From these things it is first gathered that it is not necessary that faith be taken in another way for confidence: as both some of our own men and all the adversaries take as certain. For confidence³⁷ is a thing other than faith and its offspring. Nor is it properly a virtue in itself, but a mode of virtue. For it is, as St Thomas knowingly says, 2-2 q. 129, hope strengthened by some firm opinion: or the strength of hope, pertaining to magnanimity. For from the fact that I have faith in the words of one asserting or promising, I hope and trust that it will be so. Indeed although it is born from faith, it is afterwards increased and perfected by charity. And therefore confidence draws its name from faith, as an effect from its cause. Wherefore firm and certain faith is expressed by the name of confidence: as the cause by the name of the effect. Which is plainly evident from the very examples which these multipliers of the meanings of faith bring forward. For they say that faith is taken in this way for confidence: where James says³⁸ that one who asks anything of God should ask in faith, nothing hesitating; so also as often as in the Gospel Christ demanded faith from those who came to him seeking health: and where he says, If you have faith like a grain³⁹ of mustard seed, say to the mountain, Move from here, etc. And where Paul says, If I have all faith,⁴⁰ so as to remove mountains, etc. Yet it is most manifest that in all these places faith is taken for the Catholic faith: that is, for the firm, certain, and most constant assent which we owe and give to the words of Christ. Indeed since this faith was the foundation on which our whole salvation rests, that we believe Christ to be God, and thus that all things whatsoever he taught us in preaching the Gospel are true, he performed all miracles for the corroboration of this faith. Which is a doctrine most received by the Fathers and theologians. And it is most certain from that passage where, sending the Apostles to preach the Gospel,⁴¹ he instructed them thus: And these signs shall follow those who have believed, namely who have received the Catholic faith. In my name they shall cast out demons, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, etc. Wherefore I cannot sufficiently wonder, both that our adversaries have devised another faith of miracles than the Catholic faith, and especially that our doctors recognize another where Christ says, If you have faith⁴² like a grain of mustard seed, say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move: to which agrees that of Paul, If I have faith,⁴³ so as to remove mountains: or wherever in the Gospel, about to perform a miracle, he demanded faith. For that concerning the centurion⁴⁴ who begged health for his servant, Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel, is it not understood of the Catholic faith? As also that to the blind men, Do you believe that I can do this for you? And when they answered, Surely, Lord, he adds, According to your faith be it done. But this is what deceives these men, that, as we were saying a little before, sometimes they explain the very degree of most certain faith by the name of confidence, as in the same chapter, Have confidence, son. Not considering that confidence is commended only as a sign of most firm faith. And therefore the name of confidence is taken for faith, rather than the name of faith for confidence. Wherefore it is the same Catholic faith which he blamed as small in Peter, which was teaching the future head of the Church, and which in the Canaanite woman⁴⁵ he commended as great, to the confusion of the people of Israel. Nor is it another of which he says, All things whatever⁴⁶ you ask praying, believe that you will receive. For to believe signifies nothing else than the assent which we give to one promising: whence if it is firm, confidence is begotten. But if someone argues against this, that the persuasion of obtaining whatever one asks is not necessary for asking: since it can be false, and yet confidence is always necessary: therefore faith is taken there for confidence. I too will refute him. Does it have less absurdity that the confidence by which one trusts that he will obtain whatever he has asked of God (if only he asks rightly) can be false, than the faith by which he believes the same? Surely as certain and firm as the confidence of those asking ought to be, so certain ought faith to be. For if confidence is born from faith, how will confidence be firmer than faith? Yet our Savior explains this faith: Amen, amen I say to you,⁴⁷ whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. Amen, amen is the word of one swearing. But to ask in the name of Christ is to ask those things which pertain to the salvation of the soul, when and where it is fitting. And in such a case both faith and confidence ought to be most certain: in another case both will be false. Hence James,⁴⁸ where he says, Whoever asks of God, let him ask in faith, nothing hesitating: without doubt he speaks openly of the faith which we owe to God promising: and therefore he adds, nothing hesitating. For by whatever degree one believes, by the same he also trusts. James therefore admonishes⁴⁹ that no one ask anything unless he certainly believes that it will confer salvation on him, and then let him not hesitate. Or if he is not so certain, let him have no other faith or confidence of obtaining, except under the condition, if what he asks is such.

As for what the same Albert adds, that faith is also taken for conscience: where Paul says,⁵⁰ Everything that is not from faith is sin, there would be one who would deny it: because perhaps Paul's sense is only that everything which is against the faith of Christ is sin. But yet granting that it is taken there for conscience, it surely differs from faith only as particular knowledge which is applied to the work differs from universal knowledge. For to act against conscience is to act against what faith teaches. But concerning the other division of acquired and infused faith, it will be enough to have noted here that these names do not apply to acts, but to habits: of which the first is infused by God, but the other is acquired by human use. There will be mention of these in ch. 9. But the object⁵¹ of the act and of the habit are promiscuously called by the same name of faith among the philosophers, because the act is concerned with the object, and the habit is for the sake of the act. For in this notion we use faith, saying that all things which are in the sacred page are the Catholic faith: namely because they are the object of faith. But concerning those three members, to believe God, to believe God [when he speaks], and to believe in God, the reason will give a place for us to speak.

With these notions of justification and faith explained, we undertake to demolish the machine of the Lutherans by this series of propositions. First¹ is set down against their foundation, which we explained in the fifth and sixth propositions. The catholic faith, necessary to the Christian family, as being that by which we are reckoned Christians, is not that special [faith] by which anyone undoubtedly believes and determines for himself that his sins are remitted on account of CHRIST, and that he is in the grace of God: but rather that divine persuasion and assent which we owe and render to God, concerning all things in general which have been revealed by him to the Church through CHRIST, and through his Prophets, Evangelists and Apostles: among which the divine promises themselves are numbered. We enunciate two things here. The first is that there are by no means two, but one faith entirely, by which we believe all things revealed, whether they be histories, or promises, or precepts or counsels. For it is the power of the same habit to believe that Abraham begot Isaac, and that in him the redeemer was promised to us: that CHRIST took flesh, and that he promised salvation to believers and the baptized. And it is the act of the same faith to believe that those promises, and whatever others are in sacred page, were made by God, which pertains to history: and to believe with certainty that they are most true and most firm, which properly pertains to the faith of promises, whence hope is raised in us. The second is that the assent of promises, pertaining to the catholic faith, is not that special [assent] by which anyone believes concerning himself that he either now receives or already has grace, but that [assent] in general by which we firmly believe that JESUS CHRIST is the universal redeemer, the one mediator of God and men: and therefore that unless by his merit, no fault is forgiven to anyone: but whatever sins have been remitted from the fall of Adam until now, and will be remitted, are remitted by the power of his blood. And therefore that to no one except through him is access to the eternal inheritance opened. But that this benefit is bestowed on this one in this way, or on that one, because anyone can resist the divine inspiration, is a human conjecture: which must be discussed in the chapter specially devoted to this matter. This conclusion is demonstrated especially from the apostolic definition of faith itself.² For faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the argument of things not seen. That is, the habit, or force and power of the mind, by which, although obscurely, yet certainly and firmly we assent to those things which we hope to see openly. In this definition the firmness of assent is first designated: whose cause is called substance: that is, the beginning of things to be hoped for, which has its strength and firmament from the obedience of liberty. For of things which are neither seen nor demonstrated by reasoning, we would never have so firm an assent, unless, bringing the intellect into captivity, we reduce it to the obedience of CHRIST. It is designated besides that the subject of faith is the intellective power, but the nature of its object is to be obedient to all things, and to embrace all things whatsoever have been revealed from heaven by God: whether they be deeds, or commands, or warnings, or his promises. For all these send us into the hope of future things. Wherefore in the same creed both kinds of articles are joined: namely both those which are historical, as that CHRIST was born and crucified: and besides those which are established concerning the communion of saints and the remission of sins, as comprehended under the same object of faith. And the argument is confirmed. The reason³ for Christians to believe is the supreme and infallible truth of God: but this same truth shines through all revealed things, whether it pertains to history or to promises. Therefore the faith of all things is the same. Of which one and the same tiny particle is [the faith] concerning the promises: which we believe not only truly to have been made, but to be most firm, as far as is on God's part, unless we resist. But that that special fictitious faith⁴ asserted by them in the sixth proposition does not pertain to the catholic faith, this is surely most easy to persuade. For the catholic faith depends solely on the divine assertion or promise: but that anyone is apt and fit to receive the promised benefit depends also on human assent and cooperation, therefore the faith of this is not catholic. What we say is such. The catholic faith, which if anyone did not firmly hold he would be a heretic, is entirely this, that God is most present to us and most ready, unless it stands by us [i.e., unless we obstruct], to work salvation in us: and to bestow it on each one who assents. But that anyone should believe that he himself now obtains salvation adds besides the assent that he has presented himself to God, and has not opposed any obstacle to his moving finger. Since (as was established in the previous book) God draws no one by compulsion, but freely. And therefore since this certainty requires human effort, it cannot equal the certainty of catholic faith. They are therefore connected and inseparable errors, that our justification depends on the sole divine promise without our works, and that anyone can become certain through faith that he is in grace. And therefore no one can maintain both at once: namely, that it depends in any way on our free will, and that anyone can become certain, unless God specially reveals it.

There also comes⁵ this argument, that the catholic faith is one, which obliges the whole family of CHRIST. If therefore it were a catholic faith that I am in grace, all would surely be bound to believe the same as I. In addition. He who is uncertain and doubtful concerning the catholic faith⁶ is judged a heretic: but he who doubts what manner of man he is before God has no reason to be held a heretic, since he fears nothing concerning the promises of God, but with the most just Job fears his own works, without which⁷ we are certain that we are by no means capable of his benefits which pertain to the grace of justification. For our lawgiver CHRIST⁸ makes no one certain, nor commands anyone to believe that he is or is becoming just, but only this, that he who⁹ believes and is baptized shall be saved. And that indeed unless he has opposed a depraved will: for unless you do penance, he says elsewhere, you shall all¹⁰ perish together. Nor does he preach that the kingdom¹¹ of heaven is at hand except to those who do penance. Which the adversaries themselves profess. But nowhere has he commanded anyone to determine concerning himself with the certainty of catholic faith that he has been lawfully baptized, or has done penance. Surely I do not see how those who acknowledge that grace is conferred on no one before he repents can resist [the conclusion] that a man is not certain of his salvation through faith. They say: Because penance is not the cause, yet it is required: but concerning whether it is legitimate, we have by no means a revelation of faith. But concerning this dispute of certainty there is a whole chapter below in book 3. Now however we establish only this, that that distinction of faith into historical and justifying is nugatory.¹² Therefore the definition of Calvin¹³ which he assigns to faith in his book On the Institution of the Christian Religion is incongruous. Namely, that it is a firm and certain knowledge of the divine benevolence towards us, which is revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts by the truth of the gratuitous promise in CHRIST. For if it is referred to the promises in general, it is only a tiny portion of the catholic faith: but if to that special certainty of his, which each one has concerning himself, it is outside the limits of the same orthodox faith.

The second¹⁴ proposition. Faith, hope and charity are virtues distinguished not only in thought, but in reality, and also by their object and subject. This we establish against their seventh proposition. For note well, reader: lest they should abandon the word which they had once begun to spread abroad (namely, that we are justified by faith alone), by what contrivances they have attempted to retain it. First, because they saw that the catholic faith does not suffice for justice, they began to call it historical faith, fashioning [the notion] that the faith which justifies is only that which we have toward God promising the remission of sins through CHRIST. And up to this point, although cutting the branch of faith from the just tree, they were nevertheless erring within the bounds of faith. But because they understood that that also was not enough, having now transgressed the line of true faith, they devised that special [faith] which we were just now refuting. But because they were driven also from this position (namely, convicted that anyone can believe with certainty that he is in grace, yet be deceived by that vain credulity), they thought to weave¹⁵ into the nature of faith both hope and charity: nay, even works. As if all these were reckoned under the name of faith. And to this pertains what we were just now reporting from Calvin¹⁶: namely, that faith is sealed both in minds, that is, in intellects, and in hearts, that is, in wills. But hear Philip¹⁷ in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. For these words are found in article 5 of the same confession: All terrified minds should know that they ought to believe that remission of sins is certainly given to them on account of CHRIST, not on account of their merits or dignity. All these certainly obtain remission of sins. And when in this way we console ourselves with the promise or the Gospel, and raise ourselves by faith, at the same time the Holy Spirit is given to us. Philip repeats these same words in the Apology. But very near the back of the same little page he says that the faith which justifies is not only a knowledge of history, but is to assent to the promise of God. He adds: And lest anyone suspect that it is only a matter of knowledge, we will add further: it is to will and to accept the offered promise of remission of sins and justification. And Bucer renews the same words in his recent Concordances.¹⁸ Weigh the manifest contradiction. First he says that that special faith, by which we certainly believe that it is given, and so on, suffices for salvation and justifies us. And immediately he adds that to will and to accept the promise is included in the nature of faith. Such are their apologies. If faith suffices, how is an act of the will required, which belongs to another power? Yet I see another greater absurdity¹⁹ in this stuffed definition of faith. The question was: By what do we receive the benefit of justification promised to us by God? And they answer: By faith alone. But when we press to inquire what this faith is like²⁰, they answer that it is not only to assent to the promise of God promising us gratuitously the remission of sins, but also to will and to accept the offered promise. Therefore it is just as if they said that we receive the benefit of justification by the fact that we will it, and at length accept it. Finally, we receive justifying grace because we receive the promise. Who would not perceive that we are wrapped by them in a blind veil of words, and rolled about as in a whirlwind, while they define the same thing to us by the same thing? Would they not have said more clearly that we receive that benefit by the act by which, through the special help of God, we believe that God is and is a rewarder, together with the act of hope by which we are raised through the same help, and the act of charity by which we repent of our errors, with the sacrament added, either of baptism if we are converted from unbelief, or of penance if, having relapsed, we come to our senses? But they answer: We embrace all those acts under the name of faith. Against this answer, therefore, we have opposed the second proposition. For who could endure this theology, that in the definition of faith the acts of hope and charity are glued together? For the substance of faith has its legitimate nature in the persuasion and assent of the intellect, whose proper object is the true, which has been revealed by God. But the other habits pertain to the will. For the object of hope and charity is not the nature of the true, but of the good, which is the object of the will: just as the intellect['s object] is the true. For we are raised formally not by faith, as they think, but by hope toward that divine good, although faith leads us there by directing us. We are raised, I say, by desiring and appetizing: but charity is the love of the same good, benevolence and friendship. Wherefore in the fatherland, when faith is driven out by vision, hope will at the same time cease: but charity, from the very beholding of God, will so far from depart that it will be wondrously perfected. The expectation of the creature, says Paul, awaits the revelation of the sons²¹ of God: but hope which is seen is not hope: for what a man sees, why does he hope for it? And elsewhere: Charity never falls away: whether prophecies²² shall be made void: or tongues shall cease. From which he concludes that faith, hope and charity are not only three things, but that the greatest and most excellent of them is charity. Not only because faith and hope are temporary, but charity is perpetual, but because it is the form of all the other virtues: which being absent, nothing is esteemed at the price of virtue. For this cause, where Paul speaks precisely of the nature of faith: He who approaches God, he says, must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder. Behold the whole substance of faith. But where he speaks of faith with its companions, which is required together for justice: Neither circumcision, he says, is of any avail, nor uncircumcision, but faith, which works through charity. Whence on Psalm 31 Augustine:²³ What one believes is of faith, but what one works is of charity. Moreover, unless these men had so hostilely banished all philosophy from their schools, they would never have so confusedly mingled the natures of the virtues, but would have given each its own. For as the essences and definitions of justice, temperance and the other virtues are various, so also are those of faith, hope and charity. But to one who looks back at the model of these men's mind which we set out in chapter 5, it will be easy to weigh the inconstancy and contradiction of these men.²⁴

For when they say that we are justified by faith alone, they bring their master's reason, that the sole word of CHRIST's promise is that which works our salvation: but the word is apprehended by faith alone; therefore we are justified by that alone. Where they manifestly take faith for the sole assent of the intellect, as it is distinguished against every other virtue and work. Wherefore they say that that faith is not only the foundation, but the whole apprehension of salvation and grace, which grace, they say, charity follows. But afterwards, either forgetful of themselves, or certainly convicted that that faith does not suffice, they sew hope and charity and penance onto the nature of faith. Who would not detect their whirlings? And yet by these things another of their cavils is exposed, who turn themselves to every side so that their word 'by faith alone' may obscure something. For because they felt that they were already cast down from this position, namely that the nature of faith embraces the other virtues, they say that at least they are connected. But this connection, if you recall, good reader, they do not understand in such a way that those virtues precede grace, as we have been taught by the Fathers according to the evangelical truth, but that faith alone receives justifying grace, drawing charity with it. For the words are those of Melanchthon²⁵ cited above: By faith alone, not through love, we obtain remission of sins: although love follows faith. Except that now Bucer²⁶ in his Reconciliation seems to wish to persuade that even if all were required for obtaining grace, faith, hope and charity are nevertheless three virtues, but connected among themselves: so that neither charity is without faith, nor faith is present without charity. Nor does he use any other witness than one example, which he took from his master in On the Babylonian Captivity, and thinks irrefragable. Let us think, he says, of a man of sound mind and reputation who is gravely ill, and who, fearing death, is visited by one who calls him to some prepared and splendid banquet, and who is such that the miserable man undoubtedly gives him faith; can such a starving man, he says, not immediately conceive from that faith a confidence in the food he desires: and can he not hasten quickly to that banquet, and at the same time love and honour that host with his whole heart, and desire to gratify him in whatever way he can? Humbly, he says, propose to the mind of someone suffering from a dangerous disease and expecting the end, that a physician is present who promises certain health: thus, he says, he who has faith in the Gospel cannot but certainly hope for the offered health, and fulfil all its commands, and finally turn himself to him with his whole breast. For who, he says, does not experience in himself that he cannot but love and honour him whom he does not doubt promises him great goods, and will most certainly perform them: and also eagerly follow his counsels and precepts, whom he does not doubt gives him true and salutary counsel and commands? But first of all this example of Bucer is doubtful.²⁷ Nay rather it fights more against them than against us. For even if we grant that the said virtues are connected because of the example of the sick man, who if he so believed would immediately do all that the physician ordered: from this it is not gathered that faith alone is the cause of salvation, but that faith begets confidence, and confidence obedience: which would be the nearest cause.

Yet neither do we certainly grant that: but we set down a third proposition against this example.²⁸ Faith, hope and charity are so far from being distinguished only in thought that they are separated in reality, so that faith, nay even hope, can exist without charity. And since this is the place from which they think we are most sharply and strongly attacked, we shall insist here somewhat more fully against them. We do not now dispute whether faith or hope without charity are true virtues. Since, as we said in book 1, chapter 21, no office in the absence of charity is absolutely worthy of the name of virtue. And besides, since faith is the foundation of charity, charity cannot be infused without faith. But that solitary faith can exist without charity is proved. The nature and essence of faith²⁹ is not only other than the nature of charity, but prior by its nature, and not depending on it: because it consists entirely, as has been said, in the intellect, whose operation precedes the operation of the will: therefore nothing prevents it from being able to be begotten prior to charity, and to survive when charity departs. But because they do not value arguments of this sort so highly, in order that I may at the same time dilute Bucer's argumentation, I argue by another reason.³⁰ Faith, grant it, stirs the will to appetite for the good which it shows, yet it brings no force upon it, but the will always remains free, as is its nature: therefore however much we give faith to God inviting us to the heavenly banquet, threatening us with eternal punishments, and promising us rest from our labours, it is nevertheless free for man to prefer present sensual goods to those. Not that it is not the nature of faith to call us from earthly things to eternal things, but that these present things, obvious to the senses, move us to themselves more vehemently. Especially since men promise themselves after a fall repentance and divine favour, by which they may be restored to the friendship of God. Wherefore there is no contradiction that someone may have a certain and constant faith, so that for its confession he would submit his neck to the sword, and nevertheless persist in some sin. Nay, even in human affairs the contrary of Bucer's example is not always [true].³¹ For there can be found a sick man at the point of death, even most desirous of life: to whom however if a physician offered health on this condition, that he permit his mouth or leg to be cauterized, or a part to be cut out by which the stone could be extracted, or that he endure some such terrible thing: truly he would rather reject life. As is read of Marius, who, when one leg was bound, and he was ordered to extend the other, said: Health is not worth so much pain. Nor in these terrifying cures only, but in lighter affections we find men who, though most certain that they are procuring death for themselves by their pleasures, are none the more restrained. So plainly experience teaches us concerning faith: namely that although Christian men have a firm faith in the divine goodness, and in future goods and evils: yet, either because the door of piety and religion seems narrow to them, and the path rough and uphill, or because they are entangled in the snares of this world and involved in desires, they cannot so extricate themselves as to follow what they judge best. Where the very splendour of the divinity pours over those happy heavenly ones, seeing God as he is, there can be no hesitation or delay in loving.³² For that sight of the fountain of all goods cannot but carry the blessed into love, and so deified bind them wholly to God by a certain spontaneous necessity of friendship: where there is no place for sloth, no sickness of mind: in short, nothing which can retard that perpetual filial reverence. Yet this knowledge of ours through a mirror in an enigma is not so efficacious: and therefore not always fruitful of good works. Otherwise it would not only not allow anyone to fall from the grace of God, but would also keep all Christians intent on the best and highest offices, and bound by the Pauline knot: which neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come could separate from the love of God.³³ But we are not all rapt even to the third heaven. They send us to that passage of the Gospel where the twelve disciples, asked whether they also wished to go away,³⁴ answered: Lord, to whom shall we go: because you have the words of eternal life. And from this they bid us understand in what way he who believes cannot but love. But we do not deny that faith very often engenders charity: for this is its nature: but we defend this, that it cannot always, wherever it is, do as much, when the affections of the flesh resist. Let us send them in turn to another passage, where that young man who had kept the commandments from his youth (otherwise the Gospel would not say³⁵ that CHRIST looked upon him and loved him) and therefore came with living faith to ask CHRIST³⁶ what he should do to possess eternal life. He, I say, undoubtedly believed the Redeemer that if he sold and distributed his goods and followed him, he would be perfect: and yet the great love of riches, in which he had fixed his mind, prevailed over faith. Whence it is not so plainly conjectured that his faith was not great, as that that love of wealth and of the flowing abundance of goods was greatest in him. For indeed the same faith, where it had not met such great difficulty, could immediately have torn the young man from the world. Nor is it necessary to say that he lost the grace of God on account of that tepidity of faith. Since it was not a commandment but a counsel: if he wished to be perfect. As will be said in book 3.

Therefore, that all these things may shine more fully, the qualities, degrees and habits of faith which befall it, while its substance is preserved, are various and diverse.³⁷ For sometimes it is sound and firm, sometimes weak and feeble. For Paul says: Receive the weak in faith.³⁸ And: Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.³⁹ Again CHRIST our Saviour reproaches the little faith of Peter when he trembles, and praises the great faith of the Centurion and the Canaanite woman. Finally James calls that faith dead which is deserted by charity: and Paul calls that living which works through charity. For just as the motion of the body is an indication of animal life, so also the offices which are done according to God are the witnesses of spiritual life. But as not every remission and languor of faith extinguishes the light of divine grace, so neither is death itself to be judged such as to consume and expunge the substance and nature of the same faith and its habit. Nay, a dead faith can be stronger than a living one, although then it is not better: nay, it may not be a virtue at all.⁴⁰ Peter, although he did not have that degree of confirmed faith so as to walk steadily on the waters, is not forthwith to be judged to have sinned mortally. Which we also said in like manner of the young man just mentioned. Nay, there are tepid men, not very strong in faith: yet they persevere in grace, because they are not exposed to great dangers of falling. There are on the contrary much stronger men, who nevertheless, when a great occasion suddenly presents itself, are precipitated by the impulse of passion. According to the word of that comic poet: However, it is easy to act wickedly on a sudden. As one who, seeing his dearest son slain or his bed violated, would rush upon the murderer or the adulterer. In David⁴¹ there is an example: surely when, kindled with most ardent love for the beautiful Bathsheba, he committed adultery with her, did he lose faith? By no means. Nay, he had an outstanding faith. For he did not doubt that he had sinned against God, as he afterwards tearfully confessed. But he could not sustain the great conflict of the flesh: he could have, I say, through the grace of God, if he had fought strenuously, but nevertheless he was conquered. Indeed we do not deny that, if you look only at the nature of faith, the greater it was, the greater charity was engendered. For, as Ambrose says in the book On the Calling of the Gentiles, faith is called the mother of good will and just action. And on Ezekiel, Homily 22, Gregory says: We love in this life only as much as we believe: and as much as we love, so much do we presume of hope. But there are carnal and secular impediments by which faith is hampered: to overcome which other virtues besides faith are necessary.

Finally our assertion is confirmed by the irrefragable testimony of Paul:⁴² For if I have, he says, all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. Therefore not only faith, but the greatest faith can exist without charity. This is the passage at which, seeing it most manifestly convinces the matter, they strive exceedingly to delude, by inventing I know not what faith of miracles, besides justifying faith. For just as, seeing that assent to sacred Scripture can be had without charity, they say that it is not that by which we are justified, but is historical faith: so hearing from Paul that all faith can be found without the companionship of charity, they devise another faith of miracles. Surely if it were permitted so to cavil at the Scriptures, and to tear and mock the nature and qualities of faith in individual passages by this new usurpation, all reason of explaining [them] would perish. First,⁴³ what kind of naming is 'faith of miracles'? If he had said 'grace of miracles', as grace of healings, or gift of miracles, like the gift of tongues, the word could be understood of some grace freely given. But when Paul says nothing other than 'all faith', what other faith can be understood than the catholic faith, to which as to the foundation of the evangelical law this privilege of miracles belongs? Otherwise it could also be called hope or charity of miracles. Likewise Paul's word⁴⁴ is entirely an allusion to that of the Redeemer: If you have faith as⁴⁵ a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, pass from here to there, and it shall pass. Where the discourse is manifestly concerning the catholic faith. Since indeed, when reproaching the unbelief of the apostles, who for that reason had not cast out the demons, he added that word. For indeed, as we said a little before, it is most constant and most received that CHRIST neither usurped the power of miracles nor imparted it to his disciples except to confirm faith, which could not be persuaded by natural reasons. Which we showed above by the word of CHRIST, sending the apostles to disseminate the word: where he says,⁴⁶ And these signs shall follow those who believe, etc. Nay, from the very beginning of old the divine custom of revealed faith was to confirm it by portents and miracles. For so he promised to Abraham⁴⁷ that from an old man and a barren Sarah he would propagate offspring beyond the sand of the sea. And to the inviolate virgin,⁴⁸ in order that the angel might establish faith in the mystery, he mentions the pregnancy of an old woman as another miracle. Therefore to that same faith for the sake of testifying which miracles were to be wrought, the same power and authority was conferred: if only it were so fruitful as to beget a certain confidence of obtaining. And this is what the Apostle says, 'all faith', that is, faith in that supreme degree which is necessary for removing mountains: although now, where there is no such necessity of asserting faith by miracles, this power does not display itself so frequently. But what need is there to summon other witnesses? Is not the Apostle most explicit as to what faith he speaks?⁴⁹ For when he concludes at the end of that chapter that faith, hope and charity are three, and charity greater than the others, can anyone deny that he is speaking of the three theological virtues: and therefore of the catholic faith, which is the first of them. In the whole chapter, therefore, he speaks of the same [faith], which he so compares with charity that in whatever degree it is solitary, it does not suffice for the friendship of God. But laborious charity, which is patient and kind, supplies to all the other virtues their divine being. And for this reason he attributes to it that it believes all things and hopes all things. And besides, because through charity both faith and hope increase. To the same point pertains that saying of CHRIST: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he who does the will of my Father. For many will say in that day: Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, and the rest:⁵⁰ who nevertheless will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. For to say Lord, Lord pertains to the catholic faith, by which we know that God is the true Lord. Nor do we know it as the demons do: for they do not say Lord, because they do not believe from obedience. But to say Lord is the proper faith of a Christian: not only acquired, but that by which, bringing the intellect into captivity, we offer assent to the divine majesty, having professed his law. Which can nevertheless exist without charity. And therefore our Redeemer adds: Everyone therefore who hears these my words and does them shall be likened to a wise man: but he who hears and does not do [them] shall be likened to a foolish man. Where to hear is the same as to believe and receive the faith. Whence in Luke⁵¹ that servant who knew the will of his lord and did not do according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes. For undoubtedly to know the will is to have faith. To this also pertains the parable⁵² of those invited to the great supper: who surely doubting nothing about the banquet excused themselves, putting forward secular business. But here there are two or three objections of theirs to which it is necessary to respond. First,⁵³ since faith is a gift of God, as charity is, why is it not equally expunged with charity by any mortal crime? The answer is at hand. Because charity is the inseparable companion of grace. For grace is that by which we are loved by God, and charity is that by which we love him. And as is had in the Gospel:⁵⁴ He who loves me shall be loved by my Father. Wherefore by whatever contrariety mortal sin is opposed to grace, it is also opposed to charity. But faith and hope and the other moral virtues have their own distinct natures, which of themselves do not say either friendship or the grace of God. Wherefore just as charity departing through the sin of theft does not take with it the habit of chastity, so neither the habit of hope or faith: but all remain unformed, and therefore unworthy of the simple name of virtues. But heresy or apostasy, which stands opposed over against faith, excludes its infused habit. For a heretic in one article, although he has acquired faith in the others, does not however believe them on account of the formal nature of catholic faith: namely, as they have been revealed and proposed by CHRIST through the holy Church. But when the nature of faith fails, faith itself is also abolished.

The other doubt is of greater weight among them.⁵⁵ namely, that dead faith is not faith. For the name 'dead' implies this, since a dead man is not a man. And besides they argue that this kind of faith differs in no way from the faith of demons. For in one context James says⁵⁶ that faith if it does not have works is dead in itself: and that he who believes in this way does nothing more excellent than the demons, who believe and tremble. But he will dissolve both of these without difficulty who has carefully weighed the words of James. For he does not compare faith to charity as a man to a soul: but as a body to a soul. He does not say, I say, 'as a man', but 'as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead'. For both man and body live by the soul: but man as by a form which is a part of himself, the body however as by that which comes to it from outside. And therefore because God, who is to us as the soul of spiritual life, dwells in us through charity (for God is charity),⁵⁷ and he who remains in charity remains in God, and God in him: when charity is expunged, both man remains spiritually dead, and his faith dead. Yet, as the body without the soul retains its entire essence as a body, so faith without charity has its own nature, substance and property of faith, which is to assent to the sayings of God. Nor does it forthwith follow that that dead faith differs in nothing from the faith of demons. For the nature of faith consists not only in certainty,⁵⁸ which perhaps the demons can have greater, nay clearer, than we, but in this, that it is received through obedience and the submission of the will (as we hinted in its very definition). But the demons believe not willingly but unwillingly: and hence it is that our faith by its own nature allures us to the love of God, while theirs instils nothing but fear and trembling of him. But the holy Synod of Trent has already defined each of these things in detail. Surely what it explained after canon 7, that those three theological virtues are distinguished by their own proper natures, and therefore separable from one another, and in chapter 12 it censured under anathema that faith is not that special confidence: and in canon 28, that faith which remains without charity is true faith, although dead, which suffices to make a man a Christian. The Synod, I say, of Trent,⁵⁹ which has now been transferred to Bologna (may God turn it to the good of his Church, and may it be happy and auspicious for her).

We have therefore completed [the argument] that faith is one, namely that orthodox faith altogether distinct from hope and charity: which as it can exist without grace, so also without charity. We now proceed to demonstrate that this same faith is entirely that which is necessary for our justification. But first its cause and origin, and its effect per se without the companionship of charity, must be considered in two propositions. The first is. Faith, even while it is unformed, is a supernatural gift of God. This conclusion¹ although it is most received by theologians with the highest consent on account of the authorities of Scripture (such as that to the Ephesians:² By grace you are saved through faith: and this not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God, and many of this kind) yet they disagree somewhat about its sense. For Scotus³ in 3 Sentences, d. 23, says that by human faith (which he calls acquired) a man can assent to the whole Christian preaching. Nay, he says, we believe by the authority of the Church (which he thinks human) and by the instruction of parents, who teach their children the faith. But faith, he says, is infused by God both for the greater perfection of the soul and for the greater certainty and intensity in the act of believing. To which opinion Durandus⁴ subscribes still more explicitly, q. 1 on 2 Sentences, d. 28, saying that infused faith is not necessary except that we may believe more easily. They do not say that justifying faith, which is the companion of grace, is possible for us without the gift of God. Nor indeed do they deny that the infused unformed habit⁵ is a gift of God. For all the doctors agree on this: namely that not only formed faith but also unformed faith is a divine gift: as St. Thomas⁶ is the author, 2-2, q. 6, and the gloss on that word,⁷ If I have faith, but do not have charity. Which gift is required for a man to be a Christian. Nor again do they deny that a revelation of the mysteries of God made to the world is necessary for men to believe: for since they do not fall under natural knowledge, unless God had irradiated the world with this light, the knowledge of them would be impossible. But they affirm only this, that he who heard CHRIST, or the apostles, or other preachers, would not need any supernatural habit or inspiration in order to assent to the whole preaching: just as we assent to those narrating other natural histories. Yet St. Thomas⁸ in the passage just cited establishes the faith of this conclusion far otherwise. Namely that it is not only for greater perfection, or prompter assent, but is altogether a necessary gift of God: without which we cannot believe all things that have been revealed with certainty. Whence, he says, two things are required for faith. One, that credible things be proposed to man, which was done by the ministry of the prophets and apostles and other preachers. And these have the authority of God sending them: according to that, How shall they preach⁹ unless they are sent? Add that the authority of the universal Church¹⁰ in determining the things that are of faith is by equal reason the authority of the Holy Spirit. The other is required on the part of man: and this the Pelagians thought was free will. But this is false: because since man by believing is raised above his nature, it is necessary that this be in him from a supernatural principle moving him interiorly. Thus St. Thomas. And surely not only on account of St. Thomas and on account of Augustine, whose undoubted opinion is everywhere the same, would I have judged this sense legitimate: but, saving the reputation of illustrious authors, I do not plainly see how it is sufficiently safe to think otherwise. Wherefore St. Thomas does not report this as an opinion, but thinks the contrary Pelagian. Surely the sense of the Pelagians asserting that the beginning of faith is from us would be no other than that one who hears the preaching of faith could naturally assent with as much certainty as is in the catholic faith, and that grace would not bestow anything except that man could do it more easily. Which was condemned in the fifth canon of the Council of Mileum. But let us hear Augustine¹¹ on this matter. For although elsewhere most frequently, yet in the book On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 2, he proposes the question in this form. First therefore we ought to show that the faith by which we are Christians is a gift of God: if indeed we can do this more diligently than we have already done in so many and so great volumes. Note, the faith by which we are Christians. Surely which without doubt can exist without grace and charity. But if at first sight it appears to you that Augustine only means that infused faith is from God, by which we are Christians, yet does not deny that the act of believing can be from nature, contemplate his mind more attentively, and you will see that he goes further. For no one could doubt that an infused habit, if there were such, would be infused by God alone: but he wants to establish that for actually believing all those things which pertain to the Christian religion, and so firmly as becomes a Christian, a special help of God is necessary, whether through a habit or through an act. For Augustine is never anxious to distinguish between act and habit. But this sense will be most clear to one considering what cause he treats there.¹² For after the Pelagians were compelled to retract their heresy (namely that the grace of God is given according to our merits), they attempted to retain at least this, that the beginning of faith is from us. With which error even Augustine himself laboured before he was bishop, as he confesses in the same book, chapter 3, and book 1 of the Retractations, chapter 23. But afterwards, having become bishop (as he says in the same place and book 2 On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 20), he laid aside that error. And this is what he sets forth there: namely that not even the beginning of faith is from us. He thought nothing about the habit, but says that to believe itself, which is, he says, to think with assent those things which pertain to religion, no one can do except through the help of God. Because we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves. Nor is it anything else that he condemns there against Pelagius. Otherwise that assent of faith would be of some merit, to which grace would in some way be owed. And therefore concerning that assent also he cites that word of Paul: What do you have that you have not received? But if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?¹³ Hinting that anyone who naturally said that he assented to the Gospel could usurp some glory to himself. He accumulates besides several other authorities. Such as that: By grace you are saved through faith, and this not from yourselves: for it is the gift of God.¹⁴ Although this passage, as Augustine himself expounds in the Hypognosticon, book 3, is understood of faith altogether justifying, which grace follows. But that is more open: To you it is given for CHRIST not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.¹⁵ And: I obtained mercy, that I might be faithful. He did not say, Because I was faithful.¹⁶ He also adduces that: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.¹⁷ Although indeed I cannot fully gather this sense from that passage of the Gospel. For it is the answer to what the disciples asked: What shall we do, that we may work the works of God? Where he was not asking for a work which was an effect of God: but which was his commandment, and pleasing to him. And therefore he answered: That you believe in him whom he has sent. From that [passage] of Luke the same truth is corroborated: Lord, increase our faith.¹⁸ As if it were his own power that they believed. And especially from that which Augustine expounds in the Hypognosticon, book 3, to the same sense. Where, when Peter confessed, You are CHRIST, the Son of the living God,¹⁹ the Lord answered: Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, because flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Whence it is gathered that faith is a gift of God. Wherefore I confess that I cannot understand how it can be glossed²⁰ that it is a gift not simply necessary, but for greater, or more perfect, or easier [believing]. For that very word, 'gift of God', plainly signifies that no one can do this naturally. For when Paul says, Not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God, what else did he wish to express than that, unless from the gift of God, faith and grace cannot be had? By equal reasoning, therefore, when he says, To you it is given for CHRIST not only to believe in him, what else is it than to say, you could not believe by any other way? Wherefore Augustine noted well there the word of Paul: Charity with faith from God the Father and the Lord JESUS CHRIST.²¹ As if he had said that not only charity, but also faith by itself, namely to assent to the Gospel, can be from God alone. From God alone, I say, preceding. For as he says in both cited places, namely book 1 of the Retractations and the book On Predestination, faith is the work of God and ours.²² Ours, namely, on account of the free decision of the will: because unless we assent and cooperate, we cannot believe. And for this reason it is required of us: and therefore unbelief is a sin. But it is the work of God, because unless he breathes upon us with his peculiar inspiration and moves us, we can do nothing. But how both grace and the virtues are works of God and ours, we have sufficiently considered in the previous book, chapter 15, and the three following, and it must also be repeated by us a little later.

There is besides a great argument against those who say that our faith is begotten by human authority, namely of parents, or preachers, who instruct us: and what is much worse, they call the authority of the Church human.²³ For if I assented to the Gospel on account of the sole authority of men, truly on account of the authority of the same men, if they told me the contrary, I would change my faith. Against the admonition of Paul: If I or an angel from heaven should preach another gospel, let him be anathema.²⁴ In sum, to believe the Gospel altogether is a disposition, and indeed the greatest, to grace: therefore according to what we said in chapter 3, it cannot be except through the special help of God. Wherefore the holy Synod of Trent²⁵ says very well in canon 6 that, stirred by divine grace, we conceive faith from hearing, and in canon 3, which is taken from the Council of Orange, canon 25, it sanctions that no one can believe, hope, etc., as is fitting, without the inspiration and help of the Holy Spirit, so that the grace of justification may be conferred on him.

It must be answered to them, therefore, that although someone begins to believe on account of parents or tutors, or other preachers, he nevertheless does not believe on account of their authority, but believes them as ministers of the Church.²⁶ Nor has the habit of faith any other inclination except under that aspect. But the authority of the Church is not human: but divine, which cannot err. It is easy therefore to dissolve their remaining arguments. The first is of this kind. Those hearing the evangelical sermon could have such great faith in the preacher as to believe all things on account of his authority. Just as they can give the same faith to Livy, or to any historian, by the sole natural faculty of the intellect: and especially those who, hearing CHRIST, saw his doctrine confirmed by testimonies and miracles: therefore infused faith is not simply necessary.²⁷ But the answer to this is that those hearing the preaching in this way, or formerly that of the apostles, or of CHRIST, could indeed by natural light have some assent of opinion or human faith, such as we have to Josephus or Livy: but that certainty of faith which is necessary for Christians, by no means, unless inspired by the deity.²⁸ For it is required of a Christian not only to believe some things, but all things which are in both Testaments (at least in general) and whatever the Church has explained, as matters of faith, so firmly and certainly that, if need be, he would deny a science which philosophers thought demonstrative. Such is that inference: This divine essence is the Son, and the same is the Father, therefore the Father is the Son. For such certainty of such great supernatural mysteries the powers of natural genius are by no means efficacious. Wherefore if a child before the use of reason, snatched from unbelief (which is their second argument), were educated among Christians, he could indeed have a human opinion of Christian doctrine: yet by no means the certainty of which we have just spoken, unless baptized, or otherwise aided from heaven.²⁹ Whence if, having advanced in age, he believed in good faith that he had been baptized, although it were not so, he could with that credulity be justified through the help of God: and then faith would be infused into him together with grace. But concerning the heretic we have just said how, by faith naturally acquired, he can believe some articles.³⁰ Yet that faith is not legitimately Christian: because it is not entire.

But this is the third argument against the necessity of infused faith.³¹ If a pagan hearing the evangelical preaching were fully to receive it: that is, embracing all things with certain faith, were to ask for baptism, with this obstacle however, that he does not wish to put aside the hatreds which he exercises against his enemy, he seems then to have faith, yet without a supernatural gift. Because faith is not infused except together with grace, of which nevertheless he is not yet possessed. It is answered that although if it were clear to the Church that he brings an obstacle to baptism, he would have to be kept from the sacrament: since it ought to be administered to no one unless it is believed that grace, which is the supreme effect of the sacrament, is conferred on him through it: yet if he were baptized with such a fiction, he would receive unformed faith.³² As St. Thomas is the author, 2-2, q. 6, art. 2, to the third argument: where he says that the gift of faith can be received from God without charity. For by the same reason that, when charity is extinguished, faith can survive, it can also happen that someone receives faith before charity. Whence in the chapter 'Veniente', On the Baptism of Presbyters, it is held generally that through the sacrament of faith (such as baptism) a man is made a member of CHRIST.³³ And afterwards, when the fiction departs, he receives grace: as Augustine teaches in the chapter 'Tunc valere', On Consecration, dist. 4. But what if that pagan, so disposed, were in a grove where there is no supply of water: would he then, as soon as he approved the whole law, receive faith through the desire for baptism?³⁴ For if you deny this, there follows the opinion which we reject: because then he believes naturally as firmly as after receiving baptism. It is answered that before baptism in reality it is not likely that the habit of faith is infused through baptism in desire, unless grace is infused: because he is not a Christian.³⁵ And such a habit is not infused except by reason of baptism, where a man is made a Christian: or by reason of grace, which brings the virtues with it. And therefore either he does not then believe as firmly as a Christian, or a special help is supplied to him from above for the act of believing. But if anyone still objects to us a man in pure nature, either before the coming of CHRIST among the nations, or now in that region where there is no knowledge of him: for he by natural knowledge alone, that God is and is a rewarder, could by special help touching the will be reconciled to God.³⁶ Which the Apostle seems to hint when he reproaches the natural philosophers that, when they had known God, they did not glorify him as God.³⁷ And a little after: The Gentiles who do not have the law do naturally the things that are of the law. These passages of Paul must be treated more closely immediately in chapter 11. In the meantime, however, it is answered that even if natural knowledge sufficed for salvation, with help moving the will, that was not explicit faith in CHRIST: which we now establish to be the gift of God.

The second proposition.³⁸ This faith without grace and charity suffices to constitute a man a Christian and a member of CHRIST: not only fictitiously, as the Lutherans preach, but properly, legitimately and truly, as we said in the preceding chapter, [and] as was determined by the Council of Trent³⁹ canon 28, as regards the truth of the substance of faith: although it lacks the perfection and life which accrue to faith extrinsically from charity. The first reason for this is derived from the superior sources.⁴⁰ For if faith without charity is properly, and as regards its internal substance, truly faith: and a Christian is the same as a believer, whoever is a Christian is [such] through it. But the same reason is formed more plainly.⁴¹ A Christian is one who is of CHRIST, namely who is his member, who has given his name to his militia, and has bound himself to his family, and bound himself by its laws: whence he has not apostatized: but whoever has been initiated by the sacrament of baptism is made his member through faith: according to that, In one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,⁴² nor does whatever sin he commits deny the faith: therefore through unformed faith a man is a Christian. But they say: No one is made a member of CHRIST except through grace. For whoever (says Paul) were baptized in CHRIST JESUS were baptized in his death.⁴³ For we were buried together through baptism into death, that as CHRIST rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. The similitude of the vine and branches is added, which are not members of the vine except while they live by its moisture:⁴⁴ as neither is the eye of a dead man an eye (says Aristotle). And finally to the Ephesians Paul says that CHRIST loved the Church and gave himself for it: that he might sanctify it: cleansing it with the washing of water in the word of life, that he might present to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle.⁴⁵ But this argumentation, if we tried to satisfy it fully, would lead us beyond the bounds of the present undertaking to the article concerning the Church: which these men, on account of such testimonies, admit to be none that is true except the internal one.⁴⁶ Namely the assembly of those who are thoroughly strong in holiness of heart. But as far as our assertion is concerned, it will be abundant if we say this. Namely that we are inserted into CHRIST in two ways, as members.⁴⁷ In one way through faith, which we willingly render to him as subjects enrolled in his commonwealth, and by the sacrament we bind ourselves. As when Paul, in Romans 1, having fallen into a discourse concerning the obedience of faith among the Gentiles, adds: Among whom you also are called [to be] of JESUS CHRIST: that is, Christians, by the fact that you have offered the same obedience of faith: bringing the intellect into captivity (as he says elsewhere) to the obedience of CHRIST.⁴⁸ But in another way we are implanted in him, and planted together through charity. Whence: If anyone does not have the Spirit of CHRIST, he is not his.⁴⁹ And the first union is ordered to the second. For to this end we are conformed to CHRIST crucified in baptism, that we may mortify the works of the flesh. Whence: Those who are CHRIST's have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences.⁵⁰ But it is inconsequent that he who wanders from the end and scope of faith should forthwith lose faith. For although by any sin we break faith to that extent that we do not entirely do as we promised, yet we do not altogether deny the faith, so as not to be always bound by the law: after the manner of a civil commonwealth. For he who commits one crime is not forthwith cut off from the commonwealth: but if he is a deserter, or wholly rebellious. Whence CHRIST says: If he will not hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican:⁵¹ therefore as long as someone hears the Church, he is a faithful and catholic Christian. Wherefore just as dead faith, as we said above, is not fictitious but true according to substance, so also a Christian devoid of charity is nevertheless a Christian. Nor does he altogether bear the likeness of a dead man's eye.⁵² For the eye expresses the whole composite of body and soul, which therefore departing, it is not an eye. It is otherwise with faith, which lives by another virtue. Nor is the evangelical branch, as soon as it dries up in the absence of grace, cut off from the vine: but remains implanted through faith: which faith is the mother of charity, until the end of the world: when such barren branches will be cut off and thrown into the fire. Or until they are amputated by the authority of the Church. We are taught the same in the similitude of the threshing floor: where the chaff is mingled with the wheat, and of the net cast into the sea gathering fish of every kind, and other such things: which it is not for the present place to enumerate.⁵³ And Paul compares the Church to a great house, where there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay: some for honour, some for dishonour.⁵⁴ But that [passage] where he represents the Church without spot and without wrinkle, he understands will be brought to pass by CHRIST at the last judgment: when he will deliver the kingdom to the Father. In the meantime, however, the nature of the Christian commonwealth, of the militia of faith, consists in this,⁵⁵ that the sacraments, laws, magistrates, ceremonies, and all the exercises finally instituted are for this, that men may cultivate piety, pursue virtue, and cleanse the heart by charity (which is the end of perfection), so that purified they may be blessed by that eternal vision. Wherefore those who hold this faith, even if they have sometimes swerved from the right, are reckoned Christians: unless, failing from the faith, they have departed from the Church or been cast out. The same is the opinion of the other Fathers, and also of Augustine in On Faith to Peter, and On True Religion: and often against the Donatists: and in the book On Baptism: whose words are reported in On Consecration, dist. 4, chapter 'Est unitas'.⁵⁶ The unity of the Church is that which lies wide open, namely in the society and communion of the sacraments, which is completed with the chaff along with the grain: when it suffers them to be so mingled bodily that neither do the just avoid them, nor are the just avoided by them. So there are in the Church evil men, as in the human body evil humours, which sometimes leave the body.

But the chief argument of all, by which this truth is established, is:⁵⁷ that unless unformed faith made men Christians who are truly members of CHRIST, it would come about that as soon as prelates and priests were in mortal sin, they would be deprived of the priesthood: at least as regards the juridical government of the Church. For indeed since no one can be the head (for example), which is the most worthy of the members, unless he is truly a member: where there is not the true nature of a member, neither can there truly be the nature of a head. Wherefore neither would the Pope in sin be truly Pope, nor would the other bishops truly retain their rank. Moreover that most famous heresiarch John Hus⁵⁸ judged very well that it is a most consequent [conclusion], that if the Church is only that one unknown to us which shines inwardly with charity, no one in sin is truly possessed of an ecclesiastical office. And for that reason, having asserted the first, he immediately added the second. But our more recent Hussites⁵⁹ (for they also glory in this name, Martin) most willingly preach the antecedent, out of hatred of the so-called papal Church: but they palliate the consequent. For after in article 7 of the Augsburg Confession they confessed that the Church is the congregation of the members of CHRIST: that is, of the saints who truly believe and obey CHRIST, they subscribed in article 8 that evil men and hypocrites who have the society of external signs can administer the sacraments, and that it is lawful for us to receive the same from them. Since, as Melanchthon adds in the Apology, the ministers act in the place of CHRIST. But indeed, however negligent of dialectic they may be, they cannot fail to see the force of the consequence.⁶⁰ For if faith without charity, as they everywhere inculcate, is not true faith but fictitious: and therefore (to use Melanchthon's words) those in whom CHRIST does nothing (namely charity) are not members of CHRIST, it is most evidently gathered that prelates outside grace are not true but fictitious [members]. And for this reason there is no reason why God should more certainly confer the effects of the sacraments through them than through others who do not bear the form of ministers. But what need is there of more? Does not Luther⁶¹ well know the consequence? Also in article 25 of his assertions, where he says that the Pope is not Pope if he does not love CHRIST. And do not the Lutherans ironically and mockingly call those ministers whom they call hypocrites outside grace? Let the words of Philip be weighed.⁶² We can rightly, he says, use the sacraments which are administered by evil men. For Paul also predicted that it would come about that Antichrist would sit in the temple of God: that is, would rule in the Church and hold office. But on this in the article concerning the Church.

Once the truth concerning faith has been established — namely, that it is the beginning of Christian piety, sufficient to enroll us in Christianity — it follows that we now descend to the causes of justification to be elucidated. Let us therefore lay down as a first proposition, as it were a foundation, that in this work of divine mercy, by which the sons of Adam are reconciled to God, as in the effects of nature, every kind of cause is to be considered.¹ Not only, I say, the four primary kinds, but also those akin to them. For there is the final cause, both the proximate and the supreme; then the efficient and instrumental; then the material and dispositive; besides these, the exemplar and formal. The proximate end of our justification is our own glorification.² For those whom he called (says Paul) he also glorified: that is, he justified them for this, that he might glorify them. But the supreme end is God himself, since (as we said in book 1, ch. 3) he created both man and angel for this end, that by imparting to them his divine happiness he might in a certain manner extend and propagate himself. This too we explained in ch. 3 by repeating it again. Namely, that God made man and fashioned the world first not for the sake of creatures, but for himself: evidently that his glory might be more manifest and his name most celebrated. Whence the Apostle, making mention of the last day, on which Christ will complete the final act of the work of redemption, says: Then comes the end, when he shall have delivered the kingdom to God and the Father.³ And again: When all things shall be subjected to the Son, then the Son himself (namely, insofar as he is man and the head of the saints) shall be subject to him (surely with all the blessed) who subjected all things to him: that God may be all in all. This, therefore, is the supreme end of the redemption of the world and of the glorification not only of men but also of angels. But as he is himself the supreme end, he is also the first efficient cause: whence all authority depends.⁴ For he is, as John testifies, the Alpha and the Omega. Whence: The Lord God is my helper, therefore I am not confounded. He is near who justifies me: who shall contradict me? Behold, the Lord God is my helper, who is he that shall condemn me? In nearly these words Paul says: God who justifies the impious, who is he that shall condemn? For he is the one against whom alone sin is committed, as David confesses;⁵ and therefore he is the same who, being turned, gives us life. To this surely the Jews alluded, saying: Who is this who even forgives sins?⁶ As if they had said that he was usurping for himself what belongs to God. For they had read in the psalm: The Lord will give grace and glory.⁷ For these are a certain participation of the divine nature: and therefore they exceed the capacity of a creature.⁸ But after God, Christ also, insofar as he is man, is in his own manner and order an efficient cause.⁹ First, because he merited salvation for us: by which merit, as mediator of God and men, he made him propitious to us. According to that of John: We have an advocate with the Father, our Christ, and he is the propitiation for our sins: not for our sins only, but for the whole world.¹⁰ And Paul: Being justified freely by his grace,¹¹ which is in Christ Jesus: whom God has set forth as a propitiation in his blood. Nor without mystery did he repeat, freely, by his grace. For God could have freely forgiven us our sins without any price of redemption, where there would be no reason of justice: but being at once most just and most benign, he did it freely in such a way that nevertheless he accomplished it through the justice of the mediator Christ.¹² Surely, he whom he gave to us freely, and whose members he again freely makes us. Nor is he a cause only by way of merit, but in a certain manner an efficient cause, as it were a living instrument and organ of the divinity: as St. Thomas has most learnedly noted, 1.2 q.112 art.1. This I interpret thus: that it was fitting for Christ our Lord, as redeemer, not only to merit grace, virtues and glory for us, but for the same reason so to receive all power in heaven and on earth, that he might have it in his power to dispense and distribute all things pertaining to our salvation, as universal judge. Whence the Apostle: To each one of us grace is given according to the measure of Christ's donation.¹³ For which it is written: Ascending on high he led captivity captive, he gave gifts to men. Thus he not only bestows grace and the other gifts upon us, but even justifies men, insofar as he is man. Not indeed by his own virtue, but as an organ and living instrument of God. And this is what the Apostle says: One God, one mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus.¹⁴ But if certain morose and importunate philosophers come forward against me, objecting that sanctifying grace is created by God, and that human nature cannot attain to that production, because, as St. Thomas himself says, 1 p. q.45 art.5, a creature cannot be even an instrument of creation — let them think that the answer is this: that just as a natural agent does not attain to the creation of the soul, but to its infusion, so that the whole composite is man, so neither is Christ the cause of grace, but of its infusion, so that man is pleasing [to God]. For it belongs to him to weigh in his balance and to estimate how much grace is due to each one according to the disposition by which he prepared himself by the help of God. As it belongs to him to pronounce sentence in the last judgment, and to decree punishments for the damned and rewards for the just, and to place each one in his order.¹⁵ There are besides also priests, the ministers of the Church, as causes of grace, acting in the place of Christ.¹⁶ For as this power was derived from God into Christ, so also from him into priests: as Christ our redeemer himself openly affirms. For he says: All power is given to me in heaven and on earth:¹⁷ as the living Father sent me, so I also send you. Receive the Holy Spirit.¹⁸ Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven: and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. Yet they do not have a power of this kind so ample and so free as was in Christ. For he depended on no sacraments, since he conferred grace without them on the Magdalene, on the paralytic, and on very many others. For this was the grace of the head.¹⁹ But he prescribed a manner for the ministers, that they justify only through the sacraments. Wherefore these also are instruments of grace. Not as ministers, but as inanimate organs, by which the passion is applied to us. For Paul says: According to his mercy he saved us through the laver of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit:²⁰ and that preposition is the mark of an instrument. And to the Eph.: Cleansing her by the laver of water in the word of life:²¹ where both the matter and the form of the sacrament are expressed. And on John, Augustine: Whence has water such power, that it touches the body and washes the heart? And in this they differ from the sacraments of the old law: which Paul therefore calls weak and needy elements,²² because no power of justifying was in them. For circumcision was not an instrument, but a sign of faith: by the virtue of which faith grace was conferred. For thus Paul speaks of Abraham: He received the sign of circumcision, the seal of faith.²³ But our sacraments, because they are now signs of a passion already shown forth, as it were those which flowed from the side of Christ sleeping (as is in the gloss on Rom. 5), are not merely indications but are efficacious of grace. For since Christ by his death wrought our spiritual life, in the likeness of animal life he dispensed to us the power of the same passion through the sacraments.²⁴ For baptism is a certain spiritual regeneration: for so, as we were just saying, Paul calls it the laver of regeneration. Confirmation is a certain increase and strength of grace: like the adolescence of life. According to that of Luke: where the disciples, already baptized, were admonished to sit in the city until they were clothed with power from on high.²⁵ But the most holy sacrament of the body and blood is a certain continual and daily nourishment. For unless, he says, you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.²⁶ These three sacraments indeed, unless a man once reborn should at some time relapse, were sufficient as regards each one's own person. But on account of sin, which is a certain weakening, the sacrament of penance was added, by which the precious and saving blood of Christ is applied by way of medicine: according to the prayer of the Psalmist: Heal my soul, because I have sinned against thee.²⁷ And finally extreme unction, by which the remnants, if there are any, of sins are entirely wiped away: according to that of James: And if he is in sins, it shall be forgiven him.²⁸ But the sacrament of order was instituted for the common good. Namely, that grace might be supplied to the ministers of the Church for generating spiritual offspring. Just as the sacrament of matrimony, that animal life might be propagated worthily to the praise of God. But these sacraments confer grace in the manner already stated above concerning Christ.²⁹ As being those which do not attain to the creation of grace, but are instruments by which man is made pleasing to God. An example of this is at hand in the generative power of human seed, which is not the cause of the soul to be generated, but of the man. Nor do I recognize any other power in them³⁰ than that for this reason man, because he has been baptized or sacramentally absolved, is reconciled to God. For what need is there to say that a power of this kind is a quality distinct in reality from the water and the words? Concerning this power of the sacraments there remains for us a certain conflict with Luther to be undertaken a little later. In the third place is the material cause.³¹ Not, I say, the soul or its powers, which are imbued with grace and the virtues: for those are rather subjects than matter. But we call the material cause the dispositions and preparations for grace: which are acts of faith, hope and charity, or of penance. But concerning causes of this kind it is fitting to speak here more explicitly:³² because the same things are not prerequired in every kind of justification, but each must be discussed in order under its headings. But the exemplar cause of our justification is the justification of Christ himself, insofar as he is man. For he was the first exemplar: surely he who received the grace of God not by way of merit, but by the power of union, so that he should be the natural Son of God: after whose likeness we receive grace and glory, more or less, by which we are adopted as sons, heirs indeed of God, as Paul says, but co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we suffer with him, that we may be glorified together.³³ And so we must also suffer according to his exemplar, if we wish to be glorified according to his glory. Whence he adds: God predestined us to be made conformable to the image of his Son. For an image signifies an exemplar cause. And therefore in baptism we die and are buried together in the likeness of his death and burial, and we shall rise together in the likeness of his resurrection. For if, says Paul, we have been made plantings together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in that of his resurrection. And: He will reform, he says, the body of our lowliness, configured to the body of his brightness.³⁴ All these things carry before them the account of an exemplar cause. And indeed his grace is the exemplar of ours, and his glory likewise of our glory.³⁵ But the holy Synod, can. 7, where it recounted these causes, joins the glory of Christ to the final cause along with the glory of God: either because the exemplar is in a certain manner final, or perhaps on account of the glory of the body and the name which is above every name, which came to him by way of reward, by the merit of redemption. Finally, the last place belongs to the formal cause: namely, grace and the virtues with which, being infused, we are justified.³⁶ But neither can we speak exactly here concerning the formal causes, until we expound the individual modes of justification in the following chapters. For concerning the formal cause there is both a very great disagreement with the Lutherans and some discord among us. This order and series of causes is taken from the analogy of both natural and artificial things. For an agent, having proposed the end, disposes matter through instruments, so that it may introduce the form after the likeness and exemplar of what was proposed.

Having meditated beforehand on all these principles, we at last descend better equipped to the point and article of justification. But this is celebrated not in one way but in four, if you desire clarity,¹ according to the differences of men on whom this benefit of reconciliation is bestowed. For there are four kinds of unjust men to consider. The first is that of infants before the use of reason, who are stained with original fault. The second is that of those in whom the use of reason already shines, yet with only that same stain of origin—namely, those who have not yet used their own will for evil. In the third order are those who have added actual sins to original sin not blotted out. And finally in the fourth are Christians who fall away from the grace of baptism. But concerning the first kind we disputed abundantly with the Lutherans in the former book, chapters 11 and 12, and established that original sin is most fully remitted in baptism, so far that no nature of fault at all remains. But here, where the discourse concerns dispositions, it remains to note two different errors.² The first is Luther’s, who is so tenacious and so zealous a defender of that little phrase of his, “by faith alone,” that he has absurdly sinned against both extremes: while he thinks that for adults, besides that faith, no other work of their own is necessary for justification, and has taught that it is necessary for infants. Nay, he thinks that they, like adults, are justified not by the sacrament but by faith alone. For this is his first article among the assertions addressed to Leo, which we mentioned above: “It is a heretical opinion, but a customary one, that the sacraments of the new law give grace.” And a little later: “For baptism does not save, but the faith of baptism.” Nor indeed (as Roffensis faithfully explains there) does he speak of the habit of faith infused from heaven, but says that even in infants there is a most lively act of believing. This he openly preaches in his Homiliary on the Sunday gospels, and others of his school follow him in many places, although in the Augsburg Confession and the other conferences they have silently passed it over. For it was that man’s invention that we do not receive grace through the sacrament, but through the faith which we give to the word—not of the minister, but of Christ himself—where he instituted the sacraments: for example, “He who believes and is baptized,”³ “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man,” “Whose sins you forgive.” By this faith, assenting that the promise is firm, we are justified. So he explains himself in the same article and in his commentary on Galatians, whose playful and indeed ridiculous words occur when he expounds that passage in chapter 3: “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” For he says that it is so true that faith is necessary for all—namely, a most lively act—and cannot be had except by hearing, that even infants obtain it by hearing. And objecting to himself that they hear nothing, he answers that nothing is deaf to the word of God, but while it strikes the ears, it pours the Spirit within. I certainly do not know where he could have sought not merely benevolent but open ears into which to empty such a portent.⁴ For who, as another said before me, is so alien from all sense as to fear that he could be persuaded that a little child, in whom there can be no knowledge of God, no discernment of good or evil, indeed no use of reason or cognition of anything, conceives by hearing an act of faith by which he is justified? Add that this heresy besides,⁵ that the sacraments are no cause of justification, but only the faith of the word, manifestly fights not only with the Gospel but with itself. For if that faith is true by which we assent to Christ saying, “Whose sins you forgive,” then his statement is true—namely, that the ministers of the Church forgive sins. And if the faith is true which we give to him saying, “Unless a man is born again,” and “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man,” it follows that the laver of regeneration itself and the sacrament of the body are a cause of justification. For this is what he affirms. Admirable was the audacity (to restrain myself from another word) of that man. To prove that we are justified not through the sacrament but through faith in those words of Christ, he cites that testimony of Augustine: “The word comes to the element, and it becomes a sacrament”—as if he were speaking there of the word of Christ, and it were not most evident that he was speaking of the word of the minister, “I baptize you,” and “I absolve you,” which as the form of the sacrament confers grace.

Therefore, that we may establish the conclusion according to the truth of the orthodox concerning the first kind of those to be justified:⁶ little children cannot properly be said to be justified by faith, or by any other act of their own, or by a peculiar disposition, but only by the sacrament of faith, as the instrument of Christ’s passion, by which, offering no obstacle, they are regenerated into adoption as sons. But a doubt remains, which the Gospel passage objects to us: “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.”⁷ There faith is set forth as necessary as baptism. Nay, in the negation subjoined, only faith is resumed without mention of baptism: “But he who does not believe,” he says, “shall be condemned.” There Luther noted that only faith is necessary.⁸ But that we may answer this last point first: the affirmation is the interpreter of the negation, so that it is understood equally: “But he who does not believe, or is not baptized.” But as far as concerns Catholics, a doubt remains whether children also are included under that universality, “He who believes,” since (as we were just saying) it is most known of itself that no one has an act of faith while being baptized. Augustine, book 1 on the Merits of Sins, chapter 26,⁹ while expounding the same passage of Mark, says: “Who does not know that for infants to believe is to be baptized?” Some of our men do not altogether approve this word—namely, that to believe is to be baptized, for one is an act of the intellect, the other a mere passion; and therefore they are counted as two in the Gospel. But Augustine had explained a little before in the same book, namely chapter 19, that same belief of infants in these words: “Little children in a certain way profess faith through the words of those who carry them.” And he repeats almost the same to Boniface, where he says: “In the Church of the Savior little children believe through others, just as from others they drew the sins which are remitted in baptism.” But not even this interpretation appears sufficiently congruous to all. For since “to believe” is an act of the intellect, how can one do it through another, unless by a deformed abuse of the word?

For this reason the expositors of that Gospel passage are divided.¹⁰ For some say that children believe by infused faith. But these, in my judgment, are far from the genuine sense of the Gospel. For where Christ says, “He who believes,” he in no way designates a habit to be infused by God—and least of all that which by nature follows the infusion of justifying grace—but plainly an act which, like baptism itself, is required of the one to be baptized as a necessary preparation for grace. Especially since those infused habits were not known in the Church from antiquity with such great certainty as the catholic faith. For not even the Council of Vienne approves them except as a most probable opinion, although now they are supported by greater authority.¹¹

Others are those who for this reason think that the word “He who believes” is uttered only of adults who are capable of reason. Nor is it altogether without probability if you look at the preceding words. For the context is: “Going, preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes, etc.” But the Gospel is not preached except to those who have hearing and the judgment of reason. Therefore “He who believes” is understood of them. But for little children it is enough that they be baptized. But certainly, when I consider the matter more deeply, I cannot approve this interpretation.¹² First, because the words are universal, just like that “Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit.” Nor is it likely that when Christ was handing on to the apostles the form and manner of publishing and propagating the faith, if under those words every age and condition of mortals were not comprehended, he would not at the same time explain that baptism suffices for little children. And what most presses me: the Church, taught by the apostles themselves, would never have appointed sponsors for a child, who, asked in his own name whether he believed, answer “I believe,” unless the apostles themselves, understanding that word to pertain to all, signified by that ceremony that the child believes.¹³ Nor did Augustine do this rashly, but most knowingly, as a matter of great moment, and he strove with such care to explain that little children believe. Saint Thomas holds his judgment as most approved in 3, question 68, in the article where he treats of the baptism of little children.¹⁴

Therefore, as far as I can conjecture from Augustine’s words, “to believe,” as it is necessary for all for justice, is the same as to receive the Gospel by a solemn profession.¹⁵ The difference is that adults receive it by actually believing and confessing the faith, and binding themselves to the laws of Christ; but children receive the same faith by the obligation by which they are bound by the words of their sponsors, which are reckoned as their own. As a minor is bound by the words of his guardian. And so I understand Augustine when he says that they believe—that is, that they solemnly receive the Gospel through the words of those who carry them. Wherefore they receive the Gospel in a certain way through the hearing of their parents, who, applying faith to them, baptize them and their children whom they have in legitimate power. And from this it is plainly gathered that the Anabaptists’ heresy is manifest,¹⁶ who think that children, as soon as the use of reason shines forth, are to be summoned and asked whether they ratify what their parents did concerning them. Nay, they are already truly bound, and therefore are to be compelled to keep the faith and law which they received. Hence when Augustine says¹⁷ that for children to believe is the same as to be baptized, he means nothing else than that baptism is worth the same to them, by which sacrament they are bound to the laws of God, as believing is worth to adults. For in the Hypognosticon, book 5, he openly says that little children are taken up in the faith of believers, not by the obedience of the will but by the exceeding love—namely, of God, who without any act of theirs receives them into his friendship. Thus Augustine. We have therefore that little children, without any proper act or disposition of their own, but only bound through others, are sanctified by the sacrament. And although they are baptized without that solemnity, the baptizer, as minister of the Church, has bound them.

But the opinion of certain others is at the other extreme.¹⁸ These, protected by I know not what cloak of piety, dare to say that children who by some chance die without baptism are nevertheless, by the mercy of God which supplies the lack of baptism, freed from original sin and admitted to the heavenly kingdom. And they think the same both of children already born and of those who in their mother’s womb depart this life before the use of light. And because this matter is spread abroad by the mouths of the common people, I name the most learned Cajetan;¹⁹ yet I am accustomed to name him only by way of honor. For he, otherwise truly worthy of all authority, on question 68 of the third part (yet under correction, and with that religion and modesty of his, asserting nothing pertinaciously), brings forward both as probable. For he says in article 2 that in a case of necessity—namely, where there is no supply of water for the salvation of children (and he speaks of those already born)—the baptism in the desire of the parents seems sufficient, especially with some exterior sign. And afterward in article 11 he adds (under the same censure) that little children in danger in their mother’s womb can be saved in like manner through the sacrament of baptism in the desire of the parents, with some blessing or offering of the child to God, with invocation of the Trinity. “As we have said,” he says, “concerning children who cannot be baptized.” But, with the authority of that distinguished doctor always safe, I do not doubt that both parts of his opinion are false; but I do not know whether the former deserves more approval, at least in those who now assert without hesitation what he had suggested most temperately. It is rather for their sake than to contradict them that I shall set out this matter more closely. And first of all, in both articles Cajetan most openly contradicts Saint Thomas,²⁰ whose interpreter he acts. For in the former place, where he says that the desire for baptism sometimes suffices for salvation, lest he leave anyone an occasion to suspect that the desire of the parents suffices, he plainly explains that where there is no supply of baptism in reality, the desire to receive it is necessary in the one being baptized. For he says: “As when someone desires to be baptized.” Wherefore he leaves no other way of salvation for children. And in the second place, to children not yet born, except those to whom it is given by privilege to receive grace in the womb, he grants no remedy of salvation, because they cannot be baptized, which according to the Gospel is necessary. And lest it be free to say, without sacred Scripture or the universal consent of the Church, that anyone is sanctified in the womb or receives grace, he expresses in the solution to the first argument a restriction concerning those sanctified in the womb—namely, those who are held to be such in the Church. Moreover, to ascend by steps, there are innumerable places in Augustine²¹ where he repeats the same most emphatically. The first is that most common canon on faith, reported to Peter among the decrees, distinction 4, On Consecration, where he says: “Hold most firmly that not only men who use reason, but also little children who either begin to live in their mothers’ wombs and die there, or are already born of their mothers and pass from this world without the sacrament of baptism, which is given in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, are to be punished with eternal fire.” But if someone cavils that this work is not certainly Augustine’s, he mentions almost the same wherever he comes into conflict with Pelagius.²² For Pelagius (as is clear in the Hypognosticon, book 5) did not deny that children must be baptized in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, because that is expressly had in John 3; but he said that those who die before baptism pass into some mansion where they have the felicity of eternal life, because according to him they had contracted no sin. Let every clear-sighted person note²³ therefore that it was always so firmly established in the Church that no little child without baptism in reality (which he cannot have in desire) enters the kingdom of heaven, that not even the Pelagians themselves, denying original sin, dared to say the contrary. Who therefore now, a Catholic acknowledging the original wound, will dare to send an unbaptized child thither, where the heretics, denying it, never thought anyone should be sent? For this reason Augustine did not so much insist on persuading that no little child dying before baptism is received into the kingdom—for he had that as an evangelical confession—but that outside the kingdom there is no life of eternal felicity. Hence in the cited place he first instructs the disputation from that universal sentence of the old law: “The infant²⁴ who has not been circumcised, that soul shall perish from his people.” Since therefore there is a similar sentence in the Gospel,²⁵ “Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,” it comes about that as no one was excepted from the former, so from the latter it is not lawful to exempt anyone. For the former was a figure of the latter. But because they imagined another place where little children without baptism would have eternal life, Augustine strains all his sinews to show that beyond the kingdom and hell there is absolutely nothing but purgatory. And therefore those mansions²⁶ which Christ says are many in his Father’s house all pertain to the kingdom, to which without baptism there is no access for anyone. And he adds a most elegant dilemma.²⁷ Since our Savior said both—that in his Father’s house there are many mansions, and that he who is not born again shall not enter the kingdom of heaven—choose, he says, heretic, which of the two you will defend. For if you say that outside the kingdom, which is the Father’s house, there is some mansion where there is eternal life, you contradict the first sentence. But if you send a little child without baptism into a mansion of the kingdom, you oppose the second. I report not the very words but the judgment of Augustine. He pursues the same argument most copiously from chapter 20 of book 1 on the Merits of Sins to the end of the book. I shall not report more of his words, lest I satiate the reader, than what he concludes in chapter 27 on that passage of John 5²⁸: “He who has the Son has life; and he who has not the Son has not life.” “Not only therefore,” he says, “the kingdom of heaven, but neither shall little children have life, if they do not have the Son, whom they cannot have except through his baptism.” But although someone might perhaps prefer Augustine to his own judgment, I nevertheless cannot believe that the authors of this opinion which we reject have considered that it was condemned against Pelagius.²⁹ For these are the words of Pope Innocent in the letter written in reply to the Council of Carthage and Milevis, which Augustine reports against the two letters of the Pelagians, book 2, chapter 4: “But that which your brotherhood asserts they preach—that little children can be given the rewards of eternal life even without the grace of baptism—is execrable.” To these Augustine subscribes,³⁰ saying that whoever deviated from that sentence would be a prevaricator of the Roman Church. And against Julian, book 3, chapter 1, he says that Pelagius himself, fearing to be condemned, condemned those who say that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life. And below, chapter 12, repeating the same judgment: “Hence Pelagius,” he says, “as I mentioned above, unless in the ecclesiastical judgment he had condemned those who say that infants, even if not baptized, have eternal life, would have gone out condemned.” I am not unaware that Pelagius was condemned for another reason—namely, because he denied original sin. Yet since the judgment and very form of the condemnation is this: that an unbaptized child can have eternal life, I do not see how any Catholic can think of any exception from it, unless one which the Holy Spirit has revealed to the Church. For two errors are struck by the same thunderbolt of words: that there is no original sin, and that it can be remitted without baptism. Wherefore, just as from the first part no one is free to make an exception except insofar as the Church defines or permits, so neither from the second. Yet from the second it has hitherto exempted no one. Next, after the authorities³¹ of the saints and the determination of the Church, the very words of the Gospel must be weighed. For since the sentences of the Savior are universal—“Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit,”³² and “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved,”³³ and “You must be born again”—has anyone dared, I will not say to contradict Scripture, but to be more than rash, and withdraw anyone from them without an express revelation of God through a decision of the Church? Certainly I do not doubt that what Paul says reaches even to such exempters:³⁴ “If I or an angel from heaven should preach another gospel than we have preached, let him be anathema.” Wherefore I cannot but wonder how easily and how boldly³⁵ some have been accustomed to gloss the universal sentences of Scripture so that they are understood by law. Nothing, they say, prevents the opposite from sometimes happening, either by privilege or by the mercy of God. Yet the sincerity of Scripture is such that unless the exception itself is expressed in the same sacred utterance, or is made by the authority of the Church, such a gloss is sacrilegious and a prevaricator. For Augustine would never have dared to withdraw Moses or Paul, who saw God, from that universality, “No one has seen God at any time,”³⁶ and “No man shall see me and live,” unless he had read in the same Scripture concerning the first, as in Exodus 33,³⁷ that he saw the back of God, and concerning the other, that caught up into the third heaven he saw the hidden things of God.

But to return to the Gospel passage. If it were lawful to affirm that original sin is remitted to anyone without baptism in reality or in the desire to receive it, one could with equal ease say that someone impenitent could by the mercy of God be freed from actual sin. For the words are the same: “Unless a man is born again,” and “Unless you repent.” But it is no more repugnant to God to remit actual sin without repentance than original sin without baptism. And although actual sin is greater, original sin is also true fault.

But the argument I shall subjoin, even if it stood alone, could sufficiently persuade me: namely, the custom of the Church. For unless baptism were so necessary that without it no one could be saved in any way, the Church would never have instituted the baptism of little children—and that institution is the apostles’, since Dionysius says in the last chapter of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy: “Our divine leaders”—namely, the apostles—“approved that infants be received to baptism.” And the argument is of this kind. For little children before the use of reason there was no religion that required baptizing them; nay, it would have been far more decent to wait until they could give themselves to the law by their own will and choice, which they were to observe. Therefore unless the apostles had judged that the danger of damnation hung over them if they were taken from life at that age, or that the desire of the parents sufficed at the time of baptizing, they would never have decreed the sacrament for them. And this reasoning Augustine explains in the letter to Jerome, which is 28, whose words I have therefore reserved for this place: “Whoever,” he says, “says that little children also, who depart this life without participation in his sacrament, will be quickened in Christ, comes indeed against the apostolic preaching and condemns the whole Church. Wherefore, since there is haste and running to baptize little children, it is because it is believed without doubt that otherwise they cannot be quickened in Christ. But he who is not quickened in Christ remains in the same damnation. Of which the Apostle says: ‘By the offense of one, unto all men to condemnation.’” Consider, pious reader, how the opinion we refute contradicts both the apostolic preaching and the institution of the Church, which therefore hastens and runs to the baptism of little children because it believes without doubt that otherwise they cannot be saved.

Nor certainly is there lacking even a scholastic refutation against these men. For to speak of the child in the mother’s womb, let us grant that the mother who perceives the danger of the fetus uses toward it that blessing which these men wish. Then according to their judgment it will receive grace. Suppose afterward it happens that the infant does not die but is born safe. Certainly baptism would then be in no way necessary, since it is born in grace. In the same way I shall argue concerning the one already born, if where there is no supply of water he receives grace through that blessing. For there would be no need to apply baptism afterward; for the Church would not have bound the Fathers to baptize the child except that grace be conferred on it. It is otherwise with an adult, who cannot be saved unless he desires to be baptized; and therefore he is bound afterward to fulfill the commandment. But those who would answer³⁸ that such children are justified by the mere approach of death at the very moment they depart would show themselves, if I may say so with leave, more inept than men with whom one should deal seriously. For if they understood that those who did not depart in grace would have glory, they would not be heard. But if they imagined that they receive grace at that point, as is the grace bestowed on martyrs of most full remission, it would be a rash assertion that a little child, not killed for Christ but dying by chance, without any act of his own or sacrament applied from without, is wiped clean of original stain. Finally, the last argument³⁹ is of this kind. Since after the coming of Christ there is now no other remedy or sacrament for conferring the grace of regeneration besides baptism, truly if anyone could by the mercy of God receive grace without it, the lot of all would be equal, and thus the negligence of parents would harm them nothing; but whether they proposed to baptize them or not, whether they were already carrying them to baptism and were snatched away by death on the way, or the children died suddenly by some other chance without their parents’ knowledge, no one would perish. Nay, there would be no distinction whether one was born to faithful or to unbelieving parents, because the latter are bound by no law to do anything. And therefore, unless baptism itself in reality were necessary for them, the negligence of parents in the matter would harm nothing;⁴⁰ nor conversely, without the actual administration of baptism, would their diligence and piety profit anything, since there is no nature of merit there. And that the desire in the parents to confer it suffices is a new invention, not only nowhere found among the Fathers, but most dissonant from them, from the institution of the Church, and certainly from the Gospel. Let us conclude therefore that wherever it is held, whether in councils, as now in our Council of Trent, chapter 4, or among the Fathers, that baptism suffices in reality or in desire, it is to be understood precisely of the desire to receive it which the one to be baptized himself has.

The argument to the contrary⁴¹ is one, and it is covered by a kind of veil of piety. For they judge it not fitting to the divine goodness that God should not have provided for that order and state of children who die in the womb before they are fit for baptism, by instituting some remedy of salvation. And it is almost the same concerning those who, already brought forth into the light, die prematurely without baptism through lack of water or other negligence. But it is a wonder that the most pious Fathers of the Church never acknowledged this kind of piety—especially when the Pelagians were so hostile to the Church with this same Achilles, as may be seen in the places cited above in Augustine:⁴² namely, against the two letters of the Pelagians, book 2, chapter 7. For they said that the grace of God was rather fate or acceptance of persons, if of two adults without any merit God helped one to be converted and not the other; and of two little children, without the diligence of one or the negligence of the other, the first is washed by baptism and the other is left. To these Augustine answers that there is no cause but the will of God, who is debtor to no one; and therefore he does no injury to anyone if he chooses this one and forsakes that one. And he discusses the same more fully in book 1 on the Merits of Sins, chapter 21, where he says: “Why he comes to this one and does not come to that one can be a hidden cause, but it cannot be unjust.” For Paul, struck by the stupor of this depth, said: “O the depth of the riches.” Therefore, he says, our necks must be submitted to the authorities of the Scriptures.⁴³ And truly, if this argument were as urgent as these men think, it would extend very widely, even to those of adult age. For while out of the nations, or out of any unbelievers whatsoever, God leads some by the light of faith into the way of justice by a wonderful chance, and according to our judgment a fortuitous one, leaving others in their darkness; and among Christians, when two lie in the same bed defiled by equal fault, a sudden thunderbolt extinguishes one, while the other survives, struck with fear, and afterward bears the fruit of repentance—to what cause, I ask, can we refer this, except that “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”? And that from the same bed,⁴⁴ from the same field, from every age and occupation of mortals, one is taken and the other left? And as in adults it is to be imputed to each one’s own fault that he is not taken, so also in little children it is to be imputed to the fault contracted from Adam. For God allows nature to act by its own motions. He himself made no law that some should end life in the womb or before baptism. And therefore if anyone dies naturally, nothing is detracted from his goodness. Cajetan draws a last argument⁴⁵ from the old law. For then little children who died before the eighth day, by the faith of their parents applied by another rite than circumcision, were cleansed from original sin; therefore a similar thing must now be confessed of those who die before baptism. But the argument is none—nay, it turns back upon its author. For then circumcision was forbidden by law before the eighth day because of injury. And therefore God, the author of the law himself, ought not to have left without a remedy little children snatched away by death. But in the evangelical law this is rather the case: that no day is fixed for baptism, but the child is permitted to be baptized as soon as it is born—nay, in necessity it is commanded. The testimony is that unless through baptism itself in reality, salvation lies open to no little child.

The nobility of the Germans.— But when we enter upon the sermon concerning the justification of adults, first we must suppose what we established in book 2 On Free Will, or rather have shown to have been established beyond doubt by the holy Fathers, namely that we are drawn to our justification not by force, or as inanimate things which are moved by natural instinct, but so freely that we can both reject and embrace the inspiration of God. Which is not only the opinion of the Synod of Trent¹ against the Lutherans, but the most ancient opinion against the Pelagians: as I reported there from Augustine in the letter to Paulinus. For there was a ninth condemnation of Pelagius,² because he said that there is no free will if it needs the help of God. And the discourse was concerning justification. And the other part of free will must also be supposed, which we treated there also in chapter 18: namely that God never so forsakes anyone that he is not at hand to help him continually, knocking at the door.

Then the first conclusion³ must be set forth concerning every kind of justification. The first work which is required of us for our justification is faith. This axiom is most celebrated and most repeated in Paul. For without faith, he says, it is impossible⁴ to please God. And: He who approaches God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder. Nay, in the very description of faith, when he said that it is the substance of things to be hoped for, he designated this very thing (as we said in the preceding chapter). For substance is nothing else than the foundation by which the structure of things to be hoped for is supported and founded. Wherefore that long repetition of the faith of Noah, Abraham and the other Fathers is nothing else than an explanation of what he had said: He who approaches God must believe. For he does not ascribe the whole cause of justice to faith, but the beginning. Namely, that all the just, led by faith, wrought just works.⁵ And to the same point pertains what he says: We reckon that a man is justified by faith, and not by works, and other things beyond number similar to these, for the interpretation of which a chapter by no means small must afterwards be subjoined by us. There are also very many testimonies of this truth in the Gospel: especially in John, who discoursed most divinely of the mystery of faith beyond the others. For from that very sermon on the incarnate Word he immediately says: He gave them power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name.⁶ And again: God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. And when they asked what they should do to work the works of God, CHRIST answered: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.⁷ For by these and such things he admonished mortals that the door of the heavenly kingdom lies open from no other source than from having faith in him. Nor only in the evangelical law, but in every age from the fall of the first man to the end of the world. So much so that (as we said a little before) the apostolic Church sanctioned concerning infants that they are not baptized solemnly except when professing the faith.⁸

But it is worth weighing the causes of this truth, which are derived from a threefold source. The first and greatest is that since God through CHRIST is the author of our justification, our first obedience must be to have faith in him who reveals himself to us and promises his grace, as the true God and (as Paul says) our rewarder. Through which faith we are received into the family of the same redeemer JESUS CHRIST. The second cause is that since (as we showed in chapter 3 of the previous book) the end to which we men are destined so surpasses our faculty that we cannot naturally know it, and man, unless the goal is shown beforehand, cannot rightly direct his actions: faith was necessary for us, to be the pointer to that end. The third cause finally, which contributes most to the understanding of what is to be said, is this. Since the hope of reward is what most of all applies minds to patience in labours, and that reward of eternal happiness was so far absent not only from our senses but from thought (for who would believe that such excellent wages awaited our works?), it was altogether necessary both that this be revealed to us, and that we also give faith to CHRIST and his apostles concerning it, so that we might be encouraged to the observance of the law by which we were to be led there. For it was not fitting that those eternal goods should be represented to us first in manifest light or knowledge, both because vision (as Gregory says) would take away merit, and especially because since vision itself is the reward of merits, it ought not indeed to precede, but to follow at the end of the completed course. Faith therefore had to be sent before, which would be both the first foundation of our receiving justice from God, and then the guide to acting rightly. And so CHRIST taught us supernatural things after the manner of nature. For as is [said] in the Analytics, the learner must first believe. And thus God the teacher says: Everyone⁹ who hears from the Father and has learned comes to me. And therefore Paul called faith the substance of things to be hoped for.¹⁰ Therefore, circumspect reader, understand from this that a way is paved for interpreting that saying, The just man lives by faith: and similar ones. For the sense is (as will be more fully clear in the last chapter) that faith is the foundation of life: but not the whole life, as the Lutherans believe. For since the German nobility was always most devoted to liberty and a cultivator of faith, Satan's envy cast them down in both respects, so that they both denied free will and, in the matter of faith, from which they could not otherwise be driven, overleapt the just line: surely while they extolled faith too much to the injury of the other divine virtues likewise.

Yet it is worthwhile to send before a little note concerning faith and its remedy in the state of nature.¹¹ For in every age from Adam onward, fallen man needed faith in God which would have some signification, even shadowy, of CHRIST, and therefore some [knowledge] of the Trinity. For concerning the faith of Adam before sin, nothing at present. For that word of Peter, There is no other name under heaven¹² given to men, by which we must be saved, is not referred only to this evangelical age, but to every age after the fall. Since no one ever received the grace of reconciliation except through CHRIST. Whence Paul says:¹³ God has freed us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his purpose and the grace which was given to us in CHRIST JESUS before the ages of time. Wherefore since before the passion actually shown forth there could be no power of CHRIST in reality besides faith in him, it is most consequent that it was always necessary. And to this emphasis belongs that word: Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption which is in CHRIST JESUS, whom God has set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show his justice, for the remission of preceding sins.¹⁴ And therefore the Fathers were held in limbo awaiting the payment of the price, by faith in which they had been saved. To the same point pertains, as Augustine is the author in the Hypognosticon, book 3, that most rich offspring of faith in Hebrews 11,¹⁵ which flourished through all the ages of the world. For by that reason the Apostle demonstrates that faith is the substance and strength of things to be hoped for: without which it is impossible to please God, because he who approaches God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder to those who seek him: not only at this time, but by faith, he says, we understand that the ages were fitted together by the word of God. He subjoins a most copious example, beginning from Abel and Enoch, running through Noah, Abraham and the other Fathers down to all the prophets: who by faith conquered kingdoms, wrought justice, obtained promises.¹⁶ And to the Hebrews 13: JESUS CHRIST yesterday and today, and the same for ever. But this faith (as St. Thomas is the author, 2-2, q. 1)¹⁷ although as to substance it was always the same, yet as to its expression it was not the same in all ages, nor at any time is the same [faith] necessary in individual lesser persons as in certain leading ones. The same, I say, is always the substance of faith: because where there is one God (as Paul says) there can be only one faith.¹⁸ But the act of this faith, which was necessary in every age, is to believe that God is, and the same is a rewarder:¹⁹ in whose first member all the mysteries of the divinity are contained, and in the second all those of the incarnate Word. But these things were unfolded with the progress of time: and the more clearly the closer one came to the rising of that sun itself, JESUS CHRIST our Lord, where they are more openly unlocked. Whence to the Hebrews:²⁰ According to faith all these died, not having received the promises: but beholding them from afar. Conversely, the more we are now distant from that splendour of CHRIST, the more faith grows faint in us.²¹

Therefore anyone might perhaps hold the opinion which we have sometimes defended in the schools, and in the first Venetian impression of this work judged more approved: namely that in the state of nature there was no other ray of light necessary for individual common people than the natural one: because for those nations where nature was not depraved, nor covered by the mist of vices, this ray seems efficacious for knowing concerning God that he is, and that he is a rewarder: in which knowledge CHRIST is implicitly unfolded.²² And, what is besides a great argument, there was then no more particular revelation of the things necessary for salvation made publicly than that which was made through the light of nature: therefore God required no other knowledge, nor does any other seem to have been necessary. For in the written law, and now more explicitly in the evangelical, there is revealed to us through the law the faith of the Trinity, which we cannot have naturally: and for that reason we are commanded so to believe as God is prepared to help us to believe. Anyone therefore might perhaps think that since at that time there was neither such a commandment nor such a revelation through the law, no other knowledge of faith was necessary than the natural. Although a singular supernatural help of God moving the affection would always have been necessary: because justification was always a work above nature. This opinion St. Thomas seems to have held on Paul, chapter 2, on that word, They do naturally the things that are of the law.²³ But indeed, with the matter more thoughtfully weighed, I think this opinion must be rejected, and the other embraced: namely that neither in the law of nature was natural light sufficient for that knowledge of faith which is necessary for salvation: which opinion was [held] after St. Thomas, 1-2, q. 113, art. 4. For besides that it would be dangerous to arrogate so much to natural knowledge, the Fathers established this supernatural mystery of justification not so much by reasons as by sacred utterances, bringing the intellect into captivity to the obedience of faith. And against Pelagius it is not only holy [to say] that a man is justified without works, but also that not even the beginning of faith is from us: the Apostle confessing that we are by no means sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves.²⁴ And to the Ephesians: By grace you are saved through faith, and this not from yourselves:²⁵ where faith is asserted to be a gift of grace. And Augustine, Hypognosticon, book 3: By faith, he says, no other than that which now is, all the saints have been saved and are to be saved, who from the beginning to the end of the world have been and are to be saved: since therefore this faith is supernatural, it is [fitting] that it was always such: which although it was not divinely promulgated publicly through the law, was nevertheless infused secretly into those who kept the law of nature.²⁶ But was there anyone in that state with any trace of original sin, for which some remedy might be applied to infants? For this matter was supernatural. It cannot be denied that from Adam, by the succession of generations, some knowledge of the original stain endured until Noah, who was also taught many things above nature by God. From him to Abraham the same knowledge, although under a shadow, was derived. For he received the peculiar sacrament of circumcision against original sin. But afterwards, when the human race had already been more widely propagated and dispersed into the world, except in the people of Israel it is not so likely that there was an express knowledge of it: especially where vices began to grow thick and to darken the light of reason. Although it persisted among some: as we showed in the previous book concerning Job, who cursed the day on which he was born, and asserted that there is no one on earth, not even an infant of one day, without sin. Nor was this knowledge so obliterated in other nations that some trace of it did not remain for a time, and perhaps some kind of offering, and in a certain way of sacrament, by which well-ordered commonwealths dedicated their little children to God. Nay, the law of nature, even if there were no such knowledge of vitiated origin, admonished that it should be done. For as it is read concerning the priesthood of Melchisedech offering bread and wine, so it is to be conjectured concerning sacrifice for original guilt. Whence Gregory, as is reported in On Consecration, distinction 4: What the water of baptism does among us, this the ancients did, either for little children faith alone (namely applied through some kind of religion), or for adults the power of sacrifice: or for those who came from the stock of Abraham, the mystery of circumcision.²⁷ I would not, however, agree with those who think that in the state of nature there was one sacrament instituted by God for washing away original sin. Since there is no such history. Nor is it likely that all the different nations used such a common sacrifice. Unless perhaps near the time of Adam or Noah, before the human race was dispersed. But each nation, taught by natural law, instituted its own rite. Since it did not confer grace, but was a sign of that shadowed faith in CHRIST, by whose power the cleansing of sin was made, nothing prevented it from being instituted not immediately by God, but by a human commonwealth. It is enough to have thought these things concerning that state of nature. Since no history of them exists, we judge as it were in passing. But in the written law the light of faith shone more explicitly, but most explicitly in the Gospel, beyond the knowledge it could have through an enigma. But just as we said of the state of nature, so also in the written law and in ours, the greater [persons] are held to believe more things explicitly than individual common people. So that in every age that analogy of Job may be true: The oxen were ploughing, and the asses were feeding beside them:²⁸ that is, from the meditation of the wise the rude crowd takes its fodder.