De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

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.