De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

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

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

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