De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

From those six articles which were proposed in ch. 7 on original sin, we have so far treated four. Namely how it passes into the whole human race, what its cause is, what it is, and in what way it is transmitted when the origin has been vitiated. There follows therefore in the fifth place that we discuss its effects, or defects. Concerning these there was no need for a longer discourse: indeed because they have almost already been expounded: but the same Lutherans are the ones who give us no little trouble in this part. For they say that until their own time the doctors¹ who taught the graver defects of original guilt were ignorant of the gravity of this kind of sin. But they teach that original sin is not only the guilt by which we are guilty of the wrath of God and of eternal death, but the very corruption of human nature. Its effects or defects are ignorance of God, contempt of God, to be free from fear and trust of God, to hate the judgment of God, to flee God as judge, to be angry with God, to despair of grace, to have confidence in present things. These diseases, they say, the scholastics do not notice. Their words are in the apology of the Augsburg confession, and in the colloquy of Worms. But if these people were not such enemies of scholastic theology, perhaps they would have looked more closely at the nature of things. For the effects of original sin² are entirely those which follow from it by the nature of things according to divine law, with no new act of will intervening. Further, those which are common to all as punishment for original guilt, both to little children before the use of reason and to adults. Otherwise all human sins would be called effects of original sin, which would surely be an abuse of speech. Unless one understood it of remote effects (as they say) in the sense that through concupiscence, with original justice lost, the will is enticed into consent.

But they say³ that by those names of actions they signify not only acts, but the power to such wicked actions: or the lack and privation of the contrary virtues, of which we were despoiled through the sin of Adam. They devised this response after they were forced to acknowledge that those things are not in infants, and that they are more truly actual sins than punishments of original sin. But they do not extricate themselves sufficiently. First⁴ because he who hears of contempt of God, hatred of the judgment of God, and the like, understands nothing at all except the very crimes and impieties which are actual sins that have been committed: if these are effects of the original contagion, it follows that they are also imputed to children before the use of reason. Than which nothing more absurd can be said. And besides, why do they mention these few things, as they chanced to come to the tongue, rather than all the remaining crimes, outrages, and wicked deeds which Paul lists in Galatians?⁵ Since the enticement, impulse, and origin of all is in the concupiscence of the flesh. Moreover. If they interpret those effects as being universally common to all the sons of Adam, even the just, with guilt released in baptism, this is plainly false. For there are many who do not commit so many evils. Indeed nothing prevents there being some who are free from every capital crime.

But if they understand that those things are effects of original⁶ guilt only when it has not been forgiven, as they seem to hold in the colloquy of Ratisbon, in these words: Concupiscence cannot fail to break forth into every kind of sin in the unregenerate, in whom the devil is effective; not even that is entirely true. For there were many Gentiles among the Greeks and Romans to whom perhaps original guilt was not forgiven, who nevertheless, taught by the law of nature, abstained from more vices than many Christians: as Augustine sometimes reports, among others, and sets before us even as examples. Moreover, what new kind of speech is it to reckon among the defects of original sin to be free from fear and trust of God, to be angry with God, to despair of grace, and other things of this sort? Evidently we experience many just people who are nevertheless fearful, and who fear their own consciences, and even dread the judgment of God. And on the contrary many wicked men, not only not despairing, but not even fearing. Indeed unbelievers who are in original sin neither despair of eternal happiness, nor are angry with God, nor flee his judgment. But concerning these things more broadly in the chapter on the certainty of grace, book 3. For that is what these men seem to be in labor with by these words.⁷

Therefore, to come to the matter: among the effects or defects of original sin, namely those which by divine law have followed by natural consequence as punishment for sin, the first was the privation of divine grace and the disinheriting of heavenly goods. Which is common to all deadly sins. The second, the privation of that most excellent knowledge of God, and the despoiling of original justice, that is, the rectitude of the lower parts of the soul to reason, and of the body to the soul. For the privation of the rectitude of reason to God and to the divine rule was not an effect (as we said) but the sin itself, which in its own way persists in us. The third effect of that sin, and our defect and wounding, is the unbridling of concupiscence, which, once banished from reason and from divine law, is borne by impulse (which is its nature) toward sensible things. Not that there is that diseased quality in the soul which we refuted above as a fiction, or some quality really distinct in the body. But it is called a habit in the way Aristotle calls a disease, which is the dissolution of the proportion of humors, a quality and habit.⁸ Here, however, it is rightly doubted what the sense is of that saying, celebrated among theologians, that man by that sin was both despoiled of gratuitous gifts and wounded in his natural endowments. For it is the opinion of the venerable Bede, on that passage of Luke about the man in the parable,⁹ who falling among robbers was despoiled by them, and after wounds were inflicted was left half-dead. Whether we lost some natural principle by which we are less free than man created in pure nature. For if that is not so, it is surely not easy to understand how man was wounded in his natural endowments. Nevertheless the answer of the theologians is unanimously negative. 2. senten. d. 30. and St Thomas. 1. 2. q. 81. For the authority is Dionysius, 4. ca. de divi. no., that natural goods even in demons remained whole after sin, much less therefore was some principle in us worn away. And its reason is easily drawn from the above. Because God, who had clothed our nature with a supernatural gift, did not afflict it, when sinful, with a greater punishment than to leave it stripped. Both because of his kindness, and because we contributed nothing by our will. Wherefore man in pure nature differs from fallen man in this part (apart from the reckoning of guilt) in no other way than an unclothed man who was never clothed differs from a man stripped of the clothes he had worn. For both are equally naked. Except that nakedness in the first would have been no punishment, but the natural negation of adornment: in the second, however, it is a privation because of guilt.

But is the good of nature in some way diminished, so that we are less inclined to good and more prone to evil than we would be in pure nature?¹⁰ For St Thomas seems to assert this in the place just cited, saying that the natural inclination to virtue is diminished by sin.¹¹ For since acts,¹² according to Aristotle, engender similar habits, it cannot be that in one who has given himself over to vices the inclination to good is not diminished and the inclination to evil increased. The answer is that this truth, which is agreed by all, teaches only that in Adam himself through his sins, just as in us through our actual sins, the good of nature is weakened because of corrupted habits. But original sin engenders no habit: nor (apart from the fact that it is guilt) does it otherwise enervate or injure nature than if man were born in pure nature. But why nature is said to be wounded¹³ from that foundation stated in ch. 3 and so often resumed by us is made clear. For since the rational nature of man is to act according to reason, from which it is restrained by sensuality, that gift of justice containing sensuality perfected man in his natural endowments. Since indeed it prevented that work of reason, natural to man, from being impeded. And for that reason the privation of that supernatural gift was a blow and wound in the natural endowments, insofar as man was thereby left maimed and open to the incursions of the devil, the world, and the flesh: so that he cannot perpetually act according to his nature. As if it were the nature of man to walk in a straight line, and he nevertheless had a dog tied to him pulling him in another direction, whoever restrained the dog by some remedy would perfect the man in his natural endowments, and whoever took away the remedy would in like manner injure him. And thus is to be understood the first canon of our holy synod, session 5,¹⁴ where concerning the effects of original sin it is decreed that on account of it we have incurred captivity under the power of the devil, and that the whole Adam, and thus we, have been changed for the worse according to body and soul. Whence it happens that man with original sin alone, setting aside the habits of actual sins, is not borne more intensely toward sensible things than if he were in pure nature. And therefore they differ only as a weight falling from on high, first impeded and afterwards, when the impediment is removed. Which indeed falls with equal force before it is held back and after the obstacle is removed. This must be fixed most deeply in the mind in order to understand the difference between our free will endowed with original justice and the same free will deprived of it.¹⁵ For since freedom consists of two parts, namely to be able to do what you will, through sin we lost the possibility (as Augustine says in book 3 of the Hypognosticon) of doing whatever we will, not absolutely, but in those things which pertain to God. Namely, that we cannot merit the grace of God by ourselves. And this, he says, is the wound by which we limp in free will. Which cannot be healed without the wound of Christ. So Augustine. Nevertheless the possibility for natural things remained: and besides this, freedom in supernatural things to either side, namely that whenever we wish to cooperate with God, he is at hand to help us. But if we do not wish, he himself compels no one by force, but freely according to our nature, as is to be explained more fully in the fifteenth chapter now on free will.

Concupiscence is called by many names.— But this concupiscence, deprived of original justice, is called by many names. For it is called the tinder of sin: either because it is the effect of sin: or (which the name signifies) because it is the fuel and nourishment of vices, which we admit by the consent of the will enticed from it. It is also called the law of the flesh, and a tyrant: since it follows no other norm than the pleasure of the flesh: and therefore like a tyrant it drives us from the citadel and summit of reason. Hence deservedly by the holy Fathers it is reckoned a disease, a wound, and finally an evil of nature.

The remaining effects¹⁶ pertain to the body, namely death, which God threatened as punishment for sin, and diseases: which are plainly the beginning of death. For it was fully completed:¹⁷ In whatever hour you eat, you shall die the death. For from that moment of time nature began to dissolve and go into death. Which also happens to us from the very moment of conception. Since to live is nothing else than to consume the time of life. And so all these evils, which would have been innate to us with nature even if no sin had preceded, are now the punishment of sin, because of the divine benefit, removed by sin, by which we were preserved from all of them. Moreover other external evils, which arise for us either from wild animals, or from the inclemency of the sky, or from the elements, or happen to us from our ignorance, or from thoughtlessness and folly, are vengeances of that sin. For in that most happy state divine providence would have protected us from all. But enough of these, which are indeed commonplace. However concerning that effect of diminished freedom we must hold a broader discourse, if only a very brief word about the punishment of this kind of sin has been interposed.