De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

The part which was left in the distribution of the work to this third book was that concerning the power of the justified man. For in each of the four states which we undertook to set forth, we followed this order, that first we establish man in such a state and condition, and then explain what his faculty was for the works of virtue. For in this way we have discoursed concerning man: first in pure nature, then in the flower of integral nature: and finally in the case of corrupted nature. But because concerning man restored to grace a fuller discourse had to be held,¹ we spent the whole of the next book explaining the nature and manner of reconciliation: but the first part of this [book] will be occupied with the disputation concerning the faculty of the just man, and the latter part concerning the certainty of grace. Moreover the threefold faculty² was always acknowledged and confessed by the holy Fathers and theologians, of man made just through the grace of God, and leaning on his favour and help. Namely for fulfilling the works of the law, and for satisfying by the fruits of penance for sins remitted: and finally for meriting eternal life. Which threefold power the Lutherans strive to deny and abjure. But that we may descend to the first member, it must be foreseen whether perhaps they bring forth contradictions concerning the divine commandments in the case of the just man. Luther, in that little book which he entitled On Christian Liberty,³ so extolled a man of this kind, endowed with liberty through faith alone, that he freed him entirely from the whole law. And at the same time nevertheless on the same page he teaches that all the commandments of the law are impossible to be fulfilled by us. Nay, he says, from the fact that they are impossible to us, it comes about that by the single act of faith we fulfil them all. Consider whither that madness has gone⁴ which we have therefore condemned in many places in book 1: namely that concupiscence after remission in baptism always remains sin, and that it is forbidden by that commandment, You shall not covet. From this he gathers that the concupiscence of the flesh is an unavoidable transgression. Nay, since it inclines man against all the commandments, it is by the power of all of them (even without the consent of the will) the transgressions which we cannot avoid. But yet he who believes, he says, certainly that all things are pardoned through CHRIST, by that faith alone not only obtains that those sins are not imputed to him, but fulfils the whole law. And therefore he who believes, he says, is now freed from the law. From which he immediately concludes that there is no virtue except faith,⁵ nor any sin except unbelief: according to that,⁶ God has concluded all things in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all. But these monstrosities of words betray by their own explanation how absurd they are.⁷ For first, if believers by faith alone fulfil all the commandments, how are they impossible to be fulfilled? Martin answers: because God himself, who commands, fulfils them. This is certainly most false. For (as we shall report a greater explanation in the following chapters) it is not he who believes himself: but we are the ones who believe him. For faith, although it is made by him, is nevertheless in us, not in him. Whence Augustine, book 1 of the Retractations: Although God, he says, works all things in all, yet he does not believe all things in all. If therefore the commandments are fulfilled by faith, we are the ones who fulfil them with the help of God, and therefore they are not impossible for us to keep. But concerning this a little later. For now we take pains only to prove this, that the just man is not forthwith exempted from the obligation of the law. For so Luther says that the just man does not work from obligation, but from love alone: according to that of Paul,⁸ Owe no one anything, except to love one another. Whence he set down that antithesis.⁹ A Christian man is the freest lord of all, subject to no one, but yet the most dutiful of all: and therefore subject to all. But we confess the contrary conclusion.¹⁰ A Christian, however great the sanctity with which he is endowed, is by no means freed from the obligation of the law. And first of all Luther most foully confuses and mingles different liberties. For it is one thing, and far different, for a man advanced in every duty and sanctity to be free from the resistance and trouble of sensuality,¹¹ and another to be free from the bond of the law.¹² For let us grant a man not only in some way in the grace of God, but so advanced that he dares with Paul to say, Who shall separate me from the love of CHRIST?¹³ He will surely work from charity and filial fear, with all fear far removed: but nevertheless he is not therefore freed from the bond of the law. For the obligation of the law¹⁴ consists in this, that he who transgresses it is guilty of it, and therefore incurs the indignation and wrath of God: but whoever, however just, should act against the law, would be held guilty before God: therefore although one does the things commanded by the law with the greatest liberty, he is not therefore exempted from the law: but he has only attained this, that its commandments are most light and sweet to him. Nay, even the apostles confirmed in grace were bound by the law. Otherwise, why did Paul so sharply chastise his body,¹⁵ and bring it into servitude, lest, while he preached to others, he himself should be reprobate, and why did he ask to be saved from the angel of Satan who buffeted him? But also the most holy Virgin, who was not only confirmed so as not to sin even venially, but experienced no tumult of the flesh or temptation to evil, was bound by the law, which if she had transgressed, she would have been guilty, and in fault before God. And yet Luther, who not only acknowledges the struggle of the flesh with reason, but says it is unavoidable sin, wishes not only the most perfect men, but any just man whatsoever, in whom besides natural concupiscence, from the corrupted habit and force of evil custom, he wishes him to be free from the law: and to do all things from love. Is not this most pestilent dogma, smeared with the rouge of love, to the ruin of all virtues? How many among even just men would you find who, if they were loosed from the law, would perform the works of the whole law from love? CHRIST alone was one, who had no need of any obligation of the law, because since he was man and God, it was repugnant that he should do any human work even except according to the divine rule.

Receive another contradiction of this absurd dogma.¹⁶ The sacrament of faith is nothing other than the profession of keeping the law: according to that,¹⁷ Going, teach all nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: what then is it that Luther clamours against, that a man is freed from the law by faith? Did not CHRIST say to the other professors of the law,¹⁸ If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments: You shall not commit murder: you shall not commit adultery, etc.

For the Decalogue is so inscribed by the law of nature in the minds of men that it has never failed to oblige any mortal: how then would CHRIST, more perfect than nature, not have proclaimed it to the professors of faith? Whence Paul says: Do we therefore destroy the law by faith?¹⁹ Far be it, but we establish the law. And:²⁰ This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication, etc. And he adds: Not as the Gentiles who do not know God. As if he had said: those whom faith advances more deeply into the knowledge of God, it binds by a greater bond to the keeping of sanctity. For, as the very teacher of truth says: That servant who knew the will of his lord, and did not prepare himself, and did not do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes: but he who did not know, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. See how far it is from faith to free from the law, that rather from the knowledge of faith there comes an addition of guilt to the transgressor. And furthermore the conclusion is confirmed.²¹ The law of the Decalogue is nothing other than: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your neighbour as yourself. For in the first are contained the commandments of the first tablet, and in the second, the commandments of the second: but faith by its own nature teaches us this, and calls our minds to this, that we love God and neighbour: therefore the evangelical law also binds us to this: and therefore no Christian is freed by faith from the law, but is rather bound to its most holy keeping.

Finally therefore, and most evidently, the argument²² to prove this error is that if the just man were free from the law, he could no longer lose justice: since it cannot be lost except through transgression of the law. To this argument we can think of two ways for them to answer. First, that he who is once in grace by the received washing of regeneration cannot sin any more. But this was the heresy of Jovinian, as Augustine reports in the book On Heresies,²³ chapter 82, which also now the holy Synod of Trent²⁴ condemns in canon 23. Nor is it necessary to spend time in refuting an error so manifest. For we know that not only two chief friends of God fell, David I mean from the Old Testament, and Peter from the New, but also Adam, established in so great a degree and height of happiness, and even the first angel, as Lucifer risen: as being bright with divine knowledge and burning with divine love, we read that he fell. Wherefore I cannot understand what Bucer²⁵ wishes by that screen with which he strives to protect his master in the Concordance of this controversy. Saying that justifying faith frees the just man from the law for this reason, that he who believes with living faith can do nothing else than seek the glory of God, and by this necessarily measures all things. For first it is most false that venial sins can be referred to the glory of God, from which nevertheless no one of the just is free. And besides, although while the just man perseveres in justice he cannot commit sins which are at the same time with grace, he is nevertheless always in danger of sinning. For justifying faith does not free a man from the possibility of sinning: and therefore there is no reason why it should free him from the law forbidding sins. Wherefore what draws them more strongly into suspicion of the crime of Jovinian is that they cite in testimony of their opinion that word: Everyone who is born of God does not commit sin,²⁶ because his seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. For from this they argued that the just man cannot sin. To which nevertheless Augustine, and according to him St. Thomas, 2-2, q. 24, art. 11,²⁷ answers that there is a threefold consideration of charity. The first, insofar as it is the motion of the Holy Spirit. And from this part charity can admit no sin. And to this pertains perseverance: which is the gift of the Holy Spirit himself, upholding us. The second consideration of charity is according to its own proper nature. From which part also sin is repugnant to it, as cold is to heat. And in both ways is understood the word of John, that he who is born of God cannot sin, if only the nature of the seed which is in him is considered. But the third consideration of charity is on the part of the subject: namely of the man in this life. And for this reason charity can be lost: because since faith is an obscure knowledge, not showing us the divine essence itself, it does not so establish our will in God that it is always intent on him: and therefore it is not of such vigour as to be able to overcome in every part the struggles of this our warfare: and therefore the just always need the bridle of the law. But that facial vision is what so transforms the blessed, now stripped of the trouble of the flesh, into divine love that they need no compelling law. But our Protestants wish to attribute to faith justifying [them] what is proper to that vision of the blessed.

But the other answer²⁸ of the Lutherans to the proposed argument is what they have learned from their master: namely that although the just man can lose grace and justice, he nevertheless cannot do so except by one sin of unbelief: just as justice is not acquired except by the one virtue of faith. For so we reported in book 1, chapter 5, from Luther²⁹ against Carlstadt. There is no sin except unbelief, no justice except faith. And in On the Babylonian Captivity: No sins can damn a man, even if he wishes, except unbelief alone. Nor must he who has faith doubt of his salvation, because the promise made there is not changeable by any sins except unbelief alone. And in On Monastic Vows: No works are so evil to one who believes in CHRIST that they can damn and accuse him. Here therefore the intention of these men must be seen, and the point of contradiction³⁰ between us and them weighed. They intend that since God has promised us salvation simply and without dependence on our works, we are only bound to give faith to that promise nakedly and absolutely, without respect to the fulfilment of the other commandments. And therefore Luther said on the letter to the Galatians that faith alone is necessary, and all other works are most free, neither commanded nor forbidden. But the catholic confession is that the evangelical promise is not naked and absolute, but salvation is promised to sinners on this condition, that being repentant of their past life they propose to keep the commandments. Wherefore as faith alone does not suffice for justification, so neither does it absolve the just man from the bond of the commandments. And therefore the Synod³¹ has just now condemned the mind of these men, fully understood. For in canon 19 it pronounces anathema on those who say that there is no commandment in the Gospel besides faith, and that the rest are indifferent. And in canon 20 on those who say that a justified man, however perfect, is not bound to the observance of the commandments of God and of the Church, but only to believe, as if the Gospel were a naked and absolute promise of eternal life, without the condition of observing the commandments. In these last words the root of this Lutheran error is touched to the point. For the commandment of faith is not the whole evangelical law.³² Indeed that doubt does not escape the theologians, whether unbelief is the cause of all sins. Nor do they deny that many sins flow from the weakness and languor of faith. For since from faith both our hope has its origin, and dutiful charity is nourished, the firmer faith is, the stronger hope is, and the more ardent charity. Whence Paul, after he had seen the secrets of God, feared nothing in things which could tear him from his charity.

But nevertheless, these things notwithstanding, a threefold conclusion is set down here.³³ Namely, that neither are all sins unbelief or incredulity, as these men think, nor is unbelief the cause of all, nor is faith expunged by any sin whatsoever. The first member is manifest. For although this is the common nature of every sin:³⁴ namely that it is a word or deed or desire against the law of God, and therefore an aversion from his goodness, yet vices differ in species³⁵ by reason of conversion to different objects, which are intended by the one who sins. For no one does evil looking at it as evil, but led by the appearance of good. Just as the virtues themselves differ among themselves by reason of the objects which are proposed to each. Wherefore, as virtues, so also vices are distinguished first of all by their objects. And the first difference of all is that those vices which are directly against God differ in species from those which are against neighbour. As the three theological virtues [differ] from the moral. Nay, on account of the different reasons by which those three objects differ in God, namely truth, which is the object of faith: and our beatitude, to which hope tends, and his goodness in himself, which is the object of charity, faith, hope and charity are different virtues, and the crimes of impiety are also different: unbelief, despair and hatred of God. Moreover neither are all sins concerning temporal goods of the same genus. For everything that is in the world³⁶ is either the concupiscence of the flesh, or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life. By which words the Apostle, according to the threefold good of the philosophers, distinguished the species of vices. For there is one natural concupiscence, which pertains to touch, either of foods and other things by which the individual is preserved, or of sexual things by which the species is propagated. Another is animal: namely of those things which please by apprehension and possession alone, or rather by use: such as money, and useful goods of that kind. The first of these the Apostle called the concupiscence of the flesh, and the second the concupiscence of the eyes. But the third appetite is for sublime and more spiritual goods: such as honours: and this he named the pride of life. But under these three genera Gregory³⁷ in the 31st of the Moralia recognized the seven species of capital vices, most received by theologians, nay by all Christians, which Paul commemorated in Romans³⁸ and Galatians.³⁹ To what purpose are these things? Surely to show that not all crimes are sins of unbelief, but have most diverse objects. From which is most easily gathered the second member of the asserted conclusion:⁴⁰ namely that not all sins arise from unbelief, but as they are diverse by their objects, so they are perpetrated from diverse affections and sicknesses of the mind. Indeed he who, stirred by anger, kills, or, taken by foul love, slips, or, through avarice, grows foul, does not sin against faith: for he is certain that he acts evilly. Whence the third member of the conclusion follows:⁴¹ namely that faith is not extinguished by any sin whatsoever. For as in the other virtues, whoever sins from anger does not lose temperance concerning the delights of touch, nor does he who sins against temperance lose liberality: so neither is the habit of faith lost by any mortal sin whatsoever, by which we truly believe all things divinely revealed to us, and therefore the very promise of the remission of sins, if we wish by the grace of God to tear our hearts away from our iniquities. But if the matters⁴² of the virtues and vices, about which our different affections are exercised, are different, other commandments also are most different from the commandment of faith, and different obligations, such as are expressed separately in the most distinct Decalogue. And therefore, what is the intent of this chapter, faith by no means exempts the just man from the law, but rather subjects him to the law.

There are one or two passages of Scripture⁴³ which the adversaries can raise against this catholic truth, namely that word of Paul,⁴⁴ The law is not set for the just man, but for the unjust, the disobedient, the ungodly, and sinners, etc. And that:⁴⁵ If you are led by the Spirit of God, you are not under the law: but all the just are led by the Spirit of God: according to that,⁴⁶ Those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. To which is added also that:⁴⁷ Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But to these the answer of all the theologians is most easy, most true and most plain,⁴⁸ unless these men have rejected them all. For there are two powers in the law. The first, that it is the rule of our actions, whose transgression is sin, and from this power of the law no one is excepted. For let every soul (says Paul)⁴⁹ be subject to the higher powers, nor can anyone be subject to God or to his powers unless he is subject to the laws. But there is another, coercive power of the law, which compels the incontinent man to act against his appetites, and in this way the just man, namely he who already has calm and peaceful turbulent passions, is not subject to the law, because he obeys the nod of the Holy Spirit with all fear of the law far removed.

This therefore being first established — that the just man is not forthwith freed from the bond of the law so as to judge whether he can fully satisfy the law, which is the principal intention in the first part of this book — a brief discourse must be premised on the explanation of the law: concerning which, indeed, not even the adversaries agree with us at all. And in the first place this holy confession is to be supposed among Christians, that Christ¹ was given by God to men not only as redeemer, to whom we must trust, but also as legislator, whom we must obey, as the Synod of Trent, can. 21, sanctioned against certain impious men who denied that he was a legislator. And indeed, as far as the matter regards the ten commandments, although they are all of the law of nature, and were explained in the old law, nevertheless in the evangelical law they have the obligation of divine law, because they were commanded by Christ. For the old law, simply as regards the obligation of that law, was altogether abolished and extinguished in the very moment of the passion when Christ said, It is consummated. For, the priesthood being transferred,² says Paul, it is necessary that a translation of the law be made. Where he teaches without any exception that the whole law expired as to its force of obliging. But that axiom of the theologians,³ that of the ancient commandments the ceremonial ones are antiquated and abolished, but the judicial ones not all, while all the moral ones remained, is to be understood thus: that the first, because they were figures of Christ to come, it is not lawful any longer to command in the new law, lest they be false signs. But the second can lawfully be integrated; but the third, because they were of the law of nature, it was necessary that they be restored anew. And so the Decalogue, beyond the natural obligation, would have had no divine obligation at all in the Gospel on account of the bond of the ancient law (which ceased entirely, as if it had never been), unless it had been commanded anew by Christ as true legislator and expounder of the law of nature. Whence, as true legislator, by explaining many things he commanded and commended things pertaining to the same law which the world then did not know. As:⁴ Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, and blessed are they that mourn — whether these are counsels or at some time commandments, we do not now dispute. Nor did he lay down laws only as a scribe and interpreter of the law like the Pharisees, but as one having power: You have heard that it was said to them of old, Thou shalt not kill, but I say to you,⁵ Whoever shall say to his brother, Raca, etc. You have heard that it was said to them of old, Thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say to you, Whoever shall look on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart. But besides these natural things he also added commandments of the sacraments:⁶ as, Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven: and, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you: and,⁷ Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish. Nor is it only true, however the adversaries may resist, that he gave the Church the faculty of making laws,⁸ which should be as it were the bulwark of her own, with which she hedged her vineyard — not that he himself lacked prudence perfectly to institute the whole law of the Church, but because he knew that the variety of times and places, and the diverse cases of men, need new laws from time to time. But this is not the place to treat these things more pressingly; but we have remembered them to explain the canon of the Council, which at this time was necessary on account of certain persons.⁹

With this consideration premised, there are two points on which the Lutherans disagree with us, necessary to be understood before the disputation concerning satisfaction of the law. The first concerns the explanation of the commandments: and the second, whether besides the commandments there are any counsels. On the first point, therefore, they say (as is to be seen in Melanchthon¹⁰ in the common place on good works, and in Bucer¹¹ in the book On the Concord of Controversies) that we hand down the doctrine of works brilliantly concerning external hypocrisy, or concerning human ceremonies: but the works of the first table, and the fountain of good works, we ignore and overwhelm. And they call the seven commandments of the second table external hypocrisy.¹² For they distinguish hypocrisy from the commandments of the first table, which they call internal justice. But internal justice is, they say, to believe the word of God, to fear God, to trust God, always to establish confidence, lest doubt prevail that we are in the grace of God. Which doubt either despises God, or flees from him as angry, or does not truly invoke him. Behold the mysteries in which these men place the whole Christian life, persuading that all these external things matter either nothing or very little: but that the whole business of a Christian consists within, in the heart. Nor indeed can they sufficiently wash away that color with which they were dyed by their master in the book On Christian Liberty,¹³ where he says that external works profit nothing: namely, to be occupied in sacred places and offices, to fast, not even to pray with the voice, nay not even interior speculations or meditations, beyond one faith and confidence. In the first place, who does not see that they speak unworthily of the commandments of the second table,¹⁴ nay rather that they think unworthily of them? For they think that in this only they are commanded to us, that God wished us to exercise them as testimonies of faith by which we might glorify him. But the Catholic Church distinguishes by a far different reason between the first and second table of the commandments. For they are not distinguished as external works from internal: for both in the first and in the second table both inward and outward works are commanded. But the difference is that, since God¹⁵ is both best in himself and to be worshipped for himself, and is also the author of nature and begetter of things, who has care and providence of us, he placed the sum of all the commandments in two: namely,¹⁶ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, etc., and thy neighbor as thyself. From which commandments he says that the whole law and the prophets hang. But the first, which pertains to his own worship, he commanded to be explained in the first table in three precepts: but the second, in the other, in seven others. Nor are the precepts of the first table only meditations of the mind, but they also exert themselves in works. For the first commandment¹⁷ is not formally of love, but its explanation: namely, to believe God to be one and three, to execrate idols as false gods, in which there is nothing of divinity: that he is the one to whom alone the praise and worship of heart, mouth and work is due. The second commandment also, concerning the sanctification of the Sabbath, is placed not only within in the mind, but also in external worship, and so the third concerning his holy name, not to usurp it in vain oaths. Wherefore it is a new invention that it is commanded in the first table that we believe the word of God, trust, and always establish confidence, lest doubt prevail whether we have obtained the promises of God. Concerning which more broadly in book 3, On the Certainty of Grace. But as in the first table external works are also commanded, so also in the second table are inward works. For we are commanded not only to honor dear parents with external offices of piety, but also with intimate affection. Nor are we only commanded to abstain from another's property or bed, but not to covet the wife or property of a neighbor. Therefore (as we shall propose at the beginning) he both falsely and unworthily calls the works of the second table hypocrisy.¹⁸ For hypocrisy is when one thing is brought forth outwardly in the work, and another is borne within in the heart: but the works and offices of charity toward neighbors proceed from faith and the love of God. Nay, according to Scripture, they are indications of true love of God.¹⁹ Whence Paul says: Render to all their dues: to whom tribute, tribute, etc. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.²⁰ And John, whom the Lord from his own breast had suckled with the precepts of charity, thus recounts what he had drawn from there: Dearly beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his charity is perfected in us: And, He who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? And, This commandment we have from God, that he who loves God love also his brother. This is John's exposition of that new commandment of Christ, than which he wished nothing more commended and more holy to his disciples, namely, that they love one another as they were loved by him. Whence he concludes that there is no more certain indication of divine love than the love of neighbor. Wherefore Paul did not think it enough to explain the unity of the human race from the natural bond of the flesh, by which we are compacted into one body. But, he says, we have all been baptized by one Spirit into one body.²¹ And elsewhere:²² We are members of his body (namely, of Christ), of his flesh and of his bones. In sum, God esteemed these external works, by which we cultivate charity among brothers, so highly that, although he himself was rich in all good things and did not need ours, he so properly put on the person of each one that he did not think it enough to say, What you did to one of these, you did for me, but, you did to me.²³ And on the last day he foretold that the whole judgment would turn on whether, when he was naked, he was clothed by us, whether finally he was fed in his brothers and treated with charity. With what face, therefore, do the Protestants call the works of the second table hypocrisy? Saying that the whole Christian business is to be carried on in the heart with God alone. For we acknowledge the word of Christ our liberator: The kingdom of God is within you,²⁴ since, as Paul says, our law is the law of the Spirit — but nevertheless it is spiritual in the way he explains elsewhere, that the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit: but justice, peace and spiritual joy are not preserved except through exterior acts.²⁵

The second disagreement of these men with us concerning the law of Christ is that they recognize no counsel in the Gospel which is not a commandment: if not a particular one, at least included in the commandment of loving God above all things.²⁶ From which, as we shall see in the following chapter, they draw one argument to confirm that we cannot satisfy this commandment in this life. For whatever a man does, he still owes more. And for that reason, as we shall see in the chapter on satisfaction, they laugh at us for thinking not only that we can satisfy the law, but that we can supererogate something beyond it. Wherefore when in the imperial little book,²⁷ at the urging of Eck, it had been written that works are indeed done by us which are good, which are commanded and commended by God, afterwards Bucer²⁸ near the end of his book On the Concord of Controversies protested that it would have been enough to say "commandments." Because, he says, there is nothing in the Gospel which does not proceed from the commandment of love: but the other works which are done from human institutions they utterly condemn, as is clear in their syllabus, on which article the men of Cologne have excellently met them in their antididagma. But concerning this article of counsels I shall say what pertains to the present proposal concerning satisfaction of the law, especially because we have heard certain among Catholics doubting about this, nay rather contending that there is no work of supererogation or counsel, but that all things are commandments. Even that:²⁹ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, etc. Therefore we must establish the contrary conclusion.³⁰ The reason by which the sacred testimonies of this truth are most especially elucidated is this. God in works toward neighbors commanded us under precept only those things which pertained to the custody of charity: for the end of the commandment is charity:³¹ but the other offices, there was no reason why he should enjoin them on us of necessity: but in those which pertain to his worship he did not measure our obligation by the greatness of the benefits which he had conferred on us, of creation and redemption, but disposed all things sweetly according to our nature: commanding only those things which would preserve his friendship, and which were possible, and not so difficult, not only for these or those conditions of men, or in this or that place or time, but which were possible for all at any time and place: but the rest he placed in each one's option. Wherefore counsels are not in themselves more perfect than the works of the commandments, but since the end of all the commandments is the perfection of charity, counsels are ordered to their greater custody. Wherefore although they are not necessary, nevertheless in this way they pertain to perfection. Whence Christ, in that solemn promulgation of the law, immediately before the necessary commandments proposed the counsels of the perfect: Blessed are the poor in spirit.³² For poverty is not necessary, but the lawful use of goods is good. Blessed are they that mourn: and the like. And therefore he adds: You are the light of the world: as if it belongs to them not only to cultivate justice in the common way, but excellently to cast away even the lawful use of things. And from this perhaps is drawn the legitimate understanding of those words: Whoever shall break one of these least commandments, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whoever shall do and teach, shall be called great. For it is doubtful how he called the commandments least, yet called him who kept them great. He was therefore perhaps speaking of those works of counsel, which are called least for this reason, that they are not necessary, but yet those who have legitimately kept them — namely, for the greater and more consummate custody of the commandments — will be in the kingdom of heaven not just any citizens, but great ones. There is added also the word of Christ: There are³³ eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He who can receive it, let him receive it. Of which Paul acts as expositor, where he says: It is good³⁴ for a man not to touch a woman, and, I would that all men were as I myself am. And, I say to the unmarried and widows: it is good for them if they remain as I also am: but he adds: Concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give counsel, etc. But these things are common. But I shall press the matter a little more exactly from that place where the Lord is read to have answered the young man³⁵ asking what he should do to possess eternal life: Keep the commandments: and when he at once said that he had kept them from his youth, he added: Go, and sell all that thou hast, etc. For that is the place where most perspicuously is distinguished between the common order³⁶ of commandments and the singular acceptance of counsels. But the adversaries strive in two ways to interpret or³⁷ deprave this place. For first they say that that young man was a Pharisee who lied that he kept the commandments, and therefore was ordered to leave his riches, which were an impediment to him. To which Jerome³⁸ and Origen seem to incline: but indeed by no reason can it be denied that he had kept the law, as far as was enough for the friendship of God. For it is held in Mar. 10 that Christ, looking on him, loved him. Likewise because if he had lied, Christ would not have answered, If thou wilt be perfect, or as it is held in Mark, One thing is lacking to thee: for these words suppose that the young man had already done what Christ had said was necessary for eternal life. This perhaps is true, that he did not keep the commandment of love in the most perfect way, by distributing his goods to the poor, so as to be among the perfect. And that perhaps was the mind of Jerome and Origen, as St. Thomas relates, 2.2 q.189 ar.1. For it is most repugnant to Christian perfection³⁹ that he should be as rich as he is believed to have been, when there were flocks of the poor to whom he could have distributed his goods. But whether he lied or not, I do not care. For whichever side is true, the difference of counsels from commandments is manifestly gathered from the letter. Therefore the answer of others is that it is necessary for salvation not only⁴⁰ to keep the other commandments, but to leave all things. Wherefore when Christ said, If thou wilt be perfect, he was not speaking of the perfection of supererogation, which is none, but of that which is necessary for salvation. Because, as is related in Mark and Luke, he said: One thing is lacking to thee, go, sell whatever thou hast, etc. But this interpretation is detected as false from this, that if he had understood it of such necessary perfection, he would have answered at the very beginning of the interrogation that it was necessary, when the young man asked what he should do to possess eternal life. Since therefore he says distinctly, If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. But if thou wilt be perfect, sell, etc., he manifestly distinguished between necessary works and works of counsel. Whence what he adds, One thing is lacking to thee, is understood both for perfection and for the security of perseverance. For it is difficult for the rich to act perseveringly for eternal life, as Christ immediately added. In sum, to say that the works of counsel, and especially to renounce riches and the illustrious states of the world, is of the necessity of salvation, is a heresy condemned⁴¹ against the Pelagians, as Augustine relates in the epistle to Paulinus, where among ten errors he counts that as the fifth: namely, that baptized rich men, unless they renounce all things, if they seem to do any good, it is not reckoned to them, nor can they have the kingdom of God. Nor indeed would there have been need of any other condemnation, since otherwise the whole Christian religion would be condemned, which permits rich men. Whence Paul, although he made us admonished⁴² that those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil, nevertheless adds nothing more than: Command the rich of this world not to be high-minded, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, to do good, to give easily, etc.

With these necessary foundations laid, the first question of this book is whether the just man, who is not absolved from the law by justifying faith, can by assisting grace satisfy the law. For the Lutherans¹ err in both extremes: while they say both that any just man is absolved from the bond of the law by faith, and that not even the most just can satisfy the law. But in order that they not persist in imposing on us that we ascribe to ourselves the possibility of fulfilling the law, this most holy confession,² which we share with them, must first be presupposed, which we showed in book 1 ch. 22 and almost through the whole second book was sanctioned by the Church against the Pelagians. Namely, that without divine will and special help we cannot fulfill the divine precepts: that is, neither all as to the substance of the act, nor the least as to the intention of the one commanding. For so it was confessed in the Council of Milevis and Africa,³ and also in the Arausican. In whose canon 25 the words are: We must preach and believe this, that through the sin of the first man free will was so inclined and weakened that no one afterwards can either love God as he ought, or believe in God, or work for God's sake what is good, unless grace and divine mercy have preceded him. And almost such words the present Synod of Trent brought forward in the first three canons.⁴ Which fundamental conclusion we will also explain more fully a little later: namely whether besides habitual grace a new help is also necessary for working worthily and persevering. There is therefore no controversy about this: but that man with the special help of God can truly satisfy the law. For this is what the Protestants most openly⁵ and most obstinately persist in denying: inculcating everywhere that in this life we cannot satisfy the law even with divine favor, but only begin. Indeed they hold that the very beginning is altogether God's work, and in no way ours. But this error is the offspring of that pestiferous root⁶ which we strove to tear out in book 1 ch. 11 and 12, as fertile of many errors. Namely, that concupiscence of the flesh resisting reason is a sin, prohibited by that precept, You shall not covet: which cannot altogether be taken away in this life. Hence Luther concluded in On Christian Liberty and art. 2 of his assertions, and again art. 31 and very extensively in the book On the Ten Commandments, that in this life we can in no way, however divinely aided, fully fulfill that greatest commandment, You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole mind, etc., because of the strife and struggle of the flesh, which prevents us from loving with the whole heart: but here it is begun, and perfected in the fatherland. But since these words can receive a right sense in which they can be common to us, consider how he differs from us. The adversaries do not think only this, that in this life we do not love with that perfection with which God is loved in the fatherland: for concerning this there is no dispute. For we acknowledge that the love of the way is not firm and fixed as it will be there. Likewise we plainly confess that we cannot so love God with our whole heart that many venial sins are not mixed with our justice. For if we had another judgment of ourselves, we would deceive ourselves, as John says. But yet they add⁷ that in every work of man, however just, there is necessarily an omission of that precept of love. For according to them we are bound to fulfill each precept from love: for so they understand that, Do all things⁸ for the glory of God. And, The end of the commandment is charity.⁹ And they think that there is no work so perfect that it is not stained by the continual resistance of the flesh, so as not to be from the whole heart, as is in the precept of love. And hence Luther says in art. 31 that the just man sins in every good work, because there is an omission of that precept. And art. 32: a good work done best is a venial sin according to the mercy of God, but a mortal sin according to the judgment of God. And therefore according to these men by no work of ours do we satisfy the law, but by faith alone we receive the mercy of God not imputing our sins. This doctrine the Lutherans have so far persisted in defending. Hence in the Augsburg Confession art. 6 they say:¹⁰ When we are reconciled by faith, the justice of good works must necessarily follow. But because the infirmity of human nature is so great that no one can satisfy the law, it is necessary to teach men that this obedience does not please God because it satisfies the law: but because the person is reconciled in Christ by faith, and believes that the remnants of sin are forgiven him. Wherefore they do not reckon it to be simply justice, but to be reputed a certain justice: subjoining that, Do not enter into judgment¹¹ with your servant, for no one living will be justified in your sight: and other such things, to which we will answer below. Melanchthon pursues this at great length and most clearly in the Apology¹² under the title On Love and the Fulfillment of the Law, commenting on that of the Gospel, If you wish to enter into life,¹³ keep the commandments, in this sense, that we ought only to begin the law in this life: that is, to fulfill it imperfectly. And a little further below he reproaches us because we preach that we fulfill the law, when in this life we cannot satisfy the law. And below: The fulfillment of the law which follows renewal is slight and unclean and begun, yet the remnants of sin still cling in nature, which always accuse us, and therefore it is not accepted for its own sake, but for the sake of faith: because we are reputed just or accepted on account of Christ. And again: On account of faith in Christ there is not imputed to us what is lacking to the fulfillment of the law. See how much explanation he uses to teach that the imperfection of our works is not only because it is more remiss than in the fatherland, but that true guilt is in every work. Hence a little further below (which words are also Luther's, art. 13) he reproaches us because we feign that Christ merited only first grace for us, and that we afterwards please God and merit eternal life by our fulfillment of the law. When nevertheless Christ the mediator merited all grace for us. The same he pursues more fully also in the Commonplaces under the title On the Fulfillment of the Law. The same Bucer¹⁴ still much more (as is his talent) with cumulative speech while expounding the article of the Interim: whose words we will weigh a little later. Let us therefore set forth the propositions by which this question is to be answered. First.¹⁵ It is possible for us with divine favor and assistance so to fulfill the whole law in this life, and thus the precept of love, that we can avoid not only individual sins but all mortal sins. The first reason for this conclusion is taken from the overthrow of the foundation on which the adversaries strive. For it has been abundantly demonstrated by us in the cited place of book 1 that through baptism original sin is so remitted, pardoned, deleted, wiped away, buried, and thus utterly taken away, along with all actual sins if there are any, that no account of guilt remains, except where man freely consents in will to sin; and that by that precept, You shall not covet, not the struggle of the flesh but victory is prohibited. And although free will was wounded and weakened by the transgression of the first parent, it is not so extinguished that it cannot resist with divine help. Hence it happens that our works are not stained individually by concupiscence, and those less which we do in the grace of God through his help. To this is added besides what we were explaining in the same book 1 ch. 22. Namely, that the manner of charity is not of the essence of the other precepts. And therefore even if we freely granted that we cannot in this life fulfill the precept of love, it would not follow that all the works of the other precepts are sins, and have annexed the privation of that same precept. But all these things have long since been established by us.

Hence we must begin here, whether the precept of love¹⁶ can be fulfilled in this life by us through the help of God. And the cause of doubting is chiefly taken from Augustine in the book On the Perfection of Justice:¹⁷ where he says that in that fullness of charity in the fatherland that precept will be fulfilled, You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind. For while there is still, he says, something of the concupiscence of the flesh which is restrained by continence, God is not altogether loved from the whole soul. And what he adds is that he seems to teach that that perfection of love, which cannot be here but in the fatherland, falls under the precept. For he says: For why would that perfection not be commanded to man, although no one has it in this life? For one does not run rightly if one does not know where one must run. But how would it be known if it were not shown by any precepts? But St Thomas interprets this passage of Augustine, 1-2 q. 44, in this way:¹⁸ A precept is understood to be fulfilled in two ways: in one way perfectly, when one arrives at the end of the one commanding; in another way imperfectly, when, although one does not arrive at the end, one nevertheless does not withdraw from the order and rule directing to the end. God's intention in commanding love of himself was that we be fully and entirely united to him by loving, so that not only would there be nothing in us contrary, but not even anything that could delay or diminish or hold back his love: of which happiness we cannot possess except in the fatherland, when, freed from the body of this death, we shall see him as he is. But in this life it is fulfilled imperfectly. And each one fulfills it more perfectly the closer he approaches to that perfection. Therefore the mind of Augustine is not that the love of the fatherland is commanded here as if to be fulfilled in this life under penalty of sin, but as the end and scope to which our intention is to be directed. Nor is there reason why Bucer should cry out against this gloss.¹⁹ Indeed it is clear from the very words of Augustine: for after he says that that perfection is commanded us, he adds the cause, that through the precept we might know where we must run. Hence as a soldier (says St Thomas),²⁰ although he does not obtain victory, nevertheless does not sin if he does not act against military discipline, so although no one here enjoys that love of the fatherland, nevertheless he does not sin unless he turns aside from the law and the precepts of charity, or admits some venial sin against its fervor. And so, to speak more explicitly, it is one thing to fulfill the precept perfectly, and another not to violate it.²¹ We can in this life not violate it, although we cannot fulfill it perfectly. Therefore the equivocation of "fulfilling" must be avoided. For it is taken in one way as opposed to transgression or omission, and in this way it is fulfilled in this life. And in another way as it means to reach fully the measure, summit, and end: and in this way it is fulfilled in the fatherland. And that this is the sense of Augustine is evident. For he intends in that book to dispute against Celestius, who said that man could live in this life without any actual sin: namely, both venial and mortal, from the fact that it is commanded man to be without sin. Whom Augustine refutes from that of John: If we say that we have no sin, etc.²² And therefore it never occurred to Augustine that our individual works are omissions of that greatest precept, as if sins, but that the life even of the most just man cannot be passed without a mixture of some sins, at least light ones. Which sense is most evident in the same author in On the Spirit and the Letter,²³ where he treats the same argument. For in ch. 26 he distinguishes between this militant life, in which we know through a glass in an enigma, and that triumphant one in which the just, seeing face to face, are satiated with that justice which here, living by faith, they hungered and thirsted for. For, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Hence for the justice of this life, he says, which is less than that, it is not absurdly said to pertain that man not sin; for even if there cannot yet be as great a love of God as is owed to that full and perfect knowledge, it is not therefore to be reckoned guilt. For it is one thing not yet to attain the whole of charity, another to follow no cupidity. Wherefore man ought, although he loves God far less than he can love him when seen, nevertheless to desire nothing illicit. So Augustine, and he repeats such things there, to show that the perfection of this precept in this life is placed in this, that we consent to no illicit pleasure, indeed that we guard against lighter ones.

Besides the authority of Augustine²⁴ there is an argument, as most common, so most valid, to demonstrate the same conclusion. God has commanded us to love him with our whole heart, and our neighbor as ourselves, and not to need to remember each one, if we wish to enter into life, let us keep the commandments: but God commands nothing impossible: therefore we can fulfill them, at least supported by his help. The minor of this syllogism is most evident. For whatever God commands, it is sin if it is not done: since that servant who knew the will of his lord and did not do his will will be beaten with many stripes. And Paul: I did not know concupiscence to be sin unless the law said, You shall not covet. Hence Augustine against Faustus says: Sin is a word, or deed, or desire against the law of God: but not to do what is impossible is not sin: therefore God does not command what is impossible.²⁵ For we have most extensively persuaded in book 1 ch. 17 and 18 that the voluntary is so intrinsically and inseparably the nature of sin that it is a contradiction for there to be sin unless it is voluntary: but not to do what is impossible to do is not voluntary: therefore it is not only impiety but manifest contradiction that God command us anything impossible. But how would it be true that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, if the commandments were impossible which must be kept by us if we wish to enter into life? Most holily therefore Jerome, in²⁶ his exposition of the creed to Damasus, says: We execrate the blasphemy of those who say that something impossible was commanded man by God, and that the commandments of God can be kept not by individuals but by all in common. And below: We so confess free will that we say we always need the help of God: and that both those err who with Manichaeus say that man cannot avoid sin, and those who with Jovinian assert that man cannot sin. But these men deny that that little work was Jerome's: for they fortify this asylum for themselves, to which they retreat whenever they have nothing else to answer. But nevertheless he repeatedly says in the dialogue against the Pelagians, books 1 and 3, that the commandments of God are possible, and that God has not commanded impossible things. For so his Atticus confesses, that it is doubtful to no one. And Augustine, sermon 61 On the Time,²⁷ God could not command anything impossible, because he is just: nor will he condemn a man for what he could not avoid, because he is pious. He says not only that he did not command it, but that he could not command an impossible thing because he is just: just as neither could he punish what we cannot avoid, because he is pious. As if he said, if God had commanded an impossible thing, it would not be to be reckoned to us as injustice that we did not obey, but to him who commanded an impossible thing: and if he punished us for a matter which we could not avoid, it would not be our impiety not to have avoided it, but his to punish it. And Chrysostom in the praises of Paul, homily 7:²⁸ It is possible, he says, to perform the commands of God, if only we wish eagerly to overcome every trepidation of nature by virtue, and nothing is impossible of those things which are commanded to men by Christ. For if we wish to exert our strength as much as is in us, God also joins the greatest help to us. And in the Council of Orange can. 25:²⁹ We also believe according to the Catholic faith that, with the grace received through baptism, every baptized person (with Christ assisting and cooperating) can and ought (if he wishes to labor faithfully) to fulfill those things which pertain to salvation. But concerning our Council of Trent, immediately.

But let us hear our enemies, by what devices they have thought to escape these things. Bucer says in the reconciliation of the article on justification that it is one thing for God to command what is impossible in itself (which they themselves testify to be blasphemy), and another for what God commands to be impossible for man, which is said so piously that the contrary is blasphemy: for he commands what is possible for himself. As if we ever departed a finger's breadth from this confession, and did not most certainly profess, as we set forth in the first conclusion and repeat in the second, indeed as we have shown to be most holy to the Fathers and the Church, that the commandments are possible for us not by our natural powers, but by divine favor and assistance. We dispute nothing with you about this, Bucer, but we ask this with you, whether it is possible for us through the grace and help of God to fulfill the law. And indeed you say it is possible for God, in this age partially: in the future wholly. But when you say "partially," do you understand this, that it is impossible in this life to satisfy the precept of love, and thus the law, and so impossible that any work is of itself sin? This very thing is what our argument convicts of manifest error. It is impossible that God gave men a law which they could not satisfy according to his will through his help. Otherwise to what end would he command?

You answer that although we cannot satisfy, he nevertheless commanded, so that he might conclude all things under sin, and we might therefore flee to his mercy. Surely your answer fights with itself. For behold, all of us concluded under sin flee to his mercy, who helps us to fulfill what he commands, extends his hand to us, infuses grace, assists us by his help and work. Is neither grace nor any help of his sufficient for us to satisfy the law? To what end then does faith lead us to the mercy of God: except that through his assistance we may fulfill what we cannot by ourselves? How will he who, according to David, commanded his commandments to be kept exceedingly, not help us to keep them justly? Is he perhaps more severe in commanding than powerful and kind in helping? See lest, while you take up the patronage of grace against free will, you inflict injury rather on grace, for you think worse than the Manichees. For they said that the will, which was created by an evil principle, cannot avoid sin; you even thrust this upon our will, which you acknowledge to be created by the true God. Nor do you say only this, but that not even through the grace and help of God can man satisfy the law so as to avoid sin: therefore you reckon weak not only free will, but the help of God. Far otherwise do the Fathers everywhere receive that word to the Galatians:³⁰ Scripture has concluded all things under sin, that the promise of Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Namely, that what the law commands we may fulfill through faith. Through faith, namely, which works through charity. Hence Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter ch. 13:³¹ What the law of works commands by threatening, the law of faith obtains by believing. And below: By the law of works God said, Do what I command: by the law of faith it is said to God, Give what you command. And ch. 20: The law was given that grace might be sought. Grace was given that the law might be fulfilled. And Against the Two Epistles of Pelagius book 3: By the law it is brought about that God is heard as to what he wishes to be done: but by grace it is brought about that the law is obeyed. The law therefore makes hearers of justice: grace makes doers. And how this is done he explains still more explicitly in the letter of the five bishops to Innocent, which is 95. For he says that the law is distinguished from grace because the law knows how to command, grace to help. For the law says, Do not become like the horse and mule, which have no understanding:³² but faith answers, Give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments.³³ The law says that we abstain from fornication and carnal desires:³⁴ faith says that no one can be continent unless God gives it.³⁵ In short, the law says, Turn away from evil and do good:³⁶ and Paul says through faith to the Colossians³⁷ that he does not cease to pray for them, that they may walk worthily of God in every good work and word. All which testimonies are manifest, that through the help of faith we truly fulfill the law. And therefore it is most false what our Protestants say,³⁸ namely that through the help of faith it only comes to us that we are exercised in the law, but not that we satisfy the law. For if faith obtains and fulfills what the law commands, surely it is the height of ignorance of the word, or corruption of sense, to deny that through the help of grace we satisfy the law. For what else is it to fulfill than to satisfy? Indeed what is it to do the law, which Paul says: The doers of the law³⁹ will be justified: and to keep the law, which Christ says, He who loves me will keep my words,⁴⁰ and to satisfy the law? Indeed what is it that our Lawgiver himself says: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you:⁴¹ for my yoke is sweet and my burden light: except that it becomes much easier through the grace of God to keep and fulfill the law, which seems heavy and burdensome to the slothful, lazy, and wicked, than to wander through the difficult, broken, and slippery ways of vices? Hence John: This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not heavy.⁴² Because whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory which overcomes the world, our faith. Therefore the sum of the commandments is that we overcome the world, from which through faith we carry away victory. From these and such testimonies, and the merits of our cause, the holy Synod of Trent⁴³ pronounced a sentence, which it declared most just in ch. 11, in these words: Let no one use that rash word, forbidden by the Fathers under anathema, that the commandments of God are impossible for a justified man to observe. For the Lord does not command impossible things, but by commanding he warns, and [gives] to do what you can, and to ask what you cannot: and he helps so that you can. His commandments are not heavy: his yoke is sweet and his burden light. For those who are sons of God love Christ: but those who love him, as he himself testifies, keep his words, which they can certainly do with divine help; but those who have contradicted, it commands to be anathema, can. 18.

But we reach at last the point of the controversy,⁴⁴ from which the pus of this ulcer is brought out. These men say all this, but they do not prove that we fulfill the law, but that God himself fulfills it: for this is what Bucer says,⁴⁵ where we cited him just now, that God does not command what is simply impossible, but what is impossible for us: and possible for himself. But grasp the man's mind. For he does not wish that what is impossible for us be made possible for us through the help of God, so that we ourselves fulfill the law: for then there would be no controversy between us: for this very thing is our confession. But he understands that the law, which is impossible for us, God himself fulfills through his Son in believers, in the present partially, and in the future wholly. For so he was taught by his master Luther in On Christian Liberty.⁴⁶ His words are: He who alone commands, alone also fulfills. See therefore two most absurd errors. Not we, but God in us does the works of the law, and yet he does not perfectly fulfill it so as to satisfy the law. And concerning this matter tragedies are brought forth and scattered in the vulgar tongue to the mockery of free will, that it can do nothing by itself in the works of grace, and that our freedom cooperates nothing even with the help of God. And what would be lamentable even to tears, since the matter is one which can be perceived by a man of sound mind with no probability at all, in order to persuade it to the common people they feign that the kingdom of free will was invented by the prelates of the Church, when nevertheless it itself cooperates nothing, either to obtain justice or to increase it. I do not know by what other emphasis it can be explained that our morals have blackened and prostrated the Church, and how great care must be applied to restore it, than that our adversaries, which they can persuade by no reason, nevertheless persuade the common people by saying that it is against the Roman Church. The matter is most certain, that if we composed our morals, we would need no arguments. But to return to the matter: not only the Lutherans are in this error, but some Catholics also: namely that it is not we who fulfill the law, but God. For this reason, because Paul says, God is he who works all things in all.⁴⁷ And, He who works both to will and to work for good will.⁴⁸ And, It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy:⁴⁹ And, We cannot think anything as of ourselves, as if from ourselves.⁵⁰ And, The grace of God is eternal life.⁵¹ Hence Augustine in On Grace and Free Will ch. 7:⁵² God, he says, does not crown your merits as your merits, but as his gifts. From which there was not lacking one who would elicit such a sense from that word of Paul, I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me,⁵³ so as to refer it to each of our works: that is, I pray, now not I, but Christ prays in me: I abstain, now not I, but Christ abstains in me.

But on the contrary the second conclusion is established,⁵⁴ by which the first is made clear. Although God bestows on us the faculty and strength, nevertheless it is most ineptly, indeed most falsely, said that he himself fulfills the law. For we are the ones who fulfill it, and thus who merit well of him. Let us begin from that passage of Matthew 19, from which these men extort their opinion: where, when the disciples asked, Who can be saved? the Redeemer answered, With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible. Nor indeed let us dispute how "impossible" is taken there. For certainly it is the same as "difficult": for there was a particular discourse about the rich, who can with the greatest difficulty let go of riches. But let us grant that it is used there absolutely, as it is impossible for man by his own powers to fulfill the law. Nevertheless, this being granted, only this understanding is gathered from it, that what is impossible for man by the strength of nature is possible for him through the help of God. Which understanding is most plainly explained from the words of Peter subjoined: Behold, we have left all things and followed you, what therefore will there be for us? As if he had said, Behold, we aided by your favor have left all things. He does not say, You have left, but we have left: and therefore he asks what will be the reward of our work, who have responded to you calling? Besides, who would be so foolish as to say that Christ fasts in me, or abstains from illicit pleasures? For to abstain from foods is not a mere negation: for a stone does not abstain, but it is for a man to deprive himself of desired things. But God does not desire foods or other base pleasures in us, so that he himself may be said to abstain: but we do through his help. And (as Augustine noted in book 1 of the Retractations ch. 23),⁵⁵ although God is said to work all things in all, nevertheless he does not believe all things in all. For it is not he who believes to himself, but we who believe to him, nor does he love himself through the charity which is in us, but we love him. Nor does he speak to himself while we pray, but we speak with him. Who would say that he is the one who merits in us before himself? For as merit is referred to reward, so he who merits is other than he before whom he merits. Hence it is one thing that our merits are gifts of God, and another that he himself merits. For we are the ones who through free will obey the law. Nor does Paul say that God wills through our will, but that he gives us to will, and to work, and to perfect. Hence Augustine in the same book On Grace and Free Will ch. 6: If merits, he says, are so understood to be ours that they are also known to be gifts of God, this opinion is not to be reproved. And ch. 16: God would not command what he knew could not be done by man. And below: It is certain that we do when we do, but he makes us do, by offering most efficacious powers to the will: who said (namely in Ezekiel 36), I will make you walk in my justifications, and keep my judgments and do them. And On the Spirit and the Letter ch. 9, expounding that, Being justified freely by his grace,⁵⁶ he adds: not that it is done without our will, but our will is shown to be weak through the law, so that grace may heal the will, and the healed will may fulfill the law: and in the following chapter: Not because we have fulfilled the law is grace given, but grace is given that we may be able to fulfill the law. And Paul did not say that grace does everything,⁵⁷ but, he says, I labored more than all, not I alone, but the grace of God with me. And finally to conclude, this is the error⁵⁸ which was condemned as the ninth against Pelagius, as Augustine reports to Paulinus: namely that there is no free will if it needs the help of God. For the discourse was concerning the works of grace, as we noted in book 2, which works the Church determined are so done through the help of grace that free will also concurs. But when there would be no testimony either of the Church or of Scripture, how could the human mind grasp that free will does not cooperate with God? To what end did he command those works to us rather than to beasts, which would not be in our power otherwise than in their power? But what experience could be more clear-sighted than that man performs the works of grace with that freedom with which he performs the works of nature? Although faith teaches us that we need other help and favor in the works of grace. Yet I seem to myself already troublesome, who strive to illuminate the sun.

But it would not have been enough to have established in general that the law is possible for us through the help of God, unless we also speak particularly of that greatest precept of love, and of the lighter ones. For they say, as is seen in Bucer in the same place, that the commandments of God can be kept not by individuals but by all in common.¹ For this reason they say that that exposition of the creed, where it is held that all the commandments can be kept by individuals, is not Jerome's.² For Jerome, they say, in book 1 of the Decalogue against the Pelagians teaches the contrary: that when this mortal [body] has been clothed with immortality, then God will be all in all, so that there is not only wisdom in Solomon, meekness in David, zeal in Phinehas, faith in Abraham, charity in Peter, but all virtues in all. But as long as we have this treasure in vessels of clay and are surrounded by fragile flesh, no one, he says, has all the virtues. Note, prudent reader, in what sense they take these words of Jerome: for in this way, that no one can fulfill the whole law, but one fulfills one commandment and another another, and so the whole is fulfilled by all together. And therefore, they say, Jerome had premised a little before that then we are just when we confess ourselves sinners. And in the letter to Ctesiphon he says that this is the only perfection for men, if they know themselves imperfect. Therefore for the explanation of the general conclusion of the preceding chapter we have woven in here these particular [conclusions]. The first: Individuals³ through the grace and help of God can keep each and all the commandments, so that they are truly just. This follows immediately from the preceding chapter. For if God commanded us nothing impossible, there is no precept in his law which individuals cannot fulfill by his favor. Otherwise, just as to fulfill it would not be free, so neither would not fulfilling it be sin. And the same reasoning holds of that greatest precept of the love of God above all things. Since by the word of commanding it is proposed just like the others. Nay, consider with an eye, reader, the words which Moses speaks:⁴ These are, he says, the precepts which the Lord your God has commanded, that you may do them. And again: That you may keep all his commandments and precepts. And third: Hear, Israel, and observe, that you may do: the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, etc. Here God seems to press upon them by the mouth of the prophet, lest they should dare to say that that great precept was not placed before us so that we might satisfy it. Indeed he who just before, when he commanded it, premised with such great repetition, that you may do, that you may keep, that you may observe: which is as if he had said, that you may satisfy. And the conclusion is confirmed. This precept of loving God with the whole heart and whole mind is so conformable to reason, and so deeply implanted in man by nature (as was demonstrated in the first book), that nothing can be more so: therefore although it becomes difficult for us from the infestation and incursion of the flesh, why will the help of divine grace not be so powerful that at some time we can so do his will that neither in the heart is anything contrary to him, nor consequently in love any account of fault? For to love with the whole heart and with the whole mind⁵ can be done in two ways. In the first way, so that not only is there nothing in the heart repugnant to charity, but nothing remitting or impertinent, but the whole is always actually intent on God. And this will be in the fatherland. But in the other way "with the whole heart" is understood as [the way] we satisfy the precept: namely, that we admit nothing contrary to his will, neither in deed, nor in word, nor even in thought. And in this way we love in the way: wherefore David says most often, I will confess to you, Lord, with my whole heart. And, With my whole heart I have sought you. And, With my whole heart I will search your law.

And that this is possible, we are besides most plainly admonished by the very mouth of God in the same book, where we read thus: This commandment which⁶ I command you today (and he speaks of that greatest one) is not above you (that is, it is not above your powers, supported by my help), for what we can do through friends, we can in some way do through ourselves. And it follows: Neither is it far off, nor placed in heaven, that you might say, Who of us is able to ascend to heaven, that he may bring it down to us, that we may hear and fulfill it in deed. What is it "that we may fulfill" but "that we may satisfy"? And it continues: Neither is it placed beyond the sea, that you might excuse yourself and say, Who of us will be able to cross the sea and bring it to us, that we may be able to hear and do what is commanded. But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. As if he had said, it is so ready for you to do that you can offer no excuse if you do not fulfill it according to my will. And Christ our Lord in the Gospel:⁷ This is, he says, the greatest and first commandment in the law: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind. And how it is the greatest he explains, because with the other adjoining one concerning the love of neighbor, the whole law and the prophets hang on it: namely, from this, that every law and the prophets, as they are explanations of it, are so referred to it as to a target: because the end of the commandment is charity.⁸ But if it is the greatest, it is truly chiefly to be observed: for, as the prophet says, You have commanded your commandments to be kept exceedingly.⁹ But if it is observed, the will of the one commanding is satisfied: otherwise Christ would have said in vain, He who does the will of my Father who is in heaven,¹⁰ he will enter into the kingdom of heaven: and we would daily ask in vain, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Therefore the will of God is not only in the kingdom of heaven, but before the entrance into the kingdom of heaven, on earth: which is to satisfy each commandment.

Nor did Jerome in the cited place teach the contrary.¹¹ Which Bucer could have looked at in the next line. Except that it is most holy to them to cite truncated words. For where in the said dialogue Atticus answers that no one in this life has all the virtues, he immediately explains himself by the cause subjoined: Because, he says, it is necessary that individuals excel in certain things. Therefore Jerome meant only that no one has all the virtues perfected, as it will be in heaven. Therefore he does not contradict himself when he says to Damasus that all the commandments can be fulfilled by individuals.

But from this conclusion a doubt arises:¹² Whether the just man, besides habitual sanctifying grace, also needs the special help of God moving him to the individual works of the commandments. For thus St Thomas seems to affirm in 1.2 q. 109 art. 9.¹³ Concerning this, the second conclusion is as follows.¹⁴ Although it is held by some as an opinion not improbable that the just man does not need, besides sanctifying grace, a new special help for individual meritorious works, nevertheless it is simply true that he needs new help to work and fulfill the law, to avoid sinning and to persevere. The first member is the opinion of those who hold that doctrine which is common among theologians, and which we asserted in the previous book, chapter 20. Namely, that a man can by natural vigor, with only general help, sometimes perform a good moral work, even outside grace, and so sometimes fulfill some commandments as to the substance of the works. For from this an argument is formed, in my judgment not invalid. Every work good in its kind without any bad circumstance, which outside grace is morally good, if it is done by one who is in grace, is meritorious of eternal life: because for a work to be acceptable to eternal life, nothing else seems to be required than that it be good in its kind and circumstances, and be done by a friend of God. For Scripture says: God looked¹⁵ upon Abel and upon his gifts: that is, because the person was in his grace, the work was acceptable to him. But a man who is in grace can sometimes fulfill the commandments and do other good works with only the general concurrence of God, much better than he could outside grace: therefore such works will be meritorious of eternal life. Nor does any other relation to God as to a supernatural end seem to be required than that it proceed from grace. For a work good by its object is of its nature referred to God: and when one is converted to him, he virtually refers all his works to him. Wherefore that which some invent:¹⁶ namely, that a work can proceed from one who is in grace, yet not from grace, I cannot sufficiently approve except concerning venial sins. For if the work is good, and is from one who is in grace, it virtually (as they say) proceeds from grace. But Gregory¹⁷ and Capreolus, because they imagine that St Thomas was of the opinion that for individual morally good works special help is required outside grace, rightly infer from this that according to him, even for one existing in grace, the same special help is required for individual meritorious works. But we, who have shown above the contrary concerning a morally good work, also think, under the judgment of the more expert, the contrary concerning meritorious works: namely, that besides grace no other special help is required for individual works. Which opinion was most approved before us by Cajetan¹⁸ in the cited place on St Thomas. But the second member of the proposed conclusion: namely, that simply for working and fulfilling the law special help is necessary besides grace, St Thomas proves there, because man in fallen nature needs the help of God in two ways. First, to heal nature, and for this sanctifying grace is abundantly sufficient: for by it nature is rectified, because it is restored to the order of the divine rule and will. But besides, help is required by which he is moved to act. First, on account of the general reason, because no creature can come forth into act unless by the power of divine motion: and second, on account of the peculiar condition of fallen nature, which although through grace, as regards the mind, it is reduced to order, nevertheless remains corrupted and infected as regards the flesh. And in this second reason he shows that he is not speaking of individual works, because, as he had said in the same question, article 2, the corruption of sensuality is not so great that a man could not sometimes by the general help of God act according to reason. But simply such special help is required, because neither all things nor for long can we act well for the preservation of grace without it. And by the same reason it follows that to avoid sinning special help is also required besides grace, and therefore to persevere. If, however, perseverance means the continuation of good until the end of life. For if it means a good purpose and a singular habit of mind, all that is infused into man with grace. In confirmation of this conclusion St Thomas cites Augustine, On Nature and Grace, where he says: Just as¹⁹ the eye of the body, most fully sound, cannot see unless it is helped by the brightness of light, so man, even most perfectly justified, cannot live rightly unless he is divinely helped by the eternal light of justice. And in the book On the Gift of Perseverance he asserts from the words of Cyprian that by that word of the Lord's Prayer, Hallowed be your name, the saints ask for perseverance in holiness, which depends on his continual help. The same is done by On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 6, where he says that the grace of God is necessary not only that he may justify the impious, that is, that from impious he may become just, but also that, when he has been justified by faith, he may walk with grace and lean upon it, lest he fall: according to that saying, Who is this that comes up white,²⁰ leaning upon her kinsman? And this need David confessed when he asked, Be my helper, do not forsake me.²¹ Finally there is a certain analogy and proportion between natural and supernatural things: that just as God not only gives natural forms of acting, but concurs with them by a general influx, so those whom he makes grateful to himself he helps by special help for supernatural works: so that in both ways it may be true, My Father works until now²² (that is, assiduously and continually), and I work. From which word Jerome, to Ctesiphon, gathers these words to this sense: He is always a giver and always a bestower. It is not enough for me that he once gave himself to me, unless he always gives. Therefore although it is not so expressly determined in the councils that new help is required besides habitual grace, nevertheless it is so to be understood. For in the holy Synod of Trent now²³ canon 22 it is held: If anyone says that the justified can persevere in the justice received without special help of God, let him be anathema. And in the Council of Milevis, canon 3, grace is determined to avail not only for the remission of sins that have been committed, but also for help that they not be committed. And in the Council of Orange, canon 25: God inspires in us faith and love of himself, so that after baptism (with his help) we can fulfill the things that are pleasing to him. Note "help" and "aid."

Let the third conclusion of this chapter be.²⁴ Although we can avoid individual venial sins, we cannot avoid all. The conclusion is not only St Thomas's in the same 1.2 q. 109 art. 8, but also of all theologians in 2 Sent. d. 28. Nay, it draws its roots not from the scholastic theologians but from sacred Scripture according to the interpretation of the holy Fathers. The reason is derived from the distance between mortal and venial.²⁵ For the first consists in the perversity of reason, which since it is reformed by grace (for the just man has a fixed purpose toward God), such a man can by the help of God avoid both individual and all [mortal sins]. But venial sin is committed by subreption on account of the tyranny of the flesh, which always remains in the justified. For in the person of the restored man Paul said:²⁶ I myself serve the law of God with the mind, but with the flesh the law of sin. And therefore although we can avoid individual venial sins (otherwise they would not be sins), we cannot avoid all. For that assault of the flesh into various kinds of vices is so pertinacious and continuous that while we avoid one, we run into another. Because reason cannot endure in assiduous watchfulness and vigilance to repress incursions of this kind. But this reasoning, says Durandus,²⁷ militates only concerning venials from subreption: for example, those which happen through defect of full deliberation. Wherefore (and not altogether improbably) he holds that it is venials of this kind which we cannot avoid all of. For the rest, he says, which are venial by their object, such as a lie in jest, an idle word, and all similar things, we can avoid as we do mortal sins. Nevertheless it is more probable that we cannot fully guard against all of these either: both because occasions of them also occur more frequently, so that we could repel them all; and because, since they are light sins which do not cast us down from the grace of God, we become slacker and more remiss in overcoming them. It is true, however, that they can be conquered much more easily. Nay, there are men of advanced virtue who guard themselves so vigilantly from them that they are preserved unharmed for some time. But this conclusion, as I was just saying, is not to be heard as the opinion of the scholastics, but as the collection of the Fathers from the divine utterance. For that voice of the Pelagian Celestius was once heard:²⁸ that a man can live without sin if he wishes, by the power of free choice. Concerning this matter Jerome wrote against him to Ctesiphon,²⁹ and also a dialogue against the Pelagians, and Augustine³⁰ the book On the Perfection of Justice, and afterward the book On the Spirit and the Letter. Which heresy, Jerome says, drew its beginning from the Pythagoreans and Stoics, who said that passions do not fall upon the wise man. Against which error the Fathers were not so anxious to fight with reasons as with the testimonies of Scripture: as is that saying of John:³¹ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And,³² There is no just man on earth who does good and does not sin. And Solomon:³³ There is no man who does not sin. And Job,³⁴ according to the 70: No one is clean from filth. And David:³⁵ All have turned aside, they have together become useless. There is none who does good, there is not even one. And, Do not enter into judgment with your servant, because no living man will be justified in your sight. Whence the saints daily pray, Forgive us our debts. Because of that duel which the spirit sustains against the flesh, of which Paul says:³⁶ I feel another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and capturing me in the law of sin. But it must be noted³⁷ in Augustine in both places that he does not deny that it is possible, by the help of God, for a man to be wholly immune from sin, but he says that apart from the one Jesus Christ no one has been exempt. And therefore he calls that impossible which was never done. And Jerome says the same in book 2 of the dialogue, citing that saying of Ecclesiastes: Everything that is to come has already been done in the former age: but that a man was wholly free from actual fault never was, Jerome says, in the former age: therefore neither will it be. However, if afterward Augustine, treating the same argument in On Nature and Grace, chapter 36, most deservedly excepts the most holy mother of God. Where it is indeed to be wondered at that those who think Augustine there remembers original sin.³⁸ For in that part of the book he treats the same argument as in the cited books On the Perfection of Justice and On the Spirit and the Letter: namely, that a man cannot live without sin, against Celestius, who said, A man can not sin if he wishes. But original sin is not in our will. In whose example that heretic brought forward a long catalogue of the old testament: for example, Abel, Enoch, Abraham, and the other just, whom he said committed no sin. Among them he also included the blessed virgin. Where if he understood of original sin, he could not have spoken of them individually. For according to the Pelagians, no mortal contracts it. From these just men recounted by Augustine, he excepts only the most blessed virgin. Yet not affirming [it], but not wishing to make mention of her on account of the honor of the Lord. For we know, he says, that more grace was conferred on her to conquer sin on every side, who merited to conceive and bear God, whom it is certain had no sin. In that he says "to conquer," he most manifestly speaks of actual sin: since original sin is not conquered. And therefore he said notably and discreetly of her, "to conquer": but of Christ, "to have had none." And he adds: With this virgin therefore excepted, all the other saints, men and women, if asked whether they were without sin, would answer: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. By which word it is clear that he spoke only of actual sin. For concerning original sin, although a Christian affirms that he does not have it, he does not contradict John. But on account of this word of Augustine, all the Fathers afterward and all theologians with one mind most rightly preach that the glorious virgin committed no actual sin, whatever Chrysostom³⁹ thought, who was older than Augustine. Hence the present holy Synod of Trent⁴⁰ determines in canon 23, under the censure of anathema, that no one hereafter say that anyone in this life can avoid all venial sins except by a special privilege of God. As, it says, the Church holds concerning the blessed virgin. Otherwise it reckons the other Fathers and theologians under the name of the Church: because among the decrees of the Church this kind had not been included. Therefore to return to the explanation of this conclusion, this must first be noted, that the saints called that impossible not because God could not do it, but because he had not yet done it. And second, that when we speak with our Protestants,⁴¹ it must be noted that the saints never understood that a man could at no time be without all sin. For Jerome⁴² in book 3 of the same dialogue, when Critobulus presses him whether a man who has come forth from the waters of baptism is without sin, Atticus candidly answers: I answer that it is impossible for a man to be without sin if he wishes, not because a man immediately after coming forth from baptism is not without sin, but that time when he is without sin is ascribed not to human possibility but to the grace of God. And lower, explaining that saying, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man according to my heart, who will do all my wills: It is not doubtful, he says, that David was holy, and chosen in this, that he should do all the wills of God: but yet he did not do them forever. And therefore he adds: This we also say, that a man can not sin if he wishes, for a time, for a place, for bodily weakness, as long as the mind is intent, as long as the string is not loosened by any vice on the lyre.⁴³ But if he slackens a little, as one who pulls against a river, if he slackens his hands, immediately slips backward and is carried by the flowing waters where he does not wish, so human condition, if it slackens a little, speaks its own frailty and knows that it can do many things not. Behold in what way the saints understood that a man cannot live without sin: not indeed that every work of ours is sin, so that by no work we satisfy the law, as the adversaries perversely philosophize, but that life cannot be passed without a man often falling, at least into lighter sins, more or less according to each one's care and diligence, or negligence and carelessness. Nay, a man can last a day when he is not mindful even of the slightest fault, so that he can confess it in particular.

Let us subjoin therefore the fourth conclusion.⁴⁴ On account of venial sins, a man neither loses the reality nor the name of a just man, nor is he properly called a transgressor of the law. This is plainly clear in the words of Augustine⁴⁵ in the place just cited from On Nature and Grace, where after the commemoration of so many just men of the old law, Abel, Enoch, Abraham, David, and the rest whom Scripture calls just, he adds: Not only the just, but if all the saints, men and women, to whom it was given to live, were asked, they would answer that they are not without sin. And a little before, chapter 14, he says of himself, and was speaking of others born of God, John, where he says: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And James:⁴⁶ In many things we all offend. And in the Enchiridion, chapter 64.

Nor is every crime a sin, nor is every sin a crime.⁴⁷ Therefore we say that the life of all the saints, as long as it is lived in this death, can be found without crime: but if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Whence in the Council of Milevis,⁴⁸ canons 6, 7, 8, and in the African Council, canon 81, those are reprobated with the execration of anathema who say that those voices of the saints, If we say that we have no sin, and, Forgive us our debts, are uttered not for themselves but for others, or on account of humility, not on account of truth. Wherefore among the ecclesiastical dogmas,⁴⁹ chapter 86, Augustine: No saint and just man is without sin, nor yet from this does he cease to be just or holy: since he holds holiness with affection. And therefore all the saints truly pronounce themselves sinners. The same Atticus answers Jerome⁵⁰ in book 1 of the dialogue to Critobulus, who objected from the sacred canon those many who are called saints and just: such as Zachary and Elizabeth. Concerning them it is had in Luke⁵¹ that they were both just before God, walking in all the commandments and justifications of the Lord without complaint. And Job,⁵² of whom it is read that he was in the land of Hus, simple and upright, and fearing God; to whom you can subject all from Abel the just to John, than whom Christ confesses none greater has been born among women.⁵³ All, he says, were just, but nevertheless they could fall. For, David says,⁵⁴ who understands his sins? and from my hidden sins cleanse me, Lord. Whence then, he says, we are just when we confess ourselves sinners. For the just man is the accuser of himself in the beginning of his speech.⁵⁵ And the same holy Synod of Trent now confesses,⁵⁶ chapter 11, that although in this mortal life the most saintly and just sometimes fall at least into light and daily sins (which are also called venial sins), they do not therefore cease to be just. For that voice of the just is both humble and true: Forgive us our debts. Add that not only do venial sins⁵⁷ not take away justice and the grace of God, but they do not even prevent them from being called perfect just men: wherefore what we were saying in the preceding chapter, namely that justice and charity are not perfect in this life, must be reckoned only in comparison with that [perfection] of the fatherland. It is holy that this our [justice] is not, like that, fixed and firm. Otherwise in this life they truly are, and in the sacred utterances are pronounced, perfect men. For Augustine⁵⁸ in the cited place On the Spirit and the Letter, where he denies that the precept of love is perfectly fulfilled in this life, nevertheless does not deny that charity is here perfect; nay, he openly confesses it from that saying, For no one has greater charity⁵⁹ than that a man lay down his soul for his friends. There is also that saying,⁶⁰ He who keeps his word, truly in this is the charity of God perfect. And,⁶¹ You shall be perfect before the Lord your God. And Christ in the Gospel:⁶² Be perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect. And,⁶³ For the rest, brothers, rejoice, be perfect. But if our Protestants had weighed the whole book On the Perfection of Justice more attentively, Augustine there expresses a certain word in which they would have seen the perfection of the justice of this age. For this, he says, is our justice in this pilgrimage itself,⁶⁴ that we tend now by the straightness and perfection of its course toward that perfection and fullness of justice, where in the beauty of his glory charity will be already full and perfect. So Augustine. Behold therefore the perfection of justice in the way which fully satisfies the law: namely, to walk uprightly in the way of the Lord, to turn aside nothing from it. For the perfection of the fatherland⁶⁵ is not to walk but to stand: that is not merit but reward: not the race but the prize. The law is the same as the rule by which we tend to the prize: therefore perfect observance of the law is to enter through the narrow gate and follow the straight path. For,⁶⁶ Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. And Paul:⁶⁷ I have fought the good fight, he says, I have kept the faith, I have finished the course: for the rest there is laid up for me a crown of justice. Therefore the commandment is not to receive the crown, but so to finish the contest that you receive the crown. In sum, our justice here is to walk by faith and to thirst for justice (for, Blessed, he says, are those who hunger and thirst for justice)⁶⁸ so that we may be satisfied when, his glory appearing, we see him as he is. But let me consider the words of Paul,⁶⁹ whether he looked to this as a distinction of the perfect. For he says: Not that I have already received or am already perfect. Behold the perfection of those triumphing in the kingdom. But I follow after, if by any means I may comprehend. This is the profession of the militia, concerning whose perfection he adds: Therefore as many of us as are perfect, let us think this, etc. The perfection of the way therefore is to run perfectly and to follow. But if we have admitted certain minute things while the string is slackened on the lyre, we do not therefore turn aside from the way, nor turn our backs to God: but we are delayed as it were struggling against the floods of this age. Let us finally hear our Augustine⁷⁰ in the same place On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 36: To that perfection of the kingdom, he says, pertains, You shall not covet (that is, being stripped of the body, to be freed from the struggle of this mortal flesh); to this [perfection], Do not go after your concupiscences, and to hope for the perfection of that as a reward. Therefore let us conclude the fifth⁷¹ and last proposition against Luther, art. 31: The just man does not sin in every work. That the just man falls seven times a day is indeed among the proverbs of the Wise Man,⁷² to whom the Lord revealed wisdom: but that the just man sins in every work could not be revealed to Luther⁷³ except by his own genius, so as to discourage men, lest they act well and believe themselves to owe less to God because he had already given them nature, which neither could he himself heal when infirm, nor sufficiently help when healed, so that they might act well, and yet he had commanded that we do justly the things that are just. Add that the Wise Man speaks of the lightest faults, nor does he call good works sins: but our new prophet wishes to drive us mad with a wonderful antithesis. For he says that the just man sins not only in every work but in every good work: and that every good work, even when best done, is mortal sin: mortal in the judgment of God, except that through his mercy it is not imputed. With colors of this kind he everywhere flourishes one work, both good and sin: best done, and mortal sin in the judgment of God, and yet through mercy not imputed. Let it be open to you still, reader, to hear the explanation of the man, which you have often read in the author himself. Where Paul says,⁷⁴ I serve the law of God with the mind, but with the flesh the law of sin, he has a most clear sense. Namely, that the mind aspires to the best, but the flesh to the lowest: in which conflict the man placed now as victor serves the law of God, now as conquered succumbs to the law of sin. But what Paul declares of one person on account of the vicissitude of different works, Luther⁷⁵ has tried to drag to the same person at the same time, and even according to one and the same work. So much so that he elicits from this place that not only is the same person at once just and a sinner, but that the very same work of the just man is partly good, insofar as it proceeds from the grace of God, and partly evil, insofar as it proceeds from free choice. See to what lengths that error asserted by these men brings forth, that concupiscence even in the baptized is sin. For they everywhere cry that it is the bad tree which cannot bear good fruit. Nay, consider, I pray, with what kind of mortals we have been fighting for thirty years. They make us worse than beasts. For those, if they are not free for good, certainly are not free for evil either. But these men grant us freedom for evil in such a way that they wish it wholly taken away for good. Nay, they are not afraid to teach that the best God compels us to sin: yet they can by no means be brought to believe that he himself, who is greatest, can sufficiently help us to a work that is truly good. First of all, is this not a manifest contradiction, that the same work be at once good and evil in the sight of God? In natural things nothing prevents the same food, which is wholesome for one, from being pestilential in respect of another: but that one work be at the same time done according to the rule, law, and will of God, and the same be at the same time against the same law, rule, and will (for this is to be good and mortally evil), however it may arise from whatever causes, is it possible to understand? Add that if it is sin according to the judgment of God, how is it not imputed through mercy? Is God not as just as he is merciful? In what way, therefore, can that in which he judges the account of sin and offense against himself to persist be not imputed through mercy? But I remember that I have refuted this in two places: namely, in book 1 and also in book 2. Therefore, leaving aside the contradictions of these men, the reason of the conclusion is⁷⁶ this. One can through the grace of God perform a work according to his law, so as to mix in no evil end or circumstance, but do it according to his will, otherwise we would daily ask in vain, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven: therefore such a work will be altogether free of fault. This is most strongly confirmed by one testimony of Cyprian,⁷⁷ which nevertheless Luther, art. 2, brings forward for himself from a certain letter On Mortality. For that holy martyr says: The mind of man, besieged and surrounded on all sides by the infestation of the devil, scarcely meets each thing, scarcely resists. If avarice is struck down, lust rises: if lust is suppressed, ambition succeeds: if ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride inflates, drunkenness invites, envy breaks concord, jealousy cuts off friendship, etc. From this place, in what way, Luther, you can extract that all works are sins, no one but your disciples sees. First, he does not say that when one vice is conquered another conquers us, but that another battle of the flesh rises up. But to grant you this for the moment, why do you intercalate the authority and not read it continuously? For he says: If avarice is struck down, lust rises. Therefore to strike down avarice is not sin but virtue. And if lust is suppressed, ambition succeeds. Therefore we can suppress lust so that it has no account of sin. Cyprian therefore so far denies that every work is sin that he affirms that the same affections which sometimes conquer us are also in turn conquered by us. Cease therefore to be blind. Cease to call sins the works which are done by us through the help of God, and which are his greatest benefits. Whether⁷⁸ when Paul himself, but Christ lived in him, when nothing under the sun was feared that could separate him from the love of God, will you then dare to say that every work of his was sin? Were the preaching of John the precursor of Christ, and all the confessions of the martyrs, when they were cut down, killed, and torn apart for Christ, still sins, because they proceeded from free choice? Yet works which are not done through free choice cannot be worthy of any reward, because as sin, so neither is a work of virtue, unless it is done freely. Surely one who is thus blasphemous against the saints⁷⁹ does not spare even the most holy mother of God.⁸⁰ Say therefore that the offices of the immaculate virgin, while she nursed, carried, and nourished Christ, were sins. And even that word, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, from which she merited to be called blessed by all generations, let it be your consummated blasphemy. For we listen to Paul, who to the Corinthians⁸¹ bids the just to awake, lest they sin. And again, if a virgin marries, he says, she does not sin. And Peter,⁸² setting before us excellent virtues, adds: For doing these things you will not sin at any time: and James⁸³ does not say, In all things we all offend, but, in many things. Surely because there are some things in which we do not sin: and John:⁸⁴ Everyone who remains in him does not sin. Nay, it is enough for us to hear Christ our teacher,⁸⁵ who says: Behold, you are made whole; sin no more. From these and other such things the holy Synod now present⁸⁶ refuted that confession at the end of chapter 11: namely, that it is contrary to the doctrine of orthodox religion to say that the just man sins in every good work, and canon 25, where it strikes the audacity of such men with the censure of anathema.

I could indeed have silently passed over the answers to the adversaries' arguments: so well have those who wrote to us before diluted everything; but I will not break the thread and sequence of my design, and I will take care to run through them without tedium. Especially because in chapter 19 of the first book, where we established that not all the works of a sinner are sins, and in chapter 2 of book 2, where we dealt with the dispositions to grace, I deferred answers of this kind to this place. These men can bring forward no reason, because they derive this necessity of their sinning from the contagion of original guilt: which matter is outside the natural line. For from this they immediately fabricate a certain comment on that word of Christ, A bad tree cannot bear good fruits.¹ For concupiscence, they say, is an inevitable evil, and no work can be done by us which is not in some way born from it: therefore every work is evil in this way. In like manner the Manichaeans persuaded their heresy,² as Augustine³ notes in book 2 On the Words of the Lord, saying that one nature was good, which could not do evil, and another evil, which could not do good. And therefore Augustine says there, and afterward in the Enchiridion, that by the name of tree is understood not nature but will, and he calls will intention, in the manner of the philosophers. For in this way neither is a good work born from a bad tree, nor an evil one from a good tree. For if tree were taken for nature, since every nature is good, none could do evil, not even the power of the will. Christ elsewhere calls this intention the eye, where he says,⁴ If your eye is simple, your whole body will be lightsome; but if it is wicked, your whole body will be dark. And that by the name of tree is understood not nature but the intention of the will is clear from the other words: Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. For we do not make nature, but the will, and the works which spring from it. Therefore neither are all works born from the concupiscence of the flesh, nor is that called the tree from which all works are infected: but all things are good or evil from the will. From the will, especially if it is divinely helped, many good works can exist. In like manner they distort also that saying,⁵ That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. From it they infer that all works, even those which proceed from grace, although in that respect they are spiritual, nevertheless insofar as they flow from the concupiscence of the flesh are carnal and sins. But Christ brought forward that word only for the sake of a similitude. Namely, that just as from animal generation an animal man is born, so from the regeneration of baptism a spiritual man is born. But if anyone wishes to refer it to works, he will be able to establish only this, that those works which are born from the inclination and intention of the flesh are vicious against reason. But it is contrary to human sense that all our works in this way take their origin from the flesh. But there are very many other passages in the Old Testament which, twisted against their author, they strive to use. And they take their first beginning from where Moses says,⁶ The Lord seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was intent on evil at all times, repented that he had made man on the earth, etc. From that word, All the thought of their heart is intent on evil at all times, Luther gathers, art. 36, that there is no liberty of choice in us for good, but that all our works are evil and of themselves mortal sins. But there are indeed many sins in this collection of his. For first the circumstances of the words plainly show that that word was not said of every kind of men at all times on account of original [sin], but of the men of that age on account of their wicked crimes. For thus the chapter begins: When men had begun to be multiplied on the earth, the sons of God seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, etc., where the corruption of that race is depicted. And therefore it is added: The Lord seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought, etc. Does not the word "seeing" designate present wickedness? And what is added, It repented him that he had made man? And what is subjoined, And foreseeing in the future, I will destroy man? For that destruction was made as a punishment of the human race then corrupted. Whence what he says, at all times, is only the word of one indignant: namely, that they thought nothing of amending their morals, but daily heaped crimes upon crimes and outrages upon outrages. And perhaps the same is the sense of the similar repeated word, which is the second passage in Luther:⁷ I will no more curse the earth for men. For the sense and thought of the human heart are prone to evil from its youth. But let this be referred to the sense and thought of the human heart in general, as this second passage seems to present, how then does it follow from this that no good at all can proceed from free choice? Namely, that not only idle thoughts (to use Luther's words) but also ingenious ones, and those which a man thinks on purpose, are all evil. For it is not said there that every thought of the human heart is sin, but that it is intent and prone to evil: that is, that the inclination of the flesh and sensuality (for this is what he calls the human heart) of itself allures and draws reason and the will to evil; yet it does not follow from this that other works are evil, if a man, with reason overcome, freely consents to the flesh. For James says⁸ that each one is tempted by his own concupiscence, and then concupiscence, when it has conceived (namely by consent), brings forth sin. But see whether this is clear in chapter 8. For God promises that he will therefore not avenge with such severity hereafter the crimes of the human race, because the thought of the human heart is prone to evil: yet he would not have brought into the cause of that clemency that all the works of men are sins: for this rather ought to move God to anger; therefore thought there is taken for the struggle of the flesh. So that the sense is that men are worthy of pardon because they sin on account of the continual strife and battle of sensuality, which they can with difficulty and only with difficulty always overcome. Whence in chapter 6, after he had said that all thought was intent on evil, the prophet immediately adds: But Noah found grace before the Lord. And in the following chapter: I have seen you just before me in this generation. Luther also twists another third word of the same chapter 6:⁹ My spirit shall not remain in man forever, because he is flesh. From this one passage he makes a twofold subtlety. First, that if man is flesh, he can do nothing good. Second, that God has so taken away his good spirit from men that the spiritually dead cannot do anything but the works of death. But this passage is expounded by the Fathers in two ways, from neither of which can Luther in any way extort his comment. First (according to Jerome)¹⁰ the Hebrew word is more significantly rendered in Latin as "he shall not judge," and "he shall not remain." According to this, the spirit of the Lord there is taken for his anger and indignation, and flesh for fragility. So that the sense is: I will not hereafter exact such grave punishments from men, because they are fragile, but I will permit them to live one hundred and twenty years. Josephus says¹¹ that this age was granted to men after the flood. But according to the Latin reading, "my spirit shall not remain" is taken for animal life: so that there is an allusion to that saying,¹² God breathed into man the breath of life; but flesh is taken for carnal men, in whom reason is buried. So that the sense is: this generation shall not live forever, because it is carnal. Wherefore what follows about one hundred and twenty years is not referred to the age which men were to live (as Augustine is the authority in City of God 15, chapter 24),¹³ but to the time of truce during which God would await the amendment of men. For it must be understood that God said this twenty years before Noah began the ark, whose building lasted one hundred. Wherefore it immediately follows in the text: I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. But even if we wish to grant Luther this too, that spirit is taken for the good spirit of God, he needed little dialectic to understand the sense of that universal [word]. For he did not say that it would never remain forever, but that it would not remain forever: that is, that it would not always and perpetually remain in man. To this sense nothing is repugnant, but that it can sometimes be that it remains. Nor can Luther himself deny that the spirit of the Lord is in man through faith and grace: why then will it not be for doing good? The fourth passage is Isaiah, most frequently repeated by them:¹⁴ We are all become as one unclean, and as a menstruous cloth are all our justices. Yet this passage is without any doubt understood precisely of that people. Without doubt, I say. First on account of the authority of the expositor Jerome,¹⁵ who says that it was said when the Savior had not yet come, but the people bore the image of the earthly man. And besides, he says that there is depicted the justice of the law, which in comparison with evangelical purity is reckoned as uncleanness: which he confirms by many testimonies. But the text itself reveals the sense of the prophet more clearly than light. For he desired the coming of the Messiah with great ardor and anxiety of soul. For would that you would rend the heavens, he says, and come down. And with such affection he exaggerated the need of the people, and deplored its ruin, lamenting how all, having forgotten the law, were wandering about, and all their justices were as a menstruous cloth. For they were then under captivity, where, absent from the temple, they could not offer sacrifices to expiate sins, nor use the purifications of the law. And therefore he alluded to their menstruous cloth. And the paraphrase and explanation of it immediately follows. Because we have fallen, he says, like a leaf of the whole, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. And after repeating many figures of this kind he concludes: Be not angry, Lord, exceedingly, and remember iniquity no more: behold, look upon us, all your people. Surely these words cannot be fitted to the whole human race now. Nay, there is a most manifest contradiction in Luther. For if it is understood of all of us too, how does he himself say that sinners who invoke the name of Christ in horror of their sins, and flee to his mercy, are justified by faith? For it is also found there: There is none who calls upon your name, who flees to you and holds you. But although that confession could have some general understanding, it is not to be understood of individual works, but that the whole life of a just man cannot but be sprinkled with frequent stains. For a menstruous cloth need not be wholly defiled, but can be spotted. Nor is every stain mortal.¹⁶ For St Thomas notes four kinds of stain there: namely, the absence of grace excluded by mortal sin, and this alone is properly a stain; then an intention less right; or third, the swelling of pride over a good work, which can be venial sins; fourth, some negligence besides, which can in some way be signified by the name of stain, even if it is without sin. For which reason, as we said above, even the most just can confess that all their justices are as a menstruous cloth. In which sense the Preacher says, There is no just man on earth who does good and does not sin. And especially if it is compared with that splendor of the justice of God dwelling in inaccessible light. Besides, as Gregory says to Augustine of the Angels: It is the part of good minds to acknowledge fault where there is no fault. The fifth testimony, most familiar to our Protestants, is that of the Psalm:¹⁷ Enter not into judgment with your servant, Lord, because no living man will be justified in your sight. For from this passage Luther gathers, art. 31, what his follower strives to assert, that there is no good work in us in the eyes of God, by this syllogism. God, because he is just, cannot condemn a good work: since therefore he says that no living man, not even the servant of God, is justified in his sight, it is plain that no good work can withstand the just judgment of God: wherefore neither is it good. But Roffensis¹⁸ has prudently and acutely noted the reluctance of the words. For if God cannot condemn a good work, how does Luther say that a good work cannot withstand the judgment of God? Therefore he says that a good work, which according to him is also evil, is both condemned and not condemned. That passage therefore is sufficiently expounded in the same sense in which it has been explained. For it is not said there that no work will be just in the sight of God, but that no just person will be so justified in the sight of the divine majesty that he in whom no secret lies hidden does not see many evil works which are hidden from us. For besides him, who understands his sins? But perhaps there is also another sense of Augustine in his exposition of the same psalm. Namely, that a man cannot be justified in the sight of God as he can in comparison with another man. For among men one can first merit a reward by himself, so as to claim it by his own right, but in respect of God it is not so, because no one first gave to him. And therefore neither can we bring before the sight of God even our own justices, in which there would be no account of venial fault, as if they were made by our own powers, for which we should ask rewards. For he would answer: What do you have that you have not received, who gave you both to think and to will and to work? Thus the Psalmist wishes nothing else here than to reprove those whom Paul also censures: namely, those who, ignorant of the justice of God and seeking to establish their own, are not subject to the justice of God. He cites¹⁹ besides the holy Fathers as witnesses. As Augustine in book 10 of the Confessions, chapter 13, where among the lamentations which he poured out to God for his mother, he says: Woe even to the praiseworthy life of men, if you examine it apart from mercy. For they persevere in their dialectic, arguing from the whole life to individual works: whereas Augustine means nothing else than that there can be no life so praiseworthy which has not had light sins mixed in. For he says beforehand concerning his mother: She had so lived after baptism as to give praise to your name in her faith and morals. Yet, he says, I do not dare to say that no word ever came from her mouth against your commandment. And therefore he adds: Woe even to the praiseworthy life, etc. And a little below: Therefore, my praise and my life, God of my heart, setting aside for a little her good acts, for which I joyfully give you thanks, I now pray you for the sins of my mother. Augustine therefore expressly distinguishes the good acts of his mother from the evil. Luther cites besides Gregory²⁰ in book 9 of the Dialogues, where he says that the holy man Job perceived that every merit of our virtue is a vice if it is strictly judged by the internal will. But deliberately, as was his prudence, he cited the gloss without the text. For he saw that through the text an answer would easily be given to him. For the text is that,²¹ Truly I know that it is so, and that man cannot be justified when compared with God. Where that holy man meant nothing else than that our justices, even if absolutely through the grace of God they are true justices, nevertheless in comparison with that infinite rectitude and divine goodness are not reckoned justices: just as a reed in the midst of snow is not judged white. And truly he could have affirmed this not only of the justice of this age, but also of the justice of the angels in heaven. Especially since he does not speak there of individual works, but that man will not appear just when compared with God. And therefore he adds that if a man wishes to contend with God, he cannot answer him one for a thousand: that is, for a thousand benefits which he has received from God, he will not be able to bring one which he himself first gave to God. For neither is the beginning, Gregory says there, from us; but that our justices, when compared with the divine, do not appear as justices, must be explained more fully in chapter 7. Meanwhile, to return to Gregory, he never fell into such an error as to think that no human action is free from fault. For writing to Augustine of the English, he says that it is the part of good minds to acknowledge fault where there is no fault. And in the same work of the Morals he often confirms that not only can some work be free from fault, but even a man. Especially in book 2 on those words,²² In all these things Job did not sin with his lips, nor did he speak anything foolish against God. Where Gregory says that testimony was given to blessed Job both of his mouth and of his heart, because he restrained fault from his tongue and restrained it from his heart. And although Gregory had not said it, the text itself, In all these things Job did not sin, would be abundant for us to crush the audacity of those who say that there is no good work which is not a sin. In short, the saints pray for five reasons²³ that God not enter into judgment with them, but they cast all their works upon his mercy. The first and most powerful is doubt about the salvation set before them, of which no one is so certain that he is not always in fear. The second, because there is scarcely anyone who has not committed some mortal sins, concerning which he does not know whether he has done true penance. The third on account of venial dangers, which no one can avoid. The fourth on account of negligences, which are very much mixed into every good work. And finally the fifth, because even the good works themselves do not have their root from us, but from the mercy of God, and therefore we cannot deal with him by our own right.

That which belongs to our works through the grace of God is that through them we satisfy for sins. Not indeed for the fault, before they are remitted, but for the debts of punishment which, the fault being remitted, remain, as is had in the confession of the holy Synod of Trent, chapter 14.¹ But this disputation has two members. The first concerning that thing which it presupposes, and the other concerning that which it investigates. For we suppose that the whole punishment is not universally forgiven to everyone whose fault is forgiven: but we inquire whether a man can pay what remains of punishment in this age through good works.

We shall not have much discourse here concerning the first, since that pertains more particularly to the treatment of the sacraments. But yet we cannot fail to make some mention, not only for the explanation of the disputation, but also because the holy Synod has pronounced on this. The article² was the fifth of Luther's assertions, by which he rejected that solemn partition of penance into three parts. He adds however that he does not deny contrition and confession, but satisfaction. Hence, as I narrated in book 2, chapter 5, the Roman Church began to bark against [him], namely out of hatred of indulgences. But see how satisfaction is annexed to confession. At first they had only rejected satisfaction, but thence confession was easily stormed by them.³ For confession was instituted by God especially for this, that according to the measure of the offense the mode of stripes should be fixed by the judgment of priests, and so the sick man be cured with oil and wine. But once they swallowed this error, that all sins are most fully pardoned through faith as to fault and punishment, it was thence most consequent for them that the confession of individual sins is not necessary: but only in general to profess the faith. Whence it came about that it was mere ignorance of Luther, nay rather a most pernicious daring,⁴ to deny satisfaction for the reason that this word is not expressed in sacred Scripture. For he brings no argument except that we cannot show where the name 'satisfy' is in Scripture, or that for a mortal sin one ought to satisfy for seven years. For that [word], he says, Whatever you bind on⁵ earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose shall be loosed. And, Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven, and whose you shall retain, they are retained, pertains, he says, to the remission of fault, not to satisfaction. Otherwise he should have said, Whose satisfactions you shall forgive. But indeed, besides that the Church rightly receives many things from the monuments of the Fathers, the interpreters of sacred Scripture, although they are not formally in it, we nevertheless most evidently gather the reality of satisfaction, both from other places of sacred page, and most clearly from these just mentioned.⁶ For the remission and absolution of sins (which these men do not consider) is referred not only to fault, but also to punishment. For in both ways the sinner is bound: namely, that he is an enemy of God, and besides worthy of punishment. And therefore he is absolved from both through the grace of CHRIST. But because the mercy of God is never without justice, although on the cross he both merited and satisfied sufficiently for all the sins of the whole world, yet he did not wish to apply either the merit or the satisfaction efficaciously to individuals except insofar as each one freely assented and cooperated with his help. For this cause, as he does not receive all to the same degree of friendship when they are converted, so neither was it congruous to his justice that, the fault and eternal punishment being remitted, temporal punishment be remitted to everyone except according to the proportion of the effort by which each one converted himself. But concerning baptism, in which we are buried with CHRIST and reborn into a new life, the reason is different: as we shall explain a little later. And since neither is that act equal in all, nor are crimes equal, he most providentially committed this to the judgment of the Church and of her ministers. And this is the legitimate sense of those words: Whatever you shall bind, and whatever you shall loose. And, Whose sins you shall forgive and retain.⁷ Namely, I appoint you judges, by whose judgment, with the key not erring, I will stand: so that whatever, and in whatever way, you shall forgive or retain, is forgiven and retained. That is, what punishment you shall judge, with the key not erring, is either to be remitted or retained, or imposed on the penitent, will likewise be remitted and retained before my tribunal. From which one passage the Fathers therefore elicited both parts of penance: namely confession and satisfaction. For since the matter is plain in the Gospel, there is no injury if it is signified by a most congruous name. Nor is the name new, as Luther would have thought if he had examined antiquity. For Leo the First, to whom in the Council of Chalcedon by six hundred and thirty fathers, as Theodore of Forlì reports, 'thrice holy' was acclaimed, says: The Mediator of God and men, the man CHRIST JESUS, handed this power to the prelates of the Church, that they might give to those confessing the action of penance, and admit those purged by salutary satisfaction to the communion of the sacraments through the door of reconciliation. And below: Every Christian ought to have the judgment of his own conscience, lest he delay from day to day to be converted to the Lord, lest he appoint for himself a time of satisfaction at the end of his life. Nor did the naming of satisfaction escape the most ancient Tertullian, already then most received by the Church. For satisfaction, he says, is arranged by confession: by confession penance is born: by penance God is appeased. And below,⁸ after commemorating many works of satisfaction, he adds that they are necessary, so that penance itself, pronouncing against the sinner, may function for the indignation of God, and by temporal affliction may not I say frustrate but expunge eternal punishments. Thus he in the book On Penance. And Jerome,⁹ as is reported in On Penance, dist. 1, says: The canons therefore do not prescribe the measure of time in doing penance sufficiently openly for each crime, so as to say of individual [sins] how each one is to be corrected, but they rather decide that it is to be left to the judgment of the understanding priest: because with God the measure of time does not avail so much as that of sorrow: nor abstinence from foods so much as the mortification of vices. For which reason they command that the times of penance be shortened by the faith and conversation of the penitents, and think they should be prolonged by negligence. Hear, Luther, how according to Jerome and Leo, most ancient and most wise, and according to Tertullian, in these words, Whatever you shall bind, and whose sins you shall forgive, the judicial power was handed to the ministers of the Church for remitting and retaining satisfaction. Which Chrysostom¹⁰ treats still more copiously, both elsewhere most diffusely and frequently, and in book 3 On the Priesthood, chapter 5. To whom? We pass over the testimonies of the other Fathers, which are without number: because this is not the place to recite them. For it is a miracle, and an unbearable portent.¹¹ That on account of the sin of Adam, which we contract by another's will, they wish the concupiscence of the flesh to be so much sin in us that it can be compensated in this life by no satisfaction, not even of CHRIST himself, but always remains sin, against which we must fight with our own works, and yet for actual transgressions, crimes and wicked deeds, which we ourselves have committed by our own will, they contend that the satisfaction of CHRIST is so applied to us by one act of faith that no guilt of punishment remains, which we might pay by our own expiations with the help of God. Whereas it is written in Deuteronomy¹² that the mode of stripes shall be according to the measure of the offense. And in the Apocalypse:¹³ As much as she glorified herself and was in delights, so much give her torment and mourning. And Paul¹⁴ exhorts the Romans, already justified, that as they exhibited their members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so they should exhibit their members to serve justice unto sanctification. Explaining this most openly, that the angel of God John, sent before the face¹⁵ of CHRIST, preached in the desert, crying out that men should do not only penance, but fruits of penance. But let us hear the trick of Luther¹⁶ and his men, mocking this testimony. They say, as we were just saying, that John's admonition is that through the fruits of penance we should procure the lessening of the concupiscence of the flesh, which is original sin. But did John rebuke the brood of vipers with such great bitterness and harshness concerning original sin alone? Is it not shameless pertinacity to contradict all the Fathers who have written on this passage from the Church's beginnings? For thus Chrysostom's exposition there has it:¹⁷ Do, he says, fruits worthy of penance. But in what way shall we be able to bear fruit, unless we do things contrary to our sins? You have stolen another's goods, begin now to give your own: you have fornicated for a long time, now suspend even the lawful use of marriage. And so he proceeds, opposing to each actual sin its fruit of penance. Likewise Augustine there:¹⁸ There are, he says, worthy fruits of virtues, fruits which do not suffice for penance. For penance demands graver ones. And Homily 1 On Penance, unless these men were stone and lead, leaves no room for doubt. For he distinguishes three actions of penance: the first before baptism: the second for lighter sins, and the third which, he says, must be undergone for those sins which the Decalogue of the law contains: where he says that each one ought to exercise greater severity against himself, so that, judged by himself (as the Apostle says), he may not be judged by God. But what, I ask, is signified by the name of judgment, except satisfaction and recompense, by which we avenge our sins with just retaliation? Gregory, Cyprian and all teach the same. Nor is the reason by which the theologians elucidate this matter to be despised.¹⁹ Indeed, since in sin there is to be considered both the aversion from God and the conversion to the object of sin: the second corresponds to the punishment of sense: and by reason of the first that punishment is made eternal. And for that reason, the fault being remitted through conversion (according to that of the Psalm:²⁰ I said, I will confess, and you forgave), there remains temporal punishment, of which there is a testimony concerning David, who as soon as he said, I have sinned against the Lord, heard from Nathan: The Lord also has taken away your sin.²¹ Nevertheless the son who is born to you shall die. Therefore, the fault being remitted, some temporal punishment remains to be paid. But concerning this first point enough, so that we may give the reason for the confession of the holy Council of Trent, chapter 14,²² where it is held that not always the whole temporal punishment, as in baptism, is afterwards remitted to those who, ungrateful for baptismal grace, have grieved the Holy Spirit and have not feared to violate the temple of God. With this truth therefore established,²³ the question is whether in this life a man can satisfy God for those debts of punishment, both of mortal sins remitted and of venial sins. The affirmative answer is that about which the Church was never in doubt. But here first of all²⁴ a distinction must be made concerning satisfaction.²⁵ For one is perfect and the other imperfect. For since satisfaction designates an act of justice, in its own genus it is distinguished from grace, so that the more grace there is in the work, the less is the nature of satisfaction.²⁶ Wherefore perfect satisfaction is that whose value and price all emanate from the debtor, with no grace of the creditor either preceding or intervening. So that it is the payment of an equivalent, otherwise of an undue [debt] voluntarily. For he who is hanged for a crime rather suffers enough, as also he who is in purgatory. Whence it follows²⁷ that for sins committed against God CHRIST alone, because he was God, could perfectly satisfy; but no creature, except imperfectly, that is, with his grace presupposed. Of which there is a twofold cause: as St. Thomas is the author, 3rd part, q. 1. The first, because the whole of nature was infected with sin and hostile to God. The second, because sin, in that respect in which it is against God, has a certain infinity, which a creature, even if it were in mere nature, could by no means compensate and equal. The reasons are Anselm's²⁸ in books 1 and 2 of Why God Became Man: to which he adds a third, that a creature owes to God whatever it has. I know that Durandus,²⁹ 3 Sentences, d. 20, and in 4, d. 15, does not concede even to CHRIST himself that he could, as man, satisfy to the equality of justice, unless created grace were presupposed, by which according to his humanity he would also be pleasing. For, he says, CHRIST himself also had received from God whatever he had according to his humanity: and therefore he could offer or do nothing of himself for satisfaction which was not otherwise due. And besides, because that saying of Aristotle,³⁰ that we cannot render an equal to gods and parents, is also true in CHRIST himself as man. But arguments of this kind³¹ are those of a man not sufficiently weighing that actions are of supposits, not of natures. For however much CHRIST is considered as man, yet it was not human nature that operated in him, but the Son of God through it. But the Son of God was equal to the Father. For which reason, even if he had received no created grace in his humanity, by reason of the union that man was of himself infinitely pleasing and a friend of God, and whatever he did was of itself sufficient satisfaction to the equality of justice. Nay, whatever work of his was of infinite price before God. Wherefore the reason of Scotus in 4 Sentences, d. 15, q. 1,³² proves nothing by its arguments, that if sin had some infinity, it would follow that not even CHRIST could have satisfied abundantly through his passion: since that work, because it was a created thing, would not be infinite. The argument, I say, is not solid. For although that work was a created thing, nevertheless because it was the work of a divine supposit, it was infinitely pleasing to God, by a contrary reason to that by which sin is infinite. It is answered therefore to Durandus³³ that whatever the God-man CHRIST had received from God was owed to him by reason of the union, and the union itself was a work as much of the Son as of the Father. And for that reason, as if from his own, and (so to speak) otherwise undue, he could satisfy. For although among men a son could not render an equal to his father, the matter is otherwise with the Son of God, who because he is equal to the Father could restore to him as much honour, made obedient unto death of the cross, as Adam had taken away. By which reasoning Paul compares the obedience of CHRIST with the disobedience of Adam. But also against the second member of the distinction, Scotus urges arguments in the same place³⁴ by which he persuades that a pure creature can satisfy by the absolute power of God. For as Augustine is the author, 13 On the Trinity: There was indeed, he says, another mode of our redemption possible to God, namely through the incarnation. But the mode, he says, would have been if God through attrition and merit of congruity had conferred grace on men, so that each one might satisfy for himself. But nevertheless by ordained power it could not be except through CHRIST. But indeed, to speak with honour of a most grave doctor, whose opinion many follow in this part, I cannot but hear with an unjust mind that these men think unworthily of the advent of our Redeemer.³⁵ For they seem to think that that most high and inestimable mystery, that God became man, was bestowed on men as it were gratuitously and without cause, as altogether necessary. For they say that a man could have done as much through the grace of God, but that it was done only on account of the ordained law. I would reprove them thus, if it were permitted me. What was the cause that God ordained by that wonderful law to give his only-begotten to the world, if he could preserve justice by another way? It is not enough therefore to have recourse to the ordained law, unless we bring the reasons and advantages of that law, as Augustine does in the same place. I would dare to say (for I am certain it is evangelical truth) that it could not be done,³⁶ not even by the absolute power of God, that satisfaction should be perfect, unless that man who satisfied were God. For if God made a creature merely gratuitously friendly to himself, which could satisfy, then satisfaction would not be perfect, because it would presuppose grace, as if a debtor received from the creditor whereby he might pay him. This is clear from the very nature of satisfaction. Since therefore between a creature infinitely distant from God and God himself there is no nature of justice except with his gratuitous acceptance presupposed, no creature could perfectly satisfy. But the Son of God, equal to the Father, could do this perfectly of himself. And this is the immense and ineffable benefit³⁷ which we owe to him. Moreover, since the human race could not repay to God to the equality of justice what it owed, he himself, clothed in our nature, so satisfied that we, made his members, could offer his justice before God as if it were ours, according to those unequal degrees by which it is participated by each of us according to each one's assent and cooperation. Whence Augustine³⁸ is falsely cited as having asserted that redemption or perfect satisfaction could be made by another way, or that justice could be reformed in full: but he only affirms that God did not lack another mode by which he might free men from misery. For he could freely pardon sins without any satisfaction, because nothing was owed to anyone except to himself, against whom alone sin was committed, nor did CHRIST satisfy the devil, as some blaspheme, but the Father. And therefore if he himself had wished to forgive us altogether freely, we would be free. But in order that his mercy should detract nothing from his justice, he freely sent his Son, who should satisfy with the highest justice, so that those who were afterwards made his members gratuitously might participate in his own justice. And this, besides other advantages, was the most powerful cause of the divine incarnation.³⁹ Therefore for the explanation of the preceding conclusion, from which we have digressed for a little while, the second is adduced.⁴⁰ No one can satisfy for the punishment of sin before the fault is remitted; nay, more universally I would rightly say, no one who is in sin can satisfy before God for any punishment of sin, although remitted. The first member. There is the common consent⁴¹ of all the holy Fathers and theologians. Which we note only to wash away the calumny with which the Lutherans everywhere vex us: bringing this false charge against us, that we teach that by our works we satisfy God for our sins. For no one ever thought this concerning the natural works of a sinner. Nay, as we deny that works in any way preceding grace are merits of the same grace, so we openly deny that they are satisfactory for sin not yet remitted. Nor did Scotus himself, a supporter of the merit of congruity, attribute to it that it is satisfactory in this way. There is however a disagreement⁴² concerning sin remitted, whether a relapsed person, while acting in sin, can satisfy for the remaining punishment. Scotus⁴³ affirming, because the punishment is temporal, but St. Thomas denying, because between us and God there is no equality of justice except only from divine acceptance: but the sinner does no work worthy of divine acceptance. For the work most satisfactory of all in its own genus is almsdeed: according to the word of the Redeemer, Give alms:⁴⁴ and behold all things are clean to you, and then the maceration of the body: and yet Paul says: If I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body so that I burn, but do not have charity, I am nothing:⁴⁵ namely, before God: therefore neither are such works satisfactory. Although a sinner could satisfy the precept of the priest enjoining penance. But there is no place for these things now. The third conclusion is⁴⁶ that a man existing in grace can satisfy by condignity for the temporal punishments which remain from sin remitted. By condignity, I say, not perfectly, as CHRIST. For two reasons. First, because our satisfaction presupposes the grace of CHRIST, to whose body we are gratuitously grafted. And besides because we do not render an equal as he does, but only according to the proportion which justice can be between us and God. Namely, because as what he bestows on us is related to his power and goodness, so also what we render is related to our possibility. Nevertheless, being now members, our satisfaction is condign, as the works of sons of God. To which that voice is consonant: Fruits worthy of penance. The first reason⁴⁷ immediately emerges from those things which have been explained above. For we reported three impediments why man could not satisfy God: namely, because he is his enemy: because sin has a certain infinity, and because whatever he has is otherwise owed to God: but men reborn in CHRIST through grace are named and are friends, nay even sons of God. And therefore by the same pact by which sin is infinite, we can also render infinite obedience to God. For sin is not otherwise infinite,⁴⁸ than that it is an aversion from the infinite good, by which reason that aversion takes on a certain image of infinite distance: therefore conversion also bears the same figure of infinity: and therefore a work proceeding from the grace of God can be a recompense for the injury whose fault has been freely pardoned. But although we have received from God all good things, nay ourselves, yet God (whose yoke is sweet and burden light)⁴⁹ has not obliged us to all that which we can do with all our strength, as we said in chapter 2: and therefore we can make many fruits worthy of penance, which were not necessary for the innocent, as all the interpreters of the divine [word] have acknowledged in that evangelical word. Nor does St. Thomas add only this reason,⁵⁰ but another in 4 Sentences, d. 15. Namely that even through those works which are otherwise due, I can satisfy, because by free will we are lords of our actions: for which reason God accepts our very obedience for satisfaction, as a work of justice. Nay, even in this way we satisfy not only for sin, but for our frailty, and for benefits received we render obedience to God, surely returning to him what we have received from his hand. The second reason⁵¹ is. Penance by its condition and nature has this, that it is a work through which, with God preceding, sins are remitted and altogether taken away, as to fault and punishment. For this is the legitimate signification of that voice of CHRIST, which was the theme of his preaching: Do penance, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. As if he said: by this the approach to the kingdom of heaven lies open. To which is similar: From the time of John the Baptist,⁵² the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. For it is a most beautiful periphrasis of penance. For since the sinner is an enemy of God, through it, his mind suddenly changed, he seems to storm the kingdom, which bears some likeness to those who by force are received within the walls: therefore he who has lawfully completed all the numbers of penance will be wholly free from the punishment of sin as from the fault. But this penance is made more swiftly or more slowly for the just man according to the measure of sorrow and mortification, as we reported a little before from Jerome. Therefore just as one could at the point of justification, with the mercy of God working, bring such a sense of sins and ardour of penance that every punishment would be entirely blotted out with the fault, as is believed of Magdalene, so what one has then done more sluggishly and remissly he can afterwards compensate by multiplied works of penance, and therefore satisfy for the punishment of sin remitted. The third reason finally is.⁵³ That if the punishments of which man is a debtor are paid in purgatory through satisfaction, much more equitably can they be paid here through free satisfaction, not only because liberty brings very much weight to works in the sight of God, but because the works here are done through the special help of his mercy, while in purgatory they are only inflicted by the rigour of justice. Nor do they freely offer and assume those punishments, but only patiently endure them. And to this point also extends the sense of Paul's admonition, that if we would judge ourselves,⁵⁴ we would certainly not be judged by God. Whence Chrysostom, Homily 41 On Penance: Blessed David, he says, exhibited penance, saying thus: I will wash my bed every night, and my tears shall water my couch.⁵⁵ And a sin committed long ago, after so many generations, he mourned as if it had recently happened. Thus Chrysostom. Nay, Magdalene⁵⁶ after the most full indulgence, as the model (as the Church sings of her) of penance, for thirty years did not cease to lament sins already remitted. And CHRIST would not have said, Give alms,⁵⁷ and behold all things are clean to you, if, the fault being remitted, the cleansing were complete. Whence Origen, Homily 8 on Leviticus,⁵⁸ in those washings of the old law and purifications repeated seven times, meditates on our expiations: which it is necessary for us to repeat, on account of the scar which remains from the wound. But the word of Daniel, Redeem your sins with alms,⁵⁹ what does it signify, if it does not signify satisfaction for sins? For what else is to redeem than satisfaction? Therefore it is not repugnant to what another prophet had said of CHRIST the Redeemer: You shall be redeemed without money:⁶⁰ that is, freely, since without our merits he both suffered for us and pardons us our faults. But because through his grace our subsequent works receive value, by which we can expiate the same sins, we are reckoned also to redeem them. Whence Ambrose in a certain Sunday sermon on Abraham, which is reported in On Penance, d. 1:⁶¹ We have, he says, many aids by which we redeem our sins. You were sold for your sins, redeem yourself by your works. Wherefore the Church most deservedly sings in Lent that the days of penance have come for us to redeem our sins and save souls. For if by the single act of faith the satisfaction of CHRIST were always efficaciously applied to us as to fault and every punishment, never would he have admonished us through Joel⁶² that we should be converted to him with our whole heart, in fasting and weeping and mourning, rending our hearts. Behold the reasons and commendations by which, relying on the confession of the holy Synod of Trent cited above, it holds satisfaction most holy through fastings, almsdeeds, prayers and other pious exercises of the spiritual life, not indeed for eternal punishment, which either by the sacrament or by the desire of the sacrament is remitted together with the fault, but for temporal punishment, which, as the sacred Scriptures teach, is not always entirely remitted as in baptism, to those who afterwards repent.⁶³ Concerning which penance it is written: Remember whence you have fallen, and do penance.⁶⁴ And again: The sorrow which is according to God works penance unto stable salvation.⁶⁵ And again: Make fruits worthy of penance.⁶⁶ But the punishments remaining after this age it explains in canon 30 are to be paid in the future age in purgatory. Which place of purgatory, those who have not believed in this age, we can make certain that they will not see it in the future: provided only that there is another place, namely that of the damned. Let the Lutherans therefore beware,⁶⁷ who deny that we satisfy for sins through the fruits of penance, lest they restrain the tears of the penitent, and extinguish the maceration and affliction of the flesh which was always most holy to the Fathers for this use. And therefore let them be counted in the number of those whom Cyprian in sermon 5 On the Lapsed marked with this censure.⁶⁸ Do penance full of a grieving and lamenting mind: prove your sorrow: nor let the imprudent error or vain stupor of certain ones move you, who when they are held in so great a crime are struck with blindness of mind, so that they neither understand their sins nor lament them. And below: With no one giving them peace of his own accord, they took it, seduced by a false promise, and joined to apostates and lost men, they took error for truth. The fourth reason finally is⁶⁹ by which we may explain the mind of the orthodox, lest the Lutherans defame us any longer as Pelagians. For they say, as we reported above in chapter 2, that we attribute to CHRIST only the merit of the first grace, but the rest after it we ascribe to our works, namely satisfaction for sins. Which is certainly a notorious calumny. For not only the first grace, but any increase of it relies on the merits of CHRIST, without which our works would be of no estimation. Wherefore we detract nothing from the glory of CHRIST, but rather glorify him who gives us to think, to will and to perfect. But we say only this, that the satisfaction of CHRIST, which by the testimony of John⁷⁰ was sufficient for the sins of the whole world, is applied to us through our works, we say nothing now of baptism. And that indeed by the best right, divine and natural, since we who have indulged ourselves more than is just, fulfilling our own will against the divine at the instigation of the devil, ourselves satisfy the divine justice through the grace of CHRIST. As⁷¹ his members and branches engrafted in the vine, whence power flows into our works. Wherefore our works also have this dignity, and in a certain way justice, beyond what they would have if they proceeded from a grace which had been conferred on us by God in another way, namely that through the merit of CHRIST, which is now communicated to us as his justice, we can bring it before the judgment of God as if it were ours. The fourth conclusion finally is made. Not only for one's own faults, but for those of others can one satisfy, provided only both are friends of God. Satisfy, I say, by condignity, although in this way no one except CHRIST can merit grace for another. The difference is that satisfaction only names payment: but the citizens of the heavenly kingdom can by these mutual offices also bear one another's burdens, so that one pays God what another owes, and much better than in a civil commonwealth, where in time of necessity all things ought to be common. Nor is there reason why God should not accept works which proceed from grace, if they are offered for a friend, as if he had offered them for himself. But outside charity no one is worthy that either his own works, or those which another offers for him, be acceptable to God. But to merit grace for another is not to pay, but to beg from God the good movement of the other, which does not fall under the merit of condignity, as we shall say in the next chapter. In this sense of satisfaction many of the Fathers expound that of Paul: I rejoice in my sufferings for you,⁷² and I fill up those things which are wanting of the sufferings of CHRIST in my flesh for his body, which is the Church. Not that anything was wanting in the passion of CHRIST in itself, which was furthermore most sufficient for the sins of the whole world, but because all labours and offices which the members of CHRIST do are reckoned to the head himself, and overflow to the good of the Church. Whence relaxations⁷³ and indulgences of sins, whose fault has been remitted, have flowed forth in the Church. But this is what these men here mockingly reproach us with: namely that we devise certain works of supererogation for satisfaction for another. As if all things, and much more than we can offer for our own crimes, were not necessary. But we answer. First, that since the punishment, the fault being remitted, is temporal, anyone can through the grace of CHRIST satisfy justly through the grace and help of CHRIST, especially men advanced in sanctity, so that they can also communicate their works with others. And besides, anyone can, even if he owes for himself, pay first the debt of a friend as if it were his own. But the disputation of these things requires another place less narrow. Surely they can construct no argument against [us]⁷⁴ which is not already dissolved. For a specimen of all is this. Paul attributes a far greater force and power to the grace of CHRIST for good than to the sin of Adam for evil. For, he says, not as the transgression, so also is the gift: for if by the transgression of one many died, much more the grace of God and the gift through the grace of one man JESUS CHRIST has abounded unto many.⁷⁵ And he adds: For judgment was from one unto condemnation: but grace from many transgressions unto justification. From this passage it is argued. From the one sin of Adam we all incur not only fault but punishments as great as the human race suffers: therefore whoever is freed from fault through the grace of CHRIST is also most fully freed from the debt of every punishment. Especially since, the cause being taken away, the effect is removed, and fault is the cause of punishment. But we concede to this argumentation only this, which we have often conceded: namely that the passion of CHRIST can universally remit all things: but it does not have that same most full effect, that all punishment be remitted together with the fault, except in two cases.⁷⁶ The first, when it works by itself, and not through the works of our free will. Which happens in baptism, where not even in adults is a disposition required except insofar as the obstacle is removed: that is, complacency in sin, in the manner explained in the previous book. Wherefore since justification is made through the instrument of the passion, there we wholly die to sin and are born into a new life. But in the sacrament and in the power of penance God so remits sin through his grace that he uses our works, and for that reason the remission of fault is attributed to grace operating: that is, changing our mind: but satisfaction to grace cooperating.⁷⁷ And therefore it is made according to the measure of his grace and of our cooperation. Wherefore the second case, that all punishment is forgiven together with the fault, is when we cooperate with the highest act of charity: as in martyrdom, or when by a special privilege God so moves someone, as Magdalene. Otherwise in wicked and lost men it would be reckoned a most ample privilege that there should be one interior act of penance so great that all sins would be expiated and blotted out at once, as to fault and punishment.

It follows that we speak of the third privilege of our works, which flow from that fountain of living water springing up unto eternal life, discussing whether they are in the sight of God condign merits, both of the increase of grace and finally of that inestimable happiness of his. Let us therefore set aside the first member of that division of merit which we made in book 2, ch. 4, into merit of congruity and merit of condignity. For either there is no merit of congruity at all in our works before justification, which I think has been sufficiently shown there, or it now pertains nothing to the present disputation, where we speak of works which are done through grace and the impulse of God, which are condign merits. But the Lutherans nevertheless shudder at this word: they everywhere reproach us with it, and brand it as a Pelagian mark. For since there are two fundamental conditions of merit — namely, goodness and liberty — Luther built two machines to shake the account of merit.¹ The first was that concupiscence is also in the reborn an inevitable sin. From this he deduced that all our works, not only those which precede grace, but those which the just man does, are sins: and therefore are not such that by them we satisfy the law: whence it immediately follows most consistently that they are not merits. For there cannot be a merit of eternal life with God except the fulfillment of the law: according to that of Christ, If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.² And that of Paul: Not the hearers only, but the doers of the law shall be justified.³ The other most celebrated error of Luther was to deny our free will before God, and with this removed no account of merit can stand: as we shall now make clear. Therefore they say that we are justified by faith alone to such an extent that not only do no works of ours concur to the first grace as dispositions, but neither afterwards is it increased by the virtue of them, nor do we merit glory, but only on account of the promise, which is apprehended by faith alone, both are sinners reconciled, and to the reconciled the increases of grace come, and finally glory is bestowed. Nor do they take away merit from the works of the just man only, but, as is clear in On Christian Liberty and the other places which we mentioned in ch. 5, they think all things futile and vain except one faith, by which the mercy of God is apprehended. And this they repeat again and again afterwards in their syllabus⁴ of the reformation they have obtained, that no reward is owed to just works, at least eternal life, but that it is owed only to the promise of God, and by that precise reason will be conferred on us by God, that he may be faithful. And this is their confession in the Augustan [Confession]. In its apology Melanchthon,⁵ where he answers the arguments of the adversaries concerning works, after he had said that the justification of the just man is nothing else than to be reputed just, and that he is not reputed just on account of the justice of the work, but through the mercy of God apprehended by faith, says: From all these things it can also be understood what must be said of the merit of condignity, of which the adversaries feign that the just are just before God on account of love and the fulfillment of the law: where they make no mention of the justice of faith. These things are in no way to be tolerated, etc. This is the frenzy which has demented these men in this place: namely, that in asserting the merit of condignity we deny the justice of faith and the help of God after the first justification. Which is a most manifest calumny. And so he adds again and again that our works, even in grace, are not such that eternal life is owed for them, although they are meritorious of other rewards: concerning which we shall speak a little later. This matter must first be explained, and the doubts examined concerning which Catholics differ somewhat: then it must be asserted against the Lutherans. Therefore, to begin from the very name and definition of merit, whence the arguments are chiefly to be sought: the appellation of merit is a very sad one among the Latins: as to merit well or ill of the commonwealth, or of a friend, which name is derived from reward. For merit is a work to which a reward is owed, and to merit is to make a right for oneself to a reward. For this reason in book 2 we rejected merit of congruity from the account of merit. Since merit is a work of justice. But for investigating the account and nature of merit, a beginning is most aptly taken from what St. Thomas noted, 1.2 q. 21 art. 3.⁶ For three things are to be considered in a human action. First, liberty, from which it has that it is blameworthy or praiseworthy. For on account of those things which are in us from nature, we are neither praised nor blamed. Then the order to the end, from which it has the account of virtue or vice. Then the respect to another: namely, to the commonwealth or to a singular person, to whom it brings either utility or harm: and from this it has the account of merit or demerit. For so the scholastics call an evil merit. And understand these three orders in such a way that as the second includes the first, so the third includes both in its own account. Hence therefore three conditions of merit become clear.⁷ The first, that it be a free work. For without liberty, as a work is neither virtue nor vice, so neither is it merit or demerit. Wherefore the theologians who think that there can be merit in natural things are ignorant of its nature.⁸ Unless perhaps by metaphor natural congruity is called dignity: as he said, Beauty is first worthy of command. For if a prince should confer some benefit on a man either on account of beauty, or on account of birth, or for any other gift of nature, there would be in that no account either of merit or of reward. Nor if God (as they feign concerning his absolute power) should confer glory on anyone on account of a natural good, would there be there an account either of merit or of reward. As if Christ had deigned to honor the sons of Zebedee in the kingdom of heaven with this honor, that they should sit at his right and left, for this only, that they were his cousins. The natural reason for this is that to merit is to give something to another, and to confer it for his good:⁹ but no one gives except what he is master of: but we are masters of our actions through free will:¹⁰ therefore where there is no liberty, there is no merit. Now merit is the same as obedience: but no one obeys except through free will. Wherefore the sun does not properly obey us, because it is acted upon, and therefore merits nothing from us, nor do trees, nor irrational animals. Although the humanity of mortals is sometimes to indulge them. As it is in the histories concerning the Athenians, that¹¹ when the Hecatompedon was being built, they released the mules which had labored excellently, freed them from bonds, and sent them out to pasture freely. Nay, neither do they properly have right or dominion over life.¹² The contrary of which some doctors have most ineptly thought. Although they have an appetite for living, and have received from the same nature the instinct to preserve life. For where there is no liberty, there is no right, but the whole right of irrational things belongs to the possessors, and he does injury to them who kills or harms beasts without cause. And for the same reason, because namely they are partakers of no action which is worthy of reward, Aristotle infers that neither a good nor a just man, nor any other animal, is called happy.¹³ Unless also by metaphor: as the horse of Alexander.¹⁴ For this same cause the same Aristotle in that place placed moral happiness in none of the goods either of nature or of fortune, but in free operation according to virtue. For in the Olympic games, he says, it is not the most beautiful or the strongest who is crowned, but those who enter the contest, and of these those who conquer. To which pertains the word of the Apostle: No one shall be crowned unless he has striven lawfully.¹⁵ And: If I do it willingly, I have a reward.¹⁶ But in book 1, in the treatise On Free Will, it has been more than sufficiently demonstrated that there is no account either of sin or of merit except where there is liberty. For so Augustine says against Fortunatus: I say that it is not sin unless one sins by will: and hence there is a reward, because we do right by our own will. And Tertullian to Marcion, book 2: Neither the reward of good nor of evil, he says, would be justly weighed out to him who had been found either good or evil by necessity, and not by will. But someone may object that there are some works in which there is not liberty in every respect, which nevertheless are meritorious. It is clear concerning the works of the apostles and of the most holy Virgin, who, since they had been confirmed in grace, could not transgress or omit any commandment: and yet the very observance of the commandments was merit for them.¹⁷ For it would be absurd to say that through obedience to the commandments they did not profit before God. Nay, Christ himself merited for us, and indeed most especially through his passion, which nevertheless he could not fail to undergo, whether because it was commanded to him, or because such was the will of the Father, to which, although no commandment was joined, he could not be contrary.¹⁸ And from this the doubt is greatly increased, that the love of God naturally followed in Christ on the beatific vision: and yet it seems to have been meritorious, since he was at once both blessed and a wayfarer. This argument is dissolved by this distinction.¹⁹ The absence of liberty is threefold: one from the nature of the subject, which is rather a negation than a privation, such as is in brute animals. And works devoid of liberty of this kind are neither good nor evil, and therefore neither worthy of praise nor blame, as has been said. The second is the absence of liberty toward evil, and this is twofold. One is in a certain manner natural, such as is in the blessed. For from that ineffable intuition of God there follows by natural consequence a love which by its nature excludes every possibility of acting wickedly.²⁰ Although in this sense they love freely, because they do it from a will fixed in God. And therefore their works, although they are most good, and worthy not only of praise but even of honor, are nevertheless in no way merits of accumulating reward, but rather have the account of reward itself. And the same must be judged in like manner concerning the beatific love of Christ.²¹ For I would never believe that that love was meritorious in Christ, but he merited through the love which he had as a wayfarer, and through the works proceeding from it. The third absence of liberty, therefore, is not altogether, but as to evil, and that indeed not from nature but from privilege: because in the composite sense it does not stand that something is commanded and is not done: and this does not take away the account of merit. For the apostles, although they could not transgress mortally, could nevertheless suffer difficulty and labor in keeping the law: and besides, because they did the things commanded out of obedience, they merited. Otherwise from the privilege of confirmation they would receive this loss, that the same works would not be meritorious for them which are meritorious for others. And besides, concerning many other works to which they were not obliged, there is no doubt but that they were meritorious. And the same, and much more worthily, must be thought concerning the works of Christ: for he was offered because he himself willed it, and therefore that spontaneous obedience and endurance of a most bitter death was an immense merit with the Father of our salvation, and that there should be given to him the name which is above every name.²²

The second condition of merit is that it be a good work, that is, a work of virtue:²³ whence it is that merit is not a work of commutative justice (as Durandus thinks in 2 Sent. d. 28)²⁴ but of distributive justice. For although the name merit was first imposed on services and mercenary works to which a wage is owed — as one is said to merit a horse or a pen, and to have a meritorious house — nevertheless its proper nature is thence derived to the offices of friendship. As we are said to merit well or ill of a friend. Wherefore the difference is that in commutative justice equality is precisely weighed of thing to thing, whether the work proceeds from friendship or from enmity, whether from virtue or from vice. For he who lets out his labor, whether he does it out of enmity or for any other base intention, acquires a right to equal pay. But it is otherwise in the merit of distributive justice, which must necessarily proceed from friendship toward him of whom we merit well, and therefore must be a work of virtue. Except that among men, who see only external works, hypocrisy is often esteemed as virtue. For according to Aristotle, friendship is either virtue or joined with virtue.²⁵ For this reason, in the distribution of rewards according to merits, equality of thing to thing is not attended to, but proportionality, or the equality of proportions of rewards to the dignities of persons: according to the explanation of the same 5 Ethics. That as the person is to the person, so also should be the proportion of reward to reward. But if the work is also considered (as, because I was hungry, and you gave me to eat), that is only insofar as the dignity of the person is estimated from it. By these things the third condition of merit is clear. Namely, in what way a meritorious work ought to redound to the common good, or to that of a particular friend. For with respect to the common good it is enough if it be a work of virtue: for thence public honors are owed by right to citizens by the prince, who is the guardian of justice, as Aristotle says in the same place. Since justice itself and justice in this respect are preserved in the commonwealth if rewards are established for the good and punishments for the evil.

This account, therefore, of explained merit must be accommodated to our works, and it must be examined whether the services which we exhibit to God through his grace are merits with his majesty.²⁶ For the question is placed in two doubts. The first:²⁷ Merit is the same as right, and therefore it denotes equality; but we can offer nothing to God equal to eternal life, not only because, as Aristotle says, we cannot render equal to the gods and to parents²⁸ (since from them we have received being and life, to which no other good is comparable), but because God is infinitely distant from us, and eternal life is not estimable by any services of ours: therefore there is no justice or merit of ours with him. The other doubt is:²⁹ Reward and prize denote something owed: but God, who does not need our goods, can owe nothing to us. For who has first given to him (as Paul says) and it shall be repaid to him?³⁰ therefore eternal life is not the reward of our works. There are among the theologians (as Durandus³¹ in 2 Sent. d. 28) those who deny that works, however much preceding grace, are simply and properly merits of condignity, but only merit in a broad sense. Where he seems to censure St. Thomas, 1.2 q. 114, who appears to think the contrary.³² The reason of Durandus is that a merit of condignity properly is one to which an equal is simply owed by the virtue of the work: but no work of ours can be equal to eternal life, nor does God bestow it on us from justice, but from a certain liberality and his own ordination. Since he freely accepts our works. But certainly one who has thoroughly meditated on what it is to become a son of God through grace will have a different judgment concerning the works of the just man.³³ Therefore since merit of condignity is a work of justice, a distinction must be made, as we said above concerning satisfaction.³⁴ For one is perfect, which presupposes no account of grace at all. And in this way only Christ could merit with God: for his works were works of the true God, which therefore by their own nature were meritorious. But another is merit which, although it does not have the perfect account of justice, is nevertheless properly just. And such is the work of the just man with God. For the just, as St. Thomas is the author in the cited question, is one thing simply, in which there is simply equality: such as is in exchanges and services among citizens: but another which, although it is not simply equal and just, nevertheless has the mode of justice: as paternal and dominative right is spoken of: namely, of sons to a father, and of servants to a lord. Which indeed is the true and proper account of justice. For a good son obeying his father, although he does not render as much as he received from him, nevertheless has a true and proper right to be nourished and educated by his father: and so a servant with respect to his lord. By which reason, since through grace a man is made truly and properly an adopted son of God, although he received that adoption freely, nevertheless his services are properly and truly merits of justice with the Father. Whence Paul says: You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father: for the Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit that we are sons of God, and heirs: heirs indeed of God, but co-heirs with Christ: if nevertheless we suffer with him, that we may be glorified together.³⁵ In these words indeed anyone with keen eyes can see that although our justice is founded in grace, and therefore does not have so perfect an account of justice, nevertheless grace being supposed, it is properly justice. Not indeed simply of equality on the part of the object. For this is what he adds: The sufferings of this time are not condign. But nevertheless it is truly and properly the right of sons. For he says: If sons, therefore heirs, which suffices for the proper account of merit. We do not therefore deny that that merit is founded in the divine ordination:³⁶ because we can merit nothing with him except according to the virtue which he himself confers on us: nevertheless through it we justly merit. For as natural things operate through the virtues received from him, and are nevertheless causes of their effects, so in supernatural things, although we are moved forward through his virtue, we nevertheless truly produce just merits in his sight. But you say, although they are merits, they are not nevertheless of eternal life. Nay rather, this is what "therefore heirs" designates. And: If anyone loves me, he shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him:³⁷ since this is eternal life, that we see him. But St. Thomas notes there in art. 3, and all the theologians in 1 d. 17 and 2 d. 28, that the work of the just man can be considered in two ways.³⁸ In one way insofar as it proceeds from free will, and in another way insofar as it proceeds from the grace of the Holy Spirit. In the first way there is not in it condignity to eternal life on account of its greatest excellence, but nevertheless there is a congruity of proportion, that to a man working according to his virtue, God recompenses according to the excellence of his virtue. Note that St. Thomas does not place this congruity in works before grace, but in the works of the just man. But if works are considered insofar as they proceed from the grace of the Holy Spirit, thus, he says, they are meritorious of eternal life of condignity. For the value of merit is attended to according to the virtue of the Holy Spirit: according to that: There shall be made in him a fountain of water springing up unto eternal life.³⁹ And besides, because the price of the work is attended to according to the dignity of grace, through which man is made a partaker of the divine nature, and is adopted as a son, to whom the inheritance is owed. And in the solution to the third he says: The grace of the Holy Spirit, which we have at present, although it is not equal to glory in act, is nevertheless equal in virtue:⁴⁰ as the seed of trees, in which is the virtue to germinate the whole tree, and because through it the Holy Spirit dwells in man, it is called by the Apostle the pledge of our inheritance. He understands therefore that it is a merit of true and proper justice, on account of this measure and mode of grace, in relation to glory. For although the name of seed is metaphorical, there is nevertheless in grace a true virtue toward glory, and therefore an equality of justice most like a seed. For one grain is not equal to the ear, but nevertheless it is worth as much in virtue, and clearly bears the ear in its time. But that distinction between free will and grace deceives certain people.⁴¹ Namely, those who gather from this that merits are not properly ours, but God's alone: when the matter is otherwise. For the virtue of the Holy Spirit and free will are two things concurring to the account of one integral principle. For as the work of free will would not be merit without the virtue of God, so neither would the work of God be merit unless it were done through the free will of human or angelic nature. For God does not merit through his own works alone (as when he created the world). Nor can he make the works of a plant or of a brute animal meritorious. Merit therefore is a work of God and of ours. Of him, namely, as moving, and ours as freely cooperating: as has been sufficiently demonstrated above.⁴²

From these things the other argument is easily solved: God properly owes nothing to us, both because no one has first given to him, but he himself gives us the very works through which we merit, and therefore our whole right is founded in his grace: and because these things which we give to him do not redound to his utility, but rather to ours. Wherefore although he should give us no further reward than to work well, he would do us no injury. Nay, even if he should drive those blessed inhabitants of heaven from the kingdom, he would do them no injury. Therefore there is no merit in us to which God owes anything. The answer is that God owes the reward from his own ordination, by the justice which is from him in our works: which is to owe it to his own goodness and most firm truth. As is gathered from the parable of the householder agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day. There is an example in natural things. He himself made the natures of things, and therefore according to his ordination gave light to the sun, intellect to man, etc. Wherefore as it is repugnant for the sun to be and not to be luminous by its nature, on account of the debt of nature, which is the justice of God himself, so it is repugnant to his goodness and justice that he should not repay eternal life for the works of those whom he has once adopted as his own through grace. And this is not an improper account of debt. Wherefore if he denied the reward to one who merits, although he would do injury to no one (as Bernard says in the sermon on the Annunciation), he would nevertheless deny his own law and himself, who is nevertheless faithful, and cannot deny himself.

By these things an answer is given to the other doubt which is raised here last, whether besides sanctifying grace a new acceptance of God is necessary for a work to be meritorious of condignity.⁴³ For Scotus in 1 d. 17 q. 1 thinks that it is not enough for a work to be elicited by grace in order to be meritorious of eternal life: but beyond this it is required that it be accepted by God and ordained to such an end.⁴⁴ First, because otherwise, he says, if a work were meritorious of condignity by the reason that it proceeds from grace, which is already a principle and form existing in man, it would follow that insofar as it proceeds from man, God could not fail to repay beatitude without being unjust, since before his acceptance the work was already worthy. And besides, the reward of eternal life is always greater than the merit: but the greater is not repaid for the lesser from the rigor of justice, but only from the liberality and acceptance of the one conferring it. The school of the Nominalists nearly follows Scotus.⁴⁵ Nevertheless there is indeed no argument which can convince this. Nay, the reason to the contrary is much more probable.⁴⁶ First, as Scotus himself and all confess in 2 d. 27 and 3 d. 28, grace is nothing else than acceptance to glory: if therefore through grace a man is already accepted to glory, what need is there of a new acceptance of the work? For if sons, therefore heirs. Nay, it is a manifest repugnance that a person be accepted whose work is not pleasing to God. For a work is pleasing for this reason, because the person is pleasing. For God looked upon Abel and upon his gifts.⁴⁷ Whence to the first argument of Scotus it is denied that if a work, because it proceeds from grace, were meritorious, God would therefore be unjust if he did not render the reward: since that merit depends on the grace making the person pleasing. Therefore the very thing which he himself says about the second acceptance — namely, that because God first accepts the work, it is meritorious, and he is not properly a debtor to us — we say about the grace making the person pleasing. Namely, that he is therefore not properly a debtor to us: because he first makes the man pleasing, whence the merit proceeds. Except that he does not altogether see the account of merit in the way that it is the work of a son of God. And yet the truth of the matter is that by reason of the grace of adoption and of the acceptance of the person, the work is meritorious. And because the work is meritorious, it is accepted. For to say that because it is accepted, the work is meritorious, seems a contradiction in the added term. For to be freely accepted does not place justice and dignity in the work itself, but mere grace. To the second argument the answer is that although God rewards beyond condignity, nevertheless the work is meritorious, because it proceeds from the grace of the person, which is the seed of glory.

These things therefore having been established among Catholics, it remains to establish against the Lutherans the truth of this conclusion, that the works of the just are worthy merits of eternal life.¹ Moreover the name of our merit before God is especially celebrated by the Fathers in the Church from its very cradle.² Of this there is no need of witnesses, since not even the adversaries deny it, but they deny that merit of eternal life exists in the sacred letters. For that saying, All mercy will make a place for each according to the merit of his works, they do not receive so easily as canonical: because, according to Jerome in the prologue Galeatus, that book is not among the Hebrews.³ Nevertheless by the most ancient, such as Hegesippus, Irenaeus, and the rest nearest to the time of the apostles, it is cited as prophetic: as Eusebius in book 4 and Augustine in book 17 of The City of God, chapter 20, are authorities.⁴ And Damascene in book 4, chapter 18, numbers it among the canonical books, which the Church also from the third Council of Carthage, where five books of Solomon are received, up to the present Council of Trent has always received into the canon.

Now indeed even in Paul the name of merit is manifest, where he says, Do not forget beneficence and communion: for with such sacrifices God is appeased.⁵ And to the Colossians: He has made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints.⁶ And, God tried them, and found them worthy of himself.⁷ And Christ in the Gospel: The worker is worthy of his wage, where although he spoke of food, he also suggested merit before God.⁸ But contention about the name is superfluous where the matter itself is most clear. Therefore the first conclusion is established concerning this matter.⁹ The works of the just which are good in their kind and circumstances are all condign merits both of increased grace and also of eternal life. I have said both of the just and of increased grace. Because it was shown diffusely and plainly in book 2 that the works of a sinner are by no means merits of the first grace. Let us immediately subjoin to this conclusion the first reason, which we often use against these men:¹⁰ namely, that which is drawn from the nature of things. Faith does not overturn nature, but restores and perfects it: but the reward of honor is owed to virtue by its own right and merit, as Aristotle is the authority.¹¹ And the same [is owed] by the lawgiver himself, who is the guardian of what is just: therefore God did not abrogate this law of nature through the grace of Christ, but rather preserved it. But he preserved it in this way: since man by natural vigor could perform no work of virtue that would be of any merit in his sight, he sent his Son, who would both free us from sin and thereafter give us power to become sons of God, if we assent to his calling. Therefore when we are now through his grace sons, our works, supported by his own help, are worthy before him of his grace and glory, which is properly the reward of the sons of God. And that the reasons of merit introduced above may become clearer, the argument is confirmed.¹² The work of the just man is a free work of obedience, by which we obey God according to his will, and is therefore a good work, and not only from his friendship but also by his command or persuasion, and so exhibited with his help: therefore it is worthy of the reward which he himself has set before his friends and those who obey him: but this is eternal life, according to that saying, If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments:¹³ therefore it is the merit of that blessed life. But let us descend to the light of sacred Scripture, by whose rays all these things become clear. Merit (as has been said) and reward are referred to each other,¹⁴ and sacred Scripture repeatedly mentions the reward which awaits us for our works before God: therefore our works are its merits. The subsumed proposition is plain. For from the very beginning, when God began to deal with mortals concerning our salvation, the first conversation which he entered into with Abraham was this: Fear not, Abraham, I am your protector, and your reward is exceedingly great.¹⁵ And although literally it is perhaps understood of the very wide propagation of his seed, nevertheless in mystery it certainly signified eternal retribution, which is properly the reward of faith, which he then required of him. Whence because that reward was set before us through Christ, therefore Isaiah, when he foreannounces his coming, says: Behold, your God: behold the Lord God will come with strength, and his arm shall rule: behold his reward is with him, and his work before him.¹⁶ To which John agrees in the Apocalypse: Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to each according to his works.¹⁷ And indeed Christ himself our liberator, in the first place where he began to preach the law, immediately set a reward before those who obey. Rejoice, he says, and exult when men have cursed you and persecuted you, because your reward is copious in heaven.¹⁸ And to explain that our works have the account of justice in respect of that reward, he called the same works justice, admonishing us not to intend another vain reward. For attend, he says, not to do your justice before men, that you may be seen by them: otherwise you will not have a reward with your Father who is in heaven. And he adds: But when you do alms, let not your left hand know what your right hand does, that your alms may be in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.¹⁹ To which Paul agrees: Whatever you do, work from the soul, as for the Lord, and not for men: knowing that from the Lord you will receive the retribution of the inheritance. Therefore by three names: namely, of reward, justice, and retribution, he has designated nothing else than the right and merit of works.

But let us hear the interpretation of Melanchthon in his Augsburg Apology.²⁰ For he and his companions answer these things in two ways. First, that eternal life is called a reward not because it is owed to our works, but to the promise of God. But it is called a reward, they say, because it is a certain recompense of good works, not insofar as they are ours, but insofar as they are God's alone, as the fruit of faith: according to the word of Augustine in On Grace and Free Choice: God crowns his own gifts. Which word they understand as if by no means they should be called our merits. But who does not see how they cannot escape by this diversion? For who would attribute to that benefit, which one bestows solely on account of a gratuitous promise with no right or merit of the receiver intervening, any account of reward? Since a gratuitous benefit and a reward differ as much as a work of liberality and a work of justice. But if eternal life is called a reward because it is a recompense, this very thing is a confession of merit. For recompense is a work of justice on account of debt. Paul teaches us this, where he therefore denies that our justification, by which we are made just from unjust, is from works, because to one who works the reward is not imputed according to grace but according to debt.²¹ Hence it is gathered from the contrary sense that if a reward is rendered to our works, it is owed to them as merits.²² But as for what Augustine says, that God crowns his gifts, he explains himself thus: not that they are not our merits through our free choice, but because they are made in us by his own help.²³ The second solution is that our works are truly merits, but not worthy of eternal life, but of other rewards, corporal and spiritual, which are rendered both in this life and afterward in the fatherland.²⁴ Behold the reason why in the imperial book of the colloquy of Ratisbon²⁵ they, confident that a reward is owed to our works, both corporal and spiritual, in this life and in the future, never confessed that they are merits of eternal life, but of goods, as it seemed good to divine providence. For eternal life, they say, is owed only to the reborn on account of the promise alone accepted by faith. But in this cavillation there is not one but a manifold falsity and stubbornness. First, if they now concede to the works of the just some dignity of reward, even heavenly, then such works are not sins, as Luther began to say.²⁶ But if they are good and proceed from grace, why do they hesitate to confess rewards of eternal life? Next, either those works are meritorious only insofar as they proceed from free choice, or insofar as they proceed from the help and grace of God through free choice. The first they themselves deny with us:²⁷ therefore they are meritorious insofar as they proceed from grace, whence it becomes manifest that they are meritorious of eternal life itself, whose seed is grace. I will say it more plainly: grace is acceptance to eternal life, distinguishing between the sons of God and the sons of the kingdom: therefore if works, which before grace were of no price with God, receive from grace that they be merits, of what reward do they receive that they be merits, if not of eternal life? Besides. Every accidental reward of the heavenly kingdom, such as the aureoles and the vision of Christ's humanity, and the fellowship of the saints, and the rest of this kind, flow from essential beatitude: therefore if by our works we acquire a right to accidental rewards, it is from this, that we acquire a right to life itself. Now indeed I seem to form this necessary argument against them. To one asking what he should do to have eternal life,²⁸ Christ answers that he should keep the commandments: and that if he left and sold his goods, he could become perfect. Immediately Peter asks what reward therefore awaited themselves, who had left all things on account of him. To whom Christ: You who have followed me, in the regeneration you will sit upon twelve seats judging, etc. For everyone who has left house or brothers or sisters, etc., will receive a hundredfold, and will possess eternal life. Behold, accidental rewards are distinguished: namely, to sit as judges, and to receive a hundredfold, which the saints explain either in this life, as to the peace and joy of the soul, which is the fruit of temporal goods, or even in the future life, where there is the fullness of all goods: and besides these, the essential reward of eternal life. Hence therefore the argument is taken. The works of the just are truly merits of those accidental rewards (as the adversaries themselves confess), therefore also of eternal life itself: since under the same tenor both are proposed as a reward. Nay, the adversaries themselves are compelled to answer for us.²⁹ For all rewards, even accidental, which in any way, whether in this life or in the future, pertain to beatitude: namely, either advancing us here, or in any way beatifying us there, pertain to the promise of God through Christ: therefore if, notwithstanding that they are rendered to us on account of the promise, those accidental rewards are nevertheless truly rewards rendered to our merits, why do they not confess the same of eternal life? Here indeed lies hidden³⁰ both their error and our answer. For we do not deny that eternal life is given to us on account of God's promise. But nevertheless because it is promised to those cooperating with grace and his help, nothing prevents it from being given as the reward of our works. For thus Paul says to Timothy: Piety is useful for all things, having the promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come.³¹ Where he says that both the essential and the accidental reward are promised to the works of piety. Nor is there any derogation here from the grace of Christ, but rather it is exalted, because he pours such a power of meriting into his members. Therefore the legitimate sense of Christ's words, when he names a reward, must be gathered from this, that, following the use and custom of those who established civil commonwealths, he himself, setting down divine laws, proposes the prize and palm to those who act lawfully, obedience to which would be worthy of them. Whence Paul, using the similitude of those who ran in the stadium looking to the prize, says: All run, but one receives the prize.³² There is besides very much mention of reward in the sacred canon:³³ as in Ruth 2 that patriarch says: May the Lord repay you for your work, and may you receive a full reward from the Lord God of Israel. And, But the just shall live forever, and their reward is with the Lord.³⁴ And, Do not fear to be justified until death, because the reward of God remains forever.³⁵ And, There is a reward for your work.³⁶ And Christ in the Gospel: He who receives a prophet (and he was alluding to himself) will receive the reward of a prophet.³⁷ And, Lift up your eyes, and see the regions which are already white for the harvest, so that he who reaps receives a reward, and gathers fruit unto eternal life.³⁸ And Paul: But each one will receive his own reward according to his labor.³⁹ What is "according to his labor" but according to the merit of labor? And again: That which is at present momentary and light in our tribulation works in us beyond measure, in sublimity, an eternal weight of glory. What else can "works" be than "merits"? And, See to yourselves, that you do not lose what you have worked, but that you may receive a full reward.⁴⁰ Full, that is, just. As Christ himself, the giver of rewards, says: In what measure you have measured, it will be measured to you. And in Luke: Love your enemies, do good, lend, hoping for nothing from it: give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing, will they give into your bosom.⁴¹ By what words could the account of merit be explained more openly?

To this at last is added that saying of Paul, where he explains the retribution of merit both good and evil: For tribulation and anguish, he says, upon every soul of man who works evil. But glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works good.⁴² But see here, candid reader, another cavillation by which these men think to shake off such testimonies. Melanchthon says in his Commonplaces⁴³ that Paul does not say, To a man simulating good, but working from faith, so that by the name of works faith with its fruits is understood. And therefore the reward, he says, is rendered only on account of the promise. This is their madness (as we began to note at the beginning of this book), to call all external works simulation and hypocrisy. Who of us ever said that works are worthy merits, except only those which proceed from faith? Yet from this it is gathered by no probability that the reward is rendered only on account of the promise. For then it would not have the account of a reward: just as neither does the promise have the account of merit: therefore the reward is owed to works insofar as they are freely done by us from faith, and indeed from the grace and help of God.

There comes in the second place, in confirmation of the same conclusion, besides the name of reward, the name of justice also, which is constant in sacred Scripture.⁴⁴ For David says: I will keep myself from my iniquity, and the Lord will repay me according to my justice.⁴⁵ Where the Prophet plainly speaks of his justice before God, and not of justice against his persecutors, as Melanchthon cavils in the Apology,⁴⁶ expounding that saying, Judge me, Lord, according to my justice. For he had premised: I have kept the ways of the Lord, and I have not acted impiously against my God, and I have not put away his justices from me, and I will be spotless with him. And at last he adds: And the Lord has repaid me, etc. As if he had said: because I have kept his justices, he himself will keep his justice with me, repaying me a just reward for just merit: according to the word of the Wise Man, To him who sows justice, a faithful reward.⁴⁷ Nor was the Prophet only certain that there is a reward with God for good works, but even with a view to it it was lawful for a man to stir himself to work. Whence he says: I have inclined my heart to do your justifications forever on account of the retribution.⁴⁸ As also Paul says of Moses that he looked to the remuneration. But for all, the authority of Paul concerning the justice of works is enough. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, for the rest there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord will render to me on that day, the just judge.⁴⁹ If he had only mentioned faith and mercy here, you Lutherans could cloak your opinion with it, and feign that eternal life is given to us for no other reason than because God promised it to us without any respect to our works. But yet he says: I have fought the good fight, not God fought: but I fought, and I finished the course. Nor does he only say, By faith I received mercy, but, I have kept the faith: that is, the law which I professed by faith I have fulfilled in work: and therefore God, the just judge, as the prize-giver of my contest, will crown me with the crown of justice. But you persist in answering that this is the justice of faith. We too indeed acknowledge this word, but we refute your understanding. We concede, I say, that our works are the justice of faith in this, that unless they flowed from faith and the grace of Christ they would be of no merit; nevertheless our works, that is, those which we do from faith through free choice, are merits of eternal glory. According to that most significant word of Paul: Let us draw near with a true heart in the fullness of faith:⁵⁰ having our hearts sprinkled from a bad conscience, and our bodies washed with clean water, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering: for he is faithful who has promised. He did not say only, who promised, but who has promised again, if we keep an unwavering faith. And to the same purpose belongs what he had said in chapter 5: God is not unjust that he should forget your work and the labor undertaken from charity. And John: Little children, let no one seduce you: for he who does justice is just, as he also is just:⁵¹ namely, in rendering, as we are in working. And Paul says: Do not lose your confidence: which has a great remuneration.⁵² And in chapter 11 he does not say only that the saints by faith conquered kingdoms, but that from the same faith, working justice, they obtained the promises. But remuneration and promise, what do they present to the ears but a reward? Third and finally the conclusion is confirmed from the retribution which is promised to those who do the commands of God. For Christ compared the kingdom of heaven to a householder who, having made an agreement for a daily denarius, sent workers into his vineyard.⁵³ And in another parable, from the talents distributed, he demands interest from the servants, and for its merit promises to set the faithful servants over his household. And he admonishes us as friends to make friends by whom we may be received into eternal tabernacles.⁵⁴ And elsewhere, that we should not invite to a banquet brothers and relatives who can repay us, but the poor, the weak, and the lame, so that it may be repaid to us in the resurrection of the just. And Paul says: God on the day of just judgment will render to each according to his works: to those indeed who according to patience in good work seek glory, honor, and incorruption, eternal life: but to those who are of contention, etc., anger and indignation.⁵⁵ And, We must all be manifested before the tribunal of Christ, that each one may receive the things proper to his body, according as he has done, whether good⁵⁶ or evil. Surely if there were no other testimony, this would be most sufficient. For if good works were not a true cause and merits of the retribution of the just, just as evils are also merits of punishment, what need would there be to stand before the tribunal of Christ and be judged, of what each one was worthy of retribution? Finally all these confirm the word of our judge himself, Christ. For then, he says, he will say to those who are at his right hand: Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.⁵⁷ For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink, etc. Where the particle "for" has the signification of a cause in good merits equally as in evil. Whence just as the unmerciful, because they did not feed Christ, will be sent into eternal fire, so the just also on account of the merit of mercy will be received into the kingdom. And this is what he concludes: These will go into eternal punishment, but the just into eternal life. False therefore and contrary to the sacred utterance is the gloss of Bucer on Paul to the Romans 2, Who renders to each according to his works.⁵⁸ For he says that "according to works" does not state any cause or merit of our works, but only a compensation. But far different and other is the sense of Paul, and most open to those who consider it. For thus he distinguishes everywhere between grace and glory, that wherever he mentions justifying grace, by which the unjust becomes just, he excludes all works from the account of merit. And in like manner, where he mentions the coming of Christ. For just as he was given to us freely, with no merits of men preceding, so we are made his members purely freely. But where he speaks of the reward of eternal life, then he makes mention of works, namely those which are now through the grace of Christ merits of it. From this Augustine took that celebrated distinction of grace into operating, with respect to justification, and cooperating, with respect to merits.

God does not merit, but we.— Finally, the last refuge to which these men betake themselves, so that they may not be forced to confess the merits of works, is that if eternal life is set before the works of the just in the Gospel, it is not because they are our merits, but only because they are fruits of faith and merits of God: and therefore, they say, the reward is not rendered to works, but to faith alone apprehending the promise of that reward.⁵⁹ But first of all they will not deny that faith is the cause of that reward and so a merit. For this very thing, to receive by faith, that is, to believe the promise, would have the account of merit. But whatever they answer to this, the argument is made otherwise, so that by this last reason we may touch the point of the matter.⁶⁰ For this very thing, that our works are fruits of faith, we do not deny, but willingly confess. But nevertheless from this we take the argument that we merit through fruits of this kind. For faith is not something which can of itself bear fruit, but through our free choice.⁶¹ And this is what they ought to think on more attentively. For if faith existed in us in such a way that it were not free for us to obey it, it would bear no fruit in us, and would be more in brute animals. Wherefore it is not faith itself that works, but we through it. But how this is done, the Apostle explains to us where he explains the account of faith itself. For it is necessary, he says, to believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder.⁶² Behold the root of merits: to believe that he is a rewarder. And therefore faith is the argument of things to be hoped for, because it sends us into hope, directing the intention of our works. And from this it has that it is the beginning and start of the life of the just. Wherefore the same Apostle to the Colossians says: Because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, you have love toward the saints.⁶³ Faith therefore, raising our hope, stirs up charity toward God, through which we work. Wherefore Paul did not say that faith works of itself, but through charity: namely, by which we love God, although at last we have received it from him. Nor does he call our works in Galatians fruits of faith, but fruits of the Spirit against the works of the flesh.⁶⁴ And each virtue has its own proper fruits. For, John says, do fruits worthy of penance.⁶⁵ Nay, even beatitude itself is called the fruit of our works. For, the Wise Man says, the fruit of good labors is glorious. And to the Philippians Paul says: Be sincere and without offense in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of justice.⁶⁶ He did not say only of faith, but of general justice. And below: To me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if to live in the flesh, this is to me the fruit of work, etc. Therefore he calls death gain on account of merit, and life the fruit of work on account of the eternal reward. Whence David says: Blessed are they who shall eat the labors of their hands. And the same Paul to the Galatians: What a man has sown, that will he also reap.⁶⁷ It is therefore a most shameful ignorance, because works are in some way fruits of faith, to deny that they are properly our merits: that is, of our free choice divinely helped. There is an example in natural things:⁶⁸ a pear tree indeed bears fruit through the power of God and his general influence: yet notwithstanding this, the fruits are truly and properly of the tree itself; equally therefore it must be judged concerning the fruits of the just man through grace and special help. Whence Christ says: Make the tree good and its fruits good: that is, make the will good and the works good.⁶⁹ And Paul: By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than all of them: yet not I, but the grace of God with me.⁷⁰ With me, he says, as helping. Whence Augustine in the letter to Hilary, which is 89, chapter 3,⁷¹ says: Free choice avails for good works if it is divinely helped. And below: For free choice is not therefore taken away because it is helped, but it is therefore helped because it is not taken away. And in the Hypognosticon book 3: How, he says, would it be rendered to each according to his works on the day of judgment, unless there were free choice, so that with God working man might cooperate? And below: How could Paul fight the good fight and finish the course? Because neither alone, nor grace alone, but the grace of God with me. Which grace, he says, is in free choice as a rider on a horse who guides it. From these at last he concludes: Neither does grace without free choice make a man have eternal life, nor free choice without grace, except in little children, in whom grace works without free choice. Thus far Augustine. But although our merits are the works of God preventing, nevertheless it is not only improper and most inept, but also most false speech, that God merits through us. For to merit states a respect between two: namely, between the one obeying and the one rewarding: but we merit through his help. According to that saying of Ezekiel 36, which Augustine cites in book 3 of the Hypognosticon to this purpose: I will put my Spirit in the midst of you, and I will make you walk in my precepts, and keep my judgments, and do them: therefore he does not merit, but makes us merit. Wherefore Augustine never says that God crowns his merits, but he says, he crowns your merits as his gifts. And so, insofar as they are made by him, they are called not his merits but his gifts; but insofar as they are from us, they are called merits. And therefore, he says, if our merits were so understood that they were also recognized as God's gifts, the sentence would not be to be disapproved. So he in On Free Choice, chapters 6 and 7. But our Protestants, because they have repudiated the whole scholastic account, thinking that to those imbued with Virgil and Homer the understanding of both the holy Fathers and sacred Scripture would be immediately easy, it is no wonder if through thoughtlessness or (let the word be without offense) perhaps through ignorance of things they have made so much trouble for us.

One can merit the first grace for another.— Against them I will make an end if I have only subjoined this word. Namely, that our free choice would be in vain if the account of merit were taken away from the offices of the just. These men say that free choice has a place only in natural things, but not in the works of grace before God. But one who weighs the matter more prudently will judge far otherwise. Moreover, since all these natural things were created for man, and man for the service of God, through which he could attain eternal felicity, in this especially man was made free by God, the craftsman of nature, that God might be glorified by his obedience, and that man might so use his grace and help as to be made worthy of eternal life. For if God gave us that glory so freely that no merits of ours intervened, it would indeed have the essential account of beatitude, such as Christian infants have who die before the use of reason, but it would lack that praise and honor which according to all the wise is owed to virtue. For it is more excellent in human things to have merited what you do not have than to have what you did not merit. Whence it cannot but be a most splendid accident of glory in the saints that they arrived at that triumph through their own merits. Wherefore since man could not do this by his own nature, it was the greatest mercy of God to bestow on us through his Son such virtue and power. Namely, that before the divine tribunal some might bring back the talents entrusted to them with interest: others might carry back sheaves from the seeds which they had sown in tears: others who washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb might bear palms in their hands: and so all who, made strong in battle, by faith conquered kingdoms and worked justice, might obtain their promises. The glory of all these will be returned to God through Christ our Lord. Most deservedly therefore the Church, which, renowned for the merits of the saints, daily sings their joys, has pronounced against those who speak against merits of this kind in the Synod of Trent,⁷² Session 6. In chapter 10 of its confession it is held that the justified, and friends of God, going from virtue to virtue through the observance of the commandments of God and of the Church, with the grace of Christ and faith helping, grow in the same justice, daily asking for the increase of faith, hope, and charity. And chapter 11: It is clear that they are adversaries of the doctrine of orthodox religion who deny that it is lawful for the just to look to the reward while they run in the stadium, as David inclined his heart to do justices on account of retributions. And canon 24 condemns under anathema him who has said that the justice received is not preserved and increased before God through good works, which are the cause of its increase. And canon 26 likewise condemns him who has said that the just ought not to hope for eternal retribution for good works. The conclusion is therefore most proved, that although a sinful man can merit neither the first grace for himself nor any grace for another, nevertheless a just man, through the grace and help of God, can merit both the increase of grace and also glory for himself by condignity, but for another by congruity. As Stephen merited for Paul, and Moses often merited for the people: and Christ in the Gospel, seeing the faith of those who offered the paralytic, said to him: Have confidence, son. Your sins are forgiven you.⁷³ Where the gloss says: Consider, brothers, how much the faith of another avails with God, when the faith of another availed so much. As also the citizens of heaven are accustomed to obtain good things even for us. For what madness is it to deny that those who are in grace and friendship of God can sometimes intercede before the divine majesty for those whom they love in God himself? But this kind of merit is called of congruity, from the fact that no law is established that whatever the just man prays of God in favor of another should come to pass. For he says through Jeremiah: If Moses and Samuel stood before me, my soul is not toward this people.⁷⁴ Wherefore Christ alone could merit for others by condignity: but a man merits grace for another, not that it is conferred without his own act, otherwise each one would not receive according to his own deeds, as Paul says; but a friend can merit for a friend a good motion, a conversion to God. Wherefore I would by no means agree with those who in 4 Sent. d. 4 think that parents or those baptizing can merit for a little child some portion of grace: for the grace of baptism is conferred equally on all, except on account of the greater disposition of the receiver. But that cannot be in a little child. But this place does not open itself to that disputation.

The first argument which the Lutherans bring against us against the merit of works they draw from that [passage] of Paul to the Romans, where he teaches that by the very fact that we are sons, we are also heirs.¹ But we are sons through the first grace without our merits, as we ourselves confess: therefore through it we also have the right to the kingdom. Whence, they say, it is repugnant that we do not merit the first grace, but do merit eternal life. Which is especially confirmed from what he had said in chapter 6: The wages of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life. For if life is the reward of good works, as punishment is the wage of evildoers, when he said, The wages of sin is death, he would have said, The wages of virtue is eternal life.² To this, however, the first answer is at hand, that even if through the first grace we are made sons and heirs, nothing nevertheless prevents us from being able to merit increases both of grace and of glory, as members of CHRIST into whom his power is derived, with which our free will cooperates. According to that of Augustine to Paulinus: Grace itself merits to be increased, so that increased it may merit to be perfected: with the will accompanying, not leading: following, not preceding. To which the evangelical multiplication of talents also alludes. By which answer those who have not more deeply inspected the concurrence of our dispositions to grace will think enough has been done for the matter. For according to the opinion of St. Thomas and others who examine this more carefully, a second answer is adduced. Namely, that although through the first grace we are made heirs of the kingdom, nevertheless the dispositions, namely the acts of faith, hope and penance (which is of charity), although they are not merits of the first grace itself, yet through the same grace, in the same way informed, they are merits of glory. Whence through grace which we do not merit, we are accepted to glory which through the same grace we merit. For because we receive grace, the works are meritorious, and thence we acquire the right to the kingdom. For in the same point of time in which grace is infused it works. This is not the discourse concerning the degree of grace which is the effect of the sacrament. And in this way Augustine expounds that the grace of God is eternal life.³ First in the second letter to Sixtus, which is the 105th, treating the same passage of Paul, The wages of sin is death, etc. For he had premised that he who is freed from sin cannot boast of his merits for which he was freed. Whence, with this question subjoined: Are there therefore no merits of the just? he answers: There are indeed, because they are just. But that they might become just, there were no merits. Behold, denying merits before grace, he concedes them in grace. And thence a little after he gathers these words. Whence even eternal life itself, which indeed will be had at the end without end, and therefore is rendered for preceding merits: yet because those same merits for which it is rendered were not prepared by us through our sufficiency, but made in us through grace, it is also itself (namely eternal life) called grace: not for any other reason than because it is given freely: nor therefore because it is not given for merits, but because those very merits for which it is given were also given. And therefore Paul says: The wages of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life: not that eternal life is not also the wage of justice proceeding from faith, because as death is rendered as the wage for the merit of sin, so eternal life as the wage for the merit of justice. Whence it is also called a reward in very many places of the holy Scriptures. Thus Augustine. And he adds that lest man should glory in his merits as if he had not received, the blessed Apostle said: The grace of God is eternal life.⁴ He repeats the same opinion in On Grace and Free Will, chapter 7. Therefore it must not be denied that the works of the just are truly merits, whose reward and wage is eternal life, but it must be confessed that they would not be merits unless they were the obediences of that generous one who through the grace of God is just before he has merits. And so it must be understood what the adversaries object to us from the book Against the Letters of Pelagius, and other places, that all the justices of all the saints are owed to CHRIST, and therefore they are not to be praised in themselves, but in the Lord. According to the voice of David: In the Lord my soul shall be praised: and, By the grace of God I am what I am.⁵

But they could draw another argument⁶ valid at first sight, from that [passage] of David, speaking of God with his soul: Who crowns you in mercy and compassion.⁷ Where David calls that very crown of justice, which Paul says is laid up for him, mercy and compassion: and James says: Judgment without mercy to him who has not done mercy.⁸ Where he shows that the crown of the just is judgment from mercy. From which it seems to follow that it is not owed to merits from justice.

True gloss.— Epilogue.— But indeed the answer and interpretation of Augustine in On Correction and Grace, chapter 23, is more than enough to explain this matter and to stop the mouths of those who speak against it.⁹ For he says that the mercy of God always adheres to the just, whether when they are converted, or when they struggle, or when they are crowned. For because the merits themselves proceed from the grace of God, the crown of justice which is rendered to merits is called mercy. And this interpretation is likewise fitted to the word of the Apostle to Titus: Not by the works which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us: so that to be saved may be referred not only to the first grace by which we are made just, but to glory.¹⁰ For that is rendered through justice to the merits which we have done through the grace of God: so that here also mercy and justice come together into one. And from this shines forth another gloss of the same Augustine in the exposition of that Psalm: Do not enter into judgment with your servant, Lord, because no living man shall be justified in your sight.¹¹ For they also object this passage to us, to which although we have already answered in chapter 5, that we cannot enter into judgment with God as a hired servant with his patron, asking a reward as if we had first given to him: namely as if we ourselves exhibited our works by our own powers, and he did not rather, preceding us, give us to will and to work, so that he could reproach us: What do you bring to my judgment that you have not received, and if you have received, why do you glory as if you had not received? Nevertheless, this notwithstanding, the reward is owed to our merits as of members of CHRIST. The Lutherans therefore ought to cease from that calumny, when they say that we confess only the mercy and grace of CHRIST in the first point of justification. But then [they say] we trust in our works without his mercy: surely when we most explicitly confess (as Augustine says) that from the first inspiration, by which we begin to think well, even to the supreme retribution, the mercy of God adheres to us. But nevertheless we distinguish (which they ought to do) mercy preventing, helping and rewarding, or grace operating, cooperating and crowning. But there follows immediately another word of Paul, to which it remains for us to answer. For he says: The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us.¹² Where he manifestly speaks of those things which they suffer who are already sons and heirs of the kingdom, of whom he had said: We suffer together that we may be glorified together: and therefore it seems that not even as they proceed from grace do they have the nature of justice. Some gloss it, that they are not condign for the reason that they proceed from free will. But this certainly does not sufficiently express the understanding of Paul: for by that reason it was manifest that they were of no merit. And Paul was not distinguishing free will from grace: but those works of the sons of God, even if they are done through free will moved by God, he denied to be worthy of future glory. St. Thomas answers that he understands it if they are considered according to their substance.¹³ And certainly the sense has it so. For works, even as they proceed from grace, if they are considered on the part of the object (for this is according to substance), such as to suffer hunger, thirst: to bestow a coin on the poor, to give a drink of cold water, even if you add whatever interior worship a man can, are not works equal to that heap of eternal goods which awaits us in the fatherland, as Bernard says very well in sermon 1 On the Annunciation. Yet¹⁴ from the law of God established with the cultivators of his vineyard for a daily denarius, they take on a dignity and justice with respect to the eternal reward. Whence elsewhere: That which is at present momentary and light in our tribulation, he says, works in us above measure in sublimity an eternal weight of glory.¹⁵ Another testimony which they bring as invincible is that: When you have done all things which are commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we ought to do.¹⁶ But indeed, whatever they clamour, we can retort it much more significantly against their faith alone which they defend. Namely: When you have believed all things which have been said to you, say: We are unprofitable servants.¹⁷ For so Paul says: If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have charity, I am nothing. Which opinion they cannot elude otherwise than by inventing a certain new illusory faith, which we have sufficiently shaken above. The legitimate sense therefore of St. Thomas and the other theologians: surely which is drawn from the very notion 'useful', is of this kind. That servant is useful to his lord whose works increase the lord's profit: but he who gains for himself is unprofitable to the lord. But with God, who does not need our goods, no utility is done from our works, but only glory and honour. And therefore the works of justice themselves, although they are due from us by law, yet because through free obedience we exhibit them for his honour and glory, they are merits before his majesty, who commanded them to us for this, that he might spread his glory. And this is the usury which God demands in the evangelical parable from the multiplied talents: for the utility accrues to the servants themselves.¹⁸ Therefore, lest men glory that they have contributed anything to God, of which he himself was in need, we are admonished to acknowledge that we are unprofitable servants: for in doing the commandments of God we do nothing else than what we ought: that is, what is from our own substance. And besides, the virtue and power of acting rightly we ought to refer as acceptable to God himself. But it will be pleasant to hear the last words of Melanchthon in the apology of this article.¹⁹ Nor do we, he says, here affect any idle subtlety (namely in denying the merit of condignity). For there are most clear causes for which we dispute these things. For if we concede to the adversaries that works merit eternal life, they immediately weave in those absurdities: that works satisfy the law of God, that there is no need of mercy, that we are just on account of our works, and not on account of CHRIST, etc. Therefore you see well enough the merits of works, but as incorrupt judges of the faith, thinking that we strike one extreme, you wish yourselves to deflect to the contrary: not considering that rule of Aristotle, that one who has sinned toward one part must incline to the other, is to be understood in such a way that the inclination does not exceed the line of truth and virtue. Besides that you do not rightly think that those absurdities which you imagine follow in any way from our assertion. But it is you who speak against works, who surely contend that before justification they are depraved, that in justification none are necessary: that after justification they neither satisfy the law, nor avail anything for paying the punishments which are owed for sins, nor are in any way merits of eternal life. By which reasoning you make your peoples sleep under the pretext of extolling faith, and most negligent of works.

How great and of what sort is the faculty in the justified man, through grace and divine help, of keeping the law, of satisfying for the punishments of sins remitted, and finally of meriting eternal life—which was the first part of this book—we have treated as far as seemed sufficient according to our measure. There follows therefore, according to the division set out at the beginning, that in this second part we continue to speak of the certainty of grace. Concerning this article we have a contest not only with the Lutherans but with some Catholics,¹ who have given us great trouble, contending that it can and ought to be maintained that in certain cases a man can have certainty, even of faith, concerning his grace and friendship with God. Wherefore the disputation will be twofold.² For in this chapter we shall first lay open the mind of the Lutherans, and then impugn it. In the following chapters we shall do the same against the Catholics. The question therefore is whether a man, apart from a special privilege of revelation, can by the common law have as great certainty that he is in the grace of God as is catholic faith.³ We have excluded privilege, because no one is so devoid of mind as to doubt that God can do this for whom it has pleased him to reveal it. Nay, this is to be believed not only of the most sacred Virgin, the mother of the giver of grace himself, and of the apostles, but in the authentic histories of the saints, as of Francis and certain others, the same is read. But the question concerns the common law. And the inquiry is only about certainty as great as that of catholic faith, since there is no one who suspects that the certainty of knowledge, which has clarity annexed to it, is possible for man in this life concerning his state, since not even the other mysteries of faith are known to us by such a reason. Nor on the other extreme is there any doubt that faith can be had concerning this matter as great as what we can attain by the greatest conjectures short of catholic faith, as will appear more fully later. The question therefore is established only about the certainty of catholic faith, or one like it. And because this controversy depends entirely on the understanding of this—catholic faith, as is most firmly established among all Christians, is a certain and firm assent, obscure indeed, yet one to which falsehood cannot be subject.⁴ And so this composition cannot be possible: that anyone by the assent of faith should have persuaded himself of something that is deceptive. Nay, in this certainty faith surpasses knowledge itself, although in clarity it is inferior. Concerning this supposition there is no dispute. For since faith is God’s persuasion, if anyone could be deceived through it, he himself would deceive us, which is contrary to his nature. But that the matter may become still clearer: certainty can be estimated from two things, either from the object or from the subject.⁵ Certainty on the part of the object is that just mentioned: namely, when one assents and cannot be deceived, or when one’s assent cannot be false. But certainty on the part of the subject is the firmness of assent to a thing which one persuades oneself of, with all doubt driven out, on account of the truth appearing to oneself. But the present question is not contested about certainty on the part of the subject—although we have seen some laboring under a childish error in this respect during the disputation. For no one doubts that from levity one can have an assent as firm, and as certain in one’s own judgment, about a false thing as a Christian has about catholic faith. Nay, all heretics have as great certainty about their errors, which they think are catholic truths, as we have about the articles of faith.⁶ But the doubt is about certainty on the part of the object: whether one can have such certainty that he is in grace that such assent cannot be false, any more than if it were of catholic faith. I am indeed most certain that for one to whom this explanation has been made clear, this question will bring little difficulty. But the question can have besides two senses: the first according to the present state, whether one is now in grace; the other, whether one can have certainty of perseverance to the end of life and of obtaining glory.⁷ Of this second we shall speak afterward; but now an indubitable negative conclusion is established concerning the first: no one can be as certain of his own justification as a Christian is of the articles of faith.⁸ The reason for this is as follows, which we shall explain more fully, here briefly. Certainty of this kind—that each one is in the grace of God—depends on two things: namely, on the firmness of the divine promise, which is catholic faith, and on our disposition—namely, if we have done those things which he himself requires of us. But of this second member we cannot have faith as great as catholic faith; therefore no one by the common law can have as great certainty that he is in grace.

But there are two parties who, rejecting this reasoning, maintain the affirmative part.⁹ For the Lutherans deny the first assumption: namely, that certainty of this kind depends in any way on our works, since they say it depends only on faith and the promise of God. But the Catholics denied the second proposition. For they contended (would that no one now persisted in it) that although it depends on our works, a man can nevertheless sometimes have as great certainty, either of his disposition or of the sacrament received, as is that of orthodox faith. Therefore, to begin with the Lutherans: certainty of grace is for them the daughter of that fabricated faith of theirs, by which alone they imagine they are justified.¹⁰ For from the fact that they have persuaded themselves that by faith alone—that is, by the assent of the mind by which the evangelical promise is believed to be true—mercy and grace are so apprehended that justification depends in no way at all on any work of ours, they judged it consequent that by one and the same certainty of faith we ought to assent that the promise made through Christ, who cannot lie, is true and firm, and to assent that we obtain that grace. Wherefore as we are bound to believe without any condition that God is faithful, so also we are obliged to believe the fact itself: namely, each one concerning himself, that he obtains the promised benefit, with no respect or account had of his own works. Otherwise, they say, one who doubted this about himself would be in the same crime of heresy as if he doubted the firmness of the divine promise. Nay, as it has pleased them, they call that catholic faith by which each one particularly believes with certainty that he obtains the remission of sins through Christ.¹¹ Hence among the articles of their faith in the Augsburg Confession, with that severity of censuring of the holy councils of the Church, they say in article 5: “Those are condemned who command consciences to doubt whether they obtain remission,” and they add that this doubt is not sin. And in article 20 they sharply rebuke us, saying that when we say that justification depends in some way on our disposition, we corrupt the doctrine of faith, because we cannot set before consciences a firm consolation, and therefore they are commanded to doubt the remission of sins. And below: “For if the promise depended on the dignity of our works, it would become uncertain.” And Melanchthon in his Apology¹² (with his accustomed gravity) says to the adversaries: “They counsel men unhappily when they command them to doubt whether they obtain the remission of sins. How will these men, doubting, endure at death?” And he heaps together many things of this kind to this judgment: that we ought to place no confidence in our works, but all of it in the sole promise of God. He teaches the same in his Didagma, folio 43. And Calvin treats it much more broadly in his book On the Christian Institution, and Bucer¹³ calls us sophists and enemies of the ecclesiastical reformation, because we depravedly corrupt that saying,¹⁴ “No one knows whether he is worthy of hatred or love,” as if we were not certain of our salvation. But however much they may hold, or pretend to hold, this article as most firmly established, I nevertheless hold it more certainly that whoever has perceived their mind and sentiments will judge this sacred certainty of theirs incredible. So immediately does the source and origin of the error offer itself to the eyes. Nor is there reason why they should fear in this place that we call them sophists (as they charge us).¹⁵ For if anywhere else, here especially (if they will only grant me this leave) they display no greater knowledge than what they carry within. And because a full understanding of this error will be its most efficacious refutation, I shall insist especially on the explanation.

The purpose¹⁶ here, therefore, is to demonstrate that the certainty which each one has of his disposition and state before God depends not only on the divine promise considered absolutely in itself, but also on the quality of his own works.¹⁷ Now this we have almost accomplished in book 2, chapter 7, where I argued that no promise was made in sacred Scripture in particular and absolutely concerning this or that man to be reconciled, but in general: if they have believed, if they have hoped, if they have loved, and finally if they have repented—that is, if, with God breathing upon us by his power, we have cooperated and given assent. From which it plainly follows that particular certainty, that this man, for example, has obtained the gift of justifying grace, depends not only on divine faith but in some way on our works—not indeed as on merits, but as on dispositions and advances which God works in us through our free will. Nor is this particular faith catholic faith, but that general faith by which all are bound to hold one and the same thing universally, and by which they are Christians, and lacking which they are held to be unbelievers. But concerning this particular faith, he is rather the heretic who reckons it heresy for anyone to doubt his place in the sight of God.

The second¹⁸ argument, which we have restored to the place left cut off and truncated until now, is founded on their own confession. For they now admit, as we reported there, that the benefit of reconciliation is bestowed on no one unless repentance precedes. Let us therefore dispute nothing about this, because it is not now our concern whether that repentance is a disposition or in any way a cause or not. For their confession is enough for us: namely, that it is necessary. From this, then, the argument arises in this way. No one is justified without true repentance; but that repentance is true and sincere sorrow for offending God is not an article of faith, nor is it so certain a knowledge; therefore neither can such particular certainty be had of each man’s reconciliation. Nay, let us weigh the words of the book presented by them at Ratisbon and examine¹⁹ whether they, convicted by the truth, think the same as we do. For they say in article 5: “Since renewal is imperfect and infirmity remains in the renewed, it must nevertheless be taught that those who truly repent should always establish with most certain faith, on account of Christ the mediator, that they please God.” And in the exposition of the same place, Bucer²⁰ says that this article commands only the penitent—and truly penitent, and having living faith—to establish with most certain faith that they obtain grace. Here, I pray, let all readers be attentive to how these men, who from a beginning so different from ours have removed this controversy, now mock us with mere differences of words. Who doubts that the truly penitent, having living faith, obtain salvation through Christ? But who is truly penitent and has living faith—this is what we say cannot be grasped with the certainty of catholic faith. See the ambiguity.²¹ They say that it is certain that all are justified through Christ the mediator alone. If they mean that as many as are justified are justified through him, we all confess it as catholic faith. But if they mean that it is certain that these or those have now been justified, then we utterly deny thrice and four times that certainty of faith is had of this. For although justification is the work of God without our works—that is, without the merit of our works—it is nevertheless not altogether without them, since, as they themselves admit, unless they truly repent, they in no way obtain this divine benefit. There is an example in Augustine’s exposition²² of “God wills all men to be saved.” For he says that the distribution is accommodated: namely, that as many as are saved are saved through Christ; not that all are simply saved. And according to the other exposition, which we judged in book 1 to be most true, the example is perhaps more apt. For God so promised, desires and intends salvation for all that it does not stand with him that all should not obtain it; yet nothing prevents many from not being saved.

The third argument is that of the expositors of this error.²³ Although no good works of ours were necessary for our justification as cause or disposition, and divine motions—at least those which are depraved—were no obstacle to the grace of God, yet no one can have the certainty of catholic faith whether he persists in some iniquitous work or at least thought; therefore neither can anyone be certain of the divine grace existing in him. This is the argument from which this error with its offspring is chiefly drawn, if you, good reader, attend well. For Luther, as may be seen in article 14 of his assertions, acutely foresaw that the certainty of grace cannot be maintained unless he consequently taught that whatever our works are, nevertheless by faith alone we are certain that sins are not imputed to us. And therefore he says: “No one ought to answer the priest that he is contrite, nor ought the priest to require it.”²⁴ For Paul said that he knew nothing against himself, yet was not thereby justified; and David: “Who understands his offenses?” Therefore even if our works are sins, we ought not to scrutinize this, because through faith those sins will not be imputed. “For not he who commends himself is approved, but he whom God commends.” Thus he. Observe therefore, candid reader, that the assertors of the certainty of grace not only deny that justification depends on works as on dispositions, but also that it can be impeded by sin. Otherwise, since we are by no means certain—at least with the certainty of faith—what sort our works are, especially where we labor under some vincible ignorance, we could not be certain of our state. With you, therefore, Bucer,²⁵ I wish to enter into this conversation. This is your complaint about us in this concord on the certainty of grace: that we, as sophists and enemies of the reformation, impose on you that you teach men, however impurely and wickedly they live, that they ought nevertheless to establish that they are pleasing to God through Christ. But is this not so? Does not the argument we have just made so convince? Does not Luther in the cited place, and in On Christian Liberty and other places, as we cited in book 2, chapter 5, so affirm that whatever our works are, provided faith is fixed and firm, we are certain of our salvation? But do not you yourself in your commentary on Romans 2 expressly teach that since our works are all uncertain—nay, are of themselves nothing—no account is to be made of them? Otherwise how will you sustain the certainty of grace? Nay, in the same concord, explaining your certainty, you say that since no one in this age can always exclude all doubt concerning his salvation and the fatherly care God has for him, and this doubt is a vice and a sin, every Christian must certainly strive to confirm his confidence both by the faithful consideration of God’s promises and by continual prayer for the increase of faith. Hear yourself. You say not only that even with sin present we are certain of grace through faith, but that since no one can be free from the sin of doubt, man is nevertheless certain that that sin is covered by faith. And your companion Melanchthon says the same in the Augsburg Apology. How these things cohere, you may see: that a man cannot be without doubt whether he is in sin—nay, without manifest sin, since doubt itself is sin—and yet is certain that through faith sin is not imputed to him, although faith itself teaches that God hates sin and does not spare the offender—that is, the one who persists in sin. But for a greater explanation of this contradiction, let us form the fourth argument.²⁶ Let us suppose here a man who has long hesitated in some vice—for example, who has practiced hatred or kept a concubine, whose depravity repeatedly returns to his memory; or a man whom ambition or any other reprobate affection bends, so that it casts doubt on him whether he has torn those desires, which are usually most deeply fixed in his vitals, out of his heart by the roots, and whether he abstains from them for God’s sake, as is required for true repentance, or only for temporary respects. Those who bear such fearful consciences (as you call them)—nay, most rightly doubtful ones (as I think)—you admonish only this: that they strive to fortify themselves in faith against these fears and to assert, praying with the apostles, “Increase our faith,” and trusting that through all these things their sins are covered, with no respect had to works. For so you teach in the imperial book, article 5. But what is this, if not a contradiction and a most open repugnance of words? For how can faith make a man certain that he is in grace, unless it altogether removes doubt, which diametrically fights with certainty? But if so, certainty depends not only on the faith of the promise but also on our works and affections. Wherefore it is contradictory that, while doubt exists, faith makes us certain. Especially since you here add another falsehood: namely, that doubt itself is sin. Certainly the holy Fathers admonish us otherwise how to deal with troubled consciences—namely, not as if fighting with specters and repeating in the heart, “I believe and am confident,” but certainly that, with the occasions of evils cut off before all things, we insist in prayers to God that he bring us help, and nevertheless apply ourselves to studious exercises, by which, with fear diminished, certainty may grow in us, trusting that it does not stand with God that we should not be freed from all evil. For that faith which²⁷ the apostles asked to be increased in themselves by no means pertains to the confidence of conscience, but to the revelation of those mysteries which Christ announced to them. Of this our Redeemer himself immediately adds: “If you have faith like²⁸ a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be rooted up and transplanted into the sea,’ and it shall obey you.” Nay, here I call the reader as judge: these men tear the same Scriptures into contrary senses.²⁹ When Paul says, “If I have faith so as to remove mountains, but have not charity,” etc., lest they be compelled to confess that faith can exist without charity, they say that the faith of miracles is not the faith that justifies. But when afterward they contend that justifying faith makes a man certain of the friendship of God, they cite “Increase our faith,” in which place the discourse is manifestly about the same faith of miracles, which is truly catholic faith. See how the same faith which in one place they deny to be true, in another they concede not only justifies but produces this kind of certainty.

Here next follows the fifth argument³⁰ against their assertion: namely, that not only can a man, but everyone is altogether bound to believe that he is in grace. No one is bound to things that are natural. But that doubt and fear arise in a man about the state in which he stands before God is a natural thing, especially in those who have at some time lived wickedly, or suffer vehement incursions of the demon, the world, or the flesh; therefore such doubt is not sin. Nay, sometimes it arises from a man’s natural complexion. For there are those who have little blood, and who therefore, as in other things, so also in this matter are fearful. Add that we have often found by experience that men of approved life, the more care they take to purge their conscience, the more they are in fear or scruple, as Bernard says expressly in his sermon On the Four Modes of Praying, according to Gregory’s word: that they fear fault to be present where there is no fault. How then can such doubt be sin?

Nevertheless the sixth argument³¹ is one that gave Bucer great trouble at the last Diet of Ratisbon. For the Spanish interlocutor Maluenda, a learned and eloquent man, argued that if justifying faith makes a man certain of the justification he has obtained, then faith is lost by any mortal sin, and so lost that by whatever kind of sin a man becomes a heretic, denying the whole faith. For if faith remained with sin, it would deceive, certifying a sinner that he is in grace. But here Bucer was judged more liberal and generous than was right, since he conceded the consequence and the consequent, to which he was not compelled. For although any mortal fault would exclude the faith which they consider confidence, it would not nevertheless destroy all the assents of faith which a man has to sacred Scripture, by the denial or doubting of which he becomes a heretic. But certainly the argument at least proves that whoever sins mortally loses the whole true faith. For that historical faith (as they call it) is not true faith for them, since it can admit sin with itself. But if every mortal sin excludes true faith, then the argument strongly presses that by any mortal sin a man becomes a heretic. For who else, I ask, is a heretic but one who does not have true faith? And therefore they are compelled to say that one existing in sin does not believe the articles of faith with true infused faith, but with acquired faith, as we say of a heretic in some articles who believes others. But what the argument truly proves is that their faith—that special confidence—is not of the substance of faith, since its privation does not make a man a heretic.

But the argument could have been framed otherwise in the conference,³² and let this be the seventh. For we ask of them whether there can be mortal sins that proceed from ignorance—namely, whether a man can be so disposed that if he knew what he does to be a sin, he would never commit it, yet nevertheless sins from ignorance. They will by no means be able to deny us this postulate, so received is that division of sins from ignorance, from passion, and from malice. And Paul says³³ that he was worthy of mercy because he did it ignorantly. And Satan sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light.³⁴ And heretics, and some usurers, and very many sin in this way. Nay, ignorance is itself a sin, as in the heretic. Let us grant, therefore, a man with that certainty of grace which these men imagine, who commits some mortal sin from this kind of ignorance, deceived by the appearance of good. Nothing of his certainty has been worn away or diminished—but he believes as certainly that he is in grace as before, for he thinks he is performing obedience to God—and yet he is deceived. Therefore this—that a man is in grace—is not the infallible truth which we called above certainty on the part of the object; and therefore neither can the certainty of faith be had of it. For on the part of the subject the same certainty can remain when the thing is false. Who doubts that the Anabaptists adhere to their opinions with as firm an assent as the Sacramentarians, and that these believe as certainly that they are in grace as the other Lutherans, and they as we do? And nevertheless it is most evident that some are deceived, since they think differently. But Bucer’s³⁵ solution there was splendidly amusing: namely, that faith makes a man certain that he is in grace when it is had through the motion of the Holy Spirit. Who could ever doubt this, provided he was certain that that motion is made by the Holy Spirit? But when that motion is from the Holy Spirit—on this, we say, the certainty of catholic faith cannot be had. For although he sometimes gives testimonies³⁶ of himself where he dwells, it is nevertheless not evident, nor as certain as catholic faith, as will be said more fully below in dissolving the objections.

The eighth argument indeed³⁷ makes against that which they say: that the certainty of grace is only strengthened by faith, and in no way increased by works. For this dogma fights with common sense. For who is so mad as to deny that one who has passed his whole life innocently has greater tranquillity of conscience and security, and therefore greater certainty of grace, than one who, after living most wickedly, believes by a motion of faith and trusts that all his crimes and shameful deeds are forgiven him? And of two who recover from an unclean and wicked life, who of sound mind doubts that the one who has taken care to expiate his crimes by more fruits of penance becomes more certain of his salvation in that respect than the one who has only ceased from sins? They accuse and charge us with this iniquity: that we command fearful consciences to doubt. Yet they are the ones who flatter sinners with the vainest security, and indeed, however wicked their morals, they counsel them nothing else than to beware of sins thereafter. Because³⁸ Christ said nothing else than “Go, and sin no more.” But we, with the Church, are most certain that when anyone has first turned his mind away from iniquity, he obtains the grace of God.³⁹ Yet because it is not certain to anyone with the certainty of faith whether he has truly left a depraved heart, we counsel that one should so trust in the divine mercy that nevertheless by the exercise of good works he makes his calling certain, as Peter says,⁴⁰ and so becomes more certain day by day of his salvation. For⁴¹ Christ promised life only to those who keep the commandments; and “He who loves me,” he says,⁴² “will keep my word.” And Paul commands us to exhibit our members to serve justice, as we exhibited them⁴³ as weapons of iniquity to serve uncleanness. Nor is it only said in Ecclesiasticus: “Son,⁴⁴ you have sinned, do not add again,” but there is added: “but even for the former things pray that they may be forgiven you.” Therefore it is not enough to cease from sins to establish the certainty of our salvation, but certainty must be confirmed from works. Hence Paul to the Corinthians: “Our glory is this,⁴⁵ the testimony of our conscience.” Therefore we cannot have certainty unless our conscience is quiet. And for this reason I do not know with what face these men say that when conscience stings, we ought to oppose to it nothing else than the faith of Christ. For this is not what Paul means to the Corinthians, where he says:⁴⁶ “Try yourselves, brothers, whether you are in the faith”—namely, in living faith; for of dead faith we can have certainty. And to make an end at once, these men who hunt for the certainty of grace by faith alone seem to me to be those to whom John says: “Little children,⁴⁷ let us not love in word, nor with the tongue, but in deed and in truth.” For what is it to love in word but to say persistently, “I believe and am confident”? And he adds: “For in this” (namely, because we love in deed) “we know that we are of the truth, and in his sight” (namely, God’s) “we shall persuade our hearts.” And it follows: “For if our heart reprehends us, God is greater than our heart.” Thus Bucer⁴⁸ and the rest cunningly truncate this authority so as to twist it into a sinister sense: namely, that when conscience accuses, we ought to oppose to it nothing else than the faith of Christ, who is greater than our heart. But although for fearful men, otherwise upright and of timorous conscience—nay, for all—the meditation of God’s mercy is most healthful, yet in this place John’s sense is very different, as is clear from the words subjoined: “If our heart reprehends us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things”—that is, when the heart reprehends, it is to be feared that God, who knows all things better than our heart itself, will more justly reprehend us. Whence it immediately follows: “Most beloved, if our heart does not reprehend us, we have confidence toward God,” etc. Since therefore he said first, “if the heart reprehends,” and then, “if it does not reprehend,” a great argument is taken that our certainty is greatly confirmed by our conscience, which without doubt depends especially on works. Hence Chrysostom⁴⁹ in the first chapter of Matthew, Homily 5, says: “Let each of us place his hope in nothing else, after the mercy of God, than in holiness of morals.” And Bernard says the same in the sermon On the Four Modes of Praying, treating the miracle of the paralytic healed, who was commanded to take up his bed and walk: “For from this,” he says, “our confidence is increased, that we are sound, if, rising with desire for heavenly things and lifting our body from earthly pleasures, we take care that the soul rule the body and not be ruled by it, and thus by working we see that we profit.” But there is no need to pour out more words in a matter so universally received and so known by the voice of nature itself. For as each one judges of the holiness and merit of others’ morals before God, so also concerning himself he cannot have a more certain confidence in God than that which is begotten from the conscience of works. Yet I would note here that it is not so proper and exact a Christian way of speaking to distinguish two confidences:⁵⁰ the former of the remission of sins, which rests wholly on the one and only Lord Jesus Christ and his merits, and the latter of a good conscience—unless it is expounded in a sound and right way. For there is properly only one confidence, which rests principally on the merits of Christ, and then on our own works. To this sense: that we firmly believe that sins are freely forgiven us by God, without our merits; but because justice is not conferred on adults unless we cooperate, nor increased except through merits in us springing from the same merit of Christ, in this way the same confidence is increased from works. But nevertheless we must finally cast it all back upon the grace of Christ.

(The ninth argument,⁵¹ which I am accustomed to meditate on against these men, and against any Catholics whatsoever who assert as great a certainty of grace in a particular person as is that of faith, is taken from experience. For never hitherto could I persuade myself to believe that anyone—even among the Protestants themselves, the introducers of this opinion, unless he is most rude, or blinded by the obstinacy and perversity of his opinion—who does not understand how great the certainty of faith ought to be, is as certain that he is in grace as that God is three and one, or that Christ is God and man. So manifest is the difference: namely, that these are articles of faith about which it is in no way lawful to doubt, but death must be undergone in testimony to them; whereas this—that I or that man is in grace—is not in that degree of certainty. See how my mind recoils from the mind of the adversaries concerning this certainty of grace. For I think,⁵² according to my slender ability, that when there were no other argument, this alone—that it would follow that one is sometimes certain that he is in grace—would be a reason for denying that we are justified by faith alone. So great is the evidence that faith makes no one certain of his salvation. And yet the adversaries, by a perverse argumentation, reason especially from this: that otherwise no one would be certain of his justification—so evident do they hold it that everyone ought to be certain of his salvation.

But that we may add a last word concerning the second sense⁵³ of this kind of certainty noted at the beginning of the chapter: they affirm not only that each one can, but that he ought to be certain of his salvation according to the present state, but also that he can and ought to be certain of his perseverance up to the obtaining of glory. Hence Bucer,⁵⁴ in the concord on this article, reporting that word of Augustine in 11 of The City of God, chapter 12, where he says that the just are certain of the reward of their perseverance, yet are found uncertain of their perseverance itself, interprets it as speaking of the uncertainty and ignorance which is opposed to knowledge. What more is there to dispute against such an interpreter?

I ask you, Bucer, when in the first member⁵⁵ Augustine says that the just are certain of the reward of their perseverance, of what certainty, I ask, was he speaking? Of the certainty of knowledge? You will not be able to affirm this, because we do not have evident knowledge of that eternal reward, but faith. Therefore when he subjoins the negation—that we are uncertain of perseverance itself—he was speaking of the uncertainty contrary to faith, since there was no question of knowledge. But what need is there of Augustine’s testimony? Do you wish to say that by faith a man is most certain of his predestination? Where, I ask, did faith ever reveal to anyone his predestination, unless perhaps to someone by privilege? Paul,⁵⁶ where he discourses of those twin brothers, one of whom God loved and the other he hated, reckons the mystery of predestination so inaccessible that he admires from it the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. And yet our men wish that anyone can and ought to have his perseverance certain. But this argument is invincible to the contrary:⁵⁷ he to whom God would reveal his predestination (let us grant, for example, the most sacred Virgin, of whom it is not to be doubted that she had such a revelation)—he, I say, can have no fear, not even the least; nay, I believe such a one would count the whole world as nothing, but would be far happier and firmer than Paul when he said, “I live, now not I,”⁵⁸ or when he said, “Who shall separate me from the love of Christ?”⁵⁹ But if this is so, let these men answer, I pray, how many men they have known in such great tranquillity of mind and security of conscience. Therefore as this second member is concerned, that canon is excellently written in the Synod, session 6, canon 16:⁶⁰ “If anyone says that he will certainly have that great gift of perseverance to the end with absolute and infallible certainty, unless he has learned it from a special revelation: let him be anathema.” But the other condemnations of certainty we shall report in the following chapter.

These men bring forward many testimonies of Scripture for their side,⁶¹ but they are common also to other Catholics, who affirm the same certainty for another reason; to these we shall therefore answer a little later. But the place proper and most peculiar to the Lutherans is that one: “Therefore by faith, that according to grace the promise might be firm.”⁶² For they interpret this place to mean that we must therefore believe that we are justified by faith alone, so that each one may have firm faith of his own salvation. Learn all from one charge. The promise of salvation made by God through Christ is to be considered not in one way but in two.⁶³ First, concerning the promise in general, by which God promised to Abraham, and then through the prophets, to send his Son as universal redeemer to every believer, without distinction of Jew and Greek. In another way it is understood particularly of salvation to be conferred on anyone through him. Concerning the first, the Christians converted from Judaism thought wrongly: namely, that Christ had been promised to them because of the merit of keeping the law. Paul beats down their swelling and drives away their blindness, showing that neither was the promise made to Abraham because of any merits of the law, nor was Christ given to us as a reward of any works of the whole world; but as the promise was made freely and without any condition, so Christ came for this sole cause: to make the promise certain, with no respect at all to the works of the human race. And this is what the Apostle treats there. “For not through the law,” he says, “was the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that he should be heir of the world, but through the justice of faith.” And he adds: “Therefore by faith, that according to grace the promise might be firm to all the seed: not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham.” Here therefore he makes no mention of the certainty of anyone’s promise, but of the promise of the coming Christ and the remission of sins in general, which depended on no work of the law at all, as the Jews thought.

This promise is therefore considered in another way as the promised benefit is applied to individuals,⁶⁴ and according to this consideration, apart from little children who are justified before the use of reason, the promise depends on each one’s works. Since in this way the promise was not made to anyone absolutely, but under a condition: if we have repented, if we have heard his voice. For “he who hears, and has learned, comes to me.”⁶⁵ This has already been explained very fully above. And these things concerning the certainty of grace with the Lutherans.

We have said before that there are two different ways, by either of which all who defend the opinion of the certainty of grace enter. For since the knowledge of each thing arises from the knowledge of its causes, no one can have a firm assent to his own justice and grace before God unless he has an equal assent to the causes and to all actions which are in any way necessary for justification. And for that reason those who assert that anyone can have as much certainty of his justification as there is of the catholic faith are indeed mistaken, either because they think that justification in no way depends on anything else than on the catholic faith alone, whatever our works may be; or because, although they confess that it depends in some part on the quality of our works, they nevertheless think it possible that someone may believe with an assent as firm and as infallible that he has been disposed by the help of God and has not opposed an obstacle to him, as we Christians are certain that the promises of God are true and infallible. The first is the Lutheran error, which we refuted in the previous chapter, and perhaps we have already defeated it. The other is the opinion of certain other Catholics,¹ with whom we now enter into disputation. Against them this conclusion is established: Although a man in this life can have very great conjectures of his state in the sight of God (as we began to say in the preceding chapter, and will explain more fully a little later), nevertheless no one, apart from a special privilege of revelation, can attain as great a certainty of his legitimate action, by which he cooperates with God moving him, or of the legitimate reception of a sacrament, as to judge with an equal assent that he is in grace, [an assent] equal to that by which a Christian assents to the articles of faith. In confirming this conclusion, although it is not hidden from me that most worthy, most solid, and most powerful arguments are to be drawn from the divine fountain of the Scriptures, I will nevertheless begin with the reasons by which the sense of the Scriptures is chiefly opened. And the first reason,² which fights against this second way of maintaining the certainty of grace, is the very confession of the Lutherans. For their most frequent and most powerful argument, by which they assert that we are justified by faith alone, is that otherwise no one can be certain that he has received the benefit of remission promised through Christ. For thus they understand that saying: Therefore by faith, that the promise might be firm.³ They confess, therefore, as an evident thing, that if justification depends in any way on works, there can in no way be certainty of grace, such as is [the certainty] of the catholic faith, because neither can such knowledge of the condition of our works before God be had. And therefore no middle course can be devised for asserting the certainty of grace which does not fall back into the opinion of the Lutherans. But these Catholics, against whom we dispute, contended for the contrary.

The second argument⁴ is that which St Thomas makes in 1.2 q. 112 art. 5, where he properly disputes this question. To it the following conclusion is answered. Suppose that such certainty can be had by privilege, but not by common law, although a man can have the greatest conjectures of this matter. And he proves the second part, which we establish here, by this reasoning. Certainty cannot be had of anything unless it can be judged by its proper principle. But the principle and object of grace is God himself, who is unknown to us; therefore we cannot know with certainty when we have his grace; he understands that God is the principle, through his gratuitous will accepting us to glory, which is not made known to us except through our works, which are sometimes fallacious. But there are not lacking those who interpret this passage and reasoning of St Thomas as speaking only of knowledge, namely that no one can know that he has grace. For the title of the question is proposed under the same terms, and in the course of answering he interposes the example of knowledge which proceeds from first indemonstrable principles. And perhaps this response, if rightly understood, does not stray from the mind of St Thomas. But nevertheless our conclusion is thereby proved no less. For St Thomas omitted as manifest in itself the conclusion concerning the certainty of faith. For he had never suspected that anyone could think that the revelation of the catholic faith extends to the particular and proper state of this or that man. But neither did he doubt concerning the evidentness of knowledge. For nothing is more evident than that the grace of God cannot be known evidently. And therefore he asked only about the certainty of knowledge, that is, of cognition in general: whether one could judge as certainly that he is in grace as the certainty of knowledge is. When he determines the negative part, he not only concludes that there can be no evidentness (for the question was not about this), but that there can be no certainty to which falsehood cannot underlie; whence it follows by greater reason that the certainty of the catholic faith cannot be had, which is greater than the certainty of knowledge. And that this was the sense of St Thomas is made clear from the fact that he defines that there can be had precisely that certainty of the friendship of God which one can hunt out from indications and conjectures.

The third argument⁵ is that which we have already formed above, not in one place only. A habit does not generate assent except concerning its own proper object (which is a most celebrated axiom of all philosophers, and likewise of theologians); but the object proposed to faith is not other than God and those things which pertain to our hope, already revealed in sacred Scripture or derived and expressed from it by the authority of the Church; therefore the assent of faith concerns only those things. But Scripture nowhere promises remission except in general: He who believes and is baptized. And, If the impious turns himself, etc. But in particular it nowhere asserts by common law that this or that singular person has been sufficiently prepared by God, and has not opposed an obstacle to his mercy; therefore no one can by the catholic faith have such an assent about himself that he has been received into the grace of God, apart from those who by privilege have had such a revelation about themselves. As many Fathers note concerning Abraham in that word of Genesis, Now I have known, that is, I have made you to know, that you fear God; and concerning Paul, My grace is sufficient for you.⁶ Indeed those who acknowledge that our cooperation is necessary for justification, I do not know by what color they can repel the force of this argument.⁷ For to say that the infused habit of the catholic faith extends and goes out beyond the lines of its own proper object is to deny the very nature of faith. For most properly St Thomas, at the very beginning of 2.2,⁸ explains the nature of the habit of faith: namely, that God infuses it in us wholly in order to incline and move us to assent precisely to those things which he has revealed to us as pertaining to beatitude. For faith is the substance of things to be hoped for. And I believe this to such an extent that if God should reveal to someone in a peculiar way another truth of another kind (for example, a future victory), that assent would not pertain to the catholic faith, although it would have equal certainty. Nay, if their own salvation were revealed to certain persons, such a revelation would not be made through the assent of the catholic faith, which is common to all, but through another peculiar [assent]. And the confirmation of this argument is that one who does not now by common law certainly believe that he is in grace is in no way judged a heretic.

Now in the fourth place it is argued⁹ that for this or that person to obtain the benefit of both grace and glory is an effect of predestination; for glory is its highest end, and grace is the means ordained of itself to glory, even in those who will not persevere. But the effect of predestination is not known in particular to individual persons by faith, but only in general: namely, that to one who does what we are commanded by faith, salvation will come through the grace of Christ; therefore no one by faith alone is certain of grace and of his salvation.

The fifth and principal argument¹⁰ is taken from that distinction of the preceding chapter, where we distinguished between certainty on the part of the object and that which is on the part of the subject. And the argument is as follows. The certainty of the catholic faith is discerned not only on the part of the subject but also on the part of the object. For it is an assent not only so firm that there is no fear in it, but so infallible that falsehood cannot underlie it. But no one by common law can have such an assent that he has done what he ought to obtain grace, without being able to be deceived; at least such deception does not conflict with the nature of such an assent; therefore such an assent cannot be of the catholic faith.

And from this a sixth argument¹¹ is drawn: that such an assent can neither equal the catholic faith in certainty, nor merit any other name than that of human faith, that is, of a most intense opinion. For there is no middle between human and divine faith. For divine faith (if we speak of that most certain faith of which we dispute here) is a revelation to which we are bound to give assent. For there can also be a certain attestation of the Holy Spirit through certain indications, of which there will be speech in the final chapter. But apart from divine revelation there remains only that faith which relies on probable natural testimonies, to which indeed falsehood in the object is not repugnant. For this reason the natural philosophers¹² recognized no habit below knowledge so certain to which falsehood could not underlie. Wherefore they established no habit of faith midway between knowledge and opinion, as we disputed in chapter 11 on the first book of the Posterior Analytics. Nor does Aristotle¹³ number the habit of faith among the six intellectual virtues, because human faith, however much certainty it may possess, can be false. Let us therefore come down to the matter. If the assent by which each person judges that he is in grace is not elicited from the catholic faith, nor infused by a special privilege of revelation, it cannot be so certain as to drive away all doubt, because falsehood will not be repugnant to such an assent. And the force of the argument is further explained. Apart from divine revelation, which a man is bound to believe, no one can be persuaded with a firmer and more certain assent that he is in grace than I now have that I am at Constantinople, which indeed is a faith so certain and firm to me that it is not in my power not to believe it, or than I know that there is in Spain the city of Segovia, in which I was born; and yet falsehood can underlie such faith, because nothing prevents me from having falsely believed that there was a city which I have not seen, or that there now exists one which I once saw. But I was further refuting¹⁴ those who affirmed that nothing prevents anyone from having an assent as fixed and firm that he has not opposed an obstacle to grace as there is concerning the articles of faith, by an argument which is here the seventh. Namely, that such a man would be either frivolous or a heretic. For if he judged that there is no means as efficacious for persuading him that he is in grace as the revelation of faith, and nevertheless adhered to this with as much firmness and certainty as to an article of faith, he would be frivolous and rash, as one who gave equal faith to a disparate and lesser argument and to the revelation of God. But if he judged that some other argument, or conjecture, or authority was of as much weight for persuading him this as the authority of God revealing the catholic faith, he would plainly be a heretic.

The eighth and final argument,¹⁵ by which both the foregoing may become clear and we may open the way to dissolving the arguments that are objected against us, is as follows. In order that a man may pass a certain judgment about himself that he is reconciled to God, he must have his own heart thoroughly examined and explored, [to see] whether anything lies hidden there which stands in the way of divine friendship; but this he cannot altogether infallibly perceive; therefore neither can he certainly pass sentence that he is a friend of God. The second proposition is manifest from the fact that although there can be very many judgments of this matter, nevertheless none is so evident that it is not also common to those existing in mortal sin. For the chief testimonies of all are two. The first is to offer one's life for Christ.¹⁶ For no one has greater love than this, that a man lay down his soul for his friends; and yet a heretic will give his life in obedience to (as he thinks) Christ with as firm and as lofty a mind as a legitimate Christian. The second testimony is to have absolutely no consciousness of mortal sin; and yet neither does this produce as great faith as the catholic [faith], both because, as Paul says, I am conscious of nothing, but not even in this am I justified;¹⁷ and also because a man can be without consciousness of mortal sin, and even without consciousness of venial sin, at least for a short time; and yet he cannot then certainly affirm that he has no sin, lest according to John's sentence he deceive himself.¹⁸ And by this one must answer another argument which the defenders of the certainty of grace thought great.¹⁹ Among men it is clear to a servant when he legitimately does the master's commands; therefore a man can also know when he justly obeys God. Otherwise he would have laid down dangerous commands, if it could never be certain to us when we execute them justly, as he himself commands. It is answered, I say, that there is a difference between the obedience rendered to men and that which is owed to God. For all the obedience owed to men is concerned with external work. But to God it is necessary to serve also with the inmost heart; and the nature of the heart is such that it lies open to God alone, and is inscrutable to us. And therefore it is by nature itself that it cannot be certain to a man when he has the grace of God, which by his gratuitous will he bestows on us through our internal actions. But these answers pertain to the final chapter, where the objections are to be solved.