De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

These reasons having been premised, the testimonies of Scripture and of the saints, by which the same truth is established, will become clearer.

First and most celebrated is that, No one knows whether he is worthy of hatred or love.¹ But Protestants regard this passage as so alien from this sense that they accuse us of perverting it as enemies of making peace.

They say indeed that the understanding of those words is no other than that from works which appear outwardly no argument is taken of the charity and justice which is within.² For what the Wise Man treats there is how evils befall the just as if they were impious, and on the contrary goods befall the impious as if they were just. Therefore since both goods and evils happen promiscuously to the just and the impious, we have nothing thereby known about anyone's interior merits, but all things are kept uncertain until the supreme day. And besides they object against us how in this sense we affirm that no one knows whether he is worthy of hatred or love, since wicked men, while they are actually perpetrating some outrages, most openly know that they are worthy of hatred. But if their cavils, when the letter did not plainly oppose them, ought to diminish nothing of the authority of all the saints, who always cite this passage in this sense; but even when the authority of the saints had ceased, the text itself is most plain. For first, the propositions are different: Man does not know whether he is worthy of hatred or love;³ and, Man does not know from external works whether he is worthy of hatred or love: for the first is absolute, but the other is in a certain way restricted; and yet the Wise Man asserts not only the second but absolutely the first. But what he adds, that all things happen equally to the just and the impious, is not a restriction of the conclusion, but a refutation of the contrary. As if he had said, Let no fortunes or events of men move you to pass judgment from them on merits. For those are deceptive indications, because goods happen without distinction to the just and to sinners; and therefore, with these events being no obstacle, not only does one man not know about another, but not even does a man know about himself whether he is worthy of hatred or love. And this sense is confirmed from the letter itself, which reads thus: Man does not know whether he is worthy of love or hatred; but all things are kept uncertain for the future, because all things happen equally to the just and the impious. What is it for all things to be kept uncertain for the future, except that in the present there can be no certainty? For if by faith we could attain such certainty, he would not have compared the future to the present, but the apparent works to the faith of the mind: namely, that by works we could not become more certain, yet we could by faith. But to the other argument,⁴ by which they inveigh against us with such great bile, it is answered that no Catholic has said that a wicked man cannot know when he is worthy of hatred. For St Thomas makes the same argument in the cited place. To it he answers that the way of knowing sin and grace is different. For the object of sin is changeable good, which is most known to us, and its principle is our will alone; but the object of grace is God, and its cause is the gratuitous will, which cannot become known to us with as great certainty. Wherefore Ecclesiastes does not say that man does not know whether he is worthy of hatred or love as if the account of both parts were equal, so that neither could be known; but that man cannot know with certainty when he is worthy of love. But because no one can be in doubt about love who does not at the same time hesitate whether he is worthy of hatred, in this sense it was said, Man does not know whether he is worthy of hatred or love. With greater probability, however, one could say⁵ that the saying of the Wise Man is to be understood only of predestination: namely, that no one knows to what he is destined, whether to life or truly to death. But from this at least the Lutherans are refuted, who teach that a man can be certain not only of his present justification but of his perseverance to the end. Besides, since he who is in grace, even if he is not going to persevere, is truly then in the love of God according to present justice; and it is simply denied that a man knows when he is worthy of love, not only is the knowledge of perseverance denied, but also that a man can know when he is in grace.

The second testimony against the certainty of grace is that, If he comes to me, I will not see him; if he goes away, I will not understand.⁶ And below, Even if I were simple, my soul will not know this very thing. And again, I feared all my works, knowing that you would not spare the offender. But this passage too, although manifest, the adversaries contend is also cavilled at, saying that Job there confesses only that our justice in comparison with God is not reckoned justice. But this is a manifest delusion of Scripture. For it is not one but two widely different things that that just man proclaims. For his lying friend had flattered him by mentioning his justice. For even if your sons, he says, have sinned against God, and he has sent them away into the hand of their iniquity, yet if you arise at dawn to him and entreat the Almighty, if you walk clean and upright, immediately he will awake to you, and he will make your sin the dwelling of your justice. Job repels this flattery in two ways. First, that even if he knew most certainly that he was just, his justice would nevertheless be nothing if compared with God. Next, that not even the justice itself, such as it is in a man through the grace of God, can a man know with certainty when it is present or absent. And therefore he uses different words. For thus Scripture says: Job answered and said, Truly I know that it is so, that man cannot be justified when compared with God. Here he does not say, I do not know, but I know, that no one is so just as to be able to contend with God. But he adds the second, different argument: If he comes to me, I will not see him; if he goes away, I will not understand. Therefore the same justice which he had said was not to be compared with God, he adds that he does not know when it comes or when it goes. In like manner below: How great, then, am I, that I should answer him and speak my words with him? Even if I have anything just, I will not answer, but I will entreat my judge. Not only because, although there is some good work in the just man, many evils are mixed in, but because that very thing which is just in us is a gift of divine mercy. But he adds: Even if I were simple, my soul would not know this very thing. That is, that very justice, whatever it can be in a man, is not so known to me. And therefore, he says, I feared all my works, hesitating whether they were offenses, knowing that you would not spare the offender. Whence Gregory, book 9 of the Morals, chapter 10, on that word, If he comes to me, I will not see him, says: Often the mind, while it resolves itself into security about its virtue, with the adversary lying in wait, is pierced by the spear of an unforeseen fault. And chapter 18 on another sentence, Even if I were simple, my soul will not know this very thing: There are, he says, certain things which cannot easily be known by us. For often we are inflamed with right zeal against the sins of offenders, and when we are carried beyond the bounds of equity by anger, we reckon this the zeal of just severity. And when the mind of the preacher strives to please usefully, it flows shamefully into love of its own praise. And thus in a horrible way one and the same work accomplishes guilt, which virtue began. So Gregory. And for this cause Job feared all his works. And he adds many things elegantly to the same purpose in chapter 19, where he says that the human soul, darkened by immense thought, does not penetrate even itself by examining itself. And again, he says, the hearts of the just cannot examine themselves perfectly. The third and chief passage is in 2 Corinthians,⁷ where the Apostle says, But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by man's day; but neither do I judge myself. For I am conscious of nothing, but not in this am I justified. But he who judges me is the Lord. Here Paul's gradation must be noted. For he says first that the judgment which one man brings against another is fallible: To me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by man's day, that is, by human judgment. But he says that he not only makes nothing of others' judgment about himself, but that he does not regard even that which he has about himself as certain. Since therefore he compares his own judgment about himself with another's, he openly teaches that just as another cannot pass an infallible sentence about another, so no one can about himself. And he attaches this cause: because if anyone could become more certain of his justice, that would be most of all when he was conscious of nothing; yet it is not a firm argument when an affirmation is inferred from a negation, namely, I am conscious of no sin, therefore I am just. But, he says, God is the one who judges me. If Paul did not then have a revelation of his sanctity, the sense is plain: namely, that God alone knew what he was in his sight. But if perhaps he had such a revelation, as Ambrose suggests to us, the sense is that although he was known to himself, he nevertheless did not know it certainly from the testimony of his conscience, but because God had so indicated it to him. But the interpretation by which Luther, art. 4, depraved this passage,⁸ and which his disciples retain with tooth and nail, is both most absurd and has been refuted by us in chapters 15 and 11. For they say that from this passage of Paul only this is gathered, that no argument of justification is taken from the quality and goodness of works; for who, says Luther, understands his sins? But whatever our works are, he says, even if they are sins, by faith alone we are made most certain that they are not imputed to us. With what ears can a Christian hear these portents? Namely, that not only are sins, while still retaining the character of guilt, not imputed by the most just God (who, as the Psalmist says, has hated iniquity, and according to Job does not spare the offender), but that even when a man is conscious of sin, he is then more certain by faith that it is not imputed to him. But these [claims] of ours, besides that they have been sufficiently refuted above, are most openly repugnant to these passages which we are now treating. For first, Paul does not say that no argument of justification is taken from conscience (for our glory, he says elsewhere, is this, the testimony of our conscience),⁹ but only that a testimony altogether most certain is not taken from it. Yet this irrefragable testimony cannot be had not only from conscience but neither from faith. Otherwise he would not have added, But he who judges me is the Lord; and, Do not judge before the time until the Lord comes. For by these words he indicates that in this present life, unless God reveals it, divine grace cannot become known to us to that extent. And David not only says, Who understands his sins? but adds, Cleanse me, Lord, from my hidden sins.¹⁰ Truly one who asks to be cleansed from hidden sins does not have the certainty of faith that he is clean. Now to this are also referred those proverbs of the Wise Man: Who can say, My heart is clean: I am pure from sin?¹¹ And, Blessed is the man who is always fearful.¹² And, Do not be secure about the forgiveness of sins. Here Lyra, a glossator not to be despised, says: Of sins, even those which have been remitted through penance, you do not know whether it was sufficient.

There are besides very many testimonies of the holy Fathers. For besides Gregory, whom we have cited, there is Jerome¹³ on that saying of Micah 6, The Lord requires of you to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk solicitously with your God: It is commanded, he says, that we be prepared to walk with the Lord our God; we ought to sleep at no hour, to be secure at no time, but always to await the father of the family coming, and to dread the day of judgment, and in the night of this age to say, I sleep, but my heart keeps watch. And on that saying of Jonah 3, Who knows if God will turn and forgive, he says: Therefore it is put as ambiguous and uncertain, so that while men are in doubt about salvation, they may do penance more strongly, and more provoke God to mercy. And Augustine¹⁴ on that word of Psalm 50, You have made known to me the uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom. What, he says, are hidden? What are uncertain? That God is ignorant, and such things. Nothing is so hidden, nothing so uncertain. For this uncertainty the Ninevites did penance, saying, Who knows if God will change his sentence for the better and have mercy? And in the book On the Perfection of Justice: However great the justice with which a man is endowed, he ought to fear lest something hidden lie concealed. And in the letter to Proba, which is 121, on that saying of Paul, Do not judge before the time: As no one is known to another, so each is not so known even to himself as to be secure about his conduct tomorrow. This refers to the uncertainty of perseverance. And it follows: Therefore although many are known by their fruits, nevertheless because of the unknown and uncertain things of human souls, the Apostle most rightly admonishes us not to judge before the time. Behold, hearts are uncertain. And Ambrose¹⁵ on the same passage of Paul, I am conscious of nothing: He humbles himself, he says, and speaks as a man who could incur guilt unknowingly. And Chrysostom¹⁶ on the same passage: It also happens that a man sins in certain things which he does not know to be sins. And again: Our judgment is uncertain for three reasons. First, because even if we are conscious of nothing, we still need one who may correct our sins with certain reason. Second, because many of our works lie hidden from us. Third, because many works of others seem good to us which are done with no right judgment. And on Matthew, in the incomplete work, homily 38, on that saying of Proverbs 20 cited above: No one, he says, is supported by such firmness that he ought to be secure about his justification. But Bernard¹⁷ is one whose testimonies on this matter are more evident, although the adversaries also use the same witness corruptly. For first, against the uncertainty of perseverance, he plainly says in sermon 2 on the octave of Easter that although God never forsakes his elect without a testimony, nevertheless the Lord knows who are his, and he alone knows whom he has chosen from the beginning. And he adds: But who among men knows whether he is worthy of love or hatred? But if, as is certain, certainty is altogether denied to us, will not those things be so much more delightful, if by chance we can find some signs of this election? For what rest can our spirit have, while it holds as yet no testimony of its predestination? Therefore it is not altogether certain, although there are some testimonies. But what he says at the end of this sermon, that a new spirit has come, a new conversation most certainly testifies, he does not understand of the certainty of the catholic faith, but of the certainty which suffices to pacify the human heart. But he speaks of the coming of the Holy Spirit to us in sermon 17 on the Song of Songs, where he says: He is to be prayed to only that he may guard our hearts and our understandings, lest perhaps when he is not present we think he is present, and follow our own sense, going astray. For he comes and goes as he wills, and no one easily knows whence he comes or whither he goes. And although he adds that it is most perilous to be ignorant when he comes or goes, and therefore we must watch so that we may have some sense of his approach and withdrawal, he nevertheless does not understand that we can by certain reason apprehend him either coming or going. He treats the same argument more at large in sermon 74 on the same Song of Songs, where he depicts in himself the senses of the one entering and going out, finally concluding with these words: From the renewal and reformation of the spirit of my mind, that is, of my inner man, I have perceived in some way the beauty of his comeliness. Note "in some way." But in letter 42 to the archbishop of Sens he has this: The heart of man is depraved and inscrutable, so that no one knows the things that are in man except the spirit of man which is in him; but not even that spirit fully. For when the Apostle said, To me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by man's day, he added, But neither do I judge myself. Why? Because, he says, I cannot myself pronounce a ratified sentence about myself. For I am conscious of nothing, yet not in this am I justified. I do not wholly believe myself, even my own conscience, since not even it can comprehend me wholly. Nor can it judge of the whole, which does not hear the whole. But he who judges me is the Lord. The Lord, he says, whose knowledge nothing escapes, whose sentence nothing evades, even what lies hidden from one's own conscience. God hears in the heart of the one thinking what even the thinker himself does not hear.

But among the scholastic doctors, apart from one John Bacon, a Carmelite,¹⁸ there is no one who does not hold the same opinion. For Alexander of Hales,¹⁹ in the third part, treatise on grace, disputing the question, says that by speculative and certain cognition the grace of God is not knowable, but only by effective and experimental cognition, namely through effects, as when a man has no purpose of acting badly, when by frequent meditation he tastes the sweetness and suavity of God. But, he says, according to Hippocrates' saying, experiment is fallacious. For the same effects can be in one who is in sin, at least where there is vincible ignorance, as in a heretic. Alexander was followed by St Thomas in the place cited above. And Bonaventure,²⁰ and Richard, and Durand, 1 d. 17, and all who dispute this question. And even Scotus,²¹ whom some wrongly cited as affirmative on this view. For in 1 Sent. d. 17 q. 1 he says most openly that from no act which we exercise, neither from its substance, nor from its intensity, nor from delight and facility in acting, nor from its goodness or moral rectitude, can we conclude that any supernatural habit is present. And he adds the reason: because otherwise, given any of these, one who has charity could know with certainty that he is in charity, which he reckons impossible by common law. From this follows what he says in 3 d. 24, namely that charity can be shown by an interior act, by which a man finds himself prompt to love God, and by an exterior act, by which he burns in acts and exercises for the God he loves; understand this of conjectural and experimental showing, which Alexander says often deceives. Therefore by merits and by the best right the holy Synod²² pronounced against the assertion of the certainty of grace in Session 6, first in chapter 9 of the confession, in these words: Although it is necessary to believe that sins are never remitted except freely by divine mercy on account of Christ, nevertheless no one who boasts of the confidence and certainty of the remission of his sins, and rests in that alone, is to be believed or said to have his sins remitted or to have been remitted. Since among heretics and schismatics there can be, indeed in our time there is, and it is preached with great contention against the catholic Church, this vain confidence and one remote from all piety. But neither is this to be asserted, that those who have been truly justified ought to establish with themselves without any doubt at all that they are justified, and that no one is absolved from sins and justified unless he certainly believes that he is absolved and justified, and that by this faith alone absolution and justification are accomplished: as if one who does not believe this doubts the promises of God and the efficacy of the death and resurrection of Christ. For just as no pious person ought to doubt the mercy of God, the merit of Christ, and the virtue and efficacy of the sacraments, so anyone, when he looks upon himself and his own infirmity and indisposition, can fear and be afraid about his grace: since no one can know with the certainty of faith, to which falsehood cannot underlie, that he has obtained the grace of God. Next, chapter 12 condemns those who rashly arrogate to themselves a certainty of predestination. And chapter 13 likewise those who promise themselves the same security of perseverance. And canon 13: If anyone, it says, shall say that for every man to obtain remission of sins it is necessary that he believe with certainty and without any hesitation, despite his own infirmity and indisposition, that his sins have been remitted to him, let him be anathema. And canon 14 also condemns under anathema [the notion] that the certainty of faith in particular, by which one believes that he is justified, either suffices for justification or is necessary.