Tractatus de Gratia Divina Actuali

I. A vital act is either indeliberate or deliberate: therefore actual grace, which consists in a vital act, will be either the one or the other, or both. Now indeed it is certain 1) that indeliberate acts can be actual grace. For a thought can be supernaturally excited in the mind and a spontaneous affection in the will, by which thought and affection man is moved and affected toward a good and salutary act: but this thought and affection is a certain help for acting, i.e., actual grace: therefore.

It is certain 2) that actual grace is in fact contained in indeliberate acts. For a) all the appellations which are given to actual grace (Th. VIII. n. II.) apply of themselves above all to indeliberate acts. $) Thus its origin in the soul is set forth, so that the first indeliberate movement of the faculties is evidently signified. August. ad Simplic. I. I. q. 2. n. 21. «Who can believe unless he is touched by some calling, i.e., by some testimony of things? Who has it in his power that his mind be touched by such a vision, by which his will is moved to faith?» And ibid. n. 22. «The will itself, unless something occurs which delights and invites the mind, can in no way be moved; but that this occurs is not in man's power.» Prosper adv. Collat. c. 71. «And who could perceive or relate through what effects the visitation of God leads the human mind, so that it follows what it fled, loves what it hated, hungers for what it loathed, and by a wonderful sudden change what had been closed to it are opened, what were burdensome are light, what were bitter are sweet, what were obscure are clear?» August. De Spir. et lit. c. 34. «By the persuasions of visions God acts so that we will and so that we believe, whether externally through evangelical exhortations... or internally, where no one has it in his power what comes into his mind.» v) Actual grace, and therefore vital acts, are said to be in us, to be made in us by God without us; but this is proper to indeliberate acts, which man indeed elicits physically, but not insofar as he is master of his acts, whence they are not human acts. August. cont. duas epist. Pelagg. I. II, c. 9. «God does many good things in man which man does not do (he speaks of the pious thoughts by which the heart is prepared); but man does nothing which God does not do, that man may do it.» And De Gratia et lib. arb. c. 17. «He Himself works that we will, beginning; He who cooperates with those willing, perfecting. That we will, therefore, He works without us; but when we will and so will that we act, He cooperates with us.» Bernardus De Gratia. et lib. arbit. n. 14, he says the same: «God works these three things in us: to think the good, to will, to perfect. The first indeed without us, the second with us, the third through us; inasmuch as by sending a good thought He precedes us.» Grace precedes meritorious good works; but every meritorious work is deliberate; therefore grace preceding all good works must be placed in some indeliberate act. August. De natura et gratia c. 31. on those words: Reveal to the Lord your way and He will act, says: «He seems to have attended to no one when he said: and He will act, except those who say: we do it, i.e., we ourselves justify ourselves. Where indeed we also work: but we cooperate with Him working, because His mercy precedes us. It precedes that we may be healed, because it also follows that, healed, we may be nourished; it precedes that we may be called, it follows that we may be glorified; it precedes that we may live piously, it follows that we may live with Him forever.»

II. Furthermore, the indeliberate acts which pertain to the illumination of the mind are both simple apprehension and comparative apprehension, which precedes judgment, or judgment itself. And indeed simple apprehensions contribute to pious and salutary acts and are the beginning of holy life, and the same are signified by the testimonies already adduced. But among the illuminations of the mind those apprehensions are also to be numbered which immediately precede the act of judging and contain the knowledge of the thing to be judged or, which amounts to the same, the judgments themselves are to be numbered, which flow spontaneously from the excited apprehensions. For these also contribute, and indeed more, to salutary acts, and these too are counted by the Fathers among the graces. For that is surely signified when it is attributed to grace to know what we ought to do (Conc. Carthag. c. 1), to be persuaded by exhortations (Auctor De vocatione omnium Gentium L. II. c. 9), to be taught (August. De Gratia Christi c. 14), and to this pertains what Bernardus says De Interiori domo c. 26: «When does God move you? when He admonishes. He admonishes thus: you are vainly occupied, o wise heart: it does not become you to be subject to these things, but to preside over them: you do not need these for beatitude.» To this also pertains what August. says in Psal. XXXIV: «When He shall have said to my soul: I am your salvation, then it will live justly.»

III. That the indeliberate acts of the will pertain to actual graces has now been proved. It remains to be proved that also deliberate salutary acts, not indeed all indiscriminately, but certain ones and those many, are to be numbered among actual graces. To be sure, in order that a vital act can be called actual grace (i.e., a help preparing for operating salutarily), this is required: that it be a gratuitous gift of God, a principle of a good and salutary work. Now some salutary act, e.g., a free act of charity, can be the principle of other pious acts which it itself determines; but that prior act, by the fact that it itself was also made from actual grace, is in reality a gift of God and therefore grace: therefore this deliberate act must be called actual grace of God. Namely, some deliberate meritorious act can be of such a kind that it can be the cause of no other pious act, e.g., the last good act at the end of life: this act is a gift and grace of God, because made from grace, and therefore given by God; but it is not properly actual grace, because it cannot be the cause of a good act. But if some good act is the reason and principle of another, which is or can be; then that act, insofar as it depends on another preceding grace, is a gift of God and simply grace, because it proceeds from the gratuitous operation of God: insofar, however, as this act obtains both — both to be from God and to be the principle of a good act — it deserves the appellation of actual grace. These things sufficiently stand by themselves: but moreover they are certain also by the testimony of the Fathers. «How do I believe by will, if I am drawn? (says August.Tract. XXVI. in Ioan. n. 4. on those words: No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me has drawn him) I say: it is little to be drawn by will; you are drawn even by delight. What is it to be drawn by delight? Delight in the Lord (this act of delight, since the Prophet exhorts man to it, is deliberate) and He will give you the petitions of your heart. There is a certain delight of the heart, to which that heavenly bread is sweet. Moreover, if the poet was allowed to say: each one is drawn by his own delight, not necessity but delight, not obligation but delectation: how much more strongly must we say that man is drawn to Christ, who delights in truth, delights in beatitude, delights in justice, delights in everlasting life, which all is Christ?» Moreover the Council of Arausic. II. after canon 25 says: «God, with no preceding merits, inspires in us both faith and love of Himself, so that we may faithfully seek the sacraments of baptism, and after baptism with His help may be able to fulfill those things which are pleasing to Him.» And in canon 17: «The fortitude of the gentiles worldly desire makes; the fortitude of Christians the charity of God makes, which is diffused in our hearts, not through the choice of the will which is from us, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Hence is that celebrated sentence of Augustinus De Gratia et lib. arbit. c. 16: «He makes us act by providing most efficacious powers to the will.» But what sort these powers are he soon explains, namely a pious, deliberate and likewise great will, such as the Martyrs had. «Who therefore wills to do the commandments of God and cannot, has indeed a good will, but as yet small and weak: he will be able, however, when he has a great and robust one: since the martyrs did those great commandments, they did them with a great will, i.e., with a great charity.»