Tractatus de Gratia Divina Actuali

I. For removing errors concerning the efficacy of grace it greatly helps to know what the Massilians erred in, and what the Fathers reproved in them; for from the perversion of the history of this controversy it came about that Jansenius foisted upon us his heresy as a catholic dogma defended by the Fathers, of which heresy this is the fourth proposition among the five condemned: «The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of interior prevenient grace for each act, even for the beginning of faith, and in this they were heretics, that they wished that grace to be of such a kind that the human will could resist it or obey it.» Which indeed was condemned by the Apostolic See as false and heretical. Wherefore in the judgment

of Jansenius, the Fathers, who taught that the doctrine of the Massilians was adverse to the catholic faith, attacked as heretical the doctrine asserting that grace is of such a kind that the human will can resist it and obey it. That follows of itself from these two principles, that such was the doctrine of the Massilians and that the Fathers held the doctrine of the Massilians as heretical. There is no question about the second principle; all the poison lies hidden in the first. Therefore, in order that we may vindicate the Fathers from this calumny, since that is what we are doing in this article, the history of the controversy which engaged the Fathers with the Massilians must be faithfully set forth. We begin it briefly and in order as follows.

II. Augustine had taught that men are called to faith and salvation not according to the merits of nature, but according to the purpose of the will of God, and that it is God who by his grace distinguishes the faithful from the unbelieving, the just from sinners, and that it is not men who distinguish themselves, and that perseverance is a gratuitous gift of God, and that this preparation of graces was made from eternity in the counsel of the divine will, which mercifully prepared for whom it willed its grace, by which they are actually justified and saved. From which doctrine indeed it did not follow (as Prosper afterwards noted in the Responsionibus ad Capitula Gallorum, obj. 3.) that «those who, fallen into evil, perished without the correction of penance, had from that a necessity of perishing because they are not predestinated»: since on the contrary «they are not predestinated for this reason, because they were foreknown as about to be such from a voluntary transgression.» «For although (as the same author says ibid., obj. 15, n. 7) the omnipotence of God could have given the power of standing to those about to fall, yet his grace did not desert them before it was deserted by them. And because he foresaw that they would do this by a voluntary defection, therefore he did not have them in the election of predestination.» Or (as the same author says in the responsionibus ad capitula obiectionum vincentianarum, obj. 12) «because they were foreknown as about to fall, they are not predestinated. But they would be predestinated, if they were about to return and to remain in holiness and truth.» f. both responses. We judge that these responses of Prosper, for defending and explaining the doctrine which the same Prosper testifies that Augustine always taught, are to be greatly esteemed, not only because Prosper was most versed in the works of the holy Doctor, but also because, since he lived in the same age, he could more easily attain the force of the words and sentences and the whole manner of speaking and thinking of Augustine, than we who are so far removed: for every age has a certain manner of speaking and thinking about the same things. Therefore the doctrine of Augustine tended to this, to assert that whatever good and salutary is done by men is from the gift of the grace of God, who prepared that same grace from eternity and who by a hidden and inscrutable indeed, but just, judgment (of which thing he brings an example in little ones) prepared those graces not for all but for whom he willed, which in his prescience, which cannot be deceived, he foresaw would be congruous and efficacious. This was the manner of Augustine of explaining and defending the catholic dogma, so that he might oppose himself to the heresy of the Pelagians saying: that in the nature of free will, apart from grace, there is a sufficient power of living justly and perfectly and of obtaining salvation, and therefore that men are just and are saved for this reason, because they will it, and that others are sinners and are not saved because they do not will it. But in this sense they took those words, 'because they will it,' namely because in their natural will alone it is placed to become just and to be made saved, and therefore their will from the powers of nature is the adequate reason of justice and salvation: in the same way they took the words 'because they do not will it,' namely because the sole reason why they do not act well and are not saved is the defect of their will, not of the grace of God, which moreover would be required. Or, the words 'because they will' and 'because they do not will' being taken more mildly, they poured forth this sense: because it is for men to begin, and through good acts elicited by the powers of nature to determine, as it were, God to conferring grace, so that consequently from their will alone it depends to be saved, if they will, and not to be saved, if they do not will to begin. In order to rout this error, Augustine was compelled to show that all things at last depend not on the human but on the divine will, which distributes to whom it wills the grace by which good works are done, and therefore efficacious.

The sense of Augustine, just as a little before certain monks of Hadrumetum in Africa, so also many afterwards of the servants of Christ dwelling in the city of Massilia and in other places of the Gauls did not attain. And indeed it was easy for those not weighing well the whole doctrine of Augustine and his special manner of speaking and disputing, who had especially before his eyes congruous and efficacious grace, to receive the words of Augustine otherwise than his meaning really bore, which also happened afterwards to many others. Therefore the Massilians, as Prosper testifies in epist. to Augustine, c. 2 and3,among the Augustinian letters CCXXV, written in the year 428 or 429. did not approve whatever the holy Father had disputed in his works about the vocation of the elect according to the purpose of God. And indeed in that sense in which they themselves received the doctrine of Augustine, they disapproved not undeservedly. For according to Augustine the election of God according to purpose is a gratuitous election, namely independent of the merits of nature preceding faith, and inasmuch as it is the destination of efficacious graces for good works and for perseverance, independent also of the condign merits of the just; an election therefore depending on the purpose of the free will of God. Cf. De Corrept. et Grat., c. VIII, and cont. duas pelagg., L. II, c. ult.But the Massilians so interpreted the doctrine of Augustine, that in the counsel of the divine will there had been from eternity, without any prescience of merits, a distinction made not only of those to be elected to the Kingdom but also of those to be rejected from the Kingdom. Wherefore they said: «this purpose of the calling of God, by which, whether before the beginning of the world or in the very condition of the human race, a distinction is said to have been made of those to be elected and of those to be rejected, according to which it pleased the Creator that some should be created vessels of honor and others vessels of contumely, and which takes away from the fallen the care of rising again and brings to the holy an occasion of tepidity; because in each part the labor would be superfluous, if neither the rejected could enter by any industry, nor the elected fall out by any negligence.»

Namely, the Massilians rejected that election according to purpose, according to which, as it pleased the Creator, some are vessels of honor and others likewise vessels of contumely, no account being taken of merits. They denied, namely, that the distinction of men, both of the faithful from the unbelieving and of the elect from the reprobate (which distinction is to be taken not only causally but formally, or in second act), depends on the mere good pleasure of the divine will; for, as they themselves said, as far as concerns the part of God, God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, who proposes to all men, with none excepted, the propitiation which is in the Sacrament of the Blood of Christ, who admonishes and invites every man by divine institutions to believe and to hope. And because, as we have said, the distinction of men can be distinguished as twofold, the one by which the faithful are distinguished from the unbelieving, the other by which persevering faithful are distinguished from the non-persevering (as is indicated also in the Pauline testimony, God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth), the Massilians contended that the reason of each distinction is also in us.

Thus far, however, there is no error in the opinion of the Massilians. For it is certain that besides the grace of God, which is lacking to no one, our cooperation is also required, by which we comply with the prevenient grace; and therefore that there is also in us some subordinate reason of the distinction, and that men are reprobated only on account of their evil merits. Nor did Augustine ever deny this.

IV. But the error of the Massilians was in this, that, in order to defend that, they established a certain determinate manner in which the reason of that distinction would be in us; which manner not a little conflicted with the doctrine of the faith concerning Grace.

Scilicet 1) they wanted the faithful to be distinguished from the unbelieving by this, that through some initial act of good will, a pious affection of believing, a pious desire of salvation, and faith in God, the physician and savior of souls, which act is elicited by the powers of nature, they prepare or dispose themselves to receive grace: just as a sick person, by asking the physician, disposes himself to recover health, and although he cannot heal himself, can nevertheless desire health and ask the physician (on which matter more fully in the following Th.). This natural act was said to be from initial grace, which for the Massilians was nothing other than a good of nature, by which good of nature rightly used anyone can arrive at saving grace (Prosper ad August., c. 4.). From which it follows that God, who wills to bestow his grace upon all, expects these pious movements of nature, and so leads the willing to the grace of perfect faith and justification, and abandons the unwilling. For, with Prosper as witness, ibid., c. 6., they taught «that as far as pertains to God, eternal life is prepared for all; as far as pertains, however, to the freedom of the will, it is apprehended by those who have spontaneously believed in God and have received the help of grace by the merit of their credulity... because if they professed that all merits are prevented by it (grace) and that from it is given that they are able to be, they would necessarily concede that God, according to the purpose and counsel of his will, by hidden judgment and manifest work, founds one vessel unto honor, another unto contumely... And so, since in those who received the time of free will (i.e., adults) there are two things which work out human salvation, namely the grace of God and the obedience of man; they wanted obedience to be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation would have to be believed to stand from him who is saved, not from him who saves, and the will of man brings forth help to divine grace, not grace subjects the human will to itself.

V. One may note that Cassian, who is held as a prince among these erring ones, so tempered the matter that he indeed sometimes conceded that the beginning of faith is from grace, but denied the necessity of grace for it. That is, he taught (in Collation XIII) that sometimes God prevents the wills by his grace so that they believe, as happened in Paul and Matthew, and sometimes he expects and requires a pious movement of the will preceding, which grace will receive, as happened in the good thief and the Centurion. And this he meant when he said that there are two principles of salutary acts, namely both the will of man and the grace of God. Cf. Prosper, adv. Collatorem, etc.

VI. That he himself had been involved in the same error denying the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith before entering upon the episcopate, Augustine testifies in De Praed. SS., c. 3. For he thought that »the faith by which we believe in God is not a gift of God, but is from us in us, and through it we obtain the gifts of God by which we live temperately, justly, and piously in this world... Which my error, he says, not a few of my little works written before my episcopate sufficiently indicate. Among which there is also that which you recalled in your letters, where there is the exposition of certain propositions from the Epistle which is to the Romans.« This error Augustine had already refuted in the Pelagians (Cont. duas epistt. pelagg., L. II, c. 8.). Into this error again, denying the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith, certain monks of Hadrumetum seem to have fallen, for whom there exists the book of Augustine de Gratia et libero arbitrio and another de Correptione et Gratia. The same error a certain Vitalis defended at Carthage, to whom Augustine wrote for the catholic doctrine an epistle, which is CCXVII, written about the year 427.

VI. Furthermore, when there were objected to the Massilians both the many infants who die without baptism without their own fault or that of another, and the many nations to whom the Gospel was never preached, they answered as regards those »that such are lost and such are saved, such as the divine science foreknew that they would be in riper years, if they were preserved to an active age and likewise as regards those they said «that those were foreseen by the Lord as about to believe, and that for each nation the times and the ministries of teachers were so dispensed that the belief of good wills was about to arise»: namely, they said «that it belongs to divine prescience, that the truth would be announced at that time and there and to those, when and where it was foreknown that it was to be believed.» Prosper, cited epist., c. 5. Hilary, epist. to Augustine (among the Augustinian letters CCXXVI), c. 3. The above-mentioned Vitalis used the same response. Cf. the cited epist. of Aug., c. 22; indeed also the Pelagians, see p. 151. Note that it is foolish, and insulting to the holy man Prosper and Hilary and to Augustine himself, to think that they fabricated this response from their own brain and imposed it on the Massilians. It is certain, therefore, that the Massilians responded thus, and wished by this reasoning to decline the difficulty which was in their opinion. But this also makes us more certain and places beyond all controversy that the opinion of the Massilians about the beginning of salvation was really that which Prosper understood and signified to Augustine. For if the Massilians had spoken of that beginning which follows prevenient grace, they had no need to use this response, especially as regards the nations; indeed there would have been no difficulty by which they could be pressed.

Now weigh accurately what was the grace whose conferral the Massilians taught to be repaid to the merits of nature: the grace of faith, the grace of salvation, namely the grace by which some are actually faithful, while others remain in unbelief. That is, they spoke of the grace which attains the effect for which it is given, of that grace namely which we are accustomed to call efficacious. This was the reason why Augustine, disputing with them, speaks deliberately about the predestination of graces of this kind.

VIII. They wanted 2) the persevering faithful to be distinguished from the non-persevering by this, that those willed to persevere, or merited perseverance for themselves from God, so that they denied the note of gratuitousness which is found in the gift of perseverance. The matter needs to be somewhat explained. For it can be asked in what sense the Massilians denied that the perseverance of those persevering to the end is a gift of God. Was this error only a consequence of the preceding error, inasmuch as if the first grace is given from the merits of nature, the rest of the series of graces connected with the first, and perseverance itself, would have to be said to be repaid, at least mediately, to the merits of nature? That indeed was contained in the opinion of the Massilians; but here there would not really be more than one error: yet it seems that the error was twofold, since the Fathers make distinct mention of each, namely of the denied gratuitous faith and of the denied gratuitous perseverance. Moreover, 1º if from this alone, that the first grace is given to the merits of nature, the Massilians had denied perseverance to be a gift of God, by the same reasoning they would have denied the other good works between faith and perseverance to be gifts of God: but they reasoned altogether otherwise, as will soon appear.

Indeed, Augustine attacks both errors separately in distinct books. But this error is wont by some to be proposed thus: God from eternity foreknew all those who would have the first faith by the sole powers of nature and by the sole powers of nature would persevere to the end Cf. Alticotium in Summa Augustiniana, p. 5a of the Preface, n. 1.] whom therefore he predestinated into his kingdom and glory. Which indeed Augustine seems to signify in De Dono Persev., c. 17., in these words: «those who place both the beginning of faith alone and perseverance to the end so in our power that they do not think them to be gifts of God, nor that God works our thoughts and wills for having and retaining these things, but concede that he himself gives the rest, when they are obtained from him by the faith of the believer, etc.» But it must be confessed that that explanation is difficult to understand.

And indeed it is most certainly established, as we shall demonstrate below and as can be clear from this very testimony of Augustine adduced, that the Massilians taught, as regards the other good works after faith, the necessity of that prevenient and helping grace which Augustine defended. Since therefore perseverance is the continuation of good works to the end, how could these two things be reconciled in the minds of the Massilians, namely that all the good works of the faithful are prevented by the grace of God and therefore are gifts of God; yet that nevertheless perseverance in good faith, to which eternal life would have to be repaid, is owed to the sole powers of nature? For perseverance in faith according to the Massilians is that perseverance which merits the eternal reward, which therefore is called by Prosper perseverance in good faith: it is therefore perseverance in good works from faith; but if all good works are effects of grace, how is perseverance an effect of the sole powers of nature?

We answer, therefore, that the Massilians denied that which Augustine defended in two books written against them. But Augustine there defends this one thing, that perseverance is a gift of God not only because it is not given in return, mediately, for a merit of nature which preceded faith, but because it is also given to the just gratuitously, inasmuch as although it can be merited by them suppliantly (which Augustine affirms), yet it cannot be obtained by true condign merit, as we now speak. Whence Augustine proves the gratuitousness of perseverance by those arguments by which he proves the gratuitousness of congruous or efficacious grace. We judge, therefore, that the Massilians, weighing the matter too little accurately, denied this special gratuitousness of perseverance, besides that gratuitousness which proceeds from the gratuitousness of the first grace; namely, they wished that men justified and helped by the grace of God can so persevere that, apart from any special predestination of the helps of God, those who would will would actually attain perseverance, and those who would not will would not attain it. «Those who are about to believe, they said, and who are about to remain in that faith which is to be helped through grace, God foreknew before the constitution of the world» (the cited epist. of Prosper, n. 3): but they denied that to the saints there is now given «such a help of perseverance that perseverance itself is given to them, not only so that without this gift they cannot be persevering, but also so that through this gift they are not otherwise than persevering.» But they wanted that gift to be given by which they could persevere if they would will, just as they noted that Augustine had spoken of the grace of persevering given to Adam (the cited epist. of Hilary, n. 6.). Thus we judge that this chapter of the doctrine of the Massilians is to be taken.

IX. You will say: In what sense then did the Massilians distinguish between good works and perseverance, so that they affirmed those to be gifts of God, but denied this one? For if perseverance is not gratuitous, by what right did the Massilians affirm that good works, i.e., the efficacious graces for them, are gratuitous?

I answer. It is certainly not established that the Massilians admitted that special gratuitousness of efficacious graces; indeed if they denied it for the grace of perseverance, they are to be said to have denied it also as regards the other efficacious graces. They professed, to be sure, that the graces for works are gifts of God, because nature can indeed desire and ask for them, but not exact them, and without them nature can do nothing good: therefore, just as in nature they did not acknowledge that merit which we call condign, but only the congruous and that of impetration, so they defended the gratuitousness of the graces for works. But that gratuitousness which is proper to efficacious graces for the just themselves (cf. the preceding Th., nn. IV. V.) was unknown to the Massilians no less than the gratuitousness of perseverance, and they are to be said to have denied it, when they denied this one. For since the gift of perseverance is not one simple actual grace but rather a series of actual graces, which are given for works, by the very fact that the gratuitousness of perseverance is denied, the gratuitousness also of efficacious graces for the just is denied. Consequently they denied that a gratuitous predestination of efficacious graces was made by God to the just, by which graces the just could be not otherwise than persevering. Indeed Augustine, disputing against them in two books, demonstrates both the gratuitousness of efficacious graces, and in the same manner as those he shows perseverance to be gratuitous.

X. There is therefore a twofold, as it were, part of the doctrine of the Massilians impugned by Augustine. The first: that the beginning of faith is from us, from which it follows that the graces afterwards given for the works, and perseverance itself, are mediately refunded into at least the congruous merit of nature. The second: that the perseverance of the just is not gratuitous in a special way. But note that the former error is the proper character of the doctrine of the Massilians, and in the Council of Arausic. 2. canons were enacted only against it; so that the other question seems to be reckoned among the more profound and more difficult parts of the questions that arose, which those who resisted the heretics treated more broadly.

The error, therefore, placing the beginning of salvation in man was called in the age of Prosper and Augustine the remnants of the Pelagians (the cited epist. of Prosper, n. 7.); later the appellation of Semi-Pelagians came into use. Furthermore, you will perhaps ask: did they not teach an error already reprobated in the Pelagians, especially since these too, from time to time, in order to exclude the gratuitousness of grace, threw in mention of this very error, wishing at least the beginning of faith or of conversion to God to be from us (cf. Synops. hist. haer, pelag. n. VII.); why therefore were they not held as heretics? I answer. The proscription of the Pelagian heresy was contained in the letters of Innocent, in the Tractoria of Zosimus, of which only fragments survive, and in the Carthaginian canons. Now indeed from all these there is gathered, as Celestine gathered after the adduced authorities of the Apostolic See,

«that God is the author of all the works by which one tends to God from the beginning of faith», but an express exclusion of the error of the Massilians is not contained, since they separated faith from works by the then customary distinction. Indeed in the Carthaginian canons there is nothing explicit about the gratuitousness of grace. In the other monuments also the dogma opposed to the error of the Massilians is contained only insofar as grace is handed down as necessary for any act, movement, thought: but, as we have warned, these things could be taken of works distinct from the beginning of faith: but the reprobation of that error, that God expects our will in order to give the first grace, was not had explicitly.

Celestine, the Roman Pontiff, having received from Prosper notice of this error, imposed silence indeed upon the erring, and proposed a norm of believing from the preceding authorities of the Apostolic See, in which the reprobation of that error also was contained virtually: but neither did he define the matter by a peremptory sentence, nor did he declare alien to the faith and the Church those who would believe otherwise.

Augustine indeed in the Pelagians (cf. L. II. cont. duas epistt. pelagg., c. 8.) and in others reprobated this very error, by which the gratuitousness of grace is denied or diminished: but he himself could not by his own authority bring it about that the matter would be of faith.

The Synod of Palestine, however, defined nothing in reality, published no canon: it received Pelagius because among other things he denied also that grace is given according to our merits. To whatever authority it had, there was added no confirmation of the Apostolic See.

XI. These things being laid down, a question is to be treated by us concerning two heads of the doctrine of the Massilians. For it is asked 1) what grace the Massilians denied to be necessary for the salutary beginning of faith. Jansenius contends that by them there were admitted not only the exterior graces of preaching and the like, but also the interior graces of illumination and inspiration, and the same as necessary; but that they were held as heretics because they judged that the will could resist interior grace, if it willed. Catholics on the contrary, i.e., those who venerate the decrees of the Apostolic See, deny that the Massilians admitted, besides the exterior graces, the necessity of interior grace for the beginning of faith, and that this is the error which was reprobated both by the Fathers and afterwards by the Synod of Arausic. II. It is asked 2) what grace the Massilians professed necessary for the other good works; for a disagreement exists in this matter among the Catholic Theologians themselves.

In order to proceed aptly and in order, let us note 1) that the question is about the opinion of those whom Hilary, Prosper, Augustine first impugned, and finally the Arausican Synod II and Boniface II, the Roman Pontiff, condemned; for we seek that opinion which was reprobated by the Fathers and by the Church in the Massilians, or remnants of the Pelagians. Whence 2) in order that it may be established what their error is concerning the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith, one must look especially at what the Church reprobated and proscribed in them. 3) As regards the first question: the question is not indeed whether the Massilians admitted grace for the beginning of faith, but whether they admitted it to be necessary for it: i.e., it is not a question whether they approved the fact, but whether they approved the necessity. Then the question is not about any beginning of faith whatsoever, but about the salutary beginning, about which alone the Fathers spoke, whether the Massilians demanded grace for this. Finally, the question is about interior immediate grace, whether they confessed this to be necessary for the beginning of faith.

XII. These things being posited, we can thus express in this thesis the opinion which we defend in the first question.

I. Before we prove this, we must briefly declare what is agreed upon by all, namely that the Massilians admitted certain exterior graces, and these necessary for the beginning of faith. Indeed, Prosper testifies, epist. ad August., c. 3, that this was the opinion of the Massilians: «every man is admonished by divine institutions to believe and to hope»; and Hilary likewise reports, epist. ad August., c. 2: «they assert what is agreeable to truth or fitting to preaching (namely, that the faithful are publicly taught), so that when the occasion of obtaining salvation is announced to those who are prostrate and will never rise by their own strength, by that very merit by which they willed and believed that they could be healed of their disease, they may obtain both the increase of faith itself and the effect of their entire healing.»

And in very truth we have heard that the Massilians, in order to extricate themselves from the difficulty taken from the fact that the preaching of the Gospel was denied to many peoples, had recourse to a certain knowledge of God of future things which would never be future; but this response indicates that they judged that some exterior calling of God is necessary for adults; for if this had not been certain to them, they would surely have answered that those peoples could and can come to faith by other means, and therefore that the lack of preaching is not an argument proving that God does not will all men to believe; as Prosper, together with others, argued against them.

Furthermore, the Massilians, in order to defend their doctrine, appealed to certain works of St. Augustine, especially to the Exposition of Certain Propositions in the Epistle to the Romans, and confessed that they accepted and approved everything which he had taught there, as Hilary testifies, epist. ad August., c. 3. Augustine himself, however, in De Praed. SS., c. 3, is a witness that when he wrote those little works he was in the same error in which the Massilians then found themselves. Now in that Exposition Augustine taught the necessity of exterior grace. For he says in that c. 3 of De Praed. SS.: «In like manner I erred, thinking that the faith by which we believe in God is not a gift of God, but that it is from us and in us, and that through it we obtain the gifts of God by which we live temperately, justly, and piously in this world. For I did not think that faith was prevented by the grace of God, so that through it there would be given to us what we might usefully ask, unless because we could not believe if the proclamation of truth did not precede; but that we should consent to the Gospel preached to us, I judged to be ours and to be from ourselves.» Therefore.

Wherefore those who, as Prosper testifies, ibid., c. 4, said that man is called to the grace of God whether through the natural law, or through the written law, or through evangelical preaching, thus distinguishing between the natural law and the written or extrinsically handed-down one, must be said to have signified by the name of natural law that state which is called that of the law of nature, which indeed did not exclude many exterior graces, whether extrinsic or also intrinsic and supernatural.

And indeed, since that first act was called by the Massilians faith, faith in Christ, credulity, desire of health, the entreaty of the physician and savior, some positive revelation was required, through which the disease and the physician might be recognized, which can be known only by revelation, and to which revelation faith would respond, which rests on the authority of God speaking.

Il. These things being settled, let us come to the demonstration of the Thesis. Theologians prove it by several arguments. And first, by the testimony of those who in the fifth and sixth centuries made mention of the errors of the Gauls concerning grace and refuted them. For it is established from these testimonies that the Massilians claimed the beginning of faith for nature alone, wished nature to take the lead and grace to follow, and grace to be conferred at length by the merit of credulity obtained by the powers of nature. But this is an open denial of the necessary interior and immediate grace for the beginning of faith; for what is asserted, that the beginning of faith is owed to nature alone, that nature takes the lead, that grace follows, etc., contradicts the necessity of interior immediate grace.

We have already given the testimony of Prosper in the preceding historical synopsis, n. VI. Hilary likewise reports to August., c. 2: «These are the things which are debated at Marseilles, or also in other places in Gaul. It is new and useless to preaching, that certain men are said to be chosen according to the purpose of election, so that they can neither receive it nor hold it, unless the will to believe is given. They think that all the vigor of preaching is excluded, if it is said that nothing which may be aroused in men through it has remained (after the sin of Adam). They agree that every man perished in Adam, and that no one is freed from there by his own free choice. But this they assert as agreeable», and the rest which we gave a little before.

Augustine, De Praedest. SS., c. 1: «These our brothers have arrived at confessing that the wills of men are prevented by the grace of God, and at agreeing that no one can suffice for himself for any good work, whether to be begun or to be completed. Therefore, retaining these things to which they have arrived, they are distinguished greatly from the error of the Pelagians.» Then, after a few intervening words, he continues, c. 2: «First, therefore, we must show that the faith by which we are Christians is a gift of God: if only we can do this more diligently than we have already done in so many and such great volumes. But now I see that I must answer those who say that the divine testimonies which we have adduced on this matter avail to this, that we should know that we have faith itself indeed from ourselves, but its increase from God, as if faith is not given to us by him but is only increased in us by him, by that merit by which it took its beginning from us.» Compare also the clear testimony on this matter recited a little before, in which he describes his old error similar to this one. And at the end of the book he concludes, saying that a new question had compelled him to dispute. He explains, indeed, of what sort the new question is, namely: «since in our earlier little works we had shown by sufficiently suitable testimonies that faith too is a gift of God, it was found that it was objected that those testimonies avail to this, that they show the increase of faith to be a gift of God; but that the beginning of faith, by which one first believes in Christ, is from man himself and is not a gift of God, but that God builds this up, so that when it has gone before, the rest, which are gifts of God, follow as by this merit.» Boniface II, in the letter to Caesarius by which he confirmed the Canons of the Second Synod of Orange, says, c. 1: «You indicate that some bishops of the Gauls, although they have already agreed that the other goods come from the grace of God, will that faith alone, by which we believe in Christ, is of nature, not of grace.» Moreover, there is no need to warn that by phrases of this sort, "gift of God", "to be in God", there is signified, in Augustine and the other Fathers of his age against the Pelagians, that which God works in us through his grace, that which nature cannot effect or attain by its own powers. And on the contrary, these phrases, "to be from us", "to be from nature" or "of nature", signified among the same authors that which would be done or obtained by us through the powers of nature alone, without the gratuitous help of God.

Then the same thing is established if the theorems are considered by which the system of the Massilians was, as it were, contained. For they maintained, first, that in nature, although vitiated and corrupted by the sin of the first man, there remained some good, namely that by which it could believe and will to be healed. Hilary, 1. c., c. 4: «Nor (they say) can it be said of this faith: what have you that you have not received? since in the same nature there remained, although vitiated, what was previously given to it sound and perfect.» They maintained, second, that the relation between faith and grace is this, that God requires faith, requires it of nature, and therefore requires it so that he may repay grace by its merit. Hilary, 1. c., c. 2: «For as to what is said: believe and you will be saved, they assert that one of these is required, the other offered, so that on account of what is required, if it has been rendered, what is offered may afterwards be repaid. Whence they think it follows that faith is to be shown by him to whose nature it was granted by the will of the Creator; and they think that none nature is so depraved or extinguished that it should not or could not will itself to be healed.» They maintained, moreover, that this is the difference between works and faith, that faith alone is foreknown by God, but works are also predestined. God is said to predestine those things which he knew he would do from an eternal decree.

Augustine, De Praed. SS., c. 19: «But these men of ours, about whom and for whom we now treat, perhaps say that the Pelagians are refuted by this apostolic testimony, where he says (Ephes. I. 13.) that we are therefore chosen in Christ and predestined before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and immaculate in his sight in charity. For they (the Pelagians) think that, having received the precepts, we are already made holy through ourselves by the choice of free will... and since God foreknew this future, they say, therefore he chose and predestined us before the foundation of the world in Christ.... But we (the Massilians), they say, say that God foreknew nothing of ours except the faith by which we begin to believe, and therefore chose us before the foundation of the world and predestined us, that we should also be holy and immaculate by his grace and work.» They maintained, finally, as we have already seen, that some are therefore not called through the preaching of the Gospel to faith, because they were foreseen as not going to believe by the good will of nature. Prosper.l. c. c. 5. Hilary.l. c. c. 3. But he who maintains all these things surely denies that grace is given and required for the beginning of faith; he denies the immediate grace through which faith is the work of God: therefore.

Now, thirdly, it is proved if the arguments are considered which the Fathers used against the Massilians, which would surely avail nothing if those men had confessed grace to be necessary for the beginning of faith. For the arguments taken up by the Fathers reduce to this. a) Testimonies of Scripture of this sort: I obtained mercy that I might be faithful: to you it is given for Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him: By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves; for it is the gift of God. (August., De Praed. SS., Conc. Araus. II., c. 25, and Boniface II in epist. ad Caesarium). But he who teaches that faith is the fruit of interior prevenient grace does not contradict these testimonies. b) The argument drawn from the words of the Apostle: what have you that you have not received: whence would follow what blessed Cyprian teaches, that one must glory in nothing, because nothing is ours (August., ibid., c. 3; the African bishops exiled in Sardinia, in the Synodal Letter, cc. 3, 5), from which the Fathers concluded that faith also is from God: but if the Massilians had conceded that faith also is from grace, they too would have confessed that we have nothing which we have not received and that nothing is ours; and therefore this argument could exercise no force against them. y) Of all our goods

that God is the author, and of all the virtues by which from the beginning of faith one tends toward God, as the bishops of the Apostolic See handed down (Caelestinus in Auctorit. Sedis Apostolicae): but neither would the Massilians have contradicted this doctrine, if they had agreed that faith is prevented by the immediate grace of God. d) That the Massilians destroyed the true notion of grace, in that in their opinion it would no longer be gratuitous. August., De Praed. SS, c. 2: «One does not therefore depart from that opinion which Pelagius himself was compelled to condemn in the Palestinian episcopal judgment, as the same acts testify: that the grace of God is given according to our merits, if it does not pertain to the grace of God that we have begun to believe.» But this weapon would be wrongly hurled against them, if faith were an effect of the grace of God. e) According to the Massilians, the human will precedes, grace follows, the obedience of man is prior to grace. Prosper, epist. ad August., c. 6: «They will obedience to be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation is to be believed to stand from the one who is saved, not from the one who saves, and the will of man procures for itself the help of divine grace, not that grace subjects the human will to itself (insofar as it prevents it).» This indeed cannot be reconciled with the notion of grace. But if the Massilians had demanded prevenient grace also for the beginning of faith, then according to them the human will would not precede and grace would follow: therefore.

The same thing is demonstrated, fourthly, by the definitions issued against them. For Boniface II censures the opinion of the Massilians, confirming the decrees of the Second Council of Orange; moreover he condemns those who teach that faith alone, by which we believe in Christ, is of nature and not of grace; who deny that right faith in Christ and the beginning of every good will are inspired into the senses of individuals by the prevenient grace of God; who say that the good of nature, which they know to have been depraved by the sin of Adam, is the author of our faith rather than Christ. The same Synod likewise condemns those who teach that grace is conferred by human invocation, that God awaits our wills, that the beginning of faith and the very affection of credulity is not a gift of God, that the mercy of God is conferred on those who without grace desire, ask, knock, that man can consent to evangelical preaching by the vigor of nature, that man can come to the grace of baptism by free will (canons 3, 4, 6, 7, 8); and finally, in canon 25, it establishes and proves by the testimonies of Scripture that faith is in us not through the good of nature but through the grace of God.

But the heresy opposed to these is that which we have declared thus far. Therefore.

Moreover, if the arguments set forth thus far are weighed, it will be clear that the Massilians denied for the beginning of faith the necessity of any interior immediate grace, that is, not only of the grace of inspiration, but also of illumination. Indeed, the testimonies of the Fathers hand down that grace was denied by the Massilians for the beginning of faith in such a way that they testify this universally, without any limitation. The theorems of the Massilians, that faith is of nature, that grace is repaid to the good will of nature, and therefore the opposition set up between nature, or the good of nature which remained after sin, and grace, manifestly exclude any supernatural interior grace which would be a necessary principle of faith. Likewise, the definitions of the Synod against them, which establish the necessity of the grace of illumination and of inspiration for consenting to evangelical preaching, persuade us that the necessity of both graces, as regards that point, was denied by the Massilians.

III. From the complete demonstration thus far adduced it is clear 1) that the Fathers most certainly convicted the Massilians of this, that they denied the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith. 2) From all the monuments, whether reporting, impugning, or proscribing the error of the Massilians, it is equally most certain that this one thing alone was reprobated in them, namely, the denial of the necessity of grace, not however the denial of a certain manner of acting of grace, by which, namely, it determines the will to one thing: indeed, there was not even a question concerning the manner of acting of grace.

IV. What, then, of Jansenius? He (a thing which cannot be sufficiently disapproved, some Catholics, not deterred by the condemnation of the fourth Jansenist proposition, assenting) lays down in De haeresi pelagiana I. VIII. c. 6. first, and rightly indeed, that the mind of not all the Semi-Pelagians is to be investigated by him, since the opinion of all was not one, «but of those only whose opinion and dogmas Prosper and Hilary submitted to Augustine to be judged and handed over to be refuted. For to know the opinions of those who err does not profit so very much, unless at the same time it be known, by the interposed certain and approved authority of some doctor, what is to be judged concerning each one, what is to be fled, what to be held, what to be tolerated.» Then concerning the opinion of these he decides thus: «The opinions of the Massilians and the doctrine of Augustine having been most diligently weighed, I think that it must be certain and undoubted that the Massilians confessed a true, and also internal and actual, grace to be necessary even for faith itself, which they ascribe to the powers of human freedom and will.For Jansenius wants the question with the Massilians to have been about the manner of acting of grace in us, and the Fathers to have contended against the Massilians denying this, that such is the grace conferred on fallen men, that it determines the will to one thing and that consequently it is not in the power of free will to use grace or not to use it, to consent or to dissent. (De haeresi pelag. L. VIII. c. 8. coll. De Gratia Christi L. II, c. 4.) That assertion of Jansenius, however, which seems to embrace all the Massilians about whom Prosper reported to Augustine, in reality does not comprehend all; for already in the preceding L. VII. c. 2. Jansenius had conceded that some Semi-Pelagians denied the necessity of interior actual grace, and had proved this from the testimony of the letter of Prosper to Augustine, in which there is indeed speech of those Massilians whose opinion Prosper handed over to Augustine to be judged and refuted. Jansenius therefore concedes that some Massilians denied the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith, indeed for all works, as he himself indeed judges, but he likewise contends that others among the Massilians, about whom Prosper and Hilary wrote to Augustine, admitted the necessity of interior actual grace for the beginning of faith.

V. But, to say this briefly, a distinction of this sort among those Massilians whose opinions Prosper and Hilary carried to Augustine (for about these we too speak) is to be rejected as being among the fictions of a vain mind. It rests chiefly on these words of Prosper in his letter to Augustine, by which Prosper designates some, as Jansenius thinks, among the Massilians themselves who would altogether agree with the Pelagians and would utterly do away with the necessity of grace. For thus c. 4 has it: «Some of these, however, do not depart from the Pelagian paths to such an extent that, when they are forced to confess that grace of Christ which prevents all human merits, lest, if it be rendered to merits, it be vainly called grace, they want this condition (creation) of each individual man to pertain to it, in which the grace of the Creator establishes him, meriting nothing beforehand, because not even existing, free and rational, so that through the discernment of good and evil he may be able to direct his will both to the knowledge of God and to... the obedience of his commandments, and to arrive at that grace by which we are reborn in Christ through the natural faculty, namely, by asking, seeking, knocking, so that for this reason he receives, for this reason he finds, for this reason he enters; because, having used well the good of nature, he has merited to arrive at that saving grace by the help of initial grace... And as much as anyone has faculty for evil, so much let him have faculty for good, and with equal moment let the mind move itself either to vices or to virtues. Behold, they say, an express Pelagian opinion denying the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith: but this is said by Prosper to be the opinion of some; therefore the others approved that necessity of grace which these denied.

I answer that those certain ones are not distinguished from the other Massilians for this reason, that they taught different dogmas, but for this reason, that, reduced to straits so as to confess a grace preventing all merits, they used other formulas, namely those which were proper to the Pelagians, saying that preventing grace is nature and free will, which were conferred gratuitously through creation. From which explicit explanation the others abstained, saying rather: not wholly corrupted and extinguished through the sin of Adam is the power received from him for good, but something has remained in nature, although vitiated. These two ways of speaking, if well considered, say the same thing; but the one is both more obscure and more modest, and savors less of Pelagian shamelessness. Therefore this distribution of the Massilians into two classes is to be rejected as fictitious. But the other things which are brought forward to prove the same distribution are more than empty.

VI. Wherefore, that they may more efficaciously demonstrate that the Massilians admitted the necessity of interior grace even for the beginning of faith, they appeal to writers certainly, as they themselves judge, Semi-Pelagian, namely Cassian, Faustus of Riez, Arnobius the Younger, Gennadius, in whose writings the profession of that necessity is openly contained; whence they gather that the Semi-Pelagians were not reprobated on account of the denial of a necessity of this sort (Jansenius De Haeresi pelag. L. VII. cc. 2.3). But concerning which Massilians is the controversy for us? Certainly concerning those whose opinions Prosper and Hilary carried to Augustine. But the opinions of Faustus, Gennadius, and Arnobius, Prosper and Hilary could not have signified to Augustine. But what those taught whose errors Prosper and Hilary reported to Augustine must be gathered entirely from the writings of these which survive, and it is only by a sophistical method, these being set aside, that appeal is made to other inept witnesses. Likewise the controversy is for us concerning those whose opinions the Synod of Orange and Boniface II proscribed. But by these was proscribed that error which denies grace to be necessary for the beginning of faith, not the error which, the necessity of grace for absolutely all acts being admitted, denies a certain special manner of the working of grace. Wherefore, to conclude the matter briefly, one of two things: either the cited authors concede grace to be necessary for absolutely all good acts, the beginning of faith not excluded, or they deny it. If they deny it, appeal is wrongly made to them; if they concede it, I deny that they are to be numbered among those about whom we dispute, namely those whose opinions Prosper and Hilary handed over to Augustine and the Synod of Orange and Boniface condemned.

VII. Moreover, how is it proved that the cited authors admitted the necessity of grace for all acts, even the beginning of faith? Namely, by certain testimonies being produced, by which they teach or seem to teach it. But that argument is similar to this: Cassian, easily the prince of that Massilian sect, expressly professed, as Prosper himself testifies against the Collator, the catholic doctrine; therefore Cassian and the rest of the Massilians thought nothing but catholicly. Surely it remains to be seen whether all the Massilians were always consistent with themselves, whether all their doctrine concerning grace was reprobated, or only that by which, contradicting themselves, they fell away from the catholic faith. But it is established that some, whose doctrine was disapproved by the Fathers, thought at times entirely catholicly, as is clear in Cassian, and that only those heads of doctrine were impugned by the Fathers by which they contradicted themselves while thinking catholicly. Therefore the testimonies of some, which assert the necessity of grace for all acts, do not prove that they themselves did not deny the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith and were not rejected by the Fathers on account of this error (Cf. Franciscus Annatus in the work Augustinus a Baianis vin-elicatus b. VII, c. 2. §. 2). Moreover, whether all those cited authors were or were not in the Semi-Pelagian error, you can learn from Alticotius Summa Augustiniana, in the Preface of part V.

VIII. The argument which they seek from the works of Augustine is similar to the preceding (Jansenius De haeresi pelag. L. VIII, c. 8.). For Augustine in De Praed. SS. c. 3 testifies that he once adhered to that opinion which was afterwards that of the Massilians, and says that this is sufficiently indicated by some little works written by him before his episcopate. What therefore do the Jansenists attempt? They turn over several works written by Augustine when not yet bishop (Lib. 83. 9q. q. 6.8 — De quantitate animae c. 28 — Lib. de beata vita n. 35 — Soliloq. I. I. c. 1. L. II. c. 6.), find in them the necessity of grace for all acts luminously handed down; therefore, they conclude, the denial of the necessity of grace for the beginning of faith is not that error with which Augustine was once imbued, which some of his little works written before the beginning of the episcopate sufficiently indicate.

But who indicated to Jansenius that those are the books in which the error of Augustine is to be sought? Or did Augustine say that all his little works written before the episcopate were infected with that error? Again, did Augustine leave us uncertain what sort this error was, so that it would be necessary to divine it? Did he not there in De Praed. SS. most openly signify the error to be this, that he did not believe faith to be prevented by the grace of God, but the other works to be so prevented? Therefore, is his error to be determined from the little works of Augustine (which ones are to be consulted we do not know, since Augustine himself at least did not indicate them all), or rather from the error which Augustine openly signified is it to be determined which are those several little works sprinkled with the Semi-Pelagian stain? This is without doubt to be done. But Jansenius preferred to enter the former path, so that he could traduce to us as heretical the catholic doctrine.

And indeed these things are in the first place certain: the one, that Augustine in his Retractationes emended and more accurately explained whatever in his works seemed to him less rightly said, especially if anything could in any way favor the Pelagian error; the other, that when at the beginning of his episcopate he wrote the books to Simplicianus, Augustine fully understood the catholic doctrine of gratuitous election to faith, as he himself testifies in De Praed. SS. c. 4. Now indeed in L. I. Retrat., reviewing in chronological order all the books written before the episcopate, in all of them up to c. 23 he notes nothing said by himself less cautiously or less truly in this matter of which we treat. But in c. 23, retracting the exposition of certain propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, he notes this his error, in which, when he wrote it, he was engaged. Likewise in c. 24 and 25, reviewing the exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians and the inchoate exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, he notes something in them which could at least obscurely indicate that error; for he says in c. 24: «Likewise what I said: grace is that by which our sins are forgiven us, that we may be reconciled to God; but peace is that by which we are reconciled to God: is to be understood thus, that we nevertheless know that both belong to the general grace of God, just as in the people of God one thing is specially Israel, another specially Judas, and yet both generally Israel.» The same he repeats in c. 25. There remains the work on Lying, written after the preceding works before the beginning of the episcopate, in which nothing is noted in this regard. Then follow the books to Simplicianus. Therefore the books in which that error is to be sought are those expositions cited above on the epistles of Paul.

IX. And surely, since, according to Jansenius, the error in which Augustine was before the episcopate is not placed in the denial of the necessity of grace for faith, but in the denial of a certain grace which, determining the will to one thing, gives the act itself, and this error, as Augustine testifies, is found in some of his writings before the episcopate; certainly, if Augustine had judged that error to be the error which Jansenius thinks, the same Augustine, retracting all his little works written before the episcopate, would have noted the same error in some of these little works. But Augustine never notes that error, never indicates that he once erred for this reason, that he denied or did not teach that determining grace. Therefore Jansenius dreams.

X. Finally Jansenius (De haeresi Pelag. L. VIII, c. 6. seq.) observes that the Massilians were reproved by the Fathers because 1) they affirmed salvation to be ready for all, if only they be willing to receive it, 2) all are called and invited by grace, but each one obeys the caller by his own free will (Prosper. carm. De Ingr. v. 253. 256), 3) grace withdraws itself from none, but aids those desirous of right and enlightens those willing (ibid. 259), 4) God awaits our will, that we may be cleansed from sin (Synod. Araus. c. 4). But, he says, these are the formulas which those use who deny grace efficacious of itself; therefore the Massilians denied this grace, and this grace the Fathers wanted to establish.

But when the Massilians said that men receive grace if they will, obey the caller by their own free will, are aided and enlightened if willing, that their will is awaited, 1) they spoke of the natural will elicited without the help of interior grace, and this is what the Fathers refute; 2) by the grace by which they said men are called, the Massilians understood exterior grace; but they wanted interior immediate grace to follow upon the merits of nature, and this again is what the Fathers condemn. Moreover, none of these is asserted by those who deny grace efficacious of itself, and efficacious in such a way that it determines the act. Nor does that prove it more, which the same Jansenius brings forth from Prosper (epist. ad August. c. 6.) reproving the Massilians because they refused to confess that grace which «subjects to itself the human will.» For this grace is not that which constrains and subjugates the will by determining it to one thing, but the grace which a good will follows, namely grace preventing, not prevented by the will of nature, as is clear from the whole context and the whole controversy with the Massilians.

Finally, that you may dissolve the argument which Jansenius proposes (De haeresi Pelag. L. VIII, c. 1. seq.), observe that the Massilians taught not only that man can come to faith by free will, but by free will alone; and therefore that by the name of nature, to which they granted this power, they understood nature destitute of any supernatural intrinsic aid. For this reason Augustine too, when he denies to the Massilians that free will and nature suffice, taking, as is fitting, those words in the same signification in which they were taken by the adversaries, understands nature and free will destitute of all interior grace. Which sense appears in that sentence (De Praed. SS. c. 5): «to be able to have faith is of the nature of men; to have it, however, is of the grace of the faithful.» Wherefore, although Augustine elsewhere by the name of nature and free will signified nature and free will increased by grace, which is sufficiently clear from the declarations of the same Augustine; it does not follow that these names were taken by Augustine in this same sense in this question with the Massilians, and consequently that the Massilians too by the name of nature and free will understood nature and free will endowed with some grace.

Therefore the first part of the proposition of Jansenius recited above was rightly proscribed by the Apostolic See as false. And indeed that censure of falsity regards the first part of the proposition, just as the censure of heresy regards the latter; for that part could not be passed over without a mark, since the other depended wholly on it, so that, if the first were permitted, the second part could no longer be condemned as heretical, unless by branding the mark of heresy or the suspicion of it upon all the Fathers who impugned the Massilians.

But that we may dispatch the other question, we lay down this second thesis.

I. We say that if it is considered in itself—for that grace labored under this very vice in the opinion of the Massilians, that it was repaid to the merits of nature—but once abstraction is made from this relation of grace, in which the error lies, of which we have already spoken, the grace admitted by the Massilians on account of works was, as regards its own nature and efficacy, that very same grace which Augustine vindicated as necessary for absolutely all good acts, even for the beginning of faith; it was, namely, the same help.

II. The demonstration is easy, with the most explicit testimonies adduced. Augustine, De Praed. SS. ch. 1, says: «Those brethren have advanced so far as to confess that the wills of men are preceded by the grace of God, and to agree that no one is sufficient for himself either to begin or to complete any good work. Holding, therefore, to these points to which they have advanced, they are distinguished very much from the error of the Pelagians.» And in de Dono Persev. ch. 17, he says: «Those who place only the beginning of faith and perseverance even to the end so in our power as not to think them to be gifts of God;... but they concede that God gives the rest, when they are obtained from him by the faith of the believer.» And ibid., ch. 24: «I think that I have taught sufficiently, or rather more than sufficiently, that both to begin to believe in the Lord and to remain in the Lord even to the end are gifts of God. But the other goods pertaining to a pious life, by which God is rightly worshipped, even those very ones on account of whom we do these things concede that they are gifts of God.» Hilary testifies the same, epist. ad Aug. ch. 2: «Moreover, they agree that no one is sufficient for himself even to begin, let alone to complete, any work; for they do not think that a sick man's willing to be healed with a terrified and suppliant will is to be counted among any of the works of their cure.»

II. But in order that our works may be gifts of God, they must, on Augustine's authority, be from the interior grace of the will—namely, from that grace which he himself defended against the Pelagians. Therefore, those whom Augustine testifies to have believed that good works are gifts of God are to be said to have admitted that grace which Augustine championed. Certainly Augustine did not hold as catholic anyone who did not confess wholly that grace of the will which he himself championed; but the same Augustine testifies that the Massilians, as regards the grace necessary for works, were separated from the Pelagians and therefore thought with the Catholics (as he openly teaches in the testimony shortly to be adduced); therefore. And in very truth, if the grace admitted by the Massilians for works had been other than that which Augustine approved, he would have had to institute with them a twofold disputation—one on the necessity of grace for faith, the other on the quality of the grace necessary for works; but this question is not raised, and it is not raised because the Massilians are said to consent that all good works are gifts of God and are given by God; therefore.

IV. The same thing is shown by the argumentation with which Augustine and, after him, Boniface II pressed the Massilians and their followers. For Augustine thus attacks them in De Dono Persev. ch. 17, who deny that there is any longer place for reproofs and exhortations, if the beginning of faith and perseverance are from the grace of God. Why, then, do they preach with us (therefore there was no difference on this point) that wisdom and continence are gifts of God? But if these are preached as being gifts of God, the exhortation by which we exhort men to be wise and continent is not impeded; what, then, is at last the reason that they think the exhortation to be impeded by which we exhort men to come to faith and to remain in it even to the end, if these too are said to be gifts of God? «But this argumentation would avail nothing ad hominem, if the Massilians had said that the other works are gifts of God in an entirely different sense from that which Augustine understood. Therefore.»

V. Wherefore the Massilians, who conceded that faith was foreknown by God but denied that it was predestined—that is, denied that it was the effect of grace prepared by God from eternity—protested that they conceded the other works to be predestined. «But we, they say, say that God did not foreknow anything of ours except the faith by which we begin to believe, and therefore chose us before the constitution of the world and predestined us, so that we might also be holy and immaculate by his grace and work» (De Praed. SS. ch. 19). But Augustine, that they might think catholicly about grace, demands nothing else from the Massilians except that they concede predestination also for faith and perseverance (ibid., coll. ch. 1 and ch. 10, n. 19); therefore the profession of predestination is the profession of that necessary grace which Augustine asserted; but the Massilians conceded that the other works besides faith are predestined; therefore.

VI. Therefore the Massilians professed that help is supplied by God for works, that this help is necessary, and they professed that same help which was admitted by the other Catholics; for by the profession of this help they were distinguished very much from the Pelagians, and nothing else was demanded of them, that they might think entirely catholicly, than that they preach that grace is necessary also for the beginning of faith and for persevering; therefore.

Therefore the Massilians, as regards works, confessed the necessity of interior immediate grace—not only of illumination, but also of inspiration; for Augustine always championed this grace.

VII. Note that the ontological nature of the divine help and its efficacy is not denied by anyone by the very fact that he says it is repaid to the merit of some nature. For it can be conceived that the grace is the same in itself, inasmuch as it is necessary help, even if it is said to be repaid to the merit of nature. For it can remain—or at least it can be conceived to remain (albeit through error)—still an entitatively supernatural gift, even if, in order to confer it, God requires some congruous merit of nature. The ratio of the gratuitous, that is, of the benefit, is indeed changed; but the thing, as it is in itself, can remain the same, or at least it can be conceived (albeit through error) that it remains the same.

COROLLARY. Although the Massilians and Augustine differed among themselves on the question of the term which grace attains and of its gratuitousness, they nevertheless agreed plainly in that which pertains to the character of grace, insofar as it is help for acting. But, as Jansenius himself teaches, the Massilians did not confess that grace which would determine the will to one thing, but rather that grace whose use was in the power of free will; therefore neither did Augustine ever teach a grace determining the will to one thing, but on the contrary he is to be said to have asserted that grace whose use is in the power of free will, to which the will can consent and likewise dissent.

I. There is a certain necessity which destroys freedom. It is called antecedent, namely, that which anticipates the exercise of freedom and does not include it, as consequent necessity does. If we wish to speak truly, it is the same thing to say: that the will is pressed in acting by antecedent necessity, and that the will is destitute of elective power. But lest we insert useless questions here, we say that we accept antecedent necessity in the sense in which it is commonly wont to be accepted by philosophers and is accepted by the heretics themselves, namely, as excluding the freedom of indifference.

II. Now, the Calvinist doctrine is set forth in this way by Scharpius, a Calvinist man, De Lib. arb. Bk. II ch. 3: «The state of the third controversy between us and the Pontificians is this: whether man after the fall (before the fall Calvin conceded freedom in the true sense of the word) is truly of free will in those things which pertain to piety, and although he can do nothing without the help of grace, nevertheless, aroused by prevenient grace and aided by God, he can so work that he can also not work. The affirmative part is defended by Bellarminus and the Council of Trent, Sess. VI. But we say... that in man after the fall God acts so efficaciously and bends the will, that man's will cannot not follow God willing and working the conversion of man; although it follows not compelled, but spontaneously.And the Synod of Dordrecht of the Calvinist faction says: art. 3: «we affirm that God moves the will of man by his grace, not, as the Pontificians hand down, so that it may afterwards be of our election to obey or resist the motion; but so that he bends it efficaciously and necessarily to obedience.» But this is the necessity which we call antecedent. Calvin himself in Bk. II against Pighius n. 24: «If freedom is opposed to coercion, I confess that the will is free.... We remove coercion and violence... but we deny that it is free, because on account of the innate depravity of man, it is necessarily borne toward evil and cannot desire anything but evil.»And Bk. VI n. 19: «For this is not the question: whether the will acts, which is beyond doubt, but whether it acts from itself... for who does not know that it comes about through the will that man wills? But Paul there (Philip. II, 13) asserts that the will is governed by the Spirit of God so that it may incline and aspire to good, and therefore that it is his (God's) own action, if we conceive anything good in the mind.» And lib. VI n. 4: «I deny that grace is so offered to us that it may afterwards be of our option either to obey or to resist. I deny that it is given only in this, that it may aid our weakness with its support, as if anything else were situated in us; but I confirm that this is wholly his work, that our heart be turned from stone to flesh.» Wherefore, since it was agreed between him and the Catholics that whatever of good is in us is to be attributed to God, he noted that the question was about the mode: Lib. VI n. 1: «but when we begin to express the mode in which God is in us the author of all good things; here he (Pighius) immediately resists; because he will not endure that it be attributed to God otherwise than in such a way that a part be left to man,» namely, the free motion of the will from itself. Hence in the Antidote against chapter 6 of Sess. VI he says: «I say openly that what the Tridentine Fathers pronounce here conflicts with that saying of Christ: whoever has heard from my Father comes to me. For as Augustine prudently notes, it follows that no one hears and learns from God without at the same time believing in Christ, and that the motion of the Holy Spirit is so efficacious that it always generates faith. But they place this in man's option, that he hearken to the inspiration of God, if he will. These things can in no way be reconciled with one another: that all who have learned from God believe in Christ, and that the inspiration of God avails no otherwise nor is ratified, unless men assent from themselves.»Calvin further declares what necessity he constructs, namely, that of the consequence, not of the consequent. In Instit. Lib. I ch. 16: «What God has decreed must so come to pass, that nevertheless it is neither precisely nor by its own nature necessary. A familiar example occurs in the bones of Christ. Since he put on a body like ours, no sane man will deny that his bones were fragile; which nevertheless could not be broken. Whence we again see that the distinctions about necessity secundum quid and absolute, and likewise of the consequent and of the consequence, were not idly invented in the schools.» Namely, the act of the will under grace is contingent in itself; because it could not be, for God could have not determined it; accordingly the consequent is contingent: but with the motion of grace posited, that act cannot not be; whence the necessity of the consequence is had. Luther asserted the same doctrine.Cf. among his Articles the 36th.

III. That this opinion is heretical we prove briefly, for there is no need of more words in a matter so manifest. First, it was reprobated by the Conc. Trid. Sess. VI en. 4, about which we shall say something later. It was condemned also by the proscription of the Jansenist proposition: for meriting or demeriting in the state of fallen nature there is not required freedom from necessity, but freedom from coercion suffices. For we merit when we work with the help of grace. Under grace, therefore, there exists freedom from necessity, or the will is immune from antecedent necessity, so that it can act and not act, when it has been aroused by grace to act.

IV. Moreover, Scripture and the whole Tradition openly oppose this most pestilent error. Truly 1) the works which are done through grace in the present state are so exhibited by Scripture, that by the law enacted they are commanded to fallen men, who are prevented by the grace of God and aroused to act; reward and prize are set before the same men when they do them; by the threat of punishment those men are deterred from the omission of those same works; then persuasions and exhortations are applied to men for acting holily: but all these things would be absurd, if a man acting with the help of grace were determined to good by antecedent necessity; therefore. The major is established from the repeated laws, precepts, exhortations, counsels, which occur most frequently in both Testaments, to which their sanction of reward or punishment is attached. Again, those laws, exhortations, persuasions regard men aided by the help of grace for working well. For the discourse is about salutary works, by which the friendship of God is obtained or increased, by which we are made worthy of attaining eternal glory: but it is established from the same Scripture that these things cannot be done without the grace of God. Therefore. But the minor is evident from the very light of reason. Therefore.

2. Scripture asserts to the will of fallen man, with regard to the works of piety by which he may please God, the faculty of choosing. Deuter. XXX, 19: I call heaven and earth to witness (says Moses to the people) today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose therefore life, that you may live, you and your seed, and may love the Lord your God and obey his voice." Cf. also Iosue XXIV, 15. 22. Eccli. XV, 14 ff. God from the beginning constituted man and left him in the hand of his own counsel; he added his commandments and his precepts: if you will keep the commandments (these words are directed by the inspired writer to present men, fallen men) they shall preserve you... He has set before you water and fire; stretch forth your hand to whichever you will: before man are life and death, good and evil: that which shall please him shall be given him. Wherefore Scripture testifies that an indifferent power of doing and not doing inheres in the will. Eccli. XXXI, 8—10: Blessed is the rich man who is found without blemish... who could transgress and has not transgressed, could do evil and has not done it:" and therefore that man does good because he wills, and does not do it because he does not will; as in the cited place Eccli. XV and Isaiae I, 16. 20: Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your thoughts from my eyes... If you are willing and will hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you are unwilling and provoke me to wrath, the sword shall devour you. Matth. XIX, 17: If you will enter into life, keep the commandments. But free will cannot be represented more clearly and evidently. Since, therefore, it is represented as free with respect to those works which are done with the help of the grace of God, it is clear that the free will is free under the grace of God.

3. Scripture testifies that the will of fallen man resists, or can resist, the grace of God or God calling and arousing. Apocalyp. III, 20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door to me, I will enter to him. Prov. I, 24: I called and you refused; I stretched out my hand and there was none who would look. Actuum VII, 51: Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in hearts, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Isaiae V, 3. 4: Judge between me and my vineyard. What is it that I ought to have done more to my vineyard and did not do to it? or what did I expect, that it should make grapes, and it made wild grapes? Matth. XXIII, 37: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Rom. II, 4: Do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and longanimity? do you not know that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But man could not resist, if grace brought upon the will a necessity of acting: therefore.

But it is evident that in these testimonies the discourse is about the free will of fallen man: and therefore that the exception is vain and absurd, namely, that the discourse there is about the unimpaired free will.

V. As regards the Fathers, it is generally manifest that they taught and defended against the heretics the active indifference of the will with respect to salutary works in fallen men. Nor is there need here to heap up more testimonies. Let those be compared which we gave in Thesis LXX, De Deo Creante. See Maffei, Istoria Theologica, Libb. IV. V. VI. But what avails most of all here is that we have Calvin himself consenting in this matter, who concedes that his doctrine is new and unknown to the ancients: «Christ moves the will (he says, Instit. L. II. c. 3), not in the way handed down and believed for many ages past, that it may afterwards be of our election either to obey or to resist the motion, but by affecting it efficaciously.»

VI. Specifically, in the Pelagian controversy the same thing was vindicated. Thus Peter the Deacon in the letter sent to the African Bishops exiled in Sardinia, ch. IV, n. 3: «The heavenly Father reveals (the faith) to whom he wills, drawing him to true freedom, not by violent necessity, but by infusing sweetness through the Holy Spirit, so that presently believing we may say that the Lord is Jesus: which no one can say through the natural freedom of the will, unless in the Holy Spirit.» And the same African Bishops in the letter to Ioannes, Venerius, etc., ch. 10: «But what you say, that man is saved by the mercy of God alone, but they say: unless someone shall have concurred and labored with his own will, he cannot be saved, both is worthily maintained, if the right order of divine mercy and human will be preserved, that the former may precede, the latter follow; let the mercy of God alone confer the beginning of salvation, to which then the will of man may be present as the co-worker of its own salvation: so that the prevenient mercy of God may direct the course of the human will, and the obedient human will, with the same mercy assisting, may run according to the intention to the prize.» And ch. 12: «And through this, since man has free will, he hears the precepts which he may do, but for fulfilling the divine precepts the free will is in no way made suitable, unless it be divinely aided.» Prosper in Responsionibus ad Capitula Gallorum, respons. 6: «It is wrongly said that free will is nothing or does not exist; but that before the illumination of faith it acts in darkness and in the shadow of death is not rightly denied.»

Man, therefore, being justified, with no preceding good merit, receives the gift, by which gift he may acquire also merit, so that what has been begun in him through the grace of Christ may be increased also through the industry of the free will, the help of God never being removed. But that the predestination of God, whether to good or to evil, operates in men, is most ineptly said, so that some necessity seems to impel man to both.»

VII. But as regards Augustine, we bring the matter to a close with these arguments. Augustine, even after the Pelagian heresy had arisen, defended against the same Pelagians both the necessity of grace and free will. The witness, above all others, is the book written De Gratia et libero arbitrio. Moreover, these two things are certain: 1) that he himself, with regard to the definition or essence of free will, inasmuch as in fallen men it is capable of merit and demerit, agreed wholly with the Pelagians: we proved this in the cited Thesis, n. VI; but the Pelagians vindicated for the will the active indifference of doing and not doing. 2) It is established that Augustine agreed with the Massilians with regard to the nature and efficacy of grace; this we demonstrated in Th. XXXVIII.: but the Massilians asserted a grace to which the human will could resist and consent, as Tansenius himself testifies. But this doctrine of Augustine is wholly opposed to the doctrine which we impugn in this thesis. Therefore. But let it suffice to bring forth one most eloquent testimony from the book de Spiritu et litt., ch. 34: «Let him attend and see that this (good) will is to be attributed to the divine gift not only because it is from free will, which has been naturally created in us, but also because God acts by the persuasions of things seen, that we may will and that we may believe, whether extrinsically through the evangelical exhortations… or intrinsically, where no one has in his power what comes into his mind: but to consent or to dissent is of the proper will. When, therefore, God acts with the rational soul in these ways, that it may believe him (for it cannot believe anything by free will, if there be no persuasion or calling which it may believe), certainly God works in man even the very willing to believe, and in all things his mercy prevents us; but to consent to the calling of God or to dissent from it, as I have said, is of the proper will. Which thing not only does not weaken what was said: «what have you that you have not received?» but even confirms it. For the soul cannot receive and have the gifts, about which it hears this, unless by consenting; and through this, what it has and what it receives is of God; but to receive and to have is certainly of the receiver and the haver. Now if anyone constrains us to scrutinize that depth, why to one it is so persuaded that he is persuaded, but to another not so; only two things occur for the present, which it pleases me to answer: «O the depth of the riches! Is there iniquity with God?» Let him to whom this answer displeases seek more learned men, but let him beware lest he find more presumptuous ones.» Here you have the economy of freedom and grace most clearly set forth. Cf. Petavius, De Opificio sex dierum, L. IV.

VIII. And in very truth, if the history of dogmas be weighed, it will be clear that the magisterium of the Church was no less solicitous to defend the necessity and gratuitousness of grace, than to assert the power of the free will, aided by grace, of choosing between good and evil and of determining itself to either at pleasure. Just as the Pelagian heresy was proscribed, so also among the ancients the Manichaeans were proscribed, the mathematicians or astrologers, assertors of fate, were proscribed, and among the moderns Wikleffus was proscribed (art. 27), Lutherus was proscribed (art. 36), Lutherus and Calvinus were proscribed (Conc. Trid. Sess. VI cann. 45), all of whom denied free will.

IX. And as regards canon 5 Conc. Trid. Sess. VI can. 5. of Sess. VI of the Synod of Trent, note that by it he is condemned who has said that the free will, moved and aroused by God, cooperates in nothing by assenting to God, who arouses and calls, and cannot dissent, if it will, but like some inanimate thing does nothing at all, but conducts itself merely passively. Now, however, the question can be raised what the Synod understood by the last words. Whether to condemn those who would say that the will does nothing at all, and therefore to establish only that the will does something under grace, so that satisfaction be made to the definition of the Council, if it be said that the will acts only spontaneously under grace? For the will acting spontaneously does not conduct itself as some inanimate thing doing nothing at all. It must be answered, however, that both from the scope of this definition and from the context of the Canon this exclusive sense is excluded. For first, the scope of the Council was to proscribe the error of the Protestants about free will: but Lutherus, Calvinus and the rest did not deny these spontaneous motions of the will under grace; therefore the condemnation would have pertained to them in nothing. But they denied motions free and immune from necessity; these, therefore, the Tridentine Fathers wished to vindicate. Again, these last words ought to cohere with the preceding ones: but in the preceding ones it is asserted that man so cooperates with God by assenting, that he can dissent if he will, which words are to be taken in the composite sense with grace. For if this be lacking, there can be no consent, no act; but there cannot be dissent, for when we dissent, we dissent from someone, i. e., here, from God calling through grace. Nor likewise can that grace be cast away, as is said ch. 5; for what would you cast away that you do not have? (whence, as we may hint this in passing, the fraud or inadvertence of those is clear, who take the words of Trent: he can dissent, as synonymous with these: he can not act). By these words, to some, immunity from necessity is taught: therefore, by the following words, the mere spontaneous activity of the will cannot be established as sufficient. And truly, for the Tridentine Fathers, it was the same thing for the will or man to act and to act freely; they looked, namely, at the acts which are called human, by which we are properly said to act. Whence in chapter 5, to which that canon corresponds, the Fathers had denied that man does nothing at all in receiving the inspiration of God, since he can even cast it away. Surely he acts for this reason; because he so receives it that he can not receive it, certainly he would not act if he could not do that. But this is the human action, of which we are masters; therefore.

X. To the argument taken from authority let there be added also the reason drawn from the nature of actual grace. For actual grace consists, as we have said, in the elevation of the faculty and in vital acts. Now the elevation of the faculty brings about only this, that the will can operate in a higher order, not that it lacks the power essential to itself. But the vital acts, in which the prevenient illumination and inspiration are placed, are either indeliberate, or also deliberate. If deliberate, whatever follows from them will have its ground in the free exercise of the will determining itself, and therefore will be immune from antecedent necessity. But through indeliberate acts, to which purely prevenient grace looks, the will is indeed affected to something; but the power remains to the will of choosing one of those things to which it is inclined through the indeliberate motions, which therefore exist in the will so that the exercise of freedom may be possible: therefore. Cf. Th. XVII.

Furthermore, in order that we may convince the adversaries from some of their own principles: they concede, indeed contend, that grace imposed no necessity upon the Angels and upon the first man in the state of innocence: but if the first man, whole, did not suffer necessity from the grace conferred upon him, neither ought fallen man to suffer necessity from the grace which is now conferred upon him. For the grace of fallen man is healing, medicinal grace, i. e., restoring man to that perfection with respect to meritorious acts from which he fell; but it would not really be healing grace, if a man aided by grace could not move himself as before, but could only be moved; just as that is not called medicine which, applied to an infirm foot to heal it, does not bring about that it can move by itself, as before the infirmity, but only that it can be moved by another. Therefore if the freedom of indifference was lost through the loss of grace, with grace restored and that grace healing the will, that freedom will have to be restored: and therefore the will of fallen man, too, will be free under grace.

I. Jansenius, De Gratia Christi, Bk. IV, ch. 1, says: «The controversy among the more recent Doctors is not a small one, as to what that grace is by which God converts the heart of man and works good in him. For some think it is a holy thought; others, that it is certain indeliberate movements of love, fear, hope, or of some similar affection, by which the will is excited to love, fear, hope; others, that it is a physical predetermination of the power of the will to act... Whoever shall have determined to cleave to the footsteps of the most holy and most safe Doctor will not labor much in that difficulty which has so greatly exercised the industry of many recent authors. For he will see clearly, from all his works and from his passages agreeing with one another, that that medicinal grace of Christ the Savior, which the School calls efficacious, is nothing else than a certain heavenly and ineffable sweetness, or spiritual delight, by which the will is forestalled and bent to willing and doing whatever God has determined that it should will and do.» Having adduced proofs of this matter, he adds in ch. 6: «From these things it is now clearly understood that that grace of divine delight is so greatly necessary, when we fight with the temptations and delights of earthly things, that unless it be greater than the earthly one, by which our affection is held, it cannot but happen that we are overcome by the weakness of our own will. For a greater delight will surely never be overcome by a lesser delight, but the mind will follow that one which, by affecting it more, has enticed it with sweetness... Since therefore, for the doing of any work of justice whatsoever, it is necessary that it be born from a greater delight in justice, hence it comes about that Augustine is wont to adorn this grace of Christ with an epithet most proper to expressing precisely this and... efficacious. For he for the most part calls it the conquering delight, either by that very word or by another equivalent one.Furthermore, in Bk. IV, ch. 11, »Jansenius says that this delight or sweetness is partly an indeliberate affection of the soul, which is an actual complacency, partly also and often an indeliberate desire, by which the soul is sweetly and delightfully carried into the good to be sought after, so that the will may consent to it by a free act and love the good so much the more vehemently, the more strongly it is carried by those acts.»

But Jansenius declares the necessity of this help in this way, ch. 7: »Therefore in this struggle with temptations a great, and indeed greater and conquering, delight is necessary, so that the earthly delight may be overcome; because otherwise the will cannot apply so great powers of willing, or, as the School speaks, cannot will so intensely and so strongly, as is necessary that the temptation or opposed delight be overcome.» But why? Behold the reason: ibid., ch. 9, he says »the true reason why heavenly delight is necessary for good acts is to be sought from the nature of the medicine, or medicinal help. For the will, through the sin of the first man, has been cast headlong into the dominion of lusts, from which it comes about that in all actions before grace it is provoked by a certain lustful delight going before and titillating, by consenting to which it sins... (he had already established in Bk. II, De statu naturae lapsae, ch. 24, that all sins which are admitted by men in the state of fallen nature are perpetrated with concupiscence inciting and obtaining the assent of the will). And because, as long as we live in this life, being titillated on every side by earthly delights, we are called away from the love of the Creator to the love of creatures; hence that conflict of delights, of which we have spoken from Augustine, which cannot be lulled to rest, unless one has overcome the other by delighting and the whole weight of the soul inclines thither.»

1. That this grace cannot be resisted by man, and that it therefore never lacks its effect, he teaches in Bk. II, chs. 24, 25; just as man also cannot resist earthly delight, if it be alone or greater, he teaches in Bk. VIII, ch. 9. Therefore he teaches that by grace the will is fastened to one part — indeed, as he himself says, is made «most strictly bound», Bk. VIII, ch. 6 — and in this sense he employs those phrases, that the human will is moved by divine grace indeliberately and insuperably. De Gratia Christi, Bk. II, chs.

2. 5. Then, in Bk. VIII, about to reconcile freedom with grace of this sort, he first warns, ch. 3, that «although there is so great a discrepancy between physical predetermination, as it is wont to be defended by the Scholastics, and the medicinal help of Christ (certainly physical predetermination is in the genus of physical causes; Jansenian delight, properly, in the genus of moral causes; physical predetermination is maintained to be necessary for all actions of any cause whatsoever, while delight is maintained only for the acts of man in the state of fallen nature, etc. Cf. 1. c., the preceding ch. 2m.), in this nevertheless, as we have said, it agrees with it, that the office of physically predetermining the will truly belongs to it, and by that word, taken not abstractly but concretely, it can deservedly be called physical predetermination.» That is, this help «inclines, applies, determines the will, and because it forestalls the will's own determination, it also predetermines it, not only morally, but by a true, real, and physical determination. For moral predetermination (he adds) is said to be that which is related to the will only from the part of the object, just as he does who counsels, persuades, etc.; but this (the medicinal grace of Christ) is situated in the very power of the will, which it applies to willing by the magnitude of its own sweetness, and by applying determines it, inasmuch as it causes in it this very thing, that it determine itself, and therefore predetermines.» (Cf. Suarez, De Gratia, Bk. V, ch. 6, n. 17.) Then, in ch. 5 ff., proposing the manner in which the efficacy of grace is reconciled with freedom, which he thinks he gathers from Augustine, he reduces it to this one point: that the will under grace wills what grace makes the will will; because therefore the volition is immune from coercion, and therefore free; hence freedom remains together with grace, which makes us will, even though we will necessarily. For it is Jansenius's most certain opinion (De Deo creant., Th. IXXX.) that the freedom which belongs to the will in the state of fallen nature is not immunity from necessity, but only from coercion. Moreover, Jansenius teaches that this efficacious grace is the only one that is conferred on men in the state of fallen nature. De Gratia Christi, Bk. III.

III. Jansenius therefore establishes two things concerning the efficacy of grace: the one, that grace determines the will to one alternative by an antecedent necessity; the other, that this grace is a heavenly delight opposed to earthly delight, and greater than it and conquering. For Jansenius wishes, as we have seen, that the will be led and drawn by delight alone, and indeed by a prevailing or conquering delight; that is, that the will may will, there is necessary a prevenient delight, whether heavenly or earthly, which is either alone, or greater than the contrary one, and that it necessarily determines the assent of the will. And so the opinion of Jansenius is: the will of man in the state of fallen nature lacks the dominion of its act, or the freedom of indifference, and there remains to it only the power of acting spontaneously; but it wills that to which either earthly delight or heavenly delight draws it, so that the will always necessarily follows that delight which is greater from itself, not from some free determination of the same will, and therefore antecedently greater.

IV. Now as to what pertains to the first point, namely that grace determines the will to one alternative by an antecedent necessity, and that it is therefore free only insofar as it is immune from coercion — this opinion is rejected by those arguments by which the heresy of Calvin, of which it is a reinstatement, is rejected. And certainly this doctrine of Jansenius has been proscribed by the proscription of two of his propositions, namely the second and the third: «Grace is never resisted in the state of fallen nature» and «For meriting and demeriting in the state of fallen nature there is not required in man freedom from necessity, but freedom from coercion suffices.» For if grace can be resisted, if for meriting, which does not happen without grace, freedom from necessity is required, it is evident that grace is of such a kind that it does not impose necessity, that it does not determine the will to one alternative. The same doctrine is opposed to the definition of the Council of Trent, Sess. VI, ch. 5, and can. 4. For it is certain from those texts that man can cast away the grace of God and dissent, if he wills, and therefore freely receive the same, which is wholly opposed to the opinion of Jansenius, who maintains that grace indeclinably and insuperably subjugates free will to itself.

V. As to the other head of doctrine, namely that this antecedently necessitating grace is heavenly delight, we note 1) that an equivocation lies hidden in the name of delight. For it can first be understood as any indeliberate movement of the will, by which the will is disposed and allured to a deliberate act; it can then be understood as a certain indeliberate movement, by which the will, or man, is suffused with a certain sweetness, which movement is called delight in a stricter sense. Certainly we experience not

infrequently in ourselves indeliberate movements, by which we feel ourselves drawn toward the honest and the just, without being able properly to affirm that that delights us. Now Jansenius takes heavenly delight in this latter sense. For a) he opposes it to earthly delight, which is not for him any indeliberate movement toward what is not fitting, but a special indeliberate movement, namely of sensible concupiscence, by which, as he himself says, we are titillated and driven into dishonest things, from which he supposes all sins to arise. b) He himself, as we have already heard, does not wish grace to be any indeliberate movements of love, fear, hope, or of some similar affection, by which the will is excited to love, fear, hope, but only heavenly delight, which is either immediately and necessarily followed by charity, or which is the same as charity properly so called, whence it comes about that it is named by both appellations here and there by the Jansenists (cf. Gurlen, De Gratia Christi, Bk. IV, Diss. 1ª): Jansenius therefore takes the name of delight in a certain more proper and determinate sense. And certainly, since in the will of fallen man he saw nothing but the faculty of acting spontaneously, namely that which belongs also to the sensitive appetite of brutes, it was a consequence that he attributed to man also the same motive of acting which is proper to the brute, i.e., that he be carried to the act by delight; but the delight by which brutes are said to be moved is taken in a certain determinate sense.

We note 2. that any indeliberate delight, whether taken broadly or strictly, does not of itself impede the exercise of freedom, nor is the will necessarily carried into that toward which it is more affected indeliberately; for this is proper to the rational appetite, that, solicited by a twofold object and a twofold affection, it preserves the dominion of its act and can be carried into either one, and so can bring it about that what delighted less indeliberately may delight more deliberately, inasmuch as it chooses that before the other for the reason that it is the master of its act and therefore loves it more. Wherefore, although all theologians with Augustine have admitted and judged necessary the grace of the immediate inspiration of the will, situated in an indeliberate act, which must be a certain movement by which the will is formally allured and inclined to consent to God calling — which movement can therefore be called with Augustine a certain heavenly sweetness, joyfulness, delight — yet it has come into no one's mind to assert that such an inspiration imposes any necessity on the will.

From these observations it is evident that one would contend utterly without merit and falsely that the system of Jansenius follows from this, that a necessity of some indeliberate act in the will is asserted, by which it is allured to a free act. Does the destruction of freedom therefore follow from the asserted immediate inspiration of the will? The error of Jansenius is that he judged grace to be only a certain delight taken in the strict sense; that he judged a delight greater in the first act to carry with it necessarily, by a necessity not only moral but physical, so that therefore the consent of the will is impossible in the composite sense, and that with the same physical necessity the will can will nothing if both delights in the first act be equal; so that therefore under either delight there remains to the will no elective power, but only the faculty of spontaneously following the delight.

VI. Now it is certain, 1°, that the grace of Christ, as regards the will, is not only an inspiration of charity, or an inspiration of heavenly delight strictly taken, from which charity immediately follows. For a) it is certain by Catholic doctrine that faith, hope, and charity are three distinct virtues, and that for exercising their acts the prevenient grace of God is required; but faith and hope can exist and be exercised without charity: therefore there will also be an inspiration proper to faith and hope; b) it is established by the same Catholic doctrine that there are salutary affections — the fear of God and the detestation of sin from the fear of punishments and the baseness of sin, the desire of our beatitude, and the like (cf. Trid. Syn., Sess. XIV, ch. 6; Luc. XII, 5; Psal. CXVIII, 112); therefore for these acts too there are at hand inspirations which are not properly inspirations of charity, nor of that heavenly delight which charity itself immediately follows upon. But when Augustine, Cont. duas epistt. Pelagg., Bk. IV, ch. 5, says concerning the inspiration of love — that we may do what we know with holy love — that this is properly grace, he does not oppose the inspiration of love to the inspiration of other affections and pious acts of the will, but to the help of knowledge, which alone the Pelagians wished to concede. Therefore the grace proper to Christ, or to the Christian economy, is not only the inspiration of charity, but is universally interior grace, both habitual and actual, which latter is situated in any pious illumination and inspiration toward any salutary acts whatsoever. Therefore the heavenly delight, which charity either immediately follows or which is the same as charity, is not the only grace of Christ.

2. It is false that indeliberate delight, whether heavenly or earthly or of whatever degree, if it be alone, or if it be greater, when another opposed delight coexists with it, impedes the choice of the will, or imposes necessity. Indeed, this necessity of determination toward that which alone delights, or delights more, follows in that appetite which can be carried only by a spontaneous movement and is not free, of which kind the will of fallen man is in fact supposed to be by Jansenius. But if the will is free of itself, it cannot suffer necessity from a greater delight; for all these things — namely the greater delight and the lesser delight — pertain to the constitution of the first act: but it is proper to freedom that, being perfectly constituted in the first act, it preserve the dominion of its act and be able to will or nill whatever is proposed to it, to will this or that.

VII. And certainly this can also be demonstrated against Jansenius by an argument ad hominem. For the first man, as being immune from concupiscence, was free under grace with the freedom of indifference. But if Adam was free under grace, fallen man too can and ought to enjoy a like freedom under heavenly delight. For Jansenius teaches that either delight can be equal, so that the will stands in equilibrium. Let it be supposed, therefore, that heavenly delight is equal in efficacy to carnal delight: the will will be in equilibrium, i.e., it will behave as if it were allured by no delight, namely it will behave as the will of intact Adam. If, therefore, another degree of heavenly delight be added to that will constituted in equilibrium, this will behave toward that will as grace behaved toward the will of Adam; for the whole force of concupiscence is extinguished by the equal heavenly delight, and therefore it behaves just as if it were not. Therefore the new grace coming upon it, or another degree of delight, can and ought then to leave the exercise of the will free. But whenever grace obtains its effect, it is either heavenly delight alone or it is greater; therefore always, whenever fallen men act well, they can and ought to be immune from necessity. Cf. Stephanum Dechamps Haeresis Ianseniana L. III. c.5.

I. The opinion concerning the grace of Christ placed in the victorious delectation, and the whole system of the twofold victorious and vanquished delectation, already during the lifetime of Arnauld, who had taken up in the sect the office of master after Jansenius, began to displease the Jansenians, and was rejected by Quesnel, who succeeded Arnauld, a wholly different system being substituted in its place. Quesnel did not defend that system, nor does it appear in his condemned propositions. What, then, did Quesnel devise? A thing at once most frivolous and absurd: for grace, which is a created thing, he substituted the author of grace himself, who would immediately and irresistibly excite salutary acts in us. Namely, he taught that grace is placed in the divine omnipotence, or in the action or operation of omnipotent God, whose immediate and necessary term is the salutary act, and that this divine operation cannot be resisted: for what resists the omnipotent? This notion of divine grace is set forth in the condemned propositions 10a, 11a, 19a, 23a, 24a, coll. 12a, 13a, 16a, 20a, 22a. Hence Quesnel teaches that the grace of God is nothing other than His omnipotent will, or the operation of the hand of omnipotent God, which nothing can impede or retard, and therefore that an indubitable effect, namely the salutary act, follows at whatever time and in whatever place God wills to save the soul, and that no human will resists interior grace; because nothing resists the omnipotent, namely that God commands and by this very fact all things are done, and that the operation of grace is signified by that operation by which God produces creatures out of nothing and recalls the dead to life.

II. Now, in the first place, every grace is indeed an operation of God, if operation is taken effectively, that is, it is a certain created term of God working in us; and it is an operation of omnipotent God, that is, of God who is omnipotent, and in a certain sense it is also an operation of God insofar as He is omnipotent; because the omnipotence of God is required to elevate nature and to confer supernatural powers. But it is not an operation of omnipotent God in this sense, that with regard to obtaining the effect, which is the salutary act, the efficacy of omnipotence is exercised, to which, on account of the infinite power with which the might of God abounds, nothing is able to resist; for the grace of God is resisted. It is in this sense, however, that grace is called by Quesnel an operation of the omnipotent will.

2º. Furthermore, the idea of this Quesnellian grace is such that the grace of God can exist without any created effect of God preceding the salutary act and preparing the will: «the grace of God is nothing other (he says in prop. 112) than the will of omnipotent God commanding and doing what He commands.» But this will is a simple immanent volition of God, virtually passing outward, on account of which the salutary act that is commanded exists, namely the same efficacious volition by which created things exist, and to which therefore the grace of God is compared by Quesnel. But this volition immediately attains the effect, that is, it produces it, without any other thing intervening between the willed effect and the efficacious volition of God, which would prepare the will for the effect from God and be the principle or cause of that ultimate intended effect, that is, of the salutary act. But divine grace is not this will of God or operation of the will of God, but is His real effect, namely something created in the soul, by which the soul is prepared to act salutarially. This is evident from the whole tradition, which was set forth in all of Chapter 1. Hence what is more inept than that illuminations and inspirations, which are our vital acts, and the elevation of the faculty, which is a certain mode of ours, should be the will of God, that is, God?

3. The grace of God is not the will of God commanding good acts to exist; for this command itself is the law, which is indeed distinguished from grace: but grace is the benign and merciful will of God supplying powers and helping to do that which God commands: what is clearer than this in the doctrine of Augustine?

4. Moreover, the efficacy of grace, by which God obtains salutary acts, when He wills them infallibly, depends not on the power of divine omnipotence alone, but also on infallible knowledge, as we are about to declare presently with Augustine.

III. The Quesnellians ineptly appeal to those testimonies of Scripture in which it is affirmed either that God does all things whatsoever He wills, Psal. CXIII, 3 and CXXXIV, 6, or that no one can resist the will of God, if He Himself has decreed to save Israel Esther. XIII, 9. For one must distinguish, first, between those things which God alone does and those which God wills to be done by us freely cooperating: the former are effects of the power of God alone, the latter depend also on our will, and depend in such a way that they are done freely. Then, a twofold resistance to the divine legislative will must be distinguished: one, by which He commanding is not obeyed; the other, by which he who does not obey is nevertheless able to elude His vengeance as well. Finally, a twofold reason must be distinguished why it is impossible that that which God decreed should not be done: one arising from the efficacy alone of the divine omnipotent will, the other arising from the infallible knowledge by which the decree of God is governed. Now the cited places of Scripture, commending the efficacy of the divine omnipotent will, either speak of effects which depend on the will of God alone, or, if they speak of those effects for which the concurrence of the free human will is also required, when they teach that it is impossible that it be done otherwise than God decreed and that man resist the will of God, they do not exclude the knowledge of God, by which the divine will is governed and by which it comes about that the divine will infallibly obtains what it has decreed.

Nor is the doctrine of Augustine other. For therefore, according to Augustine a) the will of God is omnipotent and always happens; because God wills either that His law be kept or that transgressors be punished: but either of the two always happens, nor can His transgressors flee the avenging power. In De Spir. et lit. c. 33 he has this: «God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; not, however, in such a way that He takes away from them free will, by which, using it well or badly, they are most justly judged. When this happens, the infidels indeed act against the will of God, when they do not believe His Gospel: nor, however, do they on that account overcome it, but they defraud themselves of a great and supreme good and entangle themselves in penal evils, about to experience in punishments the power of Him whose mercy in gifts they despised. Thus the will of God is always invincible: but it would be conquered, if it did not find what to do with the despisers, or if they could in any way escape what He has constituted concerning such ones. For whoever says, for example: I will that all these my servants work in the vineyard and, resting after their labor, feast, in such a way that whoever of them is unwilling to do this always grinds in the mill; whoever has despised it indeed seems to act against the will of his master; but then he will conquer it, if, despising the mill as well, he should flee, which can in no way happen under the power of God.

Or b) according to the same Augustine, that which the Omnipotent wills always happens for this reason, because either what He Himself wills happens or what He permits to happen happens; but He permits willingly, not unwillingly. Thus in Enchir. c. 95, preaching the omnipotence of God, he says: «therefore nothing happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen, either by permitting it to happen or by doing it Himself:» and in c. 100: «As far as they themselves (the wicked) are concerned, they did what God did not will; but as far as the omnipotence of God is concerned, they were in no way able to bring it about. For by this very fact that they acted against His will, His will was done concerning them. For on this account the great works of the Lord are sought out unto all His wills, so that in a marvelous and ineffable way nothing happens apart from His will, not even what happens against His will. Because it would not happen if He did not permit it, nor does He permit it unwillingly, but willingly; nor would the good one permit evils to be made, unless the Omnipotent were able to make good even out of evil.» Cf. Faure's notes on both chapters.

c) Augustine indeed asserts (De Correp. et Grat. c. 14.) that it is not to be doubted that human wills cannot resist the will of God, who in heaven and on earth has done all things whatsoever He willed, so as to prevent Him Himself from doing what He wills" and that God does not do this very thing «except through the wills of the men themselves,» since He has «without doubt the most omnipotent power of inclining hearts whither He pleases.» But this most omnipotent power consists in this, he says, that the effect of the mercy of God cannot be in the power of man in such a way that it happens that God indeed wills to show mercy efficaciously, but wills it in vain because man is unwilling (Ad Simplicianum L. I. q. 2ª, n. 13.).

Now this indeed comes about from the fact «that if God willed to show mercy to them, He could so call them as would be fitting for them, so that they would be both moved and understand and follow. For those are the elect, who are congruously called... God shows mercy to no one in vain; but on whomsoever He shows mercy, Him He calls in such a way as He knows to be congruous to him, so that he does not reject the one calling.» Ibidem. But this is what we were saying, that the certainty of the effect depends not on power alone, but also on knowledge.

I. The Scriptural expressions which the Calvinist, Jansenist, and Quesnellian heretics gather together are those by which we are taught either what man is able to do by himself in the order of salvation, or how and what grace works in us. To the first class belong those by which men are called dead in sins Ephes. II, 1., blind Luc. IV, 19., darkness Matth. VI, 23., an evil tree Matth. VII, 18., servants of sin Rom. VI, 17., being in the flesh, which cannot subject itself to the law of God Rom. VIII, 7., animal men 1. Cor. II, 14., able to do nothing from themselves, as from themselves 2. Cor. III, 5.. To the second class belong those expressions by which God is said to create a clean heart Psalm. L, 12., to make in us a new heart Ezech. XXXVI, 26., to raise from the dead and to give life Ephes. II, 5., to open and circumcise the heart Deuter. XXX, 6., to take away the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh and make us walk in his precepts Ezech. XXXVI, 26., to compel to enter Luc. XIV, 23., to draw Ioan. VI, 44.. To the third class are referred those expressions by which it is asserted that all must be ascribed to God, since he is the one who works all things in us Isaiae XXVI, 12. Ephes. I, 11. 1. Cor. XII, 6., who begins and who perfects Philip. I, 6..

II. But now, as to the first testimonies, we note 1) that most of these expressions are metaphorical; and if you take them more strictly and wish that whatever can be signified by those expressions be excluded from the thing signified, you must take away from the will not only the act of free determination, but also the spontaneous act, which is a vital act and cannot proceed from one who is dead. This, moreover, also goes against those who hurl these testimonies at us. And so 2) some norm must be laid down, to which the interpretation of metaphors of this kind is to be measured. But this norm, according to the heretics themselves, can be none other than the doctrine on the same matter set forth by Scripture in proper or clearer words. But it is established from the preceding Thesis that the clearest testimonies of Scripture assert freedom for man acting through grace; therefore the sense of those metaphorical expressions cannot be that which excludes the power of the will freely determining itself under grace. Wherefore 3) the obvious sense of those expressions is quite clear here: namely, men are regarded according to that which they made themselves to be by sinning, and indeed freely, whether by the sin of the first man or by their own actual sins; for on account of these they are dead, blind, in darkness, animal, servants of sin. Men are accordingly regarded according to that which they have from themselves, destitute of the grace of God. Moreover, of these it must truly be affirmed that they do not live the supernatural life, nor can they live it; that they cannot put forth any act of this life; that they can have no salutary knowledge. But what does this contribute to the question: whether man freely determines himself under grace? Furthermore, the sinful man is called an evil tree, but the evil tree is not the nature or a faculty of the will; rather, properly speaking, the act itself or the volition is so called, or the evil tree is the man willing evil, or evil things; and just as he is freely an evil tree, because the free volition is the beginning and origin of many sins, so man, by changing his will, can freely become a good tree, which indeed he cannot do without the grace of God; but excited and helped by grace, man makes himself a good tree, as Christ himself teaches Matth. XII, 33. (Cf. Enchirid. August. c. 15. with the notes of Faure). The wisdom of the flesh, to be sure, cannot subject itself to the law of God: but that is just the same as saying that he who wills to sin cannot be obedient to God; for the wisdom of the flesh consists in those practical and free judgments by which men rule themselves according to the desires of the flesh, and while these exist man is an enemy of God and cannot be a friend. Moreover, these are the ones who are said by the Apostle to be in the flesh, namely those who freely live according to the desires of the flesh, not those who merely bear habitual concupiscence and are stirred by its indeliberate movements. For the Apostle denies that the faithful are in the flesh, although they certainly were still subject to concupiscence and bore a corruptible body. Finally, what is said, that we can do nothing from ourselves, teaches the necessity of grace for salutary acts, not its efficacy determining to one; and it says in proper terms what the earlier formulae signified metaphorically.

III. To the second class of testimonies there must first be applied the same response which was given under numbers 1º and 2º to the first testimonies. Indeed, our justification is so attributed to God in the Scriptures that it is also asserted of us in almost the same formulae. For the inclination of the heart is attributed both to God 1. Reg. VIII, 58. and to man Psal. CAVIII, 112.; the change of heart is asserted of God 1. Sam. X, 9. and of man Eccle. II, 3.; the circumcision of the heart is also attributed to man Deuter. X, 16.; likewise the opening of the heart Apoc. III, 20. to God, the conversion of the heart Psal. LXXXIV, 5. but is also claimed for man Ioel. II, 12. Act. IIl, 19. God is said to make in us a new heart, but men too are said to do the same Ezech. XVIII, 31. God writes the law in hearts, but men too are said to write it in their own hearts Prov. III, 3. VII, 3. God washes our souls, but men too wash themselves Ierem. IV, 14. God is he who establishes and confirms man, but man too is he who stands and confirms himself 1. Cor. XVI. 13. Iacobi V, 8. God sanctifies man, and man too is said to sanctify himself 1. Ioan. III, 3. Moreover, nothing is more evident than these for showing that God does not so act that he alone acts, that he alone determines.

'Then, moreover, we answer that justification is therefore likened to creation, vivification, and resurrection because in this business man of himself alone can do nothing; God is the one who confers new life from no preceding merit, indeed from a pre-existing positive demerit, and he confers it inasmuch as he gives the power that men may be made sons of God, preparing the wills and helping them once prepared, and he bestows the adoptive filiation itself by the infusion of sanctifying grace. He therefore vivifies and regenerates and raises up efficiently through prevenient grace, working in us without us, but in such a way that we work the good meritorious acts together with him, freely assenting to the grace to which we could, if we wished, resist. God, however, takes away the heart of stone, that is, the undisciplined heart, and gives a heart of flesh, that is, a docile heart, and makes us act, not by compelling or determining the will, or by immediately inspiring the deliberate act itself, nor by himself alone effecting the whole, but by preparing the will and helping it once prepared, so that God is the author, and indeed the principal author, not only of the power but also of our act. Moreover, by this expression and similar ones there is signified the certainty or infallibility of the effect: but the infallibility of the effect must be distinguished from its necessity.

As for the testimony of Luke, compel to enter αὐτέγκατον ἀναγκάζειν, it is evident that the discourse is not about physical necessity, by which the indifference of the will is destroyed; for the one who compels, or who must compel, is not God, but a servant, h. e. an apostolic man, who can indeed persuade and allure men to faith and to God, but cannot determine their will to one. The discourse is about a certain moral force placed in persuasions and even in threats and punishments, when they can be justly employed.

Therefore what the Church begs of God in a certain prayer (Sabb. ante Dominic. Passionis) is not similar to this: compel our wills, rebellious toward you. But by these words there is signified that strength and sweetness of divine providence and grace by which the effect is most certainly obtained, not that force which would impose necessity.

Augustine thus explains the words of John in Ioan. Tract. XXVI. n. 7. «See how the Father draws: by teaching he delights, not by imposing necessity.» Therefore, by the adduced and similar expressions there is not signified the efficacy of grace determining to one, but there is expressed the efficacy of grace conferring the power of acting salutarily and working with us.

IV. As to the third, we have already seen in what way in the work of salvation all must be ascribed to God (Ioh. XVII, VII.). For all is not to be given to God as if he were the sole cause of the act, or the sole free cause of the act, but because he is also the sole cause elevating the will efficiently and conferring supernatural powers upon it, and because on that account in the exercise of the faculty he is the principal cause of the salutary act; and thus of any good act, even of its beginning, God is the author through his grace. The will, however, is at the same time a cause of the same salutary act, and indeed a principal cause, not merely an instrumental one; because it is that which determines the act, which nevertheless it elicits by the help of the power it has received.

I. It is certain that the Pelagians frequently complained that by Augustine's doctrine free will is destroyed, that the will does not act but is acted upon, and that fate is introduced (cf. Oper. imperf. L. I. c. 78. seg. Cont. duas epist. Pelagg. I. II. c. 5. Serm. CLVI. c. 11). It is equally certain that the Massilians objected that through Augustine's doctrine fate was introduced, as we have seen in the Synopsis of their controversy. It is finally certain that Augustine himself experienced the difficulty, and no slight one, in reconciling freedom with grace (cf. De Gratia Christi c. 47. — Cont. Iulian. L. IV. c. 8 — De Praed. SS. c. 14. — Cont. Petilianum L. II. c. 84. De Peccat. mer. et remiss. L. II, c. 18. Epistola CCXIV. et CCXV. ad Valentinum). But now, they say, if Augustine had taught that grace to which the will can resist, whose use is in the power of the free will, there would have been no place for these complaints, and there would be no difficulty in reconciling grace with freedom.

All this argumentation rests on an equivocation. In order to understand the sense of the objection of the Pelagians complaining of the destruction of freedom, we must recall and carefully weigh what we have already noted in the preceding pages (Synops. histor. n. 1.): that the Pelagians had formed in their mind such a concept of freedom that they confused the power of efficacy with the power of indifference (cf. de Deo Creante. Th. LXXX. III.). For because the will can, from its nature, will any good object proposed to it and can nill it, they concluded that the will can, by the force of its nature, do any good whatever; and if this were denied, freedom was destroyed by that very fact, because that power was destroyed. Yet it is clear that there is the greatest difference between the two. It is proper to the will to be able to will and to nill that which man is able to do when all things required for acting are in place; but that he is able to do it depends for the most part on extrinsic causes and is not placed in the nature of the will or of man alone. A man furnished with a ship can will to sail and can nill it, and this depends solely on his free will; but that he can sail, i. e. that he has a ship ready, his will alone certainly cannot bring about. Whence it is evident that this also holds with regard to natural objects. Nevertheless, if the discourse is about the natural virtues and their elicited acts, the power of efficacy is as evident as the power of indifference, and it must be said that man can, by the force of his nature, exercise every natural virtue; for the law would be in vain if the power were lacking in nature. And because the pagan philosophers knew no other virtues, they therefore asserted the power of the virtues simply to the will. But if we speak of the supernatural virtues, it is manifest that these two must be distinguished: namely, he can from his nature will or nill the supernatural good, since the power of effecting it is in him; but this power he has not from himself, but from God: just as if a man had suitable wings, he could will and not will to fly; but this power of flying would not be from the nature of man or of the will, but would be freely conferred by God. Thus Bernard excellently, de Gratia et lib. arbit. c. 8. «neque enim ad liberum arbitrium, quantum in se est, pertinet aut aliquando pertinuit posse vel sapere sed tantum velle nec potentem facit creaturam nec sapientem, sed tantum volentem.»

Thus the Pelagians erred in this, that, confusing these two, they claimed for the very nature of the free will the power of doing any good whatever, even that which leads to eternal life, which is the supernatural good, because the will is indifferent to willing or nilling it.

But if this is so, the answer to the Calvinist arguments is at hand. For, leaving aside that the opinion of him whom they attack is not aptly gathered from the objections and complaints of men who had to make use of sophisms, let this be the answer: the Pelagians complained that freedom was destroyed by Augustine, and that in his view the will is acted upon and does not act; because the Pelagians wanted the power of doing any good whatever to pertain to the nature of freedom — the power, namely, not only of indifference with all things required for acting in place, but of universal efficacy toward any good; Augustine, however, denied that the power of the salutary good is from nature, and said that it is conferred by grace. Wherefore (which is to be noted) the Pelagians inferred the destruction of freedom not from the manner in which Augustine taught grace to act, but from the necessity of grace. But in order that the Calvinists could conclude anything from the complaints of the Pelagians, it would be necessary that the complaints of the Pelagians turn upon the manner in which grace acts; since, therefore, they touch an altogether different question, they contribute nothing to our matter.

II. The complaints about the fate introduced tend to the same point, which the Pelagians deduced not from a certain manner in which grace was said by Augustine to operate, but from the asserted necessity of grace and its gratuity. For thus Augustine sets out their complaint

Cont. duas epistt. pelagg. I. II, c. 5. «Catholicos sub nomine gratiae ita fatum asserere ut dicant, quia nisi Deus invito et reluctanti (ita scilicet interpretabantur Pelagiani, vel ita loquebantur ad invidiam conflandam catholicis) homini inspiraverit boni et ipsius imperfecti (initii nempe boni) cupiditatem, nec a malo declinare nec bonum posset arripere.» Augustine explains what the Pelagians meant by these words ibid. c. 8. «Isti enim volunt in homine ab ipso homine incipere cupiditatem boni, ut huius caepti meritum etiam perficiendi gratia consequatur.» On the contrary, Augustine maintained that the first good motion is the work of grace, and therefore that men not yet willing the good, or even nilling it, are converted through grace and become willing, and that therefore the discernment of goods from evils is owed to grace, not to nature. This it is which the Pelagians disapproved of as a kind of fate — they who wanted it to be of our part at least to begin the business of salvation, so that the attainment of our salvation would depend on us freely willing; which opinion the Massilians afterwards made their own. To them Augustine replies ibidem c. 8. «Hoc nobis obiiciendum putarunt quod invito et reluctanti homini Deum dicamus inspirare non quanticumque boni, sed imperfecti cupiditatem... Verum et sic gratiam Dei dicunt secundum merita nostra dari. Si enim sine gratia Dei per nos incipit cupiditas boni, ipsum caeptum erit meritum, cui tanquam ex merito gratiae veniet adiutorium.» Therefore, again, this complaint of the Pelagians and Massilians contributes nothing to our question.

III. As for the difficulty which Augustine confesses that he experiences in reconciling freedom with grace, the Catholic theologians answer first that this serves admirably against Calvin and Jansenius. For if freedom, in order to be true, requires nothing but immunity from coercion, freedom is reconciled without any difficulty with grace determining to one; indeed there is no difficulty, nor can there be. If, therefore, Augustine thought that the freedom necessary for a good work consists in immunity from coercion alone, what difficulty did he devise in combining freedom with grace? He might perhaps have said that the matter seems difficult to others, but he himself would have denied it; for nothing is easier to explain, since it is evident that grace determining to one does not coerce the will with coercion properly so called.

We answer, secondly, that the observation we made earlier also holds for explaining the difficulty with which Augustine labored. For since freedom is conceived as the power of good and evil, and yet the power of the salutary good is only from grace, hence it is, as Augustine notes, that he who defends free will seems to deny grace, and he who defends grace seems to deny free will (De Grat. et lib. arb. c. Ic.).

This difficulty, however, Augustine solves according to that distinction which we have set out above. For he concedes that it pertains to free will that it wills or nills the good: «Noli vinci a malo, sed vince in bono malum. Et utique cui dicitur noli vinci, arbitrium voluntatis eius sine dubio convenitur. Velle enim et nolle propriae voluntatis est.» Ibid. c. 3. n. 5. But he contends that the power of willing the good is conferred through grace, ibid. c. 4. n. 6. «Sed metuendum est ne ista omnia divina testimonia (quae hactenus attulerat) et quaecumque sunt alia, quae sine dubitatione sunt plurima, in defensione liberi arbitrii sic intelligantur, ut ad vitam piam et bonam conversationem, cui merces aeterna debetur, adiutorio et gratiae Dei locus non relinquatur.»

Whence, after many things, he concludes c. 16. «Certum est nos mandata servare, si volumus; sed quia praeparatur voluntas a Domino, ab illo petendum est ut tantum velimus, quantum sufficit ut volendo faciamus. Certum est nos velle, cum volumus; sed ille facit ut velimus bonum, de quo dictum est: Praeparatur voluntas a Domino et Deus est qui operatur in nobis et velle. Certum esse nos facere, cum facimus; sed ille facit ut faciamus, praebendo vires efficacissimas voluntati, qui dixit, faciam ut in iustificationibus meis ambuletis.»

Thus Augustine reconciles both, grace and freedom, and he never employs any other solution; which is an evident argument that the difficulty of which he spoke does not arise from the manner in which grace acts — about which matter there was never a question — but arises from the necessity and gratuity of grace. Therefore neither from this difficulty can anything be gathered in favor of the Calvinist and Jansenist heresy.

They also contend in vain that those formulas which are to be approved by those who reject Calvinian and Jansenian grace were rejected by the Fathers.

I. In order that the force of these formulas may be understood, which are to be understood not according to the manner of speaking of recent times but according to the mind of Augustine, the following things, which we briefly subjoin, are to be considered.

a) Pelagian grace was the grace that gives the power to act, or the grace of possibility, namely, the grace by which possibility, i.e., capability, is given, which is the very power of free will that was gratuitously given by God; and, moreover, the grace by which this possibility is helped, i.e., the grace of knowledge, through which it comes about that that power or capability of nature can be the more easily exercised, without any physical powers being added to nature and without the will being helped by any immediate assistance. Thus grace of this kind consists in this: that it is positively the capability of nature itself for willing and acting holily, and, although it is not necessarily helped by that grace of knowledge, it negatively excludes the necessity of any gratuitous assistance which would confer powers for willing and acting holily and which would be the principle of good will and action. Wherefore the grace of possibility is contained in this bestowal of free will and is purely natural; but the grace of knowledge, which was called the help of possibility, without, however, conferring physical powers for acting, was not necessary according to the Pelagians. Note, however, that the fault is not in the name but in the thing signified by the name. For Augustine also acknowledges a grace of possibility which is grace properly so called, Bk. XXII, Against Faustus, c. 23: «Human nature is restored through that possibility (of restraining delight from unlawful things) through which, had it willed, it would not have fallen.» Cf. also Auctoritates Apost. Sedis, n. 1.

β) Against this help Augustine sets the help of willing (namely, of volition) and of action — the help, namely, by which man is prepared, not only by illumination but also by inspiration, so that he wills; by which help a good will and a good action are made; by which help, to be sure, gratuitous powers are conferred upon the will so that it may will well and act well; and without which, moreover, nature can do nothing. Accordingly, by this help not only is possibility helped, so that mere possibility of nature remains, but the will itself and the action are helped by supernatural powers conferred on man, inasmuch as through them a good will, or volition, and action are posited which could not come to be without them. Whence this appellation of grace as the help of willing and of action? First, indeed, to distinguish it from the Pelagian help, by which man was not helped, i.e., did not obtain powers for willing and acting beyond those which he would have from nature; then, because in reality by such a help powers are added to man so that he may will and act salutarily, in such a way that the salutary volition and action can be posited only by the force of that help.

v) Wherefore the grace that gives the power to act, which, as opposed to the other, is the grace that gives only the power to act, namely the grace of possibility, is in Augustine's view not the sufficient grace of the Catholics, but is that Pelagian grace of which we have spoken. Against this, however, is set the Catholic grace, which, because it gives powers, and gratuitous ones, for willing and acting — a thing which nature cannot do of itself — and is in reality, whenever a man wills and acts well, the efficacious principle of the good act which could not exist without it, is called the grace of willing and of action, the grace that gives a good will, that gives the willing, gives the act, makes us act.

Therefore the grace that gives the willing, gives the act, makes us act, does not signify in Augustine a grace that determines the act, nor, if we look only at the terms, does it of itself signify a grace that is joined with the act; but it signifies a grace that is in us the principle of willing and of action, that gives powers for willing and acting whether the act follows or not, and that, when the act exists, is its cause.

This is proved 1° from the opposition to Pelagian grace and from the aim of the disputation. For a) the grace that gives the willing is not opposed to that grace which would add powers of nature for willing, but is opposed to nature itself, which, by the powers implanted of the free will received in creation, is said to be able to act justly and holily. b) It is not opposed to a possibility which is only toward the good, of which sort is the possibility through grace, but to that possibility which «makes us able to do good no less than evil» (De Grat. Christi, c. 17). Moreover, the grace opposed to these is not to be conceived as a grace always joined with the act, much less as determining the act, but as a grace supplying powers for the act. And of this matter alone there was then controversy; for the question was not whether grace can be resisted — which no one denied — but about the necessity and gratuitousness of grace, i.e., about the necessity of a gratuitous assistance beyond the powers of nature.

This is proved 2) by the words of the same author from the Bk. On the Spirit and the Letter, c. 34. For he says: «in these ways, then, when God acts with the rational soul that it may believe (for it cannot believe anything by free will, if there is no persuasion or calling to which it believes), certainly God works in man the very will to believe itself, and in all things His mercy prevents us: but to consent to the calling of God, or to dissent from it, belongs to one's own will.» The calling, from which one can dissent, is so described that through it God works in us the will to believe: therefore by this formula is signified a grace that gives powers, which can be resisted, not a grace always joined with its effect. Cf. Faure, in Enchir., note on c. LII.

Here, indeed,3) grace of itself, as such, is a grace to be joined with its effect, since it is ordered to it; wherefore it must be conceived logically together with its effect, so that its force may be understood. Logical conjunction, therefore, must be distinguished from real conjunction. Moreover, the concept of grace logically joined with its effect is common to the grace which is consented to and to that from which one dissents: but that concept exhibits a grace that makes us act, that gives the act, namely, that supplies powers so that we may be able to act, and when we act, we act by its help, and therefore it itself brings it about that we act. Therefore the grace that gives the willing, makes the willing, gives the act, makes us act, is a help by which gratuitous and supernatural powers are conferred for willing and acting holily, and by which, when the act is freely done, the act itself is really posited; it is not a grace determining or necessitating the will. (These things are from the manuscript Tract of Bolgeni on Grace.)

And let these things suffice for now; for the demonstration of this matter will be completed after, when treating of sufficient grace, we shall have proved that it was known and vindicated by Augustine. Cf. therefore Th. XLVIII, p. 1a.

These things being posited, what is contained in the first part of the Thesis is easily settled.

II. Namely, that by those formulas first set forth a necessitating grace is not signified can be proved in two ways: ad hominem, in itself. Ad hominem thus: it is certain that, according to Jansenius, the grace of the first man and of the Angels was not a grace which imposed any necessity upon the will: but, according to Augustine's view, the grace of the first man and of the Angels also worked the very willing itself, gave a good will, made him will, and all his merits were from grace (Appendix to c. II, p. 249.); therefore it cannot be that by those phrases Augustine wishes to signify the mode in which grace acts, and that mode which consists in an antecedent determination to one alternative.

Indeed, by those formulas asserted against the Pelagians this one thing is signified: that grace is necessary for man — a grace that prevents and prepares the will — and that this grace is in us the efficacious principle of the good act; that accordingly there are no merits before grace, but that they begin from grace and depend on it. For if grace is such a principle, truly God through it makes us act, gives the good act, gives the salutary willing itself, which nature cannot give. Hear the interpreter of Augustine's doctrine, Fulgentius, to Monimus, Bk. 1, c. 14: «what is "I will make you act" except that every good which you shall have done will be of my work? He himself, therefore, makes us act, since, with Him working in us, every good that we do is done.» But it is one thing entirely to teach that grace is in us the necessary immediate efficient principle of the salutary act, and another to teach the mode in which grace discharges this office, and that that mode consists in this, that it imposes necessity upon the will. Moreover, it is not this second but the first that is handed down by Augustine only. Therefore.

III. Likewise that formula — that all is to be attributed to the grace of God — looks to asserting the necessity of grace for all acts, of prevenient and helping grace, so that nothing is from nature alone (for example, the beginning of conversion to God, which the Pelagians at least demanded, and after them the Massilians), partly from grace (to be sure, together with nature), but that all, i.e., every good work, even the least, is from grace, i.e., from God preventing, preparing, and helping the will through grace. But this formula would be applied altogether wrongly to signify the mode in which grace acts, unless one wished to say that God alone acts and the will is related only passively, which is most alien to Augustine's mind. Cf. Th. XVII, Palm. De Grat. 25.

Note. Let these things have been said in general. For perhaps sometimes in Augustine that formula — grace makes us act — signifies a certain function of the grace which is called efficacious: but because neither does such efficacious grace, according to Augustine, impose necessity upon the will, and about efficacious grace we shall have to speak later, therefore on this point we refer our hearers thither.

IV. They say: if the use of prevenient grace is left to free will, or if the will, when it has been prepared by the grace of God, is itself that which freely determines itself to the good, it must be said that it is man who distinguishes himself; for the faithful man is distinguished from the unbeliever, the just from the sinner, by good acts: but this is the Pelagian opinion, which Augustine always attacks, maintaining that it is God who through His grace distinguishes the faithful and the just from the unbelievers and sinners.

The answer, as in the preceding part, is twofold. For, according to Augustine, what Paul brings forward about men holds also in the Angels: *Who distinguishes you? what do you have that you have not received?*1 Cor. 4:7 In De Civ. Dei, Bk. XI, c. 19 he has these words: «When that first light was made, the Angels are understood to have been created, and there was a distinguishing between the holy Angels and the unclean, where it was said: and God divided between the light and the darkness (God, therefore, distinguished), and God called the light day and the darkness night. For He alone was able to distinguish those things, He who was able also, before they fell, to foreknow that they would fall.» And Bk. XII, c. 1: «Made, they adhered by love, and by this they were distinguished from the fellowship of those (the evil ones) (if distinguished by the love which they received from God, therefore distinguished by God, according to Paul's argumentation), because these remained in the same good will, while those, falling away from it, were changed, namely by an evil will, by the very fact that they fell away from the good. While these fell by an evil will, those, helped more fully, attained to that fullness of blessedness from which they would be made most certain never to fall.» But the will of the Angels under grace was free from necessity, with Jansenius himself as the authority. Therefore the distinguishing of God does not require that God determine our wills.

Therefore, when Augustine teaches that men are distinguished not by themselves but by grace, he excludes the operation and effort of nature and the merits preceding nature which were maintained by the Pelagians and Massilians, but he does not exclude the free cooperation of the will with the grace of God, by which it has been prepared and by which it is helped. To be sure, God distinguishes us for this reason: because God is the author in us of the good will, which cannot exist unless He gives it: whence by this formula Augustine teaches the same thing that he handed down in the preceding ones. Indeed, Augustine, ep. CLXXXVI to Paulinus, c. 2, thus explains the testimony of the Apostle: «Who distinguishes us from that mass and lump of perdition, except Him who came to seek and save what was lost? Whence the Apostle asks, saying: for who distinguishes you? where, if a man says, my faith, my good work, it is answered to him: for what do you have that you have not received? but if you have received, why do you glory, as if you had not received? This, to be sure, is all for this reason: not that man should not glory, but that he who glories should glory in the Lord, not from works, lest perhaps anyone be lifted up. Not because good works are frustrated, since God repays each one according to his works, and glory and honor and peace are for everyone who works good, but because the works are through grace, not grace from the works; since faith, which works through love, would work nothing, unless the love of God itself were poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Nor would faith itself be in us, unless God distributed to each one the measure of faith.» And in Bk. II, On the Merits and Remission of Sins, c. 18: «Since that we turn away from God is ours, and this is the evil will; but that we turn to God we cannot do unless He Himself is exciting and helping, and this is the good will: what is it that we have not received?» Namely, we are distinguished formally by faith, by a good will, by a good work; but we are distinguished efficiently by God, because we receive from God faith, a good will, a good work; and we receive them because, by freely consenting to Him exciting and helping, we believe, we will, we act well. God, therefore, does not distinguish us by the fact that He determines us, but because He is through His grace the author of the salutary act, which could not exist without the grace of God.

To this distinguishing our will indeed also concurs, but a will prepared and helped by God, not by the powers of its own nature, but by powers gratuitously received; and therefore it is a dependent and secondary cause, whereas God, on the contrary, is the principal cause. Thus Thomas, III p., q. XIX, a. 3: «A person is said to have something by himself, of which he is in some way the cause to himself. But the first cause of all our goods, by authority, is God; and in this way no creature has anything good by itself, itself, according to that text «1 Cor. 4: what do you have that you have not received?» Yet secondarily a person can be the cause to himself of having some good, inasmuch as, namely, in this very thing he cooperates with God.» Augustine never denied this distinguishing, he who only denies that the will distinguishes itself by the powers of its own nature, without grace and before grace, which the Pelagians and Massilians taught.

Note again that a certain distinguishing is repeatedly referred by Augustine to the gratuitous predestination of efficacious grace; but this interpretation can be accommodated neither to all of Augustine's testimonies, nor does this opinion infer a necessitating or predetermining grace, as will be clear in its own place.

V. As to those words of the Apostle («not of the one willing nor of the one running», etc.), here is Augustine's exposition in Enchir., c. 32: «How is it not of the one willing nor of the one running, but of God who shows mercy, except because the will itself also, as it is written, is prepared by the Lord? Otherwise, if for this reason it was said "not of the one willing" etc., because it is done from both, that is, from the will of man and the mercy of God,... as if it were said: the will of man alone does not suffice, if the mercy of God is not also present; then neither does the mercy of God alone suffice, if the will of man is not also present. And hence, if it was rightly said: "not of the willing man, but of God who shows mercy," because the will of man alone does not fulfill it; why, on the contrary, is it not rightly said: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man," because the mercy of God alone does not fulfill it? Moreover, if no Christian will dare to say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man," lest he contradict the Apostle most openly; it remains that it be understood to have been said rightly for this reason: "not of the one willing nor of the one running, but of God who shows mercy," so that all may be given to God, who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared.» Therefore, they say, the will does not distinguish itself by determining the act with an indifferent power, but is distinguished, determined by God: otherwise, with equal right one could say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man."

I answer. Augustine does not exclude the willing and the running of man freely cooperating with the grace by which he is prevented; but he excludes the willing and the running which precede and merit the grace of God: namely, he excludes that error which was afterwards that of the Massilians and which he himself had handed down in the Exposition of certain propositions of the Epistle to the Romans, in which exposition he had explained that testimony of the Apostle according to that erroneous sense, which explanation he now disapproves and rejects. Indeed, the free cooperation of man is not excluded, 1) because about grace only this is asserted, that it prepares and helps, not that it determines the will; but it can prepare and help without imposing necessity. 2) Once prevenient grace is admitted, even if it leaves to the will the dominion of the act, it is most truly said that that proposition of the Apostle cannot be inverted, and one cannot say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man"; because the very will of the man willing well is already the work of the mercy of God preparing and helping the will, and therefore is already contained under the term "of God who shows mercy." («For if God shows mercy, we also will: for to the same mercy it belongs that we will.» Ad Simplic., Bk. I, q. II, n. 12). But if prevenient grace is denied, then with equal right one could say: "not of God who shows mercy, but of the willing man"; because the will would be distinguished entirely from the mercy of God, on which it would not depend, and which would be necessary for grace to follow. Augustine, therefore, asserts prevenient grace, not grace imposing necessity. Cf. Faure on this passage.

VI. First it must be noted that Augustine does not say that grace is omnipotent, but that the will or power of God is omnipotent — two things which are to be entirely distinguished; for grace is something created, to which omnipotence cannot belong. Indeed, poetically, Prosper in his poem on the ungrateful calls grace omnipotent: «But truly omnipotent grace saves a man, It itself completes its own work, etc.» But it is so called for this reason, inasmuch as it is considered as joined with God, whose instrument, as it were, it is.

This being posited, we answer, having recourse again to a twofold response, as before. For if Calvin and Jansenius infer that the will is determined by grace antecedently to one alternative, because, on Augustine's authority, God has a most omnipotent power of inclining hearts whithersoever He wills, they must concede that the wills of the Angels and of any possible intelligent creature cannot but be necessarily determined to one alternative by the grace of God which is conferred upon them; for not only with respect to the wills of fallen men, but with respect to all wills, whether angelic or possible, it is true and must be affirmed that God has a most omnipotent power, or that the will of God is most omnipotent, i.e., can do whatever it wills. For this power belongs to the divine will, both because it itself is infinite, and because wills are finite and created: but this holds for any will whatsoever. And indeed Augustine vindicates this omnipotence for God not only with respect to our wills, but also with respect to the angelic ones, and in general with respect to all. Enchir., cc. 95 ff. Our God in heaven and on earth did all things whatsoever He willed. Which certainly is not true, if He willed some things and did not do them.... For not for any other reason is He truthfully called omnipotent, except because He can do whatever He wills, nor is the effect of the omnipotent will impeded by the will of any creature.... However many the wills may be, whether of Angels or of men, whether of the good or of the evil, whether willing what God wills or something other than God, the omnipotent will of God is always unconquered. Whence in De Civ. Dei, Bk. XIV, c. 27 he says: «who would dare to believe or say that it was not in God's power that neither Angel nor man should fall?» Therefore, if the omnipotent will of God, to which the created will is subject, is the reason why the grace of God binds this created will with necessity; why do these heretics will that Adam and the Angels were free from necessity? and if they were free, why will human wills not be free now?

Wherefore it must be said that it is altogether false that Augustine taught that the grace of God determines our wills to one alternative because he taught that grace is in us the operation of omnipotent God, who can do in us and from us what He wills. To be sure, from this omnipotent power it follows indeed that God can do in us what He wills; but it does not follow that He can do it in that special mode which the heretics will; rather, the mode, whatever it be, must be such that our freedom remains safe. And this Augustine presupposes. Omnipotent God, therefore, can infallibly obtain from our will that effect which He has willed, not by destroying free will, but by working good wills in the hearts of men by an internal and hidden, wonderful and ineffable power (De Gratia Christi, c. 24), namely, by calling and exciting men in such a way as He knows to be congruous to them, so that they do not reject the one calling (Ad Simplic., Bk. I, q. 2, n. 13).

VII. As to the other appellations by which the heretics think grace is called by Augustine insuperable and indeclinable...ble, they are taken from the Bk. On Correction and Grace, c. 12: «Help was brought to the infirmity of the human will, so that it might be moved by divine grace indeclinably and insuperably ¹ reading and it by no means fits the context.» But the heretics manifestly err in the interpretation of these words. For they think that by them is signified the relation of grace to the will, namely, that the will is overcome by grace, that it is invincibly inclined whither God wills; whereas, on the contrary, they signify the relation of the will, strengthened by grace, to concupiscence or temptations — a relation which is an effect of grace; inasmuch as, namely, through grace the will obtains that it is not overcome by concupiscence or temptations, that it is not bent now here, now there, to evils; but stands unconquered, indeclinably, not declining to the right or to the left, proceeding in the way of salvation, and being insuperable by its adversaries. It is, namely, a heavenly delight by which not the will, but «every earthly delight is overcome.» Serm. XLII, c. 3. Whence Augustine also uses the appellation "most unconquered" when he signifies the effect of some grace, by which, namely, as he says in the same place, men «most unconqueredly would will what is good, and most unconqueredly would refuse to abandon it.» But a relation of this sort, of an insuperable and most unconquered will toward concupiscence, does not signify a will determined to one alternative, but signifies a will strengthened with those powers by which, freely indeed, it is able to resist every movement of concupiscence and temptation, and by which, moreover, it infallibly resists them. And to this comes back the most efficacious appellation which Augustine sometimes applies both to the calling by which we are called (De Gratia et lib. arb., c. 5) and to the hidden power by which the heart is converted (Cont. duas epistt. pelagg., Bk. I, c. 20); for by this appellation is signified a grace that provides most efficacious powers to the will against concupiscence or against temptations, and that also infallibly obtains the effect for the sake of which it is given: VIII. In De Praed. SS., c. 8, grace is predicated of that sort which is rejected by no hard heart, since it is given by God precisely so that the hardness of heart may first be removed. This, of course, is true; but that grace should be such and should do this, we deny that it is necessary for it to impose necessity upon the will, but it suffices that, by the knowledge of God, the grace be so congruous that the effect infallibly follows. Cf. what we shall say in Th. LVI.

IX. Finally, as to what is said in the last place about certain formulas, see them in Thesis XXXVII, n. X. Now then, although it must be conceded that these formulas were rejected by the Fathers: it is nevertheless false that they were rejected in that sense in which they can be accepted by Catholics; but they were rejected in the sense of the Pelagians and Massilians, inasmuch as, namely, the merits of nature were said to precede grace and grace to be given according to them, and by them the bestowal of grace to be determined — things which are utterly abhorrent to the Catholic sense. Cf. I. c. the explanation of those formulas and the sense in which they were rejected by Catholics; for it does not help to repeat the same thing.