Tractatus de vera et legitima concordia liberi arbitrii creati cum auxiliis gratiae Dei

1. — If one were not contending with Catholics, the first question truly would have been whether there is free choice. But this ought to be supposed as something certain, both demonstrated by natural reason and confirmed in the sacred writings. On this matter see what we said on the Prima Pars, q. 83, a. 1, and above all read St. Thomas in De Veritate, q. 24, a. 1. Indeed the very experience within ourselves teaches us that there is a power of electing one of two proposals and refuting the other, or even of electing neither but of suspending the will. It follows, then, that one should no more dispute with someone who denies free will than with a brute.

The whole difficulty, therefore, lies in the very quiddity of free choice. On this matter Luis Molina in his new Concordia, p. 11 says as follows: «First of all it must be established what is understood by the name of free choice. For freedom can be taken in two ways. In one way as it is said from the verb to liberate [libero] and is opposed to slavery. In this sense it is said: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17)». Of freedom taken thus, he says, we have no discourse in this place. In the other way it is taken as it is said from the verb to please [libet]. And in this manner, it is taken in two ways. In one way as it is opposed to coercion—and in this way we grant that in the Godhead [in divinis] the Father generates the Son freely, that is, not under coercion but spontaneously. «But in another way it can be taken as it is opposed to necessity—and thus that agent is called free which, with all requisites for acting posited, can act and not act, or can so do one thing such that it can also do the contrary. And from this freedom, the faculty by which such an agent can so operate is called free. Since, however, it does not operate except with the preceding decision and judgment of reason, it is from this that … it is called free choice».

Here he notes two things. «The first is that boys and the insane not only operate spontaneously, but also effect many things freely, so that it is in their power to effect them or not to effect them … But on that account neither fault nor merit is imputed to them, because they do not discern by reason between moral good and evil … The second is that the will cannot but elicit all its acts». And he gives the example of the will of one seeing God, which cannot but love God. Likewise while we are on the way, acts often creep up which the will could not prevent. Whence the will is free as to its exercise only by comparison with those acts which it cannot elicit. «But if at the same time it can elicit either this act or its contrary indifferently, freedom is understood as to the species of the act, which has the aspect of full and perfect freedom». Thus far, that is Molina.

2. — In Molina's discourse many things are worthy of note. In the first place, I do not know why he derived choice from the verb to please [libet] rather than from the verb to liberate [libero], unless it just pleased him to do so. For surely if he had consulted the authors of the Latin language, he would speak otherwise. For he who pursues things prior to the mind's right deliberation does what pleases himself. But he who deliberates by right reason what is to be done is not said to have done what pleased himself. We say, therefore, that the freedom of choice extends itself more widely than desire, or rather, that it is entirely independent of it. For it happens that, in the absence of deliberating, some things please us, e.g., to fornicate or to steal, and yet we deliberate that one must not steal nor fornicate. If, however, the incontinent man shall have deliberated that one must fornicate, then indeed I declare that he deliberated what had pleased him beforehand. Whence indeed the derivation of free choice is foreign to the verb to please [libet], since we deliberate neither all the things that please us, nor do all the things we deliberate please us, although we sometimes deliberate some things that please us.

3. — Much more properly, therefore, do I judge free choice to be derived from the verb libero. For although in the primitive signification he is called free who does not serve slavery, as Cicero says in book 2 De natura deorum, he who is of a free mother is free; hence nevertheless several significations are drawn through a certain likeness, as Calepinus teaches in the verb liber. Of which one is that free be taken for immune, whether for one not subject or bound to anything. Whence Cicero in book 1 De finibus said time to be free, when the option of electing is released to us and when nothing impedes. And Livy in book 7 De bello Macedonico says free choice to be the free will and judgment of mind. Where he mentions both powers. Although, therefore, freedom, according to its primeval signification, be contrary to slavery, nevertheless because, just as he who is a slave is bound to the command of one master, so hence the freedom of which we speak is derived to the faculty of the will which is not bound to the pursuit of one object, but indifferently has the power of willing this or not willing, or at some time of desiring the contrary. But because that faculty and power arises from reason, which can also indifferently judge of such an object that it is fitting or not fitting to the will, hence the freedom of choice is so called, or free choice. For choice properly pertains to the judgment of mind; whence more properly perhaps it would be called a free adjudication, or adjudicated freedom. For freedom is formally in the will, but radically in the adjudication of the intellect. And thus free choice signifies the freedom of the will which depends on the adjudication of reason.

Note secondly that that author adduced the testimony II Cor., 3, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, judging that there freedom cannot be taken for the freedom of which we now speak. Which indeed is false; for Rom., 8 (v. 14): Who are driven by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. And yet the works to the performance of which they are driven not only snatch them from the slavery of sin, but also through them they merit eternal life with the heavenly Father, and consequently where the Spirit of the Lord is there is the freedom of which we speak.

Note thirdly that that author says in the same place that the Father in divinis generates the Son freely, that is, not under coercion but spontaneously. This manner of speaking ought not to please theologians. For although concerning the Holy Spirit some Scotists say that He is breathed from the Father and the Son freely, that is, by spontaneous will, nevertheless concerning the Son I have neither read nor heard a like locution. For although it pleases God the Father concerning the begotten Son, nevertheless theologians will in no way dare to say that spontaneous will is understood as the principle of generation; but rather before every intellection of the divine will, we confess the perfect principle of generating through the mode of nature to be in the divine intellect. That manner of speaking, therefore, is not to be admitted, namely that the Father generates the Son freely, that is, spontaneously, because in such a locution it is insinuated that spontaneous will is in some way the principle of the generation of the Son; just as we say that a stone descends spontaneously, and that a brute proceeds of its own accord to pasture, where a certain natural appetite is given to be understood as the principle of those motions. In which way we shall rightly say that the Father and the Son breathe the Holy Spirit of their own accord, not only because not under coercion, but because they breathe by will.

Moreover what he says seemed worthy of note, that boys not only operate spontaneously, but also effect many things freely, which nevertheless are imputed to them neither to fault nor to merit, because they do not discern by reason between moral good and evil. Which assertion seems to imply a contradiction. For if the definition of free choice which he had premised fits boys and the insane, namely that, with all requisites for acting posited, it is in their power to effect such things or not to effect them, or to will the contrary, it follows that they can sin, for that indifference arises from the adjudication of reason judging that so to be fitting or not fitting. And he gives the example in boys in the seventh year of their age completed; and yet indeed at that age they confess their sins and are absolved.

Lastly observe what is most worthy of note, namely what he said in the last place, that freedom as to the specification of the act holds the account of full and perfect freedom. That is, if the will can not only elicit or not elicit this act, but also the contrary of this, e.g., if the will of someone can will the act of virtue or of the contrary vice, it follows from this doctrine that there is in God and in Christ no full and perfect account of freedom; since God and Christ cannot so will the good that they can will the contrary. And the same would follow concerning those confirmed in grace, who cannot sin, and consequently would not enjoy the account of full and perfect freedom.

4. — With these assertions refuted, let us proceed to establishing the true and legitimate definition of free choice.

Of the many definitions of free choice that are circulated, the authors of the new concord have elected for themselves the worst. For the most illustrious Bellarmine, cardinal assumed from the Society concerning religion, in the third tome of the Controversies, ch. 21, which is On grace and free choice, book 3, ch. 3, distinguishes five definitions of free choice, and none of them is that which Molina and Suarez wished to use, namely: free choice is that which, with all requisites for acting posited, can act this or not act, or will the contrary. This form of the definition of free choice is found neither in Aristotle, nor in the Master, nor in the divine Thomas, nor in any grave doctor, except in Almain and other nominalists.

And indeed if they rightly understood and explained that definition, it would have been a tolerable foundation. We, therefore, intending to destroy their understanding, ask what they understand by those words, «with all requisites for acting posited». For if discourse be of the requisites before the free action is exercised, it is very well understood that the will still remains indifferent to acting or not acting. Nevertheless among those requisites is not numbered the efficacy of the divine motion, whether in the order of nature or in the order of grace; for that efficacy is simultaneous with the consent of our will. If, however, they understand their definition of the requisites in the moment in which the free action is exercised, it is proved false that, with all those posited, it is compossible for man not to elect that good which God precepts or counsels, because one of the requisites is the actual divine motion by which the will is moved from not willing to willing. Where it is to be observed that we do not assert simply and absolutely that it is not possible for the will not to elect, but we have said that it is not compossible with the position of all that are requisite in the moment of the good consent that the will not exercise that act. Otherwise the divine intention by which God wills man to elect would be frustrated.

5. — Nevertheless those authors tend elsewhere. For they judge that no other requisites are necessary on the part of God in the moment of the human operation than those that preceded, besides the general concurrence by which God conserves all things and concurs with all operating things; and thus man remains free and so indifferent that it is compossible not to act, even in the composite sense, with all those requisites on the part of God posited. And in this they judge the freedom of man to consist. And to such a point does Molina hold this that in his Concordia, p. 232, he says that the division of sufficient aid into efficacious and inefficacious is taken from the effect, which at the same time depends on the freedom of choice, and that that sufficient aid, whether greater or less in itself, is called efficacious with which choice is converted according to its freedom, when nevertheless, with nothing in that aid preventing it, it could have not been converted. And on p. 425 he judges it an error that there be given an efficacious aid which has its efficacy from the mode of the divine motion and from God Himself.

Likewise Suarez in book 3 On aids, ch. 6, n. 7 agrees in the matter with Molina, for he says that that concurrence of God «depends on our choice for it to be posited in second act». Which Bellarmine in tome 3, book 1 On grace and free choice, ch. 12 says to be an error against the sacred writings.

6. — But against that doctrine several things are to be said in what follows. Now, however, for understanding the legitimate definition of free choice, we suppose necessary that division of composite sense and divided sense which some ridicule when discourse is of free operation. Not because they deny it to be impossible for free choice at the same time to consent and not to consent, for this would be to deny the first principle, that a thing is and is not, but because they judge freedom to consist in this, that with all requisites for acting posited coming from without, even from God Himself inflowing and concurring, free choice stands at the same time not willing to operate. And to such a point does Francis Suarez judge this to be necessary that he judges the use of freedom to be totally destroyed if we posit on the part of God an aid so efficacious that simultaneously with it it is not compossible for the will not to operate. Let there be seen book 1 of the Opuscula, ch. 1, from n. 5 to 7, and ch. 2 from n. 2; in which whole chapter he seems to insinuate that according to our opinion, the indifference of freedom as to use is in us only passively, although we are far from this opinion. But what we assert is that our free will, when from not deliberating it passes to deliberating and determines itself freely to use, is nevertheless prior in nature determined by the divine will. He indeed and his associates will the free will so to determine itself that it is in no way determined by another from without; otherwise the whole freedom, if any intervenes in that election, will be in the agent or the one determining, and not in the will itself which is determined. We, however, confess so great a freedom in God alone; in the rational creature there is freedom subordinated to the motion of the divine will and freedom. And so far is it that our freedom is thereby destroyed that rather it takes strength therefrom for deliberating and for freely acting what God wills man to deliberate. But of this we shall speak more broadly in the third part of this treatise. Now, however, let us approach the establishing of the true definition of free choice.

7. — But first let us consider the other fifth definition which the most illustrious Bellarmine elects in the place cited above, under this form: «Free choice is the free power, of those things that conduce to some end, of electing one before another, or of accepting one and the same, or of rejecting it according to choice, attributed to the intelligent nature to the great glory of God». This definition he explains more broadly in his own way; but in our judgment it is not a skillful definition, but partly superfluous and confused, and partly diminished.

In the first place, since in God there is formally free choice, it would be fitting to define according to the universal account, although analogous, fitting God and creatures, which are created to the image of God. But that definition fits creatures only. Therefore it is limited nor does it adequately explicate the formality of free choice. But be it that he so intended to define created free choice, nevertheless he ought not to have posited in the definition both parts of the thing defined. For he says, it is a free power, etc., and according to choice of rejecting, etc., which is the greatest defect in assigning definitions. Finally what he says, «attributed to the intellectual creature to the great glory of God», has an obscure sense, for he seems to hold it to be a gift of grace, or something conferred on the intellectual nature from the liberality of God, which is false. For although to draw creatures from nothing was from the free will of God, as also to conserve them, nevertheless that man be having free choice is owed, just as that he be risible, indeed it is naturally contained in the idea of man which is in God. Concerning which read Augustine in book 1 On the grace of Christ, ch. 3, 4, 5 and 6.

8. — We, therefore, supposing according to the Catholic faith that in God there is formally free choice, just as there is knowledge and wisdom and intellect and will and the remaining perfections which are called by theologians simply simple, intend to assign such a definition in which we do not exclude the divine free choice; since to the likeness of it man was made free and master of his actions. The definition, moreover, is this: Free choice is the faculty of intellect and will for acting or not acting, or for acting the one or the other. This definition is assigned by the Master of the Sentences in book 2, d. 24, § 5. We, however, have said «of intellect and will» where the Master said «of reason and will», because he intended to treat specially of the free choice of man. And moreover he added, «by which the good is elected with grace assisting, or evil with the same deserting». Nevertheless the exact definition of free choice according to its whole universal account is that it be a faculty of intellect and will for either alternative. Those things, moreover, which follow, namely for acting or not acting, or for pursuing the one or the other, explicate what we understand by either alternative.

It is to be noted, moreover, that we have not said, or for acting the contrary, since to act the contrary does not pertain to the formality of free choice, but rather to imperfection and infirmity. Whence the perfect and full account of freedom is found without that indifference of contrariety, in the sole freedom of contradiction or of diversity, which is exercised in that free choice can elect one means or another means fitting to the end. The divine Thomas uses that definition in 2 Sent., dist. 25, a. 1 ad 1. That to be able to sin is not the formal account of the free will, the divine Thomas demonstrates in 1 p., q. 62, a. 8 ad 3, and in 2. 2, q. 88, a. 4 ad 1, in 1 Sent., d. 42, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3 and On truth, q. 24, a. 3 and very often elsewhere. And thus holds the divine Anselm in the dialogue On free choice, ch. 1. Not, however, on that account do we deny that it is very well gathered that free choice is in him who can sin, nor on that account does he have free choice because he can sin; but because while he sins, he uses the faculty of free choice against the law of God.

9. — But that we may consider more deeply the formality and origin of free choice, it is to be noted from the doctrine of the divine Thomas in 1 p., q. 19, a. 1, that will is demonstrated to belong to someone from that he has intellect; just as each thing has such an inclination as it has the form of its to-be. And such a disposition in things lacking cognition is called natural appetite, as gravity in a stone; and in those having sense, it is animal appetite; in those having intellect, moreover, it is intellectual appetite or will. And thence it is gathered that in God there is will, since in Him there is intellect.

Note secondly that formally speaking the faculty for either alternative is not the will itself insofar as it tends to the universal good known by the intellect or to its proper object; for thus it is borne naturally and from necessity to such an object. Whence in God Himself in respect of His proper object there is no faculty for either alternative, but the greatest necessity of the divine nature conjoined with the highest and infinite perfection, namely with the possession and enjoyment of the highest good, which is to see Himself and to enjoy His goodness. The created will of man, moreover, although naturally and necessarily determined to its proper object, which is good in common; nevertheless has this imperfection, that it is not determined as to perpetual exercise, but only as to specification, namely that it cannot will evil under the account of evil. The will, finally, of the angel is naturally determined actually as to exercise to its proper object, which is its proper good, which it loves also in sinning.

Note thirdly that the aforesaid natural and necessary disposition of the will to its proper object is the first foundation of its freedom through order to the means; to such a point that, the more perfect that prior disposition shall have been and the more necessary in act, the more perfect the mode in which it will be free in respect of the means. This doctrine is of Saint Thomas in On Truth, q. 24, a. 1 ad 20 and 1. 2, q. 10, a. 1 and 2. Just as in speculative matters the natural cognition of the first principles is the root of all discourse, so the more perfect the cognition of the end shall have been, the better is known the indifference of certain means to it, which is the proper account of freedom.

Which is clear first in God, whose will is most free in respect of all things that are outside God, because neither in common nor in particular did it need any means to its proper end, but from His goodness God proceeded to the production of creatures, ordering them to manifesting Himself.

Then the angel elects the more freely the more with greater natural cognition, and with a more necessary disposition to its proper good, it proceeds to the means fitting to that natural end, in respect of which end it could not sin in electing a means. But because in respect of the supernatural end it was not determined through its nature, thence it was made that it could have sinned, in badly electing to remain in its beatitude, in not ordering it to the supernatural end, of which ordering it had a supernatural precept.

Man, finally, who holds the lowest place in the order of intellectual beings, especially if considered in pure naturals or in fallen nature, enjoys the less perfect freedom the less determined he is to the proper end and object of the will. And although free choice has not been lost through sin, as faith teaches, nevertheless unless it be healed through grace, it remains infirm and wounded, so that even in the good according to natural reason it cannot persevere long.

From what has been said there follows one corollary: that although indifference is necessary to the account of free choice, nevertheless it will not on that account be the more perfect free choice because in itself it is indifferent in more ways. It is proved. Since otherwise it would follow that the free choice of the sinner would be more perfect, since it has indifference to good and evil, than of the just man confirmed in grace, whose free choice is now not indifferent to sinning. Indeed also Christ the Lord would enjoy lesser freedom since from the grace of union He is impeccable. Likewise it would follow that free choice is more perfect when it does not determine itself to election than when it elects, since before it elects it is less determined.

Note fourthly that, although the first foundation of freedom be the natural determination of the will to the known end, nevertheless the proximate radical foundation of the use of free choice consists in the cognition of the indifference of the means to that end. Which cognition indeed in the supreme free choice is not distinct from the natural cognition of the end, which is the account of knowing all possible means orderable to that end. But of human freedom, of which we intend next to philosophize, the proximate radical principle is not the cognition of the ultimate end and of good in common as it is the object of the will. But since man is of rational nature, from that cognition of the end he discourses to inquiring into the means useful to that end; and of them he deliberates and takes counsel, and at length from such a judgment he determines here and now that this means is to be elected, and thus exercises his freedom, not remaining indifferent in act, but determined through himself to one by actually operating; remaining nevertheless with the power which he had in deliberating. But because the greatest difficulty is in understanding the indifference which is required to the account of free choice, a special question concerning this matter is to be disputed in the following chapter.

1. — The question, therefore, is: whether indifference is of the intrinsic account of free choice.

It is argued first for the negative part. In God there is the most perfect free choice; and yet in Him there can be no indifference: therefore indifference does not pertain of itself and intrinsically to the formal account of free choice. The consequence is clear because, just as in God there is whatever pertains to the formal account of wisdom, because wisdom is a perfection simply simple, so also there ought to be whatever pertains to the formal account of free choice.

2. — It is argued secondly. Christ the Lord obeyed freely unto death; and yet, with the precept supposed, He could not not obey: therefore His free choice did not have indifference to obeying or not obeying. The consequence is clear, because He did not have indifference to sinning or meriting.

3. — It is argued thirdly. The evil angel now in fact sins: therefore he operates freely. And yet he does not have indifference in his free choice, which is obstinate in evil, since the angel from its nature elects immutably. Therefore at least to a free act it is not necessary that there remain some indifference in the will for either alternative.

4. — It is argued lastly, and the first argument is confirmed. For if indifference is required to the formal account of free choice, it would follow that God would not be altogether immutable, but could or could have had Himself otherwise in Himself than He now has Himself. The consequent is against that of James 1 (v. 17): With whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration. To the proof of the consequence it is to be noted that man is not called viciously changeable or inconstant when he changes counsel from new and reasonable circumstances coming upon him. But nevertheless his will is really changed if, after it willed something, it again wills that it not be done. The angel, however, is less changeable on account of the perfection of its nature. For after it elects something, it elects immutably, nor can it elect the opposite. Nevertheless in the angel a real changeability is considered in its free choice insofar as the election which it had, it could not have had, and consequently it could have had itself otherwise really in itself than it now has itself. But in God neither change nor shadow of alteration can be found. For the divine will could not from eternity have had another real action than it now has because, since it is the purest act, no real difference can be found in His will which is not necessary and eternal in God Himself.

5. — For the decision of this difficulty it is to be noted that indifference can be taken in two ways. In one way negatively; and thus a thing is said not differing nor determined. In another way it can be taken privatively, so that that is said to be indifferent which is apt to be determined whether by itself, or by another, or at the same time by itself and by another; e.g., just as a man who has not settled to take a wife, nor indeed has settled not to take one, is apt to determine himself to either part of the contradiction, is indifferent privatively.

Note secondly that still indifference, whether taken negatively or privatively, can be taken in three ways. In one way purely actively, insofar as that thing to which it belongs can by its faculty operate something, and can not operate that same; just as the craftsman has an active faculty of art for making some artifact, or for not making it, or for making another. Another is indifference purely passively, just as prime matter is indifferent to every form. Thirdly there is found indifference in both ways in some faculty, just as living things have power for various motions, active and passive, for from themselves they both move and are moved; just as progressive motion is at the same time action and passion.

6. — With these supposed let there be a first conclusion: If we speak of free choice in common according to its whole analogy, as it includes the divine free choice, there is not understood to pertain to its formal account except negative and active indifference, which is found in every free choice, although not always active alone.

It is proved. Because privative indifference is repugnant to God, namely that there be in Him a passive aptitude for either alternative, and there not be determination to the other. And note that we do not speak here in respect of the actions ad intra, in which no indifference can be found, but all things are from natural necessity and purest act; but we speak of the indifference which is in the divine power by comparison to all creatures, whether existing or possible. And in this way we affirm that the divine will is not determined from its nature to producing some creature, nor is determined from its nature to not producing some; but we say the divine omnipotence to have itself negatively indifferently in power for producing some creature, or for not producing. And the reason is because no creature has a necessary connection with the primary object of the divine will, nor could it bring any advantage so that the divine will better attain or enjoy this its beatitude. We have said, moreover, that this negative indifference is found actively in God, that we might condescend to the manner of speaking of certain moderns. But indeed we would more properly say that that indifference negatively befits the active power of God considered according to itself.

A second conclusion explicative of the preceding: When God has settled from eternity to make the world and all the other things which He makes in time, He does not have Himself otherwise in Himself than if He had not settled to create the world, or had settled not to create. This truth is one of the admirables of the divine majesty, namely how, with the total cause existing necessarily in the same way, the same effect does not follow necessarily.

Nevertheless this conclusion is proved from the immutability of God, who since He is purest act, it is impossible that He be in potency to having Himself otherwise in Himself than He now has Himself. But all His power is purest act, so that the deliberation of creating and the deliberation of not creating have no real difference in God Himself; just as neither does it make a real difference to be finalizing and to finalize, but there is only a difference of reasoned reason, just as is posited among the divine attributes.

From this conclusion it follows that the whole account of potentiality which is insinuated in the definition of free choice given in common, if we speak most formally, must be refunded into the object of free choice, which is always a means having passive indifference so that it can be ordered or not be ordered to the end. When, therefore, we say, free choice is the faculty of intellect and will for either alternative, we assign to each power an object having passive indifference. To the intellect indeed it befits to be intellective and to understand that indifference of the object; and such cognition is the root and proximate foundation of freedom, which is formally in the will just as also the very use of freedom. Likewise to the will we assign an indifferent object, that is, not having a necessary connection to the end which is the object of the will. For since the whole account of willing the means is the will of the end, to which the will is determined, if there be known some means which, although it can have some fittingness to that end, nevertheless does not have a necessary fittingness, thence it is that the goodness of that means is passively indifferent, so that it can be ordered or not be ordered, and be elected or not be elected to the end. And this is the chief reason on account of which we understand there to be in God the most perfect free choice and the most formal, including no imperfection, because from the most perfect cognition of the end, there is in God the most perfect cognition of the indifference of all other things, in which there is no necessary connection with the highest good, which is the object of the divine will. And yet God knows in them that they are orderable to the manifestation of the highest good finalizing all possible creatures. He finalizes, moreover, only those which by His free will He has made, indeed so that to be finalizing and to finalize posit no real difference in the divine will, but only a differing relation of reason.

And thus far the definition has been explicated concerning the purest formality of free choice, which is found in God alone; just as also the plenary account of wisdom and of the other perfections which are called by theologians perfections simply simple, is found in God alone in fullness, on which depend and to which are subordinated such perfections as they are formally participated by creatures.

A third conclusion: In every created free choice there is found not only the passive indifference of the object known as indifferently eligible, but there is also found some passive indifference with a certain potentiality of the subject.

This conclusion is proved by a common reason. First because every creature, however intellectual, has something of potentiality, since God alone is pure act; but every creature has received and limited to-be and dependent on the first to-be in becoming and in being conserved, and consequently in its every operation: therefore also created free choice in its own way must have potentiality and passive indifference to its operation and use of freedom.

It is proved secondly, because in no intellectual creature can it be found that now it does not elect and afterwards it elects without change of itself: therefore in every intellectual creature there is found some passive indifference in its free choice. The antecedent is proved. Because the election which is in the creature neither is its to-be, since it is an operation, nor is determined by the author of nature, just as the will of the end which is the object of the will. Therefore while the will elects what does not have a necessary connection with its object, it is really changed from potency to act.

Thirdly it is proved. Because every intellectual creature is peccable and defectible: therefore changeable through free choice. The antecedent is a common document demonstrated by theologians; by Saint Thomas in 1 p., q. 63, a. 1, and 1. 2, q. 89, and book 3 Against the Gentiles, ch. 108. The consequence is clear, because to be changed from good to evil presupposes the potentiality and passive indifference of the rational creature.

Finally it is proved inductively. For the angels created in grace were really changed through free choice from good to evil, and likewise man created in grace was really changed. Afterwards indeed in the state of fallen nature we experience this changeability from good to evil through free choice, and from evil to good through the grace of God we believe the change to be made.

A fourth conclusion: Nevertheless the faculty of free choice and the use of that faculty, however much the free choice be created, does not consist formally in the passion or potentiality of that faculty, but indeed the faculty is active and the use of it is action.

This conclusion is most certain according to faith, as is clear from the Council of Trent sess. 6, can. 4, 5 and 6. And indeed from the very definition of free choice it stands that that faculty is active for acting this or another, or for electing to act or not to act. And finally all human actions in which only is found the account of moral good or evil are true actions elicited by active powers, although on the part of the subject they have conjoined something of passibility, while the power passes from not operating to operating by virtue of the motion of a superior agent.

From which it follows that Suarez labors in vain in book 1 On aids, ch. 2, showing that this indifference of created free choice and the use of freedom does not consist in passion, judging that he defines something against us. But indeed he himself fashioned an enemy whom he might strike.

7. — From what has been said there follows one corollary very to be noted: that a created free choice will be the more perfect free, namely, the more through grace it shall have been assimilated to the divine free choice both in the foundation and root and in the formality of the will having itself to either alternative. This corollary seems to be openly demonstrated. For if man has this greatest perfection, that he was made to the image and likeness of God, on account of free choice and the dominion which he has for acting either alternative, as has been explicated, it is very well gathered that, if through grace this faculty is elevated, it will be the more perfect the more it shall have been assimilated in the mode of operating to the divine free choice.

There follows secondly that free choice and the exercise of it is more perfect in the blessed than in mere wayfarers. This is proved, because the first foundation, although not the proximate, of freedom is the determinate cognition of the end and the immutable adherence of the will to the ultimate end. And the blessed seeing God from the nature of the thing love Him immutably, just as God Himself sees and loves Himself. Therefore already in this foundation the blessed are maximally assimilated to God. Again from the perfect cognition and love of the highest good the indifference of the means to that end, which is the proximate root of the use of freedom, is more perfectly known.

From which it follows at last that the very use of freedom which is formally in the will is in a more perfect mode free, however infallibly the will of them always elects the good. We do not, however, posit merit in the blessed, not from defect of freedom, but because they are now constituted in the term of beatitude. Otherwise, moreover, it is repugnant that someone see God and merit in the election of the means to the end, just as Christ saw God as He now sees, and nevertheless most perfectly merited for us grace and glory in electing to obey unto death.

1. — To the first argument it is easily answered from the aforesaid conclusions: I grant the major, and I distinguish the minor. For if it be understood of privative or passive indifference which subjectively is or is understood to be in God, I grant the minor. And I deny the consequence, because such indifference does not pertain to the formality of free choice. If, however, it be understood of negative indifference which befits the active faculty of God, I deny the minor; indeed the divine faculty is not determined of itself to creating, nor is determined to not creating, but is only the power of creating.

2. — To the second argument it is answered that the supervening precept does not destroy the formality of freedom nor its root, because with the cognition of the indifference of some means according to itself to the end existing, the will also which serves under that cognition freely elects that means in obeying the extrinsic precept, which does not destroy the formality of freedom.

If, however, anyone sophistically urge that, with the precept standing, in the composite sense Christ could not not operate, since otherwise He could have sinned: it is answered that the formality and perfection of freedom does not consist in that He can not operate by sinning, but in that absolutely speaking He could not operate or operate. For free choice is not defined through indifference to opposites in the composite sense, but in the divided sense, in that it is said to be a faculty for either alternative. Therefore even if these two could not stand together: Christ has the precept of obeying unto death, and Christ does not will to die, nevertheless through this it does not follow that absolutely speaking He could not not will to die.

But if again the sophist urge that at least in respect of this act which is to obey, Christ did not have the faculty for obeying or not obeying: therefore He did not obey freely: it is answered, whatever be of the consequence, that what is inferred implies a contradiction, therefore He did not obey freely, if He obeyed, since the act of obedience is an act of moral virtue, in whose account it is included that it be a human and free act. Therefore to obey and not to obey implies a contradiction. But it is answered more to the form, I distinguish the antecedent. For if that act of obeying presuppose the precept, so that not to obey is disobedience, I grant the antecedent. And I deny the consequence, since to obey freely it is not necessary that the one obeying can sin. If, however, not to obey be taken purely negatively, I deny the antecedent. Indeed Christ was able not to obey, because it was possible not to have the precept; just as this negative is true: Christ did not obey unto the death of stoning or of beheading, because this negative posits nothing in to-be nor presupposes a precept.

We have, therefore, that to the freedom of obeying, even with the precept standing, it suffices that the will electing to obey serve under the cognition of the indifference of that means in order to the ultimate end, notwithstanding that it cannot sin. Just as God absolutely speaking most freely conserves the universe, and nevertheless with the promise of eternal life standing, it is incompossible for the world to be annihilated, just as it is impossible for God to lie. It is to be observed, therefore, always for dissolving importunate sophisms that, whatever coming upon from without does not destroy the formality of freedom nor the formal use of it, which consists in the subordination of the will to the cognition of the indifference of the means to the end, cannot destroy free choice nor the exercise of it.

3. — To the third argument are to be seen the things we said more broadly on the First Part, q. 64, a. 2, dub. 1 ad 2 arg. Now, however, it is answered that, although the evil angel is obstinate through fully deliberated operation, nevertheless this does not destroy the indifference which is required to free action. And the reason is because a free action is not said because it itself is not determined to the object which falls under election, but it is said free from the faculty and from the mode of the faculty from which it proceeds, namely from the faculty of intellect and will, which of itself has itself indifferently to either alternative, whether with negative or privative and passive indifference. Since, therefore, the election of the angel had such a beginning and such a root, it is necessary that as long as it endures, it be a free election, although it itself be determined to a particular object, which is verified also in human election. But in the angel election has another condition, on account of the inflexible nature of the angel, so that what it once elects, it cannot not elect, nor can it reject it. But nevertheless this inflexibility is so far from derogating from the faculty of freedom that rather it attests the greatest perfection of the angelic free faculty, insofar as the angel, as the divine Thomas teaches in that article cited, elects with the highest cognition of the indifference of the means to the end and of all the circumstances, and consequently cannot depart from the election once elicited, at least by refuting what it once elects. Men, however, even after they have elected, can refute what they once elected. Which changeability indeed does not arise from much perfection of free choice, but from the excessive potentiality of the faculty of intellect and will; because while man elects, he does not have perfect cognition of all the circumstances, and therefore with a new circumstance coming upon, he elects other than he had elected.

And this doctrine is proved abundantly enough. For if to the perfection of the use of free choice it pertained to be able to cease from the election of that which is once elected, there would not be in God the perfect faculty of free choice. For it stands that after God has decreed something to be done or to do, it implies a contradiction that God elect the opposite of what He elected, according to that: My counsel shall stand and all my will shall be done (Is., 46,10), and that I Reg., 15 (v. 29): The Triumpher in Israel will not spare nor be bent by repentance; for He is not a man that He should do penance. From which it follows that the more perfect free choice shall have been, the more constant it will be and the less changeable from what it once elects.

We have, therefore, that the demons now obstinate in evil sin no less than they sinned in the beginning of perfect deliberation. For knowing that they are of inflexible nature, they deliberated to remain in themselves, in not referring themselves to the supernatural end, as they were bound from the supernatural precept which they knew by faith, as the divine Augustine teaches in the Enchiridion, ch. 105: «Much more freely will free choice be free, which will be altogether unable to serve sin».

There follows also from the preceding doctrine that those confirmed in grace not less freely keep the mandates, indeed more perfectly freely than those not confirmed in grace; since their free choice through the grace of confirmation is stabilized and determined to the good, to the likeness of God.

From this doctrine, finally, we shall afterwards gather how the efficacious aid of God perfects freedom and the use of free choice.

4. — To the fourth argument it is already clear from the first and second conclusion. For we do not deny to God the negative indifference of the divine free choice. The argument, however, proves that, if there were given in God some privative or passive indifference, He would not be altogether immutable, since He could have Himself in Himself otherwise than He now has Himself. The whole most formal account of free choice, therefore, consists in the active faculty not determined to one, but having negative indifference to either alternative of acting or not acting. This power and faculty, moreover, is in the intellect and will. In the intellect indeed radically, insofar as in it there is the cognition of the indifference of the means to the end; in the will, however, formally there is the faculty of electing either alternative which is proposed by the intellect with indifference. The use itself, finally, of this faculty does not consist in some negative or passive indifference of the election itself; for every election is specifically determined and in the individual to one object with its circumstances. But the denomination of the use of free choice befits the election on the part of the principle from which it sets out, namely from the cognition of the indifference of the means to the end, and from the will, which serving under that cognition and subordinated to it, determines one to be elected. And thus the intellect is moved by the will to the act of command, which is explicated through the word of the imperative do.

Whence it stands how far we are from that opinion which Suarez judges us to hold, that the account of freedom and the use of it consists formally in the cognition and judgment of the indifference of the object. For we assert that the use of freedom consists in this radically, by means of which root God Himself in most perfectly illuminating the intellect and intimately inspiring in the will effects that the will determine itself as freely as if it were not acted from without. And nevertheless it is moved strongly on the part of God the first mover. Whose motion and aid does not bind the free faculty, but in perfecting it effects that it operate infallibly, as we intend to explicate more fully in what follows. Thus far concerning the first part of this treatise.

1. — Since the etymology of the name is wont to be of use for investigating the very what-it-is of the thing, it is to be noted that aid or assistance bespeaks an order and relation of the aider and assister to another existing thing. For aid is so called as if from increasing and promoting an existing thing. Assistance too is from assisting an existing thing which by itself cannot either be conserved or operate, or cannot operate so perfectly, as when another cause comes to it influencing the thing itself or its effect. Hence that which aids or assists is properly said of the efficient cause which influences a preexisting thing or its effect or both at once. E.g., if some man cannot lift some weight, or lifts it scarcely and with difficulty, then if another comes and applies himself at the same time to lifting the stone, he is said to aid and assist the other, not by conferring strength on him, but by applying his own strength to the effect, and thus each aids the other. And let the example be committed to memory. But the heavens and their concurrence aid each in both ways effectively, by influencing not only the effect, but also conserving by their influence the strength of the limbs and the corporeal motive faculty, and sometimes perfecting it. For with the motion of the heaven ceasing, the motions of lower bodies would cease, as the common philosophy holds. But much more necessary is the influx of the first cause, moving both natural and voluntary causes to their effects, by influencing the cause, or the effect, or both, as will at once be more fully explained.

2. — From what has been said it follows that when God created the world, He is not said to have aided or to have conferred aid. For creation is production from nothing; but aid or assistance presupposes a thing already existing. We can therefore define aid as the influence of an efficient cause ordered to some operation or motion of a preexisting thing. This definition ought to be received by the common consensus of the wise, both because another more fitting one will perhaps not be able to be assigned, and because it is not limited to a particular opinion concerning the mode in which causes concur or influence causes or effects, and finally because it is common to the aids borne whether by the author of nature or by the author of grace.

And since our chief intention is to treat of the aids of God as author of grace and of the whole supernatural order, the difference between each order is to be noted. In the first place the order of grace presupposes the order of nature and perfects it. Wherefore the whole order of grace joined to the order of nature can be called the aid of God elevating and perfecting preexisting nature to supernatural operation and tending to a supernatural end. E.g., God created the angels, at once founding nature in them and lavishing grace. But nevertheless those things which were in the angel, the term of creation, are in no way called aids. Such was the existence by which formally the angelic nature was educed from nothing; such also consequently was the angelic intellect and will and free choice and the remaining properties which are due to the angelic nature from its proper quiddity and are naturally represented in the divine idea. For all these cannot properly be called aids, but as pertaining to the existence of the thing as naturally following from the essence, against Pelagius, who thinks the whole grace of God to be free choice. Since however, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2, q. 109, a. 1, «however perfect any corporeal or spiritual nature is posited to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it is moved by God», therefore every creature needs for its operation or motion the aid of God the first mover. The reason of which St. Thomas insinuates in the same place, since «from God is every formal perfection as from the first act». As if he said, just as the thing depends in to-be on the first act, which is to-be itself, so also it depends in every operation of its own, since everything that operates, operates insofar as it is in act.

3. — Concerning which it is especially to be observed and to beware of the bad philosophy of certain men asserting that the influx of the first cause into the second, that the second may actually act, is nothing other than the conservation of the second cause and of every power of it by which it is constituted in first act sufficiently for acting. This sentence I evidently gather to be that of Molina and of Suarez. Of Molina indeed in his Concordia, disp. 27 and 28, which are had from p. 179, where he says that God by general aid and concurrence does not influence second causes by premoving them, but only influences immediately the very operations and effects of second causes, without any premotion of the causes themselves. And he thinks the contrary sentence takes away the freedom of choice, and holds that God by His concurrence, whether general or gratuitous, is disposed as a partial cause with respect to the effect. For he says on p. 169: «Whence it comes about that the general concurrence of God is not an influx of God into the second cause, as if, moved beforehand, it acted and produced its effect, but is an influx immediately into its action and effect». And on the following page he says: «since it cannot be denied that any effect whatever of a second cause needs the immediate influx of God into it that it may be conserved, even after the influx of the second cause has ceased, much more that it be newly produced. Certainly either it would have to be granted that the general concurrence of God with second causes for their actions and effects is not an influx into the causes, but with the causes immediately into the actions and effects, which we intend to prove; or it would have to be affirmed that God influences the production of each effect by a double general concurrence: one immediately into the cause and through the cause mediately into the effect, and the other into the effect». So much for Molina. Behold how he denies that the concurrence of God influences anything in the second cause, but only conserves it in its to-be and power, concerning which conservation there is no controversy.

Likewise Suarez in his Metaphysica, disp. 22, sec. 1 and 2 philosophizes at length concerning the first cause and cooperation or concurrence with second causes. And when in the first section he had treated of the immediate concurrence of God in every thing, operation, and motion, afterwards in the second section, while inquiring what that concurrence of the first cause is, whether it is something by way of principle or of action, and having related various sentences, he at length concludes in n. 20 that «the concurrence of the first cause, besides what it is by way of action or becoming, does not include from intrinsic necessity anything newly imparted to the second cause itself which would be a principle of its action or a condition necessary for it». He says «newly imparted, because it is certain that the concurrence of the second cause supposes in it a power of acting given and conserved by the first cause, which we suppose here, and we inquire what beyond it must necessarily be added on the part of the first cause». So far Suarez. Which sentence he strives to prove from testimonies of St. Thomas, from which all Thomists prove the opposite. Concerning which matter, if it were to be treated according to the dignity of the subject, a rather prolix treatise would have to be composed.

4. — Now I say first against Molina, that it is unworthy of the divine omnipotence to assert that God is a partial cause with His creature, just as two men dragging a boat are called partial causes, because neither influences the other nor is the whole effect attributed to each singly, but to both at once. But when God concurs with a second cause, the whole effect and whatever is in it is immediately from God by immediacy of power and of supposit, as Suarez also confesses above. Where note that that particle immediately is not taken exclusively so as to exclude the supposit and power of the second cause, but only imports the intimate and perfect power of God operating in all things, in which He intimately exists by essence, by power, and by presence. Nevertheless He assumes certain creatures to cooperate with Him in the same effect, by power imparted to them by God by way of principle, to which the effect is proportioned. And in this part Suarez agrees with us where cited above [sect. 1], nn. 22 and 23, where he cites St. Thomas, bk. 3 Contra gentes, c. 70, saying that «it does not come from insufficiency of power, but from the immensity of His goodness that He has communicated to creatures the power of acting; and therefore not by Himself alone, but with them does He will to produce such effects». Likewise Suarez denies, as less probable, that God and the creature are partial causes composing one total cause, but says that each is whole in its own order, insofar as one is subordinated to the other. But surely, if subordination consists in nothing other than the conservation of the second cause, he denies that such causes meet fortuitously for acting, since «the second cause depends on the first a priori and essentially, because it is insufficient of itself to do anything without its aid. But the first cause properly depends neither on the second, neither a priori nor a posteriori … And since the first cause always acts from certain knowledge and its own will and according to the order instituted by itself, it cannot be said to meet fortuitously with the second cause for acting, but with the highest providence concerning things». Which doctrine we shall afterwards adduce against him.

I say secondly against the same Molina, that there is no need for a double general concurrence, one into the cause, another into the effect, when the effect is an immanent action; but rather God by a single influx moves the cause and with it has produced the action, whether we speak of the general concurrence of the first cause by which He governs all things, or of the special gratuitous concurrence. It is proved. Since if the second cause depends a priori and essentially on the first, as Suarez well said, there is no need for one influx into the second cause as actually causing, and another into its action; but the second cause itself from the passive motion of the first cause receives actual power of acting and producing. I said however «into the cause as actually causing», since if the cause is considered as it is in itself with habitual power of acting, by another divine influx it is conserved in that to-be and by another it is actually moved to effecting actually. This influx nevertheless immediately reaches the cause and the effect, since as it is from God it does not depend on the second cause, although the effect itself depends on each. And for this reason God is said to produce the effect through the mediation of the second cause, because He Himself makes the effect depend on it in becoming, and sometimes in being conserved, as happens in vital actions.

Now we say thirdly against Francisco Suarez: whenever a second cause passes from not operating to operating, it is necessary that the cause itself be moved by the first, which motion is received passively in the cause itself. And from that motion, as it is from God, the actual causality of the second cause is so far from being impeded that rather it is thereby actually perfected so that it operates. This doctrine is expressly that of St. Thomas in 1 p., q. 105, a. 4 and 1. 2, q. 6, a. 1 ad 3 and q. 10, a. 4 and most of all q. 109, a. 1, where we commended his words, namely: «however perfect any corporeal or spiritual creature is posited to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it is moved by God; which motion indeed is according to the account of His providence, not according to the necessity of nature». And he concludes that «the action of any created being whatever depends on God as to two things: in one way insofar as it has from Him the perfection or form by which it acts; in another way insofar as it is moved by Him to acting». Note that he does not say «insofar as it depends on Him for acting», but says it is moved, lest anyone say that it depends insofar as it is conserved. In which article St. Thomas speaks universally, and not only of agents acting naturally, as Suarez says, but also of agents acting supernaturally.

5. — In whose doctrine of St. Thomas note first that he says, «however perfect a corporeal or spiritual creature is posited to be», namely through its form, power, and habit, «it cannot proceed to act unless it is moved by God».

Note secondly that he says this motion is from God not according to the necessity of its nature, as the heaven moves these lower things, but according to the account of His providence. From which it follows that, since government is the execution of the account of providence, it is impossible for any creature to be moved or to operate unless it is moved by God, whose motion is prior in nature to every other motion or operation of any creature whatever, whether it moves itself, or another, or is moved by another. And the reason is that, just as the to-be of God is the cause perpetually influencing to-be in creatures, so it is necessary that when a creature passes from not operating to operating, or in any other way moves or is moved, the influx of the divine motion be prior in the order of causality. And it is confirmed from the doctrine of St. Thomas, q. 109, a. 6: «For it is necessary, since every agent acts for an end, that every cause convert its effects to its end; and therefore since according to the order of agents or movers there is the order of ends, it is necessary that man be converted to the last end through the motion of the first mover». From which doctrine I argue thus: the last end influences by nature earlier, according to its proper mode of causing or finalizing, those things which are ordered to the end than do other particular ends: therefore the first agent also influences by nature earlier every operation and motion than does every creature acting or moving. And this reason proceeds much more concerning the operation of a lower agent which is ordered to a supernatural end. Since although God converts all things to Himself; but He converts just men to Himself as to the special end which they intend, as Dionysius says, De divinis nominibus, ch. 4.

6. — It is to be observed however that those doctors Molina and Suarez, to pave the way for their opinions concerning the determination of free choice to acting, destroy even in natural things many metaphysical principles, as will be patent to one reading disputation 22, where Suarez innovates much concerning the subordination of the second cause to the first, as is patent in n. 47, where he expressly holds that that maxim, a second cause does not act unless moved by the first, ought not to be understood so «that a second cause, besides its to-be and every connatural power of acting which it has, needs a new true and real motion received in itself that it may act».

But this doctrine seems to us most false. First indeed because it is against the common sense of philosophers heretofore received, and against the natural reason which St. Thomas uses in 1. 2, q. 9, a. 4: «everything that is sometimes an agent in act, and sometimes in potency, needs to be moved by some mover». And thence he gathers that, since the will begins to will what it previously did not will, it is necessary that it be moved to willing by some extrinsic principle.

Then, because the divine government, which is the effect of the account of providence, posits something real anew in the things governed besides the conservation of those things in their to-be and natural powers. For no one has hitherto said that the creation and conservation of things is government, but rather a certain passive motion which proceeds from the account of divine providence and is received in the things governed.

Moreover through that doctrine the discourse of natural reason is enervated, by which it is shown that there is one first mover and one efficient cause. For surely, if the actual causality of the second cause does not depend on the actual influence of the first upon the second cause itself, the discourse of Aristotle in bk. 8 of the Physics is vain. For from that principle, everything that is moved is moved by another, we could answer that we stop at once at some particular mover which is not moved by another. E.g., when wood is heated, it is moved by fire which is causing in act, without its being actually moved by another; and so fire will be the first mover with respect to that effect, and it will not be necessary to arrive at the first mover who is God. The more so since Aristotle thought the world to be from eternity, and not to depend on the free will of God in its conservation; and nevertheless by that discourse he intended to show that there is one first actually moving the rest which move or are moved.

And finally, to put an example in morals, and to destroy the chief reason on which Suarez relies to prove that the free will is not determined by God, I argue thus: free choice is perfected really and intrinsically and formally through immanent action, just as any other vital potency; e.g., sight by seeing, intellect by understanding. Therefore, just as any other vital potency depends on the motion of the first cause as on an efficient cause that it may operate in act, so also the faculty of free choice. The consequence is proved. Since this faculty passes from privative potency to act no less than do the other vital potencies when they exercise their proper actions. It is confirmed. Since the intellect through cognition of the indifference of means to the end is perfected anew when from not cognizing that indifference it becomes cognizing. Therefore it is moved by another to that cognition.

But you will say: the intellect from cognition of the end can move itself to cognition of the means, just as from cognition of first principles it moves itself to scientific cognition. It is answered that this very thing we assert, but we intend thereby to prove that the motion of the first cause is necessary, since even for the cognition of the end and the cognition of first principles there is required in us the motion of the first cause. Since for such cognition we are sometimes in potency, sometimes in act, the motion of the first cause, which is always in act, is required, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2, q. 9, a. 4. From this therefore we confirm that the will which does not elect and afterwards elects is moved not only by itself insofar as it wills the end, but also by the first cause which moves it to actually willing the end. For whatever is the cause of the cause is the cause of the caused, if the predication is formal, insofar as something is the cause of the cause as causing.

Moreover that maxim, everything that is in potency must be reduced to act by something that is in act, is most received among philosophers and metaphysicians; for also on that account did Aristotle posit the agent intellect, because our intellect is in potency to receiving likenesses. And that maxim is founded on that principle known by natural light, no one gives what he does not have, at least eminently. Therefore if our free choice is to be perfected by a perfection for which it is in potency with privation of it, it is necessary that it be reduced to that actual perfection by another which is in act. This reason, although it has place in the natural actions of free choice, nevertheless proceeds much more in supernatural elections; as when man consents to believe, to hope, and to love as is fitting for justification and salvation. Even although someone could answer to the reason given by saying that the will as it is in act for willing the end naturally, is able to move itself to willing the means and to electing something fitting for the end; nevertheless this solution, whatever sort it be, has no place in the aforesaid supernatural elections. And the reason is manifest, since the will, while it passes from not consenting to the assent of believing those things which are of faith, and of hoping in God the aider for eternal life, and of loving Him above all things as the supernatural end, cannot beforehand be in sufficient and virtuous act concerning its proper object, which is good in common, whence it might determine itself to electing the aforesaid means to that supernatural end. Therefore this change is of the right hand of the Most High, and consequently it needs to be determined by it that it may determine itself. Which determinations, namely the passive determination as it is from God moving, and the active determination as it is from the will consenting, although they are conjoined in the same moment, nevertheless the active determination of the will is dependent on the passive motion, which is from the free choice of God, intimately operating and moving and reducing free choice to act according to the mode of its nature, by illuminating the intellect that it may better cognize the means, and by inspiring into the will that it may efficaciously elect what is well-pleasing to God. And this is what the Apostle says in the proposed theme, may He fit you in every good, that you may do His will, doing in you what is pleasing before God. Behold our will is passively fitted by God that we may do. But how this comes about efficaciously, he explains in what he says, doing in you what is well-pleasing before Him.

With which doctrine agrees the exposition of St. Augustine concerning that, who are moved by the Spirit of God, ad Rom., 8 (v. 14), De verbis Apostoli, serm. 13. «Someone says to me: therefore we are moved, we do not act. I answer, nay both you act and you are moved; and then you act well if you are moved by the good. For the Spirit of God who moves you is an aider to those acting; the very name of aider prescribes to you».

7. — But those who hold the contrary clamor that we destroy free choice through that passive determination by God, as by a really efficient cause moving free choice. We on the contrary object that they precipitate free choice, attributing to it the principate in the real and physical determination of itself, in which consists the consummation of consent; while God Himself is only a moral cause furnishing certain supernatural aids, sufficient indeed, if free choice wills to use them. But this good use is not a real effect from the causality of the grace of God, but only a moral effect, insofar as God gave it at the time at which He foreknew that free choice would consent. Concerning which matter we shall treat more deeply in the third part. We therefore build up free choice while humbling it under the mighty hand of God, according to the doctrine of the Apostle ad Phil., 2 (vv. 12-13): With fear and trembling work out your salvation. For God is He who works in you both to will and to accomplish, lest we be proud thinking that we do anything of ourselves which the grace of God does not do in us. But those who say that our will applies itself to the work, and at once God also influences; «but if our free choice continues its influx, the actual concurrence of God also will cease», seem to assert that God awaits our will that we may will to be cleansed. So seems Suarez to say in bk. 3 De auxiliis, ch. 6, n. 7. But concerning this difficulty it will be established from what is to be said what is to be held.

1. — With the foundation supposed concerning which, as I judge, there cannot be controversy among theologians, namely that the aid of God is the actual influence into a preexisting thing by which the thing is ordered to operation, let the first division of divine aid be into natural aid and supernatural aid. Natural aid indeed is aid ordered to the natural operations of man or of other natural things. For the divine government, insofar as God is the author of the universe, extends itself to every creature, from the highest to the lowest, moving each according to the mode of its nature; concerning which matter it is treated in 1 p. from q. 103 on. Whence it is established that government is not the mere conservation of things, but the ordered motion of them according to the rule which is in the account of divine providence.

Hence it follows that, since man is the noblest creature, insofar as through reason and free choice he is more assimilated to God the author than the remaining corporeal creatures, so in a more excellent way the author of nature governs and aids man to his proper operations.

According to this doctrine, the first natural aid which God confers on man coming to the use of reason is not the conservation of man, nor of the natural light, which is a connate power, nor even the conservation of the will or of the faculty of free choice; for all these follow upon the existence of the thing as properties due to nature, as we said in the preceding chapter. But the first aid which God confers on man pertaining to the order of nature is the actual illumination by which man is illuminated to cognition of the true, whether speculative or practical. In which illumination God confers nothing on man by way of a principle constituting the intellect in first act. For through the intellect endowed with natural light, man is sufficiently constituted in first act for understanding those intelligibles into whose cognition he can come through sensibles. But nevertheless, «however perfect any creature … is posited to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it is moved by God», as St. Thomas says in 1. 2, q. 109, a. 1. But what that passive motion of man already perfect in first act, newly imparted to the creature, is, the metaphysical theologians inquire all too laboriously.

And the same is the difficulty concerning the first operation of the will, which we attribute to the author of nature, who by His motion draws our will from not willing the end to actually willing, according to the doctrine of St. Thomas in 1. 2, q. 9, a. 4. Concerning which doctrine I do not understand there to be controversy among the recent theologians. For all confess that our will is disposed passively in the first volition of its object. Not because that volition is not an action elicited by the power of the will, for it is a vital action, but because that volition is not an operation of man insofar as he is man. Since not insofar as rational and insofar as master of his actions discoursing from some principle; but it is altogether an operation of the will as it is a certain nature, and an inclination to its natural proper object. With respect to which the will needs no other formal principle imparted to it, but the extrinsic principle suffices which is in the intellect, the natural light showing and proposing the good which is the object of the will, with the motion of the first cause intimately existing.

2. — This supposed, I say the same to that troublesome question in which it is asked what that passive motion is by which the will is moved by the author of nature only when it passes from not willing to willing good in common: whether it is some quality imparted to the will by way of principle for eliciting vital action concerning its proper object. And I answer that it is not any superadded quality by way of principle, since the will itself according to itself is a sufficient principle for eliciting vital action concerning its proper object proposed by the intellect. But that it be proposed by the intellect now, and that the will now actually tend to it, neither comes about without the divine premotion. Which premotion is not the mere conservation of the powers; otherwise the intellect and will would always be in act, since they are always conserved by God. But I confess that I do not understand what else that divine premotion, if considered passively, is, than the very faculty of intellect placed in complete act by the author of nature, who operates in all things according to the account of His providence.

But if premotion considered actively, as it is in God, I understand it to be nothing other than the divine will, which is intimately present in all things, effecting in them all things which come about, insofar as they have the character of to-be and of goodness. But why it moves now and did not move before, that divine will itself, which is the first cause of all things which come about, no reason can be reduced except to the account of divine providence, which has so disposed according to the counsel of its will. For it is never to be conceded by a wise philosopher and theologian that the divine concurrence which is called natural and general is determined by creatures, just as the concurrence of the celestial bodies is determined by lower causes, above all by man, who through free choice dominates even the stars. But the general concurrence of the divine will, since it is according to the account of divine providence, intimately reaches all causes and all effects, determining all things and determined by none. It is called the general concurrence of God, since it is not limited to one effect, but without exception disposes and governs all things according to the mode of the nature of each thing.

All this doctrine is expressly that of St. Thomas in 1 p. q. 19 throughout, and q. 22 throughout, which is on divine providence, and likewise let q. 105 be seen. Which doctrine, if certain of the moderns had penetrated it, they would not so frequently reduce contingent effects, above all those which have their root in the free choice of man, to divine foreknowledge only, but would reduce all things to divine providence, to which are to be reduced all things which come about, whether good or evil: good indeed as effects directly willed and ordered according to the account of divine providence; but evil things of fault as permitted, as Augustine says in the Enchiridion, cap. 95 and 96. For the permission of sins is good and orderable by God to the last end. Otherwise divine foreknowledge would not have infallibility, unless the things foreknown were reduced to the decree of the divine will. Concerning this natural concurrence more could be said, but for brevity of time let these suffice.

3. — Let us now pass to defining and dividing supernatural aid.

It is to be noted first, lest we labor in equivocation, that there is a difference between aid and concurrence, if we speak properly. For aid properly bespeaks influence into the principal cause, even if it be secondary; but concurrence bespeaks influence into the produced effect, whether by a cause or by an instrument, for producing which effect there concurs at once with the cause, or with the instrument, that cause which influences the effect, aiding the cause or elevating the instrument. This is proved from the common mode of speaking; for to aid or to assist bespeaks a relation to the cooperating cause. Hence we shall not properly say that the artificer aids the instrument for effecting the artifact, since the instrument is not properly a cause, but we say that the artificer moves and elevates the instrument, and concurs with it for effecting the image; and similarly we say that God concurs with water for producing grace in the soul, but we shall not properly say that God aids water that it may produce grace.

From which doctrine it follows that there can be given aid which is not concurrence, and there can be given concurrence which is not aid, and there can be given aid which is at once concurrence. An example of the first: when God infuses the habit of grace and the habits of the infused virtues, He bears aid to man. For the infused habits themselves are aids of God, ordered indeed to operation, but it is not necessary that they operate at once. But that a habit is aid, St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2, q. 109, a. 9 where he says that «man for living rightly needs the aid of God in two ways: in one way as to some habitual gift through which human nature is healed and elevated …; in another way man needs the aid of grace that he be moved by God to acting». The infused habit itself therefore is an aid of God, which is given to little ones in baptism before they operate; indeed also to adults when by power of the sacrament with attrition alone they are justified, this habitual aid is given, when they do not yet have the act of charity. Indeed also, as St. Thomas teaches where cited above in answer to the first argument, the very conservation of the habit is an influence into a preexisting thing and is ordered to operation.

An example of the second: God concurs with water for sanctifying the soul, and yet does not aid water for the production of grace, since water has no formal principle proportioned to the effect that it be properly said to be aided to operation, but is a mere instrument of God. From which it follows that the priest has no need to ask for the aid of grace that he may absolve, that he may consecrate, but that he may worthily exercise this ministry. And the same seems to be said concerning saints working miracles, with whom God concurs for working miracles; but He is not properly said to aid them for working miracles, since they have only the character of an instrument. And finally, if it were to be spoken properly, when some partial cause influences only the effect of another partial cause, it would not be said immediately to bear aid to the other cause, since it influences nothing into it, but into the effect caused by both at once. Whence neither immediately aids the other, but both at once in the character of causing are made one cause with respect to one effect, as happens when two men lift a stone which neither can lift.

Finally the example of the third is manifest. For when God moves the just man that he may use the infused habits and operate, it is certain that by the same aid of motion He aids the just man to operation, and concurs in it.

4. — With these things thus established, when henceforth we make mention of the aid of the first cause, we shall understand the influence of God not as He concurs with the instrument for the effect, but as He is the assistance of the principal cause in order to operation. And speaking in this way, we made the first division of aid into natural aid and supernatural aid. Natural indeed is what is conferred for operation or motion to a natural end, or to good in common, which is the natural object of the will. And this aid is what is commonly called the general aid of the first cause.

5. — Nevertheless this generality is understood differently by the authors of the new concord and by the Thomists. For the authors of the new concord understand by general aid nothing other than the conservation of second causes and the immediate concurrence in the operations and effects of them. We however by this aid understand the actual motion of the first cause, without which the second cause, however conserved, cannot operate. And the reason which moves us is this, that every second cause is perfected through its operation, especially if the operation is immanent. For concerning transeunt action it is not so manifest, although to me it is most certain. Since every active power of the creature is intrinsically and essentially ordered as to its proper end and complement to its proper operation. Therefore when it operates, it has the complement of its species. And this is the reason why the divine action is not properly transeunt, since the power of God is not essentially ordered to the operation of any effect outside Himself; for this would be an imperfection in God.

But that the power is perfected through immanent action is most manifest, since the action itself is the complement of the actuality of the power, just as sight is really more perfect when it sees than when it does not see, and intellect when it understands than when it does not understand. Therefore when every power passes from not operating to operating, it is necessary that it be moved by a cause which is in act.

6. — Now supernatural aid is aid ordered to a supernatural end through supernatural operations. And I suppose that now we speak of supernatural aids intrinsic and ordered to the good of the recipient himself, that we may exclude graces freely given, which are rather called supernatural concurrences of God for the utility of the Church, than aids of the operator himself ordered to his proper good which consists in adherence to God, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2, q. 111, a. 1. All the divine influences therefore into the soul accommodated to this end are supernatural aids of God.

Again supernatural aid is divided by St. Thomas where cited above, art. 2 and 3, first indeed into operating and cooperating grace; secondly into prevenient and subsequent. Whose doctrine, when we interpreted those articles, we greatly commended as useful for the present treatise. This however is especially to be recalled, that just as St. Thomas there divides grace whether as it is a habitual gift, or as it is the divine aid by which God actually moves us to willing well, so also we now divide supernatural aid into the habitual gift divinely imparted to us, and into the actual motion of God by which the mind is moved by God, whether according to intellect or according to will. For all these are called aids of God by St. Thomas. For as we said, in 1. 2, q. 109, a. 9 he expressly calls the habitual gift of grace an aid; but the remaining motions and influences ordered to the supernatural end, in q. 111, a. 2 he expressly calls aids. And we in what follows shall call it actual grace, that we may distinguish between habitual aid and the aid of actual motion.

7. — But since our whole dispute is concerning actual aids, it is still necessary to divide actual aid into aid wholly prevenient to our freedom, or rather to the use of our freedom, and into aid with which we already exercise our freedom. Of the first kind aid is a certain sudden illumination and arousing of God calling and inviting the soul to good. And they are wont to be called divine inspirations, which come about in man earlier in time, regularly speaking, than he himself deliberates to adhere to God. And concerning inspirations of this kind it is said in the Council of Orange, can. 20: «many good things come about in man which man does not do». Concerning the same it is also said in Prov., 1 (v. 24): I called and you refused, that is, after you adverted to my call, and refused. Concerning those also can be understood that of Is., 50 (v. 4): The Lord raises up in the morning, in the morning He raises up my ear that I may hear as a master. It is to be noted however that aids of this kind wholly prevenient are indeed identified with the vital actions of intellect and will. But since they come about from the motion of God wholly prevenient earlier in time than the use of our freedom, therefore the council says, «many good things come about in man which man does not do». And similarly theologians say that in receiving them then we are disposed merely passively. For they speak of man as he is the moral cause of his actions and master of deliberating or not deliberating. And in this part there is no difference between the fathers of the Society and the Thomists.

Of the second kind we said aid to be, with which standing, we exercise our freedom. And this can happen in two ways. In one way so that, with that arousing persisting which was wholly prevenient, now man adverting and knowing and prudent resists God calling and arousing. And then the aid of the grace of God is converted into anger, from the malice of the recipient, according to that of the Apostle ad Rom., 2 (vv. 4-5): Do you not know that the benignity of God leads you to penance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you treasure up to yourself anger in the day of anger. In another way man is wont to exercise his freedom by consenting to God calling and arousing. And concerning this turns the whole difficulty and controversy between the Preacher fathers and the fathers of the Society. Wherefore in the following chapter we intend to dispute the special question: whether that same prevenient aid with nothing else added suffices for the consent of free choice and conversion to God; or whether another aid accedes by which the mind of man actually consents to God and is converted to Him.

1. — The principal question therefore is whether it is the same and one aid which, with respect to the conversion of the mind to God, whether through faith or through charity, is called sufficient and efficacious.

It is argued first for the affirmative side. For if there is always another efficacious aid by which man consents to God, distinct from every other which he received before he consented, it follows that no other beforehand had been sufficient. The consequence is patent, since if every other still needs another efficacious aid, it was not sufficient for effecting.

2. — It is argued secondly. Since if every man who is not converted does not receive that efficacious aid necessary for conversion, he would be excused from sin. The sequel is proved. Since no one can be bound to the impossible; but it is impossible for man to be converted without that aid: therefore as long as that aid is not given to him, he will be excused from sin.

But you will say: by his fault he does not have that aid. On the contrary it is proved that not having that aid is not a new fault. Since it is not in his power to obtain it, but it is only in the power of the divine mercy freely to confer it on those whom He efficaciously converts to Himself: therefore it is not denied to man by his fault.

And it is confirmed. God has decided not to give to the man who is not converted that efficacious aid: therefore it does not stand through man that he does not have it.

3. — Thirdly it is argued. Since it seems cruel to bind man to an act for exercising which he has no necessary principle, nor is it in his power to do anything by which he may obtain it. Nor does it avail to answer that he ask from God, for even for that prayer he needs efficacious aid. Therefore either there must be process to infinity, or it must be said that he already has a sufficient principle for eliciting the act without another efficacious aid; but that sufficient aid will become efficacious through the consent of free choice.

4. — It is argued fourth from that celebrated testimony of Matthaei (11,21): Woe to you Bethsaida, woe to you Corozain, for if in Tyre and Sidon there had been done the mighty works which have been done in you, they would long ago have done penance in sackcloth and ashes. From which testimony I argue thus: if the divine aid which was given to the Jews did not suffice so that with it alone the Tyrians and Sidonians would be converted, but another aid which is called efficacious were necessary, the conditional uttered by Christ the Lord would not be verified. For neither would the Tyrians and Sidonians have done penance any more than those cities which the Lord reproaches. For Corozain and Bethsaida could have answered: if to Tyre and Sidon You had given nothing more than to us, neither would they do penance.

5. — Finally it is argued from the testimony of St. Augustine in the book On Predestination and Grace, ch. 15, where he compares Pharaoh with Nabuchodonosor, and makes them equal as to all things, both on their part and on the part of God, and concludes: «What therefore made their ends diverse, except that one, feeling the hand of God, groaned in recollection of his own iniquity, while the other with free choice fought against the most merciful truth of God?»

And it is confirmed from St. Gregory in the homily on those invited to the wedding, where he refers the difference why some came to the wedding and some did not come to the diversity of the effects of those who were invited, not to the difference of the calling. Which St. Augustine also seems to confirm in the book of the Eighty-three Questions, q. 68 near the end where, speaking of those called to the supper (Luc., 14,16-24), he says thus: «For to that supper which the Lord says in the Gospel was prepared, neither did all who were called will to come, nor could those who came have come unless they were called. Therefore neither ought those who came attribute it to themselves, since being called they came; nor ought those who refused to come attribute it to another, but only to themselves, since that they might come they were called in free will». So much for Augustine. Where he seems to hold that the aid of the calling of the grace of God was equal to both.

Further it is confirmed from the Council of Trent, sess. 6, can. 4, where it is defined: «If anyone shall have said that the free choice of man, moved and aroused by God, cooperates nothing by assenting to God arousing and calling, whereby it disposes itself to obtain the grace of justification, nor can dissent if it wills, but … is disposed merely passively, let him be anathema». Hence it is argued: therefore with any aid whatever standing, it can stand at once that man dissents; and consequently there is no efficacious aid of God distinct from the sufficient, but that same aid will be efficacious if man consents, and not efficacious if man does not consent.

6. — This question demanded more time than is available to us in a few lectures. Let what we said be seen On the First Part, q. 23, a. 3, doubt 3, and in the Second of the Second, q. 10, a. 2, doubt 2, document 3.

Now proceeding summarily, let the first conclusion be: A distinction of the aid of the grace of God into sufficient aid and into efficacious aid is necessary. This distinction the authors of the new concord also admit, at least in word. And although this distinction is not found expressly in St. Thomas, nevertheless it is found virtually both in St. Thomas and in St. Augustine. For St. Augustine says most often that to the first man it was given to be able to persevere, but not to persevere, and it was given that he could not sin, but it was not given that he would not sin. It has a foundation also in the similar speech of theologians concerning the merit and redemption of Christ.

For they say that Christ the Lord satisfied for the sins of all men as to the sufficiency of merit and satisfaction, yet He did not merit for all that it be applied as to efficacy; since for many in fact the satisfaction and redemption of Christ has not been applied, and for fewer as to the salvation of eternal life. For in this way only for the predestined has the redemption of Christ the Savior been applied, according to that: Father, those whom You gave Me, I have lost none of them (Ioan., 18,9). And of sheep of this kind He said: No one shall snatch them from My hand (Ioan., 10,28). In this way of speaking the Apostle said of Christ that He is the Savior of all, especially of the faithful (I Tim., 4,10). By which words he declares both the universal sufficiency of the redemption of Christ and the efficacy in some. Which efficacy is also explained by the words of our theme when Paul says: But may the God of peace fit you in every good, that you may do His will, doing in you what is well-pleasing before Him. Let Augustine be seen in the book On the Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance.

But that this distinction of aid be better understood, it is to be noted that then aid is called efficacious when it has a concomitant effect. I do not say because it has, but when it has, and in this all agree. But that effect can be twofold: for sometimes it is with the consent of free choice, but sometimes it is not with the consent of free choice. Now our distinction is understood of efficacious aid in the first way, with which standing, man freely either believes or is converted to God.

For if it is understood in the second way, let the second conclusion be: Every aid of the grace of God is efficacious for some effect to which it is sent from the absolute good pleasure of the divine will. E.g., sudden illuminations and inspirations of the mind have some effect, while man is aroused and invited by certain vital actions to the supernatural end. This doctrine is that of St. Thomas in 1. 2, q. 112, a. 3, where he says that preparation can be considered in two ways. And he says that if it is considered according as it is from God moving, it has necessity for that to which it is ordered by God, not indeed of coercion, but of infallibility, since the intention of God cannot fail. Whence if it is from the intention of God moving that the man whose heart He moves obtain grace, he infallibly obtains it; and such aid is called by us efficacious.

7. — Note secondly that when we distinguish sufficient and efficacious aid we speak of a sufficiency which is not yet conjoined with the free effect, although of itself it is ordered to it. For otherwise the division would not be good.

Speaking therefore thus of sufficient and efficacious aid, let the third conclusion be: Efficacious aid is really distinguished from sufficient.

This conclusion is against Molina and Suarez. Against Molina indeed, who expressly holds in his Concordia, p. 232, that «the division of the sufficiency of aid into efficacious and inefficacious is taken from the effect»; and that the same aid, «whether greater or less, which is sufficient, is called efficacious when with it choice for its freedom is converted»; and that it is in our free power to render the divine aids efficacious, by consenting and cooperating with them, or to render them inefficacious by withholding consent.

Similarly against Suarez, who in bk. 3 On Aids, especially from ch. 14, posits nothing real intrinsic in sufficient aid that it become efficacious, and at length concludes in ch. 20 that the same really identical aid of grace is called greater because it is given at an opportune time. But he considers this opportuneness of time on the part of the individual, insofar as God foreknew that that singular man, if at that time he received aid, would consent and operate with it. And there he defends Molina, who said absolutely that one man with equal aid operates and another not; since among the wise that assertion is understood of equal powers on the part of the principle, and not on the part of the concurrence of God, which he thinks to be the very action of man. They hold therefore that between sufficient aid and efficacious there is no real difference, but only a moral one, which comes from the opportuneness of time, on the supposition of the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew that man constituted in such a time with such aids would operate, and mercifully willed to constitute him in such circumstances.

Nevertheless our conclusion is proved from that egregious testimony of the first ad Cor., 4 (v. 7): For who distinguishes you? But what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it? In which place, as St. Augustine says in the book On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 5, the Apostle speaks most evidently against human pride, «lest anyone glory in man, and consequently not in himself, but in the Lord». And he says: «Is it through these gifts which are common to all men that men are distinguished from men?» As if he said, not at all. And he subjoins: For the Apostle said: For who distinguishes you? And because inflated man could say, «my justice distinguishes me, my faith, or if anything else», meeting such thoughts the good doctor added: But what do you have that you did not receive? From whom except from Him who distinguishes you from another, to whom He did not give what He gave to you?». So much for him. From which I argue thus: if the aid of efficacious grace is not really distinguished from sufficient aid, it follows that he who is converted can glory in himself, saying: nothing real more has been given to me than to another, but I have added something real by which I distinguished myself from another. Therefore the good use of sufficient aid he does not receive from the grace of God, but from the powers of his free choice. He has used that sufficient aid well, and consequently he really distinguishes himself, and is not really distinguished by God.

8. — But they say that God distinguishes him morally, insofar as He gave equal and sometimes less aid really and entitatively at the opportune time, in which He foreknew from the property of his free choice that he would consent and use the sufficient aid well.

But on the contrary is what Augustine at once says in ch. 6: «Many hear the word of truth, but some believe, others contradict. The former therefore will to believe, but the latter refuse. Who is ignorant of this? who denies this? But since for some the will is prepared by the Lord, for others it is not prepared, it must in any case be discerned what comes from His mercy, what from His judgment».

From this it is patent that it does not suffice to posit opportuneness of time, that God be said really to prepare the will of one and not of another. Nor again does it avail to answer that that aid given at the opportune time in which God foreknew that man from the property of his choice would use it well was a greater mercy. First indeed since this opportuneness and that foreknowledge does not argue a real distinction of those men on the part of God, and consequently we have our point, that God does not really distinguish the believer from the non-believer; and consequently he alone who wills to believe really distinguishes himself from another through the powers of free choice alone, and will be able to glory in himself and of himself. Nor finally will it avail to answer that free choice itself at once with sufficient aid is given and reserved by God the author of nature and of grace: both because that answer was partly that of Pelagius, and also because in that which is to have free choice the believer is not distinguished from the non-believer. But in that which is to conserve sufficient aid in one and not in another, they give no reason on the part of God, but on the part of man.

There is another egregious testimony of St. Augustine in the Enchiridion, ch. 32, where explaining that of the Apostle ad Rom., 9 (v. 16), Therefore it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, he himself moves the question how the Apostle says it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, «when without doubt, if a man of the age now to use reason cannot believe, hope, and love unless he wills, nor arrive at the palm of the supernal calling of God unless the will concur». And he answers that therefore it was said not of him who wills nor of him who runs, because the will itself is prepared by God. And that he may more explain this solution of the question, he refutes a certain false solution, namely that «therefore it was said, not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, because it comes about from both, that is from the will of man and the mercy of God, so that the sense be, not of him who wills nor of him who runs, that is the will of man alone does not suffice, unless there be also the mercy of God». Which solution is that of Anastasius of Nicaea in the book of Questions on Scripture, q. 55, and of Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 31. See Suarez bk. 3, ch. 9, n. 7.

But Augustine replies against this solution: «If therefore it was said not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, because the will of man alone does not fulfill it, why shall it not rightly be said also on the contrary, it is not of God who shows mercy, but of man who wills, because the mercy of God alone does not fulfill it?» Augustine therefore concludes that, «just as no Christian will dare to say, it is not of God who shows mercy, but of man who wills …, it is necessary that therefore it be rightly understood to have been said, not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy, that the whole be given to God, who both prepares the good will of man to be aided, and aids it having been prepared», so indeed that the good will be counted among the gifts of a merciful God, according to that of Ps. 58 (v. 11): His mercy shall go before me. So much for Augustine.

In whose doctrine note first, that he calls the good will the very good action of free choice by which it uses the aid of God well.

Note secondly how he distinguishes between the preparation, and this good will, and the assistance of God for it. For he says, that the whole be given to God showing mercy, not as to the creator conserving free choice, but as to the savior who both prepares the good will of man to be aided, and aids it having been prepared. Behold he distinguishes preparation and assistance, two different aids. Otherwise if it is the same aid, we could say He prepares what is to be prepared, and aids what is aided. But surely by the name of preparation he understands the aids which are given by way of sufficiency for perfecting the power itself in first act. But when he says, He aids it having been prepared, he understands the divine efficacious motion of the consent of free choice. And in this way the whole is given to God who effects the whole in the very faculty of free choice, not only by illuminating the intellect and proposing the object, but also by really and efficaciously moving free choice, that deliberating it may consent.

Finally note how far this Augustinian doctrine stands from the doctrine of those who posit no greater physical and real efficacy on the part of God, but only on the part of the natural property of this free choice. But to God Himself they attribute only a certain moral efficiency in the execution of the good human will, which consists in this, that since God by natural and necessary knowledge apart from a decree, or rather apart from what is decreed, by the divine will knows this conditional: if this man be constituted in such a time and with such aids and circumstances, he will consent by believing in God and loving above all things, etc. In which knowledge indeed He shows no mercy to this man, since it rises from the natural comprehension of the divine essence and in it of all creatures, as Molina philosophizes. See Suarez Metaphysical disput. 30, n. 33.

9. — The whole mercy of God therefore they constitute in this, that God willed to create that man and to place him in those circumstances and in that opportuneness of time, and for this man will be able to give thanks to the divine mercy. But that, with those circumstances supposed, man applied himself to good consent, he has from the property of his free choice, and consequently concerning this application he will not be able to give thanks to God the savior, but perhaps to the creator and conserver of the faculty of free choice. For these modern doctors posit no other concurrence on the part of God, except the conservation of the faculty of free choice with sufficient aid, with which God concurs, not by influencing it, but only into the substance of the effect. And consequently the whole will not be given to God, if He does not prepare the will of man to be aided, nor aid it having been prepared; but they distinguish the whole sufficiency and real efficacy so that the sufficiency be from God, but the effecting be attributed to the nature of this free choice, which equally pre-aided by a real aid, which they call physical, distinguishes itself from another, which had received an equal or perhaps greater aid, and nevertheless does not consent to God calling and arousing.

Behold the whole difference between the Thomist and Augustinian theologians on one side, and between certain modern inventors of the new concord on the other. They indeed are convicted by the arguments made, in that they say they cannot understand how the property of the faculty of free choice is preserved with such real efficacy of the grace of God. We however with Augustine much less can understand the omnipotence of the divine will and of the good pleasure of God, «if, as Augustine says in the Enchiridion, ch. 95, God willed to do something which He did not do; and what is more unworthy, therefore He did not do it, because lest what the omnipotent willed come about the will of man impeded it». And thus «the very beginning of our confession, in which we confess to believe in God the Father omnipotent, is endangered». So much for Augustine. But how with this certain efficacy of the grace of God the condition of the faculty of free choice is preserved is explained in the solution of the arguments and in what was said in the first part of this treatise.

1. — To the first argument, I deny the consequence. To the proof, I deny the consequence again. For an aid is not called sufficient because it avails to effect without the motion of the first cause, but it is called sufficient for constituting man as it were in first act, by means of which there is proposed to him as a possible good from the aid of God's grace the supernatural end and the means to that end. And this is the kindness of God, which rouses and invites man by a certain sufficient illumination of the intellect and a certain inspiration of the will, to bind him to believe, to hope, and to love. But if he refuse, it will be imputed to him for fault, which he can commit from his own powers, with God not as author; if however he consent, with God as author and by a special efficaciously operating aid he is converted, consenting through his free choice. And thus by this efficacious aid God distinguishes him from the other who is not converted, to whom he did not give efficacious aid.

2. — To the second argument the consequence is denied, since for sinning less suffices than for acting well. And therefore one who does not have efficacious aid is not excused from sin, because it suffices that it was proposed to him by God as possible, and the man himself from his own defectible free choice does not will that aid, by the very fact that he does not will to be converted to God as the supernatural end. And this suffices for sinning. Nor is it required that it be in his power as in an active, physical, or meritorious virtuous principle for obtaining that aid, but it suffices that it be proposed to him as possible from God's aid, lest he be said to be bound to the impossible. As if, for example, God commanded me to fly, and himself offered me wings, I would not be excused from sin by saying, I do not have wings, since they are already offered to me as possible from God's gift, and accordingly I would sin if I answered, I do not will to fly.

To the confirmation it is answered: I distinguish the antecedent. For if it be understood without foreknowledge of the future resistance of free choice, I deny the antecedent; indeed to no adult to whom he offered efficacious aid does he deny such aid in execution, except to him whom he foreknew would refuse. And accordingly the divine decree does not excuse him from sin.

But you will say, why did he foreknow concerning this man that he would refuse rather than concerning the other who is converted? It is answered that he willed to permit this one to fail, and did not will to permit the other to fail. Of this difference and distinction do not wish to investigate the cause, if you do not wish to err; but let us be content to distinguish what comes from mercy, what from judgment. And this is to be wise unto sobriety (ad Rom., 12,3).

But here is an importunate and sophistical rejoinder, by which some think they triumph against us. Against it I argue thus: If affirmation is the cause of affirmation, negation is the cause of negation. But the efficacious aid which we posit as special, really distinct from the sufficient, is the cause of the conversion of every man who is converted. Therefore the negation of that aid is the cause why everyone who is not converted is not converted.

To this argument see 1 p., q. 23, a. 3, last doubt, ad 6. But it is answered first indeed that that maxim is to be understood of a total cause, which alone in its genus is the cause of the affirmation, as, for example, if whiteness is the formal cause of a white thing, the negation of whiteness will be the cause of a non-white thing. Likewise if God alone is the cause of creation by his decree, he will also be the cause of not creating through the negation of the decree. And thus the divine will by its decree was the cause of creating these angels and of not creating others. But when two causes concur, even if they be subordinated to some effect, although from the affirmation of the first cause the effect is posited, yet the negation of the effect does not have as its cause the negation of the first cause, but it can have the negation of the second cause, as is clear from the teaching of St. Thomas 1. 2, q. 112, a. 3 ad 2, where he says that «the defect of grace has its first cause from us, but the bestowal of grace has its first cause from God».

It is answered secondly, and the preceding solution is confirmed. And note that the negation of conversion to God can be considered in two ways. In one way in the genus of morals, and thus it is not a pure negation of being, but is an omission. In the other way it can be considered as it is a pure negation of being. If it be considered in the first way, it does not have as its cause the negation of efficacious aid on God's part, but the defectible and failing free choice. If however it be considered in the second way, I grant that the cause of the negation of that entity is the pure negation of efficacious aid, which God was not bound to give, but rather he willed to permit the sin. Nor always in punishment of another sin. For he permitted the angels to sin, and God often permits a just man to fall from grace through sin, and yet that permission is not in punishment of another sin. For original sin had already been remitted in the just man; and therefore that negation of efficacious aid cannot be called the punishment of a preceding sin, although sometimes such a withdrawal of aid is the punishment of sin, which in the sacred writings is usually called blinding and hardening. Hence to the confirmation we rightly deny that consequence, God decreed from eternity not to give that efficacious aid, therefore it does not stand through this man not to have it. For sometimes indeed he decreed not to give in punishment of sin, which God foreknew to be future; sometimes however, even if it be the first permission of the sin of our first parents, and it cannot have the character of punishment of a preceding sin, yet the first and adequate cause of the negation of aid, as that negation holds on the side of execution in time, is free choice, which of itself has the power to will to fail and to omit God's precept, with God permitting, who nevertheless could prevent it, if he willed in his mercy to convert man from sin, or to maintain him in justice.

3. — To the third argument it is answered that it would rather be blasphemous to charge God with cruelty because to some he does not give that efficacious aid or the gift of perseverance to those already justified. For by equal reasoning we would murmur that he did not predestine all men, if predestination has no cause in foreknowledge of merits on the part of the predestined, as some even in our times strive to introduce into the school. Against whom I urge that word of the Apostle ad Rom., 9 (vv. 12-16): Not of works, but of him that calleth it was said, that the elder shall serve the younger, as it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. And he adds: What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses (Ex., 33): I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy. Therefore it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. Behold where he attributes the whole effect of predestination to the divine mercy alone. Indeed he denies that this whole effect has its ground in foreknown striving and running of free choice, although the bestowal of glory will be future on account of foreknown merits, yet not the whole effect of predestination. And again the Apostle answers others proudly objecting thus: Why then is complaint made? For who resisteth his will? If on whom he will he hath mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth, O man, who art thou that repliest to God?, etc., unto the eleventh chapter where he concludes: O the depth of the riches of the knowledge and wisdom of God, etc. It is not, therefore, cruelty to bind man to believe before he has efficacious aid, since it is not to bind him to the impossible, since it is possible to have it, and accordingly it is possible to fulfill the precept. For there is no need that that aid be in man's power as in an active or meritorious principle; but that possibility is founded on God's mercy, and on the common law, and on the faculty of free choice, to which aid is offered by God, who is ready to give, unless it stand through man.

4. — To the fourth argument see what we said at length in 1 p., q. 23, a. 3, doubt 3, concl. 10, § But concerning the teaching, and in 2. 2, q. 10, a. 1, doubt 2, document 3. Now however it is to be noted with St. Augustine book 1 On the Trinity, chap. 12, where he sets down an excellent rule for understanding the sacred writings, namely «there is no kind of speech used by sacred Scripture which is not found in the usage of men». With which agrees Origen book 4 Against Celsus saying that sacred Scripture measures what it announces according to the strength and profit of its hearers. This supposed, it is to be known that concerning that passage of Matthew 21¹, doctors say many things inquiring why he did not give to the Tyrians and Sidonians those aids which he gave to the Jews, by his preaching and miracles. But certainly St. Gregory and St. Jerome on that passage say that to know God's secrets is not man's.

Nevertheless, to satisfy scholastic theologians, it is answered to the argument by denying the consequence when it is inferred: therefore, with God's equal aid existing, the Jews were not converted, and the Tyrians and Sidonians would have been converted with that alone. And the reason is that for the truth of that conditional it is not required that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have done penance receiving no other gift of God, which was not given to the Jews. But the sense is: if among them I preached and worked miracles as among you, they would have done penance. For this is the same as if he said: God would have given them penance. For it is certain that to do penance is a gift of God, according to that II ad Tim., 2 (v. 25): Lest ever God give them penance, etc. Which gift indeed one who does not do penance does not receive.

But if you ask again, why does Christ say that, with those miracles and teaching posited, he would give penance to the Tyrians and Sidonians which he gave to the Jews: it is answered that Christ the Lord in human fashion wished to object to the Jews that they were worse than the Tyrians and Sidonians and that on account of their greater sins and demerits that efficacious aid of salutary penance was justly denied to them, of which aid the Tyrians and Sidonians were less unworthy, to whom, if Christ had come preaching and working miracles, God would mercifully have softened their less unworthy hearts. And therefore it shall be more tolerable for the Tyrians and Sidonians in the day of judgment than for the faithless Jews. And this was the chief intention of Christ the Lord, to reproach those cities which on account of their greater iniquities, even if those exterior benefits were bestowed on them, namely of miracles and of the preaching of the Gospel, were more unworthy to be granted the interior efficacious aids than the Tyrians and Sidonians, in whom there was less unworthiness for mercifully receiving those aids which would have been given to them, if such miracles had been worked among them.

Nor does the rejoinder made on the Jews' part avail anything to excuse them when they say, if to the Tyrians and Sidonians thou hadst not given other greater interior aids, neither would they have been converted more than we. For the solution from what has been said is manifest. For we answer on Christ's behalf, granting that neither would they have been converted without greater interior aids. But nevertheless this does not excuse the Jews' greater unworthiness of their infidelity and pride, on account of which most grave sins such aids were denied to them, which would not have been denied to the less unworthy, if Christ had deigned to come to them and to work such miracles in confirmation of his teaching. Yet, as Augustine says book 2 On the gift of perseverance, chap. 14, because «neither to the Tyrians and Sidonians was believing given, and whence they might believe was denied», and both will be punished in the day of judgment; but the Jews much more on account of their greater sins.

5. — To the fifth argument, concerning the comparison of Pharaoh and Nabuchodonosor, it is answered that those who cite that testimony in favor of their view either did not read it, or if they read it, bring it forward truncated on purpose. For indeed there Augustine proceeds by arguing against him who judges God's most high counsel with a wise heart. Hence Augustine asks of him the cause of the indifference, where the medicine is equal. And although in that discussion St. Augustine brings forward that particular and formal difference on the part of the recipients, «since the one, feeling God's hand, groaned in recollection of his own iniquity, but the other fought with his free choice against God's most merciful truth», yet this difference is at once reduced to another deeper one. For St. Augustine warns us to understand that all those things which happened in Pharaoh and Nabuchodonosor and in similar sinners, «are either perfected with the Lord aiding, or permitted with him abandoning, that we may know that with the Lord unwilling nothing at all is admitted». Thus the first cause of the conversion of the one is God's assistance, which the other did not have as efficacious.

Hence let the theologian gather the lesson that, although of this difference, why one sinner is converted and another is not converted, the proximate formal account can be assigned, that one uses God's aid well, but the other resists God calling, yet this is not the first cause and root of this difference. For if one stopped there, man by the powers of free choice would distinguish himself from the other, who received God's equal aid. Therefore recourse must be had to the divine will, which inwardly aided by efficaciously moving the free choice of the one that he be converted, but permitted the free choice of the other to fail. Thus all things happen either with God willing, or with God permitting, so that the permission is not the cause of sin. «But why he draws this one and does not draw that one, do not investigate if you do not wish to err», as Augustine says on that Joan., 6 (v. 44): No one can come to me.

We have it, therefore, that greater aid was given to the penitent Nabuchodonosor than to the hardened Pharaoh; not indeed exteriorly, but interiorly.

To the confirmation from St. Gregory it is answered from the aforesaid lesson that when the proximate account of the difference is assigned, the first is not excluded, but rather is understood in it. For that prior one is as it were the formal account of the difference. But the divine will is the first efficient cause of the good and of the permission of evil. And thus St. Augustine explains himself book 2 On the gift of perseverance, chap. 9, where he asserts that the affair of the Tyrians and Sidonians pertains to the causes of predestination, «without prejudice of which hidden causes I then said I so answered». As if he said that, if anywhere he referred the account of the aforesaid difference to the use of free choice, it must always be understood without prejudice to divine predestination. And thus St. Gregory is to be expounded and all the holy fathers when from the diversity of effect of those called they say diverse ends come about, namely that some come to the supper, some do not come. For the holy fathers do not intend to deny that the good use of free choice is a gift coming from God's efficacious aid.

To the last confirmation from the Council of Trent, I wonder how insistently they contend from that canon and from chap. 5 in those words, «with God touching man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, neither does man himself do nothing at all receiving that inspiration, seeing that he can cast it away». I wonder, I say, how they contend to gather from the Council's words that the efficacy of the aid which we posit has been condemned. First, what is defined in the fourth canon, we understand according to the teaching of St. Thomas and St. Augustine as regards those words: «nor to be able to dissent if he will». Of whose understanding see what I said in 2. 2, q. 10, a. 1, document 3, doubt 2, § Now indeed to the objection. But now against those thus objecting I object testimonies of the Scriptures, which they too are bound to explain; and as they shall have explained them, so shall we explain the Council. For Esther chap. 13 (v. 9) the faithful woman says: There is none that can resist thy will. Which words the Church takes up in the office of the Mass of a certain Sunday: «In thy will, O Lord, are all things placed, and there is none that can resist thy will … Thou art the Lord of all». And in Ps. 134 (v. 6): Whatsoever he would he did in heaven and on earth. Which argument Augustine richly pursues in the Enchiridion from chap. 95 onward, and in chap. 99 he reports the argument of those blaspheming against God from the Apostle ad Romanos, 9 (v. 19): Why then doth he complain? For who resisteth his will? «As if for that reason the evil man were not seen to be blameworthy, because God hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth». Where Augustine says: «Far be it that we be ashamed to answer this, which we see the Apostle answered: O man, who art thou that repliest to God?» In which place he says: «Some fools think he failed in his answer, and for lack of a reason to render repressed the contradictor's audacity. But great, he says, is the weight of what was said: O man, who art thou, etc. For in such questions he recalls man to the consideration of his capacity. For if he does not grasp these things, who is he to answer God? But if he grasps them, the more will he not find what to answer». And at length Augustine concludes that one who considers that to all men the judgment of damnation is due on account of sin, at least original, has no ground to ask why he had mercy on some. For the answer is easy, that his undebted mercy willed to succor some. In which treatise Augustine most firmly contends that God's will cannot be overcome or impeded by man's will, so that the most powerful cannot do what he wills, «who in heaven and on earth not willed some things and did them, willed others and did them not, but did whatsoever he would».

6. — Let us come therefore to our point. For since in the sacred writings these two are found which on their face seem to be contrary, that no one resists God's will, and again, you always resist the Holy Spirit (Act., 7,51); Job, 9 (v. 4): Who hath resisted him and had peace? Ps. 75 (v. 8): Thou art terrible, and who shall resist thee? Ps. 16 (v. 8): From them that resist thy right hand, and the like, and other like testimonies, the Catholic theologian must needs distinguish and harmonize these testimonies, since both are from the Holy Spirit. And indeed St. Augustine above makes a similar objection against himself in chap. 97 from that of the Apostle I ad Tim., 2 (v. 4): Who will have all men to be saved; and that Mat., 23 (v. 37): How often would I have gathered thy children as a hen her chickens and thou wouldst not. Therefore God's will is impeded by man's will. But he solves these arguments by recourse to divine predestination and by explaining that testimony of the Apostle, who will, etc., to be understood first according to an accommodated distribution, inasmuch as all who are saved are saved by God's will; secondly according to distribution for the kinds of individuals, and he shows this to be the most literal understanding according to the context.

Moreover St. Thomas 1 p., q. 19, a. 6 demonstrates that God's will is always fulfilled, from that foundation: that «the divine will is the universal cause of all things». Whence it must needs be that, «what seems to recede from the divine will according to one order falls back into it according to another». And after in the answer to the first he recounts Augustine's two solutions concerning that, who will have all men to be saved, he adds a third from Damascene, book 2 Of the Orthodox Faith, chap. 29, that that testimony and the like are to be understood «of the antecedent will, not of the consequent will. Which distinction is not taken on the part of the divine will, in which there is nothing prior or posterior, but on the part of the things willed», as St. Thomas there excellently explains. For some goods are absolute and considered in themselves, that is without other circumstances; and thus they are said to be willed antecedently by God. As, for example, that every man be saved, compared to the divine will, is good. But the same object considered with sin presupposed and according to the exigency of divine justice is not willed consequently, that is, resolutely with circumstances attended to, it is not willed by God, but rather simply speaking he does not will every man to be saved. But what is willed antecedently is not willed simply. The reason is «that the will is compared to things according as they are in themselves. But in themselves they are in particular», with all their circumstances. «Hence we will something simply according as we will it with all particular circumstances considered». And note that one of the circumstances on account of which simply speaking God does not will all men to be saved is the showing of greater mercy to those who are saved, while divine justice is shown in those who on account of their sins, which with God permitting they committed, are punished, as is gathered from the Apostle ad Rom., 9 (v. 22): What if God willing to show his wrath, and to make known his power, etc.

7. — But you will say, to what end so many windings to solve the argument proposed from the Council's testimonies? It is answered that for this reason I interposed the teaching on the fulfillment of the divine will, which is always fulfilled, that thence I may gather that the aid which is called efficacious brings with it from that absolute divine will the power of effecting. Which standing, it implies a contradiction that the dissent of free choice stand at the same time. Otherwise the divine will which simply and absolutely is called will would not be fulfilled. Since therefore these things so stand, Catholic theologians must needs harmonize the Council's words with the aforesaid teaching. We say therefore that since the Council's teaching is directly against the Lutherans, who understood the efficacy of the divine motion and will to be such that it would have its effect without the consent of free choice, from this intention of the Council we shall give a most clear solution to the argument saying that, however efficacious the divine aid be posited by which man is made believing from unbelieving, it never has such an effect without us consenting. But we deny that from us consenting it has its effecting power, but rather from the divine will it brings with it to effect infallibly that we use that aid well by freely consenting, since we have the faculty of dissenting, if we will. Yet it will never be verified that, with that aid standing, we will to dissent, as has already been explained in the first part of this treatise.

Thus it is one thing to have the faculty of assenting or dissenting while we have that aid, for the faculty is not destroyed; and another thing to have the act of dissenting. For this second is impossible, but rather, with that aid standing, it must needs be by necessity of consequence and of infallibility that consent from free choice be present at the same time.

But they say, what does it profit me that the faculty of free choice is not destroyed, if the use in the exercised act is not free? But we answer that that act is most free, even if from the physical premotion of efficacious divine grace it has necessity of consequence and of infallibility, as has been explained in this treatise, first part, chap. 2. For this comes from the infinity of the divine free choice, which, united to our free choice, moves it so strongly and sweetly that it does with it what it wills, perfecting its freedom, so that it deliberate what is pleasing before God, from divine illumination and divine impulse. For the divine illumination makes man know the end more perfectly, and the indifference of the means to it. But the efficacious impulse of the Holy Spirit makes the will under that knowledge elect determinately what is good.

8. — And in this place the teaching of St. Thomas 1. 2, q. 112, a. 3 is to be recalled, which we reported in the preceding chapter, second conclusion, on the infallibility of the preparation of free choice for grace as it is from God's motion. Otherwise the divine will would not do what it wills in us really, and as they themselves say physically, but would only ordain to give us aids in opportune time, so that we through our free choice and by our own powers be the sole physical cause of applying that gift to use.

And through this teaching the sense is clear regarding the words brought from chap. 5, sess. 6, in the decree on justification, where it is said that man, «receiving God's inspiration, does something, seeing that he can also cast it away». Where the sense is not composite that he at once receive it and cast it away, but the sense is that he both had the power not to receive it, and accordingly by receiving it, by consenting with it, he does something. Likewise also after he received it and worked, he will afterward be able to cast it away and cease from working or sin.

And our teaching is confirmed from the testimony which is brought there from Jerem. (Thren., 5,21): Convert us O Lord to thee and we shall be converted. In which prayer we ask not only that God give us whereby we can be converted, but that in fact such grace of God go before and prepare us, by which we in fact be converted. For this is what God promises his own of himself through Eze., 36 (v. 27): I will make you to walk in my precepts, and to keep my judgments and do them. Whence the argument is taken. The divine promise is fulfilled through divine operation: therefore God will efficaciously do what he promises, applying efficacious means that the promise come about. Therefore when man wills to believe, he so freely wills that, with the efficacious divine aid standing, it cannot be verified that man does not will; otherwise it would remain in man's power to frustrate the divine promise.

9. — St. Augustine uses this argument On the predestination of the saints, chaps. 10 and 11, explaining that ad Rom., 4 (v. 16), Therefore of faith, that according to grace the promise may be firm to all the seed, where he says: «He promised not from the power of our will, but from his predestination. For he promised what he himself would do, not what men would. For although men do the good things that pertain to worshipping God, he makes them do what he commanded; they do not make him do what he promised. Otherwise for God's promises to be fulfilled would be in man's, not in God's, power». With which teaching what Father Suarez says does not well agree, book 3 On aids, chap. 6, especially no. 7, that the general concurrence and sufficient aid in the manner of concurrence «be so exhibited on God's part or exposed in first act, that from our choice it hang whether it be placed or not be placed in second act. For with our will applying itself to the work, at once God too inflows, and from the force of his antecedent will. But if our free choice hold back its inflow, the actual concurrence of God too has ceased». So he. Behold how he wills that God's promise in execution hang on our will applying itself to the work, with a certain priority of causality, so that at once God inflows from the force of his antecedent will; whereas Augustine teaches that from the absolute divine will it hangs that our will apply itself to the work, with God efficaciously moving it. For always, as Augustine says in letter 106 to Boniface, the human will in good works and actions pertaining to salvation is foot-following, not fore-going, God's grace. And this itself is what is said in the Council of Orange, last canon: «In every good work we do not begin and afterwards are aided through God's mercy, but he himself … inspires into us faith and love of him». And canon 23 had said before: «When men so do what they will as to serve the divine will, although willing they do what they do, yet their will is from him by whom is prepared and arises what they will». Thus the very act of loving God is from the grace preparing and executing what men will. Otherwise indeed God would await our will that we be purged from sin, whereas even that we will to be purged, it is God who worketh in us both to will and to perfect, as the Apostle says ad Phil., 2, and in the same council canon 4 it was defined.

Many other things could have been said concerning the efficacious aid which all who act rightly have, from which those lack who do not believe or love; but constrained by narrowness of time, we pass over them. Yet one thing I shall not cease to warn: that we be attentive to the Church's prayers, both in the sacrifice of the Mass and in the divine office, in which most frequently the Church asks not only for the aid whereby we can act well, but we also ask for the very operation, namely that God make us by his grace always to obey his commands. For example on the Wednesday after the second Sunday in Lent the Church prays: «O God, restorer and lover of innocence, direct to thee the hearts of thy servants, that, with the fervor of thy Spirit conceived, they may be found both stable in faith and efficacious in work». But if it were already in our power with only sufficient and prevenient aid to apply ourselves to acting efficaciously with God's general concurrence, there would be no need to ask this efficacy from God. Likewise the Church says in another prayer of a summer Sunday «that we may merit to attain what thou promisest, make us to love what thou commandest». And on the sixteenth Sunday: «We beseech thee, O Lord, let thy grace both always go before us and follow, and make us to be intent upon good works».

So much said on the second part may suffice.

1. — Just as for the ancient philosophers it was very difficult to compose human free choice with God's providence, to the point that they were divided into extreme errors, because they could not satisfy themselves: —for some denied that divine providence and government extend to man's free choice; but others, to defend divine providence, affirming the infallible disposition of fate, denied man's free choice—; so too after the preaching of the Gospel, proud men, overcome in the difficulty of this concord, have been divided into contrary heresies. For some, as the Pelagians and Caelestius, to defend man's freedom, denied that the interior and supernatural aids of divine grace are necessary; but they said that the exterior aids of teaching and of the law and of miracles suffice, so that man through the faculty of free choice may avail to believe and to act. If at any time God assisted man with interior supernatural aids, this was not simply necessary, but for better being. But other heretics by the other extreme, such as Luther was and his followers, denied free choice, especially after sin, wishing to attribute so much to the divine omnipotence and to God's will that they said God is equally the author of good and of evil works. Both indeed from the same proud ignorance of the concord of free choice with the divine will came to such diverse extremes of error.

And indeed the error of the Lutherans has been abundantly enough demonstrated and condemned in the Council of Trent.

2. — But the error of Pelagius and his followers, especially Caelestius, was condemned in the first Council of Carthage and in the Council of Milevis. But afterward there arose in Gaul certain men infected with the remnants of the Pelagians, concerning whom Prosper of Aquitaine and Hilary of Arles write individual letters to St. Augustine, which are had in volume 7 before the book On the predestination of the saints. Those, therefore, who were infected with the remnants of the Pelagians vehemently contradicted the teaching of St. Augustine, because the testimonies of the Apostle writing to the Romans for the manifestation of divine grace had been understood by no churchman as by St. Augustine. But when they were asked to expound them, they answered that they had found nothing that pleases, and they said that silence must be kept concerning those things whose depth no one has reached. And they came so far as to say that the faith which Augustine's disciples preached is contrary to the edification of hearers; and although it were true, yet it must be contained in silence. And certain others, confessing Christ's grace, which goes before all human merits, nevertheless «would have it pertain to this condition of each man, in which the grace of the Creator institutes him, before meriting nothing, since not even existing, free in choice and rational, so that through discernment of good and evil, both unto knowledge of God and unto obedience to his commands he can direct his will, and unto this grace by which he is reborn in Christ arrive through natural faculty, by asking, seeking, knocking; so that for that reason he receives, for that reason he finds, for that reason he enters, because, having used the good of nature well, he merited to arrive at that saving grace with the help of initial grace». And he reports many other things in which they confess «that there are two things which work human salvation, namely God's grace and man's obedience; and they will obedience to be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation is to be believed to stand from him who is saved, not from God who saves, and man's will procures help for itself from divine grace, not grace subjects to itself the human will». And Prosper himself complains that, although he is constant in not believing them, yet he is not equal to contending against their authority: «for, he says, they far surpass us in merits of life», and some of them are bishops and therefore few are intrepid lovers of perfect grace. «Whence in these remnants of Pelagian depravity a fiber of no slight virulence is nourished». And at length he concludes asking a solution from Augustine, because they affirmed that God's purpose and predestination is from foreknowledge, «so that for this reason God made some vessels of honor, others of disgrace, because he foreknew the end of each, and foreknew under that very assistance of grace in what will and action he would be». So far from Prosper's letter.

And like things are had in Hilary's letter. These men, infected with the remnants of the Pelagians, were convicted by this argument, that if predestination and God's purpose had been absolute and the efficacious cause of the good use of free choice, the faculty of intellect and will for either alternative would have been altogether destroyed, and men would have been led into despair by this teaching, and exhortations and preachings to induce men to live rightly would have been in vain.

3. — To which question Augustine answers luminously writing back to Hilary and Prosper in the books On the predestination of the saints. Against these remnants of the Pelagians the second Council of Orange was gathered under Leo the first, in which are contained almost the express words of St. Augustine through all the canons, in which, as it seems to us, not only those remnants of the Pelagians are condemned, but the door is also closed to certain opinions of our time, which I do not judge to be now altogether those ancient remnants of the Pelagians, but I judge them to be false, in that they intend that free choice, with initial grace and sufficient aid existing, have real efficacy of using well and of applying itself to the work from its own property, not from God's motion. So that when one man has received nothing more real than another, indeed sometimes less, one man is converted and the other remains in unbelief. Now at length I see the authors of these opinions have invented a certain inequality of the sufficient aid of God's grace which they say to be moral; and they reduce this morality to opportuneness of time together with God's foreknowledge knowing that that man will act well, if, placed in such a time, he receive that grace of sufficient aid. And thus they think that aid of grace to agree and be coadapted to the property of this free choice. And through this they make the concord between the aid of grace and man's free choice, for both, they say, at once enjoy their own right in the free action. For neither could free choice have been converted to God without prevenient sufficient aid, nor yet would it consent freely if it were prevened by the efficacy of the divine motion.

4. — But we, lovers and defenders of the perfect grace of God which is given to us from Christ's merits, with St. Thomas and St. Augustine and the other holy fathers whom there is no leisure to cite, think far otherwise concerning this divine and legitimate concord. For the aforesaid concord which Fathers Molina and Suarez judge necessary, although at first spring, to those looking at few things, it seem easy to understand, yet, if one look within, it is shown to contain many false things.

And besides the arguments made concerning the efficacy of the divine aid, in the first place it is against it, that it seems to derogate from the omnipotence of the divine will, which did and does whatsoever it would; but above all it wills and loves our free consent by which we are converted to God and most please him: therefore this itself it makes truly and really in us, and not only gives whereby we can, but also whereby we actually do. How then do they deny an aid of the divine motion really efficacious of this consent?

And it is confirmed from Iac., 1 (v. 17): Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights. But the very act of charity by which man is converted to God is a best gift. Therefore it comes down from the father of lights. But if the efficacy of the aid be from free choice, to love him and actually to adhere to him does not come down from the father.

It is confirmed secondly from the words of the Church praying: «God who manifestest thy omnipotence chiefly by pitying and sparing». For if God were not the real cause both physically inflowing by efficaciously moving free choice to consent, but only the moral cause by conferring whereby it can move itself physically to operation, he would not much show his omnipotence in the justification of the ungodly. For man really and physically does something which God does not do but leaves to man to do; and accordingly he does not rule man's free choice by inclining it whither he wills.

It is confirmed thirdly from that ad Rom., 11 (v. 2): God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew. Which passage Augustine in book 2 On the good of perseverance, chap. 18 understands so that by the name of foreknowledge predestination is signified. And he proves it because the Apostle «spoke of the remnant of the Jews, which were made safe with the rest perishing». And to show that the remnants were left by God's grace, he subjoins what the divine answer said to Elias 3 Reg. chap. 19,18: I have left me seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal (Rom., 11,4). And Augustine notes that he did not say, «they were left to me, or they left themselves to me, but I left to me. So therefore, he says, also at this time the remnants were made safe through election of grace». The election of grace, therefore, efficaciously separates him who is converted from him who is not converted. Otherwise man himself alone by his free choice would distinguish himself physically and really from the other who bows the knee before Baal, and would leave and keep himself for God.

5. — Secondly that concord principally displeases because it seems to derogate from Christ's merits. And I prove it from that Is., 53 (v. 10): If he shall lay down his soul for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be directed in his hand. Where Jerome says that whatsoever the Father willed be fulfilled through his powers, that is, that by Christ's merits there be given to us whatsoever comes from God's grace ordained to our salvation.

From this I argue thus: Although those who embrace such a concord confess that Christ the Lord merited that that sufficient aid be given and that it be given to this man in the opportune time in which God knew that, if that man were placed, he would act, yet they cannot grant that that known thing, namely that that man, if placed in such a time, would apply himself to operation with that sufficient aid, falls under Christ's merit. For such actual application does not come from that aid physically and really as it is sent by the divine will, but according to them it comes from the property of this singular free choice known by God through natural and necessary knowledge, which does not fall under Christ's merit.

And indeed such an assertion differs little from the assertion of those whom Prosper reports above, who said that grace and Christ's merits extend to this, that those men be created rational and with free choice, by which they discern between good and evil, so that then God direct their wills. Indeed much less can it fall under merit, that this man, already created and placed in such circumstances, have such a property in his free choice, that he infallibly determine and apply himself to operation.

6. — Thirdly that concord, while it intends to establish free choice, seems rather to destroy it. It is proved. For that certitude of divine knowledge with respect to that conditional is natural and necessary. Otherwise that man placed in such circumstances could have not acted; which possible thing, if placed in being, that conditional would already be false, and accordingly God's knowledge would not be certain nor infallible foreknowledge. Therefore the certitude of that conditionate must be founded on some natural property of Peter necessarily known by God. Therefore he does not then so act freely, because the determination of that operation proceeds necessarily from his native property.

Moreover they derogate from free choice, while they subject its operation here and now to individual complexion and to the influences of the heavenly bodies, as was granted to me in a public disputation.

Furthermore on occasion of that teaching men are made confident of themselves, so that they dare to promise God of themselves that, if he himself give even less aid than to another in opportune time, they themselves will be converted and once converted will profit more than others.

And at last they fall into the same straits, indeed greater, into which they think we fall, positing efficacious aid really distinct from the sufficient. For as we said, they derogate from that freedom; and again they will render no account which men little humble desire, why God gave aid in opportune time to this man and not to another, to whom perchance he also conferred greater sufficient aid, and he is not converted. Of which difference they will be able to assign no other account besides the absolute divine will. For to say that he who, roused by God, is not converted, could not have had the opportune time, is to say that he could not have been saved, nor God justify him through his free consent. In vain therefore is the account of the difference sought, why this one is converted and that one is not converted, from foreknowledge of future things, before the decree of the divine will, which hath mercy on whom it will and hardeneth whom it will.

7. — We therefore are more deterred by the aforesaid unfitting things, and therefore we constantly follow the teaching of St. Thomas and St. Augustine, who in the book On the good of perseverance says: «But why those have ears for hearing, those have not, that is, why to those it is given by the Father to come to the Son, but to those it is not given, who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor? (Rom., 11,34) … Shall what is open therefore be denied, because what is hidden cannot be comprehended?» So he. Whose teaching teaches scholastic theologians humility, not to be wise more than it behooveth to be wise.

Since therefore we experience free choice in ourselves, and on the other hand God's omnipotence is shown by evident reason, who can do and does whatsoever he would, of whose divine will no cause is to be assigned, it seems foolish to deny either that we are endowed with no free choice, or that divine providence and predestination are not certain, because we do not comprehend by our wit how these cohere among themselves, as Ferrariensis well noted book 3 Contra gentes, chap. 94 near the end.

8. — But they say it is necessary to satisfy the heretics' arguments.

To whom we answer that it is one thing evidently to solve the arguments, and another thing evidently to demonstrate our conclusion concerning the concord. The former indeed we promise and do. For, as Cajetan says, he who solves the arguments probably, solves evidently; for if the argument evidently convinced, neither would it probably be solved. Since therefore from the efficacy and efficacious physical premotion of divine grace it is inferred, whether by the Lutherans or by the adversaries, that the use of free choice is destroyed, we confidently deny the consequence, because those so inferring do not understand the very what-it-is of free choice and of free action, as was shown in the first part of this treatise. But rather from the conjunction of the divine free choice to the human, through the intimate motion of his grace, our free choice is perfected, so that in its operation it is made more like to the divine than if it were left in itself. For from its own powers it can fail and sin. But to adhere to God will never befall, unless God by special aid of efficacious grace draw it to himself.

But the other, which is evidently to demonstrate how this concord comes about, neither do we profess, nor can we; but with St. Augustine and the other holy fathers, we ingenuously confess our ignorance. For Augustine says in the Enchiridion, chap. 94: «Then, that is in eternal beatitude, the saints shall know more fully what good his grace conferred; then, with the things themselves evident, shall appear what is written in the Psalm: Mercy and judgment I will sing to thee, O Lord … Then what now lies hidden shall not lie hidden, when of two little ones one was to be taken through God's mercy … Then in the clearest light of wisdom shall be seen what now the faith of the pious holds, before it be seen by manifest knowledge, how certain and immutable and most efficacious is God's will; how many things it can and wills not, but wills nothing which it cannot; and how true is what is sung in the Psalm: Whatsoever he would he did in heaven and on earth». So he.

From which we gather how far from this teaching differs the curiosity of certain schoolmen, who contend openly to show how the use of freedom is preserved with the efficacy of divine grace, asserting this efficacy to be only moral, not really and physically, as they say, touching free choice, but only inviting and rousing and proposing to it the supernatural good, so that man from the property of his free choice, not from efficacious grace, apply himself to operation. For if these things so stood; the saints would in vain marvel at the efficacy of divine grace powerfully subjecting to itself man's free choice strongly and sweetly, so that it be freely conformed and consent to the divine will.

9. — To what end too, when the Apostle speaks of mysteries of this kind, commending the efficacy of divine grace coming from predestination and absolute purpose in God, is he angered against the curious inquirer into the divine disposition and the counsels of God over the sons of men, saying: O man, who art thou? And again vehemently marveling he cries: O the depth of the riches of the knowledge and wisdom of God, how incomprehensible are his judgments and unsearchable his ways. Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor, or who hath first given to him that it be repaid to him? For of him, and by him, and in him are all things. To him glory for ever (ad Rom., 11,33-36).

On which passage see St. Thomas in the last lecture excellently interpreting the single words, especially those three: of him, and by him, and in him are all things. For he says that by the first word, of him, is signified the efficient cause; by the second, by him, is signified the formal, ideal, and exemplary cause; but by the third, in him, is signified the conservation and government and disposition of all things, according to that Actorum, 17 (v. 28): For in him we live, and move, and are. But by the distribution all things, he understands whatsoever has the character of being. Whence sin is not understood, because according to Augustine, sin is nothing. Nevertheless St. Thomas says that «whatsoever of entity is in sin is wholly from God».

From this testimony of the Apostle, therefore, I argue thus in refutation of the moderns' concord and in confirmation of our concord: The good deliberation of our free choice is counted among the best real goods which are in the world: therefore it is from God as from the efficient cause, and through God as from the exemplary cause, and in God as in the conserving cause, according to the disposition of the incomprehensible divine wisdom. It does not suffice, therefore, to assert God to be only the moral cause in the execution of human deliberation, especially the supernatural, but it is also necessary to assert him to be the really efficient cause, premoving free choice to exercise such deliberation efficaciously. This conclusion is proved. For otherwise, man himself first from his own free choice, which is not God's grace, would give to God something, namely to apply himself with that sufficient aid to the good operation; which application indeed he did not receive truly and really from that aid itself, which was common to the other who does not apply himself to operation.

Likewise when the Apostle says ad Rom., 8 (v. 14): Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, it does not seem explicable that they are led only morally by the Spirit showing them the good, but also physically and really by him efficaciously inspiring unto the exercise of love of God. Likewise when in the same place he says that in the spirit of adoption of sons we cry, Abba, father, surely he signifies the efficient cause of this cry. Likewise that, The Spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings, designates the most efficacious efficient cause, which makes us ask and desire what pleases God, as is the common interpretation of the saints on that passage.

10. — Let us conclude therefore in sum that our concord in many things excels the moderns' concord. First indeed in antiquity in the school of theologians; secondly in that it agrees more with natural reason concerning the manner of causing of the first cause: for neither do we deny metaphysical principles, as others deny; thirdly because it is more conformed to the teaching of the holy fathers, if they be read with attention and sincerely, whose testimonies it were easy for us to insert, were we not constrained by narrowness of time; fourthly in that we solve the arguments of the contraries more briefly and easily, as has been seen; fifthly in that through this teaching faithful men are made more humble, while they glory in God alone, giving thanks not only because he gave to be able, but because he truly and really gave to will and to do, and with greater humility they seek God's maintenance, placing all hope in God.

But the new concord which the moderns, perchance with good zeal, strive to introduce into the school of theologians, has none of the aforesaid. But rather with excessive curiosity concerning a thing incomprehensible to human wit they offer satisfaction, so that it be wise not unto sobriety. Then I know not what greater consolation they bring to men while they intend to make them more confident concerning the power of their free choice for working their eternal salvation, while they opine that through their own powers they can determine and render efficacious God's aids which do not bring prevenient real efficacy with them, provided God give them in opportune time.

But we acknowledge that grace to be efficacious with Augustine «which is refused by no hard heart», which brings with it, not opportuneness of time, but the most efficacious power of God's eternal good pleasure, to do in us what is pleasing before God.

But those who reduce the account of the difference and distinction of him who is converted from him who is not converted to opportuneness of time and to middle knowledge, against which we spoke elsewhere, ought to have considered that they leave proud men no less anxious and ignorant in consideration of their eternal salvation. For when it is asked of the authors of this new concord, why to this man he gave in opportune time and not to another; whether the other, as the object of that middle knowledge, never had any opportuneness of time? Why then did God not decree then to give him the prevenient aid of grace, which he knew he would use well, if it were given? Surely they will be able to bring forward no account, besides the free divine will, which mercifully elected whom it would; but the rest, that the order of divine wisdom and justice be shown, it permitted to fail through sin and to remain in it. Let us all therefore cry: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. To him glory for ever.