De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

But it is not enough to have established this truth of free will on its own foundations, unless the passages of sacred Scripture and the apparent reasons which seem to make against it are also untied. And first of all that one which the Lutherans think so fights against itself:¹ Without me you can do nothing,² and that which Augustine says, that free will by itself can do evil, but for good little, unless divinely aided — these are of no weight at all. For by the same fallacious argumentation they would conclude that neither the sun illuminates nor fire heats, because not even a leaf of a tree falls without the nod and will of God. Therefore as it does not follow, "Without the general concurrence of God the sun does not illuminate: therefore it does not itself illuminate naturally," so neither does it follow, "Without God peculiarly preventing, the will of man is not moved to a work of true virtue: therefore the will itself is not moved freely." For God is the cause of secondary causes universally, in such a way that each accomplishes its own works according to its own nature: namely, natural things naturally, and free things freely. Although in the works of grace a more special help is necessary. In the same way is dissolved the argument which the same men everywhere use as their Achilles.³ If God moves us to either good or evil, it would be in our power not to be moved: the motion of God would not be efficacious, and therefore he would not be omnipotent: contrary to that, Whatever the Lord willed, he did, in heaven and on earth.⁴ By this argument they persuade themselves that whenever God moves us, he imposes necessity on us. Yet their inference has no force. For that God moves us freely fights against nothing in his omnipotence and efficacy. Nay, from this his infinite power and wisdom are most abundantly clear, that he has instituted some causes to move naturally, and others freely: and that he concurs with each in its own manner. Wherefore whatever God wills with absolute will, which is called the will of his good pleasure, comes to pass: according to that, Who resists his will?⁵ But when he concurs with free man, he does not will that it be done unless human nature and free will be preserved: which therefore can resist God, as is read of Pharaoh, and of Jannes and Mambres.⁶ So also these resist the truth.⁷ And: You always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did.⁸ But it remains to explain something further.⁹ For either we are free in actions of this kind before the moment of time in which God moves us, or at the presence of the divine motion: not before, because without him moving we cannot be moved; nor when he himself actually moves us, because it cannot happen that he moves us without our being moved together. For to move and to be moved, as action and passion, are correlatives.¹⁰ To dissolve this argument, the definition of liberty must be supposed. For that cause is free which, all things required for acting being posited, can both act and not act. The contrary account is that of a natural cause. There are therefore among the scholastics those who teach that, the concurrence of God being posited, both things are not in the power of the will, namely to act and not to act. And therefore secondly they say that a concurrence of this kind is not counted among the things required for acting. Nay, they say (to use their own word) that it accompanies the action itself. But of these two things I have either never understood either, or will never believe either. For there is no doubt that the concurrence of God, although it accompanies (as they say) the action, is nevertheless required for acting by every secondary cause: nay, even by nature it is prerequired. Since not only is God the cause of the effect of the secondary cause, but he himself also moves it to act. But although that concurrence is prerequired, nevertheless, it being posited, it is then also in the faculty of the will to act and to cease. Otherwise no number of requisites will be given, which being posited, the will can act and not act, and therefore it will not be free. For before the divine concurrence it cannot act: and when that is present, as these men say, it cannot not act. The solution of the doubt therefore is¹¹ that in that moment of time in which God concurs with me, I am free so as then to refuse to act. For while I am moved freely, I can in the divided sense not act: and then the concurrence of God will cease. Although in the composite sense they fight against each other: that God acts toward me with that action, and that I do not act. Nor does Aristotle mean anything else when he says that what is, when it is, is necessary to be, than that it is already then determinately true. But that this physical argument, necessary nevertheless in this place, may be completely untied:¹² is God able either to compel the will of man or to move it by necessity? The answer is easy. For to compel the will involves a contradiction. For to compel something is to move it against its own inclination. And therefore a man can indeed be compelled, when he is moved against his own will (which is man's own inclination), whether to understand, or to feel, or to walk, and the like. Yet the will is not compelled. For since its inclination is the same as its own act, from whatever source and in whatever way it has its willing or nilling, it is its own inclination, and therefore it is repugnant for it to have such acts against its inclination. Yet nothing prevents the will from being necessitated by God, who is the author of nature; but then he would take away its liberty in such an action, by moving it like a brute beast. Which nevertheless he never does by the common law. The authorities of Scripture, therefore, by which it is asserted that God acts with us, without whose nod we can do nothing, do not prevent our actions from being free.

Three orders of authorities.— But there are others of far greater energy, namely those by which God alone is proclaimed the author of our salvation. Of these I contemplate three orders. In the first are those by which God is so affirmed to act toward us that we deny that we cooperate at the same time. As: It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.¹³ And: How often would I have gathered thy children, and thou wouldst not.¹⁴ In the second order are those by which, although our cooperation is not expressly excluded, God alone is introduced as author. As in Ezekiel: I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a new heart.¹⁵ To which David responds: Create a clean heart in me, O God, and renew a right spirit in my inward parts.¹⁶ And: Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall declare thy praise: as if God alone were the cause of our conversion. Whence: Thy destruction, O Israel: only in me is thy help.¹⁷ And Paul: We are his workmanship in Christ Jesus in good works, which God has prepared, that we may walk in them.¹⁸ And elsewhere: It is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish.¹⁹ Nor is the matter sufficiently dispatched if someone says that we concur together with God. For we are the clay,²⁰ but God is our fashioner. Nor is this to be understood only as to the part in which he created us that we might exist: but as to the part in which he justified us that we might be just. Wherefore Paul pursues the same analogy of the clay and the potter.²¹ But the clay has itself merely receptively, as matter, cooperating nothing to its own formation. For which reason the clay cannot say to the potter: Why dost thou fashion me into such a form? But the third order is of passages in which the very name of the benefit conferred plainly explains that we cooperate nothing in its production. As is that: The Lord will give grace and glory.²² Since grace and the virtues by which we are justified are gifts of God. Whence Paul: For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should glory.²³ And: What hast thou that thou hast not received?²⁴ But if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it? Very numerous are testimonies of this kind, by which glory is forbidden to us for our works, because not we ourselves, as the Pelagians blasphemed, but God justifies us. Concerning which matter our discourse will be more ample in book 2. But as far as pertains to the matter at present, reason besides fights against us most openly. For those things which are supernatural are created by God alone without our work: for, as Isaiah is the author, Who has helped the Spirit of the Lord? or who has been his counsellor?²⁵ But grace and the infused virtues are above nature: therefore, as he created the world, so he creates gifts of this kind in us by himself alone. For which reason the theologians define infused virtue (as they gather from Augustine, 2 On Free Will) that it is a good quality of the mind which God works in us without us.²⁶ And therefore with respect to justifying grace, and the divine virtues which accompany it, we are merely, as it were, a receptive subject. Behold whence this question concerning grace and free will is most difficult. Namely, that these and other testimonies of Scripture seem so to extol the grace of God that free will in no way concurs to our justification. But there are nevertheless very many by which free will is designated to cooperate with grace, nay rather to precede it: as that, Come to me all you who labor and are burdened.²⁷ And especially that of Zach. 1: Be converted to me, and I will be converted to you.²⁸ On which passage chiefly the Pelagians founded their blasphemy: namely, that the beginning of our salvation is from us. Whence Augustine, tractate 53 on John,²⁹ says: Some, he says, excessive confidence in their own will lifted up into pride, and some excessive distrust of their own will cast down into negligence. Those say: Why do we ask God that we be not overcome in temptation, since it is in our power? These say: Why do we strive to live well, since it is in the power of God? Therefore, that these things may become clear in manifest light, according to the three designated orders, there are three kinds of divine works in our justification.³⁰ For first there are works which are so proper to God that our will has no part in them: namely, neither consent nor cooperation. As are predestination, vocation, admonition, knocking at the door, and sometimes inspiration and illumination. Wherefore these are so attributed to God in Scripture that they are in no way required of us. These therefore so precede our justification that sometimes they even precede our consent in time. Such is that: It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.³¹ For we are admonished there that the first and most high cause of our justification is eternal predestination. Because when Jacob and Esau were not yet born, God loved the one and hated the other. Nay, sometimes no consent of ours follows such an impulse of God. Their hardness our Lord Christ reproaches when he says: How often would I have gathered thy children as a hen, and thou wouldst not.³² For a hen does not compel, but entices by calling. And: Woe to thee, Corozain, because if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would long ago have repented sitting in sackcloth and ashes.³³ And often elsewhere. But that God sometimes illuminates, inspires and touches our hearts without our will is clear from the likeness of temptation to evil. For it is not in our will, as Augustine says, that we be not touched by things seen. Which motions the theologians call natural, and in their idiom, first-first.³⁴ Ambrose also acknowledged them on that Psalm:³⁵ Turn away my eyes, lest they see vanity. Whence Augustine at the end of the third book On Free Will says: What each one either takes or rejects is in his power: but by what seen thing he is touched, there is no power. It must be confessed, he says, that the mind is touched both by things seen above and below, so that the rational substance takes from both what it wills: and from the merit of taking, either misery or beatitude follows.³⁶ This is Augustine. In influences of this kind, therefore, man has himself merely receptively, as the air while it is illuminated by the sun, although unless we foster these impulses in the mind, they swiftly slip away. And by this reason the authorities of the first order are to be understood. But if someone here perhaps asks how it is intelligible that inspiration is made in us, illumination, knocking, or internal vocation without our cooperation. For illumination denotes an act of the intellect: and the rest, a motion of the heart: namely, of the mind or will. Nor could I indeed ever devise the contrary. Predestination, I say, is eternal without any action of the creature. And external vocation also through a preacher, nothing prevents it from being made without the internal motion of the hearer. But that God illuminates someone is plainly nothing else than to stir up the mind to some good thought: and to inspire is to suggest a good motion to the will. Which therefore are also works of the powers. And the same reason is for the rest. But what we say is only that they are made without our free assent and concurrence. Since they are sudden motions passing before us by way of a flash, like natural ones: unless they be fostered by judgment and free will. There are therefore other works of the second kind,³⁷ which God so exercises in us, if nevertheless we give our assent. Such are all those which designate some free motion of our mind. These therefore are not made by God before in time than freely by us, but at once by him and by us. By him, nevertheless, prior by nature. As to draw us to himself, to open our heart, and that very thing which is to convert us. Wherefore God so promises these works to us in Scripture, and we implore them from him by sedulous prayers, that he in turn requires them also from us. For it is in the Gospel: No one can come to me unless³⁸ my Father draw him. And in the Canticles: Draw me after thee.³⁹ And nevertheless God admonishes us in turn to come to him. As is that: Come to me all you who labor and are burdened. And: If anyone wishes to come after me.⁴⁰ And the like. David also prays, saying: Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord. And yet in another Psalm God says: Open thy mouth, and I will fill it.⁴¹ But when we cry, O God of hosts, convert us, he cries back: Be converted⁴² to me with your whole heart. And: Be converted⁴³ to me, and I will be converted to you. But lest this order beginning from us deceive anyone, as it deceived the Pelagians, this rule must be meditated here⁴⁴ and stored in memory: that wherever God admonishes us to come, to be converted, to open, etc., he signifies the readiness of his mercy, by which he is most present to us, knocking at the door. And therefore that he says "be converted" before he says "I will be converted" does not signify that the beginning is from us: but that it stands through us that he does not draw us and open our hearts. For which reason Jeremiah says: If thou wilt be converted, I will convert thee.⁴⁵ But when we ask similar things from him, we set forth our poverty, weakness and impossibility: namely, that unless he himself prevents us, we can do nothing by ourselves. And therefore the same prophet adds in inverted order, ch. 31: Convert me, O Lord, and I shall be converted. And: Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted.⁴⁶ Whence Augustine prays: Lord, give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.⁴⁷ Most knowingly therefore, as was divinely given, the holy Synod of Trent,⁴⁸ sess. 6 ch. 9, says in the cited place that when it is said in the sacred letters, Be converted to me, and I will be converted to you, we are admonished of our liberty. But when we answer, Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted, we confess that the grace of God prevents us.⁴⁹ And hence a clear answer is elicited to the authorities gathered in the second place. For all of them testify that God is the cause of our conversion and salvation by moving us first, in such a way that nevertheless, unless we assent, nothing will be done. But what is inserted among the rest concerning the likeness of the clay and the potter, Paul refers to eternal predestination, of which we were no cause, nor gave consent. Nevertheless he predestined to convert no adult man except one willing and assenting.⁵⁰

But there are works of the third degree, which although they are gifts of God alone, are nevertheless not infused except in him who has been disposed by his help through the proper motion of free will. Such are the graces and virtues which are marked on us by way of habit.⁵¹ Our discourse here is never concerning little children, washed by baptism without their own will. But this is the target at which those men strike who wish it thence to be inferred that faith and grace, by which we are justified, are received in us without any assent or cooperation of ours at all. Further, from this, that grace and faith are made by God alone. But the fallacy lies hidden, that although it is as is assumed, they are nevertheless not infused into an adult except one divinely disposed through the motion of free will. But if that motion is sufficient contrition, grace follows at the same time by the necessity of the divine law. And therefore no one receives it unwillingly, but willingly then, and in the same sense not merely passively, but consenting. And in like manner when the first grace is conferred through the sacrament on one who is attrite, it is given to him to receive it freely. And by these things an answer has been given to the authorities of the third order.⁵² For we concede that God produces grace in us while we do nothing toward its production, but nevertheless while we freely assent and cooperate with its reception.

By this three-membered partition of works an answer can be given to one who asks whether God confers equal special helps on all, or greater on some and smaller on others: nay, greater on those who are either not moved at all, or are less advanced. For if the question is about those of the first order, namely concerning inspirations and splendors of truth which God works in us without us freely assenting, suddenly: undoubtedly God confers greater aids on one than on others according to his mercy. For he is present knocking at the hearts of all: yet unequally. Nay, very often those who receive more abundant gifts of this kind either profit in no way or more slowly than those who receive poorer ones, because the greater hardness of an obstinate breast presses down their liberty. This is evident in those calls, whether scourges or afflictions, and the like, by which God recalls us outwardly into the way. For of two who hear the same counsels and exhortations, one, struck in mind, returns to the way, but the other not at all. As is to be seen in Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar: of whom the first, admonished by greater portents, grew hard: but the other repented at lesser scourges. Concerning which there will be discourse in ch. 18. To this pertains what Christ says to Bethsaida and Corozain: If the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would long ago have done penance in sackcloth and ashes. And to the scribes and Pharisees: The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, because they did penance at the preaching of Jonah:⁵³ and behold, a greater than Jonah is here.⁵⁴ But if the question is proposed concerning the helps of the second order, which denote a free motion in us — as to draw, to convert, to move forward, and the like — God indeed bestows unequal ones on different men, but nevertheless by how much they are more abundant in someone, by so much also is he moved better and more. Truly nothing else is intelligible. Since to move and to be moved are relatives. Nor is it anything else for me to be moved by God in this manner than for him to concur with me to elicit a free act. And therefore as in natural things, by how much faster God moves the first orb than the lowest, by so much faster is the orb itself moved: so also in special help, by how much more vehemently God moved the Magdalene and Paul than other lukewarm and remiss men, by so much more intensely and ardently did they themselves come, and were justified with greater and more abundant grace. Nor do they cohere, that God moves more the one who is moved less. But concerning the graces freely given, which are dispensed not always for the good of the receiver, but for the common good of the Church, the reason is different. For they are given to whom and in what manner God in his wisdom judges expedient. An answer has therefore been given to the sacred utterances, by which it could seem to someone that God so works salvation in us that it is done without our free will.

But besides these testimonies there remain two arguments to be dissolved. The first is taken from that distinction according to Augustine in the book On Grace and Free Will ch. 17, most celebrated among theologians, between operating and cooperating grace. For Augustine says that what God begins by operating, he perfects by cooperating. And a little below: That we may will, he works without us: but when we will, and so will that we may do, he cooperates with us. From which distinction it is plainly clear that God, without our cooperating, begins the benefit of our salvation by himself alone. To this argument,⁵⁵ which is placed in the matter of theology, the answer is that the name of operating grace can first be taken concerning those divine works of the first kind: which are to call, to inspire, to knock, and the rest: which are done without us. Nevertheless what more properly approaches the mind of Augustine also fits works of the second kind: namely, when he actually moves us to act. But it must be noted (what the great philosopher Augustine knew very well)⁵⁶ that the will is moved in one way by the first intention to the end, and in another way to the choosing of means. For since (as he himself suggests, book 3 On Free Will ch. 2) we cling by will to some evil, that will cannot be changed to good unless it be moved by something else. For everything that is moved is moved by another. And therefore that motion is not⁵⁷ attributed to the will, even if it be moved consenting and freely, but to the mover. But when it already has the intention of the end, through that it moves itself to the choice of means. The same is the sentence of St. Thomas. For he who has already resolved⁵⁸ to serve God, through that resolve moves himself to obtain the desired end by suitable means. For this theology, therefore, Augustine named operating grace that help of grace by which we are first moved away from evil and converted to good: but the help by which, now having a good will, we work toward good, he called cooperating grace. But neither Augustine nor his follower Thomas thought (as some falsely interpreting these holy men think) that by operating grace God moves us by compelling: nay, he moves us freely. This distinction also has place in sanctifying grace, as St. Thomas is the author.⁵⁹ For with respect to this effect, which is to heal and justify and to make us pleasing, it is called operating grace; but insofar as it is the principle of meritorious working afterwards, it is called cooperating grace. Hence it follows⁶⁰ that this distinction is not so to be understood that operating grace is with respect to every internal act of the will, and cooperating grace only with respect to an external work, as someone deceived might gather from Augustine and Thomas. For if grace is cooperating for giving alms, it is also cooperating for willing to give. But that Augustine says grace is operating when we will good, but cooperating when we work, he means this precisely: when our mind is first moved away from evil to good. But when afterwards we are exercised in good works, whether internal or external, grace is cooperating. And this is what St. Thomas suggested to us in the cited place: where he said that as regards the act of the will God moves us by operating grace: especially when the will begins to will good, which before willed evil. But concerning prevenient grace the reason is different, as you have it there in the same doctor in the following article.

The principal argument.— The other, and as it is last so it is the greatest argument, is that if we concur together with God in this cause of our justice, it would be lawful for us to arrogate to ourselves with an equal share those things which he properly ascribes to himself in the sacred utterances. That as he says, Without me you can do nothing:⁶¹ And, Unless the Lord keep the house, he watches in vain who keeps it:⁶² And, No one can come to me unless my Father draw him:⁶³ so we in like manner would truly answer God, Without us thou canst do nothing in us: And, Unless we watched, thou wouldst keep us in vain: And, Unless we came, thou wouldst draw in vain. Which seems absurd. For Augustine says, book 2 On the Gift of Perseverance:⁶⁴ We live rightly if we give the whole to God: not to him a part, and to ourselves a part. And in the Enchiridion ch. 32, pressing this passage more sharply, he says that if it was said for this reason, It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy: because it is from both, that is, from the will of man and the mercy of God: why, he asks, is it not also rightly said contrariwise, It is not of God who shows mercy, but of man who wills? Because that is not fulfilled by the mercy of God alone. Which nevertheless no Christian would dare to say. To this doubt,⁶⁵ however, answering, we deny that the works which are God's in our justification may be usurped by us for the same reason: but different ones, nothing prevents. For what he says, Without me you can do nothing: and such like, which are referred to our justification, we cannot say in that manner: namely, that without us God cannot: because he is not only the cause of our willing and of the good work, but is a cause so prevenient that he makes us able and willing. Whence he does not say, I will cooperate with you, that you may work: but, I will take away, he says, the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in the midst of you: and I will make you walk in my precepts, and keep my judgments, and work.⁶⁶ And so he himself makes us to do, giving us to will and to work, as Paul says,⁶⁷ but we do not move him, nor make him to do. But if this is referred to our assent, which is necessary according to the ordinary and prescribed law: we do not hesitate to say with Augustine, He who created us without us will not justify us without us. And according to this understanding, it is also true that unless we will, God keeps us in vain, and tries to draw us in vain. But behold where the point lies hidden: God gives us to will: therefore he himself effects in us the very assent by which he opens our hearts: and therefore we do nothing. We deny this last consequence. For he so effects our assent, if nevertheless we freely concur at the same time. Wherefore by the same assent both we open to him, and he opens. Whence our concurring is our permitting ourselves to be moved by him: by compelling him who continually knocks at the door. And this is what he says: He who hears and learns comes to me.⁶⁸ But what was cited from Augustine in On the Gift of Perseverance and in the Enchiridion — namely, that it is not to be attributed partly to us and partly to God, but wholly to God — that he objects to the Pelagians, who said that the beginning of our salvation is from us, at least faith. But Augustine contended (as the matter stands) that the will is altogether prepared by God: and therefore that it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs. Because, as we were just saying in the nearest answer, that action is wholly attributed to God. And therefore even if our assent is necessary, we nevertheless ought to attribute no part to ourselves, but the whole to God: who gives us to think, to will, and to accomplish. We have touched many things here which must be required again in book 2 in explaining the grace of justification, but very many also must be sought there from this place: so closely are both places bound together. But we have thought it necessary to touch these things somewhat more pressingly, for this reason, that the Lutherans among other things aim at this argument, to conclude that no works of ours are meritorious. Further, that they are not free to us, and therefore not ours, but works which God works in us by himself alone.