Tractatus de Gratia Divina Actuali

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.

I. Thus Jansenius argues in L. IV. De Gratia Christi c. 6, teaching that «for the doing of any work of justice whatsoever it is necessary that it be born of the greater delight in justice.» Our proof is in turn contained in a twofold response: the one ad hominem, the other direct, from the very analysis of Augustine's context. The former is this, already handed down by the Illustriss. Fenelon in his dialogues. The Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians was written by Augustine at that age in which he was still involved in that error which was afterwards that of the Massilians. This Jansenius himself also admits, who, making no distinction, wishes to gather from the books written by Augustine before his episcopate, among which this one is, what precisely was the error of the Massilians. Now indeed, according to Jansenius, the error of the Massilians was this: that they wanted grace to be of such a kind that the human will could resist it; and therefore, according to the same Jansenius, this is the error by which Augustine was held before his episcopate. But if the will can resist the grace of God, it certainly cannot be necessarily drawn and overcome by a greater preceding heavenly delight, which is grace; wherefore when Augustine judged that the human will could resist grace, he could not teach that the will is necessarily overcome by a greater preceding heavenly delight. But since Augustine, when he was writing the Exposition of the Epistle to the Galatians, being involved in the error of the Massilians, judged, on Jansenius' authority, that the will could resist grace. By what right, then, or with what effrontery does Jansenius cast at us that testimony of Augustine, and repeat and inculcate it so frequently, when by that testimony, on Jansenius' own authority, that doctrine of the greater victorious delight cannot be contained?

II. The other response is this. Delight is twofold: indeliberate and deliberate. Indeliberate delight does not draw the will's assent along with it, but frequently men freely follow the greater delight. Deliberate delight is an act of the will by which we freely choose something, and by which consequently something pleases us more and delights us more; while this act exists, with the necessity, of course, that follows upon the very exercise of freedom, it is necessary that we do those things which we will. Then delight is partly actual and transient, partly habitual, arising from acts, which you sometimes foster or neglect to put off, although you could. Now indeed, Jansenius would first have to prove that in this testimony, as also in similar ones, the discourse is about indeliberate delight; which, however, he does not do. Then, 1º it is more probable that here the discourse is about deliberate delight. Surely if the delight were indeliberate, it would be compared with the act of the will which follows it; but if it is deliberate, it cannot be compared except with the operation which follows the will. Now Augustine does not say: according to that we must will, but we must operate. Therefore that delight is signified which is the reason of the operation, which Augustine, as also the Pelagians were wont, is wont to distinguish from the will or volition, and that a free one. Therefore a deliberate delight, placed in the free act of the will, is signified. 2) It is still more probable that here the discourse is about habitual delight, undertaken, of course, deliberately. This is sufficiently manifest from the very context. For he says: «But those goods reign (namely, the fruits of the Spirit, charity, joy, etc.) if they so delight that they hold the soul in temptations, lest it rush into consent to sin. For what delights us more, according to it we must operate: as for example the form of a beautiful woman occurs and moves to the delight of fornication; but if that intimate beauty and the sincere species of chastity delights more, through the grace which is in the faith of Christ, according to this we live, and according to this we operate." The delight which fortifies the soul in temptations, lest it fall, by which, when some beautiful form occurs, the beauty of justice, which reigns in the soul, pleases more, has all the characters of habitual delight, which, given the occasion, breaks forth into act. Moreover, the necessity which one experiences is more or less moral. But actual grace does not relate itself as a certain habit; therefore actual grace, which Augustine says is placed in suavity, would not be compared to this delight of which Augustine here speaks.

Moreover, it is one thing to say that we for the most part choose that which delights us more indeliberately, a view which does not harm freedom, and another to say that we necessarily will deliberately that which delights us more indeliberately; this indeed destroys freedom: but Augustine never said or signified this.

III. Delight is repeatedly called victorious by Augustine, or conquering. And indeed the appellation of victorious is given by Augustine to delight only once, in de Pecc. merit. et remiss. L. II. c. 18. Elsewhere delight is named conquering, or it is attributed to it that it conquers. But conquering delight is not said with respect to the will, as if delight conquered the will and subjugated it to itself, but with respect to concupiscence. Cont. duas epistt. pelagg. L. I. c. 13. «The guilt of concupiscence, contracted by generation, is discharged by regeneration, so that it is therefore now not sin, but is so called either because it was made by sin or because it is moved by the delight of sinning, even if, the delight of justice conquering, consent is not given to it» and elsewhere many times. 2) Conquering delight is deliberate; for this is in reality that which has an immediate order to concupiscence and conquers it, and Augustine plainly indicates this in several places, as in Enchir. c. 118. «If God has looked upon us and is believed to help in fulfilling what He Himself commands, and man has begun to be acted upon by the Spirit of God, there will be a lusting against the flesh with the stronger strength of charity, so that although there is still something in man that fights against man from man, the infirmity not yet wholly healed, nevertheless the just man lives by faith, lives justly, insofar as he does not yield to evil concupiscence, the delight of justice conquering.» Delight, by whose conquering consent is not given to concupiscence, and by which one lives justly, and which is the strength of charity, is a delight conquering concupiscence, and indeed deliberate and meritorious.

III. Moreover, to turn aside the Jansenian theory of the greater victorious delight, Augustine's classic locus from Civ. Dei L. XII. c. 6 is plainly sufficient, which Jansenius wrongly strives to pervert. It must be described here, although it is rather long. There the holy Doctor seeks the cause why some of the angels stood and others did not stand, and he brings the matter to this, that he may show that the ultimate cause is to be sought in their will; for an evil will is the cause of evil, but of an evil will no efficient cause is to be sought, but only a deficient one. He sets an example, moreover, in two men, whom he thus describes: «If two men, equally affected in mind and body, should see the beauty of one body, on seeing which one of them is moved to enjoy it illicitly, while the other perseveres stable in a chaste will; what do we think is the cause that an evil will comes to be in the one and does not come to be in the other? What thing made that in him in whom it was made? For it was not that beauty of the body; for it did not make it in both, since it presented itself not dissimilarly to the sight of both. Is the flesh of the beholder the cause? Why not also of the other? Or indeed the mind? Why not of both? For we said beforehand that both had been equally affected in mind and body. Or is it to be said that one of them was tempted by the hidden suggestion of the malignant spirit? As if he had not consented by his own will to the same suggestion and to whatever persuasion. We seek, therefore, what thing made this consent in him, this evil will which he gave to the evil persuader. For, that this impediment too may be removed from this question, if both are tempted by the same temptation and one yields to it and consents, while the other perseveres, he who he had been, what else appears but that the one willed, and the other did not will, to fall away from chastity? Whence, except by his own will, where the same affection of body and soul had been in both? The same beauty appeared equally to the eyes of both; the same hidden temptation pressed upon both equally; therefore, to those wishing to know what thing made the evil will proper to one of them, if we look well, nothing occurs.»

Jansenius says that these two men, in whom Augustine places his example, look to the state of integrity. Nothing is more inept, as Stephen Dechamps well refutes, Haer. Iansen. I. III. D. 8. c. 2. For 1) that word videant refers to the present state.

In the state of integrity there were not two men who would see the beauty of one body.3) Because these two men are drawn to illicit sensible pleasures, which could not be in the state of innocence, according to Augustine himself.4) Because mention is made of carnal concupiscence: was the flesh of the beholder the cause? Moreover, this was absent from the state of integrity.5) Because these men are tempted by the interior suggestion of the Demon, which again could not be even in a standing man, not yet handed over to the Devil. Augustine certainly posits that in him who sins of these two there was, before the evil will, a good nature: for thus he continues »If we should say that he himself made it, what was he himself before the evil will, except a good nature, whose author is God?« But he does this for this reason, because he considers nature as distinct from concupiscence, which, together with the beauty placed before it and the temptation of the Devil, he places on the side of the adjuncts or conditions of sin; for concupiscence is not the cause of the evil act of the will, but only allures the will: but now the cause of sin is sought. Therefore, if the cause is sought, if that which can be a cause is investigated, before the evil will nothing is found except a good nature. Whence he concludes that, since nature, insofar as it is nature, because it is good, cannot be the cause of evil, therefore that is the cause of evil not because it is nature, but because it is nature from nothing; and therefore the cause of evil is not efficient but deficient. Thus Augustine does not place a good nature before the evil will in order to signify that he is speaking of that first sin which happened in a nature not previously vitiated, as Jansenius wishes.

Now indeed these two men, existing in wholly the same conditions, are likewise urged by the same sensible delight. For that some delight or love of chastity went before them is established from this: that he who does not sin is said to remain stable in a chaste will. But that that heavenly delight is supposed the same in both is clear from this: that the same affection of soul is said in both. This being posited, if the consent of the will does not follow except the greater delight, in the sinner the earthly delight must be said to have been greater than the heavenly, and in the other the heavenly delight greater. But this is against Augustine's very hypothesis; for each delight was the same in both. Was the heavenly delight, then, greater in the one? But since it was also the same in the other, why did this one sin? Say the same of the sensible delight. But if the heavenly delight was equal to the earthly delight, why did the one prevail over the other in the one, since two equal delights, according to Jansenius, destroy each other and some greater delight is necessary in order that the assent of the will may follow? Of course, this example of Augustine cannot at all be reconciled with the doctrine of Jansenius, and it utterly undermines it to its foundations. By it we are surely taught that, once the preceding grace and the persuasion of concupiscence are posited, the power of determining itself in whatever way it will lies with the will as indifferent, and that the reason for the determination is not to be sought from some delight preceding and overcoming the contrary one, or existing alone; for if it were to be sought from this, in that hypothesis of Augustine no consent of the will would have been possible.

Moreover, the doctrine contained in the earlier chapters of that book having first been set forth, we teach that both helps are the grace of perseverance: the help, namely, without which not, coalescing from habitual gifts and actual graces, gave to Adam, after the manner of an efficient cause, the power of persevering; while the help by which is a series of graces, or a divine providence toward the saints, embracing both interior and exterior graces and whatever contributes to the salvation of the predestined, and passive perseverance itself, by which providence the just man is so ruled that he at length actually perseveres. The distinctions, however, established by Augustine between the two helps supply no sufficient reason for asserting that, on Augustine's view, grace of itself determines the will to persevere in those who persevere.

I. Jansenius (De Gratia Christi L. II. c.4.), after Calvin, affirms that the proof of his opinion is placed, as in an impregnable citadel, in chapters 10. 11. 12. of the book of Augustine de Corrept. et Gratia. From these Jansenius gathers this doctrine. 1) That there is a distinction between the helps conferred on integral nature and fallen nature.De Gratia Christi L. II. c.4. For Adam, according to Augustine, had indeed grace, but a disparate one (c. 11. n. 29); Augustine accordingly distinguishes a twofold help, namely, the help without which not and the help by which: that one, he teaches, was given to the first man, this one to the saints in the state of fall (cap. 12. n. 34).2) This distinction is held to consist in this, that the help of the first man a) was in the power of his free will, namely, a help of which man would make use if he willed: «Nor did God will that (Adam) himself be without His grace, which He left in his free will» (c. 11. n. 31). «God had given man a good will.... He had given a help without which he could not remain in it, if he willed; but that he might will, He left in his free will» (c. 11. n. 32). Of course the first man could dissent, as in fact happened. The help, therefore, was such that it did not determine the act of the will, but the determination of the good act was left by grace to the free will itself; for this is what is signified by those words: that man should will was left in his free will. Wherefore a help of this kind was a grace that gave the ability, but did not give — i.e., did not determine — the act itself; it was an indifferent, changeable grace, whose efficacy depended on the will of man. From which it followed b) that the merits of the first man would be merits proper to free will and would be attributed to it rather than to grace or to God: «because he (Adam) did not will to remain, assuredly it is his fault, whose merit it would have been if he had willed to remain; as the holy Angels did, who, when the others fell through free will, stood themselves through the same free will and merited to receive the due reward of this perseverance» (ibid). «Whence, however, would the flesh glory before God, except in its own merits? which indeed it could have had, but lost; and through that by which it could have had them, through that it lost them, i.e., through free will; on which account there remains for those to be freed nothing but the grace of the one who frees» (c. 12. n. 37). «But now, the good merit having been lost through sin, in those who are freed it has been made a gift of grace, which was to be the reward of merit» (c. XI. n. 32). Of course, since it was man who determined the use of grace and the good act, he himself distinguished himself, he himself procured good for himself, he did not receive it from God.

On the contrary, the help that is conferred in the state of fallen nature is not left in the power of free will, which was lost through sin; but it is a help that, holding itself after the manner of a formal cause, itself gives the good act, and necessarily gives the good act, so that dissent of the will cannot exist; just as a formal effect cannot fail to exist when the formal cause is present. «One thing is the help without which something is not done, and another is the help by which something is done. For without food we cannot live, and yet when food is at hand, it is not by it that he who has willed to die comes to live. Therefore the help of food is a help without which it is not done, not one by which we come to live. But beatitude, which man does not have, when it has been given, immediately he becomes blessed. For it is a help not only without which it is not done, but also by which it is done, on account of which it is given… First, therefore… there was given the help of perseverance, not by which it would come about that he persevered, but without which he could not persevere through free will. But now to the Saints predestined to the kingdom of God through the grace of God there is not given such a help of perseverance, but such that perseverance itself is given to them: not only that without this gift they cannot be persevering, but also that through this gift they are not otherwise than persevering» (C. 12, n. 34). «Did Adam not have grace? Indeed he had great, but disparate, grace… Although these (Saints in this state) now stand in need, if not of a more joyful, yet of a more powerful grace» (c. 11, nn. 29, 30). From the fact, moreover, that a help of this kind so operates in men by determining the good act, it follows that it is God who distinguishes man from man, and that God is the cause of our merits, not free will, and that everything among the things received is to be referred to God.

3. That the cause of the distinction between the two helps is to be sought in the diversity of the powers of integral and fallen nature. «If in so great an infirmity of this life their own will were left to them, so that they would remain in the help of God, without which they could not persevere, if they willed, and God did not operate in them that they might will; amid so many and so great temptations their will itself would succumb through its infirmity, and therefore they could not persevere, because, failing through infirmity, they would neither will, nor so will through the infirmity of the will that they could. Help was therefore brought to the infirmity of the human will, so that it would be moved by divine grace unswervingly and insuperably; and therefore, although infirm, it would not fail nor be conquered by any adversity… For He dismissed the very strong and permitted them to do what they would; He preserved for the infirm, that, He Himself giving, they would most invincibly will what is good, and most invincibly be unwilling to abandon it» (c. 12. n. 38). And certainly other helps are owed to a sound man, others to an infirm one, nor can what helps a sound man generally be conferred on a sick man. Accordingly, sound nature and fallen nature had to be helped by different helps, and as much distinction had to intervene between the helps as between sound nature and fallen nature, i.e., between a nature immune from concupiscence and equipped with the full powers of free will, and a nature subject to concupiscence, with the powers of free will prostrate and broken.

4. Therefore this distinction between the helps of each state is necessary, because it is determined by the diverse character of each state, and it is essential: for the modes in which those helps operate differ essentially, just as the state of integral nature and the state of fallen nature differ essentially. Thus far Jansenius.

Two things are asserted by Jansenius. 1) That the nature of the grace both of the first man and of the rest, and the reason of the difference between the two, is such as he has thus far taught: 2) that this doctrine is Augustine's and is delivered by him expressly in those chapters 10. 11. 12. of the De Corrept. et Gratia. But both are false, as we shall demonstrate separately.

II. The doctrine of Jansenius comes down to this: a) it is necessary to establish an essential distinction between the helps of integral nature and the helps of fallen nature, because the things that suit a sound nature cannot suit an infirm one. b) The grace proper to integral and sound nature is a grace that can be resisted: the grace proper to fallen nature is a grace that cannot be resisted; because nature that is sound has the full powers of free will, has therefore less need to be helped by God, and the help whose use is permitted to its free will is enough for it; but fallen nature, whose powers of free will are broken, stands in need of a greater help, nor can the help of God be permitted to its free will, which is vitiated and almost wholly destroyed. c) The grace that can be resisted is not a grace that distinguishes the just from the unjust, is not a grace that is properly the cause of merits, the cause of the whole good work: on the contrary, the distinguishing grace, the grace that is the cause of merits and of the whole good, is a grace that cannot be resisted. d) Wherefore the good Angels distinguished themselves through free will, Adam preserved himself through free will, because they had a grace that could be resisted; but fallen men have a grace that cannot be resisted. He was able to distinguish himself; the merits of the Angels were merits of free will, and such could the merits of Adam have been; on the contrary, in fallen nature the saints are distinguished through grace, and their merits and the whole good that they have are from grace.

III. Now indeed the first head of the doctrine is false. For the grace that we defend, with the Fathers, as necessary is intrinsically supernatural grace; moreover, for both states of nature the necessity of that grace for supernatural acts is the same, and in both states nature is equally impotent for supernatural works. Essentially, therefore, the grace must be the same. The reason, however, drawn from the fact that the remedies that befit a sound man are not suited to a sick one is wholly inept. For 1) even this being granted, since nevertheless when the infirm man recovers health, he can use those means which he used before the infirmity; but now fallen man is restored to health through justifying grace; the justified man, therefore, will be able to operate through that grace by which Adam operated. 2) If that which has the force of a remedy also has the character simply of a means, which nature, whether sound or sick, needs in order to do something, the same, although not under the character of a remedy, can also be applied to sound nature: this may be seen in many foods or other external things of which we make use, which are necessary of themselves to nature in order that it may live, and which can be of use to the sound and to the infirm alike, although they also confer on the infirm that which helps toward the attainment of health. But such is grace, which of itself is a means necessary to nature for supernatural acts, and therefore necessary to nature in whatever state it be: but moreover, on account of this same character of a means, it also has the character of a medicine; for since it confers the power of acting salutarily, and salutary acts, if performed by a sinner, dispose to justification, i.e., to the recovery of health, the grace that confers this power on sinners has the character of a medicine. 3) This grace, which supplies the physical and moral powers for acting supernaturally, if it finds a subject subject to concupiscence, can also avail to restrain it, or to cure its disease. For by the force of concupiscence, which acts morally by persuading or alluring, the very moral force of grace, which persuades the good and allures divinely to it, is sufficiently suited to resist; wherefore the distinction is not in grace itself, but only as to a certain effect, which proceeds from it in this state, but did not proceed in the former state, where that which demanded that effect was lacking. It must be noted, however, that this effect, considered in itself, is not the adequate reason for the necessity of grace, which is given on account of supernatural acts and without which concupiscence could be restrained.

IV. The second head of the doctrine is likewise false. For although it is true that the grace of innocent nature and of the Angels was such that the will could resist it; it is nevertheless false that the grace which is given to fallen nature cannot be resisted. This we have already sufficiently proved above. The reason, also, that is adduced first supposes something false, and then, even that being granted, concludes nothing — indeed, it demonstrates the opposite. For it supposes that through the sin of the first man the powers of free will were lost by which one can determine oneself to good and to evil, which is false, as has already been proved. But even this being conceded: since the grace that is now conferred aims at healing nature, restoring, namely, its pristine health, at least as to those things that are necessary for meriting eternal life, and the freedom of indifference was a part of Adam's health and necessary in that health for meriting; that freedom also must now be said to be restored through that grace by which that health is restored. That reason, therefore, proves the opposite of that which it wished to demonstrate.

V. The third head of the doctrine, and likewise the fourth, are false. For, as we have already seen in Thesis XLIV, the distinguishing grace is that which excludes the merits of nature, which is the beginning of every good work; and for this there is not required a determining grace, but a grace preventing and preparing the will. Again, Adam himself and the holy Angels were distinguished through grace: but that grace was such that it could be resisted; therefore. Furthermore, grace is the principle of merit, the cause of all the good in us; because it gives the good act itself — it gives it, however, inasmuch as without it we can do nothing salutary, and it itself begins by preventing the will and follows the prepared will by helping it: and for this there is not required a determining grace, but a preventing and helping grace, conferring physical and moral powers on the will. Wherefore also with respect to the Angels and Adam alike, grace gave the good act, and their merits were from grace, although not from grace conferred on the unworthy, but from grace given to those not worthy of it in the very condition of nature; and to that extent they are said, in a special sense, to have had those merits through free will, but ours from grace, inasmuch as the merits of the first man and of the Angels were not from grace mercifully superadded to a sinful and unworthy nature. Of course, just as human nature, so also free will itself can be compared both insofar as nature is a certain thing only, with grace taken simply, and insofar as such a nature is instituted by God, i.e., a nature elevated and upright, with some grace that mercifully repairs the uprightness culpably lost. If the first comparison is made, it must be said that the merits of the first man were not from nature or from free will, but from grace; if the second comparison is instituted, it must be said that the merits of the first man were through free will, namely, through a free will upright from its institution and not yet needing a grace repairing the defect of nature, which he would have freely contracted.

VI. Now it must be proved that it is utterly false that Augustine delivered the doctrine thus far impugned in those passages of the De Corrept. et Gratia. This we are about to prove, having first undertaken a brief analysis of those things which precede Augustine's disputation on the twofold help.

Accordingly, it must be noted that Augustine wrote this book, the De Correptione et Gratia, in order to prove to certain good monks of Adrumetum that those who act badly are to be corrected, although acting well is a gift of God and grace is not repaid to the merits of nature, but is given freely. Augustine, moreover, defends both things, the utility of correction and the gratuitousness of grace; for both were attacked by those monks, who, saying that those who act badly are not to be corrected, but that God alone is to be prayed to that He may give them a good will, brought the matter to this point: that, if the wicked are to be corrected, the good works must be denied to be a gift of God, and must be attributed to the will of men.

As regards the gratuitousness of grace, Augustine defends that which he had already defended before against the Pelagians; moreover, he himself had never before championed that grace which gives the good act by determining the will to one thing, so that it cannot be resisted. And certainly nothing of this kind occurs in Augustine's responses to the individual objections of the monks. We judge it not beside the point to relate summarily both the objections and the responses, which the earlier part of the book contains, and from which the occasion arose of treating of the twofold help; for thus Augustine's mind will be more clear to us.

The monks used to say (n. 4.) «Why is it preached and commanded to us that we decline from evil and do good, if we do not do this ourselves, but God operates in us both the willing and the working?» Augustine answers: that it is false that we do not act; but that it is true that we do not act from ourselves, and that preventing grace is required. Moreover, the necessity of this grace does not make the preaching and the precept of Superiors useless; for preaching and precept aim at showing what is to be done, and by whose powers it is done when it is done, and who is to be prayed to when powers are lacking; as, therefore, the external grace of the law is not useless, although interior grace, which is given freely, is necessary for doing the works of the law, so neither is preaching nor are the precepts of Superiors useless.

The monks insist (n. 5.) «Let those who preside over us, then, only command us what we ought to do, and let them pray for us that we may do it, but let them not correct and rebuke us, if we have not done it.» Augustine answers that all things ought to be done, because just as in the precept you learn what you ought to do, and in prayer you learn whence you receive what you wish to have, so in correction you learn that you do not have, through your own fault, what you ought to have. Correction, therefore, is useful, because through it we are taught that we do not receive good from God through our own fault.

The monks (n. 6.) «How is it that what I have not received is not had through my fault — from Him from whom, unless it is given, there is altogether no other from whom so great and such a gift may be had?» Augustine warns that here one must linger a little, and then, repeating their difficulty, he brings them in speaking thus.

The monks (ibid.) «Command me what I should do, and if I do it, give thanks for me to God, who gave it to me that I might do it; but if I do not do it, I am not to be corrected, but He is to be prayed to, that He may give what He has not given... pray, therefore, for me that I may receive charity... I would rightly be corrected if I did not have it through my own fault, that is, if I could give it to myself or take it myself and did not, or if, He giving it, I had been unwilling to receive it. But since the will itself also is prepared by the Lord, why do you correct me, because you see me unwilling to do His precepts?»

Augustine (nn. 7. 8.) first limits the question to those who do not do the precepts of God already known to them, of which sort those monks were. Then he answers: 1) whoever does not do the precepts of God already known to him is evil through his own fault; therefore 2) if he does not wish to be corrected, by that very fact he is to be corrected, because he does not wish his vices to be shown to him. 9) Through correction, by which vices are shown, a useful sorrow is aroused, by which, namely, a physician is sought, one's own deformity is shown, and so man is aroused to desire and pray for a reformer. Wherefore 4) correction is a certain means by which we arrive at receiving from God that which is to be asked of Him: although He alone can give it apart from the correction of superiors. But He alone can also give grace apart from prayer and faith, apart from preaching; and nevertheless these monks do not deny the utility of prayer and preaching: let them acknowledge, therefore, the utility also of correction. The answer, therefore, comes down to this: you would not be to be corrected, if you were not evil through your own fault; if correction were not a means which God uses to give grace — I concede, or let it pass: but if, on the contrary, you are evil through your own fault and God uses correction to confer grace — I deny. Moreover, note that when Augustine says that they are evil through their own fault, he says by that very fact that they had indeed been called by preventing grace, from which alone the power of acting is given, and which is given gratuitously, but that they were unwilling to consent to the calling; for to consent or to dissent belongs to one's own will.

The monks, not content, still press the same argument (n. 9.) «The Apostle says: For who distinguishes you? and what do you have that you have not received? Why, therefore, are we corrected, rebuked, reproached, accused? What do we do, who have not received? We have not received obedience; why, then, are we corrected, as though we could give it to ourselves and were unwilling to give it by our own choice?» Augustine first notes that he who says this wishes to appear outside blame in this, that he does not obey God; because, of course, obedience itself is a gift of God. Then he answers with a two-membered answer. He distinguishes it: those who speak thus are either already regenerated, or are not regenerated. If they are not yet regenerated, the disobedience which is in them is rightly corrected in them, because this is not from God, who made man upright, but from man sinning; and since his sin is so common to all that it is also proper to each one, deservedly is disobedience corrected in each one. That is, by the same reason by which original sin is ours, by the same can those bearing it be reproached on account of it — not by a reproach properly so called, by which fault is imputed to a personal will, but by a reproach that is as it were a condemnation of an evil thing, which can take place wherever damnation can be had; and on account of original sin men are rightly damned. And this was said by Augustine that men might understand that there is no iniquity with God, and that men who made themselves evil might be displeased with themselves. But this was said by Augustine rather in passing: for those monks with whom he was dealing were not such, nor did they speak in this hypothesis.

Therefore, if those who raise these objections are regenerated, Augustine denies that they have not received. Consider this answer, which opens Augustine's mind and unties the knot of the difficulty which perhaps steals upon readers throughout the whole disputation; and remember what is the proper scope of this disputation: namely, that the wicked are to be corrected.

He says, therefore: «If one already justified relapses into an evil life by his own will, certainly that man cannot say: I have not received, because he lost the grace of God which he had received by his own free will turned to evil.» If the just man who sins cannot say: I have not received obedience; because through his own fault he lost the grace which he had received: therefore with that grace there was conjoined the power of obeying, and therefore the defect of obedience is to be imputed to him, not to God, from whom, had he willed, he would have received even actual obedience, save that the good use of the grace received sufficed. This is the sense of Augustine's answer.

Augustine adds that he who has lost the grace received, if, pricked by correction, he groans salubriously and returns to better things, in him assuredly the utility of correction appears. Wherefore again it is clear that correction is useful.

The monks fight back more sharply (n. 10.) saying: «I can altogether, when you reprove me because I have relapsed from a good life into an evil one by my own will, still say: what have I done, that I should not be corrected? For I received the faith which works through love; but I did not receive perseverance in it to the end. Will anyone dare to say that this perseverance is not a gift of God!» Of course, since perseverance is a gift of God, it cannot be had unless it is received from God; but I did not receive it from God, who did not persevere; for I would have persevered if I had received it: therefore I can say: I have not received.

Note that those monks could not affirm of themselves anything but a defect of partial perseverance up to a certain time; for a defect of total perseverance to the end of life cannot be known except at the very end of life, just as neither can perseverance itself. Nevertheless, because perseverance to the end requires that the justice received be at length retained, and to abandon justice is a certain way to not persevering to the end; hence those monks say that they have not received perseverance to the end, as it were putting on the person of those who so abandon justice that they do not persevere finally.

Augustine answering 1) concedes — indeed, since for the first time he treats of this matter expressly and explicitly, he proves in a long discourse (nn. 10-24) that perseverance is a gift of God. 2) He teaches that it can truly be said: «Man, in that which you had heard and held, in that you would persevere, if you willed» (n. 11). Compare this with the preceding answer: for the same truth is inculcated. 3) He contends that although perseverance is a gift of God, that does not follow which the monks finally gathered from all these things, i.e., that they are not to be corrected; for those are justly corrected who «have been changed from a good into an evil life by their own will» (n. 11), and because correction can avail that they come to their senses and so attain final perseverance, if they are called according to the purpose (nn. 13. 25).

If they were changed from a good into an evil life by their own will; therefore this change, in turn, is to be attributed not to a defect of grace, by which they could have remained good, but to the abuse of this grace. In other words, the presence of truly sufficient grace is indicated. But of this elsewhere.

From this disputation it is clear that those monks of Hadrumetum did not attain the sense of those propositions, which are not Augustine's but Scripture's: that good works are gifts of God, that God works our will, that we have nothing which we have not received: for they understood them in such a way, as if they excluded every operation of the will, whereas on the contrary they do not exclude the free cooperation of the will with prevenient grace and the merit born of grace for subsequent graces, but only the operation of nature anticipating and meriting graces, or sufficient of itself alone for operating salutarily.

As for Augustine, it is clear that in this disputation he always had before his eyes the final conclusion of the Hadrumetines, which he attacks, namely that those acting badly ought not to be reproved, and that he directs the weapons of his argumentation chiefly to its attack.

To one who inspects Augustine's replies it is also clear that he answers as much as is enough for breaking the force of the adversaries' arguments, and that he is not so solicitous of a richer explanation and a deeper demonstration in a matter sufficiently evident: namely, that the wicked can be reproved, even though acting well is from the grace of God.

Finally, the basis of Augustine's whole response is this: we are evil by our own fault; we do not remain in the justice received, because we do not will it: God gave to the just the power of remaining in justice, that is, the power of persevering. But this basis in no way coheres with the doctrine of necessitating grace. Therefore what in this book precedes those chapters on the two helps does not at all favor the Jansenist interpretation.

VII. Moreover, it must be noted that Augustine, here disputing about grace and about those who are called by grace, keeps before his eyes, as he frequently does, both congruent grace (by which, namely, one is called in the way that is fitting for him not to reject the one calling, as he says ad Simplicianum I. I. q. II. n. 13.) and those called according to purpose, that is, the elect or predestined, whom he also calls children of the promise. Wherefore the disputation undertaken with the Hadrumetines, by which the first part of the book is completed, he concludes in this way, c. 9. n. 25. «Let no one therefore say that he who wanders off from the just way ought not to be reproved, but that his return and perseverance are only to be asked of the Lord: let no prudent and faithful man say this. For if this man is called according to purpose, without doubt God cooperates even in this very thing, that he is reproved, unto good. But whether he is so called, since the one who reproves does not know, let him do with charity what he knows ought to be done; for he knows that such a one is to be reproved, God being about to work either mercy or judgment: mercy indeed, if he who is reproved is set apart from the mass of perdition by the bounty of grace and is not among the vessels of wrath, which are perfected for perdition, but among the vessels of mercy, which God prepared for glory; judgment, however, if he is damned among those, and among these is not predestined.» But this limited manner of conceiving the grace of God renders Augustine's response somewhat obscure and intricate, which, according to the full catholic doctrine, could have been given to those good monks most briefly and most clearly. Cf. what we shall say, Th. XLVIII.

Now indeed the doctrine explained by Augustine in the last response supplied the occasion for the question of the grace of perseverance as compared with Adam, and so for the explanation of the two helps.

VIII. Augustine's doctrine of the two helps (capp. 10—12) comes down to this. He deliberately treats of the grace or help of perseverance. He compares Adam, not persevering in the state of original justice, with the Saints persevering unto death, and says that Adam had a help without which he could not persevere and by which he could persevere, and that the Saints have a help by which it comes about that they persevere, or by which they persevere.

The explanation of the former help is contained in these chapters of doctrine, which Augustine delivers in the same place. Adam had a great grace (n. 29), by which he could remain in the good which he had received (n. 32); he had a help by which he could not sin (n. 34), by which he could persevere if he willed (n. 32), a help which he would forsake when he willed and in which he would remain if he willed (n. 31); it was not brought about that he willed (n. 31); a help left in his free will (n. 31); a help which the holy Angels also had, who stood through free will (n. 32); a help by which he could persevere, not one by which perseverance itself would be given (n. 34).

On the contrary, the help by which of persevering is that by which not only the power of persevering, but perseverance itself is given (n. 34), just as through beatitude, once it has been given, a man is immediately made blessed (ibid.); it is a help of God without which they cannot persevere, in which they not only remain, if they will, but such that God works in them that they will (n. 38); it is a more powerful grace, which the saints now need (n. 30); it is a help by which the weakness of the human will is aided, so that it is acted upon indeclinably and insuperably by the grace of God (n. 38).

IX. The learned observe (cf. Zacharia Thesaurus theologicus. Tom. V. Controv. 3. opusc. 7.) that such a notion of Adam's help is exhibited by Augustine, that one must conceive something placed in habit and permanent, not something merely actual and transient. And indeed a help in which one remains, which a man forsakes when he wills, signifies something permanent (nor does Augustine usually signify actual grace by these modes of speaking. But if these are taken exclusively, they cannot be proved by us. For Augustine's opinion is also certain, that Adam needed actual grace both of intellect and of will, and needed it for any good work whatsoever, and that both were always available to him (App. ad. c. II.) and here too Augustine sufficiently indicates actual grace besides the habitual gifts. For he says (n. 32) that in order that Adam might remain in the good which he had received and which he had not yet lost, he needed the help of grace, without which he could not do that at all, and he had received the ability, if he willed. Here the help of grace is sufficiently distinguished from the good which had been received and in which he was to remain. But the good received, which had not yet been lost, is original justice and holiness itself, which is a gift of habitual grace.

You will say: the help by which, different from the help given to Adam, is exhibited such that through it God is said (n. 38) to work the willing; therefore Adam's help did not work the willing, and therefore it was not a grace of the will.

I answer: since here there is no question except about the help of perseverance: that willing is not simply any willing whatsoever, but the willing to persevere. Why, however, God is said to work this will in the Saints, and not to have worked it nor to have been about to work it in Adam, will be clear from what will be said.

Wherefore the help without which not so embraces the habitual gifts, as also to include the actual graces, which of themselves pertain to the state of justice and are owed to any just man by the law of God. Therefore the help without which not consisted of both elements. Each element pertains to the constitution of a principle capable of persevering; whence the help without which not, which constituted this power, pertains to the genus of efficient causes. Its own character, however, according to which it differs from the other help, will be recognized more distinctly once the help by which is known.

X. Therefore the help by which It is one thing to be a help without which something is not done, and another to be a help by which something is done. For without food we cannot live, and yet when food is present, it is not by it that he who has willed to die lives. Therefore the help of food is a help without which it is not done, not a help by which we live. But beatitude, which a man does not have, once it has been given, he is immediately made blessed. The help is compared to the formal cause: for it is not only that without which it is not done, but also that by which what it is given for is done... Now to the Saints predestined to the kingdom of God by the grace of God such a help is given, that perseverance itself is given to them; not only that without this gift they cannot be persevering, but also that through this gift they are only persevering.» To this help corresponds the newest freedom of not being able to sin and the newest happiness of not being able to forsake the good of perseverance, which are goods more excellent than the others, namely, being able not to sin and being able not to forsake the good, which correspond to the other help (n. 33). Moreover, the help by which it comes about that one perseveres, and by which, once given, it cannot come about that one does not persevere, by which one is made persevering, as through beatitude one is made blessed, is certainly formal perseverance itself, or without doubt embraces it.

2. That help comprehends also those efficacious aids by which active perseverance unto the end is obtained. Certainly this help, which (n. 34) is called the help by which, is that grace whose characters he describes (n. 31): «This is the first grace (the help which he would forsake, when he willed...), which was given to the first Adam; but this one is more powerful in the second Adam. For the first is that by which it comes about that a man has justice, if he wills; the second, therefore, can do more, by which it also comes about that he wills, and wills so much and loves with such ardor, that he overcomes the will of the flesh, concupiscing against it, by the will of the spirit.» The help by which is that by which it comes about that the Saints «most invincibly will what is good, and most invincibly refuse to forsake it» (n. 38). It is a help by which «their will is enkindled by the Holy Spirit to such an extent, that they can for this reason because they so will, and they so will for this reason, because God works that they will», and that «among so many and such great temptations, to which the will, by its own weakness (without grace), would succumb» (ibid.). But this is the grace, or the series of graces, effecting active perseverance.

3. This series of graces comprehends also the exterior graces, by which occasions of acting well are supplied and occasions of sinning are warded off, or an occasion of coming to one's senses is offered and death is deferred, when a man is in sin, and is inflicted when he is just. For concerning those who actually persevere he had said (n. 13): «there is no doubt that the hearing of the Gospel is procured for them, and that when they hear they believe, and in faith, which through love...» works, they persevere unto the end, and if at any time they wander off, being reproved they are corrected... and some, having received grace (of justification) at whatever age, are taken away from the dangers of this life by the swiftness of death. And concerning the same he says (n. 34) that «their faith will persevere unto the end, nor will the end of this life find it except remaining.» And he teaches that for such persons all things cooperate unto good, «to such an extent, absolutely all things, that even if some of them deviate and wander off, even this very thing (God) makes profit them unto good, because they return more humble and more learned.» Wherefore certain is the opinion of those who teach that the help by which is not one grace, but a series of graces, or divine providence toward the Saints, comprehending both interior and exterior graces and whatever contributes to the salvation of the predestined, and passive perseverance itself, by which providence the just man is so ruled that at length he actually perseveres.

XI. It is asked, therefore, whether from the characters of each help Jansenius rightly gathered that Augustine's doctrine is this, that grace, which is given in this state of fallen and repaired nature and which Augustine himself defended against the Pelagians in so many works, brings necessity upon the will, and that Augustine's doctrine of the grace of fallen nature is to be taken in this sense in all his controversy with the Pelagians or Semi-Pelagians.

I answer that the heretics do indeed contend that the distinction of the two helps handed down in lib. De Correp. et grat. is a necessary key for opening up the understanding of Augustine's whole doctrine concerning grace: but this is wrongly affirmed. 1) first, because Augustine himself does not seem to have judged this, who, in the Pelagian contest, while the disputation was raging, never made even the slightest mention of the two helps, which he nonetheless ought to have done, if, with that distinction omitted, his doctrine of grace is unintelligible: at length, when the Pelagians had been defeated, writing to certain pious monks, he brings that distinction forward, which appears only once in so many works. Because, in the judgment of the same author, this new distinction regards not grace in general, but the grace of perseverance; in the Pelagian controversy, however, there was disputation in general about the grace necessary for a good work, for faith, for any good act, whether those who act well are going to persevere or not.

Although that distinction is not a necessary key for opening up the understanding of the Augustinian doctrine of grace; yet it cannot be denied that, since it was at length brought forth by Augustine, it can bring a certain light for understanding more clearly certain chapters of his doctrine, or that from it at least it is permitted to argue for defending a certain interpretation of Augustine's doctrine.

XII. Wherefore to the proposed question I answer, directly denying that Jansenius rightly gathered what he gathers. For 1) here Augustine does not dispute about the grace necessary for individual acts, and the same efficacious, which is given even to those not persevering and which was given also to Adam, who certainly worked some good before sin, but about the grace of persevering, and indeed as regards Adam, not about the grace of persevering in justice unto the end of life, which he also had, but about the grace of persevering in the state of integrity; as regards the just, however, about the grace of persevering unto the end in the state of restored holiness. But our question with Jansenius is about the nature of actual grace, which is given for individual acts. This doctrine of Augustine, therefore, does not regard our question.

2. To dispatch the matter in a few words: whatever is affirmed about either help is rightly understood, if the help by which, insofar as it is efficient, is said to be a series of aids, both availing by divine power not only for acting salutarily, but also for overcoming concupiscence and the other impediments, and infallibly efficacious by divine foreknowledge, which are conferred by God with an absolute intention that perseverance be most certainly obtained: while the help without which not is said to be a sufficient help for acting salutarily, conferred, however, short of an absolute intention that Adam should persevere in that state of integrity.

Certainly in this hypothesis it is truly said 1) that grace and perseverance were left in the free will of Adam; ¹ of certain authors cannot be approved by us, by which it is asserted that by these words it is signified that Adam's grace was a grace of knowledge alone, and that the grace of the predestined is also a grace of the will: for neither is there here speech about the grace necessary for individual acts, nor is it understood why the grace of the will should not have been left in the free will of the saints, unless you admit our interpretation; and besides, it is falsely supposed that Augustine did not admit, for the state of integrity, a grace of the will, as we saw above. however in the free will of the Saints. For, since there was no absolute decree of Adam's perseverance in the state of integrity, neither was there a will of conferring those aids by which that perseverance would most certainly be obtained: but, given opportune aids, it depended on Adam's will alone, in the first place, to determine the perseverance of that state. Otherwise, on the contrary, it happens with regard to the perseverance of the Saints, which depends in the first place on the decree of God conferring a series of infallibly efficacious graces, once which have been given it cannot happen that a man be unwilling. Certainly God did not decree with an absolute antecedent will that the state of integrity should persevere, but with an absolute antecedent will he decreed that the grace of repaired salvation should be efficacious in many and should remain forever. For by that very fact, with the Redemption decreed, he willed Christ to be the head, he willed also that there be a body which would be perpetually fitted to him, lest it ever come about by our fault that the head should remain without a body. God certainly resolved that he would take care of this, that those would be forever who were incorporated into Christ, namely, the saints blessed forever. Augustine here keeps this divine economy before his eyes, and applies it in the concrete to those saints who in reality are saved forever.

It is truly said 2) that Adam's grace gave the power to do, the grace of the Saints gives the act; because in truth the act was lacking there, here it is. It is truly said 3) that by Adam's grace it was not brought about that he willed: for by this phrase, God works that they will, Augustine does not signify merely the grace of the will simply, as elsewhere (cf. Th. XLIV. p. 1a. et Th. XVIII. p. 1a.), but a special grace of God; for it is that grace by which a man indeclinably, insuperably, and most invincibly wills the good, which namely obtains its effect infallibly. Now such was not Adam's grace: therefore by Adam's grace it was not brought about that he willed: but through the grace of the Saints God works that they will, not only because in him the act of persevering was lacking, while in these it is: but because God, willing with absolute will for these that there be perseverance, confers those aids by which he himself infallibly obtains their perseverance; God, therefore, works, or brings it about, that they will, and does not permit that they be unwilling to persevere: but God behaved otherwise toward Adam. It is truly said 4) that men now need a more powerful grace, and that by it aid has been given to human weakness, so that they are acted upon indeclinably and insuperably by the grace of God: for by these words, besides the fact that there is signified a) that medicinal grace exercises greater powers, because it must add strength also against the concupiscence and weakness of nature b) and that the moral necessity of that grace is held in this state c) and that that grace of perseverance is now conferred, by which the effect is infallibly obtained: there is chiefly signified d) that the economy of this antecedent predestination of perseverance has been undertaken by God for fallen men, on account of the greater difficulty, on the part of the weakness of nature, of persevering in good; which indeed, whether it is true or not, it will be permitted to dispute; but now we set forth the opinion of Augustine, who so judged.

All these things do not require a grace determining the will to one thing, but only a grace which of itself is robust against impediments and, by divine foreknowledge, is about to obtain the effect infallibly. For God knows how to call men as is fitting for them to follow the one calling. To this comes back the explanation of Merlin, Oper. cit. p. 224. p. 1a, d. ult.

Likewise, every grace is efficacious, if that is called efficacious, as it is rightly called, which can effect something. But because not every grace obtains its effect, therefore, having regard to the term or effect, which is present or absent, grace is divided into sufficient and efficacious: so that that grace is called efficacious which is effective, or is joined with its effect, while that is called sufficient which, although it gives an antecedent and complete power of acting, is nevertheless not joined with its effect. The affirmation of this real division aims at this, that it be established that not only those graces are given by God to fallen men which are joined with their effect, but that others also are conferred by God which give the same antecedent and complete power for acting, yet are destitute of their effect on account of man's free choice, and therefore that the grace of God can be resisted. This indeed is the doctrine which the Catholic Church asserts against heretics.

I. Every power is sufficient for that for which it is ordered, or in other words, for that which it can do; for in this is placed the sufficiency of a power, for sufficiency is spoken of with respect to some determinate effect, and then a power is said to be sufficient when it can do that, or when it has the power of doing it. Moreover, every power compared with that for which it is ordered and which it is said to be able to do, is a power which does not require another force to be added to itself in order to be able to do it; otherwise it would be false that it itself could do it, but it would at most be the power of another lesser effect. Now indeed every grace confers the power of acting salutarily; not any grace whatever gives the power of any act whatever, but individual graces give power for certain and determinate acts. This power, which is the reason why the act exists, is a power antecedent to the very exercise of the faculty. Therefore, with respect to those acts for which grace confers the power, the same grace is sufficient; every grace, therefore, is sufficient for that for which it is given. Since, therefore, sufficiency is placed in the power, and this is prior to the act or operation and therefore exists even when the act does not exist; hence the sufficiency of grace remains the same, whether the act for which it is given exists or not.

II. Among the approved Latin writers the term efficacious has the signification of power; namely, it signifies that which can effect, whether it actually effects or not: for actual exercise is not required in order that the appellation of efficacious may truly be ascribed to anyone. If, therefore, the term efficacious is taken in this sense, which no one can reject, then every grace is truly efficacious, just as it is also truly sufficient, since it can perform the act for which it is given.

II. Why, then, is grace distinguished into sufficient and efficacious? Making abstraction of every special system, which does not pertain to the faith, and employing the interpretation which must be admitted in every system and which suffices for the faith, this distinction is drawn from the extrinsic term, i.e. the effect, which can be and not be and in reality is now present, now absent. That grace, therefore, which obtains its effect, which in reality produces the good act of the will, is wont to be called efficacious grace (it would be better said: effective), so that by the term efficacious there is signified not only the power of effecting but actual efficacy. Moreover, the term efficacious having been contracted to that special signification, the grace which is not joined with a good act is not called efficacious, but retains the appellation of sufficient, the truth of which appellation is discharged by power alone. In order that this proper signification, by which the positing of the act is excluded, may be more determined, grace is also wont to be called purely sufficient. Thus by this distinction there is signified not a difference of nature, but of fact.

For by reason of nature both have the efficacy of power; for both are sufficient, but as regards the fact, the connection with a free salutary act, which the one has, is lacking to the other, and therefore it remains in the state of pure sufficiency.

IV. Moreover, in order that this distinction may be true in the logical order, it suffices that grace can be conceived joined with its effect and can be conceived separated from its effect. But in order that it may be true also in the real or historical order, it is necessary that some grace, in itself sufficient and efficacious in first act, be also efficacious in second act, and that some grace, in itself sufficient and efficacious in first act, not be efficacious in second act. This, moreover, is what is affirmed by those who affirm that this distinction of grace into sufficient and efficacious is real.

For it is asked whether every grace which is conferred by God on fallen men is efficacious, i.e. joined with a good act. The Calvinists and Jansenists affirm it, and therefore deny that purely sufficient graces exist. Jansenius De Gratia Christi. L. III.Cf. Stephanum Dechamps L. I. Disp. 8. The Catholics deny it, who accordingly contend that purely sufficient graces are also given. The question is of the greatest importance. For if no graces are given except efficacious ones, then whenever the effect is absent, grace too must be said to have been lacking, as Jansenius teaches, De Grat. Christi. L. II. c. 25, and therefore whenever a man sins, he lacked the grace by which he could act salutarily. Hence the first proposition of Jansenius: «Some precepts of God are impossible for just men willing and striving, according to the present powers which they have; there is also lacking to them the grace by which they might become possible.» And because the grace remaining purely sufficient is that to which the will resists; hence, with that sufficient grace denied, there follows also the other proposition of Jansenius: «To interior grace in the state of fallen nature there is never resistance»; for efficacious grace, i.e. that joined with its effect, is not resisted.

V. It must therefore be proved that purely sufficient graces are also given, i.e. that not all graces which God confers obtain their effect, but are separated from the good act. And because this separation is not to be traced back to the nature of grace, which, being sufficient, is of itself fitted for producing the effect, it can be traced back only to the free choice of the will. In the preceding theses we denied the necessity of the attainment of the good act and accordingly affirmed the possibility of its failure; here, moreover, we also assert the fact, affirming that graces which are purely sufficient are really given, graces, namely, which give the antecedent and complete power of acting, yet lack their effect, or are separated from the good act for which they are given.

Grace, therefore, that is purely sufficient is grace which gives power for the act and complete power, so that on the part of the agent principle nothing further is required; otherwise it would not be sufficient. It is the grace by which the will is prepared by the Lord, by which God touches the hearts of the faithful with paternal inspirations that they may do something good; it is that grace which, according to Augustine, gives the will and makes us act (Cf. Th. XLIV. p. 1ª.). It is nevertheless at the same time such that it is not joined with its effect, and therefore it is called purely sufficient, or simply sufficient. Its existence is to be proved.

VI. It is proved 1) by the authority of the Scriptures. From the Scriptures we are taught that the precepts of the law of God oblige all men, at least those who know them, both the just and sinners; likewise from the Scriptures we are taught that the observance of the law, which God requires at least of the just (to say the least), is a salutary observance, which, namely, can lead the just to eternal life: but it is evident from the same Scriptures that salutary observance of the law cannot take place without the grace of God. Now indeed from these things it follows, therefore all men, at least the just, can observe the law of God salutarily; therefore they have the necessary grace which confers this power; therefore when they do not observe it and sin, they were able to observe it salutarily; therefore when they sin, they had the grace by which they were able, if they had willed, to observe it; moreover, many of the just do in reality sin: therefore they had the grace not to sin: but that grace was without its effect; therefore purely sufficient graces are really given.

And in very truth sinners are reproached by God, and are reproached for this, that although God had abundantly bestowed on them all the means for living well, they nevertheless willed to sin. Isaiah V, 3. seqq. Now therefore, inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What is there that I ought to have done more to my vineyard and did not do to it? Or that I expected it to bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes? The vineyard in the prophets is frequently the chosen people (cf. Isaias III, 14. XXVII, 2. Matt. XX, 1. seqq. XXI, 33. seqq. Luc. XX, 9.). But those are dreaming who want the vineyard, of which there is speech here, to be Adam; for what do the things that immediately follow intend? And now I will show you what I will do to my vineyard; I will take away its hedge, etc.? Does not God himself interpret the allegory in v. 7, for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel...? The discourse is therefore in this place about fallen men. Now indeed God testifies both that he conferred on those men all the defenses or helps for doing judgment and justice, and that they were unwilling to act well; and this is the reason of the reproach, that they did not do it when God had furnished to them all things which would be necessary and opportune, as far as in him was: but this reproach would be empty and unjust, if those men had lacked the grace conferring the power; therefore.

Again, in this testimony note that, the helps having been bestowed, God is said to expect their good use; and therefore we are taught that the will is left under grace with an indifferent power, and that in it itself, and in no way in a defect of grace, is the reason why the act does not exist; the will therefore was able, if it had willed: grace therefore was present, which lacked its term through the fault of man.

Likewise God complains that the riches of his grace are despised by sinners, and of that grace which leads sinners to penance (Rom. II, 4); but it could not be said that sinners despise those graces which they have not received, and the grace which leads to penance confers the complete power of repenting: therefore.

Likewise God reproves sinners, comparing them with those who, furnished with the same helps, would have acted well. Matth. XI, 21: therefore the only cause why good operation was lacking in the former was their will; therefore the sinners had the complete power of acting well: therefore.

Likewise men are reproached because they resist the Holy Spirit (Act. VII, 51); grace to which resistance is made is therefore given in fact: not every grace, therefore, is efficacious.

VII. It is proved 2) by the authority of the Councils. Arausic. II. can. 25. «This also we believe according to the catholic faith, that, grace having been received through baptism, all the baptized, with Christ helping and cooperating, can and ought to fulfill those things which pertain to salvation, if they will to labor faithfully.» All the baptized, therefore, have grace to act well: but frequently many of them act badly; grace therefore in them was separated from its effect, because they were unwilling to labor faithfully.

Concilium Trident. Sess. VI. cap. 11. «No one ought to use that rash voice, prohibited by the Fathers under anathema, that the precepts of God are impossible of observance for a justified man; for God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding he admonishes both to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot, and he helps that you may be able... for those who are sons of God love Christ; but those who love him, as he himself testifies, keep his words: which indeed they are able to accomplish with divine help... For God does not forsake those once justified by his grace, unless he is first forsaken by them.» When, therefore, the just man sins and forsakes God, he was able to keep the precepts of God, and he was able by divine help; otherwise God would have forsaken him first: this help, therefore, lacked its effect; therefore.

Ibid. cap. 13. As regards perseverance it says: «All ought to place and repose the firmest hope in the help of God; for God, unless they themselves fail his grace, just as he began the good work, so he will perfect it, working the will and the accomplishment.» Therefore he who does not persevere, he himself failed the grace of God; grace did not fail him; some grace of God, therefore, was void in itself, or separated from the good act. Therefore. Cf. Cann. 18.22.

VIII. It is proved by the authority of the Apostolic See. Among the Baian propositions this is the 54ª. «This definitive sentence: that God commanded nothing impossible to man, is falsely attributed to Augustine, since it is Pelagius's.» Add also the two propositions of Jansenius recited above and the 13th of Quesnellus: «When God wills to save a soul and touches it with the interior hand of his grace, no human will resists him» and the 6th among those condemned by Alexander VIII. 7 Decemb. 1690: «Sufficient grace is for our state not so much useful as pernicious, so that accordingly we may justly ask: free us, O Lord, from sufficient grace.» by the authority of the Apostolic See.

IX. It is proved 4) by the authority of the Fathers; for this doctrine of the Faith, contained in the Scriptures, authentically proposed by the Councils and the Roman Pontiffs, was always handed down by the Fathers. Irenaeus adv. haer. L. IV. c. 37.1.: «Those who do not work good will receive the just judgment of God, because they have not worked good, when they could» by the authority of the Fathers. to do it.» Hieronym. epist. 140a. 5.: «From the beginning of his condition man uses God as his helper, and since it is of his grace that he was created, of his mercy that he subsists and lives, he can do no good work without him, who so granted free will that he did not deny his grace in all things.» Ambrosius in Luc. L. VI. c. antepen.: «The Lord Jesus distributes the foods, and he indeed wills to give to all, he denies to no one, for he is the dispenser of all... what will you answer him, or how will you excuse yourself? You cannot say that he did not give food, who gives to all. And you cannot say that he did not will you to do good, before whom he placed good and evil, so that your good might not be from necessity, but voluntary.» Chrysost. hom. VII. in Ioann.: «Grace is poured out upon all; it does not except or disdain the Jew, the Greek, the barbarian, the Scythian, the free man, the slave, the man, the woman, the old man, the young man; it is the same for all, it shows itself easy to all, it calls all with equal honor: but those who neglect to enjoy its gift, let them impute this their blindness to themselves; for since it is given to all, lies open to all, and is forbidden by no one: certain lost and worthless men refuse to enter through their own malice alone.»

X. It is proved 5) specially by the authority of Augustine. The heads of the doctrine of the most holy Father in this matter are these: α) The grace of God is received in vain by sinners. De peccat. mer. et remiss. L. I. c. 39.: «He (the baptized person) has concupiscence, with which he may fight and, God helping, overcome it; if he has not received his grace in vain, if he has not willed to be a reprobate.» Whence in Psalm. CXXIV. c. 1.: «Their heart (of those who prosper in this world) grows cold against God and becomes hard against the rain of his grace, lest it bear fruit.» β) He who sins despises the grace of God, and this contempt is imputed to him as fault. L. III. De Lib. arbit. c. 19: «Since God is everywhere present, who in many ways through the creature serving him as Lord calls the unwilling, teaches the believer, consoles the hoping, exhorts the loving, helps the striving, hears the praying; it is not imputed to you as fault that you are unwillingly ignorant, but that you neglect to seek what you are ignorant of; nor that you do not gather your wounded members, but that you despise him willing to heal. These are your own sins.» And De Spir. et lit. c.

33. »Unbelievers indeed act against the will of God, when they do not believe his Gospel;... destined to experience in punishments the power of him whose mercy in gifts they have despised.«

γ) God does not forsake unless he is forsaken. De Nat. et grat. c. 26: «God, when... he justifies the impious,... and has led him to perfect life and justice, does not forsake him, if he is not forsaken, so that one may live piously and justly. For just as the eye of the body, even most fully healthy, cannot see unless aided by the brightness of light; so also man, even most perfectly justified, unless he is divinely aided by the eternal light of justice (the discourse is therefore about actual grace, which is conferred on the justified, and this God does not forsake unless he is forsaken), cannot live rightly. God therefore heals not only that he may blot out what we have sinned, but that he may also provide that we do not sin.»

δ) That men are not helped by the grace of God, the cause is in themselves, not in God. De pecc. merit. et remiss. L. II. c. 17.: «That what lay hidden may become known and what did not delight may become sweet, is of the grace of God, which helps the wills of men: that they are not helped by it, the cause likewise is in themselves, not in God.» On these words of Augustine Fulgentius says this to Monimum, L. I. c. 28: «In these sayings of St. Augustine attend, I ask, my dearest, first that men are not helped by God is said to have the cause in themselves, not in God.»

ε) To persevere is in the power of the just man who does not persevere. De Corrept. et grat. c. 7. »It can be said: man, in that which you had heard and held, you would persevere in it, if you willed.«

ζ) To call and to persuade is God's; to consent, however, or to dissent from the calling is of the human will. De Spir. et lit. c. 34. has these words: «By the persuasions of visions God acts that we may will... in these ways, therefore, when God acts with the rational soul that it may believe him (for it cannot believe anything by free will, if there is no persuasion or calling to which it may believe), certainly God works in man even the very will to believe: but to consent to the calling of God, or to dissent from it, is of one's own will. Which not only does not weaken what was said, for 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, except by consenting; and by this, what it has and what it receives is God's; but to receive and to have is certainly of the receiver and the holder.» Where you see that to receive the gifts of God is to consent to God calling through his grace, and that the gift which is received is the very good act.

η) God condemns no one by an unjust judgment, although hidden: for an evil will preceded, which merited the punishment. Augustine, answering those who objected that some are blinded and hardened by God, says: «I answer that even this their will has merited. For thus God blinds, thus hardens, by forsaking, not by helping (i.e., efficacious help having been denied): which he can do by a hidden judgment, by an unjust one he cannot.» Tract. LIII. in Ioan. n. 6. This is the reason why the judgment of God in forsaking certain sinners is just, because namely their will merited it: if it merited it, it was able, therefore, to act well although it did not act; but certainly it could not have done so destitute of the grace of God, according to Augustine: therefore.

θ) The calling of God which the consent of man does not follow is to be distinguished from the calling which the consent of man follows, which calling is productive of the good will, which calling Augustine calls by the special name of mercy. Therefore a twofold grace is to be distinguished, namely the congruous and the less congruous, to which the consent of the free will is lacking. Likewise a twofold persuasion is to be distinguished: the one, by which someone is so persuaded that he is won over; the other, by which he is persuaded in such a way that he is nevertheless not won over. Certainly in De Spir. et lit. c. 34. Augustine says: «Now if anyone should press us to scrutinize that depth, why to one it is so persuaded that he is won over, but to another not so, two things alone occur for the present, which it pleases me to answer: O the depth of the riches, and is there iniquity with God?» But in book I. ad Simplic. q. II. n. 13: «It is true, therefore: many are called, few are chosen. For those are chosen who are congruously called (al. who corresponded to the calling): but those who did not correspond nor were attuned to the calling are not chosen, because they did not follow, although called. Likewise it is true: it is not of the one willing nor of the one running, but of God showing mercy; because even if he calls many, he nevertheless has mercy on those whom he so calls, in the way in which it is fitting for them to be called that they may follow. But it is false if anyone says: therefore it is not of God showing mercy, but of man willing and running; because God has mercy on no one in vain: but on whom he has mercy, he so calls him as he knows to be congruous for him that he may not reject the one calling.» Augustine therefore distinguishes calling and mercy, simple suasion and persuasion: God persuades all, which cannot be done without actual grace,

God calls all: but he persuades, or has mercy on, those whom he congruously calls, who are also the chosen. But those who are called and yet are not chosen are not chosen for this reason, because they have not followed the calling. Congruous calling, therefore, supposes and includes the free consent of the will following the calling; when this consent is lacking, the calling is not congruous. Besides the grace, therefore, by which God actually has mercy on the elect, there is also the grace which many do not follow, from which it comes about that God does not actually have mercy on them, which is the less congruous grace. Consider that all these heads of doctrine are drawn from the books which Augustine wrote either when the Pelagian heresy was already known, or after God revealed to him what was to be held in the question of the beginning of faith, which happened to him when he wrote the books to Simplicianum (De Praed. SS. c. 4.).

XL. Jansenius, lest he should fight against the very evidence, concedes some grace besides the efficacious, a grace to which the will resists, namely one not doing that to which it is moved by it. But this grace is not a grace sufficient for deliberately willing and doing that which it inspires, but is only a gentle breath, as it were, of a thin breeze, obtaining a certain most tenuous complacency of the will, by which it draws the will after itself most swiftly and, as it were, stealthily (De Gratia Christi I. II, c. 27.). But it is most absurdly said that the will resists grace, when the will both does all that to which grace draws it and does not do that to which grace does not impel it. For who resists him, to whom he yields only as much as he is drawn by him, and whom he does not follow only in that in which he is not drawn? Moreover, this grace, sufficient for stealthily obtaining a most tenuous complacency, insufficient for deliberate will and action, draws the will to that, not to this: and it always obtains that; never, therefore, is the grace of God resisted, according to the doctrine of Jansenius.

In vain is it also objected 3) that we are taught by the Church to ask of God not only the power, but the good act; 4) that grace is that which distinguishes; 5) that a benefit is conferred on those who do well which is not conferred on those who do not; and finally 6) that that grace is like a monster, which never does anything).

I. They say, therefore, that Augustine acknowledges no other grace than efficacious grace, i.e. that which obtains the consent of the will or is joined with its effect. This indeed would not be demonstrated by itself merely from the fact that Augustine speaks of this alone; for these two things can be combined at the same time, namely, that of two things only one is spoken of, and yet the other is not understood to be excluded, or it can happen that the speech about the former is not exclusive. But if account be taken of the Pelagian controversy, in which the question was universally about the necessity of grace insofar as it is the gratuitous principle of good will and action, and about the insufficiency of nature for salutary works, and moreover it be considered that Augustine wrote very many books on this question and that it is held by the consent of all that the grace which the Church proclaims as necessary was defended by Augustine; it appears impossible that in Augustine no mention should occur of another grace besides the efficacious, if this other grace is to be held on the authority of revelation.

II. We therefore briefly lay down these points in order. A) We concede that Augustine, when he disputes about grace, not infrequently keeps before his eyes that grace which is called efficacious or congruous. Surely it is this of which he treats when he disputes on the Predestination of the Saints, which is defined by him as the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits by which most certainly are liberated whosoever are liberated; for benefits or graces of this kind, by which most certainly are liberated whosoever are liberated, are certainly efficacious graces. Wherefore he says that this grace is rejected by no hard heart. c. 8. Likewise Augustine keeps efficacious grace before his eyes when he disputes on the gift of Perseverance, which gift he does not have who does not persevere. Again, he has regard to efficacious grace when he restricts the sense of the words of Paul: God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. He also perhaps signifies efficacious grace (see what we will say below) when in the letter to Vitalis CCXVII. c. 5. he places this in the fifth place among the dogmas certainly to be held about grace: the grace of God is not given to all. Which also the African Bishops exiled in Sardinia do in the letter to John and Venerius, etc., teaching in c. 9. that «he does not think worthily about the grace of God whosoever thinks that it is given to all men; since not only is faith not of all, but there are even still found some nations, to which the preaching of faith has not come.» Finally Augustine considers efficacious grace, whether when in the book De Corrept. et Grat. he disputes about the help whereby, or generally when he treats of that grace which is given to the elect, called according to purpose, children of the promise (cf. De Gratia Christi. c. 13. seq. De praedest. SS. c. 6. De Persever. c. 9. etc.)

III. B) But it must be denied that Augustine restricted the amplitude of the grace of Christ to efficacious graces alone. For 1) he also frequently speaks expressly of grace insofar as it is sufficient, namely of the grace conferring powers on the will, which lacks its effect only through the fault of man; 2) he also speaks of grace insofar as it is a genus indifferent to the purely sufficient and the efficacious; 3) he also co-signifies sufficient grace even then, when he speaks of efficacious grace.

a) Surely for demonstrating the first point the testimonies brought in the preceding Thesis ought to suffice, which are taken from the works of Augustine written in the Pelagian cause, and which certainly are not all the testimonies that could be brought.

β) The second point must be proved a little more at length; for it is a matter of no small moment, rightly explained by Bolgeni in his unpublished Tract De Gratia, namely, not sufficiently noticed by all. To this contributes first what we explained in Th. XLIV. p. 1ª. on the force of these formulas: grace which gives the good act, and makes us do. Furthermore, mention of grace occurs frequently in Augustine under this respect of a power conferred for acting, without the existence of the salutary act being determinately conceived. De Nat. et Grat. c. 26. «God heals not only so as to blot out what we have sinned, but so as to provide also that we sin not.» De Gestis Pelagii c. 10. «This grace, which they knew as most well-known in the Catholic Church, the Bishops believed Pelagius to confess, when they heard him saying: a man converted from sin by his own labor and the grace of God can be without sin.» Ibid. c. 14. «The grace which is preached in the Church of Christ is given by the ministration of the Holy Spirit, so that we are helped in each one of our acts.» Serm. CLXXVI. n. 5. «To implore, it stirred your heart and it gave you the power to implore: for it is God, he says, who works in you to will and to work, because, that you might have a good will, his calling went before.» Cont. duas epist. pelag. L. IV. c. 5. «The inspiration of love, that we may do what we have come to know with holy love, which is properly grace.» In Psal. CXVIII. Serm. XXII. n. 7. «This is that sweetness, which the Lord gives so that our earth may yield its fruit, so that we may do good truly well, i.e. not from fear of carnal evil but from delight in spiritual good.» Oper. imperf. I. II. c. 165. «God justifies the impious not only by remitting the evils he has done, but also by giving charity, that he may decline from evil and do good through the Holy Spirit, whose continual ministration the Apostle besought for those to whom he said: we pray to God, that you do nothing evil.» De Grat. et lib. arb. c. 4. «The grace of God, without which we can do nothing good.» Moreover, by these formulas there is not represented a grace which is historically joined with its effect, but one which gives power and strength for the effect: therefore grace is exhibited by Augustine under a generic notion indifferent to the purely sufficient or the efficacious. Similar testimonies of Augustine, moreover, occur not infrequently; which accordingly must be explained in the same way.

v) It remains to demonstrate the third point, namely that sufficient grace is co-signified by Augustine even then, when he speaks of efficacious grace. For sufficient grace is co-signified, if, when the grace effecting the act is represented, it be signified that the same grace can be resisted and can therefore remain in a state of pure sufficiency. Now indeed De Praed. SS. c. 5. he says: «Where it is said: what have you that you have not received? whosoever dares to say: I have faith from myself, therefore I have not received, certainly contradicts this most open truth: not because believing or not believing is not in the free choice of the human will, but in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord.»Here the grace of the elect is exhibited, and these are they who consent to the calling, who are congruously called that they may consent, i.e. whose will is prepared by the Lord (by a congruous preparation): when however it is said that to believe or not to believe is in the free choice of the human will, it is signified that the elect one, who consents, could dissent; and therefore that preparation of the will could be without effect. Likewise de Gratia Christi c. 13: «Thus God teaches those who are called according to purpose, at the same time giving them both to know what they do and to do what they know.»The discourse is about the grace which is given to those called according to purpose; and these are they in whom grace is efficacious. Concerning this manner of teaching he adds in the following chapter: «Concerning this manner of teaching the Lord also says: everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned, comes to me. Whoever therefore will not have come, it is not rightly said of him: he indeed heard and learned that he must come, but he does not want to do what he has learned. It is altogether not rightly said concerning that manner of teaching, by which God teaches through grace. For if, as the Truth speaks, everyone who has learned, comes; whosoever does not come, certainly has not learned.»Weigh carefully here that it is not said only he who hears, but he who hears and learns; the discourse is surely about that grace by which one is not only urged, but also won over. (cf. the words of Augustine in the preceding Th. under lit. 5.) It follows: «but who does not see that both someone's coming and not coming are by the free choice of the will? But this choice can be alone, if he does not come: it cannot however be unless aided, if he comes, and so aided that he not only knows what is to be done, but also does what he has known. And by this, when God teaches not through the letter of the law, but through the grace of the Spirit, he so teaches, that what each one has learned, he not only sees by knowing, but also seeks by willing and perfects by acting.»Therefore he who comes, comes aided, and without this help he could not come: he however who, being aided, comes, was able not to come; because he comes by the free choice of the will. But a necessary connection is said to be between learning and coming: he who has learned, comes: he who does not come, has not learned: but on Augustine's authority, he comes freely, therefore also freely has he learned: otherwise he would come necessarily. Namely, to learn is to give consent to the word heard, which consent is made with the help of the grace of God, but is made freely. «To learn, says s. Thomas 1ª. 2ae. q. CXIII. a. 3., is not without a movement of free will; for the learner consents to the teacher." Distinguished therefore are both learning and seeking by willing and perfecting by acting, which are the coming itself, just as the first free act from the subsequent ones. Therefore this grace does not obtain its effect without the free consent of the will. It could therefore be without effect, i.e. remain purely sufficient: therefore.

Wherefore this declaration — that anyone believes or does not believe, comes or does not come by the free choice of the will — is to be understood according to the mind of Augustine wherever he treats of the effect of grace or of efficacious grace, according to what he expressly taught in Spirit. et lit. cc. 33. and 34: therefore everywhere, either explicitly or implicitly, when he speaks of efficacious grace, he co-signifies sufficient grace.

IV. If it be asked why Augustine frequently exhibits grace under the aspect of efficacious help, more than one reason can be brought. First indeed, because it is familiar to Augustine, when several species, as it were, are contained under one genus, to direct the keenness of his mind to that species which is the most excellent, and to signify it by the name of the genus antonomastically. Cf. what Faure has in the note to cc. 1 and 2 of the Enchiridion, which likewise accomplish the very same thing that we say. Then the reason could have been that which compelled him to circumscribe the interpretation of the Pauline text: who wills all men to be saved etc. Thirdly, it must be noted that the Pelagian question about the necessity of grace could also be proposed thus: are faith, good will, good action, and generally any good and salutary act a gratuitous gift of God from the powers conferred through grace, or are they from the powers of nature, which is from God? moreover, if it be so proposed, the question is really instituted about the good acts themselves which are done, and the grace which is asserted to be necessary is that which is joined with its effect. Now indeed Augustine frequently seems to regard the question of grace in this way, as he certainly regards it in the books on Praedest. SS. and on the Dono perseverantiae. Finally, it must be accurately and subtly considered that Pelagian grace was accustomed to be so proposed that it was called the grace which gives the ability, or the grace by which possibility is helped: we have seen in what sense indeed that was said, which is entirely different from the notion of sufficient grace (Th. XLIV. p. 1.): nevertheless because it is also fitting to avoid the manner of speaking of the heretics, lest occasion of error or of suspicion of error be given; hence we judge it to have come about that Augustine, abhorring that ambiguous formula, deemed it better to preach above all that grace which is not only active but also really effects, and to oppose this one to Pelagian grace, inasmuch as it is most distant from that one.

V. Moreover, when Augustine speaks of this grace, by which God so calls man that he follows the one calling, he rightly says that it is rejected by no hard heart: «for who would say that the manner, by which it was brought about that he was persuaded to believe, was lacking even to the Almighty?»Ad Simplic. L. I. q. II. n. 14.

Again, speaking of the grace of Christ, Augustine in letter 217 to Vitalis c. 5. denies that it is given to all. With him agree the African Fathers exiled in Sardinia in the Synodal letter c. 9. This seems at first sight entirely alien to Catholic doctrine; but if the polemical scope and the manner of speaking of the Fathers be regarded, there will be no difficulty. The polemical scope was that they should oppose the Pelagians, who said both that the grace of God is given to all, because free will and the law were given to all together with nature, and that if there are those who do not believe, who do not act well, this is not to be traced back to a defect of the grace which is given to all (namely of nature and of free will and of the law), but to the free choice of each one. This was the poison that lay hidden in that opinion: the grace of God is given to all, namely so that the gratuitousness of grace and the necessity of the supernatural gift would be denied. The Catholics therefore, teaching that the grace of God is not nature or free will or the law, but an interior gratuitous gift superadded to nature, whose first effect in little ones is to justify them, in adults to call them to faith, and noting that this grace is not given to all little ones, nor to all adults the proximate calling to faith, which is ordinarily joined with the preaching of the Gospel, since however they were not bound to believe that the other graces going before this calling are supernatural (for in reality they can be intrinsically natural, through which however man disposes himself negatively to faith, cf. Th. XXXIV. and Parergon pag. 264.) and therefore graces in a stricter sense; they affirmed the very fact: the grace of God, the grace of justification, the grace of faith is not given to all, by which affirmation indeed they established that the grace of God is not nature or free will or the natural law, which have been given to all, and that the grace of God is given freely. Cf. the quoted words of the African bishops. But the Pelagian affirmation, that the grace of God is given to all, taken in the sense of its authors, was entirely heretical: what wonder, then, that it was rejected?

VI. If all these things be held, it will be evident that what the Jansenists say is entirely false: that only efficacious grace is preached by Augustine, and that besides it he acknowledges nothing but Pelagian possibility.

Wherefore, in line with what has been said, there must still be discussed the difficulty of certain testimonies, from which Augustine seems to have placed nothing intermediate between grace joined with its effect and Pelagian possibility. Surely after the words recited above from the book De Gratia Christi, c. 14. he says: «By this divine manner of teaching even the will itself and the operation itself are helped, not only the natural possibility of willing and operating. For if only our being able were helped by this grace, the Lord would say thus: everyone who has heard from the Father and has learned, can come to me: but he did not so say etc.» Again on Praed. SS. c. 1: «To be able to have faith, just as to be able to have charity, is of the nature of men: but to have faith, just as to have charity, is of the grace of the faithful. That nature therefore, in which the possibility of having faith has been given to us, does not distinguish man from man: but faith itself distinguishes the faithful from the infidel.» And after a few things, when he had said that in the elect the will is prepared by the Lord, he adds a little later: that for some the will is prepared by the Lord, for others not prepared; therefore for those who are not elect, the will is not prepared by the Lord: those therefore who act badly lack the grace which would truly be sufficient; for by it the will is prepared for good.

Now as regards the first: it is said that grace does not help only natural possibility, i.e. it does not so help man, that the natural power of free will, even if aided by various helps of knowledge, nevertheless by its natural powers alone at length acts as it ought. This is what Augustine must demonstrate. It is proved, however, because the grace of Christ effects the good will and the good action, namely it is a principle superadded to nature, from which the good will and the good act proceed. Moreover, for this demonstration to hold, it is not necessary that that grace always produce the work, but that through it and it alone the work is produced when it is produced, or can be produced. That is therefore what Augustine intends here. Wherefore Augustine posits nothing intermediate between natural possibility and the grace by which the work is done, insofar as it is the grace by which the work can be done: conceded; insofar as it is the grace by which the work is really done: denied. Cf. here n. III. 8.

As regards the second: the Massilians wanted the beginning of faith to be from nature, and by the merit of nature the distinction of the faithful from the infidels to be made. This Augustine attacks, who therefore teaches that not by the power of nature (we call it obediential potency), which is common, but by faith the faithful are distinguished from the infidels, and that faith is a gift of God. But that these things again be true, there is no need that the grace by which faith is given be always joined with faith itself; but it is only necessary that faith be given through a grace unowed to nature, and therefore that faith be gratuitous; for that is what Augustine intends here. Wherefore nothing is placed intermediate between the power of nature and the grace of faith insofar as it is the grace by which faith is given by God; con. insofar as it is the grace by which faith is received, i.e. grace joined with faith itself; neg.

To the third it is clear that the preparation, by which the will is prepared for some, is here that preparation by which one is so called that he follows the one calling, so persuaded that he is won over: that there is, however, another calling and persuasion, from which man dissents, Augustine himself teaches, as is evident from what has been brought above: therefore nothing can be wrung out of this testimony.

But there remains that passage from the same book, De Gratia Christi, ch. 47: «If they agree with us not only that there is in man a possibility, even when he neither wills nor acts well, but also the very will and action, that is, that we may will well and act well, which are not in man except when he wills well and acts well; if, as I said, they agree also that the very will and action are divinely helped, so that without that help we will nothing well and act nothing well... nothing, as far as I judge, will be left of controversy between us about the help of grace.» There it is weighed that two helps are distinguished by Augustine: the help of possibility, which is present even then when man does not act well, and the help of will and action, that we may will well and act well. But this second help, that we may will well and act well, is said not to be in man except when he wills well and acts well; when, therefore, he does not will well and act well, only the help of possibility is present, which is shown with sufficient clearness by the whole series of the disputation in that book to be the help of Pelagian possibility: therefore.

I answer, denying the minor, or, for the sake of clarity, by distinguishing. Augustine affirms that only when man wills well and acts well is there in him the help that he may will well and act well — I deny; he affirms that only when he wills well or acts well are good will and action in man — I concede. This is established grammatically; for he does not say: that which is not... but: those things which are not.

So I distinguish the consequence. Therefore, when good will and action are not present, the term is lacking which is intended by grace and which is expressed in these words: that we may will well and act well — I concede; the help is lacking that we may will well and act well, namely the help supplying the power for this, and therefore only Pelagian possibility is present — I deny. By a like reasoning, moreover, you will dispose of similar things which may be objected.

VII. The Jansenists say that Augustine not rarely holds it as certain that grace is lacking to those placed in temptation. Of course, Augustine teaches what all men experience more or less. Namely, when men are pressed by a vehement temptation, they experience that they do not immediately have the strength to crush it utterly, yet that they have the strength of resisting for the present instant and have the strength of praying to obtain the help by which they may be thoroughly freed from that annoyance, which they will certainly obtain, if, as they are able, they continue to pray and so resist. Moreover, this is to have even from the beginning sufficient grace. And Augustine gives the reason why God does not immediately from the beginning confer the grace by which the enemy may be utterly crushed, or why He does not suddenly free from temptation, namely that man may acknowledge and feel his own infirmity and so be solidified in humility. On Ps. CVI, n. 5: «The second temptation is difficulty in doing well. He cries out to the Lord (behold, prayer and the power of praying), the Lord frees from necessities, breaks the bonds of difficulty... The Lord could have brought this about without difficulty (namely, which man placed in temptation experiences): but if we had this without difficulty, we would not acknowledge the giver of this good. For if He willed it from the first, He could, and man would not feel the cupidities striving against him, nor would the soul, weighed down by its bonds, be dashed; he would attribute to his own strength what he felt himself able to do.»

VIII. But in order that Augustine's doctrine in this matter may be declared more fully, it must be considered that a twofold grace is distinguished by Augustine: the one proximate, which is the complete power of fulfilling the law; the other remote and initial, which is the power, or proximate grace, of seeking and asking. Furthermore, the latter grace is called by him something of love, a somewhat small grace; but the proximate grace is called by him simply grace, helping grace, help.

Certainly, let it first be considered that Augustine frequently supposes both that grace is lacking to man, by which temptation might be overcome, and that the same man prays to God for the obtaining of this grace. Thus on Ps. LXX, serm. 1, n. 6: «I who will to be freed from captivity by your grace cry out to you. Free me from the hand of the sinner, from his power, lest when he rages he lead me to consent, lest when he lies in wait he persuade me to iniquity.»Cf. Serm. CLXV, nn. 1, 2, on Ps. CXVIII, Serm. X, n. 5, and on Ps. CVI, n. 4. You have, therefore, a twofold grace indicated: the one which is desired, that we may not consent to the suggestions of the enemy and that we may also do the good, and which accordingly is still lacking; the other by which we pray, by which we ask; for we cannot pray usefully without grace, on Augustine's authority; which grace is already present and stirs man to pray. Consonant with these are the things which he has in ep. CLVII to Hilarius, c. 2, n. 10: «He who says to God: 'Be my helper,' confesses that he wills to fulfill what He commanded, but to seek the help from Him who commanded, that he may be able. So also this man, since he knew that no one can be continent unless God gives it, went to the Lord and prayed; surely willing he went, willing he prayed, nor would he have asked unless there were a will; but unless he had asked, how much would the will be able? For even if it can before it asks, what does it profit, unless it gives thanks to Him for what it can, from whom what it cannot yet do is to be asked?... But He will help (God), if we do not presume on our own strength... and for the things which we can already do, let us give thanks, and for those which we cannot yet, let us ask God with suppliant, yearning will.» Serm. CLXIII, c. 10: «I will that you will, but it does not suffice that you will. You must be helped, so that you may fully will and fulfill what you will.» Serm. CLV, n. 4: «Grace superabounded, which blotted out all the sins which it found, and supplied help to our striving will for not sinning.» And so, when man does not yet have the help by which he is helped toward some good works, toward fulfilling the law, he can already do something; he can will, he can strive, he can pray — which does not happen without grace. You see, moreover, that by the name of helping grace, of help, the proximate grace is meant.

IX. But that grace, by which we can already do something, at least pray, Augustine calls, as we have already noted, something of love, a somewhat small grace. De Gratia et lib. arb., c. 18: «Why therefore was it said: Let us love one another, because love is from God (1 Ioann. IV, 7)? unless because free will was admonished by the precept to seek the gift of God: which indeed would be admonished utterly without its fruit, unless it first received something of love, so that it would seek to be added to itself, whence it might fulfill what was commanded.»Serm. CXLV, n. 5. »The law terrifies the one presuming on himself, grace helps the one hoping in God. See, for instance, that captive. He sees another law in his members fighting against the law of his mind... Behold, he is conquered, behold, he is dragged, behold, he is captured, behold, he is subjected. What did it profit him: you shall not covet? He heard it to know the enemy, not to conquer. Now you have seen the enemy, fight, free yourself, assert yourself into freedom, let the pleasing suggestion be repressed, let the illicit delight be destroyed. Arm yourself, you have the law, go forth, conquer, if you can.» These things are said with man considered only under the law. He continues: »For what is it, that from a somewhat small grace you already take delight in the law of God according to the inner man?» Here something other than the law is supposed, an interior grace proper to the new testament. He adds: »but you see another law in your members... leading you captive in the law of sin. Behold, whence that multitude of sweetness is hidden from you who fear; it is hidden from the one who fears: how is it perfected for the one who hopes? Cry out under the enemy, because you have an assailant, you have also a helper; who waits for you as you fight, lifts up the one laboring, but if he finds the one hoping; for he hates the one who is proud.» Just as, therefore, on Augustine's authority, faith is inchoate and perfect, and there are certain inchoations of faith similar to conceptions (ad Simplic., L. I, q. 2, n. 2), so also charity is inchoate and perfect, and inchoate charity is inchoate justice (De Natura et Gratia, c. 70), and so there is a small and weak will and a great and robust will: by the former the commandments cannot yet be fulfilled, by the latter they can (De Gratia et lib. arb., cc. 15, 17).

You have, therefore, a twofold grace distinguished by Augustine: namely, an initial or somewhat small one, by which man can pray and ask, and so for the present necessity resist temptation; and a helping one, by which the law is fulfilled.

X. But when Augustine supposes that grace is lacking, he speaks not of any grace whatsoever, but of the helping or proximate one. For when grace is lacking, he admonishes that it must be asked of God: therefore he already supposes that the initial grace is present, and that only the great and robust grace is lacking. De Natura et Gratia, c. 43: «God does not command impossible things, but by commanding He admonishes both to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot.» Opus imperf., L. I, c. 93: «Scripture usually addresses man's will, that, admonished, he may feel what he does not have or cannot do, and, in need, may ask from Him from whom are all good things.» Certainly the same Augustine teaches that the admonition of asking for help is joined to the precept. De Gratia Christi, c. 8: «The law commands rather than helps; it teaches that there is a disease, it does not heal; rather, what is not healed is increased by it, so that the medicine of grace may be sought more attentively and more solicitously... What is it, then, that this man reckons the law and doctrine to be grace, by which we are helped to work justice, which, however much it helps, helps to this: that grace be sought... Accordingly, through the law grace is shown, so that the law may be fulfilled through grace.» And De Grat. et lib. arb., c. 15: «The Pelagians think they know something great when they say: God would not command what He knew could not be done by man: who does not know this? But He commands some things which we cannot, so that we may know what we ought to ask from Him.»

XI. Finally, so that every cavil may be demolished, these three things are to be noted. 1°. A certain manner of speaking of Augustine is to be noted. For to him, not to have grace is not always the same as to lack help, but is not to consent to God asking and urging: it is clear from the words of Augustine cited in the preceding Th. under n. X, s. 2. The impotence with which men are said time and again to labor is a consequent impotence, arising namely from the fact that they do not will to use the means which they have and so to obtain the grace by which they could. Thus in Tract. XCVI, n. 1, on John, he says of the Apostles: «The Apostles were not yet fit then to die for Christ, to whom He said: you cannot follow me now. Whence their first, Peter, who had already presumed that he could do this, experienced something other than he thought.» But was this impotence an antecedent impotence arising from a defect of grace, which God would deny by His free will alone, or a consequent impotence, the free non-use of that grace which they already had and by which they could have obtained more abundant graces; so that they could not for this reason, because they did not will? If the former, why did Christ urge the Apostles to pray? Christ therefore foresaw that they would be unable, because it was to be that they would not pray, would not place their hope in God.

3°. When Augustine at times teaches of man willing to act well that which he says (De Perfect. iust., c. 3): «nor yet, when he wills, does he immediately have the power; but when, the cure having been applied, he has been healed and the medicine has helped the will», besides what we said under n. VII ff., he also wills to teach this: that the will of salvation does not suffice of itself, unless grace be present; namely, that a will which is elicited by the powers of nature is worth nothing, but that grace is necessary in order that the will be powerful.

XII. The Church and the faithful do not ask only for the power; but because, as regards the power of overcoming the infirmity of nature, there can be several degrees, they ask for those graces which are so relatively strong that they are certainly to be joined with the act: namely, they desire that grace which will be efficacious; and although they know that it depends on their own will that grace be efficacious in act, they also know that they can dissent, and will dissent from certain graces, but that God knows which graces they are by which men are so congruously called that they follow the one calling: therefore they ask for these graces, because with these, i.e. with good operation, the attainment of happiness and the actual keeping of the divine law are connected. Undoubtedly the faithful, with the Church going before in her liturgy, ask for two things: both the power and the act, i.e. a grace which so confers the power as also to give the act.

XIII. In order that grace, not the will, may discern, it is not necessary that it itself determine the act, but it suffices that it, freely given, be the principle of the good works which without it could not be done by the will alone. Cf. Th. XLIV, n. IV. More clearly: the grace which is given to discern men from the mass of perdition and to transfer them into the kingdom of Christ is that which can discern all, yet does not actually discern all, but in many remains only sufficient for discerning. Whence there is given both efficacious grace and purely sufficient grace. But the grace which actually discerns the good from the evil, the predestined from the reprobate, is not every grace which is distributed by God to men, but a definite grace, i.e. efficacious grace; whence it does not follow that besides it no other is given.

XIV. He who works well has both the power and the act; since this is an effect of grace, it is a gift; namely, he has a gift, and a gift from a gift. He has, namely, grace both prevenient and helping: but he who does not work has only the gift, i.e. the prevenient grace. But if both graces — both that which is efficacious in the one working and that which remains purely sufficient in the one not working — are considered in the divine prescience, which knows what the will of each one would do under these or those graces, and which preceded the predestination of grace, it will easily be clear that the conferral of the grace which was foreseen to be efficacious if conferred has the character of a greater benefit and is a sign of greater love.

XV. That grace which is called sufficient and yet never operates from the defect of some principle required for the first act, which is not in the power of the will, is like a monster — we concede. That grace which both obtains its effect and does not obtain it on account of the free choice of the will, and which, when it does not obtain it, is called purely sufficient only to indicate this fact, is monstrous, if as purely sufficient it never attains its effect — we deny. This takes place in any faculty which can indeed act, but sometimes acts and sometimes does not. The adversaries suppose that sufficient grace is of a different nature from efficacious grace, and that the effect is lacking on account of the defect of some principle holding itself on the part of the first act; but this is not the doctrine which the catholic Church defends. Sufficient grace really obtains its effect whenever the will works well, and then accordingly it is efficacious in the second act: sometimes it does not obtain its effect, and then it is called by us purely sufficient, which accordingly, as such, is never joined with its effect. Namely, by this appellation not the nature of grace, but only the fact, i.e. the defect of free consent, is signified.